The two points in Primal Precision is movable. It is great for MT due to the expertise from it. The three points in King of the Jungle can be moved around as well. It's not too much of an important talent, but if you're a bear that has trouble with initial threat this could help with enrage/charge in. Also nice to keep around if you're an OT type that pops into kitty when not needed to tank. The optional talents for this is:
2/2 Brutal Impact - Good for fights where you know you're going to need interrupts. Bash is a stun and an interrupt and both affects are treated separately.(If target is immuned to stun but not interrupt, it will still interrupt) I like to use it for heroics mostly. Not so much in Naxx. Somewhat useful in Ulduar.
3/3 Infected Wounds - Good for fast attacking bosses that dualwield and if you don't have a warrior to apply T-clap. If you also have a hard-hitting mage(Isana), it's not bad to put points into this as well.
2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild - If you're expertise capped and the other talents don't look as needed for whatever situation you're going into.
2. Glyphs
Major
Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration - A must-have glyph for tanking. Your healers will love you knowing that you're healing yourself and their heals are increased on you.
Glyph of Maul - A nice glyph to help in aoe tanking. Mauls are a great way to gain a huge amount of tps. Since Maul is on a swing timer, you can use a rotation for aoe tanking as maul and swipe while maul is waiting for the swing. For places where you're going to be using CC, it isn't as nice.
Glyph of Growl - A replacement for Glyph of Maul if it is problematic for CC.
Glyph of Survival Instincts - This glyph is a nice addition to your oh-shit buttons and people will wonder how you got 40-60k hp out of nowhere.
Minor
Glyph of Challenging Roar - 30 seconds doesn't seem like much when the cooldown is already at 3 mins, and I don't really see much of a different between 2 mins and 30 seconds vs 3 mins, but if you think you're having trouble aoe tanking and you know you'll be doing it often, this is for you.
Tier gear is not listed, but it usually has really nice stats for tanking which is better than some of the non-tier pieces.
The items listed under Bear and Cat are gear that can both be used in cat and bear. The items listed under bear is generally alot better for bear tanking. I did not list which is better for tanking or not. This is up to you to decide from what you're upgrading from. The general idea is, if it has more stamina>agility>armor>hit>expertise. This is the list of order of stats you should look at when looking to see if it's an upgrade with the left being most important and the right being least important. If it's a tough choice for upgrading, you can use the program Rawr. http://www.codeplex.com/Rawr
This program helps you see what gear is available to upgrade to and from where. Take it with a grain of salt though, sometimes it emphasizes too much of some stats.
Stats The stats to look for in an upgrade is stamina>agility>dodge>armor>hit>expertise. This is the list of order of stats you should look at when looking to see if it's an upgrade with the left being most important and the right being least important.
Stamina - Increases HP Agility - Increases dodge and crit. Crits procs Savage Defense, which you want to keep up as much as possible. Strength - Gives 2 attack power for each strength and the amount absorbed by Savage Defense is based on 25% of your attack power. Armor - Physical damage mitigation Hit - Increases your chance to hit your abilities such as taunt. Increases your tps(Threat per second) as well. Expertise - Decreases the chance to get dodged/parried. Increases tps. Dodge - Gaining dodge is a good way to stop the amount of dmg you take. For a Heroic lvl tanking, about 30% is a good start. MT tanking in Naxx should be around 35%. 40% is good for harder hitting bosses such as Patchwerk, or even Ulduar. About 45ish% dodge starts to get terrible due to diminishing returns and this is where you want to start looking into increasing your stm.
The hit cap for a druid is 8% on a lvl 83 raid boss. 8% translate to 263 hit rating. Though it's nice to get hit capped for tanking, I wouldn't force myself to try and get it. Mine is about 7.5% hit right now and I leave it around there.
The expertise cap for a lvl 83 raid boss is 6.5% to not get dodged. If you get the Primal Precision talent, you'll get 10 expertise(2.5%). You'll only need to get 132 expertise rating, which translate to 4% expertise. This eliminates your attacks from getting dodged. To eliminate your attacks from getting parried, you need 16% expertise. With the 2.5% from Primal Precision, you only need 443 expertise rating to eliminate parry. Getting the dodge cap is relative easy and should be tried for. Getting the parry cap is difficult with it being 16%, but can be obtained. I would try to get expertise over hit when it comes to tanking though. Since parries = extra hit to you. Missing a hit won't be as devastating.
Gemming
Meta: Austere Earthsiege Diamond - Nice armor and stm increase Red: Shifting Twilight OpalDelicate Scarlet Ruby - Gives dodge and crit Bold Scarlet Ruby - Great for when you have too much dodge. You can use it to buff your savage defense. Yellow:Rigid Autumn's GlowGlinting Monarch Topaz or Deadly Monarch Topaz or Rigid Autumn's Glow - Fill in as you need for Dodge,crit, and hit. Blue: Solid Sky Sapphire - Try to put in as many of these that you can. Stamina gives a good amount of hp. Even though stamina was drastically reduced with last patch, stamina is still a good way to absorb blows for a druid. Compare 24 stm gem to a 16 strength gem. 24 Stamina gives 240 hp roughly. 16 str = 32 attackpower. Savage Defense gets extra 8 absorbed. So 8 absorbed vs. 240 hp makes stamina a better gem.
