Baaja's Druid Compendium [Long]

[Baaja]

First EDIT: I actually didn't write this, as the posters after realized quite fast (darn) But as a new Druid player, I found this Druid Guide veeery veeery understandable and it really helped me So, I'm trying to find a few ways to get out of my leecher status, because I have been here for a long time So I by contributing with something that originally isn't mine! I still believe it is contributing and I havent seen a comprehensive guide on druids as this on these forums

Introductory Post

Introduction
As of making this, it's entirely a Work In Progress, so 'bear' with me (groan, etc).

The structure of this multi-post is as follows:

• Introduction post - random stuff.
• The Cat Post - DPS stuff.
• The Bear Post - Tanking stuff.
• The News, Changelog, and Summary post.

Random Info

One standard abbreviations/shortenings I use is: 2t4 = Two pieces of Tier 4 (Malorne). Similar numbering for other sets (2t6, 4t6, etc)

This post here will be referenced quite a few times, as it has all the rating conversions for level 70 players explained. It is important to note that (as of patch 2.3) both Melee and Spell haste rating conversion is now 15.7 rating per 1% of haste, not the values stated in the link. Other values are subject to change in future patch notes, and I will try and make sure this stays up to date.
If you're wondering where I pulled some random numbers from while talking about how stats are affected by things, chances are that this thread or the talent tree will be the best places to look.

Talking of talent trees, if you're looking for a good feral spec this should be your base spec. It includes all the important things you need for being a feral druid. The spare points can be put into many different things. The talents I recommend to put the rest of the points into are:
Brutal Impact
Savage Fury
Primal Tenacity
Natures Grasp (and possibly Control of Nature for a PvP oriented build, although other points may shift around for that. I'm not good at PvP so I won't even try and tell you how to do it).
Natural Shapeshifter
Intensity
All are good talents with usefulness dependant on what you like to do.

If you've read through the main posts and haven't found what you're looking for, have a quick look again and then ask in the thread. Asking repeat questions which are already answered is likely to get people annoyed, while posting new questions that need answers is likely to get people interested in finding out what's going on.


Useful Mods
Some form of energy tick mod is very useful whilst DPSing, as is a timer bar for Mangle/DOT's. Personally I use Pitbull and Quartz (from wowace.com) but there's a lot of other options out there.


Things to Add
-Use of /cancelform for 2.3 -- Macro's section (cat powershift/bear potions+hs)
-More stuff in general.

The Cat Post

Explains about being a cat in a DPS role. I don't know what other role you could do as a cat, but whatever. Contains stuff like stats to go for, what enchants, items, gems, set bonuses and professions are good, what powershifting is, and some other stuff.

All gear suggestions in this post are summaries which are true for the majority of gear setups. If you're in doubt, use the spreadsheets/DPS calcs at the bottom of this post to put in your own gear and work it out for your own setup!

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The Basics - Stats

Stats and what they give you. Brackets are raid buffed values while the normal ones are unbuffed. All values are assuming HoTW and SoTF. All values are per 1 point of stat. Also see Athinira's Stat/DPS Analysis on the druid wiki, linked at the end of this post.

Strength                  = 2.266 (2.49) AP

Agility                   = 1.133 (1.25) AP, 1% crit per ~25 agility (1% crit per ~22 agility).

Critical Strike Rating    = ~1% crit per 22.1 critical strike rating.

Hit Rating                = 1% hit per ~15.8 hit rating [[You need ~9% hit to 
                            become hit capped, so ~142 hit rating total]] 

Attack Power              = 1.1 AP

Expertise                 = Expertise gives 0.25% less dodge and parry per point. 
                            This makes expertise a lot less desirable in comparison to the 
                            old form of weapon skill for a player that isn't hit capped, and 
                            marginally less desirable than the old form of weapon skill for a 
                            player that is hit capped.

Currently Agility is accepted as the best stat to stack lots of, with good reason (decent AP per point, very good amount of crit% per point). The value of Agility in comparison to Strength varies. There's a chart that shows that if you have minimal raid buffs, that you will always have Agility as more worthwhile than Strength. even without raid buffs, the majority of the time Agility will be better than Strength.

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Gems
From the stat analysis it can easily be seen that purely +agility gems are the best things to socket with (Delicate Crimson Spinel, Delicate Living Ruby. However, you need to have 2 yellow and 2 blue gems for the Relentless Earthstorm Diamond (generally accepted as the best meta for druids), which are best made up with either Inscribed Pyrestone (Inscribed Noble Topaz) or Glinting Pyrestone(Glinting Noble Topaz) for the yellow slots, along with grabbing 2x Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst (Shifting Nightseye) for the blue slots, or (if you can get it) a Shifting Tanzanite.

