X_X


Q = Growl
A = Demo Roar
Z = Bash
V = Charge
G = Faerie Fire
X = Enrage

1 = Maul
2 = Mangle
3 = Lacerate
4 = Swipe
5 = Frenzied Regen

Ctrl 5 = Challenging Roar

Typical Fight:

Pull with G.
Autoattack->Mangle
Throw up Demo
if(rage > 40) { Mash 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3 }
else { Mash 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 }

Mousewheel up = Trinket 1
Mousewheel down = Trinket 2
Mouse3 = /sit /sleep to get crit

You're correct. I should have flipped that sign.

And, no, I didn't forget to include multiple mobs into the equation. Because by then I'm already asleep at the sheer boredom that is bear tanking.

Honestly though, I feel Druids need an overhaul. Given how specialized you have to gear/spec yourself to fill each role, there's no risk to giving a bit more utility to a given form and have it be too powerful. Blizzard seems to be stuck in the mentality that druids are shape shifting all over the place. Well, not as tanks at least. Blizzard *seemed* to be moving in the right direction with all the tier loot being such amazing hybrid Bear/Cat. But it doesn't solve the problem of being stuck in a pve role.

Perhaps if Barkskin were buffed to allow bear hp/armor bonus in other forms, we could play around with a bit more utility. Perhaps shift out of bear->hurricane during a boss fight! Or Shift->Cat->Shred a fleeing mob in the back...... hmmm. No, I guess that'd be too much fun

I noticed that there isn't any mention of threat cycles in the inital posts like the prot warrior thread has. Not that druids have too much problems with threat, but it may be something you wish to add. My preferred rotation would be mangle, lacerate, swipe, swipe and repeat with maul queued to burn any excess rage. In 2.4 with lacerate AP scaling I think this should be close to an optimal rotation. Under a hit/expertise capped scenario, and with 400+ mangled lacerate ticks, using lacerate every 6 sec should be generating 285 + 0.2(2*400+initial dmg) threat. At 30% crit, the average non-crit swipe would have to be greater than 323 dmg. Even with ArPen and 4t6, that's a pretty difficult number to reach in tanking gear. Considering dmg/rage in this rotation, lacerate's providing around 850 dmg for 13 rage as well, making it significantly better than swipe for single target dps.

This is based on hit/expertise cap though, and if that were truly possible, the actual optimal rotation would be only lacerating every other cycle. Due to having to deal with "misses" the player would have to substitute lacerates in for swipes as needed when it gets missed to have buffer time to maintain the stacks. It's somewhat interesting that in the non-hit/expertise capped scenario, even with assuming only 80% mangle uptime, that lacerate pulls even further ahead of swipe. This is due to swipe, if missed/dodged/parried loses all its potential dmg whereas with lacerate, missing means you've actually gotten an extra half tick or more of dmg from the previous lacerate, so long as the stack remains. This is all napkin math so bear with me:

Threat from lacerate: 285 + 0.2(2*400)*0.8 mangle time and ignoring inital dmg = 413 (would be 445 with 100% mangle time i.e. the hit/exp cap)
Swipe dmg needed with hit/expertise cap (30% crit): 413 = 0.7x + 0.3*2.26x; x = 299 (323 in actuality due to 100% mangle)
Swipe dmg needed with 20% miss, 30% crit: 413 = 0.2*0*x + 0.5x + 0.3*2.26x; x = 350

The reason the inital dmg of lacerate is being ignored is because I wanted to create a worst case scenario for lacerate so long as the stacks didn't fall. The longer lacerate ticks before being refreshed, the stronger it is for the rage/gcd spent on it. For reference sake, 400 dmg ticks for lacerate are obtainable with 2500 ap so long as you have naturalist and have mangle up. Even the current version, at an avg of 177-180 dmg per tick, is worth using, at least for me since my WWS seem to show I only land about 82-85% of my attacks.

This is also of course for bleed vulnerable mobs. On mobs like void reaver and supremus I swipe spam, but I think I remember something stating increasing the bleed and poison vulnerability of many mobs in the next patch. In any case, those are my two cents on lacerate.

Edit: mangle, lacerate, swipe 2x is the base rotation for use, but once a lacerate is missed, the best thing to do is refresh it, and once refreshed, wait 6 sec (or 7.5 if it would have taken place of mangle) before using it again, so the cycle could be altered to mangle, swipe, lacerate, swipe or mangle, swipe 2x, lacerate depending on how lacerates land.

