October 2023 update:
Spoiler:Show So warmane has officially ended it's frostmourne seasonal servers and as of this update, is awaiting the launch of their new Onyxia server for Vanilla-TBC-WotLK. I will not be rewriting the guide to cover anything other than 3.3.5 WotLK.
Also, since this guide's last major revision in 2016, it has now become important for me to acknowledge that warmane has seen a shift in meta away from Bear Maintanks towards Blood-DK Maintanks. So why has this meta shift occurred?
Warmane (and Molten WoW) are known as Vanilla-Like servers. As such, much of the warmane playerbase follows in the footsteps of the theorycrafting, knowledge and calculations from retail-wow in 2008~2010 and the modernized version, "ClassicWoW". This included the habit of running a default setup of a Bear (as main tank) and a Prot Paladin (as Off-tank) during progression. Why does/did retail WoW do this?
Well simply because Bears can "steal" rogue and cat loot, and thus you can gear up 1 leather and 1 plate tank much faster than you could gear up 2 plate tanks. Bear's also have the best EHP scaling in WotLK, meaning they can get to 3-hit EHP range (3 major hits/mechanics before death) much quicker than other tanks; which is considered the "minimum" threshold to comfortably and consistantly tank encounters without needing a consistant Hpala to time a Holy Light 0.1s after each boss melee (Which is easily doable by monitoring boss's swing timer, but most healers do NOT do this, much less nail it consistantly EVERY time, and even rarer to do it without OOM'ing). And lastly, many fights didn't require 2 tanks for the entirety of the encounter; Meaning druids could shift into cat form for significant portions of the encounter and pull a very reasonable amount of DPS.
Meanwhile, Blood DK tanks of early progression days often linger at 2-hit-EHP range and this is how they garnered their reputation for dying in sub-1-second windows at very little fault of the tank or healer - especially with their lack of a block or savage defense mechanic to proactively absorb damage. They were also the most skill reliant tanking class and thus, with 2009era player skill levels, DK's also garnered a bad reputation amongst healers in the casual scene (especially with their lack of AoE threat in dungeons).
Other factors included the fact that Frost DK's and Enhancement shamans have been the main source of an important 20% melee haste buff; Whilst these specs were topping charts in Naxxramas and Ulduar in 2008 progression, they also scaled extremely poorly with gear and by the time 2009~2010 rolled around, or when other classes had gotten access to tier 9/Tier 10 gear; DK's & Shaman's plummetted to the bottom of DPS charts.
To make matters worse; Warmane has permanantly available catch-up dungeons, so players start level 80 with access to Tier-9 level gear from FoS/PoS/HoR extremely quickly meaning that DK's and Shaman's getting outscaled on warmane is a reality from day1 of hitting level 80.
Basically, all of this meaning that the 20% raidwide melee haste buff has become extremely rare in highly optimised raid rosters, and optimising raid compositions to include this buff is one of the major downsides of having a bear tank; DK tanks can easily spec to provide this, whilst bears cannot.
It has now been over 7 years of weekly resets and loot distribution since this guide's last major rewrite, and warmane has developed a guild culture of only allowing their veterans to tank raids("ONlY aN oFFicEr or GM iS ALloWeD tO tANk"); This therefore means guild raids always have access to an extremely overgeared bDK providing Improved Icy Talons to cover this raid buff with nearly none of the downsides of a lesser geared bDK being played poorly by a PuG or trial riader. Simultaneously there is no need to steal leather gear from rogues/cats to accelerate gearing up a main tank anymore, as a significant amount of characters are anywhere up to 8 years old which is plenty of time to have achieved BiS/Nearly-BiS gear. In addition, top guilds obssess over hyper optimising their raid compositions because there's simply no reason to recruit or bring along a lower-dps spec when you have 40 raiders online and you can take the higher performing specs (meaning Enh/fDK stay benched and aren't recruited); What's the most impactful however, is the trickle-down effect this has on the more casual and PuG community on warmane; Everyone is obssessed with imitating whatever they see the top guilds doing, often without understanding the reasons why.
The reality is that Frost DK's and Enhancement Shamans are still quite popularly played outside of the top guilds; This is especially true for the casual and PuG community, with many PuG groups ending up with one or numerous enh/fDK's. My theory is that many enh/fDK's are forced to PuG as guilds do not recruit for them; And thus, it's very likely optimal to run an adequately geared Bear versus that undergeared bDK you might get if PuG'ing. Especially since in PuGs there's a higher chance the bDK will misplay, have poor gear optimisation, and in some cases, they don't even have improved icy talons spec'ed.
But yet, all too often you still see PuG Raid Leaders asking exclusively for bDK tanks even with several Enh/fDK's in their raid comp, and end up trying to clear ICC with an undergeared bDK and wondering why they keep wiping or why the prot paladin ends up solo tanking with whilst permanatly on Ardent proc. It's a lack of game knowledge born out of trying to imitate top guilds; If you see your raid leader doing this, it's always worth trying to educate them, but the fact remains that Bear tanks may face a certain amount of stigma with joining PuGs because "tHAt'S nOT WHaT toP gUilDS rUn!!"
And ofcourse, it's not just PuGs that could benefit from bears; Not every guild on warmane is expected to have Best in Slot tanks available for every raid; In lower to mid-level progression guilds, the usual benefits of being able to gear up 2 tanks faster and bears having higher EHP and the usual reasons why Bears dominated during WotLK progression still completely apply for any guild masters looking to pilot a new progression roster through WotLK raid content.
This is also in part relevant to Lordaeron raiders who don't have the luxury of enjoying Icecrown's 30% buff in ICC; a Bear tank's higher EHP can offer some much needed EHP stability, and increased damage output to help meet shorter enrage timers. In very advanced rosters, on certain boss phases where only a single tank is required, the Offtank can taunt boss and allow the bear to go cat form to DPS, thus significantly surpassing the damage output of bDK's which are notorious for having the worst damage of an tank by far.
I am still pleased with how much of this 2016~2017 era guide remains up to date even through into late 2023. There have been some points that might need tweaking to be perfectly in line with a modern-day guild's meta expectations from a bear, but in general all information provided is true to retail, and thus remains true to warmane.
Most of the changes to Warmane WoW over the years have come in the form of backported addons and it's new community-made HD clients. Some notable changes and improvements to addons include; Kader's fork of Skada has taken over as the new top-performing damage and healing meter; Zidras's DBM version specifically for Warmane has made Raider's lives so much easier. Tidyplates has a new backport which is amazing. Elvui's UI suite is basically the best thing to have graced WoW since sliced bread. And finally, Weakaura's existance has completely revolutionised the way we're able to play the game.
On the to-do list for this guide;
-Update talents section to include Feral Aggression and King of the Jungle earlier in the gearing process and dissuade levellers from going hybrid talents too early.
-More emphasis on levelling builds to focus on getting 51 points in feral before spending hybrid points in other trees, as recent levellers I've seen love going hybrid and having self-gimped builds.
-Update Addons section specifically to include all the amazing new addon backports.
-Maybe get ChatGPT to finally clean up some of these 10 year old typos.
Welcome to Raenel's comprehensive Feral Tanking Guide!
Firstly, we should start with an introduction. Who am I?
Spoiler:Show
I'm an Australian player who started playing WoW in Retail Burning Crusade in 2007. In 2008, I joined and became a core raider with the Oceanic #1 guild <Tsunami>, grinding hard and elapsing a total of 8,000 hours, averaging approx 8 hours a day for 4 years in a brutal PvE grind with Australia's top raiding team, trying to prove Australian/OCE servers had what it took to compete with higher population realms such as NA/EU/Asia.
I quit Retail in late 2011 due to burn out and personal life commitments; Plus the expansions of those times simply weren't very good (Cata+MoP). However, probably due to stockholm syndrome, despite having a full time job, I looked for a more "casual" WoW experience; Thus I found and Molten-WoW in 2013 where I have been a part of the community ever since.
My notable PvE accomplishments throughout Retail and Warmane include
Retail Burning Crusade;
Kil'jaeden - World 19th - Oceanic 1st
Retail Wrath of the Lich King;
10 man Tribute to insanity - World 3rd - US 1st - Oceanic 1st
25 man Tribute to insanity - World 30th - US 12th - Oceanic 1st
25 man Lich King Heroic - World 23rd - US 9th - Oceanic 2nd WoWProgress
Warmane-WoW New-Core, re-scripted ICC bosses
25 man Lich King Heroic - Icecrown Realm 2nd - Horde 1st Royal Bloodline Progression
Raenel's Comprehensive Feral Tanking Guide 3.3.5a
Please do not reproduce or plagiarise any part of this guide outside of the Warmane Forums!
http://i.imgur.com/XdIca1B.jpg
Not enough HP!
http://i.imgur.com/bffIzOY.jpg
MORE HP!This picture is from the old core on Ragnaros Server, back when buffs stacked incorrectly. A typical BiS bear has closer to around about 95k HP in ICC with full buffs
00.Contents
01. An Introduction to Druids and why you should play as a Bear
02. Talents, Glyphs, Enchants, Professions and Consumables
03. Single Target Rotation, AoE Rotation, and Abilities
04. Why we execute our rotation the way we do and how to trouble low threat
05. Your objectives and some responsibilities as a tank
06. Why EHP and not Avoidance in raids?
07. Items and Stats
08. Best in Slot Gear List
09. Macros
10. Addons
11. Tips and Tricks
01. An Introduction to Druids and why you should play as a Bear
Spoiler:Show
The Druid is a shapeshifting class with the most diverse amount of roles in World of Warcraft. Although there are a few other classes with have 3 specs that each cover DPS, Healing and Tanking; The druid is the only class whose talent trees cover FOUR different roles.
Restoration Healing in Tree form
http://i.imgur.com/lO80VPo.jpg
Balance Spec for Ranged DPS
http://i.imgur.com/4wHD0e9.jpg
Feral DPS spec to melee DPS with Cat Form
http://i.imgur.com/hURnvyj.jpg
And most importantly, Feral tanking with the awesome Dire Bear Form
http://i.imgur.com/JTuqp9u.jpg
This gives us access to a large variety of utilities. Even though we might not be talent spec'ed for specific roles, we still have access to all of the best spells in each spellbook
Restoration Abilities
http://i.imgur.com/0DB7igf.jpg
Tranquility Tranquillity is a powerful AoE-Heal that affects your whole party, healing for over 10k HP each even with 0 Spell Power
Innervate Innervate restores 7866 mana to ANY targetted player
Rebirth Rebirth is a resurrect spell that can be used IN COMBAT! It's a literal lifeline that has saved countless wipes
Balance Abilities
http://i.imgur.com/7KrTgQ5.jpg
Cyclone A crowd control ability that can protect a mind-controlled ally from harm, or take a dangerous enemy temporary out of the equation
Nature's GraspA crowd control ability that makes any target that attacks you stay rooted. As a tank, this is especially useful to kite dangerous melee attacks.
Barkskin A defensive ability that reduces your damage intake and provides spell pushback immunity. Great when used with spells like Tranquillity or Rebirth during combat to avoid casting delays, and helping to keep you safe when you leave Bear Form
Feral AbilitiesThe feral tree is the secret behind how druids are able to specialize into 4 roles. This talent tree improves both Melee DPS characteristics of the Cat Form, but also bolsters the Tanking abilities of the Bear Form. There is a major overlap of talents for both builds, which allows a Bear to pull decent DPS in a pinch, and allows a cat to become a decent offtank in case of an emergency.
http://i.imgur.com/RRSZv4W.jpg
Dire Bear form is the poster child of Feral Tanking. Besides from being the iconic image of druid tanking, the intrinsic workings to Bear Form is responsible for many of a Feral tank's greatest advantages.
Because druids are only allowed to equip Leather DPS armor; Bear Form multiplies the Armor and Stamina we gain from items. Given the comparatively lower stamina and armor found on rogue gear, this seems fair... After all, the shape-shift has to transform a fragile DPS character into a sturdy Tank.
However, this multiplier for Armor and Stamina is EXTREMELY high. Perhaps it was intended to give compensation for the fact that bears don't have a shield equipped, or that bears can't Parry. Regardless, Bear tanks undoubtedly end up with the LARGEST amount of HP in the game, by a VERY large margin. And therein lies the Druid's greatest advantage; Effective Health. Get used to hearing that term, because we'll be going over it in depth multiple times in this guide. This Effective Health, aka EHP, more than makes up for the fact bears cannot Parry or block attacks but makes Bears by far the most consistant tanks in the game.
An unintended side effect of Bear Form's multiplier is that it exaggerates any improvements in our gear; Much more than any other class in the game. If you gain a 20 stamina upgrade on Bear, that's the equivalent of a warrior or paladin gaining 30 stamina!
This VERY quickly adds up over time, and makes gearing up a Bear Tank an extraordinarily satisfying experience. Over the course of weeks or months spent working on your Bear's gear, you can very rapidly transform from a 20k health cubling into a ferocious 100k health monster tanking Icecrown Citadel. The journey of gearing a Bear tank is extraordinarily rewarding, beyond any other class in the game.
So just how OP is this Stamina "Multiplier" for Bears vs other Tanks?
Each 100 Stam on gear gives us:
Bear form alone: 1490 HP
Bear+ Kings: 1630 HP
Bear + Kings + ICC - 2130 HP
~~100 Stam comparison~~
Unbuffed Prot Warrior : 1090 HP
Unbuffed Prot Paladin: 1090 HP
Unbuffed Blood DK: 1130 HP
So, due to scaling reasons, Bears outgrow and quickly become superior tanks compared to other classes. But how about in the early game? Bears actually start off with a HUGE headstart, for a couple of very big advantages effectively immediately upon hitting level 70.
Firstly, Defense Cap: The first rule of tanking in WoW is that you MUST be defense capped before you attempt to tank anything. Being Defense capped means the immunity from receiving a critical hit from enemy monsters. As you can imagine, a Tank's main job is to stay alive. Getting critically hit by enemies is a LETHAL burst of damage that can often 1 shot the tank, often catching healers by surprise. For this reason, Critical Immunity is by far the biggest priority for any tank.
Bears are AUTOMATICALLY critical-immunity right from day 1 thanks to the talent Survival of the Fittest. This is a huge blessing, as achieving Crit-immunity as a DK, Paladin, or Warrior often takes a very large gear investment early on before those classes are able to effectively tank even the easiest of dungeons.
The second reason why Bears do well in the early game is that Bears can easily shapeshift into Cat-Form and pull a respectable amount of DPS even with a tanking-setup equipped. If you're interested in Cat DPS, check out the mini-guide that I posted in the first reply to the thread below. Tanking is a very important job, and for this reason, groups will often be very reluctant to let a new, or undergeared tank join the party. Bears are able to avoid this problem by simply temporarily switching to cat form, without needing to invest in costly talent changes or investing in a whole different set of gear. Remember, 90% of a bear's gear is Leather Agility gear; Perfect for DPSing! This means that even if your endgame goal is to gear up as a bear, you can start off by using Cat form and joining groups as a DPS, and rolling on tank gear from the very start.
The fact that Bears use Agility gear also provides many advantages, even for a tank.
Firstly, Agility provides 2 Armor per point. Armor is EXTREMELY valuable for tanks, and scales very well with High HP. This is one of the reasons why Bears have such good Effective HP compared to all other tanks, as Bears are the only class in the game to wear Agility gear.
Secondly, Agility provides a VERY high amount of dodge chance. In fact, for bears 1 single point of Agility provides more dodge chance than 1 point of Dodge Rating, whilst also providing other benefits too.
Thirdly, Agility provides Critical Hit chance, which works well in combination with Savage Defense] to reduce our overall damage intake, as well as helping us deal more damage and helping us maintain aggro.
Savage Defense is essentially a bear's form of shield block; Except it's much better suited for absorbing HIGH amounts of damage from slow attacks, further making Bears perfect Boss-Tanks.
Whereas Shield Block works on a fixed chance to block a SMALL amount of damage per received attack, more often, Savage Defense focusses on preventing LARGER amount of damage less often. The TL;DR of the story is Shield-block works best for rapid, small attacks such as Trash Mobs, and Savage Defense is superior for hard hitting, slow-attacks such as bosses.
There are 3 Forms of Class-Mitigation in WoW;
Paladins and Warriors have Shield Block as their main form of mitigation
Bears have Savage Defense as their main form of mitigation
Death Knights have neither of the above, and instead have Self-Heals, which is a unique, but very flawed form of mitigation.
The best way to compare these is with some examples
Example Time!
Spoiler:Show Let's compare Shield Block vs Savage Defense vs Self-Healing, to demonstrate why Druids are such good Boss-Tanks. We're trying to keep things simple, so lets ignore other factors such as Parry or Dodge chance.
