Should I MT and RL as a Bear in Cata?

[Clawtrocity]

Tanking in cataclysm means that you should be doing a lot more threat than DPS in the same gear as you. Vengeance is a powerful weapon and as long as we have that it'll be hard for DPS to pull off of us. Thrash is your main AoE move don't worry about AoE threat right now. I'd say paladin tanks have the easiest time tanking while raid leading, but I feel once we get use to our rotation then we'll have it just as easy.

[Onalzza]

SO Bear tank still looks viable in Cata? I was curious myself because of the stamina changes we get hit with unless that has changed again.

[Deleted]

SO Bear tank still looks viable in Cata? I was curious myself because of the stamina changes we get hit with unless that has changed again.

Um, pretty sure the reason for the bear stamina nerf was the greatly increased amount of stamina (and armor) on all DPS gear.

I don't think any of the four tank classes is or will be "not viable".

[bashastick]

imo bears generate the best threat on single targets. pulverise + zerk mangle anyone?

[Amandil]

If you like bear more than others right now I'd stick with it. The rotation isn't changing dramatically and it isn't like other tanks are getting much easier, at least not as easy as wotlk bear was.

If you are thinking about being RLer and then not tanking, I'm guessing you will just get bored or frustrated if the tank doesn't do well.

The only time during bosses that you should have to worry about your rotation being perfect is right at the start and when new adds come out. It shouldn't be that hard to focus on those things when needed while still paying attention to the raid at other times.

Don't worry about which tanks are better either. They are about as similar as they can possibly get. AE threat shouldn't matter anyway on bosses, and even if it does, you gain Thrash.


Pick the class you like playing the most and just go with it.

[Sunfyre]

while tanking seems reasonable, i would not suggest real life as a bear.

Pure win.

[martyisokay]

My main is a prot pally and I find that he is rather boring to play so I leveled a bear for cata because they are so much more fun to play. I already told my guild leader that I am changing my main since we already have a few aspiring pally tanks in guild. Not really any point in joining the bandwagon when I am not happy playing him. On my server, there are very bear tanks.

[Deleted]

I tanked with DK and Druid and recently decided to stick with the druid. I haven't really tanked on my DK after patch 4.0.1 because i got to frustrated with it before that. Tanking 1 aoe pack was fine but if the dps excedently pulled another and my runes were on cooldown i was seriously fucked. I felt to restricted as a DK.
My druid has bin resto all trough Wrath but i swapped to tanking after 4.0.1, tanking heroics daily now and enjoying it more then ever.

[Skjerra]

I'd say stick with the character you like best. It takes a lot away from the game (for me anyway) if players are feeling pressure to play particular classes over others because they are (temporarily) considered to be more powerful.

I raid lead in a casual guild and I'm actually more comfortable leading and keeping an eye on other players when I'm bear tanking (the only tank I have) than when I'm dps. I don't think I'm a great tank, but I got the job done and didn't have as many mechanics to worry about in ICC as the dps and healers. Let's face it, tanks didn't really have a hell of a lot to do in many of the ICC encounters, so I'm glad to see that rotation looks like it will be more important come Cataclysm.

As for the AOE tanking, I'm sure it will get easier at 85 (or even 81 as we'll have an extra AOE tanking button), and if it doesn't work properly straight away then I'd expect a fairly rapid hotfix, or at worst a fix in 4.1.

Im not in the beta so can't be sure, but I'm expecting the trash in Cata raids to be more like Ulduar than ICC trash. More single target dps and CC and less aoe, therefore less need for aoe tanking.