Building Your Threat

First things first: you are a bear. This means will always have more trouble building and maintaining your threat than warriors, paladins, death knights...and every single dps in the raid. With your spec and your skill, however, you can still tank and get the job done.

It can be very frustrating to struggle with maintaining threat, but remember that every tank has the same problem (it's just more acute for bears). It's dps-class players who need to watch their own aggression and achieve the delicate balance between doing a lot of damage and not pulling threat. Sometimes, you may lose threat through no real fault of your own. Remind the dps that their job isn't just spamming AoE or throwing all their best tricks as fast as they can - it's about not pulling off you.

As long as you're doing everything right, everything else is up to them.

Spec for Damage

Building your threat begins with your spec. The more damage you do, the more threat you're going to build. Naturalist 5/5 (resto tree) increases your damage in all forms by 10%, not bad when you should be putting 11 points in your resto tree already. Savage Fury 2/2 increases the damage of your Mangle and Maul by a whopping 20%. Predatory Strikes 3/3 increases your damage by 150% of your level and 20% of any attack power on your weapon - this is an absolute must-have. King of the Jungle 3/3 increases your attack power by 15% when you Enrage (which you should be doing every minute). Rend and Tear 5/5 increases the damage of your Maul on bleeding targets by 20%.

If you spec yourself to do more damage, you will - and you will have less trouble maintaining your threat. Unfortunately, maintaining threat as a bear is a full-time occupation...and there's lots more to learn.

Using Your Taunts

Okay, you've got two taunts - and neither one of them is all that wonderful. But they're what you've got, so learn to use them to their fullest.

Growl
Instant, 30 yard range, 8 second cooldown
Taunts the target to attack you, but has no effect if the target is already attacking you.

Challenging Roar
Instant, 3 minute cooldown (see Glyphs)
Forces all nearby enemies to focus attacks on you for 6 seconds.

You should always use Growl as part of your pull (more on that later), but it's going to be pretty ineffectual for the rest of the fight unless you find yourself losing threat. If you do lose threat, immediately cast Growl to get it back.

Challenging Roar, on the other hand, can be dicey. If you're in a raid situation it's likely another tank will be fooling with another mob somewhere nearby. Casting this taunt could cause them to loose aggression and then your biggest problem is no longer losing threat (you'll want to lose the threat from the rest of the raid at that point). If you're tanking everything there is to tank, however, or if shit starts to hit the fan, go ahead and cast this AoE taunt. Better to have all the mobs than to lose every target.

Using Your Debuffs

There's more than one way to create damage, and you can do more than taunt to capture the attention of a mob. You should be using your debuffs at every available opportunity, even before they wear off in some cases. If you're having trouble with threat, popping your debuffs can give you a little extra boost.


Demoralizing Roar
Decreases all nearby enemies' attack power for thirty seconds. Amount of damage determined by ability level (at level 80, it's -408).

Faerie Fire (Feral)
Decreases the target's armor by 5% for 5 minutes.


Both these debuffs should always be a part of your initial pull. It's best to pop your Faerie Fire in a macro with Growl, then cast your demoralizing roar as the mob nears. The roar is a great way to gain the attention of all enemies at once - a quick swipe or two helps you ensure that you have more than their attention. Any AoE you can use is helpful if you're tanking multiple targets, and demoralizing roar actually helps build threat - so pop it often. Faerie fire lasts for five minutes, but you want to pop it at every opportunity. It does damage and it helps you maintain threat - so keep this one close to your main action bar.

Use Your Rotation

Okay, so you need to pull with Growl and Faerie Fire. You need to pop Demoralizing Roar as soon as the mob is within range. You want to keep up your debuffs as much as possible and you want to keep checking your threat to be sure that you're holding well. So when the hell do you get to damage?

Make your debuffs a regular part of your rotation, and keep your damage-building abilities and bleed debuffs up at all times. A good bear should be clicking or pressing buttons like crazy, and that's no joke. If there's a second where you don't have something to click, then you're failing.

An AoE mob rotation is going to end up playing out something like this (side-by-side abilities are macroed together):

Faerie Fire/Growl
Demoralizing Roar
Swipe
Swipe
Maul
Mangle
Maul
Swipe
Swipe
Maul
Demoralizing Roar
Mangle
Maul
Swipe
Swipe

Get the idea? You should absolutely have Glyph of Maul regardless (see Glyphs), so you should have little trouble tanking two targets at once. If you're tanking three or more enemies at once, you're going to want to switch targets. Watch your threat meter - when you have a decent amount of threat built up on your first target, switch to your third target but keep your rotation the same.

If you're tanking a single target, you can pretty much forget about your Swipe. It doesn't do a whole lot of damage, and you'll benefit much more from your Lacerate. Keeping the same pull and debuff principles in place, your rotation will wind up looking more like this:

Growl/Faerie Fire
Demoralizing Roar
Mangle
Maul
Lacerate
Lacerate
Maul
Mangle
Lacerate
Lacerate
Mangle
Maul
Faerie Fire
Demoralizing Roar
Mangle
Maul
Lacerate
Lacerate

Get the idea?

Going Berserk

You must not forget the best bear ability of all: Berserk. This burst damage, AoE mother is so badass, you've just got to have it - so spec for it. Glyph of Berserk is absolutely wonderful for threat-building - so get it. Whether you're fighting a larger mob (no more than three, because this ability only hits three targets) or a single target, go Berserk when you can. There are some pulls where you'll want to time this out, saving Berserk for certain occassions. For instance, some bosses may offer a buff where damage is increased. There are also times when the raid will use Heroism to boost damage. When possible, save your Berserk for these occassions. Otherwise, the dps will find it all too easy to pull threat right off you.