This might be a silly question, but do cloaks with bonus armor (green armor) have a portion of that armor as base armor that get's multiplied by Dire Bear, Thick Hide etc.? And if they don't, wouldn't that make cloaks with such bonus armor inherently worse for tanking than those with just base armor?

The base armor of a cloak should be getting modified by the bear multipliers, while the rest of the armor will simply be added on. At least, that's how I'm interpreting the recent blue posts on our armor changes.

The base armor of an ilevel 213 cloak is 154 armor.

And that would be 324 haste rating?
Hmm, what's the calculation with Imp moonkin aura? Does anyone have the forumlae for this stuff so I can calculate it? I just can't find the numbers I need to do it on my own, and nowhere to model it.

Arg, why doesn't Rawr show haste rating instead of always converting to %, and why doesn't it allow Wrath of Air/Moonkin in the buffs. Makes modeling this difficult.

Did anyone else notice that Earthliving (Shamans' Earthliving weapon proc HoT) gets eaten by Swiftmend?

I've searched a ton in EJ and a bunch of other boards looking for the answer to my holy grail:

If I want to DPS for my guild and do as much as possible, am I better off as moonkin or feral? Basically, which does more DPS currently and which has better scaling for future content?

I'm worried that feral's wont scale just like in TBC.

I've seen WWS of ferals (amazing gear, journey's end etc.) breaking 4k but I've also seen WWS of moonkins breaking 4k in much worse gear. I've also seen one or two moonkins breaking 5k on WWS.

@Hoffmand9:

Ferals have the benefit of being able to offtank, while Moonkins don't.

If you have a lot of casters, go Feral, while if you have a lot of melee, go Moonkin, as it'll balance the raid better and reduce the waste on gear drops.
If you have no arms warrior (for Trauma) then Feral will give you 30% more bleed damage (mangle).
If you have no fury warrior (for rampage), then Feral will give your raid 5% physical crit.
If you have no elemental shaman (for Elemental Oath) then Moonkin will give your raid 5% spell crit.
If you have no retribution paladin (for Retribution Aura with Swift Retribution) then Moonkin will give your raid 3% spell haste.
If you have no shadow priest (for Misery) then Moonkin will give your raid 3% more spell hit (Improved Fairie Fire).

All these things should be taken into account - it's not an easy question to answer, which is why there isn't a straight answer. Both Feral and Moonkin are very good DPS specs now. I'm not sure which is the higher DPS - in the raids I've been in, my own dps as Moonkin has been greater than that of the ferals for the most part, but I believe I'm better geared in general so I'm really not sure.

Only happens if Riptide(!) or another of our HoTs is on the target but it will indeed consume the puny Earthliving if it is the lowest duration on the target for a pathetic <3k heal.

If imp. moonkin/swift retribution works the same way as wrath of air we'd get: where 1.05 is wrath of air, 1.03 is moonkin/ret and h is how much haste needed to reach 1s GCD on GotEM spells since it's -0.3s after haste.

Solving for h gives: or 6.7% haste.

It was posted earlier that Idol of the Raven Goddess does nothing for trees. I'm curious as to why that would be so. Does the healing not actually apply anymore to other healers? Or is it just that the amount is so low that it's a negligible buff/far eclipsed by other idols (20~ spell power)?

edit: I fail at item links apparently.

Just a guess but before 3.0 the Aura of Tree of Life was increases healing taken by a percentage of the druids spirit, so the +20 bonus would be added to that. But since 3.0 Tree of Life Aura is +% increase instead of flat healing increase.

After hearing that it doesn't work i tested in game, and healing is not increased at all by the idol. Mizarus reasoning sounds right to me.

so can some one explain to me how to build the numbers for lootranks for resto, cus its not lookin like any one here knows the numbers or have taken the time to look, i have been useing rawr but doesnt have everything in it.

A question I haven't seen yet - can you actually put Mongoose on a 2H/Staff? The tooltip for the enchant is pretty specific about it only applying to a melee weapon. I've just picked up the Naxx staff but have been in a dilemma about enchanting it.

Staves are melee weapons, yes, you can enchant Mongoose on it. Do you think people would be recommending it as the best bear enchant otherwise?

I've been reading alot of theorycrafter's work and i still can't figure out where i go wrong...


