Druid Tank Help Please

As of late, I’ve been struggling with tanking during SSC and TK. There’s nights everything goes great, and there’s night I struggle. I have a few questions to make it consistent:

  1. What is the true defense cap for Druid tanks? I’m at 376 and another player argues I need more, though I could of sworn 376 is the ideal number. Why I ask this: There’s fights the boss will take me from 15k hp to zero in seconds. I’m currently at 34k armor, but I do suffer from getting crushing blows, which i know could be helped by having resilience. That rarely happens, but did happen twice in a row tonight which is making me wonder if there’s something I am needing to fix with my gear. I’ve been using the same set for weeks, sadly using the 4 set tier 4 because all tier 5 gear is going to our healers and pumpers.

  2. I notice a problem with dodges and parrys happening often, I know this has to do with lack of expertise, but whats a good middle ground to be able to build aggro and have enough armor/defense in order to stay on top of aggro charts and still live. I have gems for hit on my gear since I don’t have much hit gear that will make misses less likely. Which leads to the next question

  3. Is sacrificing HP gems for resilience and expertise worth it? I know bear tanks rely a lot on armor and hp since they lack the ability to parry and shield block. I do have 37% dodge, which feels like it happens a lot, but there’s times I can’t get a dodge to save my life.

  4. Am I just playing a class and role that is underwhelming right now and I need to wait for future patches or expansions to actually be an amazing utility for a raid comp? I know my hunters love the leader of the pack buff, so they will claim I’m great, but I feel like I would of been better off rolling Warrior or Palidan. We currently run a Warrior, palidan, and me (druid) for our 25 man raids, and I feel like I screwed up with the class I picked. I need time to build threat and I’m doing great on some bosses as the MT, but with mobs, my swipe seems minimal and I will lose a mob when I tank by tabbing between mobs.

I want to be the best I can for my raid group, but I feel like there has been times I’m letting them down when I’m taking from max HP to zero in seconds. Any suggestions to improve myself would be appreciated. Thank you for your time.

First get on the druid discord: https://discord.gg/wJJ9sCc

The fourms is NOT a good place for help as even if you get info you get far better info there and is the place the same people that have wrote the wowhead guides hang out among many other good druid players.

  1. The druid crit cap is 5.6%. This can be gotten with EITHER def rating or res rating and you want a MIX of both. This assumes 3/3 survival of the fittest talent.

This means you need 415 DEFENSE to be crit caped if going with PURE defense rating. This is 154 defense rating. But you can have 0 and be caped via having 103 resilience rating a balance of the two is the most common way to go. There is a chart on the druid disc to see how mcuh you need or better the weak aura: https://wago.io/NacQHoIfF

As such at 376 DEFENSE if you are talking about defense you never did say you are SHORT. IF you have 0 res but if you have 103 res as low as 350 DEFENSE would be caped.

You said crushing blows res would help with just NO. Res dose not effect crushing blows in ANY way there always 15% chance nothing will ever change that other than getting DODGE + miss chance so high that it pushes crush of the ctc table this means dodge levels of 71% unbuffed. The fact you think res works on crush tells me you need to go on the druid disc and read the info there as well as look up the wowhead guide for druids as you are showing you lack the vary basic info that makes up your class which IS hurting your raid group. Not knowing the def cap something that is made rather clear in any spec guide is another indicator of the same. https://tbc.wowhead.com/guides/feral-druid-tank-burning-crusade-classic

  1. In order to have enough agro is NOT a factor of hit or expertise alone in fact it rarly is even a factor of them. If you are having agro issues the first and formost thing is to look at your rotitation check your log if your mangle CPM is not near 10 at least > 8 and as close as possible you are losing a TON of agro via a bad rotation. If you are rage caping same thing while you should have > 30 CPM between lac and swipe.

