Bear Rotation:

This article is going to be all about holding aggro as a bear. There really isn’t a rotation as much as a priority. Some people will probably say I’m wrong, but then again, I’ve main tanked pretty much every encounter in the game, and have done so for the last three years. Another thing to remember, is there are two different situations that you’ll be up against. First is trash / multiple mobs, and second is boss / single target.

Trash / Multiple Mobs:

Trash. Nothing is more annoying, but it’s gotta be taken out (Get it? ). Now, there are two ways trash comes in; Patrols, and stationary groups. Both are usually pulled the same way, but patrols sometimes sneak up on you. When they do, you can’t start the way I like to, with a Faerie Fire.

Stationary:

1. Faerie Fire your main target.
2. Get up to the group, position yourself so that you’re facing majority of your enemies, and won’t break CC.
3. Swipe
4. If you have an Idol that increases agility, or AP with Mangle, use mangle now.
5. If you’re not rage starved, spam Maul (should be glyphed so you hit 2 targets) along with spamming Swipe. (Please note that while you’re Mauling, you might want to tab to other mobs so that you build major threat on those as well.)

For mobs with quite a bit of health, when you start your your Maul spam, Lacerate the mobs you’re holding one time each.  This will increase the amount you’re Mauling for due to Rend and Tear.  Also, if you catch a patrol while you’re still tanking a previous group, you should probably skip step 1, and move right to Swipe spam.  We skip step 1 because of healer / dps aggro if the patrol is off to the side and aren’t effected by your Swipe / Maul.

Single Target / Bosses:

1. Pull with Faerie Fire.
2. While still getting in position, Mangle (Mangle is your instant snap aggro move, this will also give you the added Agility / AP if you have those types of Idols.)
3. Lacerate once (This makes Maul hit harder due to Rend and Tear.)
4. If the fight has no fear effects, activate Berserk, and continue spamming Mangle, along with Maul.
5. Once Berserk expires (or the fight includes fears), start Lacerating while Mauling.  Mangle when it’s off cooldown.

Once you achieve 5 stacks of Lacerate, you get into a juggling act.  First off, don’t ever let Lacerate fall.  Second, Mangle every time that it’s up.  If Lacerate is far from expiring, and Mangle is on cooldown, Swipe.  While doing all of these, remember to Maul.

Tips:

There are a few things that I see tanks often doing that just makes things turn south.  All of them are easily solved, just have to keep calm, and think about what you’re doing.

First off, positioning is a pretty big thing for us, it used to be even bigger before they made Swipe a 360° move.  None the less, you need get as many mobs with your initial Swipe, and the following Swipes as well.

Glyph of Maul.  I have no idea how I can stress this glyph any more, but this glyph is huge.  Being able to Maul two targets is HUGE for threat generation on multiple mobs.

Never pull using anything anything other than Faerie Fire or Feral Charge along with Swipe spam.  I have no idea how many tanks pull with Taunt, which is a huge waste, along with not creating any real threat. (Faerie Fire now does quite a bit of damage and threat, along with making your following attacks hit harder due to lowering the target’s armor by 5%).

While we’re on the topic of Taunting, don’t EVER Taunt unless you’ve lost threat on that target.  Taunting any other time is a complete loss.  Taunting builds NO threat, and when your dps actually DOES pull, guess what, you just put your Taunt on cooldown, and the person that pulled will probably die, which means you’re not protecting your party.

Rend and Tear.  This talent helps quite a bit with threat.  Maul is your big threat generate along with Mangle.  While you can’t always spam Mangle, you keep Maul going.  So if you do have talent points in Rend and Tear (you should anyway) remember to Lacerate atleast once before starting up your Mauls.

Thorim Tank Tactic:

I’m currently still in progression with my guild going through Ulduar on 25 man.  Thorim can be a little tricky with tank swapping, and lets face it, Thorim hits like a truck with Unbalancing Strikes.  Well, I was looking around and found a topic about how to rectify this, and found an interesting topic.  So, without any more babble, here is the post from http://wowthinktank.blogspot.com/ .

In this thread on the official forums (don’t worry, it’s not that bad) one of the tanks (Adamas) posted that for their Hard-mode kill, they used one druid – and that the druid in question solo-tanked Thorim on hard mode to 14 stacks and had 56k HP.
The druid in question is Sudhir, who you can check out here. They probably don’t have their max stam setup on right this instant, so don’t worry about it.

The 56k health is nice, but the big problem with Thorim isn’t the high health requirement, it’s dealing with Unbalancing strike. Being crittable is no fun, especially when the attacks are coming every .5 seconds and are hitting for 14k+ a hit on normally armored bears. How is he solving this?

