Rockbiter?

[Adril]

i guess it can be used for kiting, in the combination With Frost shock

[Staplecrab]

From memmory a blue said that Rockbiter is there for low level shaman to be a viable tank. This was said before dungeon finder and even wotlk was even released. by low levels I mean 10-50 where instances like wailing caverns, deadmines etc were hard to get a full group together by asking in chat.

You now learn rockbiter weapon at level 75. It's not for tanking. It will be used for kiting in conjunction with unleash weapon, frost shock, earthbind totem and ghost wolf. It will also be useful for gimmick fights that require a ranged tank. Only boss I've noticed on the beta that requires a ranged tank is Rohash in the Conclave of Wind.

[Mammoth]

People keep saying that blizzard has said it will never happen. yet they add rockbiter, we have Toughness to increase stamina, shamanistic rage reduces all damage taken by 30%, spark of life increases healing received by 15%.....

Talents/abilities that increase your survivability are useful for DPS (and ofc PvP), you do a lot more DPS alive than dead. Just because you got something that increases survivability, does not make you a tank.

Personaly, while running Anzu runs for the mount, rockbiter is highly useful for damage reduction.

Not to mention you can change your weapon buff mid-fight, so you can have damage reduction during BloodQueen air phase, Festergut's blight, Saurafang's marks, ... Its really useful, if you just stop to think about it for a little while.

[Against the Modern World]

Personaly, while running Anzu runs for the mount, rockbiter is highly useful for damage reduction.

Is -5%(-10% if DW) damage reduction worth the loss of damage from WF/FT? I'm running Anzu/MgT every day, mostly as Enh, sometimes as Ele, and never used Rockbiter. They can't hurt you when they're dead.
Just rotate glyphed Stoneclaw/Wolves/Shamanistic rage.

[Mammoth]

Its mainly the trash. The Guards seem to hit me really hard and Wolves/Rage are normally on CD from the previous lot. But there's probably truth in what your saying, killing them faster might be better. I made my choice purely based on an arguement of RNG is unreliable.

[syonxwf]

Talents/abilities that increase your survivability are useful for DPS (and ofc PvP), you do a lot more DPS alive than dead. Just because you got something that increases survivability, does not make you a tank.

Personaly, while running Anzu runs for the mount, rockbiter is highly useful for damage reduction.

Not to mention you can change your weapon buff mid-fight, so you can have damage reduction during BloodQueen air phase, Festergut's blight, Saurafang's marks, ... Its really useful, if you just stop to think about it for a little while.

Im not saying that it makes shamans tanks, but most classes don't have that combination of purely taunt and purely damage reduction talents except tanks. I am more curious than anything as to where they are truly going with this. Im excited to see

[Zelven]

It has its uses. I view it the same as a holy paladin before using Righteous Fury when it comes to healing. As a Resto shaman, I find myself using Rockbiter instead of Earthliving. For one, the additional spell power is just wasted on overheals; for two, the damage reduction is nice and a Resto shaman can easily take a few hits from some adds to help a weak tank out. Dungeons and raids are team efforts. Falling asleep on your Chain Heal button isn't being a group player necessarily. :P
Hell, we had an interesting encountre the other day where we pulled a group and the General in Heroic HoL with the lightning charged buff. My shaman took a few adds while the rest of the group burst down the General. No one died. And my silly resto shaman took the hits just fine.
As was also said above, it isn't impossible to think of an Enh shaman being a caster offtank. Been doing that for a LONG time. And kiting with Frost Shock with an additional threat modifier on can really help out, regardless of spec. Then there's level 81+ with the new ability that permits Rockbiter to taunt a mob. Hellooooo Healer helper. D:<
Actual shaman tanking? Nah. Being a benefit to the group in multiple ways? Sure.

