I’ve been strictly resto spec’d for a long time. The vast majority of my time as a level 70 Druid has been spent as a healer. I enjoy healing, I consider myself a strong asset in raids, and I will always be a healer first.
Last night, however, I switched sides, at least for a day or so. Through my days of raiding, when I saw the first 5 bosses in SSC over and over again, and farmed Kara many times for badges, I made a point to pick up any cat or bear gear that would have been sharded otherwise. I hate to see a purple go to waste. So over time, I have gathered a fairly respectable, albeit imperfect, set of gear for tanking. I have the Heavy Clefthoof set, of course, and I also have some very nice epics to fill things out. Heck, I have the best tanking weapon for a Bear in the game, I may as well put it to use sometime, right?
I do still have some issues. I obviously haven’t concentrated much on slots, I’ve just picked up stuff that dropped. I’m presently sporting a DPS helm and shoulders, and a green pair of bracers. So I have some spots to fill. Last night, I was half tempted to pick up the nice badge tanking bracers, but luckily remembered the whole point of going feral.
Farming for badges.
It seems, at least on my server, that the hardest class to get a hold of for heroics is a tank. We seem to have more than enough healers willing to do the job, and of course more than enough DPSers, we just don’t have all that many tanks.
So, I figure, why not?
I headed to Darn, picked up all my tanking pieces from the bank, and hit the druid trainer. My cost to respec had bottomed out to 15g, so no big deal. (I will have to respec again on Saturday for BT, however.) I carefully chose my talents, and ended up with 0/47/14 or something like that. I’m pretty sure I hit all the key talents for tanking, and threw in the DPS talents as well.
I put on all my bear gear, and took a look at my stats.
- 11.4k Health (A little low, but should be doable for a lot of easier heroics with a good healer methinks – this is completely unbuffed, though, I didn’t even have Mark up.)
- 20,800 some armor
- 20.33% Dodge
- 417 Defense (Yay! No crits! This is one thing I reworked the gems a bit to achieve.)
- 1600ish Attack Power
Not bad. I spent the next half hour or so setting up a tanking bar, as it had been a LONG time since I tanked.
By the time I was done, though, I was yawning. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to tank a heroic for the first time fairly tired. I had stayed up later than usual to watch the Bears get beat by the Chiefs, and then to watch the So You Think You Can Dance finale. Yes, I’m a sports nerd, and a lot of other nerds rolled into one. My name is PTD, and I am a gaming nerd, blogging nerd, sports nerd (go Cubs and Bears!), reality TV nerd (especially Gordon Ramsay) and a Bowling nerd. Beat that! Oh, and if you ever want to get pwned on the lanes, give me a ring.
Anyhow, I elected not to try to get anything going, but logged off in Shatt with the SP daily heroic saved. I plan to start with either that or Ramparts. SP has classically been known as the "easiest" heroic, but I think I might prefer to do Ramps first, as I have a more solid understanding of how all the pulls work. Hopefully tonight I get a shot at my first tanked heroic, and I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes. Who knows, maybe I’ll love it and finally be everything my class could be. A Tank, Healer or DPS, whatever you need, for any situation.
Next I’ll have to look at my DPS gear overall. I know I have a nice epic chest from SSC!
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Good stuff, my man. It looks like I will have no family for the weekend, so give me a yell. I could use the heroic runs myself.
I’ve gone back to feral before. Mostly because questing as a resto-druid is painfully slow at best. When I wanted to finish my SSO repgrind and pick up some Kureni rep I went back to feral for a week or so. It is just easier that way.
That said, I’ve got a bit of casting set built up so I think the next time I want to grind out something I might try a boomkin spec.
I’ve thought of playing around with a Boomkin spec as well. I can regem my Windhawk set for spell damage, and a lot of my other gear does have decent spell damage thanks to the change a while back. Hmmm…
You are the bear! Great to hear it; I posted on your site a while back saying I was jealous of that staff, and how you should use it since you have it. Well – good news since then – I just picked it up last night – so I’m looking forward to taking it for a spin this evening.
When you say 11k health, is that after you switch to bear form or before? Seems a little low if its after. Spec wise, I put 3 points in primal tenacity, 1 in natural shapeshifter. Those are the only choices I’ve ever played around with for the feral spec. If you want to powershift a lot in catform, go for natural shapeshifter. However, the stun/fear resists of primal tenacity are just too good if you’re mostly main tanking. Who needs a warrior for stancedance on nightbane eh? I’m all about tanking out of the box, hehehe. I wonder if I’ll ever convince my guild to let me tank Illidan??
Anyway, ramblings aside, as long as your healers are good, you’ll have no problems anyways. Tanking heroics is mostly about learning the encounters. Tanks are natural leaders too – I didnt antipate it, but I love it now. You also get compliments from ppl which is a nice payoff for all the work you put in.
I basically learned to tank in heroics, saving up for the earthwarden. I personally find slave p easier than ramps – the pulls seem less complex- but maybe thats just about familiarity.
Thanks to my new guild, I’m pushing up to some good stats nowadays, and looking forward to tanking t6. I hope you love tanking as much as I