1. #1

    Are you raiding as a feral tank?

    When I look at the abilities and talents DKs have I think they must be OP tanks. A shield that absorbs 100% of the DKs health? Not that I understand them all but, it looks like they have two types of barkskin as well. But then we don't have a single raiding DK tank in our guild, and all the DKs I've ever healed thru heroics seemed more difficult to keep up than any other tank class. That said our guild also doesn't have any druid tanks in raids, I'm geared for it but always have to run on my priest for heals. Are any of you druids tanking in raids? What are your strong points in raids? What fights do your leaders want you to MT, and why? Which ones not?

  2. #2

    Re: Are you raiding as a feral tank?

    We have DK as MT now. And yes, Im full time feral tank.
    Well... There are no bosses that we can't tank. Content now is pretty easy, no challenge at all. Ive tanked malygos 10/25, sartharion 10/25 and etc. The only thing we lacking NOW is that we have to rely on other classes abilities (Sacrifice, Pain Supression, Anti-Magic Field) to survive spike damages like Sartharion's breath. The rest is piece of cake.
    Currently we have the biggest hp pool in game. No one can reach 55k as easy as we.

    Well... 3.1 will be different. We will lose hp and our armor, but will have new toy - savage defence (shield that proc from our crits). Can't really comment on that one, but as for me it is... different style. Not good or bad, just a little different.

    One of the big deals why our guild have feral (me in particular) that I can pull good dps while wearing full tank gear (or switching some parts) and tank build. Not really high, but far better than prot warriors or paladins.
    And dual specs will kill that...

    Quote Originally Posted by fibre
    A shield that absorbs 100% of the DKs health?
    You have misread. It is ability that absorb 75% of magic damage of friendly targets in its area. The amount of damage that it can absorb calculated of DKs attack power AND damage it absorbed can not be higher than 100% of DKs health. It is PTR. On live Antimagic zone dont have such restrictions.

  3. #3
    Herald of the Titans xebtria's Avatar
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    Re: Are you raiding as a feral tank?

    we are sort of casual raiding guild. currently we have 1 prot warrior, 1 full and one if-needed prot paladin, and one feral (me).
    We are looking for more members, so currently our tanks are mostly those who are in the raidgroup... and due to the fact, that we are basically equal equipped, the "MT" is just the one, who wants to be the MT for this raid... we have no 24/7 player who is always and ever the MT.... same rights for everyone.

  4. #4

    Re: Are you raiding as a feral tank?

    Quote Originally Posted by fibre
    When I look at the abilities and talents DKs have I think they must be OP tanks. A shield that absorbs 100% of the DKs health? Not that I understand them all but, it looks like they have two types of barkskin as well.
    The shield absorb only magic damage. It is very powerfull (OP ?) is some situations when you know you will take a huge amount of magic damage (lol Sapphiron bomb and no block nearby), but most of the time it wont change a lot as a tank.

    We have druids who (casually) tank in our raid, they usually tank anything. They just don't tank Patchwerk, because their high HP pools help offtanking him (not that he is really hard nowadays ...).

  5. #5

    Re: Are you raiding as a feral tank?

    I tend to tank most things in my guild. While I'm not a feral druid, we still have 2. The way I see it is, the best thing a feral druid has to offer in instances like Naxx, possibly ulduar as well, is the fact that you can bring them as a wildcard. Meaning, some bosses require 2 tanks, some 3, some just one. A feral druid can swap gear and still be fairly useful when he isn't tanking. If you brought an extra paladin or warrior instead, they'd be more or less useless in those situations. Dual spec will probably change it a bit, though.

    But yeah, I don't think there's anything our druids haven't tanked perfectly fine at some point or another.

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  6. #6
    Herald of the Titans arel00's Avatar
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    Re: Are you raiding as a feral tank?

    As for 3.0.9, DKs are decent tanks, and they shine when there is a ton of predictable burst, like Sartharion with 3 drakes. However, if you take into account a more normal fight, they tend to fall behind the others. I'm talking as a full time feral tank that cleared everything - usually we use a DK tank only on Sartharion+3D, but we do it with me tanking aswell, so it depends.

    As for 3.1, DKs are gonna be improved some on their passive mititgation, nerfed on avoidance and many of their cooldown are gonna be nerfed "TO THE GROUND BABY". Mostly capping their absobrtion values or increasing the cooldown. This is intended because they are currently "the cooldown tank" on Live.

