3.1 Bear Specs

[Insahnity]

@ Insahnity
In terms of OT'ing and using 4/5 furor I agree with kalon. Whenever I need to tank an add, I make sure I take 6 seconds or so in bear form and ensure I have a full rage bar going into a single target situation. It is much more priceless than having 40 rage instead of 30. It means that I can spam the maul button early on in the fight. This is anecdotal evidence, I'm not entirely sure how I could demonstrate this in a parse.

Getting to a full rage bar is the issue here. Yeah, I'd love to spam that maul button early in the fight, and most times it does happen (regardless of 3/5 or 4/5). Once you got that maul in, in most cases it's impossible for something to remove it from you.

And along the same vein, anecdotally, most times it's not an issue when running 3/5, but I get irritated by the few times (RNG) things go wrong due to a lack of rage on the initial pull. Sure there are ways around it, if everything goes well, the DPS would hear omen going off, and not wail into things during your growl. A hunter/rogue could help out, it doesn't happen every time (as mentioned before it's a pug situation).

It's just irritating that people have taken offense to something I am trialling temporarily. It's some pretty specific situations that work for me at the moment, and I have tried to identify all the conditions to make it clear it isn't meant as a cookie-cutter suggestion or some sort of gospel. It's an idea and an opinion for what works for me temporarily, and it works (for now). When things change, it will change as well.

Ideally, the solution is more gear. But in the absence of gear, you regem/re-enchant. If that doesn't help, you are left with spec or your buttons, and bears just don't have much in the way of buttons to work with.

[geros]

I think it's just very difficult for most of us to envision a situation in which furor is anything but a way to get to omen of clarity. I'd be ecstatic if it were to swap places with naturalist. That's probably why there is so much resistance though. Most feral druids would entirely skip the talent if it was possible.

Almost all single/multiple add spawns in raid encounters come with enough warning to build up at least half a rage bar. The only exception I can think of right now is Anub'Arak, but bears are one of the least suited to be tanking those adds anyways.

[Darksend]

It's just irritating that people have taken offense to something I am trialling temporarily. It's some pretty specific situations that work for me at the moment, and I have tried to identify all the conditions to make it clear it isn't meant as a cookie-cutter suggestion or some sort of gospel. It's an idea and an opinion for what works for me temporarily, and it works (for now). When things change, it will change as well.

Well I am irritated at the fact that the person you are arguing with (kalon/felhoof) is one of the most influential druid theorycrafters still playing world of warcraft. Just because he has not posted much on tankspot before does not mean much to me in this case. He frequently makes very influential posts on the wow forums and runs a very successful blog.

Furthermore, just because it is the way you do something does not mean it is the right way to do something. It might even work but that does not mean it is the best way either. If you want to gimp yourself with your spec fine but most of your suggestions so far have been wrong. specifically this:

Mangle (Bear) - Spell - World of Warcraft

because look:

Maul - Spell - World of Warcraft

Maul -10 rage

applying

Ferocity - Spell - World of Warcraft

to one but not the other tells me a great deal about your lack of knowledge of the druid class. You have made a lot of posts regarding druid specs and most of the time I find your information misleading or just plain inaccurate.

[felhoof]

Getting your bonuses cut in half is pretty serious in my books. Comparing against warriors is pointless, we always have scaled way above warriors, that hasn't changed at all. However they are avoidance tanks, and their avoidance scales with gear and it hasn't been changed. Our health is scales with our gear as well, but that has been changed. You are reading far too much into nerf comment.

It's not serious if it's not half. It's half of one of a bear's bonus. A bear gets 25% from being a bear, 10% from HotW (formerly 20%), 6% from SotF, 2% from imp motw now, and then you get into things like kings (10%). Add that all up, and you're up to 1.6x of a multiplier. Yes, things would have been higher without hotw being nerfed - point of fact, they would have been 10% higher. But is that nerfing to the stone ages? Does it matter? Not really. Stamina is important for a bear because they can exploit it more than any other tanking class, particularly on gems/enchants/jewelry/buffs. Don't mistake that exploitation for necessity.

As Darksend noted, Mangle is normally 15 rage with Ferocity. It's odd that you'd say mangle was 20 rage but maul 10, as maul is normally 15 without that discount. It discredits your argument when you can't get these basics down.

