asd | wow-freakz.com

The choice is easy: for Alliance go Night Elf for the extra 2% dodge, for Horde go Tauren for the extra health. If you want to give it a try to the other druid specs you should get a Troll.

Game Mechanics

On MoP the druid got their Guardian specialization, being the only class in game with 4 specializations. This is the dedicated tank spec, having special Guardian-only abilities, glyphs, different tier sets, new mastery and and awesome playstyle.
Below I will list the new things and changes to the old things that Druid tanks know or are getting familiar with.

Vengeace

Vengeance is a 20s buff that you gain when you take direct damage in the PVE content. This buff gives you attack power scaled on the ammount of damage the target(s) throw at you, so the more unmitigated damage the target does the more Vengeance you get. The unmitigated damage is the damage the target does to you before any of your passive or active spells reduce or totally avoid that damage (you'll find those abilities down below on the Abilities and Cooldowns part of this guide).
The Vengeance stacks for every hit you get and the formula is

Code:

0.015 * UnmitigatedDamage + OldVengeance * OldVengeanceSecondsRemaining / 20

This means that each time you take damage you gain new vengeance that is added to a % scaled to the remaining time of the old vengeance. For example: you constantly take 100k every 4 seconds, at the first hit you gain 1.5k vengeance -> the second hit, 4 seconds later, you gain another 1.5k vengeance that's added to 80% of the old vengeance so now you have 1.5+1.2k=2.7k vengeance.
In order to taunt off another tank and mentain threat on that target you gain 50% of the vengeance that the other tank has and gain 200% increase to vengeance for 4 seconds while the taunt debuff is present on the target.
Vengeance has a cap at max health, so if you have 800k HP you can have up to 800k vengeance but this cap will never be obtained in any situations since it means that there should be an attack of 53M damage made against you or a series of attacks of 20 attacks within 20 seconds, each for 2.65M so forget about it.
The beneffit of vengeance is that all of your offensive abilities and your healing abilities are buffed by it so you will more damage with more vengeance and more healing.

Very important note: exiting bearform you will lose the buff.

Rage

Rage is the main resource for the Guardian and is no longer generated from taking damage. Instead Guardians now generate Rage from landing attacks on our enemies.

Direct Rage Generation:
Mangle generates 5 Rage when used (or 6.5 if you have the talent Soul of the Forest). Mangle has a 6 second cooldown.
Auto-Attacks generate ~10.85 Rage per attack that deals damage. Your base auto-attack speed is 2.5 seconds.
Enrage generates 20 Rage when used, and an additional 10 Rage over the next 10 seconds. Enrage has a 60 second cooldown.
Critical Strikes of either Mangle or Auto-Attack will generate 15 Rage (Mangle Critical Strikes will generate 19.5 additional Rage if you have the talent Soul of the Forest).
Shifting into Bear Form will set your Rage to 10.

It's needed to point out that most of our Rage we get from Critical Strikes, this being the best stat for Rage Generation, way better then Haste.

Indirect Rage Generation:
Incarnation sets cooldown on any offensive Bear ability to 1.5 seconds for 30 seconds. This includes Mangle, meaning you can press Mangle every global cooldown to generate the maximum amount of Rage. Incarnation has a 3 minute cooldown.
Berserk removes the cooldown on Mangle and causes it to strike up to 2 extra targets for 10 seconds. Berserk has a 3 minute cooldown. It should be noted that the extra targets struck are not causing any Rage to be generated on regular hits. However critical hits on the extra targets will generate 15 (or 19.5) Rage. Whether this is intended or not is unknown.
Landing a hit with Lacerate, Thrash, or FFF has a 25% chance to reset the cooldown on Mangle.
Temporary buffs such as Bloodlust/Berserking or Trinket Procs can also indirectly increase Rage Generation by increasing Haste, Critical Strike, Agility.

Abilities and Cooldowns

Damage:
Mangle is the main dps and rage generation ability. It has a 6 seconds CD and it has a 25% chance to be reseted by Thrash, Lacerate and Faerie Fire.

Lacerate is a bleed (so it ignores armor) with a 3 seconds cd that hits every 3 seconds for 15 seconds and stacks up to 3 times, increasing the damage dealt.

Faerie Fire has a 6 seconds cd and applies 3 stacks of Weakened Armor, reducing the target's armor by 12%.

Thrash is an AOE bleed that deals a good ammount of damage every 2 seconds for 16 seconds and is very usefull in AoE situations where you need to generate threath on multiple targets. It has 6 seconds cd and applies Weakened Blows to the affected targets.

