Feral Tanking Discussion - Page 51

ghooge · 02/03/10, 9:43 AM

FFF generates more threat than Swipe and it's free.

You'll find having FFF in your rotation generates significantly more threat than not. It's also easier on your rage pool, which is especially helpful on bosses that are not constantly hitting you.

Outside of the initial pull and stacking of Lacerate, my rotation looks like this..

Mangle, FFF, X, Swipe

If Lacerate is going to fall, X = Lacerate
If Demo roar is going to fall, X = Demo Roar
Else, X = Swipe

Barlow · 02/03/10, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by Vaccine

Also check your rogues aren't using a lazy MT Tricks macro. I was having odd threat issues and realised the MT was still getting tricks of the trade when I was the one tanking.

That actually was the first thing I was thinking about. Since T10 pretty much EVERY Rogue uses TotT on CD. And because of this a lot more of us have Tricks glyphed to 10 Seconds.

Because of the mechanics of Tricks of the Trade this is not simply a "Macro" Problem - Tank A has aggro, I trick him and now Tank B taunts. Tricks is still on Tank A and this can easily lead to Tank A regaining aggro.

My Advice would be: Announce a taunt early or tell your rogues to trick a DD who can handle the additional aggro after the pull.

Leafkiller · 02/03/10, 2:07 PM

Most fights are only aggro sensitive at the start. I would expect ToTs to be distributed to other DPSers as soon as the threat ceiling is high enough that a string of crits will not jump past the 110% mark. Our rogues typically ToT each other since they can use vanish for a threat dump if needed. This is especially true on tauntable bosses where each tank can save threat generating cooldowns for use when they are MTing. The threat ceilings on those fights should be well out of reach of the DPSers. Also, most tanks probably know to do something for a few seconds after having the mob taunted off to make sure their threat level drops below the new tank (Festergut is a great example of this - where the debuff increases tank dps - and a bear can pop into cat form to generate less TPS and more DPS).

Tanks should only be the continuing target of ToTs on fights where there is a mechanic that causes DPSers to generate more TPS than the tank (fights like Hodir and General Vezax are good examples) - and those are generally fights with either taunt immune bosses or no required tank switching. Continued lazy taunting on the tanks on a taunt fight will most often be a dps loss to the raid.

Danen3 · 02/03/10, 10:19 PM

Originally Posted by ghooge

FFF generates more threat than Swipe and it's free.

You'll find having FFF in your rotation generates significantly more threat than not. It's also easier on your rage pool, which is especially helpful on bosses that are not constantly hitting you.

Outside of the initial pull and stacking of Lacerate, my rotation looks like this..

Mangle, FFF, X, Swipe

If Lacerate is going to fall, X = Lacerate
If Demo roar is going to fall, X = Demo Roar
Else, X = Swipe

Ok, but its also more threat to reup lacerate after a tick or two rather than waiting to reup it before its about to fall.

Vaccine · 02/04/10, 7:56 AM

Originally Posted by Danen3

I thought the tank rotation was:

Mangle laceratex5 to open followed by Mangle, Lacerate, Swipex4 repeat.

Thats going to be awful for threat. All you need to do is ensure you use Mangle every time its up. With Imp Mangle this is going to follow the pattern of Mangle, ability, ability, (0.5 sec wait) Mangle etc... After Mangle you want to prioritise Feral Farie fire. The CD is 6 seconds so this will shift through your rotation and sometimes come off CD at the same time as Mangle, but its 2nd priority. After this your next abiility, you want to stack a 5 stack lacerate during the starting 4-5 rotations of the fight. After that Swipe is the priority except to refresh Mangle when its down to a few seconds.

So Mangle > FFF > Maintain Lacerate > Swipe.

ghooge · 02/04/10, 8:57 AM

Originally Posted by Danen3

Ok, but its also more threat to reup lacerate after a tick or two rather than waiting to reup it before its about to fall.

According to Think Tank these are the damage and threat values for our skills.

Threat (mangle): 3406.9
Threat (swipe): 1578.763 (post 50% boost)
Threat (lacerate): 1162.154
Threat (maul): 5309.797
Threat(FF): 1933.057
Threat (Lacerate DOT): 844.21

Damage(mangle): 1644.7
Damage(Swipe):508.1
Damage(Lacerate): 91.08
Damage(Maul): 2139
Damage(lacerate DOT): 815.1

According to teeth and claws, the optimal threat rotation is as follows:

Unlike feral DPS, bear tanking has a true rotation. Repeat these steps for every six second chunk of time during the fight:

1. Mangle
2. Feral Faerie Fire
3. Lacerate and/or Swipe (x2)

Note 1: Every time Maul becomes available, use it.

Note 2: In this rotation, Lacerate should only be used if your debuff stack is smaller than 5 applications, or if your it is about to fall off. In all other cases, use Swipe.

Note 3: If you are responsible for using Demoralizing Roar, use it during step #3.

Note 4: This rotation assumes that you are not specced into Improved Mangle - if you are, then prioritize Mangle above Feral Faerie Fire when the two skill cooldowns collide. (Or see Marino's pretty picture of what the extended rotation would look like.)

