Druid threat

[Sheep]

There are eight viable DPS classes in the game and now there are two viable tanks.
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Poor paladins... <_<

[Tal]

Poor paladins...&nbsp; <_<
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Don't worry - I intend to prove that Paladins can still tank with Sharanna. Much like I did in Beta. :)

[Warlock]

I'll be interested to see the effect 1.9 does have on Paladin tanking. At the moment I look the changes look (with my level 14 Paladin) to be a Good Thing ™, though not on the same scale as the Feral revamp in 1.8.

For small group content they should make great tanks. With Healer, 3 * DPS and Tank, I'd happily take a Paladin for the Tank role - Blessing of Salvation alone is comparable to a 50% threat bonus for the Paladin. In raids I'd prefer to have a Warrior or Druid tank because the rage system will always last the whole fight - but I have seen a Paladin offtank successfully in MC in 1.8 so with the 1.9 improvements I'm sure at least that will be possible for the right build.

[Tuftears]

If no one said, the vibe from the forums is that paladin tanking is significantly nerfed - Righteous Fury generates less threat overall than Seal of Fury did before, even taking into account the protection talent to increase its threat. I haven't tested it myself.

BOSalvation remains unchanged, so leave that out of the equation, simply figure whether you can generate as much threat 1.9 as you could in 1.8.

[vor_lord]

I'm actually not sure whether pre-cast HOTs generate threat once the mob knows about you.
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I did some testing of this and I concluded that threat is generated on HoT on the tick. Don't test it with a low level healer as the piddly amount healed might not be enough to show it.

But in my experience casting a HoT before combat is initiated does not make the entire HoT threat-free.

PW:S threat is calculated at cast time, making it totally safe to pre-cast.

[Xame]

I believe that the original discussion somewhat misses the point of tanking. The point of tanking is not only theat generation but also damage reduction. It is the tank/healer combination that needs to be considered. If threat is your only concern then any of the dps classes would make a good tank; NOT. The trick of a warrior is that they can be geared/talented to become more effective the more damage they take.

I would fully agree with you that a druid is more then qualified to tank in any of the 5 man instance, just as a shaman can heal through the 5 man instances. It is just a question of "is it optimal" given the tank/healer combination.

[Olon97]

My warrior has been protection spec for most of her career (started the day the game came out). Tanking is the most enjoyable aspect of this game for me by far.

I recently made a druid on a seperate account (originally intended as a dual box healbot), and as I looked at all the 1.8 improvements to the druid tree I was astounded by how strong a case on paper they've made for a great tank spec.

At this point my druid has MT'd all the pre-MC content and offtanked a full MC clear excepting Golemagg's dogs. Non-fear bosses are next on the checklist. Now that I'm getting more comfortable doing these runs with the druid I have toyed with collecting some comparative data.

Multiple druid players have MTd all of BWL besides Nefarian (who forces druids to go cat - kinda puts a monkey wrench into it). Recent thread posted by one such BWL MT druid.

Therefore, the "viable" question is really not even a relevant discussion. Clearly druid tanking is viable. As to the question of optimal - hard to say, but one thing I can say is that after ~10 months of playing a protection warrior who was not so useful in PvP, I love having a toon capable of tanking up to my personal standards (i.e. not an MS warrior - tried it for a couple months, hated the "feel" of tanking with that spec) that I can also PvP with effectively without respeccing.

Just from rough experience, I would say your typically geared MT druid will have marginally higher threat generation than a typically geared MT warrior, but will have marginally less net mitigation after crits, parries, the 10% reduction of elemental damage and such. Upside is with an ~8k+ life buffer, the lesser mitigation does not translate into a dead tank - rather simply a little extra hustle from healers required on crits. Both classes can re-tweak gear to get more threat/mitigation, but the tradeoff in both cases is usually not worth the bother.

What has shocked me, when looking into the druid tank subject in general is the amount of prejudice and near hatred some people have experienced over the concept (no such issues at the Basin on Tichondrius). In my opinion a robust guild would have at least one competent protection warrior and at least one competent feral specced druid on every raid.

