Druid: What are my options for more TPS with my gear?

[morphlings]

Hello, I'm pretty sure this is the right part of the forums to post this in, I'm sorry if it isn't. If so please just pm me with where it should go. Well I'm gearing up my feral set now that theres emblem t9 and in heroics for the most part I can hold threat somewhat decent. According to omen I average 4k TPS and every once in a while I see it jump up to 5k. But if I get a dps that does 3.5k + DPS I tend to lose aggro on bosses and am forced to growl only to lose aggro again a few sec after growl wears off. I don't think your are really supposed to depend on a taunt like that if your tanking and I know this is holding me back from tanking anything above naxx. (Haven't tanked naxx yet so assuming here). I read the feral druid guide and don't have improved mangle, so my started rotation is mangle, FF, lacerate, lacerate then mangle, lacerate, lacerate, lacreate then mangle berserk. All the while spamming maul.

My armory in my tanking gear/spec is: The World of Warcraft Armory - Morphlings @ Daggerspine - Profile

I followed the gemming instructions on the feral druid guide so I don't know if i should regem for more str/crit or not.

Thank you in advanced for your help.

[Darksend]

probably because you are tanking in resto gear.

no really though, kind of hard to tell since you are logged off in resto gear but drop the 3 in KOTJ and get primal gore and primal precision

[Dekar]

On a pull you should mangle for your snap aggro, FF, then start stacking your lacerate to 5 (mangle in between when its off cd) all while keeping Maul queued. If you don't already have maul macro'd to your main abilities, do it now and it will make sure it's always queued when you use them. (On my bear tank alt I have it macro'd to mangle, lacerate and swipe) and once u get lacerate to 5 stacks, just keep mangle and FF on cd and swipe in between cd's as a filler, only lacerate to refresh the 5 stack once it's up, you'll get more tps swipe spamming than spamming lacerate.

If it's a boss and you think a dps's initial burst is gonna pull off you, mangle and FF on the pull (I macro faerie fire to my charge so it puts it up as i charge in since charge really does no threat) then lacerate once or twice, pop zerking and mangle spam to get a good threat lead, then once its duration is up, just go back to your normal mangle, ff, lacerate to 5, swipe spam for a filler all while keeping maul queued.

[Jrue]

Respec like Darksend said. KOTJ is pretty bad for tanking and Primal Gore helps to proc Savage Defense off Lacerate.

Macroing Maul to all your other attacks with a castsequence macro is a good idea but make sure you use !Maul. This will disable the toggle behavior of Maul. I use these macros and rarely have a problem with rage starvation, and only on trash in heroics. You also might want to add in a Demo Roar early in that rotation if possible. Does decent threat and reduces incoming damage.

[felhoof]

If you're really worried about trigger happy DPS I'd go mangle, lacerate, berserk. (or potentially better: lacerate, mangle berserk. This puts a bleed on your target to give your mauls 20% more damage quickly and then puts you into pure mangle mode. With that kind of threat lead you shouldn't have any problems, and you can lacerate once during the berserk to avoid the stack falling off.

You should also be leading in with FF if possible. So you won't need to FF after the mangle.

Also, maul does not toggle. It hasn't toggled in a long time. There's no harm in doing !Maul, but it doesn't do anything that just /cast maul also does.

[Jrue]

Ah good to know. It would also be helpful to see what weapon you're sporting. Grabbing the Orca Harpoon our of HoR is likely an easy but big upgrade.

[morphlings]

Okay, Thank you guys very much, I'm going to do everything you guys said right now lol. Just one thing, I know you said they do the same thing but I'm assuming it a macro command but what does !Maul mean? and what is the exact syntax for it? I'm just curious, maybe I can use it for another character or something. Thank you all again.

[Quinafoi]

Quoting myself from a different topic.

To add to the prior post, ! means NOT as in the boolean conditional statement where NOT FALSE = TRUE. This is a condition for firing the cast or use macro. It only functions on abilities that are toggled (have an on/off, or TRUE/FALSE status).

/cast Maul
This will trigger the "Maul" ability which is a toggled ability. If it is off (false), it will toggle it on (true). If it is on (true), it will toggle it off (false).

/cast !Maul
This is actually a bit more complex, this is a shorthand for saying the following.
IF (NOT Maul) THEN
CAST Maul
END
So if Maul is false (off), non false = true therefore the if statement falls passed and it will cast Maul turn it on (true). If Maul is true (on), not true = false therefore it will fail the condition and not cast anything.

The NOT conditional does not check for if an ability is on cooldown and cause it to skip. It doesn't work on those abilities. It only works on abilities that have a true/false status (on or off), on cooldown is not one of those boolean statuses.

[morphlings]

Ok, so if I understand correctly the code "/cast !maul" will prevent me from toggleing maul on and off? Because I have noticed that even with the regular button I have toggled it on and off before the maul went off.

Edit: I'm sorry, I was going over all the previous post and saw that Jrue confirmed that it does turn off the toggle. Thank again guys

[Insahnity]

Ok, well I have the benefit of seeing you in what is presumably feral gear (although it looks kinda like a mishmash of cat and bear gear). I'm gonna run with bear, given the stam trinkets, stamina gems, and lack of obvious cat talents.

First off:
-No to strength. Ever. Stack stamina, then agility, and nothing else. The only str you get is if you get some with a tanking ring/necklace/etc.. If you want to try and go for a 12 stamina socket bonus on a yellow slot, use a nightmare tear.
-Get a real idol, ideally idol of the corruptor. That should have been your very first purchase before 4 pc t9.
-This is 2008 calling. We'd like to have our Moroes Pocket watch back, because its pretty useless at level 80. Try replacing with The Black Heart, grind regular toc until you are stark raving mad if you have to.
-There are plenty of leather boots around, especially toc (which, you should be grinding anyways). Failing that, there are no less than two crafteable boe boots available to ferals (although the one from primordial saronite may be too pricy for your finances at the moment).
-your shoulder enchant should be 30 stam/15 resilience (unless the 40 ap/15 resilience is part of your cat set..?)
-Stop using rare quality gems, epic gems aren't that hard to come by.

Since you have fixed your spec, aside from the points I have listed all you have to do is follow felhoof's advice on rotation.

[morphlings]

Allright, I'm going to work on the gems, I just figured the gear itself would be more important than the gems at the moment. and as far as damage is concerned I haven't had any problems that I know of, thats why I didn't go with the idol from triumph yet, but that will be the next thing I get now.

But just to keep you guys updated since I respec'd and macro'd maul to most of my buttons my tps on omen on boss fights (In 5 man's atleast) is consistently 5.5k - 6k. So thank you all so much I appreciate it.