[Ciderhelm]

This is part of Darksend's Feral Druid Guide.

[Lognar]

<3 Darksend

I have found beartank theorycraft to be somewhat lacking in comparison to the other classes and its good to have something like this for people learning the ropes! Nice work!

[Buliwyn]

Real nicely done. Never played a bear, never researched it, and that really covered the important parts.

[Martie]

Very interesting, thanks for posting.

[Darksend]

Something on the youtube comments that was on topic that I feel needs addressed. Granted maul is no where near the level of heroic strike spamage but there have been so many threads about heroic strike usage here on tankspot that I just have to express my personal thoughts on this and to stomp out the misinformation.

For feral tank also use this macro for all your attacks you spam a lot. Lacerate, mangle, etc. /cast Lacerate(Rank _) /cast Maul(Rank_)

While it is true most of the time you will have the rage to do that, it is a very bad habit to get into, for the same reason in the past we have had the threads about heroic strike being macroed to every ability.

On fights like general vezax and lord jaraxxus it will significantly and negatively affect your threat. You simply do not have the constant flow of rage on those fights to keep a 100% maul uptime because they are constantly stopping to cast. Also on a fight like northrend beasts when icehowl is stunned you want to keep your normal rotation going but you are wasting all your rage by doing nothing but mauling the entire stun, same goes for xt during a tantrum.

[Fayre]

I enjoyed the guide, thanks.

The volume level on this video and others of yours seems quite low to me.

[damnpatch]

Volume seemed fine to me.

Thanks for the guide, Dark. I'm working on getting my drood up there right now and it's a great indoctrination for me.

~Patch

[Draks]

I would recommend the following type of macro:

/cast Lacerate(Rank _)
/cast [mod:noshift] !Maul(Rank_)

If you're in one of the few rage starved fights just hold down shift to stop queueing up Maul.

Also, I tend to start fights with FFF -> Mangle -> Lacerate -> Berserk -> Mangle spam. The reasoning being:

1) FFF: you tend to be at range of bosses anyway, and it's good to get that unique debuff on the target ASAP.
2) Mangle: Best GCD threat.
3) Lacerate: Get 1 application up just for the bonus from Rend and Tear.
4) Berserk and go to town with Mangle, refreshing Lacerate 1 time as needed.

This rotation has helped my initial aggro, and I don't think it greatly effects long term threat. If anyone can prove otherwise I'd love to see the math as I can easily shift back to building Lacerate to 5 before Berserking. (TBH everything above Maul is gravy, keep it queued and threat shouldn't be an issue unless you've got a Prot Pally OTing.)

[Lakotamani]

I think this just inspired me to turn my resto alt into my feral main... MAYBE... Never mind, I can't give up Warbringer...

[Kazeyonoma]

Long time coming, awesome guide Darksend!

[klor]

THANK YOU for helping me figure out the issue with our feral druid's threat. He is not spec'd into imp mangle and I am fairly certain doesnt use faerie fire in his rotation I'm going to have to yell at him for that.

[bigbully]

This is the hax macro I use for bear threat. It's for a 6 second mangle, and I lacerate manually with a macro that toggles maul with every lacerate:

/cast Maul(Rank 10)
/castsequence reset=6 Mangle (Bear)(Rank 5), Faerie Fire (Feral)(), Swipe (Bear)(Rank 8), Swipe (Bear)(Rank 8)
/cast Maul(Rank 10)

Mangle and FF are always used immediately on cooldown, and Swipe for filler, just remember to lacerate manually.

[guns]

Omen of Clarity is useless once you have the 2 piece tier 8 set bonus

[TylBronto]

One of the things I've seen pop on my server recently is a 1/3 imp mangle spec.

It basically has the same priority system as 0/3 mangle but doesn't wait .5s seconds to keep the rotation going, at the cost of 1 lacerate per rotation every so often.

I don't play a feral druid, but coming from an arms warrior player (where I run a 5.5s rotation), this makes a lot of sense to me from a smoothness of play perspective w/ lacerate.

[TylBronto]

I meant w/ Faerie Fire Feral.

[gabbu]

Source: guns Omen of Clarity is useless once you have the 2 piece tier 8 set bonus

Ofcourse you will be wearing 2-pc Tier 8 forever amirite?

Omen of clarity is a very essential talent.

[Darksend]

Source: TylBronto One of the things I've seen pop on my server recently is a 1/3 imp mangle spec. It basically has the same priority system as 0/3 mangle but doesn't wait .5s seconds to keep the rotation going, at the cost of 1 lacerate per rotation every so often. I don't play a feral druid, but coming from an arms warrior player (where I run a 5.5s rotation), this makes a lot of sense to me from a smoothness of play perspective w/ lacerate.

THIS THIS THIS and this again.

I have toyed around with this idea for a while but never got a spec I actually liked with it.

[Mrcx]

Hello there,

Well this is an interesting Post of feral druid tanking. I am a feral tank myself and i can tell its hard to explain how its works because its improvising on every encounter.

