I had a very nice email earlier today, and after the crazy day I had, it was the perfect capper.

I was gonna talk about my crazy nutso kooky day, but what the hell… this question is about Bears, and the guy really hit the right chord with me, so I guess you folks that hate anything that isn’t about Druids on the blog win out.

This time.

Don’t push it. :)

Here is part of the email, from Stratus on the Darkspear server;

Hello Big Bear - 
 
Anyway – have a question for you.  Myself and another geared bear tank were discussing gemming.  I essentially stam stacked my gems.  Had some expertise in there because mine was so low, but would otherwise go +30 stamina gems – no matter what the color called for.  Anyway, he basically stated I was a moron.  I laughed of course (but inside I was like, damn, maybe I am a moron – lol). He went on to say by me stam gemming I am gaining health at the expense of damage mitigation.  True, I replied, but I am counting on my gear to do that.  I look at gemming for health power mainly.
 
I could not find any specific BBB blogs on this although you mention in one of your side articles about a blog on that – but I could not find.
 
Any words of wisdom or articles you could shove my way to look and ponder with regards to high level tank gemming?

Looking forward to your response whenever that may be.
 
Stratus, Darkspear

Thanks for the really nice email, Stratus. The whole thing was very nice, and I hope you’ll forgive me for just excerpting the parts relevant to your question.

The question about choosing between Stamina and Agility is a great one, because it touches on the part of the game where judgment intercedes against ’set in stone’ guides.

The short form answer to your question is, no, you are not a moron, because clearly you have given thought to your Bear and grasp the basics of mitigation (and I assume you’re lumping avoidance in with it) and health pools, but yes, you could be doing a little better in your gemming selection criteria.

Lemme ’splain.

As a Bear tank, when choosing between Stamina or Agility gems, you are making a choice between either a higher health cushion to eat the damage and last longer before healing is needed, or increased avoidance to do the “sidestep bear butt boogie” and avoid the damage entirely.

There is a fine line between having just enough health, and an overabundance of health as compared to Dodge.

Let’s start with increasing health. We’ll slip some Dodge tank in afterwards.

What your intent is with increasing health, is to have enough health to ensure that your healers are never drastically rushed in trying to get in that desperate last second heal to keep you from taking a dirt nap. When you increase your health pool, it appears that the more health you have, the more reaction time you are giving to the healer to respond to your incoming damage.

Healers these days are frequently responsible for healing the main tank, and also a bunch of other people too. If your health is consistently too low, the healer has to focus on healing you to the exclusion of everyone else just to keep that next blow you take from being your last.

Some of those other players may take damage, especially in fights like Ick and the ramp before the tunnel run immediately after in Pit of Saron, and die from lack of healing if the healer has to be all over you.

The more health you have, the safer the healer will feel in letting you get your face beat in while he or she is busy popping some much needed heals on the rest of the party. Right? That seems reasonable, amiright?

From hearing me talk, you might think that there is no better thing than having a huge health pool. After all, I’m implying that the more you’ve got, the more time the healer has to react, right?

Well, that is true, IF you have balanced your health with avoidance.

For the long time theorycrafters out there, please realize that I’m not speaking about armor caps and mitigation, or Defense or Dodge Rating, or comfortable Critical Strike levels for Savage Defense. We’re talking the basics of Stam vs Agi.  It’s okay, trust me, I know you got this already. :)

Back to health balanced with avoidance.

You have been a dutiful bear tank, you have gotten new gear upgrades through drops and Emblems while following my lists, and along the way you have stacked Stamina like a madman. Er, bear.

You pop into Heroic Pit of Saron, and you are surprised to find that you feel very squishy. You have lots of health, that’s true, tons and tons and gobs and oodles of health.

Problem is, when the big hits come in, you go down like a… umm… wow, okay, for the adults, pretend there was a Navy shore leave joke there, and a good one at that. For everyone else, let’s say you go down like a stone dropped in a still pond. A pond with aerated water.

You have the big health numbers, but you’re taking massive damage, and that health pool is disappearing fast.

Now, if your healer is from a pug, or is generally unfamiliar with you, they might have seen your high health and assumed you were well balanced in gear. With that thought in mind, they might have given you scant attention, and focused more on keeping the party alive.

Suddenly, your health plummets, they abandon the party in a panic to spam mana-intensive big, fat, fast heals on you, and by the time they started you were already below half and dropping fast.

You’ve got a massive health pool. The healer is used to getting you topped back off to full and then going back to the party.

Low and behold, you’re NOT getting back to full, because you keep taking damage. The healer is trying to fill an infinite well with a thimble, the party members are yelping and trying to find the Potion or *gasp* Bandage buttons, while the DPS are frantically fending for themselves the damage going outbound slows down, and the fight takes even longer.

The healer quietly has a nervous breakdown while wondering what *they* are doing wrong.

I think you get the overdramatized point.

This is where Agility, and the avoidance it brings, comes into play.

As your Dodge (and Dodge Rating, Defense Rating, Armor, all the avoidance and mitigation stats) increases, the rate of speed of incoming damage slows down.

Mitigation is already reducing damage taken, and your Dodge is causing some attacks to be avoided entirely. As you increase Agility, the better your Dodge score becomes, and the more attacks that just go whizzing by your cute furry ear.

