My take on "The disappearance of the bear"

There was recently a post of Shifting Perspectives, wow.com's weekly druid column, in which Allison Robert discussed the reasons that bear form druids are underplayed brought up in a thread on the official forums. You can find the post here, and it's an interesting read. It also depressed me badly, because most of the reasons are true, though some are more relevant than others. Being a druid tank myself, I thought I'd give my thoughts on the reasons listed. All of these complaints and the accompanying quotes are taken verbatim from Allison's post; they are not my own creations. The one exception is when I replace words to make them more child friendly, in case any kids are reading this.

Complaint #1: Bears just aren't as visually compelling as other tanks.
"If I'm going to tank, I don't want to stare at a bear [butt] all the time, especially a LARGE bear [butt] that takes up half the screen."

WoW is a very visual game, but I am surprised that players actually have time to look at their characters during raids. With all of the enemies that need to be kept track of, the difficulty of positioning them correctly, and all of the numbers flying across the screen, I wasn't even aware my bear had a butt. That said, the essence of this complaint was about the unchanging bear model and the lackluster animations of bear abilities. I have already gone over ideas of how to make bear form scale with gear in this post, so I'll let you read that if you are interested. I suppose I am biased in this issue, since any dedicated druid will have long given up on their forms being as cool as other people's armor. Like I said, though, time spent in combat leaves little time for admiring your character's shiny gear, and if you really want to see the gear, you can spend time out of combat in caster form. (Doing this also allows you to take advantage of Furor.) Armor is cool, but there is plenty of time for admiring it when you are going from place to place on a mount or waiting between a wipe and the next pull. These times are much more appropriate for thinking about how cool your armor is than during battle. The same goes for animations, which seems to be such a petty complaint to me. Sure, they may not look cool, but all abilities end up looking stale when you use them long enough. I think this is just a case of people trying to come up with a justification for why they think bears aren't fun to play and making one up.

Complaint #2: Gear consolidation had a more demoralizing effect on druids than other tanks. "In BC the tanks talked the drops over and took care of each other. Now I'm fighting half the raid for gear while the other tanks get everything handed to them. That's not fun."

This is a more reasonable complaint. The short version of it is that plate tank gear is plate tank gear, no if's, and's, or but's, but we druids need to share our tanking gear with our kitty and rogue compatriots. This is a result of the gear consolidation of Wrath of the Lich King that made more classes able to use the same gear, which reduced the incidences of unused drops, but had the unfortunate effect of increasing competition for us druids. Now we need to compete with DPS for our tanking gear, and I will admit, that does make it harder to gear up.

The heart of this issue lies in the fact that the three other tanks have their own separate gear from other classes, but we druids, as leather wearers, don't. It would be unreasonable to expect Blizzard to give us unique itemization again, since that doesn't fit in with their new design philosophy, but where can the happy medium be found? Perhaps if Blizzard made more leather armor with high amounts of stamina and less agility, it would mark it as tank gear without making it useless to rogues and kitties. This would allow bears to have a sense of which gear was all their own and which gear the rogues and kitties should get first dibs on. Perhaps this gear could also be more likely to have +hit or +expertise than other gear, in order to make it more like tank gear and less appealing to a rogue, who are also looking for +haste and +armor penetration on their gear (though they won't be looking for armor penetration after the expansion hits). At this point, its uncertain how reforging will affect the way gear is distributed, so any sort of change to the system will need to wait until after Cataclysm hits.

Complaint #3: The need to use DPS leather has resulted in an uncomfortable opportunity cost associated with gearing bear tanks.
"My raid leader's a rogue, and he's sick of sitting around waiting for me to get my stuff. We're going for hard-mode Jaraxxus-25 this week and his three options are a warrior, a death knight, and me. Guess who'll be coming as resto?"

The essence of this complaint is that DPS are bitter about bears taking their gear, and that it takes longer for bears to gear up because they are competing with so many other people. Allison downplays this issue as one that solves itself with time, but I think it's an unreasonable one because we should only be competing with rogues and kitties for our gear. The article mentions competing with hunters and warriors for our drops, but they should be rolling on mail and plate, respectively, and not our leather. Why? Because allowing them to have the same priority for leather that we do gives them an unfair advantage in getting gear. It allows them to role on gear that is below their tier, but we can't role on gear that is above ours. If a warrior can role on plate, mail, and leather, but a druid can only role on leather, then it is unfair to let the warrior role on gear outside of his armor type. In short, a druid should never need to compete with a hunter or plate wearer for gear.

That said, what about the fact that we do still need to share our gear with rogues and cats? Like I said in my response to the last complaint, this would be less of an issue if there was clearer itemization for tank leather and DPS leather, so these two complaints could be solved together. Until then, its a legitimate concern, more so than Allison makes it out to be.

Complaint #4: Early Wrath weaknesses in 5-mans left a bad impression on players, and this bled through to raid content.
"Who's your least favorite tank to heal and why?" "My least favorite in a 5 man is a druid. It's not their fault and I still love them to pieces but they have the biggest challenge for maintaining aggro on groups. In a Pug situation, I will outright decline if the tank is a druid."

