Feral Druid Tanking 101, page 2
by Allison Robert 
Jan 18th 2011 at 7:00PM
Bear Tanking: The spec
0/31/9 is the basic bear tanking spec, and you'll have one point left over at the end to slot wherever you want. You'll probably get the most use from putting it in Stampede.
Tanking rotation
- Feral Faerie Fire for the pull.
- Mangle.
- Demoralizing Roar.
- Lacerate three times.
- Pulverize. Yes, it hits like a limp noodle, even with tons of extra attack power from Vengeance.
- At this point, you should have the Feral Faerie Fire, Demo Roar, and Mangle debuffs on the mob, and Pulverize's critical strike buff on yourself. From here, your aim should be never to let any of these drop.
- Mangle on cooldown. If you're in a low-rage situation, Feral Faerie Fire on cooldown. Reapply Demo Roar as necessary. Free global cooldowns should be spent on Lacerate. Pulverize whenever you reach three.
- When Berserk procs, Mangle.
- Extra rage can be spent on Maul and/or Thrash. Unfortunately, now that Savage Defense procs have been removed from bleed ticks, there's no mechanical advantage to Thrashing on a single target, but eh. It's something to do.
- If you're AoE tanking, Swipe and Thrash on cooldown. Tab-target around the pull to ensure that threat is distributed evenly.
Rawr will be very helpful for gem choices, but you really can't go wrong with agility, stamina, dodge, or mastery. Gem for socket bonuses granting either of the three.
- Austere Shadowspirit Diamond The Cataclysm stamina/armor meta gem. Satisfying the yellow gem requirement should be fairly simple with one of the orange gems listed below.
- Polished Ember Topaz A tailor-made bear gem and great all-purpose choice.
- Shifting Demonseye Another good, all-purpose bear gem.
- Delicate Inferno Ruby Pure agility if you're not concerned about your health.
- Solid Ocean Sapphire Pure stamina if your other stats are fine but you're worried about your health.
- Puissant Dream Emerald A very useful gem that can be slotted into blue or yellow slots if you're interested in a socket bonus.
- Adept Ember Topaz Another very useful gem for yellow sockets.
Glyphs are a pretty easy call because there are only three prime glyphs that have any effect on us at all, and the selection of major glyphs is pretty uninspiring.
- Prime Glyph of Lacerate, Glyph of Mangle, and Glyph of Berserk
- Major Glyph of Maul is mandatory for multi-mob tanking. After that, Glyph of Faerie Fire and Glyph of Feral Charge will make your life easier but aren't really game-changers. Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration is very useful in raids, but the penalty is less inspiring in 5-man content. Glyph of Rebirth should be considered necessary for raid purposes; with combat resurrections limited, you can't waste one on a player who might die right after the Rebirth.
- Minor Glyph of Challenging Roar is helpful. Otherwise, there are no minor glyphs that have any direct effect on bears. Most feral players traditionally use Glyph of Dash. Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth will save you money on reagents.
Enchant choices are a little less straightforward than they've often been in the past; you'll often get a choice between more effective health and more balanced stats. Again, Rawr is helpful here, as is a little common sense concerning the nature of the content you're doing.
- Helm Arcanum of the Earthen Ring (requires Earthen Ring revered)
- Shoulders Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz (requires Therazane exalted)
- Cloak Enchant Cloak - Protection or Enchant Cloak - Major Agility. I tend to favor the former.
- Chest Enchant Chest - Greater Stamina or Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats
- Bracers Enchant Bracer - Agility will be the best choice in patch 4.0.6. For the time being, your choices are Enchant Bracers - Dodge or Enchant Bracers - Major Stamina.
- Gloves You'll have several choices here: Glove Reinforcements, Heavy Savage Armor Kit, Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery, Enchant Gloves - Major Agility
- Belt Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
- Legs Charscale Leg Armor
- Boots Earthen Vitality or Assassin's Step
- Weapon Enchant 2H Weapon - Mighty Agility or (if you can afford it) Windwalk
What race should you choose for your druid? What happened to Tree of Life? How can you get started as a bear or cat in Cataclysm? Shifting Perspectives has the answers!Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
saxamaphone Jan 18th 2011 7:17PM
"and a raid healing buff (Improved Leader of the Pack)."
Sadly, they removed this.
Allison Robert Jan 18th 2011 7:30PM
You're right -- that was a brain fart of epic proportions on my end. Fixed, and thanks!
Crispn Jan 18th 2011 7:17PM
Finally a new enchant, Mongoose was used waaaay to long
gewalt Jan 19th 2011 4:04PM
speaking of enchants, why are maelstrom crystal enchants listed on a 101 guide when most realms have the cost of said crystals at 1-2k gold each? Thats not very 101'sh.
