Druid tanks.. Are they good?

[shamani]

I know that a lot of high-end guilds use a druid tank in their raids and I've always wanted to play a bear tank but I never did and I am thinking of rolling a druid at the moment. My recent experiences made me doubt about this though so heres my question:

Currently I am playing a fury warrior, mostly in 251-264 gear. I usually pug ToC10-25 everyweek and if there's a druid maintanking, I always end up being dead. I open up with DW and recklessness, and usually in the first minute of the combat, I end up overaggroing the tank, get smashed by the boss and lie down on the floor for the rest of the combat. For this situation, as far as my observations go, these tanks are in 232-245 gear or higher. This never is a problem for me if I am playing with warrior,paladin or DK tanks even they have lower gear than me.

Does the awesomeness of the bear tanks scale highly with gear or is it just the tanks in my pugs suck badly? Or am I doing something wrong - which I highly doubt because I am in a good guild, working on ICC HMs and I never ever have aggro problems.

[Gemazarus]

Bear tanks are awesome atm. They are the tank class least effected by Chill of the Throne and their massive Armor and EHP as well as their nice Cooldowns make them a very nice choice for ICC.

It ofc relies on player skill though. No amount of stats can hide stupid...

[sithorion]

In general, though, druid tanks do have the lowest threat at the moment. nothing to whine about, just a simple fact. When you're starting with DW and Recklessness, you'll probably be looking at 9-11k dps, which will result in almost the same amount of threat due to HS. Therefore, with a less gifted and geared tank, who is gemming for stamina, and not for agility where he gets the most threat from, you'll probably end up death..

my suggestions is: try to fit into the situation with your druid: An ICC druid gems for stamina all the way. However, if you want more threat for hc's and totc's, you better go for agility, since you absorb some dmg, aswell as you get more crit=more threat.

[LumberJackMatt]

Stamina is the number one stat for tanks in ICC...Druids gain more from 1 point of stamina than anyother tank...they doing allright, but like the guy above me said, you will want a stam set for icc but a more balanced set for everything else

[Modez]

In general, though, druid tanks do have the lowest threat at the moment. nothing to whine about, just a simple fact. When you're starting with DW and Recklessness, you'll probably be looking at 9-11k dps, which will result in almost the same amount of threat due to HS. Therefore, with a less gifted and geared tank, who is gemming for stamina, and not for agility where he gets the most threat from, you'll probably end up death..

my suggestions is: try to fit into the situation with your druid: An ICC druid gems for stamina all the way. However, if you want more threat for hc's and totc's, you better go for agility, since you absorb some dmg, aswell as you get more crit=more threat.

Except a smart druid will actually have leftover rage from the previous pull, supplemented by enrage.

Bad bears do this: On every pull blow all their rage by the time the mobs die.

Good bears do this: Establish threat on the main and up to 2 other targets fast (lacerate +maul on initial + maul hitting another, 2nd attack mangle on 3rd with maul hitting it and another), then swipe, and at the end of the pull just autoattack (as you over the required threat to keep it off DPS before the mobs die) and start out the next pull with 100% rage.

Stam is fine in heroics if 'you're doing it right'. The ONLY instance that can be hard once you outgear it (but this isn't a stam vs. agility issue) is VH. It is hard to store rage from one pull to the next due to portal delay.

My armory.

[Hinalover]

In general, though, druid tanks do have the lowest threat at the moment. nothing to whine about, just a simple fact. When you're starting with DW and Recklessness, you'll probably be looking at 9-11k dps, which will result in almost the same amount of threat due to HS. Therefore, with a less gifted and geared tank, who is gemming for stamina, and not for agility where he gets the most threat from, you'll probably end up death..

my suggestions is: try to fit into the situation with your druid: An ICC druid gems for stamina all the way. However, if you want more threat for hc's and totc's, you better go for agility, since you absorb some dmg, aswell as you get more crit=more threat.

I don't know which druid bear you raid with, but on my druid, I hold threat just fine compared to an equally geared DK, pally, or warrior. Shoot I out threat the our warrior on Marrowgar when our dk is main tanking. Really it comes down to four reasons why the druid cannot hold agro. a) DPS out gears the druid b) Druid doesn't have the gear [appropriate weapon] or c) is moving constantly and cannot keep his rotation up d) doesn't know his rotation.

