Feral Druid PVE in Wrath of the Lich King: A Comprehensive Guide

[Oilslick]

This guide is current as of patch 3.3.

Introduction:

Very few classes have undergone as many changes over the years as druids, particularly feral druids.  In vanilla, we more or less didn't exist - if you were druid, you were heals or you were wrong.  Towards the end of bc we became the ultimate healer mana soak with our uber hp and just armor for mitigation, but were the truest definition of hybrid as we could pop out of form and toss heals, go bear and tank, go kitty and dps, all in a single fight and do all sufficiently well.  In wotlk, it all changed again...and again...and again....and again.  Blizz really couldn't make up their minds and we underwent more free respecs than any other class except perhaps dk's.

As a result of the many changes, the curious feral wanting to rely on web based sources for gearing up and learning their class are all confused and in most cases terribly outdated.  Even here in our own forums, most of the guides and tips/hints written up are very outdated.  In many of my pugs i've come across people quoting sources 9 months to a year old as if it was the bible and calling me a "bad druid" for ignoring them...and just like the worst soap box bible thumpers refuse to listen to logical argument or reasoning when an explanation is given for my gearing, gemming, or enchanting.  For this reason, and many others including several direct requests from guildies, I've decided to begin putting together a "guide to feral" current as of Wrath Patch 3.3.

So, to start off...time to dispel some of the common misconceptions about ferals, and clear up a few of the primary differences this class has compared to others.

1)  Bears have no way to silence pull a mob.  We either have to LOS pull or rely on another class that can silence and then peel the mob off them.  This makes certain trash pulls very difficult on bears, and despite sometimes being labeled "main tank" for a raid, it's the reason why i completely pass the duty of "main tank" onto better suited classes during trash (if you've been wondering why i do so in vent so very often).  Our only silences as a bear also root the mob for as long or longer than the silence - making it impossible for us to silence "pull".

2)  Misconception: bears have insanely more armor and hp than any other tank class.  I'm really tired of hearing this one.  It's incorrect.  This hasn't been the case since blizz decided to introduce (a few patches late) the shifting agi/stam gems as well as diminishing returns on several stats.  They also removed all our bear bonus to armor from rings, necks, trinkets, and weapons (making any outdated spreadsheet or calculator completely wrong in it's suggested gear).  Under current bear mechanics, it's just as viable to gem agility across the board as opposed to stam, especially if you're stuck with a weapon lacking enough feral ap to maintain threat.  Blizzard's idea when reworking the feral bear was to essentially try to make us on par with a warrior in equivalent gear.  Take a warrior and druid in equivalent gear and our hp will be within 1 to 2k (not much difference when getting nailed for 10 to 20k in raids), and bear armor is only slightly higher after diminishing returns to make up for the difference in crit based savage defense versus shield block mechanics.  That being said, there's no way or means by which a bear could ever come up with a gimmick set similar to warr or pally "block set".  Instead we come up with a stam set for the situations where others would equip a block set, and pray the mobs are susceptible to bash and feral charge mechanics.

3)  Misconception: bears with defense gems are bad.  This is a huge misconception.  Sure, bears are uncrittable by talents, but that talent does not make up for the "chance to miss" or the boosted dodge that other classes obtain when pushing their defense to crit cap.  Toss in diminishing returns on armor and dodge from agility and eventually a bear will hit a point where defense can actually add more avoidance than an agi or dodge gem would.  I'm not saying to go out and gem all  defense...just that you may find yourself eventually reaching a point where your spreadsheets or calculators recommend a def/stam gem over a stam gem or agi/stam gem, and instead of looking at it sideways and thinking your calculator is broken you'll more easily understand where it came up with it's recommendation.

4)  Don't use emmerald's guides which became so popular in bc.  They're terribly outdated and so very wrong that a druid using them to gear up a bear will find themselves getting beasted on like a clothie and unable to maintain threat.  If you use them to gear up a kitty, you're also outdated - the guides were put together prior to one of our dots being able to crit, glyphs that extend our dot, etc., back when min/max'ing arp was priority.  Most really high end feral cats will recommend gemming agility until approaching crit cap, then gem strength instead arp for the 2:1 attack power conversion, scaling with kings, and simply consider arp a "nice bonus stat" to their gear but never shoot for it directly with gems or enchants.  For people that consider cats to simply be rogues in a different skin, this information should be pretty eye-opening.  Crit cap for a feral kitty is somewhere between 63 and 73% depending on tier set bonuses and talents...and which attack we're talking about...and whether or not there's a bleed up on the target during the attack.

