Druid issue with Shammy Chain Lightning

[crowdx]

Hi all,
so I am starting to clear some heroics with my new team and the major issue I am having is with my druid holding aggro against my shamans and their chain lightning.
My normal pull is faerie fire (the armor reduction one) plus PoM and then start swiping with maul etc thrown in, I often drop enrage in also to get a head start on his rage up for the start of the pull. What then happens is my dps (3 shamans) start nuking his target but in their rotation they have chain lightning (rotation came from the click macro guide here) as 3rd spell and this often pulls the other mobs off my tank and sometimes causes a wipe. I try to keep Growl for pulling back a mob I am losing aggro or Challenging roar if more than one mobs heads for my other toons.
My tank is a lot better geared than the shamans and so it is a little frustrating to keep losing aggro.
So should I drop the chain lightning out of the rotation? I feel I am losing a lot of AoE dps doing this and it takes a lot longer to down mobs, which then gives me the knock on effect of mana to the dps and also my priest if the tank starts to take more damage.

I am going to glyph my tank for the extra target with Maul but other than that I am not sure what else to do? :eek:

[genocyde]

I'm suprised your having trouble aoe tanking off chain lightning. My druid isn't having any issues against my mages aoe or priests.

How many adds are we talking 1-2, 4+ etc?
Are you rage starved? If so drop maul and just swipe. You'll have a tad less threat on your main target but if your rage starved maul will cause you to lose adds.

Edit: I hate to ask but how is your druid specced? Is it an appropriate spec for tanking/aoe?

[crowdx]

3 - 4 normally, happened me in UK and also DTK
I normally use Enrage before I pull so rage should not be an issue I would think. When I was experimenting with my priest as disc I was using Power Word Shield on the pulls but I am now just using PoM.
My druid link is here:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Uther&cn=Ruthger

[Drizzit]

I sort of know your problem. I was having the same thing when i first starting tanking. When i first starting tanking i had all badge gear that i could get. The reason why my problem is different then yours is that when i was doing heroics the dps sometimes attacked different targets then me, which mad agro a huge problem. Mostly it is because of having no rage. You have the right idea of popping enrage before the pull, but don't pop it and then pull (unless you have p4 t10) because it drops your armor. In heroics it doesn't matter too much, but it is a bad habit to get into. Like genocyde said, don't use maul spam unless you have ton of rage. When fighting a ton of mobs spam swipe until 1 is left and when that mob is almost dead just auto attack it to get rage back up. When i run heroics when there is 1 mob left i have such a lead in agro that i just run to the next wave. You just really have to keep an eye on your rage (rage over 50, use maul. rage under 50 don't use maul). Another way that can help you in a bad spot is berserk, which has mangle have no cd and hits 3 targets, but has 3 min cd.

You logged out in your healing gear so i cannot tell what your gear is like. I had your talent layout when i first started. I switched to my current one with maul glyph. Sense then i haven't had any problems. Once you get your 2p T10 keeping agro will be a complete joke.


Here is my toon: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Icecrown&cn=Tigatron&gn=Shock

[crowdx]

I am not sure if it linked correctly for you, my tank is in his tank gear :)
I think your points are really what I needed, coming from a Pally it was more about watching mana, which was never an issue, but the druid probably will take more practice to watch his rage and make sure he has enough rage up.
I think I will just use swipe and forget any rotation until I am better geared :)

EDIT: Looking at your linked toon it also seems as if I just gem stamina for all sockets, no point in any other stat?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

My bear uses maul in his castsequence (lacerate, swipe, maul, swipe) and he never ever has rage issues. Especially with the rage generation from incoming damage. I suspect the problem with rage on ubergeared bears is the same as ubergeared warriors in lowbie instances: not enough incoming damage to generate rage so you only get it from hits, thus the "spam cleave/swipe" advice.

I could be wrong and my bear is only sitting at about 3200 gearscore.

[Drizzit]

I am not sure if it linked correctly for you, my tank is in his tank gear :)
I think your points are really what I needed, coming from a Pally it was more about watching mana, which was never an issue, but the druid probably will take more practice to watch his rage and make sure he has enough rage up.
I think I will just use swipe and forget any rotation until I am better geared :)

EDIT: Looking at your linked toon it also seems as if I just gem stamina for all sockets, no point in any other stat?

Yea, i looked at your wrong toon. You didn't link the toon name until later so i going on each link on your sign and i thought i x of the correct one. Oh well, but yea the new talent tree you help you a ton and adding the maul would be good. There really isn't a rotation for non-boss mobs, we lucked out and have a easy aoe rotation swipe/maul. Single target is easy too but just a couple more buttons to press and dots that need to be refreshed.

Rage is a big issue, i was always like qq warrior saying rage is bad, but now i know what they mean. It took me about a week of heroics to figure out how everything works with rage. Found out just watch your rage when there is only 1 mob left.

