feral tank picker-upperFollow

So I would appreciate some input here...I have a 70 feral druid. My gear is focused on tanking, got all my T4 pieces except the helm from kara. My guild is currently working on TK and I'm pretty much told to play kitty in my tanking gear unless someone breaks cc or tank dies then i have to growl off. They say I only have to play kitty on trash mobs but I'm noticing that when there are enough warr or pally tanks, then I stay in kitty form.

I just want to know, is this typical for feral druids to have to dps in their tanking gear so we can play back up picker upper? It's a little frustrating to be expected to play dps in my tanking gear, with salv slapped on, stay on bottom of aggro list then fight my way up because a tank died. If this is the norm, then I'd like to know, because if it isnt, its time to browse the guild recruitment forums.

No, I don't think it's normal to have a Feral Druid DPSing in tanking gear but cat form. Even in your kity form gear, you probably have 20k+ armor (remember you can switch from your DPS staff to Earthwarden, and your Everbloom Idol to Idol of Terror). Your Agi should be higher in your cat gear than your DPS gear, so you'll have more avoidance than normal. The big thing you'll be lacking is the 2.6ish crit immunity, but on short trash mob "oops" moments, this is less of an issue than on longer fights where you're also taking crushing blows (trash mobs can't crush).

If your RL insists that you're uncritable to cover emergency tanking, it's fairly easy to get a mix of Rogue and Feral druid PvP gear with enough resil to be uncrittable. This would mean you're gonna be carrying up to 3 pieces of gear for each slot, but look on the bright side. At least we have 1 spec that covers tanking and DPS. No prot warrior or paladin could swith gear and put out as much DPS as a feral druid can.

What I did was I made an off-tank set that balances dps and mitigation for when I think I'll need to do some of both. It's more or less a mix of PvP and hybrid pve gear. Still have a high armor count, lots of avoidancee due to agi, and PvP gear makes me crit immune and gives lots of stamina. On the flip side, I can still swap weapons, go cat and and have nearly as much crit and AP as I do in my dps gear, only missing out on some +hit. An added bonus is if you do need to switch to a tanking role mid fight, your threat will be alot higher to start off with from your previous dps so you won't have a messy transition phase.

It makes a great high threat set as well, for when your tanking things that don't hit hard enough to give you much rage in your full mitigation set.

Well it seems that way because druid is the best OT. Not that you cant find a MT job, just that when it comes down to wich tank can do the OT job the best it falls in our lap.

OT is a role at least and it helps ferals get raid spots so it is a good thing.

Seriously dude, if this bugs you, why did you roll a druid? The thing I love the most on my druid is the fact that we can switch mid fight between tanking, dps and even healing. Our versatility is our greatest strength. If you don't like the changing roles you should seriously consider rolling a warrior or rogue.


We are mostly OT's because a protection warrior does crap dps. So if you are main tanking, you have a protection warrior basically /dancing and doing nothing good for the raid, while with the protection warrior main tanking you could push out some very decent dps.

On some fights like Gruul and Supremus it's even more beneficial to have a druid OT, since they do secondary damage to mellee targets based on second highest threat and highest HP respectively. When the boss is not directly on you, and you need to stay second on agro, you do the job much better than a warrior or paladin. Druids are just better at building threat without direct attention from the boss.


It's not typical to dps in tanking gear, although some of your dps pieces may be the same as you tanking pieces. On trash you can easily tank in your dps gear if the main tank dies or a mob breaks loose. As have already been posted by others, you should try and mix some pvp gear in to your dps set. That way you are still crit immune in your dps gear. Trust me, you will love that crit immunity on whirlwinding trash mobs!

On certain boss fights you do however need to mix in some pure tanking gear, at least until the boss is on farm. On lurker you dps when the boss is up and tank adds when the boss dives. First tries on him you should be in full tanking gear to ease the pressure on your healers.

About the entire OT think, this states it best.



Prot tanks only get rage when they are getting pounded on. Pallies get most of their threat when they are getting beat down. Druids get rage on attacks, especially critical hits. It is much easier for a druid to gain range and there for hate when they are not the target of the enemy then any other tank around. They are built for off tanking.