feral tank agro rotation

[Xuca]

for single targets how can you maximize your agro rotation?

[Knighjen]

I keep up FFF, mangle/maul to start, lacerate, lacerate, mangle, lacerate, lacerate mangle... if you have plent of rage, then i Maul/mangle, lacerate/maul, lacerate/maul, maul/mangle
if beserk isnt on cooldown
maul/mangle maul/mangle maul/mangle

thats about all you can do, until swipe does more damage than lacerate, then just replace lacerate with swipe.

[The Cat]

Assuming unlimited rage, FFF Maul/mangle then lac to start. Demo roar, Maul at all times, mangle whenever its up, swipe in between mangles and do a lac whenever timer is about to go out. Lac is just for buffing maul damage if you have the talent.

[Dooudad]

yes fff to pull, typically with charge if placement is ok, have maul active as you charge. Mangle, Demo roar, 1x lacerate, (2x if your mangle is on 6 second cool down), mangle, 2x lacerate, (3x if mangle on 6 second cool down) Mangle, and repeat over and over skipping lacerate to put on fff once more or another demo roar. maul if you have the energy every time its up. and skip lacerates all together if berserk is on cool down, refresh fff and demo roar berserk then mangle while spaming maul. doing that in heroic gear and your threat will be untouchable and you will likely be 1-2 highest dps in your group.

[xebtria]

3 macros:

#show Mangle - Bear
/cast Mangle - Bear
/cast !Maul

#show lacerate
/cast lacerate
/cast !maul

#show swipe
/cast swipe
/cast !maul

get "glyph of maul"
bind them - maybe like me: growl 1, then 2-3-4 those 3 makros - on keys.
tell your nukers that CC isn't needed.
press in following order:
FFF at start
2-3-3-2-3-3-2-3-4-2-4-4-2-4-3-2-4-4-2-4-4-2-4-3-2-4-4-and-so-on => for bosses
2-4-4-and-so-on => for trash > 2 mobs
for exactly 2 mobs
start with a "3" for each mob and than like trash>2, just refreshing lacerate any now and then (if the life really that long, that lacerate needs to be refreshed... :P)
good advice for bosses and every trash which is =< 3 mobs: pop beserk and simply spam "2". if beserk drops, just go on with the "normal" rotation.

you're done.

[symbiosis]

2-3-3-2-3-3-2-3-4-2-4-4-2-4-3-2-4-4-2-4-4-2-4-3-2-4-4-and-so-on => for bosses

You'd use swipe against bosses? Surely only if it has adds.

[Nepenthes]

Get a FFF on early, it makes you hit a few percent harder.

Use a macro that does maul and mangle:

/cast Mangle
/cast !Maul

Hit this contantly. Hit Lacerate whenever mangle is on cooldown. And that's it. Massive single target threat.

Remember that Lacerate does up front threat when you hit and minimal threat from damage, so spamming it over and over is good for threat. With decent gear and a proper bear spec rage is not an issue, but if you every get low mangle is your first priority followed by maul. Use a /sit macro to give the boss a free critical hit for extra rage.

For super-threat build up a bit of rage and hit beserk, then spam mangle and maul as much as you can... by the time beserk is over you will have a massive amount of threat.


My personal experience in heroics/10 mans is single target threat is so easy to gain there is no need to optimize your rotation for threat. The real danger is the first few seconds of a fight (mages getting dual crits on openers, or your first mangle missing) and AoE where ranged mobs won't co-operate. That's where you start really having to thaink about aht you're doing.

[Deleted]

You'd use swipe against bosses? Surely only if it has adds.

no because with the idol from Grizzly Hills one swipe creates more threat (1.1k crits for me on a single target) than one lacerate and i prefer swipe instead when not mangle/mauling. OFC Lacerate should be kept up if no warrior dps is there, you want them bleeding for increased maul damage.

[xebtria]

of course lacerate should be at 5 stacks everytime... but you don't spam lacerate anymore once it is. you simply use it now and then to refresh it.

[Beasty]

The higest threat you could do would be to Maul every swing, Mangle when off CD, FFF when off CD and lacerate the rest of the time.

But as threat is somewhat trivial I use a DPS rotation which is Maul every swing, Mangle when off CD, keep lacerate on 5 stacks renewing when it has 3 seconds left, and swipe the rest of the time.

Forgot to add, to both, keeping debuffs up as required!

