[Druid] Use this spec AT YOUR OWN PERIL, EARTH HUMAN

That's a...fox? And a...tasmanian devil? Google images never fails me.

One of the odd things that I see from time to time is people armorying me to get the 'default' spec for tanking, using it blindly because they assume that if I'm doing it, it's optimal.

Well, naturally it is. I am the allmighty Kalon, and nothing I say could ever be wrong.

The question you should ask yourself is this: if Kalon's doing the optimal spec, what is he optimizing for? And with that, I bring you the totally wacky 56/15 spec. Or here, if you like the armory.

Okay, the first thing you're probably thinking is: the hell?

Most of the stuff is the same as what I've mentioned in the bear FAQ and even in the antiquated core tanking talent post. But there are some oddities that I'll mention. First, though, let me explain the reasoning.

This is a tanking talent tree only for main tanking, and it assumes that during a fight you will only be tanking. Cat DPS is incidental. Tanking when not being attacked is not the issue and should not be accounted for. This is also not designed to tank multiple adds.

Furthermore, this is for specifically tanking Anub'arak in heroic mode. For Anub'arak, you do not want improved Leader of the Pack; the healing is too random to count on, but gives too much healing to want to keep around. As such, removing it is very good; for our kill, removing it removed about 300,000 healing, which essentially meant removing 2100 HPS on the boss.

It also assumes essentially infinite rage situations; while tanking, you're expected to be taking massive damage. Rage should not normally be an issue.

With these things in mind, here are some of the controversial calls.

1. No Omen of Clarity. If you have infinite rage, Omen of Clarity is pointless for bear tanking; it gains you nothing. It's unpredictable anyway. It's essential for good cat dps (even with bear talents), but since we don't care about that in this spec, it's gone. It's essentially one point wasted.
2. No Ferocity. This is such a no-brainer to take; druids have been trained since birth to pick this. 5 less rage on mauls, swipes, and mangles? Of COURSE this is a good talent.
   Except that in infinite rage situations, it's not that important. It does mean that with a streak of avoidance you will get rage-starved; this happened to me a couple times. It also means that it's very, very important to pull with a full 40 rage (or more)But for the most part I didn't miss it when tanking Anub', or Beasts, or Twins. It's not necessary to get to tier 2 either if you're taking Feral Aggression.
   
3. No Improved Leader of the Pack. Normally this is something that at least one feral in the raid should have; it's stabilizing and a decent amount of heals, and usually points are there for it. In this case, however, Anub'arak needs to have exactly the right amount of deliberate and predictable healing so that we can limit the healing as much as possible. That means unpredictable heals that we can't rely on to passively heal a group have to go. Honestly, we didn't miss this at all in the fights save perhaps Faction Champs.
4. Feral Aggression and Infected Wounds are needed. This is because our warrior is going maximum threat/deep wounds, which means no improved Demo Shout. And I need to make sure the slow effect is up on my target, so Infected Wounds is required too. This is a requirement for our fights in general, so no big change here.
5. Improved Mangle AND Master Shapeshifter? Wow. Yeah, that's right - with the above changes I have enough points to take basically anything that improves threat throughout the fight. King of the Jungle isn't taken because I can't use it; I must not have 25% armor reduction. But I can take the above. Improved Mangle actually deserves some credit here. Because I'm having to do things like demo roar and refresh my lacerate stack early so that neither drop off during freezing slash, the rotation doesn't look like a rotation so much as a priority system. And if you're doing a lot of other things anyway, being able to mangle more actually improves your rotation and your threat quite a bit. I need to work out exactly how much, but I'd ballpark it at more like 4-5% instead of 2.5-3%. It also helps uptime with your Idol of the Corrupter, so that's nice too.
   
