DPS as a Tank

[zattox]

Hi-
i read this forum a lot but rarely if ever have posted. So i thought i would give it a go and see if you all can advise me. My main spec is resto and in my guild 25 mans thats my job. However, in our 10 mans i am one of the tanks. Most of my gear is from 10 man or from 25 that our main tank ( a bear ) already has. I have done ok for myself in grabbing gear and have little to no issues tanking in ICC10 with a fellow pally tank.Now for the hard part , for me at least, i have been called upon several times to tank our 25 man as OT or even MT sometimes but mostly as the OT or as the third tank for fights like Professor. Ok once again the tanking part is fine , i know how to read the guides and have had little issue with threat at all in that role but the issue is when i am not tanking. On the parts of the fight where the other tank has the boss( both 25 and 10 ) ( ie- festergut) and i am called on to dps as opposed to standing around doing nothing this is where i run into issue. My dps blows .. no better way to say it. i realize it will never be super as a tank spec and i dont want to try to be hybrid but i was hoping you could offer ideas on how to raise my dps during those few times ( ie- festergut when other tank has boss, sindragossa during first phase when our pally has the boss etc....) i have tried staying bear and going kitty ( i know i am bad at kitty and to prove my point, i usually do better just staying bear) i would like to improve , our real MT also a bear manages to go kitty when he fills this role and while his numbers are not staggering he does a whole lot more than i do. I have asked him to help me some but he has limited play time right now due to school and RL issues and doesnt have much time to work with me atm.
Anyway you all ( most of you anyway) are real educated about this class and the ins and outs of it so what better place to ask this question . i have read the kitty guides and tried to convert what i can but i havent had much luck its better then before but not much
ok heres my link http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mal'Ganis&cn=Zattox
neither my guild nor myself are elite in any way but we have fun and make progress so anything you can offer is great ....
i am also not opposed to any suggestions you have on improving my current spec or gear to help with this but i dont want to make myself a less effective tank as so far i havent had much problem tanking ICC . ( if my whole 10 man group would show up every week maybe we could finish off the LK as its the one boss left for me ugh attendance issues suck) ...
sorry for the long winded post but i thought better to explain what i am trying to find out in more detail then to have you all flame me for not giving you the info ...LOL
thanks
Zat

[littlepiggy]

there really isn't a way to raise your dps without gimping your tank spec, and blizzard design boss encounter's so that tank dps doesn't really matter. The best thing you could do is get shredding attacks, but you'd have to sacrifice something to do so.. you also should take 2 points out of furor and put them in primal precision and imp leader (you could take the 2 from imp leader and put them in shredding, but then you're losing utility for the occasional dps). If you're not having threat problems you should move your points from imp mangle to infected wounds (a must have talent)

kitty dps is reliant on shredding attacks, king of the jungle and shred, rip, SR glyphs
PS you're tank glyphs should be maul (or mangle or taunt), frenzied regen and survival instincts

[Hinalover]

It really only comes down to this. Is your threat fine. Right now you have mostly a threat spec over a progression spec. Don't get me wrong, having a threat spec is fine, but if you think your threat is good enough so that you are not going to be out-threat by your dps, you can go with a more survival build. DPS for tanks is not that big of an issue. I know in my tanking gear, I use a more survival spec and and still pull 3k dps (9k+ tps).

Having Frenzied Regn glyph also helps with staying alive. I have to agree with the above poster, you really should have Infected wounds since this will a) slow down the bosses' attacks and b) help you mages who gain an additional 18% damage increase on mobs with infected wounds debuff.

Furor is only needed as a filler talent so only putting 3 points in there is all you need. As a tank, your not going to be switching our of bear form that many times.

I'm a huge fan of Primal Percision since it gives free expertise. More expertise = less likely to be parried (thus being parry gibbed on some bosses) = more threat/dps.

Once you get your 4-piece T10 though I would suggest looking into speccing into King of the Jungle. The 4-piece will not only reduce damage on a 1 minute cooldown, but also increase your damage by 15% for the duration of buff if you spec into KotJ.

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As for dpsing in tanking gear, not much you can do about that really. Best that I've done in my tanking gear/spec as kitty is 5-6k. This is using 4-piece T10 (for the rake critting part). But due to the fact that your gemming stam instead of agility or arp really hurts our dps as kitty.

[hoot80]

I am in the same boat...though I tank and heal 10/25 heroic ICC. As a bear you are not going to have the reduced energy cost of Shred so I don't even use it in my rotation when I'm going kitty on Putricide, Festergut, Sindragosa, etc. What you want to do is get something (anything) that can help you keep track of your debuffs and buffs.

