Although I haven’t done any raid tanking lately, I’d say that druid tanking is better than it’s ever been, sure we’re not paladins, but only paladins are paladins and they’re getting nerfed in the next patch.
But like SFG said, some people think that druid tanking is boring, and I suppose that there is some truth to that, when tanking trash we pretty much just spam 2 or 3 abilities and against bosses we add Faerie Fire and Lacerate into the mix. Then there is the people who don’t like the fact that we don’t have any dedicated tank gear, but personally I dismiss those as people who don’t know what gear to use unless it’s got ‘Tank’ written on it in bold letters.
Grazt. Is it 25 man? I have only done General Vezax on 10 man and while he is on farm, the 10 man Yogg seems to keep eluding us.
Yeah but they don’t send me to every corner of the world getting a token from every instance and zone. I got the impression that plot tokens were meant to keep people on a fairly linear story line.
There’s that guy in Darkholme too but he stays put. I agree that Ghostland is a better levelling zone than barrens simply because you don’t have to go running all over the place (you seem to spend half your time running in barrens).
- We don’t currently have the people to do 25. Yoggy’s a bitch, ain’t he? We’re consistently getting through Ph1, but Ph2 is killing us as the melee are having problems getting stuck in the portals with no way out and going insane. :rolleyes:
My offspec is bear (my main is tree) and the problem I run into is that there are very few encounters in a well balanced raid group where you would give up healers for tanks or vice versa. I there are a lot of encounters where DPS/tank will be asked to switch spec and where DPS/heal will be asked to switch spec but I have never been asked to switch my resto to bear (I am toying with the idea of respeccing to cat).
The one great thing about bear tanking is that once your adds are down, you can contribute significant DPS in cat form.
Yeah Yogg 10 is hard. We have cleared TOC 10 regular every week since Anubarak came out. We are still stuck on the keepers in Ulduar 25 and we are still stuck on PVP in TOC 25. Thank heavens for VOA, if you are not doing VOA 10 and 25 every week then you are cheating yourself because it is the easiest way to get awesome upgrades.
Bear in mind that the warrior prot tree got an immense improvement already with the release of Wrath. Most of the cutting edge raid progression guilds still use warrior tanks and prot warriors are even making an amazingly good showing in the top end of PVP, something that was utterly unheard of in the past. While warrior tanks are middle of the pack in any single stat (effective health, threat gen, AOE threat, group mitigation, damage output, etc…) that also means they have no glaring weakness, they have a very wide toolkit including reflects, stuns, rapid mobility and vigilance, and they have the greatest density of raid buffs and debuffs, which by itself is huge in a 10-man raid and still helpful even in a 25.
The paladins got their recent buffs because they were absolutely second string tanks on anything at all difficult, especially showpiece fights like Firefighter & Algalon, and dependant on the rest of the raid for everything from that missing survival cooldown to the boss AP debuff. The DKs are getting buffed in the next patch because they’re in pretty much the same state right now - their specs give them the great choice between terrible survivability and terrible threat output. Bears, going strictly by the math, are actually in need of nerfing, but the developers are loathe to do that because of their scarcity; largely due, IMO, to how mind-numbingly boring bear tanking is and how limited their toolkit is. A bear MT doesn’t even get much chance to use their main raid tools of innervate and rebirth.
Warriors remain the tanks by which all others are judged. You would have a very difficult time making the argument that the spec is broken.
Yeah, protection warriors are still good tanks, just spam intensive. The change for Wrath on shield block and crushing blows was nice since it removed the requirement to hit shield block every five seconds or die.
Question for anyone who’s worked reputation in Sholazar Basin. Is it possible to raise both factions at once by doing the switching allegience quest and doing both sets of dailies each day, or do I need to work one to exalted, switch allegiences, and work the other to exalted? Also, how long does it take to get to exalted with either one? I’m working through honored right now and it looks like it will take me four or five days more of doing the three quests availible to reach revered.
I’m sorry for not being on as Goblinboy the shaman on Cairne recently. I’ve been too busy doing dailies on my warrior on Blackhand. I’m sort of waffling on what to do. I recently got moved to second shift here at work, 3pm to 11:30pm, and I’m not sure how long I’ll be stuck on it. I like my warrior, and don’t want to lose him since I’ve been playing him off and on since about six months after release and don’t want to give him up.
You can only work one Sholazar rep at a time; switching factions doing the Altruis daily will reset you to Hated with one rep, Honoured with the other, so you gain nothing (and lose progress with whatever rep you were working on) by switching. At 1500 rep per day, it will take 14 days of doing all 3 dailies to get through Revered (Revered -> Exalted = 21000 rep). If you want the achievement and all the rewards they offer, start with Frenyheart, get Revered and start fermenting the disgusting jars while you work towards Exalted. Once you get the wolvar costume, you have the only time-based reward; switch to Oracles when you get the Honourary Frenzyheart achievement and start hatching eggs when you get to Revered with them. There are several pets and a green proto-drake mount that can come of the egg; the latter being rather rare, it will take some time to get.
Ok, so no way to work on them concurrently? Thought there was but I was just doing it wrong.
I’m not sure what you mean by time-based reward with the wolvar costume. Is it guaranteed after a certain amount of time that is less then it takes to get to exalted? And are you saying it takes much longer to hatch all the eggs to get all the rewards? I’m about halfway through honored with the oracles right now, would it make sense to switch?
Also, for purposes of the reputation achievements, does Oracle/Frenzyheart count as one or two exalted factions, once you’ve done both? I just hit 30 exalted factions, so am starting to think about going for 40.