Use examples which involve the following (a few to choose from)
-MT is off on another target
-You are assigned to light hitting adds, with burst DPS downing things with you.
-Failure to grab secure aggro quickly either results in DPS munch or slows down DPS down, resulting in other issues (next wave of adds comes, missing timers, etc.)

I asked you for one example. You've still failed to give me one. I still can't come up with one where you're not being hit, you need to put massive front loaded threat early and you won't have rage to do it in. Can you?

If the MT is on another target, you're tanking that mob and you can assume reasonably high rage intake. I ask again - would 10 rage matter in 6 seconds time if you get so unlucky that you aren't getting any rage from being hit, from your white attack, from Natural Reaction, and from crits? Is this situation so crucial that you'd rather spend a talent point there?

If you're assigned to multiple light-hitting adds, swipe provides more than enough rage most of the time. Swipe + NR will definitely do so.

If you can't secure aggro quickly, you can usually deal with this by either having smarter raiders, having MD/tott, or taunting.

None of these things would be solved with 10 more rage in 6 seconds, and using your math that one talent point mitigates this situation down from 6% of the time to 1%. So 6% of the time you're not going to have 10 rage that you might have wanted for these edge cases.

Is that really worth 1 talent point?

1) Avoidance streak
2) DPS will be doing maximum damage to burn thing down
3) DPS is capable of outstripping you withing 4 GCDs if things go wrong.

That's true - but these things are FAR more likely if you have worse hit/expertise.

It just seems like you're fabricating theoretical worst-case scenarios that will simply not reasonably happen. Basically you're saying that you want 10 more rage for the situation where you go to bear 3 times and don't get 10 rage (6%), then must open up with a maximum threat rotation, don't have any MD/ToTT up, have great DPS, don't get any crits on any of your attacks for 6 seconds (that's at least 5 attacks), don't dodge (in 6 seconds time that's at least 4 attacks), don't get hit (so you missed all of those, each of which has about a 9% chance of missing).

are you starting to see how insanely unlikely this situation is?

[Insahnity]

First off, I'd like to tip my hat to Geros. His posts are a bit more civilized. I appreciate the spirit of his replies. He's the first person to point out felhoof's credentials. After many years of playing, I have just recently started devoting time to a site, namely this one, when not browsing info sites (EJ, wowhead, etc.). Without knowing this, all I see is a guy who just joined tankspot this month. Still, it would be nice to have a calm discussion with somebody who is knowledgeable instead of a needless argument.

As Darksend noted, Mangle is normally 15 rage with Ferocity. It's odd that you'd say mangle was 20 rage but maul 10, as maul is normally 15 without that discount. It discredits your argument when you can't get these basics down.

*sigh* yes that was a mistake. However, we aren't discrediting Darksend's knowledge or good work because he couldn't add to 20 points earlier in this post. And he's a community author.

I asked you for one example. You've still failed to give me one. I still can't come up with one where you're not being hit, you need to put massive front loaded threat early and you won't have rage to do it in. Can you?

I did, repeating is not going to help. At this point it's an argument and no longer a discussion, so I'm not going to go much further. It's a pity, I think this could have gone positively otherwise, and I respect the fact that you are regarded as an expert in feral druids, if not debating without attacking.

If the MT is on another target, you're tanking that mob and you can assume reasonably high rage intake. I ask again - would 10 rage matter in 6 seconds time if you get so unlucky that you aren't getting any rage from being hit, from your white attack, from Natural Reaction, and from crits? Is this situation so crucial that you'd rather spend a talent point there?

Holding threat at all costs and survival are all that you need to worry about as a tank. If you notice you are not surviving or holding threat, and investing 1 point somewhere that works, that's worth investigating. Again, this is not a gospel, it's an investigation into a potential spec.

Darksend could be right, that point could be spent elsewhere. It would be great to say "If you spent a point here and did this.." to accomplish the same task. My situation is that I OCCASIONALLY find myself on initial pull with no rage, growl down, and scrambling to grab aggro because I have no rage to do anything else. The responses so far have been "That will never happen" instead of "In this situation, putting 4/5 furor is inferior to XXX distribution of points because...". That is a better way to go about this.

