Cutting My Losses on L29 Weaponry

There is a good, clear successor to Rhahk-Zor's Hammer from the Deadmines, and that's Slaghammer from Razorfen Kraul.

But it's dropped by trash mobs.

RFK is a long instance, and one where your party members are likely to be either impatient lolret geezers in heirloom gear, or noobly huntards lost in an epic fog of auto attacks and overeager pets, oblivious to the scary blue bar next to their portrait.  Neither breed will help you clear the gutters of Razorfen at the end, looking for that awe inspiring trash-drop of lore.

Therefore, if you get the Plains Ring or Slaghammer from a dungeon finder pick-up group, consider yourself the official target of my ursine envy.

It seems that the 20s really have it in for a Bear's self image, pushing us relentlessly toward the feline angels of our nature.  Resist it, I say.  Ignore the laughable absence of a clear blue leg-armor tanking successor to your tattered Smelting Pants, put the drool-inducing Slaghammer out of your feral minds, and take your tank points where you can get them.

There are worse fates than to wear the Barbaric Leggings and the Acrobatic Staff of Stamina. We'll make it up in the Scarlet Monastery.

Right?

Right?

o.o

Keeping Aggro at Low Levels

One of the old complaints about Bear Tanks, which (lucky for us!) is just a myth, is that Bears have an innate difficulty in getting snap aggro at the beginning of a fight, and in keeping their threat high throughout the fight.

There are some things that we can do to overcome the challenge of keeping aggro during fights at low levels. The first, clearly, is to be know how much threat you're actually dealing out.

1. Install the Omen Threat Meter add-on.  This is the most important tanking add-on you will use.
2. Install the Aloft add-on.  This surrounds the name plates of all mobs that you have aggro on with a highly visible red bar.  When you get close to losing aggro for a mob, the nameplate border turns yellow, warning you so that you can change to that target for your next FFF-Maul combo.
3. Use the Glyph of Maul.  In the end game, you might have good reason to remove this glyph, but while leveling, it's your bread and butter.
4. Always always always show name plates for mobs when you are tanking.  Do this by pressing "v".
5. Cycle your targets by clicking on the nameplates of the mobs you are attacking.  Make sure to spread out your Maul, so that every Maul attack hits a new primary target.
6. If things start to go badly, jam Enrage and lay down a Swipe to remind all the mobs within 5 yards of you who's in charge.
7. Fight with your back to the wall.  This lets you keep the mobs in an arc in front of you, further ensuring that you are able to distribute your Maul damage across the crowd.
8. Backstrafe, never run away.  You can't dodge attacks that come from mobs behind you, and you sure as shootin' can't auto-attack or Maul them back.  Backstrafing will eventually add up to faster rage gain.
9. Keep Thorns up all the time, but don't be lazy about it--skip the Glyph of Thorns.
10. Always keep Faerie Fire (Feral) on cooldown.  Start your pulls with it.  Then, every six seconds, pick a new target and hit them with FFF.  Consider this a permanent part of your tanking rotation, from now until forever.

Assume that most players ignore raid targets--the end game has spoiled a lot of players into expecting every trash pull to fall to AoE damage.  You can try using raid targets, but will probably catch flack for it.

If you try to establish threat dominance over a crowd of 4+ mobs using only damage superiority, you'll probably fail.  Particularly if you are new and grouped with a bunch of fire-hardened raider alts in bind-to-account gear.  The truth is, it's pretty easy for dealers to pull a mob out of your threat-well if you are trying to spread white damage out over a large group.  In the early game, Swipe doesn't really give a good return on the Rage investment per use--it's a great tool for establishing a fast burst of threat at the beginning of a fight, but you'll be experiencing relativity directly, as time seems to slow down when you have no Rage, Enrage is on cooldown, and you're losing aggro to multiple dealers.

Your only real chance of keeping high threat (and thus aggro) on multiple mobs is to target cycle Maul, and keep Faerie Fire (Feral) on cooldown.  If you're dealing with a mix of caster and melee targets, catch the melee with a Maul and FFF, then drag those bastards over to the caster.  If he tries to root you and run away, power shift and punish him.  Let the melee mobs fall to your Maul splash-damage, the caster's attacks ignore your armor anyway.

Keep an eye on your healer, too.  If you body pull a mob and catch a heal, you might inadvertently transfer aggro to your healer.  FFF comes in handy for these situations.

In many ways, tanking is like fighting with your own party members.  The threat game is a tight rope, but can be quite a bit of fun.  If you think one of them is really trying to pull a mob off of you, drop an FFF-Maul-Maul combo on it to discourage them.  If one of the mobs you're fighting breaks and runs to get help and your ranged dealers let him run, and you aren't ready for adds, if you decide that the situation warrants it, shift to Cat form, punish the bastard with Shred for showing his back, then back to Bear form before your healer can complain.  If nothing else is attacking you, why not?  If the mob gets a head start, you can hit him with an FFF-Moonfire combo the same way.  If you look at your threat bar on Omen and see that you've got 5x as much threat as the next contender on a mob, cycle to the next one.