Agility also improves your Critical Strike Rating, and as your Crits become more frequent, your Savage Defense passive ability procs more often. Savage Defense, of course, causes the next incoming physical attack that does damage to be lessened by 25% of your attack power. It can proc as fast as you can crit, and your Swipe has the potential to cause an individual Crit from every single mob hit. That’s a lot of chain crits when swarmed, and that’s a whole lot of mitigation.

That is why stacking Stamina gems to a lower health level than you might think, and balancing the rest with Agility, can be such a powerful combination for your runs.

The healer may be taken aback by your seemingly low comparative health. Say, 40,000 health. A mere pittance, you think.

And then, as the fight begins, the effects of your 50%+ Dodge come into play.

Attacks will still strike you, but the frequency of successful attacks is reduced, you take damage at a slower pace, and the healer has a lot more time to react to the damage you HAVE taken. Time that can better be spent ignoring your invulnerable silly bear butt and paying attention to those DPS that forget to hustle their tushies out of the green fire. Again.

That is the point to balancing Agility and Stamina. Having the health to survive the big single blows and rapid damage spikes, and the avoidance and mitigation to slow the rate of incoming damage overall way the hell down.

So, how much should you take of both? What are the limits?

It depends purely on your understanding of how health and Dodge affect your role in your groups, and then basing your decision on the content you are trying to prepare to run. 

I could link you to my character on the armory, Windshadow, assuming she is logged out in Bear gear (I have no Cat gear, I either tank or heal. No middle ground.) and let you see the choices I have made based on 5 person Heroic/no raiding gamestyles. But it’s not important, what is important is where I’m at just from non-raid stuffs, and how effective it can be.

In current gear, my health totally unbuffed is 36,587 and my Dodge unbuffed at rest is 43.39%.

That Dodge seems low, doesn’t it?

But wait, there is more than is immediately apparent that I’ve factored into my gear plan!

First, I have The Black Heart, for a frequently procced increased physical damage mitigation buff. You’d be surprised what an extra 7k armor can do against physical damage.

For increased Dodge aside from gems and enchants, I have factored in Darkmoon Card: Greatness (Agility), the Mongoose weapon enchant and the Idol of the Corrupter.

So, unbuffed base of 43.39%.

• Add 1.66% when Lightning/Mongoose procs (and it procs a LOT on group swipes).
• Add 3.89% when Darkmoon Card: Greatness procs.
• Add 2.02% when the Idol procs.

When all three buffs are up, which does happen quite often, I’m running around with 50.96% Dodge. Unbuffed.

Mongoose is damn near always up, and at least one of the other two is usually with it.

Add in Mark of the Wild, Kings (I carry Drums of Forgotten Kings, of course) and Agility food buffs and it just goes up from there.

That health probably seems a bit low even after you’ve read all this Dodge gunk, but I always carry Runescrolls of Fortitude, so I know that when the Big Bear be tanking, I’ve got a Fort buff guaranteed. :)

The final result?

I cannot play without having any healer at all… but there have been plenty of times when the healer has gone down, and I have lasted a truly ridiculously long time without heals on a boss fight or against multiple mobs, because although my total health pool at start is lower than most tanks, if I am suddenly on my own, I have the option of popping Survival Instincts, Frenzied Regeneration and Lifeblood, and becoming a full-on energizer bunny, with the avoidance and mitigation to slow down the rate of incoming damage to a crawl.

The lesson to be learned as a Bear tank is, if you intelligently balance health and avoidance against the content you are running, throw in a well timed powerful self-heal and a temporarily increased health pool as needed, and use Barksin and Crit like a banshee, you’re going to be a favorite tank for healers… at least, the ones that like to know at least ONE idiot in the run won’t be driving them nuts.

Stratus, I sure hope this helps you gain a bit more insight into the considerations you make when looking at gemming.

At the very least, thank you for a nice, polite, friendly and well written letter. I hope you and your friend have plenty of fun chewing on all the things I intentionally left out. :)

Take care, everyone!

Open Discussion!

Now that we’ve mostly gone over Druids and Paladins, in a very basic way, I wanted to throw the floor open to everyone to share their own experiences in tanking with either, or with both.

Before we do that, let’s address the single biggest point, one I saved for this post.

One of the biggest concerns people have for either of these classes, that they have shared with me at least, is “Yes, but how are they at getting aggro right off the bat?”

I did not previously nail this down, but the Paladin is fantastic at generating initial threat. With the Avenger’s Shield, Ret Aura, Consecration and Hammer of the Righteous popped in the first three seconds, it’s very hard for anyone to overcome that without serious effort or a blatant gear disparity. 

For the Druid, most tools have excellent single target threat generation, but the AoE starts slow and builds up over time. With two tools for group threat, Swipe and Maul, and Maul being more of a luck of the draw on which extra target gets hit, it’s certainly slower out of the gate.

The thing to remember, however, is that Druids have spammable threat generators, and can choose which ability to use at any given time, while Paladins have to manage their cooldowns.

It’s similar to how healing works, actually. One class has to work predictive, beginning to cast in advance of when the spell will actually be needed, while the other can pre-emptively spam HoTs and then wait to use an instant cast reactively.

What does that mean? It means that you shouldn’t think that the only difference between how you play a Paladin and how you play a Bear is the names and pictures on the buttons you click while you stand in one place.

While a Paladin can run forward, Avenger’s Shield and then drop Consecration and use that as his “King of the Mountain” spot from which to tank all comers, Druids have huge single target threat generation and no Silence.