If you're assigned to multiple light-hitting adds, swipe provides more than enough rage most of the time. Swipe + NR will definitely do so.

I should have clarified, by multiple targets, I mean waves rather than simultaneously. Swipe crits work all the time with several mobs at once, yes.

If you can't secure aggro quickly, you can usually deal with this by either having smarter raiders, having MD/tott, or taunting.

Better gear, smarter raiders, these are all valid answers. Unfortunately, better gear doesn't always come by well in pugs, and smarter raiders in pugs isn't happening either. If one of those changes, I probably wouldn't be having this discussion.

None of these things would be solved with 10 more rage in 6 seconds, and using your math that one talent point mitigates this situation down from 6% of the time to 1%. So 6% of the time you're not going to have 10 rage that you might have wanted for these edge cases.

Is that really worth 1 talent point?

Finally, the heart of the discussion. So far, investing that 1 talent point has made a difference for me (but not enough to keep it in the long run). It has made things smoother, I find the extra 10 rage is solving something in that I don't find myself in that situation any more.

There are a lot of things that are edge cases, and it is a bit of a grey area. Keeping specfic gear for situations, a dualspec or respecc for gimmick fights, and so on. It's not the norm but it happens, and people progress beyond it as they learn better ways to do things.

That's true - but these things are FAR more likely if you have worse hit/expertise.

If I did, then it would invalidate the premises of the discussion. I've agreed that not being expertise/hit capped means you should be taking PP above all else.

It just seems like you're fabricating theoretical worst-case scenarios that will simply not reasonably happen. Basically you're saying that you want 10 more rage for the situation where you go to bear 3 times and don't get 10 rage (6%), then must open up with a maximum threat rotation, don't have any MD/ToTT up, have great DPS, don't get any crits on any of your attacks for 6 seconds (that's at least 5 attacks), don't dodge (in 6 seconds time that's at least 4 attacks), don't get hit (so you missed all of those, each of which has about a 9% chance of missing).

are you starting to see how insanely unlikely this situation is?

That is a bit of the quirk of it all. It *is* unlikely to happen, but I noticed happening far too often to ignore it. That's the nature of RNG, you sometimes get a string of occurences. Along these lines, it could be entirely co-incidental that my shift to 4/5 furor has nothing to do with the fact I am no longer facing these situations, it's just that RNG is co-operating now and am incorrectly attributing the changes to another co-incidence. That's another way to look at things without resorting to character assasination. But hey, thanks for the benefit of the doubt.

[felhoof]

To be clear, Insahnity, I'm not assassinating your character. I'm poking holes in your argument. Your argument was full of fallacies and inaccuracies, and emphasized anecodal evidence over statistical likelihood. Regardless of my pedigree, my arguments have been sound and accurate; yours have not. If you are offended by my pointing out these fallacies, that's on you, not me.

You've still provided no actual examples of situations where this is likely to occur. Nor have you provided your character, which would probably help more than anything else in determining what is going wrong.

Finally, this:

Holding threat at all costs and survival are all that you need to worry about as a tank. If you notice you are not surviving or holding threat, and investing 1 point somewhere that works, that's worth investigating. Again, this is not a gospel, it's an investigation into a potential spec.

Sorry, but this isn't remotely all that you need to worry about as a tank.

I do agree that quibbling about small inaccuracies or suboptimal specs isn't going to be as important as playing better, but on that note: no amount of jiggering with your spec is going to mitigate playing with bad players. 10 rage extra isn't going to solve DPS going balls out at zero seconds. It might make you feel more comfortable, but you're basically putting extra padding into your iron maiden at that point.

If you're really having problems with rage, why not go with completely suboptimal and pick up Intensity? It's horrible, but it will give you consistently more rage on every single enrage and will solve the problem more concretely than Furor will.

[Fenier]

Sigh, seriously just click a Mighty Rage Potion - Item - World of Warcraft and be done with it.

[felhoof]

That too, Fenier.

Though honestly, if it's stupid pugs I'm just happy enough to let them die.

[Insahnity]

Sigh, seriously just click a Mighty Rage Potion - Item - World of Warcraft and be done with it.

