VĂ ndication

This is the spec that i use. on my druid for tanking. I really didn't see the point in getting primal precistion as i gather enough exp with talents. Also my point for not getting king of the jungle is i rarely leave bearform.. Also i feel that 4% more damage/threat out weighs 15% more damage over 1 minute. 60/15% = +4% damage/min only when used, while Master Shapeshifter give 4% extra damage/threat overall without having to use a GCD on it. I might be wrong though so i'm open to suggestions.

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Druid -> Talent Calculator

 

kalbear

Unless you're parry capped, primal precision is far better than almost any other talent for TPS or DPS. Without knowing what your char is though, it's hard to say what your expertise is at. 214 rating is what's required to get past the dodge cap (assuming a 6.5% dodge rate), and you'll need a whopping 494 rating to get past the parry cap.

 

scient

I would personally take Primal Precision over iLoTP anytime, expertise = TPS/DPS as the previous poster said.
And imho LoTP healing is just so minor that it doesnt matter in raids, i see it only useful as sologrinding (less shifting and healing :P)

 

Abranor

Here is my thought on an OT/DPS build. I have recently changed guilds and in that change I've gone from being a MT to tanking trash and some boss adds in Heroic Naxx. We have a Paly who serves up the majority of this duty so I'm really a glorified trash tanker and hateful soaker now.

My thoughts are to keep most of the major damage reducers but pick up SA, PI, and Master SS to increase my dps potential when I'm in cat. We have 2 arms warriors for Trauma. Any holes you see or reasons to go other ways? I think it's on target for what I want to be able to do and will provide a nice damage boost on trash tanking too.


Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

kalbear

Primal Precision is, once again, a really huge boost to TPS/DPS if you don't already have it maxed. It's less critical for cats but you still need a fair amount of expertise rating (216) to get to the cap. If you're not near the cap points in expertise for cat, it's going to be a very big win. Each point is essentially 1.25% more DPS until you're capped; only things like OoC come close to that level of efficiency. And of course it's far better for bear TPS.

 

Boevis

I don't know why so many Druids discount iLotP so readily. This past raid, it accounted for 7.8% of the total healing done on WWS, and I sat for a couple fights including 2 Malygos attempts. Even if you assume 66% overheal compared to 45% from other healing sources that's still 3.9% of the effective healing is coming from me spending 2 talent points and simply being there.

I used to have a build identical to Demik's for tanking, but I started running into the same thing as in Sunwell and BT, Druids are still the best suited for DPSing with a tank spec and gear, and Tanking with a DPS spec and gear, and there's very few fights in Naxx where even as the 2nd Tank I'm not in catform at some point and my DPS was abysmal. Shapeshifter really just seemed like a waste of points in comparison to KotJ and iLotP when looking at the numbers: 3.9% of total raid effective healing, 2 more energy per second (60 energy every 30 sec), and 2.5% more damage done in bear (15% for 10 sec every min) compared to 4% more damage in bear.

KotJ is better than Shapeshifter for catform by 250 DPS in Rawr for me, and I'm more than willing to take a 1.5% dps hit in bearform to do 4% of the raid healing. Maybe my guild's healers aren't as amazing as yours, but iLotP saves me, it saves rogues, it saves hunters and their pets. When doing 8 man Naxx, I was once at 4k health just before a Doom with Loatheb in the teens, if not for a iLotP heal in the window before hand, yeah, that would have been a wipe. This conversation has been had before, and there's thousands of testimonials from Hellfire Ramparts through Illidan to now, iLotP saves raids

 

Abranor

I was being greedy, I wanted that 4% crit...

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Better?

 

kalbear

That extra one point in imp mangle is the tough one for me as well. Imp mangle for bear is either 0 or 3 points; anything less than three may as well be zero. It's better for cats, but not significantly, and especially not if you can either count on trauma or are doing a primarily shredding rotation. Still, it's at least -some- dps increase.

That's really the big problem. While NS/MS costs 5 points to get 4% crit and primal precision costs 2 to get 2.5% more hits, there's nothing to spend those extra 3 points on, really. The best bet might be to dump a couple from R&T; while your bear threat will take a slight hit, it should be offset by doing more mangles. We'd be looking at a loss of 8%*60% or about 5% damage compared to roughly 4% threat. That might be good, and it helps a lot more for cat.

Still, not ideal.

