Feral Druids (Bear)

Xymnas

Trieb of Judah Starcraft Series Chapter Co-leader
Hey all, again I'd like to take a few minutes to explain the feral druid as a BEAR tank! In my other post you can see I've played for some time. And again I continue to gain knowledge of my class and its works. I also get a lot of info from Elitist Jerks. The forums there are a GREAT help!

First off i'm going to start off with the SPEC! With being a bear tank you always want to have the Max stamina/Armour/Dodge that you can possible.

Here is my spec http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Stonemaul&cn=Xymnas&group=2.

<<Spec>>
<<Feral Combat>>

5/5 Ferocity -- Decreasing your cost of your abilities
2/2 Savage Fury -- Increasing damage done by abilities
3/3 Thick Hide -- Increasing armor amount by 10% (Helps a ton and is a MUST have)
3/3 Feral Instinct -- Increase damage of swipe
2/2 Feral Swiftness -- Increasing your dodge
1/1 Survival Instinct -- Increasing your health by 30% for a few seconds (A MUST have as well, almost as a "Reserve" for those lazy healers)
3/3 Sharpen Claws -- Increase crit chance
3/3 Predatory Strike -- Increasing AP a ton
2/2 Primal Fury -- Gives rage when you crit
1/1 Feral Charge -- Ability to charge
3/3 Natural Reaction -- Increasing Dodge AND giving your rage when you dodge
5/5 Heart of the Wild -- Increasing Stamina
3/3 Survival of the Fittest -- Increasing ALL attributes by 6% AND Makes you uncritable which for any raid or instance or anything is a MUST HAVE!!!!
1/1 Leader of the Pack -- Increasing crit chance
2/2 Improved Leader of the Pack -- Heals you when you crit
3/3 Protector of the Pack -- Reduce damage taken by 12%
1/1 Mangle -- Ability to Mangle
3/3 Improved Mangle -- Reduce CD on Mangle
5/5 Rend and Tear -- Increasing damage of Maul
1/1 Primal Gore -- Allows Lacerate to be a crit
1/1 Berserk -- Hitting 3 targets with Mangle and Mangle having no CD

<<Resto>>

2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild -- Increasing all attributes
5/5 Furor -- Gain 10 rage when you jump into form
5/5 Naturalist -- Increasing all damage done
3/3 Natural Shapeshifter -- Decrease cost of Bear
1/1 Omen of Clarity -- "Clear cast state"
2/2 Master Shapeshifter -- Increasing damage done



Rotations for Attacking!
On Bosses

First we open up with jumping into Bear from, gaining the 10 rage to start out the fight. If need be pop Enrage to gain rage, but watch out because when you do it will give you a debuff of -Armor %.

1. Growl
2. Mangle
3. Faerie Fire (Feral)
4. Demoralizing Roar
5. Lacerate (2-3 times)
6. Mangle
7. Lacerate (2-3 times) (You ALWAYS want to have Lacerate up with it stacked up to 5. This will continue dealing damage to the boss but also gain your aggro)
8. Faerie Fire (Feral)
9. Growl
10. Mangle
11. Lacerate (Making sure you continually have the stack up to 5)
12. There really isn't a "Restart" in your rotation for tanking, just as long as you continually have Lacerate up and keep using Mangle when you can along with the other spells.

Now you have 2 other abilities that you may use, throwing them in between all these attacks or when something is just on CD.
Maul: Increasing damage by an attack by a ton
Swipe: Swiping multiple targets, or even for single target usage.

What I like to do is when Mangle is on CD for about 6 seconds, and Lacerate is fully up with 5, use Maul and swipe, causing extra damage to the boss which increases your aggro. Swipe may not do much damage but when everything else is on CD you might as well use this.

Again like in Kitty form, Mangle is one spell you have up to increase the damage of your bleed affects. Then Lacerate will be ticking, doing more damage with Mangle up.


BARKSKIN: Now when your low on health and your healer is slacking or you need to reduce the damage taken or what ever it may be, you have a "Shield", if I may say so, that reduces damage taken by 20%. This spell helps out a ton when your fighting a boss that does more damage over time. Very affective ability and and must have on your action bar.

SURVIVAL INSTINCT: This spell allows you to gain 30% more health, which rocks. This again is a spell that you keep as an "OH CRAP" spell. If you realize your low on health, or the boss hits like a truck (Like Festergut, after his 3rd inhale) you'd pop this and gain health, allowing the healers to refocus on you and get your health fully up.

FRENZIED REGENERATION: A great spell that regenerates your health at the cost of your rage. This is also an "OH CRAP" spell. This spell is a "HoT" heal and heals your for quite a bit, depending on how much health you have.

Now on Elitist Jerks, the druid forms, they have a rotation that is similar, but different also.
*****"Unlike feral DPS, bear tanking has a true rotation. Repeat these steps for every six second chunk of time during the fight:

1. Mangle
2. Feral Faerie Fire
3. Lacerate and/or Swipe (x2)

Note 1: Every time Maul becomes available, use it.

Note 2: In this rotation, Lacerate should only be used if your debuff stack is smaller than 5 applications, or if your it is about to fall off. In all other cases, use Swipe.

Note 3: If you are responsible for using Demoralizing Roar, use it during step #3.

Note 4: This rotation assumes that you are not specced into Improved Mangle - if you are, then prioritize Mangle above Feral Faerie Fire when the two skill cooldowns collide.