Well, for starters, I suspect he’s crittable. That’s not as horrible as you might think; if the healers know that you’re the only tank that’s going to take big damage, spam healing someone through 25k hits is not the worst thing in the world. But my gut feeling is that while he’s crittable, he’s using PvP gear to deal with some of this.

But what if we use enough PvP gear to completely remove crits from the equation, even with unbalancing strike? We may still get crushed, but the crits will be gone – and they’re the real danger.

First off, what you need: with 6% crit removal from Survival of the Fittest, Thorim’s ability puts you 7.6% in the hole. That means you need a total of 623 resilience or similar defense to deal with this. The easy way to figure this out is with Rawr; you need a total of -8% crit reduction in Rawr in order to be safe from Thorim.

How does this gear look? Well, I decided to not go after any Furious gear. Why? Because deadly gear requires no rating requirement in any slot, and it can be bought via conquest badges if you are so inclined. Plus you get two chances to get it – from Emalon 10-man and Archavon 25-man. I am using JC and Leatherworking; JC really helps, but it’s not a requirement. And (this is the important bit) I’m not using a single Ulduar-level item. If you have them, this will only be easier.

Head Deadly Gladiator’s Dragonhide Helm
Neck Boundless Ambition
Shoulders Deadly Gladiator’s Dragonhide Spaulders
Chest Polar Vest
Waist Titan-forged Belt of Triumph
Legs Deadly Gladiator’s Dragonhide Legguards
Feet Polar Boots
Wrist Deadly Gladiator’s Armwraps of Triumph
Hands Deadly Gladiator’s Dragonhide Gloves
Finger1 Hateful Gladiator’s Band of Triumph
Finger2 Deadly Gladiator’s Band of Ascendancy
Trinket1 Figurine – Monarch Crab
Trinket2 Essence of Gossamer
Back Deadly Gladiator’s Cloak of Triumph
MainHand Origin of Nightmares
Ranged Idol of Terror

Health: 50801
Agility: 1180.112
Armor: 30899.22
Stamina: 4057
Resilience: 598
Dodge: 39.380%
Miss: 7.762%
Mitigation: 70.128%
Avoidance PreDR: 52.064%
Avoidance PostDR: 47.142%
Total Mitigation: 84.931%
Damage Taken: 15.069%
Savage Defense: 77.388% ~ 1586
Chance to be Crit: -8.055%

So just under 51k health, can’t be crit, just a bit less than 50% dodge. Not too shabby. And again – this is pretty much bottom of the barrel. If you have access to Furious gear, it becomes a bit easier (and you get a lot more stamina).

Would I do this? No. It’s not that hard of a hard mode anyway, and if you don’t already have the deadly gear it’s probably not worth grinding for it. (If you have the furious gear or want to get it, that’s another story). The amount of resilience gems used makes a lot of this stuff pretty unusable anywhere else; I tried to make the gemming such that only the PvP gear is using the resilience gems, but it’s still annoying.

But if you’re bored or interested in trying something new, I’d recommend it. I’d also recommend throwing on resilience gear for this fight if you have it anyway (and it’s comparable in the slot you’re replacing). Having less of a chance to take crits even when you’re swapping can really make a difference.

Now, I’m always been a huge advocate of PvP items have no place in PvE (especially tanking due to lost of hit / expertise, along with other stats taht are vital for holding aggro and survival, but this post makes quite a bit of sense.

Edit: Looking back at this post, they never mentioned using Glyph of Barkskin.  Glyph of Barkskin prevents you from being Criticly hit by melee swings by 25% which would more than account for the 7.6% you’d have to make up in Resilience.  However, please keep in mind that Barkskin only lasts for 12 seconds, so after those 12 seconds, you’re back at where you started.

Bear Consumables:

There are a ton of foods, potions, elixirs, and flasks that you can choose from.  Some of them seem like a good idea, but you can actually squeeze a few extra stats that are more beneficial.  Please remember that you can only use one potion, and one flask (or one Guardian and one Battle elixir).

Please note: The following lists are in order from what I’d believe is most important to least.

