[frotes]

There are a few reason behind no feral aggression:

The main one is because bear demoralizing roar has a lower ap value (240) than warrior demo shout (300). In raids, someone is going to have improved demo shout and it will lower more ap than if you had improved demoralizing roar. So the warrior demo shout will just override your shout, making your shout useless. This makes having the improved demoralizing roar only useful basically for 5 mans where you will be the only one putting up a demo shout. Also the ferocious bite bite part of the talent is pretty bad also as cat dps cycles don't use bite.

Another thing is that the feral tank builds are pretty tight as they are and you couldn't really spare 5 points on such a lackluster talent.

[Norrath]

You can easily find room in a 47/14 spec for Feral Aggression -- easily. Primal Tenacity doesn't stack with Predatory Instincts (and yes, PI works on AoE fears), drastically lessening its impact in raiding (which is already questionable), and Savage Fury has no impact on tanking and very little impact on raid DPS. (It still has more impact on raid DPS than Feral Aggression, though.)

47/14 with 5/5 FA is the single-strongest tanking focused build you can get as a Feral druid. The problem with it is that as soon as a warrior has 2/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout, FA is pointless.

[Taur]

Agreed, warrior demo shout makes FA meaningless. However if you took the warriors demo shout out of the equation, would that extra buff make a noticeable difference?

The reason i ask is that there are occasions, at least in my raiding experience (which is the only one that matters when making my build ;-) ) where i can't rely on a warrior's demo shout for two reasons:

The first is the lack of reliable warriors in our runs, where you can't guarantee demo shout being up. So its a bit like the argument for dps druids who don't want mangle in their dps rotation if there is druid tank... if they rip when a mangle is not up its a massive waste, so not mangling is risky. Just like for me when tanking without a good demo roar up is risky.

The second reason is the occasions where you have to tank a mob or mobs away from the other tank, taking yourself out of the range of their demo shout. Bear riders in ZA a good example. In these situations, demo roar is the only reducer of AP.

So personally i don't necessarily see FA as a talent to disregard off-hand... the "conventional wisdom" of its uselessness just doesn't add-up to me. And i agree with Norrath that there are talents in our tree that are more 'nice to have' rather than 'need to have', such as primal tenacity and intensity that probably have less impact on raid runs than FA potentially could (definitely would if the warrior is out of the equation).

So my question is - is the reduction in AP for improved demo roar INSTEAD OF normal demo roar a significant reduction, with the assumption that warriors demo shout not being up?

[Melange]

Lacerate's damage is good threat and maintaining the stack is also fairly important. For maximum threat on a bleedable boss, you will always stack it up. Your swipe would need to be doing better average damage than 450 for you to even think about replacing it entirely. That is simply not going to happen in tanking gear, and I doubt it would in cat gear.

Also, always remember that armor reduction needs to be accounted for. I would also like to point out, on that note, that rake with full ticks, against anything more than around 5% armor reduction, which is most every mob and player, is going to be more damage than mangle, assuming you have the mangle debuff up. I know mangle is horrible for damage, but when you are soloing, or PVPing, or even sometimes in a raid, it can be hard to get behind a mob. When attacking from the front, rake should be in your rotation. In PVP, a rake can be more damage per energy than a shred on plate, since players get much higher armor totals.

[Melange]

If you assume that you are using Demo Roar, then FA will decrease the damage you take fairly considerably for all 5 points. The problem is that it is 5 points. If it was 2-3 points it might be something you get, but 5 points is a lot for something so situational.

Also if you are off-tanking something, have a lock hit it with curse of weakness. That will overwrite even your fully-talented Demo Roar, and make you cry.

I have not been in ZA yet, but in the Karathress fight, I will off-tank the shaman, while everyone kills the hunter. That is about the only place I could see it being nice to have, and again, that assumes that a lock doesn't do his job on the pull (which happens.)

If you only do 10-mans, it might make some sense, but in a 25-man, you should have a DPS warrior around, if for no other reason than to have someone to loot all the DPS warrior loot that drops like candy.

[Norrath]

Source: Melange Lacerate's damage is good threat and maintaining the stack is also fairly important. For maximum threat on a bleedable boss, you will always stack it up.

This is plain and simply wrong.

You need five points of damage to cause ONE point of threat with Lacerate. Yes, it has a 0.2 threat modifier.

It's completely negligible threat.

The threat you gain from Lacerate is from the application. Maintaining a 5-stack is not required under any circumstances. It adds 10 TPS. While it's there, it's not something you're going to miss.

