Feral MT "Representation"

#0 - Sept. 17, 2009, 3:42 p.m.

For atleast a month now, the topic of why ferals arent be chosen as maintanks has been comming into tank balance discussions. Ghost crawler quote was "Something else must be going on we are unaware of"

I would like to start a topic to specificaly discuss why regardless of avoidance,mitigation, or effective health, that feral druids might not be chosen over other tanks for a maintank role

Utility
First lets discuss what sets a feral druid apart from other tanks and other melee dps, based on utility only.

[Rebirth] [Innervate] [Faerie Fire Feral] [Mangle] [Leader of the Pack] [Infected Wounds]

Now lets address each of these and decide wich is easier to provide to your raid on a consistant or emergent basis in bear form, over being in cat form.

Oh wait...none of them,

Innervate, and Rebirth both place you in a position that you must blow your cooldowns, and sometimes an external cooldown like pain suppression on top of barksin to battle rez, or innervate while tanking a boss, and increasing your chance at a tank death. The chances for live or die are dependant on the gear and skill of your raid, but even with world first guilds, that is still an increased chance of death while in elf or cow form.

The other abilities are active parts of your rotation so long as you are spec'd into them.

The exact opposite is true for Prot Paladins where you are required for a paladin in the raid to have atleast a 21 point investment in the protection tree to bring that utility to the raid.

Versatility and Dicificulty

For all non hardmode encounters, and even many hardmodes, in gear optimized for catform, and a spec optimized for 80% dps, 15% raid utility, and 3 points in [Survival of the Fittest] a feral druid not only seriosuly increases his survivability, but also provides bar none the best dps class that can handle the easiest of three tanking assignments, or fill in for a dead tank until he can be battle rezzed and the feral druid can revert back to dps, in one spec, and one set of gear, all at the push of a buton.

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Atleast my guild, until toc was released, used three tanks when first breaking into new content, learning the fights and gearing up, feral druid being the number 3 guy, dps for all 2 tank encounters, and once we got our bugs worked out, and we can two tank all encounters, we chose the option of putting our feral as primarily cat, so that we had access to his utility, his dps, and his ability to pick up if a tank died, or DC'd that a furry warrior, ret paly, or dps DK simply cannot do at the effectiveness he can.

The question of "is he as good as the other tanks" or "does he avoid,and mitigate enough dmg" or "does he have enough effective health" in order to maintank never even comes into the picture when you consider all of that.

So why exactly does "Something else must be going on" not get translated into "ferals kick to much versatility, that noone else can bring, to tie them down to a MT roll"

Ghostcrawler

#35 - Sept. 17, 2009, 5:54 p.m.

You're welcome to argue that Ferals aren't fun to play for one reason or another or that they are too valuable in healing roles or having too much fun as Moonkin or cats.

Still, I have a strong suspicion that if they conveyed an enormous advantage over other tanks for difficult fights that raids would still find a way to use them. "Well guys, our bear wants to heal tonight, and nobody else can survive the boss, so I guess we're calling the raid."

It's possible bears do convey an advantage on some fights. But I'll argue that if that advantage was large or if it manifested itself on most fights that progression-oriented guilds would flock to them. Instead, most of those guilds use warrior tanks, because they always have, and because the warriors do just fine.

I'll also add that who is tanking heroic Anub isn't the critical tanking role on that fight, and that we see mostly warriors tanking the adds.

Ghostcrawler

#160 - Sept. 18, 2009, 6:51 p.m.

Q u o t e:
GC, the problem with your argument is that you fail to account for the "sunk cost" component of switching tanks. First the player loses all of the time spent gearing and developing his tank. He loses the time spent on achievements. And, some of those achievements are unique to the server (i.e. server firsts) Further, players develop an attachment to their main character. In some ways, it's their second identity and severing that tie can be difficult. Second the guild takes a double hit. The guild loses a tank, and the guild loses all of the gear on the tank. If loot was not bound, then your argument would hold substantially more merit.

What you're describing might be a plausible explanation for why there might not be many Feral tanks (I'm not saying that's the case - just that your post might address it). It doesn't explain why cutting-edge guilds wouldn't switch to a bear if it conveyed a significant advantage. "Well guys, we'd probably have beaten this if we had a Feral tank, but we can't find one and none of you are willing to reroll, so I guess we're done."

That probably happens to a lot of guilds. It doesn't happen to the crowd chasing world first kills. If we asked those guys to all go Leatherworking for the first boss and Jewelcrafting for the second, they would do it. They would complain and have every right to do so, but they'd probably do it. Very hardcore guilds have access to resources that more typical guilds do not. If they wanted a bear, they could get one. Therefore, one answer is maybe they don't really want a bear.