Feral Druids - the Bear guide

[Swarfie]

I used to be a bear back in TBC, and as such I don't know much about gemming anymore. I play a protection Paladin at the moment but depending on what they do to Paladin's will be a deciding factor on if I switch to another tank class. Since the search function is still not up and running my questions are... Paladin's have a weird way of gemming, how do bears do it? Do they go for socket bonuses, straight stamina or a mixture? If they go for a mixture what's the minimum bonus to go after?

Thanks in advance for the help. And thanks for the guide!

[arel00]

I used to be a bear back in TBC, and as such I don't know much about gemming anymore. I play a protection Paladin at the moment but depending on what they do to Paladin's will be a deciding factor on if I switch to another tank class. Since the search function is still not up and running my questions are... Paladin's have a weird way of gemming, how do bears do it? Do they go for socket bonuses, straight stamina or a mixture? If they go for a mixture what's the minimum bonus to go after?

Thanks in advance for the help. And thanks for the guide!

General rule: stamina until you have a safe amount of health (which depends on the content, see RAWR for the survival values), then you switch over to agility, or def/sta, hit/sta if the yellow socket bonus is good, like 6-8agi.
Oh and... Austere Earthsiege Diamond and its requirements, of course.

[getefix]

I took like a 5 month break from WoW. I came back and my guild's MT decides he wants me OTing most fights. He asked me to regem for stamina, swap out the maul glyph for FR, and continue stacking stamina indefinitely. His reasons for this are that in ICC stamina is 30% better than it is outside of ICC and we're still working on heroic LK.

My problem is: The majority of my gear is 264 ilvl (some of it is lower, but I have 4pc T10) and I'm trying to hold threat off guys that are 5/5 Heroic T10. Without glyph of maul, the old shifting gems that I had, and at the gear situation that I'm in with 21 expertise and 116 hit rating... I'm struggling on threat really badly. I'll admit I'm a tiny bit rusty, but I don't think it should be so serious that I don't have enough time to get 2 lacerates on a boss before he gets pulled off me.

I don't think my survivability is good enough that I can start changing gems for agil/stam. Raid buffed I sit at 80k HP, 70% armor, and around 45% dodge (I think) with the ICC debuff.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...mer&cn=Getefix

Suggestions (read: Help) please

[Deleted]

Don't think you'll ever get to the point where you will want to gem away from stamina on heroic LK, the risk of getting 2shot is just too big, and paladins can afford to spam you with heals regardless of getting hit. With proper tricks of the trade from rogues, threat should never really be an issue, especially at the start of the fight. You can get the ICC boots crafted for a nice boost in expertise (if the guild wants you as OT they might be able to support this with some primal saronite?).

[bavarcarus]

Expertise to 26, then hit to cap, then expertise past cap is what I'd be looking for. Agi doesn't give you much threat, in 264 I wouldn't be surprised if you were running 60% crit and agi won't give you AP. Druids start slow and spool up from lacerate stacking, your only real option would be a berserk after getting a lacerate up (mangle-lacerate-berserk-mangle keeping up lacerate and mauling with everything). Even so it'll be hard without tricks.

Alot of tanks would disagree with me, but I'd gem hit/expertise at that low of a level. However, you ought to have the ashen verdict ring (hit), the crafted boots (expertise), and tell your guild you *need* H sack of wonder ASAP. Also, get 20 hit to gloves.

I'm at a similar gearlevel if you wanna look later http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...&cn=bavarcarus (I'm currently in crappy pvp gear but in 30 minutes I'll switch it)

[getefix]

I'll try for the crafted boots.

I'll get the ring, I have the dps one right now but I'll lose it.

I'll probably pick up +hit on gloves as well, seeing how agility isn't doing enough for me.

It's not really LK threat that's an issue, I was having some serious problems trying to tank two blood princes yesterday. I was given about a 5 second head start and a warrior whirlwinded and pulled one off of me. Tanking adds on gunship is a little difficult as well. Essentially, whenever I have to pick up more than one thing at a time and DPS starts on it, I end up losing one or more. I'm basically just swiping and mauling while tabbing around if there's 3+. With 2 I'll try to get a bleed on each of them and tab between mauls, it's just slow starting off.

Thanks for the tips, any more suggestions are welcome.

[Sharpopiev2]

I don't know if anyone has posted this or not, but I actually found an NPC in the game immune to Infected Wounds, I don't know if this is a bug or if I was just doing it wrong but Novos from DtK was immune to my IW

[bavarcarus]

you could keep some maul glyphs with ya, for princes replacing SI wouldn't really be a problem.