[Kezic]

I don't know which druid bear you raid with, but on my druid, I hold threat just fine compared to an equally geared DK, pally, or warrior. Shoot I out threat the our warrior on Marrowgar when our dk is main tanking. Really it comes down to four reasons why the druid cannot hold agro. a) DPS out gears the druid b) Druid doesn't have the gear [appropriate weapon] or c) is moving constantly and cannot keep his rotation up d) doesn't know his rotation.

Lies only kitty feral drudis have a rotation bears have like 3 abilites... well 4 if u count FF

[exochaft]

To the OP:

Alright, if you're pulling aggro w/i the first 10 seconds, it's most likely the tank didn't get TotT/MD... that's on you to notice, because that's pretty obvious if you're watching the threat of the tank. Currently, I'd say druid tanks have one of the longer ramp-up times for threat, but probably one of the highest sustained threat values. Getting up a 5-stack of Lacerate is time consuming, especially on movement fights where we can't be in range of the boss for 15 seconds or more. Going against geared DPS, if we don't get a nice string of crits, threat will be rough at the start. Also, if the druid tank overgears the content, it's not uncommon to be rage starved even in ICC. Don't fall into the trap of stam vs. agi gemming as being the problem... I'll stack stam on some content to ensure I have rage, since rage starvation is a true threat killer. Sure, stacking agi will increase your crit and help with initial threat, but I'd venture to say most bears should be flirting around the 45-50% crit range in average tanking gear even if they stack stam everywhere, and the crits should average out anyways.

If you're pulling aggro near the end of the first minute, it's probably the tank's fault (unless the fight mechanics cause tank threat to fluctuate/drop to nothing). Granted we don't have as many buttons to push as other tanks, it doesn't mean an idiot can just jump in as a bear and expect to maintain optimal or even decent threat. I think of it like pally tanking... sure, you can whack-a-mole your abilities whenever they light up, but doing them in a certain order or at certain times creates a very sizable increase in threat.

In terms of gear, we're fortunate in the respect that we have quite a bit of DPS stats on our gear to help with threat, however the druid tank's weapon is where you want to look to see how well they'll perform (as long as they're aren't in all greens elsewhere for raids, but use common sense here). Druid tanks are slaves to their weapons, as it provides a ridiculous portion of our AP... I've taken off my weapon in raids to see how much it drops, and we're talking roughly 2/3's of your AP would disappear w/o your weapon. It's THAT important. The weapon should be at least on the level of the content they're tanking, or just slightly below if they're new there... if we're talking ICC tanking with an ilevel 200 weapon, forget it.

Beyond that, if you have to deal with a sub-optimal tank, I'd recommend buddying up with paladins/disc priests/warriors for Hand of Salv/Pain Suppression/Intervene to drop your threat. If you've done 25man Deathwhisper HM, you'll understand the value of recognizing other ways to drop people's threat than through personal cooldowns.

[Jaerin]

I play a druid tank since classic wow and I have to say that recently I've noticed it much harder to hold the initial 10-20 second aggro. I'm mostly gemmed Stam, but I do share some piece with my main cat DPS so there are pieces that are all Agi.

Usually there are only a couple times when I have trouble holding aggro.

#1) more than 2 mobs and people insist on single target dpsing the one target I'm not specifically Mauling/Lacerating ect. Swipe by itself will not out threat single target dps, especially in the first 20 seconds.

#2) Single target dpsing literally one hit after the pull has occurred. If the fights are coming down to needing the extra attack at the beginning of the fight then there are probably bigger efficiencies that you could find.

IMO pulling aggro off the tank is as much a problem of your own than it is a problem with the tank. If a tank cannot effectively hold aggro over the course of a fight then yes that is a tanking/gear problem. If a tank can adequately hold aggro against everyone except you then its not the tanks fault or problem. When Blizzard put that threat meter in game and explicitly showed everyone their own threat it stopped being a problem the tank had to deal with.

Its pretty simple, if you are at the top of the threat meter or close enough that you could pull aggro then stop attacking. If your raid leader starts complaining that you're not doing enough dps because you're having to stop all the time then there is a bigger problem, but remember that a dead dps = 0 dps. It is ALWAYS better to lose some dps and not pull than it is to do more dps and die and that is no one's fault but your own.

So if you're having trouble try counting to 5 before starting your dps rotation. You might not always be at the top of the meters, but you'll stay alive a whole lot more often.