We'll use 3 subjects. A Shield-Tank to represent Paladins and Warriors, A Savage-Defense Tank to represent Druids, and the Self-Healing Tank to represent DK's.
They all have exactly 50,000 HP. If they lose this much HP, we'll say they died and caused a raid wipe. This is pretty realistic because when a Main Tank dies, it's usually pretty hard for a raid to recover. And as stated earlier, to keep things simple they have 0% chance to dodge, parry or anything else. We're just focusing on the Shield block, Savage Defense procs, and self healing.
The only differences are:
1)Shield Tank has 50% chance to block an attack, and each block absorbs 500 damage from the attack.
2)The Savage Defense Tank will absorb 2500 damage from a single attack every 2-3 seconds.
3)Self Healing tank.... Well, no matter what he heals for these examples will make him look bad as we'll see soon.
These numbers are fairly realistic for an endgame ICC-level geared tank.
First Scenario: Each of the Tanks receives 50 simultaneous attacks dealing 1,000 damage each, totalling 50,000 total damage. This represents a very exaggerated form of Trash tanking. Let's see how the tanks perform.
1)The Shield Tank blocks 25(aka half) of the attacks for 500 damage each, absorbing 12,500 and only taking 37.5k damage. Survives with 12.5k Hp.
2)The Savage Defense Tank absorbs 1 attack, fully blocking 1,000 damage from a single attack. They take 49 attacks for 1,000 damage and barely survives with 1k hp left.
3)The Self Healing tank receives all 50 attacks and intended to self heal afterwards. The 50 attacks deal a total of 50,000 damage and the tank dies immediately and had no chance to heal himself
Second Scenario: Each of the Tanks Receives a SINGLE attack that deals 50,000 Damage, once every 3 seconds. This emulates an exagerated and simplified version of Boss Tanking, with a single extremely strong enemy.
Lets see how the tanks perform.
1)The Shield Tank blocks 500 damage ONLY when he gets lucky with his 50% chance to block, and would survive with 500 hp left after each successful block. However, once he fails to block an attack, he would receive the full 50,000 damage and die. On average, he would die on the 2nd attack.
2)The Savage Defense Tank absorbs 2500 damage from every attack consistently, receiving 47.5k damage from each attack meaning he survives with 2,500 HP remaining after every attack.
3)Self Healing tank receives the 50k damage and dies instantly with no chance to heal afterwards.
So in conclusion, we can use the above results to determine that:
1) Shield Tanks, aka Warriors and Paladins, are good at tanking situations where they receive many, rapid attacks such as trash fights, or fights with alot of adds, and are quite consistent in many scenarios, hence why they are considered versatile tanks.
2) Savage Defense Tanks, aka Bears, are extremely good at tanking Slow-striking, powerful enemies such as Bosses, and one of the contributing factors for their dominance as Main Tanks during progression.
3) Self-Healing tanks, aka Death Knights, are good at neither of the above, but receive compensation with their higher Parry chance, large amounts of defensive cooldowns and the ability to self-heal; However, it's important to realise how much more dangerous turning your back to a boss (and losing dodge/parry chance) is as a DK. In current meta, a DK needs substantially higher gear than a Paladin or Bear tank to consistantly tank raids, which is fine due to the age of the server. On top of this, DK's bring a highly sought-after 20% Melee haste buff, and these are all considerations for Blood DK's popularity as a main tank.
As covered later in my EHP vs Avoidance section, in the next expansion after WotLK, Cataclysm, Blizzard openly admits this was class design error, and DK abilities were redesigned to provide absorbs instead of self-heals, making them quite similar to Bear tanks from patch 4.0.1 onwards; As a big absorb tank just with slightly different proc mechanics to Savage defense; The end result was both bDK's and Bears had high EHP and good, reliable boss absorbs.
I'VE SEEN THIS BEING MISQUOTED WAY TOO OFTEN. PLEASE REMEMBER THIS ONLY DEMONSTRATES THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE 3 MAIN MITIGATION MECHANICS;
Shield block vs Savage Defense vs Self healing.
The 4 tanking classes are much more complex to compare than this trait alone, though this is undoubtedly a big part of their nature. Also, I obviously didn't mention more nuanced things like block cap tanking, crit blocks on warrior or well timed selfheals on DK.
TL;DR The takeaway is that Bears are uniquely positioned as a strong Boss-Tank in WotLK with a unique ability to pull very decent DPS in catform when they don't have boss aggro.
So why should you pick a Bear tank?
The journey of gearing up a Bear tank is like none other in the game. Due the the insanely high multipliers and stat-scaling, although every levle 80 tank starts their journey with 20k hp in fresh greens, bears gain MORE from every upgrade, relative to other classes with the same level of upgrade, eventually growing into a tank with possibly over 90k+ HP passively inside ICC, a feat not achievable by ANY other tank.
For players new to tanking, and a very big reason for even veteran players, is the very simple rotation that bears use in combat. This offers a great introductory dip into the world of Tanking, offering a fun and stress-free way for players to gently adapt to the new responsibilities and tactics expected from a tank - Less time spent worrying about complex rotations, more time spent focusing on more important matters such as raid strategies.
This is also a great doorway into tanking; After rolling a few DPS classes, many players are often reluctant to tank quoting being "scared" that tanking is hard. Well, bear tanking rotation easily ranks amongst the top 5 easiest rotations in the game, even with the most nuanced bear rotation.
For experienced players, the wide range of Druid Raid Utilities gives you plenty of opportunity to exercise your advanced raid-strategies and situational awareness skills; pulling Innervates and Rebirths out of thin air to save your raid. The simple rotation allows advanced players to devote more attention to raid-members and boss mechanics, a trait extremely useful for Raid Leaders, and something I can attest to personally; Tanks are usually the best role to lead a raid from: The tank sees everything, everyone, and has more control over the raid than any other single person in the room; Even if you're not leading a raid, such observation lets you learn more about the game and boss fights than other classes where your attention would be otherwise distracted. If you've raid led a pug before, you understand how horrible it is when you /rw for a rebirth and there's no rebirths.
Druid Tanks have a storied and long history as main tanks; no other class has gone into the record books as being the Main Tank in almost EVERY retail-wow World First progression boss kill. At the end of the day, the job of a tank is to not die, and bears are number 1 at the most important attribute to consistently staying alive in WotLK: Effective HP. (Although, 2023 update: Warmane is an old server and any class with full BiS is overgeared enough to tank all content, sadly. But this still doesn't detract bears are the tankiest of tankybois. Namely DK's with their 20% melee speed buff)
And even if bear tanking doesn't quite agree with you, or if you get bored and wish to branch out (no pun intended) with an Off-Spec, the diversity of the druid class gives you 3 other choices for specs to play; caster dps, melee dps, and even healing. More options than any other class in the game. Worst comes to worst, druids also make the one of the best gathering profession class, stick on herbalism + mining, go Resto with some resillience spellpower gear and you're a gank-proof, instead flight form spamming, gathering machine with nasty CC/anti CC tricks for escaping (notably entangling roots/natures grasp and powershifting root/snare breaks/travel form spamming). You even have the ability to instantly-Natures Swiftness+Cycloning an enemy player so you can yoink a gathering node from right under them; And if they don't have a pvp trinket, it's free loot. And if someone tries to gank you, limitless self heals and you can out-escape all over classes in the game that don't massive outgear you.
02. Talents, Glyphs, Enchants, Professions and Consumables.
Spoiler:Show Recommended Talent Builds;Spoiler:Show
Some notes before we look at the buildsSpoiler:Show
Firstly; If you are low level, and planning to TANK DUNGEONS, you are advised to watch guides on where to go in dungeons first; A lost tank is extremely hard to play with, and tanks are the default "leaders" in a dungeon; The team follows you, since you need to attack enemies first or else your teammates either die or get stressed. Of course, other teammates could always attempt to tank instead of you, and this is common whilst levelling since people don't really care much, but you're also likely to get new healers and this could go very poorly if you're not careful.
Secondly, for LEVELLERs, >>SPEND ALL YOUR TALENTS INTO FERAL UNTIL LEVEL 60<<
It is important to understand that in WoW, you need to spend talents in the top/higher rows of a tree, to unlock talents in lower/bottom rows of a tree. AS A GENERAL RULE OF THUMB, THE LOWER DOWN THE TALENT IS, THE STRONGER THE TALENT. So unless you know what you are doing, you are highly encouraged to spend all talent points into a single tree until level 60 or later, where you unlock your "capstone" talent, and instead of following a talent tree blindly from top to bottom, it's highly likely that if you unlock a "new row" lower down on the talent tree, the lower rows probably have stronger talents in them. (Although in reality you should just read all the talents that are lit up/unlocked and decide which is strongest)
Omen of Clarity: >>DO NOT SKIP OMEN OF CLARITY IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT SKIPPING THIS TALENT DOES<<
This is the most common mistake I see new bears make. Probably dinging fresh-80, copying a random guildy or copying a random 6.5k gs Bear in Dalaran's build; But only the most endgame Raid-tanks, or at least, bears who know what they're doing, should be skipping this talent. For practically everyone else, this is an extremely important talent for you. If you are unsure WHY endgame Raid Tanks drop this talent, or if you're questioning if you're at the point where you can safely drop Omen of Clarity; It probably means you SHOULDN'T be skipping OoC.
This talent plays a pivotal part in breaking a very serious self-compounding issue with threat relating to how bears generate threat: To understand this issue, we need a little background information.
Here are the 2 main sources for Bears to generate Rage:
1) Receiving Damage from enemies; The more damage taken, the more Rage.
2) Using regular Auto-Attacks. Yet thanks to Maul, this should NEVER occur. See troubleshooting threat section for why, and how much threat this costs you. (MUCH more than you think)
As you can see there is realistically only ONE reliable source of Rage for bears; Taking damage, as maul replaces our Auto Attack completely. Maul singlehanded makes up over HALF of our total Threat Output on single target so we simply cannot skip mauls. And therein lies the vicious cycle that bears always face:
Bears only deal threat if they have enough Rage to spend. Gaining Rage requires getting hit, which requires having aggro. Therefore: losing aggro means bears also lose their only source of producing threat, making it nigh impossible to ever re-establish aggro without the use of utilities such as Growl or Challenging roar, which is why it's especially important for these to be spell-hit capped. But back to Omen of Clarity: The Free Attack granted from Omen of Clarity is an absolute lifesaver in these situations, and is especially important for Dungeon tanking and lower-tier content where bears may not be receiving enough damage from enemies to self-generate enough rage to be constantly attacking without downtime.
On top of that, Omen of Clarity is incredibly strong; if you're unfamiliar with how Omen of Clarity proc rates work, it's not a "proc rate" at all. Omen of Clarity proc chance dynamically scales to attack speed, with slower attacks having a higher chance to proc Omen of Clarity, in a concept that is misleadingly called "Procs per minute" or PPM for short. Omen's PPM rate is 3.5. As in, If all you did was auto attack for 1 minute straight, you would get, on average, 3.5 omen procs each minute no matter how fast your auto attacks were. So for Cat form with it's 1 second auto attack timer the math calculates to 3.5/(60/1) =0.5833 or 5.833% per auto attack to proc Omen. And EVERY cat build takes omen, because it's extremely strong. For bear, with it's 2.5 sec swing timer, the math works out to 3.5/(60/2.5) or 2.5*3.5/60=0.1458 or 14.58% chance per attack to proc omen of clarity.
Okay so, now you're thinking, oh but the % chance doesn't matter because bear auto attacks are slower than cat, you still always get 3.5 procs per minute. Right? Nope. WRONG. All attacks in bear form, are not normalized to PPM and thus, every skill and attack you cast, has a single, 14.58% chance of triggering omen of clarity, no matter the amount of targets hit. However, Omen of Clarity has had a long history of bugs and nerfs on Molten/Warmane, so it remains to be seen if this procrate will stay. It's important to note ClassicWoW-WotLK introduced new runes for Omen of Clarity and tweaked the Omen of Clarity proc chance, so many druid build and ClassicWoW-WotLK info/theorycrafting is not applicable to Warmane and how things worked in 2008~2010.
So basically, whilst you might be tempted to copy the talent build of that 6.5k GS bear with a fancy title you see AFK'ing in Dalaran; If you're not getting auto attacked by a heroic raid boss every couple of seconds or something that hits equally hard to give you practically infinite-rage, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT skip Omen of Clarity.
For example, an exception to this rule is ADVANCED tanks who know how to do massive chain-pulls in dungeons, tanking a high amount of enemies without wiping; Specifically for dungeon tanking, this often requires indepth dungeon knowledge to know how much damage intake certain packs provice, how much you can handle, good situationaly awareness of patrols and healer mana, and how how to line of sight properly to group up enemies and fast growl reaction times, and advanced movement mechanics to avoid get hit from behind whilst moving quickly forward in dungeons (although backpeddling is a beginner friendly way to start, side strafes when it won't kill you is advised) That's just the absolutely minimum required to skip omen of clarity, if even one of those things flew over your head, keep omen of clarity. It's only 1 talent point.
Improved Mangle - 0/3 or 3/3, ALL or NOTHING
Mangle's default Cooldown without talents is is 6 seconds, and the Global Cooldown trigerred after every ability you cast is 1.5 seconds long, and this CANNOT be shorted with haste rating.
This means that Mangle normally becomes usable every 4th Global Cooldown, that is, 1.5 -> 3.0 -> 4.5 -> 6.0, or every 4th button will be a mangle. at 6 seconds. However, since Improved mange cuts off 0.5 seconds per talent, a build with only 1 or 2 talents taken, will be left at 5.0 or 5.5 seconds, so only useable every 6 second or 4th after 4 full GCD's, hence the talent points are wasted.
As an additional note; This talent is situationally useful for the simplified cat rotation for shred-less cat rotation; However, for bear form this omplicates the rotation as your Mangle and Faerie Fire cooldowns become desynched; And actually doesn't offer too much of a threat increase given threat-senstive timings you use the Berserk cooldown which removes the cooldown entirely, and most of your threat generation comes from Mauls, so using Mangles won't contribute as much threat as most people probably expect. Overall, this is a decent, but relatively weak threat talent choice, more aimed at simplified cat rotations for beginner offtanks. If you plan to spend significant time in cat form, you should spec for.
Feral Aggression
Demoralizing Roar is one of the most underrated and underutilized skills by beginner tanks in WotLK.
Demoralizing Roar usually decreases Attack Power by 410. With this talent at 5/5, this number becomes a total of 574 Attack Power.
While this doesn't sound like much, PvE mobs have a relatively low amount of Attack power, and without delving too deep with the mathematics, the non-talented, not improved Demo Roar equates to approximates -10% damage dealt to all targets afflicted. With the Talent, this increases to over 14% less damage taken, or in other words, approx -1% damage taken per talent, give or take a bit. And remember, this is far stronger than merely 1% less damage received on YOURSELF; This is damage reduction on all damage the boss DEALS (at least, damage which doesn't count as a spell with no attack power modifier). So various raid-wide abilities may actually be weakened by this talent, and it still works if you aren't the active tank, or you lose aggro on a mob.
But before diving in and thinking that this talent is mandatory, it's important to consider who else is in your raid or party, as this debuff does not stack with others of the same effect.
Paladins USUALLY spend 2 points into [Vindication] which is a talent that can proc a debuff causing -574 Attack Power (the -14% damage improved version). If the paladin is wielding a fast weapon, Vidincation generaly has around a 85%~90% uptime on single target bosses (much less to nearly none on AoE pulls, however), although this will be lower if it's Ret paladin who is taking the talent. Not every Ret paladin will take this however, but almost ever Prot paladin will.
Protection Warriors also have the exact same ability called Demoralizing Shout, and it works exactly the same as the Bear version. Just like ours, their Shout starts at -410 AP, and they can spend 5 talents to increase this to -574 AP. However, due to the Prot Warrior talent tree's layout, Warriors often find it more awkward and difficult to find 5 spare points to pick up this talent, plus Warrior tanks are considered the worst tank in WotLK for various reasons and are relatively uncommon to find anyone playing; so it's safe to say you almost will never find a Prot warrior with the improved version of Demoralizing Shout in your raid.
And finally, just for thoroughness, its worth mentioning that warlocks also have a Curse of Weakness, and talents to Improve this from the usual 410 to 574, but they literally NEVER take this talent, and also they shouldn't ever be using Curse of Weakness anyway as this causes a massive DPS loss.
So in the end, Bears with Improved Demoralizing Roar have the most RELIABLE way to maintain this debuff on enemies, especially in an AoE situation. The only other source being Paladins who only keep this debuff up on single target, and best case scenario with 90% or usually less lower uptime. As a Bear in any raid content, upkeeping this debuff is your responsibility, although if you have multiple prot/ret paladins with it, it will likely be self sufficient for single target fights, but you still need to apply it for AoE/multi target fights.
