>How to bear in Cataclysm: Part 2

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Well! This is part two… getting into the real nitty-gritty… the actual in-dungeon method. If you haven’t checked it out, you should see Part 1 first.

So… your dungeon group is put together. Congratulations! Now stop hyperventilating… Relax and take a deep breath. Take a look at your group makeup, and what dungeon you’re in. Recognize what your party members can do CC-wise, and if you’re unsure ask. If it’s a pug, don’t be ashamed or afraid to say that you aren’t familiar with the instance you’re running. (Or that you’ve never tanked it before, at the very least). You never know what kind of group you’re going to come across. If someone in the group says they’ve done the place before, then don’t be afraid to have them mark things for you so you can learn. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Don’t be afraid to use your cooldowns.. EVEN ON TRASH. Some trash hits as hard as some of the lighter bosses. You’re going to take a beating. If you feel threatened start using things… just don’t blow them all at once.

Now then. There’s two ways to start a pull. You can initiate it, and have CC cast right as you’re running in, or have the CC cast before you run in, and pull the mobs off of them. Personally I prefer the 2nd way. The mobs are coming towards you while your enrage is… giving you rage. Mobs heading towards whoever cast the first CC, when they’re in range hit thrash/swipe. You should have your kill order setup, and marked with a skull (or whatever mark your group has agreed on to die first).

Now, I won’t give you a specific set of things to do to keep aggro on a group of mobs, because it really depends on a LOT of different factors. Biggest thing I can tell you is to keep thrash and swipe on cooldown if there’s more than two mobs. If everyone is focusing on your kill order, that should generally be enough, but you need to pay attention to everything. Watch your healer’s mana bar, your party’s health bar, your healer’s mana bar, your target’s health bar, omen, your healer’s mana bar, the CC’d targets in the back, any patrolling mobs that might be coming too close to you guys, your healer’s mana bar… starting to get the picture yet?

When I tank, my eyes are darting all over the damn screen. On trash i’m literally only looking at the actual trash mobs like 1/5 of the time because there is just so much everything else I need to keep an eye on. It takes a LOT of practice to get good at it. I can tell you right now, you WILL FAIL at some point. Don’t take it too hard. I still screw up at some point. I know the DPS still screw up. Sometimes extra pulls are made, sometimes you may get too close to a CC’d mob with your swipe/thrash.. Don’t panic. Panicking is the worst thing you can do, and can easily spell death for your group.

When your group wipes, take a second to take stock of what happened. What could you have done better? Did a mob get past you somehow? Did you position your combat mobs too close to your CC’d mobs? Was the kill order followed? Did a patrol catch you offguard? All of these things can, will, and DO happen. I have done them all… your guild’s main tank has done them all… the main tank of Ensidia has done them all. /shrug. Nobody’s perfect, and to expect such from yourself is only going to set yourself up for failure.

Now then… how do you keep aggro on packs of mobs? Thrash and Swipe are going to be your main abilities, but as they both have 6 second cooldowns, obviously they’re not the only buttons you’ll be hitting. I generally thrash, swipe, and mangle my main target, then start targetting my other targets and hit them with lacerates, hitting thrash and swipe as they come off cooldown, or occasionally mauling (you have that glyphed, right?) if you find yourself near the top end of your rage bar (as a rule, it’s usually safe at 60 rage or more). Let the DPS do their work. Tab through your targets and keep an eye on your threat relative to theirs. Watch for errant spell-casts. Use your interrupts whenever you see something to interrupt. Don’t be afraid to use your cooldowns. [b]ALWAYS keep an eye on your healer[/b]. Watch your healer’s mana bar like a hawk in between pulls, and then…

Congratulations! You now have a big ugly boss staring you in the face. Do you know the mechanics of this boss fight? If not, feel free to ask your guildies/group members if there’s anything specific you need to know. Unless your group’s committed to going in blind. Make sure your group has completely mana’ed and healed up… make sure they’re *ready* (yes there is a difference… sometimes people go afk for a split second, or will alt-tab for something briefly)… and then make the pull. Use your enrage to generate some opening rage, and hit it with your Faerie fire.