Talent builds:

There are four or five primary talent builds for feral druids since 3.3 came out: Bear, Three different cat dps builds, and a pvp/arena build.  With most classes blizz originally attempted with wrath to allow for diversity in builds and a wide amount of customization for personal preference.  Well, they failed with ferals.  There is really only one bear build.  The cat dps builds are pretty role specific.  The pvp build is more or less set in stone due to the need to "blow up the competition" while still being able to cc and assist.

Bear Build with glyphs:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxGGsfrzceRcczAkbA0z:nMNczM
Most other classes of tanks will drop their jaws when they read this...but...here goes...if you reach expertise parry cap (yes, that's right: PARRY CAP), you can think about moving the points from precision into something else like feral aggression or if close to 4 piece t10, perhaps king of the jungle.  Just keep in mind that the expertise from precision is base expertise and not expertise rating.

Cat dps with glyphs (single target/boss dps):
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZEMMsfrz0eo0huAkbAczb:VpmVzm
This build has one point leftover to place where you see fit...possibly two if you have enough expertise on your gear to reach dodge cap to drop a point from primal precision.  The viable places for these extra points is feral instinct for increased trash/aoe damage with swipe, or in nurturing instinct for boosted survivability as a cat and the ability to occasionally use a predator's swiftness proc to toss out an "oh sh*t" heal on someone.  The common aoe swipe build simply moves points from feral aggression into feral instinct.

Cat assist/buff build (powershifting pve without going oom):
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZEM0sfbdbeR0huAkbAcz:mpVmzV
This unique and rarely seen build gives cat's all their cool abilities that we almost never see a feral put to use these days.  With imp lotp all your melee will heal themselves when they crit.  You can be a maim bot for interrupts, assist with fc rooting and interrupting with increased duration and shorter cd's for fights like faction champs, pop form on every predator's swiftness proc to toss boosted heals and never go oom, and go bear for a quick imp demo roar then pop back into cat and actually do some pretty decent dps (though not nearly as strong as the more pure dps build above).  The minor glyph of the wild combined with natural shapeshifter will let you brez mid fight, buff, tranq, innervate, and go back into form with plenty of mana to spare.  Many ferals in another spec can find themselves needing to down a mana pot to be able to pop back into form after that ritual - especially if they missclicked a spell in the process.  The best part about this build is that it's fun, really fun...and you have a leftover point to put where ever you want.

Cat arena/pvp:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxGMsfbdbeRhIuVk0Ezz:jpNVzM

Basic gemming:

Cats:
[item]Relentless Earthsiege Diamond[/item] in meta sockets.
[item]Delicate Cardinal Ruby[/item] in all sockets.
[item]Nightmare Tear[/item] if needing to match a blue socket bonus (the only bonus worth meeting would be meta or +9 or more agi)
[item]Nightmare Tear[/item] or [item]Deadly Ametrine[/item] if needing to match a yellow socket bonus (the only bonus worth meeting would be meta or +9 or greater agility).
Note:  Many guides you find will disagree with this entirely as many of them are completely outdated.  Most guides will tell you to socket armor pen across the board.  Frankly, armor pen and strength are both less important than agility on any modern gear calculator UNTIL you reach kitty soft crit cap.  Kitty soft crit cap will be somewhere between 63% and 75% depending upon set bonuses, idol procs, trinket procs, and raid buffs.  If you manage to reach this point, the value of armor penetration and strength edge out as being slightly stronger than agility.  Armor penetration compared to strength once reaching this point is very nearly 1:1.  Personally I prefer strength, but if you see that you've got a large chunk of armor pen from your gear, you might consider continuing down the armor pen trail due to it's oddly exponentially increasing effect.  I'd probably frown upon you for doing so because of my opinion that armor pen is a completely gimick stat, but you certainly wouldn't be wrong in going this route.