TL;DR: Keeping Demoralizing Shout on enemies is usually the Bear's job, and spending 5 talent points to do so is quite beneficial, especially in raid content. For Dungeon content, the reduced damage dealt debuff on enemies can actually sometimes cause rage starvation issues, especially as dungeons are easy enough for healers to heal unless you plan to consistantly chain-pull huge amounts of enemies each dungeon.
Master Shapeshifter/Natural Shapeshifter, VERY INEFFICIENT: Take Naturalist instead if not taken already In the 2nd tier of Restoration, these talents requires a total investment of 5 Talent points to reach, including 3 points in a completely useless precursor, giving 4% damage boost in total. Considering that within the same tree, on the same tier directly next to this talent, [Naturalist] provides 2% damage per talent, Naturalist is just a simply far superior choice. If you already have Naturalist 5/5 and are still looking for increased threat, consider taking Improved Mangle 3/3 instead. Only then, if you are still DESPERATE for threat, you can invest another 5 talents to pick upthe 4% damage here.
I only recommend this for extremely new, or extremely undergeared Bears. If you are even the tiniest bit confident with your threat, consider moving these 5 Talent points to Improved Demoralising Roar instead, which I talked about just slightly above. It will provide 1.5% more damage reduction raid wide, which Id argue is better than 4% damage if you can hold aggro
Primal Precision
This talent increases our Expertise. As will be later covered in the Stats section, Tanks will benefit from Expertise up to the hard cap of 56. If your expertise is higher than this, you should remove points from [Primal Precision] and spend them elsewhere. Although, this is an excessively high number of expertise to reach, and this will be incredibly rare to accomplish.
Should you wish to spend these talents elsewhere, try to maintain AT LEAST 26 expertise, as this is the Expertise Soft Cap and maintain this amount of expertise provides an incredibly large boost to your threat output. The BiS list for bears commonly uses 35 Expertise total which is considered a good sweetspot.
For pre-Tier 10 bears and pre-raid Dungeon Farming
https://i.imgur.com/hFKB34q.png
HOW TO OPTIMISE:
PRERAID TANKS:
[Shredding Attacks] is aimed at fresh-80s who may wish to DPS in Cat-Form when they first hit 80. This is useful for RDF dungeon grinding before you are geared enough to tank without annoying your healers or wiping parties, or in fights where you are offtanking and the fight only requires 1 tank. If you aren't planning to Kitty-Form DPS at all with these talents, consider replacing these 2 points with [Brutal Impact] instead.
[Feral Agression] Could also be worth taking, but in my opinion, survival is the least of your worries as a tank in dungeon content, which sounds counter-intuitive for tanks but it's true. Dungeons are very easy to heal and your healers can handle it. Going from not-dying in dungeons, to not-dying in dungeons but even less-not dying, actually makes no difference, apart from maybe having a more bored healer in the latter scenario.
Remember; as stated multiple times in the guide so far; Damage intake is your only source of rage. IF you are starved on rage, which many tanks at this gear level doing dungeons are constantly starved, using demo roar will just make these starvation issues worse, and make it that much harder to get rage. You absolutely can(and should) demo roar if things get dicey, but remember the non-improved demo roar still does -10% damage reduction which is plenty, theres other more useful talents for the dungeon grind.
RAID TANKS: By the time you move on to doing raids, you should probably be taking out [Shredding Attacks]. You won't need those anymore. You should also definitely take out the 3 points from [Improved Mangle], and put all or as much into [Feral Agression] for the damage reduction instead. This is invaluable for raiding, -14% damage dealt as a DEBUFF on the boss, (up from -10% untalented) may not sound like much, it's it's absolutely huge especially in heroic raids why there's so much damage output from bosses, and this helps cut almost ALL of it, raid wide.
When making this guide in 2013, this talent and Demoralizing Roar was bugged and did nothing, this has since been fixed many years ago and this guide was quickly editted to include it as an option; But the full extent of how good this talent was took some years for the community to fully appreciate. Many top heroic-raiding guilds now consider this an absolute must-have talent that cannot be skipped and is absolutely critical to maintain 100% uptime on, with DPS ret paladins also speccing it.
For 4 Piece Tier-10 Bears and End-Game Heroic Raiding
Having the 4 piece T10 Set Bonus means we'll start regularly using Enrage in combat. This makes the previously unattractive talent King of the Jungle suddenly very useful, which means we can optimize our builds slightly to take this difference into account.
By this point, I will be making the assumption you are mainly Raid Tanking now, and that RDF dungeon and trash fights are trivial.
https://i.imgur.com/qIpGlJ2.png
HOW TO OPTIMISE:
[INFECTED WOUNDS]: You'll need to pick up Infected wounds for the -20% Attack Speed debuff if there is no Death Knight or Warrior who will thunderclap (almost none do) in your group. Prot paladins can spec into this debuff as well(Judgements of the Just), but if none of the mentioned sources are present in your raid you'll need these talents as -20% melee speed on enemies is a very big deal. Generally speaking though, there should always be a DK present in your organised RAID group, but you probably will not have one for your dungeon PARTY or RDF groups; Hence this talent was recommended for bears during their "spamming dungeons" phase of gearing up; But since you are now mostly raiding, it is probably more than safe to drop this. Worst comes to worst, you can go to respec if you raid lacks a source of this.
[BRUTAL IMPACT]: If your main goal is progression/farming Lich King 25 Heroic, Brutal Impact may be required to stun Valkyrs in Phase 2. Just 1 point is enough to have the cooldown available for each wave and is a nice backup incase your Paladins get picked.
[OMEN OF CLARITY]: This talent can now safely by dropped if you're purely Main Tanking hard hitting raid bosses fights in organised T9/T10 Raids. When bosses are regularly chunking you for 20~30k damage every couple seconds, your practically have infinite rage, and rage reduction effects are mostly considered safety/QoL talents for adds and trash. For trash pulls, you're likely to be pulling/ SHOULD be pulling multiple packs at once for faster trash clear and thus, you also shouldn't be starved even on trash pulls, just certain slow hitting minibosses incase you get unlucky and go on a dodge streak. Worst comes to worst, you should also have at least a couple of competant Rogues/Hunters to ToT/misdirect you should threat ever become an issue
-If you are really desperate for any untaken talents and want to trim points from this build, FIRST consider cutting Omen of Clarity, King of the Jungle, or Feral Agression to pickup the necessarily talents you prefer instead, I consider those the least critical for a raid-logging bear. But of course, it's important to adjust to your own scenario.
Recommended Glyphs
Spoiler:Show Major Glyphs
Recommended Major Glyphs:
http://i.imgur.com/YQdsEMO.png
Growl and Challenging Roar both use the Spell-Hit cap of 17%. Becoming Growl-Hit-Capped is VERY important for Bears. As discussed in the Talents section above (under Omen-of-Clarity's advice), a Bear who loses aggro loses their only source to generate Rage, meaning Growl is practically your only Lifeline to recover from a full party wipe. If it misses, everyone usually dies.
http://i.imgur.com/qLM5Hd2.png Making Survival Instincts give a total of +60% HP in total.
http://i.imgur.com/000mepb.png Transforms Frenzied Regeneration from fairly-useless into an AMAZING Panic-Cooldown. The glyph effect alone is the main reason to use FR.
http://i.imgur.com/A4pqUwU.png
Early Game glyph only. A Must-Have for Levelling, RDF, FoS/PoS, and ICC Rep Farming. Replace either Glyph of Survival instincts or Glyph of Frenzied Regen.
As discussed in the Rotation Section, Maul is singlehandedly about half of our total threat on single target fights. Have Maul hit a 2nd enemy is a huge boost to our AoE and multi target tanking. However, the only downside is that Maul is useless of pure-single target fights, so endgame Bears who are striving purely for boss-tanking builds should replace this glyph once survival becomes more important
Minor Glyphs
Recommended Minor Glyphs: Challenging Roar, Unburdened Rebirth, Dash
http://i.imgur.com/h08208x.png Obviously a must-have.
http://i.imgur.com/oBD33sN.png Obviously a must-have.
You can use any of the following for your 3rd slot
http://i.imgur.com/YhffPKC.png Very nice if you spend alot of time farming as a Miner or Herbalist
http://i.imgur.com/j8DyS2C.pngThis is what I use purely because it's fun to sprint back after a wipe. If you don't mine or herb often, this is what I'd pick as a 3rd minor glyph.
Enchants
Spoiler:Show Head:{Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector: 37 Stamina and 20 Defense Rating} from the Argent Crusade quartermaster a 15 second flight north east of Dalaran. Look for Veteran Crusader Aliocha Segard - located on the tallest hill in the Argent Vanguard camp, he hides beneath/behind a tent.
Shoulders: {Greater Inscription of the Gladiator}: 30 Stam Bought from the Hall of Legends in Orgrimmar for Horde or the Champion's Hall in Stormwind for Alliance. Costs 10k honour points.
Cape: Engineers can opt to use:{Flexweave Underlay: 23 agil+ Parachute} Otherwise using {enchant Mighty Armor: 225 Armor} is recommended. {enchant Mighty Agility: 22 Agility} is an alternative, but less appealing.
Chest: {Heavy Borean Armor Kit: 18 Stam}is recommended. 18 stam provides bears 304 hp in bear form and kings, better than the 275 HP enchant, which should never be used by bears.
Bracers: Leather Workers use {Fur Lining: 102 Stamina}. Otherwise use {enchant Major Stamina: 40 Stamina} if you aren't
Weapon: {enchant Mongoose: Increases attack speed and chance to proc 120 agility for 15 seconds} The best weapon enchant for bears.
Rings: Enchanters use {enchant Lesser Stamina: 30 Stamina}. Nothing available if you aren't.
Boots: {enchant Tuskarr's Vitality: 15 Stamina and minor runspeed} is what I always recommend, but {enchant Greater Fortitude: 22 Stamina} gives you 7 more stamina at the cost of runspeed.
Legs: {Frosthide Leg Armor: 55 Stamina and 22 Agility}
Gloves: Engineers use {Reticulated Armor Webbing: 885 Armor}. Otherwise I recommend {Heavy Borean Armor Kit: 18 Stamina. {Glove Reinforcements- 240 armor} can be substituted if you want more armor. If you're lacking hit or expertise, other options include {enchant Precision: 20 Hit Rating}, or {enchant Expertise: 15 Expertise Rating}
Gems
Spoiler:Show Metagem: Austere Earthsiege Diamond. 32 Stam +2% armor value from items. Requires 2 blue gems and 1 red gem to activate.
Shifting Dreadstone: 15 stam 10 agil. Purple- Counts as both a Red and Blue gem. USE ONLY 1. Place into a Red Socket with the highest possible Stamina Bonus, if all other slots are filled with Blue gems.
Solid Majestic Zircon: +30 Stamina. USE EVERYWHERE ELSE.
IGNORE ALL SOCKET BONUSSES. You want 30 STAMINA EVERYWHERE that you can. You only use a single Purple gem to activate your metagem, which requires 1 red gem.
ONLY if you are VERY desperate for hit rating or expertise rating, you can add a few hit/expertise gems until you find your threat generation becomes stable.
Professions
Spoiler:Show Recommended professions
JewelCrafting - 3 Solid Dragon's Eyes - 63 Stam (1027 Hit points with Kings)
Leatherworking - Fur Lining - 62 Stam (1011Hit Points with Kings)
Enchanting - 2x Ring Enchants - 60 Stam (978 HP with Kings)
Mining - Toughness - 60 Stam (978 HP with Kings)
Blacksmithing - 2 Sockets - 60 Stam (978 HP with Kings)
Engineering - {Reticulated Armor Webbing} 885 Armor to gloves which is roughly worth 60 Stam of EHP
Other professions
Alchemy - Mixology - +650 HP (Flask of Stoneblood 1300HP -> 1950HP = +650HP) Flasks last 1 hour longer.
Tailoring - Swordguard Embroidery - Cloak enchant - Chance to proc 400 AP for 15 seconds.
Skinning - Master of Anatomy - 40 Crit strike rating
Inscription - Master's Inscription of the Pinnacle - 40 Dodge rating (0.864% Dodge Chance)
Herbalism - Lifeblood - Heals 3600 HP over 5 seconds
Profession bonuses are fairly minor, and you don't always need to go for the recommended profession bonuses listed above.
An important consideration is whether you would like to go for the most beneficial bonuses, or pick professions that provide you with gold, and a way to make a living.
If you're not interested in Min-Maxing your Stamina/Armor gains, a few popular profession combinations would be:
Skinning + Leatherworking; Skin your own leather, and craft your own gear.
Herbalism + Alchemy; Druids can use herbalism without leaving flight form. Collect your own herbs, and craft your own consumables.
Herbalism + Mining; Maximise on gathering professions, very easy to make gold.
Or if you're focussed on Min-Maxing your Stats, the best Stat-gaining professions are
Jewelcrafting + Leatherworking; Highest Stamina increase.
Jewelcrafting + Engineerig; Stamina + Armor Increase.
Taurens gain a bonus to Herbalism, and Engineering also provides access to an Auctioneer without leaving Dalaran.
Consumables
Spoiler:Show Potions;
Indestructible Potion: 3500 Armor gained for 2 minutes. You can Potion once before entering combat, which lets you potion a 2nd time mid-fight.
Flask;
Flask of Stoneblood: Increases Health by 1300 for 1 hour. (Recommended)
Lesser Flask of Resistance: Increases your resistance to all schools of magic by 50(Only for magic damage fights)
Food;
Blackened Dragonfin: 40 Agility, 40 Stamina(best for most fights)
Rhinolicious Wormsteak: 40 Expertise Rating, 40 Stamina(Best for Parry-Haste fights)
Snapper Extreme: 40 Hit Rating, 40 Stamina
Worg Tartare: 40 Hit Rating, 40 Stamina
Or if there's nothing else available, good old Fish Feast(80 Attack Power, 40 Stam) will do the trick if you're being cheap.
03. Single Target Rotation, AoE Rotation, and Abilities
Spoiler:Show SINGLE TARGET ROTATION This is a priority system; Use the highest Priority Option that is currently available
1)Maul. ALWAYS CAST MAULS! Use macros with "/cast !Maul"
2)Refresh Lacerate's bleed debuff if it has less than 4 sec remaining
3)Mangle(Bear)
4)Faerie Fire(Feral)
5)Build up Lacerate bleed debuff to 5, if it's not at 5 stacks already.
6)Spam your [Filler] ability. This will be either Swipe or Lacerate.
WHAT FILLER SHOULD I USE?
If swipe would hit 2 targets Use SWIPE as filler (must maintain Lacerate 5 stack)
Higher Threat if no 30% ICC damage buff Use LACERATE as filler (+easier rotation)
Higher Threat if good gear and have ICC 30% buff Use SWIPE as filler (must maintain Lacerate 5 stack)
Higher DPS Use SWIPE as filler (Must maintain Lacerate 5 stack - And yes, Damage output still matters even as a tank)
NOTE: There is a less than 5% total difference between which filler you use, it is seriously NOT A BIG DEAL. If in doubt, use Lacerate, it's easier, safer and much simpler.
Please read the section below on Swipe vs Lacerate for more information, as which filler you use is highly gear dependant, situation dependant, and can also depend on playstyle. For example, Swipe as a filler does higher DPS than lacerate, so if you have a significant threat lead, Swipe could still be worth using as a filler even if sims show for your specific gear level and scenario swipe does less threat. However, if swiping means you regularly drop Lacerate's 5 stack bleed, it's not worth swiping.
IF USING SWIPE AS A FILLER; Aim to refresh refresh lacerate with between 2 and 4 seconds remaining so a single miss doesn't cause you to lose your 5 stack, or slightly earlier (at 7 seconds left) if your Mangle/Faerie Fire would come off cooldown in the next GCD; You don't want to delay those stronger abilities in order to refresh Lacerate. The idea is that if your lacerate misses with 2 seconds left on the debuff, 1.5 seconds later you can lacerate again and still catch the refresh with 0.5 seconds left on the debuff. Remembering that tanks are often not hit capped.
SAFER AND EASIER SWIPE ROTATION: If you want to play it even safer, you can refresh Lacerate anywhere under 7 seconds left of the debuff and simply Mangle/Faerie fire off cooldown without having to consider when Lacerate might expire or thinking about when you need to lacerate earlier to avoid delaying Mangle and FF; Of course, for the even easier and safer option simply opt to use lacerate as a filler
AoE Rotation:
Swipe+ Maul as much as possible.
Switch targets every few seconds to check your threat on various mobs and to Maul different enemies. 90% of your rotation is just spamming your Swipe+Maul macro (check the macro section below)
Remember; Maul does an insane amount of threat; A single maul is equivalent to multiple swipes worth of threat. Don't be lazy with changing targets regularly. This is also why glyph of maul is fantastic for dungeon spamming.
