Bear tank build

[Brista]

I'm making a bear tank to supplement my holy priest - it will be nice to be able to raid with a tank one day and a healer the next.

The bear is level 49 and should hit 60 in about 3 weeks or so, maybe 2. The priest is 60 in 8/8 Devout/Virtuous with a couple of MC rings.

Our guild has cleared MC to Domo and ZG to Hakkar. We have a lot of new players. One of the shamans asked tonight, after several deaths on trash "should I be healing?" which was a bit of a bang your head on the wall moment for some of the veteran players. We do have some very good players and a good guild/raid leader

We have a lot of Warriors but most are WSG pwnage spec. I think people generally accept that our Fury warriors aren't good tanks even though they can trash an unsuspecting clothie in 3 seconds so I'm hoping for a role as secondary tank behind our 3 nominated Prot Warrior main tanks

I'm asking for 3 things here?

Spec advice
Gear advice
L2P advice

For spec I'm thinking of this.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=zZEtxscMdtE0b

Ideally I'd drop Improved MOTW but we need me to help buffs as people are still a bit slow and disorganised and prone to forget reagents and/or get cross if someone's not pulling their weight


Gear is a huge area - links to useful lists would help as would an explanation of what starts to get. Stam, +def and armour seem the main ones with Strength, +to hit and +crit helping with threat

L2P advice. I can tank 5 man instances fine. I've watched good main tanks handle raid bosses. That's the sum of my knowledge and it seems short of where it needs to be

Do you always stay bear? Can you shift out to innervate a healer with a raid boss on you or is that suicide? Are there encounters where being bear is better - I must say I like being able to Feral Charge without the stance dancing warriors have to do for a similar effect - seems it would be nice on Domo if you get teleported

Look forward to reading your responses, thanks for taking the time to read this

[Warlock]

My main for a long time was a Bear-specced Druid that I raided with including some raid tanking. I'll be responding to your stated intent of filling "a role as secondary tank behind our 3 nominated Prot Warrior main tanks" though I'll comment a little on other situtations as well.

This means you'll never be trying to hold a boss mob over raid DPS, but want to be kept alive as easily and as cheaply as possible. For fights that require less than four tanks (assuming all are regular attendees) you will be filling another role.

Gear:
Your key stats for this role are armour, stamina and fight-appropriate resistances. Crit and Strength are almost irrelevant - you'll get plenty while looking for defensive stats as Druid tanking itemisation is far more limited than Warriors. Don't worry about Defence too much, partly because there is very little around for Druids, partly because the first points are inherently worth less than the last points and partly because we don't get the bonuses to block and parry that Warriors do from the stat.

Some key items to collect include the Warden Staff (world BOE) or Unyielding Maul (DM Tribute), Smoking Heart of the Mountain (Enchanting 265), Mark of Tyranny (UBRS Quest) and the Ring of Protection (Darrowshire Quest). There are some high armour battleground rewards as well which may or may not be acheivable in finite time on your server. Make sure you also build a healing set for use when four tanks aren't needed; while Cat DPS seems a natural backup role for all those Feral points I don't think it's really viable at the moment because it's threat is very high by DPS class standards.

Spec (general):
I prefer either 11+/31+/0+ or 0/30/21 to your current build. I use the former (14/37/0 variant) for the extra threat and damage from Natural Weapons, Omen of Clarity and Improved Thorns; it's an extremely effective 5-man tanking build. The latter seems a better fit to your intended role - it lets you get all the mitigation and survival talents in the Feral tree while still picking up Nature's Swiftness and a bunch of healing talents (not least HOTW) for use when you're not tanking.

Spec (individual talents):
Feral Aggression - the attack power reduction is sometimes useful, but check with your warriors to see whether you're wasting points, some 2H warrior builds will have the warrior version and hence produce a marginally larger debuff.
Brutal Impact - many raid mobs are not stunnable. If you get it for other uses, get both points.
Feral Instinct - not required for an offtank.
Furor - I'm not keen on this for full time or planned tanks - it's a great talent for getting off that emergency Feral Charge when shifting in a Crisis, not so hot if you only leave bear form for emergencies and rebuffing. The emergency use alone can make it a better entry to the tree than MOTW is for a tanking build; your other Druids should understand you not doing your part of the buffing, especially if you bring reagents and pass them out.
Improved Enrage - largely superflous if you have Furor, though worth picking up (again for that emergency use) if you don't. Your healers generally won't appreciate you using enrage (and hence giving up thousands of armour) while a raid mob is hitting you.

