Please don’t take this as a QQ. I love playing my druid and want to keep playing him if I can. I just would love to know why blizzard thinks this will be better for us. The only thing I can think is they want to put some stuff in ulduar that would be too good given the current situation in druid tanking.

On a side note if the “leaked” patch notes are accurate it looks like master shapeshifter will give bear 2% damage reduction. I hate to have to spec higher into resto to get it but if dual specs come out that will be a little easier to swallow.

1) bear gearing was too simple. Now, we can push for different types of damage mitigation, and have harder gearing choices. This is a good thing.
2) it’s a net mitigation buff. Yes, our physical mitigation remains equal, but we gain magical mitigation when we had none (or little, resistances etc).
3) we’ll do more dps. ‘we’re tanks, that’s not our job’ you say? It doesn’t matter were it comes from, dps is dps. Also, more dps=more threat.
4) spikier damage? Somewhat, yes. We’re not losing our jobs over that, though. It puts us no worse off than other tanks.
5) rage problems? You have rage problems? High end content rage is a nonissue, low end content just put on dps gear and tank.

Seriously, there’s so much angst about this, and I think most of it is simple fear of change.

Yes, BBB, I realize you were talking somewhat tounge in cheek, I’m more referring to others comments

My other druid Alanon is a boomkin/sometimes tree, so at least he isn’t affected by all this.

It may be time to level my warrior.

The bit about changing how Sunder and FF work is stupid. They are afraid that cloth armor gets reduced too much? It’s CLOTH it doesn’t stop shit anyway. My guild paladin has more armor on his left boot than my Mage has on his whole body.

It’s starting to feel like pre-bc all over again, okay, well, maybe not THAT bad, but there does seem to definately be “something up”.

That means, I’d get a shield of 1200-1500 damage.

Now, the question really does become – what happens with Swipe if I crit on 4 targets? What happens with Glyph of Maul if both strikes crit? And as Artoo asked, what happens when you get another crit before your first shield has been used?

These are questions that will definitely decide whether I like or dislike this change.

From an initial view, it seems like this gives us our own form of “Block”, making Crit Rating somewhat of a tanking stat, but as Agility already was, it really only re-emphasizes Agility as a bear stat, and will make the damage we take burstier for our healers.

If it does nothing that would be pretty disappointing, I think the best one would be if it creates a second shield so you’ll have damage absorbed on the next two hits would be ideal, although stacking the shields for would be nice on slow, hard hitting bosses.

“I am overstating the affect any change will have for dramatic value.”

“Most of my loose interpretation is intentionally tongue in cheek.”

Relax.