Against just 2 or 3 targets, your single rotation is generally enough to keep aggro. Just make sure to evenly spread out your threat from Mangle/FF/Mauls and check your threat meter to gain information on which mobs your DPS are attacking; If you are struggling to hold aggro, it's usually because multiple of your DPS are doing their full, single-target rotations against DIFFERENT enemies at the same time; If this is happening to you regularly, I reccomend setting a keybind to mark an enemy with the Skull raid icon, marking an enemy with skull BEFORE you pull and putting more Mauls on the Skull than any other mob. In dungeons and raid trash, techniques such as Line of Sight pulling, always moving unless healer is drinking, and chain-pulling together packs all make tanking significantly easier and make clearing dungeons faster.
Tips: If close to losing aggro on a mob, keep it targeted as this will make you Maul that target. If this isn't enough, try to sneak in a Mangle or Faerie fire in between your swipes.
If you lose aggro on something Growl it back ASAP and follow it up with a Mangle(if at melee range) or a Faerie Fire(if at Range) and put a few mauls on it.
If you lose aggro on a LOT of mobs all at once, get close to them all and use Challenging Roar which will buy you a few precious seconds.
Optionally: If you have Idol of the Crying MoonLacerate a single enemy to gain agility buff if you think it's worth it.
My biggest tip for AoE tanking is to use a nameplate addon that changes color based on whether you have aggro or not; If a nameplate changes color, you know you have to taunt it. Preferably, you also have colors for "almost losing agro" and know that these are the mobs you need to maul most. My recommended nameplate addon is Tidy Plates: Threat Plates
Optimal opener for boss pulls
- (Prefight)Shift into bear form to gain 10 rage from Furor talent (with 3/5 Furor this will be a 60% chance per shift. You may need to shift in and out a couple times)
- (If you are the only druid/need a ranged pull); Pull with Faerie Fire to reduce enemy armor.
- (If not in melee range of boss, optional) Use Feral Charge or start running towards the boss to get into Melee range.
- Optional: Lacerate ONCE as soon as you are in melee range to start gaining agility from Idol of the Crying Moon if you have it and to increase Maul's damage dealt by 20% due to Rend and Tear talent. Skip this step if someone else in your group applies a Bleed or if you don't have the 264 Idol
- Pop Berserk cooldown and beware of the 1.5 second Global Cooldown. Preferably you'd rather do this with 1.5 seconds remaining on a pull timer, or whilst running towards boss after a faerie fire pull from afar, timing it so the GCD is over right as you reach melee range.
- (DO QUICKLY) Get in your tanking position such that the boss is facing AWAY from the Party/Raid, and make sure that the Boss directly in front of you so that you can dodge it's attacks. This step should become an automatic habit, and take less than 0.1 of a second. DO IT QUICKLY, or do it whilst in your first few GCD's of the pull. This allows Cats and Rogues to backstab the boss, and protects the raid from getting cleaved. For dragons/tailswipe bosses, side the boss sideways to the raid.
- Optional: Pop Enrage right before your first attack in melee range to benefit from the King of the Jungle talent if you have it. (Remeber; Maul is the majority of your threat so don't bother using this before a faerie fire from range, your mauls aren't hitting yet)
- Mangle + Maul for the duration of Berserk. (You may wish to refresh lacerate ONCE during this, when it's close to timing out if you applied it earlier / there's no other bleeds in your party)
- Once Berserk ends use Demoralizing Roar to decrease enemy attack power. This is anywhere from a 10% or higher damage reduction, it's highly advised to track demoralizing roar/shout or the Paladin version Vindication using an addon such a Weakauras.
- Start doing your Single Target Rotation following the priority system explained above, aka
Maul -> refresh Lacerate if its about to expire -> Mangle-> Faerie Fire(Feral)->Build up Lacerate to 5-> [your choice of filler] Filler should be swipe if theres 2 or more targets, Lacerate is also good if low gear/not inside ICC.
Essentially; you have a few ways of pulling depending whether you need to apply faerie fire for a 25 man raid, or are just tanking a 5man dungeon boss. Always consider how many hunter/rogue misdirects or ToT's you will be provided, and be ready to Growl if you lose aggro in the first few seconds of a boss fight.
Mitigation abilities When tanking, try to reduce your damage taken as much as possible. Use these abilities in between your normal rotation
Demoralizing roar: This should be active on enemies as often as possible. Reduces the Attack Power of all nearby enemies by 400+ meaning they'll deal less damage.
Barkskin: A lot of tanks overlook this ability. 1 min CD to reduce damage taken by 20% for 12 sec. It is a cooldown, but it is not a panic button. 20% less damage taken will NOT be enough to save your life when catastrophe strikes - This is true in both PvE and PvP where arena enemies will still burst-kill you through barkskin anyway. Instead, use barkskin as often as you can to reduce the workload on your healers. Also makes your spells immune to pushback, handy for casting Battle Res or Tranquility in combat
Bash: Stuns the target for 4 sec. 1 min cd. Can be talented to 5 sec stun on a 30 sec cd. This also interrupts casting for 4 seconds. Bash enemies you know deal high amounts of damage, or when your growl(taunt) misses and the enemy might damage the DPS'er, buying time to growl again. Also some enemies have very powerful spells that interrupting will make everyone's life easier. You cannot stun bosses.
Survival instincts: This is your panic button. Increases your HP by 60% if glyphed, or 45% otherwise. Best saved for when you think you are going to die. Special note; KEYBIND this to something you can instantly press in under a moment's notice (No, keybinding it to control+alt+9 does not count as a good keybind) I personally reserve the side button of my mouse for this, specifically the key that I find my thumb always naturally rests on top of.
Frenzied Regeneration: Mainly used for it's glyph effect(20% more healing taken). On top of that, it converts 10 rage per second into 3% of your max HP, providing good synergy with SI. In a panic recovery situation, SI can serve to temporarily delay your death for long enough for your healers to heal you - And Frenzied Regen will help restore your health to full.
Enrage: Provides 20 rage instantly, then 1 more rage per second for 10 seconds. Normally, for those 10 seconds you will lose armor, but with 4p T10 gear you will instead take 12% less damage; use this as you would use barkskin, as often as possible. Otherwise use the provided macro in the section below to easily gain 20 rage and dispel the armor debuff.
Trinkets: Use in a panic, or as often as you can to reduce workload on healers depending on what you have equipped.
Raid utility abilities Awesome abilities that make the Druid class OP (In my opinion)
Rebirth: A 10 minute CD resurrect useable in combat. Takes 2 seconds to cast and not be used in bear form. Use this on a dead tank, healer or important DPS ONLY if safe to do so; This means times where you aren't going to die when you shift out of bear form to cast it. Remember that taking damage can lengthen the cast time: Use barkskin if you need to avoid this
Innervate: Restores 7866 mana to a friendly target over 10 seconds. Not useable in Bear Form; Use only when safe to do so - Preferably on a healer who's low on mana; They will love you for it
Berserk: Mainly a threat cooldown, for 15 seconds your Mangle (Bear) has no cooldown and hits up to 3 targets. This is a pretty huge amount of threat when used early in a fight. Also breaks you out of Fear and makes you immune to fear: Handy in some fights like BQL, where I like to berserk out of fear then use Tranquility(yes, as a bear, it still heals a fair bit).
Tranquility: An AoE healing spell that you channel, even as a bear this ability heals for over 12000HP to all nearby group members over 7-8 seconds. Use barkskin to avoid pushback and wasted healing. You can save a few lives with this when used right. You can not cast this in bear form. 8 minute CD
04. Why we execute our rotation the way we do and how to trouble low threat
Spoiler:Show Remember: DAMAGE DOES NOT EQUAL THREAT. Some of our abilities scale well with damage, but other abilities don't. For DPS, they have a simple job of using the ability that does the highest Damage possible. However, for tanks, we have to use the ability that deals the most threat - But this is difficult because it's hard to know how much threat each ability deals because recount and combat logs only display damage dealt.
For this reason I'll try to list the amount of THREAT our abilities deal (not damage).
Test Setup: All data was calculated using Rawr 2.3.22 using my own druid as a data model, 6.5k gs near-Best in Slot, raid buffed attacking a theoretical enemy with no armor or defenses - somewhat unrealistic. Note that this scenario heavily favors high-damage scaling abilities, whereas faerie fire/lacerate abilities who's threat values don't scale heavily with damage look somewhat weaker than they actually are. Averages account for critical hits.
Auto-attack: 2551 threat per swing(Generates rage.)
Maul: 9420 threat per swing (Note: Using maul replaces and "upgrades" your normal auto-attack. Does NOT generate rage and CANCELS the Auto-attack)
Mangle:5419 threat per swing (Note: WITHOUT glyph)
Faerie Fire Feral: 3798 threat per cast (Note: Ranged attack)
Swipe: 2333 Threat per swing (Note: AoE ability, it will hit all nearby enemies)
Lacerate(upfront damage): 1732 threat on upfront damage.
Lacerate DoT(5-stack): 1821 Threat per Tick
Too many numbers! What does it all mean?
When we want to do the highest Threat per Second, we focus on using the ability that deals the most threat that we can currently use.
The summary is that Maul --> beats Mangle --> beats Faerie Fire. Already this looks a little bit like our single target rotation.
The only complication is Lacerate's DoT. This stacks up to 5 times, so it's worth 5 GCD's of threat - So if Lacerate is about to time out and you get to spend 1 Global Cooldown on either Mangling for 1 ability's worth of threat, or Lacerating once to preserve 5 ability's worth of threat: 5 abilities is better than 1.
Hopefully now you see the reason why our rotation is
"Maul -> refresh Lacerate if its about to expire -> Mangle-> Faerie Fire(Feral)->Build up Lacerate to 5-> Swipe if there's 2 targets -> Lacerate OR Swipe as a filler(see below regarding which you should choose)"
It's a basic way of using whatever does the most threat possible at any given time.
Why Maul is so important, and why you need to avoid Auto-attacks
Maul is our #1 threat producer! It does even more threat than Mangle AND Faerie Fire put together! Put another way, a single Maul deals the same threat as 6 full Upfront-Lacerate hits(not the bleed part). Hopefully you now understand how important maul is in our rotations!
Due to popularized useage of macro's and people innate focus on GCD-abilities (since this is easier to see), It's very easy to miss a maul and not notice it. Hence, it obviously sucks to miss a Mangle... AND a Faerie Fire right after. Or 6 whole Lacerates. But people don't get the same "negative feedback" and may not notice when they miss a Maul.
Even worse, some players who regularly miss mauls don't seem to quite understand how huge missing even a single Maul, and don't take the necessary steps to prevent this happening again.
Due to how maul cancels our regular Auto-Attack, our mandatory reliance on spamming Maul means that we are not only forced to spend 10 rage on Maul per auto attack timer, it also stops us gaining rage from the auto attack itself; This puts use heavily at the mercy of gaining rage from enemy attacks, and heavily at the mercy of having enough rage to keep attacking.
Remember, there's only 2 possible ways for bears to generate rage:
1) Receiving Damage from enemies; The more damage taken, the more Rage.
2) Using regular Auto-Attacks. Yet thanks to Maul, this should NEVER occur.
As you can see, realistically speaking, the only way for bears to generate rage is by taking damage; The more damage you take, the more Rage you receive. However, if you ever accidentally "miss" a maul, aka, you didn't upgrade an auto attack and let a regular auto attack slip out, you gain rage from it;
This is a semi-genius but also extremely dangerous class design from the game devs; If you have enough rage, you maul. Great. If you don't have enough rage to maul, your normal auto attack slips out AND GENERATE YOU RAGE WHEN YOU NEED IT MOST.
So now I know what you're thinking! "Oh that's great! Good game design!" Well yes and no. It makes alot of bears fall for the trap of losing a tonne of Mauls (and threat) without realising they're rage starved.
So essentially; Bears need rage to deal threat. Bears need to take damage to gain rage. To take damage, you need aggro. If you lose aggro, you also lose your ONLY way to generate threat. This is part of the reason why it's so important to be hit-capped on Growl, so you can reliable taunt back aggro. Also, there are several bosses which you need to tank why may not always be hitting you back;
This is one of the reasons why new bear tanks run into so many issues when they try to copy Raiding talent builds; Many Heroic-Raiders often drop Omen of Clarity because they really only care about 2, maybe 3 fights in reality; Heroic Sindragosa(ish), Lich King and Halion. Everything else isn't worth optimising for when you're at their level.
However, unlike most guide-readers (new players aka mostly dungeon tanks), Raid-tanks are getting melee'd by heroic bosses hard enough to practically stay pinned at 100 rage at all times; However, earlier and lower difficulty content(eg, Dungeons & lower tier raids) do not produce even close to this much rage and this WILL cause significant rage starvation; And sadly, in most cases, Rage starvation is extremely sneaky and most rage-starved bears won't even notice it happening.
Since the vast majority of players don't have an addon or weakaura to track their Autoswing timers, or paying enough attention to their total rage, a VERY common occurange is that a Bear will cast Mangle or Lacerate, fall under 10 rage for a fraction of a second right before their Autoswing timer completes, and since they don't have 10 rage to cast Maul, the UNUPGRADED auto attack slips out AND GENERATES RAGE - Remember, everything leading up to this scenario would have looked normal - Enough rage to cast skills, Maul button would be lit up and "queued". But at the last moment, without 10 rage, the maul doesn't get casted.
This sneaky mechanic might be happening dozens of times a fight, and the bear continues the fight thinking he's got fantastic rage generation, when in reality, as I've been trying so hard to explain, even a single missed / nonupgraded Maul is a MASSIVE damage and threat loss. The only real way to catch this is by checking damage meter counts as details in the troubleshooting section right below.
I have helped more than 50 bear tanks who have claimed "BUT I DON'T HAVE RAGE ISSUES" but upon analysing their logs, or looking at a single Recount/Details/Skada of one of their boss fights, they have a significant portion of missed Mauls and upon fixing this; their threat is magically fixed.
The amount of times I've seen someone claim "Oh I only missed 6 mauls that last RDF fight, not bad for a 1 min fight! Idk why I still lost aggro can you help me"
To which I WANT to scream at them: Bro WTF! You missed 6... SIX?!?! WHOLE MAULS?!?
Even just 1, although somewhat acceptable, is still bad. More than 2 missed mauls per minute is already in copium territory.
Hopefully this highlights how serious I am about how important Mauls are in your rotation; Remember, macro's are provided in the macro section, please use them.
Troubleshooting Low Threat
In short, if you are suffering from much lower threat output than expected from your gear level, it can usually be explained by 3 broad reasons:
1) Not mauling enough - Either due to Rage starvation (using Raiding talents whilst spaming dungeons) or not having maul and /startattack macro'd into all your skills.
2) Accidentally not having max rank spells on your bar - Spells on your bar won't always update to the highest rank when you train a higher rank in various scenarios.
3) Gear related - Not enough hit/expertise, or equipping too many PvP items or caster armor without agility
In 90% of cases however, it is purely due to not Mauling enough. As explained right above, mauls are very important. Even losing out on even a single maul has a huge affect on our total threat generation and damage output.
Even if you do have relatively good threat, you could do even better threat (and DPS!) if you Mauled more often.
To check if you are mauling enough, download a damage meter addon (Currently, Skada for WotLK by Bkader is considered the best, but recount or details! work as well - Linked in addons section). On the damage meter, click yourself to see your total skill useage break down; We're looking for the total amount of times we casted Maul, compared to the total amount of times we casted an Auto-Attack (usually appears as "Melee"). If you are seeing more than 1 Melee per 20 mauls, you're missing far too many mauls. Ideally of course, you should ONLY be seeing 100% mauls, and no normal Melee's whatsoever. As a bear tank, one of the most useful skills is self-reflecting on how many mauls you missed each fight and always aiming to do better.
Another thing to check is your total frequency of Mauls and Auto attacks - Bears have a base 2.5 attack speed, meaning your auto attack occur once every 2.5 seconds before haste. This translates to approximately 24 Melees or Mauls per minute (not counting Glyph of Maul). So this means you should be seeing roughly 24 (or higher with haste) Mauls and Normal attacks per minute of combat. If you are seeing drastically less than this; It likely means you're not using a /startattack macro (which automatically "Right clicks the targetted enemy to start auto-attacking it", especialyl important as you stop autoattacking when switching targets), or that you are not in melee range with your target in front of you when your Autoswing timer is off cooldown; Another issue I sometimes see is in AoE rotation, Bears button mash tab or spam-change targets extremely quickly - Doing so doesn't give your melee/mauls enough times to be casted, much less time for you to also press your /startattack macro on the new target. Your melee attacks seem to require that you keep the same mob targetted for around about a third~half a second before they cast, and always pressing one of your /startattack macros after changing targets each time. In most cases however, you shouldn't be changing targets more than twice per second anyway, so this issue is relatively uncommon.
