First bear tanking experience in Beta

[sethers656]

Hey guys, so... I got into Beta! YAY ME!

My Background:I wanted to tell you guys how my first two dungeons went as a bear, and tell you how I think the first two dungeons are from a general tanking perspective. I do play a bear in live and I am fairly experienced at playing it. I am in a casual guild on live and I've cleared 11/12 in 10m and 9/12 in 25m(Just so you guys know I actually know how to play somewhat.) I was really wondering how my first dungeons would go, so now that I've got to try them out, I wanted to let you guys know as well.

My Rotation: Well first off, Threat and tanking is almost completely broken right now.Mangle doesnt work at all right now except puts a debuff on the target. As far as I can tell, Pulverize is pretty useless atm because it takes your lacerate stacks off. I used Pulv. sometimes when a mob was dying anyway, but it doesnt really even hit that hard. So my single target rotation ended up being FFF, Maul, Laceratex5, Keep Maul on CD, keep FFF on CD... and that's pretty much it.. FFF is currently a lot how it is on live and applies all 3 stacks of the debuff at once... Maul is on a 3 sec CD but doesnt seem to hit very hard. Lacerate I think was my top threat ability... but I cant be certain.

The Trash: First pull the mages and spriest in my group were pulling off me instantly. It is extremely hard to keep anything on me, let alone 2/3 guys. For most of the pulls we sheeped at least 1 guy to make it easier. (CC whaaaaaat?) Swipe currently hits like a wet noodle (About 200-300 dmg) so I single targeted everything. Overall the trash is very fun and challenging(At least for now when everything is broken). I'm afraid that once they fix everything, that it might go back to being easy with no CC. but overall it was sheep 1, burn skull, and when (not if) you get aggro, dont run away from the bear.I kept my taunt and Challenging Roar on CD almost the whole time.

The Bosses: The bosses were really FUN! Most of them seem to have really fun mechanics and we only 1-shot 2 or 3 of the bosses (Out of the ~5/6 that we did). They were very challenging (once again being broken so it might be easy once everything is fixed)They all had interesting mechanics, and once again were very hard to keep aggro on. My damage in take didn't seem too bad but sometimes I think I would get crit and my health would spike down...

Overall: Overall I had a blast even though everything was broken. It was really fun not facerolling 5 mans... I cant wait to see what the heroics are like... It was frustrating, but at the same time, very interesting. If you guys have any questions, please ask. If you have any suggeestions, feel free to yell them at me.

Note: I posted this in the Druid forums and the Cata forums... If im not supposed to, please delete one of them.

[Deleted]

Make some words about survivability of you and the group, and how stressed your healer was please

[Greenmahn]

Just a couple of questions if you wouldn't mind dear sir/madam

One. Does FFF cost rage in bear yet I have heard conflicting reports from other ferals some say it does soem say it doesnt.

2. when you specced did you take the Feral agression talent when you specced?

3. Did you notice any self heals from crits as i have heard that it was rolled into the mastery from some and that its completly gone by others.

4. last but not least did you try cat form at all?

Thanks in advance

[sethers656]

Make some words about survivability of you and the group, and how stressed your healer was please

Our first healer (Holy Priest) was having trouble keeping me up... he switched to Shadow when we kept wiping due to me dying. Then we got a Holy pally who was much better. Our survivability was pretty good when he came in. The priest might have been able to do it if I was actually keeping aggro on everythign though... lol

[Cerus]

Just a couple of questions if you wouldn't mind dear sir/madam

One. Does FFF cost rage in bear yet I have heard conflicting reports from other ferals some say it does soem say it doesnt.

2. when you specced did you take the Feral agression talent when you specced?

3. Did you notice any self heals from crits as i have heard that it was rolled into the mastery from some and that its completly gone by others.

4. last but not least did you try cat form at all?

Thanks in advance

1. As I've already pointed out, FFF is back to no rage cost. Before the last build it did, this build it no longer does.

2. FA would be required to stack x3 FFF in one go.

3. I don't believe it's in the mastery. I believe why some have it and some don't are because either they copied from Live while having it or they were already on Beta and had it before the talent tree revamp. Things like that happen all the time. Lunar Justice is gone however I'm still getting it on kills because I specced for it and knew it before they removed it.

The OP can chime in as well but those are my observations

[sethers656]

Just a couple of questions if you wouldn't mind dear sir/madam

Thanks in advance

1. No Rage cost

2. Yes

3. I didn't notice but I wasn't paying too much attention to it. Mastery currently is not working.

4. I jumped in cat form to use Dash... lol. Other than that, not really. Mangle is completely broken right now. I tried killing a quest mob with claw + FB but it died slower than bear form.