It's like boxing.  Stay on your toes.  Cycle your mobs, watch for incoming and pull them with FFF before your dealers body-pull.  Spread out that Maul damage and save your Swipes for when you've got Rage to burn.  Keep an eye on the nameplates.  And you will see, when you bring your A-game, there'll be nothing that your dealers can do, at least while you're leveling, to take your aggro away from you and keep it.

Good Advice from PuG Members

Yesterday I set aside some time to run Razorfen Kraul. There are a number of items I want from that instance, including two rings and a weapon upgrade.

Many of the items that I'm looking for drop off of trash mobs, so of course I took the first left turn to hit that optional part of the instance. Predictably, some of the members of the party told me that I was going the wrong way. I explained about the trash drops, and most of them were very understanding.

While crossing the chasm bridge, I lightheartedly said "no falling". The Warrior DPS got hostile at that point, and the rest of the group precipitously did the same.

"Don't tell me what to do, just keep pulling mobs" (Warrior)
"Absolutely, no problem." (Me)
"Pull very large groups so we can AoE" (Warlock)
"And trust my healing" (Paladin)

And just like that, I ate my humble pie and, throwing caution to the wind, decided to get really aggressive with my pulls, hauling in groups of 6-8 mobs at a time, strafing forward like a train, pulling the assembly along behind me and making frequent stops for Rain of Fire. Everyone seemed to enjoy the fight quite a bit more. The healer had more to worry about, I had a more challenging time keeping aggro off of the warrior in B2A gear, so kept FFF on cooldown, but the overall rate of completion was much faster and I only had to pop Lifeblood once. There were no more complaints, or talking for that matter.

So, in the balance of things, it was great advice, and a very good group. And in the final boss fight, I fell off the edge and into the pit. Epic fail. The warrior tanked. Chalk this up as an "experience" post.

In Favor of Furor: Seeing Red over Blue Rage

To those of you who are trying to spare me from the fate above, I thank you.  The argument against Furor, which I've gotten twice now in the last two weeks, is this:

"Furor is not needed now that Enrage gives instant Rage."

This is the orthodox, safe, standard, popular opinion. If you want to go with the flow and save the TL/DR below, awesome. /salute

This snap rage is nothing new. Enrage alongside Improved Enrage which later became Intensity used to give snap rage, though not as much, and the above argument against Furor was just as popular back then as it is now that they consolidated the two talents. For more on this, see BBB's July 04 2009 post on endgame raid tank bears vs "facepulling" 5-man bears.

Ultimately, Furor lets you use you mana as rage. It's that simple. It gives you a guaranteed infusion of rage whenever you need it, as long as you have enough mana to make it back to Bear form. If you can take advantage of this during a powershift to break out of a root (Deadmines Frost Novas come to mind), more's the better. And you don't have to choose between them--you can use both Enrage and Furor if you want (I do often).

So, with respect to Bear tanks talented into Furor, Mana is not Mana. It's blue rage.

The most rage efficient mechanism for generating threat at level 20-30 for four or fewer mobs, is to keep Maul and FFF on cooldown. Swipe's "threat per rage" vs fewer than 5 mobs at low levels is abysmal, and without Savage Defense there's really no reason not to save the extra 5 rage for your next Maul and to target cycle.

The only mobs that you're going to be able to actually make stick to you when spamming Swipe are melee combat mobs (casters stay put and cast), so blowing Enrage in order to Swipe spam a pack of melee mobs is probably a very poor idea for low level encounters.   Swipe's threat generation isn't worth the rage cost.  I don't think it can stand up to a Mage's Blizzard at early levels.  Even if you can keep the melee mobs on you, Enrage comes at the expense of 27% of our base armor, which is exactly what you don't need when you're Swipe spamming melee.

Not that I'm arguing for the value of the extra armor, really.  The early value of Thick Hide is possibly worth debating, but probably not worth it.  Armor's contribution to survivability is pretty limited for low level Bears.  I never ever stack armor in the 20s, but the time when armor would conceivably be most useful at my tender level is when I'm surrounded by melee mobs, making that a very poor time to blow Enrage.  So, Enrage for Swipe spamming, I'll conclude, is not useful at this point in my tanking career.

Conversely, armor doesn't contribute at all to survivability vs. magic damage, so saving Enrage cooldowns for caster encounters is probably its optimal use.  The armor penalty means nothing at that point, so it's just free rage and makes a great burst if you need to drop a Bash, for example, in WC when the druids are about to cast sleep on your Healer.

Once you get Savage Defense, then combined probability on crit strikes vs. melee mobs becomes a major contributing factor to survivability, and Swipe is totally redeemed. Also, by this time you can talent into Feral Swiftness / Natural Reaction to fuel extra rage generation from dodges. At this point, temporarily speccing out of Furor is probably very smart.

