Excited to be a Feral Tank @ 3.0 Patch While 70... Not So Much 80.

[mgp84]

I for one have several mixed feeling about WotLK and feral itemization BUT, I am very VERY excited to get an extra 6% dodge, uncritability without resil/defense and an extra 15%! damage reduction in bearform. I would just like to hear thoughts on this from others in the community.
PS and never going rage starved from being a dodge tank. (65% dodge fully buffed)

[Guran]

Unless they keep Mother Bear talent as it is now, there simply isn't a way to justify having no armor bonuses on gear. The tier sets will probably have some, but outside of that you can't push druids towards stacking avoidance + health and hope you don't get too many hits in a row >_>

[Trayke]

I for one have several mixed feeling about WotLK and feral itemization BUT, I am very VERY excited to get an extra 6% dodge, uncritability without resil/defense and an extra 15%! damage reduction in bearform. I would just like to hear thoughts on this from others in the community.
PS and never going rage starved from being a dodge tank. (65% dodge fully buffed)

I very well may have missed something, but how do you account for uncritabillity without def/resil?

[Nydas]

I very well may have missed something, but how do you account for uncritabillity without def/resil?

Survival of the Fittest talent has been changed from 3% to 6% reduced chance to be crit, which is crit immune.

[Alski]

Blizard will (hopefully) have additional armor on Teir gear, otherwise instead of our dps scaling badly like in TBC it will be our mitigation.

but anyway, on another note there were very few high armor Blues/greens at or around lvl 70 and outside T4 there was only 1 piece of epic high armor leather from the first 3 raids. so i wouldn't be to worried, if they do take it out they will make sure we are just as good as the other tanking classes out there (going from what they have been saying)

[Maenetus]

Blizard will (hopefully) have additional armor on Teir gear, otherwise instead of our dps scaling badly like in TBC it will be our mitigation.

OH the irony. The bonus armor on teir gear in TBC caused feral mitigation to CAP! and stop scaling.

feral mitigation will scale better while sharing gear with rogues

[Pepper]

With about the same gear, I've lost more than 14% dodge between my drood at level 70 on Live servers and my drood at level 80 on the beta. It will take a long time, even with the new talent, to go back to the avoidance I used to have.

[Sharandris]

Unless they keep Mother Bear talent as it is now, there simply isn't a way to justify having no armor bonuses on gear. The tier sets will probably have some, but outside of that you can't push druids towards stacking avoidance + health and hope you don't get too many hits in a row >_>

My thoughts exactly. I liked my druid pre BC because it was solid and not luck driven. With BC this balanced up quite a bit - but now?

[Maenetus]

when 3.0 hits with crushes gone, crits gone and mother bear... ferals will have ridiculous EH. It'll all balance out by 80

[Purplehaze]

I think feral tanks will be just fine. Fine while leveling, and fine at 80. Blizzard has stated numeroues times that ferals should be able to tank end game content, so we will get the gear or talents we need. I think there will be items with buffed armor in WotLK too.

When I hear "rogue gear" i think of the leather items. But there are other item slots too, which will be shared with the other tanks. Cloak, rings, neck, trinkets. Who knows, there might even be armor on some of these.

[Pepper]

when 3.0 hits with crushes gone, crits gone and mother bear... ferals will have ridiculous EH. It'll all balance out by 80

And ? Crushing blows are gone for warriors and paladins too, why only the drood should suffers ?
I hope we'll find a few parts of armor gear with some improved armor on it.

[Maenetus]

And ? Crushing blows are gone for warriors and paladins too, why only the drood should suffers ?
I hope we'll find a few parts of armor gear with some improved armor on it.

....fail....

any serious endgame warrior or paladin tank is crush immune. Druids where given higher EH (in the form of bonus armor) to compensate.

warriors and paladins would use gear with bonus armor too if there was any (besides the fel steel set which all starting warrior and paladin tanks use)


more to the point what suffering? feral tanks will be OP until 80 where they'll be balanced. Mother bear is a 12% EH boost

[Bullshifter]

OP may be a stretch- this ain't gonna be TBC. And "most" ferals won't even be "tank" spec'd until 80 anyways- there just won't really be a point during the leveling grind, unless you're just leveling as a tank in instances.

[Maenetus]

OP may be a stretch- this ain't gonna be TBC. And "most" ferals won't even be "tank" spec'd until 80 anyways- there just won't really be a point during the leveling grind, unless you're just leveling as a tank in instances.

after 3.0 but before WotLK, feral tanks will be OP.

that's part of why you can't get the bear mount after 3.0

[Bullshifter]

Pfft. So for the few weeks - couple of months after 3.0 but before WotLK we'll be OP? Who cares, lol...Every class will be all screwed around with during that time and it's completely inconsequential. Lol...

