I’m not disputing how they stack up against a rogue, prot warrior, or holy priest in direct comparisons. Okay maybe a little, a bear tank can absolutely perform just as well as a prot warrior in dungeons at any level. I digress. The point I was making is, nobody is playing them because if you’re trying to pick a class, and everyone and their dog says druids are useless, no one is going to pick druids. And for horde, the only other tank at 60 is warriors.
Also, while druids won’t out heal a good priest, won’t out damage a good rogue, and probably have a harder time tanking a raid boss, does it really matter? that content is getting cleared but groups with well under 40 people, including people under level 60, in whatever gear they picked up off the ground while leveling. I get druids aren’t optimal, but are they really so so terrible that a 60 feral cat is significantly worse than a upper 50’s rogue in greens?
My point is that there is a reason people said that. Because comparatively they are pretty useless. If you planned on healing, you wouldn’t roll a druid. If you planned on DPS, you wouldn’t roll a druid. Tanking is the only real reason you’d roll a druid and even then you’d be fighting an uphill battle for a raid spot.
Elemental Tanks with mail / leather SP gear make better tanks due to higher damage (vastly more threat) and more longevity (mana pool). I did struggle however with princess due to nature immunity and the dragons in temple. But I was able to breeze through BRD arena tanking as an ele shaman.
For the record, I do have 5/5 shield spec for solo and world pvp bulkiness. Final build is (31/7/13) and aiming for the pvp boots for 61% faster ghost wolf for mobility in large conflicts.
A motivated Feral druid, Prot Paladin, or even Shaman with a shield that wants to tank is better than a reluctant arms or fury warrior that begrudgingly tanks because he has to.
The motivated player that knows his craft will always do better than the reluctant warrior that doesn’t care or want to do it and is only doing it because it is the only way they can get a group at the time.
Basically this. I’m either pulling too much, too little, too fast, too slow or even using the wrong abilities… It’s just isn’t enjoyable running with pugs so I stick with guild groups
Ditto. During the leveling process, Paladin tanks are super easy to heal. It’s like healing a warrior and bear are my usual, so when I get a paladin tank, it’s like I just won the cheat mode lottery. Ha ha
I made my priest a dwarf because I just didn’t have a dwarf yet and I think human toons are mostly boring to look at and play as. Only one of my classic characters out of the many is human. I really wanted to make my mage a dwarf, but alas not an option.
I only found out later there was a thing about dwarf priests and then I lolled my head and put this character on the back burner.