   And on this, as much damage as you can muster is good. For our kill I managed to do 2800 DPS, which isn't bad on a single target using primarily survival gear.
6. No Maul Glyph. Another one that I miss - but if you've read me before, you know that I think glyphs are the new flask. Still, this has some explanation. I don't actually care about growl that much on Anub'arak, but it was important that my mauls don't hit another target. This is because occasionally a burrower would get close enough to me that I'd hit it with maul if I wasn't lucky - and that might mean that it went to me instead of the add tank. That meant instant wipe. Easy to fix - just swap glyphs back and forth, and you're set.
   

The end result was a fairly strong MT build. Only a couple times on bad avoidance streaks did I have any rage issues. My DPS sucked when switching to cat on adds, but not so much that it mattered hugely.

Heroics, though...were a totally different experience. It was like playing through molasses. Just painful. Fortunately I outgear content enough that if need be I'll just switch to my DPS spec and tank that way. I won't have PotP or NR or a lot of important tanking talents, but it won't matter. I'll have the essential speedy attacks, and taking more damage will mean more rage.

It's also a really horrible spec to solo in without imp lotp.

Ony was also a bit hit and miss; the transition from p2 to p3 left me with a lot of threat to make up, and not a lot of rage. It wasn't the funnest thing ever.

Still - it was great to have a substantial threat gain from what I had had before. Mauls hit for more, and mangles were going off all the time. It felt a lot more in control, and most importantly I did significantly more damage while keeping all of my necessary survival talents. If you want to go against some of the 'standard' experiences - you might try it.

IF. YOU. DARE.

[General]Nature Resist for Anub'arak ToGC25

A couple people have asked about what nature resist I use for Anub'arak here and there. It's pretty easy, actually.

Nature Resist Totem (130)
Arcanum of Toxic Warding (25) - from Knights of the Ebon Blade Honored
Enchant Cloak - Superior Nature Resist (20) - farmed from Icecrown mobs. And the drop rate really isn't that bad.
Lesser Flask of Resistance (50) - pretty much any alchemist will have this, though it costs fireleaf, which isn't that common.
Fur Lining - Nature Resist (70) - farmed from the same icecrown mobs as above. This is a leatherworking-only perk.
Runed Ring of Binding (25) - Onyxia 10.
And while I don't have it, Signified Ring of Binding (30) is also awesome, and drops from Ony 25.

That's all it is. With the above enchants and flasks and totem, I get to 320 NR. Which is good for an average resistance of about 38%.

What does that mean for Anub'arak though? On our 2% wipe last week (side note: sob) this was my values for Leeching Swarm:

Actor	Totals		Hits			Absorbed		Resisted		Misses
										Ab	Total
Fellhoof	1544848	16.2 %	214	7218.9	1544848	73	230926	214	1137968	2	2

So I took 1.5 million damage from leeching swarm, and resisted 1.1 million damage.

Leeching swarm was active in this fight for 217 seconds. This is the formula for how much damage Anub'arak heals from leeching swarm:

healing = (damage done + absorbed damage)*(2.3)*(MS effect)*(player modifier to healing)

The MS effect corresponds to whether MS or wound poison is up - if it is, this all gets reduced by 50%. The 'player modifier to healing' is another example of awesome blizzard mechanics, where the player's talents that multiply healing done also multiply healing done to Anub'arak. So things like Purification or Master Shapeshifter (tree) boost healing done to Anub'arak.

The important thing to note here: resisted damage doesn't ever heal Anub'arak.

For me, that meant I was personally responsible for 1.983 million damage healed to Anub'arak - in 217 seconds, that's 9173 HPS. Yikes.

But how good was the resistance? The damage I didn't take was equal to 1.137 million/217 seconds or 5244 DPS I wasn't taking during this time. The healing done would be equivalent to 1.15 this value (MS effects were up), which meant that resisted damage was equivalent to 6030 HPS not done.

In other words, the resistance was the equivalent of 6k DPS done to the boss.

Note that this isn't all due to the enchanting this way; 130 NR provides about 18% resistance by itself, or about 3k DPS done by itself. That means the gear by itself contributed about 3k DPS, or 2.6k reduced damage.

That's very substantial, and it certainly makes it easier to heal the tank on the hardest part of healing.