After that you look at your group. You want a ehn sham first and formore followed by a warrior using battle shout followed by bm hunters folloed by ret pallys in order of importance. With ehn sham and warrior being worth 3-4 bm hunters EACH. Meaning a group with a ehn warrior and a warrior using battle shout and no one else would be the same as having a group with 8 bm hunters buffing you approx. This is VASTLY more threat than anything. To the point if you where in 70 blue gear with just those two classes your threat would be higher than a full sunwel geared THREAT set with a group not buffing you. Gear is NOT a large factor to threat it is a large factor to survival thou as such gear is used for survival NOT threat for the most part. When people are talking about hit/expertise they are talking about reducing pull variance as such lowering odds to miss on pull so dps can start faster if your not in a speed running guild this should NOT really be on your mind as your survival should be your main issue.

Looking at your logs (only looked at one fight) your not getting blood lust, you had only 1 hunter buffing you, no warrior, no sham at all so no totems, No sant aura as the worst of case you basicly had only a single BM hunter buffing you this means your threat would be CRAP no matter what you did. To the level that you might as well be using green gear as your threat in green gear with a proper group would be higher by a good margin.

But your group wasent the only factor your CPM on mangle was 6 this means you gave up 40% of your mangle threat this is MASSIVE when mangle acounts for about 50% of your total threat so you in effect gave up 20% right there from bad rotation. As this was a’lar there is downtime thou when accounting for that thou the CPM only goes to 7 this is still low 8 should be the min goal with 9 being acceptable.

You had a 50% uptime on lac and only at 4 stacks or less and only 8% at 5 stacks which is laughable about 20% of your threat is from lac not using it is a joke. Your swiping alot when lac is not yet stacked to 5 and letting lac fall this shows a clear lack of understanding of the basic bear rotation and is the reason your threat is really low.

Now it may of been just this fight but I highly doubt that as I picked your BEST fight from all your logs (which is old on Nov 17) in order to look at making me think it would only be worse if I looked over more.

I can’t blame your group for trolling you with a bad group comp when your rotation has basic issues but ill be honest I would be looking to replace a tank with basic rotational issues as thats a vary important slot to have a player that wont look at a guide to be in.

Might not be the kindest thing to say but must be said.

  1. This is answered above No unless you are in a speed running guild hit/exp will not change the result of people pulling of you or not outside of bad rng at the start of a pull that is fixed by your dps waiting a sec if losing agro past the first 10-15 secs of a pull the issue is not your gearing but your group and rotation. While if in a speed running guild gemming hit is worth to reduce pull variance at the loss of survival as at that point your survival is not in question. You should have 2 hit gems for your meta gem thou.

Many dodge/parrys will NOT significantly lower your overall threat output, yes it will lower them but not to the point of losing agro if rotation and group is correct. They only change the agro within a small time period to a high degree such as on pull for the first 15 secs which is pull variance.

  1. Hard no. Druid tanks are in t5 equal to warriors for the top tank spot while able to do more dps when not tanking in prot and in fact most warriors are being “forced” out of tank roles and into fury tanking as they do more dps when not tanking playing that way than cats and can fill the 3rd tank role just fine leaving druids able to 2nd tank with the pally alot better for a better raid comp. While we only get better from here in t6 and sunwell druid become hands down the top tanks and if already in full t5 you have already gotten to the point of just being outright better than warriors in threat and survival. While druid threat is massively high to a level its not uncommon to see a druid 50+% above a warrior in the same condition.

Druids have the HIGHEST threat production not only over time but in small jumps we DO NOT need time to build up threat as you write in your post. We are the single tank above all that lets dps to ham out the gate. This is one of the CORE reasons druids are used as one of the main speed running tanks along with pallys + on single tank fights can go kitty and do high level dps while the pally tanks. Leaving the warrior as a lower threat lower survival unwanted child used as a fury third tank in t5/6.

If your going from full hp to 0 in seconds should be posting logs of examples of the cases. As without knowing the case cant call it normal or not. As eg tidewalker yes it is possible for him to outright kill any tank in a wombo combo in jsut bad rng. Eg double crush fury into tidal all within 0.3 secs for ~25k damage give or take.

