Feral Druid Tank Guide 3.3.5
Feral Druid Tank Guide 3.3.5
With no Feral tank guide currently being up with working links to talent specs (that i saw), I wanted to post a guide mainly focusing on talents. This guide is a work in progress and i will add to it as well as make it more aesthetically pleasing in the future.
I. Why tank as a druid:
A. Pros:
1. Huge health bars. Usually whats thought of to healers when they first see they are healing a feral tank.
2. Survival of the Fittest allows us to be uncrittable through talents. Unlike other tank classes who must build 540 defense to become uncrittable we can do so in any gear allowing us to focus on other stats.
3. Great cooldowns 2 of which have only 1 minute cooldowns: Barkskin - reduces damage taken by 20% (1 minute cooldown), Survival Instincts - Grants us 30% of our maximum health (45% if glyphed) (3 minute cooldown), Enrage - Decreases alldamage taken by 12% if we have 4 piece t-10 bonus (1 minute cooldown), Frenzied Regenration - Converts up to 10 rage per second into health over 10 seconds, each point of rage giving us 0.3% of our maximum health (3 minute cooldown). If glyphed Frenzied regeneration also grants us 20% increased healing received.
4. Rebirth + Innervate: Each requires us to break bear form but if an off-tank takes aggro these spells can be game changning.
5. Easy to switch between tank and dps gear as they are the same except for offpieces.
B. Cons:
1. Dodge is our only means of avoidance. With the 20% reduced chance to dodge in ICC this means we take damage quite often and need extra armor and health to make upfor this.
2. No magic damage mitigation. Outside of protector of the pack we are getting hit full blast by magic damage.
II. Talent Spec:
First of all there is currently a bug where bosses are immune to attack speed slowing debuffs including being immune to our infected wounds so this talent is useless to us. For this reason I have skipped over infected wounds in all of the talent specs.
http://forum.molten-wow.com/bugtraq....w&vbug_id=1187
Talents explained:
Feral Combat:
Tier 1:
> Ferocity: Reduces rage cost of our Maul, Swipe, and Mangle each by 5. No reason not to pick this up, reducing all of our damaging attacks we should be usingby 5 rage except for lacerate helps with rage management ridiculously.
> Feral Agression: Increases the attack power reduction of our Demoralizing Roar by 40%. Not terrible but almost always skipped over inplace of much better talents.
Tier 2:
> Feral Instincts: Increases the damage of our swipe by 30%. Must have for any AoE tanking and also great to have when main tanking raid bosses as we should be using swipe when Mangle is on cooldown and we have a comfortable amount of rage.
> Savage Fury: Increases the Damage of our Mangle and Maul by 20%. Increases the damage of our two single biggest attacks by 20% no reason not to take.
> Thick Hide: Increases armor contribution from cloth and leather items by 10%. Must have as a tank increasing our Effective Health. Armor is really underappreciated here on molten
Tier 3:
> Feral Swiftness: Increases our dodge by 4%. Dodge being our only means of avoidance, we should pick up dodge any chance we get.
> Survival Instincts: Grants us 30% of our maximum (45% when glyphed) health for 20 seconds. A must have as one of our big defensive cool downs.
> Sharpened Claws: Increases our critical strike chance by 6%. Also pre-requisite for Primal Fury and Primal Precision.
Tier 4:
> Shredding Attacks: Reduces the rage cost of our Lacerate by 2. Now this talent helps at the beggining of fights when we are stacking our lacerate to 5 stacks but after that point, unless our Lacerate falls off for some reason, we are only saving 2 rage every 14 or so seconds. More useful when we first ding 80 doing heroics, farms, etc. this talent falls off a bit when we begin raiding and usually have more than enough rage to throw around.
> Predatory Strikes: Increases our attack power by 150% of our level (120 attack power) and 20% of any attack power on our equipped weapon. Also pre-requisite for Heart of the Wild. Must have as we need Heart of the Wild but also a huge attack power buff.
> Primal Fury: Gain 5 rage anytime we land a critical strike. Being in essentialy dps gear we have a huge critical strinke chance and in turn gain this extra 5 rage quite a bit throughout a fight.
> Primal Precision: Increases our expertise by 10. Great increase to our threat and becomes more viable than other talents as a late pickup as we progress in the game.