These are the best gems to put in your those color slots.
Savage Defense Savage Defense As you know, Bears received a new Savage Defense ability, which allows for your crits to proc the Savage Defense shield which absorbs for 25% of your ap.Your lacerate ticks almost every 2 seconds. Every 2 seconds you have about your crit chance(say 30%), to gain a shield(absorb amount = 25% of ap). Your ap is about 4000. In a typical heroic, mobs hit about 1.5k-2k. You get a proc and you're going to absorb about 1k dmg. You're only going to take 500-1k dmg. That is a good amount of dmg mitigated making this ability really nice. Of course you'll be dealing dmg in between 2 sec lacerate ticks so your chance of getting a savage defense proc up is pretty high(ie. swiping multiple targets). This is like a more reliable version of block, where your block chance is your crit %. Bear armor was in turn nerfed for this ability and though it is nerfed. It is still relatively higher compared to a warrior and about the same as a DK. You're still mitigating more physical dmg with armor + Savage Defense + Dodge makes bear tanking alot better than what it was before where bear tanks were just trying to stack stm and take as much dmg as they can(Makes it difficult for healers). A bear's HP was nerfed for this skill as well.
Edit: (5/5/2009 1:02 AM) After some calculations, it turns out with a 30% crit chance and 4000 ap, bears will on average have 2 savage defense procs every 5 seconds, which is 2k absorbed dmg every 5 seconds on average.
Summary: You'll want to get to about 45% dodge to be at a good spot. At about 45% dodge, try to put in some hit. Stm in as many blue slots as possible without breaking meta.
5. Tank Rotations Single Target Rotation Start off by pulling with Faerie Fire(Feral). After 3.1, they increased the amount of threat/dmg that FF can do. From Furor you should have 10 rage in Bear form or if you start by using enrage, so hit maul as the boss comes towards you, or you're going towards it. This means your first hit on the boss will be Maul. Maul is the bear's best way to build tps. When you gain enough rage, you'll want to hit Mangle every cooldown and lacerate to build up to a stack of 5. The threat from lacerate is drastically increased with Primal Gore.
Summary: FF(on pull)>Maul(Before the mob reaches you)>Mangle every cooldown(good tps)> Lacerate(Build up to stack of 5 and keep it stacked)>Maul between swing timers>FF(every cooldown).
Aoe Tanking(Assuming Maul glyph) FF(on pull)>Maul(Before the mob reaches you)>Swipe>Keep swiping between Maul swing timers while using repeatedly using Maul.
6. Addons: CooldownCount - Puts the big numbers on cooldowns on the abilities as well as the numbers on the debuffs on target. SmartyCatManaBar - Not used in pve content too much, but it's convenient to know what your mana is when you're in bear or cat form so you know if you can Battle Res or pop Tranquility. Omen Threat Meter - Let's you see your threat and let's you know if you need to back off or use Cower(which I haven't had to use since BC) Outfitter - Great for setting up gear and changing it automatically to dps or bear if you need to. RatingBuster - Breaks down stats on an item to make it easier to compare to what you are wearing. For Cat and Bear gear, make sure to be in cat or bear form before you compare. Otherwise it is just making the comparison in your caster form, which is sometimes inaccurate.
Right now I'm using the glyphs of Frenzied Regen, Maul, and Survival Instincts. Do you think it's worth getting the Growl glyph and ignoring hit rating in gem slots and chants? Or is there a decent enough amount of hit on tanking gear to make Growl misses not an issue? I guess I'm mostly thinking of fights like Gluth, Razorscale, and Kologarn where missing a taunt could mean a wipe.
Currently I'm playing devil's advocate with having low hit rating in my own gear and not having growl glyph. But it seems that the miss on the taunts is pretty low, and when I actually do get missed, challenging roar is there to save it. I'm only using 28 hit rating. Same for fights like Gluth, Razorscale, and Kologarn. All this glyph does is lower your hit cap for growl to the melee hit cap which is 8%.
From the testimonies I've read, It's a 50/50. Some say, They've never used it and they only get the taunt resisted like only twice a year or something and others say it's better than Maul due to the fact as a MT you won't be tanking more than one generally and some bosses are a must-have. Another way to look at is comparing the length of time you spend aoetanking in an instance(Maul) vs. single target MTing(Growl). Or if you really like to be safe for stuff like bosses like Gluth, Kologarn, Razorscale, 4 horsemen, etc. use the growl glyph. But even when you use the growl glyph, if you're not hitcapped for 8% then you'll still have a small chance to miss.
Ah, I misinterpreted the Growl glyph then. I assumed that Growl has a base miss of 8% against raid bosses (much like the melee base miss) and the glyph would essentially make Growl miss-free. Thanks for the info!
- A must-have glyph for tanking. Your healers will love you knowing that you're healing yourself and their heals are increased on you.
AoED
Quests
Quests1