Now from the pull the first thing you need to worry about is positioning the boss. It’s a 100% safe bet to put the boss’s back to your party members. Unless there are obstacles that prevent that, any melee in your group will thank you for it. If you’re unfamiliar with the mechanics of a fight, or if you know there is are knockbacks involved, putting your large butt against a wall is also a good idea. Now the problem with putting your back against a wall is that it will screw up your visibility immensely. There’s a large joke running around that all tanks ever see is boss crotch. Rotate your camera around to your side so you can keep an eye on the party. That way any adds that spring up can be controlled quickly.

Once your boss is in melee range, and while your positioning him, it’s time to start building threat… I mean, after all… that’s your job as a tank, right? You absorb hits, and you build threat to make sure no one ELSE has to eat any of hits. Your FF will give a fair amount of opener threat. Now your highest threat generating ability, as well as your hardest hitting ability, is going to be Mangle. Mangle should be used as soon as it comes off of cooldown, EVERY time it comes off of cooldown. Watch for your berserk proc’d mangles as well… they take priority over everything else. The majority of your button presses are going to be Lacerate. You always want to get lacerate up to 3 stacks, and then Pulverize. Maul can be thrown in as your rage gets higher (again, 60 rage or higher it’ll be safe to maul). I personally don’t find the bleeds from lacerate hitting hard enough to be worth leaving stacked while Pulverize’s buff runs lower. I could be wrong about this, but it’s how [i]I, personally[/i] do it.

With all that, this is what your combat priority should be

Faerie Fire (to keep/refresh the debuff) > Demoralizing Roar (to keep/refresh the debuff) > Mangle > Maul (over 60 rage. It’s off the GCD so fit it in anywhere really) > Lacerate x3 > Pulverize > Faerie Fire (if the buff isn’t in need of refreshing/you’re out of rage for some reason)

It’s worth noting that you *shouldn’t* run out of rage, but if you slip up and maul at the wrong time, you can definitely find yourself with a free global cooldown. Now, as for your defensive cooldowns. You need to learn what your healer can and cannot handle. If you see anything going on, and your health bar is dropping to an uncomfortable level, pop a cooldown. Depending on what’s “uncomfortable” for you, should really depend on what cooldown you use. Barkskin is a short cooldown (And it can be used while you’re stunned too), so it’s a safe bet to use that one first. If, for some reason, you end up REALLY on low health, use another one (frenzied regen or survival instincts)… The worst thing you can do is panic and blow all 3 cooldowns at once. Sure, you’ll take very little damage for a period of time, and your heals will pop you up much higher, quicker, but if the shit hits the fan again within 3 minutes, then you’re boned.

Have you noticed a recurring theme here? A lot of what’s involved in successfully tanking is keeping your head straight, and not spazzing out. Sure, some people can boil it down to a bunch of math and formulas and stat weights and priorities and such… and to a point those are ALL important, but a tanking is a lot more seat-of-your-pants style than DPSing is. Tanks have to be proactive AND reactive, and legitimately, the entire group depends on your ability to perform your job well. Don’t expect to be an amazing tank right off the bat, but take the small successes with the failures, and find out what you do well, and where you can improve. Ask your party members or guildies for advice… find a good bear that you know and ask them for tips on what might help with certain encounters or trash pulls that give you headaches.

Feel free to leave me any comments or questions.

>How to bear in Cataclysm

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So, i’ve been doing a lot of talk about bears lately… and i’m going to talk about them more now, so deal with it. This is going to be more of a comprehensive “how to” guide for people who want to start bearing it up, but it’s mostly focused on the 80-85 experience. To be perfectly honest, bears were relatively weak while levelling BEFORE the swipe cooldown was implemented. I’m not saying it’s impossible for bears to tank in low levels now, but things are a lot harder that way… and honestly you’d have a much more difficult time of it. So… First thing I am going to look at is the talent spec. I know I posted about this a few weeks ago, but after having experienced the new content, I feel like I am pretty sure of my talent tree decisions now.

This will be the level 85 talent tree you want to shoot for. I seriously underestimated the importance that Perseverence would have, and I definitely feel that 6% is indeed worthy of 3 of those precious talent points you’re given between 80 and 85. You’ll notice there’s 1 open point here… Not a lot of leeway to go with, I know, but it’s better than nothing. I think I am going to put mine in Stampede for a bit of extra threat generation. Personal preference, of course.

This will be the tree you start off with at level 80. You can finally spec into Master Shapeshifter again! I know you’ve been eyeing it for weeks. Sadly, Master Shapeshifter is really a decent talent, but having it tied to Natural Shapeshifter is absolutely horrible and I hope that Blizz reconsiders it at some point, but nonetheless, your first point at 81 should probably go there.