[Richmond]

Does the awesomeness of the bear tanks scale highly with gear or is it just the tanks in my pugs suck badly? Or am I doing something wrong - which I highly doubt because I am in a good guild, working on ICC HMs and I never ever have aggro problems.

Personally, if the raid has no rogues ToTT or hunters MD'n the tank. Then you should give the tank a good 1-2 second headstart. Even if you have to auto attack for the first few moments. Bear tanks are pumping out there highest threat when we have FFF and 5 stacks of lacerate on the boss. That will take at least 6 GCD and they will be opening with Mangle so that will be 7.

Other to that, you must have been playing with a fairly bad player IMO. Check out my armory if you need a general jist. But bears are currently the 'favoured' tank because we can gain unobtainable amounts of health points - most of them favour stamina which will gimp them on threat.

To your original question, yes we are currently great, but come Cata, i gaurantee that another class will have there 15 minutes of fame. Warriors are overdue, maybe you should try Prot on your current character

[bavarcarus]

In general, though, druid tanks do have the lowest threat at the moment. nothing to whine about, just a simple fact. When you're starting with DW and Recklessness, you'll probably be looking at 9-11k dps, which will result in almost the same amount of threat due to HS. Therefore, with a less gifted and geared tank, who is gemming for stamina, and not for agility where he gets the most threat from, you'll probably end up death..

Bolded is false. Agi gives a bear crit, and that's it in the threat department.

Just looking at the typical gear a bear wears, it's the str from tanking rings/neck and AP on items (particularly your weapon) that is really getting you threat. From a good raiding guild point of view bears are fine with threat. Their health and armor combigned with great CDs make them good for normalizing incoming damage.

[Mijolnyr]

The reason why people think bears have bad threat is because they are looking at bad bears.

Stam is a great stat don't get me wrong but when a bear gets to a point where he has enough stam its pointless to stack more eventually even at higher gear lvls the bear just becomes a heal sponge which for some fights is good but most fights even in ICC is still bad.

Agi is a far better stat even with the 20% nerf to dodge. All bears have more than 20% dodge so that means stacking more avoidance would be just as effective in ICC as any other raid. Agi also gives crit AND AP which increases threat obviously but also increases savage defense procs and absorbs for mitigation. Savage defense hasn't gotten to much love from bears but if you gem and gear right it will mitigate large amounts of damage, and with enough crit it will be up 95%+ of the time. I'm not saying don't stack stam at all but to many people take it to far just because they think their skill is directly related to how much HP they have. Mitigation will trump mass health in the majority of the situations you will encounter.

Hit/exp is another overlooked stat I have seen many bears ignore exp until it is capped which is around 26exp is the single highest threat generation stat. Hit is second.

I personally am not the most geared tank I only have a few lvl 277 items but I can out sustained threat any class, burst is another story due to mechanics that can't be changed by gear certain tanks have a high burst threat rate.

[Richmond]

Agi also gives crit AND AP

Hit/exp is another overlooked stat I have seen many bears ignore exp until it is capped which is around 26exp is the single highest threat generation stat. Hit is second.

Those parts i've quoted are false information, please stop posting if you really dont know what your talking about. Agility increases attack power in Cat Form, the multipliers to agility do not apply in Bear Form.

Hit is the highest DPS stat, once your capped there is no point in getting anymore hit (Unless you plan on getting to 13% odd so that your Growl will not miss). After that, expertise is second. After you get to 26 expertise (Soft cap) then i believe other stats actually bag you more threat than expertise, such as Arp and Crit.

All that being said, the single biggest way to increase your threat is to upgrade your weapon. The battered hilt one is great until you are capable of getting an upgrade from ICC 25

[Mijolnyr]

I have just checked the math and I was mistaken about AP in bear but that doesn't change the other points and yes crit does in fact help your threat.
and no exp until it is capped is a higher threat/dps yield since you are in front of the boss than hit is.

[littlepiggy]

Stam is a great stat don't get me wrong but when a bear gets to a point where he has enough stam its pointless to stack more eventually even at higher gear lvls the bear just becomes a heal sponge which for some fights is good but most fights even in ICC is still bad.