L2P:
Sounds like you're doing fine, good luck!

[Warlock]

Missed the last part of your question:)

Shifting to Innervate or Battle res while tanking a raid mob is pretty much a no-no. It can be done by having another tank taunt the mob off you first (do get out of any melee AE or cleave arc etc before shifting though!).

Druid single target threat is best built with Maul (every swing), Swipe (when you have rage left after Maul) and Faerie Fire (when you don't have rage left and the cooldown is up). Fully talented Maul has simply amazing rage to threat efficiency. Make sure to point any AE away from the raid.

There are fights where Druids are preferable to equivalently geared Warrior tanks, such as every five man instance (I'm not entirely joking - Warrior tanking in a PUG can be a real PITA). Druid tanks are good on anything that has knockback, polymorph or physical spike damage and not so good against things that fear, have high but steady physical damage or mostly magical damage.

[Trien]

Just to add a little bit more...

Spec-wise, here are the things I'd like to have were I a dedicated bear tank. If you're not going for a dedicated tank build though, you probably won't pick up all of these:

Balance

• Natural Weapons 5/5 - druid threat is virtually all damage based, so you'd like that extra damage<>
  
• Omen of Clarity - Not a must-have, but any extra damage you can throw in is nice. Though if you have more rage than you can dump, this won't do you much good, but is quite nice pre-endgame, as well as for soloing.<>
  [st]Feral
  • Ferocity 5/5 - Reduced maul cost lets you spam maul more often. Again, not so much of an issue if you have more rage than you can dump, but on the initial agro build when you have no rage yet, it can let you get in a few more mauls so the DPS can start on the mob earlier. Also if you're blowing extra rage via swipe, it'll mean more overall mauls and swipes in total.<>
    
  • Feral Instinct 5/5 - Like Warrior Defiance, +15% threat<>
    
  • Sharpened Claws 3/3 - +6% crit. Maul crits generate a ton of threat, and you want those crits.<>
    
  • Primal Fury 2/2 - More rage on crits, lets you throw out more mauls.<>
    
  • Savage Fury 2/2 - +20% maul damage - more damage, more threat<>
    
  • Heart of the Wild 5/5 - +20% stamina means you live longer:)<>
    
  • Leader of the Pack - +3% crit<>
    
  • Faerie Fire - You'll have to decide whether it's worth it for this to take up a debuff slot in raids, but in small groups, by all means throw it up whenever the cooldown is up.<>
    [st]Restoration
    • Furor 5/5 - I wouldn't call this a must have either, but having the 10 rage as you shift into bear right on the pull means you have something to work with. While you could use enrage to build up the rage pre-pull, you're usually better off to self-regrowth + rejuv (so you get the HoT and the associated agro) and then hit them with a moonfire for initial agro, then shift into bear and throw a maul.<>
      [st]Obviously, if you take all of these you won't be left with much else to, say, throw into the Resto tree.
      
      Gear:
      Warlock covered most of this. A couple other items to look for:
      • Atal'ai Spaulders (193 AC), of the Bear, Monkey, or whatever fits you stat deficiency best. They drop off the 6 trolls in the circle in Sunken Temple... and you should be able to solo most of them as a L60 druid, and possibly even earlier.<>
        
      • Slaghide Gauntlets (207 AC), which also come in multiple flavours, and dropped by Urok Doomhowl, the summoned guy in LBRS.<>
        
      • Cloak of Warding (crafted, 214 AC) is nice for stacking on the armour. Has +def, but no other stats. Another option is...<>
        
      • Sergeant's Cape (115 AC, +17 sta), if you can make Sergeant rank, which isn't terribly hard, but will require some time spent PvPing.<>
        
      • Thrall's Resolve (150 AC), if you are horde side.<>
        [st]The Arathi Basin rewards have a ton of armour, and if you can manage to get your hands on them, they are quite amazing. The Warsong exalted leggings are very nice as well... no str on them, but lots of agil and +1% crit. These will both however require massive amounts of time spent in the BGs.
        
