What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Xarnen(US-Cairne), Tauren Druid, Feral
What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
Heroics, and Raids (10/25 dont matter)
What is your favorite tankng spell for your class and why?
Berserk. For scary trash pulls you can mangle maul swipe spam pretty good, and for single target threat it's a nice boost during bloodlusts and such.
What tanking spell do you use least for your class and why?
Frenzied Regeneration. I really only use it as part of strategic cooldown management as it's a huge threat loss to get good use out of it.
What do you feel is the biggest strength of your tanking class and why?
This is a really a tough call, because I'm divided between bear's ability to kite+swipe adds and generate nice sustained threat while positioning vs the flexibility in changing gear to gimmick out encounters.
What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your tanking class and why?
Interrupts in raids. Most bears don't spec 2 points into improved bash and feral charge is rarely practical.
In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?
It really depends on the encounter, but more often than not boss tanking. Bears have so much stamina that they can just outlast huge damage intake. If the boss hits like a sissy but has adds all over the place, then that's probably my secondary home (Hi Jaraxxus).
What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?
Warriors. They more naturally spec into Improved demo shout and thunderclap for the speed debuff allowing me to be the terror tank focusing on high damage output(sunders ftw!)
What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?
Paladins, by far. Many(not all) paladins tend to have an elitist attitude about their class. Also their ungodly threat generation and captain america shields tend to cause a lot more problems than they realize.
What is your worst habit as a tank?
Tunnel-vision on omen.
What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
Since bears lack snap aoe threat, overzealous AOE is a concern, but I'd say vent chatter during encounters when stuff I call out is missed.
Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks?
Not really. We have stupid amounts of health and mitigation, awesome damage, and great dps flexibility with cat form. We lack ungodly threat, great cooldowns, and viable interrupts. So that does kind of pigeon hole is for being either the kite tank or the big hit tank.
What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
Recount to evaluate deaths, and world of logs sometimes to evaluate performance. Mostly I evaluate my in fight threat management and did we kill the boss or not.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?
That we're a lot more effective than people think against magical damage.
What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?
Multi-target threat management
Effective Health or Avoidance and why? Effective Health, because of how well bears scale armor and stamina.
What tanking class do you feel you understand least?
Death Knights.
What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in tanking?
X-Perl, Omen, DBM, and SCT.
Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why? Stam, stam and more stam. I tend to adjust to threat/avoidance through trinket management or occasionally and older piece of gear enchanted for resistance.
