Comments on: Do you have Bear Tankatude?

By: Devynn

Devynn — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:26:46 +0000

This blog captures EXACTLY what I’ve always thought! I thought I was going mad when I pointed it out to my friends in some randoms last night and they looked at me like I’d gone mental. As a proud bear tank I always spam spacebar and the amazing right-click-frantic-mouse-spin. Unfortunately I’ve been kicked from a group more than once for attitude like that. :(

I think it must have something to do with the lore every single player follows whether they know it or not as they level up their characters. Death knights and warriors level up as dark, battle-hardened warriors, paladins are serious-business holy men, and druids…roll around in mud. :B

By: caliokiegirl

caliokiegirl — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 07:04:13 +0000

I think it takes a special person to want to be a druid. I started out as a druid, because it was my first rpg, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be, and let’s face it druids are very flexible. I fell in love with the feral druid with the fierce bear, and the stealthy cat. My boyfriends warrior would get so jealous when I would bear attack, and then shift to cat and disappear. I think we have a great sense of humor, and don’t get bogged down in the isn’t my gear sic, and check out the new helm I just picked up. We don’t have to worry about all that we just play. I know on my server I hardly ever saw another druid even in Darnassus, but I’ve noticed over the last few months there are more and more low level druids that will become end game druids, which will make it all more fun.

By: Kethup

Kethup — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:14:15 +0000

I was always feral dps, but tanking looked fun so i switched i prefer to tank than dps.

By: Tielyn Pawtucking

Tielyn Pawtucking — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:45:13 +0000

First off, long time reader here; enjoy your stuff.

*grins* BBB, I -am- the bear tank when I feel like doing the heroic thing and not waiting for a ‘safe’ DPS slot. But yeah, outside of me doing it, most of the time it’s a warrior, DK, or pally tank doing the (as our other tree tree calls it) ‘pulling like there’s candy at the end of the instance’.

However, one of the reasons I think that we might see less bears is the notion that we lack initial multitarget threat generation — and our itemization upgrade routes are sucky compared to what you can get as a dinnerwearer. (aka ‘plate armor’). I’ve had positively awful experiences tanking with ret paladins who love to attack the targets that I’m not directly attacking, and then make it into my fault that they pulled aggro.

Though the latest cake taker was a warrior who managed to peel the first boss in AN off of me, and then asked (all sarcastically polite) how he managed to pull the boss off of me.

Turned out he had 245/251 gear, including 5/6ths of the latest arena gear. Guy was doing 3x my DPS. :P, and even with my T9 6 second taunt, it wasn’t helping. Love some advice on how to fix this other than ‘let ‘im die’.

On the other paw, I am pleased to report that our other feral bear tank and RL girlfriend has been tanking our 25 man/ICC, and I regularly main tank our ‘gear up the initiates’ 10/TOC. Bear tanks are representin’ over here, rar. :)

-Tielyn.

By: Lenaiya

Lenaiya — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:22:38 +0000

@ Helistar Yeah, I regularly run H. VH and others that level as kitty “tank”. Sooo much fun to actively try and keep aggro as a cat. And if you have a shammy face-roll chain healer and a heavy melee group… awesome.

By: Morrighan

Morrighan — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:53:52 +0000

Bear tanks are the best! I have a tank offspec on my pala main. Sometimes I even get to use it. Not too many people die when that happens, and I’m convinced they deserve it. But I much prefer tanking with my bear. The bear looks cooler (pala tier gear = ick), bounces better, and I just like the mechanic more. Their cooldowns rock and they’re fun. Who’d voluntarily tank on anything other than a bear? I mean really?

*Glances furtively across the room.* Just don’t tell my husband the DK tank about this post.
.-= Morrighan´s last blog ..ICC Lower Spire (10 and 25 Normal) Crib Sheet =-.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:25:00 +0000

Ran a PUG with a Bear tank yesterday. Besides having to stare at Bear butt, he did an excellent job. Seeing a lot of Tree healers lately, more so than traditional holy Priests. Love the tree dance!

By: Kaethir

Kaethir — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:11:03 +0000

BTW, I wanted to say something about TJGypsy2′s post:

“The other day I was in regular ToC, which is an instance I hate, doing the kitty dps thing. All of a sudden, our DK tank died, and chaos ensued. I was able to to pop bear form, pick up the boss, and save the wipe, and keep the dps alive, and then, when it was all over….i went kitty and vanished. :) It was one of the greatest moments I’ve had in a PuG in a long time.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… Hunters may play the game on easy mode, and Paladins might play it on God mode… But Druids, we just cheat, hardcore.
.-= Kaethir´s last blog ..New Mount! =-.

By: Helistar

Helistar — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:22:26 +0000

Well, in my case of course I’ve not seen a single bear tank in a Pug…. it’s ME the bear tank :)
But now that you mention it, even when pugging with my mage, I’ve NEVER hit a single bear tank…. I’ve had a uniform share of pala/Dk/warriors.

BTW, want to have fun? Find a good healer and kitty-tank. And I mean full kitty spec and gear, 23kish HP and irrelevant armour and less-than-one threat multiplier. Of course don’t try this in halls of reflections (or any of the newer instances, for that matter), but most of the old ones can be kitty-tanked (“gauntlet” runs like the CoS corridor or the UP event require a shift to bear, but places like UK, VH are easy to do).

@Linedan: a bear tank with 29k can be a tank in full hi-ilvl threat gear (dps enchant/gems, warrior dps trinkets/cloak/rings), when I tank in heroics this is usually the setup I prefer, since I still have enough HP and do a lot more damage.

By: Paona

Paona — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:25:52 +0000

One of the things I’ve been saying at the beginning of my PUG is, “Okay, so how fast do you guys want to do this? Slow, Medium, Fast, or ‘Ravening Hellbeast Furball Rocket’?”

Invariably, they all seem to choose that last one the most. <.<;