3.1 Feral Tanking?

[Hbgsmokealot]

if you lost 7k hp then you were more than likely one of those fail stam stacking druids. regular bears with BiS gear lost about 4k hp

this

[Zhoreilh]

Well, not only a stam stacker...
7K HP loss is just impossible.

pre 3.1, we got 10*1.25*1.2*1.06*1.1 = 17.49 health/stam on stuff (with Bok)
now, we get 10*1.25*1.1*1.06*1.02*1.1 = 16.35
That's a 6.5% loss for health from stam. It doesn't affect some buff and enchant (Commanding Shout for instance), nor the base health.

[enigmaran]

It seems like bears are just fine in terms of survivability but still lagging behind other tanks on threat generation.

[fibre]

It seems like bears are just fine in terms of survivability but still lagging behind other tanks on threat generation.

Bear tanking is retarded compared to prepatch. threat seems to be better though, prolly due to Gore and Improved MotW.

lol, man there are so many counter comments in this thread! ;D

[arel00]

Oh I have been waiting for so long.

Now Ulduar is here, and you went there. Bad druids found themselves even worse, and good druids found that, who could have guessed, we are still good tanks.

It is time to keep my word:


I TOLD YOU


Thanks. Have fun.

[fibre]

Yep you said it! I haven't tanked anything serious in the last several weeks, or been on wow much at all. Idk, boredom has set in again, I might be putting my accounts on hold for awhile. I did that pre-BC for 7-9 months. Right now I'm more interested in discussing the game and possible additions than I am in playing it. I have two 80's, five 50-60's just chillin

[Deleted]

The normal modes aren't a challenge at all. The problem will come when its time for hardmodes (As I've said more than once). The normal modes are designed so that everyone can raid it and kill it, and given the time we've all had to farm the old content pretty much everyone has BiS gear, especially tanks. The normal modes arent an issue and wont ever be for any tank, regardless of gemming.

Personally Ive gone full out agility socketing again. 27 agi prismatics in yellow sockets, 8agi/12sta in blue and 16 agi in red. Its working out OK and I cant see how to make it any better for the time being. Next reset I'll tank hardmodes and then and only then can I see how good/bad things are.

That being said, 6.2k dps on Ignis and 5.9k on Vezax is probably gonna make me stay as DPS for a little while longer. Time to start experimenting with ArP tho, expensive stuff

[Azreala]

By no means am I a feral guru (although been a feral since vanilla - only a casual player), but on Tuesday at 7pm (patch day) I logged in and giggled. From the sounds of the forums and all the QQ I was expecting to loose 20k hp and have 1k armor (j/k...). I lost 1.2k HP (WOW, went from 34.2k unbuffed to 33k) and about 5k armor. That hurt most but the HP loss was nothing. I have always gemmed for agility and never had any issues generating threat. In all reality, my dps has increased slightly thanks to the, ever so popular, bleed crits but my problem seems to be with my two druid healers. They're great healers too, but changes happen and we just need to learn to adapt.

I'm far from Ulduar - only in 3/5 Tier 7, nothing fancy, but I've had no issues whatsoever keeping threat or tanking. As another posted mentioned, the new boss in VOA really does hit like a truck.

Think the hardest thing for me is remembering to put on my TANK gear when I'm a TANK spec. I've switched over to dps a few times, always remembering my dps gear during the first spec change, but can't get it together when I go back to a tank. BAD KITTY!

For those bears who stack stam - why? Too many goodies with agility.

[enigmaran]

lol, man there are so many counter comments in this thread! ;D

no - those two are not counter comments.

Our threat is better - but we still do lag behind the other tanks, but from a survivability standpoint it seems like we are still in really good shape.

[fibre]

no - those two are not counter comments. Our threat is better - but we still do lag behind the other tanks, but from a survivability standpoint it seems like we are still in really good shape.

True they're not exactly counter-points. One says threat is improved but otherwise bear tanking is now retarded, aka survivability is worse. The other says survivability is in good shape but threat is worse than the other tanks. The poll shows the majority of people find bear tanking to be harder than before, but it's definitely not a unanimous opinion.

[Incrediguy]

i dont know what guilds everyone in but our guild is definately not top on the list. Sometimes we have lazy heals and sometimes healers switch targets instead of MT healing. We currently have 3 feral druids. We have never had a steady warrior pally or Dk tank until right before 3.1 patch.

With the current change to feral we tried a warrior/Dk/pally tank in nearly BiS gear and still he was replaced tonight by one of the ferals on kologarn. Not saying that we're better then before because i think we are no where close to being where we should be. We are no longer OP and have you use our CDs wisely. Yes we have to be smarter not all about stacking agi/stam/armor and GG druids win.

I personally like SD and think its a great idea because it has nearly an 75% uptime.

[Daiyara]

I personally like SD and think its a great idea because it has nearly an 75% uptime.

I don't like it. If you tank a boss with faster swing, then it will hit you before you proc the Savage Defense. The same situation occurs with AoE tanking, you can block (let's use 'block' as it is a similar scenario) one of the atackers if you get a crit, but you won't be able to block the rest of the atackers.

