Druid tanking 4.0.1

[Fenier]

Could suggest taking the 2 points out of master shapeshifter and going for Brutal Impact for more interrupts, but we druids always have been counting on our dps to do that so why change it now :P(just stay lazy and let them handle it)

Why would you willingly give up survivability talents like Skull Bash? Yes, your DPS could handle it, unless of course, they die or are busy elsewhere. Taking the talent means you don't have to be babysat by someone who can interrupt.

[outlandar]

i would suggest the Single target rotation of the first post then:
FF
Mangle
3x lacerate
Pulverize

instead of the:
FF
Mangle
Pulverize
3x lacerate


KFC

I'd have to say ONLY use pulverize to keep the buff up, and if you had to choose between mangle or the buff, mangle > buff. My rotation, which i can do around 14-17k tps sustained just in 5s with only half the damage buffs, in 25 icc, i do MUUUUCh more:

FF to pull, never again ---> Mangle, lacerate x3 --> pulverize for buff ----> heres where you make a choice, either you can pop beserk and just spam it, or wait, get 3 stacks of lacerate up, beserk and as the pulverize buff is about to drop, hit that in the middle of your mangle spam and then keep going.

After you use up beserk my rotation goes strait to mangle on proc, spam lacerate and try to keep the beserk buff up, though half the time i forget about it.

With the above rotation i can keep off any heavy threating caster with relative ease.


From some rudementary testing, i found lacerate is worth about 8k threat on application, 16k on crit, swipe is about 14k on crit. If you just spam lacerate and NOTHING else, you can do between 8-10k tps.


edit: maul after about 5 seconds so the boss builds up your rage so you can just spam it.

[Sluni]

Thanks Épic and others for advice, I will give it another try.

[Niadyth]

KFC, they made this for you.

A new hotfix is being pushed to live. The lacerate dame over time effect associated with lacerate has been renamed due to player confusion. It is now more accurately named "that thing that procs mangle".

ilold.

Seriously though, what kind of dodge figures do people have? I mean really, mine feels way way too high.

[eekee]

ilold.

Seriously though, what kind of dodge figures do people have? I mean really, mine feels way way too high.

tbh mine is 47% give or take cant remember atm (just woke up) but i never try and fall under 45% to me that's the lowest i would go. Ive seen bears who have like 70% but imo hows that helping? your not getting hit yest but your also not getting rage. with 47% then just buffed in 5ms i have enough problems keep my rage up with 6.2k GS i have no math that goes behind this to back me i just kinda go with my trials and errors

(remember to take into account that our idols no longer giver dodge minus the lil agi that is on them (but it still not enough to give you 200 dodge))

[Niadyth]

Yeah, not only will high dodge reduce the flow of rage you're getting, but it'll also slow down the buildup of Vengeance. And lets face it, now that there's very little left in Wrath where survivability is an issue, the fun for me in tanking personally is in threat generation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hUJ_b67Px4

That, for example was an awesomefun fight. Just going in there, getting smacked in the face and watching Vengeance + Gastric Bloat fly completely out of control. Critting 33k on a bear is somewhat hilarious. I've heard of 277 geared bears mangling for 40k+.

On a separate note, theres a tank in a half decent guild on my server who's now switched to gemming pure agility everywhere, in lieu of stam. Does anyone know what the balance would be in that model where he'd be losing potential Vengeance AP (from the loss of stam) but gaining AP from agility? I might try it out in a few off-set pieces and see how it goes.

[Zantam]

Hi guys, I'm looking for some help on a macro, I figured I'd ask here.

Basically, I would like a button that casts Swipe as priority one (if it's off cd), then Maul if it's off cd, or nothing if they are both on cooldown. For some reason I've tried a basic

/cast Swipe (bear)
/cast Maul

and it just doesn't seem to be working.

After quite a few raids post 4.0, I've come to the conclusion that having FF, Mangle, Lacerate, and Pulverize on 4 different keys make sense, but Swipe + Maul would be a good button to have to support both single target and AoE threat gameplay. Thanks for the help, I suck at macros.