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Enchants
Enchants are generally pretty easy to work out. Cenarion Glyph for the helm (16hit/34AP) or the Lower City (17str/16int) if you're hit capped, Aldor/Scryer AP/crit enchant for shoulders, +6 stats for chest, +12 strength for bracers (possible to use +4 all stats if you prefer), +15 agility for gloves, +50ap/12crit for legs, +12 agi for boots, +35 agi for weapon. Some of these are interchangable with more tanking oriented ones dependant on your exact role in the raid/what piece it is on.

For Ring Enchants, +2 weapon damage is very marginally better in terms of pure DPS to +4 stats when fully raid buffed, however +4 stats will also give you extra stamina, int and spirit so is probably more worthwhile when taking everything into account.


A table of how run speed enchants stacks with other bonuses can be found here.

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Set Bonuses
Two pieces of tier 4 is good. Very good. So damned good you probably won't believe it. The only thing that comes close to it is four pieces of tier 6, and even then that's personal preference really. I personally prefer 4t6 to 2t4.

The upshot of 2t4 being so good is that 4t5 is practically worthless. 2t5 is nice to have, but 4t5 means you give up 2t4. 4t4 is also rather good, but it depends on what you're upgrading to as to whether it's worth upgrading and needs to be taken on an individual basis. Using the stat "weights" above you should be able to work out whether it's an upgrade or not.

For the 2t4 bonus, it depends on what you're using in other slots as to which pieces of t4 are best. Using the 2t4 bonus should still be considered as best regardless of what pieces you're giving up - it's only T6 set pieces with the 4 piece bonus or the new Sunwell loot that is better than keeping the 2 piece bonus. The best way to work out which pieces of t4 are best to use is to use one of the DPS spreadsheets/calculators linked at the bottom of this post to see which parts are best for your own situation. In general, the shoulders and helm are the best pieces to keep for the bonus.

Due to people not being able to work out what gear to use on their own, Valerian has posted this as a general summary of what is good to use at different gear levels.


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Idols
The main idols for comparison are Everbloom Idol and the Idol of the Raven Goddess. All other idols are pretty sub-par, mainly because of switching an idol in combat losing a white attack (reset of the swing timer) which is way more damage than an idol will affect. The Idol of Terror is also worth mentioning as a good idol.

Everbloom idol is 88 damage per shred. Assuming you shred once per 4 seconds (general average based on using some energy for mangles/rips, losing some through dodges/etc), that gives 25-30 DPS factoring in crits and armour reduction and everything else.
Idol of the Raven Goddess gives +0.4% crit to everyone in the party. Assuming an average person in your party does 1500 DPS with a direct 1%crit->1% damage ratio (which isn't far off), it's a gain of ~6DPS per member of your group, or 24 DPS + your own gain (more likely to be 4-5 or so). Remember that it's ~6DPS per physical DPS member of your group! Obviously if you're in a group with 2 hunters, a shadowpriest and a resto shaman, it's value decreases massively and you'd be better off using everbloom.

As of 2.4, Idol of the Raven Goddess will give +0.9% crit to the party. Sticking to above system of 1500DPS per physical DPSer and a 1:1 damage:crit ratio, we get ~13.5 DPS per person. This means you need 2 or 3 DPSers of this quality to make the Raven Goddess better than the Everbloom. Remember that it's both dependant on those who are benefitting from it and their personal DPS.

In basic terms, the gains are very similar in a full DPS group. Dependant on what fight you're doing depends on which may be better, but generally they're about equal in a full DPS group. I have a feeling that the Raven Goddess will become better as gear goes up, as it scales pretty well. Due to not always getting into a full DPS group though, Everbloom is generally the better idol.

The Idol of Terror is another easily available idol from Heroic badges, and is almost as good for DPS as the Everbloom but is also useful for tanking. Personal preference again prevails, so some people use the Everbloom and some the Terror. The disadvantage of the Terror is that it is chance based, although it does have a very high % chance, so it's always possible to get very low uptime on a fight which may make it look bad in comparison to the Everbloom.

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Trinkets
The main options for trinkets are (listed top to bottom in approximate order of goodness):
Living Root of the Wildheart - Bad. Very bad for where it is. Not even really worth it if you're going to be in bear form half the time really (which is very few fights anyway).
Ashtongue Talisman of Equilibrium - Quite good, but not quite as good as some of the other trinkets. There's been a lot of discussion in the past about it, because it depends on how much/when you mangle as to how effective it is. Because of the standard DPS cycle meaning that it's not possible to have it active when you're about to rip, it loses some of it's effectiveness. It's still alright trinket though, but probably not one of the best.
Hourglass of the Unraveller - A very good trinket for where you get it. ((proc = 45 second cooldown, 10% chance))
Bloodlust Brooch - Easy-ish to get and very effective. ((2 minute cooldown))
Darkmoon Card: Crusade - Quite hard to get, but also quite good once you get it. How good it is depends on fight more than anything (lots of movement = bad).
Crystalforged Trinket - One of the best trinkets to get, and very easy to get too. ((1 minute cooldown))
Tsunami Talisman - Upgraded version of the Hourglass. Not much more to say.
Madness of the Betrayer - Hard to get but very good, as long as you aren't hit capped. ((not sure on proc rate))
Dragonspine Trophy - Apparently still the best around, even after all the nerfs. Be warned that you may recieve some skepticism from other physical DPS classes if you express an interest in it.