        Which brings us to stat points... Stamina will be your primary focus, followed by str/AP and agil/crit. High AC will come mainly from the aforementioned rings, trinkets, shoulders, gloves, and cloak, all which have much higher AC than normal. There aren't any other really outstanding high AC pieces for the other slots until you start getting into BWL/AQ40 gear (AB rewards aside), so you're free to mix and match for those. I haven't worked out or seen any math for optimal str/agil ratios, but both are stats you want to work on. +str means more damage, and more damage means more threat. +agil increases both crit (more threat, especially maul crits, and also extra rage if you have Primal Fury) and dodge (which you'll want to take advantage of since you can't block or parry). +defense isn't really an option, since there are very few pieces you can get which have it, and it's not really worth it to give up the other stats for it (eg. by going for Atal'ai or Slaghide of Defense or green +defense leather)
        
        Playstyle:
        
        I'd already mentioned double-HoT/moonfire/bear pulling. If you happen to find yourself doing any serious tanking (especially if you end up MT), you'll want a warrior keeping 5 sunders on the mob. Since bear threat is all damage-based, you want that extra physical damage, and so far as that warrior isn't fighting you for agro, they shouldn't pull it off you, assuming you have the AP to put out the damage. This is going from memory since it's been a while since I looked at the numbers, but I think it worked out that a 1000 damage maul crit is worth something like 6-7 sunders worth of agro. The discussions on the druid boards back when this was being worked out seemed to suggest that while a well equipped druid couldn't quite match the overall damage mitigation of a well equipped warrior (and also doesn't have the nifty survival skills like shield wall and last stand), sustained single-mob threat generation is higher, though initial agro build tends to be a bit slower due to 2.5s attack speed. This means the bear will take more healing as a tradeoff, but overall raid DPS can be pushed higher as well. I cannot offer direct confirmation of this from personal experience other than to say that bear agro is quite adequate as long as you're given enough time at the start. Crit maul a mob twice in a row, and it'll pretty much be stuck to you for life.
        
        (Edit: Added single-mob qualifier)

[Lok]

I'll toss in some advice from the warrior side. My main is a 60 warrior. Druid bear tanks work best when you have to (a) hold threat on multiples since you have swipe, and (B) when you are facing something with elemental attack forms, since Druids can get way more HP and the resistance gear is easier to obtain for leather imo. Where you are weaker is against physical single targets, particularly if they fear or aggro dump, and you need to regain threat fast. Warriors deliver superior burst threat, and have better physical mitigation. Healers will often like to heal a bear more though because a crit or crushing blow isn't going to put them in the red zone. Warriors however if they can get base shield block to 25% can via the shield block skill completely avoid crits and crushing blows, which really makes them ideal in many fights.

[TheDragoon]

Just throwing in some more ideas. I see a lot of people advocate this 11/33/7 build. I only mention it because I have been doing some research into good bear tanking builds. I have been seriously pondering playing my Druid on SR more, or perhaps starting one on Terenas and I think I would enjoy tanking as a Druid to see how it compares to tanking as a Fury Warrior.

[ZugzwangZeitgeist]

Gear advice

I did a lot of math with my old guild to try and help one of our feral druids understand what he needed to get in order to successfully tank, so I'll just repeat it to you:

Armor: You'll need approximately 11,000 or more armor to seriously tank raid mobs, ideally much more once you start turning purple. You do not have block, defensive stance, parry, or access to viable defense gear. If you have less than this armor you should not tank raid bosses until you do - every percent of damage mitigation is vital for warriors and doubly so for druids, who don't have as many tricks for survival.

Defense: Don't even bother getting defense gear. Treat it as an almost meaningless stat. I say this because I got into a lengthy argument with a feral druid from old guild who insisted that his +33 or so defense worth of gear he had cobbled together was too valuable to give up for more armor or stamina. Because of this insistence, his character had terrible mitigation and hitpoints, because he didn't understand what defense actually did or it's value, which is actually very little if you are not mitigating crits on hard-hitting raid bosses.

The point value of Defense is determined specifically with Warriors in mind. Warriors get both Parry and Block with Defense, while Druids do not. Warriors can viably get immunity to crit with Defense, while Druids cannot. Defense is a close to useless stat for Druids that plan to tank.