 

Gater25

How's it goin man. Read your post and checked out your spec's.. One thing i wouldnt go for infected wounds as to where it doesnt cause anymore threat then normal.. Putting those points elsewhere would be more useful than having the infected wounds. As to pulling threat, it shouldnt be a issue. In my tank gear/spec i round about 6.5k tps... and that is mostly acquired by dealing an incredible ammount of damage. spamming maul/mangle demo roar. Dont worry about naxx imo druids are easiest tanks.. 3 button tanks easy to hold ag on most targets and i have my ot's have issues fighting for ag against me. as to defense cap there is none with 3/3 survival of the fittest makes us uncritable/crushable with no +def gear/gems/enchants. Enjoy tanking as a druid. i always say that tanking as a druid is like being a dps that holds ag. Great fun.

Nice spec.. only thing i have issues with is the infected wounds.. seems to me that is more of a PvP over a PvE talent.. May just be me but id rather put the 3 points into intensity.. I prefer to start a fight with 30 rage.. more rage off start = higher ag to begin with. just imo


I have to agree with you on some points. But going 3/3 for imp mangle is imo a good thing to have. Reduced cooldown on mangle means you get to use it more often. Say you are taning 2-3 mobs... you will have a faster chance of hitting all 3 wiht a mangle which causes your maul to hit for more and with glyph of maul causing it to hit an additional target makes it easy to hold ag on 2-3 mobs allowing aoe to burn them down. I'm not claiming to be the best at druid tanking but i have yet to have an issue with dps pulling agro and on patchwerk while tanking being able to make it to the top 4-5 on the dps chart isnt bad for a tank. I build my spec for max damage output.. because for us druids damage = threat. and the primal precision is more of a cat build spec rather than bear spec imo.. there are other things that will benafit you more with those 2 points.. such as throwing them in imp mangle.

completely agree with you there.. iLotp is crucial for druid tanks.. The healing as miniscule as it may seem every little bit helps. i cant tell you how many times i would have died if i didnt see the +1534 (Imp Leader of the Pack) pop up on my screen.

gonna disagree with ya there.. as a druid tank i dont have primal precision and i pull over 6k tps and the iLoTP is more benaficial imo.

 

◊ Abradix

No. Primal Precision is very much a bear talent, it's fantastic value per points for both threat and survivability. I do agree on Infected Wounds, unless you run without Death Knights there really isn't a very good reason to have it from a raid perspective, and not taking it allows you to get all the bear talents including master shapeshifter, which is fairly decent for our damage output in bear although expensive in points.

 

Melthu

Infected wounds is necessary in any serious tanking build unless you can depend on someone else to reliably provide a 20% attack speed debuff. The damage reduction per talent point that it provides on standard bosses blows every other talent out of the water.

Also, you seem to be confused about Rend and Tear. It increases damage from Maul on targets that are bleeding, not targets with a Mangle/Trauma debuff.

 

kalbear

Mangle doesn't cause your maul to hit for more. Lacerate does. And it's far more threat to swipe three times on three mobs (with Maul queued up) than it is to mangle one, then swipe a couple times, then mangle another. Swipe by itself is becoming fairly comparable to mangle in threat, and that's a single target. Unless you're specifically burning something down you should never mangle when tanking multiple mobs, save when you've berserked.

Infected Wounds works on every raid boss in WotLK, as far as I know. All testing has shown it works on everyone. There are enough times where I'm the only one tanking a mob or there aren't warriors around to tclap (10-mans spring to mind, as do heroics), that the 20% loss of physical damage is really a big deal. True, it doesn't cause any more threat, but threat so far, aside from perhaps one fight, is a tiny concern. As is damage. A good example is Sartharion; there's very little likelihood that a tclap will be up on Sartharion while adds are up. Having infected wounds up then is critical to survive the bursts he can do when he starts getting his damage buffs.

 

red

Honestly I don't think there are that many options or talents to play with for an optimal druid spec. In fact, I really only see 3 spare points.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
And the points are almost always best spent in Infected Wounds, though it depends on your raid setup etc. Imp Mangle is probably the next weakest talent, and will be slightly less useful next patch. I'd still take it over the master shapeshifting garbage though.

I truly don't understand people going for threat over mitigation. On what encounters are you having threat issues that would be best solved by dropping mitigation talents? At worst, just swap in a piece of gear that is slightly more geared toward threat (esp. hit rating). I also don't understand people going for worse threat talents over better ones. I'm just baffled.

 

◊ Abradix

King of the Jungle is by no means a bear talent, so you have 6 spare talents, which you can put into Natural Shapeshifter. Not taking Infected Wounds is NOT "dropping migitation", because any good DK you bring will keep Icy touch up, and with Frost DW being the best DPS spec it will be just as good as our Infected Wounds. In this scenario, Infected Wounds is completely wasted, so again, in a pure raid setting IW is by no means a mandatory talent.

 

red

Infected Wounds is not in that build, and I specifically mentioned that they were extra points. You're right about King of the Jungle.