Tier 5:
> Brutal Impact:Increases the stune duration onour Bash by 1 seconds and decreases its cooldown by 30 seconds. Decent for some some heroics this talent should most likely be skipped over.
> Feral Charge: Unlike a warriors charge ours actually costs mana so not used at the beginning of a fight to gain rage. Still a great move to get to our targets before the rest of our group and provides great mobility.
> Nurturing Instinct: Nothing usefull for us as tanks.
Tier 6:
> Natural Reaction: Increases our dodge by 6% and we regenrate 3 rage everytime we dodge an attack. Must have as we need the dodge and the extra 3 rage throughout fights comes in handy.
> Heart of the Wild: Increases our stamina by 10%. As bear tanks the main reason we are chosen to tank is our huge health bars. No reason not to take this talent.
> Survival of the Fittest: Increases all attributes by 6%, reduces chance to be critically hit by melee attacks by 6%, and increases our armor contribution from cloth and leather items by 33%. Most important talent for us. Makes us uncrittable not needing and defense rating or resilience to do so. Huge armor boost and a 6% increase to all attributes. Would be a must have if it gave us just 1 of these 3 talents let alone all 3 of them.
Tier 7:
> Leader of the Pack: Increases ranged and melee critical hit chance by 5% to entire raid or party. Also pre-requisite to Improved Leader of the Pack, Protector of the Pack, and Mangle. Must have as it provides a great raidwide buff and leads to other must have talents.
> Improved Leader of the Pack: Causes those affected by our Leader of the Pack to also heal themselves for 4% of their total health whenever they land a critical strike on a 6 second cooldown. Another good raidwide buff though not necessarily a must have.
> Primal Tenacity: Reduces the duration of all fear effects by 30%. Shouldnt be getting feared to often so normaly skipped over.
Tier 8:
> Protector of the Pack: Increases attack power by 6% and reduces damage taken by 12%. Must have as it reduces all damage taken by 12% which is also the only damage mititgation we receive as bear tanks from magic damage.
> Predatory Instincts: Does not reduce our AoE damage taken by 30% in bear form just in cat form so completely useless to us.
> Infected Wounds: Currently bugged as stated above.
Tier 9:
> King of the Jungle: Increases our damge by 15% when using our enrage. Now this can be picked up before we get our 4 piece t-10 however it is strongly discourageed as we do not want to lose 16% of our armor in favor of a 15% damage buff. However once we do gain our 4 piece t-10 this talents becomes extremely valuable as we should already be using enrage to mitigate damage this talent will then add on top of that a huge boost to our threat.
> Mangle: Must have talent. Generates huge threat and also increases the damage done by our lacerate.
> Improved Mangle: Reduces the cooldown on our Mangle by 1.5 seconds. Good for snap aggro but not a must have.
Tier 10:
> Rend and Tear: Increases the damage done by our Maul on bleeding targets by 20%. Huge damge increase to one of our biggest threat generators.
> Primal Gore: Allows the periodic damage from our Lacerate the ability to critically hit. Only taking up 1 talent point there is no reason to skip this over.
Tier 11:
> Berserk: When activated allows our Mangle to hit up to 3 targets and have no cooldown. Great for AoE tanking and when used in conjunction with our Enrage generates huge amounts of threat.
Restoration:
Tier 1:
> Improved Mark of the Wild: Increases the effect of our Mark of the Wild and Gift of the Wild by 40%, and Increases our total attributes by 2%. Increases the effectiveness of our raidwide buff and also raises our total attributes. A good pick up especially compared to our other option of where we can put the points.
> Furor: Gives us a 20% chance (per talent point) to gain 10 rage when we shapeshift into bear form. Not much use to us however requires 3 talent points to be put into it to get to the 2nd tier.
Tier 2:
> Naturalist: Increases the damage we deal with physical attacks by 10%. Great pickup and a must have. Want to pick this up before we get Natural Shapeshifter and Master Shapeshifter.
> Natural Shapeshifter: Reduces the mana cost of all shapeshifting spells by 30%. Not much use unless we are killed in a fight and revived with low mana in which case can help us shift to bear form faster. Only really specced into to make our way to Master Shapeshifter.