[arel00]

Assuming unlimited rage, usually not a problem if you're MTing a 25men raid:

On pull - start/pull with FF, then Mangle then Demo Roar. You get snap aggro and immediately mitigate the boss damage. A following Maul, as you'll probably have the rage form the boss hit, will complete the stacking of Infected Wounds. From now on, you can stack up to 5 Lacerates.

The rotation after that is now is a priority list:

- keep hitting Maul (we take unlimited rage for granted, mind you)
- keep hitting Mangle whenever it's ready
- refresh DR
- refresh FF
- refresh Lacerate just enough to keep the 5 stacks up
- hit Swipe whenever you have a free GCD

For maximum TPS, lower DR in the priority, but it's a good thing to have it up constantly, since boss damage scales incredibly with AP. Why the list is on this order, it's simple: it's based on a Threat/Rage scale. Maul is the strongest attack we have for threat, and if you can pay its cost all the time (and we usually can on real bosses) that is the main source of your aggro. Mangle follows closely, then Swipe then Lacerate.
Generally, as it has been said, Lacerate is worth stacking (and at least one bleeding MUST be on the target if you have Rend&Tear, which does miracles for Maul) but not worth spamming.
FF is surprisingly good for aggro, it costs no rage, keeps a useful debuff on, and given our usually high amount of crit, scales off nicely in that sense too (FF threat doubles if we crit, yes).

The only pissing thing in this is exactly the FF, since now you get a "a more powerful spell is already active" message if Vampiric Touch is on. It's stupid, because they overlap only if there's a Boomkin with the FF talent, but you get the error nonetheless. I've reported that thing a thousand times, let's hope they fix it

[Zhaknafein]

or simply do what our MT says:
"press whatever button lights up first" ;D

[xebtria]

a bit difficult if you have 3 buttons which simply have no cooldown, except that maul is on next swing :P

[Deleted]

Whats with all the macros and "bind to growl"? That seems like making a very simple activity very advanced. So you forget to click maul, thats hardly a problem, just keep whipping yourself until you do it automaticly. For me, maul is at 1, and everytime i hit one ability, i also hit maul. My mangle is at 2, so if i do a mangle, i am actually pressing 1 and 2. Swipe is at 3 so everytime i do a swipe, i also click 1. 4 is demoralizing roar, T is lacerate, fairie fire is E and so forth - all within reach of pressing 1 for maul aswell.

[xebtria]

you are "just" a human. this "/cast !maul" extra line is not human.
you CAN make a error and maybe forget sometimes to press maul.
this macros with the extra line cannot.

I don't think it's critical if you forget to press maul 1 or 2 times.

But if the the macro language provides you the possibillity to do this, why not use it? just because "it feels more professional if I do it manually"? I don't think so. It also frees you 1 place in the button bar.

[Deleted]

I think its silly - its not like we have that many buttons to press as it is, now you're taking one more away :P

[wingcommander]

Druid tanking is button mashing, but you don't really need to even when tanking naxx 25. The only people getting close to my threat level are mages on bosses.

The only problem I have with are packs of 4 with 2 caster/range types in it. I seem to have problems grouping them up. Yeah I could LoS pull, but I don't know if there are any dps who can wait a few seconds for this any more. When they die, they blame the tank, I just lols at them for their repair costs.

Anyway back to topic, I just stack lacerate/maul none stop and mangle when its up. Enrage if rage is low and if I can't keep this up then only maul/mangle and then only refresh lacerate. I don't use imp-mangle and I never have threat issues on bosses or packs.

[arel00]

The whole point of this is not what you *need now*.
It's how to maximize your threat.

No matter how fine your aggro is now, things aren't staying this way all along the expansion. Dps aggro will catch up someday unless you pay attention. So to be honest, better you start figuring out now what the rotation is and train to keep it up flawlessly, than just careface the problem to end up marked as "horrible tank" later, 'cause you never bothered to learn the how-to.

On a sidenote: if you're LoSing packs and your dpsers don't possess enough brain to understand it and wait some seconds, then they deserve a kick in the nuts. Unless of course you declared a "pointless and savage dps spam race" at the beginning of the instance/raid (which I like to do sometimes to challenge my aggro) :P

[wingcommander]

I agree, I'm always on the lookout for a nice 3 pack to pop mangle/maul berserk spam. and link the dps after and guess what always top.

I agree about the threat though. The mages appear to getting close to dangerous levels, where I have to start concetrating.

However, if I am to stay second in aggro, i actually have to stop attacking to stay in the middle of MT and 3rd, so I'm still ok for the moment ...