Bears:

Bear gemming is a bit more complex if looking to achieve a strong balance between survival and mitigation for the content you are tanking, however - the standard gemming once pushing t9 and beyond would be as is listed below.
[item]Austere Earthsiege Diamond[/item] for meta.
[item]Solid Majestic Zircon[/item] for blue.
[item]Shifting Dreadstone[/item] for red.
[item]Enduring Eye of Zul[/item] for yellow.  If not in t9+ gear, i'd consider using stam or agi/stam gems and forgetting about the bonus.  Also, if the bonus isn't a big chunk of agi or a REALLY big chunk of stam, i'd recommend putting stam or agi/stam gems in.  As Dharq wrote in his first response, you should more than likely socket stam or agi/stam in yellow sockets until reaching around 50% to 60% dodge, and then only if the socket bonus is really really worth it should you consider a green gem.

Enchants:
I've left out all profession exclusive enchants like those from leatherworking or ring enchants.  Depending on your profession you may have better enchants to choose from.

Cat:
[item]Arcanum of Torment[/item]
[item]Greater Inscription of the Axe[/item]
[spell=60663]Enchant Cloak - Major Agility[/spell]
[spell=60692]Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats[/spell]
[spell=44575]Enchant Bracers - Greater Assault[/spell]
[spell=44529]Enchant Gloves - Major Agility[/spell]
[item]Icescale Leg Armor[/item]
[spell=44589]Enchant Boots - Superior Agility[/spell]
[spell=60691]Enchant 2H Weapon - Massacre[/spell] depending on gear will actually offer more dps than [spell=59621]Enchant Weapon - Berserking[/spell] for kitty form.  The opposite also holds true depending on gear.  My recommendation however is to go with [spell=27984]Enchant Weapon - Mongoose[/spell] if you have the same weapon for bear as you do for kitty.

Bear:
[item]Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector[/item]
[item]Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle[/item] or [item]Greater Inscription of the Gladiator[/item] depending on whether you need more avoidance or more stam.
[spell=60663]Enchant Cloak - Major Agility[/spell] (don't get the armor enchant, it doesn't get the bear form multiplier)
[spell=60692]Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats[/spell]
[spell=62256]Enchant Bracers - Major Stamina[/spell]
[spell=44529]Enchant Gloves - Major Agility[/spell]
[item]Frosthide Leg Armor[/item]
[spell=44589]Enchant Boots - Superior Agility[/spell] for avoidance and mitigation or [spell=44528]Enchant Boots - Greater Fortitude[/spell] for more stam depending on your needs.
[spell=27984]Enchant Weapon - Mongoose[/spell] is unfortunately the best there is for bear weaponry in game at the moment.  Despite it's decreased proc rate on mobs above level 70, and the fact you may see alot of bears with [spell=64579]Enchant Weapon - Blood Draining[/spell].  The latter might be a good choice if you don't have good healers like we do...falling below 35% is a rarity with our healers, making it a largely wasted enchant.  If we are ever below 35% and not back up within a global cooldown and a half...then our healers are dead and we're gonna wipe anyway.  This enchant by itself will never make up for dead healers...so go farm some old BC heroics and get goose at the earliest opportunity.

Consumables:

The only food a feral should eat is [item]Blackened Dragonfin[/item].  If you're eating [item]Fish Feast[/item], you're gimping your dps or bear stats and simply being lazy.  Learn to fish.  Learn to cook.  Do the cooking daily for spices.  Pools of [item]Dragonfin Angelfish[/item] spawn in two lakes in dragonblight, one near the kaluak daily where you steal the pups, and the other between dragonblight and howling fjord behind the horde town.  Usually i start at one, fish all the pools then fly to the other and keep going back and forth.  They've usually all respawned during the short flight.  If you manage to finish off all the pools, they also can be fished as a random drop from these same two lakes without pools.  Stacks of these fish also happen to be the biggest cooking money maker on the auction house...worth more than fish feasts and fewer matts to cook them up.

