Pretty much universally the faster the attacks, the better avoidance is relative to stamina. If you look at an extreme: a boss hitting 20 times a second for 1k, there's not really a big chance for a bad avoidance streak averaged over that many attacks. Sure, its mathematically possible to still not dodge any of 50 attacks in 2.5 seconds and fall over dead, but chances are you're going to take at most like 30 of those 50 and be very much alive. Basically the faster the attacks, the larger the sample size, so the more you can rely upon your avoidance. Mitigation like armor is just always good as long as its physical damage killing you.

You're going off of Rawr, correct? Rawr has a bug about how valuable shredding attacks is, and it's much better than mangle is. Saving 18 points on shreds is a much better bargain than saving 6 points on mangle, especially given that it's only 2 points.

if thats for kitty yes, u dont want SA for tank...and geting IMP mangle will help threat since it reduces the cooldown by 1.5 secs

So reading though a good deal of the forums on tanking after one of my guildies suggested that [Formula: Enchant Weapon - Blood Draining] was actually a good enchant for tanking said so by some one on these forums (which I haven't personally found a single post supporting this notion that hasn't either been auto disproved or completely ignore.)

Now the fact that It only generates 2k hp without outside healing boosts to it, and that to date any Druid Tank currently in end game raiding 9/10 has Mongoose enchanted says a lot by its self, but to prove some stupid guildies I am requiring your opinions on this subject.

I am a huge fan of IlotP. Both soloing, pvp, and raiding, it saves lives, not nearly as much as JoL or having decent healers, but it's there and it only costs 2 points which if spent elsewhere will only slightly increase TPS.

Blood Draining works off of a similar principle as iLotP, but in theory, provides a (slightly) bigger heal right when you need it most, instead of at random. It is absolutely terrible. It often takes longer to build up to 4 stacks (approximately the same value of an iLotP heal on a Low MaxHP Bear) than it does to proc iLotP twice. It also means you can't be using Mongoose. 2% Dodge (after kings, imotw, sotf) and 2% Haste with an absurdly high uptime (60% I think) is going to prevent far more damage on any fight where Burst Deaths are actually a threat. Certainly Mongoose can't remove the possibility of getting 2-shot, but neither can Blood Draining.

As the saying goes, An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

I agree with the rest of your post, but our warrior tank gets results like:
Blood Reserve 6 hits Avg 1028 Max 2026
Improved Leader of the Pack 43 hits Avg 1986 Max 2564

So a single ILotP heals for more than a Blood Reserve proc at somewhat good gear levels. Even with 75% ILotP overheal, it heals for 4 times as much health as Blood Reserve during a fight of reasonable length. And that's with a ~20% crit chance and lower max health than a feral.

And just because it's so important: It takes at least 50 seconds to stack up a 2000 health heal using Blood Draining. Blood Draining is worth at most 44 heal/second in the best-case scenario.

Re: Thorim hard mode. Boevis I notice you don't have Imp Demo - do you have a Warrior put it up?

I couldn't find any figures for the differencein his hits between standard Demo Shout/Roar and talented. I assume that Imp Demo is a big yes - especially later on in the fight, but I'm stuggling to quantify the difference in incoming damage it would make.

Hello Folks,

I am fairly new here and I apologize if this question has been answered else where. Currently I am a feral tank for Ulduar10 and naxx25 and such trying to get into Ulduar25. Most of the gems on my gear are based on hit rating trying to reach as close as i can to the cap which is 263. I am wondering if the gems are a waste and should probably go for agi/stam instead? If I do that wouldn't that affect my threat generation? I am currently sitting on 250 hit rating. What about expertise rating, I do know the cap is 17% for tanking but thats impossible to get. i am sitting on 7.50% right now. Some feral druids have been telling me to maximize on expertise instead of hit but I am wondering if thats the right way to do it?

Please feel free to inspect my character and give any suggestions.
Any help is appreciated

I'd really consider dropping the 16 hit gems out of your gear, you have hmm 160 hit from gear? Thats probably fine with you being over the expertise softcap aswell, the cap is 6.50%(26) for dodges and 11% for parries, nowhere the near 17% you got from somewhere.

You dont need the socket bonus on the legs, chest or helm just stick 24 stamina gems in them and you are still at 218 hit which is more than enough, i think most would tell you to resocket the whole lot except for the gloves.

Edit :thought I would add that you should have some kind of goals to reach with basic stats, somthing like 30k armor,43 - 45k hp, then 50% or more dodge and 26 expetise is suitable for ulduar 25(raid buffed) Thats like 33k hp 41% dodge 29-30k or so armor unbuffed, then you can start playing around with hit rating gems.

Expertise is generally better for you than hit since it will reduce parries, which means less parry hasted attacks from the boss; this will not only give you better threat, but less chance to spike

thanks for your quick response Mat. I just did what you said and managed to get 32K HP, 29k Armor, 42% dodge, and 29 expertise after re-gem'ing, all unbuffed. My hit dropped to 178. About to go try Maly25 and see how it goes.

The 2nd tank in raid (this week anyway) is a Prot Warrior, he keeps up sunder, thunderclap, and demo for me so I can focus on threat. Usually I'll provide the Demo myself with a different spec, but since this is the only fight where I actually tank now, I spec specifically for my situation.

My Armory Specs should never be emulated, they are always custom for one fight or another in particular, my guild is focusing on various Hard Modes so I spec based on what I feel will be best on a fight by fight basis, usually not specs that I (or anyone) would generally consider overall optimized.

I have a question, does the agility add to the dodge deminishing returns aka as you get more agility you ll get less dodge from it?

