Druid Bear Tanking Guide:

[Lethi]

I did search, never saw it posted, and not like it would have been :P

I also, did not write this. I found it while browsing the WoW Forums.
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First, though, to set the record straight on a few points, I'll list some of the advantages and disadvantages of the big bad bear, in comparison to the paladin and warrior:

ADVANTAGES:
1. Immunity to Polymorph (Jindo!) and Disarm, and any other humanoid-only abilities.
2. Superior physical damage mitigation.
3. Deepest health pool.
4. Superior aggro generation, especially on multi-target pulls

DISADVANTAGES:
1. Lack of discretionary combat maneuvers (combat potions, healthstones, abilities and talents such as shield wall and last stand)
2. Inferior magical damage mitigation.
3. Susceptibility to Fear (and, presumably, Hibernate)

Looking at the list it may seem that bears should always be the first choice to tank, especially for the alliance with their plethora of fear wards, since most bosses have at least an auto-attack that needs to be dealt with. In fact, it is the lack of discretionary combat maneuvers that tends to be the biggest weakness in the bear tank, leaving the burden of a succesful encounter on the healers, and, indeed, bear tanks require the most healing.

But it's not all bad. Beartanks have a deeper health pool to heal into, and their superior physical mitigation means that they "spike" much less frequently than warriors. It may take more healer blue, but it also gives healers more time to react than a warrior or a paladin tank, and also improves the efficiency of heal over times. Ironically, the best person to heal a druid tank tends to be a druid healer, with their slower but more efficient heals.

Enough with comparison! On to strategy!

GEARING YOUR BEAR
Before you can step up to the plate, you gotta put some on. Or, in your case, leather.

Bears with thick hide (which ALL bears should have) currently gain 5.06 times the armor value of an item when they put it on, and in two weeks will gain 6.05 times the armor value of the item. Thus it is that your very first consideration as a bear when reviewing an item is its armor value.

Similarly, Bears with Heart of the Wild (again, a required bear talent) gain (in BC) 150% of the stamina values on their gear. Since health is a major consideration for a tank, stamina should be your second consideration when looking for Beartank gear.

Third should be (perhaps surprisingly) Agility. This was true even before bears got rogue-like dodge ratings from agility; it is even moreso now. Besides helping you dodge (your only form of complete damage avoidance), Agility also improves your critical rating, which a fully specced bear should know means 215% threat from a given hit (on top of the bear multiplier, the talent multiplier AND the multiplier of whatever special ability just crit, if any) AND a tasty +5 rage bonus. Not to mention an ILotP heal, if you're ready for one. Bears keep aggro by critting, no doubt about it.

Fourth, then, comes +dodge and +crit at about even levels, followed by +hit at fifth. Sixth is +strength (pure threat generation), and DEAD LAST is +defense.

This is the major difference bear tanks have with paladin and warrior tanks, our lack of reliance on +Defense. But it's easy enough to understand. What does defense give you? Additional block, parry, and dodge, and reduced critical hits and crushing blows against you. Of these, bears can't block and parry; our superior dodge rate means we'd rather have agility for that; and our amplified armor means we'd generally just have a higher armor rating and reduce the damage of the incoming critical hit or crushing blow. Defense is not useless to a bear, but it is the bottom priority of one.

Resilience, on the other hand, is a much more appealing stat, should we have much access to it, and is just as useful to a bear as to any other tank. I don't know HOW useful it is, since I haven't worked with it yet and I don't know how many ilvls it consumes. I'll stick it in the list below as moderately useful, but it may easily go up or down yet.

Thus, borrowing again from Ivydancer:
Armor > Stamina > Agility > +Dodge and Crit > +Hit > Resilience >> Strength/AP > Defense

Specific Gear:
With BC upon us, specific gear lists are for the most part worthless. However, I will point out two things. First, there are no known armor trinkets yet in BC, although there are several very high Stamina trinkets. Get your Mark of Tyranny (LBRS/UBRS quest) and your Smoking Heart of the Mountain (Enchanting BoP) just in case, but don't sweat it too much.

Secondly, while the Unyielding Maul and the Warden Staff are really the only choices for a bear tank currently, there are some VERY nice bear staffs/mauls in BC. One of them is a level 62 BoE blue that far outstrips either. I expect that each time one of these drops it will pay for some lucky person's Flying Mount training. Perhaps Epic Flying Mount training, for a good long while. Bear tanks are getting more popular as they are finally getting the itemization they need.

Remember, world drops drop off mobs 5-6 levels higher than the required level, so grind them 67-68 mobs, everyone!

THE TALENTED BEAR
Feral Tree:

Ferocity: 5/5. Reducing your costs increases your threat output.

Thick Hide, Feral Instinct: Max these out. Inreased threat is huge, and increased armor is more important for a bear than any other class.

Feral Swiftness: Max out. A nice +dodge for bears, for whom dodge is our only avoidance stat anyway.

Sharpened Claws: Remember what I just said about crits? Max it.

Primal Fury: Max it. Whatever it's called in the expansion, it's the +5 rage on crits talent. Huge. Warriors drool over this.

