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The Feral Tanking Guide, Part 3: Abilities, Rotation, Cooldowns
October 29, 2009 by Chase
October 29, 2009 by Chase
This page has moved to my new site! Please visit http://fluiddruid.net/2009/10/the-feral-tanking-guide-part-3/.
A couple points –
Since you asked, lacerate crits don’t proc imp LotP to my knowledge. They do proc SD, which is enough of a reason to have them around.
I’ve not tested this exhaustively, but my memory of SI is that you don’t lose the extra health unless it’s over what you had. In other words, you can use it as a cheap heal if you need to.
Glyphed Frenzied Regen works differently than you’re thinking. It doesn’t add another 20% healing to the effect; it improves healing on you by 20% while the effect is up. It’s similar to nurturing instincts or guardian spirit, and it is very, very nice and quite useful. Use a healthstone during it and you gain 20% more health. Use it with SI and you gain 20% more health than you would have. All heals will heal you for 20% more. It can be great when you’re taking a ton of damage for a while and your healers need some time to catch up.
If you’re facing anything big, don’t enrage. 16% armor doesn’t sound like a lot, but the effect on your health is very, very large. Dropping from 32k armor to 26k armor is a loss of 6% mitigation – but that’s a pre-armor loss, which makes it close to 15% extra damage taken that you wouldn’t have. Against attacks that do 100k pre-armor, that means every attack that would have done 30k before is doing 34k now. If you do do this – warn your healers.
Nice write up.
Only thing I would add is in the Rage section a note on Primal Fury. The ability to generate rage on crits is one of our biggest differences from a warrior in terms of rage generation.
In AOE packs a bear can sustain constant Swipe/Maul spam just from rage generated from swipe crits without getting hit at all, and in general is very nice if you need to be attacking something in bear but are not being hit.
@Kalon-
For SI, I’m positive that you do lose the extra health when the buff drops. It’s killed me a couple times when I got lazy while soloing the trash before Anzu. I think we’re talking about two different things, though.
For FR, I’ll rephrase the text to talk more about the glyphed version…the glyph does boost FR healing by 20%, but it’s real power is that it boosts ALL healing, not just FR healing.
Yeah, my bad on Enrage. I don’t ever use it in raids except pre-pull or for emergency bear AOE tanking…it’s 5-mans where I use it liberally since I overgear the content. I’ll rephrase it.
@Ateve-
Yeah, I think I had something in there about it, cut it, and didn’t re-add it. Thanks.
I usually save Barkskin for panics, but several druids have suggested running it as soon as it is off cooldown (i.e. macro it to all attacks), unless you are fighting a boss that has a timed big attack that you can take advantage of…
Given 20% damage reduction for 12/60 seconds, that’s 4% damage reduction you’re giving up when it isn’t running. Set bonuses make it even more valuable.
There aren’t any other abilities that give you a 4% damage reduction…
(I should be better about using it in cat form too, when Raid damage is incoming.)
Cae, that’s pretty much what I do too, even though I don’t have T9 yet. Barkskin in kitty…eh, I use it for predictable raid damage (Malygos, XT), but generally I save it for emergency tank moments. I can hold a boss in cat gear if I pop BS/SI/FR, long enough for the tank to get a brez. I also macro my use trinkets (used to be Def Code, now Glyph of Indom) to it, so I don’t forget them, even though that’s suboptimal. (You want extra dodge when Barkskin is down..better to dodge a full hit than an 80% hit.)
