Thoughts on lowbie tanking

[:1]With all the complaints about druids tanking at lower levels I decided to roll a new bear and see how things go. I was actually expecting it to be harder. I didn't have any trouble holding threat except in situations where you are supposed to: when someone else pulls or focuses the wrong target. Even then I could cover their mistakes. But just because an experienced player with BoAs, enchants, and consumables can roll along without any trouble doesn't mean there aren't issues. Ideally the levelling experience would be fun and easy at first and designed to teach new players how the spec works.

Multi-target Threat is something you have to work for. I personally don't like the idea of lowering the cooldown on Swipe that supposedly is coming in the next patch but it's a simple fix and should address the issue for lowbies. I didn't seem to have any problems with being squishy when fighting groups but presumably the tinkering with the mastery for us high end bears will also help out lowbies.

Lack of Cooldowns was my biggest complaint. Having to wait until level 48 before the spec provides a defensive cooldown is silly. We want the concept introduced to players a lot sooner so they can learn how to use them and just how useful they are. Sure there are external defensive cooldowns and I have loaded up on them but they only go so far. Barkskin, Survival Instincts, and/or Frenzied Regen should be available sooner. Preferably two of them, one before level 20 and one before level 30.

Gaps in Rotation is also an annoyance. Until we get Lacerate at lvl 66 our attacks on the GCD are Mangle, Swipe, and Faerie Fire. At times you sit there unable to attack anything until an ability comes off of cooldown. Sure you can throw out extra Demo Roars but that's not going to do much to reaquire aggro on a loose mob. I would suggest they take Claw (useless to cats anyway) and make it a bear ability hitting for moderate damage for 5 Rage. Would be nice if it hit for a bit more than Swipe but a bit less than Lacerate. If Blizzard doesn't want AoE attacks in our single target rotation then it doesn't make sense for them to teach up and coming druid tanks to Swipe individuals. (Of course the preliminary 4.1 changes don't make sense from that perspective either. Nor live for that matter.)

Rage Management is clunky. Enrage losing the relic of the days when dungeons were run one pull at a time would/will smooth that out some. The new consolidated talent tree eliminated our talent reducing the cost of basic attacks but left Furor producing 10 Rage and not enough to get one off. Either the cost of attacks should be reduced or Furor should grant 5 rage per talent point up to 15. Nonattacks shouldn't cost any Rage.

tl:dr Lowbie druids need more skill to tank right now than other classes but the 4.1 changes as they stand now address much of that. Hopefully Blizzard will also do more to facilitate learning the spec.