I feel druids should be the default choices for the following endgame encounters:
* ZG Spider Boss - Two tanks on this are nice, but a quick feral druid can solo tank it due to the ability to remove roots (coming from horde perspective with no blessing of freedom) followed by a 10 second cooldown intercept that's in the same "stance" as taunt.
* ZG Jin'Do - Immunity to Frog means Jin'Do never chases after some poor clothie who happens to be 2nd on the hate list.
* MC Lucifron Adds - Immunity to Mind Control guarantees no adds running loose.
* MC Majordomo - 10 second cooldown intercept in same "stance" as taunt again. No 2nd tank needed and possibly not even hunters (have yet to try this first hand).
* MC Ragnaros (assuming sufficient FR) - a fast feral charge and taunt completely negates the threat of the MT knockback (again not first hand - the videos of the bears 20 feet in the air zipping back and taking back aggro within seconds are fun though).
* Silithus Royal (Falling Damage One) - Again the feral charge to negate all falling damage and get back to the boss quickly to tank.
* AQ boss that sheeps the MT (unconfirmed) - immunity to polymorph FTW.

[Tuftears]

* MC Lucifron Adds - Immunity to Mind Control guarantees no adds running loose.

Wait, druids in form are immune to mind control? Polymorph I knew about... I'm not seeing 'immune to mind control' in the bear form description though.

[Warlock]

Lucifron adds - I'm yet to tank these myself but I suspect a Druid tank can still be Mind controlled. Mob mind control doesn't seem to be limited to humanoids. I've certainly been possessed by the Baroness in Strath enough times :)

The big problems facing Druid tanks are itemisation and player perceptions. Green tanking gear is easy to get, blue needs a bit more work than a warrior (eg. Enchanting to 265 for the Smoking Heart), purple is very hard to get.

[Kevin]

Lucifron adds - I'm yet to tank these myself but I suspect a Druid tank can still be Mind controlled. Mob mind control doesn't seem to be limited to humanoids. I've certainly been possessed by the Baroness in Strath enough times :)

The big problems facing Druid tanks are itemisation and player perceptions. Green tanking gear is easy to get, blue needs a bit more work than a warrior (eg. Enchanting to 265 for the Smoking Heart), purple is very hard to get.
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Is there a good list of blue of and green tanking gear for druids? Stuff you can get before MC or ZG? All the stuff I see now is ZG and MC gear lists... And since I've never cared all that much about getting this item for this toon I haven't tried to hunt things down myself. I'm wondering if someone knows of a list where someone else has done the work. :)

[Warlock]

Bear tanks need stamina and armour to stay alive, strength and agility to hold aggro, resists if the encounter needs them, caster stats if you will be helping heal once your mob is down.

Green tanking gear: of the Bear and of the Monkey are both good. There aren't a lot of high armour green items (the volcanic set and the turtle ring from tanaris are the only ones that come to mind).

Blue tanking gear: All the instances have some good items, so I wouldn't worry too much about going to specific ones for specific drops until you're down to needing upgrades for only a few slots. Do get the following items:
Ring of Protection (Battle of Darrowshire)
Mark of Tyranny (Drak's Demise)
Smoking Heart of the Mountain (Enchanting 265)
Unyielding Maul (DM Tribute) or Warden Staff (BOE epic)
Cloak of Warding (Crafted)

Horde should also get Thrall's resolve (Princess quest in BRD).

[Olon97]

Wait, druids in form are immune to mind control?&nbsp; Polymorph I knew about...&nbsp; I'm not seeing 'immune to mind control' in the bear form description though.

Take a priest, walk into WPL, and try to mind control one of the bears there... se how that goes for you. Same logic as why a hunter can't use "scare beast" on you when you're human.

You might be thinking of the first boss in UD strat (Baroness) - that is more of a special posession effect (she dissapears completely while you're posessed) than a mind control.