Its been written all over: for Feral tanks ~41.666667 agility = 1% dodge or 1 agility = ~0.0235% dodge
When i look at my druid i only get about 0.0188% dodge per 1 agility. I'm aware of the dodge cap which is around 50% but my own dodge is only at around 35%.


Is there something I'm missing? Do i fail at simple math? I can't figure out why I'm getting alot less dodge from agility than the theorycrafter claim i should get.

If Rawr doesn't have everything in it, just add the items yourself. Tools menu -> Edit Items -> Add Items button. Type in the wowhead itemid.

It seems to me that Leatherworking and Jewelcrafting are currently the two best professions for Feral tanking. Leatherworking gives 90 Stam in place of 15 expertise, Jewelcrafting is worth at least 51 Stam, BS and Enchanting are worth 48 Stam each. BS and JC can emphasise other tanking stats by using different gems. This assumes rare gems, epic gems will improve BS and weaken JC. Is this summary roughly correct?

I've tested this and it just requires Earthliving to be on the target.

As a lover of feral druid tanking, I have a few questions I'd like to throw out to improve myself as a tank. I am by far the 'best' there is, and while I hope these questions are appropriate to ask, feel free to let me know if these dont belong in the forums here. This is my first post so it might be a bit lengthy and I am going to repost in the sticky for general questions as this might be an inappropriate place to reply.

As WotLK has been out for several weeks now, I have a lot of speculation as to what is the most viable, efficent tank build for druids.

You have your druids who go 2/2 in Primal Precision, 2/2 in Brutal Impact...You have your druids who go down to 2/2 Master Shifter; some go into Intensity, Omen, Naturalist. Some only put 5/5 Furor and tell the Resto tree to buzz off and go ape nuts in Feral everywhere.

What *is* the best Feral tanking spec? Opinions are welcome to me, but would prefer reasoning as to why you support your 'best spec' opinion.
All the specs I have seen each have great benefits to them. The master shift for more damage, naturalist has more damage (which one would believe helps increase threat), Intensity is nice, but do we really need that extra rage? In trash pulls it seems like I never have enough rage unless I'm chain pulling with rage saved up. Even with !cancelform and enrage. I tend to use Maul Mangle a lot to keep up with my heavy hitting dps, but is the talent points worth it and perhaps its a matter of the gear I choose has more damage reduction than necesary for what it is. ( I.E Heroic gear vs Raid gear... too much armor can be a bad thing in heroic trash). Is Primal Precision worth the 2 points? So far I have found a nice bit of gear (blues, epics and the trinket that has 109 AP and chance to proc 200+ expertise rating), therefore should one really waste 2 points for 10 expertise rating? Improved bash - is it worth 2 points? Yeah longer bash *is* nice, and cooldown reduction is nice, but is there something points can be better spent on. I feel I'm starting to beat a dead horde....horse...on this subject, but I think the general point was made.


Next...What are reasonable ways to avoid these "mistakes:"
Personally, my two biggest mistakes in druid tanking is "Skull target" is usually getting pounded and people catch up very fast on threat - is this just the way it is because dps arent really paying attention, or do most druids have this issue, but by the time they get to "X" (2nd target) they have 30K threat already and its smooth sailing? My "rotation" consists of FFF, DR if its several targets, otherwise I find it a waste of initial rage, Mangle, Lacerate x 3, and include maul when rage is 50 or higher.

2nd problem for me - For those who have wrath and have tried tanking (i.e Violet Hold or Nexus) - what do you do when the mobs that are blinking all over the place just generally doing whatever they want, and your DPS just randomly splits dps and targets different mobs? You've used CRoar, and swiping, but the DPSR already has more threat and continues splitting dps and generally, growl is every 8 seconds, so you still have 2 mobs doing whatever they want.... what is the way to cut down on this? I really never have too much of a problem keeping Melee mobs *ever,* but casters always seem to give me a problem - is it coordination, is it lack of skill or is this something that most druids find themselves struggling w/ as a tank without concecration or thunderclap? Personally if any one dps has a mob of any kind attacking them, I feel like I'm not doing MY job, especially if they die.., but if you're AOE is on CD, the mobs are so spread out they dont come into your swipe, and two mobs are on two different DPS'rs how in the world do you cut this down? Bash one, mangle/ lacerate the other hoping for threat? It seems nearly impossible if you figure there is still another mob (or more in some cases) attacking you and one person is still tearing him down, so in essence, you should be using Mangle/Lacerate on that mob because swipe isnt going to do enough threat (when the dps is split like that from the start) to keep them all on you - this is assuming Beserker is down, for the record. Simply put when there are a ton of spread out casters and NO CC, how do druids with Beserker on CD and mobs too far out of range for a good hearty swipe (*and dps who go ballsout one second into the pull), keep them off of the DPS'rs (who are no doubt aoeing!)?