Bears have a choice between a pair of elixirs or a flask.  [item]Elixir of Protection[/item]+[item]Guru's Elixir[/item] combined offer the highest mitigation+avoidance+threat of any other consumables, however [item]Flask of Stoneblood[/item] offers the greatest stamina boost and does not vanish upon death like elixirs do.

Cats only have one viable option, [item]Flask of Endless Rage[/item].

Bears should probably keep a stack of [item]Indestructible Potion[/item] on them for soft enrages.  Cat's however really don't gain much from any potions.  The highest dps boost from a potion a cat can get is from [item]Potion of Speed[/item], but due to a cat's incredibly short swing timer (shortest in the game as far as i know...20 to 30% shorter than rogues typically), it would only amount to about 15 more dps tops and then only while it is active.  My recommendation for cats is to bring some mana pots instead...in case they get caught out of form tossing a brez, gotw, innerv, and a tranq...and find they can't get back into cat form without a little more mana.

Professions:

Since adding some passive buffs to the gathering professions, blizz really more or less made profession choices pretty even.  For example, the difference for a bear between the best possible prof combination and the "worst" is somewhere around 200 hit points.  Last time i checked, blacksmithing+jewelcrafting were tops pretty much across the board, but only barely.  My suggestion is this...with the exception of tailoring for melee (although they did add some cloak enchants for melee to tailors)...if you've already got professions leveled up, keep them.  If you haven't started your profs at all...pick two that go together so you don't feel like you're banging your head against a brick wall while leveling them.  If you're into min/max'ing stats, then do the painful blacksmithing+jewelcrafting combo...but it's just not worth it in my humble opinion.

Gearing Up:

With the introduction of icecrown citadel and all dungeons dropping triumph badges, gearing up a druid has never been easier.  Simply spec kitty dps and start farming the random dungeon finder to get the badges necessary to put together a set that will outperform the gear most players had when rocking ulduar hard modes.  In making these sets i've tried to utilize easily farmable badges, and matts where possible.  Unfortunately a couple of slots still require praying for a specific drop, but I've done my best to keep those to a minimum.  There are a few better pieces out there now with the introduction of the new five man ICC dungeons, and you may get lucky enough to have one or more drop while farming badges to build these sets.  I tried to avoid pvp items as many people frown upon them in pve content, however there are a couple feral pvp items with +hit and other useful pve stats that you may prefer over the gear listed here.

Bear starter set:
[item]Malfurion's Headguard of Conquest[/item] 50 Emblems of Triumph
[item]Shard of the Crystal Forest[/item] 19 Emblems of Conquest
[item]Duskstalker Shoulderpads[/item] 45 Emblems of Triumph
[item]Platinum Mesh Cloak[/item] 25 Emblems of Valor
[item]Knightbane Carapace[/item] crafted
[item]Bracers of Swift Death[/item] crafted
[item]Malfurion's Handgrips of Conquest[/item] 30 Emblems of Triumph
[item]Belt of the Twilight Assassin[/item] 28 Emblems of Conquest
[item]Malfurion's Legguards of Conquest[/item] 50 Emblems of Triumph
[item]Footpads of Silence[/item] crafted
[item]Clutch of Fortification[/item] 35 Emblems of Triumph
[item]Dexterous Brightstone Ring[/item] 35 Emblems of Triumph
[item]Glyph of Indomitability[/item] 50 Emblems of Triumph
[item]The Black Heart[/item] regular TOC 5 man (I'm personally not a big fan of stamina trinkets for bears, but this one is probably the easiest and best trinkets to farm for a bear outside of raiding and expensive darkmoon cards.)
[item]Idol of the Corruptor[/item] 19 Emblems of Conquest (better than the triumph emblem idol for tanking imo)
As for weapons, i highly recommend running all three of the new five man Icecrown Citadel heroics to try and get a [item]Battered Hilt[/item] which will start a quest that will lead to [item]Lightborn Spire[/item].  Until you manage to get this, or farm the gold for it (they are not soulbound and can be found on the auction house ranging anywhere from 12.5k to 20k gold at any given time), any agility/stam staff or polearm will do.  The lightborn spire however is best in slot until we manage to down some bosses we haven't downed in 25 man ICC, and it's acquirable without any raiding at all.