For all the reasons above, it's highly recommended to use an addon (many just use a weakaura) to track your auto attack cooldown timer and making sure you have maul queued, an enemy targetted and in front of you every time your autoswing timer is ready.
Of course, the easiest fix to using accidentally downranked spells, not being able to press maul often enough, or losing out on melee swings due to not using /startattacks is to just use the macro's in the macro's section of this guide. By simply macro'ing /cast !maul and /starttatattack lines into all your buttons, you essentially eliminate the majority of threat issues for bears and simplify the rotation massively.
But if you are using the macro's provided tracking your autoswing timers, pressing buttons quickly enough for good /startattack and queueing maul on every autoswing and still missing out on mauls - It means you must be rage starved even if you don't feel like you are.
So, how do you fix Rage starvation issues?
1) Don't skip rage cost reduction talents and Omen of Clarity talents - this is the most common culprit, especially dungeon-tanks copying raid builds. Remember, raid tanks get melee'd for up to 40k damage every 2 seconds and have unlimited rage. Dungeons tanks have the opposite issue.
2) Take more damage - Pulling more mobs in dungeons/trash fights is the most preferred way to do this, as this both fixes rage issues and helps in clearing faster (higher aoe damage). Ways to safely and deliberate take more damage to increase rage generation will be explained below.
3) Not spending as much time out of combat between pulls for rage to start decaying - Of course, you need to watch your healer's mana before pulling trash.
This is where an important concept called "Chain pulling" for tanks comes in; Pulling as much as your gear and healer can safely handle, situational awareness of patrols and other dangers that might overwhelm you and factoring these risk factors into your pulls.
However, an easy way for beginners to start the concept of chain pulling without getting too advanced is simply leave your last trash pull and start running towards the next pack when the previous pack is low health, or a couple seconds from dying.
And in scenarios where you can't chain pull but still feel rage starved - An even riskier but advanced technique can be employed- Try to safely take more damage on purpose. For example, in dungeons where rage starvation is notorious (mobs in dungeons don't hit very hard), most experienced bears will know not to apply Demoralizing Shout on every pull (although admittedly, new players also do this, but theirs is not on purpose LOL); This debuff reduces enemy damage dealt by 10%~14%, which directly means less rage generated, but not so much extra damage that it overwhelms your healer. This is also where Enrage comes in, and if you don't have tier 10 bonus yet, the armor reduction effect. Enrage already gives you some rage, but the armor reduction actually gives you even more.
Of course, we get away with this in dungeons because your healer isn't getting stressed in your average dungeon pull, but it's important to do this responsibly - There are alot of factors to consider. Is rage more important than your healer's mana? Are you losing aggro without rage? Are you the most geared in the dungeon and carrying the DPS where you just want to do more damage and finish the dungeon faster at the expense of healer's mana? If a patrol aggro's and you're suddenly tanking way too much, have 100 rage, healer is struggling, of course you should use Demoralizing Roar, and even pop cooldowns such as Barkskin/trinkets/Survival Instincts/Frezied Regen etc. You only fish for higher rage when rage starvation is occuring, and when safe to do so.
Other methods of deliberately taking more damage in dungeons or trivial content is running less armor gear - which for BiS tanks (if you happen to dungeon on a BiS tank for some reason) usually means the higher hit-rating, higher agility gear, and putting on DPS trinkets for higher threat and damage output. It's not absurd to say that dungeon-BiS is pretty much to run full DPS gear, since threat and damage output matters most in dungeons, and survival is rarely a concern. Your ultimate end game is clear speed, which of course, risk of wipes reduces your average clear time. so it's still important to consider safety.
But of course, deliberately fishing for extra damage intake in dungeons is a Last-Rsort; Simply respec and pick up rage cost reduction talents or Omen of Clarity if you're regularly running into rage starvation issues or planning to regularly farm dungeons;
Also hopefully you now understand that copying someone else's build isn't always a great idea, especially if the content they play isn't the same as the content you're regularly farming.
To Lacerate or to Swipe as a filler single target?
Anti-intuitively, you can also see that Lacerate deals a large amount of upfront threat, it is not merely a bleed.
Looking at (a summary of) Lacerate's tool-tip we find- Lacerate: "Lacerates the enemy target dealing 105 damage(upfront), and making them bleed for 380 damage over 15 seconds (bleed)..."
As you can see lacerate deals both upfront and bleed damage, and both of these deal threat separately. Below I will be discussing the upfront damage part, which is the part that makes it worthwhile to use Lacerate even when the bleed is already at 5 stacks
This has been largely debated ever since retail-WotLK, during which time many theory crafters lost their minds in endless calculations and simulations; oftentimes entire forums erupted into horrible, gory battlefields where Team-Lacerate and Team-Swipe could never come to a decent conclusion on which was the superior filler. What they did find were the
formulas for how these abilities scale relative to damage done is as follows:
Lacerate(Upfront) threat = 1.03675*damage + 1067.8525
Swipe Threat = 3.11025*damage + 0
This is a classic high school grade math equation scenario, but before you pull out your y= mx+c quotes, we can't solve for Y here because the "damage dealt" portion of both skills is different, and doing so yields no meaningul conclusions.
The point however, is to illustrate that Lacerate's Upfront hit deals good threat due to the extra ~1068ish threat additive constant which does NOT scale with damage dealt;
And the Multipliers, Lacerate scales poorly with damage dealt, and Swipe scales very well with damage dealt.
This works exactly how you would intuit the situation;
Lacerate is good at lower gear levels, Swipe is good at higher gear levels when you have damage boosts such as 2p T10, or ICC's 30% buff
For Swipe-Filler users: the most important thing to keep in mind is just DON'T LET A LACERATE 5 STACK BLEED TIME OUT. Especially if you are not 100% expertise/hit capped, which most tank's aren't; Refresh Lacerate early (As mentioned above, there's not much DPS penalty for doing so; even if your Swipes are higher TPS for you). Don't let a SINGLE missed or dodged lacerate at the wrong time will lead to your 5-stack timing-out.
But lastly, and definitely worth mentioning, swipe deals more damage; Even though a tank's job isn't to deal DPS, more damage in a raid is still better than nothing, and in a dungeon scenario, is actually extremely rewarding as in 5 man groups the tank's damage actually noticeably speeds up dungeon clear times.
05. Your objectives and some responsibilities as a tank
Spoiler:Show During combat, a tank has 4 main objectives which is not merely limited to dealing threat alone. A good tank who knows his/her responsibilities will greatly help their raid to crush bosses and conquer entire instances, while a lesser-informed tank, no matter their gear will often merely serve to hinder and wipe raids.
Threat, Mitigation, Positioning and Awareness.
Many of the improvements to your tanking can be made before even stepping into a dungeon. Make sure you have the right balance of stats to balance out both threat and survival
Dishing out threat
Every tank is constantly told dealing threat and holding aggro is their biggest job; But this is only true about what you're focussing on AFTER you're already in combat.
In reality, the majority of what determines whether you do well in a group depends on what you did BEFORE even stepping into a dungeon or raid; Your talents build, your glyph selection, your gem choice, your gear selection, the effort you put into farming better gear, whether you have the correct macro's setup, having good keybinds, the effort you put into your addons/UI all make a massive difference to your success in combat, and are all factors that you setup well in advance.
But don't get too carried away on threat stats; As long as you have the highest threat on an enemy, you will have it's aggro, and additional threat stats may be "wasted". Having too much threat gear may come at the opportunity cost of dropping EHP stats; So it is important to balance your stats based on the current group; For example, if your group has very low DPS, or a high number of expected Misdirects/Tricks coming your way; You will need less threat output. Every group you join will require a different amount of threat output to hold aggro; So whilst most tanks try to get enough threat for all groups, knowing how to adapt and change gear(and/or rotation) to your current group and next encounter is a very important skill. Although the majority of tanks will just equip the highest gearscore set they have, this isn't always optimal and the best tanks know how to adapt their gear choices and know the value of carrying options.
Actively Reducing/Managing your damage intake in fights
Alot of your damage mitigation will come from gear and talents. The gold and effort you put into improving your equipment is far more important than any DPS or Healer. This is because you are constantly on the front line where enemy attacks sorely test your defenses. Be sure to use your mitigation abilities wisely, and rotate your tanking cooldowns as efficiently as you can.
Tracking certain debuffs and buffs, rotating your damage reduction cooldowns, and countless other tiny details will all fall under this category. For example, your Demoralising Roar uptime on raid bosses is extremely important; As a single debuff, it reduces the damage the BOSS DEALS, by over 10% and was worth mentioning as it is one of the most common mistakes I see bears make.
However, the damage you take also directly coresponds to how much rage you are receiving; If you recognise you are in a very low-danger scenario and are also rage starved and losing Mauls or unable to cast major skills; You may actually want to safely and responsibly try to take EXTRA damage to order to generate MORE rage income.
In most serious content, however, this boils down to trying not to die . The less damage you can take, the longer your healer's mana may stretch for, leaving more mana to heal raid mistakes and meet longer duration fight timers. In serious and well organised raid groups, this often means planning out your cooldowns meticulously for dangerous boss mechanics, or even shotcalling external defensives from the raid (paladin sacs, priest pain supp's etc) to properly compliment your own personal defensives.
This is all part of the reason why skilled tanks have so much to balance and why a good tank is so influential in their groups.
Good positioning is key
Tanks cannot dodge or parry (bears can't parry anyway) attacks that come from behind them. Make sure all enemies stand in front of you at all times. Many enemies have cleaves, so as a rule of thumb, always try to face enemies away from the party unless they have a tail whip like Dragons. This allows some DPS like Rogues and Kitty to perform backstab abilities as well as reduce the damage your party takes.
Smart boss positioning will allow DPS classes to deal more damage than if they were forced into moving, especially casters or DPS who can't attack while running. Moving a boss unnecessarily will lower your entire raid's DPS, yet failing to move the boss at other times will lead to wipes. Usually, your party/raid members will expect you to position the boss in a certain location, and if you need to reposition, your raid will also have their own expectation of where you will move to. Moving differently than expected can at the least cause a very large loss of DPS, or sometimes result in deaths. In the case of healers, moving out of their range will usually result in your death in mere seconds. Knowing where to position a boss distinguishes experienced tanks from inexperienced tanks.
Raid awareness
This basically involves keeping "aware" of the situation around you. This becomes easier the more comfortable you are with your rotation, because this tests your player-ability to multi-task under stress.
Difficulties may appear when you need to hold threat from a monstrously high-geared DPS, on top of managing your mitigation and dealing with boss mechanics.
Things to stay aware of include your healer's mana levels, where fires/hazards are located around your raid, noticing when and how raid members died and trying to predict the boss's next ability ahead of time. This skill is the single most important skill that differentiates the excellent tanks from the merely "good" tanks.
This is because as the Main Tank, you have absolute control over your entire Raid. You dictate where bosses are positioned, and Healers and Melee follow you almost religiously, with caster's DPS almost entirely depending on how often you decide to reposition the boss (Many of them can't attack while moving to follow you).
If there is fire in or near the melee, it is YOUR job to reposition the boss - Many Mdps will not notice they are in danger until they are dead - it is the tank's job to protect them by dragging the boss and forcing them to follow you away from danger. Likewise if the boss has Cleave or Breath attacks, it is your job to make sure these do not hit the raid. Remember the job description of a tank is to protect the raid: this involves more than just holding aggro and having lots of HP.
As a druid, your Innervate and Battle Res also come into major play under this category. Stay alert for periods of time where you can Innervate a low mana healer or Battle Res someone safely. You cannot cast these in bear form so you need to be aware of periods where you can safely shift out of Bear form to use these.
06. Why EHP and not Avoidance in raids?
Spoiler:Show
EHP Stands for Effective Hit Points: It's the concept of how much damage you can REALLY take before dying, without receiving any heals. This is made up of 2 things:
1)Damage Reduction Effects (Usually Armor, for physical damage)
2)Hit Points (Usually Stamina)
Say you have 51% damage reduction (Damage taken = 49%), and 100,000 Hit Points. Your EHP would be just over 200,000, as given by formula
EHP = (100/Damage Taken%) x HP
So in this case,
EHP = (100/49) x 100,000
=2.04082 x 100,000
=204,082 EHP
Back to our explanation of why we're obsessed with EHP:
In WotLK, If you are tanking challenging bosses such as in Heroics, a Tank's health bar receives a HUGE amount of both DAMAGE and HEALING, resulting in the HP bar rapidly bouncing up and down like a yo-yo. The problem comes because Healing and Damage don't arrive in a steady stream - Tanks are capable of receiving 100k in burst healing in just a few seconds, but are also easily capable of RECEIVING 100k in burst DAMAGE in just a few seconds.
Bursts of healing might come in while you're already at Max HP, turning into USELESS overhealing. Looking at the flipside, a burst of Damage that makes your HP touch 0, for even a split second, makes you instantly DEAD.
There's just simply no reliable way to "smooth" out the incoming damage you take besides from just having a huge amount of Effective Hit Points to always be prepared for the worst.
Avoidance is a great stat on paper, but should NOT be considered a reliable way to keep yourself alive in a raiding scenario. Avoidance and mitigation helps you take less damage, and makes you EASIER TO HEAL, but does nothing for your Time-To-Live rating which is the sole deciding factor of your survival in WotLK raiding content.
Consider that by the end of Icecrown Citadel, bosses inflict enough damage to kill a tank in under a second, but healers are also able to fully heal a tank in just as short a time frame. This is NOT a healthy nor consistant way for tanks to survive.
You have to be able to survive ALL the hits, ALL the time. You can't rely on a "chance" to keep you alive. Your goal is to use "guaranteed" options for survival; Your Health bar is ALWAYS guaranteed to be there, but your dodge chance is anything EXCEPT guaranteed to save you from a lethal attack.
There's a very huge difference between "taking less damage", and "Being hard to kill". It is not hard for WotLK raid bosses to kill you, and the only thing keeping you alive is the fact that your healers have a few precious moments to heal you before you die; Your best option is to increase the size on how long these few precious moments are and maximise the time your healers have. A CHANCE to extend this time (by dodging an attack) simply doesn't cut it for consistancy. IE, your sole worth as a tank in End game raiding is based on your guaranteed EHP.
Why EHP became so important in WotLK
EHP is extremely important in WotLK due to game design errors present in WotLK, which made tank avoidance so high at end-game that in order to make Raid Bosses a challenge, melee attacks from bosses had to almost one-hit-kill tanks or else fights would be too easy for healers. Think about this: If a tank has 75% avoidance, this means only 1 in 4 boss attacks hit. If a Boss attacks every 2 seconds, it means the tank only gets hit once every 8 seconds.
Healers are easily capable of healing 10k healing per second, and there's 5 healers in the 25man raid. 50k Healing per second, and the boss hits once per 8 seconds, that means the boss would melee for 400k damage per auto attack just to keep up with the tank's avoidance and possible healing... which of course would just 1 shot K.O any tank in the game. This exact reason is why Blizzard implemented -20% dodge debuffs for ICC and Halion, as well as redesigned bosses to hit faster but in smaller damage per attack to "smooth" out damage and try to lessen instantly-dead tanks. Still, despite their best efforts some tanks will end up just dying randomly in under 2 seconds and there's nothing anyone could have done - Unfortunately the only fix for this is to have ridiculous amounts of EHP to compensate.
Read more about it here: Blizzard messes up tank avoidance, and is forced to make drastic changes to make raiding at end game possible at all.
Posted by Daelo, the Lead Encounter Designer (the person who designs and balances boss fights):
"The high levels of tank avoidance players have obtained is making the incoming damage a tank DOES take more "spiky" than is healthy for raiding."
"Instead, the current situation is that if we make a hard hitting melee boss and a tank doesn't avoid two successive swings then the tank could very well be dead in that 1-2 second window. The use of reactive defensive abilities instead becomes a methodically planned affair, healers have to spam their largest heals just in case the huge damage spike happens."
"We've been trying to do a fair amount to mitigate the effect of high tank avoidance on the encounter side of things during this expansion with faster melee swings, additional melee strikes, dual wielding, narrowing the normal variance of melee swing damage, and various other tricks. There's a limit to what we can do, however."
Just before Cataclysm was released,GhostCrawler, Lead Systems Designer admitted to the mistakes made during WotLK, why they happened, and explained how the team would fix them in future expansions:
"Our original estimations for tank avoidance would have worked fine had we not decided to add extra tiers of gear to reward heroic boss kills halfway through the expansion."
"The Cataclysm design will keep tank avoidance at more manageable levels[than WotLK]."
