Panzerkin: A Beginner's Guide

Arright, I said I'd do it, so here goes.

Panzerkin: A Beginner’s Guide

So. You’ve read my posts and decided you want to give it a shot, or you’re as crazy as me and have noticed that a lot of Druid Balance talents lean towards tanking. And as such you’re looking for a Panzerkin guide. If you can’t work it out, by the way, Panzer is German for tank – hence Tank-kin, but Tankin sounds silly. Here’s the first thing to know. It’s not difficult. Playing a Panzerkin relies almost solely on your ability to survive and, therefore, your healer’s ability to keep you up. Threat is not a problem.

Courtesy

THIS IS IMPORTANT. Do NOT be an arse about being a Panzerkin. Do NOT get annoyed because other people are hesitant to take you. You are intentionally playing an obscure tanking spec in order to make instances you already know and love more challenging and hopefully more enjoyable. You should not be surprised if the group gets upset about you insisting to Panzerkin tank. More importantly, tell them you're a Panzerkin. If you're joining a group, contact the leader and let them know that they should inform the others that you're a Panzerkin. If you're building a group, tell everyone you invite that you're a Panzerkin. The group is MUCH more likely to accept you if you sound happy that you're a Panzerkin, and if you sound confident. Good grammar is important too, but dis r no fkin inglesh lezun. Etc.

Spells: A look-over.

Single-Target Spells

Starfire

Slow cast, massive damage, ludicrous crit damage, high mana efficiency. This is your pulling spell when you don’t need to worry about speed, and can also be used in-combat under certain circumstances. 3.5k threat on a pull at level 65 is better than most “proper” tanks can manage, paladins perhaps notwithstanding.

Wrath

Fast cast, medium damage, low mana efficiency, although 900 damage in Boomkin form with just over 300 spellpower is not to be sniffed at. Never use wrath to pull, since it falls between the two stools of Fairie Fire and Starfire. Wrath should be used usually at close range, since it’s fast enough to not suffer too badly under pushback. It also generates threat much more constantly. If you have Moonfire and Insect Swarm on your pulled target before it reaches you, you can slot in a quick Wrath to help with damage and threat.

Moonfire

Instant cast, low-medium damage, low damage DoT. Low mana efficiency when spammed, very high mana efficiency when the DoT is maintained. Good for quickly picking up a bit of threat between Wrath casts, and the DoT should be maintained on as many targets as possible; you’ll see why later, because you’ll be pimping out that DoT.

Area of Effect Spells

Typhoon

Instant cast, medium damage cone effect with a pushback. Very useful, since it effectively hits everything with a slightly more powerful Wrath and the knockback can give you a good second if you’re quick to blast out another Wrath or refresh Moonfire and Insect Swarm.

Hurricane

Channeled cast, medium single-target damage, high multi-target damage, unlimited targets. Hurricane should never be cast unless you have Owlkin Frenzy or Barkskin up, and should always (almost always) be cast when you have Barkskin or Owlkin Frenzy. Be careful of Crowd Control, though. Hurricane is fantastic for holding aggro off the healer, and surprisingly very effective to hold off the DPS classes. We love Hurricane.

Starfall

Instant cast, low single-target damage, medium multi-target damage, 20 stars over 10 seconds maximum. Starfall can crit even if the damage isn’t that high, and has a fairly low mana cost. Generally speaking, with Moonkin Form’s mana regenerating effect, this spell will end up giving you more mana than it costs. You need to be –very- careful with it, however, as it’s indiscriminate in its targeting – it will quite casually pull three more groups onto you if they come within its thirty-yard range. Use with caution. Starfall is, however, even better for holding aggro from healers than Hurricane, because you don’t need to channel it. Used in conjunction, Starfall and Hurricane will hold aggro unless your DPS are fecking crazy.

Force of Nature

Instant Cast, summons 3 Treants under your command which attack targets. Since you’re taking Brambles, these beasties will hit very hard, considering, but they don’t add aggro to you so they don’t contribute to your tanking. Drop them if your group has low DPS in a DPS race, or if you need some fodder to soak up adds – such as on Vexallus in MgT. I haven’t tried tanking MgT yet, by the way, so that isn’t a “Yes, MgT is safe.” I’m not even 70 yet on Draik, although I’m getting there.

Utility Spells

Insect Swarm

Instant Cast, high damage DoT which reduces the victim’s chance to hit by 3%. This is very obviously critical, since it helps towards the hardest part of playing a Panzerkin as outlined earlier. With Improved Insect Swarm it also improves Wrath damage, which is well worth having.