L2P advice

There are a handful of fights in the game in which it can be better to have a druid tanking than a warrior. They are:

1) Shazzrah. Shazzrah does low physical damage to the tank so poor mitigation is not as much of an issue. However, the added mobility of feral charge allows you to pursue Shazzrah immediately after a teleport, which is valuable.

2) General Rajaxx. While it is generally good to just have the tank with the best mitigation and highest hitpoints tank for this fight, all things being somewhat equal, druids have a few advantages while fighting Rajaxx. His disarm will not work on a feral tank, and his knockbacks are less dangerous when they can be followed by a feral charge back into melee range.

3) Following these patterns, any fight in which the trickiest component is the mobility of the enemy. Druids have easier access to their in-combat charge, so they can get rampaging mobs back under control more easily. I suspect the Tiger boss would be another example where a druid could do well. Bear tanks are also very good for tanking summoned adds, as in the first phase of Razorgore. Majordomo as well, as you say, although he's easy to tank with one character if you get placement right.

L2P advice. I can tank 5 man instances fine. I've watched good main tanks handle raid bosses. That's the sum of my knowledge and it seems short of where it needs to be.

The important thing about raid bosses is that tanking a raid boss "fine" is not good enough, in a sense. If you are just learning to take down a boss and still gearing up, you need the absolute best tank possible doing the main tanking. Having even 3% less damage mitigation can be a huge deal and can be the difference between healers running out of mana with a wipe and a successful encounter with no deaths.

Do you always stay bear? Can you shift out to innervate a healer with a raid boss on you or is that suicide?

Against a raid boss that would be suicide. While tanking a boss add, maybe, if you have a lot of health.

In many ways, druids really are best suited for off-tanking. When you kill your add, that provides a perfect opportunity to shift back and throw around innervate/combat rez/heals around as necessary.

I'd like to stress though that Druids do not mitigate damage as well as full specced and geared main tanks, so you shouldn't have any illusions that you will be your guild's permanent main tank or whatever. It's certainly possible to use a Druid to main tank Molten Core once you have the instance down, but while you're still pioneering through content, the task will go to the character with the best damage mitigation which will inevitably end up being a warrior.

You will be most effective if you embrace the hybrid nature of the role, being a secondary tank, healer, and cat-form DPS as necessary. Adaptivity is the most important trait in feral druid players.

[Warlock]

One minor point - there are fights that are better learned with a bear tank. Bears have less long term mitigation but survive spike damage a bit better (more HP, more armour). If the risk is "will the tank get one shot" rather than "will the healers run OOM" it's worth trying a bear tank, provided you have one with equivalent gear (a major caveat given the rarity of Druid tanking items).

[Trien]

While tanking a boss add, maybe, if you have a lot of health.

Still probably not a good idea:)With the time it takes to shift out, throw the innervate, and get back into bear, adding network lag into the factor...

For the majority of situations, it is quite true that warriors will end up as MT. They're designed for it, the class has the skills for it, and as many have noted and worked out, overall mitigation is better for a warrior than for a druid. It is quite uncommon for a raid to have started with and stuck with a druid MT, but not unheard of either. With everyone rolling alternate characters these days, the picture may be slightly different, but typically... you're short healers:). So, guess what the druid is often called upon to do.

one with equivalent gear (a major caveat given the rarity of Druid tanking items).

With my own druid, I've tried to have an all-around mentality, but a lot of druids which I know have pretty much specialized in healing and not much else... namely due to the nature of raid makeup and all. I've got gear for healing, bear tanking, and cat DPS, and even though the majority of the time I do end up healing, I have everything ready to swap into the other role (hence why I run around with 6 free bag slots:P)... with the usual druid caveat/complaint about not being able to switch the gear to fit the role mid-battle of course. The druid who does this seems to be an uncommon thing though, at least among the ones I know. But my recommendation as a druid is to take the time to gather this gear, and play with all the different roles. That's why I find the druid so much fun: despite being a 'lesser' version of the 'pure' classes, it's nice to be able to switch around.

