Bear Tanks

[mackenziemi]

I was thinking about starting another group last night and it hit me that I really haven't seen anyone use a bear tank for their MB group. That got me wondering why. Now since I have never leveled a druid I am not very familiar with the class, so I can't see an obvious game mechanic that would stop it. So why aren't druid tanks used in mutliboxing groups?

Thanks

[Toned]

Because Paladin's are like shortbus tanks. You don't even have to try and they can hold agro on tons of mobs.

[mlwhitt]

My main is a 70 Druid that goes back and forth between Feral and Balance. I am able to use her to 5 box most outlands instances without any problem. Sure she isn't as good about AOE as a Pally and you have to watch things a bit closer, but you can't beat the Dodge, Armor and HP that they have. Where Pally tanking is pretty much a 3 button deal, a bear tank is maybe a 4 button deal.

[kadaan]

My main is a feral tank, and my team of 3 shaman + priest is being leveled with the intent of doing 5-mans with my druid as the tank. So far the only issue I've run in to is groups of more than 3 mobs. Swipe only hits 3, and even tab-swiping I get the occasional chain lightning that pulls one of them off me. Paladins are the preferred tank because they can tank as many as they have to just fine.

As for buttons, I only use 3: Mangle+Maul macro, Swipe, Lacerate. On trash I hit my MM macro once for the snap aggro and FF that target down with my shaman while swiping. On bosses I spam both the MM macro and Lacerate.

[Toned]

When I played alliance I had a resto druid with full season 3 feral that I'd box with it is doable, but paladin is just so much easier. Druids are viable just little more micromangement. Tab target all the mobs mashing swipe to make sure you hit them all. Where as paladin you drop a consecrate and you're done lol.

[Sanctume]

Before Raf, I could have never levelled a druid past level 40.

I actually just leveled a druid now from 38 to 40 but in an un-linked account, and leaching exp from 2 sets of linked accounts.

For now, the druid is resto, but I would like to play around with a Druid Tank later on.

But I've been playing prot tank for a while now that I have not even looked back at my original warrior tank.

[xyzzy]

I'm biased since my original character is a feral druid that tanked everything from Stockades up. That said, in my opinion a feral tank is a legitimate but not ideal option for five boxing. It's easy mode with crowd control from three mages, but I wouldn't be so keen to try and hold aggro in the face some of the larger dungeon pulls in a CC-lite group for the very reason Kadaan and Toned mentioned.

On balance, bear tanking is a fun alternative and keeps you on your toes a little more.

[Vyndree]

Because Paladin's are like shortbus tanks. You don't even have to try and they can hold agro on tons of mobs.

I considered rolling a druid tank for my initial 4 shammy+tank group ('http://dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=3060').

These are the three tanks I considered, and why I choose pally:
Warrior: (leveled 20-40 w/4 ele shammies)
Synergy: WF totem, STR totem, AGI totem, STONESKIN, healing streams
Drawbacks: Low multi-target threat generation. Harder time keeping aggro off healers when multi-mob tanking. Harder to macro.
Meh: Tremor totem can be negated by stance dancing, but is still useful for the shammies

Summary: Warriors are great single-target threat generators, and STR+WF makes them even better at it. However, shammies have ZIPPO cc abilities -- so they don't play on warrior strengths well.

Druid:
Synergy: AGI totem, STONESKIN, STR totem, healing streams, TREMOR totem, MoTW buff -- also swipe hits exactly 3 targets so may work with CL, respec to boomkin for PvP (high synergy as boomkin)
Drawbacks: Unable to use innervate while tanking (plus low shaman spirit regen), unable to use WF
Meh: easier to macro and few abilities to micro, but doesn't benefit from certain shammy totems

Summary: Druids are great tanks in general, and well rounded enough to tank up to 3 mobs (which is perfect for CL). That being said, they can't use certain totems like WF, but since shammies don't need WF totem anyway it's not a big deal. They're a solid choice, particularly since a respec turns them into another role (Boomkin) with HIGH synergy with ele shammies.