Entangling Roots

Reasonably fast-cast, long duration root with a DoT effect. Can be used indoors thanks to 3.0.2, so if you’ve got a melee target you want out of the way, use Roots. The damage is also surprisingly effective. You can also use Roots to prevent a DPS target from constantly whacking you, by casting Roots and then moving away. However, because the roots break after a certain amount of damage, this isn’t hugely effective. The healer(s) might appreciate a breather, though.

Nature’s Grasp

Instant cast, 45-second duration self buff. 0 mana cost. Attacks against you can trigger the effect, casting Entangling Roots, but with only one charge. Nature’s Grasp can be handy if you need to reduce damage taken by getting some distance, but is incredibly unreliable as CC. Its primary function is just to cause a bit of free damage to a random target in melee range.

Faerie Fire

Instant Cast, 2-minute duration debuff. Reduces the target’s armour and prevents stealth. Improved Faerie Fire can make this worthwhile, but we’re going to be tight on talent points and 3% increased spell hit and crit chance won’t make as much of a difference as you think. However, if you do suffer lots of misses or find yourself running low on mana, by all means find three points to move and start casting Faerie Fire.

Gift/Mark of the Wild

High mana cost buff, improving your armour, stats and resistances with a 60/30 minute duration. Make sure you maintain it on your whole group.

Thorns

Relatively low mana cost buff, causing damage to anyone who attacks the target. Much shorter duration, so keep an eye on it. With Brambles, this is very useful once you’ve got threat for maintaining it. Keep Thorns up on yourself at all times – do NOT cast it on anyone else.

Innervate

Instant Cast, low mana cost mana regeneration buff. Innervate is your bestest friend, since it alleviates another of your main issues; running out of mana. This affects all mana-based tanks, running out of mana, so I didn’t mention it at the start. Innervate allows all spirit-based regeneration to continue while casting and adds 300% mana regeneration. This regenerates mana as fast as or faster than you can use it, so blow Innervate in tricky fights, boss fights or against especially tough mobs. If you have a second druid, have them ready to hit you with Innervate.

Healing Spells
Various. You can drop your HoTs before a fight in order to gain a little extra threat and to give your healer an easier time, but that’s up to you and not usually necessary, especially considering the mana cost of casting the spells and then Moonkin Form.

Moonkin Form

Yeah, this is obvious. Improves your party’s crit chance, improves your armour, and prevents you from casting anything apart from Balance Spells… Stay in form, yes? If you drop out, you will do three things: 1: Lose aggro.

2: Run out of mana

3: Die painfully.

Clear?

Gear

Panzerkin Gear can be problematic before level 70. If you play a balance druid, you are by now used to rolling on cloth caster items and being yelled at by the cloth casters. If you’re trying to gear up for Panzerkin fun, however, cloth is not wise, because of the obvious lack of armour. As such, you want to be wearing all leather (All Leather Fun! Sorry, in-joke). You obviously need spell power to improve threat, intellect for mana pool and spirit for mana regeneration, especially with Innervate. Stamina is also important for obvious reasons, and Mp5 is handy for longer fights. Defense and Resilience can also come into play; however, this is pushing itemisation to the extreme, and as such you should sacrifice these two in preference of other stats. Gladiator gear is the exception as regards to resilience. My order of stats would be:

Spell Power

Stamina

Intellect

Spirit

Mp5

Resilience

Defense

Generally speaking, you can compensate for low Spirit or Mp5 with another druid, a Shadow Priest, a paladin or even just by taking regular mana breaks and never pulling without full mana. The last is the least favourable, as it obviously slows you down a lot. Gems should also lean towards these stats; make sure you use them to fill up any holes in your gear, especially stamina, since leather caster gear with high stamina is tragically sparse. Solid Stars of Elune are your standard blue stamina gems, and should be used generally regardless of socket bonuses, unless those socket bonuses grant you more stamina. Runed Living Rubies are also useful if you do have plentiful stamina; usually if you’re wearing Gladiator Gear. Enchants are much the same, but, surprise surprise, unlike other tanks, you don’t want mongoose. Durr.

Speaking of Gladiator Gear, it is an excellent way to get the stats you need, albeit not as excellent as it was before armour was normalised. Pick it up as soon as you hit 70, and only replace it post-Karazhan. You aren’t likely to raid that far as a Panzerkin anyway, or indeed as any class, due to the impending expansion, but still. Gladiator still applies at 80; there’s going to be a new season and new sets, so pick them up.

