[Bear] Pulling Trash

[ixirawr]

The only time I ever tanked on my druid was Pre-Cata and in lower level instances as I was leveling in BoA gear. This is back when Swipe had no CD, and until I hit level ~78 I was ALWAYS on top of the damage done meter.

Flash forward to today: I have a few 333 blues, the tanking Darkmoon card, and I even bought a pair of Valor Boots. Sure I have a handful of greens, but I queued up for some normals thinking I was going to roll right through them. Instead, I look like someone who just bought his account yesterday.

I read the guides and I know the rotation. I can hold single target aggro easy. But pulling trash? /sigh

If there are more than two mobs, one of them gets away from me and starts hitting a DPS or the healer. Sometimes it's because the DPS can't hold their (aggro) load, but more often than not, it's me. I've tried FFF a group of melee mobs then Thrash into Swipe, into Mangle. I've charged into the group and done the same thing. I just can't get them all. Is it a practice thing? Where I just need to run them a bunch of times to learn exactly where to position myself? Is there something else I can be doing?


Something that would be really helpful is an addon that puts nameplates over enemy mobs and they glow certain colors depending on how much aggro I have on them. Like, they are red when I am in control of them, and start to go Orange or something if a DPS gets close to pulling them off of me. I can look at my Party Frames and tell that a DPS has aggroed something. I frantically Tab through all the mobs but by the time I find the one I'm looking for it's been a couple of seconds and if it were a Heroic they would be dead and/or the healer would be OOM. Does such an addon exist?

Speaking of Tab, is there anyway to limit the range on what Tab targets? Half the time I'll be tabbing through and target something on the other side of the room I am not in combat with.

Tips/Suggestions?

[audy]

Try something like Threatplates or Tidyplates.

[terrih91]

i was gonna say to download tidyplates it makes keeping track of what mobs are on you and what arent easy. u can click on their nameplate and taunt off easy as pie.

[ericyeahright]

Try something like Threatplates or Tidyplates.

This. When you do randoms without guild mates you need to let them know, you need a few seconds for threat [shock! I know]. Have the healers HoT you up if needed before hand and tell dps to relax. If the healers if pulling threat, well, I dont see how they could if you have Thrash on them.

[Ashareth]

Try something like Threatplates or Tidyplates.

Tidy Plates (with the Threat Plates mod) is indead the most useful namelplates addon out there, so much it should be made into the game as default, can't live without it.
They are both on wowinterface.com, they are on Curse.com too but are usually lagging a little behind there (a few days top most of the time).
They can need a little tweaking/tailoring on the alerts levels (ie : at what point they change color/size/transparency due to level of threats) depending on your playstyle and liking so you have time to react when you start to lose threat.
I know i don't have the same settings as dps/dk tank or pally tank for example.


Back to the subject. Yes, Bear AoE threat is pathetic right now (and Blizz is just starting to notice it, after all the fucking nerfs to trash and swipe, hence the *very slight* cd reduction to Swipe next patch ), and it's not only you...

I don't know how it goes at 85 when you start to rack up gear (i'm not there yet, mine is still 84), but it's a pain.
You suffer from the same rage starvation problem than wars, without the ability to front threat they got from Shout+Charge+Berserk+thunderclap+Shockwave in no time.
Only thing i can manage to do right now is to faery fire one mob, taunt another, charge the last one just after transforming for the rage to get charge, and pray that dps aren't going AoE, focus the right marked target (don't rejoice, it never happens :/) AND get very lucky on Clear Casting procs (ie : it never happens).

Right now, tanking as a Bear is probably the most frustrating and painful experience of tanking i had (and i've had 3 max leveled tanks i played in instances and raids during all WotLK and i'm currently gearing up my third 85, the war), due to the pitiful AoE threat (specially the front/initial/burst threat) and the total lack of tools to do the job.


For the Tab range limiting, i don't think there is a way for that, only thing i can see is look into the wow keybindings and get an easy to use keybind for the "target nearest ennemy" so you can start closer but it won't do exactly what you want either....

edit : you might want to get a look in Tauntmaster addon too ( http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...untmaster.aspx ), it can be useful (i stopped using it because i didn't really use it and it was one thing too much to watch on top of the other addons i use, but some people can have an use of it ).

[iceberg265]

Bear AoE threat is by far the worst of any tank right now, and Blizzard doesn't seem to care/realize it. You are always going to struggle, just ask your DPS for an extra second to build threat.

Rotation is thrash on CD, swipe on CD, tab maul when you have enough rage(and glyph), tab mangle as filler with tab lacerate as filler when mangle is on CD.

[Ashareth]

Yeah, and it's not really working, specially not when you've got fire mages/frost dk/Fury or Arms wars in your group.

I know that when running frost dps with my dk, Bears are the only one i really need to be extra careful with, due to their AoE threat (and it's not that they are bad either, most seems to know what they do, do really well on bosses and such, but God i rip threat on adds from them in a couple gcds even if i let them have a lead if i'm not extra careful ).

