Druid Tank Utility

Classes Druid
1

I’m honestly not here to really throw down a gauntlet. I was pretty bored with how little changes guardian druids have gotten but we are still the kings of tanking trash (at least that how I feel) and generic auto attack garbage. I’m curious if that alone is the reason we lack some of the great options other classes get for tanking.
I.E.
Monk has there physical dmg increase.

DH has magical dmg increase.

Paladin can block spells… Yikes that’s amazing. Though admittedly thier utility
feels low to me? But they do incredible amounts of dmg atm. They do have aura’s though which is something I sorely miss, being feral use to give crit which is for sure crazy now so I’m not asking for that.

DK’s have anti-magic zone which is also amazing. Though they seem to be at the rather shallow end of the dream pool anyway this expansion. They also have grip which is always boss.

Warrior has the melee dmg group buff which gets so out of hand when mixed with a WW monk. They also have 3 charges, jealous much?

Druid has group sprint, AoE disorient instead of a stun, it’s practically useless in high mob count situations. Ursol’s Vortex is really nice for M+ keys. We take what basically amounts to no dmg from mobs in trash pulls, it feels truly amazing. I just feel like I bring nothing to the group besides tanking, often. I know druids aren’t in a bad place, but Fairy Fire use to reduce armor, at one point it added crit which in the state of retail would be bonkers so I’m not asking for that either. But maybe split the difference of monk and DH and 2% inc total dmg, not just physical or magic but all of it. And it doesn’t have to be this at all. I just wish I brought more to the group. We use to give crit for being a feral druid. We inspired others to be savage’s just like us. I don’t know what I would really do to make me feel better honestly, I just feel like I’m missing something that makes me stand out besides that thick booty.

Druids are without a doubt in a good spot, I’m so grotesquely tanky atm. And I don’t know that I would sacrifice that just to make me feel better, but I want people to want me for more than just my ham hocks. =)

Before this is flooded with people telling me to shut up. I repeat, I don’t think druids are in a bad place. They are a solid second or third and they scale tremendously with gear so I’m not worried about my place in the game. I just think it would be nice to have something that buffs the group or debuffs the mob like other tanks have.

2

I look at Guardians as the kings of self sustain.

Guardian with Resto Affinity and Mass Entanglement talent + Night Fae covenant + assortment of Legendaries that you can’t go wrong with.

Vortex, Wild Growth, Swiftmend, Mass Entanglement, Incap Roar, Berserk, Convoke (super defense and massive heals + decent damage especially in AoE setting), Soothe, Hibernate, Cyclone, Remove Corruption, huge self heals via FR x2 (Renewal if you talent that way too), with great defensives that are up constantly when rotated properly.

You may not help the group by allowing them an extra 5% physical/magic damage, but you’re helping them by them not having to worry as much. Now that’s not to say they can Willy nilly into random packs and body pull everything, and interrupts still fall to them to help out with blah blah blah…

I find Bears to be extremely easy to heal and I’ve heard it back in kind as well from healers. They’ve got multiple ways to stay alive when things get dicey/low on health.

So while they may not be buffing the group, their own utility helps them excel as self sustainability better than other tanks

IMHO

1 Like
3

I think guardian should get a passive that makes it so when they swap out of bear form, you keep bear form/buffs for 5 seconds. Would be cool to give it an animation effect of you still looking like a bear, but then your humanoid form is spirit like and offset to the side and both do cast animations.

I think guardian druid skillcap and rotation variety would vastly improve with this. Can then safely use all your other utility. And would be the only tank that is sort of like a spell caster too.

2 Likes
4

There’s a conduit that does that with Feral, while exiting Cat or Travel form, I retain the movement buff for 3 seconds

Is there one for Guardian that would allow Iron Fur to stick (take the hut to overall health though) for 3-4 seconds afterwards would be neat. Would allow for more use of Affinities without having to jump through hoops

5

It’s just an anima power unfortunately. But it would also need to be more than just iron fur. The entire bear form passives would need to stick cause you’re losing health, ton of armor still and threat gen.

6

That’s the thing though…that would be boring if it didn’t retain a bit of risk tied with it.

Let the threat, abilities that require form (mangle, swipe, thrash, etc), and health drop.

Retain current armor + IF stacks (if applicable)

Fair compromise?

7

I mean, no not really. It’s not about risk, it’s either viable or not. You can’t afford to just drop bear form even for a single global when you’re tanking like 3 m+ mobs slamming your face.

Paladins can use all of their support on allies without losing anything. Imagine if bear druid could safely toss out a swiftmend on an ally while tanking. Best you can do now is use some mobility or cooldown to back off for a second, but you want those for other reasons than to just toss out a swiftmend.

There’s a reason they made some spells castable in bear form baseline, like cleanse, just can’t use it otherwise, unless you have a window of not tanking.

I will concede that maybe it might be too strong to be able to pop out with no risk to spam self heals though. That’s the edge case that might be too strong. But again, pally can spam flash of light right? Maybe I’m wrong, but there’s a parry/block penalty so maybe lose dodge while not in bear form?

8

And this argument has been beaten into the ground over and over. Paladins are able to throw out heals at the expense of their mitigation.

That’s the same thing bear is doing.

Sure Paladins can throw out a WoG, but there goes their holy power they built up to use on Shield of the Righteousness. Sure Paladins can sit there and spam a whopping 4 Flash of Lights, all the while they’re hard casting, they’re getting beat on by mobs, not mitigating. They can’t block or dodge or parry while casting.

