It was pointed out to me, that I might have been a little tired/excited in my last posts. I re did some of the punctuation, and corrected a few sections of typos. To anyone who read them(very few people I'm sure), I apologize.

san

Heroic AN

It is my opinion, the very first boss area is the hardest in the whole instance, with one note.


If you do not have anyone in the group that is a shaman, druid or pally, I wouldn't do it, due to the poison. It hits hard, its nasty and its completely random. If there is a shaman in your group make sure he drops the totem, if a priest is healing you, and have a pally or druid doing dps, they have to understand the poison is there responsibility, if not, you will most likely fail.

However, the first stuff sucks, What I do is pull with FFF(feral faire fire), remember to kill the smaller guys first, the caster I would use FFF on, kill the small guys and try to position it so that you are facing towards your group, your butt near the caster for swipe. Swipe is essential here. If you are in lower gear, use EVERY cool down you can. The packs with the caster hit hard, and it can be no fun at all. During the first boss, critters run out everywhere, Swipe should grab them, if not, instruct your healer to move to you quickly drop your aoe taunt, swipe and pray. Remember the AOE taunt has a 15 yard radius, timing is impeccable.

Next boss is so easy, until someone says , hey can we get the achievement. Then begin to cry yourself to sleep in a pool of your own blood. Ok, its not that bad. Number 1, Sacrifice someone in the group, after you pull a few of mob groups and the boss comes out fighting the 20 mobs, have someone go down there and die. Just down the hill and die, not you or the healer.(hunter would be great at this). DO NOT FOLLOW. After this you are going to stand there, and be like well what now, as your standing there hopefully, you will see this web fly at you, and pull you towards the boss. If it is not you, you need to get in there and get the mobs off of whoever got webbed to the boss, very quickly, very very quickly. The healer will follow you, after you have been pulled. At this point you are tanking about 15 mobs more or less. Make sure to use your cool downs here as well, and with a little bit of luck and you freaking out, Everything should be ok(should, no promises, this is on the healer and your gear).

The last boss(poison cleansing for whoever can) of this area can be very competitive, as a tank in this instance, you have to step it up at least for this boss. You need to move every time the ground below you is shaking, if you get blasted up wrong time, can be very bad. The boss also does a move known as pound, for the most part you will dodge or be moving when its coming down. Note he ususally does this move right before he burrows under the ground. Due to druids health, don't worry about it so much if you take one or two, you can eat the damage its pretty big, like 20k or so, but with savage defense up and a little luck it wont be horrible. Main thing is to watch your healers back on the mobs, and don't get overwhelmed with the trash as it comes in, use your innervate during the breaks on the healer when its up if he needs it.

And that my friends is tanking AN, Every trick and tip I know.

Fuzz

I bring to your attention some questions that have been asked and some rather complicated ideals.

Recently, in patch 3.1, druid bears were given a beautiful ability called savage defense. It's a 25% damage taken shield, the catch is its a proc, to have this proc you have to deal a crtical strike. Hence, Critical strike and agility stats gems or item enhancments will cause these this to proc more, causing you to take less damage. Agility will also add dodge. So as far as I'm concerned if you want to stack agility with a little stamina and tank go right ahead, I personally I like stacking stamina for geared healers(making it easier to heal the big health market I offer). But as you can see I will take more damage this way.

I'll be honest with you the math that goes into dodge diminishing returns is crazy, especially since I would have to redo the math thats been done since its different now that 3.2 came out. if you want to do the math or look at it wowwiki has it, but remember thats not 3.2. However, one thing is very simple to under, as the fight gets longer you lose dodge.

However, there is other things. Armor count for bears is actually much higher than for other classes, most sit around 23k to 25, where even in my full stam trinkets and rings im at a 27.5 with more mitigation gear on around 30k, Use to be you had to worry about a cap, but now its 45,697 at level 80, good luck hitting that.

The truth is, Bears are the worst mitigation tank in the game, all this sounds great, but compared to other classes, who have dodge, parry and block for pallys and warriors. So no matter what happens, bears are missing one mitigation stat, 2 in some cases, but as we crit more with savage defense we are getting very close.

At this time i feel like I have left something out, I will make another post if i remember anything else. Thank you for reading

Sanford
(please remember to use barkskin every minute you can, as I have listed ealier.)

For the most part i have discussed tanking as a druid so far, I am a dual spec healer tank and pretty decent healer for my part.

This post is specifically for healing it, I will be going over tanking this instance at another time.

Healing this instance can be the biggest challenge I think I have ever had. I have done it countless times with out a problem, then the last 2 days i went in there 2 times with the same group(pretty much, sub hunters first time one hunter was alittle dps low) attempting it. Death knight tank(admittedly under geared a little) 25 man lock, 25 man hunter, 10/25 man dk blood and myself, nice guild run.


