Saturday, January 16, 2010

Tanking: Druid vs Paladin

I've recently begun tanking on my paladin again, to take advantage of the daily frost badge random dungeon in hopes of purchasing some yummy [Primordial Saronite].

The first thing I noticed when switching to her is that her gear really, really sucks.

The second thing is that paladin tanking is a whole heck of a lot different from bear tanking.

Luckily I was with guild mates, so while it was still horribly embarrassing when mobs went running lose among the group, I at least didn't get yelled at and called a noob... well, they called me a noob, but I like to think it was lovingly.

I thought I understood paladin tanking pretty well. 9-6-9-6-9, right? I even had a fancy addon to help me fail less. And my original tanking experience was on my pally. But I've found that transferring from druid AoE tanking (which uses all of one button) to pally AoE tanking (in which you actually have to target different mobs and build threat on them) is a big jump. And pretty much every trash pull is an AoE pull these days.

The main tank in my guild has a level 80 tank of every tanking class, and plays each regularly. How he manages to switch seemlessly from one to another is beyond my comprehension. I will say that, as a main spec healer, playing tanks has brought me some very useful insight into the tools available to those I heal.

What about you folks? Do you play a tank? More than one? If so, do you find it challenging to switch between them?

1 comment:

  1. I play a Bear tank as my offspec (easy heroic groups etc.) and while tanking is enjoyable, I find the Druid AoE tanking 'rotation' quite bland but in retrospect it is nice to be able to concentrate less and relax after progression raiding.

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