Predatory Strikes: Pre-requisite for Heart of the Wild. Max it for that reason alone. Otherwise, very meh.

Shredding Attacks: Lacerate isn't that expensive anyway, and a reduction of 2 rage is not a LOT. But, on the other hand, Lacerate is very, very powerful. Your call. The shred cost reduction is a lot more tasty for when you have to go Kitty.

Savage Fury: More damage is more threat. Take!

Faerie Fire (Feral): Take. One talent point for a beautiful talent in small-scale instances. Might drop this if you're raiding. Always good for pulling.

Heart of the Wild, Survival of the Fittest: Max 'em both out. They're both crucial bear talents.

Primal Tenacity: Feels more like a PvP talent. I'd skip it.

Leader of the Pack, Imp LotP: Max these out. More crit is always good, self-healing is better.

Predatory Insticts: Max it. Both of these are excellent for bears... damage mitigation and threat generation rolled up in one.

Mangle: Duh. TAKE!

Resto Tree:
Furor: Max this out. 10 rage on turning bear is always useful.

Naturalist: When ferals heal, they heal with nukes. Plus, it's 10% extra threat as a bear and 10% extra damage as a cat. There is nothing that is not desirable about this talent.

Intensity: Again, sometimes ferals gotta heal. This is one of the most crucial healing talents in the tree, but on top of that it's also improved Enrage, which is why you are taking it.

Omen of Clarity: Yes please. It's the only proc we get for our attacks, but it's a whopper.

HOW TO PLAY YOUR BEAR
Were this a guide on how to play a warrior, it would probably take pages and pages. However, Bear tanking is one of the simpler forms of tanking, and as such I will keep it appropriately short.

TOOLS FOR TANKING:
Maul: Your first bear ability is maul, which corresponds with the warrior's heroic strike. While it only takes ten rage to maul, and the maul multiplier to threat means that a maul will generate a good deal of threat, it also consumes your next attack and therefore reduces your total rage. Bears do get quite a bit more rage in general than warriors (my bear's white crits tend to generate 20-25 rage), so you will be mauling quite a lot. This is important, since it's your primary single-target rage generation device.

Swipe: There is no warrior counterpart to swipe, and it is the major reason bears are currently favored in BC content in the smaller instances, and the cause of much hard feeling in warriors. Swipe hits up to three targets, currently scales with AP (new as of 2.0.0), and has a special threat modifier that makes it VERY useful in multi-target tanking. It doesn't hit very hard, but it is spammable, and as your only spammable attack AND your primary off-mob threat generation device you will come to fall deeply in love with this ability. Especially since each time Swipe crits a mob, primal fury will give you five more rage, meaning that a triple-crit not only generates vast amounts of threat on all the mobs, but it is also free (!!). Get that crit rating up, bears!

Some bears tend to undervalue swipe since it hits for so little as the bear levels. However, once you start instancing, it is your bread and butter. Careful around shackles, sheeps, seduces and saps, though. Although if you swipe the thing it's probably going straight for you anyway, so it hardly matters that you've broken CC.

Mangle: The 41 point feral talent that deprives all full bears of Nature's Swiftness. The value of mangle can not be overstated. It hits very, very hard. It can be used every six seconds. It improves lacerate. It sadly does not have a special threat modifier (from the attack itself, it does get the bear threat bonus and the feral instinct threat bonus), but it still generates more threat than a maul. Use this every time it's up.

Lacerate: Ahhh, lacerate. How much we love thee, and we never even knew we needed you. Lacerate is the bear's counterpart to Sunder, but far more powerful (in my opinion). It stacks up to five, meaning that raiders can simply look at the mob's debuff limit to see whenabouts they should attack. It has a special threat modifier. It ignores armor, and is the only threat generating tool a bear has that does so (besides, technically, FFF, Enrage, and Demo Roar... ha!). But most importantly, it generates intense amounts of threat per rage when used properly.

Lacerate, if allowed to expire, is fairly useless. To be used correctly, it must be renewed towards the end of its duration (a DoT timer may actually be helpful here), before the last tick when it expires. In this manner each Lacerate will renew the whole stack of five, and thus each lacerate will generate almost five times (again, the last tick is not received) the threat of a single use of lacerate. Which is already a threat-modified, armor ignoring threat generation tool.

Did I mention mangle gives it another 30% damage, which is further multiplied by all those threat modifiers? Did I mention both bear mangle and cat mangle stack?

Some druids have been scoffing at lacerate. They don't realize how absolutely impossible it makes pulling aggro for a raider, if that raider knows to wait for the lacerates to start working.

Enrage: It gives you 20 rage, 10 more instantly if you have intensity (you should have intensity), and costs you a percentage of your BASE armor. Which makes the mobs hit a little harder and thus gives you even more rage. Good before a pull to start with some rage, or during a pull to generate a tiny amount of threat and give you initial aggro. Warriors have to take off their pants to achieve the lower armor for good rage gen; bears get to use their ability that already gives them more rage. Not that rage is hard to get for a bear.