This ended up being 2 of the toughest runs ive ever done. I dont mean in toc, i mean in the game, Theres times in both of these fights where i healed with everything i had, and it almost wasnt enough.

phase 1 the three champions

We had small issues with poison and the usual but i noticed i was almost out of mana around the end, and had used innervate. Which for me is unheard of, in 10 man uld I use my intervate on dps. Straight and simple, DKs take a lot of damage. They have taken alot of hits and to no fault of their own, they just dont make the greatest of tanks right now. But we got through it with no major problems.

Phase 2 we got the boss who fears. and this is where the problems begin, no shaman or priest to help with fear, no damage eating pally or warrior. It took a few try's but the tank determined that he could use anti magic shield out of the fear, the locks cookies and some healing pots to help keep him up. Healing from a druids perspective on this one sucks. HOT as you may me with big spellpower the ticks were nothing compared to the hits from behind, and i would spend most of my time healing the tank back up to full health, I had to get other the other folks to use cookies potions whatever to get back up. It is always possible Im not the greatest healer, But i dont think that's it. A mix between bad tanking and no help with the fear, I could keep everyone else alive but the tank keep getting hit hard. Esp hard when the tank gets feared and takes hits from behind and cant dodge or parry.

remember to have you group come close together for your Aoe heal right before the fear, that way you have 4 to 5 ticks during the fear and can aoe heal right after,make sure to use regrowth, first heal nourish 2nd regrowth after the fear, all the dots you can get. Try to save tranquility for last boss, hot anyone you can with lifebloom or rejuv before the fear if u can and if you have a big mana pool. Main thing is keep the tank up, my tank was 30k hp and taking hits around 15 to 17k whether chain hits of 7.5 or so who knows, but its a tough encounter. If the fear happened right after those hits its gonna be a tough thing to keep the tank up.

Last boss is cake, heal the tank with hots and group with Wild growth and phase 3 after the explosioin hit tranquiltity after a few seconds of it and go to sleep.

This post is longer than I thought it would be but i hope it gives a better understanding to healing.

see you next time(maybe later tonight) for more druid information,

fuzz man

I must admit I hummed and tossed over going over this in my last post, But I am trying to make my posts quick concise guides to follow, this one may not be.

The logic behind the rant:

Many druids believe that stacking stamina is the way to go, its the best way to defend and all it will do is lower your healers overhealing. Other druids believe that stacking agility will increase dodge making your mitigation higher meaning your healers have less to heal, and that goes double, There is less of a health tank to heal. 29k health but 42% dodge or 35k health and 35% dodge, take your pick. And then there are others who believe in a health mixture of scaling and mixing gems.

Fuzzy Logic:

Tis my belief, and i must be honest i haven't seen this written in to many other areas anywhere, That its not what you gem, But when you gem. For just starting heroics putting on agility is great, you never know what kind of healer you need and for pretty much everything(heroics) other than TOC and maybe UP having the big health pool isnt needed. Your going to get healers with big spellpower or mana pools will love all the health because their gear can handle it, lower ones have to do more healing and you will not do as well as you can.Once you begin getting some badge and naxx 10 gear you want to move to mixing gems to stam and agility. As you move to 25 man uld or 10 man uld as a tank, Stam begins to take importance but plenty of agiltiy gems, For those of us lucky enough to have sets of tanking gear you can kinda care some mixtures and have a higher dodge set for trash and a lower but more health for bosses and its my belief that would be best.

Please gem agility not dodge, I know its pretty, but having the extra crtical strike gains more threat everytime you crit.

On a side note, When I hit 80 I had made for me the frost resistance set for me, Please dont throw that away if u have it made, it comes in very handy later, Put agility on it and its a great tank set for starters and if u go skinner can probably make it for yourself for the price of a frozen orb and tipping of a leatherworker. The only problem with this route is you threat level will be lower because those dont have attack power built in. Single target will not be too difficult but swipe will definatly be hurting for you.

Thank you all for reading, next post I will discuss addons and macros that I use and why.

Da fuzz man

Unless you have been out of the country or rping in goldshire the last few days(even then you might know), You have heard about the new expansion. Cataclysm.

Maybe its just me but since then there has been explosions of information faulty and real going everywhere, tons of speculation for every spec and bit and piece of information. And I am just not feeling it, Its a year away at most, probably with blizzards time tables, 2 years. I have a lot more game to concentrate on before then. All the other bloggers, in game psychopaths, and forum lurkers are all so excited let me be the first(well probably not the first to say) Bah humbug!

Im not going to get excited about the expansion until Im playing it, And by that time will be writing here how to tank,heal, dps and overall mechanics.

Again thank you for reading my rant and ill get back to writing tanking specs

Sanford
(ps: Thank you to liz for actually making my blog look presentable and her continued patience with me)

I had began to start getting together all the gear upgraded and best things you can do to become the best bear you can be when I realized that there is an amazing guide of this already.