This leads to the Bear style being more mobile, taking it to the enemy, and if the Bear wants to climb the threat charts, then choosing who to whack, and in many cases traveling to meet them on their own ground is the order of business.

One commenter, Bear Pelt, mentioned that for Forge of Souls where there is not all that much room for LOSing, they would find themselves running from mob to mob like their tail was on fire, and said that probably was not the best thing, but it had worked out allright so far as long as skull was taken down first and foremost.

In my opinion, that’s just how you SHOULD do it! Use your mobility, the rapid coldown on Feral Charge, the ranged short cooldown on Feral Faerie Fire, the ability to spam Swipe while running as fast as the GCD allows, Bash to interrupt, Maul, etc.

It does mean that you use marked targets. It does mean that you don’t group everyone up as tightly as a Paladin or a Death Knight does. And it does mean that, if the tanking standard people WANT to get used to are stationary tanks, you’re not going to be perceived of as “as good of a tank”.

The classes play out differently. They’re not the same class with different buttons. If you are having problems playing a Bear the stationary “everyone come to me” style, then why not try changing your gameplan up by running around?

In my experience, going off the numbers I’ve generated, on single targets the Bear takes over except when the Paladin is actively using taunt as part of their rotation. On groups, the Paladin is stronger. Much stronger.

Druids shouldn’t take that as a reason to complain or call for a nerf, in my opinion. Instead, I think that Bears should try to develop more opportunities to use that high single target threat output.

For example, as I said in Part 1, there is absolutely no reason for you to ride one mob down to zero hit points before you look elsewhere. If you have a marked target, then unload everything on that one target, watch your Omen threat levels, see where the DPS compares, and as soon as you judge you’ve got a big enough lead… switch to someone else to build massive threat on next.

If you use a nameplate addon such as Tidy Plates (with Threat Plates), then you can still keep your eye on the first target in case the Mage wakes up halfway in and suddenly does 9k DPS with crit bombs, but hey, that’s what Growl is for, ya know?

Swipe will still be great in overcoming most AoE and certanly healer aggro. It’s the people that unload on X instead of Skull that I have seen issues with… and your changing targets once you’ve built up enough threat will help tremendously.

If I’d played my Paladin for a lot longer, I’m sure that similar tips would have been learned by me to help overcome some of the tricky patches on that side of the pond. I’m still working on it and learning.

I have learned that Righteous Defense works easily for me by keybinding it with Vuhdo, and leaving Vuhdo up, so if Vuhdo shows me someone in the group has aggro (which does flash arrows on the Vuhdo nameplates) I can simply mouseover the nameplate and trigger it. Righteous Defense is a great tool… and I love it now that I have figured out a way for me to easily activate it when needed. (It’s the one that pulls aggro from up to three mobs off one targeted party member… and darn it, now I confused myself with the names. I think I got it right.)

Anyway, please, take the opportunity to continue to share your own experiences tanking with each class, what you’ve found that is or is not a problem in different situations, and how you learned to adapt… or what has frustrated you that you haven’t overcome yet.

Oftentimes, the problem you once had and found a solution for is the exact thing someone else is stuggling with, and would dearly love some help.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these three posts… and now, I shall return to leveling my Death Knight, who is 62 and having fun.

Take care, folks, and have a fun weekend!

Okay, so in Part I, I talked about a subject I know very well.. Druid tanking.

Now, let’s take a look at my experiences with the Paladin.

Introduction

The Paladin, and let me be clear on this, is NOT easier to play as a tank.

In fact, I want to go on record as saying that Paladin tanking is NOT ‘ez mode’, a claim I have seen people frequently claim, and in very disparaging tones.

What Paladins ARE, are tanks that have a huge number of abilities that deal Holy damage, and Holy damage, thanks to Righteous Fury, is a Paladin’s bread and butter threat generator.

Paladins have a lot of tools in their toolbox, and most of them have cooldowns that need to be juggled, high mana costs, or both. Many abilities are also situational.

I think this is a key component to understanding the philosophical differences between the two classes, but we can discuss that later.

The tools available, if used properly, can generate massive immediate group threat, sustained AoE threat, and thus reduce the likelihood a Paladin tank may lose aggro on mobs to pre-emptive DPS. They can also effectively cause casters to pick up and move, getting them to cluster closer together, rendering player AoE DPS to be more effective.

Again, however, just because the abilities that are available are highly effective does NOT mean that they are easy to use properly!

That’s the catch on the ‘ez mode’ remarks. Somehow, the idea that Paladin tanks can generate a lot of AoE threat is supposed to equate to being easier tanks to play. The threat generated is great, yes, but it is HOW that threat is generated that requires skill. Skill at time management and multi-tasking.

I did a brief recap of the majority of Druid tanking related abilities in the first section, and remarked on how concise, how streamlined they are. 

Time now to do the same for the Paladin. See if you note any differences.

• Ranged Holy attack that dazes and silences up to 3 targets, based on proximity to each other.
• Ranged taunt that does decent Holy damage (conditionally).
• Ranged aggro redirect that tells up to three mobs to leave a poor, scared party member alone.