    As for feral tanks role: usually it's me and a prot warrior tanking the bosses. Depending on the situation, I may be the MT due to a larger health pool (as for Sartharion), or because my single target threat and the warrior's aoe threat shine when put together this way (as for Noth), or I can be the offtank due to specific needs (Patchwerk) or the fact that I can switch and go cat for half the time (Gluth, Malygos and KT).

    All considered, ferals aren't living a bad situation at all now. You can run every present instance in the game with a feral druid MT without blinking an eye. We will see with Ulduar. However, I'm much more worried about paladin tanks than DKs, to tell the truth. They may look less "omfg uber" when you look at the talents, but game mechanics make them end up being at the top.
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  7. #7
    Deleted

    Re: Are you raiding as a feral tank?

    Yepp, I am.

    We have five Tanks and try to have everyone tank every fight as often as the other tanks. Obviously our two druids and our DK get to tank Sartharion3D normal instead of our Warrior/Paladin, but thats it basically.

  8. #8

    Re: Are you raiding as a feral tank?

    Normally, every saturday a group of friends and i PuG heroic naxx, we try to get as many alts from the "better" guilds who have cleared naxx25 + sarth, then PuG anyone else to fill in the gaps. I normally go on my feral tank, (which is my alt). It's not "quite" the same i suppose, but yeah, i get to main tank everything, or if i choose someone else can MT which is generally a DK (who are part of this friends/"better" group as for some reason warrior + pally tanks seem a bit rare for the PuGs) .

    I generally seem to be the prefered tank, not because i have better gear, but because i have quite a lot of experience, as i've done everything up until Hyjal on my druid before the main nerfs, and ofc have been playing since TBC with my druid, rather than wotlk. We've even rolled with 6 healers, increasing to 7 at sapphiron+kel because someone had to leave and still have completed it. Ofc, not every run is "smooth", such as one sapphiron attempt someone attempted to hide behind a lightwell... poor guy :| said his mate told him to... anyways...

    I've MT'd every fight except Sarth 25, 3d so far (sometimes i'm needed to help on my druid in sarth) although yes, i've MT'd sarth 10man, +3d and we downed it - although, this was in full stam-gimped polar kit (which i don't usually use).

    One thing that i'd like to point out though, even with all of this experience and practically having Best in Slot pieces, a moonkin PuG for a 5man thought that i couldn't tank violet hold heroic the other day... i facepalmed.

    He thought that i wouldn't be able to hold aggro in his T7/5man instance gear, and that my "better" gear was my stam-gimp stuff (he wanted to see how huge my hp was in bear, which is very important, much more than dodge... clearly, as this is worth more than threat and dodge combined). - I was tempted to wear my dps gear, just because of the lack of threat that one usually experiences in heroics, though i stuck to my normal gear and tanked it fine, without aggro problems :P

    He seemed well impressed... do ferals really seem that bad overall or are there just some bad ferals on my server? :P However, there aren't many feral tanks on my server it seems, only 5 i think i've found which actually tank more than sarth and patch as an OT, and all of these are from the "better" guilds. The rest of the ferals on my server seem to be badly specced cat dps ??? oh well.
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  9. #9

    Re: Are you raiding as a feral tank?


    If I do understand correctly what is missing between your lines your raid is a) looking for a tank and b) your raidleader prefers a DK instead of c) loosing a healer (you) and have a feral tank. Now you are looking for arguments...

    Well, as long as you don't make them understand you're quitting priest for any strong reason to switch to your feral tank as your main character (even if that means to leave and look for another raid and maybe to change server?) there's nothing to argue about. (At least be aware of that bunch of DKs competing for available MT jobs other raids may offer and maybe those raids already have bears and other folks having more experience as MTs...)

    About those poorly tanking DKs in pugs:

    Pre BC Blizzard focused on maxing content... adding some opportunities with BC to keep people busy. In BC they found out some aspects of the game being frustrating (as one result just 1.5-3.0% players raiding sunwell etc.). The goal for WotLK was to keep subscriptions active and people busy: Hey, let's add some OP Hero-Class... and give half a year to see how things are going. Adding Ulduar we address balancing and those DKs hopefully get some skill and keep paying... oops: playing.