SM strat end boss, lucifron adds, Jin'Do's MC totem... all powerless against the might of the fuzzies - at least in my experience and others'.

Is there a good list of blue of and green tanking gear for druids? Stuff you can get before MC or ZG? All the stuff I see now is ZG and MC gear lists... And since I've never cared all that much about getting this item for this toon I haven't tried to hunt things down myself. I'm wondering if someone knows of a list where someone else has done the work.

This list is a good starting point. No greens but it does include pre-ZG/MC blue gear.

[Quark]

There is an excellent tanking blues list stickied on the Blizzard Druid forums. Unfortunately, as I'm typing this the druid forum is down so I can't direct link it.

Also, don't forget in many cases blue is the best (or very close to the best) you can get for druid tanking. There's really a sparcity of non-set leather purples. Those that do exist are typically geared to healing (Salamander Scale Pants), or just aren't spec'd out as good as they good be (Wristguards of Stability).

Some PvP rewards help this out, though that means getting Exalted with the corresponding faction typically.

Feral epic gear is still a problem, and it sucks because I'd like to see how a cat could do equally geared to an epic'd Rogue.

[Xanthix]

Take a priest, walk into WPL, and try to mind control one of the bears there... se how that goes for you. Same logic as why a hunter can't use "scare beast" on you when you're human.
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That would explain bear Druids being immune to MC from players, in PvP. But in PvE it's a different story. Mobs spells can be vastly different from player spells, even if they share a name. As you MC mobs for fun and try out their abilities you notice this.

[Olon97]

That would explain bear Druids being immune to MC from players, in PvP. But in PvE it's a different story. Mobs spells can be vastly different from player spells, even if they share a name. As you MC mobs for fun and try out their abilities you notice this.

Point taken that mob abilities and player abilities may have different limitations. What I would give for a thunderclap that functioned like the ZG Beserker's Thunderclap...

That said, personal experience is besides the Baroness encounter, every boss fight that typically found my warrior MC'd on occasion (SM strat endboss / Jin'Do totems / Lucifron Adds) I have yet to get a single MC on my druid while in feral. Blind luck perhaps, but other feral druids on the blizzard forums have the same impression...

[Trien]

One place where druids in animal forms can be MC'ed:

In the 1st phase of the Nefarian fight, I have gotten MC'ed while I was in cat form. Of course, the usual trick of polymorphing the MC'ed guy didn't quite work, and I managed to scratch up a priest nicely, and by the time the other druids figured out that they should hibernate me, it had worn off. :)

Of course, you wouldn't want a druid tanking Nef anyways (Phase 2 and later, but no more MC's after that anyhow), since once the druid call comes and we're all forced into cat form, we'd be mighty squishy.

[Warlock]

Some great posts on the Bliz forums recently (shock!). Copying here to preserve them. Original is at http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...id&T=708760&P=1

Kenco on the warrior forum posted some nice numbers for warrior threat. So naturally this causes me to wonder how druids compare. I tried sifting through tons of posts of mostly anecdotal evidence, but I was unsatisfied and decided to do the testing myself. So here the data I gathered on Maul. Swipe will be incoming, but this was boring so it might be a while. :)

The tests were preformed with me (Chibi, a warrior) using Recap, a Warlock (Impudence), and a Druid with "defiance" (Alys).

The druid initialized combat with a single maul in bear form. Enrage was not used, since I felt it could cause threat. Then the warlock would punch the mob (four damage per swing generally) until he pulled aggro. This resulted in the following data.


