Any Ferals Tank DS yet

[Oerba Yun Fang]

Honestly, the vengeance is madly OP now. Just go into 5 man where you can relax more, see how high and INSTANTLY it goes up. I saw constant 10-15k vengeance in FL heroic gear, inn the 5 mans. And its there right as you pull really.

And I LOVE IT! It helps so much with those annoying people who think you have complete aggro when you FFF a mob. I really hope Blizzard doesn't nerf it (but I'm sure they will QQ) cause it's so awesome how it is now. lol

[Djuntas]

yup it sure is Moontalon

[exochaft]

Have cleared 7/8 and up to phase 2 on the Madness of Deathwing... only to be stuck due to the boss bugging out and not lowering his head after destroying the 4 claws every attempt. Hoping they fix this so our group can clear 8/8 this week, but from what I've heard of P2, I doubt that'll change my impression of bear tanks for DS.

Granted I'm a bear tank and felt tanking was pretty easy, but I think it would've been easy for any tank. Most boss fights have the "tank and spank" feel to them or movement requirements are very relaxed. I'll reserve my final judgement for heroics, which I hope are significantly more challenging. Honestly, the biggest challenge with the normal modes so far has been dealing with bugs and working around them or waiting until they get fixed if it makes the encounter impossible (like Deathwing not lowering his head). I'd say the first 4 bosses feel very under-tuned since they don't seem to require much planning or effort, plus I literally didn't blow any major survival cooldowns for those fights (wasn't any mechanics that required them anyways).

Ultraxion is a hefty step above the first four bosses, but once you figure out tanking rotations it's all up to the healers (feels dirty with 4-piece T12 and the Thrall buff). Gunship is... well, gunship... the most challenging part would be trying for the achievement to stop all the shadow blasts. The Spine of Deathwing was the first fight that felt tuned for a normal mode... granted we couldn't raid it our first raid night since the cinematic DC'd most of our raid and/or the raid would be stuck on an invisible ceiling above the spine, unable to do the fight. Once we were able to get the entire raid landing on the spine w/o dying from falling damage or being throw off his back despite being latched on, the fight's fairly straightforward (as a bear, most difficult part of the fight is near the end with the little oozes coming out very fast, just a pain trying to aggro them all). The Madness of Deathwing also felt tuned appropriated for a normal mode, granted it has been and still is plagued with bugs that add difficulty... however, the fight is very manageable as a bear (you can pop out 2 Tranquilities and Innervates every CD, as well). Depending on the order of the platforms, your mileage may vary, but in general you'll be saving your major survival/DPS cooldowns for the last two platforms.

Onto my general raiding overview! Vengeance change is really nice, especially since you can have long avoidance strings and not see a huge/any reduction in our Vengeance stack. Yay consistent SD shields and damage output (it's fun to destroy those Blistering Tentacles with ease).

With respect to our larger HP: I found it very noticeable and nice. Now, with all the normal modes, a bear tank might not say it was needed (likely not needed), but I suspect the increased stamina from Bear form will be a godsend on heroics. While there is quite a bit of magic damage, there are quite a few mechanics that are magic-based or cannot be avoided, and this is where the extra stamina will help out. Only fight where I semi-needed the extra stamina was the Madness of Deathwing on one of the later platforms since we'd always be down a couple DPS (due to falling through the world, aka bug with jumping across platforms). We had a bad staggering of one of the flying shards and eating a second Impale... yeah, don't ask how I lived, but that 10% extra stamina helped.

Kind of curious to try DS with the LFD tool to see how easy it is to tank with my main druid tank, alts seemed fairly easy.

[Arielle]

Morchok and Zon (or whatever his name is) are pretty stupid easy on 10m normal.

Von is harder, and probably the most properly tuned out of all of the first 5 of the 10m normal bosses.

Hagg is actually quite a snoozefest.

Ultraxion's trash is harder than Ultraxion himself. Ultraxion is entirely a DPS/Heal check, while the tank gets to snooze through the entire fight.

[Odmanex]

Extra stamina buff was nice but not super huge, vengeance change was enjoyable. It seemed like there was a higher percentage of magic damage vs firelands. Of the 4 fights we did (Siege of Wyrmrest), we needed two tanks only on morchok. Having your feral as the offtank (agil/dps gemmed/enchanted, swapping trinkets and spec for 2 tank fights) seems like a very smart move.

Or just have a prot pala solo tanking it :P

[Hanto]

The bear tank in our guild just pushed us to 5/8 in our guild tonight. He practically solo tanked Ultraxion, only asking for a taunt off when he got the Faded Light debuff and taunted when it ended. He soaked all of the Twilight Hour hits as well. Downed it with a DPS being dead for about 30secs in 10m. 4 secs left before the enrage.