A note about bear trinkets and spreadsheets and other stuff:  Bear stats can be broken down into two components, survivability (stamina, avoidance, and self healing) and mitigation (armor and savage defense procs).  For any given dungeon, you'll need a certain amount of stamina just to survive the big hits.  As a general guide, the numbers you'd ideally shoot for are approximately 36k hp for T8 25 man and T9 10 man content, 38k hp for T9 25 man content, 45k hp for T10 ten man, and 48 to 50k hp when entering T10 25 man content.  Any spreadsheet or calculator you use if starting with a blank slate will recommend stamina gems, enchants, and trinkets across the board to try and reach these survivability "soft caps".  The goal of any tank while progressing through content however will be to maintain a balance between their survivability and their mitigation while gearing.  No matter what spreadsheet or calculator you choose to use, it should show an overall value of your mitigation and survivability numbers, try to keep these close to one another while gearing up.  If you do so, you'll find that stamina trinkets begin to take a very very low priority on the gear listings when setting your target dungeons to match the content for which you are currently geared.  Do not be fooled, simply adding stam to your gear will not suddenly make you capable of tanking ICC 25 man...the mitigation and the survival portions of your stats must be brought up together.  The reason stam trinkets fall way behind for the content your are properly geared to tank, is that a single stamina gem in your leather items will equal more stamina than [item]Satrina's Impeding Scarab[/item] to your bear form.  However, there is no single gem or enchant that will ever compare to the mitigation+survivability gained through trinkets with other stats and cooldowns.  This balance of stats on a single piece of gear is often referred to as itemization...however, itemization also refers to the combination of your gear as a whole.  In most scenarios, if you've maintained good itemization (or a balance in your stats) while gearing your bear, you will find that stamina trinkets tend to be the worst itemized for your gear set, where trinkets offering agility, armor, or dodge are best itemized.  Lately I've heard in raids over vent such incorrect information regarding bears that at one time it even led to a trinket being sent my way by the master looter despite passing on it.  For this reason I've decided to put together a snapshot of best in slot trinkets for bears utilizing my current stats, leaving out heroic modes.  Keep in mind, with every change in your stats and what content you are pushing, the order in which these are listed can change dramatically...if you've maintained a decent balance in stats and choose to tank the appropriate content for your gear level, these should not move around that much though:

some of these wowhead links show heroic versions - the point values listed after are for the non-heroic versions that i'm referring to but wowhead doesn't like my links
[item]Glyph of Indomitability[/item] 19800 points
[item]Unidentifiable Organ[/item] 18939 points
[item]Darkmoon Card: Greatness[/item] agility version, 17714 points
[item]Death's Verdict[/item] 16506 points
[item]The Black Heart[/item] 15188 points
[item]Furnace Stone[/item] 13233 points
[item]Heart of Iron[/item] 13233 points
[item]Defender's Code[/item] 11420 points
[item]Darkmoon Card: Greatness[/item] strength version, 11312 points
[item]Sindragosa's Flawless Fang[/item] 11043 points
Followed by three of the JC figurines and then finally coming in 14th place, the ever so popular:
[item]Satrina's Impeding Scarab[/item] 10680 points

Cat starter set:
[item]Malfurion's Headguard of Conquest[/item] 50 Emblems of Triumph
[item]Broach of the Wailing Night[/item] 19 Emblems of Conquest
[item]Duskstalker Shoulderpads[/item] 45 Emblems of Triumph
[item]Hammerhead Sharkskin Cloak[/item] 25 Emblems of Valor
[item]Malfurion's Raiments of Conquest[/item] 50 Emblems of Triumph
[item]Bracers of Swift Death[/item] crafted
[item]Malfurion's Handgrips of Conquest[/item] 30 Emblems of Triumph
[item]Death-warmed Belt[/item] 28 Emblems of Conquest
[item]Malfurion's Legguards of Conquest[/item] 50 Emblems of Triumph
[item]Footpads of Silence[/item] crafted
[item]Bloodshed Band[/item] 35 Emblems of Triumph
[item]Dexterous Brightstone Ring[/item] 35 Emblems of Triumph
[item]Banner of Victory[/item] Regular Toc 5 man
[item]Needle-Encrusted Scorpion[/item] Heroic Forge of Souls
[item]Idol of Mutilation[/item] 25 Emblems of Triumph
Weapons follow the same suit as with tank weapons above...shoot for the lightborn spire if you can.  Until you get it though, go for the highest feral AP staff or polearm you can get as they drop for you.