Potions:

• Crazy Alchemist Potion *Requires 400 Alchemy!* (3100-3500HP + Random potion effect)
• Runic Health Potion (2700-4500HP)
• Powerful Rejuvination Potion (2475-4125HP)
• Any resistant potion (I.E. Indestructible Potion (3500 Armor for 2 minutes) or any potion that absorbs any amount of spell damage)

The reason I selected the Crazy Alchemist Potion for the top slot is because of the higher low number compared to the other two health type potions, plus it gives something extra.  Sometimes it can be armor, sometimes speed, both beneficial, and according to my research, the only ill effect that can come from the potion is the effects of potion of nightmares which will put you asleep.  However, this seems to only happen out of combat.  Also, for the resistant potions, these wont be used very often, and I personally like the instant health than the damage to be absorbed.  As of right now, the only fights I can see where resistance plays a role are possibly Sartharion with 3 drakes up, and Hodir (although I have done both without such resistances.)

Flasks:

• Flask of Stoneblood (Max health increased by 1300)
• Flask of Endless Rage (180AP)

Flasks are pretty easy.  Usually, since you are a tank, you will be using Flask of Stoneblood for the increased health of course.  However, if you find that you’re in a fight that you’re not making the enrage timer for, or find that you lose aggro quite often, I’d try the Flask of Endless Rage.

Elixirs (Guardian):

• Elixir of Mighty Fortitude (Max health increased by 350HP + 20HP5)
• Elixir of Protection (800 Armor)
• Elixir of Mighty Defense (45 Defense)

The Elixir of Mighty Fortitude is on top because flat out there are more fights that have more sources of damage other than physical, so having an overall higher health pool will help you with 100% of the fights.  However, there are still those fights that are physical damage heavy, and the extra armor will do just as well.  Elixir of Mighty Defense was put on the list solely for the purpose because you can still get a little bit of Dodge / miss from it (About 0.4%) and that it should be the last resort as you should already be defense capped through the talent Survival of the Fittest!

Elixirs (Battle):

• Guru’s Elixir ( +20 to all stats)
• Elixir of Mighty Agility (45 Agility)
• Elixir of Major Agility  *Outlands recipe* (30 Agility + 12 Crit Rating)
• Elixir of Deadly Strikes ( +45 Crit Rating)

Battle elixirs are a little more tough to select.  I’d say always go for Guru’s Elixir if you have it available, you’ll be getting more health, dodge, crit, armor, and Attack Power.  Also, the two agility elixirs I’d say would be neck and neck, however, I believe you’d get more out of the Elixir of Mighty Agility just due to raid buffs and such. Elixir of Deadly Strikes also is included just for the fact of Savage Defense, so that’s pretty much equivilant to 0.98% chance to absorb 25% of our AP.  If you find that you’re missing or getting parried / blocked often, you might want to try Elixir of Accuracy (+45 Hit Rating) or Elixir of Expertise (+45 Expertise Raiting).

Food:

• Blackened Dragonfin ( + 40 Agility, + 40 Stamina)
• Fish Feast / Poached Northern Sculpin (+80AP, +40 Stamina)
• Spiced Wyrm Burger (+40 Crit Raiting, + 40 Stamina)

With food and tanking, the biggest thing you’re wanting to be conserned with is the stamina.  Usually with any raiding party, you’ll have someone dropping Fish Feasts and those are super, you get extra AP so more absorption when you crit (along with helping threat), and 40 stamina.  Blackened Dragonfin of course is at the top, because of how much Agility brings to the table in terms of survivability.  Again as with the battle elixirs, if you find yourself missing or getting parried / dodged quite often, try the Expertise food (Rhinolicious Wormsteak) or Hit foods (Snapper Extreme / Worg Tartare).

Bear Glyphs:

Untill this last major patch (3.1) Bears really didn’t have a lot to choose from in the terms of glyphs. I personally ran around with two bear glyphs and a cat glyph because I would DPS heroics to make money in my spare time. Even without giving my full attention to getting all bear glyphs, I’ve main tanked every boss encounter, and still have up into Ulduar (Although we have no finished yet.) Now with dual specing however, you CAN give your full attention to one aspect or the other, and with the new glyphs that are out, it is very helpful to be able to focus on a particular job.

Please Note:  I am including every glyph that effects an ability you would use at a bear, even if it’s not useful, so that you don’t waste your money and time on a worthless glyph.

MAJORS

Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration:  This glyph increases healing done to you while having Frezied Regeneration up by 30%.  As a tank, extra healing power equals you living longer most of the time, and usually if you have popped this ability, you’re in trouble, so anything that will extend the duration of you living is always a plus.  This is even more powerful if you actually have healers that do what they are supposed to and have HoTs ticking on you at all times, as this will increase their effects as well, but none the less, if you have a disc Priest or a holy Paladin just booming their cast heals into you, it is still pretty effective.