But, between target cycling glyphed Maul, watching my autoattack swing timer and rage meters for good opportunities to powershift, and my Dealers following the kill order, I have zero problems right now with threat generation or keeping aggro. I'm pretty darned good at it, actually. So, dropping furor on the premise that my talents can do my tanking for me is not in the cards.

Survivability is really not impacted by Thick Hide at my level. At all. In fact, I dropped 20 gold to respec and ran a TankPoints comparison on it, and three ranks in Thick Hide left my overall damage mitigation completely unchanged. At these low levels, tanking is all about Stamina, and paying attention.

The 4% added dodge from Feral Swiftness is really tempting, though, and I'm looking forward to having it, but it doesn't become a no-brainer until it can be combined with Natural Reaction. Savage Defense with Swipe Spamming makes Feral Swiftness / Natural Reaction (FS/NR) a murderous combo.

There are two feral talents that are absolutely worth speccing out of Furor for, in my opinion. The first is Feral Charge at L30. The second is Mangle at L50. The FS/NR is also a worthwhile combo to spec into. But Swipe and FS alone are just not worth it.

I'll probably spec into and out of Furor a number of times as I climb the tree. It's sort of a "training wheels" talent, scaffolding to prop us up as we level. Furor / powershifting enables a certain style of play that I find challenging and rewarding, so I will keep it for the time being. If I could use mana (which I don't need) for rage (which I constantly need) without burning 5 talent points, I'd love that. The bonus ability to keep my energy in cat form should take some of the pain out of leveling.

What can I say?  I think there's value in blue rage.

Anyone who decides to play differently, devoting themselves to deep feral from the beginning, and forsaking the impurity of the Resto tree, as long as they are having fun with the results of their decision, is doing what they ought to, and I won't recriminate.

Bear Tanking Items at Level 20

While the 20s have very little to offer Bears in terms of new skills, they certainly do bring a wealth of new items. I'm going to start compiling a list of items that are available at given levels, and will commit to keeping these lists up to date and adding items as I learn more about them.

The items listed below are superior to the best that was available at the previous level, as measured in TankPoints.

Uncommon

• Bear Bracers
• Coral Band of Stamina
• Defias Renegade Ring
• Forest Leather Gloves

Rare

• Black Wolf Bracers
• Fenrus' Hide
• Cloaked Shoulderpads of the Monkey
• Deep Fathom Ring

If you know of items I have missed please let me know in the comments and I'll add them to the list. Thanks for your help!

I ... Have Pink Fur?

Last night I crushed Deadmines for the Miners Cape and the Smelting Pants, completing my collection of top-shelf L19 tanking gear. I landed a fantastic dungeon party that included a Ret Paladin pulling about 75 DPS. The party was very skillful, it was as good an ending as I could have asked for in my first bracket of instances, so I ponied up my 10g and then went back to Ashenvale and leveled to 20.

It was a bittersweet thing, to bid farewell to my first real gear crawl on Brick. Going from auction house greens to top of the line in just a bit over a week, got me over being nervous about getting back into tanking.

It turns out I have pink fur in Cat Form. Pink. I feel like a quadripedal, pixelated, Night Elf analog of Conan O'Brien. Not that that's a bad thing, at all. But I'm not sure about pink fur. It's just not me.

Now begins the 20s bracket. The next ten levels will not see much in the way of skills for Bear form. Instead, I'll be looking for ways to amplify my Bear form with my Cat abilities. I've already been practicing a caster-form combo that involves Bash, dropping into Caster form, casting an instant Moonfire, then back into Bear Form for Furor and 10 rage. By the time the mob falls out of the stun from Bash, they've got a HoT on them and a reinvigorated bear. Working this trick against two mobs requires a little Nature's Grasp and some dancing, but it's fun. Having done a lot of cat-bear form-flow work in the past including my now infamous Flying Bear Maneuver, I'll be looking for more combos that cross the lines of form.

Looking into a change of hair color. Pink being pink and all.

The Terrible 20s

From the standpoint of an ursine enthusiast, the 20s bring very little to the table in the terms of feral tanking improvements.  They are, in order of appearance:

1. Demoralizing Roar, Rank 2 - Level 20
2. Feral Charge - Level 20
3. Swipe (Bear), Rank 2 - Level 24
4. Maul, Rank 3 - Level 26
5. Challenging Roar - Level 28

This is a fairly sparse list, and the 20s seem to be more dedicated to the introduction of the various Cat abilities, as well as some respectable improvements to the Restoration skills.  I am on the brink of leveling to 20, and will likely do so if only to achieve the remaining skills needed for The Flying Bear Maneuver.

My thoughts on the 20s, however, are rather grim with respect to feral tanking.  My next entry will focus on the love-hate relationship we have with the Maul skill, how it is best used, what its relationship is to swipe, and other Maul-related things.