I’m usually more worried about threat than tanking.
Bear with talents is 262% threat.
Cat is 80% threat.
Moreover Claw sucks from a frontal facing, it doesn’t scale and is awful.
Just make sure your raid is aware of that and watch their threat for the next 30s.
You won’t have to worry about positioning for Rogues and such for Druid class call and all your healers can heal at full output during our class call.
So just communicate and let them know what to expect.
It really depends on WHEN the call hits. I was lucky to have my first call on the 3rd or 4th so I had a decent lead.
Cat is terrible for threat though.
I remember the first time it happened, we were using Teamspeak back then.
Me: “My threat sucks, so watch your threat!”
Snarky Raider 1: “I never thought I would hear Val say that ever!”
Snarky Raider 2: “I’m setting that up as my ring tone!”
lol
That doesn’t diminish the point I made about bears getting crit/crushed.
Except I don’t believe that bears are really getting instagibbed more than warriors excepting bosses with nasty enrages (which we have yet to see). On those, yes get a warrior with shield wall ready.
The only dangerous situation are the drakes and their stupid Thrash mechanic. Everything else could back-to-back-to-back critically hit and a Druid could soak it while Healers healed.
Druid TTL is subpar compared to Warriors, not our EH. We don’t unavoidably die.
I’ve seen a few people refer to ‘EH’. What is that?
Bear tanks are not memes…like everybody knows a bear tank can be effective…
I like bear tanks. I like warrior tanks. I even like shaman tanks which are a rare breed, but fun to play with. I don’t play alliance, so don’t know about pallies. I assume they are fun too.
But for real. Bear + Warrior is a VERY good mix of tanks. Strengths and weaknesses. People are holding onto the pre-1.12 skills, itemization, etc as a rationale. Ignore them. Keep doing what you do.
Effective health. It’s a measure of the raw amount of physical damage one can take before dying, in the worst case scenario (no RNG avoidance, etc). The calculation is based on the health pool, DR from armor, and other permanent DRs like Defensive Stance.
Firemaw can flurry, so I don’t put a druid on him. You’re also bypassing that good feral tank gear doesn’t exist until you’ve cleared out BWL. I don’t mind a feral in BWL gear tanking BWL bosses, but there’s no way I’m putting one as MT during progression. They’re outright worse than warriors for a majority of fights, and it may only matter during progression, but that’s enough.
I mean you can still outgear the Thrash that Firemaw/Flamegor/Ebonroc do, but Shadow Flame + double crit from Thrash is a lot of spike damage.
Eh… while the better gear comes from clearing BWL, I’ve done all the bosses before getting my first piece out of BWL itself. Even while Warriors pick up Wrath gear across the board, the Druid only needs one or two items to stay ahead on EH, and if we get all of our gear out of BWL, we stay way ahead.
You wouldn’t be gimping yourself if you did, we do just fine.
Thrash will take down Shield Block faster than you can say “pant dropping Warrior!”
But sure…don’t bring the tank that can swap to large gobs of EH to deal with it…what?!
Thrash spikes every tank.
On a Warrior it also allows you to be crushed nearly as much as we can be…without the HP’s or AC to compensate.
Gives me some hope. Need that Breastplate, but guild hasn’t seen it drop in UBRS skin runs. Don’t have the extra gold to buy it as it ranges from 200-500g on my server and I’m saving for my epic mount (650g atm). Really want the Breastplate to test threat. Thanks for posting the logs too!
lol the quote feature is so buggy sometimes 
druids are good tanks exactly what i was saying on every board ever
some heartless min maxers just have the head of a brick
We had to replace our feral tank because he kept getting destroyed in BWL. We’re going to have a Thunderfury (finally) for out next BWL, so there’s no benefit to a feral’s threat now.
I’m wondering what your Bear tank’s gear was, and whether or not they were using proper comsumables. Because based on the log I posted in the OP, Bears are very sturdy. On this Broodlord pull, I prepared with the following:
Even without my Warden Staff, I reached the armor cap with Inspiration and took about 1k less damage from Mortal Strike than the Warrior tanks who got hit by it (I think 1 Warrior even got instagibbed by it, need to check the log again). I was also able to generate enough threat to tank 7 of the 8 Knock Aways the boss cast, meaning even having my threat cut in half 7 times wasn’t enough to keep me off top threat.
And look, please don’t reignite the “But muh Fury/Prot” discussion. It’s been discussed ad nauseum in this thread and we get it that until later tiers, Fury/Prot can eek out 10% more threat than a Bear (under absolutely perfect circumstances and only on one boss in the game) while giving up a gigantic portion of their tanking profile. Whatever. The point is that a properly supported Bear (which honestly even Warrior tanks should be using everything I listed above except MCP and Barkskin before pulling Brood or Firemaw) is going to be your highest EHP tank that can also generate a ton of threat.
Is he skimping on EH gear, consumables, etc? There’s absolutely no reason for any Warrior or Druid to be “getting destroyed” in BWL unless Healers are really asleep at the wheel. Also note what kind of buffs/debuffs you raid team brings. Are your Warlocks super pro at putting up Curse of Recklessness, but you and/or the Druid really lazy about putting up Demoralizing Shout/Roar? What about Thunderclap (soon to be overtaken by Thunderfury)? What about a Hunter’s Owl maintaining Screech? Is the Druid in a group full of Warriors and Rogues and not getting the benefit of Fire Resistance Aura and/or Devotion Aura?
Proper consumable use, not even counting a Flask of the Titans, can put even a thinner armored Feral well above where they need to be to survive.
Also… your Healers. This isn’t a slight against them or to say they’re bad, but if they’re used to MC damage profiles and/or Warrior streaks of Avoidance, they could very well have very piss-poor reaction time and aren’t proactively Healing. Even with poor DPS the BWL fights don’t last that long. Heals should be bombed out liberally. Druids don’t avoid as much damage and take hits pretty steadily, so if the Healer is expecting to be on the MT but often snipes heals on DPS to pad meters… they’re going to let the Druid die through no fault of the Druid. Every single one of my deaths on Broodlord have resulted in me eating an MS, a cleave, and then an auto or two before finally dying… all without getting a heal… and all across the 3-5 seconds it takes for that to occur. Healers can’t tunnel on threat swaps and they can’t snipe healing off the non-Tanks, and this will only continue to be true (and more severely punished) moving into AQ and Naxx.
They shoulda been pvping anyway, not real wars