The three main types of trinkets listed are Activate trinkets (which sometimes have a passive effect), Random-passive trinkets (which also sometimes have passive effects), and purely passive trinkets. The majority of trinkets in the Burning Crusade are of the first two types. Active trinkets are preferred by some because of the controllability of the effect, while random-passive are preferred by others because they don't have to worry about activating them. Random-passive effects generally have a "hidden" cooldown, and then a good chance to proc giving them approximately a 1 proc per minute total proc rate.

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Other Items
Due to the interest in Idols and Trinkets I've put them separately. In general for other item slots it's pretty clear what to go for, because there isn't much choice. There's a lot of rings that are very similar, and the tier pieces are very well itemised although with the upcoming changes to HoTW a lot of rogue gear is going to become even better than it was in a lot of slots.

The best place to look for a good estimate of how gear will affect you is the DPS spreadsheets/charts/analysis section at the end of this post.

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Professions
The main professions in the game are Tailoring (craft), Leatherworking (craft), Blacksmithing (craft), Alchemy (craft), Jewelcrafting (craft), Engineering (craft), Enchanting (gather/craft), Herbalism (gather), Mining (gather), and Skinning (gather). The general rules are that gathering professions are good for making money, and crafting professions are good for making lumps of money if you can get rare items, or making nice stuff that you can use.

The interesting ones in terms of feral druids are Leatherworking, Jewelcrafting, Engineering, and Enchanting. Gathering skills are good if you want to make money (generally herbalism and mining are better than skinning) or to support a main skill (skinning is good if you have leatherworking, generally). Alchemy is useful for making pots, but there's normally a lot of alchemists around so you can get pots made elsewhere anyway.

Leatherworking
Leatherworking provides a number of decent benefits some of which are useful all the way through the game as it currently stands.

Provides armour patch crafting (Nethercobra Leg ArmorNethercleft Leg Armor are the two interesting ones). Also provides some items which are good for their slots - see Boots of Natural Grace, Belt of Natural Power and Belt of Deep Shadow. Both the belts are BoE items with the plans being BoP, but leatherworking is generally not a common profession, so being a leatherworker may end up with you being the only one available to pick up the plans. The boots are a good investment at the point you get them (~SSC/TK level, can buy the plan off the AH/guilds before that). Leatherworking also allows you to create Drums, the best of which for a feral druid is the Drums of Battle. These are both instant, and usable in forms which makes them very useful.

All the items made from being a leatherworker (other than the armour kits, which are more of an enchant than an item) will get outdated once you start getting to t6 content (i.e. the boots). It's certainly still worth being a leatherworker for the benefit of both making armour patches and being able to use (and make) drums, even if the other items get outdated or can be made by other people.

Jewelcrafting
Jewelcrafting provides a few minor benefits, such as special gems and craftable trinkets.

The main useful thing for a feral druid is the 18 stamina, 12 crit rating and 24 attack power gems. Neither the AP or crit rating gems are better than 8 agility, but may be useful in a situation where you need a yellow socket for a bonus (insidious bands for the +2 agi bonus, for example). There is a possibility 12 agility and 12 strength gems will be introduced - they are in the databases (wowhead/etc) but the plans for crafting them are not. Be aware that all these gems are unique-equipped!

The trinkets that may be useful dependant on where you are in the game are the Figurine - Dawnstone Crab, Figurine - Nightseye Panther and Figurine - Felsteel Boar although none are better than a lot of other fairly easily available trinkets at any level.

Engineering
Engineering is more of a PvP profession, but also has a couple of minor benefits for PvE.

Enchanting
Enchanting provides a couple of nice things such as ring enchants and never having to find an enchanter/pay an enchanter.

The ring enchants that are of worth are +4 to all stats and +2 weapon damage. These are approximately equal in DPS terms, although +4 stats is better in an overall sense (more mana/health on top of the dps stuff). +4 stats is becoming available from Honoured with Lower City in patch 2.3, instead of being a Scale of the Sands (Hyjal Summit) rep item.