Note 5: On many fights it is possible to ignore Swipe and maintain a healthy threat lead by just spamming Lacerate instead - keep in mind that this will also lower your DPS. "

Glyphs

Major:
1.Glyph of Maul -- Hitting 2 targets with Maul instead of 1
2.Glyph of Barkskin -- Reduce crit strike chance on you when barkskin is up
3.Glyph of Survival Instincts -- Increasing your Survival Instinct to 45% instead of the 30%

Minor:
1.Glyph of Thorns -- Increasing duration of thorns
2.Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth -- No reagent for Rebirth
3.You can pick what you want for this spot, doesn't really matter what you choose.


Macro's

I got some great macros that I LOVE and that also help me out a TON!

First is a mouse over macro for Lacerate. Because Lacerate does a large amount of threat to a target, your able to just mouse over one and click the button on your key board, allowing you to keep attacking your target but also to attack a different one you may be losing threat on.

#showtooltip Lacerate
/cast [target=mouseover] Lacerate


Second thing is this: I have a few more macros for my Focus target. I can focus one target, and be attacking a different one. When i want to attack my focus target I can easily hold down "Shift" or "Ctrl" button and press whatever button you have with this macro such as mangle or lacerate or maul. You can pretty much use this for any attack.

#showtooltip (Blank)
/cast [modifier:ctrl/shift, target=focus] (Blank)
/cast [nomodifier] (Blank)

In the Blanks you can put your spell, whether it is Lacerate/Mangle/Maul/Charge...whatever it is.

This Macro would also replace your regular button. So lets say I have Maul as #1 button. Instead of having my "Focus target attack button" as #2, you just replace #1 with it. It will continue to work the same as if it was a normal spell without the macro part.

If you have a question about that I'll try and explain it better via in game or Vent. Not sure what the best way is to explain that.


Add ons

Omen: Threat meter
Omni CC: CD add, showing in BIG letters the CD on your spells/casts
Deadly Boss Mods: YOU MUST HAVE THIS FOR RAIDING!!!! Helps out when to move and lets you know whats going to happen

And my Favorite
Feral By Night: Showing you which attacks to use and when, also showing the CD on your Trinkets and any buffs you have have that can "Proc"

Again any questions or comments feel free to post or ask me anything in game!

Thanks for your time
 
Also for your Spell Rotation for Multiple targets would be this:

1. Maul
2. Demoralizing Roar
3. Swipe (2-3 times)
4. Mangle
5. Maul
6. Swipe (2-3 times)

Make sure you always use swipe, helping you keep agro on all mobs, along with maul. Because it can hit 2 targets, helps keep mobs on you as well.

This is about all I do for tanking multiple mobs at once. Obviously if you see one mob change targets, you can use growl or even mangle on the target to pull him back to you. You wanna make sure you have the glyph for Maul, because it makes it to where you hit an extra target with maul. So that will also help keep agro on the mobs. Another thing i like to do is either use my mouse over macro for lacerate, OR you can tab though all the mobs using lacerate, which cause very high threat on the target. If you struggle with tanking more than a few mobs then possibly this may help.
 
One thing of note, at least from my minimal tanking experience as a bear tank.

I have 2 bars setup, but mainly just use the one for all purpose tanking. But one of them I have all my major abilities macro-ed in with maul. Great help for AOE tanking and also taking care of not having to worry about queuing maul up. The times when I don't use this bar, is for fights that might be a little more rage starved. An example is:

#showtooltip
/cast Swipe (bear)(Rank 8)
/cast !Maul


Also, another major glyph you can look at, I don't use the barkskin, but use Frenzied Regeneration instead, that extra 20% of healing affects on you really helps healers get you back up there.

On boss fights, I tend to pop berserk fairly early and spam mangle to get me a fairly good chunk of threat. Helps for those DPS guys who like to jump the gun before you can get an established threat lead.
 
One thing of note, at least from my minimal tanking experience as a bear tank.

I have 2 bars setup, but mainly just use the one for all purpose tanking. But one of them I have all my major abilities macro-ed in with maul. Great help for AOE tanking and also taking care of not having to worry about queuing maul up. The times when I don't use this bar, is for fights that might be a little more rage starved. An example is:

#showtooltip
/cast Swipe (bear)(Rank 8)
/cast !Maul


Also, another major glyph you can look at, I don't use the barkskin, but use Frenzied Regeneration instead, that extra 20% of healing affects on you really helps healers get you back up there.

On boss fights, I tend to pop berserk fairly early and spam mangle to get me a fairly good chunk of threat. Helps for those DPS guys who like to jump the gun before you can get an established threat lead.

Hmm i'll have to try out that macro or a few of em like that. I could see how that would help you out getting agro on many targets faster. I usually use swipe and maul at the same time...just mashing the two while keeping mangle going when its off of CD and lacerate up. Also tossing Farie fire or whatever the spell is called helps with a little agro on a target...also dealing a little damage when mangle is on CD. But yah I'll give the swipe and mangle macro you have there a try. I would love to make my life easy instead of hitting 2 buttons at once lol
 
Quick question as I am started to do heroics on my Feral druid. It looks like we share a lot of the same gear as feral cats and rogues. Is it okay or even preferable to pickup strength/stam/defense/dodge rings and neck pieces or stick to agility gear?
 
Yah, for the most part you'll see tanking rings for druids as any tanking ring warriors, dk's, and pallys would use. It will most likely have Str/Stam and Dodge/Parry/Block.

If possible try and find one with more dodge and stam. The Defense rating for feral druids isnt really needed because we get it though our talent tree. Neck and ring pieces are pretty much the same ones a warrior would pick up.

Druids only way of avoidence is to dodge, and dodge.....And be a sponge when it comes to our health. So for cat you want Agi gear, but for tanking find the Str/Stam/Dodge/def/any other tanking stat rings and neck pieces.
 
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