Fresh druid tank

[Havick]

Hey there, I've recently got a druid up to 80 and really was excited to tank having healed and dps a lot on my shaman in the past I wanted to try out the last roll. But I am have a lot of difficulties getting it down.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Thats my armory and as you can see my gear is kinda all over lol. I've made some gear for him with my shaman which has made it somewhat unbalanced. But in bear I have around 35k health and 35% dodge. I seem to take a ton of dmg all the time, I tanked the new FoS and PoS last night and I would not have gotten through them without the pro healers I had. But today I tried to tank heroic 5man ToC to try and get merrowstrike. But I wasn't able to get past the faction bosses there. 2 healers tried and couldn't heal me through the warriors WW. I had about 40k with the priest buffs and food buffs so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Also, and I assume it's just because of my weapon but I am have terouble holding agro. It's generally with 3 or more targets that I have this problem. The weirdest thing was that I had healers pulling (Pallies) of me which I couldn't understand.

I'd love any general advice, thanks guys.

[Insahnity]

Bears do take a fair amount of damage, they can't block or parry. However, as you get better gear this will improve because
-Your leather gear has more armor, which gets multiplied by bear form and thick skin. Please note, armor anywhere else, while useful, does not get multiplied.
-You get more agility, which in turn increases your dodge and crit. The damage reduction by dodge is obvious, but crit -> Savage Defense -> Bear Shield, and Savage Defense is significant component. PS, Swipe is your friend, any crit will proc it. Having 10 targets gives you 10 chances per swipe.

-Your Bear spec looks mostly fine (the Omen of Clarity is a great cat cat/moonkin/tree ability, pretty useless for bears; but it's not the end of the world)
-Your Bear Glyphs look OK to me.

-Your Kitty spec needs work
-Your Kitty Glyphs also need a lot of work
-I say this because sometimes you grind instances as a cat until you get good bear gear. Don't ignore it.
-I run a feral/resto dualspec, the only thing close in demand of a good tank is a good healer. If you can't hack content as a bear and don't want to wait amongst the bajillion DPS to run an instance, keep a tree spec handy. As a resto shaman, this shouldn't be too strange, although I do appreciate that you want a break from healing. However, you do what you have to do to get gear.

Upgrade talk:
-Your threat is low because your weapon needs upgrading, this is true. There is a VERY nice staff in H VH which I Swear was meant for feral druids. You are not prepared for HToC or the ICC instances, but H VH should be doable for you.
Although this isn't as much of an issue for you, keep track of your threat stats, specifically hit and expertise. You want to aim for 264 hit and 26 expertise, but don't gem or enchant for it unless you are significantly below those caps (you are fine right now).
If you are really desperate you can get a Titansteel destroyer crafted.
Enchant your weapons with Mongoose.
-Idols by and large cannot be acquired as drops. Do get the Idol of Corruptor instead of Idol of Mutiliation (the latter is great for cats, mediocre for bears; former is great for bears, mediocre for cats).
-I cannot stress enough the importance of getting Black Heart Trinket from reg toc. 7000 armor is a MASSIVE boost, and it has a huge uptime, and the stamina boost is better than the H AN trinket you already got (good work on that).
-Although I leveled my feral back when WotLK came out, leather helms were nigh impossible to find. Now there is one in from Heroic ToC Black Knight, if you don't buy one with emblems.
-For pants, aside from H Gundrak and reg toc, you can also try your luck in voa10 (and if you are lucky, voa25) for tier pants, again assuming you don't buy with emblems. As a LW, you shouldn't have problems producing leather patches (even the BLUE version is a bare minimum, it's cheap).

Look at these links to see where you can find drops.
Normal Instance Drops
Heroic Instance Drops
Heroic Dungeon Weapons (There's one in Normal PoS and one in Normal FoS too)

[derangedhermit]

Kinda hijacking his topic but i'll have a lvl80 bear soon too so i have this question on gearing up : pvp items.

They have nice stats and my other 2 80s are filled with shards that i can trade for BoA commendations. This will let me get like 3 or 4 pvp items(Deadly Gladiator right now) for my bear. Is that a good idea?

EDIT: since the OP also already has an 80 main, maybe he can do the same if it's viable? (haven't looked at his gear)

[felhoof]

Deadly glad gear is good beginner gear. You'll want better, but it certainly has a ton of stamina and a good amount of agi. I'd recommend trying to get as much good non-pvp gear as you can, but it's certainly reasonable to do so early on; just make it a high priority to get a better weapon if you can.

[Havick]

Insahnity - thank you a lot. I do have a few questions though:

In regards to my bear spec, what talent would you get instead of omen of clarity? Should I be looking at getting King of the Jungle instead of MS? Basicly taking 6 points from the resto tree and getting KotJ and Improved mangle.

As far as my cat spec goes, I haven't used it at all since leveling lol. I'll clean it up soon though heh.

