Bored Druid ThreadFollow

@#$%ing harpies. I was getting chased by like 8 of them across stonetalon last night. I miss shadowmeld sometimes.

God.

I have far too many 16-17 year olds fancying me. The kind who can't speak proper English and deep down inside know that I'm way out of their league and thus act like complete morons around me. Yes, I like the attention. No, I don't like some kid who I can't even have a reasonable conversation with getting a hard on just thinking about me. I mean, I'm easy to talk to. In fact, I can normally do all the talking if you're too insecure to say too much and I don't even mind someone trying to be funny unsuccessfully, but there are these two guys who I just really can't stand and they can both stand me quite a bit too much. With one of them, it's my own fault (don't play with someone if you're not serious), and he's sometimes bothering me on Facebook. The other one just sent me a friend request on Facebook. He's... throwing condoms at me in class and then blushing. That's just not nice. :(


Also, Dalalag is awful. AWFUL.

I don't think either of us has the money to ship him over here. Plus he's disappeared and it hasn't been long enough to text him yet.

Plus I've got other male protectors who can beat the **** out of insolent little kids if I wish that. I don't really. I'm still kind of flattered, and that makes up for some of the annoyance.

Where is the challenge in that? Oh, they want to throw an earth shield and go for some snacks?

Also, people have gotten very impatient about getting their emblems as of lately. Sometimes when I enter a dungeon, the game would freeze up for a couple of seconds while loading all necessary data. When it works properly, there has been no buffing, and the tank is at half health beating down a group of 8 mobs. Well, guess that's the challenge for the healers...

Rage-starved?

I dunno, that's my problem usually. Wiped on that Xevozz guy in VH that other day cause I couldn't hold aggro over the ret pally. I don't tank heroics so much on my druid because of this kind of thing. We're so out of balance right now, and with more people running around in t10 stuff, keeping aggro is more work then I'm willing to put in for quicker frost badges.

Don't know if there's much of a choice other than to take your pants off and swap for kitty gear...

All that stamina means ****** avoidance, so rage is rarely an issue (I love to abuse Enrage and rage nuggets, especially in VH). With a full rotation (Mangle, FFF, Lacerate spam with Maul on every attack) I pull around 5k TPS self-buffed. My Death Knight pulls around 6-7k. My Druid is in full T9 or above while my Death Knight is wearing some T9 and assorted.

Also, my survivability feels like crap. Did they hotfix something lately? Maybe I'm just not used to tanking. Seems like I'm just one big squish-ball for the healers to play whack-a-mole with. Wish I could block.

I managed to log in my heroic gear set.

It is mostly old DPS gear and fully gemmed for DPS. So I usually have around mid 30k health in a heroic. I have my old 4T9 on for the reduced time on Barkskin, it is mostly the 245 versions though and will be all when I get the badges to upgrade the gloves. Actually, most of the gear is 245 or better so the armor is around the same as a T9 tank should have, maybe higher because of the Agility gemming.

That being said since it is a full avoidance set I do have around 50% dodge and crit when doing heroics. That combined with chain pulling is how I keep aggro. If I go slow the rage doesn't come fast enough and tanking becomes painful, like H VH.

I usually just spam Swipe n Maul for trash, never have any issues with aggro either. For bosses I do the normal bear stuff. I usually get to the boss a second or 2 before the rest of the group so I can start up an aggro lead. Same deal with trash. Hell, I leave the boss for the next pull when Omen says I have more of a threat lead then the boss has HP left just like it was trash.

If you are having threat issues stat using Swipe instead of Lacerate when the stacks are up and only Lacerate to refresh stacks. It will be higher threat/damage.

You logged in DPS gear so I can't really comment on your heroic set up. Spec is the higher threat version as opposed to the Demo Roar boost one I run with.

All I can really say is that you have absolutely no reason to fully gem stam for heroics. Gem/gear for avoidance and threat. If you are using 232 or better gear the armor will be there, you will have enough health and you will generate more threat.

Yes, my tank set is way better. If I bring the stam heavy set to most heroics I have rage issues.



Of course the DK will do more TPS, Icy Touch combined with many talents to prop up Frost damage will do that for ya. Your bear is likely being a pure meat shield in heroics. Meat shield is fine for raids where the damage and rage intake are higher but doesn't fly in heroics where you don't take as much damage and don't have a high crit/avoidance level to help increase rage generation.

Also in my heroic set I am hit/dodge capped. Really helps out with threat and damage. Especially since I don't have the pally stam into SP, War or DK Str scaling mechanics. Str adds more punch for threat to the other classes than Agility does for bears. Bears scale poorly compared to the other tanks with regards to threat/damage and higher end gear unless you really know what you are looking for with regards to threat.

Agility only gives crit as a DPS stat for bears. Strength is the AP stat and as we use leather Agility gear we don't have the AP scaling other tanks do. Well the raw AP on gear is nice you typically take what comes on the piece which is largely determined by iLevel.

So all you can do to drive threat up while maintaining a stamina based gemming strategy is get hit/expertise capped, well the dodge part of expertise at the least. Then after that try and grab pieces with haste and ArP. Haste will mean more Maul and Maul is beast. ArP is strong for TPS as we use all physical attacks. Especially if you only Lacerate to refresh stacks and stick with Mangle/FFF on CD and Swipe as filler even on single targets. Maul is of course always queued up.

Or you could just use DPS gear with a tank trinket for an extra CD, tell healers that ***** to **** off and chain pull while laughing at all the dodge messages that pop up when things try and hit you.

My DK is frost too, and the AoE threat is crazy. People with 1kGS higher than me rarely manage to pull agro. Makes tanking fun :)

Except for the stupid event in Halls of Stone where the mobs keep turning up and running past while all my AoE abilities are on cooldown. At times like that I wish I was on my druid and could just spam swipe non stop to pick everything up.

So basically Druids suck for anything but boss fights?

Judging by the changes to Resto in Cataclysm, looks like I'll be going Feral/Resto again.

I did ToC25 as DPS today in hopes of getting a DV. No luck did get new bracers though for DPS.

I think next time I have time for it I will find some scrub 80s and chain run reg ToC for a Banner. I really need to replace a trinket as I would way over cap ArP if both proc'd at once. At around 700 now before trinket procs.

I was 4th overall on the run and broke 10k on Twins.

I might have to DPS more in the future.