As good as ferals may be for tanking the fight, they're also really good at dpsing, then tanking just to clear stacks on the tank at some point, or to use mass regen during a purple ooze. Also, that's a pretty decent time to pop heroism.

From what i have gathered so far in DS it would be wise for a Feral Bear to be the Off tank in the guild, meaning you will be going Cat on fights that require only 1 tank. Since many of the earliest fights have alot of spell damage bears suffers alot due to our mechanics.

Comparing to a Prot paladin where both have equal gear, the prot paladin is taking 4k DPS less then me as a feral bear.

This MAY be due to my gemming being full stamina. Still gonna switch abit around the see if it helps with AGI or Stam/Agi. (Probably will)


but overall is see the other tanks abit above druids on fights which have spell damage.

The fights ive got to test this on is mainly Warlord and Yor'Sahj.

Why would ferals be behind other tanks in fights with spell damage? Savage defense doesn't work on magic, but neither does blocking or blood shield.

Its hard to argue with DKs having bone shield, ams, ibf, vamp blood, and the oft unused but powerful DRW+Army cooldowns (I've never seen another DK do it, but army gives you a damage reduction to keep you from getting gibbed while casting and thus not avoiding that is equal dodge + parry. DRW gives you 20% more parry, so that's a pretty powerful cd against magic damage, though on a long cd). But compared to warriors and paladins overall our CDs aren't noticeably worse.

We also have a flat 18% reduction on all damage, along with a 6% reduction on magic which meets or exceeds the passive reduction of other tanks. I may have missed something, but pretty sure Paladins have 9% from sanctuary, warriors 10% from dstance, dks 6% blade barrier and 8% from blood pres. Druids can also gear heavily for stamina much more viably than any other tank if being burst down by a melee, magic, melee is a concern. Also the fact that the melee hit right after a magic cast is virtually guaranteed to have a SD shield up since you didn't get hit during the cast doesn't model as much, but it sure is noticeable.

Bears work very well for Hagara since Savage Defense works during Focused Assault but block does not. I flask Stamina for that fight and use Soulshifter + Stay of Execution.

I've been a druid for as long as I've been playing the game and I'm working now on switching mains. Our guild went from 25m to 10m due to RL and sw:tor losses plus poor content management from Blizz. I also have a pally and a DK and I'm working on gearing my DK as the MT with a druid as OT. The reason for the switch is to make for a better comp 2 druid tanks aren't the best comp to have.

@Drippier, Spell reflect from warriors does not work on Yor'sahj

My take on tanks/boss with some research:

Morchok: Pally/Warrior>DK>Druid

Yor'sahj: DK>Pally>Druid>Warrior (it's worth mentioning that my druid did a shit ton of heals with the 4set and LotP on this fight…for a tank)

Zon'ozz: Pally/DK>Warrior/Druid

Hagara: Pally/Warrior>Druid/DK (Dk's have more tricks and CDs but SD procs more often than DS and druids have more passive avoidance, plus the druid 4set for lightning and roar for ice is very useful for this fight)

Ultraxion: DK>Pally>Druid>Warrior

Blackhorn: Pally>Warrior>DK>Druid

Spine: Pally/Warrior>Druid>DK

Madness: DK>Pally>Warrior>Druid

Obviously depends on how you time your CDs and who's playing the tank but just considering the type of damage per boss and mitigation per class that's what I came up with.

On a side note, Druids are the best OTs in the game ATM. Dragon Soul is mostly a one tank or a 1.5 at some point and Druids can output the most dmg as OT (having that 4set is pretty handy too).

Pallies and Warriors are the best vs Physical dmg hands down. Then DK since they have control over their Blood shield and then Druids, hope for dodge or hope for a SD shield.

DK's are obviously best vs Magical dmg and they do OK vs Physical.

Druids are the best OTs.

Pallies are the most balanced ones with a good array of CDs and the glyph for DP gives them a decent mitigation vs magic every 1min.

I think you're wrong. A druid having the 2 set gives you 100% chance to trigger savage defence if you crit with mangle when you have pulverize up. Myself got 47% crit with with 3 apps of lacerate then pulverize, which give me almost 50% to trigger Savage defence. Also we're having sick dodge compared to other classes.

Druid's concern in Dragon Soul as a tank is just a lack of direction.

Warriors and Paladins excel in cases where there are constant physical damage going out due to Block
Blood DKs excel in cases where damage is not blockable, or where the mechanic allows Blood Shield to function very well (Morchok's Stomp, Madness Impale, etc). So while Druids are not last in any tanking situation (so I disagree with post #82), they also don't stand out.

That, and the fact that Druids are superior OTs that can add very valuable DPS in especially a 10man setting make them much better offtanks than main tanks (enjoy while it lasts)

Also disagree strongly on most of #82's points.