Rotations:

Like all classes, rotations are situational everywhere except straight tank and spank fights.  However, for cats...there is no straight forward rotation...ever.  For cat's the "rotation" instead follows a priority...much like hunters...however, where a particular attack falls on your priority list changes with procs from idols, trinkets, gearing, whether or not you landed a crit, how much time is left on your debuffs and bleeds, if a shred increased the duration of a bleed, etc.  In other words, cat rotations are far far too dynamic to break down into a castsequence macro.  In addition to this, it's impossible to get a maximized dps rotation out of armor pen like a rogue can, so the rotation could never be turned into a pure combo point build + ferocious bite scenario.

Bear:

Bears have several attacks that are on the global cooldown, and one attack that is tied to the swing timer and seperate of the global cooldown.

Maul is our highest aggro attack, and tied to the swing timer.  Unlike a death-knight's rune strike, you should not macro this attack to all your others.  The reason for this is that maul benefits from swing timer resets, similar to a boss gaining parry haste, sometimes allowing you to essentially land two mauls in the time you'd normally only get one off if it were macro'd.  It doesn't happen often but when it does, you need to be able to see your maul cd/swing timer instantly refresh.  Hitting it seperately does add to some finger confusion compared to other classes and their tanking macro's...but if i can do it, so can you.

Essentially, for bears...maul...continuously.  If you get rage starved toss a faerie fire and wait for the rage to maul again.  If not rage starved you basically want to continue mauling at every swing and alternate between mangle and faerie fire.  In the beginning of a fight, you'll do this and toss in a lacerate between each mangle/faerie fire combo until you reach a five stack.  Once you've got the five stack up, the rotation for a new bear will seem like you're constantly filling with swipes and lacerates...end up wasting rage and losing threat...but i need to point something out that most bears miss:  you will typically do more threat and conserve rage if you don't "fill" with lacerates or swipes and instead just WAIT for your fearie fire or mangle cd.  When the gcd of a lacerate or swipe would be greater than the time remaining on your fff or mangle cd, then wait, otherwise fill with swipe.  This is something that is very difficult for most bears to get used to, and also why improved mangle is an absolute must talent to max for bears.  The difference in threat generation from waiting on cd's is not subtle, it's absolutely huge (up to 2k threat per second difference depending on gear...usually about a 1.2k threat per second difference for me).  Unfortunately, the stock ui cast bars do not make this an easy interpretation to make on the fly as they don't show cd's in fractions of a second for squat...but most bar addons do, and if you're aware of it and get used to it, the stock ui will be fine.  The rest of a bear rotation is simply deciding if you've got enough of a threat pad to occasionally use a gcd on demo roar and making sure to toss in a lacerate before the five stack wears off (the reason for keeping lacerate up is two fold - the crits proc savage defense and the ticks proc certain idol procs...but it's a waste of rage+gcd vs. threat unless you get the five stack up and maintain its uptime with as much time spent between refresher lacerates as possible).

Aoe tanking is a pain...best i've found so far is to swipe nonstop, while tab targeting to see which mobs need a maul on omen.  If it's three mobs or less, zerk em down.

Bears only have a couple of cooldowns, barkskin and survival instincts.  These two cooldowns are far too long in duration to rotate regularly by themselves...it's recommended to get on-use trinkets if possible to add to your cooldown rotation repertoire.  Generally you want to save the cooldowns for when they are really needed, or for fights that require regular cooldown rotations.  T10 four piece bonus adds another cooldown, making our enrage ability another sort of barkskin and removing the reduced armor debuff from the spell.

