After recently leveling a Druid and playing every Tank class, I have to say playing a Feral tank requires so much more effort to hold threat and seems to take way more damage on aoe packs without a shield. Compared to a Paladin, Warr, and DK it just feels like it requires way more effort especially holding aoe threat. I’m only a level 40 on my Druid so maybe it gets alittle better, but feels bad. Still loving it though, all the utility they have feels amazing but still doesn’t hold a candle to Paladins utility and in general.
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It took them up to Shadowlands to finally make druid tank threat competitive for aoe compared to other tanks. Don’t particularly feel that guardian druid takes more efforts, but certainly they take more damage.
Jack of all trades—master of none.
While Bears have terrible aoe ranged threat…they do well 1v1 single target boss fights.
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DK aoe threat is far worse
It’s more painful on AoE packs than a paladin, yes, but it’s still manageable. Have you glyphed Maul yet? It makes a huge difference. Make sure you also Faerie Fire Feral on CD in bear form.
It will also get better once you learn Mangle and Lacerate.
Find a shammy friend and a pally healer friend, for druid tanks. I member when. See back then ppl had friends. It was neat.
Bear has very poor AOE threat, this is why it feels so bad to level up as. Their single target is fine and they have a lot of HP, utility and flexibility when playing in dungeons. This kind of depends what level you are, but I recommend creating 2 macros and placing them somewhere on your bars that are bound to ‘mouse wheel up’ and ‘mouse wheel down’.
Now, i also strongly recommend getting a nameplate addon, i use one called ‘ThreatPlates’. This will highlight nameplates of mobs depending on their aggro status (green = on you. red = on someone else yellow = about to lose threat).
This combo of changes will allow you to focus on changing your target to maintain control of large groups, it’s a bit like playing whackamole where you are trying to keep all nameplates green, tab targeting to yellow/red nameplates as they appear.
macro 1:
#showtooltip mangle (bear)
/cast mangle
/cast maul
macro 2:
#showtooltip swipe (bear)
/cast swipe
/cast maul
you can now just twitch your finger up and down on the mousewheel to perform most of your trash / aoe tanking rotation.
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Pally tanking, min effort, max reward…shoulda rollled a pallly.
Druids wont become good till Cata. then they become S+ tier if played right, S teir is played normally and A+ is played just okay. As a bear in cata though…they are okay. Mainly talking about the boom, boom moon kins.
Feral druids are the easiest tank to play in-game, their kit just isnt overloaded like paladins, but their rotation is mind-numingly basic.
Let’s not conflate ‘easy rotation’ with ‘easy play as a tank’.
yes, the rotation is braindead basic, as posted above you can put almost all of it into 2 macros on scrollwheel.
However, the basic rotation just does not hold aoe threat, you have to tab around and be constantly taunting loose mobs, this is something you typically just don’t have to worry about on other tanks (even DKs), where you pick a focus target and the rest just stick to you passively.
if we’re talking easy to tank, it’s paladin 100%. Seal of command + hammer is free auto cleave allowing you to tank 3-5 targets with strong threat without ever changing target, abilities or rotation order. you just mash 4-5 buttons in whatever order on whatever target and the whole pack sticks to you no problem.
lol ya right… no
Glyph of Maul is a must have.
Pull with FF at range (FF does do damage), and Maul+Swipe non stop.
Mangle for single target threat.
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Yes, it gets better. No issues with threat if you use your abilities correctly and keep an eye on mobs. AOE kit is lacking a little compared to other tanks, yes, so go Engineering for bombs.
I can’t speak for warriors but pallies and DK’s both have much better aoe threat just by virtue of being near things than druids.
Vs spamming swipe which will pretty much only hold threat from healing agro.
Yeah no a 1k engi bomb every minute or so is not meaningful threat.
being near mobs doesn’t magically generate threat for dks. we don’t have thorns dmg like paladins.
blood dk aoe threat is bad. You can spec and glyph to make it okay, but that isn’t an ideal single target spec. Every competent blood dk uses Single target spec, and relies on the other tank for aoe threat. Let the pally do it.
dnd is most of your aoe threat and it’s 30sec cd. 30 sec cd means you might need to get creative on some packs without dnd.
it’s also dot, so you have nothing to get an initial threat lead. In fact, the first 3 globals after dnd are all single target to spread diseases. if anyone aoes too soon you lose threat.
ohh and if someone pulls adds, gl. You might not have any runes up, and you can’t do much. Use your 5min cd to refresh runes is your best option. If that’s down too… hope taunts buy enough time so you can use icy touch.
You need to tab target Rune strike and throw bombs and taunt to have a chance. Either that or try to tank with your dps spec, which you can do, but then you rely on the healer not to suck. I do do this tbf, but tank spec aoe threat is the topic at hand.
The only boss where I wouldn’t spec aoe threat is algalon, you can tank everything else with a morb/dnd spec blood dk easily. Every tanks can use the usual MD or tricks on AOE, you cannot beat a dps going ham without help as dps aren’t as hard capped on their aoe vs tanks. If someone pull as a dk you still have 2 taunts which ain’t bad.
Having all 4 tanks, all at 80 and all having tanked raid content, that there is indeed a pretty big delta in AoE threat. This is further exacerbated by the fact that both Feral Druids and DKs have multiple specs that are for different things.
That vs Prot Paladins and Prot Warriors who pretty much have a standard tanking spec and perform pretty much the same all the time. And saying that Prot Paladins have the best AoE threat is I also believe true. They lack an AoE taunt but it takes something going really wrong for them to miss a tool like that given their other tools.
Prot Warriors also have a lot of tools that help mitigate any AoE threat loss. Their mobility is unparalleled and they do have an AoE taunt, AoE fear, infinite taunts thanks to Vigilance, Shockwave, etc. Always remember that Wars where the lead dev’s personal class in vanilla so they started with an amazing toolkit and only as the game aged did other tanks catch up.
Now with DKs, the newest tank and class, they are a bit more nuanced. Omgonoz gave a good breakdown as to why if you are the a standard Blood raid tank your AoE threat is going to suck. However it could be that Bigchad only has played with Frost DK tanks who do have decent AoE threat. That being said even Frost DK tanks don’t exactly have things, “just stick to you passively.” To be honest with the way DPS scale that is not a thing that any tank has but it sure is not a DK thing at all.
And finally to Feral Druids. To be a proper Bear tank you have to spec and glyph that way. And doing so utterly brutalizes any chance at that crazy kitty DPS that a Feral Druid can output. However even the kitty DPS is passively crit immune and can be a bear just by…turning into a bear. As such any Feral Druid can tank but if they are the kitty DPS spec with, and these are huge, the kitty DPS glyphs they are going to do so much like a DPS Warrior who’s put on a shield. It’s not an exact comparison but it’s a good way to think about it for those who don’t know a lot about tanking.
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