Grin and Bear Tank It

Well here I am on the ship, on duty, once again. The only redeeming thing about having to spend 24 hours on the ship, if there are any, is the fact is it’s about the only time I actually set aside time to get a blog out. I’ve been stewing over several topics for my newest blog but had to narrow it down to this one. I mean, after all, this blog is called “Grin and Bear Tank It”. For those of you that might be reading this after talking to me on twitter or just browsing the internet, let me explain the name of the blog and the reason that it’s not always about being a Bear and mauling things.

About a year and a half I noticed that a lot of my fellow guildies had blogs of their own that they were updating regularly. They ranged from guides, to tips, to just random rants. But I noticed that with the fact that I love to write and the idea of letting out things in writing about wow, I would love to have my own World of Warcraft blog. At the time I was leveling my druid and thought that would be a perfect thing to blog about. I had leveled him to 70 and pvp’d all through BC as a moonkin. So when Wrath came out I decided to try something different with him and level him through feral tanking. I started my blog to write about my exploits and really didn’t get to far with it. I had a few posts here and there, and then it really kicked up a bit after I got back from deployment. I’m quickly realizing that my blog is more about everything that happens to me in WoW and not so much bear tanking specifically, but I love the name of my blog and don’t plan on getting rid of it just because my content has changed. I’m sure most people would do the same.

So with that out-of-the-way, let’s get on to the meat of this post.

I’m back at it again. That’s right; I’m hiring my fuzzy bear behind for tanking services. I did Cataclysm a little backwards from Wrath. I leveled 80-85 as a Boomkin and switched to Feral when I dinged 85. Of course with dual spec, I can go back and forth, but for now my main spec is Feral tanking. I know my friend Matheo will be very happy to hear this as I’m sure he was sad to see me go back to my Laser Chicken in Wrath and kind of give up my feral specialization. So I thought I would share some of my observations so far, and hopefully someone who reads this will have some insights for me.

1. Extra AOE Threat: I’m glad to say that with Thrash, Swipe, and a glyphed Maul, I can now keep AOE aggro with even greater ease than I did back in Wrath. I know that to be the best I need to do some tab targeting and get some mangles and lacerates in. I just can’t help starting off with a Maul, hitting a swipe, then going back to Maul (which is pretty much off cooldown), then hitting a thrash, then rinsing and repeating. It’s worked out pretty good so far. That is with one exception…
2. Hunter Pets: I must be doing SOMETHING wrong, or else I’ve run into some pretty untrusting hunters that don’t want to wipe. I can’t seem to keep good aggro when there is also a ferocity hunter pet beating on my target. I’ve been told that Kill Command is the reason that their aggro is always at about 90-95% of what mine is, but I’m not sure that I believe it since it’s a constant thing that’s happening. Someone mentioned to me that they like to run their pet out with growl on when they don’t trust that the tank can take care of the group well enough. So I’m thinking either the one hunter I could get to answer me (the one talking about Kill Command) was lying to me or I just don’t understand the mechanics of fighting for aggro with a hunter pet. Either way, they’re the only things that seem to steal aggro from me. That and DPS that don’t follow my raid icon kill orders.
3. Early Cataclysm Bear Tanking: must have been bad. There have been several times that I’ve popped into a group and been greeted with “Great… a bear tank.” And that was promptly followed by a “*InsertNameHere* has left the group. I asked a few people about why this might be and apparently Bears were having a lot of trouble in early cataclysm before a lot of the changes that were implemented for Feral tanking (I.E. the Swipe change). I feel kind of lucky that I was gone on deployment for most of the ‘dark days’, because I’m fairly certain it probably would had disparaged me enough to keep from continuing on in my Bear pursuits. So was it really that bad?
4. Gearing up: One of the great things about my two main characters is the fact that there isn’t much to fight with for gear. On my Holy Paladin if it’s armor, there aren’t any other specs out there using plate with intellect and spirit. And the only person I’m really fighting for bear tank gear are rogues, and some of the stat weighing keeps that from even happening. So I’ve realized how easy it is to keep a bear tank gearing up at a regular pace, especially taking justice/valor points into account. So with Nashamire hitting 80 about a week ago, I’ve got him geared up pretty good already with about 180k fully buffed. This may not be a huge number, but after just a week of gearing I feel like he is progressing very quickly and I’m pretty happy about it.
5. Overall: Overall I think being a Bear in cataclysm might be a little easier than I remember it being in Wrath. I’m really enjoying it and I’m sure as I keep going getting into raids and such I’ll have even more to blog about. Especially considering I see Nashamire becoming my main again over Nashette just like which happened in Wrath. Nashette hits 80 first, then gets put on the back-burner for Nashamire after he hits 80 second. We’ll see though, Pally healing is a lot of fun, and always has been.

I’ll write more about my first heroic experience on Nashamire in another post. That was pretty epic, and pretty accidental. But yeah, that’s a story for another time.

Filed under: Bear Tanking