[…] 0: Introduction Part 1: Why Play a Bear Tank? Part 2: Talent Overview, Builds, Leveling Part 3: Abilities, Rotation, Cooldowns Part 4: Gear/Glyphs/Enchants/Gems/Consumables Part 5: Useful addons, additional resources, last […]
[…] 0: Introduction Part 1: Why Play a Bear Tank? Part 2: Talent Overview, Builds, Leveling Part 3: Abilities, Rotation, Cooldowns Part 4: Gear/Glyphs/Enchants/Gems/Consumables Part 5: Useful addons, additional resources, last […]
[…] 0: Introduction Part 1: Why Play a Bear Tank? Part 2: Talent Overview, Builds, Leveling Part 3: Abilities, Rotation, Cooldowns Part 4: Gear/Glyphs/Enchants/Gems/Consumables Part 5: Addons and Other […]
[…] 0: Introduction Part 1: Why Play a Bear Tank? Part 2: Talent Overview, Builds, Leveling Part 3: Abilities, Rotation, Cooldowns Part 4: Gear/Glyphs/Enchants/Gems/Consumables Part 5: Useful addons, additional resources, last […]
Glad I found this site. Have played just about any form of caster and started a druid to play boom. A friend challenged me to try tanking (I’d picked up some gear) and….I think I like it. 😀
My big question is truly how to catch “runners”? Any suggestions?
Shyone,
Good question, and I know exactly what you’re talking about (AOE swiping a pack of mobs, one of them breaks off for the ranged DPS). This usually happens when a DPS’er is using single-target attacks while you’re trying to keep AOE threat. I personally have Growl (taunt) mapped to a mouse button, so I just click the mob running off and taunt it back. (Some tanks use a /mouseover macro for taunting to avoid having to change targets…I see the benefits of that, but I’ve had some bad experiences with mistaunting adds vs. boss, so I prefer the two-button method.) Once it’s running back, I’ll hit it with a Mangle (+maul) to get a good chunk of threat, and then go back to AOE swiping, while keeping that mob as my target so it eats the Mauls.
If you’re in a low-aggro situation (freshly spawned mobs) and need to grab two at range, Faerie Fire is another excellent tool. I used this frequently in our attempts on Lady Deathwhisper last night…FF one, growl a second, charge a third and maul it (preferably the caster, to get an interrupt as well).
Actualy, it’s hard to keep agro on mob/boss when in your party there is Warrior/Mage/Hunter who doing 7k DPS 😛 What can I do to keep agro better? I mean, do I have to do any changes in rotation or in enchants/gems?
BTW I’m tanking 2nd day xD But i like it 🙂
Honestly, not much, especially for the Warrior. If you’re losing aggro in heroics, try tanking in cat gear; I throw that on for everything except the new heroics…the extra threat helps. Make sure your healer can handle it though. Really, if your DPS outgears you, there’s nothing you can do cept let them die a few times to teach them to slow down, especially on AOE.
Hi again. Now im tanking ony25,voa25,toc10-25 as MT and it was rly difficult to keep agro at the start…
I changed a little bit rotation.
Single-Target
1. Demoralizing Roar (if not kept up by another) –
No needed. Just loosing some sec.
Im using that at the end of rotation.
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2. Berserk (for DPS races) –
No needed at the start but it’s fine
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3. (Maul) Keep queued at all times. –
Fine
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4. Mangle –
Same in my rotation
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5. Feral Faerie Fire (to apply debuff if no moonkin) –
I’m spaming FFF all time, mostly at the start.
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6. Lacerate (If Lacerate not fully stacked) –
I’m just stack it to 5 and when it’s about to drop i’m
using that again
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7. Berserk (regular) –
That’s very nice skill, but 3 min cooldown ;/
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8. Faerie Fire
Good
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9. Lacerate (if Lacerate stack is about to drop)
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10. Swipe
Also nice skill, spaming it all time like FFF or maul
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Anyway thx for guide m8. When I finded this webside Im just started to tank HCs. And now i’m tanking 25-man
raids as MT :p And even I like more my OS Bear then my tree MS xD
And 1 more think. Are there any addons for bear??
Darg,
There’s not really any bear-specific addons, as far as I’ve seen. There’s some like FeralByNight and BadKitty that are designed for feral DPS, but have a tanking component as well. Still, you shouldn’t need much more than the addons I discuss in part 5. (At least as far as raiding is concerned..obviously, there’s other stuff like inventory mods that are helpful).
Thank you for this guide, it’s very useful and I don’t know what I would do without it 🙂
You’re welcome.
[…] Part 3: Abilities, Rotation, Cooldowns […]