Agi is a far better stat even with the 20% nerf to dodge.

err, agility got devalued with Chill and even more so with hardmode ICC.. any bear attempting hard Heroic ICC 25 bosses is going to have 90% + stamina gems, we get all the dodge we need from gear. Why gem for agility and still have lower avoidances than any other tank and put yourself close to their HP? Until we have close to 100k HP, there will never be a point where to we have to much stam. No fight devalues stamina in ICC, but several devalue agility (The hardest three; LK, Sind, Put and more)

crit gives so little threat (especially since we already have like 50-60%) that it barely counts, but yeah exp is the best threat stat

you probably played with a bad bear, the sad thing is that their are websites out there that try to help but really end up being completely wrong. probably only 10% of the druid's i've ever seen have speced/glyphed/gemmed correctly, not counting all the ones i've helped in whispers.

[Niter]

Druid tanks are not good. They are great. Most people should have realised that when SWP came out years ago...

As for the threat, the thing is quite simple: Druids DO NOT have Thunderclap. What do I mean by that? Thunderclap is a much more efficient aggro snap move. Of course, we got Swipe but it is ridiculous to assume that a move we can spam will be more effective than, which has a cooldown, in a single use.

Let me try to put it in a better way, with an example.

Case 1:
Warrior Charges a pack. DPS follows. Warrior does TC and then SW. TC has a very high threat mod applied to it and followed by a SW, it makes them have all mobs on them (or stunned) until SW duration expires. Such Warrior may have problems with threat afterwards.

Case 2:
Druid Feral Charges in, DPS follows. Druid do not have Thunderclap, but he can and he will spam Swipe and Maul. If DPS are not careful, they may pull mobs before a 2nd or 3rd Swipe hit the pack. After the 2nd or 3rd Swipe, a Druid will not lose aggro unless the a DPS outgear him for a large margin.

In case 1, DPS is saved from his own recklessness by the mechanics of Warrior class. In case 2, the same DPS may have a horrible death as punishment for his own mistake. Of course, this is only valid for packs. Bosses are an entirely different game.

I will not mention Paladins because the mere presence of a Prot Pally causes major threat. Everything they do has nice threat mods and most of their abilities will hit more than one target.

Let the Druid Swipe twice. Then unleash hell. It is simple as that. If you give the Bear a couple of seconds and you still happen to pull aggro, you are looking at a poorly played/geared bear.

[Mijolnyr]

err, agility got devalued with Chill and even more so with hardmode ICC.. any bear attempting hard Heroic ICC 25 bosses is going to have 90% + stamina gems, we get all the dodge we need from gear. Why gem for agility and still have lower avoidances than any other tank and put yourself close to their HP? Until we have close to 100k HP, there will never be a point where to we have to much stam. No fight devalues stamina in ICC, but several devalue agility (The hardest three; LK, Sind, Put and more)

Like I said earlier no bear has less than 20% dodge so the is no "devalue" of any stat used by bears. Each point of agi will still increase avoidance even with the debuff, and even without the debuff.

And also I did mention certain fights that requires more health, just like 3d back in the day but that doesn't mean stack stam all the way for everything. No matter how you look at it except for certain fights mitigation still beats pure stam.

[Sarcasm]

Threat is everyone's responsibility, not just the tank's. If you have a whole minute's warning and you still pull aggro, it's not the tank at fault.

That being said, druid tanks are still great tanks, you just must have had a string of bad ones.

[littlepiggy]

Each point of agi will still increase avoidance even with the debuff, and even without the debuff.
mitigation still beats pure stam.

I never said agility gives less dodge, but there is no reason to gem it (other than a agi/stam gem for the meta) because we get all we need from gear. Bear tanks are designed on getting stamina and armor, not avoidance, so why gem for something we don't need more of over something we do need more of.

stam > armor > agi
mitigation is amazing, but useless if you're dead

Threat is everyone's responsibility, not just the tank's.

This, but to many people are bad and just think they can do whatever

[Kyndig]

A lot of good have points have been made (and some really stupid ones :s). But none have pointed out that Blizz have in fact said that tanks threat doesn't scale as well as DPS. Atm at least for my guild it doesn't matter what class is tanking, without ToT's and MD's at the start the DPS will pull agroo every time. SO it is down to you as DPS to control your dmg/theat and make sure it does not go over the tank. Everyone gets strings of lucky hits every now and then and equally tanks can get strings of unlucky hits and generate little to no threat. It's why there are threat meters, learn to use em.

Back on topic Bear tanks are awsome and lots of fun to play. I highly recomend trying it out.