[Oweena]

TBH you could level as cat spec anyway... a cat druid could still tank any pre 80 instance very easily

and the scaling... I'll take a look at warrior TBC tanking set and a druid if they was in rogue TBC dps set... ofc

Warrior...: Druid...:
1.3k stamina 1.3k stamina
19k armor 26k armor
27% dodge 43.5% dodge
25% parry
34% block
46 hit rating 201 hit rating
79 expertise 62 expertise
11.32% crit 40% crit
AP 545 AP ~2.5k (I cant work the druids out)

the warrior is 7/8 t6 kalecgos weapon and felmyst shield

The druid would be 5/8 t6 with the other pieces having SWP level gear. Using wildfury greatstaff, badge ring, badge neck (hit+expertise) normal MgT ring, Heroic MgT trinket, Badge of Tenactiy. Gemmed for shifting shadowsong amethyst I believe its called (+5 agil +7 stam)

Ok... now they seem pretty similar

Druids have more crit (30%+) hit (150+) ap (2+) and armor (+7k)

Warriors have more avoidance (9%+) and expertise (15+)

Now.. warriors have 10% extra mitigation in defensive stance and the extra block... Druids will have mother bear which increases mitigation by 5% for every friendly player in your party soo.. thats 25% extra mitigation I cant be arsed to do the maths but... I'm guessing the total damage mitigated will be the same. The druid has an overabundance of hit rating... soo 60 of that can be changes for more dodge/more stamina/more expertise.

By the look of things they are gonna be pretty well balanced if the gear plan doesnt change to much.. and there are some +armor rings and trinkets out.. Soo druids will most likely still do more damage than a warrior tank they will mitigate around the same amount of damage as a warrior. Do around the same amount of TPS as a warrior tank and have a oh shit button... berseker

Things are looking swell for druids in wotlk... Bring it on I say

Oh something else druids will be able to use weapon enchants... Soo.... if they come out with an updated mongoose... avoidance ftw for druids

[gronyon]

And ? Crushing blows are gone for warriors and paladins too, why only the drood should suffers ?
I hope we'll find a few parts of armor gear with some improved armor on it.

He meant "ridiculous" as in "so high that it will be ridiculous". Druids don't "suffer" from that change, they gain a lot.

In TBC our health would suffer picks (string of crushs you fail to dodge, and the more dodge you have, the more crush you take when you don't dodge). Paladin and Warriors are crush immune with abilities very early in the game, and without even using their ability at some point (like mid T5 they can already design their gear to be crush immune even when shieldblock is down).

In Wotlk, with low dodge, and no crush, we will take more hits, but way less spikes. If rogue armor x bear bonus + mother bear brings us back to TBC level of physical damage reduction, then we would be the tank with the most constant damage input and that's exactly what a raid is looking for.


When they said druids would have higher hitpool, I expected increased healing received. Yet they gave us Mother Bear, a flat damage reduction, like warrior defensive stance... They also announced that all 4 tanks will have roughly the same "numbers" except for block. I fear that a bear will just be a warrior with simply different names on its abilities (and a bit less abilities but that's ok and was always the case). Maul=Heroic, Mangle=Shield Slam, Swipe=TC, etc.
I fear we will end up with exactly as much dodge as a warrior parry+dodge. Maybe tomorrow they'll give us some kind of shield too ?

I wanted seriously different mecanisms

@the Original Poster, your poll is biased, you don't give enough options. I mean : I can't vote : it will hold and I WILL tank. Or it won't hold and I won't tank anyway so I don't care, etc.

PS : EH is Effective Health (took me a few minutes to realize that lol !)

[Oweena]

Druid avoidance and warrior avoidance is already very similar its just warriors is spread over 2...

[NotValidAnymore]

Pfft. So for the few weeks - couple of months after 3.0 but before WotLK we'll be OP? Who cares, every class will be all screwed around with during that time and it's completely inconsequential.

No one cared about Restoration Druids being OP for all these months, so you're ironically right. And WotLK will probably come out 2 months AT MOST after 3.0 is out, so yeah, I guess it won't matter much.

Although after 3.0, Druids will be a much bigger pain in the bee-hind in PvP, I bet.

[Bullshifter]

No, warrior avoidance is significantly higher than druid avoidance currently. We just make up for it in sheer mitigation.Their dodge +parry + block adds up to a significant advantage over our pure dodge. We'll just have to wait and see how it all stacks up for WotLK.