Pally: (leveled 40-70 w/4 ele shammies)
Synergy: EVERYTHING. Mana, Healing, Agi, WF, Str (minor buff to block, but still usable), Tremor, Wis buff, Salv buff, Kings buff, WoA totem, hits multiple targets for CL, easy to macro (lawl holy shield spam), respec to holy for PvP
Drawbacks: LowER single-target threat, but as long as you give standard "lead time" (i.e. "wait for sunders") you're fine. Click-cast at the beginning to get an aggro lead unless you can Avenger's Shield in which case DPS away
Meh: Prot sucks for PvP, but Holy is decent

Summary: Pallies not only play well with ALL shaman buffs, but have very valuable buffs to GIVE shaman. AoE tanking is easy to macro and micromanage, and they are a respec away from being your healer in PvP. Pally has high threat generation on multiple mobs, allowing chain lightning to be used liberally. Consecrate tags all mobs such that Magma/Fire Nova aoe farming is doable (without mobs peeling off and one-shotting your 5hp nova totem) -- since if a totem kills a mob 100% by itself you get no XP, consecrate can be used to "tag" mobs while the shammy aoe totems kill them.



In the end I choose pally for its INCREDIBLE synergy with shaman. Not that warriors and druids have NO synergy, but the amount of synergy pallies have with shamans is near 100% -- I can't think of a single totem (besides maybe Tranquil Air -- but clever positioning can even make that useful -- and it DOES stack, multiplicatively, with Salv) that a pally wouldn't find useful. Not only that but pally buffs are uber useful for shammies, too! Blessing of Wisdom helped TREMENDOUSLY for outdoor quest leveling since ele shammies suffer from mana problems early on. In instances, salv helps when I'm doing single-target tanking since the pally isn't as good as a warrior or druid. Kings helps for PvP, so that's even useful too.

Second, Pallies make EXCELLENT boosters. So if I ever want a warrior or a druid to mix and match, all I have to do is boost it up with the pally. So they are a good long-term investment.

[mlwhitt]

Another thing along the Synergy lines with Pally + Shaman is Grounding Totems. If there is one thing that causes Pally tanks problems it is caster mobs. 4 x Grounding totems help that out a lot. The other thing is that you can't beat Spiritual Attunement getting you nice little bits of mana from 4 x Healing Stream Totems.

[Suvega]

Now, Pally
WOTLK? Druid, by far.

Synergy issues no moar (windfury and agi and str all help the druid).
AND you can actually cc stuff with them, AND you don't need to overgear an instance to tank.

REMEMBER IN WOTLK YOU WONT HAVE BADGE GEAR TO CARRY YOUR ASS THROUGH INSTANCES.
(maybe 4-5months later :P)

Tanking 6 mobs won't happen in Wotlk either, they have said it will be small pulls.
CC is probably going to be required with the shitty blue quest rewards, and pallies frankly BLOW at tanking anywhere fucking near cc'ed targets.

[Mac]

and pallies frankly BLOW at tanking anywhere fucking near cc'ed targets. Swipe is not a good thing to use around cc targets either. There where many times I wanted to use swipe, but had to settle for tab+lacerate on multiple mobs because the mage parked the sheep where I was tanking. so, as a multiboxer, if you have cc, and thought you where going to be able to swipe, now you might have to tab+lacerate to pick up the multiple targets or adjust your tanking positioning and sometimes depending on what your doing and where you are in an instance, there isn't a lot of room to move around. Either way, its more work for the multiboxer.

As for blue gear not working in instances, afaik, most quest gear is adequte for the level of instancing that your doing, and when you get to 80 you'll be picking up better gear doing instances so why is that a problem?

[Suvega]

Try AOE tanking a heroic with Blue gear (I.E. the best you could ahve before heroics).
It stings. Alot.

And if you were smart as a bear, you would step back 3 steps, and hit swipe.
A pally howeever has a constant aoe planted on the ground where they are tanking, even if the ymove it's still beating the shit out of the CC'ed target.

IMO druids will be far superior for begining WOTLK, and pallies will become viable after badge gears starts proliferating across again.