It's been a long time since my druid stepped into MC, but I was probably at a good 9000 AC at that point; would have been more so if I had done enchanting to get my Smoking Heart of the Mountain and managed to scrounge a group together to summon the LBRS guy for some Slaghide Gauntlets. These days I can hit some 14000 AC (no thick hide), though my preference is for somewhere in the 13000's but which gives me a good chunk more health (+22 sta from Dragon's Blood Cape [116AC] vs none from Cloak of Warding [214AC]), since as mentioned one advantage of the bear tank is the possibility to have a huge HP sink. We were working our way through Naxx last week and for kicks decided to throw ourselves at Patchwerk. With full raid buffs, no flasks or other items other than a +8 sta well fed from some food someone happened to have brought along (please also see discussion about advantage of Paladin BoK:)), and missing a health enchant on my tanking legs which I hadn't managed to afford yet, I was sitting at some 9000-some HP and about 13500AC. Granted this is with some of the nicest (though not all... there's still stuff on my wishlist) druid tanking gear you can pick up. It's something I've worked on throughout my druid career, even despite being healer 99% of the time, to be ready for when I need to do something else, and I can probably comfortably tank much of what's out there (resistance sets are something I'm lacking in). Though admittedly, being an avid PvPer is a large part of it, as my PvP gear is a hybrid of everything, healing gear for mana pool, AP gear for damage, and tanking gear to survive the ever harder hitting warriors and rogues.

[ZugzwangZeitgeist]

One minor point - there are fights that are better learned with a bear tank. Bears have less long term mitigation but survive spike damage a bit better (more HP, more armour). If the risk is "will the tank get one shot" rather than "will the healers run OOM" it's worth trying a bear tank, provided you have one with equivalent gear (a major caveat given the rarity of Druid tanking items).

Do you have any specific fights in mind? I'm not sure I entirely buy that premise, mainly because there are also reasons why Bears would be worse at surviving spike damage - mainly lower mitigation, no crit immunity, and no access to shield block (the skill, not the passive trait). On top of that, warriors have more proactive things they can do in response to spike damage - Last Stand, the class trinket that has a similiar effect, and Shield Wall. I'm not aware of any similiar abilities for Druids.

[Warlock]

Do you have any specific fights in mind? I'm not sure I entirely buy that premise, mainly because there are also reasons why Bears would be worse at surviving spike damage - mainly lower mitigation, no crit immunity, and no access to shield block (the skill, not the passive trait). On top of that, warriors have more proactive things they can do in response to spike damage - Last Stand, the class trinket that has a similiar effect, and Shield Wall. I'm not aware of any similiar abilities for Druids.

For a current example, one of the hateful strike tanks on Patchwerk. I'll never participate in this fight myself but I hear that Hateful Strike can't crit and can't crush but does a boatload of physical damage. While a Warrior will avoid it completely more often thanks to Parry, a Druid tank will take less damage both absolutely and as a percentage of their life bar when it does connect.

In terms of surviving single hits a Druid's armour and high life total makes crits about as dangerous as crushes are to a warrior (presuming AQ gear for both, a uniquely favorable situation for the Druid as it's the only time where Druids have even close to equivalent epic itemisation). Shield block can push crushes off the hit table but can't always completely avoid the risk of crushing blows (eg. both charges have been used on normal hits when the boss's special timer rolls around).

Consumable use and Last Stand are certainly useful (basically an extra instant heal each). Shield Wall is better still. The closest Druids have is precasting a HOT and barkskin - useful and useable more often but nowhere near the same percentage stopped.

[The Gnu]

In general, I'd say that dodge and parry are more important than hitting that 75% mitigation and having a bit of extra hp. Long unlucky streaks with no parry/dodge that ends up in a offtank getting hateful strike twice is the most common wipe we've had on Patchwerk.

Druids are very good to use as the third hateful strike tank (that's mainly used as a buffer, and is rarely hit) though, since they don't require a flask to be able to take the occational hateful strike.

That is, if you can spare the healing...;)

[Brista]

Update at 60

As a new 60 I'm not really strong enough to raid tank. I'm finding lot of social pressure which isn't entirely fair. As a guild we don't lack healers. But with several of our priests shadow, over half of our shammies specced for pvp and the shammies in particular liable to turn up to heal a raid in +str +crit gear we lack healing power.