[Zantam]

Just so you know, I've been able to get the desired result with

/castsequence reset=2 Maul, Swipe(Bear Form)

[Shadyman]

This seems to be working fine for me (4.0.1), as far as i can tell ... and well Maul before or after is whatever you feel like

#showtooltip Swipe(Bear Form)
#show Swipe(Bear Form)
#showcooldown Swipe(Bear Form)
/cast !Maul
/cast Swipe(Bear Form)

[Baggor]

I did some testing today using the threat addon posted under the Warrior 4.01 thread on a single target. I haven't adjusted any of these number for my gear (which isn't the greatest: 5040 Gear Score). However I did adjust the threat levels for the 300% form modifier and did the normalization for 1 threat = 1dps, so take that into consideration. Also, I didn't test the differences due to bleed effects. All of these numbers are independent applications except for Pulverize, which had 3 stacks of Lacerates.

Maul:

Damage: 1159, Threat: 1189, Scaling: 1.02

Lacerate (single stack) Initial Application:

Damage: 593, Threat: 2626, Scaling: 4.4

Lacerate (single stack) Tick:

Damage: 57, Threat: 57, Scaling: 1.0

Mangle:

Damage: 3039, Threat: 3039, Scaling: 1.0

Pulverize (3 stacks of Lacs):

Damage: 4522, Threat: 4522, Scaling: 1.0

Feral Faerie Fire:

Damage: 615, Threat: 1445, Scaling: 2.35

Swipe:

Damage: 1539, Threat: 2308, Scaling 1.5

So, it looks at first glance that to me the rotation, as given by Epic in the first post, would only be:
Mangle, Lac x3, Pulverize, although I'd vary it a bit when Berserk procs to get extra Mangles. I imagine there's a trade off in responding to Berserk procs, so that needs to be analyzed. I'd also do the initial application of FFF, and then refresh, but it looks like that needs to be taken off the pre-4.01 rotation.

As was mentioned in a later post, you can change that to:
Mangle, Pulverize, Lac x3 to maximize bleed effects

[Frushia]

I have read about enough, and decided that i was going to put my own words in on this to help some from my prospective. First, i would like to say that i believe that for single target it should start with a mangle to add bleed debuff, then Lac. x3, and follow with Pulverise. I didnt talent into EC cause it was easy enough to keep pulverise up when need mostly only for boss encounters, its easy for bears to keep single target threat. i havnt met a dps yet that could pull off me single target.

With Glyphs i have chosen to feral charge cause there is something about dashing to the rescue that i love as well as the fact that i macro my FF to it, i also have FF on a separate key for ranged pulls, and as far as Dodge .vs Rage, i like to think that rage is really good, and here is the thing that im having to think on is whether the mastery is there to buffer alot of the dodge ive noticed that alot of the gear droping for druids to tank with has lost dodge, and those with dodge have strength, with makes it a little hard to figure out whats going on, and thats where i think the mastery is comming is but we will see.

Now for aoe agg, there is this little ability at lvl 85 called Thrash, now they have added another swipe to our cast bar but this one adds bleed damage as well "SO SEXY" with Berserk and if really needed a challenging roar, is a no fail threat hold, since ive gottin my thrash i have not had one issue with and dps pulling off me. accept for the eager ones, doing the pulling (FAIL) for me. Its OK i help Karma with those peeps ;-)

All in all, what it all really comes down to is the fact that bears until lvl 85 suck at holding any kind of AOE agg, and until ones bear hits 85 the DPS in any group needs to be aware that bears suk at holding aoe threat, and that mobs should be properly marked and CC'd for optimal team performance and a zero wipe factor to be included. I dont think that im the best druid tank out there, but i do know what works for me. hope this helps

[Frushia]

i forgot to add that the points that i didnt put into EC went in to master shape shifter for the extra damage, and i dont macro maul anymore because it eats way too much rage, i only ever use it in my aoe threat rotation which is enrage, maul/swipe,thrash, (berserk if needed) get the berserk mangles in when you can and all agg is held quite easily beyond this point, just repeat and use priority to fill in the gaps.

[Quinafoi]

Thread Necro
This thread was from back in patch 4.0.1 at level 80. We're on 4.0.3a now and 85, an expansion happened inbetween. Two months ago is history. You signed up and posted your first two posts to add your thoughts on a discussion that has been dead for two months?