My build looks something like this: http://www.wowtal.com/#k=-wDKmF30.9q4.druid

[Greenmahn]

Woot Ok thanks Sorry Cerus been Up allot recently had forgotten your post earlier in the other thread till i saw you replied again and i reposted some of these questions over there to sorry about the double post will try to keep things more straight in my mind maybe even sleep some tonight :}

[Cerus]

No need to be sorry. The more times an answer gets repeated, the more likely (you'd hope) it is that someone will read it before making another QQ thread about something that may or may not be removed.

[Cortano]

My Rotation: Well first off, Threat and tanking is almost completely broken right now.Mangle doesnt work at all right now except puts a debuff on the target. As far as I can tell, Pulverize is pretty useless atm because it takes your lacerate stacks off. I used Pulv. sometimes when a mob was dying anyway, but it doesnt really even hit that hard. So my single target rotation ended up being FFF, Maul, Laceratex5, Keep Maul on CD, keep FFF on CD... and that's pretty much it.. FFF is currently a lot how it is on live and applies all 3 stacks of the debuff at once... Maul is on a 3 sec CD but doesnt seem to hit very hard. Lacerate I think was my top threat ability... but I cant be certain.

Thanks, this is great stuff

How did you find feral charge? Did skull bash make it less useful? Did you try out the improved version?

[kiseki]

Make some words about survivability of you and the group, and how stressed your healer was please

I've healed as a shaman, and found it to be a bit stressful to keep DPSers up. The tank was not a problem. The paladin who stood in front of bosses and danced in fire stressed me out. The mana costs of healing spells feel a little bit wonky. I'm sure they'll be juggled and balanced a bit, but right now there is no real reason to use the "big expensive heal" unless you want the tank to faceplant twenty seconds later.

[sethers656]

Thanks, this is great stuff

How did you find feral charge? Did skull bash make it less useful? Did you try out the improved version?

Well, I am more used to using feral charge than skull bash... so I used feral charge whenever needed and only really used skull bash a few times... but it was useful.

I do have Imp feral charge. but I didnt really notice it.

[Niter]

So far I am worried about our 'AoE snap aggro'. Death Knights seem to be more or less like they are today, Paladins still have great AoE tanking and Warriors received the love they needed in that area.

As for Bears... Well, Lacerate has never been a very practical ability (most of the time we got it to 5 stacks naturally when fighting bosses or some especially tough mobs, but even in TBC when Lacerate seemed more important, it never made a great difference in regards to tanking packs) and Pulverize seems to need Lacerate in order to actually pulverize anything. With Swipe being so ridiculous right now, I honestly fear our AoE tanking is going to get cumbersome and maybe bears will need more time to get good aggro on packs than other tanks. If Maul glyph goes away it gets even more troublesome. I hope their final solution will not be to rely on Swipe so much again or Pulverize will be just a cool move we use when we feel like it.

Lets see how it goes when they pay some attention to us Druids in later stages of beta.

I have one question: how is Maul working? How does it *feel* to use it now?

[Greenmahn]

Well we also have a new spell for aoe tanking that It seems not many people are using for tanking yet? As none of the Beta tank threads have mentioned it is it not working yet?

Thrash
Bear Form 81 Deals 47.36 damage, and causes all targets to bleed for 15.79 every 2 sec for 6 sec.
25 Rage, 18 yd range, Instant, 5 sec cooldown

And Pulverize is from what i can read from the tool tip is a single target threat and survivability tool. You use Pulverize after you have some lacerates on the target to do some threat (to make up losing your lacerate stacks) and increase your crit. Thus its a tool to use when you know a BIG hit is coming from the boss to help you have a savage defense proc up. You use it and then start reapplying your lacerates and other abilities witht he higher crit chance. It doesn't seem to be a tool to actually put in your rotation just a tool to use as needed just my views on that skill.

Still want to hear about Thrash though.

[Archdrood]

I'm also on the Beta. I tanked the new Blackrock Caverns. For some reason when I went to learn "Thrash" it was blanked out as an option for me, eventhough I'm lvl 82. So idk how effective it was bc I could never test it.
I also had issues tanking AOE mobs, esp casters who I couldn't round up. I macro'd mangle and maul together. Even with the cd on maul, it still helped me push 1 less button to apply the debuff and also hit maul.I just had to tab FFF/Mangle/Mual/Laceratex1 all the targets, otherwise even AOE for Rets would pull.