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Consumables
Warp Burger is the best food choice, Grilled Mudfish is an equivalent for fishing. The bottom left of Terokkar is the best place I've found for farming Warped Flesh (80/hour or so), and Figluster's Mudfish can be easily found in Nagrand, where there are pools of them. Alternatives are Roasted Clefthoof and Spicy Hot Talbuk.
Elixir of Major Agility is the best battle elixir choice, although Elixir of Mastery isn't bad.
There is no "best" guardian elixir choice, however Elixir of Major Fortitude is good.
Flask of Relentless Assault is the best Flask choice for DPS. It's approximately equal in terms of outright DPS to the Elixir of Major Agility, but cannot be used with a guardian elixir. It also provides no dodge, which may (or may not) be useful dependant on your role and what fight it is.
Haste Potion is the best potion for DPS (they provide ~25% haste). Using haste potions on cooldown will gain you approximately 25 DPS (4 extra hits at ~600 each over a 120 second period).
Insane Strength Potion's are good for big numbers, but not as good as haste pots over time - averages to approximately 35AP over 2 minutes, which according to Toskk's DPS sheet gives around 5-10 DPS.
Combat Mana Potion's can be very useful if you powershift a lot and still get called on to combat res/etc. They stack to 10 and can be bought for battleground tokens.
Flask of Chromatic Wonder is also a reasonable DPS flask if you're going to be tanking at some point during the time. It's a good mixed use flask and is worth it in a lot of situations.

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Powershifting
Many people ask what powershifting is. The basics: Furor gives the player 40 energy when they switch out of form and back in. This means you can shift out and in for a net gain of 40 energy, every time. This is essentially a conversion of Mana to Energy, as it will always cost you mana to shift. By timing the shift you can make it so you lose as little energy as possible (from the residual energy in your bar when you shift and the energy you lose while out of form), and this is essentially the skill of Powershifting. By doing it correctly you should be able to gain about 30-35 energy, and even doing it badly the gains should be in the region of 20 energy or so, although it is possible to gain no energy or even lose energy if you do it badly. By doing this you can gain a decent amount of DPS, an general analysis of the DPS gain you can expect follows:

Over the course of two minutes or so, you should easily get around 125 energy (5 shifts worth, minus a few per shift for "imperfect" shifts) if you pay attention. 125/42 = ~3 extra shreds (126). 3 shreds at around 1500 damage each = 4500 extra damage without crits, or ~10000 damage with (40-80 DPS or so), plus 3-6 combo points (probably another 20-30 dps on it's own). Total DPS gain of around 70-80 or so, which is pretty nice.

It's now possible to powershift instantly. The following macro will shift you out of form and back in to form with no "lag" as it's all client side:

/cast !Cat Form

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Windfury
Druids do not gain windfury in Cat or Bear form. It is often asked "how much increase in DPS would we gain with windfury?" because of this, as many people see it as a reason why our DPS is not as good as it maybe should be, so I've done a general estimate below:

dukes - WWS

Total number of white hits: 185 (35 normal, 50 glancing, 100 crit).
185*0.2 = 37.

with a 50% crit rate, this is 19 hits and 18 crits. Taking average values for these:
((425+((578.5*1.1)/14))*19) + ((832+((578.5*1.1)/14 * 2.26))*1 = ~9k + 17k = ~26k damage.
Present from 20:25'26 to 20:28'48 (100 %) = 202 seconds.

26k/202 = ~129 DPS total.

129 / 1544 = approximately 8% DPS increase.

It's a pretty crap estimate, but at least it gives an estimate and it should be something close to right (this is assuming a shaman with improved weapon totems and UR).

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DPS Cycle
The standard cycle is:
Mangle -> Shred to 5 combo points -> Wait for 70+ energy (preferably 80+), Rip->Mangle, start again.

Due to the way Rip scales with combo points, a four combo point rip is almost as effective as a 5 combo point rip (there is a static gain, AP doesn't scale between 4 and 5). This makes it quite effective to use a 4 combo point rip if your mangle has already run out (as a non-mangled shred is pretty pathetic in comparison to a mangled one).

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Linked DPS Spreadsheets/Charts/Analysis
These links are provided as is - support for these links lies with the owners, and I take no credit or responsibility for the content.

Lolaan's DPS Spreadsheet - Put gear in, get DPS value out.
Voldin's Spreadsheet - Put stuff in, get stuff out.
Mijae's spreadsheet - DPS and Tanking Stats Spreadsheet.
The Druid Wiki -->> Toskks DPS gear analysis thing - Put in stats, get some gear recommendations, stat weightings and estimate of DPS out.
The Druid Wiki -->> Athinira's Blog - Stat Values for High End DPS - pre 2.3 detailed analysis of the interaction between Agility and Strength for Raid DPS gear setups.
The Druid Wiki -->> Gear Theorycrafting Program -- Rawr - Put in items, get stuff out. Works for both Cat and Bear forms.