"What I would like to see in Cataclysm is higher health pools but also lower heals ... Hopefully everyone won't be on the verge of almost dying"
So the recap - The CREATORS of WotLK admitted that tanks could die in 1-2 second windows. That Healers have to spam their "largest heals " in case of "huge damage spikes". Then the fix they implemented in Cataclysm? "Higher health pools"
Long story short, the experts who designed the game, the best tanks in the game, and all the mathematicians behind the most advanced theory crafting done in World of Warcraft all agree on a single fact:
>>Effective Health is by far the most valuable tool that keeps a tank alive<<
Effective Health is, and should be every tank's number 1 priority. Get those +30 Stamina Gems out and get Stam-stacking
07. Items and Stats
Spoiler:Show Agility vs Strength Equips.
Spoiler:Show There is no such thing a Leather item designed for tanks - instead, Dire Bear Form enhances the defensive-attributes found on Leather items to ABOVE the levels of defensive-attributes found on Plate-Armor. This added boost is deliberate as Bears are unable to equip shields. Other tanking classes gain a very large portion of their defenses from their equipped shield, so this high multiplier is designed to give bears compensation. What this means is the weighting on a Bear's Leather gear is ESPECIALLY important because the Bear-Form multiplier is so high.
This means that it is EXTREMELY important to always equip LEATHER items with agility on them; Once the armor and stamina on these items get multiplied by bear form, a very high amount of defenses is gained. Incorrectly equipping a Cloth item will result in a comparatively huge loss of defensive stats, and therefore Cloth items are to be avoided. Of course, the only exception to this rule is Cloaks, which are ALL cloth.
So now that we know that Bears can freely equip Leather DPS items without any downsides, how about "Off-Pieces", aka, Rings, Trinkets, Cloaks and Necklaces?
Well, unfortunately these items do NOT get boosted by Bear Form.
Generally, the best choice available is to merely equip the same Tanking items as other tank-classes, and tolerate that these items will have strength instead of our preferred stat of agility.
But some Tanking items have extremely BAD stats on them for bears, whereas ALL Agility-DPS-items have usable stats.
So which is a better choice?
Let's compare them.
"Tanking" off-pieces
Tanking Off-pieces are can be quite poorly designed for Bears. They will always have Strength instead of our preferred Agility stat, and they also almost always have Defense Rating, which is almost useless for Bears as we gain Critical-Immunity(aka Defense-Cap) via talents.
And what's worse is that the secondary stats available on these items can sometimes contain UNUSABLE stats such as Parry-Rating, which does literally NOTHING for bears, because Bears can't parry no matter what.
But if we desire the higher amount of Defensive-Attributes found on Tanking equips, we need to overlook these downsides, and focus on selecting specific items which avoid Parry Rating, and instead contains useful stats such as Additional Armor, Dodge Rating, or Hit/Expertise Rating.
Depending on which secondary stats are found on the Tanking item, they can range from being very good, to really useless for Bears.
Keep in mind that Strength is not necessarily an "evil" stat for Bears. Each point provides 2 Attack-Power. This increases both our threat and provides some Attack Power for stronger Savage Defense procs. The reason we prefer Agility, is because Agility provides dodge chance, armor and Crit-Chance, whereas Strength merely provides Attack Power. Overall, a small amount of Strength is perfectly usable, as long as it can't be avoided.
All in all, the main downside of Tank Off-Pieces is their minor loss of crit-chance, armor and possibly dodge-chance, but the tradeoff in higher Stamina and possibility of good tanking Stats such as Armor and Dodge chance make using GOOD tanking off-pieces generally better than DPS-off-pieces
Agility-DPS off-pieces
While agility DPS off-pieces have lower Stamina than Tank off-pieces, they make up for this by providing a reliable source of useful stats; All the stats found on any DPS off-piece is useful to Bears.
Predominantly is the fact these items give Agility instead of Strength, which means the guarantee of gaining 2 Armor per agility, some dodge chance, and a decent amount of Crit Chance.
The only downside is the loss of defensive stats; However, the gain in offensive stats from these items is usually fairly substantial and can provide a good Threat boost.
Again, Agility-DPS off-pieces usually won't be as beneficial as Tanking-items with a GOOD combination of stats for bears,
but thanks to the higher threat and decent Agility gains, agility items are perfectly decent options for a bear with nothing better at hand.
So how do Tanking and Agility Off-Pieces compare, and which ones should you use?
Tanking Items; Guaranteed Strength. Guaranteed Higher Stamina. Guaranteed Defense Rating. 2 Additional Random Stats that can be any combination of the following; Dodge, Parry, Hit, Expertise, or Armor.
Agility DPS Items; Guaranteed Agility, Guaranteed Lower Stamina. Guaranteed Attack Power. 2 Additional Random Stats that can be any combination of the following; Hit, Expertise, Armor Pen, Haste, Crit.
Tanking Items have higher Stamina and Attack Power. Always have Higher EHP and lower Threat stats.
Agility DPS Items have lower Stamina, but always provide at least a small amount of Dodge, Crit and Armor. Always have lower EHP stats, and substantially higher Threat Stats, usually in the form of Crit Chance(from agility or Critical Hit Rating), but can be in the form of haste or armor penetration.
So alot of the difference in these 2 types of items comes down to which 2 random stats that they have. Hit and Expertise can be found on both types, so these end up being the differences;
Tanking Items can provide Armor/Dodge/Parry as part of their 2 random stats.
Agility DPS Items can provide Haste/Armor Pen/Crit as part of their 2 random stats.
Armor and Dodge are GOOD.
Haste, Armor Penetration and Crit are OKAY
Parry rating is ABSOLUTELY USELESS. Does literally nothing. Complete waste.
So overall, the Item rankings go a bit like this;
Best; Any Tank items that has Armor.
Good; Any Tank Item that DOESN'T have Parry
Decent; Any DPS Item
Bad; Any Tank Item with Parry.
So comparing end game(277+ item level items) these are the differences:
Tanking items will always have about 40% more Stamina. Which is HUGE.
Tanking items with Additional Armor as a stat give around 700+ Armor, which beats the ~200 armor given by all Agility DPS pieces. Armor on Tanking pieces is AWESOME.
All DPS items give about 1.5% dodge chance, which equals a DRAW in dodge% chance when compared with any Tanking Item with Dodge Rating as one of their random stats.
DPS Items always have one of the DPS stats Haste/Crit/Armor pen that makes them do higher Threat than Tank items.
Parry Rating is USELESS so tank items with Parry rating are garbage.
Overall, if you need more Threat, using Agility DPS-pieces may be beneficial. But most of the time, you should be aiming to use Tanking items with good stats(aka, that have armor, and no parry)
Types of Stats and what to look for
Spoiler:Show The stats we find on gear can be categorized under 3 different functions, and you will need the right balance of each
Effective HP, Threat, Mitigation.
Effective HP: If you are raiding, you need EHP above all else, for reasons already explained near the top of the guide.
These stats improve how much damage you can sustain before going from full HP to dying, without getting healed. This mainly means 2 stats: Stamina and Armor (though technically it is more correct to say HP increasing stats and %damage reduction stats).
The important concept to understand is that the way Armor and Stamina works together is multiplicative. This means that double the amount of Stamina doesn't just mean twice the benefit from armor, it means four times as much(It'd be too OP if armor was this simple, which is why Armor has crazy high Diminishing Returns, but this concept still holds true. Also, this fact ties in with how Armor penetration works so well as a DPS stat when near Arpen Hard Cap). This simple relationship is what makes it so important to squeeze out every last bit of Stamina and Armor out of items you can, especially when it comes to the use of Majestic Zircon +30Stam gems instead of rare-quality 24 Stam gems, or even hybrid 15stam/10stat gems. At lower gear levels, you don't quite get the crazy non-linear scaling that comes with stamina and armor yet, so you can be forgiven, and often even recommended to go for avoidance stats until you reach a point where EHP becomes your main focus (usually when you start raiding).
Threat: These are stats that will increase the damage we deal, and therefore our threat. While threat is important, for as long as you have the highest threat on a boss you will have aggro - Having more threat than needed to get the job done can sometimes be described as wasteful. However, if you don't have enough threat it will be a disaster if you constantly lose aggro and fail to protect your DPS.
Simply put, all the effort you put into being tanky and tough to kill means nothing if you are not the one being attacked. For a tank that can't keep aggro, you may as well just /sit in a corner of the room for all the good you would do for your group. All your armor, health and defenses aren't being put to any use at all. Simultaneously, there's no point doing 10000x more threat than 2nd place on the aggro table because it does the same job as being 1% above 2nd place.
Try to balance out the right amount of threat that you need. Generally speaking, try to tank using as much tanking-specific off-pieces as you can, with full Stamina gems, and if you find that aggro becomes an issue with your Full Stam-Stacking setup, fall back on gemming towards the hit/expertise caps or using more Agility-DPS off-pieces. If things get really dire, you can use DPS-Trinkets until you become okay with threat. I suggest first checking the Rotation and the "troubleshooting low threat" section of this guide to ensure you are using the correct rotation and abilities before resorting to any of these actions, as the majority of the time the way that you play your class has more of an effect on aggro than your gear and talents do combined.
Mitigation/Avoidance: This is about reducing the amount of damage you take in general, be it through flat damage reductions or chance to avoid attacks completely. As a tank this type of stat speaks for itself. The less damage you take the less healing you will need. If your focus is mainly on running FoS/PoS and heroics, Mitigation and Avoidance is extremely helpful - this is because healers at this point might not be geared enough to keep up with healing, and they'll appreciate every last bit of help they can get. However once you start doing raids, Healers are both more geared, and there's going to start being more than just 1 healer in your group. When this becomes the case, avoidance is lot less useful than earlier: You have both more geared and more total healers, and "keeping up" with healing is quite unlikely to become an issue for them. At that point it would be better to ignore Avoidance altogether and focus on EHP, which should reflect in your Trinket choice and Gems/Enchants.
When gearing your Tank, this is the general priority of stats you should look for:
- JUST ENOUGH threat to barely consistently hold aggro; If you can't hold aggro, how are you protecting others? Plus if you're not the one being attacked, whats the point in having all that HP and Armor? Too much threat is bad however, as holding Aggro is a Yes/No equation. Additional Threat stats is lower priority.
- JUST ENOUGH Mitigation/Avoidance stats so your damage intake doesn't overwhelm healers; If you're to hold aggro, you better make sure healers are able to keep you alive. This is basically impossible to fail unless you equipped full-cloth gear, as the Agility found on all leather items is more than enough dodge/armor for you to be easily healable.
- Effective Health Stats: This means Increasing your HP and Damage Reduction stats. This mainly equates to Stamina and Armor, but can also include Magic Resistance. This is the FIRST stat listed that does NOT state "get just enough"; Therefore, this is what most of your spare itemization goes towards. Aka, Gemming, Enchants, Profession bonusses, etc. The goal of EHP is to increase your Time-To-Live without being healed; This lets you survives bigger Damage Spikes and is the best way to stay alive in WotLK.
- Avoidance/Mitigation stats that further reduce your total damage taken: If you are given the choice between a low amount of EHP, or a high amount of avoidance, the higher amount of avoidance would obviously be preferred.
- Threat stats that help eliminate the presence of RNG; This means additional hit rating towards the hit cap, and additional expertise; Assuming you already have enough to hold decent aggro with, stacking a bit of extra Hit/Expertise rating is still beneficial; A tank's nightmare is getting unlucky at the start of a fight and missing all their first 2-3 seconds worth of attacks due to bad luck and letting 2-3 DPS die for no reason, and through no one's fault.
Threat Stats in Order from most effective to least:
- Expertise until 26(softcap), including talents.
- Hit rating until 8% melee cap.
- Expertise at or above 27, until 56(hardcap), including talents. (beyond 56 does nothing)
- Haste rating
- Attack Power*/Crit*
- Armor penetration
Agility* is excluded from this list as I don't want it to cause any confusions: However agility gives Crit chance, so falls under the Crit section. But agility also provides Armor and Dodge chance, making it much more valuable than merely a threat Stat.
Strength* gives bear 2 attack power per point, however with kings, this becomes 2.2 attack power after buffs, which means that generally speaking 20 strength gives 44 attack power when raid buffed. This still does NOT mean that strength is good for bears, it is only good for threat(and Savage Defense). NEVER GEM STRENGTH.
Savage Defense benefits from both Crit chance and Attack Power, regardless of the source from where these stats come from.
So when considering what to Gem and Enchant for, how much Hit/Expertise rating gives you 1% more threat on boss? (Assumes you have 2/2 Primal Precision Talents)
16.39 Expertise Rating (between 0-132 rating) = 1% more MELEE abilities hit the boss.
32.78 Hit Rating (between 0-263 rating) = 1% more of ALL abilities hit the boss.
32.78 Expertise Rating (between 132-377)= 1% more MELEE abilities hit the boss. After 377 rating you should remove Primal Precision talent points.
Yes, Expertise softcap is very efficient in terms of threat gained per itemization-point
Survival Stats in Order from most Valuable to least:
- Armor found on capes and jewellery
- Stamina
- Agility
- Dodge rating
- Strength / AP/ Crit
- Defense rating
Although not mentioned here, keep in mind that Magic resistance can also be counted as a form of Damage reduction; But the sources of Magic Resistance is rare, and usually requires sacrificing other stats.
Stat descriptions
Stamina This is our primary Stat. 1 Point of stamina grants us 14.9 HP in Bear form, and this is increased to 16.3 HP per stamina when buffed with Kings - This is roughly 25% more HP gained per stamina than other classes. Stamina is VERY important for bears, much more than any other tank. The more stamina you have, the more time healers have to heal you before you die, and this is the MOST important factor that keeps you alive in raids. This is known as the "Time-To-Live" Concept, or the Effective Health concept. You can never get enough Stamina, stack it like crazy.
Agility This is another "main" and fairly important stat. Agility serves a 3 fold use that both reduces our total damage taken, as well as increasing our threat output.
Agility increases our Critical Hit Chance, which increases the frequency of our Savage Defense Procs, and increases our Threat output.
Agility also provides 2 Armor per point, and a large amount of Dodge Chance.
The amount of Dodge chance given by agility is so high, that 1 agility gives bear's a higher amount of dodge chance than 1 Dodge Rating.
Although Agility is an overall great stat, you should already get more than enough agility from your Leather items, and in raiding-scenarios, Stamina is a better stat to gem for.
There seems to be a common misconception that Agility grants Attack Power; this is NOT true. Only Cat Form gains attack power from agility, Bears do not.
Additional Armor
Although ALL leather and cloth items have an innate amount of armor, the stat of ADDITIONAL Armor, can sometimes be found on cloaks, trinkets, rings or necks, taking the place of a less useful stats, such as Hit, Expertise, Dodge or Parry rating. As none of these other stats provide EHP, Additional Armor is an extra source of EHP that would otherwise not be possible to have.
Armor is usually seen as the "more important" half of the EHP equation; a 100k Health tank that takes 50% less damage has 200k EHP. However; When a healer heals this tank for 20k, due to their 50% damage reduction, this 20k heal allows the tank to effectively soak 40k damage worth of punishment. This is why armor tanks give off an impression that they are "Easy to Heal, Easy to keep topped-up" by healers.
The Hard Cap for armor is 49,905 armor, at which point level 83 enemies (Aka Bosses) will deal 75% reduced physical damage to you. This amount of armor is literally impossible to passively attain. Note that the amount shown in the character tab is information for a level 80 enemy, which is different to bosses.
There is a VERY common misconception that due to Diminishing Returns, each additional point of armor becomes LESS valuable the more you have. This is UNTRUE; the effect per-point of armor on our EHP does not diminish AT ALL.
This is because going from 98% damage reduction to 99% damage reduction is vastly different than going from 0% reduction to 1% reduction.
Going from 98->99% doubles your EHP, whereas 0->1% has almost no effect on EHP.
So although going from 74% to 75% armor may seem like it takes a proportionately HUGE amount of armor, this is because this last 1% of damage reduction has a proportionally LARGER effect on our EHP.
If all you're looking at is the percentage of damage reduction that armor gives, it will LOOK like the effect of armor diminishes. However, this is only one half of the equation. Call it an illusion, or call it the magic of maths at work.
Overall, the effect PER-POINT of armor on EHP never changes, until you hit the impossible-to-reach Hard Cap of 49,905 armor.
The only thing that diminishes about armor is the Damage Reduction percentage, which is why Armor Penetration is a DPS stat that increases in value the more a DPS stacks; HOWEVER, this is only talking about damage taken, and damage dealt.