Last but not least, I did notice some posting with "Numbers" but as I'm mathmatically challenged, I do kind of need a idiots version:
At the end of BC, druids with 19-21k HP, 35k Armor, 50%+ dodge with 3k+ AP were the bomb diggity (on my server). These numbers are an approximation... easy to heal, could withstand Supremus bolts, decent threat, etc. But with the nerfage of Agi to dodge, the introduction to Expertise-o-rama, off the charts amount of HP, what general starting stats would a feral druid want to go into say Naxx, and Heroic Nax? My dodge seems horredous (sp*) right now, but I have 30 K HP, around 231 Expertise with 88 hit, and 23-24K Armor - this is with MotW only not using Primal Precision, or trinket procs. I was really hesitant to start tanking heroics the day I turned 80 yet I still had decent stats from my new blues and old epics and so far I have been able to tank a lot of stuff with a decent pally healer behind me.

I think this sums up my questions for now. Basically looking for some decent feedback with factional reasoning behind it. This is kind of a last resort posting because I have looked thru the forums here, and else where trying to get answers with facts versus answers based on opinions that are generally wrong, and have no real reasoning behind them. Again, I apologize if this is somewhere else and I overlooked it. Thanks.

Taloren, as far as format goes for your post, I would have broken it up into several posts.

1 post in Tanking talent build for your Feral Spec questions.

1 post here regarding your "mistakes"

1 post in http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t36963-f...aid_tank_gear/ for your gearing questions.

I'd also avoid posting in the Feral Questions? thread, as I believe we should either have 1 thread for all spec (our current situation), or 3 different threads stickied for SQ/SA on the various roles we play.


As far as specs go, I tank with the spec you have shown in your armory. I'd be happy to answer your questions via private message about exactly why I chose every talent point, but I'm trying to stick to the thread intentions which is to give a simple answer. Your talent build (0/60/11) focuses on mitigation with most of the dps talents which gives you flexibility to dps at about 90% of the dps a cat spec would give you.

When I'm rage limited starting a pull, I always start with FFF, then mangle the first target if I have enough rage. If not, I wait a second for the other mobs to get there and use swipe. This is important because you never want your healer to have aggro. Normally once the mobs reach me, I'll have enough rage to do whatever I want, so I use swipe for every GCD and maul as well. With the maul glyph, you should have nice aggro on 2 targets, and decent aggro on the rest. If you want to maximize your threat on other targets, you should change targets but realize you may need to move around some as you may not always be in melee range of your target. If that's the case, you will be generating no threat as your swipe and maul target will be out of range.

To answer your second question, in VH I usually try to swipe after about 10 seconds so that I catch any mobs that come out of the portal. I'm trying to think of a situation in Nexus where it's difficult to control mobs. The only cases I can think of are the non elite lashers and the non elite ghosts near the warp rift boss. Both of which have very few hit points which shouldn't be a problem.

I'd recommend going to the link above for all your gearing questions. There are some really nice guides there for gearing for Naxx and Heroics.

WoW-Guru, diminishing returns isn't something that only cuts in when you get close to 50%, it just accelerates in diminution (awful terminology - pardon me) the higher it is. In practice, no matter how low your dodge from non-base stats and talents is, you will never actually get the dodge-per-agi that is listed in the table post-DR since no matter how little, it will be reduced by the formula. At 35% dodge, 10% of which is from talents, I assume, you are already being quite significantly affected.

Just a quick question. Most feral tanks I've seen both in game and on armory seem to stack stam on everything possible. Normally I would say they're doing it wrong, but I've literally only seen one druid with agil gems so far. So, my question is, is stacking stam at all more beneficial than gemming/enchanting for agility when you have enough health to survive the mob's burst? I realize it helps reduce overheal, but that seems more dependent on the healer than anything.