Mark of the Wild

The Tanking Build

Marked Readers –

 Since I covered my healing build yesterday, and I happened to log out in my feral spec last night, I thought it might be a good idea to review my tanking build.  It’s a fairly common 0/58/13 with only 1 point that isn’t set in hard stone.  And in the end, that’s not all too bad. 

 While I don’t have any pure Cat talents in this build, it does let me do enough damage to do my dailies quickly and easily.  Though, I often find myself just popping into Bear form, rounding up a group of big uglies and swiping them to death. 

 As I did yesterday, I’ll mostly focus on the talents I skipped, rather than the ones I took.  Though there will be exceptions, of course!

I’ll start with the Resto talents because it’s a smaller group and they’ll let me get my two typing fingers warmed up. 

I skipped over the Shapeshifer talents in favor of Improved Mark of the Wild and Omen of Clarity.  I don’t shift around much when I tank.  If I do need to pop out and either throw a quick heal on myself or rebirth someone (Ow, that sounds painful, doesn’t it?) I’m not worried about not having the mana for it.  So in the end, I’d be spending 5 points for a 4% damage boost.  No thank you.  Instead, with IMotW, I get a 2% across the board stat boost as well as a 40% increase in my Wild spells.  This used to be a Resto-only talent, used to get to the next tier.  No longer, it’s a near must-have for all druids. 

I won’t say the same for Omen of Clarity, though.  This was/is my last point and there are a couple other places I can place it that I’ll discuss later.  I threw it into OoC because it’s a one point talent, and I like being a ‘completionist’ if possible.  But I’m not sure how useful OoC is for me.  When I tank, rage is very rarely a concern.  I mean, it’s just not.  I either have a full rage bar, a half full rage bar, or I’m divvying up the loot after a boss kill (and doing a poor job at that.  I am the worst master looter in the world).  So I don’t need the free thwack that OoC gives me.  But then again, more is better, so I’ll take it. 

Now on to the feral tree!  The first talent I skip (aside for The Talent that Shall Never be Taken) is Shredding Attacks.  This goes back to my rage theory, and so far, it has proven me correct.  I use Lacerate a lot.  If I’m not mauling or mangling, I’m using my mouse-over macro and stacking lacerates.  And I still have a plentiful supply of rage.  So using two points to lower lacerates cost by two isn’t necessary, so I’m putting them elsewhere. 

The next un-taken is Brutal Impact.  Now, I love Bash as much as the next guy, but it simply has too long a cooldown to be reliable.  Even with the two points in BI, Bash has a 30 second CD.  If you need to interrupt something again and again, like KT’s Frost Bolt, then Bash just won’t cut it. 

Nurturing Instinct and Primal Tenacity are both mostly PvP talents (though I do recommend NI for leveling ferals who find the need to heal on occasion).   Predatory Instincts is all Cat all the time, so I bypassed it as well. 

 The final talent I skipped is King of the Jungle, and it’s most likely where I’d place that point from OoC if I every change it.  However, I only use Enrage before the pull, so I can get a good head of steam built up as I head into the fight.  But I don’t like the reduction in armor enrage imposes.  So I’d rarely benefit from the DPS boost in the talent.  Why would I take it then?  Well, that extra 20 energy points you get from Tiger’s Fury would come in handy in an opening move on a mob.  

As for glyphs, my majors are Frenzied Regeneration, Maul and Mangle.  The only real alternatives are Survival Instincts and Growl.  I don’t use SI all that often (thank you awesome healers) and I don’t notice my Growl missing, or rather, missing and me not regaining aggro through a swipe or glyphed Maul hit or something. 

 And that’s what I do.  How about you guys?  Are any of the talents I skipped on your must have list?