[Mac]

Try AOE tanking a heroic with Blue gear (I.E. the best you could ahve before heroics).
It stings. Alot.
Why would someone try to do heroics before their gear is ready for it? My assumption is, that the progression will work like it has before. You level up your ten levels from 70 to 80, you get your greens and blues from quests and instances along the way that are appropriate for your level, then once you hit 80 and your doing 80 quests and instances and your going to start gearing up for the level 80 heroics. I didn't try to do 70 heroics before I had a decent set of gear, I wouldn't expect to do it at 80, but based on what bliz has said about makeing all tanks viable, why would a pali have to wait for badge gear to do their jobs and other tanks would not?
And if you were smart as a bear, you would step back 3 steps, and hit swipe.
I'm assuming you have done a lot of heroics and raids on your druid tank so your a smart bear with a lot of bear tanking experience?

I know how to be a smart bear tank. I did very well as a druid tank for a long time in instances and raids. I know how to deal with cc'd mobs. But I'm writing from the perspective as one who has done it as a solo player bear tanking in heroics and raids. As I wrote, often times cc isn't applied optimally and you have to adjust your positioning to avoid breaking it, it isn't always a simple case of taking three steps back. Nice when it is, but that's not always the case. I've even had cases where there appeared to be plenty of room between me and the cc'd mobs and I've swipped and still broken cc, which led me to using swipe very rarely when other peoples repair money was on the line, in most cases it was mangle, tab+lacerate to handle multiple mobs and I could do a pretty damn good job of holding many mobs, but I'm not suggesting it would be an easy thing for someone multiboxing to do. I'm not all that convinced that three steps back is always the answer given the bugs in the game. Hopefully, since a multiboxer is applying their own cc, they will hopefully do it better and the point of having a cc'd mob next to whatever tank will be moot.

However, there is always things that happend that don't go the way you planned, and when you are one person controlling multiple toons, concecrate to gather up all the mobs and heal for dear life to keep the tank up that has all the mobs beating on it seems to be a better solution for the multiboxer then run around trying to grab agro back off the casters because the mob that broke cc resisted/dodged/parried your attempt to get its attention and now its two shotting your casters.

The problem here for druid tanks is, it gets increasingly difficult for druid tanks to control multiple mobs past a point, and the tools available to get them all under control take more effort in compared to what a pali has to do. Contrasted to the pali's ability to just consecrate and pic them all up and then all you have to worry about is keeping him healed. With all that in mind, and assuming appropriate gear for the encounter, even though I have a well geared druid, I still think the Pali would be a better multiboxer choice if you want to keep the tanking simple and minimize the amount of micromanagement you would have to do overall. Its been the choice, I'm not seeing anything about wotlk that will change that. All I see on the druid forums is the qq about them taking away itemization with armor and it appears a lot of people are worried about that. Bliz said they want all tanks to be viable. So, we have yet to see what will happen because they say they are still working on druids tanks. If it does work, great, I have a good druid tank to take advantage of it. But for those that don't have either a pali or a druid tank yet, I think a better choice to roll a tank would be a pali at this point.

[Suvega]

Why would someone try to do heroics before their gear is ready for it? My assumption is, that the progression will work like it has before. You level up your ten levels from 70 to 80, you get your greens and blues from quests and instances along the way that are appropriate for your level, then once you hit 80 and your doing 80 quests and instances and your going to start gearing up for the level 80 heroics. I didn't try to do 70 heroics before I had a decent set of gear, I wouldn't expect to do it at 80, but based on what bliz has said about makeing all tanks viable, why would a pali have to wait for badge gear to do their jobs and other tanks would not?
You don't understand. There is only blue gear available to you before you tank heroics. You ahve the luxury of being able to be carried now to get badge gear thats equivelent to BT level. THAT WON'T EXIST IN WRATH.
Thats the point of tanking with all blue gear (From dungeons), IT IS THE BEST YOU CAN GET.




The problem here for druid tanks is, it gets increasingly difficult for druid tanks to control multiple mobs past a point, and the tools available to get them all under control take more effort in compared to what a pali has to do. Contrasted to the pali's ability to just consecrate and pic them all up and then all you have to worry about is keeping him healed. With all that in mind, and assuming appropriate gear for the encounter, even though I have a well geared druid, I still think the Pali would be a better multiboxer choice if you want to keep the tanking simple and minimize the amount of micromanagement you would have to do overall.