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I learned so much and I’m a hunter!

Checking my raids feral tanks logs now!!

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Extremely well written and informative. Learned quite a bit from this.

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I have a question since you seem very knowledgeable on the subject.

My raid has our feral with 2 BM a resto shaman and a survival hunter.

The melee group is an enhance a fury an arms a rogue and a ret.

How much threat is our feral losing with the above comp because as you said the feral loses a lot without a fury and enhance??

The survival gives him nothing being in the group, Resto is blood lust and totems totems are worth approx 96 tps from grace and 67 from str of earth. Assuming a 300 sec ST fight. This assumes p2 bis gear as without knowing his gear level cant give exacts. Bms are good but there one of the weaker effects for tank druids due to lower dps as such static ap gains such as battle shout and totems are vastly stronger than % damage increases the outlier being the 10% ap from ehn due to ferals having one of the highest attack power levels in the game and also why ehn is so strong for them.

Given that your feral in his group should put out around 1125 tps assuming a 95% accurate rotation, no chickens, 2 BMs, resto, survival for his group.

Now moving him to the melee group taking the place of the arms (one of the better swaps as this moves battleshout to cover both hunter group and melee group maxing its value while battle shout remains a strong buff thou weaker than lotp for hunters), if not moving the arms the next option is moving the ret as the 2% buff from ret acts like the 3% from hunters and as such is one of the stronger buffers for the hunters.

In both cases the resto would be expected to twist which unless you are 6 healing this is NOT worth it unless you really need your feral to put out more threat and realistically the group setup you have should be high enough tps assuming not speed running and can afford to hold of for a sec. IF your hunter group is further bringing chickens from all players his threat esp would already be fine enough. I would suggest getting a 2nd ehn for hunter group THAN swap ret into that group and druid into double warrior group. That being said the most ideal tank setup is pally druid fury warrior and as such you want double warrior in the druid group for battle shout + commanding during prog esp for the fury that needs the extra hp when tanking moving the ret is likly to be the best option.

If you moved the ret:

His tps in the same case would go up to 1372 a gain of +250 tps or a gain of approx 20% a massive jump in threat. This would further get him commanding shout boosting his hp around about 10% health which is vary significant on a tank.

If you moved the arms:

His threat would be about 1400 another 25 over the ret move but this case gives the hunters a warrior that may be slightly better for them than the ret this will depend on there gear level (better gear favors the ret and in t6 the hunters would pref the ret over the warrior), while this case you don’t get commanding shout which is a loss. Furthermore as warriors is the HIGHEST scaling class from LOTP from the druid your raid is likly to gain the msot dps keeping both warriors with the druid.

Now lets add chickens. The melee group and the hunter group both should be bringing 5 chickens basically anyone ever in a group that has even a single physicals dps or tank should be bringing a chicken as really everyone in your raid should be eng if talking optimal (yes many guilds wont have this but lets say you do). Chickens slowball with other effects so the group already ahead the melee group gets more value from them. While hunters it only scales there pets so yes if only one group can have chickens better to maximize them on melee dps not your tank assuming not having threat issues.

Using the case of rogue ehn 2x warrior druid and 5 chickens the druids tps is now:

1552

This is +180 vs just moving him into the melee group. +430 vs when he was in the hunter group without chickens. This is a massive increase of nearly 50% threat. This allows your dps to go ham from the start and just not worry. This is the group I myself have and peek on void reaver with lust as remember this numbers where without lust (using a higher threat gear load than this sim) at just under 2k tps for the burst window. This is not even the highest amounts ive seen as I only parse in the 98th percentile. My group is able to go ham from the get go from the moment I cast mu first mangle without worry. While only needing to slow slightly on void reaver if I get bad knockback rng which is rare when you have your surv hunter use scorp sting to max miss rate on the boss paired with rather decent dodge rate (even higher in my dps gear than surv gear as higher agi).