But there's swings and roundabouts to that - I'm not being forced to spec resto or invest dkp in healing gear. If either of those things were true I wouldn't be able to develop the character as a tank at all

Because of our lack of healers I'm usually going to be healing when raiding. That's ok, I'll put the time in to get decent blues and make sure I do a decent job of it - certainly better than some of our other "healers". Like our enhancement shammies, I won't be investing my dkp in healing gear

What caused a lot of drama tonight is the fact I have a very good Holy Priest healer also in the guild. Several people objected to me rolling on a blue for feral tanking because I get gear on the druid plus I get gear on the priest so I'm gearing up two characters at everyone else's expense (that's how they see it)

To me if I bring a druid 2 days and bring a priest 2 days it's the same as two other people playing 2 days per week each. Each character is separately developing their own gear based on the contribution it makes. Frankly I wish I'd never told them it was me - I'd be having a much easier time if they thought the Holy Priest was just some dude who plays less these days and the Feral Druid was some new dude.

Well anyway people weren't very happy with me collecting items on two characters so I decided to put the Priest on hold for now. No big loss, it will be very easy to come back to him at some future date. I had been a candidate for class leader so I posted on our guild forum withdrawing my application for that job

The guild leader contacted me, asked me why, told me he was happy for me to develop two characters if that's what I wanted and said that he had been looking forward to making me the class leader. That's very flattering but I told him I didn't feel I could do that without dropping the druid unless we were going to have arguments in the guild so I prefer to put the Priest on hold

I imagine he then vented on officer chat because a little while later our raid leader announced he was upset and left the raid.

Several people felt the guild was losing one of its best healers. It's a blow to the guild (which is true - they are losing a good healer but they wouldn't be keeping it if they tried to force me to play it after getting a bit bored of it and wanting to do something else)

Also **cough** maybe some of the people moaning about me withdrawing the Priest could have done a little bit more to develop their own healing capabilities *cough cough**. I refuse to feel guilty simply because some people were hoping for a free ride to Tier 2 epics without speccing out of pvp and without spending time in Strat instead of WSG

I'm a bit fed up to be honest because if we were a min/maxxing guild where everyone spends all their free time farming elemental fire and picking dreamfoil they might have a right to expect me to play my best character but since 80% of us are really casual I kind of feel like they required me to put in effort that only a handful of people put in

Now I do put in effort and I like to do well. I expect my druid to be around 3rd or 4th best tank in the guild in a few weeks (most of our warriors aren't prot, some who are prot are rather clueless and don't pay attention well, many have poor gear or don't know what good tanking stats are - str agi stam is pretty normal tanking gear in the guild, probably only 4 have over 320 defence)

I'm now thinking about a dkp strategy for my bear which won't aggro the guild too much. Most of these players don't really understand the game well so it makes bidding on items like Foror's Eyepatch http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=19945 difficult because, despite being probably the best bear hat in the game, certainly at our low level, it's considered "rogue loot". As a Druid who isn't buying healing stuff I'm going to accumulate a ton of dkp pretty fast without much to spend it on so what I bid on I'm likely to win

I think it's a matter of picking my battles with care. I'd greatly appreciate advice from people about items that might really hurt the guild if I got into a tussle with others over them and what might be reasonable. For example our Ragnaros fights go like this -main tank tanks well, healers keep him up with a lot of frantic healing, rogues and dps warriors all wipe because they haven't bothered to get enough FR stuff, Sons come out and eat the casters. Obviously in this situation I can't ask for crafted FR stuff since its priority for our under-geared meleers and I'll be healing in that fight anyway. This is currently our big "we need to beat this boss to progress" fight. On the other hand bidding on "rogue loot" like the Foror's Eyepatch probably is worth a bit of an argument because the Rogues in our guild are notoriously reluctant to spend dkp on anything that isn't a weapon and most of them probably don't think it matches their T1 and T2 set hats

It's certainly a rocky road but I can be stubborn at times and the squabbling is making me more determined to build a kick-ass Bear tank. Any advice would be much appreciated - these guys are not bad people but they're just not very open to variants and some of them see a "healer" gearing up in tank gear as holding the guild's progression back

And who knows? Maybe some of the people complaining now will be pleased I perservered when Pansy the tanking bear steps in to save the day in some future raid :-)

[Concillian]

For example our Ragnaros fights go like this -main tank tanks well, healers keep him up with a lot of frantic healing, rogues and dps warriors all wipe because they haven't bothered to get enough FR stuff, Sons come out and eat the casters. Obviously in this situation I can't ask for crafted FR stuff since its priority for our under-geared meleers and I'll be healing in that fight anyway. This is currently our big "we need to beat this boss to progress" fight.