[Murrog]

It may be an old thread, Quinafoi, but I don't see a fresh one, so why not add to it?

Here are a couple of issues I note:

Rage is a big issue for me. It seems that rage is now generated primarily by hitting mobs, instead of being hit by them, so I have to make sure I am facing a mob and actively meleeing--bearing in mind that the AOE's we have do not start auto-melee.

Lacerate is the huge threat move--if I can get a couple lacerates on a mob it is not going off me, and if I have a mob on another player, a lot of times I do not taunt, I just lacerate it---assuming I have rage. And in fact if you look at lacerate it mentions high threat, more so than the dps.

I do not have maul glyphed, because I do not want to inadvertantly break CC in dungeons. It is not uncommon for a mob to be in the group, feared or sheeped or trapped, while we beat down a mob right beside it.

Just a correction--swipe is 83. The 85 effect is the mushrooms, which I see no use for, since they take me out of bear form.

I also do not have anything macroed. I don't macro maul because rage is the primary issue, not timing. I don't have swipe and thrash macroed to each other because a lot of times timing is key in getting off an AOE--ie a group of mobs runs in, not all at once, and the tank needs to make sure he gets them all picked up. A common scenario is I pull with faery fire, lacerate the first mob to reach me, then swipe, then thrash, then go back to lacerating the first kill target. An example of where timing is key is on the Lord Geoffrey fight in HSFK. He summons adds--I hit a swipe, then I move out of the way of his pistol barrage and hit thrash, then usually thrash again, then bash his magic bullet or whatever it is--this lets me keep aggro on the adds.

[dotOrion]

It may be an old thread, Quinafoi, but I don't see a fresh one, so why not add to it?

I would say because the rest of the thread isn't relevant anymore, and you can always make a new one

But now that we're here, anyway ..

bearing in mind that the AOE's we have do not start auto-melee.

Easily solved by adding /startattack before the abilities in a macro

Lacerate is the huge threat move--if I can get a couple lacerates on a mob it is not going off me, and if I have a mob on another player, a lot of times I do not taunt, I just lacerate it---assuming I have rage. And in fact if you look at lacerate it mentions high threat, more so than the dps.

Yep, Lacerate is great. So is Mangle, of course.

I do not have maul glyphed, because I do not want to inadvertantly break CC in dungeons. It is not uncommon for a mob to be in the group, feared or sheeped or trapped, while we beat down a mob right beside it.

Hmm. Nothing a bit of practice won't solve, though. Also, changing the way you pull can help .. for example, if there's two melee and a caster .. let the mage do a sheep pull on the caster, let the melee run towards the mage, then pick them up. They're now far away from the CC and under your control AND it's safe to use glyphed Maul for free threat on both of them.

[Kojiyama]

As there have been plenty of changes since this thread was made, I'm pretty sure the rotations being talked about here are perhaps a little overly simplistic.

For instance, if your Thrash does more damage than the multiplied threat of Lacerate applications, it's worth using Thrash as priority over stacking Lacerate past the first one as you have plenty of time before Pulverize fades. My Thrash does about twice as much threat as a Lacerate application at the moment.

Also, FFF generally does very slightly more threat than Lacerate applications once you have a fair amount of AP, and importantly is free. Therefore if you have 3 stacks of Lacerate and are waiting to use Pulverize, it would make sense to FFF instead of Lacerate again to save Rage.

e.g.

Mangle
Lacerate x1
Thrash
Lacerate x3
Pulverize if no buff
FFF
Pulverize

For AoE scenarios, I've found it pretty useful to instead of try to build on Lacerates on one target, to put Lacerates on multiple targets instead, as this gives a much higher chance to proc Berserk. While Mangle is certainly not as much AoE threat as Thrash or glyphed Maul, it is still upwards of 3 times as much threat as anything else. So getting 2-3 Lacerates up on different targets then being able to use Mangle on almost every (or every other) GCD between Thrash CDs is pretty high TPS and, more importantly, pretty high DPS.

In regard to Maul glyph--yeah, it's a bit annoying sometimes, but it's pretty hard to ignore how much of a DPS and TPS increase it is.