The Bear Post

Explains stuff like what you need to be normally uncrittable, what the stats mean and how you should be looking to gear yourself.

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The Basics - Stats
I'll start off similar to the Cat post, by explaining the (important) stat conversions. Bear form is for tanking, therefore your tanking stats are the most important part of your gear, in general. Each is explained per point.


Mitigation Stats
Stats and what they give you. Brackets are raid buffed values while the normal ones are unbuffed. All values are assuming HoTW and SoTF. All values are per 1 point of stat.

Agility         = ~0.07% ((~14.7 agility per % dodge, or ~13 agility on gear per %dodge with 
                   SotF and BoK)) [[Same crit conversion as for Cat form]] [[Grace of Air is 
                  77 agility (90 improved) which comes out as approximately 6% dodge (7% 
                  improved) in a raid environment]]
                  
Dodge Rating    = ~0.05% ((18.9 dodge rating per % dodge))

Stamina         = 15.45 health (17hp/point)

Defence         = 2.4 rating per skill, 1 skill = 0.04% dodge, miss, anti-crit ((25 defence,
                  or 60 rating, for 1% less crit/more dodge/more miss))

Resillience     = ~0.025% anti-crit ((39.4 resillience for 1% less crit and 1% less damage 
                  from DOTs))

Armour          = 35880 armour to be capped at 75% reduction versus level 73 mobs.

The main priorities as a bear are to get un-crittable (for which you need 2.6% anti-crit), get decent amounts of health and armour and, if in an OT or hybrid role, stack agility. 2.6% anti-crit is 156 defence rating (415 defence total) (155 will not do, although the character screen will inform you that you have 2.6% less chance to be crit (415 defence)!) or 103 resillience. You can mix and match, but make sure you check afterwards that you have a total that comes out to more than 2.6% to be safe. Remember that although you need more defence, you do get some avoidance out of it so it's not always most worth getting pure resillience.

If you want to skip a point in SotF, you need 1% more crit immunity to make up for it (39.4 resillience or 25 defence (60 defence rating)). To get to the full cap (i.e. no points in SotF) you need 221 resillience or 140 defence (336 defence rating) in total.


The value of avoidance

Defence gets you avoidance at a rate of 1% more dodge/miss per 60 rating.
Agility gets you 1% more avoidance at a rate of about 14 agility per 1% dodge.

here[/url][/i] (fear my mad excel skills, done in between bits at work). Avoidance has more effect once you get to the crushing range. (it should be for 101.2% for a 73 boss mob but its the same principle).

Getting a good balance of all stats or stacking stamina will almost certainly be easier to heal overall than stacking avoidance to the point at which you start to push crushings off the hit table (86.2% total avoidance against a lvl73), even with the raid debuffs that you can take advantage of (insect swarm/scorpid sting is 7% extra avoidance).
for the comparison of avoidance against worth of 1% avoidance.

Note that if you're on 60% dodge, 6% miss (total 66%) and you don't have insect swarm/scorpid sting while they are available in the raid, you're missing out on about 15-20% damage reduction (~2.5% per 1% avoidance at 65%, ~3.3% per 1% avoidance at 75%).


Threat Stats

In general Bear tanks have less trouble with threat than Warrior tanks, and this is seen as a major strength of Feral Druids. The stats that have value for threat are detailed below, with normal values being unbuffed and bracketed being buffed, assuming HoTW and SotF.

Strength                  = 2.06AP per point (2.266 AP per point)

Agility                   = ~1% crit per 25 agility (~1% crit per 22 agility)

Critical Strike Rating    = 1% per 22.1 rating at 70

Hit Rating                = 1% hit per ~15.8 hit rating  

Attack Power              = 1 AP per point.

Expertise Rating          = Expertise gives 0.25% less dodge and parry per point.

Agility features pretty heavily in both the tanking and mitigation stat lineups - it's a very good multipurpose stat, and will be very useful on gear that you use for both bear and cat forms.


Hit Rating and Expertise

Hit rating gives 1% hit per ~16 rating.
Expertise gives 1% less parry and 1% less dodge per ~16 rating.

There are a lot of good available items now that contain hit or expertise. Expertise is of approximately double the value of hit rating up to approximately 96 rating (24 expertise), then becomes approximately the same value. This amount of expertise is not easily attainable and so it can be said that, at this time, expertise is always better than hit rating for a bear as a solo stat. Consideration of the item that it is on needs to be made.
Expertise has a secondary effect as it reduces parries. Mob's have an effect where when they parry it hastens their next swing by ~40%, therefore reducing/removing their ability to parry can have a large effect on incoming burst damage.
Hit rating has the secondary effect of increasing taunt hit. This can be very important for particular fights and so it may be worth putting together a secondary set of gear with capped hit rating (~9%, ~142 hit rating).

