The Place of a Druid

Forward: I apologize for the meandering rant here, I've had a few major disappointments lately in non-wow circles and wow circles both and I kinda need to vent atm.

So, entertaining the idea of being a hydross tank has resulted in a lot of interesting commentary. This one's my favorite: (it should be noted my raid leader's alt is a 3T5 feral druid and he knows what he's talking about.)

Me: "Hey, (raid leader), I figured out how to get 365 Frost resist on my druid and still maintain tank stats."
Raid leader: "You want to tank hydross?"
Me: "Yeah."
Raid Leader: "You'll get crit and die."
Me: "No, I can keep crit immunity."
Raid Leader: "You won't have enough avoidance then, you'll still die."
Me: "45%?"
Raid Leader: "You'll die."
Me: "we'll see."
Raid Leader: "Who's gonna pick up adds, anyway, the warriors? Druids are better at that."

This bothered me greatly but he's right. My specialty in our 25 mans is quick pickups which usually relegates me to add duty. Often times I feel like a main tank, but in raids I'm an offtank.

Last night I ran ZA with my old guild as MT and Nalorakk was an experience worth remembering. My warrior offtank kept eating it during bear phase, and I had a rather unusual experience during our last human phase. 8% left on Nalorakk, and the warrior's got shield wall and last stand on CD, he's at 3400 hp, I see the incoming heal indicator for him on grid, but I think "the next tick is 4800 damage and he's going to die." I look at the DBM timer. 10 seconds left on bear.

So think fast. your offtank is about to bite it, you're in max EH gear, as a feral you have no shield, no shield wall, no last stand... you're SOL, right? Yes blizzard, thank you for giving us the shaft. Fortunately, there's always Moroes.

I didn't have enough time to barkskin and shift back to bear, so I hit moroes and badge of tenacity both, then I taunted Nalorakk a split second before my offtank died.

He hit me with one bleed, no white hits. Moroes + badge is awesome, +30% dodge give or take a decimal. The healers had no problems with the single mangled bleed, My OT ordered one of our fury warriors to throw on his gladiator's shield and start eating cleaves almost as soon as his corpse hit the ground. We dropped Nalorakk halfway through that human phase.

For those who's first reaction is "why was the warrior your OT?", I just out gear him to the point where it made sense for me to MT. We're trying to get him geared up for tanking in SSC (My old guild and new guild are teaming up for SSC now with alts/non-core raiders + Most of the people from my old guild's main kara groups)

But this brings me back to tanking hydross, who frankly, hits harder than Nalorakk. I would have the advantage of going into frost phase with barkskin each time... it would make rage tricky at the start but -20% damage for the first 8ish seconds would be good... but my only panic button in my proposed gear set would be the scarab of displacement (if memory serves it's either +8% or +16% total avoidance.) and counting on someone else for pain suppression.

Druids in the present WoW model are not built for tanking most bosses. With enough gear we can tank farm bosses, and there are gimmick bosses who can be tanked by a feral almost regardless of gear level (Leotheras the blind hits like a pansy and Tidewalker is an awesome fight that requires all three tank classes in their prot role.) but for the most part we either A: eat hurtfuls/tank adds, B: Stay loose in case the warriors drop or C: lolcatdpslololol.

if I could spec out of cat for a defensive stance or shield wall I would in a heartbeat. who needs cat form. I'm here to tank. But fact of the matter is there's a resource limit that prevents us from approaching warrior. We don't have defensive stance's damage reduction, we don't have spell reflect, we don't have shield wall, we don't have last stand, using a potion while tanking is an epic risk in and of itself.

However, we are still capable tanks, anything a warrior can tank we can tank, it may just be impractical to do so. We have to be resourceful to make up for tools that we lack, either using situational awareness, the tools of other classes, or just strategically using trinkets and consumables. (People who know me know I'll do crazy things like use [item]Chained Essence of Eranikus[/item] for AE aggro when I don't think swipe alone will cut it. )

I'm continuing testing on Resists, I'm waiting on an alch friend to get me some [item]Magic Resistance Potion[/item] to test if they stack with auras or not... And ultimately on the whole I'm very confused about where my role is. I have the skills as a player to be main tank in most situations, but my class is very much a utility offtank. My personal skill lets me step out of that role if the situation demands it, and there are times I just want the prestige of being the main tank even if it isn't my natural place.

Other disadvantages we face as MT are that being MT prevents us from using innervate and battle rez. The Feral form limitations for those two abilities would have to be removed on those before we could truely be MT without disadvantaging the raid. (And battle rez would have to be changed to revive someone where they DIED as opposed to where the tank is just to prevent them from getting insta-gibbed by a cleave)

Facing these disadvantages, I continue to be an OT, Dominating gimmick fights and giving it all whenever the chance arises to MT. I somewhat regret picking druid, hindsight being 20/20, I would've rolled a Prot Warrior. I have the respect of those around me at least, which is worth it's weight in gold.

It disappoints to have to take second fiddle on fights where you know you have the skill to main tank it, but the only thing holding you back is Blizzard's poor plan for your class. I don't want to replace warriors, I don't want to replace paladins, I just want to stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

Unfortunately, being a quadruped, my shoulders are a few feet lower...