I would say if there isn't significant pressure on the raid members to collect FR outside of raid loot, or you are not doing trash clears several times a week for cores, then you are not really on much of a "we need to beat this boss to progress" push... but that's just my opinion, I guess.

[Brista]

I would say if there isn't significant pressure on the raid members to collect FR outside of raid loot, or you are not doing trash clears several times a week for cores, then you are not really on much of a "we need to beat this boss to progress" push... but that's just my opinion, I guess.

Well I certainly think some people aren't

These things dropped

Fireguard Shoulders
Binds when picked up
Shoulder Leather
159 Armor
+28 Stamina
+22 Fire Resistance
Requires Level 60

and of four rogues in the raid none bid. I might be wrong but I'd bet 10 gold that none of them had any FR shoulders when that dropped. Saving the dkp for a Perdy I guess

Some people very much are including the raid leader who got annoyed with me and left the raid

In a way a casual, contribute what you feel like contributing guild is more fraught than an autocratic everyone must min/max guild. It is supposed to be a laid back guild, I guess the combination of ambition and dependency on other players sucks people in and turns a game into a drama

[Concillian]

That particular piece of loot is very interesting.

One week we got that and a rogue complained that a druid got it.

The following week it dropped again and the complaining rogue wasn't there. A rogue took it... the rogue on the bottom of the points...

I just think it's interesting. I try not to get very worked up about issues like this, but then I'm not terribly obsessed with "progressing" ASAP. I enjoy what experiences I have in the game and the only time I got really worked up was when I thought I'd have a chance to experience something with a group of friends, but due to a lack of communication, I was denied that chance.

[Watto44]

Sheesh, people should at least put in an effort! I might be a feral druid, but at least I went out and collected the best blue healing gear I could (and spent my DKP on healing stuff as well). There's a difference between min/maxing and putting in a little bit of effort. I don't mean to sound rude, but it seems like some of your guildies are just there for a free-ride.:(

In my opinion, if you have the DKP and outbid or outroll a rogue on a marginal sidegrade - like wristguards of stability and Furor's for example - then perhaps they should contribute a little more.

But anyways, my advise would be to look over the 20 man instances for nice tanking gear, particularly the nicer blue drops from those instances. For example, if Furor's is really causing that much drama, you can always think about getting the Southwind helm from AQ20. (You'll loose 5 stam and 1% crit, but will gain 1% dodge and hit.) People tend to be less aggressive over blue drops than the shiny purples.:)

[Warlock]

If they're not willing to spec and gear to optimise the raid's progress it seems unreasonable to demand it of you. Since raid lead is supporting you I think you'll be able to sort things out. I'd have any argument now rather than letting it fester, though.

[Trien]

Ahh, raid drama:(

I've been somewhat lucky in that from the beginning, I've made it known I'm a druid, not just another healer. With the paucity of actual feral gear, I haven't really run across many cases of conflict with the other classes about loot distribution. However, I did build up my healing set first... though that was more so because I had nowhere else to spend my DKP. I think I was at some 6/8 Cenarion and a good way into Stormrage before I finally picked up a Heavy Dark Iron Ring, letting the main warriors take it first. Take a bit of care and watch your DKP I guess, and spend it wisely, but keep a reserve around to spend on what you really want?

One thing that you perhaps could do (and I have seen this happen many a time in our raids)... though really only for certain DKP systems... is when everybody ends up passing, and the disenchant is threatened on an item, someone comes up and picks it up. If all the rogues pass... hey, it's their fault nobody took it, and then they can't seriously lay any blame on the druid for taking rogue loot over them when they all passed and he's stepping up to save an item from bing DE'ed. Dragon's Blood cape going to a mage (our warrior who wanted that was away the one night, nobody else did...), heck even a Perd's Blade going to a warlock (okay, this was more of a joke, and late in our MC career when all the dagger rogues had gotten it already). However, since you mentioned 'bidding', if item costs aren't necessarily fixed this probably won't work that well.

