Feral Tank Guide

**vaticon** · 06-13-2011

Hello, mmowned my name is Vaticon. I've been leeching for sometime without having anything to share, so I found out that I can share something I am doing pretty well at. Before starting I just want to apologize my English mistakes in the following text(If there is any

Tried as best as I could to write with no mistakes).

Overview:

1. Talents & Glyphs
2. Stat Priority List
3. Enchants, Gems & Reforge
4. Macros
5. Rotation

1. Talents & Glyphs

For a feral tank is very few talents that you want to switch around. The best talents for threat generation would be this one. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Personal I am running with different talents because I am one of the main interrupters in my guild. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It’s up to you and your guild if you want a tank with more TPS or if you want another interrupter.

Prime Glyphs

These 3 are basically the only prime glyphs that can help a feral tank.

Glyph of Berserk - Item - World of Warcraft Berserk is your damage and TPS god mode, why wouldn’t you want it to last longer? This help so much in the start of fights to get some good threat going. It’s also gold when tanking multiple targets!

Glyph of Lacerate - Item - World of Warcraft Fair enough. Got nothing else to take, and crit never hurts anyway.

Glyph of Mangle - Item - World of Warcraft 10% more damage on your main TPS and damage output? Yes, please!

Major Glyphs

Again there is not much fun for us feral tanks. We got 4 glyphs that we can choose from and it’s depending on you and your raid group.

Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration - Item - World of Warcraft This glyph will make it so much easier for your healers to heal through phases were you do take a lot of damage.

Glyph of Maul - Item - World of Warcraft Great for tanking multiple targets and more damage output. It’s great for timed ZA, Halfus and of course other heroics. Just make sure you do not have in glyphed in fights where you are not supposed to attack some targets. For example on Omnitron Defense System when one of them got their shield up or Nefarian if the adds in P1 spawn where you tank Onyxia.

As the last glyph you want either Glyph of Rebirth - Item - World of Warcraft or Glyph of Faerie Fire - Item - World of Warcraft. I would recommend to go with Glyph of Rebirth - Item - World of Warcraft, but if you are sure that you will never CR anyone go with Glyph of Faerie Fire - Item - World of Warcraft.

Minor Glyphs

There is no important minor glyphs, but I would recommend to go with Glyph of Dash - Item - World of Warcraft, Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth - Item - World of Warcraft and Glyph of Challenging Roar - Item - World of Warcraft.

2. Stat Priority List

Agility provides Attack Power (TPS), Crit (TPS) and Dodge (Survivability) Agility increases both survivability and threat.

Stamina increases your total health, which scales with Vengeance. A good defensive stat that gives you a small threat bonus.

Dodge increases your chance to dodge. This scales great with Feral, sadly dodge is affected by DM.

Mastery is a good defensive stat. It increases the amount of damage absorbed by Savage Defense.

Expertise reduces the amount of attacks being dodged and parried. This is the best secondary stat for threat generation.

Crit/Haste/Hit these are stats that only affect threat generation, and are not as effective as Expertise.

The priority list looks like this
Stamina > Agility > Mastery > Dodge > Expertise (26) > Crit > Haste > Hit Cap (8%)

Some feral tanks use this priority list, but I have to agree with Sejta.
Agility > Stamina > Dodge > Mastery > Expertise (26) > Crit > Haste > Hit Cap (8%)

"I think that Stamina is the best stat to have because it is the most reliable survival stat for the druid class. Mastery isn't as hot as it is for other classes and dodge starts to diminish the more gear you get so I rather have a bigger HP pool than little higher chance to dodge. Stamina also increases your vengeance cap which increases your Savage Defences, also theres always overhealing which again increases the value of Stamina more than avoidance."

Paragon | View topic - Sejta Tanking question

3. Enchants, Gems and Reforge

Enchants

I’m just going to list the enchants as most of them speak for them self. I will not list the enchants you can get from professions.

Head: Arcanum of the Earthern Ring - Spell - World of Warcraft

Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz - Item - World of Warcraft

Back/Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Protection - Item - World of Warcraft

Chest: Enchant Chest - Greater Stamina - Item - World of Warcraft

Bracer/Wrists: Enchant Bracer - Dodge - Item - World of Warcraft

Weapon: Enchant 2H Weapon - Mighty Agility - Item - World of Warcraft

Gloves/Hands: Heavy Savage Armor Kit - Item - World of Warcraft

Belt/Waist: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle - Item - World of Warcraft

Legs: Charscale Leg Armor - Item - World of Warcraft

Feet: Enchant Boots - Earthen Vitality - Item - World of Warcraft

Gems

The gems you want as a feral tank is simple and wotlk style. You want Austere Shadowspirit Diamond - Item - World of Warcraft as a meta. The 2 yellow gems to activate meta should be Puissant Dream Emerald - Item - World of Warcraft and the rest should be Solid Ocean Sapphire - Item - World of Warcraft.

Reforge

The goal for reforging gear is to juggle the weaker secondary stats into the most effective secondary stats. With that in mind, it can be situational for which secondary stat is currently the best for you.

If TPS is a problem you want to increase your expertise as it's the best secondary stat for threat generation. On any gear without expertise, reforge Haste (first priority), Crit or Hit into Expertise. Do this until you have over 26 expertise or are no longer having threat issues.

