Druid Tanking Compendium for WOTLK

[Mexdude]

Hey all here i hope to be of some assistance to aspiring druid tanks as i had a lot more to learn because of the expansion. Druid tanks have been drastically changed and new tactics are in order as is gear.

First i'd like to introduce all of you to a great program called Rawr
you can download/find more info on it here:

http://www.codeplex.com/Rawr

What rawr essentially does is calculate your stats based on your gear now you might ask why cant i just look at my stats in-game. Well Rawr ranks all the gear currently in the game for the best mitigation and it lets you equip from this gear list on the fly to see how your stats would look with pieces of gear.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way this is my current Rawr Profile for the easiest to obtain gear

http://rapidshare.com/files/186346745/hopefuldruid.xml

Now what you do is you just open up that file in Rawr and it shows the ideal gear layout for you to be able to tank 10man/25man/and heroics.

This nets you the minimum tanking stats needed for a feral druid tank which would be :

35k+ health buffed
25k armor
at least 30% dodge

With those stats you'll have no problem main-tanking any of the current content.


The following is not my write-up info but a similar writeup of another druid that i'd like to share with you all the original post can be found here:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=363F3A4E9FC696972ED29FF92ACB04CC.app27_01?topicId=11228423378&sid=1

This part is very important it details the Fundamental changes that happened from BC feral druid tanking to WOTLK druid tanking:

Fundamental Changes in WotLK 

Armor and Dodge 
Druid Armor and Dodge have been significantly reduced with the latest patch. This is an obvious cause for concern. However, if you look at the overall changes made in WotLK, you'll see that many changes were made to compensate for these reductions. 
 - Boses no longer do Crushing Blows - This greatly reduced the damage that bosses deal. 
 - Protector of the Pack reduces all damage taken by 12%. This not only helps with physical damage, but now also gives Druids damage reduction vs magic attacks as well. 
 - Survival of the Fittest now makes us 100% crit immune without the need for any Defense or Resilience which allows us to Gem and Enchant for Agility or Stamina etc. 

Also remember, the gear Druids use to tank has changed drastically with WotLK so you'll need to select your gear, gems and enchants accordingly. If you tank in your old tanking gear or don't have some of the new key talents, you'll likely take tremendous extra damage. 

These changes put us in line with, not better or worse then, the other tanks. So please give it a try before you consider these overall changes a nerf. So far from my testing, I have found that Druid tanks are both very effective and very competative. Thank you. 

Armor 
Bonus or "green" armor has been removed from WoW. You'll find all of your old tank gear now has far less armor then it used to. As well, The Dire Bear form armor multiplier has been reduced from 400% to 375%. Futher, items equiped in the Neck, Ring, Trinket, Back and Weapon slots do not receive the armor multiplier bonus. These changes were made to prevent Druid tanks from being able to reach the Armor cap and to keep our mitigation in line with the other tank classes. 

Feral Tree "bloat" 
Blizzard has radically changed the Feral tree to force Druids to focus on Tanking or DPS or have a partial build that is good (but not great) at both. Many call this bloat, but it was intentional on Blizzards part. 

Mitigation now has diminishing returns 
Dodge, Block and Perry now have diminishing returns. This means that the more +Dodge you stack, the less value each additional point has. In other words, the rating co-efficients become worse as you get more rating. 

Crushing Blows 
While still in the game, Crushing Blows can only occur if you are fighting targets that are at least 4 levels higher then you. This means, for basic tanking purposes, Crushing Blows have effectively been removed and you do not need to worry about them unless you are to low level to be tanking the instance, in which case, Crushing Blows are the least of your problems. 

Potions in Forms 
Druids will now be able to use Potions, Health Stones and other such items while remaining in their current form. This means no more shifting to caster form to drink a potion. Blizzard has also limited everyone to 1 potion per fight. 

Enchants in Forms 
Proc enchants will now work in all forms making many Enchants very viable for Druids to use. 

Threat 
Blizzard made some very fundamental changes to threat in WotLK. 
1. Threat is now built into bear form - your party no longer needs Salvation or other such abilities to reduce their threat. In fact, Salvation has been removed from the game. 
2. Threat generation by tanks has been significantly increased - Blizzard wants threat to be a factor in fights, but does not want threat to set the DPS cap as it currently does. So expect it to be easier to hold agro going forward.

The other part that i crucially want to share with aspiring druid tanks is the talent review on getting an excellent tankbuild this outlines the crucial tanking/mitigation talents and also some crucial dps/threat building talents:

Tank Talents 
This is a review of the most important tank related talents. 

Survival of the Fittest 
Each point of the Survival of the Fittest talent (max 3) reduces your chance to be crit by 2%, making it so that Druids are 100% Crit Immune immediately if they have 3/3 in this talent. 

This is an absolutely critical talent for Druid Tanks. 

Protector of the Pack 
Each point of this talent (max 3) reduces all damage, including Magic, by 3% per talent point spent. This means that you will take 12% less damage from all forms of attack. This is our primary magic damage reduction ability. 

This is an absolutely critical talent for Druid Tanks. 