Wow Fenier, It's been so long since I have seen one I totally forgot they existed. I haven't made those on my alchys since vanllia, but I might still have some gromsblood around. That's an awesome idea! And way more practical than 4/5 furor or Intensity (although I have to add I seriously did think about that when I read it). Due to the shortage of healers, the healers you do get are usually top notch and almost never need to nibble on cookies or quaff a pot, so a rage pot is an option.

As for letting PuGs die, there are two problems with that:
1) I'm still a nice guy, I just cant bring myself to do that very often.
2) In the rare occasions I do that (Mostly through witholding heals), a pug situation is fragile enough, it does lead to raid wipes.

[Kreature]

It's a stupid thing; you should either get three points in IW or none.

I dont understand why all or none? surely reducing targets attack speed by some is better than none? heres my build where would the 2 points be better spent? OR where could I poach a point from where it is less valuable?
The World of Warcraft Armory

also does IW stack on bosses as it sais on the talent?

[felhoof]

It's a stupid thing because either you don't have it at all - in which case you should get the three points - or someone else can put it up, in which case it's entirely wasted. There's never a point where you want partial values here. In that specific case, I'd get rid of imp mangle entirely and put those points elsewhere.

And yes, it does work on bosses. It doesn't stack with other slowing effects, but it does otherwise work.

[Insahnity]

I'm inclined to agree with Felhoof. Either
-Lose IW and imp mangle and go 5 points in Feral Aggresion
-Lose Imp Mange, finish out IW and put the last 2 points in Imp LotP

You've already specced into a lot of threat by spending points in Master Shape Shifter. Now you need some more mitigation.

[Kreature]

ok i am taking your opinions on board and have decided to try a new tanking style.
mitigation ftw i dont have a rage problem or a threat problem and i realised that I tend to use berserk as a dps boost more than a threat boost but in some raids i do get pretty close to the whole being dead thing so this is the new build i will trial The World of Warcraft Armory
Just means i'll have to use berserk at the begining of the fight to get my threat loaded.

again your opinions are both valued and appreciated

[geros]

I haven't done the maths in awhile but keeping IW + demo roar up is worth about 1-1.5 tiers of damage reduction. Making IW as potent as possible is a great boost for survival and should really be skipped if it is going to be reliably provided by another class.

[Darksend]

Furthermore, while I do not know DKs all that well, I am under the impression that every single DK rotation keeps up icy touch.

Even untalented icy touch is a 14% attack speed reduction so if you have any dk in your raid having 2/3 IW is completely wasted.

If you happen to know you will always be running with a frost DK they will always have 3/3 improved and all 3 of those points are wasted. Do not do this unless you know with 100% fact that dk will always be frost (a lot less likely until next patch as blood is the predominant dk tanking spec atm).

[Bovinity]

Yeah, that 0/60/11 build is the one that I've been using for a while now as well, Kreature.

Was previously using the spec with KotJ and Imp. Mangle but threat really isn't that much of a concern very often. The only time I find myself in danger is if some overzealous ranged fires off something huge before I've even engaged.

As for IW...I'd always get it if you're tanking. Don't rely on someone else to put up an attack speed debuff, it's your job to stay alive and your ass on the line, not theirs. You never know when that DK/Pal/War/Whatever is going to die or get DC'ed or just get lazy. Then where are you?

[Lunaros]

Quick question...

I don't get why you spend points in PF.. Are ppl having trouble gaining rage since they seem to standard use 2 points there...

I use a 0/55/16 spec myself, and I don't seem to ever run into rage probs..

[Barta]

lunaros, i guess if you've always operated without PF, then you wouldnt necessarily notice a rage problem. but just for experimentation's sake, spec it, run recount or wws report for a raid night, and check on your "rage gained". its absurd how much rage PF gives. also, i run this spec (since we run a 10man and i put up my own debuffs) Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

and even if i did want to drop it, theres no better place for those 2 points.

[Lunaros]

Okay I might try to spec PF... but then I would have to consider sacrifising master shapeshifter and thereby some of my dps output, and hence tps as I understand the class...

Or will I get a re awkening, finding out that I'm basicly a noob tank?