[Melange]

Source: Norrath This is plain and simply wrong. You need five points of damage to cause ONE point of threat with Lacerate. Yes, it has a 0.2 threat modifier. It's completely negligible threat. The threat you gain from Lacerate is from the application. Maintaining a 5-stack is not required under any circumstances. It adds 10 TPS. While it's there, it's not something you're going to miss.

Sorry if that went over your head.

What I said was "Your swipe would need to be doing better average damage than 450 for you to even think about replacing it entirely." This is true, because when your swipe is doing more than 285, you replace swipe with lacerate, as your standard GCD attack.

HOWEVER, you still keep lacerate stacked for the bleed damage. If you have a 5-stack of lacerate up for 12 seconds, that will add 651 x .2 x 1.1 = 143.22 threat to each lacerate. That is 428 threat per lacerate. So my guesstimate was off by 22, but whatever. You still will not be seeing swipes hitting for 428 average damage in tanking gear.

Also let me point out that the bleed damage in this example, which is how many Druids use it, is about a third of the total threat, which IMHO is not "negligible".

All that said, this, "Maintaining a 5-stack is not required under any circumstances." is probably true, since I am usually under no kind of pressure from any but fury warriors threat wise. However, if you are talking about maximizing your threat, then you will use lacerate, and you will use it because of its bleed damage at the higher levels.

[Norrath]

It did not "go over my head", and I resent the implication.

It doesn't matter what a 5-stacked Lacerate would do in damage if it were allowed to tick out. You refresh it every GCD except when using Mangle. That means you do not get the full damage per Lacerate.

Lacerate ticks for 155 every 3 seconds with a 5 stack.

That's 14,983 TPS after Dire Bear Form and Feral Instinct.

I repeat, it is negligible.

[Melange]

Source: Norrath It did not "go over my head", and I resent the implication. It doesn't matter what a 5-stacked Lacerate would do in damage if it were allowed to tick out. You refresh it every GCD except when using Mangle. That means you do not get the full damage per Lacerate. Lacerate ticks for 155 every 3 seconds with a 5 stack. That's 14,983 TPS after Dire Bear Form and Feral Instinct. I repeat, it is negligible.

/palmface
I was responding to your idea of replacing Lacerate with Swipe. When Swipe passes 285, you DO NOT Lacerate every GCD, you Swipe. You only Lacerate to keep the bleed going. Lacerate is a 15 second bleed, and I am saying you can get 12 of that. A 12 second rotation will make it fit in well with mangles and will give you a second chance if the attack misses. Some Druids like a 10 second rotation, for the added security on the bleed. I suppose you could calculate out which is actually more sustained threat, but they seem similar to me.

Also, I see now why I thought it was more threat. I screwed up on that calculation and forgot to add in mangle. So the actual threat of a 12 second Lacerate is 471, even more than my estimate at 450. Let me just repeat for effect, YOU WILL NEVER FULLY REPLACE LACERATE. Never is a strong word, but it should be true until the Xpac.

Also, if you are in a situation where your swipe is not higher than 285 and your Lacerate is in danger of falling off, then it probably is important to keep the bleed up, since your next Lacerate will likely be ticking for a while as well, since you are in an incredibly low rage situation.

While we are on the subject of threat, it should also be noted that for lower gear levels, when you are rage-starved, Maul will be better threat-per-rage than Lacerate, minus the bleed. Maul's effectiveness in these situations drops off considerable with increased crit and AP. Also Maul suffers from the problem of being very spiky threat. I am unsure at what level Lacerate passes Maul, since it never seemed important enough to figure out. But, as an example, if you are tanking Leotheras, fire phase, you will be wearing almost no AP/Crit, so Maul will be a better TPR attack, but lacerate needs to be done every 12 seconds. I am also unsure at what levels swipe passes Lacerate as a basic GCD attack.

I can only say that swipe for me is getting close on caster trash mobs, but very far away on anything else. I am wearing T4 head, S3 chest, and 3 T5, with the boots from BT, PVP bracers, SSC belt, SSC staff. We have killed 3 in BT and 4 in Hyjal. (WTB T5 chest PST. I am still not armor capped for bossmobs. We did Kael 3 times and haven't gone back. I never got the Mag chest or ring either, since we fail at clicking cubes, so we hardly ever did him. Way to go Blizzard, put all the chests on mobs you kill maybe 4 times.)

[Norrath]

All right, yes, you could Lacerate once every 12 seconds to keep the bleed going. But I see little reason to do so. The threat is negligible. It's not above 20 TPS even with everything in its favor.