----------------
NORMAL MAUL

# MAUL PULLED DIDN'T THREAT THREAT BASE BASE MAX MIN MAX % MIN %
DMG PULL MAX MIN THREAT THREAT DIFF. DIFF. OF DMG OF DMG
MAX MIN

1 285 796 792 723.6 720.0 499.0 496.6 214 211.6 75.1 74.2
2 292 818 814 743.6 740.0 512.8 510.3 220.8 218.3 75.6 74.8
3 263 735 731 668.2 664.5 460.8 458.3 197.8 195.3 75.2 74.3
4 270 755 751 686.4 682.7 473.4 470.8 203.4 200.8 75.3 74.4
5 288 806 802 732.7 729.1 505.3 502.8 217.3 214.8 75.5 74.4
6 286 801 797 728.2 724.5 502.2 499.7 216.2 213.7 75.6 74.7
7 277 774 770 703.6 700.0 485.2 482.8 208.2 205.8 75.2 74.3
8 268 749 745 680.9 677.3 469.6 467.1 201.6 199.1 75.2 74.3
9 266 744 740 676.4 672.7 466.5 463.9 200.5 197.9 75.4 74.4
10 260 726 722 660.0 656.4 455.2 452.7 195.2 192.7 75.1 74.1

--------------



Threat min and max are determined by dividing damage by 1.1. 10% is the melee range stickiness, that is, the amount needed beyond the current aggro holder's threat in order to pull aggro. This was determined by various sources (including myself) in other tests.

Base threat is determined by dividing threat totals by 1.45. The 1.45 threat modifier in bear form was crudely tested beforehand, but mostly this number comes from faith in thottbot.com and the assumption that bear form works just like defensive stance for warriors.

DIFF. means difference which is determined by subtraction (duh!).


Smallest max difference: 195.2
Largest min difference: 218.3

From this impossible range we can conclude maul does not have a fixed modifier as heroic strike (similar warrior skill), but notice the beautiful final columns.

Smallest max % of damage: 75.1%
Largest min % of damage: 74.8%

I feel fairly confident saying maul provides a 1.75 threat modifier to its damage from this data.

To verify these findings and investigate the possibility of strange crit behaviour we tested a few crits using the same methods.


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CRIT MAUL

# MAUL PULLED DIDN'T THREAT THREAT BASE BASE MAX MIN MAX % MIN %
DMG PULL MAX MIN THREAT THREAT DIFF. DIFF. OF DMG OF DMG
MAX MIN

1 594 1659 1651 1508.2 1500.9 1040.1 1035.1 446.1 441.1 75.1 74.3
2 575 1610 1602 1463.6 1456.4 1009.4 1004.4 434.4 429.4 75.5 74.7
3 596 1665 1661 1513.6 1510.0 1043.9 1041.4 447.9 445.4 75.2 74.7
4 587 1640 1636 1490.9 1487.3 1028.2 1025.7 441.2 438.7 75.2 74.7

--------------



Crits apparently function the same.

So threat from maul is:

Maul_Damage * 1.75 * 1.3 (or 1.45 with talent)
[ post edited by Chibi ]

[Warlock]

We went back and tested swipe.

The data is broken into two tables so that it won't be too wide.


# TOTAL WHITE SWIPE PULLED DIDN'T
DMG DMG DMG PULL

1 220 153 67 432 428
2 369 302 67 670 662
3 214 146 68 424 421
4 222 154 68 436 433
5 219 146 73 439 435
6 218 151 67 430 426
7 205 137 68 412 405
8 218 151 67 432 424
9 238 164 74 470 466
10 211 144 67 418 414
11 252 180 72 491 487
12 67 0 67 188 184
13 67 0 67 191 187
14 284 145 139 627 623
15 302 158 144 654 650
16 293 147 146 643 639
17 275 140 135 604 600


# THREAT THREAT WHITE SWIPE SWIPE BASE BASE MAX MIN MAX % MIN %
MAX MIN THREAT THREAT THREAT SWIPE SWIPE DIFF. DIFF. OF DMG OF DMG
MAX MIN THREAT THREAT
MAX MIN

