Hey, welcome to the Feral side of things!

First of all, you should go and get Rawr now, consider it the Feral druid bible. It will not only optimize gear you have now, but build upgrade lists for you and let you rank your gear, and so much more. Make sure you set it to DPS mode, since that’s what it seems like you want to do. You can find it at:
http://druid.wikispaces.com/Rawr

I know you said you’re not planning on raiding, but in case you are and are looking for some gear recommendations, I recently wrote a blog post about gearing up a new 70 feral druid, you can find it at:
http://ooc.array0.com/gearing-up-a-feral-druid-from-rags-to-rawr.html

As for info, I highly recommend blogs such as the Rambling Bear and Big Bear Butt Blogger, both of which are a wealth of information. The Druid Wiki is also an invaluable resource. If you’re looking for a quick “down and dirty” explanation to tanking, all you really need to do is keep Mangle up on the target, Lacerate while Mangle is on cooldown, and queue up Maul if you have over 50 rage.

Let me know if you need any help, =D

SaladFork’s last blog post..Complexity of Class vs. Gear Required

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Have a look at B3’s feral tanking gear guide. Should be helpful.
Gearing your bear tank

As for dps, roll against rogues :\

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Hrm. Interesting choice of talents. ImpMark? I highly believe that those points could be spent elsewhere (Primal Tenacity and Shredding Attacks, for instance). Shred would be 18 energy cheaper (which means you can cast more of it — whoot!), not to mention that you save a bit of rage on Lacerate (a spell you should be using quite often as a bear tank). Less chance of being stunned/feared means that during fights such as the first boss of Shadow Labs, and you don’t have a priest or a shaman along, there’s a chance that you can resist and, therefore, build even more aggro as the rest of your group is running into the walls, feared.

BBB’s list that Ash… er… listed… covers a good variety of gear that I would have suggested (must make a note to thank him — means I don’t have to do much searching… It’s slightly irritating on the laptop).

As for being a bear tank and how to go about that, it’s fairly simple.
If you find that you’re having threat/aggro issues, I’d start off in caster, Starfire (or Moonfire pull), switch to bear, and wait around for that rather unhappy mob to come and get you. Start off with a mangle, lacerate a few times, and then mangle whenever the cooldown is up. I, personally, like to spam maul in between my lacerates (especially after I’ve gotten a stack of five, and am only really doing it to keep the stack up) and mangles — generates more DPS, and, through it, threat. If you have a cooldown to spare, toss faerie fire feral up there too for good mix (and, if you are multitanking, demoralizing roar (could do it on a solo mob, but I find that extra ten rage better suited toward killing the mob faster)).

Rinse and repeat.

If you don’t need extra threat, or have a huge rage bar left over from the previous fight and therefore, don’t want to shift out, I normally hit enrage, wait until the effect is almost over, and pull through faerie fire feral. Feral charge is another good way to start if it’s a safe place to engage where your mob stands and then do that rotation. My only issue with feral charge starting is that I like to use that as a backup if something goes wrong (I’m multitanking and my other mob gets hit a little too hard, a CC broke loose and has a craving for someone squishy, someone aggroed extra mobs) and I can charge them and get aggro on them again (hopefully) before they do damage where they shouldn’t. If you start with a charge, there’s a good chance that your cooldown might not be up yet, and you are stuck running to the mob.

Just keep a sharp note of your surroundings, and hit those few buttons, and you’re good to go. Tanking’s cake.

(-gets the feeling she should note a Hurricane pull and at least make a mention of Swipe, but oh well-)

Lin [EG]’s last blog post..How Not To Upset Your Mage

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http://www.emmerald.net

Good for on the fly gear checks as to which piece is better when a drop comes up (I can search this with a ctrl+f faster then I can in rawr, especially since I am a Mac User and firing up rawr in mono still has problems for me.) It also shows you which gems will give you the best mitigation (it usually assumes uncritable already, which isn’t hard to get if you have SotF) or best dps.

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Welcome to the furry side of druidic yumminess!

