Mookow's Druid Tanking Guide

As of late I have noticed an increase in the number of feral druids playing in rota. While only 1 other besides myself has tanked in a graid that I know of, there are others trying to build a tanking druid. Among these druids I have notice some issues with their gear, talent spec, or attack rotation and so I have decide to write this guide for the gforums to hopefully educate those who are trying to tank as a druid or are interested in turning their current druid feral. This guide is not meant to teach you everything, nor tell you the best way to build a druid tank. Instead its meant to give you an idea on how to perform on par with other tanks as a druid.

Gear:

Gearing a druid for tanking is quite a bit different from gearing any of the plate classes for tanking. While key stats are still important such as avoidance, health, and armor. Feral druids rely on a few other stats more so than the other tanks, these being attack power, crit rating, hit rating, armor penetration, and expertise. Since armor pen and expertise don’t work as they should for pve we can ignore them and focus on the others. Since a druid and rogue share the same armor many of these stats will be easy to come by so you can save your enchants and sockets for the all important agility and stamina. Here is a break down of stats and their roles for a druid. They are listed in no particular order.

Agility:The end all stat for ferals. This gives you dodge, crit chance, attack power, and armor all in one. Nuff said.

Stamina: Its your health. With proper talents and shifting into bear form each point is increased by nearly 50%.

Attack Power: This is a twofold stat for bear druids. It contributes to the closes thing you have to a block with http://www.wowhead.com/spell=62600 and it increases the damage of your attacks. The more damage your attacks do the more threat you generate so enough said there. The druid block is based on 25% of your attack power and it comes in the form of a buff that is gained upon a melee critical strike. While it will not absorb as much damage as a paladin or warriors block this buff does have an advantage over a paladin’s or a warrior’s standard block though. If the damage received is less than 25% of your attack power then the shield stays up until damage exceeds the remainder. If you can hit a critical strike before damage exceeds the shields limit then it is renewed. In the end you are potentially immune to trash mob attacks from most mobs in raids.

Crit Rating: This is a twofold stat like attack power. First the higher your crit the more damage you do, which translates to more threat. But more importantly a druid’s block is gained from crits. So the higher your crit the more up time your block buff has which translates to healthy tank and happy healers.

Hit Rating: This stat is more of a support stat than anything. Since your block is reliant on attacks critting you must make sure your hits land as often as possible. Don’t worry about gemming for hit. You want to aim for about 5% hit. While you will still miss attacks, 5% will insure you hit often enough to have the shield up as much as possible, think of it as a soft cap when dealing with tank gear. Also more you hit = more damage = more threat.

Now on to the sockets and enchants. First thing I am gonna say on this is DO NOT GEM FOR SOCKET BONUS!!!!! That is a waste of sockets and 100% of the time the socket bonus doesn’t make up for the agility or stamina lost from gemming a yellow stat. The only gems a tank druid should have are the Red agility, Blue Stamina, and Purple agility/stamina. Anything else is a waste of space. The general rule I follow is yellow and blue get stamina and red gets agility. I save purples for when I have to adjust my sockets after getting a new piece of gear to make sure my stats improve as a whole and I don’t lose anything overall or if I need to lose some stamina or agility and increase the other stat. I know what you’re thinking when will anyone need to lose stamina or agility? Well it’s simple, when you have an unbalance between the two it will result in a decrease of your effectiveness as a tank. So how do you know when you have a balance? Just follow the formula I have developed and you can’t go wrong. I mean it works for me so why wouldn’t it work for you.

Note: the socket bonus comment is for items with yellow sockets. Since druids do not need defense and the other sockets available for yellow are mainly dps sockets its best to use red, blue or purple.

[(Unbuffed Health)/1000] + 10 = Unbuffed Dodge.

If you used my stats
(38177/1000) = 38.177 + 10 = 48.18% dodge.

Currently I have 47.52% dodge.
This formula isn’t supposed be exact. If you are within 1% of the estimated dodge by the formula then your fine and in the ballpark of where you need to be.

Accessories:

What you use here is up to you. I use a dps neck and rings with http://www.wowhead.com/item=40252 for the increased armor, but dps cloak works too. As for trinkets if your a JC use the stamina trinkets until you can get http://www.wowhead.com/item=45158 then replace one of them with that. If your not a JC then get http://www.wowhead.com/item=37220 or a nice dodge trinket. Remember GS doesnt translate to pro-ness. Just cause gearscore says its better doesnt mean it is. So if you use essence do be so quick to give it up for something with say defense rating, cause then youll look more of a noob than a pally in cloth gear saying they can tank.