Swipe is an AoE attack that deals a good ammount of damage on a 3 seconds cd. It deals 20% more damage against bleeding targets so it works great on targets affected by your Thrash or Lacerate. I usually use this on single target too to gain more dps while there are all my offensive abilities on cooldown and I`m safe.

Defense:
Mitigation is a term used to describe regeneration, reduction or complete avoidance of the damage. We can split Mitigation into two categories:

Active Mitigation
Is when you make use of abilities in order to heal, reduce or completly avoid the damage. Guardian Druid has the most large pallete of active mitigation amongst all tanks and this makes you to learn the fights and be aware of what will happen in the future and be prepared with the best combination of cooldowns.

Savage Defense was redesigned on Mop and it costs 60rage/charge, increases your chance to dodge melee and ranged physical attacks by 45% for 6 seconds and it has 3 charges. Each charge has 9 seconds recharge time. It has no cooldown and the buff gets extended if you use a new charge, so if you use 2 in a row then after the second one you'll have 10.5 seconds remaining on the buff (6x2-1.5gcd). This is the main active mitigation ability for the druid and the one you will be using most of your rage on. IT'S NOT ON GLOBAL COOLDOWN so you could use it as soon as you gain one charge or enough rage for it. Be aware that thanks to the 6 seconds duration and 9 seconds recharge time you can't have this spell active on you non-stop.

Frenzied Regeneration was redisigned also, healing the Guardian for minimum of 2.5*Stamina (@60 rage). It costs up to 60 Rage and it scales up with the ammount of rage consumed and the attack power. Formula is max(2.2*(AP-Agi*2), Sta*2.5). So the more vengeance you have the more heal you will get with this spell. This is the best way to recover from big chunks of magic damage and IT'S NOT ON GLOBAL COOLDOWN, so if you are expecting a big hit just bank some rage and use it as soon as you took the damage. Use it AFTER you take the damage.

Barkskin - has a 30 seconds cd and reduces all damage taken by 20% for 12 seconds. This is the best "filler" for active mitigation thanks to its short cd. The best use for it is to fill the gaps between the Savage Defense charges when they are on cd. If there's known incoming magic damage save it for then. Always use this BEFORE taking the damage.

Survival Instincts is our biggest damage reducing CD. It gives 50% reduced damage taken from all sources for 12 seconds every 3 minutes (it can be reduced to 2 minutes but the duration is 6 seconds with Glyph of Survival Instincts). Save this for when you know there will be a lot of damage you will take and use it BEFORE the damage comes.

Might of Ursoc increases your HP with 30% for 20 seconds and activates Bearform. This is the "OH SHIT!" button since it will add that 30% to your current HP and i recommend to use this only when you got low on HP and you need to survive or if you anticipate that an incoming attack would kill you otherwise. This is also the spell that made my healers hate me because when i pop this i get way over 1M HP and they need lots of casts to heal me up. Within those 20 seconds your minimum heal by Frenzied Regeneration will also get a boost so make use of it!

Healing Touch ONLY WITH Dream of Cenarius talent it's another Healing spell useful this time not just for you but for the entire raid since you can cast it on any raid member. The heal from this spell while casted in Bearform will benefit from Vengeance, which will make it to heal hard and be a very usefull when taking a large chunks of damage. For self healing purposes I found it very usefull while taking a lot of physical damage since I was using my rage for Savage Defense and healing myself with Frenzied Regeneration was not an option. Be aware that you can`t use this spell while you are on global cooldown and you should only use it when you have the Dream of Cenarius buff up!

Passive Mitigation

It mostly refers to passive abilities that reduce the damage without you having to press any buttons.

Armor - reduces the physical damage taken. Inspite of having Leather Armor the Guardians have the most armor ingame. It is increased by item level Thick Hide and Mastery: Nature's Guardian.

Stamina - is our main passive mitigation for magical damage, since the more health you have the more likely is for you to die.

Dodge - Gives you a chance to totaly avoid the damage made by a physical attack. In order for this chance to occur you must face the attacker.

The Guardians can't parry or block.
The math for these passive mitigation is in the stats and reforge section of this guide.

Thick Hide is the passive that is our main source of reduced magical damage taken (25%), it also reduces the physical damage taken by 12% and nullifies the critical chance of bosses on you, reducing it by 6%. You benefit from this only in Bear Form.

Bear Form increases the armor contribution from our gear by 330%, increases the stamina by 40% and increases the Haste and Critical Strike we have from gear by 50%.[u]

Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,
Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.