As a tank, we're concerned with the amount of EHP, which is also known as "Time to Live"
From WoWWiki;
Spoiler:Show
However, in terms of absolute time to live with respect to melee attacks, armor has no diminishing return effect. Given a constant melee DPS amount, each additional point of armor (whether it be from 0 to 1 or from 30000 to 30001) will increase the tank's time to live by the same effective amount. 1k additional armor increases time to live by approximately 9.47% (6.01% at level 80??), as shown by the graph. The formula for calculating time to live with respect to melee attacks is:
Effective time to live = 1 / (1 - DR%) * Base time to live
Where DR% is calculated according to the above formula. In this way, armor can be thought of as increasing the effective health of the tank with respect to melee attacks. Since DR caps at 75%, effective time to live caps at 400% of the tanks base time to live (time to live if the tank had no armor).
Prior to hitting the cap, armor is certainly a very desirable stat for tanks, but difficult to find. Most items of similar quality and rarity have similar armor values, and extra armor can be found only very rarely.
Source: http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Armor
Expertise Rating
>>Recommended Minimum: 132 Expertise Rating(16 Expertise) from gear. DO NOT EXCEED 459 Expertise Rating(56 Expertise) from gear.
Expertise reduces the chance that your enemy will Dodge or Parry your melee attacks; In many ways, Expertise is similar to Hit Rating, except for the single difference that it only applies to Melee Attacks.
Expertise below the soft cap is the BEST THREAT STAT for tanks. 2nd best Threat stat for Tanks is Hit Rating until Melee Hit-Cap, and 3rd best threat stat is Expertise above the soft-cap.
It is worth noting that there is a BIG difference between Expertise, and Expertise Rating. Expertise is the number found in your Character Sheet, and Expertise RATING, is the stat given from gear and gems. It takes 8.195 Expertise Rating to grant 1 Expertise.
Expertise also rounds DOWN only. For Example, if you have 16 Expertise Rating(Rounds down to 8.195), you will only have 1 Expertise due to ROUNDING. However, if you have 17 Expertise Rating(Rounds down to 16.39) you will have 2 Expertise.
A Raid Boss will always have a 6.5% dodge chance, but gains an additional 14% Parry chance ONLY if the player attacks from in FRONT of the boss. As the boss always faces towards the target he has aggro on, presumably the tank, we will assume all your attacks a Bear will have to contend against both the Dodge and Parry chance of bosses.
1 Expertise reduces the chance for your melee attacks to get DODGED or PARRIED by 0.25% EACH. The emphasis on "EACH" is important, because 1 Expertise for a tank effectively gains DOUBLE the effect, as it overcomes both Dodge and Parry chance. That is to say, that 1 Expertise means a total of 0.5% more melee attacks successfully strike the boss. This "Double Benefit" is the reason why Expertise is the BEST threat stat for tanks, but only until the Expertise Soft Cap at 26 Expertise.
If you have 26 expertise, you will overcome the full 6.5% dodge chance that the boss has, as well as negating 6.5% of the boss's parry chance, totaling 13% more successful hits. At 26 expertise, your attacks will be dodged 0% of the time, but still be parried 7.5% of the time. This is called the Expertise SOFT-cap.
Overcoming the additional PARRY chance of the boss is called being HARD-capped, which is achieved at 56 Expertise,
at which point attacks will no longer be parried either.
Being Expertise Soft-capped is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED AT ALL TIMES, as this provides the BIGGEST threat increase for tanks.
Above the Softcap, Expertise only gives half the benefit as below the Soft-Cap, because the boss now has 0% Dodge chance. From this point on, we're only reducing the Boss's Parry chance, and Expertise effectively only provides half the benefit compared to when below the Soft-Cap.
The Relevant Expertise Caps, depending on talents are as follows:
2/2 Primal Precision: Requires 16 Expertise from Gear @132 Expertise rating
1/2 Primal Precision: Requires 21 Expertise from Gear @173 Expertise rating
0/2 Primal Precision: Requires 26 Expertise from Gear @ 214 Expertise rating
2/2 Primal Precision: Requires 46 Expertise from Gear @377 Expertise rating
1/2 Primal Precision: Requires 51 Expertise from Gear @418 Expertise rating
0/2 Primal Precision: Requires 56 Expertise from Gear @459 Expertise rating
It is also worth noting that against Lady Deathwhisper, Sindragosa, and Halion, Expertise also gains a defensive benefit due to these bosses having Parry-Haste. It is also essential that on these bosses, Melee DPS and Warlock/Hunter Pets attack from BEHIND the boss, to avoid being Parried.
A quick note on Parry Hasting;
Spoiler:Show Whenever a Boss or Player parries an attack, a passive effect occurs that makes the defending player or boss's next Auto-Attack strike earlier. As bears can't parry, this phenomenon can never be a DPS-increase for us, but instead is something important to understand as it can greatly influence the amount of damage we receive from certain bosses, why it's important to make sure none of the melee are attack from in front of boss; and why expertise may help our survival on these bosses.
Fortunately, almost all end-game Bosses have Parry-Haste disabled by the Developers of WotLK, due to the fact that "the incoming damage a tank DOES take [is] more "spiky" than is healthy for raiding", and parry haste only would've made it worse and resulted in instantly dead tanks for the whole expansion.
In any case, Parry hasting is only enabled on 3 total end-game bosses in tier 10 content. These 3 bosses are Lady Deathwhisper, Sindragosa and Halion.
There are 3 main mechanics to Parry hasting;
Rule Number 1: When a Player or Boss parries an attack, the defending person's next Auto-Attack timer is reduced by 40% of their total Auto-Attack timer. For Example, if a boss usually Auto Attacks every 2 seconds, when the boss parries an attack, it's next melee will strike UP TO 40% faster, aka UP TO 0.8 seconds faster.
Rule Number 2:The hasted Auto-Attack cannot result in skipping more than 20% of the REMAINING Swing-Timer.
Rule Number 3: Parry-Hasting can stack multiple times, as long as the resulting attack doesn't result in skipping more than 20% of the REMAINING Swing-Timer(aka doesn't break Rule 2)
TLDR; Parry haste makes the next melee attack UP TO 40% faster, but not always. There's also a hidden rule to prevent Auto-Attacks occuring at the exact same time as the defending person parries an attack, and Parry-Haste stacks multiple times
Hit Rating
>>Recommended Minimum: 158 Hit Rating for Growl Hit-Cap. DO NOT EXCEED 263 Hit-Rating(8%
Melee Hit chance)
Hit Rating increases your chance to successfully hit the boss with ALL abilities. Although similar in some ways to Expertise, Hit Rating also applies to SPELLS as well as Melee abilities. Hit chance is separated in Spell-Hit and Melee-Hit chances. The stat Hit Rating increases BOTH spell-hit chance and melee-hit chance.
All bosses have an 8% Chance for Melee Abilities to miss them, and every 32.78 Hit Rating increases the chance for the player to Hit with Melee Abilities by 1%.
All bosses have an 17% Chance for Spell Abilities to miss them, and every 26.23 Hit Rating increases the chance for the player to Hit with Spell Abilities by 1%.
Most of a Bear's attacks are Melee abilities, and only Growl, Challenging Roar, Demoralizing Roar, and Faerie Fire count as Spell abilities.
Hit Rating is the 2nd best Threat-Stat for Tanks, losing only to the Expertise Soft-Cap. Achieving the melee-hit cap of 263 Hit Rating(8%) is a very good threat increase for Bears.
It is ESSENTIAL for Bears to be Growl Hit-Capped before raiding, as a missed Growl can lead to very big problems in Raids. The Glyph of Growling provides 8% Spell-Hit for Growl, and Shadow Priests or Balance Druids provide a further 3% Spell Hit chance.
The Relevant Growl-Hit-Caps are as follows
With Glyph, With 3% Raid Buff: 158 Hit rating(6% spell-hit)
With Glyph, NO Raid Buff: 237 Hit rating (9% spell-hit)
NO Glyph, With 3% Raid Buff: 368 Hit Rating(14% Spell-hit)
NO Glyph, NO Raid Buff: 446 Hit rating(17% spell-hit)
Dodge Rating This stat comes very low on the priority list because it is completely inferior to agility across the board. 1 point of dodge will grant the average ICC geared Bear approx 0.0214% chance to dodge, whereas a single point of agility will grant approx 0.0256% chance to dodge. Agility will ALWAYS be better than dodge rating in EVERY possible way, despite whatever gearscore your bear is. Remember; Agility also provides Crit and Armor, AND a larger amount of Dodge.
However, many tank items will come with dodge rating so it's pretty much unavoidable, but it takes up the secondary-stat slot so it's not like you sacrifice anything important for it.
JUST.DONT.EVER.GEM.DODGE! SeriouslyI'mNotKidding
Haste From here on these stats are mainly for threat, but are inferior to hit and expertise rating. Therefore these DEFINITELY should never be gemmed for. Haste is current preferred stat amongst the remaining stats because Maul is such a large portion of our threat and damage, and more mauls will give us the most threat gain - at the slight downside that parry-hasting bosses such as Lady Deathwhisper, Sindragosa, and Halion cause you a TINY bit more damage. I would try to avoid Haste on Halion, but otherwise Haste is a very good Threat stat.
Strength/ AP/ Crit Remember that one of a druid's passive abilities is Savage Defense, where critically striking an enemy reduces the damage you take by the next physical attack you receive by an amount equal to 25% of your attack power. Strength grants a bear 2 Attack power, or 2.2 attack power after kings. Agility DPS gear is always better than using strength DPS gear, the only strength you should have on your gear is from Tanking offset pieces, used for their tendency to have strong defensive stats.
Armor PenetrationThis is a very complex stat, and it is unnecessary for tanks to fully understand it. Just know that the more armor penetration a DPS has, the better each point of additional armor penetration becomes. However, at low amounts of Armor penetration, Attack Power and other stats add more DPS per-point unless you can get close to the armor penetration cap of 1400, which is in no way worth trying to achieve as a tank. Depending on how much armor pen you have it may sometimes increase your threat a lot, but most of the time it'd barely do anything. Due to our Savage Defense skill, we'll gain more than just better threat from Attack Power/Crit stats. Hit/Expertise still remains the king of pure threat stats. Use whatever ArPen you are given by your gear, but don't go out of your way looking for it.
How about Defense rating and "Defense Cap"?
Defense cap is the immunity to being critically hit by Bosses. As a druid, speccing into Survival of the Fittest (Reduces chance to be critically hit by 6%) will grant you immunity to crits from all PvE content in the game.
That said, Defense is still meant to add a chance to Parry, Dodge, and for attacks to miss you. A bear cannot parry, and our talents make us not require crit immunity stats. Therefore out of the 4 possible benefits, a whole 2 are wasted for bears. 5 points of Defense rating will gain you only 0.04% chance to dodge and 0.04% chance for attacks to miss you in the best possible scenario. However, due to diminishing returns the actual amount of avoidance gained is much lower, and gets worse the more defense you get (A level 80 already has 400 defense skill to start with, which is why this stat is weak from the very start). Defense rating works by raising your defense skill. Use whatever you have on your offset pieces, but never go out of your way looking for it. Defense rating is inferior to even dodge rating, which is a bad enough stat to start with
08. Best in Slot Gear List
Spoiler:Show December 2017 Update;
Unlike DPS, tanks don't really have a single "Best in Slot" List, as there is alot to consider when thinking about which items to equip. Generally speaking though, Bears have ALOT less gear-options than Plate Tanks, but this still doesn't always mean you can just slap on 1 particular gearset, and then call it a day.
It is EXTREMELY critical we can hold aggro. The ONLY reason we bother stacking defensive stats is so that we can keep the boss's attention away from the raid. If we can't hold threat, we literally FAIL in our role as a tank.
For this reason, Threat-Output is the #1 Priority.
However, as soon as we reach >JUST ENOUGH< threat generation to BARELY keep aggro, additional threat-output becomes literally worthless. Aggro is a "yes/no" thing. Once we have aggro, excessive threat stats suddenly become completely worthless.
And to make things even harder, the amount of Threat-Output needed to hold aggro isn't constant. We never really quite know how much threat-output we need, but all we know is that having too little is disastrous, but having too much is wasteful.
And if the Threat considerations alone weren't enough of a variable, every single fight has different mechanics, and different amounts of Magic/Physical damage. Armor is a stat that only reduces Physical Damage, and therefore might be extremely useful on some fights, and almost worthless on other fights.
Basically, this is an extremely long-winded way for me to say something very simple
>>THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SINGLE BEST IN SLOT LIST FOR TANKS<<
If you truly want to be a "Best-in-Slot" Tank for every scenario you find yourself in; Then you should try to collect EVERY possible "BiS" Tanking item that exists, and then change your gear before EVERY encounter. This is the only sure-fire way to be 100% optimally setup for every scenario.
But this is too much work for most tanks. Instead, the more popular approach is to simply just use a "Jack of all Trades" Armor set, which does a decent job in every scenario, and then just change out a trinket or ring every now and then as needed.
So overall, I've just decided that for this supposed "BiS" section, I'll just list a whole lot of end-game Tanking items which are possible "BiS" candidates, and do my best to help you select which ones are good as Daily-Drivers, and which approaches generally work best.
Keep in mind a lot of playstyle and preference differences come into play here, and opinions will usually always be different when it comes to Tank Armor.
Also, be sure to read the Item and Stats section of the guide for a much more in-depth explanation of stats.
Common practices for BiS gear setups.
No matter what BiS list you consult, you'll always tend to find they use use Ikfirus's Sack of Wonder in the Chest Slot. This is because there's not too many tanking alternatives for Leather gear, and Ikfirus's Sack has both Expertise and Hit Rating, making it the best possible threat-gain on a single piece of armor possible. This leaves Shoulders, Gloves, Helment, and Legs for Tier 10 Set pieces.
Attaining 4 Piece Tier10 is also a very common goal to get as soon as possible; the 4 Piece T10 Set bonus is EXTREMELY useful, and Leather gear usually all has fairly similar stats, meaning that there's not many choices when it comes to choosing out Leather-Items for a BiS list.
Before we go onto the BiS list, here's a reference table on Hit Rating and Expertise Ratings
Expertise: Recommended minimum: 26 Expertise, as this is the BIGGEST threat increase for a tank. Don't exceed 56 Expertise. 35 Expertise is a perfectly good amount of expertise for most fights, which is what most BiS lists use. You only need higher than this for Parry-Haste bosses.
Hc Ikfirus's Sack Chest alone = 12 Expertise
Hc T10 Legs alone = 12 Expertise.
Hc Ikfirus + Hc T10 Legs = 25 Expertise
+10 Expertise from the Talent Primal Precision = 35 Expertise
For Parry-Haste Fights, you can aim for 56 Expertise Hard cap to avoid Parries;
The BoE Boots Footpads of Impending Death for 7 additional Expertise
The Ring Seal of Many Mouths can also provide 7 additional Expertise
Expertise food Rhinolicious Wormsteak can provide another 40 Expertise Rating
TOTAL EXPERTISE RATING FOR PARRY-HASTE FIGHT SETUP;
Ikfirus's Sack of Wonder(106) + Sanctified Lasherweave Legguards(106) + Footpads of Impending Death(64) + Seal of Many Mouths(60) + Rhinolicious Wormsteak(40) = 376 Expertise Rating = 45 Expertise
+10 Expertise from Primal Precision = 55 Expertise.
Fun fact: 377 is expertise cap(46) with 2/2 Primal Precision, so we're just missing 1 expertise point from hard cap with this setup.
Hit Rating: Recommended minimum: 153 Hit Rating for Growl-Hit-Cap. Do not exceed 263 Hit Rating(Melee Hit Cap).
Heroic Ikfirus's Sack = 114 Hit Rating (3.48%)
Royal Crimson Cloak= 44 Hit Rating (1.34%)
Ashen Band of Endless Courage = 55 Hit Rating (1.68%)
Noose of Malachite= 52 Hit Rating (1.59%)
Cryptmaker = 99 Hit Rating (3.02%)
Common Hit and recommended Hit Rating Combinations:
Ikfirus + Ashen = 169 Hit Rating (5.16%)
Ikfirus + Crimson Cloak + Ashen Band = 213 Hit Rating (6.50%)
Ikfirus + Cryptmaker = 213 Hit Rating (6.50%)
Helmet:
Sanctified Lasherweave Headguard Tier 10 Helmet.
Neck:
Bile-Encrusted Medallion Armor Necklace(Recommended)
Noose of Malachite Hit Rating Necklace(Only if below 153 Hit Rating)
Shoulder:
Sanctified Lasherweave Shoulderpads Tier 10 Shoulders
Chest:
Ikfirus's Sack of Wonder Gives both Expertise+Hit Rating. Non-heroic version is a BoE which can be bought on AH. Best non-T10 offset choice.
Cloak:
Sentinel's Winter Cloak Armor Cloak.
Note: Bear Form does NOT affect the "Extra Armor" stat
Royal Crimson Cloak Hit Rating cloak. Inferior EHP but higher Stamina than the Armor Cloak.
Bracers:
Umbrage Armbands Not many other good choices, unfortunately
Hands:
Sanctified Lasherweave Handgrips Tier 10 Gloves.
