Why did Druid tanks disappear?

[tankeroshie]

I've been trying to decide whether I want to level my old 70 bear tank and gear him up for ICC, but 1) you never see bear tanks anymore and 2) it's very difficult to find any good information sites like tankspot and maintankadin for druids. Any advice?

[felhoof]

There's never been a lot of bear information out there, and certainly nothing the level of maintankadin or tankspot focused on druid tanking. There are a few good blogs and posts here and there, but that's it.

I'm not entirely sure why. The closest the druid community has gotten has been something like the druid wiki, but that's not really about bears; it's about druids. And that's what you'll find more than anything else; druids play druids, not bears more often than not. Darksend is a notable exception here.

The traditional place to start for questions about n00b bear tanking is Big Bear Butt Blogger, but for the most part the information there is wrong and/or out of date in bad ways, and more accurately it's difficult to find useful information; most posts aren't about bears at all. I keep some info at my blog; you may specifically find useful info for beginning bears at the bear faq, though it's not been updated for 3.3 yet.

The general consensus is that bear tanks are predominantly focused on playing cats or trees because in general they're more fun or more in demand than bears. That being said, bears are in the best position for tanking they've ever been in WoW. Still, that point has merit; while bears play well, they don't play fun for a lot of people, and the comparison between how they play as a bear vs. a cat is quite jarring.

[Reev]

1) My guild's Bear Druid is a central part of our tanking team. He main tanks as many bosses as I do.

[zaubade]

My 10 man run and our guilds 25 man run also has a bear as one of the main tanks. good tank as long as i do not ask him to tank the AoE packs to much .... he hates it when I do

[Bovinity]

There are a LOT of misconceptions about bear tanks that tend to drive them away it seems, too.

Even in my guild, people say things like, "Druids are squishy because they have high HP.", "Druids take tons of damage because they can't block or parry." and GC's favorite, "Chill means druid can't dodge no more, other tanks aren't hit by it as much."

I end up getting asked to heal or DPS more often than not, even though our other tanks are often 10k hp beneath me. It's unspoken as to why, but I wouldn't be shocked if it were due to some of the misconceptions.

[Reev]

It's true that I probably ask my fellow druid tank to dps more often than me or my paladin, simply because he can do it better. This is particularly true for fights like Northrend Beasts 25, which we usually begin with 3 tanks, and only need 2 for worms, then only 1 for Icehowl. Our druid can easily switch to catform and dps reasonably well, while I and my pally buddy can't. That puts him in the position of being jack of all trades, but less often the main tank than me or the pally.

[doomwarder]

I used to OT with a druid MT, since 3.3 came out and we are farming icc10 and working through icc25 the roles have switched, I am now main tanking and he is OT'ing even though he is still better geared. He just looses so much from the -20% dodge debuff that it is hard to overcome. This last week he went kitty and now have a warrior ot.

It is not that he is bad, but at times it is hard to keep him up, even with 50k+ hp.

[felhoof]

He just looses so much from the -20% dodge debuff that it is hard to overcome. This last week he went kitty and now have a warrior ot.

It is not that he is bad, but at times it is hard to keep him up, even with 50k+ hp.

This would be one of those horrible misconceptions that druid tanks face.

Druids lose less from that 20% debuff than any other tank. They're better equipped to handle said debuff. If you're having a problem keeping up your druid, chances are that they didn't gear properly.

[Eravian]

I don't play a druid, I play a warrior, but the fact that druids have a high health pool and high armor rating seem to me to make them the MOST suited to dealing with the Chill of the Throne debuff...

[Inaara]

Druids can tank?

[Dresk]

Even factoring in chill of the icewell radiance, our bear tank takes less damage than me in all of our icecrown clears. Nerf bears IMO :P

Seriously though, I would not trade in our bear tank for anything. Great utility and, more importantly, ours is a great guy.

[klor]

Pretty sure most druid tanks disappeared when their pewpew numbers for dps went through the roof and were near the top of the meters on most fights.. before they made the adjustment to arcane mages and rogues. Most just didnt switch back after that..

