Torn Between two..maybe 3.

[Easy Waters 0]

So, first off, new to WoW. Have probably 100 hours combined. Anyways, I'm having an issue on which class too main. Naturally I run with a mage class. But deep down I'm a tank at heart, I just love nuking with fancy abilities. 

Anyways I have a level 27 druid which is by far my highest level character. But I have a 16 warrior and 19 mage. I enjoy tf out of druid gameplay. Mage is cool, I think it'd appeal more (to me) if I went fire until late game. And warrior...well not nearly as bad as it's made out to be but not very enjoyable.

So thinking late game here. Druids make great heal bots that are 'socially acceptable.' How I would like to play is as a support roll that people aren't so quick to accept in terms of efficiency. 

Warriors are very very rewarding from what I've grasped which is why I will probably roll one anyways. So kinda not an issue here. 

But mages... I'm almost positive they are a very all around great class and an asset too any group but I feel like the gameplay could get boring. 

 

Which should I main?

[soulzek 3]

Warriors are the only tank people are going to be looking for at 60.

Inb4 "paladins and druids can tank 5 mans with naxx gear just fine"

[Easy Waters 0]

Yeah I'm aware of that.. 

[Aethelwulf 12]

In your case you may as well just play the Druid. Soulzek is not entirely correct when he says Druids cannot raid tank. Some guilds do permit Druids to offtank and tank trash mobs in raids. The rare guild even has them maintank, but they're inferior to prot warriors. In Naxxramas, Bear Druids are actually ideal for tanking Patchwerk's Hateful Strikes as they typically have the highest hp and armor. In normal fights Druids tend to suffer considerably because they cannot prevent enemies from dealing crits and crushing blows, although they have higher health and armor to compensate. A Druid also does not tend to have the "oh shit" buttons a Warrior has, such as Last Stand or Shield Wall or Lifegiving Gem and cannot even use potions or healthstones in bear form. The lack of "oh shit" buttons coupled with a Druid's tendency to eat damage spikes is the main problem Druids face, although the lack of "oh shit" buttons is not a crippling factor in a skilled raid where there should be healers with instant heals at the ready and hopefully the superior armor and health should absorb the spike damage more manageably. Another problem is the lack of a taunt. If you want to play as a Druid raid-tank, you better gear well and research your playstyle (as well as whatever you intend to tank) very carefully, and be sure to have a skilled raid because Druid tanking is fairly unforgiving. Once you or your raid messes up, you're screwed, unlike Warriors who can hit a variety of buttons to recover from a bad situation. If you are dangerously low, you need your raid's Druids, Shamans, or Paladins to instantly drop a big instant heal on you because you don't have your own "oh shit" buttons. And if you lose aggro, you're usually screwed.

The upsides of Druid tanking is that they can tank dungeons just fine and they rarely need to worry about loot competition while gearing. Also some of the Druid's tanking gear comes from PvP, so you might want to start early on the AB grind.

Edited March 17, 2017 by Aethelwulf

[Pottu 290]

Druids have a taunt.

[taladril 43]

Having a dog in this fight I'll bring my side of it. Druid tanks absolutely do and completely work. I can tell you that because I've tanked all of the current content (and ptr content too). And not just once as a novelty either. Can druids survive? With reasonable consumables and the right gear, absolutely. Now it's an uphill battle trying to convince guilds that it's worth it but from my opinion it absolutely is. The key is to utilize us correctly. We are not your main tank or your off tank. Don't try to do that stuff. Warriors always will be best at that because they have more key survival skills. However multi tank fights do not need that and we can provide a ton of utility and the crit buff while simultaneously removing an extra prot warrior from the raid.

The most optimal situation is to stick with 2 prots and put a feral in as your 3rd. When you need a 4th have a fury throw on a sword and board and you're good to go. If you absolutely can't get rid of that third prot then a feral is fine for a 4th tank too. The problem with that is that feral is doing a lot more dpsing than tanking now. And really a 4th spot you're comparing that feral to a fury and the utility isn't as easy to justify since a good fury can output a lot more individual dps than the feral. But the beauty is comparing a nightfalling prot vs us. It's no contest for what we bring and to me I would always try to run with one feral for true raid optimization - but they would be tanking. When naxx comes out eventually, dpsing ferals I expect will have a hard time justifying their spots compared to current content and naxx is where the real optimization has to be happening anyway.

[Aethelwulf 12]

I stand corrected. Druids obtain Growl at level 10. As for the subject of Druid tanking, it is also worth noting that Druids can tank dungeons well, as can Shamans and Paladins. (Arguably, any class short of the Mage can dungeon tank with the right healers, gear, talents, and determination.)