A few things

1) Mobs will not be in packs of 7 like shattered halls. It was confirmed
2) As quoted by blue here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8765643774&sid=2000&pageNo=5#90


The trick is to let a Prot paladin still be useful in tanking large groups as on Morogrim or Hyjal without letting them trivialize the 5-player content that other tanks have to work at tanking
I.e. Expect CC to be needed, and not having a LOLeasy time at tanking instances with a prot pally in wrath.
Just because now you can overgear an instance and be able to brute force something down by tanking all the mobs and /pray heals, I doubt you'll be able to for Wrath.

For CC, a druid is MUCH easier to tank when you have sheeps or seduces, or anything that breaks on damage. You can CONTROL WHEN YOU DO DMG, compared to a pally who has his consecrate down 24/7. If something breaks lose, YOU CAN ACTUALLY RE-CC it, instead of praying that your healer won't go oom.

You will not have badge gear doing lvl 80 instances when Wrath comes out. I assume the harder of the instances will require some type of CC. You can't brute force things down when the gear ISN'T AVAILABLE YET. Tanking with a druid 3 targets while 1/2 are cc'ed is much easier then a paladin, and you have more control over when you deal aoe dmg. CC'ing targets with a 15 yr radius consecrate anywhere near it is a PITA.

[Revith]

I don't know that paladins are going to be as poor of tanks as you imagine, or that feral druids will be as great. A couple of ideas:

1. Drop consecrate to get aggro, then back out of it after 2 ticks, THEN hit your CC's, and move back a second time. You take more damage initially but then the cc mobs are out of consecrate, and you still get initial aggro.

2. Badge gear is not the only way to epics at the start of an expansion. My suggestion is to take up your armor of choice as a tradeskill right now. Crafted primal (eternal? I think that's the new equivalent) gear is a good way to start gearing up, at least for some of your slots. World-drop epics on the auction house can be an expensive option, but is still an option. As much as I hate to admit it, pvp may be another good option to gear up with before heroics as well.

[Rudi89]

You will not have badge gear doing lvl 80 instances when Wrath comes out. I assume the harder of the instances will require some type of CC. You can't brute force things down when the gear ISN'T AVAILABLE YET. I do somewhat hope that paladins are viable tanks in the end game instances from the beginning. I assume we'll all be struggling through (doing the level 80 version of '6 hours of wiping in Shadow Lab'... gack...) but it would be a bummer if all the pally tanks have to heal until they can overgear the instances. I dunno about other guilds but we didn't really have any pally tanks until we were well into clearing Kara. It would suck if they aren't viable main tanks from the first zone-in to a level 80 5-man.

[Mac]

You don't understand. There is only blue gear available to you before you tank heroics. You ahve the luxury of being able to be carried now to get badge gear thats equivelent to BT level. THAT WON'T EXIST IN WRATH.
Thats the point of tanking with all blue gear (From dungeons), IT IS THE BEST YOU CAN GET. I do understand. But after readying those blue posts, its really a matter of having a different perspective about how they are changing all tanking class abilities now versus what gear you will be in when you get there.

For now, I got the following from reading all of that.

- Tanking for all classes and specs is still in design, they only have an idea that we will have 4 classes to tank.

So, really no decisions can be made about anything at this point.

However, it appears they want everyone to have to bring at least one form of CC to an instance since they are implying that no tank will be able to handle more then a set amount of mobs, and the number of mobs in a pull will be larger then whatever that number will be, so you will need by design a CC class to run an instance in the way they are talking about it.

With what I have read, they are trying to make tanking classes pretty generic in their abilities, just do the same thing in different ways, but leave nobody behind in their ability to fill the roll, thereby increasing the number of available tanks.

Based on what Ghostwalker is saying, It looks to me like people should be more worried about how they can get a CC class into their multibox group then what tank to bring.

It will be interesting for us that have invested the time in our 5x shaman groups to see if the 5x shaman burst will still be viable alternative to a classic tank + cc group.

[roddo]

Why would you assume that pallys always use consecrate for agro generation? If they pull with avengers shield then spam holy shield they should be able to hold agro, unless its a huge pull, where mobs would be cc'd, in which case the smart pally doesn't use consecrate. If the pally is in a non cc group then consecrate doesn't break anything, so they can use it. Since most boxer's use 4 shammys and a pally consecrate breaking cc doesn't apply anyway. Any way you look at it your comparing apples and oranges, and making assumptions about what skills/abilities are used when a smart player wouldn't use those abilities under those circumstances.