Talents

Oh dear, this will take a while. Panzerkin talents are not, in my experience, a fine art. I’m no theorycrafter, so I can’t tell you what spec is ideal. I don’t know what’ll give you the highest threat boosts, the best survivability and the ideal mana regeneration. I do know that some talents are out of the question and some are vital.

Talents to Take to full

Balance

Obviously your main tree.

Starlight Wrath

Nature’s Majesty

Nature’s Grace

Moonglow

Vengeance

Insect Swarm and Improved Insect Swarm

Dreamstate

Moonfury

Moonkin Form

Owlkin Fury

Typhoon

Earth and Moon

Starfall

No, that’s not a lot of wiggle room. There are a few points I would say you can move around. Balance of Power and Improved Faerie Fire can be very useful but aren’t vital. Same goes for Improved Moonkin Form, but it doesn’t do a whole lot for your threat, because it improves everyone else’s

Feral

Thick Hide

This talent is a pain in the ass. It’s second tier, but there’s nothing we want from the first tier. It’s a choice you’ll have to make; is 10% improved armour worth 8 talent points? Up to you. Maybe, maybe not. If you have an excellent healer and quality gear, probably not.

Restoration

Nature’s Focus

Furor

Improved Mark of the Wild

Intensity

Omen of Clarity

It’s up to you which of these you take. If you have spare points, slam them in here. Come Wrathtime, this is probably where your points should go, but I don’t have Beta so I can’t really tell you. I certainly think Intensity will be useful.

Talents to Avoid

Balance

Nature’s Reach

Celestial Focus

First is fairly obvious, second is less so. Stunning your targets limits your ability to move them about in case of patrols, especially when the stun is highly unpredictable. If you need them to stay still, drop entangling roots.

Feral
Everything But Thick Hide

None of it helps enough to warrant the ridiculous point expenditure. Don’t waste your talents!

Restoration

Naturalist

Everything beyond intensity

Intensity is the last useful resto talent. Beyond that you’re sacrificing Starfall for the useful ones, and even Nature’s Swiftness isn’t worth that.

Glyphs

New for 3.0.2 and Wrath of the Lich King, glyphs can have a big effect on your play style. I would suggest Glyph of Moonfire, since the DoT is what we’re really interested in about Moonfire. Glyph of Entangling Roots can also be useful if you want to control a DPS target, since it’ll give you a little longer to move. Do NOT take Glyph of Insect Swarm. Glyph of Starfire and Glyph of Wrath are both handy, although Wrath less so, since you have your arcane backups if Wrath gets interrupted, and the spell is so fast a lot of the time that NPCs won’t interrupt it. For Minor glyphs, it’s mostly just convenience, so grab Glyph of Thorns, Unburdened Rebirth and maybe the Wild.

Pulling

Pulling is the Boomkin’s biggest strength. As the only ranged tanking class that’s even semi-viable, you can generate far more threat than anyone else with your pull, and as such it’s very important you get it right. Here’s my advice.

Pull with Starfire. A crit here will solidify your threat for most of the fight.

Hit Moonfire and Insect Swarm – you want to maintain them, remember.

Use Typhoon to extend your ranged time – you’re a ranged class, so use it.

Cast Wrath if you get a crit due to Nature’s Swiftness, and cast Wrath at the end.

Spell Rotations

This will be problematic. As I’ve said, I’m no theory crafter – with my rogue and warrior I use set rotations, but I couldn’t work them out myself. As there’s so little theory craft around as regards to Panzerkin, you’ll have to do this mostly by feel and the events around you, as opposed to a set rotation. Here’re some rules to lend a hand, though.

1. Maintain Moonfire

Especially if you have Glyph of Moonfire. Much easier with Glyph of Starfire as well.

2. Maintain Insect Swarm

You need to reduce damage taken, here’s how.

3. Regulate Mana

You don’t need to have a massive 20k threat gap between you and your DPS. If you get a huge chunk ahead, don’t keep blazing away with Wrath; slow down, use Starfire, and grow back some mana. Starfall is also a nice spell in these circumstances.

4. Wrath is your Friend

Wrath is quick and powerful. If you are short on threat, use Wrath. If you want to pull, use Starfire.

5. Area of Effect is Better Than You Think

Starfall, Typhoon and Hurricane are all very useful for holding aggro.

That’s basically all I can say. Good luck to you if you try it out, and I hope this will be handy. I hope I've spawned a lovely big generation of Panzerkins to apologise profusely to their group for not being bears.