[axxey]

Bears have some of the worst snap agro compared with other tanks but fine once they get going, pre-planning MDs and tricks for multiple targets can make quite a difference. Single target get 4 stacks of lacerate up during the MD/tricks buffer at start of fight before hit berserk, add 5th lacerate on the mid berserk lacerate refresh.
Also if you have a warrior they'll nearly always get a bleed up on new target if want to run the duration of a berserk mangle+maul spam before you spend global lacerate stacking new target.

---------- Post added 2010-08-20 at 12:21 AM ----------

Ouch, just checked your gear getefix, get sack of wonder soon as possible, your hit/expertise are very low.
When your hit is that low sacrifice your armor a touch and wear rep ring, and/or some other hit slots, you're way under taunt hit cap even with your growling glyph in.

[Merodium]

Armory, Aeffkayi Moonglade EU

I just got my Kingslayer last night.
So far, I've followed RAWR's recommendations, and started gemming Agility when told to.
My gear is getting better, and I'll be acquiring Footpads of Impending Death soon, hopefully. (My Skeleton Key is not showing up on Armory, but I have it)
I wouldn't mind starting MT'ing on other fights than LK.
Would this mean I would have to start gemming full stamina instead?
Anything I've done wrong?
Comments appreciated

[Deleted]

Rawr will tell you to start gemming agility when it passes the survival softcap you have set in the options. So just increase the softcap abit.

[Merodium]

Rawr will tell you to start gemming agility when it passes the survival softcap you have set in the options. So just increase the softcap abit.

Was that directed towards me? It didn't help me one bit..

[bavarcarus]

Are you saying you're not sure if you agree with the rawr suggestions? It'll get pretty goofy if you don't turn on chill of the throne in the buff settings. I mostly stopped bothering trying to set it up to have the stamina that I want...but yeah most bear tanks gem mostly stam. I like having 80k health in ICC.

[Squishy2]

Was that directed towards me? It didn't help one bit..

yeah I think it was directed at you. Pretty much when you go into RAWR, go to the Buffs tab, there's a box for temporary buffs on the very bottom, click on "Chill of the Throne" buff and then go to the options tab... specify the Survival Soft Cap by choosing which level you're running at, for example if you choose 'Lich King (25)' RAWR will adjust the survival/stamina requirement. then look at the gear suggestions, you'll see RAWR will recommend stamina or a mix of stamina/agility gems depending on the socket bonuses.

[Merodium]

I know how RAWR works, thank you very much.
What I meant was, "It didnt help one bit" as in, it didnt answer any of my questions, in any way.
When RAWR suggests gemming and gear, lets say for me going from 10man normal to HM, does it instruct me to gem so I can take exactly 2 hits, or a bit more than a few hits? I just want to know how precisely I should actually follow it.

[bavarcarus]

I'm not sure how it works, I always figured out how much health I want to have through experimentation while using rawr as a general guide.

[axxey]

If you need rawr to tell you things that precisely you have other issues.

[Findus707]

Looking for a rotation for Cataclysm / next patch, please help!

[_Khasim_]

Looking for a rotation for Cataclysm / next patch, please help!

What I do on PTR is not really a rotation, it's more of a priority list, though I don't know if it's really good, because i didn't test it too much.

*use Faerie Fire and Mangle whenever they're up (that's the part I'm unsure about)
*Lacerate to 3 stacks, if no Pulverize on you then Pulverize, if you already have Pulverize, keep the 3 stacks until P. wears off, refresh P. refresh Lacerate
*spam Maul

I was thinking about not spamming FF and Mangle, only using Mangle on the procs and Swiping instead. Gonna do some more testing later today and tell you what I've got.

[arel00]

I'll catch the calm before the storm, given the chances of a patch tomorrow, and say: farewell, dear druid community.
I'll be playing my paladin to 85 first for Cataclysm, so I won't be dancing the Bear dance for a while. Not like I'll forget my druid anyway, but I'll leave this work to others. It's been fun doing this all along, and a great honor to have built something, along with all the good guys that make this community worth respect.
My thanks to everyone that contributed and supported the Bear guide all the way from a bunch of random posts to over 260k views and three different language versions.
I'll stick around in these months before Cataclysm hits, trying to answer what I can regarding 4.0 as soon as it hits Live. After that, I'll be happy to get back to the "asking" side ^^