Cats:

All cat rotations start the same:  mangle+roar+rake+shred to five combo points+rip.  What comes next however follows a mathematical principle known as chaos.  No, I'm not joking.  However, as anyone who's seen Jurassic Park can infer...chaos can be made simpler, or we'd never be able to explain it to others.  Even if you don't understand chaos, we can set forth a few rules that will help to push your kitty dps up towards the maximum possible that it can do.
1) start with the opening rotation
2) refresh rake right after it wears off, but refresh mangle first if it's not up
3) only rip with five combo points
4) ALWAYS keep roar up, ignore how many cp's you have and refresh it immediately after it wears off or just prior
5) get a dottimer+cdtimer to track your dots and roar, IF they're all above 50% time remaining and you've got 5 combo points, ferocious bite
6) shred on every omen of clarity proc
7) last but not least, attack from behind and use shred to build cp's

Cat's have one cooldown, berzerk.  Either use berzerk near the beginning of a fight so you can get another in at the end, or wait till after heroism has cooled off.  Pop berzerk AFTER you've refreshed all your dots and roar.  Berzerk will change your rotation.  Under the berzerk effect...you have one attack: shred.  Don't cash in your cp's unless roar wears off before berzerk is over...just keep shredding.  Only mangle under the effects of berzerk to refresh it IF there is no bear to do it for you.

Suggested Addons:

There are a million and one addons out there for ferals, but these are just my suggestions.

Omen.  Not so helpful as a tank outside of aoe tanking (i keep it showing all the time regardless though), very very helpful as a kitty since cower is broken.

Decursive.  Nuff said.

RAWR isn't so much an addon as it is an application.  It's not only for bears anymore either.  What the developers have done is taken all of the spreadsheet calculators and theorycraft from elitist jerks for every class and spec and turned it into a program that will load your character from the armory, suggest gemming, chanting, upgrades, etc.  It is by far the easiest and most comprehensive "spreadsheet" available today, and is regularly updated to include all known items from the game as well as mechanics changes to class and spell abilities, as well as buffs and debuffs.  Just keep in mind that for any tanking class, you need to be sure to set the target dungeon level to match the content you are geared for, or it will favor stamina over all other stats, turning you into a giant super squishy mass of hit points.

Most of our guildmembers don't use it, but I use ORA/CTRA for tanking.  I like the extra unitframes of just the tanks and their targets and their target of target...and i get to see who's going to tibet for water during readychecks.

Power Auras Classic - It's out of date, but works, and is limited only by your imagination.  Once you get used to this addon, and learn how to set it up, you'll probably use it for every alt and class you have.  For example, instead of a dottimer to tell you that rip or roar has worn off, you can have a soft pulsating halo alert you to it...or even change glow when it reaches 50% duration...or a sound...or words come across your screen...or whatever works best for you.  You can have different halos or sounds point out that predator's swiftness is currently up...allowing you to cc a mob with an instant cyclone - or toss an instant heal on yourself or others.  It really is limited only by your imagination in what you want it to alert you to.  There are a few youtube videos on how to set up power aura's for a hunter, while the info on how to play a hunter may be incorrect, it does a good job of explaining how to set up the addon.

Event Alert (modified for predator's swiftness) - If you can't wrap your head around Power Aura's setup, try googling "eventalert predator's swiftness" and you'll find a version that includes this proc in it's alerts.  This addon requires virtually zero setup and works pretty much right out of the box.  It's basic, but it works.  It is simply a proc alert mod - omen of clarity procs, predators swiftness procs, etc.

Take your pic of whatever dottimer and/or cd timer you want...there are tons out there.

Finally, feralbynight.  Feralbynight has a ton of windows that you can disable because they just aren't needed.  After you've cleared up the ui, you're good to go.  What feralbynight does is keep track of everything in your "rotation", all your procs, all your buffs, all your debuffs, your combo points, how much energy you have, your stats at any given second, the mobs health and estimated time to death, and much much more to calculate and suggest your next move.  While the seven rules listed above seem simple...it's incredibly difficult to keep track of everything you need to keep track of in order to squeeze out every drop from your dps.  Feralbynight does it for you, putting a simple icon on your screen of what to do next.  Think of it as "How to Scratch and Claw for Dummies (or people that feel the maxdps rotation is just friggin insane).  All other dps maximizing addons that offer suggested moves for cat rotations that i've found only look at keeping your dots up and nothing more.