Tier 3:
> Omen of Clarity: Picked up in almost all druid specs. Each of our damage and auto attacks have a chance to to reduce the cost of our next spell by 100%. Good pickup for 1 point however not a must have.
> Master Shapeshifter: Increases our physical damage by 4%. Essentially takes up 5 talent points for this 4% physical damage buff so not a must have.
Specs:
Just dinged 80 spec:
http://rpgworld.altervista.org/335/d...00000000000000
Skips over Primal Precision and King of the Jungle in favor of Master Shapeshifter. Picks up Shredding attacks for Lacerate stacking in those heroic boss fights.
Ready to start raiding spec:
http://rpgworld.altervista.org/335/d...00000000000000
Same as the just dinged 80 spec but switches Shredding attacks for Primal Precision. In raid atmospher we should have no trouble with our rage when stacking our first 5 Lacerates and the extra 10 expertise really outshines the rage we will save from casting lacerate once every 14 seconds after that point.
4 piece t-10 spec:
http://rpgworld.altervista.org/335/d...00000000000000
Now that Enrage becomes a staple in our tanking, King of the Jungle becomes a talent we should pick up. Here we drop the points from Master Shapeshifter to fill King of the Jungle and put the leftover 2 points into Shredding Attacks.
Alternative 4piece t-10 specs:
http://rpgworld.altervista.org/335/d...00000000000000
Still pick up King of the Jungle but in this spec we opt to take the points out of Improved Mangle so that we can keep the 4% physical damage from Master Shapeshifter and don't have to dump a leftover 2 points into shredding attacks.
My end game preferred spec:
http://rpgworld.altervista.org/335/d...00000000000000
In an attempt to keep King of the Jungle, Improved Mangle, and Master Shapeshifter we can take the 2 points out of improved Leader of the Pack or Primal Precision and 1 point from Omen of Clarity. If you still want Omen of Clarity however feel free to take 1 point from whatever talent you kept: Primal Precision, Improved Leader of the Pack, or Improved Mangle
My end game preferred spec should they ever fix Infected Wounds:
http://rpgworld.altervista.org/335/d...00000000000000
III. Glyphs:
Major Glyphs:
Recommended Major Glyphs:
* These 3 glyphs are recommended if threat is no problem and help you to get through those huge damage moments that could cause your death.
1. Frenzied Regeneration - Increases healing received by 20% while Frenzied Regeneration is active. Turns a decent self heal into a major defensive cooldown great in situations like air phase on BQL.
2. Growl - Increase the chance of of growl to work by 8%. The spell hit cap is much higher than the melee hit cap and for that reason our growl has a chance to miss, this glyph reduces that chance. A missed taunt can result in a wipe if it comes at the wrong time.
3. Survival Instincts - Gain an additional 15% of your health when you use Survival Intincts.
Other Major Glyphs:
1. Maul - Maul ability now hits one additional target. Great if AoE threat is a problem, used in conjunction with swipe this will help you to keep aggro on multiple mobs. Only other glyph I would really consider using.
2. Mangle - Increases damage of you Mangle by 10%. Helps increase threat on single target fights mainly but can also help on AoE fights when using Berserk.
3. Bersek - Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 seconds. Once again can help with threat in both single target and AoE situations.
Minor Glyphs:
Recommended Minor Glyphs:
* Challenging Roar is the only must have glyph and the others are up to personal preference.
1. Challenging Roar - Reduces the cooldown of our Challenging Roar by 30 seconds. A 30 second reduction on a 3 minute taunt may not seem that crucial, but as it is only a minor glyph it is definitely a must have.
2. Thorns - Increases duration of Thorns by 50 minutes when cast on ourselves.
Other Minor Glyphs:
1. Unending Rebirth - No longer need reagants to cast Rebirth. Anything to free up bag space is a must have for me but may not necessarily matter to you.
2. Wild - Reduces mana cost of Gift of the Wild and Mark of the Wild. Just saves a bit of mana.
3. Dash - Reduces cooldown of Dash by 20%. Shouldnt use dash much as a tank. Already have good mobility with Feral Charge and should have Tuskar's Vitality on feet, switching to Cat Form just to use dash can result in some trouble if messed up.
Once again, this guide is a work in progress.