TBC Classic Feral Druid Tank Stat Priority

1. Expertise up to the 6.5% cap vs bosses;
2. Agility;
3. Stamina;
4. Physical Hit up to the 9% cap vs bosses, 5% in PvP;
5. Strength (1 Strength = 2 Attack Power baseline but Druid gets extra from Heart of the Wild and Blessing of Kings making it stronger than raw AP);
6. Critical Strike;
7. Haste;
8. Dodge;
9. Defense;
10. Attack Power;
11. Resilience;
12. Armor;
13. Armor Penetration.

This is the stat priority that will generally get you the best balance of threat vs effective health. Stamina is of special importance for Feral tanks, as it gets multiplied into 1.7 stamina per each point of stamina you get on your gear after all buffs and bear form are accounted for.

Having a huge health pool is fundamental for bears as unlucky crushing hit streaks will always happen from time to time, and healers need time to react to this sort of damage.

Expertise, Agility, and Hit are excellent for both threat and mitigation, making them all-star stats for a tank Druid.

As a tank, you have two main goals; keep the enemy's attention and to not die. These can be broken down further, and how you gear will usually reflect your choice to prioritize one of these goals.

Keeping the enemy's attention means generating more threat than anyone else in the raid. As a tank, your abilities will generate more threat naturally, but it can still be quite a challenge. Hit, Expertise, Attack Power, Crit and Haste all serve to increase your damage done, which will increase your threat generated.

On the other hand, for not dying, you need to increase your total EHP, or effective health pool. This is done in two ways, either increasing your total health pool through Stamina, or decreasing your damage taken through Armor.

Armor will be your most important stat, since decreasing your damage taken generally matters more than increasing your total health. The one exception to this is if you are primarily taking magic damage. Magic damage is not mitigated by Armor, meaning the only way to increase your EHP is through having a higher total health pool.

As a default approach for a tank, damage mitigation is more important than increasing your damage dealt. However, this can change depending on your role in a raid group, your gear, or the content.

Expertise replaces weapon skills from WoW Classic, and reduces the chance of your attacks being parried or dodged. It takes 3.94 expertise rating to gain 1 expertise skill. Each point of Expertise skill will reduce the target's chance to dodge and parry your attacks by 0.25% each.

Expertise is a strong stat, increasing the odds of your attacks hitting their target. While enemies cannot parry from behind, they can still dodge your attacks. For level 73 mobs (bosses) the expertise cap is 6.5% dodge or 26 expertise skill / 200 expertise rating.

Against targets your level, you have a 5% chance to miss attacks. Raid and dungeon bosses are considered to be 3 levels above you, meaning your chance to miss attacks is slightly higher at 8.6%. Reaching the cap on hit means having a 9% increased chance to hit through gear. Reaching the hit cap as a Feral Tank is a great threat increase, and ensures that you do not accidentally lose aggro due to an unlucky missed Maul early on. Generally speaking, however, Feral Tanks do not have the same threat issues that other tanks do, and mitigation is going to be a bigger priority.

Feral Druids get extra crit, dodge, and armor from each point of Agility while in Dire Bear Form. Agility is an excellent stat that you will want to look for, as it boosts your threat and defensive capabilities. Druids cannot parry, meaning that dodge is our only avoidance stat. When your dodge an attack you do not take any damage from it, making dodge incredibly useful and life-saving at times if you get lucky. The mitigation from armor will be better, but dodge is another very useful stat to have on top of it.

Unlike for DPS specs, Stamina is incredibly important as a tank, more so as a Feral Tank. Feral tanks get a higher multiplier on their Stamina values due to Dire Bear Form and Heart of the Wild. Combined with Blessing of Kings, each point of Stamina increases your maximum health by 17 instead of the normal 10! A high max health pool is especially important for Feral Tanks because you can get crushed by bosses, unlike Warriors and Paladins who can push crushing hits out completely through their blocking abilities.

Each point of Defense gives you an additional 0.04% chance to be missed, not to be crit, and to be dodged. This is a rare stat, not found on many pieces of gear that Feral Druids have access to. Getting crit can easily kill you if you are not careful, making this an important stat to pick up where you can. With the introduction of Resilience in TBC, it is more possible than ever to completely push critical strikes out of the combat table, making you much more likely to survive worse-case scenarios.

Resilience is a new stat in TBC which is only found on PvP gear and reduces your chance to suffer a Critical Strike, as well as the damage you take from those, the Mana burned by effects such as Mana Burn and the damage taken from damage over time effects such as Corruption. This is a great stat while pushing critical strikes away from your combat table, and in all situations PvP, as it makes you a lot more durable.

Resistance, while inherently niche due to different bosses dealing different magical damage types, can be very useful while progressing specific bosses. Wearing resistance gear of a type makes you take less damage or even completely avoid damage when hit by that type of magical damage.

Armor reduces your damage taken by physical attacks. This will be your primary mitigation stat and is where Druids specifically excel, due to their high modifier to armor from Dire Bear Form.

Your weapon DPS range is completely irrelevant, as Feral forms use their own hidden weapons with normalized damage. The main thing you want is Feral Attack Power, which is very common in weapons throughout TBC, thankfully. You can find some examples in the weapon guide below.

Druids receive 2 AP per point of Strength. This is your strongest stat for pure AP gain, which will increase your damage done by all attacks. Again, this is purely used as a way to increase your threat generated, which is not a problem that Feral Tanks should deal with if you are using Maul whenever possible. If you want to focus on dealing more damage though, this is a great stat to pick up more of.

Attack Power is the base stat off which all of your damage is calculated. For Feral Druids, this is especially true, since your auto attack damage is not based off your weapon DPS. In fact, weapon DPS has zero value to Feral Druids. Your auto attacks are normalized on a 2.5-second swing timer while in Dire Bear Form, and the damage is calculated based on your Attack Power. All of your abilities have their damage calculated either as a multiplier of a single auto attack's damage or it is based on your Attack Power as well. If you are looking to deal more damage, you can pick up either straight Attack Power or Strength depending on which gives more, knowing that 1 Strength = 2 Attack Power.

Critical strikes as a Feral Druid deal 120% increased damage once you maximize Predatory Instincts. This is a relatively unimportant stat for Feral Tanks since it is mostly about increasing your threat generated, which should not be a problem most of the time. Also, you get a fair amount of crit from your Agility, making it not an important stat to look for on gear. If your goal is more damage, however, then go for it.

Haste is one of the new stats introduced in the Burning Crusade. It increases your attack speed, allowing you to get more white attacks off in a given period of time.

Armor Penetration is another new stat in TBC which allows your attacks to partially ignore your enemy's armor. This is a nice damage increase for physical attacks, and something you can expect to see a lot in Tier 6 gear.

Intellect, Spirit, and maybe even Mp5 will most likely be on some of your gear, but they hold little to no value as a Feral Tank. Intellect and Spirit only become valuable when you use Mana, which can really only happen through swapping forms repeatedly. This does not happen if your primary role is tanking, meaning the stats hold no value. Sitting (through the /sit command, or when eating or drinking) increases Spirit regeneration by 33%.