How to be a 'good' bear tank?

[knumskul]

best tip you can get: leave the idiot dps who aoes before you touch mobs or does it 0.5secs after you touch the mobs

then keep pulling so healer cant rez them. force them to run back. about half those idiot dps would rather wait another 40-45mins than run back. even if they died on the 1st pull of the instance.

raging dps always put a smile on my face =)

[Cortano]

One more thing:


Use crowd control and marking

It is a bit of a lost art, and not everyone is used to it. It isn't necessary when you totally overgear instances, but it is still REALLY useful to do it sometimes.

bind the different symbols to keys so you can place them quickly (I use F9 to F12 for different marks, plus the skull, which is bound to a mouse key)

Use a 'skull' to indicate the first target, 'X' to indicate the subsequent target.
I use 'star' for sheep, 'circle' for sap / anything else, 'square' for hunter trap.

It really doesn't slow down things very much to use marks and crowd control, and the majority of players will be just fine with it - if you explain what you are doing at the beginning. Normally, I'd ask everyone, "I don't over-gear this instance like some of the tanks you might have experience with; we may need to take things a little bit slower. Is everyone ok if we use start off using crowd control and marks?" ... "the marks I will be using are ..."

(I did this on my warrior alt, when he started tanking and never had a problem with it. A warrior struggles even more than a druid with the AoE side of things.)

[Psychobull]

The trick is to move faster than the dps..I got tanking for (one of my) offspec and from a small personal experience, i've seen that those 1-2 secs u gain when charging (like stated from someone here before) or just moving faster (u don't have to be there when they kill the mob if u got a lot of threat on it) will help u a lot managing ur threat. Good luck!

[Cortano]

#showtooltop
/castsequence reset=180 Berserk,Mangle
/cast [nomod] Maul

I thought the reset timer was reset every time you clicked the macro, thus you will be using Mangle forever with this macro, unless you stop clicking it for 3mins. I think Blizz changed it so you actually have to think a bit about playing.

No, No, and No! ;-)
(seriously though: if it reset on every use, it wouldn't be a 'castsequence')

It will use berserk the first time you press it
every time after the first that you press it, it will mangle
180 seconds after the initial use, it will reset

If berserk is up, the tooltip will show berserk. Otherwise, it will show Mangle.

If you don't have another key depressed, you will use Maul
if you depress alt or shift (or any other modifier) it will not use Maul

You can rewrite the Maul line: /cast [alt] Maul
This will use Maul ONLY when you have the alt key depressed (rather than when alt is not depressed)

You can dress it up: /cast [shift] enrage
That casts enrage if you have shift depressed (useful for minimizing buttons, so you can do this all one handed.) I practically always use "enrage" at some point during a berserk... this just makes it easy to do so.

[ccckkk]

@op: This is all getting far too complex. Just stick with your maul macros.

A few people have said, but just to be clear, just mark a priority target, ff as you run in, mangle and swipe away. By the time people move on to a second mob you will have threat and you will out threat aoe'ers anyway.

[You can also mark a second target if you find it helps (set up hotkeys to make marking easy). You may need to tell the dpsers to kill skull then cross if they are really bad. Taunt if a mob breaks away.]

That's it until beyond all 5 man heroics.

[If you are severely outgeared there's not much you can do but it's fun trying ]

[sapiorion]

Use the maul macros man U'll never go wrong really.

You have enrage for rage-starved moments. It's easier managing that than mauling all the time (repetitive strain any1?)

Some people choose not to but try it if u don't like it you can change. Don't listen to anyone saying "OMG NVA DO THIS".

[Deleted]

The best way to keep aggro is to say "If you take aggro you're tanking it" then follow through with it.

Guarantee you the b*tches will stop rushing in before you can even swipe after their 5th/6th death.

[SobeBauxite]

I preface this with my only rage tank being a warrior, but don't use a macro for your rage dumps. The common argument I see for people using them is that you're only rage starved for the first few seconds of a fight. In most cases, the first few seconds of any given fight are when you're most likely to lose aggro on something. Tanks now dish out ridiculous amounts of threat, but a burst dps can do more in the first few seconds when you're still setting everything up (positioning, debuffs, etc) and not having rage in the most critical moment of tanking is always a horrible thing to have happen.

I have faith in you, OP. If I can manage both HS and cleave being unmacroed while keeping up TC, Demo shout, devastate, shield slam, shockwave, revenge procs, and commanding shout, I'm sure you can manage maul with swipe, mangle, lacerate, faerie fire, and demo roar. The difference between being a decent rage tank and being a great rage tank is controlling your rage. Macroing it all away doesn't really help your cause.

[Fojos]

In 5-man normals you often don't have enough rage, it's as simple as that (even against several mobs). Macroing maul then is just silly. It's not about overgearing, they simply do very weak hits to begin with.

[Cortano]

preface this with my only rage tank being a warrior, but don't use a macro for your rage dumps.

I have both a warrior and a druid. I think the advice is good for warriors, bad for druids.

Most druids that have poor aggro are not mauling enough. Most warriors with poor aggro are making inefficient use of their other ability (revenge, shield slam)

As a comparison:

Maul hits two targets, with a 50% crit rate, you gain 5 rage. Cost = 5 rage for hitting two targets.
Heroic strike hits one target and costs 12 rage.

Maul is not just a 'Druid Heroic Strike', it has a significantly better cost/benefit, combined with a lack or other attractive abilities for druids (so less opportunity cost) (obviously, you have an opportunity cost from no rage being generated by a normal hit in both cases.)

It is trivial to modify a macro so you can control whether or not to Maul with the use of a modifier.