Hagaara, it's unreal how much easier it is to tank her Frenzied Assaults with a bear compared to a paladin. Warrior is in a slightly better position due to heroic leap/intervene, but being a bear, you can literally just stand there with Barskin up and take it whole on heroic.

I find myself taking less damage on Morchok than our paly MT. The difference is slight, but consistent.

Blackhorn i've only tanked once, but after our pally MT died, I ended up solotanking whole p2 due to insane dodge we have. Sure, it's RNGish, but it's also something no other tank can do with reasonable expectancy. That's a pretty big plus.

Spine is another ideal fight for a Feral OT. The advantages are pretty obvious really, no need to point them all out. Not sure why you'd want to force a feral in Bloods tanking role there if you go for the point that your bear is "MT".
On this point, i want to give a huge thanks to Rhy. I followed your advice and ended up in cat for 5 tendon bursts, staying in bear and picking up stray bloods before the last one. My damage done until 6th was comparable to our other DPS, aka 4.4 mil on the 5 tendon phases. Definitely what allowed us to make the dps check prenerf, which we're very happy for.

On madness hc, I'm in ilvl394 offspec gear, FULLY gemmed for dps (not a single stam gem), dps trinkets, taking impales like a boss. SI+Barkskin+disc bubble and pally sac after red platform is down and and I'm good to go. While not even being last on DPS meters (yes, I know it's inflated due to Spellweaving bloods tanking).
I'll see what happens once we get p2 attempts, but so far, Madness seems exactly like half of DS fights. Incredibly favorable for feral. I hesitate to say OT or DPS because there's so little to distinguish between them.

A bit of misinformation here.

First of all, Impale is not mitigated by armor. In terms of pure mitigation, Druids are the best because of 18% from Natural reaction. However, Blood DKs are able to time their Death Strikes (x3 if they have 2 piece and dip under 35% before Impale) to get a huge absorbance bubble. Similarly, Druids are able to keep up a bubble with Savage Defense. Ironically, the 2 non-block tanks have the advantage here since they can partially block Impale.

Tetanus is shadow damage and the debuff can be avoided using AMS, so DKs are also the clear winner here.

Madness Tank is DK> Druid> Paladin= Warrior, in my opinion.

Ranking tanks for Madness (10 man at least which I have done, 25 is obviously different) depends entirely on how you want to do the fight. You could use 2 tanks if your dps can manage the enrage, but you could also solo tank it, which is what we have done (shamelessly copying the strat from Angered).

For solo tanking, DKs clearly have the advantage. The reasons why were explained above. However, behind the DK you should put the paladins. They have a lot more cooldowns than the bears, which helps them have higher mitigation for the Impale that they take while still having a cooldown left for the Blood (glyphed DP helps a lot). In P2 the large amount of cooldowns they can use is again very helpful. They can also bubble the Tetanus stacks which is the biggest plus for them.

That being said, I have also solo tanked it as a druid. The key difference is that I rely a lot more on healer cooldowns to keep me alive than a paladin would. You will need at least HoSac from your holy paladin or PS from the priest. Having both is amazing but not 100% necessary.

As for the Impales, it is true, they are not mitigated by armor. Here's how you calculate the damage:
Things such as Demo Roar/Shout and the other similar debuffs decrease the damage taken. Inspiration from the Disc priests and Ancestral Healing from shamans also apply(but they do not/should not stack), as well as the passive % damage reduction from talents.
So for example, as a druid on 10 man, if I have Inspiration(10%), Demo Roar(10%), 18% from talents, Barkskin(20%) and Survival Instincts(50%) the damage I will take is:
840 000*0.9*0.9*0.82*0.8*0.5=223 171

*The 5% zone wide debuff should also apply if I am not mistaken. Then you need to multiply again by 0.95.

There's no remote way to answer that without a lot more information.

Obviously a cat even in bear gear and spec does substantially more damage than a bear, even with full vengeance, even with full rage, so, you're essentially looking at a question of does the damage you do while in cat form, exceed the damage you would have done in bear form by more than the damage you lose in the first part of being a bear again from lost vengeance.

There's no way at all to answer that without knowing: Whether you will get vengeance back quickly when you go back to bear form in this fight? Would you have kept it up high in bear form? How long would you be able to be in cat form? Which talents do you have? Are you in front of the boss for purposes of shredding (as ultraxion would be a fairly prime fight for this question)? Is there anything to cleave? Are you saving zerking for using while in cat form? And the list goes on.

That said, my semi educated guess from looking at damage done over a lot of rag attempts was that if i can get a rip up, its worth it. Especially with a lot of mastery for SD, that bleed ticks for a lot.