Improved Nature's Grasp and Tanking

[Cambrian]

Since roots is now castable indoors as a form of CC for druid, would picking up Improved Nature's Grasp be a useful tanking tool for 5 and 10 man instances? I may be wrong since I have experienced beta, but it seems to me that every time a mob hits you it should be entangled with roots. Anyone got any insight on this?

[drakath]

Nature's grasp only has one charge, and entangles only one person.

[Egeldi]

Nature's grasp only has one charge, and entangles only one person.

It could, if you could choose what gets entangled. As is, you'd have just a good chance of the skull target getting the roots as the second tank target.

Best bet would be to cast roots on your second kill target (a melee mob) and then shift into bear. Or be fancy and after the skull is dead re-cast roots and then move down the CC list (sap, trap, etc).

[Houndy]

It could, if you could choose what gets entangled. As is, you'd have just a good chance of the skull target getting the roots as the second tank target.

Best bet would be to cast roots on your second kill target (a melee mob) and then shift into bear. Or be fancy and after the skull is dead re-cast roots and then move down the CC list (sap, trap, etc).

Or, you could refrain from marking any of the targets until one is rooted.

Or, you could bash your main target and cast Nature's Grasp so that the off-target will hit you for the roots.

Or, yes, open with roots. That seems like a good idea.

[Jathro]

Or, instead of starting with a Starfire on your 2nd tank target (and hitting Moonfire on your 3rd as it applies) before shifting to bear, you could just cast roots on one (and still Moonfire as needed) and pick up the rooted mob before going down the CC list.

[Seraphk]

As the only tank without any significant AoE aggro ability you will always use Hurricane to open just as smart Ferals do in BC now. It does just as much damage with 3 ticks as a Starfire and 35% +/- less than Moonfire in BC, while in WoTLK, it's base damage scales significantly better than that of Moonfire / Starfire to the point where if you get just 2 ticks you will be doing as much or more damage than either of them only on every mob in a pull rather than just one.

After two ticks establishing decent enough aggro to make sure the healer won't pull off you initially due to a crit heal or HoTs -- You will then cast Entangling Roots on your secondary mob to CC it. In BC, I currently do this in Heroic MGT with Cyclone, only Cyclone's duration is four times shorter than that of Entangling Roots making its only purpose for me to take less initial burst damage when casters and melee are both on me and we're doing it without CC.

The fact that you can only Entangling Roots one target where you cannot have Nature's Grasp root another is the main reason I would never consider it. It would be nice but, rarely will you ever really need to root something while tanking if you have CC... You can cast Entangling Roots after pulling with Hurricane without a problem. And, basically, the only time it would ever be useful is if your healer somehow died and you had two mobs beating on you. Hit Nature's Grasp to root one, Bash the other one, and Battle Rez without any risk of dying or dying by the time the healer gets their next cast off from taking so much damage trying to rez them. Of course, in normal instances, you can just Barkskin + Battle Rez people very easily -- I'm referring to Heroics where coming out of Bear Form with 2 mobs on you is a sure death without any heals on you.

[Jathro]

So you start the pull and shift into bear form.... what.... 10 seconds later?