If your TPS is fine you want to increase your survivability as much as possible. On any gear without mastery, reforge hit/haste/crit/expertise into mastery. Do this on as much gear as you can. If it is mastery on the gear you want to reforge it into the second best secondary stat, which is dodge.

Remember to look at stat priority to find out what you want to reforge away.

4. Macros

For raids I did macro everything with Maul, so in a raid that is one less button to click and it give me more time to look at my BigWigs timers. This is the macro I use, just replace Mangle with Pulverize, Lacerate, Thrash, Swipe, Demoralizing Roar and Faerie Fire (Feral). When I am doing heroic dungeons I am usually not getting enough rage to spam my Maul all the time, so I got an identical bar at shift + 2/Action Bar 2 where the normal abilities are without the Maul macro.

#showtooltip
/cast Mangle <-- Replace that Mangle with what I listed over.
/cast Maul
Simply cast Mangle and Maul.

#showtooltip
/cast [stance:1] Skull Bash(Bear Form); [stance:3] Skull Bash(Cat Form)
/s Skull Bash on a 10 sec CD!!
If I am in bear form it uses Skull Bash(Bear Form) and if I am in cat form it uses Skull Bash(Cat Form). It also tell my group that I used my Skull Bash and that it is on a 10 second cooldown(You need to change that if you are not going to take the talents with Brutal Impact to 1 minute)

#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus] [stance:1] Skull Bash(Bear Form); [stance:3] Skull Bash(Cat Form)
/s Skull Bash on a 10 sec CD!!
Does the same as the one above just on the focus target instead. Helps a lot on fights like Halfus.

5. Rotation

Single Target

1. Mangle
2. 1 stack of Lacerate up
3. Thrash
4. Pulverize at 3 stacks of Lacerate
5. Faerie Fire(Feral) if low on rage
6. Lacerate as a filler
- Always use Maul whenever you have enough rage
- Keep your Demoralizing Roar up.
- Use Berserk on CD for more damage output + threat boost.
- Use Enrage on CD for a damage boost and some rage.
- Use your CDs when they are needed, don’t just waste them and please don’t just let them be there off CD all the fight.

Multiple Targets

When tanking multiple adds, you'll want to Swipe and Thrash as much as possible. Tab target through mobs and Mangle/Lacerate them as well.

If you got all the way down here I would like to say thank you very much for taking your time to read this and hope it helps you on your way to and become an even better player in this game. Also I can add a comparison of the different tanking classes if you want me to and I got time. Same with an arcane mage guide!

Edit: Spelling mistakes

**rayray** · 06-14-2011

nice guide wouldnt mind seeing the arcane mage guide also +rep

**Anonie** · 06-14-2011

Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration is situational. Like when heals go oom, and there's no one to heal you except yourself, or heals are focusing on others rather than you.

The stat priority IMO should be Agility > Dodge => Mastery > Stamina > Crit. These are all your strongest (read: try not to reforge) stats. Expertise (26) => Hit Cap (8%) > Haste. Feel free to always reforge these into dodge/mastery whenever possible. I put crit as a main stat because it makes your non dot crits proc mastery, thus it is vital to have to make sure mastery even works. I'm not sure how much is needed, but I'm assuming you need a bit more crit for more mobile fights and target switching fights to make sure you have the mastery bubble up at all time.

4.1 changed Savage Defender - Spell - World of Warcraft so that it would be a bubble to absorb over time (think barkskin) instead of a flat amount like disc priest's bubbles, so it raised the value of mastery and lowered crit. Consider an aoe tanking situation, a feral druid's swipe would easily crit, proc mastery and mitigate all incoming damage, rather than have a chance block/parry/dodge for each hit. And I suppose being hit from behind won't matter that much either, but still would loose dodge.

Dodge's diminishing returns start to get noticeable at around 35% which is when Mastery starts to gain advantage in mitigation.

The enchants for weapon should be Enchant Weapon - Windwalk - Spell - World of Warcraft over your agil enchant. The rest are fine, but I would consider the mastery or agil feet enchant instead of stam. You have feral charge, stampede + catform to run. Use it.

IMO, once you hit around 190k hp fully buffed, I would regem for straight avoidance. 190k+ hp is what my guild's tanks are sitting at and tanking hm raids fine. Stacking mixed stam + avoidance, or straight stam gems once you hit 190k is kind of pointless since heroic raid content (at 4.1) doesn't need THAT much HP.

Expertise + hit to get threat and to hit and thus allow the chance to get crits in and thus proc mastery. The only reason why exp is better than hit is because exp also helps avoid bosses parring which has a higher chance to happen than hit. Haste is by far the worst stat only because it only effects GCDs and white hit for bears.

Personally, I'd drop Feral Aggression - Spell - World of Warcraft for Primal Madness - Spell - World of Warcraft. The extra rage at the start of the pull IMHO is more important than 3 stacks of FF at once. With a warrior or feral cat around, you wouldn't need to FF for the armor debuff, and its only a TPS increase which is used as a filler anyways.

An addon I'd suggest you to get is Tricks, it's a great addon to announce your own cds in emote (reduce spam on screen) or /s (when you need to alternate kicks) and shows in chat when someone else uses a CD. This way you can macro your skull bash with something else (such as demo roar or charge).

Everything else seems good, +rep.

**vaticon** · 06-14-2011