This is Tartana's Totally Awesome
and Accurate Guide to Bear Tanking

 

ADDONS. 

You need these addons. 

Deadly Boss Mods (or equivalent)
Tidy Plates
Threat Plates (addon for Tidy Plates)

 

DBM is a no-brainer. 

Tidy & Threat plates some folks don’t know about. Basically, it makes your enemies nameplate look different whether you have agro or not. Real easy. If the nameplate is:

Small and green-bordered: You have agro. Good job!

Largeish and yellow bordered with parenthesis on the ends: You are losing agro. Get swiping.

Large and red bordered with “OH FUCK” triangles on the ends: You have lost agro. Taunt, swipe, maul, insult their mother, whatever it takes just GET THAT AGGRO BACK.

Here are some diagrams:

 

See? How can you tank without it? This is the most valueable tank addon EVAR. Get it and love it and tuck it into bed at night, maybe with your penis. It is your personal addon fellatio maker.

 

ROTATION:

Rotation? What the hell are you, a mage? No, you are a bear. You are a wild animal. There are no rotations. Only your natural bad-assness. Also, abilities. Basically you need to know your abilities and what they do.

 

WHAT THE FUCK TO DO:

This is what you should have on your main bar, or readily available (NOT NECESSARILY IN THIS ORDER. Order it however it works best for you. Remember, this is NOT A ROTATION)

Mangle, Lacerate, Swipe, Thrash, Maul, Growl, Pulverize, Fairie Fire Feral, Demoralizing Roar, Enrage,  Challenging Roar, Feral Charge, Skull Bash, and regular Bash.

 

Also, you should have all of your cooldowns readily available and know what buttons to push. These include:

Berserk (oh shit button, extra damage, extra threat) – makes mangle hit multiple targets. Makes it spammable (assuming you have lacerate on the target)

Survival Instincts – Reduce damage by 50% for 12 sec.   3 minute cooldown so click wisely

Barkskin – reduce damage by 20% for 12 sec. 1 minute cooldown. Use a lot. Your healer will thank you.

Frenzied Regeneration – Increases health and max health by 30% and converts rage into HP for 20 sec. 3 minute cooldown. Click wisely.

 

So this is what you do:

First, make sure you have rage. If you don’t have rage, you can do nothing, and everyone dies. Fail. Open either with a power shift (assuming you have the furor talent, which you should.) or use enrage before pulls (this makes you a little more vulnerable to damage initially, so pair it with barkskin and apologize to your healer)

Mob Packs:

1. Get those mobs CCed, as applicable. If you are marking, make sure people know what mark means what. Understand the CCs that various people have and how they work.

2. Feral charge, and pull back from the CC’ed mobs, OR use Fairie Feral Fire to pull. There are many casters in this expansion so learn to corner pull. (when you corner pull, please let your group know or they will die)

3. Keep the mobs agro. This is the hard part. It’s actually much harder than it was before 4.0 when you could just spam swipe. Today you have to use more than one ability. Those abilities are: SWIPE, THRASH and to a lesser extent MAUL. And to an even lesser extent berserk->mangle.

 

Swipe and Thrash are your primary AOE attacks and threat builders. Each one of them has a six-second cooldown, but this cooldown is not shared. Therefore, the best thing to do is hit one, wait three seconds, then hit another. If things get away, click ‘em (you can click their nameplate if you use threatplates, which you should be.) and growl at ‘em.  In emergencies, hit Challenging Roar.

That’s about it, honestly. Learn by doing. Note that if you’re under level 81, you don’t have thrash which fucking sucks and makes low level bear tanking a nightmare. You should not have threat issues if you do these things, and if you do one of two things is happening:

1. You’re doing it wrong.  OR

2. DPS is not watching their fucking threat. Eat their hearts. You are a bear.

 

Bosses:

1. Feral charge, or pull with faerie feral fire whatever into position (depending on the bosses mechanics).

 

2. Get agro as quickly as possible! This is the only place I have anything resembling a “rotation” It is as follows:  Mangle, Lacerate x 3, Pulverize, Lacerate again at least once. Then mangle, maul, etc. etc. John Fucking Madden

 

3. Know the boss. Move him around if the boss requires it. Don’t stand in the fire. Trade taunts with the other tank in a rade if the boss requires it, etc. etc.  If you know the boss and/or if you follow directions and you have DBM, you’re golden (unless you don’t have the heals and you die… or unless you don’t have the DPS and the boss enrages and slaughters you all… but I digress)

 

You can use swipe and thrash if you want.. and you’ll need to if there are adds that you are responsible for of course, but they’re not as important on the big bad boss as your large damage/threat single target attacks and abilities. Remember your cooldowns. Remember where your growl button is. Etc. etc.

 

GEAR.

You need to wear leather.

That leather should have Agility and Stamina. You will be fighting rogues for your gear. Fuck rogues. You are a bear. You can eat them (exception: if one of the main secondary stats is haste, give it to the rogue. They need to compensate for being naturally slow. You are a bear. You are made fast by nature. You know the flash? Slow as shit compared to a bear. You can tear open his lightning spandex and eat his heart.)

Here are the stats you want in this order:

STA/AGI, Armor, Dodge, Mastery, Crit, Hit/Expertise, Haste
 

Reforging:

 

Reforge haste to dodge or mastery (dodge is generally preferred). 