Glyph of Mangle:  This glyph for bears is pretty useless, it increases the duration of Mangle by 6 seconds.  Mangle should be used every time it’s up regardless if you’re clearing trash or tanking a boss,  But it’s not going to kill you if it’s not always applied.  Mangle already lasts 12 seconds and has a cooldown of 6 seconds which I personally like to reduce to 4.5 seconds, as this is our snap aggro move, so the increased duration DOES NOT help at all.

Glyph of Barkskin:  This glyph reduces the chance you’ll be critically hit by melee attacks by 25% while barkskin is active.  Again this glyph is pretty awful for bears  As any feral druid, you should spec into Survival of the Fittest; not only does it increase all of your stats, and increases armor, but it also makes you over defense cap, and being defense cap, YOU WILL NEVER BE CRIT WITHOUT A DEBUFF ON YOU.  Now, if you do happen to have a debuff on you that reduces your defense you should always have an off tank ready to taunt off you.  The only time this would be of any use for a bear is if your offtank goes down and you have a decrease defense buff, you could probably sit through it, but there are so few mobs that have that ability that you can use better glyphs no doubt.

Glyph of Berserk:  This glyph increases the duration on Berserk by 5 seconds.  Berserk as you all should know, for bears, eliminates the cooldown of mangle completely for the duration of Berserk, and also allows you to Mangle three adjacent mobs (You can also increase the damage done while in Berserk if you spec into King of the Jungle.)  For bear, as for cat, I cant see this being very viable for PvE.  Berserk is a nice to burst your threat, or nuke mobs, but an extra 5 seconds is only going to buy you about 3 Global cooldowns of Mangle, which by my standards, just isn’t cutting it.  Just the uptime that you’d be using this should be a turn off,  if you pop this ability every time it is up in an hour that would be an extra minute and a half-ish of Berserk.

Glyph of Survival Instincts:  This glyph increases the amount of health you get when you use Survival Instincts by 15% of your maximum health, making you Survival Instincts grant you 45% instead of just 30% of your max health.  This glyph is HUGE.  Survival Instincts and Barkskin have saved me so many times in encounters that we have to have a cooldown rotation between myself and my healers (examples: 3D Sarth, Mimiron).  Being able to increase the cusion that your healers have to keep you up is amazing.  Just to give you some numbers, on average with Kings, Imp Mark of the Wild, and Fort, I have around 41k health.  Popping Survival instincts unglyphed: 53,300hp  Glyphed: 59,450hp, so for me it’s a gain of 7,150hp during that time.

Glyph of Growl:  This glyph increases the chance of your Growl to hit by 8%.  This glyph is pretty useful since taunting can save your group.  A lot of tank gear does not have hit, so you have quite a bit of hit to make up to be capped, and this glyph almost assures that your Growl will hit every time.  Good thing to note, a lot of the trash / bosses in Ulduar have tank switching mechanics, so being able to have your Growl hit every time, it makes things go a lot more smooth.

Glyph of Maul:  This glyph allows you to hit an extra mob with Maul.  This glyph is A MUST HAVE.  This will help you a ton keeping aggro on trash and multiple boss mobs.  The only thing you have to really worry about is keeping away from CCed mobs, as it will break it if it hits it.

MINORS

Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth:  This glyph allows you to use Rebirth without a reagent.  This is extremely useful so that you never have to exuse “I forgot my nuts!”, and you have a few places free in your bags because you no longer have to carry the reagent around.

Glyph of the Wild:  This glyph lowers the mana cost of your Mark of the Wild and Gift of the Wild spells by 50%.  Not a super strong glyph, but it makes things move faster after a wipe or if someone dies and you rebirth them and need to apply the buff to them without the hastle of drinking, or waiting for mana to regen.

Glyph of Thorns:  This glyph increase the duration of Thorns by an extra 50 minutes when applied to yourself, (increasting the duration to an hour.)  The extra damage helps a ton to keep aggro, so this is always nice to put on yourself, and with the extra time, you wont have to keep applying it to yourself.

Glyph of Challenging Roar:  This Glyph reduces the cooldown of your Challenging Roar by 30 seconds. Challenging Roar is a 3 minute ability, so this glyph reduces it to a 2.5 minute cooldown.  I personally do not use Challenging Roar often, but if you seem to use this ability often, I would pick this up.

My Personal Picks:

Majors:

• Glyph of Maul
• Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration
• Glyph of Survival Instincts

 Glyph that almost made the cut:

Glyph of Growl:  Only use this if you find yourself missing quite a bit, I have a bit of hit, so this isn’t as useful as it once was.