The trinket was next on my list to get with emblems so hopefully I'll be getting that tonight. I've also been farming the black heart a little, hopefully it drops soon.

I currently have Maul bound to my swipe attack right now, should i be binding that to mangle as well? I find that having it just on swipe lowers its use rate being that I don't use swipe as much on single target fights. I guess my question is will it be using too much rage to bind it to everything? lol EDIT: Another question concerning this is; Is Lacerate better dmg then swipe for single target? Also which is the better tanking option?

Thanks again for the help guys I'm learning a lot.

[Insahnity]

I recommend reading Felhoof's work (aka Kalon elsewhere). Good info.

Darksend is the resident community author for tankspot on feral druids. He knows a fair amount on feral druids, even if I don't always agree with his choices.

Master Shapeshifter is a reasonable expenditure of 5 points to get a little more threat, which you currently have issues with. It's only not viable when you are trying to get a hybrid bear/cat spec, which you aren't doing. If threat ceases to be an issue but survival is a problem, consider swapping those 5 points into feral aggression (if you don't have anybody doing that debuff, such as a warrior's demo shout, a paladin's vindication, etc.). If you can have other people slow the boss (warrior Tclap, prot paladin Judgement of the Just, DK improved Icy Touch, fellow feral cat/bear, etc.) you can forgo infected wounds.

To gain more threat short of a new weapon, which as mentioned above is high priority, I suggest you spec into imp mangle. Take out two points in Improved Leader of the Pack and Omen of Clarity and plop them into imp mangle. Although Mangle is mainly to provide a bleed boosting debuff, it's still a fairly hefty chunk of damage per hit, spamming it more often with a lower cooldown will help. I have to warn you, it uses a fair amount of rage, so be mindful.

King of the Jungle is a GREAT DPS burst, for certain phases when you need that extra damage boost, however, I wouldn't spec into it for now, it also drops your armor. When your gear gets better, it's an option.

Lacerate as a matter of course should be up at max stacks. You don't need to be spamming lacerate every time, it's a waste, just keep it refreshed. It's big benefit (aside from the bleed which can crit) is to activate Rend and Tear, which boosts your Maul by 20%. Maul is about 60% of your threat. Incidentally, macroing maul into everything, much like warriors with heroic strike or DKs with runestrike, is not a bad idea, provided you are never rage starved. If you are in a fight where rage starvation can happen and its all macroed, yer screwed. Another solution is to bind maul to your wheel mouse, it's what warriors do for heroic strike.

For macroing maul, read felhoof's post on the subject.

Swipe is your friend. It's your rage battery. Every time a swipe crits, you get 5 rage. You try not critting when you are hitting 5-10 mobs. Having said that, it's not nearly as powerful as your other DPS talents, but it's what you have for AoE as well as building rage against more than 2 mobs (and thorns, of course).

Your rotation should look a little like this if single target
-Range pull with Faerie Fire. It damages the target when in bear form (new!) and puts 5% less armor debuff. Every hit is better
-Maul + Mangle
-(possibly) Maul + Demoralizing Roar
-Maul + Lacerate to 5 stacks while mangle is not up; Maul+Mangle if it's up
-Once you have 5 stacks, Maul + (Mangle if it's up, Lacerate if it's about to drop, refresh Faerie Fire if needed, refresh Demo Roar if needed, swipe otherwise even if it's just one target)

If you have two or more targets, tab through each dropping a lacerate. Eventually you will build 5 stacks and keeping up 5 stacks on each mob will be a full time task until you get the mob down, but it's damn near impossible to take threat off a druid who has 5 stacks of lacerate and is mauling with Rend and Tear, most especially if they can manage a mangle in there (if you set a kill order, mangle the target people are supposed to be burning down). If you have a cat druid dropping mangle or an arms warrior spreading trauma, your lacerates do much better. Incidentally, if you take imp mangle, you can get another mangle up before the effect of one expires, even without the glyph (which, you should NOT glyph, by the way)

The trinket (Corroded Key, 228 stamina?) is nice, but you should save your emblems of frost for other things. If you are talking about any other trinket, the short of it is don't buy it, you have better things to spend your emblems on (maybe glyph of indomitability later on...). If you want to know the best upgrades, download RAWR and plug in your toon.

Rage issues:
The standard cure for rage issues is to pull more, if you can survive it. You should never be rage starved against a boss. Therefore you are rage starved against trash. If you pull more, every dodge nets you 3 rage, every crit on a swipe nets you 5 rage, and having more people beating on you generates more rage. It's not uncommon to go from empty to full with a single swipe given enough mobs. Also, your opening is good. Shift in and out of bear form to gain 10 rage, pop enrage for an additional 30 rage, and then head out.

[Insahnity]

Deadly glad gear is good beginner gear. You'll want better, but it certainly has a ton of stamina and a good amount of agi. I'd recommend trying to get as much good non-pvp gear as you can, but it's certainly reasonable to do so early on; just make it a high priority to get a better weapon if you can.