It's better threat per rage than Swipe, yes, but it's not better threat per second.

[Melange]

If your swipe does 290 average damage, and therefore 290 threat, and your lacerate does a total of 470 threat, how is that not more threat per second. Both are GCD attacks. Just because you have to wait on some of the lacerate threat, doesn't mean it is not there.

1) 470 is greater than the average damage of swipe.
2) I want to maximize my threat.
If you agree with those two statements, then lacerate is still usefull every 12 seconds.

Now it may be, that you are too lazy to maximize your threat, and it may be that you do not need to maximize your threat, but that has no bearing in a discussion of how to maximize your threat. There are fights where I have twice the threat of the nearest DPS. I will still maximize my threat. Why? Because it's the only thing I can do; my only job. (sometimes I will stick to pure maul/mangle/12secLacerate rotations in this situation though, if my trinket is on CD and I want to have my GCD for pots. So it is not always important to maximize threat.)

12-second Lacerate is better than swipe for threat-per-second, it is even better for threat-per-rage. There is no argument here only math.

[Norrath]

15-20 TPS extra, tops, is not worth keeping a 5-stack up for. And that's not even counting the dip in threat you'll have when you hit Lacerate over Swipe.

I have said before, it's there, but it's negligible.

[Melange]

So 20 TPS is worthless then? There are plenty of warriors that put the 2% increased threat enchant on gloves. I'd imagine that that would be worth about 20 TPS. Are they stupid? Meanwhile, Druids can have this 20 TPS at zero cost. You move one finger one key away every 12 seconds, (assuming you set it up like I do) and keep mashing away at your keyboard. This is all done with one hand too, (two fingers in fact) so your other can be holding the beer to your mouth, or ready to use your Badge of Tenacity, whichever your pleasure.

20 TPS directly translates into 30-40 DPS for anyone who is threat capped.

Edit: BTW, I'm done with this argument, if you want to keep going, you win.

[hkyeakley]

Wow, this is an excellent guide. I like having all the important numbers calculated out for me.

I think I detected one error, however, under the armor section. You state:

Source: Qaletaqa 100 armor * 1.1 = 110 * 4 = 440 Armor in Bear Form

When I take the number 100 and add 10% on a calculator, I get 110. When I then add 400% to 110, I get 550, not 440. Adding 400% to a number is not the same as simply multiplying a number by 4. If I added 100% to $1, I'd have $2 instead of $1 * 1 = $1. So unless I'm mistaken, your example should read:

100 armor * 1.1 (3/3 Thick Hide) = 110 armor
110 armor + 400% = 110 + (110 * 4) = 110 + 440 = 550 armor

Or, if you wanted to keep it really simple, just remember that 5.5 is the magic number for factoring in Thick Hide and Dire Bear Form into Feral Armor Contribution.

If I'm totally off on my math, I apologize.

Again, this is an awesome guide. Thank you for writing it.

[Kazeyonoma]

Source: hkyeakley Wow, this is an excellent guide. I like having all the important numbers calculated out for me. I think I detected one error, however, under the armor section. You state: When I take the number 100 and add 10% on a calculator, I get 110. When I then add 400% to 110, I get 550, not 440. Adding 400% to a number is not the same as simply multiplying a number by 4. If I added 100% to $1, I'd have $2 instead of $1 * 1 = $1. So unless I'm mistaken, your example should read: 100 armor * 1.1 (3/3 Thick Hide) = 110 armor 110 armor + 400% = 110 + (110 * 4) = 110 + 440 = 550 armor Or, if you wanted to keep it really simple, just remember that 5.5 is the magic number for factoring in Thick Hide and Dire Bear Form into Feral Armor Contribution. If I'm totally off on my math, I apologize. Again, this is an awesome guide. Thank you for writing it.

Your making a misassumption of how multipliers work.

Its not +400%, its 400%, which means +300% to spare yourself any of the trouble its easier to just do what the OP did, and multiplicatively do everything.

If you have 100 armor, and you gain 10% from some talent, that's 100*1.1 = 110, then you give 400% more for bear form, which gives 110*4.0 = 440.

remember, 10% more = 110% = 1.1 just as 400% =4.0

[Norrath]

Source: Melange So 20 TPS is worthless then? There are plenty of warriors that put the 2% increased threat enchant on gloves. I'd imagine that that would be worth about 20 TPS. Are they stupid? Meanwhile, Druids can have this 20 TPS at zero cost. You move one finger one key away every 12 seconds, (assuming you set it up like I do) and keep mashing away at your keyboard. This is all done with one hand too, (two fingers in fact) so your other can be holding the beer to your mouth, or ready to use your Badge of Tenacity, whichever your pleasure. 20 TPS directly translates into 30-40 DPS for anyone who is threat capped. Edit: BTW, I'm done with this argument, if you want to keep going, you win.