Bears are given the tools to create distance and maintain distance. Bears are almost easier to top off a group via that way.

At least with my proposal, you’re retaining all your armor, and increased armor via IF. So mitigation is still there, you just take on an equal risk of being at lower health.

More health + 3 mobs beating on you at full damage

Vs

Less health + 3 mobs beating on you at reduced damage

Comes out in the wash. All depends on your risk vs reward factors and how comfortable you are or how comfortable your healer is.

I love my Druid, and I enjoy tanking on him. And I’m all for buffs…so long as they make sense. I will not advocate for over buffing or stupid nerfs though, regardless of classes/specs. Such as the nerfs to Boomy. Well justified. And also negligible

Edit: Ah caught your edit while I was typing. Yeah I covered the party/block/dodge aspect in the post. Retaining all your defensives and bonuses while being able to group heal and throw super strong single target heals would easily overshadow what a Paladin could do.

Wild Growth (group heal), Rejuv, Rejuv, Regrowth, Swiftmend vs 4 Flash of Lights.

1 Like
9

Yeah I wasn’t trying to label paladins has healing gods while tanking. I totally concede bear self healing would be busted if you retained full bear form. That would push this over. But being able to root/cyclone/heal others and cat/owl weave as bear would add a lot to the tanking rotation and be fun.

It might be more my perspective as a resto druid. I can shapeshift constantly and do a ton of things. Bear druid you just get stuck sitting in bear with not much going on unless you’re in a situation where you can/need to kite. But you can’t always just zip away to pop out of bear.

2 Likes
10

You already can do all of this :slight_smile: just gotta be comfortable and familiar with creating distance. Vortex/Typhoon help a lot. So does Mass Entanglement. And travel form + Wild charge (or no form + wc).

Vortex + Rejuv (drops form) + WC to healer + Wild Growth + Bear form (hello 20 rage) charge back in and Thrash + IF and you never missed out on anything and just helped your healer + group

Quick edit: a lot of the Dungeons are hard to pull this off with their corridor/hallway designs, kinda sucks. But I like Spires for this fact

11

At the very least, I think feral affinity should allow this, and maybe heart of the wild perhaps. The problem is kiting just isnt realistic most of the time as a tank in general, and threat would be a huge problem. And blowing very vital cooldowns to create distance just for the sake of casting wild growth or sunfire also isn’t realistic imo.

12

This would be such a tremendous QoL to retain bear armor for 5 seconds after exiting bear, sweet baby jesus.

And as for your first post. I have no argument to make against anything you just said, I just feel left out? If that makes any sense.

13

I’m on your side, giving us enough time for 1-2 globals while retaining bear armor would be quite amazing. We wouldn’t HAVE to make that distance available to do a quick heal or cyclone. It might be a bit overpowered but it sounds so good in theory.

14

Grizzle is correct in general. My disagreement is: it’s not really practical to kite or use cooldowns for kiting just for the sake of using alternative abilities as part of a normal rotation.

1 Like
15

If you’re healing on the run I get it but as far as popping out just to… I don’t even know what, Wrath? The total loss of time to do that would probably result in less overall maul’s or pure attacks and it wouldn’t be worth it damage or threat wise.

I just want something akin to faerie fire back, give it a cooldown, de-buff a boss for 10-15 seconds on a 30-60 second cooldown, line it up with the group for big damage. Just something to provide other than being a tank. Which again, is amazing, just feels lack luster sometimes.

16

Oh man I forgot about faerie fire, that’s such an iconic druid spell. But yeah this is the thought I had when trying to justify balance affinity over resto affinity for more than just typhoon (which is huge admittedly), but it’d be really nice to have sunfire as part of my rotation for more trash dps, but just not that practical in most cases. And I’m not going to just waste typhoon and annoy allies just to cast sunfire lol.

17

Gotta Typhoon the Melee at the casters, it’s the only good use of Typhoon. Fact.

Yeah, Sunfire would be crazy good for bears, throw Moonfire in the trash.

Faerie Fire was just a good little armor debuff and Invis stop. It was never OP it was just good, felt good to click. Could make it do a small dot or something for a bear, or just make it a good cooldown to really debuff something effectively. It doesn’t have to be broken, just there to be pressed when appropriate like the other 900 skills we have.

18

How do you feel left out? Perhaps I can find a way to add you in. I am an advocate for equality after all lol

Dropping form to cast a wrath or something, no. The point would be to emphasize your affinity. Which for the most part is either Balance or Resto.

When playing with Balance Affinity, which I tend to do at times, I do like pulling with Sunfire, bear form, Moonfire 2x on my way to the pack and then Thrash. Usually holds threat pretty good :slight_smile:

19

Do you not use your resto affinity heals? I would say Guardian off-healing is the most powerful off-healing in the game and we have the only AoE heal. I play a Paladin and a Warrior and whenever I’m on those tanks, I feel way more useless to my group than I do as Guardian.

20

Yeah, I’m just saying there isn’t anything I wanna drop out of bear to cast more often than not, cept for heals. With how it currently is the affinity is just for the HoT and occasionally UV’ing a pack to help the healer catch up. I rarely leave bear form for cyclone and I don’t think there is a single other thing I leave bear form for?

I wasn’t having threat issues before the 10% buff this week so I just charge and moonfire otw in, then thrash yadda yadda…