PvP gear drops from VoA in abundance. Druid bears are the only pve class I can think of that gets great pve usage out of pvp gear. Do be running VoA as much as possible.

[Lachesis]

I'll assume what i'm going to say has already been said (I only skimmed the responses for the most part). However, just in case...

I see a couple things that can help your threat and survivability greatly.

First, imp mangle. mangle is king for single-target threat specials. Shorter cooldown means more threat.

Second, be wary of maul macros. There is no infinite rage situation. You are bound to run into a situation from time to time where you're very low on rage, and cannot afford both maul and mangle/lac/swipe. In these situations, you want to forgo maul and gain the extra rage from landing a white hit. Macros do not give you this option (unless they use a modifier, say, if you press alt it will not use maul)
Honestly, we're not a very complicated tanking class. It may be annoying to sit there and spam one key while going through your rotation, but it gives you much greater control, and you really don't need that many other keys.


Since you said you mostly had problems with multi-target threat, glyphed Maul and Swipe are your best friends! The way I do multi-mob pulls is by using FFF during charge, having maul qeued up to land as soon as I reach my target, and start swiping the second I get in range. After you charge, position yourself so that they are all in front of you, so you don't get "target is behind you" while tabbing through the targets to make sure they all get some love from maul.

If you want to get really technical, it is possible to use growl and FFF while charging. For example, on the Faction Champions fight in ToC 5-man, you can charge the middle target while taunting the left one and Faerie Fireing the right one. This takes a decent amount of skill and speed to pull off, but it can sometimes make pulls easier.

Also, something that will hurt your threat a little, but improve your survivability:
Take the points out of natural/master shapeshifter, put them in feral aggression. Wen charging a pack of mobs, swipe once, then demo roar, then swipe away. This would likely have saved you on that five-man when the warrior was whirlwinding, especially if you had the rogue as well. That is a lot of AP that demo roar knocks off, don't ignore it.

Finally, your gear sucks. I see there's a couple people offering gear suggestions. My reccomendation would be to go for the staff in VH, or try to get lucky in onyxia and pick up shadowstrike. Use mongoose for your tanking enchant- the proc gives you armor, dodge, and crit (which becomes SD uptime) Your threat is going to be low, because your gear is of poor quality, and there isn't much you can do other than keep on pushing and grind up some better gear. This is not a slam at you, it's simple fact.

Oh, one more gear suggestion: if you can find a naxx group that is planning on full-clearing, GO! It's a good amount of quick, easy badges, and there are tons of upgrades in there for you. They're not great upgrades, but they're better than what you have in many cases, and you're more than geared to be tanking it. Oh, and pick up the triumph idol. i had another tanking tip, too, and it keeps slipping my mind, dangit...

edit: OH! BERSERK! DON'T FORGET THAT IT MAKES MANGLE HIT THREE TARGETS! HELLO, AOE THREAT! Anyway >.<

Tanking section finished.
For your dps spec, in case you care:
pick up survival of the fittest and king of the jungle. Take the points for these from natural/master shapeshifter, and one from feral aggression. Here's why:
KotJ = 60 free energy every thirty seconds.
SotF = 6% stats (that's 6% more AP/crit from agi, 12% more AP from str (if 1 str still = 2 AP, I don't remember >.<), and some extra stam, which is always nice when it's free. Also, crit reduction for when you're being mean with kitty swipe + berserk + trinkets and pulling off the tank :P

As opposed to:

4% crit.
A little damage lost from an ability that you should never use at your gear level anyway (except in very specific situations)


The standard glyphs are shred, savage roar and rip. Rake is mostly useless, and if claw was still on your hotbar beyond level 50, there's something very wrong there. I'll let someone who plays cat as their main spec get deeper into detail.

[Havick]

Alrighty, first thank you to everyone's advice so far! If you check my armory again you'll see I've gained a bunch of gear and a new weapon. I am no longer have any trouble at all holding aggro. I am now curious of ways to gem. I've seen most bears just stacking straight stam - should I be doing that or getting the agil + stam gems?

[Omnialt]

Gem stamina and enchant aggility where it is said to be one off the best enchants. Ofc this is a generall advice. Ofc there are exceptions. But in generall it also works :-)

[Failyn]

This is my armory link:The World of Warcraft Armory

I am a Feral Druid Tank, I haven't had any problems but any recommendations would be appreciated. But people have asked me what to do for druid tank and I tell them to look at my spec. I know my dps sucks cuz of the gear I have but I truly enjoy tanking.

[Darksend]

This is the one forum where it is allowed to make new threads to repeatedly ask the same question. This is havicks thread to get feedback, please refrain from hijacking it.

[Failyn]

I apologize, I was not trying to HIJACK his post. On most sites, they want you to refrain from repeated posts on similar topics.