 

Aldhissla

I agree that IW is not always a mandatory talent, but it certainly has it's uses. Making assumptions about whether or not a Death Knight of a specific spec is present in a raid is probably not wise. Also keep in mind that some boss fights require mobs which hit pretty hard to be offtanked. For example: you are tanking Sarth + 3 and no one else can keep up icy touch / thunderclap on the boss while they are off dealing with drakes etc?

 

kalbear

I'd say it this way: IW is absolutely a mandatory talent if for whatever reason your role requires you to tank mobs that will not have tclap/judgments/icy touch on them while you're tanking them. If this is not the case, it is an optional and fairly weak talent that's really only useful for heroics.

 

matrixsage

I play a Druid-off in 10 man Naxx right now and i find that sometimes dpsing some events in NAXX in bear spec which doesn't require an off tank is a waste of dps. so i shuffled some points around for this

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

i think the strategy is to get 2 piece T6 for the -6 mangle energy so i can still dps those events and not get improve shred. Im required for the IW so this is the best i could do. Anyone have any suggestions on how i can maybe get more out of it by adjusting for KOTJ as well?

 

scient

Bottom line is that your spec should depend on your skills, your gear and the performance of your group/raid, also depending on what you are doing the most (heroics, 10mans, 25mans).

I personally started out with full mitigation talents and iLotp for running heroics, had IW and all the stun/aoe damage reductions. When i got a bit more geared, i dropped the aoe damage stuff and went for more TPS. And now MTing 25man raids im going for allout DPS/TPS with the exception of IW (im being polite towards my friend warrior MT in our guild so he wouldnt have to TC all the time :P). And as our healers are good in 10mans and 25mans, i see no need for iLotp tbh. Havent had a situation yet where it would really save me.

I do agree that on one tank bosses i usually do DPS (as i do more DPS than a prot warrior), it would be nice to have stuff like Kotj and other DPS talents. But at the same time im probably around in the middle of the meters while dps-ing in tank spec. Noting much to worry about.

Anyhow with proper gear and proper talents it feels nice to pull off around 3k DPS on patchwerk in 25man while OTing

To matrixsage:
Remove PI, iLotp and move those points into Natural Shapeshifter + Master Shapeshifter. Thats an instant 4% more crit in cat = more CPs = more DPS imho. Thats what i would do.

 

Inaiwae

About IW: this talent is either mandatory or useless depending on raid composition and the boss in question. In my opinion typical druid tank cannot guarantee that attack slow debuff from other sources will be always available. Sarth3D MT, KT adds tank, 4h come on my mind as encounters where you can have problems even if other tanks are available in the raid. When you run 10mans, the chances there wont be a debuffer for your target is quite real on all bosses. So if you are specialized purely on 25mans, have always a debuffer available and do not MT sartharion, you can skip it quite safely. But i think most of us do not fall into this category.

 

Marena

I just looked over all your pure tanking build suggestions and I wonder why everybody ignores Feral Aggression. Actually it lowers all incoming physical damage, so why not putting some points in it? As Inaiwae already mentioned there are lots of situations where other debuffers are not available and why not building a spec for this "worst case scenario"? So to my mind there should be no doubts of taking talents like Infected Wounds or Feral Aggression and you do not have any real spare points left.
My optimal tanking build would look like this:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Artemas

If I only put 2/3 in Improved Mangle, will I lose on quite a bit of TPS? If someone can provide math I would greatly appreciate it.

I am in full 25-man tanking gear and as of recent, I can't seem to keep up with Prot Pally/Prot Warrior single target TPS.

 

• jonny

I always assumed that Imp Mangle was an all or nothing thing for bears as unless you reduce the cool down by a full GCD you can't use it anymore frequently.

 

scient

I personally see it as a waste of prescious talents. It only reduces physical damage, in which druids are "kings" anyhow.
Didnt see it nessecary during gearing up in heroics and seems even more useless now with better gear. Actually im shouting only on bosses like Maexxna and Patchwerk as everywhere else that extra incoming damage = more rage to dump = more TPS = more DPS. And the healers wont even notice the difference

 

Marena

Actually I didn't notice any problems in aggro so far. After 10 seconds of a fight you should constantly have enough rage for DPS. So shouting just makes it easier for your healers.
Furthermore, in bossfights like Sartharion +3 Drakes aggro is just no problem..It's all about surviving there. Although most of the damage is fire damage, why not reducing his physical damage?
And I don't really understand your point about druids beeing "kings" at avoiding physical damage. That's no good reason not to avoid even more damage.
Anyway, which other talents are missing? Ok, you can spent 2 more points into imp. mangle and just 3/5 into FA. But every other talent would be even more wasted.