Is this adviseable for other players? Probably not. Certainly not other DPS classes, who will already be fairly low on health and want to do maximal DPS prior to phase 3. Maybe healers, who may be able to take the hit on their healing power/regen power.

But almost certainly tanks. Our two tanks by themselves were responsible for about a third of all healing done to Anub'arak - and that was with me using NR gear. If I hadn't, we'd be closer to 40%.

So if you have enough health to survive the scary part of phase 3 - which is freezing slash + a melee hit + a leeching swarm tick - consider dropping it for at least a lesser flask of nature resistance.

[Druid] How are bears doing?

Zax posted a comment on an old (yet strangely still reasonably accurate) post about Savage Defense back in the day that I felt dovetailed into something useful now.

I know this is an old entry but I also see this problem, that the breaking point, when an amount of AP is on par with mitigation from an amout of agi/armour, is pretty low. What would certainly help this issue is a possibility to stack SD.
So e.g. lower SD to 15% of AP. Then implement:

Nurturing instinct 2/2 AND Natural Shapeshifter 3/3 - in bear SD can stack up to 2 times, in cat you can proc SD with 30s CD with the basic 15% value, while those 10% are reflected back (subject to critical attack chance ArP and armour mitigation, can't be dodged etc.).
If you have both talents, then it's up to 3 times for bear and 15 CD for cat and with 25% AP value.

The choice of talents, values etc. was just an example, but the point is the should be a way how you can improve this ability from talents.
The hard luck is that Blizz doesn't care about ferals and doesn't give a damn about feral tank and feral cat itemization. I just hate seeing feral set with AP, where should appropriate amount of strength. But this list could be endless x).

Thanks for posting, Zax.

I do think that there is definitely some degree of truth to this. I've written before about how bears use rogue leather, hunter weapons and plate tanking jewelry, and that's still the case. Because of the changes to how armor is done, there's no 'wow' stat that says "I'm a feral" item on it.

Conversely, I don't feel it's true for cats. Cats have been designed well to do well with most of the stats rogues want (though not with the same scaling on each stat) combined with doing well with the stats on hunter weapons and the occasional DK weapon. Cat itemization is better than it's ever been both from the perspective of choice and the perspective of things being designed with ferals in mind. That we continue to have debates about whether agility or armor pen is the best stat is a good indication of this - if there are two stats that can compete for best, it's a sign that the spec is fairly healthy. Furthermore, no dps stat is truly worthless any more.

But still, we have bears and their annoying itemization. I ask you - is that all that problematic? I recognize that the feeling can be sometimes upsetting (side note: why are ferals so emo?) and it doesn't feel good to be getting weird scraps of gear to get things to work. It doesn't feel like your class is finely designed and tuned; it feels like afterthoughts.

But in terms of actually getting things done, bears are in a better position than almost any time in their history (save possibly the end of T6, when they were stupid good). And if you take one thing away, take this away:

As long as bears have the highest armor of all tanking classes and the highest potential health of all tanking classes, they will remain a solid choice for the majority of tanking encounters.

There are going to be gimmick fights where certain things benefit one tank over another. Cooldown usage in Ulduar and Sarth3D, BoPs on heroic Beasts, being unhittable on the adds on Anub'arak, lots of blocking and avoidance on Algalon, AoE threat, burst threat - all of these can favor one tank or another here and there. But in general, having super high health and the highest armor (and more accurately, the highest overall mitigation) will make druids always competitive in tanking.

Always.

And with the way blizzard is choosing to do their itemization for bears, this will stay this way. As I talked about in the right way to nerf bear stam went, as long as gems, enchants and buffs scale with the bear multiplier bears are going to have stupid health. Armor is going to also have an advantage due to agility and having higher armor per tier than the other tanks by a small margin (about 100-200 per tier). Keeping protector of the pack means bears will have close to the same consistent amount of base mitigation too. So for the foreseeable future, as long as encounters do not emphasize high avoidance, high threat, or large cooldown requirements bears will do well.

