Druid tanks.. Are they good?

[tekoix]

What happened to the days when we use to give tanks 5-10 seconds to generate plenty of threat so the dps never has to worry about pulling off the tank, instead of just charging in with them and being a douche?

That 5 seconds won't effect your dps enough to really care, the only ones who can avoid it and just run in are rogues and hunters (TotT / MD) but they should be near the top of the meters either way if your concerned that much.

[exochaft]

Well damn, all I can say is I stand corrected. I guess there needs to be a balance of the 2. My question to you exochaft then would be, when do you know you have enough TTL to start working on your EH (and visa verse)?

I'll help yas out since I'm in the nice and cuddly mood this morning!

I did see your list of fight examples, and yes, I read through them all. This goes all the way back to the definitions of EH and TTL, and what they're both used for. I'll spare the in-depth details since they're easily available in my sig link. However, semi-long post inc!

When do you know when you have enough?:

EH is used to model how much damage you can take w/o a heal and zero avoidance. It's on a per fight basis, obviously, because every fight has different mechanics and sources of damage. There's only a handful of fights that are pure EH-only fights, and that's as BQL OT, tanking Keleseth, and maybe Gunship (we just have tanks sit and taunt the boss back and forth to eat bleeds the entire time), since it's all purely unavoidable damage.
Beyond that, you'll have to play around with your gear to get it right. A rule of thumb: figure out ahead of time what "burst" there is in a fight, or what has a high chance of killing you because healer reaction might be slow. Get your EH high enough to deal with that and live. Congrats, you've just estabilish your EH.
Do not confuse burst damage with strong, consistent damage onslaughts. Yes, there is a difference... burst damage is damage that you'll take and the healers cannot or have a very high chance of not being able to react to in time, while strong, consistent damage is a heals-per-second issue (which cannot be solved through EH, but... you guess it, TTL!). Keep in mind that EH will increase your TTL, but it happens in huge chunks since the hits you'll take are pretty massive compared to what you can do to personally adjusting your gear.

The point where EH fails and TTL takes over is beyond the burst damage. Once you've survived the burst damage, you need to keep living beyond that... healers can help, but HPS can only go so far. LK is a very good fight to discuss EH and TTL. If you've done the heroic versions of LK, you know the Shambling Horrors are no joke when they drop below 20%... there's just no way to stack enough EH to survive two hits in a row, especially if two are out at the same time. I've seen our warrior Shockwave and still die, even though they're stunned due to server-client latency. Soul Reaper is another beast in itself: the initial damage and then 100% hasted LK melee attacks (suppose it depends on your strat), but you need enough EH to survive the initial blast and possibly the first melee attack, since they've come w/i a fraction of a second on me before. TTL really takes over when the healers do have time to react, but the DPS you take will be greater than the HPS... try living through all of the melee attacks and not avoid one of them, it's not pretty.

Now we use ICC as the basis for everything, since it's the latest raiding content, however the ICC stacking buff sort of muddies the water in this discussion. Since it increases HP and Heals by X%, you can go a few ways. With the HP increase, LK and Sindragosa are about the only fights where I care about my EH and TTL balance. With the ICC buff, I can maximize my TTL so much since my HP is increased drastically while maintaining the EH I need... +80k HP really isn't necessary for most of the fights, seriously. The other route you can go is to just EH to the max and forgot about TTL since your healers' HPS should go up with the buff. However, I prefer not to go this route since I'd rather help my healers out than make them stress out spamming heals nonstop... lag spikes, other idiots need healing, "oh crap, I just used divine plea, stop taking damage," tank healers get unchained/iceblocked, list is endless... I'd rather have the best chance of living depend on me rather than multiple people.... which actually ties into the original OP: raiders should take measures to ensure the success of the raid based on their own abilities/preparation, don't make other ppl your crutch unless it's absolutely necessary.

If you want non-ICC muddied discussion about the extremes of EH and TTL, and why maxing them separately is bad, just read the post linked in my signature. Cataclysm will change a lot of things, but EH vs TTL will still be relevant.

[mielikinna]

There's been a lot of arguing about stam and agi stacking in this thread, and I feel it's time to weigh in.

My answer - It depends on what content you are tanking.

My guild is 11/12 HM working on HM LK. I stack stam 100%, use blood draining, armor on gloves, etc. It is not just about surviving 2 hits in a row. It's how much healing you need to survive the third hit. It is always about the worst case scenario, because RNG cannot be relied upon.

Example - Boss hits for ~30k.
Tank 1 stacks stam and has 75k health.
Tank 2 stacks agi and has 65k health.

Supposing no dodges, tank 2 needs at least 25k healing to survive hit #3.
Tank #1 needs 15k.

A shadow trap goes out. One tank healer is running to the horror tank with plague and the other now has to move for shadow trap. Can you survive consistently off of only the HoT's others thrown you until one of your paladins can bomb a fresh HL on you?

With cooldowns, soul reaper hits for 40k, and he can melee at the same time it ticks, and his average melee on me is 27k. I have no choice but to stack stam to survive the burst.

However, if the content you are in does not force you to such extremes, I would stack agi in a heartbeat. I stacked agi through ToC, then swapped to hybrid gemming for ToGC. I did hybrid for the first few weeks of ICC, then swapped to full stam. There is no real choice for a tank doing heroic LK. For someone doing 5-mans, or pre-ICC content, I’d lean towards agi. For someone doing 10 mans, including hardmodes, and probably non-hardmode 25’s, I’d say hybrid gemming (provided you meet survival softcap limitations for the fight you are tanking).

[Gestopft]

What happened to the days when we use to give tanks 5-10 seconds to generate plenty of threat so the dps never has to worry about pulling off the tank, instead of just charging in with them and being a douche?

That 5 seconds won't effect your dps enough to really care, the only ones who can avoid it and just run in are rogues and hunters (TotT / MD) but they should be near the top of the meters either way if your concerned that much.

This, for one. OP, you may not realize that druid tanks have a ramp-up time. It's not terribly long, but druids aren't doing their max threat until they get lacerate up to five stacks. You could ask them to Berzerk right off the bat (after debuffs are up) because if you are pulling near the start of a fight, Berserk can give them a good threat lead.

[Mijolnyr]

Could it be that people are starting to see the light again?

Thank you for laying it out in the other thread exo that was very well written.

It comes down to situation, and a good bear will know when he has enough of EH and TTL

To many bears see high end tanks that are strictly stacking stamina for H LK which I'm not one to argue with that but that's 1 fight the guild is trying to overcome, a single fight with very unique mechanics. But these bears look at their heroes and then follow after them stacking stam at every nitch they can get, even replacing agi enchants for less stam than the enchant offered agi.

Its best to use your head not copy off someone else just because they are up there. For all you know they just put all that stam on there to sit around dal in bear form epeen flexing their health to nubs that will follow them without doing research of their own. Its a wow wide conspiracy O.o

But with all seriousness finding the best combination for what content you are clearing, and adjusting for specific fights has always been the better choice, and by just stacking one over the other for all cases is just gimping your own performance.