Belt:
Astrylian's Sutured Cinch Not many other good choices, unfortunately
Legs:
Sanctified Lasherweave Legguards Tier 10 Legs
Boots:
Frostbitten Fur Boots Best EHP option
Footpads of Impending Death Best Threat/ Expertise Option. This is a BoE that can be crafted by Leatherworkers
Idol::
Idol of the Crying Moon264 idol from EoFs is undisputedly the best.
Idol of the CorruptorThe 226 Idol from Emblems of Conquest is actually the 2nd Best Idol, giving 168 Agility after Kings Buff. 168 Agility is approximately equal to about ~180 Dodge Rating, but also provides 336 Armor, and ~4% Critical Strike Chance.
Piece Of Junk245 EoT Idol is a piece of Garbage. Only use is for Gearscore stacking. 200 Dodge gives no armor for EHP, and no Critical Hit Chance for threat and Savage Defense Procs. Avoid.
Weapons:
Note: YOU CAN CHANGE WEAPONS WHILST IN COMBAT; Doing so will trigger a GCD but this allows for the unique ability of starting a fight with a threat weapon such as Oath/Bloodfall/Crypt and switching to an EHP weapon such as WGG once threat has stabilised.
Wrathful Gladiator's Greatstaff Despite being a PvP item, this weapon(aka WGG) has the BEST EHP in the game. Does have alot lower threat-output than other weapons, but when near-BiS, threat usually becomes less of an issue. Usually a Donor-Only Weapon, unless you plan to do high-rated arenas on the same character as your Bear.
Oathbinder, Charge of the Ranger-General Best Agility and All-Around option. Beats Bloodfall due to higher Attack Power and item level, despite Armor Penetration being inferior to Haste for threat. Much higher threat output than WGG. Less EHP than WGG but good if you can't donate or if you aren't comfortable with the threat-loss from using WGG. Also Best in Slot for Cat Form, if you're interested in Feral DPS.Spoiler:Show
Cryptmaker Best Hit Rating Option. However, as this weapon uses Strength, it loses around around 330 ~ 360 armor compared to the Agility options listed above. Also loses about ~5% Critical hit chance compared to the other options. Although Cryptmaker provides a very good amount of Hit Rating, the tradeoffs are quite punishing. Oathbinder or WGG are recommended instead.
Rings:
There are MANY options for rings, depending on what you need. You can use rings to stabilize on your Hit/Expertise Caps, you can use them for Armor gains, you can use DPS rings for Threat-Gains. Overall, most bears find themself lacking hit rating, so the use of Hit Rating on 1 ring is very common. The other rings are usually devoted to Armor rings, for EHP, but some tanks prefer using DPS rings for Threat output.
I usually recommend the Ashen Ring for Hit rating, and then either Devium's Eternal or Signified Ring of Binding for the 2nd ring slot to maximize EHP.
Armor Rings (Using 1 is recommended)
Devium's Eternally Cold Ring Best Overall EHP Ring in the game(Recommended)
Signified Ring of Binding Purely an EHP Ring with 0 Threat gains at all. Has even higher Armor than Devium's, despite it's lower Item Level. Decent Magic Resist too.(Recommended)
Loop of the Twin Val'kyrAn Item level 245 Version of devium's. Still very good EHP despite it's lower Item level, but can't compare to the godliness that is Devium's
Hit Rating Rings: (Using 1 is recommended)
Ashen Band of Endless Courage Good overall tanking ring. Decent Hit Rating, and a nice Armor Proc(Recommended)
Signet of Twilight Best Agility-DPS Ring for Bears in the game. Good Hit rating, good Crit Chance. Lower Stamina than the other Tanking-Rings mentioned though.
Expertise Alternative(Only for Parry-Haste Bosses)
Seal of Many Mouths Similar to Signet of Twilight, but with Expertise instead. An alternative that may be considered on Parry-Haste Bosses, when you might prefer using a DPS-Agility Item instead of a Tanking-Ring.
Trinkets
Trinkets are the most Situation-Dependant equips in the game. VERY useful to collect as many as you can,
and it is well worth swapping trinkets to best match your next encounter.
I consider these 4 trinkets BiS for Bears, with Sindragosa's Flawless fang SLIGHTLY favored for #1, and the other 3 pretty much tied for 2nd place.
Sindragosa's Flawless Fang Highest Passive Stamina on a trinket, and a HUGE magical-defensive CD with only a 1min CD.
Corroded Skeleton Key The second highest passive Stamina found on any trinket, although the activated ability is only a minor absorption.
Unidentifiable Organ VERY encounter-specific. Best on encounters with high Physical Damage intake. If you can maintain the stamina proc at maximum, then this trinket has the highest EHP of all trinkets. Unreliable procs though, avoid in magic-fights or taunt-swap fights.
Satrina's Impeding Scarab/Juggernaut's Vitality Ally/Horde versions of the same trinket. VERY similar to Skeleton key, with slightly less Stamina but an arguably more usefull on-use effect. However, the on-use is a 3 min CD as opposed to Skeleton Key's 2min CD.
And an honorable mention for 5th place: Petrified Twilight Scale
Petrified Twilight Scale Nice passive armor... But that's about it. Very situational activated effect. For the average bear, it'll proc for something in the range of 11-13% dodge chance depending on your gear, but chances are if you're falling below 35% HP, extra avoidance isn't going to help you much anyway. Avoidance isn't going to help you stay alive in raids, and can not be considered as EHP.
Despite being the highest item level tanking trinket in the game, PTS is very poorly designed, and Bears have horrible compatibility with it.
Firstly, Bears can't parry, which means we already have excessively high Dodge chance. This makes the dodge rating from PTS suffer from much higher Diminishing Returns than any other tanking class.
Secondly, as the EHP Kings of the game, Bears rarely every drop below 35% HP to begin with, unless we're caught in an EXTREMELY bad situation, in which case a 10% extra chance to dodge is likely useless. Better to rely on cooldowns such as Survival Instincts/Frenzied Regen at this point instead.
Thirdly, the other 4 trinkets are just plain better. If you want a passive-armor trinket with an semi-reliable proccing effect,
just use Unidentifiable Organ. At least UO procs for something useful, and can proc at a useful time.
TL;DR NEVER DONATE FOR PTS. Alot of new tanks do this, and they'll regret it later on.
That said, is PTS worth collecting on a Bear? ...It can be, yes. But ONLY if all the other DK/Paladin/Warrior tanks pass on it, they'll have a much better use for it than you.
There could be very specific circumstances where you can find a use for it, but it's very rare.
09. Macros
Spoiler:Show The most important macros to use are the ones that cast Maul automatically for you whenever you press any button in combat. This maximizes your Maul-usage which can lead to a VERY large threat increase. Type "/macro" ingame and create a new macro for each ability below. Leave the Icon as the default "?" mark as this allows the "#showtooltip" line display the ability cooldown for you.
The exclamation mark in "/use !Maul" is EXTREMELY important; The Exclamation mark tells the macro to keep the maul toggled ON, without it, every button press will keep toggling Maul on and off rapidly, which isn't what we want at all.
Mauls when you Mangle
Mauls when you LacerateCode:#showtooltip
/use Mangle (Bear)
/use !Maul
/startattack
Mauls when you SwipeCode:#showtooltip
/use Lacerate
/use !Maul
/startattack
Mauls when you Faerie FireCode:#showtooltip
/use Swipe (Bear)
/use !Maul
/startattack
Mauls when you use Demoralizing RoarCode:#showtooltip
/use Faerie Fire (Feral)
/use !Maul
/startattack
Mauls when you Maul, so you can Maul while you Maul. -Just kidding, this just starts your Auto-Attack incase you changed targets recently, which allows you to start using Mauls on them.Code:#showtooltip
/use Demoralizing Roar
/use !Maul
/startattack
Also includes a few lines to remove spells which may require removing urgently.
Code:#showtooltip
/use !Maul
/startattack
/cancelaura Divine Intervention
/cancelaura Hand of Salvation
/cancelaura Hand of Protection
The above macros are the only essential macros you should use. After you make the macros, just drag them to your Hotbar and replace your default abilities with these macros.
Click once to enrage, then again to get rid of the enrage armor debuff. Only if you don't have 4p T10
Useful when you need a quick pop of 20 rage but not want to deal with the decreased armor for 10 seconds, which can often be as much as 4000-5000 less armor.Code:#showtooltip Enrage
/cancelaura Enrage
/cast Enrage
Announces who you innervate to party/raid
Announces who you are casting Revive on to party/raidCode:#showtooltip
/stopmacro [nohelp,nodead]
/run if UnitInRaid("player") then c="RAID" else c="PARTY" end
/run s,u="Innervate","target" if IsSpellInRange(s,u)==1 then SendChatMessage("Innervate cast on "..UnitName(u),c)end
/cast Innervate
Announces who you are Rebirthing to party/raidCode:#showtooltip
/stopmacro [nohelp,nodead]
/run if UnitInRaid("player") then c="RAID" else c="PARTY" end
/run s,u="Revive","target" if IsSpellInRange(s,u)==1 then SendChatMessage("Revive casting on "..UnitName(u),c)end
/cast Revive
Code:#showtooltip
/stopmacro [nohelp,nodead]
/run if UnitInRaid("player") then c="RAID" else c="PARTY" end
/run s,u="Rebirth","target" if IsSpellInRange(s,u)==1 then SendChatMessage("Combat Rez cast on "..UnitName(u),c)end
/cast Rebirth
10. Addons
Spoiler:Show [Deadly Boss Mods, Click to Download]
A must have for every Raider. Shows timers for abilities for Every Raid and Dungeon Boss in the game, puts up warnings ahead of time and plays a "run away!" sound if you need to move away from something dangerous.
[Tidy Plates, Click to Download]
An improved version of the default Blizzard Nameplates. You need to use nameplates when tanking, it display what mobs you have aggro on, are close losing aggro on and do not have aggro on. If you AoE tank without this then you'll have no way of knowing what mobs you you need to taunt.
[Omen Threat Meter, Click to Download]
Shows the entire Threat table of your current target. Get into the habit of glancing at this every couple of seconds.
More addons can be found on the Community 3.3.5 / 4.3.0 Addon List
Everyone is highly encouraged to browse for their own addons. They can make it easier to raid by letting you customize your UI into something more Practical, or more importantly for some, even change their UI just to make things look pretty. They can sort your bags for you, automatically warn you of certain events and much much more.
A few of my favorites are Tbag, for sorting bags, PowerAurasClassic to let me track cooldowns, buffs and debuffs, Mik's Scrolling Battle Text which is a nice addon to handle displaying all your combat text in a pretty manner.
I use Xperl with the raid frames disabled for my HuD, which many consider to be a somewhat outdated mod (I've been using it since vanilla and refuse to change), I substituted the terrible Xperl raid frames for Healbot, or sometimes grid2 depending on what class I'm playing, and finally I use BarTender to position my excessive amount of action bars around the screen and customise my keybinds for them in a manner to takes advantage of my 19 button mouse.
11. Tips and Tricks
Spoiler:Show -Keybinds are important! Consider keybinding everything to easy-to-reach locations such as the numbers 1-6, or keys such as Q/E/F/G/Z/X/C. Remember; More frequently used spells, or more urgent spells (such as survival instincts) should take up the best keybinds, aka the ones closest to WASD!
-Consider changing your A/D keys to STRAFE left+right; Keyboard turning is redundant and a useless waste of the A+D keys. I personally keybound strafe to A+D and never looked back; Basically an upgrade to your dodging/kiting skills for every class and role; Always use your mouse(right click) to turn.
For convenience, I still keep keyboard turning bound to shift+a/shift+d just for when my right hand isn't near the mouse because I'm playing onehanded....*LikeWhenI'mEatingFood* This also frees up the keybinds Q+E for more important spells.
-Tanks are allowed to backpeddle... as long as you aren't aiming to move somewhere quickly - Doing so keeps all your enemies in front of you so you can dodge their attacks, and also moves the boss slowly enough so that your melee DPS aren't outranged suddenly, allowing them to keep up their DPS. However, if you need to move somewhere quickly, STRAFE sideways at an angle(never backpeddle!), this still keeps the boss in front of you. If you're feeling advanced, you can implement some jump backwards+quickly turning to face the boss maneuvers to move away at full speed whilst still facing boss, or get an closely monitor the boss's melee timers and only moving in between their attacks.
-When tanking a group of trash mobs that has a mix of Melee units and Ranged units; Keep in mind that the melee units always follow you, whereas the ranged units don't. Take advantage of this by positioning yourself near the Ranged units; the Melee will follow you and this means the enemies will group up better for both your swipe's Area of Effect threat, but also gets more mobs in your DPSer's AoE abilities allowing your party to kill them faster. This is opposed to standing away from the ranged units; You won't build any Swipe aggro on them and will likely end up attacking and killing your healer, as well as taking double the amount of time to kill due to how AoE's work.
-Use Line of Sight to your advantage when pulling monsters; In my above tip, I mentioned that ranged monsters normally don't follow you; However, by breaking their line of sight around a corner, or hiding behind an object from them, they will walk towards you like a melee monster! This is extremely useful to do safer/smaller pulls in a densely populated room or to group up monsters more tightly for AoE. Just be careful you dont LoS your healer as this will usually result in your death.
-When tanking enemies you know have knockback skills, or any sort of ability that throws you backwards, position yourself such that your backside is directly up against a wall! Any wall that's directly behind you will instantly catch you and this completely negates the knockback effects, giving you much better control over the fight since you aren't being tossed around the room.
-Take your time with creating an informative User Interface; Information is power, and the default UI does not always give you all the information you need. This is where addons come into play, Tidyplates can tell you which enemies you have aggro on, and which ones you need to taunt at a moment's glance, and Omen/Skada allow you to see the full threat table of your current target! Many other addons can also be used to reduce clutter in the middle of your screen, or track anything else you may wish to.
-Camera zoom distance lets you see more at a time; By default, mousewheeldown will zoom your camera out. However, by default the maximum zoomout distance is still much too low for how I like to play. use the macro "/script SetCVar("cameraDistanceMax",50)" to zoom out even further. This allows you to keep an eye on your party or raid more easily and instantly pick up extra dds that might patrol into you from behind, or other such circumstances.
-Collect all the alternative BiS gear you can, particularly trinkets; Often the biggest difference that you can make is what you do before the pull timer even starts; Knowing which items are best to use in a fight is an important decision; Generally speaking Armor for physical-damage heavy fights, and Stamina for magical-damage heavy fights! Paying attention to your hit rating/expertise and the amount of threat you'll need throughout the fight, and considering Expertise against parry-haste bosses such as Halion all make a huge difference!
-Keep stocked up on consumables; Notably Flasks (Stoneblood) and Potions (Indestructible Pots). Remember you can pre-pot each fight; that is, using your potion before you start the boss fight which allows you to use the potion a 2nd time again during the fight. Using 2 potions for hard fights such as on Heroic Lich King/ Heroic Halion can be the difference between a raid wipe and a clear!
-Getting alot of WoW Critical Errors? Try Setting WoW to be Large Address Aware Retail WoW was patched to become LAA - compatible in 4.1, but as 3.3.5 clients are not LAA compatible, this renders 3.3.5 clients prone to getting "RAM overflow" crashes.
I consider this to be practically mandatory for all Warmane players; Being Large Address Aware allows your WoW client to access up to 4gb of RAM instead of the default 2gb, which won't just result in less crashes butshould also result in smoother gameplay and faster loading times.
-A lot of the theory and and tanking skills covered in this guide (importance of EHP, useage of defensives, moving bosses away from danger etc) translates extremely well to ANY tank class and spec. It takes a comparatively very short time to learn a class's rotation than it does to learn to "how to tank". Build up confidence by chain pulling in your random dungeons, guaging how much you can pull based on your healer's performance/remaining mana, and learning which bosses/monsters hurt the most and scaling your pulls accordingly are all skillsets which perfectly translates to any tank class.
Thanks for visiting my Feral Tanking Guide for Warmane's 3.3.5a Icecrown realm!
Please do not Copy-Paste this guide onto any other sites (Such as shivTR guildsites, or other Private Server community forums >.< )
This guide is actively maintained specifically for WARMANE's servers, and revisions are constantly being made to adapt to Warmane's current content, whether there are unique scripting challenges on the server. To avoid outdated copies, please instead LINK to this thread so readers can browse an Up-To-Date version of the guide.
If you have any questions feel free to Private Message me or leave a reply below; I'm sure myself or one of other experienced tanks who dwell on the forums will be happy to answer.
Also if you're new to Feral, you may want to check out the Mini-Guide on Cat-Form DPS with bear-talents in the first reply posted below, or even better, check out a full Kitty-DPS guide and invest 1,000 gold into dual-spec!