I've seen a few people do this, and don't understand what the point is. The only thing growl does when a mob is already on you is prevents someone from pulling off you while the debuff lasts. It adds no threat. Why not save it in case some dps gets a lucky crit, or you get a string of unlucky misses and the mob is pulled off you?

My personal pulling strat goes like this:

1. Lifebloom
2. Dire Bear Form
3. Faerie Fire
4. Auto-attack
5. Mangle

The bloom on lifebloom + FF gives you a decent enough buffer that if both your auto-attack and mangle miss, the healers won't pull off you on their first heal.


EDIT: My bad, I must have misread G as Q... even when I quoted it. Sigh. Still, I see quite a few tanks (both warriors and druids) who taunt/growl before anything else on a pull.

He said pull with G, which is Faerie Fire. Growl is Q for him. Q != G.

You can do this for every boss if you're really picky about personal DPS for that fight. I don't think there's ingame addon that does that.

As I understand, it is a trick that has been purposely kept quiet so Blizzard doesn't change it. However, I've seen it floating around here a few times, so I see no harm in posting it. Perhaps they'll see this and be prompted to figure out a way to fix rage starvation for overgeared tanks in lower instances.

I suppose my main concern is the concept that the bleed is insignificant threat and that maintaining the 5 stacks is trivial. Even with the live version of lacerate it doesn't seem to be the case. Because of the hit/expertise issues with lacerate and swipe that I had mentioned before, the equivalent break point in lacerate v. swipe threat looks more like this:

Lacerate: 285 + 0.2(threat)*1.3(mangle)*.85(mangle uptime)*1.1(naturalist)*2*155(two 5-stack lacerate ticks) = 360
Swipe: 0.15*0(miss/parry/dodge) + 0.3*2.26x(crit) + 0.55x(hit) = 360 => x = 293 normal hit swipes

I do see you mention the variation of the value dependency varying with bleed vulnerability and the 5 stack maintenance, but a 293 swipe is quite a ways from a 225 dmg swipe. Against a mob with 0 armor, the ap difference is about 865, and still 752 with 4t6. The amount of lacerate dmg calculated was based on lacerate use every 6 seconds on average, and I was hoping it could lead to some more theorycraft on how to optimally use lacerate considering its upcoming buff. The move is interesting in that when spammed, only gets half a tick of bleed of threat per lacerate, but when used every 3 sec, gets one tick per lacerate, if every 6, gets 2 ticks per, every 12, gets 4 ticks per (best if hit/exp capped). My previous post was made because I don't hit 293 swipes normally while tanking, even with 4t6 (which still takes close to 2900 ap with 20% armor mitigation), and so long as lacerates are spaced by at least 6 sec, it does appear worthwhile enough to spend a gcd on that over a swipe, though I probably should have added the quick math for the live version there as well. One additional thing is that lacerate used in this way is more dmg per gcd than swipe too in case that bit of rdps is important, albeit at the cost of a raid debuff slot.

Also, I felt that it would be noteworthy to explicitly state that because mangle is on a 6 sec cd that only 3 global cds are available in between mangles, something not all new feral druids are aware of and spamming swipes/lacerates may burn more gcds than intended to maximize their mangling.

I just finished reading 57 pages on the other thread, to get redirected to this one, therefore I'm sorry if this has already been discussed before, but my eyes are already hurting

I currently have 3 pieces of T4, and I passed on the legs and chest, although I'm getting the legs next time around! My question's realated to the upcoming patch, with the introduction of the new Chest piece, Ring and Trinket, my math doesn't seem to get around to make up for the crit immune cap with defense+resilience.

Are there any other Druids out there around the same level of content that have figured this out? The only possibility I've come up with is to forget the Ring or the Trinket, meaning either get Mag's ring and keep it in order to be able to use the new trinket, or get [Scarab of Displacement] and use the new Ring.

I'm also facing this problem with [Wildfury Greatstaff], if I loose the def rating from EW, I go below the crit immunity.

Any thoughts as to what path I should follow?


Thanks for any input

Latest PTR patch gives shaman a MS effect -- are we officially useless now in PvP as feral?

Pretty much, I don't even PvP or arena on my druid any more.
Could you link the enchant please? I have only seen+15 def to chest.