The other problem that i see is your gear. Not saying that you suck and get gear, everyone has to start somewhere. I would try to get your T9 helm first so you can get the meta, but only get the helm first if you can meet the meta requirement (i think i got it 2nd or 3rd because i couldnt meet the requirement). Then work on getting a really good weapon, Heroic VH has a really good 200lvl weapon for druid off the last boss which is a good drop rate. After that it is HoR, which i was using until last week. I found that the weapon generates a huge amount of agro. When you get your Heroic VH weapon mongoose it (unless you can do Heroic HoR without a problem, then hold off on mongoose because it cost some gold for the mats now). So just do Heroic VH everyday till weapon drops, which is a easy heroic.

For gemming.... it depends on what you want to do with your druid tank. If you just want to do heroics, i say stack till you get 35k health in bear form with no buffs and then stack agility (more damage = more agro). At 35k health it should be easy to heal. If you want to raid tank, then it is all stam. I just remembered, you want your hit around 200 and your expertise around 26 for a min. You cannot get agro if you are not hitting them. In my opinion i would gem till i have at least 200 hit and 25 expertise. I had to gem for hit, because before i got my chest i was sitting at 80 hit. My funds are a little low so that is why i still have hit. Sense you are in starting gear i wouldn't gem with epics right now unless you can afford them or unless you are going to keep them for a long time.

I think i am something like 61k health in icc with buffs and when my organ procs i have like something like 64k or something. I will try to find out my health next raid. Plus i am switching my gems around (getting the hit gems out now that i just got my new chest) and going JC so probably getting like another 138 or so more stam.

[crowdx]

Well it seems my hit and expertise are fine but I agree I need to get my gear up, I only bought the epics that I believed I would be keeping for a while (with the exception of the shoulders).
I will keep an eye on rage when I get to play tonight or tomorrow and see where it is at.
I want to try and gear the whole team at the same time. So far I have downed prince in UK, the first and last boss in DTK and the first boss in Gun. My plan is just to use any drops as upgrades until I get all badge gear and then work on the ICC 5 man for any upgrades I can get there, a 5k GS is my target over the next couple of months. Being my second team I am taking things a little slower :)

[Asuka]

I tank on my druid with:
/castsequence reset=combat Mangle, swipe, swipe, swipe
/cast Maul

My shamans in the druid group run:
/castsequence reset=combat Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Chain Lightning, Lightning Bolt x3/4 (I don't remember)

For me, it seems that as long as I get one or two swipes in before letting loose on the dps, we're fine.

I usually pul with FFF and swipe when all the mobs are on me then start the dps button spamming. I spam moar FFF when I'm out of rage. My druid is Filetmignon in my character list and shamans in the group are Azelio and Azeliu. Maybe my shaman macros suck. :/

[Zub]

sorry if it was mentioned, as i didn't read the whole thread.

Do you have the Maul glyph? the one that makes hitting 2 targets instead of 1.
It's the best thing since sliced bread.

macro maul to everything (swipe, mangle, lacerate, FFF) to make sure it's always on.
if you know you might be low on thread, just go Berserk and Mangle spam, that should give you a good lead.

[genocyde]

My bear uses maul in his castsequence (lacerate, swipe, maul, swipe) and he never ever has rage issues. Especially with the rage generation from incoming damage. I suspect the problem with rage on ubergeared bears is the same as ubergeared warriors in lowbie instances: not enough incoming damage to generate rage so you only get it from hits, thus the "spam cleave/swipe" advice.

I could be wrong and my bear is only sitting at about 3200 gearscore.

Actually my rage generation was fine as I overgeared everything thanks to the talent natural reaction (gain rage on dodge) and hitting way harder + more crits for more rage procs. Plus once you overgear to a certain extent you can just pull more mobs :)

I think most peoples problem with aoe threat gen on bears is that everyone macros maul to swipe. You definately don't "need" maul to aoe tank and it can cause rage problems early on in a fight depending on how you geared. I made a habit of keeping maul off of my swipe key. You can always tap another key if for some reason your capped on rage and decide to add maul in for extra damage. Also should go without saying but make sure you keep thorns up, every little bit helps.

[crowdx]

Well as an update, I ran a ton of heroics using the LFG tool solo and I am now sitting at 4200gs. I have not run with my shammys yet but I am hoping that aggro will not be an issue. I am also considering adding a second button so that I can spam swipe for a couple of seconds before opening up with my dps toons.
Overall in the random heroics there were few times I lost aggro except where people nuked a mob that I was not on.
I also completed my first Trial of the Crusader which I have never done on any of my other toons.
I got the staff out of VH, which after I got the drop, dropped 3 times in a row once I had it lol.
Overall though, it seems that there is not a huge amount of love for feral druids with few drops which are upgrades for us?
All in all it was a decent weekend :)

[crowdx]

So I got the epic achievement on my druid tank last night, I dropped in the battered hilt mace and now he is over 5k gs. Gotta say the LFG tool made his gear MUCH easier than the previous teams tank. I am now considering doing the same with my priest but think with the tank fully geared the priest duties in my group should be pretty easy.
The long road now is with gearing my shammies :( , get them from 2.5k gs lol