Well, I finally got to tank on a druid. Given, these experiences are definitely NOT representative of what will/could be. I mean, I just dinged 20 on the bear.
I ran two instances, Ragefire Chasm and Van Cleef...now rightly called Deadmines, as Van Cleef is not to be found in the Deadmines.
Ragefire is not a hard one, in fact, I have completed this with just a healer at level, when running it with the paladins. It is a bit of a joke, actually. This went fine. The group actually asked to keep going to get all the bosses within the instance. Interestingly enough, we had a level 20 hunter, who took aggro ever so often, but I was able to tank for, at level 15. Hah.
Deadmines was a bit more challenging, and aggro was a bit of an issue at times, but I must admit that we had no casualties, and our biggest hurdle was the healer's grid going bonkers. We decided that we should level a bit more before we continued instancing, so I could manage aggro better, and so I could be less squishy, as the healer, my significant other, was complaining how difficult it was.
Tanking on druids is weird. You have -
1. Auto attack (oddly enough, a must. You can crit at 310% with auto attack, so, a must)
2. Taunt (which I feel should have a shorter cooldown)
3. Bleed attack- forget the name.
4. Go to-aggro grab attack
5. Aoe debuff
That's as of now. I know that soon enough I'll get more stuff, but honestly, it's not that much. The cooldowns are long too, so very similarly to dk tanks pre- 4.0.1, you get a lot of dead time where you're just waiting for stuff coming out of cd.
Where the druid gets interesting is this- unlike pallies, they have few (so far, no) aoe abilities to speak of, and there is little to no hang time when you cast the ability, only the cooldown. So I ended up tab-cycling quite a bit. It felt very similar to Warrior tanking. Except warrior tanking is now plagued by a queue system for their abilities. I jumped on Akarius last night and tried pulling big groups, to see what it felt like. The ability queue is still there, but it doesn't feel as blatant as before.
But as of right now there's one BIIIIIG problem with my druid. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, BUT, I find myself without rage ALL THE TIME, a problem I do not have with the warrior. Maybe this will change as I gain more talents, or as I start critting more, but dangit, was it difficult.
Questing as a tank on a druid though, is...retardedly fun. Questing as a protadin prior to 4.0.1 was....idiotic. It took forever. Post 4.0.1, it's...idiotic. It doesn't seem fair to the rest of the specs, that a tank can do so much damage. Questing as a prot warrior is nifty: you are hard to kill, and you can zip around with charge and intercept, but stuff still takes time to kill. Questing on a DK...is...weird. They have some very interesting resources, and hardy, but they don't necessarily kill things fast enough to make the going faster.
On a druid though...imagine this: you approach 1 mob, you root it to the ground, approach as cat, start killing it FAST, it starts running away and brings 3 more mobs, you turn into a bear, start killing them FAST, they start hitting hard, you rejuv fast and pop back into bear, it goes the mob's way, you turn into a cheetah, and run away.
...It's like a tanking rogue. It's awesome. OH! Except rogues don't turn into mutated sea lions and swim faster. Never mind.
...Druids are OP. More on this class when I level it up. But man...so OP.
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