I didn’t specify any minor glyphs because really… there’s not much to choose from. I pick Demoralizing Roar for the reduced cooldown, but otherwise you can do whatever. Prime glyphs really offer no customization… pick those 3 because they’re the only ones that are of any use in bear form. Major glyphs are a bit more tricky. Maul is a definite must-have. Rebirth is damn nice if you actually get a chance to USE that ability… the 3rd major glyph I used is Frenzied Rengeration. I would rather hang on to my own rage stockpile and have my healer’s heals hit harder (unintentional alliteration for the win?), than not be able to keep threat because I was suddenly rage-starved and had more health… your mileage may vary.

Now before you queue up to tank anything in Cataclsym, there’s one thing you should do first.Hit… level… 81. Honestly, whoever decided that bears should only have 1 real AOE ability before 81 should be forced to tank Blackrock Caverns and Throne of the Tides at level 80 until they renege… but I digress. Seriously, do yourself a favor and wait till level 81 before even thinking about tanking. Thrash really does make THAT MUCH DIFFERENCE in your ability to tank.

The second thing you want to do is familiarize yourself with your damaging abilities and your offensive/defensive cooldowns. Unlike most times in 70-80 dungeons, you should be ready to use your cooldowns a lot. Especially once you hit 85 and start looking towards heroics, but that’s jumping the gun a bit. I’m going to give a brief rundown of your major abilities, and when you should use them.

AOE

Swipe – Low rage cost, low damage, moderate aggro. 6 second cooldown. 360 degree swipe, no target limit. Use judiciously when out of range of CC’d targets (8 yard range)

Thrash – High rage cost, moderate damage + bleed, moderate aggro. 6 second cooldown. Also 360 degree swipe w/no target limit. Best used in conjunction with swipe to ensure solid aggro on groups. (8 yard range)

Demoralizing Roar – Very low rage cost, does no damage, and thus does very little threat as well. Best used in larger groups to reduce the damage you take. Lasts for 30 seconds.

Challenging Roar – Low rage cost, long cooldown (3 minutes baseline, minor glyph reduces by 30s), produces no actual threat, just force-focuses* target’s on you for 6 seconds. This is a sort of extreme situational use with patrols and unexpected adds.

Single target -

Mangle – Low rage cost, very high damage, very high aggro, 6 second cooldown. Your bread and butter single target ability. This should forever be on cooldown.

Lacerate – Low rage cost, low/moderate damage + very low damage bleed, no cooldown. Stacks 3 times. Your main filler ability. This has no cooldown other than the GCD, so use it often. It’s also a good idea to tab target and lacerate mobs on groups in between swipe/thrash cooldowns. A nice way to keep extra threat, as well as proc rage-free mangles (which i’ll get to in a bit)

Pulverize – Low rage cost, moderate/high damage, moderate/high aggro, no cooldown. New ability as of 4.0. Consumes lacerate stacks to increase your crit chance 3% per stack for 10 seconds. For single target boss-type encounters, this is an amazing ability for you. More crits = more Leader of the Pack heals, and more Savage Defense shields, and it does a good bit of damage to boot. I personally use this as soon as my Lacerate is stacked to 3 on bosses because, usually, by that time the buff is about to wear off.

Maul - High rage cost, moderate damage, moderate aggro, 3 second cooldown. Maul is no longer the king of the road that it used to be. I listed it as a single target ability because, baseline, it is. It can be glyphed to hit a 2nd target for 50% damage, and you definitely SHOULD do so, but generally you won’t use it much in multi-target situations. This is your excess rage-bleeder ability more than anything else. It’s off the GCD so throw it in anytime you’re sitting above ~60 rage.

Faerie Fire – No rage cost, low damage, low/moderate aggro, 6 second cooldown. This is one of your only ranged abilities, and gives the target a debuff reducing their armor by 4% per stack (up to 3 stacks). Great way to make line of sight pulls, or tag a target who might be casting off in the distance. This can be talented to instantly stack 3x with one application.

Skull Bash – Low rage cost, zero damage, 1-minute cooldown, unsure of aggro generation but it’s a spell interrupt off the GCD! /cheer. Druids have been aching for an actual non-stunning interrupt for who knows how long… 4.0 delivered with this blessed ability, talented down to a 10-second cooldown… there’s nothing negative I can say about it. Oh… did I mention it charges too?

Charge - Very low rage cost, zero damage, zero threat generation, immobilizes mob for 4 seconds, 15 second cooldown. Nice way to get a “runs away in fear”, or to get a mob chasing after your healer awfully quick. 30 second cooldown is… annoying at times, but more than fair as you shouldn’t have to use it TOO much in-combat. This no longer interrupts spell casting like it used to, but we have skull bash for that now.

Bash – Low rage cost, zero damage, unsure of threat generation, 1 minute cooldown (talented to 50 second cooldown). Stuns a mob for 4 (talented up to 5) seconds. Decent secondary spell interrupt, and last-resort crowd control. I believe I remember reading that it would still interrupt a stun-immune mob, but don’t quote me on that.

Growl - No rage cost, no damage, taunt* mechanic. Be sure to actually hit a mob after taunting him, or they’ll just turn around again.

*I should clarify the difference between a taunt mechanic and a forced-focus briefly. Challenging Roar forces the target(s) to focus on you, but does absolutely nothing to the threat table. If you don’t hit them in that 6 second time span, they’ll go back to whomever they were looking at before. Growl on the other hand is an actual taunt. It will put your name on top of the aggro list just above whomever had current aggro.

Cooldowns – (both offensive, defensive, and otherwise)

Frenzied Regeneration – 3 minute cooldown. Baseline, it increases health by 30%, and converts 10 rage/second into health for 20 seconds. Glyphed, instead of converting your rage into health, it increases the effectiveness of all heals on you by 30%. I personally went with the glyph, because I like keeping my rage to actually generate threat on the mob(s). Feel free to try it either way and see which you prefer though.

Survival Instincts – 3 minute cooldown. Reduces damage taken by 50% for 12s. Basic shield wall like all classes have now.

Barkskin – 1 minute cooldown. Reduces damage taken by 20% for 10s. This should be used OFTEN. 20% makes a huge difference… and at a 1 minute cooldown, can you really afford to NOT use this all the goddamn time?

Enrage – 1 minute cooldown. Instantly gives 20 rage (talented to 32), and generates 10 more over 10s. Best used in between pulls, but you need to be careful as this makes you take 10% MORE physical damage while it’s active.

Berserk – 3 minute cooldown. When I mentioned “otherwise” under the cooldowns part, I was referring to this. This is an offensive cooldown, with an added benefit of a random proc when you don’t use it. When lacerate deals damage to a mob, it has a chance to refresh the cooldown of mangle, and make it rage free… that’s a berserk proc. But, when you USE berserk, it makes your mangle have no cooldown, and it also makes it a 3-person cleave for 15 (glyphed to 20) seconds. Great way for insanely high threat at the start of a fight.

Take a minute and go to some older, yet semi-challenging content, to play around with your abilities and get a feel for how your cooldowns work. Perfect place to do that would be BC dungeons. Go try and solo Hellfire Ramparts or Sethekk Halls… or if you’re up for a challenge, try turning them up to heroic, provided you have the respective keys. I’ve found that soloing these have given me a real great way to learn what kind of damage I can handle, when to pop my cooldowns, how much healing I can take from Leader of the Pack, and what kind of mechanics to learn to watch out for… maybe that’s just me though.

Next thing I want to look at is gear. I’m hardly a theorycrafting expert, and ElitistJerks tends to make my head hurt when I go read through it, but this is basically how I feel about gear right now.

Agility and Stamina are king… Strength also gives us 2 AP per 1 point, but strength gear is generally saved for plate wearers. Parry is a useless stat for us so try to avoid it, unless the piece is SUCH a significant upgrade as outweigh useless stats… AND unless no one else really wants it. Poorly itemized upgrades for you do not give you priority over someone’s offspec… please don’t be a dick about your gear.

As far as “green stats” go, I don’t have specific weights, but I figure it will be something on the order of: Dodge >= Mastery > Hit/Expertise > Crit > Haste

Other stats like resilience or parry give us zero benefit from a tanking perspective, so they have very little business being on any gear we pick up.

There has been discussion in some camps about taking Strength items with dodge rating (cloaks, rings, and necklaces primarily), but this will still end up coming farther behind taking an agility item without dodge rating. Here are a couple images to prove my point… taken with my very own bear, completely unbuffed, in bear form.

Now, as you can see in the first image, I picked up a strength ring with dodge rating on it, and in the second shot I have an agility ring with no dodge rating. Both rings are the same item level… they even came from the same reputation faction, so they’re even budgeted comparably. Yet, the agility one comes out with more dodge, and it can even be reforged with the excess hit rating into more dodge rating. So unless the item is a MAJOR upgrade for you, then there’s no reason to pick strength items over agility items.

Now that you’ve got a basic handle on your abilities and what they do, grabbed yourself some gear to work with… and you’ve made it to at least level 81 (you HAVE made it to 81, haven’t you?) it’s time… Press that random dungeon finder! Better yet, ask some guildies if they want to run with you. Guildies tend to be a lot more forgiving if they know you’re just learning.

“Your dungeon group has been found!” /flail OGAWD WHAT DO I DO!

Well… Part two will get into that! I’m breaking this up for the sake of walls of text critting you for 800 million overkill.

>Form of – a BEAR!

>Well, i’ve done a ton of rambling and ranting posts. I’ve talked about my guild and how we’ve raided, or about my titles and achievements… I’ve tooted my own horn quite a bit, and I figure now it’s time to finally put something *useful* on this blog. What can I talk about that’s useful? Hmm… that’s a tough one. OH! Druids! I’m quite a good druid tank!

Well! Obviously the first thing to look at is how to spec your druid for maximum… tanking… awesomness! So for level 80, there are basically two different talent trees you can go with.

This is the spec I run with. It is pure tank, no kitty-ing about. Pretty straight forward. Glyphs are all but a no-brainer because they’re really the only ones that will have ANY effect on our tanking. I actually just switched to this spec from a VERY slight (2 point) differential, and I’ll explain why after the 2nd screenshot.

So the only difference between these two specs are the points I moved out of Feral Aggression and into Primal Madness… currently I am running with the points in Primal Madness. Initially I liked the idea of having a 1-time three stack of Faerie Fire for the DPS increase… I still do like that, to be quite honest, but the reason I moved to Primal Madness is for trash packs and 5-mans. The extra rage generated by our Enrage ability makes it so we can almost swipe as soon as we pull a pack. It also makes it so we can start our rotation more quickly on boss encounters.

I’ve been questioned a few times on my choice of the points in Brutal Impact. I suppose you could make the arguement that the extra interrupts are situational but DAMMIT if I don’t like having them, because i’ve spent so much time tanking WITHOUT having worthwhile interrupts… and no, an interrupt with a stun DOES not count, because you can’t pull mobs towards you when they’re effing stunned. The other thing you may ask about is why I only put 2 points in Fury Swipes… Druid threat isn’t in a place that’s hurting in any way right now on single targets. 2 points procs plenty enough, and our threat is insane after the first 5-10 seconds on a mob.

So, assuming all of these things (and assuming Brutal Impact, if you’re like me) then let’s move forward into tanking at level 85. Not a lot is going to change from your level 80 spec. No real need to change specs unless you want to test weird things out, so I came up with basically 2 different level 85 specs.

This first one you’ll see that I have a spare talent point available. The reason for this is I figure it’s kind of your “do whatever the fuck you want with it.” If you want to go with max TPS For that point, put it in it should probably go into Stampede. Honestly, though, the TPS generated by 2 points in Stamepede, let alone 1, is hardly worth the poinst from a pure tanking point of view. A point in Feral Aggression could be handy to 2-stack FFF instead of 1-stack. One point in Perseverance (in the resto tree) for a bit of extra spell damage reduction, but that’s properly a bit situational… which brings me to my second tree below.

This tree doesn’t have any spare points, and honestly I wish it had just one more talent point to finish out Perseverance in resto… but as I mentioned earlier, this could be a very situational setup to have. It really just depends on how many bosses in Cataclysm deal random magic damage, and whether 4% will really make that much of a difference.

Now.. With all of this stuff I want anyone reading this to realize a couple things.

First – I am not in the beta. My lvl 85 druid builds are purely hypothetical based on my experience with druid tanking post 4.0, and with what I know about how the theorycrafting works behind it.

Second – I am no 100% expert. I could very well be proven wrong about some of my ideas. They’re not set in stone by any means, and I am not proclaiming them as such.

Thirdly – I am not responsible for your fuckups. I *can* help if you’d like, but if you tell me that my spec sucks and you can’t get shit to work with it, then well…. your mileage may vary. I’d be more than happy to compare notes with you as long as you’re not a shit-stain about how you approach it.