1 392.7 389.1 221.9 170.8 167.2 117.8 115.3 50.8 48.3 75.8 72.1
2 609.1 601.8 437.9 171.2 163.9 118.1 113.0 51.1 46.0 76.3 68.7
3 385.5 382.7 211.7 173.8 171.0 119.9 117.9 51.9 49.9 76.3 73.4
4 396.4 393.6 223.3 173.1 170.3 119.4 117.4 51.4 49.4 75.6 72.6
5 399.1 395.5 211.7 187.4 183.8 129.2 126.8 56.2 53.8 77.0 73.7
6 390.9 387.3 219.0 171.9 168.3 118.6 116.1 51.6 49.1 77.0 73.3
7 374.5 368.2 198.7 175.8 169.5 121.2 116.9 53.2 48.9 78.2 71.9
8 392.7 385.5 219.0 173.7 166.5 119.8 114.8 52.8 47.8 78.8 71.3
9 427.3 423.6 237.8 189.5 185.8 130.7 128.1 56.7 54.1 76.6 73.1
10 380.0 376.4 208.8 171.2 167.6 118.1 115.6 51.1 48.6 76.3 72.5
11 446.4 442.7 261.0 185.4 181.7 127.9 125.3 55.9 53.3 77.6 74.0
12 170.9 167.3 0 170.9 167.3 117.9 115.4 50.9 48.4 76.0 72.2
13 173.6 170.0 0 173.6 170.0 119.7 117.2 52.7 50.2 78.7 74.9
14 570.0 556.4 211.7 358.3 344.7 247.1 237.7 108.1 98.7 77.8 71.0
15 594.5 590.9 229.1 365.4 361.8 252.0 249.5 108.0 105.5 75.0 73.3
16 584.5 580.9 213.2 371.3 367.7 256.1 253.6 110.1 107.6 75.4 73.7
17 549.1 545.1 203.0 346.1 342.1 238.7 235.9 103.7 100.9 76.8 74.7



Once again the smallest maximum difference is 50.8 and the largest minimum difference is 107.6, which creates an impossible range. So swipe appears to be affected by a threat multiplier like maul.

The range for the swipe multiplier is 1.75 to 1.749. 1.75 might be a good guess :) This is the exact same modifier that maul has, and since swipe and maul are your only damage causing abilities (as far as I know), we could generally say bear damage causing abilities cause damage * 1.75 threat.

So swipe's threat, like maul is calculated thus:

Swipe_Damage * 1.75 * 1.3 (or 1.45 with talent)



We also did some quick fairy fire and demo shout tests. The warlock was wimping out cause he wanted to go to sleep, so there isn't much data. Sorry. Here are the results.

Demo shout was used once. The warlock pulled with 67 damage. 63 damage did not pull.

67 / 1.1 / 1.45 = 42.0
63 / 1.1 / 1.45 = 39.5

Faery fire at one application (pulled_number / 1.1 / 1.45):
1) 180 pulled aggro. 172 did not. 112.9 max base threat. 107.8 min base threat.
2) 174 pulled aggro. 170 did not. 109.1 max base threat. 106.6 min base threat.

Faery fire at two applications (pulled_number / 1.1 / 1.45 / 2):
3) 345 pulled aggro. 341 did not. 108.2 max base threat. 106.9 min base threat.

Faery fire at four applications (pulled_number / 1.1 / 1.45 / 4):
4) 693 pulled aggro. 689 did not. 108.6 max base threat. 108.0 min base threat.


Thus, before bearform modifier:
Fairy Fire: 108.0-108.2
Demo shout: 39.5-42
[ post edited by Chibi ]

[Warlock]

Threat Modifier
Dire Bear Base: 130%
Dire Bear with 5/5 FI: 145%

Since I have FI:

Base Threat Total Threat
Maul Damage * 1.75 Dmg * 1.75 * 1.45 = Dmg * 2.5375
Swipe Damage * 1.75 Dmg * 1.75 * 1.45 = Dmg * 2.5375
Faerie Fire 108 108 * 1.45 = 156.6
Demo Roar 41 41 * 1.45 = 59.45

Threat Required for Someone Else to Pull Aggro = Total Threat * 1.10