Now, it's reasonable to fear that encounters WILL have those things. But even so, falling back on effective health and mitigation is not the worst thing in the world here, and should result in bears being competitive if not optimal.

Savage defense is basically an afterthought here. I'd honestly like to see it entirely removed and replaced with something more functional and less kludgy. It does do its job, but it's unintuitive, hard to model, hard to predict and rely on, and tends to just be a pain. Like Zax mentioned, making it stronger would also be a good choice. It's curious to think about what it's going to be like when block gets so radically changed.

On a less theory/QQ note, Bears have quite a few advantages going into ToC that I've not seen talked about, especially on hard modes. For starters, their damage output is very strong. Their cooldowns work well with Heroic Beasts (barkskin is available on every tank swap and every worm swap), bears are awesome on faction champs, the high health and damage multipliers on Twins makes them keep threat well and combined with mobility, make them a good choice.

And then there's Anub'arak. I'm talking heroic, mind you. Normal mode is easy enough (not easy, just easy enough) that any tank works fine.

Anub'arak's adds are problematic for a feral. They don't have the interrupts of a warrior, so they can't stop Shadow Strike nearly as easily. They don't have the blocking capabilities of a warrior or paladin, so they'll end up taking a lot of damage. Add tanking is somewhat problematic.

But tanking Anub? Oh, it's great. For starters, barkskin is usable while stunned, meaning that on some of the freezing slashes you can have 20% less damage taken; no other tank can reasonably do this. Oddly enough health kind of sucks to have here; you need to be topped off but want to have as little health as you can possibly afford to due to how leeching swarm works. So you'd think that bears would suck, right? Take away that health advantage and what do they have?

Well, they have superior armor. Armor helps where blocking does not, on those freezing slashes (where avoidance is 0) and in general. If you stack things like Defender's Code and The Black Heart you can get quite a lot of mileage out of having lower health, and Glyph of Indomitability is better still.

They also have much more flexible gearing choices. If you want to drop most of that tanking gear for DPS gear with more avoidance (particularly if you're using agility instead of arpen) you can without unduly hurting your chances. But more importantly, they can easily go with resistance gear.

Why resistance gear? Well, frost damage is part of it, but the big win is Nature Resistance. Leeching Swarm is completely resistable, and as the main tank you will be kept at 100% health most of the fight. That's a lot of healing done to Anub'arak. For our 10-man heroic attempts, I was somewhere between 25 and 30% of the overall healing to Anub'arak.

So what if we go for nature resistance? If we go for a head enchant and cloak enchant, still have leatherworking as our profession and go for the bracer enchant, choose the lesser flask of resistance as our flask and go with a nature resist totem, we can get to 295 total resistance. That's not quite enough to make sure we resist 30% or more, but we don't care about that here; we care about average resistance, and the average would be around 38%.

38% resisting of 30% of the healing corresponds to about 10% less healing done. Basically, by wearing that gear you're contributing your very own mortal strike debuff, albeit a weaker one. And you're taking less damage while not having a ton of stam.

Other tanks can do this, but bears do it best. They can easily remain uncrittable regardless of gear. They can usually maintain a high amount of health while doing this due to how they scale with those health benefits. Most plate tanks aren't leatherworkers; being a leatherworker adds 6% resistance by itself. Losing the flask doesn't hurt that much either compared due to the high health as well.

This was one part of the strategy that we came up with on our Heroic Anub'arak kill, and the overall strategy worked really well; we killed him after 4 tries, getting A tribute to Mad Skill. We had thought about doing it before, but seeing that Premonition did this as well for their bear (Melaar) on 25-man heroic really brought it home. Reducing his healing by 20% meant that we spent the same amount of time in the leeching phase with our dps, but did 6% more overall damage in less time. Part of that was some gear upgrades, but a lot of it was that he healed for 300k less in that time. That's a big difference.

So yeah, you might feel like Blizzard doesn't care about you, Zax, and they don't care about the bear. But that same lack of caring works to your advantage if you think about what your options are.