Feral Faerie Fire: Ideally, a Boomkin is keeping this on the mob to allow additonal +hit for all, and that is actually better for your threat generation than the threat provided by this spell. Still, in smaller parties, or more exclusive raids, keeping this up does generate a small amount of threat every six seconds, on top of the threat gained by the armor reduction to the mob. Use this when you're low on rage after a string of mauls, lacerates, swipes and mangles.

Growl: It's, um, Taunt. Use it when someone pulls aggro on a tauntable mob. The mob will hit you, giving you rage. Use this to maintain aggro. It's got a longer cooldown than a warrior's taunt, but it's harder for people to pull off of us anyway.

Challenging Roar: Challenging Shout. I actually find this quite useful when a second pack has just been pulled in a small instance, since one hit from seven mobs generally gives me all the rage I need to swipe them and more. Have good healers, though. Also useful, obviously, in AoE pulls.

Feral Charge: Very useful, especially in smaller instances or when a raid encounter spawns adds, or a boss knocks you back. Worst case it'll still get you there, able to start building aggro on the mob. Best case it'll root the mob there while you do so, making life a little easier. Very best case, it'll interrupt the spellcast of a mob (i.e., a heal) and life is peachy keen.

Frenzied Regen: Your only discretionary combat maneuver (remember bear disadvantages?) until the day they make barkskin castable in bear and the warriors all quit. It gives you a not-very-large chunk of life, but at a massive cost to rage (100 over ten seconds). Use it when your life creeps below 40% and your rage creeps up to 100 on a really hard-hitting mob and you start feeling really nervous. Then curse that it stinks so terribly. It doesn't even get affected by +healing gear.

Demoralizing Roar: The warrior's demoralizing shout is more powerful, but if there aren't any around, use this on a mob to make it hit less hard. The threat generation of this ability was nerfed, which affects us less than warriors since we have Swipe (which any warrior, by the way, would give his left arm for to be able to use in Defensive Stance).

TIPS AND TRICKS:
Regrowth, Rejuv, Lifebloom, Bear, Enrage. This is the basic starter pull for any boss mob. If it hurts hard enough, barkskin. Your attack speed reduction will be counter-acted by the incoming damage, allowing you to generate initial aggro while relying less heavily on the healers (and thus making them less likely to pull early healing aggro). You're not using that mana for anything else, and those HoTs will both help mitigate damage and generate a little extra starting healing threat.

With lacerate in your hands, cats are your friends. The mangle debuff should always be up, and cats are better at that than bears, who can potentially miss, or have it dodged or parried. I assume they are fixing or will fix the cat/bear stacking of mangle.

In general, you have two "modes" as a bear: snap aggro, and long-term threat management. Generating snap aggro, you are more concerned with threat per time than threat per rage. Long-term management is more concerned with threat per rage than threat per time. Lacerate is definitely a long-term threat device, whereas maul is a snap aggro devices. Snap aggro is inefficient in the long term and is usually used at the beginning of the fight, since it takes at least 110% of your threat to pull the mob off of you. Once you've got a good starting load, you start relaxing your threat per time to invest in larger payoffs later, so that your threat curve can get higher. Mauls are not usually used after the first few attacks in a fight unless your rage is higher than 60 or so, since swipe and mangle are both more efficient. Swipe and mangle are used pretty much throughout the entire fight, mangle when its up and swipe when mangle is down.

Regarding Maul: Maul is the most rage-expensive attack a bear has, since it consumes all the rage a normal attack would generate, plus ten. White damage, not yellow damage, generates rage. That said, if you're tanking a boss that gives you nigh-infinite rage, there's no reason why every swing or almost every swing should be a queued maul, while simultaneously spamming swipes, mangles, and the occasional faerie fire. When soloing big guys as a bear, however, be aware that maul is ridiculously inefficient damage/rage. Even swipe is better. Still, maul's special threat multiplier makes it very high threat per time, making it good in the early fight in a group or raid.

Since resetting a DoT resets the timer until the first tick, you don't want to spam lacerate until it nears the end of its duration. Make sure you give yourself a chance in case the mob blocks/parries/dodges the lacerate to use it again before your stack expires. Lacerate management will be key to bear tanking in the expansion, and learning how stacks work and how DoTs work is a very good thing.

I'm willing to expand this guide with any input from experienced bears. These forums need a guide for the querying bear; I was surprised there wasn't already one.

LINK: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...62147454&sid=1

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[The Doctor]

This guide is really outdated... the guy who posted it made it before TBC came out and since my druid was my main most of the time I played TBC/Pre-BC, a lot of things have changed, and this guide is backwards nowadays.

[Centerfold]

Its not bad at all for beginner bear tanks, although an important point is skipped over. Including Survival of the Fittest, you must hit 5.6% crit reduction to be uncrittable by normal boss (skull) mobs. Survival of the Fittest gives you 3% base, which means you need 2.6% from defense or resillience. WIth 0 resillience, it comes out to 415 defense. Defense is always superior to resillience, because defense also gives you dodge, while resillience's secondary bonus is useless once you hit the cap for crit avoidance.