TBC Classic Feral Druid Tank Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities

This is the priority list for single target:

1. Keep Demoralizing Roar and Faerie Fire (Feral) (if no Boomkin available) up;
2. Use Mangle (Bear) whenever available;
3. Keep 5 stacks of Lacerate on the target;
4. Use Swipe with extra globals if above 2700 buffed Attack Power;
5. Use Maul if you still have excess rage.

This priority list is simplified when tanking 3+ enemies:

1. Keep Demoralizing Roar and Faerie Fire (Feral) (if no Boomkin available) up;
2. Use Swipe;
3. Use Maul with excess Rage.

Once you have full T4 level gear, you will typically also have around 2700 buffed attack power in raids, making Swipe stronger than Lacerate for single target damage. You will still want to stack Lacerate's debuff to its maximum 5 stacks and keep it refreshed, but fill the other non-Mangle global cooldowns with Swipe, instead!

Growl and Challenging Roar are great taunt abilities that force either one of multiple enemies to attack you when used. Use Growl when you need to pick up threat on a new enemy, and use Challenging Roar when you do not have threat on a group of enemies and need to pick them up urgently.

Feral Tanks generate Rage from auto attacks and from damage taken. Once you get into raids, most of your Rage will come from damage taken. This will allow you to use your attacks much more often, and you should look to use excess Rage on Maul.

Feral Tanks do not have any way to reduce their damage taken through normal abilities. The only abilities that Feral has to help with mitigation or healing are Frenzied Regeneration and Barkskin. Barkskin can be used relatively often since it only has a 1-minute cooldown, but it takes you out of form when used, making it only usable while you are not actively tanking.

Frenzied Regeneration is a powerful healing cooldown that converts Rage into health. This is a great cooldown to use if you are either getting low or if you know you are about to go into a period of high sustained damage.