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At the risk of being unmercifully mocked, I have some simple and stupid questions about Bear-tank Talents that have thus far defied my [search] button.

I expect this is because they are so stupid and simple that the answer is assumed amongst you super-raiders. I have been playing for some years as hunter and resto druid (light raiding on both), but recently decided to build up a tank set and try my hand at feral bear.

So far it has been fun, but questions/observations follow:

Berzerk : For a bear tank.. this seems rather useless. Obviously situational in that it lets you eat fear, and yeah dps/threat is outstanding but on a heroic boss it doesn't matter, and in raids the fights are long enough that berzerk can hardly be meant to maintain a threat lead. What am I missing?

Improved leader of the Pack: Fabulous solo and PvP talent but PvE for beartank? 100% useless as far as I can tell, can anyone tell me the err of my ways?

Infected Wounds: I guess this was recently nerfed? I was told by my guild class-leader that its now a PvP talent only, but that doesn't seem right. Attack rate mitigation (perhaps not much since I assume it only affects swing-timer, but still, some) and more importantly- with glyphed maul, there is an excellent chance that my off-targets are wounded before the main target has been burned down, if dps switches too fast I have an extra step or two to taunt it as it walks slows away. Is it really a waste?

Master Shapeshifter: yes its 5 points eaten up for a mere 2% dps increase, but based on the above, I really don't have anywhere else to put them that will increase threat/dps/mitigation. Yet I have read many places that its a fool's errand to put points here.. ?

Omen of Clarity: yeah the occasional 0-cost maul is nice, but... doesn't seem to come up. With the other rage-generating powers I am never starveed on a bossfight, single-target or (better yet!) adds. This situation can only be more so in raids where bosses hit for the fence. I know its only one point easily spent (like berzerk) but 0 benefit is 0 benefit.

I have not seen this discussed anywhere but I have taken 2/2 improved mark of the wild and 3/5 furor. In a raid this doesn't matter since there will be a resto druid that has it, but in a 5-man I am often the only druid, and that 2% is very nice. In exchange for this I occasionally have to power-shift at the start of a fight to get the +10 rage.. big fat hairy deal.. again am I doing something stupid?

Too much for one post? appologies. And if there is a good discussion of talents (that isn't "get this and don't ask why") please direct me!

Oh and having said all that, this is my current build: The World of Warcraft Armory


-Shiorin (a dps tired of begging for groups.. 'heal/tank LFG' gets me into a pug faster than it takes to type)

The questions don't sound too stupid to me. Here's my take on them:

* Berserk - I wouldn't say this is one of my more important talents, but I use it for when I want to quickly ramp up the threat.

* ILotP - Meh. I may just be emotionally attached to this talent, but I figure that something that heals everyone (even if only a little) has some value.

* Infected Wounds - I consider this a must-have talent, mainly because I think tanks should always bring their own debuffs whenever possible. Particularly when you are off-tanking, there is no guarantee that you'll have this otherwise.

* Master Shapeshifter - I don't have this with my bear spec.

* Omen of Clarity - I've always considered this a must-have and I still find it useful. Now that I have Maul macro'd to all my other attacks, I still find myself occassionally low on rage on low-rate fights. Every little bit helps.

It's all about the fight, really. Stuff like Vezax normal mode it's not that important because it only heals yourself. But on, say, Steelbreaker hard-mode, you can do >2k heal/sec with just 2 talent points (Wow Web Stats), because the overheal will be in the order of 5%. It's not as overpowered as judgement of light, but still very useful.

I've been looking into refining my Restoration build. It currently sits at 14/0/57 But when I ask rawr to optimize it for me I get a build like 23/0/48 (for Lunar Guidance). Now I'm wondering is this the way to go?

If I was you I would take one point from Tranquil Spirit and put it into Nature's Swiftness. Maybe it's just me but I tend to use it quite often. Getting Lunar Guidance would be crazy considering we don't need the increased mana regen and the points in the resto tree you would lose.

I have been thinking about this but I've yet to see the proper moment for me to use this. As I'm usually assigned to raid healing, the worst dips in health are solved by throwing a swiftmend. (we roll with 2 resto druids)

.. on a single target. This has never been a problem for me, thats mostly because I rarely run with well geared (5k+) dps. but even if I was, raid bossfights last minutes, and high-dps classes are used to waiting a second or two for the tank to get a good aggro lead. This is assuming you run with no rogues or hunters for tricks/misdirect which I'd imagine renders single-target aggro-rampup moot

What I'm getting is that a toptier talent is barely worth the point spent on it.