Here

In this, is a guide of a lot of the best gear in the game. One thing I would like to add that this list is out of date due to H TOC and regular toc, as well as now no emblems of heroism so you can jump in with emblems of conquest. So make sure to get the 126 stam trinket and armor buffing trinket out of TOC reg. the boots out of TOC H are the best tanking boots i think in the game. tons of agility.

Gemming and stats questions are going to be answered by my next post.

Sanford

(I am setting forth into this post with the goal in mind to make as much sense as I possibly can, I may break this, and for that I apologize)

In this segment I will be going over the mechanics and rotations I use as a bear tank. The next serious segment will be gear, and it will probably be the most intensive out of my posts for all the research I have to do to feel I've done the task successfully. It might be a little bit before that is done.

Bear tanking 101

feral faerie fire(FFF) is usually the first spell I cast, I usually cast it upon whoever needs to die first and I usually don't apply again. If you are fighting trash(bad guys who are not a boss) I usually open with swipe and maul and move to mangle on cool down. If you are having problems with a group and or gaining aggo you might want to try leading with mangle, Its called snap aggression and its a wonderful tool to use if your group is very exuberant. From their its a rinse and repeat through the list of targets

As a starting druid Please make sure you group is aware they can dps as hard as they want, but let you get in there for a second, I usually say 2 Lacerates. Lead with FFF, then Lacerate to 5. At this point you should have enough rage to smack him, hit maul, mangle, and swipe in that order. Mangle will go off first, maul probably around then and then the swipe(Maul is a next attack command so it activates on your next melee attack).

The next issue is defenses, your given frenzied regen and barkskin. A lot of druids and i agree the best way to treat barks kin is as long as your getting attacked and your health is dropping its ok to use bark skin. Long as your not next to boss who's really quick and it wont be up for it. I must admit frenzied regen is sometimes a 2nd thought as your trying to help the healer though a long fight. Which isn't a bad way to use it, however if you used it at the start of the fight around the end you might be able to pop it again. Plus it usually means letting the healer know, if you use it and the healer doesn't know by the time they figure it out they have over healed you and stop healing you and you take a shot. Not saying its not great to use but I love having ventrillo or a macro to tell the healer this information.

Last piece of knowledge is using enrage. Sure great you get more rage wonderful, at the expence of your healer. Notice in the tooltip for enrage it says lowers armor, Please be aware of when you run in using enrage first thought with 5 targets hitting you, its your health bar and the healers mana pool, and maybe you should think about it like clicking it off right before you go in or get hit.

That ends this one,
Sanford

I was recently talking with a "friend". She was doing a VH with a member in her guild who got killed randomly(ok not so random, the members a rogue) and was complaining about it. I asked the question of who was tanking,it was a warrior or dk I don't remember, who was healing, A pally.

It irritates a lot of people and me when people don't understand class mechanics. Pallys are amazing healers. Pally s don't have a lot of multi target/aoe healing. Healing the tank out duties healing the rogue. A warrior is going to hold great aggro on one target, But anything more is quite stressful. Anyone who has played the game should understand basic concepts of class dynamics before yelling and being upset and snotty. And I am certinaly not placing the blame in any corner but maybe the death your so upset about could be your fault for not focus firing, not watching aggro levels. Theres many other answers to examine before assulting someone on their play style.

To do a quick recap.

Tanking:

1. Warrior single target and burst 2 or 3. highly based on rage.
2. Druid best mix of both imho, lowest mitigation, but high health and armor.
3. DK alittle low on holding aggression but 2 aoe aggro grabs and tons of tricks
4. Pally the king of all aoe tanks right now, Great on aggression

Bear is quite possibly the simplest form that druids possess. Bear tanking is very simple, few buttons to hit, and abilities to rely on. For the next day or two I'm going to talk on different druid tanking subjects, Gear, Abilites, Talents and over all strategy.

It was a toss up between starting with abilites and talents but I decided on talents first.

I recommend something along the lines of...

http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=11&tal=0000000000000000000000000000503232130322010353100303013501203503012000000000000000000

You can fight over it all day, But you need to have survival of the fittest, you cant tank with out it.

Where most tanks have to obtain a certain amount of defense to be uncrittable, We druids do not, we are the only class who does not have too.(Till next expansion so I've heard) SotF by definition makes that so we don't have too, Get it.

Infected wounds is basically thunder clap for us, and amazing at reducing our damage taken. Notice that the spec I have gives expertise(through primal precision) which is vital for tanking since it decreases chance to be dodged or parried when attacking.

And my last point for this post is that I gained a lot of attack power using this spec, Which is vital to keeping aggro. I think the rest of the talents are self explanitory but if anyone has questions please ask either here or though my email, sanfordanddruid@yahoo.com

First post is nothing too important, Just a little explanation.

I am Sanford, I play on a small world of warcraft server but have played on the big ones. I am currently a co Guild master in a guild that is progressing through uld 25. Have you asked the question as a druid of What should I do, How should i spec, what stats are important. Well I hope in due time to answer everything I know to my knowledge.