Sigh. No, it's not worthless. I didn't say it was. I said it was negligible, which is not the same. It's not something you're going to miss.

If you want to absolutely maximize your threat, then yes, it's another thing you can do. It all adds up. But it's a very minor threat increase.

[Melange]

Source: Kazeyonoma Your making a misassumption of how multipliers work. Its not +400%, its 400%, which means +300% to spare yourself any of the trouble its easier to just do what the OP did, and multiplicatively do everything. If you have 100 armor, and you gain 10% from some talent, that's 100*1.1 = 110, then you give 400% more for bear form, which gives 110*4.0 = 440. remember, 10% more = 110% = 1.1 just as 400% =4.0

HK was correct, it is a 500% multiplier, making it 550 with talents.

Dire Bear Form Shapeshift
35% of base Mana
Instant cast
Shapeshift into a dire bear, increasing melee attack power by 120, armor contribution from items by 400%, and Stamina by 25%. Also protects the caster from Polymorph effects and allows the use of various bear abilities.

The act of shapeshifting frees the caster of Polymorph and Movement Impairing effects.

[Norrath]

hkyeakley and Melange are correct. It's +400%.

[Melange]

A few points for the OP:

It should probably be mentioned in the agility or dodge sections that as your dodge increases, every percent you get has increased effectiveness in keeping you alive, whereas hp increases diminish in effectiveness, and armor remains constant.

Your stam calculations are off. Warrior vitality is 5, not 10. Paladins have a 10% and a 6% multiplier.

The armor section needs a mention of armor caps for lvl 70,71,72, and 73 mobs. Just go over to Sat's section and steal those numbers.

1% Dodge is a good racial, but it does not compare to 5% stam. You're kidding yourself. For it to be as good, you would need around 70% avoidance, which is possible, but not for most Druids against non-dualweilders.

Expertise should be included in the stats section, it could be grouped with hit.

We only need 101.2% Miss+Dodge to become unhittable. (Overpowered Druids, that's why.) You should also mention in the uncrushable section that not all lvl73 mobs crush, and that some lower level mobs will crush. I would also assume that you need less dodge to become unhittable against a mob that doesnt crush, although I do not know if anyone has tested this. (Funny crushing story, we once had a human paladin tank with +15 weaponskill, he got MCed and crushed half our healers to death. I guess you had to be there.)

Feral Charge and Faerie Fire (Feral) are core, class-defining abilities and should be labeled as such.

You forgot to color Mangle.

Also your "Cookie Cutter" PVE build takes brutal impact, which is not as good as intensity, and is mostly useless in PVE. Although you could take the points out of Primal Tenacity if you want, since getting feared doesnt really matter anymore.

The HS/Pot Macro you have uses both a HS and a Pot when used. (It's the same as I use, although I use tk/orgri'la pots and charged crystal foci as well.) Also you need to put some big warnings all over it to make sure you are not on GCD, or you will not end in bear form. I usually find that if I am tanking, I am mashing my keyboard like a crazy person, and always will need to wait 1.5 seconds to use a pot, if I need one, which usually leaves me dead. Last boss I tanked, I actually found myself in caster form for a bit. Luckly he didn't swing fast enough to hit me before I got back in bear form.

Foot enchant can also be Dexterity (12 agility), which is what I and most NE druids use, AFAIK.

Chest can be Resilience, if you need crit immunity. Resilience will get you faster crit immunity than defense, and you only are giving up 12 stats for 15, if you only use the chest for bear form, as opposed to giving up 12 for 12 defense on the bracers. If your chest is used for cat as well, this may not make sense.

Right after that you link to Emmerald's list, which is horrible. Link to Rawr instead, or you are going to have some oddly geared bears running around.

[Norrath]

Source: Melange We only need 101.2% Miss+Dodge to become unhittable. (Overpowered Druids, that's why.)

... heh, I can't believe I never thought of that. Of course you "only" need 101.2%. You don't get parry or block.

Source: Melange I would also assume that you need less dodge to become unhittable against a mob that doesnt crush, although I do not know if anyone has tested this.

You shouldn't -- as long as the mob is level 73. The non-crush factor is not based off their level, but a custom attack table (as far as I know).