General Tips:
1)  Always face the mob...sounds simple but it's been a pain in this last patch as a tank.
2)  If kitty, get behind the mob.
3)  Screw the numbers, if you're a kitty, and there's adds that need to be killed - go kill them.
4)  PLEASE DECURSE!
5)  As a tank or dps you should pretty much always have enemy nameplates turned on.  At the very least as a tank it'll show who the dps is on when not on your target.  You'll never have a hard time finding snobolds in toc again...or the large slime to merge your little one with in icc.

And most importantly...more important than anything i've written...actually, it's the only important thing i've written in this guide:  remember to have fun.  Just play, and have fun.  Don't think about any of the rotations or suggestions in here too much or too seriously...if you aren't having fun while playing, then it isn't playing.  Always remember that.

[dharq]

Excellent start, Oil.

A few things to add, if I may:

50-60% dodge seems to be the magic range where def rating becomes valuable. If you aren't at 50%+, keep stacking agi instead for the crit/dodge/savage defense improvements.
Expertise is terrific until you're at 6-7%--especially if you're having trouble with threat.
The lack of silence pulling is a true pita...

[Oilslick]

Just a bump for those looking to this guide for assistance in their bear gearing.  I've revamped the suggested starting gear list for bear, and am currently working on kitty.  Any suggestions, requests, or content that you'd like to add or see added, feel free to send me a private message or simply respond in this thread.

Rawr!

[Oilslick]

I'm done for now i think...just another quick bump because i added a TON of content today.  As always, feel free to bring me any suggestions or criticisms.

[Oilslick]

Bumped due to adding a section regarding itemization, gearing, and trinkets, as well as a "best in slot" list more or less for bear trinkets.

[Raif]

What about expertise, how does it factor in to calculations?

[Oilslick]

Ferals get a pretty big chunk of their expertise from talents, and the rest typically from the gear or weapon being used.  That being said, somewhere between 5 and 7% is sufficient typically, though bears usually end up pushing 10% or even higher (potentially much much higher, reaching parry hard cap even) through gear alone without gemming or socketing for it anywhere.  Expertise for bears is often considered our "main stat" for threat generation...that comment needs to be put in context though.  The difference in feral AP from one ilvl weapon to another is so huge, that the iLvl of our weapon is actually our "main stat" for threat generation, and the percent you'd get from gemming or chanting for it would typically be so low that it gets trumped by other tanking stats in those same socket or enchant spots.  So, my recommendation if you find yourself falling short of the 5 to 7% goal  on expertise, is to enchant gloves with 2% threat until you reach the 5 to 7% goal as a sort of "bonus stat" on your gear, and then replace it with agility on gloves (or other profession based enchant) if your weapon's feral ap is sufficiently high enough to maintain threat.

[Tolwen]

awesome guide Oil!
Thanks, it was very helpful!

[Oilslick]

Some people have asked me if there's an option as good as rawr for macs...

Well, look no further...there's now a rawr that runs in your web browser:
http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php

I'm not sure if the offline install button works on macs, but the online version should.

[Docsamson]

Some people have asked me if there's an option as good as rawr for macs...

Well, look no further...there's now a rawr that runs in your web browser:
http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php

I'm not sure if the offline install button works on macs, but the online version should.

Note that Rawr3 requires Microsoft Silverlight to run, so you need to be using a Silverlight supported browser for it to work.

[Oilslick]

...ugh...   

[Tolwen]

works with Safari

[fiere redfern]

Works with Google Chrome as well.

[Shadowwolf]

Silverlight is like Microsofts "Flash" so its supposed to work with any browser/OS combo, you just need it installed as a plugin. No biggie. Why someone would chose to code with that and not Flash that isnt Microsoft themself I have no idea...

[dharq]

Surprisingly, I'm actually running into a lot of publishers who are developing online resources using Silverlight instead of Flash.  My guess is that some of the features of Silverlight lend to better animation and streaming for tutorials or interactive resources, but I'm not really sure why the switch is occurring...