[Zub]

Damn, it's friday arvo here and i'd love a beer tank.

[moji]

Cheers!
/rasies large ass can of Fosters

k, I'm a prot warrior tank from WAAAAAY back. I'd never box and tank with anything but a pally atm, but Suvega, I don't see where WotLK will change that.

Love warrior tanking. LOVE IT. I have and do run Heroic Shattered Halls, and beat the timer regularly, with little or no cc. It's just way too much micromanagement to box effectively. When I tell people, I'm hitting half the keyboard while tanking, they don't believe me. They don't believe in cc-less heroics is possible either, but most runs I do that all the time. So while my warrior is in ridiculously good gear, he's not boxed tanking anything any time soon.

WotLK everyone gets a blank slate. EVERYONE. even druids. If BC is any indication of how WotLK is gonna go, this is what will happen. Druid tanks are the easiest to gear up, always have been, so right away, they'll be very easy to tank with. Warriors will gear second, since most their gear drops fairly often, but warriors are a pain to box with. Pallies, the hardest to gear up, will eventually get there, and then shine like the shortbus stars they are.

It's very possible to gear up pallies the old fashioned way, just be prepared to take a little longer. There's nothing intrinsically better about a druid's health pool and mitigation that makes him a better aoe tank in the gearing up stages. Pallies are THE aoe tank, there is no argument here.

PS, good pallies know when to use consecrate and when not to. avenger's sheild > holy shield alone can hold most mobs off aoe light groups. Usually on my paladin, I don't consecrate more than twice on pulls to conserve mana.

[pinotnoir]

I have a feral druid that I used to tank all the way up to BT with. I stopped raiding because I didnt have the time anymore. My original plan was to use my druid tank, 3 shaman, and one mage for heroics. It works but not well. You will be limited on encounters with that group. I also have a pally tank but his gear is not anywhere near the druids. He takes a beating but I find it much easier to multibox with him. The druid tank needs to be near perfect. You have to make sure all your macros are setup to work with the tank skills. I had a mangle/maul macro for my dps spam button.

I dont know how the expansion will work. Right now 5 shaman can blow through stuff my druid couldnt do. There are heroics I just cant do because of the bs like heroic mana tombs. You get stunned on your tank and your group dies. Stuff like that really kills tank dps healer groups. My advice to you would be make a pally. Druids are great tanks I love my druid. However, pallys utility is way better than a druid. You can go powerlevel any new character once you have a 70 prot pally. A druid cant single pull SM and grind xp super fast. A druid cant pull all the npc on BT and kill them all.

The stuff you can do with a pally is much better than a druid tank. And remember you can still tank with a pally without consecration. Its not like you will be shooting the other mobs when you are using a pally tank. With a druid you may end up shooting a mob the druid is tab targeting to build aggro so they dont run after the alts. The pally has salvation for the alts. Their range pull puts nice threat on off targets if there was a reason you couldnt use consecrate. Consecrate can be applied with cc if your smart. I really like how I can sheep a mob and pull with the pally. The range pull bypasses the sheep so I can consecrate the adds I want. I wish swipe did that. There was a blue post saying swipe would ignore cc targets but that didnt work at all. If they fix that a druid tank would be much better but I still prefer a pally.

[Los]

Hope you all realise that druids are not the only type of tank getting a bit of changes, pallys are changing in LK just as hard/fast (new agro abilities, scaling with AP as 2 examples). Also it has been stated in numerous blue posts that all 3(well dk as well so 4) tanking specs/classes will get about the same type of viability. In the end in LK it will be what works best for you.

Check out http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintankadin/index.php for some information and remember its still all beta and even in the first few patches things will be ironed out by blizz and are opted for changes.

[oxxo]

Why is everyone saying WotLK bears will be better??

As of now bears are bottom tier tanks by far. I do believe that they will be buffed but all that has happened so far in WotLK beta is:
Paladins have gotten nothing but tanking buffs. The only problem is mana which *should* be fixed.

Bears have gotten 6% SotF and 4hit swipe. They have lost all their armor (due to gear), no block or parry still, and have lost alot of crit/agility due to the agility nerf (which affects them more than other tanks). New talents are also extremely lackluster (in general and for tanking).

But like I said I think they will be fixed since druids haven't gotten their "review" yet.