[Nah]

To me, it seems quite obvious that Blizzard is allowing for another class to be a (more) viable ranged tank to allow greater flexibility for 10-man guilds. In a 25-man raid environment, you're more likely to have representatives of most classes and specs. By allowing shaman to range tank more effectively, guilds focused on 10-mans would not be hindered in progression simply because no mages or warlocks happened to log on for raid on a given night.

[Parietis]

The point of Rockbiter weapon, simply put, is that shamans are a melee class who previously had no way to reliably offtank a loose add or prevent a wipe by taking a few hits, as they can't just switch to Defensive Stance/Blood Presence/Righteous Fury/etc. It is NOT intended to make actual shaman tanking viable at any level.

Rockbiter's only purpose is to increase threat and decrease damage, searing pain does a ton of damage on a quick cast, hence does a lot of threat. Most spells that say "Cause High Threat" do it because of high damage, and make it so you can't just spam that spell over and over. Just my humble opinion.

Spells that go out of their way to say that they "cause high threat" typically have threat multipliers attached to them. Any spell that hits hard would cause relatively "high threat," that's just common sense and thus the tooltips do not reflect it.

[Rehea]

yeah it has suggested uses on rockbiter, but what is it really intended for since its not for tanking, still unclear.

Other dps and healing classes/specs have abilities to not get attacked, fade, invisibility, die by the sword. Why give shamans and ability to get threat?

Shamans are meant to get threat on lose adds, then die and self res

no but seriusly, the only time it would have any kind of real use right now is for kiting rotface adds/ mutated fanatics in deathwhisper, and we dont even have unleash weapon for the taunt yet.

[Shakari]

Rockbiter's only purpose is to increase threat and decrease damage, searing pain does a ton of damage on a quick cast, hence does a lot of threat. Most spells that say "Cause High Threat" do it because of high damage, and make it so you can't just spam that spell over and over. Just my humble opinion.

No spell that say "causes high amounts of threat" do not do it by doing high damage. The have a added built in threat modifier ie like heroic strike. There designed to cause more threat than damage

[builderthebob]

I pretty much tanked a normal 5 man dungeon with my level 79 enhance shaman. Wasn't even overgeared.

It has some interesting effects to say the least. There are a lot of creative things we can do with the bonus threat and taunt we are getting at level 81.

[Acidbaron]

Think kiting not CC-able mobs and tanking things as Keleseth and Mimirons head.

[Omanley]

rockbiter and rockbiter ue represents blizzards opinion of shamans:
"we dont fucking care"
seriously, look at shaman talents and baseline abilities:

enhancement talent feral spirit's ae taunt, earth elemental's ae taunt, stonwclaw totem's ae taunt, rockbiter imbue unleash single target taunt, shamanistic rage dmg absorb, enh shaman toughness talent, which otherwise only prot warriors, prot paladins and blood death knights have, all of them tanks. spark of life for more heal received.
dont also forget mail armor, the ability to wear shields and to parry, stacking agility which results in huge avoidance also, armor buff (stoneskin totem) and str/agi buff (dodge, block), selfheal abilities, +thread frostshock...

add a crit immunity talent, a talent for extra hp and maybe a talent that lets enhancement get parry from agility also.

would be enough to make enh comparable a tank to blood dk.

but blizz doesn't want to. keep adding tank abilities, not giving us any better cc/pvp utility while also destroying our viability as buffbots and telling us we're not tanks.

[Taalyn]

The only purpose of Rockbiter is to be bit first on BQL.

Seriously though, if the Flametongue glyph is not one of our best 3, you can use Rockbiter for the damage reduction as long a threat isn't an issue.

[electrikfuzz]

It's for kiting and ranged tanking.

It isn't for melee tanking.
While it can be used to pull threat off a healer, that isn't what it was implemented for.

Rockbiter, frost shock, SWG, unleash weapon, etc. I think shaman are probably going to be the best ranged tanks in Cata.
Although it isn't a role that needs to be filled often, it's still there.

Now stop asking about tanking. It makes you look bad.