Reforge hit to dodge or mastery (Obviously you want SOME hit. But the amount you don’t reforge should cut it.).

Do NOT Reforge Crit unless you have so much that you can go back in time and crit the mobs mother to prevent them from being born.

Never reforge mastery.

Absolutely never reforge dodge.

Weapons:

You want a 2-handed weapon. Generally these come in the form of polearms or staves. I think we can use other weapons, but fuck, I don’t remember the last time I had anything that wasn’t a goddamned polearm or staff. You want one with AGI/STA and then Mastery and Crit. Some of the good weapons have haste. That’s okay. Reforge the fuck out of it. Here are good ones pre-raid:

Level 78 - Berto's Staff - Blackrock Caverns (N) - 388 DPS 212 AGI 319 STA 142 Crit 142 Haste

Level 81 - Obsidium Bladespear – Crafted (BS) - 418 DPS 229 AGI 343 STA 153 Mastery 153 Haste

Level 85 - Elementium Poleaxe - Crafted (BS) - 552 DPS 302 AGI 545 STA 202 Mastery 202 Crit

 

Here’s a good raid one. GLWT.

Malevolence - Bastion of Twilight - 623 DPS 341 AGI 512 STA 228 Mastery 228 Crit

Enchant that sucker with Mighty Agility (130 AGI). Well, actually this one is really expensive, so only use this on raid weapons, or maybe ilevel 346’s. For the lower ones, use Massacre (110 AP), Greater Savagery (85 AP) or hell, even Major Agility (35 AGI) is better than nothing!

 

Relics: 

Level 81 -  Runed Dragonscale – Crafted (Ins) - 72 AGI 108 STA 48 Hit 48 Expertise 1 Prismatic

Level 85 -  Silver Inlaid Leaf – Crafted (Ins) - 95 AGI 143 STA 60 Haste 65 Crit 1 Prismatic

Level 85 -  Relic of Golganneth - 700 Valor Points - 107 AGI 161 STA 72 Haste 72 Crit 1 Prismatic

 

Trinkets:

If you can’t recognize tank trinkets, you fail bear. Basically look for tank stats (no strength, plz. Bears are naturally strong). STA is what you want, and dodge. Armor is also good. Maybe things that increase healing done to you or something.

 

Gems: AGI/Dodge or AGI/Mastery gems.

Enchants: Agility. Alternately, whatever gives you stats that you need (see above)

 

Notice a trend? Yeah. Agility. Stack the fuck out of it. It gives dodge, crit and AP. 

 

TALENT BUILD:

 

Balance (0 Points)

None

 

Feral Combat (32 Points)

 

Feral Swiftness - Rank 2/2 - For the 4% dodge increase 

Furor - Rank 3/3 - You get 10 Rage when you shapeshift into Bear. This is for the powershift and you fail without it. Unless you use enrage all the time which makes healers cry.

Infected Wounds - Rank 2/2 - Makes mangle and maul reduce the targets movement (-50%) and attack (-20%) speed for 12 seconds

Fury Swipes - Rank 3/3 - This just helps you with aggro mostly. increases the damage of auto attacks occasionally.

Primal Fury - Rank 2/2 - Gives you rage when you crit.

Feral Aggression - Rank 2/2 - Causes Faerie Fire Feral to apply 3 stacks with a single cast. 

King of the Jungle - Rank 1/3 - Increases damage when enraged. This is mostly a throw-away point.

Feral Charge - Rank 1/1 - You need this.

Thick Hide - Rank 3/3 - Increased armor. and reduced chance you'll be critted

Leader of the Pack - Rank 1/1 - Increases party/raid crit and makes your own crits heal you a little occasionally.

Brutal Impact - Rank 2/2 - Lets you interrupt (skull bash) and stun (bash) more often.

Survival Instincts - Rank 1/1 - This is one of your cooldowns. You want this. (see cooldowns above)

Endless Carnage - Rank 2/2 - Makes pulverize last longer. BAM!

Natural Reaction - Rank 2/2 - Reduces damage, and increases dodge. Also gives you rage when you dodge.

Rend and Tear - Rank 3/3 - This is for threat. Increases damage done by maul on bleeding targets.

Pulverize - Rank 1/1 - A nice big hit for bad guys who have lacerate on them. BAM. This is part of the so-called "boss rotation"

Berserk - Rank 1/1 - One of your cooldowns (see above). In addition, it'll break you out of fears.

 

Restoration (9 Points)

 

Natural Shapeshifter - Rank 2/2 - Reduces mana cost of shapeshifting. Situationally okay.

Heart of the Wild - Rank 3/3 - Increases stamina

Perseverance - Rank 3/3 - Reduces spell damage taken

Master Shapeshifter - Rank 1/1 - Increases your damage. This is for threat.

 

Note: These talents are mostly totally required, but there are always a point or three that is... mobile?
Different strokes for different folks. Check other bear tanks builds on wowarmory or something. Do the research, grasshoppa.

GLYPHS:

Prime: Mangle, Lacerate, Berserk

Major: Maul, Feral Charge, and whatever.

Minor: Challenging Roar and whatever.

 

 

IF you have any questions, please ask the bear tanks. These include, but are not limited to Tartana, Kibito, Dasia, and a couple others. Guild roster is your friend. If you want to double-check builds or whatever, wowarmory is also your friend.