I watched the video and i would say some things are not right, atleast i do them different.

For example (in my opinion)
U do want Infected wounds: Slowing the boss his attackspeed against u and making threat. And slowing mobs/boss with 25% so they are easier to tank when running away.
U wont use Lacerate as much as u do: Only on bosses. NOT on mobs.
(Like i said i dont use Lacerate as much as u do, so i dont have Primal gore, i rather have Infected wounds)
I pull with Faerie fire: Gives u almost 2k threat to start with, ranged pull, u dont need charge so u can put those points somewhere else.
U dont use swipe on single targets:Thats useless.

So i do it like this.

Mobs:
Pull 1 with Faerie fire mobs are linked so all of them will come your way. Swipe till your in position (mobs in front of you) then Maul and mangle as soon as possible. (Glyph of Maul hit 2 targets). On mobs my main attacks are Maul and Mangle and some swipe in between, i wont use Lacerate its a waste of rage on trash.

When i do a Heroic my party members can nuke full after the first attack i do, i dont use marks because i will have the aggro on me up to 4 targets of trash.

Little calculation, Faerie fire does about 1,5-2k + Swipe 3k (all targets) Maul (2 targets) 5-6k + Mangle +5k Threat, so that should be about 15k Threat on your main target and between 5 and 10 on your off targets. Which means u have a good threat to start with. The average attack of a melee wont do 5k Threat with 1 hit, so by the time they hit again the threat is high enough so they cant overaggro you.

Boss:
Pull with faerie fire, maul + mangle to get my starting aggro. Which would be 15K again. Demo roar, then stack up Lacerate 5x, and then maul mangle lacerate when off CD. And no one will outaggro you unless your gear is not equal.

I do agree on the part of mangle, Mangle is ALLWAYS on CD if not then u lose aggro.

If u got multiple targets to start with, for example the 3 Champions at the ToC 5 man, just start with berserk and mangle and u got aggro to much.

GL with it.

[Darksend]

Source: Mrcx U do want Infected wounds: Slowing the boss his attackspeed against u and making threat. And slowing mobs/boss with 25% so they are easier to tank when running away.

Did I say otherwise? I am lucky enough to be in a situation where 100% of the time someone else in the raid will have an equivalent debuff. Also the movement speed is irrelevant as most raid mobs are immune to the movement speed slow.

U wont use Lacerate as much as u do: Only on bosses. NOT on mobs. (Like i said i dont use Lacerate as much as u do, so i dont have Primal gore, i rather have Infected wounds) U dont use swipe on single targets:Thats useless.

so when mangle and FF are both on cooldown you sit there and do nothing? because that is how that reads. Also swipe is amazing on single target if you have 3/3 feral instinct which almost every tanking build will.

spam this macro

/castsequence reset=3/target Mangle, FF, lacerate

with the correct spells for those 3. Then do it again but using swipe once lacerate has a 5 stack. You will notice a HUGE threat difference.

Little calculation, Faerie fire does about 1,5-2k + Swipe 3k (all targets) Maul (2 targets) 5-6k + Mangle +5k Threat, so that should be about 15k Threat on your main target and between 5 and 10 on your off targets. Which means u have a good threat to start with. The average attack of a melee wont do 5k Threat with 1 hit, so by the time they hit again the threat is high enough so they cant overaggro you.

Your calculations are a bit off there. reference and also there is no way a swipe does 2K damage especially in a 5 man. Fully raid buffed in 25 heroic toc and ulduar gear it crits for 1400 tops.

[Mrcx]

Source: Darksend Did I say otherwise? I am lucky enough to be in a situation where 100% of the time someone else in the raid will have an equivalent debuff. Also the movement speed is irrelevant as most raid mobs are immune to the movement speed slow. Mrcx: Well the part of the slowing is more towards adds then a boss, because a boss wont run away from u since you are his main target. so when mangle and FF are both on cooldown you sit there and do nothing? because that is how that reads. Also swipe is amazing on single target if you have 3/3 feral instinct which almost every tanking build will. spam this macro with the correct spells for those 3. Then do it again but using swipe once lacerate has a 5 stack. You will notice a HUGE threat difference. Mrcx: Well i dont use Macro's (my choice), but instead of goin for swipe i would use maul. Boss, Lacerate, maul, mangle (if needed refresh demo roar) then u got plenty to do. Your calculations are a bit off there. reference and also there is no way a swipe does 2K damage especially in a 5 man. Fully raid buffed in 25 heroic toc and ulduar gear it crits for 1400 tops.

Mrcx: Well im quite high geared so my threat with swipe is high and it does hit quite hard. The World of Warcraft Armory

Im not aiming for a Big discussion because everyone has his own playstyle im just giving mine. And in my opinion the Rotation in your Video would make my performance lower if i should stick to that, but oke its nice to see a good start point for new Druid Tanks.