Minor:

• Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth
• Glyph of Thorns
• Glyph of the Wild

If you do find yourself wanting the Challenging Roar glyph, I’d replace Glyph of the Wild with Glyph of Challenging Roar.

Percents And Numbers To Know!

I’m sure everyone has at one time or another wondered “Hmm, I wonder how much hit I need to stop missing!”, or “I wonder if “x” amount of Dodge is better than the “x” amount of agility I’m gaining.” Well, hopefully this section of the blog will give you some insight into that, and you can make more educated decisions on gear. A lot of the numbers will be repeated so that you can go to the section you’re looking for information in, and see all the equations for that one stat.

Please Note: All numbers are assuming you are level 80, have Heart Of The Wild and Survival Of The Fittest.  Numbers in parenthesis “()” are with Blessing of Kings added in.

Agility:
1 Agility =

• 2.12 (2.332) Armor
• 0.01272% (0.013992%)  to Crit
• 0.02544% (0.027984%) to Dodge
• 1.166 (2.2826) Attack Power *(Cat Only!)*

To get 1% of:
1 % Dodge = 39.31 (35.73) Agility
1% Crit = 78.62 (71.47) Agility

 

Strength:
1 Strength=

• 2.332 (2.5652) Attack Power *(Cat Only)*
• 2.12 (2.332) Attack Power *(Bear Only)*
• 2.2472 (2.47192) Attack Power *(Bear with Protector of the Pack)*

 

Crit:

• 1 CritRating = 0.022% Crit
• 1 Agility = 0.02544% (0.013992%) Crit

To get 1% of:
1% of Crit = 45.91 CritRating
1% of Crit = 78.62 (71.47) Agility

Hit:

• 1 HitRating = 0.0.30% hit

To get 1% of:
1% of Hit = 32.79 HitRating
Hit caps:
Cap vs. Level 80 mob = 5% hit = 163.95 HitRaiting
Cap vs. Level 81 mob = 5.5% Hit = 180.34 HitRaiting
Cap vs. Level 82 mob = 6% Hit = 192.74 HitRaiting
Cap vs. Level 83 mob = 8% hit = 262.32 HitRating *(This is the number for Raid Boss cap)*

Haste:

• 1 HasteRadting = 0.030% Haste

To get to 1%:
1% Haste = 32.79 HasteRating

Expertise Rating:

• 1 ExpertiseRating = 0.030% reduction in Dodge and Parry chance

To get 1%:
1% reduction in dodge And parry = 32.79 ExpertiseRaiting

Expertise Caps:

Cap vs. Level 83 mob = 6.5% Dodge / 15% Parry = 213.13 / 491.85 ExpertiseRaiting

The 10 Expertise you get from Primal Precision was not factored in, but is an additional 81.975 Expertise raiting.  If you have that talent, subtract 81.975 from the amount of Expertise Raiting you need to cap.

 *Another side note, please remember that parry is only a factor if you are infront of a boss, as they cannot parry from behind.  So in other words, the last number (491.85 ExpertiseRaiting) should only be sought after by tanks, as DPS should ALWAYS be behind the mob unless stated otherwise*

Armor Penetration Raiting:

• 1 ArPenRating = 0.065% Armor Penetration

To get 1%:
1% Armor Penetration = 15.395 ArPenRating

Stamina:

• 1 Stamina = 10.6 ( 1166) Health *(Cat Only)*
• 1 Stamina = 15.9 (17.49) Health *(Bear Only)*

Dodge:

• 1 DodgeRaiting = 0.025% Dodge
• 1 Agility = 0.02544% ( 0.027984%) Dodge

To get 1%:
1% Dodge = 39.31 ( 35.73) Agility
1% Dodge = 39.35 DodgeRating

Armor:

•  1 Armor = 4.7 Armor [5.17 with Thick Hide] *(Bear Only)*
• 1 Agility = 2.12 (2.332) armor

Equations to know:
Damage Reduction from Armor % = Armor *100 /(Armor +(467.5 * AttackerLevel – 22167.5))
Damage Reduction for Level 83 mob = Armor *100 / (Armor +116635)
Armor cap is at 75% Damage Reduction – 49905 Armor

Cat Glyphs

As a cat, there aren’t many major glyphs to pick from; six major, five minor.  Although some of them are better than others for PvE, some PvP.  So, instead of me babbling, lets just get to the breakdown of each of the Glyphs. First, the majors.