I really don't understand what Blizz is doing. Bears were fine AoE wise before all the nerfs to trash, swipe and such, but now...
And in the same time they nerfed it to the ground they buffed DK's AoE (Blood Boil damage has been upped by 40% which was more than needed), and Protadins that were already the total op beasts of AoE tanking got another buff in the way of 360° Hammer of the Righteous... clearly there is something going on, but i really can't understand.

[The_Butcher]

On Topic: Swipe & Thrash with occasional maul and mangle when berserk is active at least should be able to do just fine for threat.

[Deleted]

It's easy:

Pull with FFF, start with Thrash and Swipe, Tab + Maul/Lacerate (Mangle instead of Lacerate when proc is up). WHEN one mob runs for a dps that is AoEing like a fool, taunt it, when the NEXT ONE goes for the SAME fool dpser (while your taunt is still on CD), laugh at his corpse after the pack is killed and say; "You're a bad tank, you died in like 2 hits!!!".

[Dindo]

ROFL! It's been too long since I've laughed this hard at an MMO-Champ post. Thank you, good sir.

...Anyway, why do I feel like you've had that on your computer just waiting to use on an aptly named thread such as this?

OT: Everything has pretty much been covered earlier in the thread. If you see a potentially troublesome group, pop the CD whose name escapes me that makes mangle cleave and have no CD. Pop that, pop enrage, and spam away.

[Kazlehoff]

Threat plates is broken with the newest version of tidy plates. but tbph Tidyplates is still rawkin by its self.

[Palegod]

It's easy:

Pull with FFF, start with Thrash and Swipe, Tab + Maul/Lacerate (Mangle instead of Lacerate when proc is up). WHEN one mob runs for a dps that is AoEing like a fool, taunt it, when the NEXT ONE goes for the SAME fool dpser (while your taunt is still on CD), laugh at his corpse after the pack is killed and say; "You're a bad tank, you died in like 2 hits!!!".

Yeah, the dps is the fool for expecting to be able to play his class the correct way with all four tank classes instead of just three of them.

It does gets better though once you have at least full heroic level gear. The bears I play with haven't had trouble holding aggro for a while now, even when I DoT everything in sight on my moonkin/spriest.

Also, nobody in this thread mentioned thorns which is a pretty important part of holding threat as a bear, especially when you're just starting out.

[Sjenka]

The_Butcher... you are just fucking awesome.


OT: Hit Cap + Expertise Cap

If you have already reached these then Tab target Maul + lacerate.

[Auroro]

Yeah, the dps is the fool for expecting to be able to play his class the correct way with all four tank classes instead of just three of them.

It does gets better though once you have at least full heroic level gear. The bears I play with haven't had trouble holding aggro for a while now, even when I DoT everything in sight on my moonkin/spriest.

Also, nobody in this thread mentioned thorns which is a pretty important part of holding threat as a bear, especially when you're just starting out.

You have 10 second to make use of thorns, i do wish blizzard let feral druid use it in feral form.

[Smoothe]

Or you could do what I do when I foresee a hairy pull: "Pat behind us!"

As they look around I rush in and start buiding ninja threat.

[Ashareth]

Threat plates is broken with the newest version of tidy plates. but tbph Tidyplates is still rawkin by its self.

No it's not, not even with the latest beta of Tidy Plates...
There was a moment during early v6.x of TidyPlates when Threat Plates didn't work correctly with it, due to multiple internal changes that Threat Plates author didn't had time to catch up with, but it's working fine since before v6.1 got out.

edit : Smoothe, you made me laugh so hard with your post....
But sadly i don't think it can work for more than one or two pulls.

For Hit+Expertise cap, not possible while leveling, and not possible for quite some time after hitting 85 and starting hc, unless you are really lucky with trinklet drops (and i'm not even sure that's easy in bear).

Main problem is mostly before being decked in full hc gear, not once you are in it, because at that point, with everyone geared up (or most people), you can start switching in dps pieces again as tank, to output more damage/threat again.

[rathofvol]

You have 10 second to make use of thorns, i do wish blizzard let feral druid use it in feral form.

20 seconds, actually

[Starhiker]

Default nameplates show threat percentage with colors. May have to turn it on in your Settings, but it's all right there in-game Press your V key to see them, and with that option turned on they'll glow red, orange, yellow, or not depending on your threat on the target.

[izdlang]

20 seconds, actually

+ if you have any rage built up by a previous pull.. say bye bye rage.. hope your enrage is off CD..

[eternalwhitemoon]

I had a huge issue with this when my abilities were all over the place on my action bars. I tried keybinding them to easier to reach buttons but still had issues. I then decided to make my life easier with a macro I shamelessly stole from EJ:


#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Swipe(Bear Form), Thrash
/use !Maul

The icon will change depending on which ability will be used next. If you see it get to Maul, and you don't have the rage for it, just wait a second. This helped me a TON and I was able to successfully tank Anshal without looking like an idiot.

I know not everyone wants to use macros and some think of them as a "crutch", but this is what helped me, so here ya go.

Edit: I forgot to mention, FFF doesn't do NEARLY as much threat as it did in WOTLK, so tabbing to FFF multiple mobs in a trash pack is really not a wise opening move, since it's just wasting time to build a lackluster amount of threat. Use it for the pull, sure, but get some Swipes/Thrashes/Mauls off for your "real" threat.