Druid WotLK Abilities & Talents

Abilities
This is a review of abilities that have been added or significantly changed that directly effect Druid Tanking.

Savage Defense
This is a passive ability that procs a shield any time you crit with a melee attack while in Bear form. The shield protects against physical damage only and reduces damage taken by 25% of your attack power (after armor).
Because the proc is crit based and there is no internal cooldown, using Swipe when around groups can greatly increase the proc rate and thus your overall mitigation. As always when using Swipe, be careful of CCed mobs.

Swipe
Swipe is an AOE effect that hits all mobs around the tank and does not require you to have a target to use though a target must be within range. This allows Druids to AOE Tank any number of mobs without having to worry about targeting or direction issues. Basically AOE threat is very easy - just push the button.

Growl
With a range of 30 yards, Growl is ideal for pulling mobs to you at range, including off of a healer or DPS that’s pulled agro or a newly spawned mob for example. Another important note on Growl is that it forces the mob to attack you for 3 seconds, even if someone generates enough threat to pull the mob off - after the 3 seconds the mob will then go to that person if their threat is still high enough to pull threat. A Growl or Taunt ability from another tank will pull the mob even within the 3 seconds however.

Note that some mobs and especially many bosses can resist or are immune to taunt.

Feral Ferie Fire
When in Bear form, FFF does significantly threat and damage. This makes it an excellent ability to use when pulling a single target to you for tanking. And because FFF uses no Rage, it is now an excellent ability to help increase your threat on a target even when you are low on Rage. FFF in cat form has not changed.

Note: A nice combo to use when trying to get threat on a target that is far away attacking someone else is to Growl to force the mob to attack you, then FFF to increase your threat even more. Do not do this combo backwords as it is a waste.

Barkskin
Barkskin be used in any form without shifting you to caster form. This makes Barskin a primary emergency button for Druid Tanks that reduces all damage, physical and magic, by 20% for 12 seconds every minute. This should be a button you are ready to use whenever you are low on health or expect to take a lot of damage.

Survival Instincts
This ability gives you 30% of your max health for 20 seconds and can be used every 3 minutes. Basically this is for when you suddenly take a large amount of damage and need to give your healers a few more seconds to cast their spells or to give you more health when a boss soft enrages. Knowing when to use this ability can mean the difference between a boss kill and a wipe.

Bash
Bash is considered an “Interupt” effect, even if the target is not stunable. This means it will stop spell casting on trash and boss fights just like a Rogue Kick or Warrior Shield Bash do currently. This is an excellent tool and makes 2/2 Brutal Impact worth considering. However, the talent only reduces the cooldown and most raids will have a Rogue or Warrior to interupt when needed, so while good, these points are not critical to spend.

Nature’s Grasp
Natures Grasp can be used in any form without shifting you to caster form. This allows you to root targets that are attacking you while remaining in bear or cat form.

Tank Talents
This is a review of the most important tank related talents.

Survival of the Fittest
Each point of the Survival of the Fittest talent (max 3) reduces your chance to be crit by 2%, making it so that Druids are 100% Crit Immune immediately if they have 3/3 in this talent.

This is an absolutely critical talent for Druid Tanks.

Protector of the Pack
Each point of this talent (max 3) reduces all damage, including Magic, by 3% per talent point spent. This means that you will take 12% less damage from all forms of attack. This is our primary magic damage reduction ability.

This is an absolutely critical talent for Druid Tanks.

Infected Wounds
This talent causes your attacks to apply a stacking wound that reduces the attack speed of your target by 20% including most bosses. When applied, this will greatly reduce the incoming damage taken and is considered a very important tanking talent.

Thick Hide
This ability increases your armor by 10%. This is a very good increase and definitely worth the 3 talent points.

Feral Swiftness & Natural Reaction
Together these talents increase your total Dodge by 10% - a very big and very important increase. As well, you gain 3 rage from Natural Reaction every time you dodge an attack - a very nice boost to threat especially when low on rage.

Survival Instincts
This talent gives Druid tanks an emergency button for when their health begins to get low. For one point, this talent is very much worth it.

Threat Talents
This is a review of the most important threat related talents for Druid tanks.

Mangle & Improved Mangle
Mangle is your number one threat attack on a single target as a Druid tank and is an absolutely critical talent. Improved Mangle reduces the cooldown from 6 seconds to 4.5 seconds allowing you to use Mangle more often in your rotation. So while Mangle is critical, Imp Mangle adds marginally to threat generation.

Note on Improved Mangle - If you are going to put any points into this talent, you must go 3/3 because if you only get 1/3 or 2/3 no benefit is gained whatsoever for Druid tanking.

Berserk
This ability alows the tank to produce huge threat very quickly by removing the cooldown of Mangle so that it can be spammed for 15 seconds. It is best to wait until you have a near full Rage bar before you use this ability so you don’t waste it due to being rage starved. Also, be careful not to break CC as it causes you to attack up to 3 targets at once instead of 1.

Savage Fury
Very important talent for increasing threat. Considered must have for the damage increase it provides for just 2 talent points.

Precision
Very important talent for increasing threat. Considered must have for improved chance to hit with attacks, which greatly increases your threat.

Feral Instinct
This talent gives our AOE Tanking ability a 30% damage increase making it extremely important to have.

Omen of Clarity
This talent is a very significant DPS boost in that it very often gives you free attacks.

Note: OOC only procs off of White damage making it scale very effectively with Haste.

Rend and Tear & Primal Gore
These talent boosts the damage Maul does on bleeding targets but the 6 talent points are generally better spent else where unless you are an OT and will use it for Feral DPS.

Other Talents
This is a list of other Threat related talents that should be considered for any tanking build:
Ferocity
Sharpened Claws
Primal Fury
Predatory Strikes
Primal Precision
Naturalist

Talent Build
This is a MT build designed for high survivability and threat at the cost of Cat form attack abilities:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxGGscrdceRcczAkbA0z:0nMMc