I had no trouble keeping single target threat. I'm in ICC25/25-H gear, but my rotation was FFF, mangle/maul, Laceratex5, then Pulverize and it dumped the Lacerate stacks. Obv there is no Omen, so I can't tell how well my aggro is, even the built-in aggro Wow indicator only shows 100% all the time while you have the mob on you. W/o glyphs and finalized mechanics idk what our rotations will look like. I do know this, w/o my tanking mods and glyphs, tanking in bear on the beta is no fun at all. I also had to run around and taunt mobs on thrash pulls >.<

I had the same issue with a healing priest. idk gear lvl or disc/holy? I had ~67k hp in tank gear in the dungeon and I dipped to 16-20k constantly. We wiped a couple of times. On my next trip I had a Hpala and it was day and night. Idk if it was overhealing but I was always full hp and never died.

Bottom line- I don't recommend tanking bear atm, unless you really want to experience the dungeon as a tank. But be prepared to be a little stressed in there.

[Greenmahn]

Thanks for the Info Archdrood. And yes its a wait and see :P

[escobar]

Good post, constructive criticism but no QQ and I'm really excited that 5 mans will be challenging again with cc n such i might go back to my rogue and be sappin away

[sethers656]

So far I am worried about our 'AoE snap aggro'. Death Knights seem to be more or less like they are today, Paladins still have great AoE tanking and Warriors received the love they needed in that area.

As for Bears... Well, Lacerate has never been a very practical ability (most of the time we got it to 5 stacks naturally when fighting bosses or some especially tough mobs, but even in TBC when Lacerate seemed more important, it never made a great difference in regards to tanking packs) and Pulverize seems to need Lacerate in order to actually pulverize anything. With Swipe being so ridiculous right now, I honestly fear our AoE tanking is going to get cumbersome and maybe bears will need more time to get good aggro on packs than other tanks. If Maul glyph goes away it gets even more troublesome. I hope their final solution will not be to rely on Swipe so much again or Pulverize will be just a cool move we use when we feel like it.

Lets see how it goes when they pay some attention to us Druids in later stages of beta.

I have one question: how is Maul working? How does it *feel* to use it now?

Well as it is right now... we don't have any AoE snap threat. We don't even have Berserk --> Mangle spam because it is broken. 1 thing though is we don't have Thrash yet, which I can see being very helpful. I don't think swipe is supposed to be this weak. I am pretty sure they are going to up the dmg on it.

Also we don't really need AoE snap threat as much. As long as you CC stuff and are careful about your pulls, AoE isn't needed much at all.

About Maul, It feels weird using it since I am so used top it being macroed. But I'm sure I will get used to it and it will still be a big part of Bear tanking.

[Cerus]

1 thing though is we don't have Thrash yet, which I can see being very helpful.

We most certainly do have Thrash. You may not have it if you weren't 81 before the last patch that mucked up trainers but it's not a broken ability - at least as far as working or not. It does however hit like a wet noodle.

[sethers656]

We most certainly do have Thrash. You may not have it if you weren't 81 before the last patch that mucked up trainers but it's not a broken ability - at least as far as working or not. It does however hit like a wet noodle.

No I wasn't 81. ='[

But this most recent patch Mangle is fixed!!!! YAAAAY!!

It is really nice to be able to berserk --> Mangle spam again. It is my only good snap aggro. Mangle still hits for a good amount...

MY new single target rotation has been. FFF on CD, Maul on CD, Mangle on CD, Laceratex5 --> Pulverize... I'm still not sure if Pulverize is worth it or not... but it's fun to use.

[exochaft]

No I wasn't 81. ='[

But this most recent patch Mangle is fixed!!!! YAAAAY!!

It is really nice to be able to berserk --> Mangle spam again. It is my only good snap aggro. Mangle still hits for a good amount...

MY new single target rotation has been. FFF on CD, Maul on CD, Mangle on CD, Laceratex5 --> Pulverize... I'm still not sure if Pulverize is worth it or not... but it's fun to use.

LoL, I'm sure they have something planned for Pulverize. At least my original thought on how the bear rotation would shape up is actually happening. Pretty sure Blizz plans on making the Lacerate stacks go up faster or Pulverize not consuming the Lacerate stack, both of which could be easily done via glyphs (but since we won't see glyphs for a while, no sense in dwelling on it right now). Considering the individual tweaking of numbers on the talents in the feral tree and zero modification of the Pulverize talent, there's something in store that we haven't seen yet.