    Here we are: Typically DKs puging for heroics today are those twinks having nothing else to do - mainly interested in pvp for some reason - they have to tank in pve if puging for a group most of the time...

    If guilds did raid in BC they just continued raiding - no reason to add DKs tanking except a) MT rerolling or b) MT quitting. (Maybe c) DKs being op up to 3.1. :P)

    This said, there's no reason for a raid to drop a tank to bring anyone else in 3.1, including feral tank. (Assuming balancing for 3.1 isn't finished yet and devs are still fine-tuning some aspects like TTL tanking massive trash or magical damage etc.)


  10. #10

    Re: Are you raiding as a feral tank?

    @ Barbie:

    Nah, I came into the guild healing, they were already tank heavy. Since then I've geared my alt which is a feral tank druid. I'm not sure why our guild only has Pally/Warrior tanks. lol, reading between lines

  11. #11

    Re: Are you raiding as a feral tank?

    Undergeared dk tanks are a pain in the arse to keep up. They actually do worse than just about every tanking class when they are under geared. When they are geared it is quite a different story. In my opinion, however, druid tanks are just broken right now. I would say the tanking goes paladin>warrior>death knight>druid right now. In 3.1, druids and death knights will both be even more broken and paladins will be even stronger. In the end, I retired my feral tank when Wrath broke them and made a paladin tank instead.
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  12. #12

    Re: Are you raiding as a feral tank?

    My current 'role' in my guild is officially feral dps, which means I'm kitty on 9 out of 10 fights. Tankwise we have 2 warriors, of which one usually maintanks, we have a feral tank specced druid. For sartharion +3D we've always used a DK respeccing, plus we are currently recruiting a DK tank. We have always used a prot paladin as well, but he recently rerolled.

    I think I'll have to offtank pretty often in Ulduar as our other feral druid isn't very active and I wonder whether we'll find a decent DK tank before 3.1 hits live. I do have my doubts about this, I did test some of Ulduar and it was a pain for me, especially because my tank gear wasn't and still isn't the best gear around. I'm sure I definately can't tank in Ulduar with the spec I have at the moment, lacking the extra armor, dodge and Protector of the Pack. Dualspec ftw?

  13. #13

    Re: Are you raiding as a feral tank?

    I've done a lot of pugs with a lot of different guilds and if there's one thing I find common it's that every guild seems to have ill-conceived notion that X class is better for or should be considered for main tank more than Y class.
    It's a load of crap. Your guild should choose its main tank based upon gear, ability to pull threat, and general skill level and raid management. For this reason a guild with a really strong DK will love DK tanks because they've seen all the benefits that a good DK can bring. Same for pally, warrior, AND feral.
    Currently I'm the main tank for our guild as feral and there's nothing we can't do because our tank isn't warrior. I'm not pushed into doing kitty because I don't like kitty.
    There are some guilds that will always see warriors as the only real tanks, but I feel bad for them, because it's a mark of how they don't understand how to use their resources well.
    The last time a feral was not a good tank for a fight was Kael and Illidan (the rest of BC/WOTLK should all be fair game for you).

    Lastly if your guild needs to know what a feral is strong at it's this. DKs can be hard to keep up because they rely on high armor (like druids) and high avoidance but lower HP than druids (though a DK who's easy to keep up will come closer to bridging the HP gap). As a feral, you will take the least amount of dmg on hard hitting bosses while at the same time having the highest hp. It allows your healers to not have to spam overheals and saves them mana that way. Warriors and pallies are the best add tanks (lots of little guys) due to block/avoidance, and putting a feral on adds wastes the healers mana because you will simply take much more dmg overall, and the dmg chunks are small enough to not be a problem on lower hp tanks.
    Remind your raid leaders that your DK can do just as much/more dmg than you can as DPS spec'ed for tanking, because while you can both switch gear to dps, he can also switch presences and get that extra dmg.

  14. #14

    Re: Are you raiding as a feral tank?

    Quote Originally Posted by iluwen_de
    Yepp, I am.

    We have five Tanks and try to have everyone tank every fight as often as the other tanks. Obviously our two druids and our DK get to tank Sartharion3D normal instead of our Warrior/Paladin, but thats it basically.
    You have 5 tanks? What kind of guild are you in? We run with 2 tanks on everything in nax. 3d we have a DK respec to tank adds, or if our slacker 3rd OT is online we'll pick him up. But 5 tanks seems over the top.

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