Key rotation of core abilities based on effective cooldown management, called the “969″ rotation.
In no particular order, but always long short long or short long short, are;

• Holy AoE DOT (9 sec)
• Holy attack on up to 5 melee range targets (6 sec)
• Various self buffs/enemy debuffs available for a wide range of situations (9 sec)
• Single target melee range Holy attack (6 sec)
• Self defense that increases block, and deals Holy damage to attackers (9 sec)

Various situational benefits;

• Medium cooldown AoE damage/stun that is only effective against undead and demons.
• Instant cast self shield with short duration.
• Medium cooldown ranged Stun.

Various long coolown abilities that are each very powerful, but if one is used it locks the others out for 30 seconds;

• Self bubble that reduces incoming damage by half.
• Big damage boost (20%, “on the wings”)
• Instant cast full self heal

Various situationally dependant Seals, tanks mainly choosing between single target or multiple target damage boosts. 

Oh, and did I forget to mention one of the more confusing, super-powerful party buff systems in the game?

And much, much more!

Yes, so… do you happen to notice any differences there?

To spell it out, Paladins have far more buttons to arrange on their bars, all of which do something that may just turn out to be very, very important at some point in the game.

On the lighter side

I touched briefly on the Druid naming conventions, and how they seem, at least to me, to be evocative of function. To me, a Bash means something quite different, evokes an entirely different feel than a Mangle or a Swipe.

Perhaps others feel differently… but I challenge anyone to tell me that you can easily picture what the difference would be between Shield of Righteousness, Holy Shield, Sacred Shield, Divine Shield and Avenger’s Shield, or between Hammer of Wrath, Hammer of the Righteous or Hammer of Justice, or what about Divine Shield, Divine Intervention, Divine Protection or Divine Plea, or how about Righteous Defense, Hammer of the Righteous, Righteous Fury and Shield of Righteousness, or…

Well, I think you get my point.  It’s damn silly, is what it is.

I think the new level 85 ultimate ability for Paladin tanks in Cataclysm should be called “Divine Holy Shield of Righteous Hammering“. A single Paladin protective self-bubble that casts a Judgement dealing Holy Damage on each individual target that tries to hit him. Just go with it. Give in. Do eet!

The lesson to be learned from seeing that list of powers is that Paladins have a lot of choices to make. A lot of options to work from. Many of them are situational. Almost all, if not all, cost mana. Almost all have cooldowns of varying length.

In short… before you can effectively tank as a Paladin, you have to give careful thought and devote time and effort into researching your abilities, understanding what they do, how they are meant to be used together, what situations each is effective with, and why. If you don’t, it gets ugly.

Let’s talk about the simplest of Paladin pulls.

Three mobs standing close together, one a caster.

The Paladin starts by selecting an Aura. These are weak mobs, so instead of increased armor, he chooses Retribution Aura to deal out constant Holy threat every time he is struck.

The Paladin makes sure he’s got the right buff for the encounter… let’s say Blessing of Sanctuary. It’s the most obviously “tanky” one. He makes sure he has Righteous Fury up, so that his Holy abilities deal a LOT of boosted threat. He makes sure he’s got an appropriate Seal active… we’ll say Seal of Command because it’s 3 enemies and none of them are bosses, so the multiple mob attack is more beneficial in this situation.

He triggers Divine Plea, so that his attacks will return a portion of mana, and does it now so that he doesn’t waste a precious GCD during his rotation later.

Now, he steps forward and tosses his Avenger’s Shield, applying a light daze that slows all three, and silences the caster so all of them step forward, closer together and facing the Paladin.

He drops a Consecrate, his persistant Holy AoE DOT. This triggers a 9 second cooldown.

Next he lets loose with Hammer of the Righteous, which hits all three mobs for a nice big chunk of threat and triggers a 6 second cooldown.

This is followed up with, in this case, Judgement of Wisdom. There are many Judgements he could choose from, ones that slow the enemy or get healing back, but with worthless trash like this in the way, the more mana back the better to prevent having to stop and drink. This triggers the 9 second Judgement cooldown, shared amongst all Judgement effects.

Now comes the other 6 second cooldown ability, Shield of Righteousness, that deals solid single target Holy damage and threat.

Finally, we have our third 9 second cooldown ability, Holy Shield, that increases your chance to block attacks, and deals out Holy damage to anyone that tries to attack and gets blocked. In effect, another short lived Holy AoE.

Now we have come full circle. Hammer of Righteousness has come off cooldown, and once that is popped Consecration is in the chute and ready to rock. The 969 rotation is in full play.

During the entire sequence, the Paladin has to remain aware of the situation. Is his mana level dropping too fast? Is he not taking enough damage for heals to replenish his mana? Should he drop one or two abilities from his rotation to conserve mana for later? Are the targets undead or demons, and would Holy Wrath be more useful here? Is he taking enough damage that using a Divine Protection mini-bubble is called for? Should he use Avenging Wrath instead for increased damage and faster mob kills?

Are the rest of the party suffering from excessive AoE damage of their own? Can the healer keep up, or should Divine Sacrifice followed by Divine Protection be used to slow their rate of death and give the healer a chance to keep up (such as can happen with Forgemaster Garfrost in Pit of Saron).

You get the idea. I intentionally didn’t mention many of the variables that really go into normal Paladin tanking, because I think the point is made. The act may appear simple, but Paladin tanking is a dance among the activations… and there is rarely down time to be looking around and bouncing wildly. It’s all careful planning, preparation, knowing what you CAN do, and being prepared when the moment comes.

Serious choreography.