I set up Satrina's Buff Frames specifically for this purpose. It shows a bar that reduces over time indicating how much time remains on each of my debuffs on the target. I also have a large single buff icon that is specifically for Savage Roar with a timer on it that pops up above my player's unit frame. Basically you want to have Rip and Rake on your target at all times and Savage Roar up on you at all times. So as long as you have a way to track those 3 things and make sure to refresh them (ONLY 5 combo point Rips) you should do alright. It is hard to switch from tank mentality to kitty, but with some practice you can do pretty well. I would suggest practicing on a test dummy just to see where you want to put your debuff/buff trackers so you can easily keep track of them without losing focus on other important things (like boss timers and your combo points).

We actually usually have me tank Festergut first so I can get 9 stacks of the damage buff, then I switch to kitty, get a Salv, and I usually end up around 7000 dps on the encounter. I don't know if that's good or not compared to other Bear tanks, but I'm satisfied. Good luck to you.

[jr06]

It's a pretty simple and gimped DPS rotation as a feral tank in cat form:

-Keep Savage Roar up at all times (I've found 2 combo points seems to work fine)
-Keep Mangle on the target (won't be difficult considering it should be your main attack in tank spec)
-Keep Rake on the target
-Rip when you hit 5 combo points
-Use Shred instead of Mangle whenever you get a Clearcast proc
-Use Tiger's Fury on cooldown (not much point saving it considering you don't have it talented for extra energy)
-Use Berserk whenever it is most beneficial (such as having 8 stacks after tanking Festergut)

At best you're probably not going to pull more than about 4k dps on most fights, and even if you screw up your rotation it won't hurt your DPS much (certainly won't hurt anywhere near as a pure feral dps spec).

[exochaft]

DPS as a tank is really a null point, since raid content isn't designed around tank DPS.

If you want my honest opinion, if you're tanking in a fight, just worry about tanking. There are some fights that support the ability for a bear tank to go kitty, but the DPS difference will not make or break a fight (or it shouldn't, anyways). Staying in bear gives you survivability that does no exists for kitties, especially if you're using a full tanking spec. This makes life easier on the healers because they don't have to worry about you when you aren't directly tanking.

There is only one fight where I actually do go kitty with a full tanking spec, and that's Festergut, but it's not for the reason most people do so. It's because with 9 stacks of the debuff, my TPS in bear is so ridiculous I'd be stealing threat from the transitioning tank. Once the taunt transition occurs, I immediately go kitty to reducing my threat generation by just being in kitty form, and I might as well DPS instead of just standing there. Last night on 25man H Festergut, I managed to pull 8076 effective DPS by popping into kitty to drop threat, but that's almost the same as my tanking DPS on the fight staying bear the entire time. Overall, I only go kitty to drop my threat, nothing more.

[Dharmabhum]

Everyone has some good insight here, but to answer your question, your dps should be better in kitty than in bear and there are a few things you can do to help boost that. All of it though will be rotation and ability choice rather than spec since you really can't switch much around without gimping your bear, and I'll assume you want to keep bear strong as your first OS.

So, assuming you've got your bear spec and bear gear, the biggest boost you can give is going kitty. Then its just a matter of using a slightly adjusted kitty priority list to do as much dps as you can, and you can follow jr06's advice for that. Just be aware that you won't pump out great dps anyway but it will be easier to dps since you won't have to manage Shred-RIP extensions and all that extra stuff. You're really at the mercy of your energy regen, and since its pretty slow for a kitty anyway, you'll have more time to think about what you're hitting rather than furiously trying to cram everything you need into a kitty rotation as per normal. Keep those simple priorities in mind and you can at least contribute a bit more than you might now. And do make an effort to do this dps part in kitty... druids are so fun because you can go back and forth fluidly. Make sure you take advantage!

[Speedycat]

If I tank festergut first on our 10mans I can usually pump out around 7-8k dps. Just save berserk for that and use that different kitty rotation and you can impress all your friends!

[zattox]

Thanks all for the insight - i am currently went through and swapped the points around a bit in my spec as suggested to include primal and infected. I dont think i will have issues with threat at all as I am not currently and with my groups having rogue tricks and hunter md's threat has not really been an issue even without the tricks and md threat is fine.....
Thanks for the suggested kitty priority/rotation and the tips on beserk. i will try all of this.
Just one note for those who were saying the dps a tank does isnt that important , i agree , however after hearing the numbers some of you pull in this kind of situation i am definitely low and can improve. it isnt going to make or break a fight for my group its just that it is good to contribute as much as possible. .... not such a bad thing to see at least average dps numbers as opposed to my really sucky ones on these types of fights too ...lol thanks again all ..on my way to the dummy to practice ....