Sevyvia - one of the sources you did not search were the Feral Bear and Feral Druid Megathread that are locked down below in this forum. All your rotation questions should be answered there. Somewhere in this forum is also an updated list of threat values.

Assume we have a cloak with 100 base armor + 400 extra green armor. Currently, all 500 of this gets multiplied with the bear armor.

When the change goes through (is it confirmed for 3.04?), you'll get: 100 x bear armor multiplier (which will be a different number than it is now) + 400.

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. Thanks.

Taloren:

There aren't a ton of things that a bear absolutely must have for tanking. I did a post on it, but here's the basics that all bears must have:
Ferocity (5 points)
Thick Hide (3 points)
Savage Fury (2 points)
Survival Instincts (1 point)
Feral Swiftness (2 points)
Feral Charge (1 point)
Predatory Strikes (3 points)
Heart of the Wild (5 points)
Natural Reaction (3 points)
Survival of the Fittest (3 points)
Leader of the Pack (1 point)
Protector of the Pack (3 points)
Mangle (1 point)

After that I recommend taking feral instinct (3), sharpened claws(3), and primal precision(2) to get you to 41 points total (you need to take these to get to the mangle). From there, it's a matter of utility vs. bear damage vs. cat dps.

For a pure raiding spec, I would recommend a 0/60/11 spec. It gets 3/3 infected wounds and 3/5 feral aggression. Infected wounds may be irrelevant depending on the fight (it is overriden by thunderclap and other similar slowing abilities) but it is certainly something to be considered if your group does not have a similar ability. Same with feral aggression; if your group does not have imp demo shout up, you may need to do this. (assuming mobs require 3 points of improved debuffing to remove their AP; if they do not, skip this). You can swap 2 points from furor to improved mark of the wild, since you can simply recast bear form until getting your 10 rage.

I do not like natural shapeshifter/master shapeshifter, as it's a small amount of DPS gained for a lot of talent points. Brutal Impact is okay but only just; it doesn't replace needing a class with a reliable interrupt. Primal Tenacity is weak. Intensity is never needed and is only vaguely nice to have. Shredding attacks, predatory instincts and king of the jungle are all effectively cat talents.

First off, make sure you have the maul glyph. Second, if there are more than two targets chances are you want to mangle, swipex2, and maul regardless of rage.

I seemed to have stumbled across some inconsistencies in the way our bleeds (Rake and Lacerate) work when applying from the front of a mob. I noticed this while leveling but forgot about it until recently and tested it on both 80 and Boss Training Dummies without gear and 2/2 Primal Precision. These dummies have block values of 67 and 54, respectively, from my tests. This occurs on non-training dummy mobs as well.

Rake: Average initial hit of 259

After 200 applications I had a 5% full block rate which seemed puzzling that the initial hit would have been more than the dummies can block for. Furthermore, a fully blocked Rake does not apply the DoT bleed damage. However, if Lacerate is fully blocked the DoT will be applied.

I will do some more tests tonight but I was wondering if anyone else observed this happening or has an explanation.

I started writing this post about 6 hours or so ago in reply to Taloren's post but ten I got busy at work. I hope it is still relevant when I submit it

Haha, mistype?

Anyway, I'm no math pro or anything, but I can give you what I have learned from experiance. Here is my build: WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Druid -> Talent Calculator

Mostly for tanking but I have shredding attacks incase I need to dps or pvp.

I personally do not use demo roar on trash pulls as an opener because you're likely to lose aggro on an off target mob especially if you get a couple of dodges and do not have rage for a swipe. I pull with FFF on the main target then swipe once, maul once (maul glyph is so totally awesome for trash tanking it's not even funny), swipe a couple more times, then demo roar as you should now have plenty of rage to spam swipe and maul with mangles in between. I rarely use lacerate at all on trash pulls because it is a single target threat and only serves to increase my maul damage on one target. IMO on trash pulls stick to swipe/maul/mangle and maybe a demo roar to reduce incoming damage. On bosses I do keep lacerate up at all times but I do not make it a point to stack up to five before swipe spamming, I just make sure to renew lacerate before it falls off.

As far as DPS splitting up and all that junk the way I take care of it is caster/ranged mobs are always killed first
so I will always target them first for threat. If there is more than one caster/ranged mob then get a maul/mangle on the first target and then maybe FFF the other ranged mob. Once the first ranged mob is dead feral charge the 2nd one and keep going, all the while you should be swiping/mauling to keep aggro on whatever melee mobs you have on you. Melee mobs should almost always die last unless they do something really nasty that increases their priority. If your DPS is not targeting the ranged/caster mobs first then say something about it, if they keep doing it then let them die. It isn't your job as a tank to make up for their idiocy, it is their job as a dps to kill what you're tanking.

And finally regarding your stats, your armor seems incredibly low. I think I have close to that much armor in my dps gear and my dps gear is pretty bad. I am in a smaller guild and we started in naxx 10-man this week and I have 29197 armor, 23435 health, and 30% dodge in my tanking gear which is still mostly level 70 gear.

Is that Darkmoon fairy card for Inscriptions only? (I'll reroll Inscription for sure !)

As a hated feral DPS this item looks really really good for me! a base of ~200 AP, and a ~600 AP proc is just... amazing!

No, Scribes can make the individual cards, but anyone can assemble the deck and turnin the quest to get the trinket.

Maybe If i go wild on str gems?

Still a 300 agi proc is awsome (better then a 2x mongoose!)

Has anyone noticed weird behaviour when it comes to strength, ap (and possibly blessing of kings) in the newest Rawr. Mainly, under relative stat values str is listed as 2xap, regardless of whether BoK is ticked or not. Certainly str should be a bit stronger than that?

Unsure if this behavior was identical in previous Rawr versions, only noticed it for the first time yesterday at least.

Guess this is the place to ask.

Got [Keystone Great-Ring], but what to aim for the 2nd?

Ive got "access" to Naxxramas Normal right now.

Please come with suggestions