9
Jun

Learning To Tank (Druid)

   Posted by: WoWGrrl   in Adventures In Azeroth


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So, a few days ago a guildie made her return after a 4 or 5 month hiatus, and since the levelling guild we share is not one of vast changes over time, her old levelling buddies were still around and still had a handful of alts that she could party up with for the few hours per week she can play.

I’m one of her old levelling buddies, there are three of us in total, plus some friends we each picked up along the way who tag along at times.

So, the other night we took a look at all of our alt toons and discussed which were closest to one of hers that we could all party up with and spend some of her long-accumulated rest bonus.

In the end, the three of us went into Razorfen Kraul - me on my 33 Druid, and my two long-time guildmates and levelling partners who were on a 32 Rogue and 25 (healing) Priest.

“I guess you’re the tank?”

My Druid has long been spec’d Resto, although at times I will go for a Resto/DPS mix in my stats, to go along with the two different gearsets I carry with me on this toon.

So, uh, I threw on my DPS gear and hopped into Bear form, and tanked my first instance, with friendly partymates who were supportive while I fumbled and follied and got the Priest killed.

So Many Fun Aspects To This Game…

I’m someone who likes to challenge myself and to learn and to improve, and World of Warcraft just keeps on entertaining me with the same content, from a different viewpoint.

Last night was about two things: Trying to recall what I’ve seen other good Druid tanks do, and Challenging the healer enough that she didn’t have time to contribute DPS via wanding ;)

I grabbed a Marking addon via the WoWMatrix addon updater, and while it works okay for me, it’s got some problems so I’ll probably be looking for a replacement if I start to tank a little bit more. The one thing about the addon I did get is that it only shows up when I’m party leader, and most times it’s the tank who’s the leader, so it doesn’t show up to bother me at all.

We didn’t get a chance to complete the instance because our Healer friend (the one who just got back into the game) had a slightly unruly child not wanting to go to sleep, and we had to call it after a couple of bosses, not really wanting to turn to the LFG line to fill out the party at the late time of night it already was.

But in the time that we played I had a bit of practice with some of the key Druid tanking strategies, including slapping a Rejuvenate on myself before going to Bear form to gather up 3-4 mobs and beat them down, pulling with Fairie Fire and doing LOS pulls.

It was kinda neat, but I’m not really looking to make a job of it quite yet ;)

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Adventures In Azeroth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

4 comments so far

 1 

My druid has tanked DM a lot.. Why? I don’t seem to know.. Anyway, feral faerie fire is a great pulling technique till you get your rage topped off.. after that.. body pull all the time in lower places.

I’m sure there are more refined techniques at higher levels buy my druid is about 37 and I’ve got nothing to contribute to that. If you aren’t feral (cough.. resto..) pull a moonfire, bearshift, then enrage and start to do your threat building.. remember tor growl periodically at ppl (der, but some ppl forget it).

June 10th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
 2 

I played a prot warrior for 5ish years now, being the tank brings more responsibility then just the mobs, people look at you to set the pace of the instance, to mark, to kinda give the people an idea what is going to happen. There’s alot to being a tank, then actually tanking.

It’s fun, and challenging, but can be frustrating at times too. One thing though if your a good tank, your going to get the gear, the respect, and lots of attention by people wanting you to come with them.

One more thing if your going to be a tank I hope you love the idea of looking at crotch and feet the whole time…I know I do :)

June 11th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Noise
 3 

I use FFF to pull all the time. Instant, respectable range, no mana cost, no need to shift, nice debuff, perfect. The only reason I shift while tanking is if I’ve 0 rage and need to generate 10 with the Furor talent or if I want to save the healer some mana and heal myself or someone else after a long fight. Other skills I use while tanking:

- FFF (see above)
- Demoralizing roar (really important for mitigating multi-mob damage and keeping everyone focused on you)
- Growl (I typically don’t need to spam this once the fight gets going, so saving the 10 second cooldown for the off-chance that someone is attacking the wrong target or if the healer steals aggro, it’ll save the day)
- Swipe (really good for multi-mob tanking since a lot of a druid’s aggro is generated by damage)
- Mangle (instant, good damage and nice debuff)
- Lacerate (this comes later, and is obviously great with mangle)
- Feral Charge (life-saver for those times you need to peel aggro off the healer who’s dumbly running away)
- Bash (the only real interrupt we have in bear and the long cooldown stinks)
- Improved Leader of the Pack (I totally underestimated this talent, but with the crit bonus of the Sharpened Claws and Leader of the Pack talents, this generates a useful amount of healing–something like a full health bar every 2.5 minutes)
- Furor (to generate a bit of rage to start a fight.)
- Omen of Clarity (30 minute buff that makes my skills free every once in a while? I’ll take it! Frustratingly, it seems to proc at the end of combat far too frequent for my taste. Just bad luck, I’m sure.)

I’ve never thought to look for marking mods. I bind Alt+1 through Alt+6 for raid markers. I’ll have a look through the available mods.

June 11th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Elerossë
 4 

When they call you back because they loved the way you kept them out of troubles feels great ;)
Personally, I love healing too. It’s probably because the job has as many rsponsabilities.
Elerossë
feral druid on anachronos

August 29th, 2008 at 9:11 pm

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