I want to give you guys a quick update with where I’m at with my characters in WoW.
Tanking in Legion as a Druid
My Druid reached level 110, and I’ve been bursting through dungeons with relative ease. I feel like as a Druid I am really great at tanking. I definitely take damage, but it’s consistent damage. My health rarely spikes and I have only come near death maybe twice in all of the dungeons I’ve done.
What I like most about the Druid tank is my ability to DPS. I feel like I really pull numbers when groups of mobs are pulled.
My defensive capabilities have proven exceptional thus far. In Halls of Valor someone accidently pulled an entire side of the tavern area, and I was able to hold the entire 10’ish mobs on me and stay pretty much half health or above. Yes, my healer was exceptional (a random PUG), but my self-healing and defensive cooldowns helped a ton.
My iLvL is at 823; just two points away from LFR and Mythic! Wow that went fast. I feel like I geared up way faster than my Hunter, but I’ll credit that toward getting gear above 850 such as my 860 trinket from the world boss this week.
Questing as a Tank: Easy Mode
Tanking and gearing up aren’t the only things easier as a tank. I’m also having a really easy time questing and completing world quests. I can pull 2-3x what my Hunter can take on and come out without a scratch.
Generally speaking, I kill slower than my Hunter. But killing 10 things at once as a Druid means I’m ending up killing more mobs over time, with no chance of death and no downtime.
Suramar, for example, has been a breeze. My Hunter is always having to feign or watch out for something that hits him hard enough to kill him. My Druid just runs in and swipes his way to victory.
Roadmap for Bewear the Druid
As I mentioned before, I’m almost at LFR level. I’m going to keep doing LFR and random heroics (soon Mythics) to gear up… then I think I may actually main my Druid. I think what I’ll actually end up doing is healing in raids with our team to allow more people to DPS. That will probably not be for another week, though.
My Hunter is at 855’ish iLvL. Not bad, and I’ll probably raid with him on Sunday/Monday if my Druid isn’t able to gear up a bit more.
That was my experience as a protection paladin. Good DPS for questing and dungeons. Enough cooldowns to survive most hairy pulls (although not as hairy as yours… cuz you a bear HA… sorry).
So I’m guessing you took the tank weapon for your artifact thingie?
Oh yeah, absolutely. I leveled 100-110 as tank and don’t even have other specs right now. The tanking spec is what I use.
The only problem Guardian really has right now, at least at the raid level, is threat. They are probably the lowest threat tank. Which only matters when compared to the other tank, and only really happens in Heroic+ raids so it probably will never affect you.
Its funny, my main is blood DK and I thought when I leveled my druid I would be guardian all the way, but I ended up falling in love with moonkin of all things. I do keep a set for each spec though and got my guardian weapon to 13 where the ramp starts so I still tank sometimes, as well as do the wardens quests as guardian. The thing I love about druid is the flexibility, I play all 4 specs regularly. If someone ever drops out of a dungeon I can easily switch to tank or healer and do great. Its pretty amazing.
I see you are enjoying your time in WoW with ~80% of your posts from the last 2 months focusing on the game. I look forward to your future blogs on other PC games when you get a chance to sail away from the Broken Isles.
If you know what you are doing, even with a rather casual pace, hitting 825-830 gear level is rather quick. I like that, it should in theory place everyone quickly at a level where they can hit most of the content their friends might be doing. Not everything is unlocked, there’s still rep to be grinded, some key questlines to be completed, but at least, you have some basic gear.
@Gankatron: There hasn’t been anything to talk about. We have a few games coming out this month, though! Civ 6, for example.
@Maljjin: I’ve already skyrocketed to almost 845 now. It’s pretty awesome.
After watching a couple of videos from youtubers that got a press release 2 weeks ago, I’m excited about Civ6. It should be another fun chapter in the series.