Thanks for the help.
To get the achievement, you have to have 40 Exalted reps at the same time. Since you can only be Exalted with one or the other (and it is a hard and fast rule that you can only have one at a time, like the Aldors and Scryers), it only counts as one.
I’m fairly certain they will count for two reps, but I don’t really know. Regarding the time-based nature, the disgusting jar and mysterious eggs each hatch after a week. The wolvar costume from the frenzyheart is the only real reward from the jar, and has a 25% droprate. Compared to the egg having multiple rewards and one very rare, it’s fair to assume it will take a lot longer to get the oracle rewards. So, if you’re trying to get both achievements quickly, it’s best to go frenzyheart first. I can’t say whether you should switch; that’s something you need to determine for yourself, based on what you want with the reps and achievements.
Ok, I got home from work and checked this out on WoWHead. Looks like I’m going to be switching allegiances in the morning. Though with my luck it’ll take over a month to get the wolvar costume. It may take until this time next year doing the eggs every chance I get to drop the mount.
Thanks, Words on the Interweb and Bosstone, for the advice.
From looking at the class, I’ve started to wonder if Blizzard will make some major changes to Druids int he future. They’re erratic tanks, erratic melee DPS, reliable but unexceptional ranged AoE DPS, and great healers.
The problem, as I see it, is just that the class really doesn’t have a good focus. Playing as a Druid, it fdoesn’t look you have anything in particular to go for. You could go for anything, but you need two or even four sets of gear to really optimize. And you have to carry that around, and be able to sub in as needed. So, you have to really know how to play four entirely different roles. In each role, you’re probably not quite as good as another class.
Basically, it’s a lot to ask of people even for such a potent class. I would venture to guess Druids would have a reputation as bad as Hunters/Rogues once did or Dk’s do now, except there aren’t any. Even the very class name just doesn’t convey any idea about what you can do with it, unlike every other class.
Jack of all trades, master of none. A multipurpose class, particularly one that’s so flexible that one talent tree can fill both roles, really shouldn’t be as awesome when focusing on one role. What point to playing a Rogue if Cat Form does it better? The appeal of a Druid is that I have options. if I encounter a situation where I need to be a Rogue, I can; if I need to be a Warrior, I can; if I need to heal, I can, and if I need to fight at range, I can. Like I said to SFG above, as long as a class is at least capable of filling its specified roles, even if it’s not the best at them, I’m happy. That goes double for multipurpose classes.
I also like that you have to know how to play multiple roles to be effective. It introduces a lot more room for strategy and forethought, whereas with, say, a Paladin or Rogue, your selection of approaches to a situation is pretty narrow regardless of spec.
Having to carry extra sets does suck, though. I’ve got a healing set in my bag at all times, so I only have one bag for consumables and two bags for lewt. I’m eventually going to need bigger bags.
It’s kind of funny you say this. Perhaps it’s confirmation bias, or just that BDL has a few active Druids, but I see them everywhere. The populations are going to explode when Trolls and Worgen (especially Worgen) get them, too. We’ll probably see refinements to the class then. And if the next expansion after Cataclysm is the Emerald Dream, then Druids will be getting a great deal of attention then as well.
They absolutely count as one. The Hordie switched when he was at 30 exalted reps and spent weeks cursing himself for it (in his defense, it was 7am and he takes a while to wake up).
I’m sorry but you’re hitting a nerve here, in the Bad Old days when a druid would work his ass off to collect gear and learn his rotations and still couldn’t even get close to a facerolling rogue on the damage meter people used the same ‘What point to playing a Rogue if Cat Form does it better?’-argument(along with ‘But you can heel!!1one’) to justify the druid suckiness.
Druids are not flexible within specs anymore(and in the old days being ‘flexible’ meant sub par at everything), if you want compete with rogue dps in the end game then you will not be a viable tank, if you sacrifice your ability to tank and heal then you should damn well be good a doing damage.
Every spec needs to be so close in capability to the parent classes that gear and player skill is what matters not the class, or that spec will be useless.
Well, you’re right, certainly. I suppose I wasn’t as clear as I might have been. If you’re going to be flexible, able to switch between roles at a moment’s notice and do so competently, theoretically you shouldn’t be as awesome in those roles as someone who chooses to specialize. That includes classes like Rogue, but also includes a Druid who’s concentrating entirely on Cat Form. A dedicated Cat should definitely be able to pour out the DPS, a dedicated Bear should be able to tank very well, and so on. It’s bad design to say, “Well, since you have the option of switching more easily than other classes, even if you specialize you won’t be as good.” The design should sacrifice power for versatility only if you exercise that option, but the point of the class is that the option is there.
Of course, with dual-speccing, most of this is moot, as with a little prep time most classes now have that option. 
Yeah, but I find it terribly irritating when someone claims to be equally good at healing, DPS and tanking. First, you can have two specs tops; second, many of them don’t even change eq (while those who really focus on two things do change it*); third, it just isn’t true and I see it as damaging to the group.
*I know there’s some class-spec combos which use the same clothes in both specs. I’m speaking about things like a retrankadin saying “I’ll heal” or a cat saying “I’m a better tank” on the exclusive basis of having more hp in bearform than the tank (who actually has the right spec and eq that’s correct for the location).
Yeah, people tell me “oh, you can do kitty DPS if you want” if I want to send my druid on something but they’re set for tanks and I basically say no, I can’t, because I suck at playing a kitty. My cat gear set is miles away from the bear set in quality, and I just do not do well at trying to dps as a cat.