SD (Savage Defense) should be a passive skill, depending on the atacker, not on the druid swing/atack.

I have increased my threat generation in about 600-700 tps, and it has been obviously caused by Gore and the improved MotW (specially Gore). AoE tanking is still crappy. If you pay atention to any of your wowwebstats reports, you will see that your Swipe generates about 1500-1800 tps (depending on your gear). Your Maul helps, but not too much against a big pool of mobs. Any DpS will steal your mobs.

Druid is now clearly behind the rest of the tanks, but it doesn't mean we are not able to tank. We just have 'harder times'. We still can tank, and don't forget we provide some other things like our Leader of the Pack aura, the 'rezz-in-combat' and innervate (most of Ulduar bosses are tauntable).

The sad thing if that I feel like I am now the fourth tank in the roster. There is not a big difference with the rest of the tanks in HP (I have about 3k HP more than my warrior tank) and due to the armor reduction, bigger melee hits.

I don't find any scenario where we are the best choice, and that's a big concern whenever we will start with hard mode.

Hard times.

[Incrediguy]

okay for you to be 4th tank means you either need to change your style or get better. Plenty of Druids on my server are current MTs of ALL bosses and have proved that they can MT ALL bosses. I guess i dont see your arguement. Even with all nerfs of HP, Armor, 1 Hit bubble, Diminishing Returns, My guild has cleared up to mimiron and still hasnt had a problem healing druid but has said the other tanks have taken more damage and have shown more damage from WWS reports.

Im a Druid tank. Im one of serveral Pre BC tanks that fought for a Raid spot as a tank. We were way worse before, then we are now. We got nerfed. the quicker people start realizing that were not bad as tanks and stop QQing about being terrible, maybe, just maybe, the rest of the community might also start having faith in Feral Druids again. Otherwise we can QQ then cry more and people can keep losing theyre raid spots or prove that your skill is above the nerf and prove that you deserve the spot and not based on you OP status as a Class.

[Cain]

first of all, 1500-1800 aoe tps per mob should be fine, since i mostly worry about healers pulling aggro and those won't. as for damage dealers, which of them actually do more than 1500 aoe tps with aoe skills? and you still got mangle and the option to change to each target. if your dps got problems attacking the skull marked mob first, then it's their problem, seriously.
and show me that warrior or dk that is doing more aoe tps than i do, given gear is similiar. only paladins getting hit might be above that.

As for SD: with a decent dodge, most hits will either be dodged or (partially) absorbed in a boss fight, so not that much to worry about physical damage. magical damage we'll have to see.

[Lynalis]

our mt is still feral and normal mode encounters so far are very doable ( killed 3 of the watchers so far ); but not sure about hard modes or stuff.

[deathsclaw]

Yea im not having any probs tanking or holding aggro. But it does take some getting used to having less HP and being hit for a bit harder. And some healers are having to adjust a small bit. But its deff still alive and its not as bad as myself and others had thought.

Same here.. 40% crit in my bear suit and 45% dodge. The 2.5k drop in HP isn't very much. Healers have said healing me is the same. No problems here.

[baseball]

Healers have said healing me is the same. No problems here.

Verified. Running Uld10 with two healers means it's essential they be able to trust I'll survive as they take care of the raid, and they have no complaints so far.

Which is good, because if they do, I have to switch to resto as a third healer and let the ret paladin dual spec to prot. :/

[Moofyre]

Last 2 night in Ulduar went just great from my pov, and I am feral tank.
Lost about 500-700hp only. Staying at 41k+ now. Not a big problem.
With all buff procing that boost my armor int he combat i am at 72% dmg reduction, so lost only 3% since before 3.1. i was at 75% (caped).
SD it like up 80% of time on boss, on trash - multiple mobs is 99%.

Well not sure how much life you ran before patch.. But I lost 4200 life and about as much armor.
Can I tank still : Yes
Can I do it as well as before : NO

The one thing that I use to easily do is tank several Elite Mobs...Now not so easy.
Savage defense is only helping with one of those mobs...the others are hitting me far harder than they use to....even tho they gave me a 360 degree swipe (which made this easy to do aggrowise)

Druid tank just lost the one thing it did better than the others.... so now name a fight where you would PREFER a druid tank over pally, DK, or a warrior?
Yes I was a stam stackin Mofo...(we run alot of pally healers in my guild)

[Danthegreat1]

Honestly it's not that bad. I'm an OT, doubt i'd ever want to be a full-time MT, but OTing is where we shine. We can Innervate, Bres, and DPS all in our tank gear. I can push well over 3.5k dps in my tanking set, what other tanks can do that? Sit on the sidelines as the OT, you get just as much fame and glory as the MT. With less responsibilities and more versatility.

[Remen]

Oh I have been waiting for so long.

Now Ulduar is here, and you went there. Bad druids found themselves even worse, and good druids found that, who could have guessed, we are still good tanks.

It is time to keep my word:


I TOLD YOU


Thanks. Have fun.

I rofl'd and I agree... we are just fine, altho I must admit before patch I had other thoughts, we seem to be just fine, only slightly different mechanics are involved.