For a warrior (use a modifier to select a rage dump):
#showtooltip
/cast Devastate
/cast [alt] Cleave
/cast [ctrl] Heroic Strike

For a druid (use a modifier to NOT use maul):
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Mangle, Lacerate
/cast [nomod] Maul

[Cûr]

I won't get into the macro'ing maul to every attack... but I will 2nd what was mentioned in this thread about binding Maul to MWheel up/down.

I've used this on my ICC10 geared druid (maul) and warrior (HS) and on my ICC25 geared DK (Rune Strike). It works extremely well. Also I have the "other" direction bound to 'next enemy target'.

1 mouse wheel roll up changes targets, 1 down "big threat move". Rinse, repeat. Profit.

(yes I like tanking... and I have a lvl 80 toc25 geared pally, too)

[Cortano]

Also I have the "other" direction bound to 'next enemy target'.

I always hated Maul (or Cleave, or HS) on the mousewheel. It works for a lot of people though.

I really like next/prev target bound to the wheel. (I make use of a lot of modifiers... 'tab-targetting' combined with 'alt-cleaving' involves a lot of staring at the desktop.)

[coocoo]

#showtooltop
/castsequence reset=180 Berserk,Mangle
/cast [nomod] Maul

It will use berserk the first time you press it
every time after the first that you press it, it will mangle
180 seconds after the initial use, it will reset

Most people seem to have the wrong impression of how reset=x in /castsequence works. Above example is wrong.
http://www.wowwiki.com/MACRO_castsequence
"<number> - The number of seconds since the last click"
In other words, x is the number of seconds the macro has been idle before it resets.

A better way to do this is:
/cast [modifier:alt] Berserk
/cast !Maul

(btw, you also forgot to include ! in front of Maul to force it to cast instead of leaving it as an on/off trigger)

[tibben]

I stopped reading there, unbind them and learn to manage rage (There's alot of times where them lazy macros can leave you ragestarved)

Or instead of unbinding your macros, learn to create useful macros. I have Maul bound to every single ability I have, however, if I just hold shift while I'm spamming the key Maul will not be queued. It's very simple and effective and on a fight where rage is a non-issue I never miss a Maul. On fights where I have to tread carefully I just hold Shift until my rage is 75% or more and then let off a couple of Mauls, rinse and repeat. No need to knock people that use macros.

[Cortano]

(btw, you also forgot to include ! in front of Maul to force it to cast instead of leaving it as an on/off trigger)

That changed several months ago; now you have to press 'esc' to untoggle an ability. /cast Maul now does /cast !Maul used to do.

Most people seem to have the wrong impression of how reset=x in /castsequence works. Above example is wrong.

This is very good information.

[Feral_Zeh]

When I started tanking in WOTLK I started macroing maul to swipe, lacerate and mangle. Yes I found myself rage starve at the beginning. Then I made some adjustments... I have a powershift macro to rebear myself and generate some rage(10). I can also use enrage to build up some rage and that does the trick to keep up aggro and smash my macroed swipe...

Usually, I just mangle once, lacerate 3 times and swipe my way to a main boss. If I have an overgeared mage going all out, I usually berserk and use mangle repetitively. At that point the mage goes, "WOW nice aggro" when I hit close to 17k TPS...

Another trick is to STOP tanking at the end of the fight, just using auto attacks, that will keep your rage at a sustainable level.

At this point in the game, I now tank in kitty spec and kitty gear, 4T10 set bonus + enrage FTW. I only swipe to keep aggro and pull more then 1 group at the same time. The unfair advantage of swipe is to keep aggro on the run, I dont know any other tank class that can do that by smashing only one button, LOL.

Zeh

[Cûr]

I dont know any other tank class that can do that by smashing only one button, LOL.

I can assure you that DK's using Blood Boil can do it, too. Or dropping a DnD and having said mobs run thru it. Bears are the best at it / easiest to do it, no doubt, but they aren't the only ones capable of doing it.

[Cortano]

I can assure you that DK's

OMG NERF DK's PLZ

[TyralisUH]

spam swipe , you'll be an awesome druid tank

[deadman80]

Quote from: SpaceMuffinMan on June 09, 2010, 10:35:47 am
It's you who's trolling, no rage = aggro problems, but you didn't know that because you're a troll.

did you read his post? he's having problems on multi mob pulls... not rage starvation problems, i don't think he over-gears instances @ lvl 67 so rage shouldn't be a huge issue, he just want to get more bang for his buck and telling him not to use maul is just bad idea...

This is a good point that frester made here. ^^

Quote
In one of your other posts, all i have to say is LOL KOTJ & 4T10 = Ungodly amounts of threat when you open with Berserk.
do you seriously need that when you got MD and tricks? i would rather save that as defensive CD when shit hits the fan, and beside that there are better places to spend that points.

This is a bad one ^^;; Tricks = lvl75, MD = lvl70... Neither ability is going to be in play for the OP so talking about them will be a bit counter-productive for answering his/her question. What frester quoted here might be good for situations where initial threat is a major issue but maintaining threat is easy, but it's not how I would personally do things.

For the OP: Make sure your spec is focused on tanking talents. I know that may sound like a no-brainer, but a lot of people grab a lot of dps talents while grinding, but solo vs group tanking have different spec requirements. Maul glyph is awesome, use it until you are tanking raid bosses. Once you are at that point, you will be able to figure out what glyphs you should use for raid tanking on your own.
In the meantime, spam Swipe, Maul if you have the extra rage, kill trash with reg auto attacks last few % to ensure you start the next fight with some rage. Basically, all the same stuff everyone else said about the tank rotation XD