One item stands out among the rest for hit and expertise, which is the Brooch of Deftness. The cost of obtaining this item along with the amount of hit and expertise gained from it makes it a very highly recommended item to use. The cost of this item is also relatively low and can be obtained by pretty much anyone at level 70 in a small amount of time.

Other items containing expertise that could be used are (in no particular order):
Shoulderpads of the Stranger
Belt of One-Hundred Deaths
Gloves of the Searing Grip
Shapeshifter's Signet
Earthwarden
Clefthoof Hide Leggings - another very good entry level piece that has hit too.

There are a lot of items that include hit rating. The S3 arena gear is very good for tanking due to resillience along with hit (especially with the 2 piece bonus). There is a large number of other pieces with hit rating on them, so I won't list them all here, but a quick WoWhead filtered search for druids can be found here.

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Roles, Gems, Enchants and Professions
There are two main roles that you will take as a feral while tanking: Main tanking, in which you are the number one tank tanking the boss, and offtanking, where you are either soaking damage on a fight such as Gruul or Supremus, or tanking a mob for a short amount of time/limited periods, like Morogrim, Karathress or Lurker, for example. In the first instance, stamina is generally king along with armour. Due to the amount of stamina that a bear tank can setup on their gear, they can become great tanks for certain fights. Armour generally comes with good gear anyway, but it's still worth paying attention to. As an MT you want to be at the armour cap if possible to do so without sacrificing too many good pieces of gear. As an OT/Hybrid you want to maximise the value you can get out of your gear if you happen to switch to DPS mid-way through a fight, and help the healers mana along while tanking. This means that agility is generally king, as long as you have a decent amount of armour.

Coming on to the topic of gems, this makes it fairly easy. You either go for pure Stamina (Solid Empyrean Sapphire or Solid Star of Elune, Stamina/Agility (Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst or Shifting Nightseye - useful for if you MT some fights and use the same gear for other fights you DPS on), or pure Agility (Delicate Crimson Spinel or Delicate Living Ruby). If you are in need of a tiny bit of extra anti-crit, a resillience/stamina gem or pure resillience gem is probably the best choice, although 12 defence is not a bad enchant for bracers.

Again enchants are dependant on role in the raid these can vary. Many are shared with the DPS equivalents, especially if you are in a hybrid/offtank role.


A table of how run speed enchants stacks with other bonuses can be found here.

For Professions see the Cat post.

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Consumables
Warp Burger and, Grilled Mudfish are the best foods. Spicy Crawdad or equivalent is also good, along with Talbuk Steak or equivalent.
Elixir of Major Agility is the best battle elixir choice, although Elixir of Mastery isn't bad. Elixir of Major Fortitude is a good guardian elixir; alternatively Elixir of Ironskin is a good choice if you want to get a bit more resillience for crit immunity.
Flask of Fortification is the best flask choice, however Flask of Relentless Assault is also good dependant on what role you're taking in the overall raid/fight.
Flask of Chromatic Wonder is also a reasonable DPS flask if you're going to be tanking at some point during the time. It's a good mixed use flask and is worth it in a lot of situations.
As of 2.3 it will be possible to instantly shift (using /cancelform with macros) to use potions during combat, heavily reducing (I'm not going to say eliminating because it's possible that it won't completely eliminate it) the chance of being hit while switching to take a potion. The only real survival potions are Protection potions (Fire/Shadow/etc) and Superior Healing Potion's.

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Threat Generation
In a general sense, threat generation for bear tanks is very good in comparison to other tanks. Mangle is exceptional as a threat generator, and white hits give a lot of rage, along with the talent Primal Fury which gives 5 rage on a crit (works on every individual crit, so a triple-crit swipe gives 15 rage back). Also see the hit and expertise section earlier in this post, as gear can play a big role in threat generation.

In rage starved situations a good tip is to NOT use maul. Maul is good for threat generation, but severely gimps rage generation by reducing the rage you gain from white hits. A crit in good tanking gear can be upwards of 1000 damage, generating a significant chunk of rage (30+) along with the extra 5 from Primal Fury. By converting this attack into a maul, you "lose" the rage you would have gained from the white hit, but it also costs you the rage cost of Maul (10). This means that maul costs you can effective 40 rage or more, which could be used for other special attacks if you're rage-starved (especially useful to note when you're offtanking something like Gruul). Maul is very useful for getting "snap" agro on mobs though, as it will activate as soon as you are in range.