We gave the Gunship battle a few honest shots but couldn't push to P2. Lots of moving around! ><
But anyway... bear tanks seem to be doing well.

[Sackman]

Tanked alongside another feral yesterday. Was easy.

[exochaft]

He practically solo tanked Ultraxion, only asking for a taunt off when he got the Faded Light debuff and taunted when it ended. He soaked all of the Twilight Hour hits as well.

You can technically solo tank this fight. My tanking partner had a crit error one attempt, so I ended up tanking it for the duration. With the cooldown reduction, you'll always have SI and Barkskin/FR available if necessary. When you get the Fading debuff, you don't even need someone to taunt if you time it properly (since you'll return to your group if you use it the instant you fade). While I don't know if this will work for heroic (haven't bothered looking up the additional abilities yet), but right now it's very doable for normal if you have a DPS shortage.

[Arielle]

You can technically solo tank this fight. My tanking partner had a crit error one attempt, so I ended up tanking it for the duration. With the cooldown reduction, you'll always have SI and Barkskin/FR available if necessary. When you get the Fading debuff, you don't even need someone to taunt if you time it properly (since you'll return to your group if you use it the instant you fade). While I don't know if this will work for heroic (haven't bothered looking up the additional abilities yet), but right now it's very doable for normal if you have a DPS shortage.

Yeah if you hit Heroic Will at ~1 second (or less) left on fading you can 1 tank it. It's actually a pretty huge DPS check so it might be a good idea to try this if you're having problems.

[Imnick]

No, no ferals have ever tanked DS.
For some reason literally every person specced Feral decided to either go to Dragon Soul as DPS or not at all, an entirely baffling occurence.

[NavarrJenkins]

My main spec was resto but our relatively new raid team has had tank consistency issues, so I just switched over to be our main tank this weak. I took damage against Warlord Zon'ozz and Yor'sahj the Unsleeping very well - and take damage better overall than the 2 pally tanks in the guild. Per the logs I was absorbing/dodging/being missed 40-50% of the time (low 40's on 1 boss and high 40's on other). My self healing was very nice at around 1 mil per fight. The healers said my bear was no problem to heal.

Search NavarrJenkins Warlord Zon'ozz guide on youtube. I'd link but am new here so it hasn't unlocked yet.

The team I'm on in the video was entry level geared for DS normal. None of these toons have firelands heroic gear on. The highest level was my druid with 378 item level equipped. Thus, my video/guide is probably just right for many casual raid teams and for teams of alts.

[caa]

Anyone tank Dragonsoul yet? How are ferals feeling in there? I am tanking it on friday so was just kind of curious.

I'm feeling pretty good.

[Hinalover]

Well on our alt 10m run tonight, we only did up to Hagara and I had no qualms with it (Ran Firelands real quick before going to DS). Hitting 7-9 stacks on Zon'ozz started to feel painful before we changed our strat to every 3 bounces after the first clump instead of every 5 bounces. Hagara's Focused Attack was painful. Just needed to stack Barkskin and a major cooldown. Have the second tank taunt after the Focused attack and just rotate from there. We didn't know about the "move away from the boss" bit until the LAST TWO Focused Attack before we killed her. If your doing the "Run as a group on lightning phase" strat, Stampeding Roar is nice since it will be up for every lightning phase.

[Vulpei]

Yeah if you hit Heroic Will at ~1 second (or less) left on fading you can 1 tank it. It's actually a pretty huge DPS check so it might be a good idea to try this if you're having problems.

How do you get threat back after you come back when you have Faded into Twilight?

[uzumati]

That is the problem with one tanking the debuff you get from using Heroic Will (threat wiped and unable to build threat for 10 seconds). Although several times i would hop out for Fading Light and come back just in time for the other tank to pop out for Hour of Twilight and had no problems holding threat, but i think this was because everyone (but the 2 soakers) was porting out and i was taunting off the other tank who had a threat lead.

[Bumdaorf]

Tanked the first 4 last night, pretty simple like everyone else seems to be saying

[Rudolpho]

Went 8/8 this week and I feel pretty op. I dps on every fight we can 1 tank, and the AP buff is nuts for cat form, then on the two tank fights it is pretty powerful in bearform too. I was pulling 25-30k dps, depending on the fight, in bear form...and taking very little damage.

I have 4 piece now, however, and with the new stamina bonus + the unglyphed 4 piece bonus I'm thinking about switching to stamina stacking to see how that will work out. I have a feeling that with some heroic gear and stamina completely stacked out, can get up to around 100k HPS out of frenzied.