Bear swipe!!!!

[Oerba Yun Fang]

Swiper no swiping!

Oh god... this just made my day. Thank you.


OT: Hopefully this'll help my poor little bear alt. x.x

[figgis]

i might just have to play my druid tank more after this patch, also can we get better rage management please outside of combat

[exochaft]

After reading several comments posted throughout this thread, I suppose I can touch on a few.

Yes, the change is a boon to lowbie druid tanks. Nothing more annoying than waiting quite a few levels before you get a primary AoE tool only for it to be scaled for something you get at 81 for AoE threat.

However, I think some people are missing the point when we're talking about max level tanking, or perhaps it's just a case of short term memory loss . Part of the design goal for tanks was to separate single-target and AoE abilities so that none would overlap for Cataclysm. That's fine and dandy, but what was the cataclyst for the Cataclysm design? Part of the problem was that other classes had much more passive forms of AoE threat, another part was that some classes had AoE threat moves that were even better than intended for single-target applications due to low/no CDs and low use costs, and another part, specifically for druids, was that having no CD on AoE abilities (*cough* Swipe *cough*) put them in a place where all you could do was use AoE abilities nonstop to maintain threat.

What was the model Blizz wanted to adopt? If you were in a single-target situation, a tank would only want to use single-target abilities. If you were in an AoE situations, you would default to using your AoE abilities, but you could also have the ability to maintain solid single-target threat due to having extra GCD's at the same time. Right now, there's only one fight that that puts tanks in this situation (heroic Halfus, probably restricted to 10man since you can faceroll through 25man heroic with 5 or more tanks), but that doesn't mean we won't see a raid in 4.1 that would call for a tank to maintain AoE threat on mobs while still generating solid threat on a primary target. I don't really consider 75% of our GCD's being used on AoE threat (and more importantly, being balanced around using 75% of our GCD's for AoE threat) a step in the right direction... our survivability compared to other tanks in AoE situations is already pretty inferior.

Now, Blizz would like us to believe that Vengeance is the end-all answer to our scaling woes, but the fatal flaw many of us saw in the beta and is showing up now in heroic 5mans and in raids to some degree is that as a tank gets better gear, Vengeance doesn't really scale enough because it requires you to get hit and get hit often/hard enough to make a difference (which is ironic for tanks, since we want to minimize that). Heck, I check my Vengeance even in heroic raids and I'm barely at a Vengeance stack of 5% of my HP when I'm getting pummeled... you can only imagine 5man heroics where rage is already bad enough where CCing, at least in my case, is a guarantee of losing threat since I need that extra Vengeance/rage. I'd like to say it's just a simple oversight, but this is one issue that was spotted on the beta, along with other scaling issues, that some of us saw well in advance but have yet to be or only recently fixed because suddenly "Oops, you were right, we'll adjust it."

[bavarcarus]

yeah vengeance is quite irritating, I don't know about other tanking classes but it screws our aoe tanking figures. They try to balance around full raiding vengeance for abilites to make sure we aren't turning to swipe and thrash supposedly, but then without it they're hardly worth pushing. I can't count the number of times on aoe 5man pulls I end up keeping taunt, swipe and thrash on CD, and that's running with kittie gear. I'd likely be better off taking gear off entirely.

[Yeran]

Yes we do less single target threat while tanking aoe, but we are in the same boat with every other tanking class here (at least pala and warrior, don't have an DK). While doing our aoe-rotation we can still use maul every 3 seconds for example, thats something warriors and paladins can not, as they have weaker multi-target attacks to replace it. I don't see how it would be justified to keep maximized single-target threat and add aoe as some kind of free bonus. And itas not like we lose that much single-target threat as pointed out earlier. We mainly lose free mangle proccs and the pulverize buff, both would only kick in at a point of the fight where aggro needs to be stable already alway, the first few seconds of the fight do matter in my opinion. I can build up enough threat on average, but in a short sample all sort of RNG screws you up (everyone loves getting his first white hit parried while dodging the bosses first blow).

About Vengeance I can only agree and it was obvious from the very beginning. It simply increases the problem of doing less threat in better gear as we don't only encounter more rage problems but will also get less AP. But thats a heroic problem mostly, in raids there are rarely aggro worries so far.

[Djuntas]

You have problems with rage? Really?

Yup, all the time. Havent tanked in raids trough except Halfus normal25 cause my guild got like 6 tanks lol.

I hate tanking 5 man heroics when I run with thoes 12-17k overall DPS. Like there speed, but I feel like a noob... Like Im doing something utterly bad playing. And I have been feral since day 1# TBC. Havent even been balance once since TBC... Rage problems are suck ass in 5 mans the more I geared up (and the group geared), I know how to tank just fine, and I know how and when to ease down on rage. But the problem is often on pulls where I never go over 30-40 rage... constantly starved.

Much rather have my DK friend tank the daily HC and I'll dot tab dot tab dot tab dot tab dot tab dot tab dot tab dot tab dot tab dot tab dot tab dot tab (.........) :& Prot palas and DKs as tanks ftw. Not just me QQing about rage, also our warrior MT in guild.