What I found, personally, while playing my Paladin was that it felt very smooth, very tightly controlled. Having the ability to Silence your opponent is, frankly, overpowered, but then again Feral Charge is on a damn short cooldown. 

Everything else is fairly comparable, and once the proper groundwork is laid, the Bear and the Paladin are on very even terms. Drastically different styles, but equally effective.

Without a Silence or Death Grip, Bears tend to be more mobile, running all over the place. Paladins and Death Knights are more about bringing the mobs to them.

This plays out in the AoE, as well. Bears have traveling AoE, Paladins mostly stationary. Mostly.

Since we’re on the subject, let’s talk about some of the few areas Paladins have a bit of a challenge. 

First, moving threat generation.

Consecration is awesome, but it is stationary. Hammer of the Righteous is amazing, but is only effective against targets in front of you. Holy Wrath kicks butt, but it’s on a moderately long cooldown. Everything has a cooldown.

Paladins do not have a comparable, spammable, moving AoE threat generator.

Take a Bear up the tunnel in Pit of Saron, and it’s a bouncefest. Mobs get Swiped and dragged behind, no worries, no issues. It’s relaxing, in a way.

Take a Paladin up the tunnel, and it becomes a bit slower, a bit more careful, as you back up part of the way, or stand still to turn around and get threat off your party members, or use Righteous Defense on your healer. It’s manageable, but certainly a noticeable change. It’s not as easy.

At this point, someone will ignore every single other thing said in this post to object to that characterization, stating that they certainly don’t have a problem with moving threat. In anticipation, I invite you to think on this and wait unti the end; I didn’t say they can’t, I said they had more difficulty. If you haven’t yourself played a Bear tank, and have a direct means of comparison, I invite you to pretend I actually have compared this, multiple times, and also asked other Paladin tanks about their experiences for comparison. Okay? Of course they can do it, the point I’m making is, which can do it smoother.

Likewise, the mana efficiency and management issue can come into play if you are overgeared and overpowered for the content you are running, and the fight drags on a very long time. Even in a level 80 heroic like Halls of Stone, the Brann fight can go on long enough, with just enough time between waves, that your Divine Plea keeps fading and your mana starts struggling. Much lower level content and it’ can be worse. 

With a Druid, the lower the content with big waves of mobs, the better, because every time you Dodge or you Crit, you get fed lovely, lovely Rage. Rage. It’s whats for dinner.

These are, again, not insurmountable problems. Just differences in feel.

In the end, my conclusion for the Paladin tanking style is that it has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, but it is truly equally effective. Not more, not less… because each situation faced is different, and what is awesome for one may not be the best choice for another.

The biggest conclusion is the no brainer of the evening - the playstyles of each are radically different.

My conclusion on playstyles.

The thing that really stood out to me, once I began delving into Paladin tanking, was that there are certain similarities amongst those who prefer it.

Players who love Paladin tanks seem to share an interest in careful planning, dedicated research, and careful micro-management of a lot of different abilties to keep them busy all the time.

You could say that they like to have a LOT of things to keep them busy all the time. A constant stream of activity.

I’ve seen some folks make statements in fora that seem to indicate that, to them at least, having more abilities to manage means that their class requires ‘better’ players. More skillful players.

It’s an interesting point of view, but having played both, I choose to disagree. I think that, once you have seen a Bear tank bounce around annoying all the mobs and never losing aggro because moving is part of his style, just as your standing there and getting everyone to come to you is part of your style, you’ll agree that there is skill used on both sides… it’s just used in different ways.

Another interesting thing of note.

If you look at the Paladin tank bloggers out there, and the Paladin tanking community websites, look at the tone of the conversations.

These are people who like to discuss the best situational use for Divine Sacrifice. The timing involved when using Divine Plea, and whch Seal is most advantageous for different scenarios.

They get into, and are passionate about, the minutia of Paladin tanking. Adjusting and debating placement of the cogs, sprockets, wheels and gears, always seeking to fine tune the accuracy to that of the finest Swiss watch mechanism.

To be blunt, players who seek out and love Paladin tanks seem to posses certain common traits; orderliness, stubbornness,a compulsion for carefully precise planning, and a control of potential variables.

Paladin tanks are the stamp collectors and bird watchers of WoW.

Bear tanks are about movement and flow, improvisation and adaptation, and getting stuck into the face of the mobs out on the deep end.

Bear tanks are, basically, the surfers and base jumpers of WoW.

Someone, somewhere, is going to take serious offense to that. My work here is done. :)

Wrap up

I am struck, in hindsight, by all the questions I’ve had over the years from Paladin tanks branching out into Druid tanking for the first time.

The most common question from these people has tended to be, “Is this really all there is? I feel like there should be more. That I’m missing something. It feels… boring. Static. Easy. Oh, and by the way, how come I can’t seem to hold aggro while I stand there waiting for all the mobs to come to me?”

This is where I bring it all back to how I kicked things off in Part 1.

I find it wonderful that the programmers of Blizzard have developed two tanking classes that are each, in their own way, equally effective in the game, right up to the top… but in the way they are played, how they handle on the racecourse of WoW, they appeal to drastically different attitudes and temperaments.

Whether by careful planning or fortuitous luck, the end result is nothing short of amazing.

Introduction

Over the last few weeks I have had a simple premise. Tank as a Druid, tank as a Paladin, and see how the face to face differences stand now that I’ve had lots of experience and are comparably geared with both.