[Darksend]

wow a compliment from kalon! 2 in 1 month I must remember to write this down in my diary!

but seriously

1) http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/...uid-guide.html

2) ThinkTank (and you have a new post must go read that soon)

3) I'm not feral, I'm a Bear (mine but I have been doing more work here at tankspot lately and neglecting it a bit)

4) as was said cat druids are insane right now so most guilds will have their feral tanks go cat. I tanked very few of our progression kills im ulduar because I was always first on DPS.

5) misconceptions:

a) -20% dodge makes druids impossible to heal. Not only is this wrong but in fact it is the exact opposite. Before DR on avoidance when you could reach 85-90+% adding 1% at 90% was like adding 10% at 50% acoidance. Druids currently have about a 5% avoidance difference from the other 3 tanks, as such a difference of 45% vs 50% avoidance or 70% vs 75% is a huge difference. By bringing down the overall avoidance numbers this greatly reduces the impact of a 5% avoidance deficeit.

b) druids cant parry so they are bad tanks. I do not even want to touch on this. Those who understand how things work realize that if they gave druids parry it would actually HURT us more than help us. Pray they never give us parry.

c) druids are boring. I have an 80 warrior, that is boring. to each his own.

I could go on forever, I love my druid and am SO happy I decided my guild forced me to not reroll when LK came out.

[Joe6606]

Pretty sure most druid tanks disappeared when their pewpew numbers for dps went through the roof and were near the top of the meters on most fights.. before they made the adjustment to arcane mages and rogues. Most just didnt switch back after that..

This.

Kitty dps has been outrageously high for at least the past 6 months, if not longer. Given that most people find kitty more fun than bear...well...bye, bye bears.

[Daereg]

Can't see why they're not popular, I do rarely see them, but I know of some with lesser gear than Plate Tanks, yet they have +2k HP(as a bear ofc). Hardly any Dodge in ICC though.

[KaptainKa]

Two of my guild's most active tanks are bears, and both of them are pretty damn good at it.

The ICC dodge debuff hasn't really been a problem for us, either; We've cleared up to Saurfang with a Paladin and a Druid tank.

[Hammerfists]

If your bear has no dodge he probably went full on stam stacking instead of some agility. Stam is great but if you avoid attacks like my 70 year old grandpa then youre really no good to anyone out there. ICC didnt kill your bear he just wasnt gearing properly. Most guilds have Druids and Pallies as OTs out of the two you will get better dps performance asking the druid to dps than the pallie.

The other sidenote also is you want a strong aoe tank in your 25 man. Having a warrior and two druids is alright but people would sooner go two pallies than two druids. I really wish they would incorporate the tier 10 bonus to swipe to druids in cataclysm or give them some way to maneuver casters (Dks will death grib, pallies will holy frisbee).

if you want to be a bear tank you should go for it. True they are buzzworthy like Pallies are right now but most guilds will pick you up if you can show competence. If they tell you "silly druid tanking is for plate wearers" do you really want to be part of their roster? Spread sheets have become the Gospel for some people but never discount that 90% is the player not the class.

[Darksend]

CAN WE PLEASE STOP WITH THE MISCONSEPTIONS!

Hardly any Dodge in ICC though

Even with full 30 stam gems, I have 30% dodge in ICC. Compared to a warrior who would have 5-10% dodge and 20-30% parry, the avoidance difference is MUCH MUCH MUCH less noticable than at higher levels of avoidance than before for the reasons I mentioned before

[Bashal]

Fully raid buffed (10-man) my bear tank has about 25% dodge after the debuff, more when mongoose/relic procs. Our first full clear of ICC was with my bear tank and a warrior tank. On Lord Marrowgar, the warrior tank went down and I had to take saber lashes for about 20 seconds alone (I had to pop all my cooldowns) before he could get a battle rez.

And my bear tank isn't really all that well geared, either.

Bear tanks are fine in ICC.

[Martial]

yep, misconceptions seem to be the issue here tho on my realm i'm seeing a revival in bear tanks. I love it tbh.

Pala and warrior are just too boring and being able to dps in my tank spec reasonably (but not great), dps in moonkin form or take on a healer spec is great.

Plus, people forget the major bonus of having a tree and boomkin/tank in a grp which allows for 2 combat resses every 10mins mid battle. very useful