Saturday, October 23, 2010

Getting started!

So, you just bought World of Warcraft, leveled a druid, and have chosen the role of defending your allies. Congratulations! Over the span of many months(Or however long it takes you to read this) I will try to unveil the secrets of the Druid class. I will delve into the many different talents, glyphs, abilities, and even names that you can choose for your Druid.

At this point I am going to assume you are a level 80 Druid, but even if you are an experienced Druid tank, the 4.0.1 patch can be very intimidating to some players.So before we begin let's start off with some benefits to being a Druid tank.

Druid Tanking Benefits:
  • Instance queues are instant
  • You provide valuable raid buffs
  • Leader of the pack(5% Critical strike bonus)
  • Mangle Debuff(30% additional damage done by bleed effects)
  • Shredded Wounds(20% less attack speed and 50% less movement speed)
  • Leader of the Pack heals people
  • When you get geared enough you can solo heroic instances
  • You are a god damn bear
  • Everyone loves you
So you have now chosen the Feral tree.Let's choose a "build" that will allow you to tank effectively in most situations.

TALENTS

Primary level 80 build: (0/33/3)
Level 80 T10 Build: (0/33/3)
Level 85 Build: (0/32/9)

These builds are all very similar, they skip the talents that are only useful for cat form in the feral tree and depending on your gear and level they will vary. The main reason the T10 build picks up both of the enrage talents are because the 4 set T10 bonus allows enrage to no longer reduce your armor by a certain percentage, and on top of that it DECREASES damage taken by 12% which is almost like another barkskin! I'll go more into detail with that, but you'll hardly use enrage during combat unless you have the 4 piece T10 so I suggest sticking with the primary build for now. The level 85 build has more points that allow you to access the second tier of the resto tree for better magical mitigation and threat generation.

GLYPHS

Prime glyphs: Mangle, Berserk, Lacerate
Why? 
  • Mangle is your hardest hitting ability so you should let it hit harder. 
  • Berserk puts your mangle off cooldown so with this glyph you get an extra 5 instant mangles every time you berserk.
  • Lacerate is your second biggest threat ability and it's really your only other option.

Major glyphs: Maul, Frenzied Regeneration, Your choice!
 Why?
  • Maul allows you to more effectively AoE tank
  • Frenzied Regeneration turns a nifty effect into one of your most important cooldowns
  • You can choose whatever you want for your third glyph, but I suggest it be something practical. 
    1. Faerie Fire allows you to pull the mob from further away
    2. Battle Rez is good if you are an offtank and one of the only druids in the raid
    3. Feral Charge is great for fights with a lot of movement
    4. Thorns is absolutely great for running heroics with trash pulls that are very close to one another.
Minor glyphs: Challenging roar, Dash, and Unburdened Rebirth
Why?

These are your minor glyphs they all hold very little merit and it's totally personal preference, but you are reading a blog so I thought I'd tell you my opinion and what my glyphs were.


ABILITIES

Mangle: You're primary ability. Use it whenever it's off cooldown, when berserk pops, or when you are using the cooldown berserk.

Berserk (Proc): This is a talented ability from the talent "Berserk" It resets the cooldown of mangle and allows you to use it rage free, but is not to be mistaken with Berserk(Cooldown)

Berserk(Cooldown): This is a talented ability at the end of the feral tree. When you use this cooldown you're priority will be to spam mangle as often as possible. The perfect time to pop this cooldown is when you have the pulverize buff and lacerate is stacked on the boss three times. Sometimes this can be used to start off a boss, but if at all possible try and hold out for the ideal situation.

Pulverize(Attack): This is a talented ability that does damage based on how many lacerate stacks are on the boss, It consumes the stacks in the process and gives you a buff that increases your crit by 3% per stack for X amount of time. X being 10 seconds + (how ever many points you have in endless carnage)*4

Maul: This ability is new to many bear tanks. Before patch 4.0.1 bears never even used maul as it's own button, they just macro'd it to every single keybinding and let it do it's thing. In patch 4.0.1 you can still do this, but it now costs 30 rage and if you don't know what you're doing or aren't in the right situation you will be rage starved. It also doesn't do as much damage as mangle. I suggest using this 90% of the time, but make sure you prioritize keeping you're pulverize buff up, mangle off cooldown, and lacerate stacked to three times.

Swipe: This ability is your prime AoE ability. If there are more than 3-4 mobs go ahead and spam swipe and maul and when you hit 81 throw thrash in there as well. I don't suggest using this ability on single target, but if you have the extra rage and you can afford it, go ahead and do it.

Faerie Fire(Feral): This ability is your ranged pull, sunder armor, 0 rage cost, filler ability that can be useful all the time. Be sure to use this ability if you are out of rage and/or everything else is on cooldown.



NAMES

Now in order to solidify you're role as a tank you're going to need to choose a name that strikes fear into the heart of your enemies and with the new name changing feature you can easily choose one of these awesome names I have created for you!

All of these are super original and they should not be taken on any server.

I may or may not be sarcastic.

ALL BEARS:
Fluffybear
Mrcuddles
Imabear
Bearywhite
Drewbeary
Growlicious
Clawtrocity
Bearamanjaro
Maulpocalypse
WillFeral
Pulverizzle
Clawsterfobic


RACE SPECIFIC:
Moo(anything)
Elfbearcat
BobMauly(Troll)
WorgenDruid(I literally could not think of anything)

Alright well that's it for now be sure to stay tuned for plenty of information as well as some videos. I'm looking for all kinds of feedback as long as it's somewhat constructive.

And always remember that if times get hard, just bear with it! SEE YA

4 comments:

  1. How about Moonpanzer for the Worgen Druid?

    Really though, why are yo8u recommending King of the Jungle over Infected Wounds in your lvl 85 spec? We won't still have the T10 bonus at that point, right?

    Also, thanks for the blog. I bookmarked it.

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  2. I personally used Enrage with barkskin before without the T10 bonus. It's horrible and you shouldn't do it unless you have good survivability and horrible threat. The only reason I took it in that build is because there are a lot of different classes that give that debuff and the "Best" talent spec should be the one that benefits you the best.

    If someone else is giving you the debuff then it's 2 wasted talent points. No one can give you 15% more damage when you use enrage.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I gotta be honest, I'm not sure what that means? I get the bear part. Is it suppose to be "Barely Working"?

    BearlyWorgen = Barely Working?

    If so that's good and if they aren't bears "HardlyWorgen" would be funny too. lol

    ReplyDelete