The test. Run a bunch of random heroics as a Druid tank, and then do the same as a Paladin tank, and be honest with myself about the playstyle differences between them.

The goal I started with was to try and pick out differences in feel. Make some oranges to oranges comparisons.  Dig into the playstyles, see how well each performed when challenged by the realities of modern PUG groups. 

My test conditions for each class was to perform the initial pull, build group threat, control aggro caused by DPS playing without marks or direction, judge single target threat compared to DPS capabilities, and to hustle as fast as possible chain pulling. Crowd Control, which I normally welcome and adjust small unit tactics for, was not requested, although player initiative is always welcome. :)

I say that’s how this started.

Along the way, my thoughts turned to a more deeper consideration of the personalities and traits of those that may feel attracted to each different playstyle, and how wonderful it is just to HAVE these diverse choices of character types in the same video game.

Part 1: The Druid

While playing the Druid, with all these conditions firmly in mind, a few things became apparent to me.

The tools available as a Bear seemed clear in their function, and simple in their execution. They also had very little overlap in function.

• A single target taunt with a fast cooldown.
• A group taunt with a long cooldown.
• A single target attack with a short cooldown, with a long cooldown kitchen sink ability available (3 target conditional modifier with immunity to fear, removes cooldown allowing it to be chain cast on the GCD).
• A single target instant cast DoT with a slow component.
• A dual target big whammy.
• An instant cast AoE.
• A ranged pull that applies an armor debuff and prevents stealth.
• A group debuff that reduces enemy attack power.
• A single target stun/interrupt.
• An interrupting charge.

It sounds like a lot, but they each have a clear purpose for specific applications. 

Interestingly to me, each Bear ability also has a name that feels intuitively linked to what it does. Growl. Swipe. Mangle. Bash. Lacerate. Frenzied Regeneration. Berserk. Each ability seems pretty easy to describe when you recall the name. 

Swiping the enemy? Why, of course, that’s hitting a bunch of bad guys with one wild swinging blow.

Growling? Sure, letting loose a blood-curdling roar, striking fear into the heart of my foe, driving him to face me in a life or death panic for survival.

With so few abilities and a clear idea of when to use them, and most of them instant cast restricted by the GCD, actual implementation was very simple, and left a lot of room for looking around, ready to improvise, adapt and overcome if things went wahoonie shaped.

As long as I kept my Growl on cooldown, if someone ran around free for a moment I could Growl them back into line. If someone in the group was hitting a mob outside my AoE range, I could either Feral Charge them and whack them on the snout (the mob, not the player, sadly), or use the ranged aggro (Feral Faerie Fire) to remind them who’s the boss.

Plenty of tools in the toolbox for what needed to be done, but lots of… in-between time. Idle time. If things DIDN’T go crazy, then it left me with lots of time to jump around. And jump, and jump, and jump around. Jump, jump, jump, jump… 

When playing with a very good group, not highly geared but highly skilled, there was a clear feeling that everything was smooth as glass, and there was a lot of free time for chatting, looking around, and bouncing for the fun of it.  Tanking as a Bear with such a group was relaxing. It was light hearted tanking.

Aggro control was very solid. The times when aggro WAS uncontrolled were when mobs got targeted by DPS outside my range of AoE/Maul, and so long as my attention was on the area around me and I wasn’t just on cruise control, I could pick them back up even at range. If soeone jumped the gun on area AoE before I’d locked things up with Swipe, then Challenging Roar gathered them back up. Single target threat generation was out of sight. No problems.

All in all, results on my Druid initially left me with the feeling that playing as a Bear tank, with so many instant casts at my beck and call, left the playstyle more about art and feel and improvisation than an ordered, regimented process using a specific pre-determined plan.

There are specific areas of challenge for a Druid.

On ranged pulls, there are a few options; Growl or Feral Faerie Fire.

Feral Faerie Fire applies a 5% armor debuff at the same time as it pulls, and also applies threat. Growl acts as a taunt, but doesn’t actually apply any active threat. Neither option has a Silence component such as Avenger’s Shield, or a method to yank them in range such as Death Grip.

This means that the Bear tank has to adapt, and find other means to handle those situations. The solution can involve a slower method, such as line of sight pulls using instance architecture to force mobs to come to you… but about half the time hasty DPS run forward and start damage before the mobs reach the tank, stopping them where they happen to be, or healers begin healing before it’s necessary, and healing aggro overcomes tank aggro as well.

More often than not, the solution I used was to use Feral Charge even more aggressively to come to grips with the casters first, dragging melee mobs in behind me, or in the case of multiple casters, use a kill mark (Skull) on the most distant caster, and run in, swiping as I went, to inflict damage/develop aggro on closer caster targets and then Feral Charge to the most distant target to pin him down until dead, then charge back to the other caster to get him dead, bouncing back and forth in a state of constant movement.

In these situations, Bear tanking becomes dance and movement, and an awareness that the purpose of a Tank is to hold aggro on all mobs, and to keep them steady for melee DPS to kill without chasing them. You do not have to stay on one mob until he’s dead before changing… all you have to do is develop enough aggro that no one will be able to overtake you, and then you can safely change attention to someone else.

Since caster’s don’t move, you can charge one, build massive threat on him, then move on, and melee DPS can continue to stay in place and finish him off. By the time they run to catch up with you on your new target, you’ve built up more threat again, and can pick someone else for your attention.

Using this, plus Swipe, really keeps things under control.