Note 5: On many fights it is possible to ignore Swipe and maintain a healthy threat lead by just spamming Lacerate instead - keep in mind that this will also lower your DPS.

Damgaard · 02/05/10, 7:58 AM

Originally Posted by ghooge

According to Think Tank these are the damage and threat values for our skills.

Ehmmm those damage values are a little over a year old. You should see considerably higher values in ICC.
The rotation itself is correct though

Ahh back then I guess FF, didn't have a damage component. It does now FF damage = [AP * 0.15 + 1]

Oldmcdonald · 02/08/10, 12:33 PM

Maul everytime it's up is a good idea, but just to save my finger from spamming, I simply macro my lacerate, mangle, and swipe attacks to maul right after. My question is, what glyphs should be used since maul messes up the Saurfang fight? Are my choices limited to just switching to something arbitrary like Berserk and changing back or dpsing, or is there a different glyph we could just put in altogether?

Daenerys · 02/08/10, 12:49 PM

Originally Posted by Oldmcdonald

Maul everytime it's up is a good idea, but just to save my finger from spamming, I simply macro my lacerate, mangle, and swipe attacks to maul right after. My question is, what glyphs should be used since maul messes up the Saurfang fight? Are my choices limited to just switching to something arbitrary like Berserk and changing back or dpsing, or is there a different glyph we could just put in altogether?

Switch it out with Glyph of Growl since you want to make sure every taunt hits in that fight. I recommend carrying a stack of both the Growl and Maul glyphs, as each fight usually favors one or the other, but you rarely need both.

Umah · 02/08/10, 10:16 PM

Today @ ICC-10 Lich-King I had a Taunt Resist in Phase #1 having more than 11% Hit. Wasn't Growl/Taunt changed to 8% somewhere around 3.0.x? Anyway, I will go for the Taunt Glyph as my third at any fight that requires secure taunts, even if I am obviously(?!) overcapped.

Finkum · 02/09/10, 1:38 AM

As far as I know, all regular taunts still use the spell hit cap (17%). Due to the different conversion factors for melee and spell hit, if you are at the melee hit cap and have the appropriate glyph, you should be at 17%.

Nevir · 02/12/10, 2:25 PM

Originally Posted by Oldmcdonald

Maul everytime it's up is a good idea, but just to save my finger from spamming, I simply macro my lacerate, mangle, and swipe attacks to maul right after. My question is, what glyphs should be used since maul messes up the Saurfang fight? Are my choices limited to just switching to something arbitrary like Berserk and changing back or dpsing, or is there a different glyph we could just put in altogether?

One trick would be to set it up so that you don't swipe if you're holding down a modifier key. For ex. holding down shift to not mangle (a few secs before the adds spawn, until they're out of range)

#showtooltip
/startattack
/use Mangle (Bear)()
/use [nomodifier:shift] !Maul

Note: I haven't tested this macro, but that's the general idea

Litch · 02/13/10, 6:13 AM

Recently I joined a raiding guild and started raiding with them. Ive started to notice some issues with threat, mostly on AoE intensive fights. The main two "problem players" are a lock and a mage, both at 5500 GS while I have a 4700 GS. All I can really do in an AoE intensive fight is spam maul and swipe but that doesn't seem to be enough. Should I remove some of my stamina gems for something else?

Ive also noticed some times when Im doing randoms with PUGs that Ill lose agro in the middle of a fight. Tonight I had a huge lead on agro against a furry warrior in 5k gs when in just one hit, they took agro off of me. I was spamming maul, lacarate, and making sure FF and maul were both on CD the entire time before the warrior even came along. Do I just have to big of a gap between my gear and the other party members gear? I know on my paladin whos in mostly blues at 2600 he can still hold threat, AoE and single target, against a 5k GS DPS.

I think its been about 3 weeks (other then the last 2 days) that Ive played my druid. Were there any un-documented patch notes that lowered our threat? Because I was doing just fine in heroics in the same gear as I have now. Ive been tanking on and off since launch, even tanking some nax in 3.1 with no problem at all but now Im getting frustrated with agro issues.

Abbichum · 02/13/10, 6:25 AM

Litch: You should be looking for a new weapon more than anything. Gettin the extra feral AP going from a ilvl 200 to a 232(a prime target would be the polearm from HoR heroic, or anything from TOC10/25) will be huge for your swipe threat. Also, you've got 0 expertise from your gear, while having too much hit. Getting to at least the softcap of 26 expertise will be very significant as well.

Litch · 02/13/10, 6:44 AM

Originally Posted by Abbichum

Litch: You should be looking for a new weapon more than anything. Gettin the extra feral AP going from a ilvl 200 to a 232(a prime target would be the polearm from HoR heroic, or anything from TOC10/25) will be huge for your swipe threat. Also, you've got 0 expertise from your gear, while having too much hit. Getting to at least the softcap of 26 expertise will be very significant as well.

Should I gem or enchant to meet that soft cap? Or just start looking for new gear altogether? In bear form tanking Ive got just under 42k health unbuffed and about 48k health with GotW, Fort, Kings, and Bloodpact. Im running ICC 10 first wing with my guild and ToC 10, tanking both as the off tank. I dread halls of reflection but Ill try to tough it out to get the polearm.