I have one teeny tiny suggestion about your talents. You will get more out of spending those 5 points in Improved Mark of the Wild elsewhere. Natural Shapeshifter is an excellent choice… particularly when you are doing dailies that require you to loot/interact with things and you are repeatedly shifting between cat and night elf form. You won’t have a whole lot of mana anyway, and anything that reduces the cost of shifting - reserving your mana for those “oh noes!” moments when you need to heal - is much more beneficial than a few extra stat points.

Ok, maybe not so teeny tiny.

Intensity, I’m not so sure about. I rarely use Enrage in bear form, so I have never felt the need for it to be improved. As you play, you will develop a playstyle and get a better sense of how to spend your talents. If you always use Enrage in bear form, than by all means take it.

If you’d like to take a peek here are my talents. I have refined my playstyle to the point where I would respec just to move the 2 points in Improved Bash to Natural Shapeshifter. I just haven’t done it yet!

I hope this helps, and I hope you have fun with your new druid.
Mama Druid’s last blog post..The Ragga @ 26, continued

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@Mama and Softi

I can’t look at those specs to see what they are like (stupid work block) you can check mine out at the http://www.armorylite.com/us/Tortheldrin/Valthan.

Definately spec away from Imp MotW. That is the resto druids job, if there isn’t one around, the benefit you get from the extra 25% (or whatever it is these days) is negligible.

You should always be enraging end-game, as part of your pulling sequence (after that you shouldn’t need it). If it is a caster pull, I then pop bear and pop enrage to get off 2 swipes quick to get those extra mobs. Bear pull, it lets you get a mangle out right away so that you dps can start right on in on burning that sucker down. But I have recently taken out intensity, and put it in NI, so I cna do some offheals when we have another tank, and a healer drops. I worked it out that the 10 extra rage was nothing since even on a bear pull I would get a Mangle, white during the GCD then a swipe and still have rage left over to start on my lacerates.

Imp bash I find is quite a waste, if the mob isn’t hitting me I am not gaining threat and not gaining as much rage to keep my maul spam up. Normal bash is good enough for picking up a runner if your taunt is on CD (although if your taunt is on CD you are not using it correctly (remember, it pops you up to the highest on threat, if you are already there, it does nothing for you and is a waste), or need to tell your dps’rs to back the F*** off, usually by letting them die and then saying “Stop being a meter whore and watch your threat you asshat!”).

As far as natural shapeshifter is concerned, I much prefer those 3 points to go towards my 15% fear and my 15% AOE resists (my spec is usually lacking one of those if I take NS) which is much better for tanking. Don’t get my wrong, it does help with the dailies (not really my priority on my spec, and if you are just doing dailies, keep popping that innervate and you shouldn’t see any mana issues), and when I am Cat DPS in raid (or heroic) I am an avid powershifter, but NS will only get me one more Powershift on a bossfight before oom anyway, so its not that big of a help.

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I can’t see your current spec as I’m at work, but if you don’t have survival of the fittest, take 3 of those points from imp MOTW and put them in there. I personally would recommend keeping natural shapeshifter as it has served me well over time. And I use it a lot when soloing for the horrid dailies.

if you check the Armory for Flaime on Earthen Ring US, you can see the feral spec I use for both tanking and kitty. There are kitty specs that will net more over all damage than miine, but I feel mine has way more utility.

As for gear…since your heavy clefthoof gear is for bear…I would recommend replacing all you gems with +stam gems. Overall, the socket bonuses will help you less than the stamina at year gear level. And you can make up the difference with the +def to cloak enchant. Also, for everything that you can, for both specs, I would recommend you get +Agi enchants. Agility is the most versatile stat for both cat and bear.

Flaime’s last blog post..First impressions: Age of Conan

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Unoffical edit to my comment (I wish we could do that).

I devised a blog post from my note above, and added a touch about multi-tanking as well. So a bit of shameless advertising, but hopefully it’ll help you along in your tanking career!

(Hrm. CommentLuv might take care of the job for me, but if it doesn’t — http://elunesguidance.blogspot.com/2008/05/bear-tanking-101.html)

Lin [EG]’s last blog post..Bear Tanking 101

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