Agility does add up to the DR cap of Dodge, but since the DR for Dodge is 50% (not including the 10% from talents.) means getting to the DR cap is a long process not including multiple procs/use effects.

Why do I have or mainly why do you use swipe in your tank rotation? Is it only a filler? Does it make more threat than a laterace? And if it makes more threat, why do you use laterace so often and not only if the dot is nearly expired?

I am strugling with threat on Vezax (normal mode) and Hodir (hard mode) kills.

What i do on Vezax is using dps trinkets ([Mark of Norgannon], [Pyrite Infuser]) together with standard stamina-gemmed tank gear. Threat is so-so, mostly depending on luck during initial berserker (sometimes i get miss streak, sometimes i get dodge streak and have no rage). I guess with 232 lvl weapon (which refuses to drop) threat will improve, but i wonder what setup others use there?

As for Hodir hard mode, we just started with it. Seems the only way i can provide enough threat together with sufficient survivability is to get storm buff at the beginning and together with berserker. I am using 2 FR pieces (chest, ring), resistance flask, rest stamina-gemmed tank gear. Is this viable approach or are people using more dps-oriented gear to tank this?

The threat problem on General Vezax hard mode only gets worse. The DPS requirement in the hard mode is even greater than in normal, and general cannot be taunted. Use enrage during the first berserk for extra threat and keep the rogues/hunters feeding you MD/Tricks. Make sure the ranged dps saves their threat drops (invis/shatter/etc.) until later on in the fight. Use Hand of Sanctuary as much as possible.

The threat problem on Hodir is much more interesting. In order to make the timer, your DPS must put out more threat than you. It is not uncommon to see casters hitting 14-16k DPS with a good string of buffs. The key here is that Hodir is tauntable. The best strategy is wait until a mage pulls aggro and then taunt. After that the mage pops invis, and you should (hopefully) have a huge threat lead on the rest of the DPS. When the next caster pulls aggro at 130%, rinse and repeat. This strategy will only work if you have caster DPS pulling aggro at 130% threat before melee pull aggro at 110% threat (which they should). If the casters aren't doing pulling aggro then they aren't doing their job

The start of the second parse of your macro FFF and Mangle are both off CD.

Also if you have to hit Barkskin or any other CD it will throw off the timing more so.

I am not a fan of tanking sequence macros for bears. It smacks of laziness and to easily goes off track.

Barkskin is off the GCD.
Compared to a regular Mangle,FF,X,X rotation it will sync up at (36gcds in).

Over 52.5 seconds the difference is.

Imp Mangle - 12 Mangles 8 FF
Regular - 9 Mangles 9 FF

FF - Mangle threat wise are very similar. I think FF is slightly ahead but let's just say they cancel out.
You gain 2 mangles over a 52.5 second duration.
Mangle over a swipe is about 2k~ threat.

This is a 75 TPS gain over a regular rotation.
So, 25 TPS per point in Improved mangle or about a 1-1.5% TPS gain.

But you complicate your max TPS rotation ALOT (9gcd 'rotation' vs 4 gcd rotation), and by putting everything in a castsequence if you ever need to demo shout or use anything that might use a gcd you push your rotation off by one gcd - do this once or twice and you totally negate your tps advantage.

Barkskin and SI may be off the GCD but, well for my binds at least, do take time to hit. Which can further deviate the sequence. Also the latent haste forced on to gear will have a similar affect.

Regardless, we can both agree that cast sequence macros are bad.

Except for buffing ones. Go go Mark -> Thorns cast sequence macro.

For the most optimal threat rotation macro with 3/3 imp mangle, I use the macro listed below. It optimally uses mangle and FFF every time its up, generally right when its up and repeats only when they line up completely again. I mainly use the macro because I am normally a moonkin first and while I have dabbled in tanking I've only recently had to do it as my official offspec. Macros for threat after the stacking of lacerate to 5 in my opinion lets me focus on the other tanking things rather than optimal rotation. Of course as with any macro use maul manually as you would see fit.

Swipe is used as filler for the most part as it ends up being more damage than the initial hit of lacerate, at least for me. The reset conditional is subjective to whatever you want.

One thing to note about this macro is it is over 255 characters so I actually have to use macaroon action bars to use it which allows macros of up to 1024 characters.

/castsequence reset=target Mangle (Bear)(), Faerie Fire (Feral)(), Lacerate, Swipe (Bear)(), Mangle (Bear)(), Swipe (Bear)(), Faerie Fire (Feral)(), Lacerate, Mangle (Bear)(), Swipe (Bear)(), Lacerate, Faerie Fire (Feral)(), Mangle (Bear)(), Swipe (Bear)(), Lacerate, Swipe (Bear)()

I hope this helps those that like using macros to simplify their threat rotation.

This cast sequence makes zero sense.

You put 7.5 seconds between ever FFF (FFF is 6 second CD).
You put 6 seconds between every Mangle (Improved Mangle is 4.5 CD).
Your castsequence is 16 actions long. That's 24 seconds, there absolutely no reason it has to be this long.
You reset on target change, if your tanking multiple mobs and trying to build threat on them your macro would be sitting around waiting for mangle gcd and you'd be doing nothing alot of the time.
Your castsequence doesn't even include Maul - the highest threat ability druids have.

If you absolutely have to use a castseqence to tank, and you absolutely have to use 3/3 Improved mangle.
Loryli's Castsequence is probably most optimal. (I would lower the reset time though, so I could substitute the last swipe for a demo roar and have it reset as mangle CD is coming back up)