MAJORS

Glyph Of Shred:  This glyph refreshes your Rip for an extra two seconds each application of Shred for an extra addition of six seconds.  For all of you keeping score at home, you’d need to Shred three times to get all six seconds, and those six seconds equal three additional Rip ticks. In addition to that, you have to be behind your target for this to be efficient (So, for example, if your tank is horrible at positioning on fights like, lets say Heigan and you have to stay infront of him or else you’ll get killed by the fissures, this is not the glyph for you.)

Glyph Of Mangle:  This glyph increases the Duration of Mangle on the target by six seconds.  This is an excelent glyph for a cat and pretty much would be a Must Have for me.  Mangle increases the damage from Rip, Rake, and Shred while applied.  Being that Rip should be your highest ability on a boss, only possibly second to Melee, any increased damage that can be applied to it is a plus.  Also keep in mind, the bleed from Rip and Rake are not affected by Armor, so they usually deal relitively nice numbers on a highly armored boss or Player, so additional damage, again a plus.

Glyph of Rip:  This glyph increases the durration of your rip ability by four seconds. So, an additional two ticks of Rip.  The nice thing about this you don’t need to use extra energy for the extra time on Rip like Glyph Of Shred does, and also, you do not have to be behind your target.  The down side is, you get one less tick.  All in all, very nice Glyph to have because it’s a for sure 2 ticks, where as with Glyph Of Shred, you might miss a shred, and therefore possibly losing the effect if Rip wears out.

Glyph  Of Berserk:  This on not too PvE in my book, yeah, it’s an extra five seconds of berserk, so 50% less energy per move, and you can’t be feared which means higher dps on a boss that can fear.  But I think you’d possibly get more out of the other glyphs.  The only thing I can see this viable for is Arena or PvP in general to avoid from using trinket or nuking a priest / warlock when they panic and fear.

Glyph Of Savage Roar:  This glyph increases the damage you do by 3% while Savage Roar is up.  Extrodinary in my book, 3% might seem like a whole lot, but over time, it’ll add up.  Especially effective since Savage Roar should ALWAYS be up, or else you’d be losing a lot of DPS.

Glyph of Rake: Honestly, the worst cat Glyph out there, This glyph stops any mob from running away as long as Rake is on them.  Kinda poor considering that nothing in instances after Outlands runs away anymore.  I’d highly stay away from wasting a spot or money on this.

MINORS

Minor glyph wise, there really isn’t a whole lot to choose from.  I also tend to keep the same minor glyphs for booth my cat and bear form specs.

Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth: This glyph allows you to use Rebirth without a reagent.  This is extremely usefull so that you never have the excuse “I forgot my nuts!”, and you have a few places free in your bags because you no longer have to carry the reagent around.

Glyph of the Wild: This glyph lowers the mana cost of your Mark of the Wild and Gift of the Wild spells by 50%.  Not a super strong glyph, but it makes things move faster after a wipe or if someone dies and you rebirth them and need to apply the buff to them without the hastle of drinking, or waiting for mana to regen.

Glyph of Thorns: This glyph increase the duration of Thorns by an extra 50 minutes when applied to yourself, (Increasing the duration to an hour.)  the Extra damage from this is actually a lot better for being a bear, but in cat, if you’re soloing, or accidentally pull aggro, you still get extra damage in.

Glyph of Dash: This glyph reduces the cooldown of Dash by 20% making dash available every 2 minutes and 24 seconds (knocking off 36 seconds).  Can’t really see the utility as a cat other than maybe long fights with lots of movement, or for travel for leveling.

Glyph of Aquatic Form:  Increases the speed of which you swim while in Aquatic Form.  Not very useful as there really arent any instances, except for Coilfang instances, that have water.  Possibly usefull for leveling and that’s about it.

My personal picks:

Major:

• Glyph of Rip
• Glyph of Savage Roar
• Glyph of Mangle

Glyph of Shred was not added to my picks because of the reliablity of having to be behind the mob at all times, and that’s just not ALWAYS an option.  All three of these are useful whether you’re behind, infront, inside, outside, on the side, just plain helpful.

Minor:

• Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth
• Glyph of Thorns
• Glyph of the Wild

Cat Rotation For Bosses:

Rotation for bosses can get pretty scary some times, but hopefully the tips that are in this article help you out.  First off, the word “rotation” should be taken lightly for bosses, as what you do is more a priority list than a rotation.  Secondly, if you let any of the abilities about to be mentioned fall off either you or the boss, your dps will dip, but it’s not the end of the world.  Just make sure to follow the list below, and you should be on your way to the top of the DPS charts:

1. Always make sure that you’re behind your target if you can help it!
2. Always keep Savage Roar up.
3. Always keep up Feral Faerie Fire.
4. Always keep Mangle up.
5. Always keep Rip up (only 5 combo point rips, nothing less)
6. Always keep Rake up.
7. If all the above are applied, Shred.
8. If all the combo point required moves above have 5 seconds or more left, Ferocious Bite.