The issues of balance have been solved since Wrath was launched, but the damage has been done. Not only have players lost trust in the druid class as a tanking class, but I'm sure many bears started going to raids as boomkin, cats, or trees, thus falling behind in their tank gear. As such, their tank set is probably woefully outdated, making them unable to hop back into taking easily if they haven't been tanking through the new content. More on this with complaints seven and eight.

The real issue here, though, is the general perception of tanks, and the fact that old prejudices die hard. It probably won't be until Cataclysm is released that players are willing to rethink how they think about druid tanks, and like it or not, we are stuck with the existing perceptions.

Complaint #5: Bear gameplay is boring. Too much of the bear's effectiveness is baked into talents rather than being determined by player skill.
"I wore the letter off my Swipe hotkey."

Like Allison said, this is mostly an excuse written by people who don't actually play a bear tank, but its still a legitimate point. We druids have a ton of abilities open to us, but we can only use one fourth of them in bear form. It would be nice to see some variety, but the problem is in shifting out of bear form to use our other abilities. Yes, we have rebirth, innervate, cyclone, and other awesome abilities, but we can't shift out of bear form to use them.

Perhaps Barkskin could be the key to this problem. As it stands, Barkskin doesn't reduce damage by enough in order to use it to shift out of bear form, but what if it did? What if the talent Protector of the Pack was edited to include something like this:
Also, when Barkskin is used in bear form, it causes 33/66/100% of the bonuses you receive to your damage taken and threat to apply to your caster form as well.
This would allow you to pop barkskin and rebirth a fallen healer or innervate a caster. A talent like this would really go far in making druids closer to their nature. After all, we are masters of shifting, and it seems quite un-druidic to stay in one form for the whole battle.

Complaint #6: Gear consolidation often results in druids looking insanely stupid in caster form.
Allie: (In Ulduar), all of the non-set melee leather was oriented toward rogue tier, which had the effect of making druid (tanks) look like a postmodern clown on the run from Cirque du Soleil. Matt Rossi: Druids look like they got into the craft bin at the local thrift shop.

I suppose if I'm going to call complaint #1 bogus then I need to acknowledge this one as legit. I don't really look at my armor very often, personally, but I will agree that the druid set pieces look very different from the rogue pieces. This problem could be addressed if Blizzard took my advice concerning complaint #2 and then made the tank-oriented pieces look more druidish, while making the DPS-oriented pieces look more roguish. Its a simple complaint, really, so I don't think it warrants much thought.

Complaint #7: If the raid needs more tanks, it's easier and faster to gear up a plate class than a druid. "The plate +defense gear's been going to offspec for weeks, but the hunters get dibs on the next Twin's Pact or Hellion Glaive, and the rogues are still rolling on non-set. We need another tank, but they'll just respec one of the death knights for the next boss."

This is closely intertwined with complaints #2 and #3, and perhaps my suggestion for solving complaint two would address this as well, but the essence of this complaint is in the fact that plate wearers can easily build an off-set for tanking by picking up unneeded drops in raids, whereas druids do not have that option. Thus plate-wearers are more likely to be taken when an extra tank is needed. That said, if you are DPS'ing and are picking up a tank set in your spare time, what are you doing complaining about not being able to tank? I find DPS'ing to be more stress-free and more enjoyable than tanking, so why are DPS druids worried about being picked to tank? This complaint only applies to DPS who are picked as extra tanks, but I personally would not want that role if I were lucky enough to be a permanent DPS.

Complaint #8: A druid who's dual-specced into healing or DPS has more difficulty returning to tanking than other classes.
"Look, I know you really want to tank this fight, but all three of our tanks have excellent attendance and I don't want to leave any of you out of the raid. The warrior's going to tank, the pally's going DPS, and I'd like to have you come boomkin or heals because melee sucks on this fight. Would you seriously rather be benched?"

The essence of this complaint is that druids can be every role in the game, and the pressure to fill those roles tends to squeeze us out of the tank slot. As Allison says, its the classic druid dilemma of "do I change my spec to fit around the group, or do I force the group to fit around me?" and most people will do the former. That, after all, is the greatest strength of the druid class; to be able to fit yourself around the group. Warriors and Death Knights, the two most popular tanking classes currently, both can only be tanks and DPS, but paladins and druids, the classes that are currently lacking representation in the tanking community, can be healers as well, another in-demand role. Because healing leather is much easier to pick up than tank leather, it's not unreasonable to expect a druid to be able to pick up a healing set in a quick amount of time (it happened to me), thus forcing that avenue open for him, making him less likely to be picked as a tank.

Unfortunately, this it just par for the course when it comes to druids. Because we can fill any role in the game, we will be expected to, and considering that it is easier for us to gear up for healing or DPSing than tanking, and it's easier for plate wearers to gear up for tanking than it is for us to do so, I guess that's going to be our lot in life. Because of dual specs, its harder for us to put our foot down and say that we will only fulfill one role. Perhaps if Blizzard can solve the issues above and make tanking more lucrative for Druids, this issue will solve itself.

Until then, I will wear my tank gear with pride, for tanking is the role I am best suited for, and I will not let circumstance push me out of that role. I hope other feral tanks make similar commitments, for considering how far we have come as a class, we cannot let ourselves die out. It took a long time for us to become viable in all four roles (tanking, melee DPS, ranged DPS, healer), and we cannot let our victory become our demise.