About druid tank

[silver797]

Hello to all

I'm new at this foruns and some time ago my guild asked me to do a tank to help guild.

I'm will say sorry in advance if this is not the correct forum to talk about this.

Since many people told me this is the best forum to speak about tanking stuff, i'm looking for some help about druid tanking, since im new at this.

I would like to have some help about the mechanics if possible ( stats, Rotation/priority's, more avoidance or more stamina, etc)

I was looking some players in some guilds of my server and some druids stack alot of stam, others alot of agi and atm tbh im a bit confused and looking for answers.

I want to have the best performance possible, so i created a topic here since the bests write here.

Thx alot to all in advance for answers, and if i choosed the wrong forum, i would like someone to tell me the correct place to search.

[Satorri]

I will throw out a quick, brief few points of my own, short-hand guidance, but, for the real dish you'll want:
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/...uid-guide.html

So, on gearing as a bear:
I prefer to stack stamina and agility primarily. Blue sockets get pure stam, red get Agi/Stam, many enchants get Agility or Stamina. I'm a sucker for socket bonuses so I will use Hit/Stam if I need to match a yellow socket and am not hit capped, Crit/Stam if I am hit capped.

The distinction is that bears get great Stam scaling from talents/form so Stamina will feed you loads of health. Agility scales fairly well from talents, and will give you nice amounts of dodge, armor, and crit, all of which are survival tools, and dodge and crit will feed your threat a fair bit too. The armor will help your stamina scale even better in terms of effective health.

For rotations, it will take time to find the right pacing, but in the guide linked above you can watch as he uses his skills smartly. Generally speaking Mangle and Feral Faerie Fire are your two hot threat spikes, but they have CDs. Ideally you'll want to use them as soon as they're available. Lacerate stacks support longer duration threat, and Swipe+Glyphed Maul becomes laughable group threat (I've tanked entire 5-mans using nothing else just to see if I could, it worked).

Read the guide. The Darksend is good.

[Samomleko]

Hey, I'm tanking alot for few years now but im concerned now. in our rotation we rarely got some white hits, and only those hits can proc omen of clarity, don't you think that this point is lost if we put it there? And what options we could pick for it?

[Liquidska]

I don't even spec in to Omen of Clarity anymore, it is very rare that I get rage starved on a boss. Rotface has done it a few times if the slime spray lines up at the right time but that's rarely an issue.

Really everything you need to know is in Satorri's link.

[Samomleko]

Well that guide assumes omen of clarity in spec. Could you link your spec without OoC? I'm curious how you do it.

[Güth]

in our rotation we rarely got some white hits, and only those hits can proc omen of clarity, don't you think that this point is lost if we put it there?

Certainly not a wasted point, you should read the comments on the talent points in the feral druid guide linked at the top of the post:

"Omen of Clarity: Each of the Druid's damage, healing spells and auto attacks has a chance of causing the caster to enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the Mana, Rage or Energy cost of your next damage, healing spell or offensive ability by 100%.

Comment:
No longer procs off specials (maul being on neck swing still procs it)."

I assume "neck swing" was meant to be "next swing", which is the mechanic for mauls

[Samomleko]

Aaah, that changes things. I read "being on neck" as removed, and understood that only white swing can proc it. Good, so i won't change spec at all. Sorry for confusion.

[Insahnity]

The distinction is that bears get great Stam scaling from talents/form so Stamina will feed you loads of health. Agility scales fairly well from talents, and will give you nice amounts of dodge, armor, and crit, all of which are survival tools, and dodge and crit will feed your threat a fair bit too.

Additional notes:

Never, under any circumstances, gem using orange, red or yellow if a tank. If you find yourself wanting to, the answer lies in better gear (equivalent gear that has, for example, expertise instead of hit, all other stats being the same).

For gemming, Nightmare Tear is a great gem, it's worth having one if you want a socket bonus but don't want to put an yellow based gem in there. Unfortunately, you are allowed only one.

Practically speaking, most feral druid gear is basically rogue gear, which has lots of hit because those silly rogues like to dual wield. Gemming for hit is very rare.

Defense is yellow in colour, however, you don't gem for defense as bear, not because you don't need defense with survival of the fittest talent, but because its other benefits (chance to dodge, and chance to miss), are not quite as valuable as other choices. Crit is nice, more threat and increased chance to trigger savage defense skill, but agility is usually preferred over crit (Although Satorri's point is that the sub-optimal stat + socket bonus make it ok, and in some cases, he's quite correct).