Glyphs:

There are a handful of glyphs to choose from but the ones i recommend are
http://www.wowhead.com/item=40897 and http://www.wowhead.com/item=46372 and the other major glyph you choose is up to you. Since I also dps as feral i have glyph of mangle as my third major glyph. But glyphs of growl, beserk, frenzied regeneration, and savage roar are all good choices too, but idk if they work on magic or not so you will have to look that up.

Attack Rotation:

The attack rotation of a druid tank is easy as long as you follow a few rules
1. Keep http://www.wowhead.com/spell=48564 on cooldown.
2. Keep http://www.wowhead.com/spell=16857 on cooldown.
3. Keep http://www.wowhead.com/spell=48568 at 5 stack.
4. Keep http://www.wowhead.com/spell=48560 up at all times.
5. http://www.wowhead.com/spell=48480 should be used as often as your rage lets you.

Following these rules you will generate enough threat to keep even the most skilled dps from aggroing. but also following these rules you will find yourself in need of a filler. Since maul is off the GCD and you dont wanna lacerate so often you prevent the dot from dealing damage, but you can fill the gap with a http://www.wowhead.com/spell=48562. While this will do little damage, it is better than just standing there, if you have the talent http://www.wowhead.com/spell=16949 then you will further improve your threat generation and dps.

As for talent speccing I am currently using a 0/57/14. Here is a list of talents that are must haves. What you choose to fill the gaps is up to you and what you think will help. I have spent alot of time building my spec to how i want it and i would like to see it not become a cookie cutter build. If your curious at what i use please ask me in game i will be happy to share, but please try to make it your own based on what you want to do.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=24866: Gives you dodge, why would you not get it.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=61336: Needed for emergencies and showing off.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=57881: More dodge plus rage when you dodge.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=24894: More Health and the intellect boost helps with shifting.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=33856: This is your Crit Immunity this talent is a MUST!!
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=57877: Damage reduction. Cant be a good tank without it.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=17007: More crit chance look up to see why its needed.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=34300: Allows you and the raid to heal themselves. Makes happy healers
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=51269: More maul damage is nice, but its the next talent that you want.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=63503: Lacerates can crit, this makes easy threat.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=50334: I use for fear immunity while tanking. Solid dps talent too.
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=37117: This lets you gain rage from crits.

Ok I am sorry its so long, but with feral druids be few and far between on our server I figured I had to go this deep to set people straight. If you notice anything wrong or feel like I am missing something please inform me so I may correct it as soon as possible.

Nice job man your first post and its on a huge topic
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To the article, in what cases are dudu tanks needed more and are better than the competition. Me wanting to finish leveling a feral dudu just wanted to know if hands down there is a boss battle that i would do great in (poor fellow was made like 5 months ago time to dust em off ) and what boss battles should i be on guard for?

In my opinion druid tanks really shine against bosses that hit really hard. Be it a spell or plain physical damage. Because of talents druids have a 12% reduction to all damage including spell damage and druids have the highest armor of all the tanking classes which results in a lot of physical damage mitigation. Then the icing on the cake is that druids sport a rather large health pool making it easier to take the damage without stressing the healers. There is a healer saying i remember seeing when i was learning how to tank as a druid. "Less spike, more mana" over the course of a fight a druid tank may require more heals but you will never see 25% of your health disappear in one blow. As for which bosses you need to be on guard for. In a word All.

nice effort man i really appreciate ppl coming on forums and making ROTA community better

well i agree i have raiding 3 years with a druid OT which always had more difficult task of gathering mobs when we try bosses on retail

Druids are good tank but there aren't to many good player of druids on server

your tank guide is certainly longer then mine was but thats not a bad thing as druids are generally the most ignored of the tanking classes.

+1 for the guide

Slash (Supreme Overlord) wrote:your tank guide is certainly longer then mine was but thats not a bad thing as druids are generally the most ignored of the tanking classes.

+1 for the guide

well its not ignored class man druid is the most difficult class to play in wow only ppl with Mindscore 5k+ can play it

i said that because most pugs when they look at a feral druid see a rogue saying they can tank. ive had a druid tank before thats why i switched to a paladin when i migrated to magic.

here are some things ive heard (on scape)

"druids cant tank theyre in leather, theyll get one shotted"
"your wearing dps gear how can you tank in dps gear"
"why are you stacking agility why not dodge?"
"ive never seen a druid tank so they must not be able to"
"druids avoidance is nonexistant"
"your a filty stam stacker you wont dodge anything"

i got really really tired of it. In BC my druid tank was 36k 63% dodge 72% DR (i want to say 50 crit but im not sure) and i constantly lost the MT job to warriors with 20k (no joke) because "they have more armor and avoidance" and since scape was unscripted i would be stuck with dps.

i agree with you man ...

ppl think druid cannot tank but they are best tank available