Furor's Eyepatch... isn't that from ZG, and thus considered a '20-man instance drop'? However, being a nice shiny purple, it's bound to generate controversy...

And for some personal experience...

Due to a lack of geared/specced tanks, I ended up MT'ing all of MC except for Ragnaros last night... this being pretty much a run for alts and those who are newer and still getting geared up. Surviving wasn't a real problem with a good collection of tank gear, until we hit areas where FR was required, and as my tanking collection has had as its main aims: 1) surviving the crazy hitting guys in PvP and 2) tanking in instances when needed, collecting FR gear to tank in MC was something that I never got around to doing. So, threw on a few pieces of Cenarion/Stormrage and some FR jewelery, trying to balance it with keeping enough AC/stam to take hits and AP/crit to hold agro... to reach a grand total of 203FR after buffs. Eww. Okay, well, it wasn't *that* bad, though nowhere near enough for me to want to tank Rag; died once to some unresisted crits from a lava pack, and once when I forgot to run out of the Baron's fire nova (noob tank!)... and no decurse on Gehennas leads to a dead bear... stupid lazy druids!

Holding agro wasn't a big issue so long as I got the first hit in most of the time ('Taunt resisted! Stop attacking!'). And having feral charge is very nice in a few places, such as with Shazzrah... charge and taunt to pull him back to the center. The part that gave me the most trouble was Majordomo. Shield against physical damage, means I generate no agro from usual means (maul, swipe). It basically came down to taunting whenever it came up, hoping he hit me enough to generate enough rage, and spamming demo roar and faerie fire. A moonkin probably would've done a better job:P

[Brista]

Thanks for the help everyone, things have settled down a bit and it looks like I'll be getting my first chance to play Feral in a raid

We spent tonight wiping on Razorgore, the first boss in BWL. Wiping on his adds in fact. Druids were healers in this fight. Kiters were shamans and warriors and hunters. The hunters were a disaster and we stopped using them after a couple of tries. They took huge amounts of damage and complained of getting cleaved and dazed. I think they had Aspect of the Cheetah on which in retrospect was probably a mistake. The shamans include some of our more raw players and some of them weren't very good (although a couple were excellent). They had a real problem keeping an Earthbind totem up in their assigned spot while still kiting mobs. Of the Warriors I think only one had Piercing Howl and I suspect they were a bit to keen to grab aggro by whacking things that hit them back pretty hard because their life dropped very fast

Despite all that we reached 5 eggs twice which is pretty good for a first try by all accounts

Next time round the officers are talking about using some Feral Druids to try kiting (along with Warriors). I'm quite buzzy about this because I fancy myself as a decent WSG flag-runner and it seems pretty similar

In flag-running gear I have 4 sprints: Swiftness Potions, Catform Dash, Skull of Impending Doom and Nifty Stopwatch. (The last two used to share a timer I believe, they certainly don't now)

Our warriors have been getting aggro by hitting things but I'm thinking that heals would be a better way to get aggro

We will have Earthbind totems in each corner (although we had some trouble tonight with mobs attacking the totems - any advice on this?). After some problems with healers in the centre getting aggro we've opted for a 2 groups in each corner of the room strategy

I'm thinking to set CTRA to display 8 groups. In the display I'll drag the 2 groups we have in the South at the bottom of the screen, the two groups in the West on the left of the screen, the 2 groups we have up North at the top of the screen, and the East groups on the right

Then run clockwise around the room dropping Rejuvenates on whoever is available

If I start getting hit I'll rejuvenate myself and sprint, using the ramps to gain extra distance

I'm not sure whether kiting something up a ramp then dropping off the side of the ramp buys me enough time to cast Regrowth. I'd love it if I could since that's a ton of extra aggro

I'm also considering using feral charge to gain distance and aggro extra mobs. If I have 5 mobs chasing me and Feral charge something up ahead I gain distance on the pursuers and immobilise the new target long enough to escape that one too - at least that's the theory

A technical question - if I rejuvenate then go Bear do the innate Bearform threat modifier and the +15% threat talent apply to the Heal over time ticks for more healing aggro?

Should I try not to get too many adds chasing me? Is it suicide to have 20 things chasing you no matter what tricks you have in the bag?

Has anyone here done this encounter as a Feral Druid kiter? I'd love to hear about other people's experiences