[Deleted]

Something that really annoys me, is that most ppl be it dps or other tanks don't know how Vengeance works for bears. They complain when I don't have aggro on everything, even though there are 3 dps bursting out 15-20k AoE dps......

Anyways I've started to tank in some of my kitty gear as well. Shouldn't have to be this way imo.

[Deleted]

I now understand that you are talking about heroic dungeons and I am with you here. Rage in this dungeons can be frustrating as it is with vengance.

Some people here already mentioned kitty gear as an alternative. Using no CC is another one. Right now I am even telling the melees to not stun or kick targets because I need their damage to get enough rage.

Maybe you should think of getting armor with more expertise and hit as right now it seems really undervalued in the heroic dungeons. While wearing my max hit set with less dodge and mastery but more expertise I have less problems with rage. And just try to pull with FF not with charge.

[Deleted]

As it stands, we'll be seeing Thrash, Swipe, filler, Swipe, Thrash, Swipe, filler, Swipe, ... you get the idea. In essence, our ability to throw out a single-target threat ability, or something not related to AoE threat, is halved. While this is a solution to one problem, it just brings us back to the old problem of having use most of our GCD's to maintain AoE threat while not being able to maintain solid single-target threat. From my point of view, this is just a poor (or lazy) solution to the problem. While nothing is set in stone, as this is just projection for 4.1, I hope Blizz will realize the short-sightedness of this decision compared to their overall goal for tanks.

Our "ability" stays exactly the same, you're free to throw a mangle threat sandwich into the mix on any mob that seems like it'll break free at any moment.

Hopefully this will bring us more in line with other tanks who spam AoE moves just because. From what I understand, Blizz's problem with bears was that we could spam one button for tanking before - but with swipe damage nerfed you'll need other abilities still. The problem was that swipe is so weak atm it's barely worth the global... but there's simply nothing else before 81. B&T pretty much tanks FOR the warrior, but they also have two cleaves and a shockwave for good measure. Palas have the hammer of threat, DK's spam cleaves with their most common runes and they have the threat carpet. Swipe doesn't hit for too much - but it'll surely serve better as the AoE filler move, keeping the mobs on you long enough for another thrash. We'll tank with same number of abilities as now.

Honestly, low level bear tanking is atrocious. Any other class can keep any number of mobs on them as long as the healer can handle it - pre-81 bears need to hi-five one mob at a time or they'll all run loose. Hopefully this change will help.

[exochaft]

Our "ability" stays exactly the same, you're free to throw a mangle threat sandwich into the mix on any mob that seems like it'll break free at any moment.

Hopefully this will bring us more in line with other tanks who spam AoE moves just because. From what I understand, Blizz's problem with bears was that we could spam one button for tanking before - but with swipe damage nerfed you'll need other abilities still. The problem was that swipe is so weak atm it's barely worth the global... but there's simply nothing else before 81. B&T pretty much tanks FOR the warrior, but they also have two cleaves and a shockwave for good measure. Palas have the hammer of threat, DK's spam cleaves with their most common runes and they have the threat carpet. Swipe doesn't hit for too much - but it'll surely serve better as the AoE filler move, keeping the mobs on you long enough for another thrash. We'll tank with same number of abilities as now.

The original problem wasn't that bears could tank with one button (Swipe was never that good for single-target, it was used as a filler before Lacerate got a front-end damage buff), it was the only way bears could maintain AoE threat against decent to high-end DPSers by using every GCD on Swipe compounded by having minimal threat on the primary burn target. On the contrary, no other tank had this issue with either massive cleaves, fire-and-forget AoE, or passive damage/threat that far exceeded our GCD-spam of Swipe. Even with Cataclysm changes, all the other tanks have superior cleave mechanics and fire-and-forget AoE threat generating methods compared to feral druids, which makes us heavily dependent on Swipe/Thrash being on cooldown as often as possible to have even a semblance of on-par AoE threat.

While we can say "well, let's just drop a Swipe in the rotation for single-target threat," we have to assume Blizz is not designing our AoE threat around Swipe having a 3-second cooldown, which is silly (I'd be just as concerned if they aren't designing it around a 3-second CD, because that's pure recklessness). In all honesty, we'll need to use Swipe every GCD to boost our chance of getting SD procs since our survivability in AoE situations really isn't the greatest. If we put this in the realm of survivability vs threat, the recent blue post concerning prot paladins and WoG usage just reiterates that Blizz wants survivability to be our main focus over worrying about threat non-stop: "While technically a tank had a choice between threat and survival, we felt it was an illusion of choice because tanks often (and rightfully) worry about survival first and foremost." In our case, in AoE situations, we'll need to use Swipe regardless for threat and survivability, because dropping Swipe for single-target threat is also an illusion of choice in this regard.

I'm not saying I don't like the change, because it'll do some real good for lowbie druids. I'm just saying that the change is uninspired and will potentially lead to more trouble down the road at the end-game level. It's a tough thing to balance, don't get me wrong, but Blizz should be able to come up with something better and more creative to help druids tanks out.

[bavarcarus]

I wish they'd modify SD to be stackable for aoe situations and bosses that hit fast, so we aren't at a disadvatage compared to shield tanks.

[Xytras]

Aoe Threat is going to be way better.