I’ll detail one example most people are familiar with.

For the Forge of Souls groups, I would typically target the furthest spellcaster as Skull, the nearest spellcaster as X.

To start the run I would FFF the distant Skull as I ran in towards the nearby X.

I’d keep Skull as my target, and observe target in case of healer or DPS aggro while I ran in towards the X.

Once on top of the X, I’d Swipe a few times, coincidentally gathering in the melee opponents and developing threat with them as well.

Once I felt my threat on X was enough to stay above healer aggro or DPS AoE, I would Feral Charge into the distant Skull to lock him down.

I would physically turn around to watch the X while staying on top of the Skull and getting the melee mobs in front of me, back to the player group. 

As soon as I saw I had an unbreakable threat lead on Skull for the health he had remaining, I would Feral Charge straight into X and start building threat on him, still trailing my little group of melee mobs.

The melee DPS would stay on Skull and finish him off while I began building serious threat on X and the rest of the melee mobs, and kept an eye on things in general.

At all times, Growl would be poised to grab Skull or X (whichever was most distant) if I saw I was losing threat on that mob, and I kept FFF ready as well to add threat.

If I was losing threat on a distant mob using this technique, generally it was to solid AoE DPS landing where it shouldn’t, and not healing aggro. I never, ever had a problem staying on top of healer aggro using this method.

That about wraps up the breakdown for the Druid, so I hope to see you soon for the next part of the series, as I delve into my impressions of the Paladin!

Yes, I know, the post title is silly, and only vaguely relevant if you know who the Saints are. And I don’t mean St. Jude and St. Peter, either. I don’t think they play on the same team.

Hey, if you think it’s that easy to make fun new post titles for over a thousand posts…. you’re probably right, but I do the best I can with what I’ve got under the hood.

I have an amusing story to share with you. I think it illustrates a few telling things about what we can get used to, and what we expect to see, and how we can sometimes ignore things until confronted with the one when you expected the other. 

Now that I’ve vagued that up for you as much as I can, I’ma gonna tell a story.

Once, last night, on a server very, very close to home…

There I am, continuing my experiments in tanking comparisons.

I’ve been tanking on my Druid, followed by tanking on my Paladin, mostly in PUG situations and comparing the general feel between the two. A post on that might go up later today, more likely tomorrow.

This has, by necessity, required me to actually tank a lot with both characters. To run a lot of things. To test a variety of instance situations.

It’s been lots of fun.

Whenever possible, I prefer to only run with friends, but I wanted to run several things in the shortest possible time so as to really hammer home my impressions of the classes while they were fresh. Also, I was testing the ease with which strangers without restraint could pull aggro off of me. My friends are actually smart players, so they don’t do dat. To get idiots and out of control DPS meter chasing freaks, I had to resort to strangers. So, that means running purely random pugs.

I love Gnomeaggedon, and I’ve tried to follow the ‘be positive’ meme he started, but I’m just gonna have to warn you; there might be some mention of asshattish behavior on the way. Sorry, I know. 

I know!

Over the last week, I’ve run a few things.

I’ll make one observation, which I swear is relevant to the story.

One thing that I’ve noticed as a key difference between pugs and playing with friends, is that in pugs people whom I’ve never met before will announce what the group will do. Not ask what the rest of the group wants to do, or make a suggestion as to what they’d LIKE to do. Just flatly announce what will happen. ”We will be doing X on this run.”

I’ve noticed it mostly because I wasn’t used to that approach in groups of players before. It’s by no means unheard of, just not something I was used to seeing consistently myself, unless from the tank, and even then it would be about 50/50 phrased as ‘what we will do’ or ‘what I like to do’, which is a slightly gentler way of saying the same thing, but leaves you more open to counterpoint. 

I can’t speak for other people’s experiences, but to my mind it’s unusual behavior in a group environment among social equals for one person to dictate to the rest. It stands out as rude, an attempt to remove the power of choice of other people by putting yourself and your own needs first, and requiring an awkward confrontation if someone else has a different idea.

It’s a negotiation tactic used to control a discussion and get your own way. If you make a pre-emptive strike to state what WILL happen, rather than phrasing it as a request and asking for consensus or other competing suggestions, than what you have done is forced anyone that does NOT agree with you to have to confront you publicly, to challenge you, and to face the consequences of bringing conflict and potential drama.

For many people… not all, but many, the easier route will be to simply shut up, keep your head down, go along, get the run done and move on. Maybe put that person on ignore, maybe not.

I don’t want to give the impression that I think being assertive is evil, or that telling people what you expect them to do is wrong. Not at all, I’m not some head in the clouds idiot. If you have someone over you in a position of authority, or you are someone who has the responsibility of seeing to it that things get done, then this is normal and welcome. Having someone responsible in charge providing clear direction, assigning tasks, or setting work priorities gets things done. They may be the wrong things if he or she isn’t open to learning and listening to the opinions and experience of everyone that is part of their team, but it gets things done. 

What I’m saying is that, in my opinion, when you’ve got a group of strangers who are all there for the same purpose, are there by their own consent to work together and offer their contributions to the groups’ success, and you have one person start tossing orders around and making unilateral decisions, it’s bullshit. Your mileage may vary. :) 

Okay, so there I am, running things on my Paladin. I’ve had a lot of fun runs, solid learning experiences, good times. Quite a bit of stress, but my studies and research are paying off. I’m using a Talent spec, Seal of Command and Retribution Aura along with Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous to optimise 5 person instance threat generation.

