Feral druid

[Bob]

After the last patch, I for the first time went full feral (0/41/10).  Up till now, I've mostly been running around grinding solo, or smaller instance runs like Strat and Scholo - and I must say: I really like my new powers :woot2:

Yesterday I got my kind of first "big test": I was set as MT1 in ZG :blink:
At first I must admit I was a wee bit skeptic, but it actually went quite better than I had expected.  I tanked my way through all the trash mobs, and I also tanked 4 or 5 bosses - managed to hold aggro most of the time, and I didn't die too much either.
For those times I died, I can either blame the healers (:narnar:), or just admit that my feral gear sucks hard

So my question is than, to those of you who have more experience in druid tanking (and also how to do über DPS in cat form), how should I best do it, and what kind of stats should I focus on when looking for gear?


Firstly, about how to tank - yesterday I pretty much went like this:   Feral charge
Mangle
Maul
Demoralizing Roar + Feral Faerie Fire (redo this whenever it wears out on the mob)
Continue with Mangle as often as the CD allows it, and use Maul in between
Growl, if somebody should manage to steal aggro (bash, if Growl is on CD)
If I were tanking many mobs instead, I would just skip Maul and Mangle, and use Swipe instead.

Is this a good and reasonable way to do it?  It looked like, for me at least, that I managed to keep aggro most of the time (as long as I were allowed to charge in first).

When it comes to gear for bear tanking - what is than the stats I should go for?  Is the most important thing high stamina and armor, and also get stuff with defense, dodge and parry (block isn't possible to do in bear, right?), or is it also important to get agi/str to increase AP (for generating more aggro?)?


When it comes to cat form, I really doesn't have much of a good "tactic", I mostly just try to build up combo points (starting stealthed, doing Tiger's Fury and than Shred) - any good hints here?

When I built up my feral gear, I tried to look for gear that gave me the biggest AP - anything else that should be considered here?


Best regards
Bob, the n00b bearcat

[Bastet]

You cant parry in bear neither bob, just dodge. + Dodge items are good, defense gives a bit of + dodge, but its normalized for a warrior, for a druid the yield is too low to be of much intrest (warriors get block/parry/dodge for it, druid only dodge)
 
So you want stam/str/dodge/armor for bear
And str/agi/crit/ap gear for cat
The (epic) pvp armor is a very decent feral/hybrid set.
 
Single target agro mangle/maul, with just keeping FFF up on mob (less armor = more dmg = more threath). Demo roar is better in PVP, since PVE the dmg reduction isnt too great.
 
Swipe is a nice use as a rage dump (if your pushing 100 all the time), or for multiple targets (its a weak attack threath wise though, dont bother if mages go AOE crazy), as of TBC launch for rage dump, use lacerate.
 
Growl / Bash / charge are nice for oh **** moments, or taking initial agro (bash not so much, hits on you = rage = threath)
 
For cat, from next patch, its mangle and then shred it socks off (mangle will give a 30% bonus to shred dmg as of next patch), though if you are stealthed and behind, use ravage, and not shred (its a ambush, giving better dmg bonuses then shred)
 
(Oops its a bit of a clutterd heap of text, but i hope it helps)

[Sandrion]

Gear:
 
For tanking you mainly need AC, +sta, +agi, +dodge and +def (in that order). +str is not really needed, since it doesn't improve survivability. Most good bear items have +str or +AP on them anyway; I wouldn't specificly pick any item because of that stat. Agility is much more important, since it improves both survivabilty (+dodge%) and threat generation (+crit%. More damage = more threat. Additionally crits give back 5 rage, more rage = more threat as well). You can use some +def as well, but don't focus too much on it. The reason for this is that we want to reduce the amount of back-to-back crits; we get -3% crit from talents, but pushing it down a bit more will noticably reduce spike damage (you don't want to scare the healers too much :narnar: ). Getting critted once is fine, druids have enough armor and health to aborb them, but two in a row can be deadly.
 
For 5 man runs it's a bit different. Here you're dealing with multiple mobs most of the time. You can slightly lay back on the AC and +sta and focus a bit more on stats that improve your DPS. You'll take a bit more damage, but those mobs don't hit all that hard anyway. This causes you to generate a bit more rage as well (which you'll probably need for spamming Swipe so you can hold aggro on everything). Vs bosses you can just put your 'best' tanking gear on again.
 
