I understand horde druids are better for PvP (war stomp) and alliance for PvE/raids (paladin buffs + 1% dodge).
My question to experienced druids is how are horde druids for raiding? Are they much inferior to their alliance counterparts?
Thanks in advance.
If you’re raiding, you’re probably going to want a warrior tank. Druids and Paladins just didn’t have the full tool kit they needed to be “real” tanks yet, though they came closer than anyone else (sorry Shaman).
As I recall, Druids, Paladins, and Shaman all pretty much ended up in healing specs if they ever wanted to see the inside of a raid. Could be wrong, though, I didn’t do much raiding in Vanilla (and I wouldn’t have known anything about raid comp even if I did).
You really want to base your faction decision on minmax? Different strokes I guess.
Tauren feral tanks have the advantage of extra health. That might save your life in rare circumstances. There isn’t much difference otherwise.
False, lets just move in…
Druids are great in raiding regardless of faction because we only want heals, innervates and battle rez from you. Anything else is lawls.
I was a horde druid, but weren’t they better for two reasons:
Meld preventing death during raid wipes.
If you did wipe you could get back faster.
In raids horde druids don’t get benefit from Windfury, and alliance druids get 10% all stats from paladins’ Blessing of Kings. I’m wondering if this difference is sufficient to make a real difference.
(I’m not interested in playing warrior, and shadowmeld isn’t usable in combat in Classic.)
Pretty sure warstomp takes you out of bear form too.
No. The racial differences between nelf and tauren are largely irrelevant for raiding.
Meld didn’t work in combat in vanilla. You wipe with the rest of us and use your wisp form to run back.
Druids can get chain bubbled by a disc priest and still get rage, unlike a warrior, a little fact overlooked. A disc priest also wont run out of mana healing a druid who has more health than a warrior tank.
Is it super optimal? No. But if you build around it, you can make it better.
Druid tanks are viable in all 5 man content, and while they wont ever be straight up better than Warriors, they 100% can tank in most of the raids on most of the bosses, as long as that druid itemizes correctly and knows how to play their class.
This goes for (almost squints at boomkins) all classes and specs
Druids are good tanks but they can’t tank every boss
reading old guides, some state the windfury totem buff makes threat a problem for horde, 10% from blessing of kings makes a difference as well
More mitigation via dire bear armor and stam. Best tank tps in the game (with MCP).
Bear tanks are good. Naysayers are still carrying vanilla bias from early days and haven’t kept up with the meta.
That being said certain fights a warrior will be better. (Chromaggus, etc.)
Want more info? I recommend checking out Skarmtank on YouTube. He has a a bunch of classic tank info, a chunk of it specific to druid tanking in raids at endgame.
Check out: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5xSfo5nMGSmv00sGpRN7SQ/videos
Farm MCPs and you’ll be fine.
Yes, I’m a huge fan of Skarm ! As well as a highly knowledgeable tank he seems like a genuinely nice bloke. He druids as alliance, and I can’t recall him mentioning horde bear tanking.
Night Elf cat forms are prettier.
Tauren bears have more health.
Dodge vs. Health. None of it is that big of a deal.
He is switching to Horde for Classic and will be leveling a Druid as his MT first and a warrior later.
Check out the druid tanking vids (he covers this a lot in other vids too as well as his streams) though: