Feral Druid – Bear Tanking

Bear Druid – Feral Tanking Talent Build:

Feral Tank Build

As the tank you have one main task, which is easy with patch 4.3:  Keep the boss from attacking the other players in your group/raid

You have the secondary task of survival. And decent healer can keep you up in 5 man dungeons, unless you pull way too many mobs. It’s a little harder as you progress through the Cataclysm raids.

Don’t forget your other abilities, such as interrupting, using Innervate or Rebirth, or even helping to DPS at times. The better you can perform those tasks the more valuable you will be to your group or raid.

Glyphs:

It’s useful to learn all of the Druid glyphs, unless you know that you will only tank and never heal or DPS. This gives you the flexibility to swap glyphs in and out as you need to do so.

Prime Glyphs – for Bear tanks there are really only these three choices:

1. Berserk – Mandatory
2. Mangle – Mandatory
3. Lacerate – Mandatory

Major Glyphs – a bit more flexibility here.

1. Faerie Fire – Recommended for the armor debuff.
2. Maul – Useful for AoE/Multi-target fights
3. Feral Charge
4. Frenzied Regeneration
5. Rebirth

Minor Glyphs:

1. Unburdened Rebirth
2. Challenging Roar
3. Dash

Rotation:

Here are your highest priority abilities.

1. Mangle – On Cooldown
2. Berserk – On Cooldown
3. Maul – With excess rage
4. Demoralizing Roar – Keep applied to targets
5. Lacerate – Apply debuff, stacks to 3
6. Thrash
7. Pulverize – Keep active
8. Faerie Fire (Feral) – Keep active

AoE Rotation

1. Swipe
2. Thrash

Your tanking strategy for multiple mob pulls is to utilize Swipe and Thrash as much as possible while also applying your Mangle and Lacerate debuff to each target.

Cooldowns

1. Enrage
2. Survival Instincts
3. Barkskin

Stat Priorities:

Agility > Stamina > Dodge > Mastery > Expertise (26) > Critical > Hit > Haste

• While Armor is one of your most important stats it’s not something you can really gear for as it comes with your gear and there are very few enchants and no gems for it. Leave it be as your gear will provide enough.
• Agility increases attack power, critical strike chance, and dodge chance. This provides you with more damage and more threat, as well as somewhat greater damage avoidance.
• Stamina increases your total health and increases the effectiveness of Vengeance which further increases your damage and threat.
• Dodge increases your chance to avoid damage.
• Mastery increases the effectiveness of your Savage Defense ability, allowing you to absorb more damage.
• Expertise reduces the chance of your attacks being dodged or parried.

Reforging

When reforging gear, it’s important that you look to reforge from your least effective stat into the most effective for whatever gear goal you are currently aiming for.  See our stat priority list for more information.

Dodge and Mastery are your most important stats as a Bear tank. Reforge the other stats into these two where you can.

Gems:

The quick and dirty gemming method: Agility gems (Delicate) in all slots, but two. Equip two yellow gems somewhere to activate your Meta gem. Ignore socket bonuses unless they are around +14 or better Agility per gem slot.

The epic gems are very expensive. It’s not a big loss to drop down one level and save a lot of gold.

• Red – Delicate Queen’s Garnet/ Delicate Inferno Ruby – Agility
• Yellow – Polished Lava Coral/ Polished Ember Topaz – Agility & Dodge.
• Blue – Shifting Shadow Spinel/ Shifting Demonseye – Agility and Stam
• Meta – Austere Shadowspirit Diamond – Stam and increased armor

Enchantments:

• Helm: Arcanum of the Earthen Ring/Arcanum of Ramkahen
• Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz/Greater Inscription of Shattered Crystal
• Cloak: Enchant Cloak – Major Agility/ Enchant Cloak – Protection
• Chest: Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats
• Bracers: Enchant Bracer – Agility/Enchant Bracer – Superior Dodge
• Gloves: Enchant Gloves – Greater Mastery
• Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
• Leggings: Charscale Leg Armor
• Boots: Enchant Boots – Major Agility/ Enchant Boots – Assassin’s Step/Enchant Boots – Earthen Vitality
• 2H Weapon: Enchant 2H Weapon – Mighty Agility/Enchant Weapon – Windwalk

Feral Druid Bear Tanking Build

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