The Disappearance of the Bear

Wow.com today ran a good piece on bear tanks: The Disappearance of the Bear. This is a topic near and dear to my heart. As bear tank, I was our guilds main tank throughout Burning Crusade and our Karazhan runs. However, after leveling my bear to 80 and running Naxx with my bear, I quickly became very disillusioned about my spec. Pally tanks were basically better at everything, especially AOE threat. So eventually, I switched to Resto and then Balance and stopped tanking on my druid altogether. That was a sad day for me. Balance is a lot of fun and I am doing well with the spec, but i will always be a bear tank in my heart.

I think the article hits on a lot of reasons why bear tanks are quickly becoming extinct on WOW, but it lacks focus. To me, there are only a few main reasons for the decline. In my opinion, the problems with bear tanks are pretty specific to 10 man raids and heroics.  Which is what the vast majority of players run in the game. Too often, Blizzard focuses is on 25 man raiding guilds which represents a vary small percentage of the player population.

Here are the reasons I see for the decline in bear tanks.

(1) Druid Tanks are Single Target Threat Tanks in an AOE World
No one uses crowd control any more. Ever! So AOE threat generation is a requirement to tank. Druid tanks have the weakest AOE threat of any tank in Wrath. Pally and DK tanks are vastly superior in this area.

(2) Lousy Itemization
I know you are supposed to get Rogue gear and tank with it. But it doesn't "feel" like tank gear. It feels like you are the red headed step child who gets everything as hand me downs. Plate tanking gear has a lot of stamina on it. Heck, feral tanking gear had a lot stamina. Rogue gear does not. So it just feels wrong for tanking.

Plus as pointed out in the article, it can be difficult to get when several people are rolling for the same thing.


(3) Nothing Outstanding about Bear Tanks
In Burning Crusade bear tanks had amazing health and physical damage mitigation. We were the preferred tank against magic wielding bosses because of that extra health. I don't think there is anything about a bear tank in Wrath that makes it superior as a tank. Pally's have really nice self healing abilities. Death Knights have all those cool anti-magic spells.

What did Druids get?  Some sort of invisible damage absorbing bubble that only procs on crits and last for 1 hit. Cool....  Not!!!! You can make all the excuses you want. But the bottom line is, Druid tanks are currently an inferior option in the game. While they remain one, their numbers will continue to shrink.