With all of that said, my personal rotation goes a little like this:

• Get in position
• Feral Faerie Fire
• Mangle
• Savage Roar (gives me 14-19 seconds depending on if I’ve crit or not.)
• Rake
• Shred till I have 25 or less energy
• Tiger’s Fury (for 60 extra energy as I am speced into King of the jungle, and extra damage is always good!)
• Shred till 5 points
• Rip

Usually by this time, you need to either need to reapply Mangle (if you are not glyphed) or have to reapply Savage Roar, followed up by the reapplication of Rake. after I have reapplied those, I’d have whatever combo points I have from rake, and then I shred till 5 points and then FB as everything else should still be applied, if not, I apply those first.  Also a good rule of thumb to follow is to do two combo point moves and Savage Roar when reapplying (only use one combo move for the initial application), and Always use a 5 point combo for Rip or FB (Only exception is FB on a mob close to death, than just go to as many as you think you can before it dies.)

Side Note: My current Cat spec / Projected glyphs that I’d take are found here. (An indepth look into Glyphs and Talents are to come soon!) Alternatively, if you don’t have 43-ish% to crit, This spec, might be a bit better for the added crit.

A few thing that might need to be cleared up:

Mangle: Make sure this is appied before any bleeds are applied or you shred, as it does increase their damage.

Rake: Not as strong as any of the other moves you can do initially, but the bleed is still powerful (especially on those mobs that have high armor, as bleeds are not effected by armor reduction.) And anytime you can do damage while continuing your rotation is most certainly a gain.

Feral Faerie Fire: Quite a few druids of all specs forget to apply this, and it’s a shame, I personally apply this while I’m getting in position since it’s the only ranged move I can do as a cat.  Also, this will increase not only your damage, but everyone in your party that relies on physical attacks.

Tiger’s Fury: With the changes that were applied in Wrath of the Lich King, this should almost be activated every time it is up.  The only exception is if you’re speced into King of the Jungle, as it gives you 20/40/60 energy back instantly when activated (Along with the extra damage Tiger’s Fury already gives!) If you’re speced into King of the Jungle, you should most definitely wait till you have 25 or less energy.

Savage Roar: Every move that you do while this is up (except for the initial move to gain the combo points to apply it), you’re losing dps, and a lot of it.  So almost at all costs, make sure that this is up.

Rip: This is now our bread and butter Sustained damage over long fights now that it can crit.  If Savage Roar and Mangle are applied (if mangle was not applied or is wearing out, you should probably reapply it getting points to either Savage Roar or Rip) you should rip.

Ferocious Bite: I’m personally in a love/hate relationship with FB.  Even with a 75-ish% to crit through crit % and the talent of Rend and Tear that gives me an extra 25% while a bleed is present, I seem to not crit quite a bit, and when I do, I’m not only losing 65 energy, but I’m only doing a burst of about 10-14k depending on how much armor the mob has.  I would HIGHLY suggest that you use Rip over this everytime, unless the mob is at 10% and rip will not last the full duration.

Berserk: This was one ability that I did not cover as it is very situational and you have to talent into it.  I personally don’t see a situation where either a cat or a bear druid would not pick this up, but I’ve seen it before.  Pretty much though, you get 15 seconds of abilities being 50% energy cheaper, so this is a MAJOR dps boost.  As I said though, it’s situational, If you know the fight is going to last longer than 3 minutes, activate it early. Warning!: Tiger’s Fury cannot be activated while Berserked so always apply Tiger’s Fury first!  If it lasts longer, wait till that clinch moment that everyone has to burst a certain mob down, or if the boss has a percentage enrage (see Patchwerk and Maexxena).  Also some people like to pop it when the group Bloodlusts (or Heroism for all you Alliance people out there. ).  I personally like to use it after the initial Savage Roar and after Tiger’s Fury, or after the Bloodlust, and after Tiger’s Fury if it is up.

Even with how hard it seems, it’s quite simple to keep everything you need applied up almost all the time. Also, if there are any questions with this, or any of the posts I make, please, feel free to comment, and I can try to help answer them as best as I can.