Infected Wounds 
This talent causes your attacks to apply a stacking wound that reduces the attack speed of your target by 20% including most bosses. When applied, this will greatly reduce the incoming damage taken and is considered a very important tanking talent. 

Thick Hide 
This ability increases your armor by 10%.  This is a very good increase and definitely worth the 3 talent points. 

Feral Swiftness & Natural Reaction 
Together these talents increase your total Dodge by 10% - a very big and very important increase. As well, you gain 3 rage from Natural Reaction every time you dodge an attack - a very nice boost to threat especially when low on rage. 

Survival Instincts  
This talent gives Druid tanks an emergency button for when their health begins to get low. For one point, this talent is very much worth it. 


Threat Talents 
This is a review of the most important threat related talents for Druid tanks. 

Mangle & Improved Mangle 
Mangle is your number one threat attack on a single target as a Druid tank and is an absolutely critical talent. Improved Mangle reduces the cooldown from 6 seconds to 4.5 seconds allowing you to use Mangle more often in your rotation. So while Mangle is critical, Imp Mangle adds marginally to threat generation. 

Note on Improved Mangle - If you are going to put any points into this talent, you must go 3/3 because if you only get 1/3 or 2/3 no benefit is gained whatsoever for Druid tanking. 

Savage Fury 
Very important talent for increasing threat.  Considered must have for the damage increase it provides for just 2 talent points. 

Precision 
Very important talent for increasing threat. Considered must have for improved chance to hit with attacks, which greatly increases your threat. 

Rend & Tear 
This talent significantly boosts the damage Maul does on bleeding targets as is definatly worth considering. 

Feral Instinct 
This talent gives our AOE Tanking ability a 30% damage increase making it extremely important to have. 

Omen of Clarity 
This talent is a very significant DPS boost in that it very often gives you free attacks. 

Note: OOC only procs off of White damage making it scale very effectively with Haste. 

Other Talents 
This is a list of other Threat related talents that should be considered for any tanking build: 
Ferocity 
Sharpened Claws 
Primal Fury 
Predatory Strikes 
Primal Precision 
Naturalist

I hope this makes things easier for druids who want to Main tank in WOTLK since we're such a rare breed nowadays. I hope to see more of you so i can stop getting flamed in trade chat :wave:.

Maybe we can get a discussion going on some improvements to what i posted here or gear that i overlooked.

I also really hope you guys look into Rawr and thank the creator of it for his outstanding work maintaning it.

[dbalauca]

OMG it's great.

Good Job. Druids ftw +rep from me

[Khalts]

just reroled DrooD Ty + 2 rep ;O if you can add a little more about the abilities we have to hold agro on multi targets i would be very pleased i know it has sometin to do with swipe but not that sure.

[Mexdude]

just reroled DrooD Ty + 2 rep ;O if you can add a little more about the abilities we have to hold agro on multi targets i would be very pleased i know it has sometin to do with swipe but not that sure.

Well what works great as of this patch is Using Feral Faerie Fire on Skull (Main Target) and then 1 mangle to keep aggro while the group dps' as soon as you got that mangle off on the skull spam swipe and then throw down a demoralizng roar switch back to skull throw a lacerate/mangle then just rotate through all your targets throwing swipe in periodically to keep aggro. This also entails you having decent gear so your swipe does decent TPS.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask and ill help to the best of my ability!
Druid Tanks FTW!!!!!!

[Scammich]

just reroled DrooD Ty + 2 rep ;O if you can add a little more about the abilities we have to hold agro on multi targets i would be very pleased i know it has sometin to do with swipe but not that sure.

I am a raiding druid and have raided most of BC to include Illidan kills, and all of Wrath content. Tanking has become pretty easy with Wrath. For Aoe trash pulls I generally feral faeire fire or charge into the group and maul and swipe. I have not had any trouble keeping aggro on the whole group with high DPS going crazy.

On bosses, I'll Mangle, get some lacerates and maul and even swipe. No problems staying well ahead of everyone on aggro. You should have enough of a lead to use GCD on demoralizing roar and all of your other tank abilities.

Don't forget to keep thorns up (glyph is great) and use Barksin at the beginning of pulls and whenever it is off cooldown. Berserk at the beginning of a boss fight will also ensure you have a nice aggro lead. Keep an eye on your health and use your feral version of last stand to help your healers out if things get heavy on them with healing you and the raid or group.

There are some nice gear lists out there. DO NOT USE POLAR SET in all slots. They are high on many lists due to the huge amount of stam, but you will gimp many other stats. I used the boots for a while as our boot table is pretty sucky right now, but as for the chest and belt, a blue chest with high expertise and stam will work until some Naxx drops and the Trollwoven girdle is perfect and will not be replaced until Naxx 25 or beyond.

[junkkiller]

thnx alot ive looked for such guide thats fitting for wotlk + rep

[Traeyu]

Druid tanking FTW, knew most of this allready since Ive been druid tanking for a LONG time but awsome guide! +rep

[Wiseguy42]

Most of it i know (druid tanking since onyxia hoooo!) but if i want to read it the annoying code box is making be browse forth and back! Remove it and add colour instead plox.