Thursday, October 09, 2008

Warcraft time - The Great Tank Debate!*

So, Ive respeced to feral, specifically Dire Bear, when the new patch came out. Since I am planning on doing this throughout the leveling stages of Wrath, now was my first opportunity to try out how druids tank, and to a lesser extent, how tank has changed all of a sudden. One big talent change for bears is how they gain rage. They still gain rage as normal, however they also gain rage by dodging. So it works out to if you hit me, I get angry and smack you. If you try to hit me I also get angry and smack you anyway. It really lets druids tank things with a greater disregard for others gear level.

My friends and I were doing a 3-man instance in ramparts, one of the easier instances. The healer was Tier 6 and the DPS was halfway between tiers 5 and 6 as far as gear goes. My tanking gear is mostly blue quality, with some greens. In Burning Crusade, If I had attempted to tank this same instance with the same group,we would have lost people, wiped out, and generally taken allot of repair bill damage - to our banks. It would not matter how good or bad I am, The difference in gear level is high enough that there is way for me to hold threat from those two. In wrath, or at least the in game patch to ready the game for the expansion. I was holding aggro. From a Warlock and a Shaman healer, both at black temple raids in gear level. My gear level for feral is still early Karazhan. Some might say, well that's their job to let you hold aggro.

Not this warlock. His personal victory is being second highest on the threat meters. And stealing aggro from tanks. I have play DPS throughout most of my Burning Crusade experience, and let me say this: DPS's are not supposed to be doing this. So all you clothie DPS out there: Aggro equals bad, really bad, worse than anything else that could happen. Its a DPS'ers responsibility to keep their aggro under the tanks. When the tank is under geared, you need to lower your DPS itself to follow that, but it is rule #1. Period. The End. and for recap.

DPS Rules:
  1. Don't grab aggro from tanks.
  2. Don't grab aggro from tanks.
There are more but that is for another time. Suffice to say, I still kept aggro from the Aggro lovin' 'lock and I am amazed at the AOE tanking that Druids get now. Which I hear everyone gets now. Which makes me think that the tanks will be hit by wave after wave of lots of elites in the next patch. Give all classes more opportunity for CC, give all tanks the ability to AOE tank.

I smell being outnumbered 10 to one in wrath. And I'm still excited... Somehow?

*Greatness neither required nor guaranteed. Debating also not promised at this time. Tanking not necessarily mentioned.

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