Don’t forget to have one person use the jc neck (and sham drumming, surv hunter in hunter group so can be at range) to give the party a crit buff your rogue and ehn sham should be alternating for the melee group and ehn (resto in your case) / hunter in the hunter group for that party its well worth the personal dps loss for a single hunter for the gain to team and for all other specs mentioned its a dps gain vs there normal neck for themselves when buff is active making them the ideal specs to use. Kitty/bear is also ideal kitty more so BUT only if bear dose not need neck to be crit immune for that fight (if using 100D he will need said pvp neck for crit immune) kitty should always be using neck before anyone else thou.

So in the melee group he would be doing 1500 TPS.

So in the most optimal raid group setting the feral would be again with 2 BM a fury and an enhance with 5 chickens what would his threat be?

I think currently you said he was doing around 1125 TPS in his current unoptimized group.

2 bm warrior druid ehn is pre chicken

1453 and 5 chickens add about 210 in this case so 1663 tps pre lust and drums and jc neck and haste pot and sappers.

Not having challenging from double warrior thou is a loss thou as the extra stam means he can gear more aggressively which is a greater gain than 1 hunter and when needing survival the extra hp again has more value giving him options and room to play so the most optimal would be in fact double warrior bm druid ehn not double hunter assuming the druid has the gear to make said swaps. This doubles with warriors getting the greatest gain via lotp.

And yes it was 1125 in his current group without chickens assuming he was p2 bis this was pre lust pre drum pre jc neck and haste pot and sappers also.

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Okay thank you so much now I just got to find out if he’s doing the right rotation

look at his logs and check:

  1. mangle CPM for >9 as close to 10 as possible void reaver is an ideal fight for this
  2. lac + swipe CPM > 30 as close to 40 if not over as possible
  3. resources page rage if hes caped on rage more than 5-10% of the fight there is a issue.
  4. check lac debuff uptime should be at 5 stacks 90+% of the fight even higher on VR about 98%.

If the first two is low can mean using maul to much and not having rage to use others which is more important maul is filler only. IF 3 is high not using maul enough. While if 1/2 is low can mean not pressing buttons. 4 being low means swipeing to much vs lac. Its higher threat to just use lac ST not swipe BUT its higher dps to only maintain lac and use swipe when not renewing lac assuming t5 gear and in a group of at least 2 bm resto, any group better than that such as ehn warrior or even just a single one of them swipe will always win.

We look at casts not hits as bears are often not hit/exp caped so hits would give inaccurate numbers.

If you want to know how is tps looks use this tool:

https://voomlz.github.io/

Yea I will look when off work, he’s in my raid and our logs are public.

Can link them later if want me to look over but otherwise as at work not going to look over at this moment.

Yeah I’m also at work lol

Sounds like you are getting “parry jibbed” my dude. When the target parry’s your attack their next attack comes much faster. (40% maybe who knows current numbers) Being well below the crit immunity, this screams back to back crit and/or crushing blows from parry’d attacks, especially being low on expertise. I’m personally confident thats the only way your going to get globaled 100%-0% at that quantity of armor contribution.

Not to overly simplify this conversation, but you definitely want to follow the above advice about crit immunity. A lot of bears run resilience>defense at that gear level as it is much MUCH cheaper per point than defense rating to gain what is needed. 3% from talent, so what nother 2.6% from resilience and defense, plz correct me if wrong. You can hover over the 2 stats on character window to see the reduced chance to be critically hit and the combined chance needs to be 2.6 or greater. Expertise will most definitely smooth out your incoming damage, but not worth stacking for loss of Armor etc.

Threat wise keep maul queued up as much as possible and don’t open with Lacerate. Make sure the raids Boomkin is getting Imp Faerie up ASAP for that hit rating.
/moo

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Your attitude firmly cements the fact that LFR is needed.

Forgot to add that Expertise rating kicks all butt for the modern way of aoe tanking 5mans… like velcro for mobs

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