People suprised to see a bear.Follow

I've been a bear tank for a while now. When I first got to 80 I was a speced for cat dps and restoration. It wasn't long before I changed my cat dps to bear so my guild had another tank. My guild no longer needs the extra tank, but I stay bear because I enjoy it. Every time I que up for my random daily, I get surprised dps to see a bear, and a healer that either insta-quits after ridiculing bear tanks or says "ah hell, a bear, guess I'll try to stick it out." Is it just me, or are there other bear tanks out there that get this kind of reaction? I'm not the best geared tank, and I'm not the best tank, I know, but I've been told countless times after almost every run that I surprised the people at how well I did, I've been told when I OT ICC 10 that I did better than a lot of other people that had OT for the person that was main tank.

The only thing right now that a bear can't tank is anub adds in ToGC. Everything else is pretty fair game, I MT'd everything in icecrown 25 up to sindragosa with great success and good feedback from the healers.

Edited, Jul 14th 2010 8:36am by Norellicus

Druids generally make up for their lack of any other avoidance ability than dodge (which gets shot to **** by the -20% debuff anyway in ICC) by having loads of health and a short mitigation cooldown (Barkskin).

Still, when I'm healing, I generally prefer healing anything but Druids. The lack of a major cooldown makes them an overall squishy ride.

This myth is still going around?

Edited, Jul 14th 2010 2:05pm by Norellicus

I'm going to roll a warrior when I get the new BoAs in Cata. He will be Arms, played it to mid 30s before and was insanely fun.

A good Shield Slam crit is pretty lol too.

I had fun with arms warrior back in the day when they had no buttons, I'm sure it's even more a blast now that you have actual things to do on a regular basis.

-20% is, regardless of everything, still -20%. I know Druids still rock some killer avoidance in there, but I have yet to take less damage (anywhere) than any other tank equally geared. Savage Defense is win, but it can also fail so hard sometimes. Getting hit by a 100-ish AOE tick just before a 6k boss hit, causing the 100 tick to pop SD and the 6k to hit.

Never had an issue being a bear tank. Never even heard of this since vanilla, actually o_O

I remember how, back in Vanilla, everyone was SO impressed that a bear had main tanked Ragnaros. :(

That said, I've never had a problem with bear tanks. I guess I have to take a longer time to start DpSing in Heroics, and they lose threat more often than others, but I've never had a healer complain.

I hated trying to tank as one though (and I'd like to add that I've only taken a Druid to like 23). Rage + no AoE attack made me sad.

That really surprises me. I don't see how a DK could get 7K TpS right off the bat. Unless they had TotT/Misdirect on them and were getting really lucky IT/RS crits.

Also, other contributing factors:

1. Your DK might have had a really good weapon from the start? Like if you started off with a QD or something?

2. Raid bosses might have higher armor? Depending on your ArP, this could make a huge difference on your TpS. If we assume bosses have capped armor for their level, raid ones should have at least 1K more.

3. Hit cap for a heroic boss is 6%, but it's 8% on a raid boss. So that could hurt. Plus, RS can't miss, so it's really powerful at lower gear levels (though balanced by the fact that you need to dodge or parry to use it).

4. If you are calculating total threat, rather than just that on the main target, and there is an add, then the DK is getting more from his heart strikes.

Well, your DK has a weapon that's 200 more base damage than the Titansteel Destroyer, which is the best you'll have when you first hit 80. That's an extra 600+ threat per RS alone.

You can figure downgrading to the TTSD would be a drop of at least 500 TpS. I'd be surprised if it wasn't more. The stats on it, meaning ArP, Haste, high Str and a gem socket, are also quite a bit better than those on the destroyer, which has hit. You probably don't need that for a Heroic, especially since it doesn't help RS at all. So the Tyrannical Beheader is set up to be really good for a Heroic-level DK. The weapon is easily the most important aspect of a DK's ********

Remember that strikes are a percentage of your weapon damage which is then multiplied by 1.25 with two diseases, which makes the average damage of a weapon huge in determining threat. Plus, you'll be getting like 20% more RS procs in a Heroic.

I imagine the same DK in ICC would be producing TpS on a similar level as the Druid, even if they are really powerful in dungeons. What does your bear do in Heroics?

I assume Maz meant a PS>IT>DS>HS>HS>DC>DS>HS>HS>HS>HS>DC rotation.

If you were just spamming IT, then I don't know you.

That's more effective anyway. You can see if your DpS are in any position to pass you, even with a string of EXTREMELY lucky crits. Adding 1K DpS would be far more effective for the raid, imo.