On the topic of Nightfall Prot vs Feral Druid though, a Nightfall easily wins. That debuff (+15% to raid magic damage) is far too potent to neglect, although you could just as well have a Nightfall Hunter spamming Wing Clip on cooldown to force large amounts of procs.

[taladril 43]

15% when it's up. It's a proc weapon and lasts 5 sec when it does proc. I haven't used it (obviously) but looking at the weapon comments proc rate is 2 ppm. That is not stellar. 3% crit is dependable, constant, and comes with a battle rez and innervate along with stronger dps when not tanking.

[Garun 9]

If you want a significant chance of raid tanking, you must play a warrior. There might be the feral OT, but it will mostly be warriors because they are just the better tanks in most cases due to itemization and class abilities. To the guys that say that "druids can raid tank," yes they technically can, but in almost every case a prot warrior can do it better with lesser gear. For roughly the same effort it requires to barely get a tank spot as a feral as something like tank 4, you can become tank 1 or tank 2 as a warrior. However, druids can tank 5 mans and UBRS just fine to gear up.

[taladril 43]

Benefits of feral tanking: buffs for melee, utility for the raid, and are very very easy to gear up since almost no one cares much about feral loot. One less prot means your other tanks get geared faster too. And I'm not saying druids can tank I'm saying druids DO tank and are successful at it. So you should stop posting your opinion on what can and can't be done because I am empirically telling you when you say we can't you're wrong.

I'm talking about optimization and a not first or second tank doesn't require the higher level of surviability criticality and can make compromises based on a general raid improvement. A prot swinging nightfall on fights where you only need 2 tanks isn't as useful as a constant 3% crit buff for the entire dungeon for you plus 4 other melee.

[Theloras 108]

COUGH  A Paladin swinging Nightfall with Seal/Judgement of Righteousness has highest Nightfall uptime of any class/spec COUGH

:P

PS Welcome back Pottu!

[taladril 43]

That may be true. But now we need to look at the calculation of someone doing nightfall full time vs other pure dps classes since nightfall spam all the time is indirectly tied to dps. I'd be curious about the calculations and don't forget that it's one less debuff slot being used too so that needs to get added in. Maybe it's smart, I can't be sure.

My point is talking about flexi tanking. A druid who's 3rd or 4th tank isn't always tanking. They are doing dps too. But their crit aura is always functioning so that's not something fight specific.

[Theloras 108]

48 minutes ago, taladril said:

That may be true. But now we need to look at the calculation of someone doing nightfall full time vs other pure dps classes since nightfall spam all the time is indirectly tied to dps. I'd be curious about the calculations and don't forget that it's one less debuff slot being used too so that needs to get added in. Maybe it's smart, I can't be sure.

My point is talking about flexi tanking. A druid who's 3rd or 4th tank isn't always tanking. They are doing dps too. But their crit aura is always functioning so that's not something fight specific.

As someone who does it full time every raid for my guild, my personal DPS is never a factor because I'm not Ret spec - I'm actually modified Reck spec but instead of putting 1/5 points in Vengeance, I pickup Blessing of Sanctuary for the raid (most people discount having BoSanc but it's actually an incredibly powerful Blessing for reducing incoming raid wide damage + damage to the tanks but also increasing their threat as it does unmitigated holy dmg every time they block).

With Seal + Judgement of Righteousness now properly able to trigger weapon procs here on Elysium, Paladins have 2 chances to proc Nightfall every swing and an additional chance every 8 seconds with Judgement cd - similarly I have the same chances to do an AoE group heal when I put on my 8/8 Tier 1 armour as well.

As it stands, I can tell you that my casters LOVE me as my average Nightfall proc uptime is ~20-30% at all times. 1 person being able to boost raid wide caster DPS by 15% by that margin isn't anything to sneeze at.

[Theloras 108]

These are the debuffs that we put up every raid:

1.    Thunderfury Proc (NR vulnerability)
2.    Thunderfury Proc (Attack Speed Debuff)
3.    Mindflay
4.    Curse of Shadow
5.    Curse of Elements
6.    SPriest Shadow Word Pain
7.    Shadow Weaving (spriest shadow vuln)
8.    Sunder Armor
9.    Nightfall
10.    Judgment of Crusader (If Thelo or Smiter raiding)
11.    Curse of Recklessness
12.    Hunters Mark
13.    Shadow Vulnerability (Improved Shadowbolt)
14.    Faerie Fire
15.    Winters Chill / Scorch
16. Situational Debuff

Situational Debuffs
1. Vampiric Embrace - Golemag, Vael, Firemaw, Magmadar, Flamegor
2. Judgement of Light - Golemag, Vael, Firemaw, Magmadar, Flamegor
3. Judgment of Wisdom - Onyxia, Nef, Chromag

[Theloras 108]

8/8 Tier 1 set bonus AoE group heal + Judgement of Light = #1 effective healing on Flamegor

While swinging Nightfall ain't bad :)

[taladril 43]

Alright so I'm gonna do some hand waving math since I can't see your raids on legacy logs and realmplayers is down. I took some data from our legacy logs bwl run and will just apply it to your raid. For this I think it'll be close enough.

