WoW Stratics IRC Chat

[Taelas]

A feral is always my first choice to off-tank, even if another Prot warrior is in the raid. I do what's optimal, and offtanks where threat is required to be maintained are perfect for druids. I know you don't believe that druids generate more threat than warriors in the off-tank position, but it's true. Multiple KTM records from months of Gruul and Void Reaver kills confirm it. Hell, I always assign our feral to tank the first add on Magtheridon because DPS can go all-out even though the first add hits lightly.

I've stated several times that druids DO generate more threat. I know this.

Protection warriors are perfectly capable off-tanks, however. I get relegated to dealing DPS because the Protection warrior can get the job done, and I'm much better at DPS than he is.

I will admit that I haven't got a Druid or Prot warrior of my own, but I do know when I tell the Druid to do the job, it gets done, and when I tell a prot to do it, it doesn't. And these are good protection warriors: every one of them has been with us since BWL and tanked 4h, Kel'Thuzad, and every difficult encounter up to now.

Whenever we have more than one Protection warrior in the raid, the second Prot warrior off-tanks. I don't understand why your Protection warriors fail to do the job, though I suppose it could be due to the level of content.

Let me explain. Morogrim Tidewalker has a "murloc phase" where he shakes the ground and twelve murlocs come barreling into the room, hitting for about 1800 on cloth. They do need to be tanked and AoEed down.

There are twelve of them. How, without using Challenging Shout, is a Warrior supposed to hold aggro on all of them? TC hits four targets and you can't even pick which ones. Murlocs come every 40 seconds on a 10 minute fight so Challenging is out. Demo shout and Piercing Howl can't hold aggro against more than one or two Seeds of Corruption.

A paladin? Just drops consecration, and he's got them all without a fuss. Healing himself through the subsequent attacks with RF on is all the tanking the murlocs need. A warrior simply can't do that. He's outright incapable of simultaneously controlling twelve mobs in a repeatable fashion. We don't have a protection paladin, but I wish we did, because I am forced to assign two protection warriors and our feral druid to control the murlocs. Yes, this is a use for prot warriors, but suboptimal by any stretch of the imagination - I have to get three people to do one person's job, and any of the tanks on their own would be outright incapable of doing the job.

This is only one example, but I think it illustrates my point well. There are many unconventional tanking situations in new raid content, and some of them are really bad for warriors.

If a single paladin can tank them without dying, it sounds like a gimmick encounter to me. It's pretty much what mages were forced to endure in Molten Core and BWL (Majordomo, Suppression Room).

And if they hit for ~1800 on cloth, they'll hit for ~1000 on plate. 12 murlocs on one paladin? It's a bit of a stretch. He'd have to spamheal himself as well as getting spamhealed by at least one other healer, if not two - and if they are higher than level 70, he'll get crushed (can't keep Holy Shield up). I suppose it's possible, though.