For DPS you mainly looking for +str, +agi, +AP, +crit% and +hit%. The importance depends on the amount you already have. If you got a lot of AP +crit% and +agi get more important and vice versa. If you can get your hands on a +feral AP weapon that really helps.
 
Tanking:
 
Bear tanking vs one target is pretty strait forward. Maul on every attack, keep FFF and Demo roar up and use Mangle and Swipe to dump rage (only do this when you have more then 30 rage, so you can keep Mauling). If you don't have any access rage use FFF instead whenever it is off cooldown. The order from most to least threat is: Maul > Mangle > Swipe > FFF > Demo roar.
 
Vs multiple targets just pick one target -> demo roar to gather the rest around you. You want then to hit you so you get more rage. Maul your main target and just spam swipe on it's global cooldown. As long as people keep attacking your main target you should be fine. (If you need to handle more then 4 targets ask a pally to tank them instead :narnar: ).
 
For initiating combat I always shift to bear (10 rage from furor) -> Enrage (10-20 rage) -> pull with FFF or feral charge + FFF. This way you always have initial aggro and some rage to start with so you can maul on your first attack. After getting two successfull Mauls the rest of the group can just unload on the mob with everything they got, they ain't gonna get it of you :norty: .
 
If you need to regain aggro, well ... just growl. Bash can be used if it resists (as long as the mob isn't immune) or (in a real emergency and there are no other mobs around) you can use challenging shout (AoE taunt), you can taunt stuff from quite some range with that. Feral charge also rocks, especially if you get knocked back / thrown in the air, although the immobilizing effect doesn't work on most raid mobs.
 
DPS:
 
Hmm, there is a difference between now and in TBC. Atm shred is obsolete, since it isn't effected by the mangle debuff. So now you can just spam Mangle and use Rip once you have enough points :sideways: . Rip > Ferocious bite most of the time, since armor doesn't effect bleeds. In TBC you generally want to keep Mangle up and use Shred.
 
To boots you DPS you can wait for you energy bar to fill (or nearly fill) -> use tiger's fury + 3 times mangle or shred. The additional damage per hit it provides is multiplied by the mangle and shred multipliers and it'll give you an increased white damage output for the duration.
 
Powershifts can also be a minor help. Just shift back and forth between caster and cat to gain 40 energy from furor. This works perfect in combination with the rune of metamorphosis (free shifting for X sec), but that gets nerfed in TBC. The idea it that you clear your energy bar and sacrifice one white damage hit for 40 energy, giving you a free mangle (40E) or nearly free shred (42E). Nice for PvP, but not so usefull for PvE unless you have the trinket.
 
A easy damage cycle for TBC that I came up with before is: [FONT='Times New Roman']… -> Mangle2 -> wait for energy -> Mangle1 -> wait for energy -> TF -> Shred1 -> Shred2 -> Shred3 -> wait for energy -> Rip(5CP) -> Mangle2 -> ... . But OOC procs and the crit = combopoint talent changes things a bit.[/FONT]
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[FONT='Times New Roman']Also be carefull not to over aggro, cats got some real damage potential now.[/FONT]
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[FONT='Times New Roman']I hope this is of use to anyone. I could explain some more stuff about druid aggro, mitigation and items but this post is getting too long :narnar: .[/FONT]

[Bob]

Thanks a lot Sandrion (and Bastet, even though your post was a bit shorter :flirty:), lots of nice stuff in there.
I'll read it over some times so I remember the most important parts, and than it's just to start gather gear

Btw, I think this one deserves a sticky (just so I don't have to start searching the next time I need to re-read it :narnar:)  in the druid section, so perhaps some admin could fix that?

[Bastet]

Sure m8

[Bastet]

oh and for TBC weapons, id take one of these http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=7459 or even better these http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=913

[Sandrion]

I also got my eye on those. The first one is easy to get and the second is the best druid DPS weapon I've seen so far.
 
For tanking I'd take one of these: http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=17533 (easy one) or http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=13907 (rep reward). Both give 3k+ armor in bear :norty: .

[Bastet]

id go for the second, as you need the rep for the mount hyal battle attenument anyway :blink: (to unlock a dungeon heroic mode you need to be revered/exhalted with the faction, heroic needed for atunement)

[Bastet]

heres some more changes that should be incoming with TBC:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=96479697&sid=1