Theloras DPS: 205 (gotten from a bwl run of yours)

Average caster dps: 240

Average warrior and rogue dps: 390

Casters in your raid: 8? Let's say 9 so you have 4 lock, 4 mage, one shadow. Good enough composition

Nightfall Buff:15% Uptime: ~25% So total nightfall effect per caster 0.15*0.25 = 3.75%

Average caster dps increase from nightfall: 240*0.0375 = 9

Total dps increase from casters because of nightfall: 9*9 = 81

Total dps brought with a pally doing nightfall: 205+81 = 286

Difference from an average melee to a nightfall pally: 390-286 = 104

So the difference between a pure melee just doing their thing and the benefits of a pure nightfall pally is over a hundred dps. Now yes I am sure you are bringing utility to the raid. That is not questionable. And is the difference horrible? No it's doable. Your dps becomes competitive with the higher level casters. But a pure melee spot would be providing more benefit to a warrior or rogue doing what they do best.

If we go back to:

Quote

On the topic of Nightfall Prot vs Feral Druid though, a Nightfall easily wins. That debuff (+15% to raid magic damage) is far too potent to neglect, although you could just as well have a Nightfall Hunter spamming Wing Clip on cooldown to force large amounts of procs.

A prot warrior will have far lower uptime considering that it will go unused for any fight where the prot is actually tanking. Plus they will have lower dps and utility than you as a pally. On the flip side you can have a druid giving your 4 top melee a 3% crit buff for the entirety of the dungeon while tanking or dps, allowing for only needing 2 full prots and also then allowing for a whole additional melee slot opened up to add to that utility.

Even if you run 3 prots and a feral you'll have the standard amount of melee slots but still get all that utility and effectiveness. While nightfall is a nice boost to anyone stuck doing melee who shouldn't, it isn't a substitute for a class with built in utility.

 

PS wait do you think I'm Pottu?

[Theloras 108]

Keep in mind that I'm not full Ret spec like Smiter is - he does much more DPS than I do with his spec plus he stacks consumables galore.

The asset that I bring is utility as you mentioned - I can fill multiple roles at the same time with my flexibility depending on what each boss fight encounter requires

On tank heavy damage or raid wide heavy damage fights I can literally come #1 in healing as you can see in the screenshot from tonight's BWL raid - withought casting a single heal - this allows our raid healers to focus on the tanks and not have to worry about keeping the melee (or anyone in my group for that matter) topped off as they all get passive healing from JoLight and my set bonus aoe group heal.

The screenshot only shows Effective healing - my total healing was a hell of a lot more as I also had 61% additional Over-healing.

Plus the fact that my bringing Blessing of Sanctuary further lowers everyone's incoming dmg by up to 24.

Yes, in a pure min/max sense a pure dps class is obviously higher, but can't provide anywhere near the flexibility that my setup, gearset and playstyle can provide.

[taladril 43]

I'm not saying that it's not legitimate. Obviously it is. You're middle of the pack dps with utility to bring. That's valuable. My biggest point is that a feral put into a tank role provides more increased dps, more utility, and more optimization than running a third prot as well as opening up an entire raiding slot! And nightfall on a prot being used sporadically in a dungeon is a shadow of the effect that you add to the raid with it. The thought that a prot is equal to that is no contest.

[Theloras 108]

Well I used to have a more rounded 11/26/14 spec that had Consecration which allowed me to AoE tank but we have several extremely geared Prot Warriors (Pakez especially with his Thunderfury) that it really wasn't needed.

I do however tank Nefarian phase 3 undead add spawn with Holy Wrath + Stratholme Holy Water for instant uber AoE agro on the entire pack.

Right now, both my guild and I are happy with my spec and what I bring to raids so it's a win-win for us - seeing as I do world PvP ALOT and Reck spec is THE ultimate Paladin PvP spec.

The same would apply to what you're advocating as well - as I have always recommended trying new things out, including new classes/specs/raid comps in order to see what works best for different people.

If you want to min/max that's fine, but it never interested me.

[Theloras 108]

and no, I don't think you're pottu but he chimed in earlier in this thread after returning as a GM here - so I sawyin WASSUP to him :P