patch 2.0.10 notes on the PTR

[Taelas]

:blink:Not take along a class that can tank, can dps and heal in a pinch seems pretty short sighted to me. Especially in light of the smaller raid compositions in TBC.

That being said a feral druid doesn't give up as much in comparison to a protection warrior to spec for raids. All of the best talents for tanking and dps are in one tree. A protection warrior gives up DPS to do one job and only one job in raids just like a healing specc'd priest gives up a lot of their dps.

And on behalf of many warriors I reiterate: We never wanted druids nerfed but warriors buffed. Druids, paladins specc'd for tanking and arms/fury warriors should be of comparable effectiveness for tanking. Protection specc'd warriors should be above that because of their sacrifices.

That's nothing but a load of wash. Arms/Fury warriors should NOT be equal to Feral druids or protection Paladins. I have a 60+ of each of the three tanking classes, and the winner when all three are specced tank has always been and will always be the Protection warrior--and that's just the way it should be. That doesn't mean a Feral druid should be relegated to be an off-tank only.

The Protection warrior should be the obvious choice, but a Feral druid or a Protection paladin (who, by the way, gives up healing and DPS in order to tank) should be the obvious replacement the second a Protection warrior isn't available, otherwise we might as well not bother to have them. A Feral druid is extremely dependant on gear to step in as main tank. Off-tanking doesn't require much, but tanking the big, hard-hitting bosses that warriors tank require an effort in gathering gear that warriors have never had to even contemplate.

Aside from that, Feral druid tanking itemization is so horrible that I got my ultimate tanking boots at 66, my ultimate tanking belt at 68, and my ultimate tanking bracers at 69 (the last two on the same questline, no less). Only one out of those three isn't green. I can get basically all my ultimate tanking gear save 2-3 pieces outside of raids. Once raiding starts, I get almost nothing... and the upgrades I'm talking about are the T5 Feral set, which basically has horrible stats for its ilevel with regards to tanking (it's just better than anything else).

Well, Druids have to spend a lot of time (as it is) educating people about our class. Pre-expansion, it was educating them about our range of abilities. In the Expansion, we have to educate people about our limitations. For example, Tal probably didn't mean, "Go from rogue DPS to holy priest healing in combat," by "heal in a pinch," but the popular view is that Druids basically can. People simply don't realize the effect our gear has on our abilities. And for feral druids--no one has a CLUE how much iLoTP heals.

(Hint: it's a lot. If I shift out of cat in some places, people die)

And yeah, Tal, that short sightedness is definitely out there and will be exacerbated by these nerfs. A KZ raider was telling me just the other day that his ideal raid composition for KZ was "One of every class and an extra warrior...because you need two tanks in some places,"

QFT. I cannot count the times I've felt myself forced to explain my capabilities and limitations to others.

Some of them go so far as to say that we are "better tanks than warriors", then in the next sentence add, "druids should never be MTs". Yeah, go figure.