DjLionheart Jan 18th 2011 7:28PM
Question for you Allison
Since I'm very lazy and hate updating bookmarks, could you make it so the old 101 post automatically links to this new one? I would love you forever, even though I already do just for writing this post.
Go Bears!!!(Not the Chicago ones, unless they bring back the super bowl shuffle)
Allison Robert Jan 18th 2011 7:33PM
No problem. Actually, I'd intended to do that and it must have slipped my mind this week. I'll take care of that now, and thanks for the reminder!
Manadar Jan 18th 2011 7:29PM
Imp. LotP only gives the feral the healing proc I think.
I like the spec more now then in WotLK, but I wish mastery was a bit closer to dodge. I understand that it's a hard stat to balance tho.
Scunosi Jan 18th 2011 7:43PM
I'm curious about the Foot and Wep enchants. If you use Windwalker I'm assuming when the speed boost procs it wouldn't stack with the Boot ench? Though as a tank you're not really using it for that anyway I understand, just curious.
Also above you listed four stats to gem for, then said to gem for those "three" for socket bonuses. Is one never given as a socket bonus or is there a typo here?
Allison Robert Jan 18th 2011 7:59PM
The Windwalker proc does in fact stack with the boot enchant, or at least it did as of the last information I saw on it. In practice, it can be quite useful, though obviously a bit too RNG-riddled to depend on for fight mechanics. Bears in need of a sudden speed boost are better off blowing Stampeding Roar or (if feasible) just switching to cat form.
Dodge is functionally impossible to get as a socket bonus if you're a bear tank due to the nature of the gear we're after. You'll never find it as a secondary stat or socket bonus on agility pieces, so you can't really gem for a bonus unless you're wearing what's likely a plate tank-oriented piece ... which we generally don't want except as a last resort. So while the stat itself is quite good for us and you'll want to reforge to it for the forseeable future, it doesn't actually show up on our gear. So that's why you'll want to look for agility, stamina, or mastery socket bonuses instead.
Necromann Jan 18th 2011 7:45PM
Which day of the week is the cat section coming?
Lissanna Jan 18th 2011 7:57PM
Is "soon" a day of the week? lol
Allison Robert Jan 18th 2011 8:04PM
When Dan O'Halloran and I talked about it back in December, I think he was planning to run it on Saturday or Sunday.
Sean Jan 18th 2011 7:47PM
It really is sad that Feral tanking is so down in the dumps these days. I'd like to give it another try (haven't since before ICC came out) but not if there's no reliable way to keep AoE threat.
Lissanna Jan 18th 2011 7:58PM
We put our guild's feral tank on single-target tanking in raids, which seems to work out fine. It's just hard to get new bears to level up and make it through 5-man dungeons.
Gossamer Jan 18th 2011 8:01PM
I feel the same way. I like tanking, but as I'm normally a DPS and find tanking very, very different from playing my hunter, I'm finding the reports of the state of Druid tanking to be very discouraging. I hope things start looking up.
Herculis Jan 18th 2011 9:00PM
This is exactly my issue. The plate-wearing tanks all seem to be better at aoe tanking than druids. Does it get easier when you re-learn to basically tab-sunder like in vanilla? Are there any tips for aoe tanking specifically, besides to hit swipe and thrash on cooldown?
My bear is my 4th tank, I already have one of each of the other tanking classes, but I'm still moving through the 70's with it and feel very unsure about tanking with him compared to any of the other's primarily due to the difficulty in keeping aggro on 3 or 4 trash mobs at once. I'm hoping once I hit level 81 and get thrash it'll get easier, but I'm not convinced. Whatever happened to getting rid of tanking niches anyway, I thought all tanks were supposed to be able to handle similar circumstances?
Herculis Jan 18th 2011 9:07PM
Another quick question: Does lacerate actually have a threat bonus as it describes in the tooltip, and if so, does that matter? I know we're supposed to keep it stacked to 3, but was curious about the threat bonus text.
Sal Jan 18th 2011 9:14PM
Lacerate does have extra threat it seems. At least it spikes you on Omen when you use it.
As for a lot of people's concerns, I haven't been having a problem. I'm an 85 bear tank raiding ten man content at the moment. For single target threat my pally counterpart cannot hold from me, and with multi-targets, swipe, thrash, and tab through some lacerates and mangles and I'm usually good to go.
Sal Jan 18th 2011 9:27PM
@Herculis
Yes, tab sunder tanking is it on target. I had to get used to doing this again when they made the changes at the end of Wrath (stuck at 80 with no thrash possible).
I tab through all my targets. It adds great threat with lacerate, plus the added bonus of more Berserked mangle procs. And of course, once per three minutes berserk is off cooldown and then aoe threat comes without an effort at all.
Herculis Jan 18th 2011 9:29PM
So do you try to keep at least one lacerate stack on each mob in a group pull then? Or what is a good rule of thumb to use?