Any tips for being 'faster' with druid tanking

[Wardley]

Ok - so my druid is now level 70.

Up until level 64ish I was tanking on and off with him but in the end I just got fed up with trying to point out to the rest of the pugs that I'm not a Paladin or Warrior or DK tank so I have pretty weak AOE tanking skills and if they all just unload their big AOE damage skills on mobs straight away I'm gonna spend the whole fight trying to aggro them back.

So, after 1 too many 'noob tank' comments from DPS pulling aggro I just thought that as I'd not actually quested in Outlands for a while that'll be a nice change.

However, I'm now at lvl 70 and can't really face Northrend again for the moment so I thought I'd start tanking again.

The complaints I got last night though was that I was taking too long between pulls, even though I was pretty much chain pulling (IMHO). I'd pull a pack with faerie fire and charge, demo roar, try and tab-target and mangle, they would die, I would then go to next pack, pull with faerie fire and charge etc.etc.

Ok, so I think at lvl 81 is when we get a good AOE type of skills, but is there anything else I should be doing now to make tanking quicker and easier?

[Vist]

open with a swipe. If you have a good dps with you, just have him go all out on a mob, then taunt the mob to you before it reaches the dps. Swipe the remaining adds while that is happening, and build up agro on other mobs. By the time that first mob comes back to you from your taunt, it should be dead.
Make sure to get the maul glyph that hits an additional target.

My druid tank is lvl 71, this is how I quickly get through dungeons

[Richmond]

The problem with Druid tanks and chain AoE pulling isn't just you threat, you have to remember that you can't AOE tank without taking a lot more damage than say a warrior or pally would take... Just tell them to chill out, if a level 70-80 dungeon is taking 20 minutes then fine, but if your talking 40 minutes then your doing it too slowly. If a DPS pullis threat, let him tank it. Mark one mob with a skull and try your best to keep agro on the rest with Swipe, demo roar and tab lacerate (awesome threat now) whilst keeping mangle on CD

[Fleafarm]

I have a question regarding druid tanking and it seems like a waste of a thread for a simple question, so I'm posting it here.

The big problem I have is overall damage and dps as bear. I notice the pally tanks with awsome dmg and same with warrior tanks. As a druid tank, my overall damage is always in the bottom of the charts even though i use swipe alot and have the maul glyph. i use macros for lacerate, swipe, pulverize, and mangle, all having maul built into them. for example:

#showtooltip
/cast Swipe
/cast !Maul

These macros work well for holding agro, even on multiple mobs (if i tab target). I hit the swipe macro whenever it's off it's CD, same with the lacerate macro. If i'm hitting with all this AoE attacks, and my crit is around 30%, why is my dmg so low? I feel if i can get my dmg up higher, my agro management will be alot better.

Any advice?

I know my 30% crit seems low, but i'm currently lvl 76...not 85

[Afroshin]

Fleafarm your main problem may lie in your macros, as maul was changed with the pre-cata patch to no longer be an on next swing skill and is on the GCD like any of your other spells. So unless you're manually casting it inbetween CDs you'll have next to no damage from maul.

[Fleafarm]

Good thing to know, but i was having this problem before i made the macros as well.

[baelon]

Fleafarm your main problem may lie in your macros, as maul was changed with the pre-cata patch to no longer be an on next swing skill and is on the GCD like any of your other spells. So unless you're manually casting it inbetween CDs you'll have next to no damage from maul.

Maul is not on the GCD.

@ Fleafarm, I used to macro maul into my other abilities, but given how expensive it is I began using it manually instead. At current rage generation levels you can't always use it on every CD, and thus you'll end up using it over higher damage-per-rage abilities, thus explaining your lower dps. I tank on an 85 druid and an 85 warrior in similar gear, and they do similar dps as tanks.

@ OP, bear aoe is atrocious, no getting around it. Especially pre-81. Next patch I blelieve they're lowering the swipe cooldown to 3 seconds, which apparently is the only way they can improve bear tanks without imbalancing their precious rated duels.

Still, there are some things you can do. Make sure you're keybinding & mouseturning, this will vastly improve your reaction times. Don't worry about minor things like FF or demo roar at the beginning of an AoE pull, you need to frontload more threat. Use swipe on cooldown, and make sure to swap targets, hitting everything with a mangle and/or a maul. You probably already have maul glyphed, but if not, glyph it. Make sure you get at least one lacerate on a few different mobs. This will increase your chances of proccing berserk, resetting the cooldown on mangle and making it free. I have powerauras setup to show a big paw when this procs.

Use a healthbar addon such as Tidyplates, or use a UI that incorporates smart healthbars like TukUI. I use Elv's edit of TukUI, and the healthbars are green if the mob is on me, red if not. They turn yellow if someone is creeping up on me on threat, letting me preemptively swap to a yellow target and load some threat on it. If a bar turns red it means someone pulled something off me, so it makes it very easy to quickly taunt something when needed.

[Fleafarm]

That is really good advice Baelon. I removed my swipe and pulverize macros and just kept the mangle and lacerate - they include the maul ability. never had a problem with rage management for that. TY.

I tried out tanking a lower lvl dungeon (Utgarde Keep), something more controlable to work on rotation and agro. My dps was higher than I've ever seen it. Might've had something to do with the lvl of the dungeon, but I like to tell myself it's not...lol.

The only time I had to run back to grab agro was when the mage thought he'd be funny and nuke something i haven't targeted yet. Other than that, agro was really easy to keep. Again, it might've had something to do the lvl of the place, but I think if I do the same things in a higher lvl place I can keep a pretty good hold on things too. Probably not as well, but not to the point where I want to just walk away. Just tab target through the mob hitting my lacerate macro with the maul on each target. Like Baelon was saying, this greatly increases the chances of berserk proccing. On any given pull, that was proccing anywhere from 3 to 6 times.

Thx again for the advice guys. Made my tank alot easier to play.

[gombudja]

A higher level dungeon can make a big difference to your threat generation. You have a lower chance to hit higher level mobs.