In no particular order, the threat moves you should be using:
- Mangle. You should always be using this if it is off cooldown.
- Swipe. You should be using this if tanking more than 1 mob, as long as it doesn't screw up crowd control (sheep/etc).
- Lacerate. This is for tanking one mob in a low damage/high armour situation (i.e. the mob has high armour or you're doing low damage to it because of lack of buffs or similar). The bleed part of lacerate is of almost no impact on threat. Lacerating just to keep up 5 stacks is not worth it.
- Maul. As above, use when you have a lot of rage and don't use if you're rage starved a lot.

Generally the point where swipe overtakes lacerate in terms of threat output is when it's doing ~225 damage to the target normally - this value varies dependant on bleed immunity and whether you're keeping 5 stacks up as well as crit chance.

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Boss List
This is intended to give a guide as to what favours or does not favour being tanked as a Bear in Raid instances. Most guilds will favour Warrior tanks as standard due to better itemisation choice and access to both Last Stand and Shield Wall which can seriously increase the chances of making a screwed up attempt into a kill.

T4:
- Karazhan: All bosses other than Juliet (spell interrupt), Maiden of Virtue (emergency buttons), and possibly the Prince (debatable) are fine for tanking as a druid.
- Maulgar and Gruul: Maulgar himself favours a druid tank (doesn't crush with specials, armour mitigation is very good as a druid at this level compared to other tanks). Gruul prefers a warrior as MT (emergency buttons for silence) with a Druid OT (threat generation is generally better than warriors).
- Magtheridon: No preference either way really. Druid tanks are good on the initial adds (threat generation).

Zul'aman (credit to Anathor for the original list).
- Trash: no special requirements, although feral charge is very useful on scouts to root them.
- Nalorakk (Bear): 2 tanks required, druids are well-suited for this fight since a large hp pool helps. Using some hit gear may be a reasonable trade off for other stats due to taunt being important to land. Possible advantage for warrior tanks (defensive stance vs bleeds).
- Akil'zon (Eagle): No problems for a druid to tank this.
- Halazzi (Lynx): 2 tanks required, druids are good to soak the saber lash type of ability (split damage on targets standing on top of each other) due to high armor/hp.
- Jan'alai (Dragonhawk): 2 tanks required. Druids do fine either on either the boss or on adds.
- Malacrass: No problem for a druid although interrupts are useful on this fight. Druids also work fine tanking an add in dps gear and then moving to a DPS role.
- Zul'jin: Druids can tank him but intervene for warriors while in the lynx phase is useful, and therefore a warrior is a good choice for a tank although he doesn't necessarily need to be the MT.

Serpentshrine Cavern
- Hydross: Lack of level 70 crafted Nature/Frost gear means that Hydross favours plate wearers as MT's in general. Druids are good as offtanks due to "snap" threat and overall threat generation.
- Lurker: No real advantage either way.
- Morogrim: No real advantage either way. Crushes but possible a warrior would not be crush immune (extra effects eat shield block charges).
- Karathress: No real advantage either way, although Tidalvess (the Shaman) possibly favours a druid tank because of health/armour advantage over other tanks.
- Leotheras: Doesn't especially favour any kind of tank. Snap agro generation of bears is good for pickup from Whirlwind stages.
- Vashj: No real advantage either way (except emergency buttons).

Tempest Keep
- Al'ar: Melt armour screws over any tank. Add pickup may be easier as a druid (feral charge with 15 second cooldown, snap agro from mangle).
- Void Reaver: Threat generation while off-tanking is generally better for a druid.
- Solarian: Hardly matters.
- Kael: Add tanking - tanking Kael is left to those who can use shields.

Hyjal Summit
- Rage Winterchill: Possibly better with a druid (threat generation) - he channel's a spell for 10 seconds every so often which reduces rage income from hits.
- Anetheron: No advantage either way really.
- Kaz'rogal: Possible druid advantage due to lack of shield block while stunned. No real difference.
- Az'galor: Does not crush. Emergency buttons are good (silence). Advantages for both warrior or druid tanks.
- Archimonde: Cannot Crush. Fears. Possible this won't be an issue if you have a Dwarf/Dranei priest (fear ward), or post 2.3 if you have 4 priests who can organise themselves well.

Black Temple
- High Warlord Naj'entus: Small amount of magic damage, but quite a lot of burst. Prefers warriors slightly due to ability to mitigate crushings with defensive stance reduction on the explosion damage which reduces the maximum possible burst damage by a significant amount.
- Supremus: No benefit either way for MT.
- Shade of Akama: Tanking adds, no real benefit either way.
- Teron Gorefiend: No real benefit either way. Druids have more health/armour (in general) but he does crush and hits very hard.
- Gurtogg Bloodboil: No real advantage either way - threat generation and emergency buttons are both good.
- Reliquary of Souls: Virtually requires a Warrior for Phase 2 (spell reflect). Possibly favours a Druid for Phase 3 (threat generation).
- Mother Shahraz: No real advantage either way (magic damage mitigation compared to armour mitigation).
- The Illidari Council: Tanking the Priest, Warriors have advantage (interrupt), Tanking the Paladin Warriors have the advantage (spell reflect).
- Illidan Stormrage: Tanking Illidan requires shield block for Shear. Phase 2 doesn't really favour any type of tank; Druids generally have a slight health and threat gen advantage along with SotF, while warriors can have 10 to 16% total magic reduction ([Improved] Defensive Stance).


