@ Flynx @ Bronzebeard: I’m doing the same thing…dropping herbalism for leatherworking. It’s going to be hard…I will miss being able to swoop down to snag my weeds.

As a joke, I decided to level another druid, and try to level her as resto. The joke quickly turned serious as I realized that I enjoyed playing a druid way more than any of my other alts, and the next thing I know I have two 70 druids. One’s feral full-time and the other’s resto full-time.

I’d say the only downside to it, really, is if I’m tanking a raid and something resto drops, my toon that NEEDS that drop isn’t there to get it, and vice versa. But oh well, such is life.

I don’t have a problem with respeccing costs & managing multiple gear sets… it’s the being limited to two professions part that irks me. Bar none, Druids are the best herb gatherers and as one of my guild’s Elixer Masters, I’m very conflicted about dropping Herbalism to pickup Leatherworking, which is a very big deal for end game raiding… whether for the various Drums or the uber Resto Druid patterns that drop in SWP. I was thinking about having one my alts picking up Herbs to feed my Main’s habit, but leveling a 2nd Druid is obviously the way to go!

Thanks!

Flynx @ Bronzebeard

To comment on the lack of tanks at 70, I think it has a lot to do with a few factors:

First, it is just plain easier to become “geared” enough for heroics/raiding as a healer than it is as a tank, in my opinion. Healing stats are relatively straightforward, and there is a lot of good healing gear to be found. If nothing else, you can use cloth to fill in the gaps, which you can’t do if you are trying to be a tank.

Second, less knowledge of game mechanics and specific encounters is required at entry level for a healer. Sure, it takes skill to heal, but your learning curve is relatively shallow. A tank has to have a really strong grasp of threat, managing mobs, positioning, and the basics of pulling and CC. An entry level tank has a steep learning curve, especially if they are just starting to try their hand at it at lvl 70 after leveling as a DPS prior to that. Add in a relatively obscure imaginary value like threat, which is almost totally irrelevant outside of groups and instances…you get the idea. Tanking often requires a lot of research, and many players aren’t that devoted.

Third, tanking and healing are both intimidating roles. The stress factor (and fun factor, in my opinion) ramp up a lot, but when you screw up, sometimes even a little, every one does a corpse run. Of the 2, healing seems a lot less stressful, because it often isn’t apparent to someone what all the healer is doing, unless a DPSer is watching the health bars attentively, which is a little unusual in my experience. Lets not forget that it is often expected that a tank will have group lead, have to mark the kill order on mobs, and have to decide who to invite or remove from the group. A tank is a group “daddy” in a lot of ways, and a lot of players aren’t ready to put on their daddy pants.

Finally, there is role competition. Healers have it too, no doubt, but have you ever seen how viciously some tanks fight over a raid tanking slot? I have seen many guilds actively refuse to recruit new tanks because 1 or 2 prima donnas were afraid of any competition coming in and taking “their” slot, to the point that they would threaten to leave themselves if any new tanks were recruited. Often, there is a lot of behind the scenes backstabbing and double-talk about the other players, attempting to sway other guildies about who should be the “MT”. Is it a poor way to behave? Yes, but it happens, and I think it serves in part to keep the tank population low at lvl 70.

Ozebs last blog post..Druid Love