 

 

 

Cat Rotation For Trash:

Quite a few people ask me how I get high DPS in heroics and raids.  With the new changes to our abilities, it’s quite easy, However, there are a few rotations you have to do based on the situation.  This post is going to cover the situation of basic trash, which you’ll find this in Naxxramas and 5-man dungeons.  Now some people might say, “Trash? No one cares about that!”  But think about it, even if you’re overgeared and have an instance on farm, you spend majority of your time on trash.  Needless to say,  the faster you get trash down, the faster your run goes, or more attempts at progression. 

Now on to some trash talk! ( get it?) Trash is all about doing a bunch of damage really fast, which is perfect for cat druids because we deal our damage in bursts for the most part.  Trash usually doesn’t have high health, and you have a lot of people doing AoE’s like yourself, so there isn’t much time to really establish a complex rotation.  So, first thing to do is get in position. 

Being that swipe is our only AoE that we have, you want to get where you’re behind the middle most mob, and turn your character so that you’re facing the most mobs nearest to you.  I know this is kinda like a “Duh!” statement, but I don’t know how many druids forget good positioning.  Also, wait for your tanks to establish aggro.  Another fault that I see a lot of cats have is they will see the tanks pull one of the mobs, Feral Charge in, and start their rotation.  This will most likely lead to your death, and ultamately lead to you having lower dps.  So, with that said, getting positioned without the help of Feral Charge helps give your tanks a few extra seconds that might be vital for your survival.

Secondly, you need to get Savage Roar up as quickly as possible, and to do that, you’ll need combo points.  As you can tell from the tool tip on Savage Roar, it’s ability lasts longer the more combo points you have.  How many points you hold out for depends on how quickly your group clears trash, but for the most part, you should be able to get by on one or two (If you are speced into Primal Fury and crit).  Now to get these points are up to you, I usually go for Rake, It’s cheap, and I get extra damage from the bleed while I’m swiping.  Although a Mangle will do the trick as well, and it does a bit of burst just incase you’re killing something that dies before a few ticks of your bleed goes off.  Once you land that first blow, be it Rake or Mangle, you need to hit Savage Roar.

Side note: If you have not speced into King of the Jungle, this would be the time you would hit Tiger’s Fury for extra damage on the next step.

Once Savage Roar is applied, the fun begins.  You need to start Swiping.  You should be able to get one off after landing Rake/Mangle, and Savage Roar unless you’ve speced into Clearcasting, and it has proced, then you get another Swipe in.  Once you cannot swipe again, you have two choices, you can either wait for enough energy to regenerate to swipe again.  Or, if you’re speced into King of the Jungle, you can activate Tiger’s Fury and gain energy (up to 60 energy) and some extra damage on your next swipe.  However, after you activate that, unless you get a Clearcasting proc, or 30 seconds have gone by (and you dont have the tier 7 set bonus to reduce the cooldown of Tiger’s Fury to 25 seconds), you’ll have to wait for the energy to regenerate, and by that time, your mobs could be dead.

Once the pull thins down to one mob, chances are they are almost dead, so you cant quite start up a standard single mob rotation and have to do as much damage before they die.  So again you’re faced with one of two choices that I see, and that is either Mangle and then Shred them to death (Mangle increases the damage of Shred), or you can just Mangle spam till it dies.  Rake does low initial damage, and the bleeds might not make up for the damage of Mangle and Shred by the time the mob dies, and your other abilities for the most part require combo points you may not have to equal the damage you could do with the two abilities mentioned above.

Side Note: Some people might say it might be better to Mangle one time and then Ferocious Bite(FB), but with one or two combo points, you would have to crit, and hope for the high end of the damage range on FB to equal the damage that you could easily do with Mangle or Shred.

Below is a flow chart that I usually run through my head for trash, and it might be useful for someone so I’ve decided to post it. (Also, I’ve never seen a rotation as a flow chart and thought it would be fun. )

Another Side Note: For the chart below to be 100% accurate you need to be talented into all energy reduction talents, King of the Jungle for the 60 energy when Tiger’s Fury is used, and also Clearcasting.

Day One:

Welcome!  This is Day One of this little blog type thing.  Being that I don’t have anything on here yet, I thought I might write about why exactly I’m starting this blog.  I’ve been a feral druid ever since I’ve started playing World of Warcraft about four years ago.  since then I’ve created four druids, all of them feral for majority of their lifetime (Although one of them did eventually turn into a resto druid).  But, in my travels as a druid, I’ve had people come to me asking questions about certain things; this blog  hopefully can shed some light on those topics, and many more. So please, feel free to leave comments, and I’ll try my hardest to get them answered.