Summary

Catform:
- Stats: Agility is very good (primary stat).
- Stats: ~9% hit (142 rating) for the hit cap.

- Gems: Pure agility gems are the best. Still worth meeting the requirements for the Relentless Earthstorm Diamond though.

- Enchants: Most are "obvious", Runspeed can give more gains than is obvious though. Ring enchants (+2wpn dmg/+4 stats) are approximately equal in pure DPS terms.

- Set Bonuses: 2t4 ~= 4t6 >> *

- Idols: Everbloom Idol ~=~ Idol of the Raven Goddess if in a pure physical DPS group, otherwise the everbloom is generally better. Idol of Terror is a good alternative to either. In 2.4 Raven Goddess is likely to be the best if you're in a mostly-physical-DPS group.

- Trinkets: All high-ish end level trinkets are good, as long as it's not the Living Root.

- Consumables: Elixirs for non-wipe content, flasks for wipe content. Both are pretty comparable (major agility vs relentless assault). Food is easy to farm, use it!

- Powershifting: Making use of Furor to convert mana -> energy through shifting.

- Windfury: Would be a decent increase in DPS on initial inspection (~8%). Possibly not needed with the current cat DPS, but would still be nice to benefit from as a group buff.

- DPS Cycle: Mangle -> Shred to 4 // 5 Combo Points -> wait for energy (70+, 80+ preferably), Rip->restart.

Bearform:

- Stats: Agility is good, Stamina is good, Armour is good. A split of three is probably the best.
- Stats: You need 156 defence or 103 resillience to be crit immune with SotF. Mixing the two stats is fine, just make sure you check that you're still crit immune with rounding errors!
- Stats: Hit rating is good, Expertise is very good. A small amount of both can make a major difference!

- Gems: Agility is good. Stamina is good. A mix of both is also good.

- Enchants: Runspeed can give more gains than is obvious.

- Consumables: Major Agility elixir with Major Fortitude is the best combination, but for 'wipe content' you may want to use a flask of Fortification. Food is easy to farm, use it!

- Raid Boss Tanking: There are a couple of bosses which seriously favour Warriors due to abilities only they have. In most other situations Druid's are either slightly favoured (threat generation) or perfectly acceptable (disadvantages/advantages either way).

- Threat Generation: Mangle is very good. Swipe scales with DPS, Lacerate does not. Generally, if swipe does 225 damage or more on a default hit, it will do more threat than Lacerate.
- Threat Generation: If you're rage starved, don't use Maul. It's effective rage cost is a lot higher than you might think.

[Kirrya]

Hey, I'm new to this page and I was wondering if we are allowed to copy someone elses work.

Because this (atleast the parts I read) have you just been copied from the Mega feral druid thread on EJ forums. :/


EDIT: Baaja, pretty unfair to use your own name for this if it would just have been a link with like a recommendation to this thread on EJ it would have been ok but when you named the thread "Baaja's Druid Compendium [Long]" you just stole someones work and added your name.

[Killer69]

Hmm... wall of text.... And for some reason I dont think you actually wrote this. That's just me ... let's see what the rest of the community thinks.

[Drythils]

This was probably copy and pasted from a Different site. Really doubt he wrote all this just for rep.

But its still good all the same, seeing my alt is a noob druid.
Learned about powershifting

[Kirrya]

This was probably copy and pasted from a Different site. Really doubt he wrote all this just for rep.

I couldn't post links since I have only posted once but here you go:
<add http here>://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16902-feral_druid_megathread/

[Baaja]

I couldn't post links since I have only posted once but here you go:
<add http here>://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16902-feral_druid_megathread/

Whoa, I didnt even take it from that site:O..i guess the one i ripped it from, had already been ripping it haha...well I tried to bring it to this site anyway hope i just dont get to much of flames (A)

[b2zeldafreak]

What sort of druid is this written for? Cause you gotta stack stats for your job...

[IlluzionE]

You stole this from a site. - linked it here ffs. FLAME ON YOU!

[Volcano]

FFS get out of here, you didnt make this.

[Druidguy123]

Very good and helpful guide but as the posts before, I do not believe it is yours thus no rep from me