Does it? We're talking about 2 points here spent on a teeny heal every 6 seconds. In a 5-man heroic, any all-party damage is goign to be handled by the healer (who will heal way way more than IloTP in a much shorter time) and in a raid there will be a healer who's only job is to keep non-tanks alive.

To re-iterate, PvP and solo play, this talent is da bomb, but in a Tank build It just seems like a point-sink on a power that sounds cool, but isn't.

So you are only running low on rage during small trash fights where it doesn't matter? That is my experience as well; when I need rage I have it. When I need to conserve and lay off the maul once or twice I do. Again we are talking talent points, the way i view them is they should be spent on things you cannot get any other way.

Of course its only one point, but just wanted to try and figure out how it lies in the main-tank lay of things, and it seems more and more like its useless.

Ah but its not 2 points, its 5. You have to get the 3/3 natural shapeshifter to get this, a talent that is of 0 value to a non-PvP player (or at least a tank, I imagine a power-shifting kitty finds this useful) So its quite an investment for that 4%, my point is I cannot find anywhere else to put those 5 points that makes more sense.

I keep hearing "those points could be better spent" but its parroted from 'me-too' druids who are just told that by successful raiders and don't understand why. I want to know why, and I want to know why because I am questioning that popular wisdom.

Not really. Shifting no longer adds energy, so there's no benefit to shifting. Raid buffed I've never run low on mana even in fights where I shift to remove roots, and doubt I ever will.

Imp Leader of the Pack is worth it unless some other druid has it; for two talent points, you provide a situational, but useful, "hot" on the melee and hunters, for free, with no aggro issues and no healer attention needed.

As far as "better" talents points: check Rawr's talent point value sheet for relative threat. Master Shapeshifter is one of many talents that you might take after you're done with the core tanking talents; by adding no utility and costing 5 talent points, it's one of the least exciting. For a serious tank, I'd recommend getting a raid utility talent like 5/5 Feral Aggression (15% off boss melee damage, more in some scenarios) before spending 5 talent points for a 4% threat boost. If your raid comp covers every shared buff completely, then you're right that you may as well pick up the low-utility talents.

Shiorin, here are my thoughts:

Berserk does have advantages in small situations as a fear break, and it does increase significantly snap threat and damage on a single target over a small amount of time. But it isn't great or highly useful, and there are plenty of fights as a bear where I simply don't end up using it at all in raid contexts. I do end up using it a lot in general contexts though, such as dailies or soloing older content. But it probably could be cut for something else if you wanted to. I just don't see anything else worth 1 point.

Imp LotP, as others have stated, should be covered by one person in your raid more likely than not, and bears are a good choice for it. There are enough fights where raid damage is high and healing is hard that any amount of healing, even small amounts, is worth it. Hodir hard mode, Thorim, Vezax hard, Yogg, Mimiron, Auriaya...all benefit from this.

Infected Wounds is the worst of the slowing abilities from tanks. All tanks have a slowing ability (or at least have the potential to), so if you have another tank that can put this up, this is superfluous. That being said, if you will ever be tanking something without support from another tank, it is a huge benefit to damage intake. I didn't have it for a long time until I started tanking Sarth3D. When that happened it was important to have it. I've kept it ever since. The important part isn't the slowing of movement (which rarely affects bosses) but the 20% attack speed reduction.

Master Shapeshifter is tough. It's 5 points for 4% more damage, which roughly equates to 4% more threat. It's not quite as good, point for point, as 3 points in improved mangle - but overall it does more and helps more with aoe damage. There are quite a few situational points to spend though, and the main argument against MS is simply that bears threat is pretty great without anything else and doesn't need boosts.

Omen of Clarity is not particularly good for bears. However, it's much like berserk - it's hard to find a better use of 1 point, and it helps considerably when you have to go to cat.

The standard spec nowadays goes with 2/2 imp motw and 3/5 furor, with shifting to generate rage. Now that you will automatically get 20 rage when you enrage, it's not as big a deal.

I wrote a somewhat outdated FAQ for bears here that might help some:
ThinkTank: [Druid] Bear FAQ for 3.1

It's in the first post in FeralbyNight (Cat & Bear simulation tool) - you just weren't looking hard enough.