A word about that. I ain’t a Paladin tank expert. If you would like to learn more from actual experts about Paladin tanking, I direct you to Ardent Defender, Blessing of Kings, Honor’s Code, Righteous Defense, and Tankadin.com (my apologies to those I missed – Paladin tanks have a big blog community).

However, that being said… I am somewhat used to the concept of researching a class for myself, once in a while. I know what I wanted, to optimise heroic instance tanking and threat generation. I did heroic Halls of Reflection last night, and as they say about New York, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

I ran a few heroics with my friends Cal and Ely, as tank, heals, deeps. After each one, we dropped group to port out and then reformed to start the next one.

This time, after Utgardt Keep, I drop group, and Cal announces he has to go put some pants on.

I have to admit, Utgardt Keep speed run and guns are fun, but I know I’ve never had to go change my pants after running it. Still, best not to judge. (That’s a pally joke. Ha.)

So he’s off afk, and I go scurrying around farming some Titansteel mats since I want to have someone craft me the Saronite Swordbreaker plate tanking wrists, and I’m just 3 Titansteel Bars short.

After a bit, Cal says he’s back.

I queue up Looking for Dungeon, and as usual for a group with a tank, insta-form a group.

Boom! Halls of Stone loading screen forms.

I buff folks as usual, and right away the following pops up in Party chat;

• [player1]: We’re skipping the two optional bosses.
• [player2]: You pull as long as I’ve got mana.
• [player2]: I don’t run out of mana so you better not stop.
• [player1]: Let’s go, what u waiting for?

I pull the three dwarfs that like to pat near the portal entrance, we burn them down, and I’m thinking, “Wow, what if I wanted to do the two optional bosses? I can use the Emblems, myself. And what if *I* happen to be out of mana? Am I allowed to stop and drink? Do I need to raise my hand first and ask permission? Seig Heil!”

• [player3]: What are you standing there for, go!
• [player1]: Get moving, go, go!

Now, understand, the time sequence here is, 5 people appear in instance, I click the Pallypower buff button 5 times fast, then Avenger’s Shield the three dwarves and we burn ‘em down, then as I saw a third unfamiliar player name pop up in party chat, I paused for 1 second to actually LOOK at the names of who I was in group with, and what guilds they were from.

It almost takes longer to type that stuff out than I took to read the member names of who I was grouped with, and yet that’s how fast these were popping up.

What I was asking myself was, “How in the HELL did I end up with THREE asshats, when I joined group with TWO FRIENDS?!?”

Right about that time [player4] chimed in demanding I get my ass in gear.

That was when I realised the incredible mistake I had made.

I queued up in LFD without reforming party with Cal and Ely first.

Now, understand that I am actually IN VENT with Cal and Ely as this is happening. We’re chatting away, and I’m trailing off as it finally dawns on me that I’m all alone with these strange people, none of whom are guilded together, they are all spontaneously being making demands as I’m awakening to the concept that I didn’t intend to be available to join this group in the first place.

5 seconds have now elapsed without my moving, and as I let my friends in vent know just how incredibly dumb I’ve been, one of the pug group runs forward to pull the next group FOR me, to spur me on to action or something. 5 whole seconds! Omigawd, I know, right?

Well, that makes things easy for me. Incredibly easy. Every single one of the four players has shown the patience of a Mayfly, has been rude and demanding. I have two friends waiting to play with me, and I joined these morons by mistake anyway. My bad.

I grab the group that they pulled, take aggro and control them getting burned down, then grab a stack of Mana Strudel from the mage table, announce “You guys are on your own, go find yourself another tank to order around” and leave party.

I then spent the next 15 minutes of my random lockup hopping around Dalaran chatting. Cal went fishing.

For the rest of the night, every time I ate a Conjured Mana Strudel, I fancied I could taste the tears of selfish QQ flavoring the pastry… and it tasted delicious.

The moral of this story is, if I had zoned in to find out I was a dumbass for queueing, and nobody had said anything, or if people had done the customary “Hi! How you doing?”, I would have apologised to Cal and Ely for screwing up, but I totally would have run the entire instance.

If even only one or two people there were rude, or pushy, or demanding, I would have stayed and made the best of it. And it’s not like a tank doesn’t have a veto. As the tank, if I decide to run down and kill Maiden and get an extra Emblem for 2 minutes work, who’s to stop me? Is the rest of the group REALLY going to go on strike if the tank wants to pull a group of mobs? They may bitch, piss and moan, but are they really going to leave?

But when I zone in, and I’m greeted with four asshats… where is the incentive to care if I leave? Why should I endure your crap? What’s my motivation to be your bitch?

I hope you take away from this story three things;

1. I’m a moron. (Big newsflash there, huh?)
2. If people are friendly, even if it’s not what you intended to do, having fun with friendly people is the best part of the game. Why not stay and give it your best shot?
3. You don’t have to be anybody’s bitch.

If you join a group and are treated with abuse… then leave, RIGHT THEN. You do not deserve anyone’s abuse, and you do NOT have to take it. Whether in real life or in a virtual world, if you are in an abusive situation, do not be a victim. Do not suffer in silence. If you do not wish to be in a confrontation, if you cannot bring yourself to speak up on your own behalf… then leave. 

You, and your time, are worth more than that.