Classic Feral Druid Tank Stat Priority

1. Armor;
2. Stamina;
3. Defense;
4. Agility/Dodge;
5. Hit chance until 9% (Hit Cap)
6. Strength;
7. Attack Power;
8. Critical Strike chance;

As a tank, you have two main goals; keep the enemy's attention and not to 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, Attack Power, and Crit 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.

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.

Unlike for DPS specs, Stamina is incredibly important as a tank, more so as a Feral Tank. Feral tanks get a slightly higher multiplier on their Stamina values due to Heart of the Wild, meaning each point of Stamina increases your maximum health by 12 instead of the normal 10. A high max health pool is important as a Feral Tank especially because you can be critically hit by bosses, unlike Warriors. This will be especially noticeable with raid bosses, where melee swings that crit can sometimes do 50% or more of your health pool in a single hit. If your goal is to maximize your ability to live in a raid, this is another important stat to get lots of early on.

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.

Feral Druids get 0.05% crit chance, 0.05% dodge chance, and 2 armor from each point of Agility while in Dire Bear Form. Agility is going to be another primary stat that you will want to look for, mostly due to the dodge chance it provides. 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.

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.

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.

AP 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 AP. 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 AP as well. If you are looking to deal more damage, you can pick up either straight AP or Strength depending on which gives more, knowing that 1 Strength = 2 AP.

Critical strikes as a Feral Druid deal 100% increased damage. 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.

Intellect and Spirit 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.