To Bear the Burden - The Future of Tanking Part 2

Update: changed the tanking build suggestion at the end of the post.

It's been some time since I wrote part 1. Many things have changed, but now I feel they have stabilized enough to give an outlook on how we will tank come WotLK.

Blizzards says, that druids are the best tanks by far in the current beta build - generating the most threat, having the biggest health pools and taking the least damage. Ghostcrawler has stated that we should expect some nerfs in the near future, but they will take care not to overshoot their goal this time :)


Basic Mechanics
The first change is: No more crushing blows.
Yes, you read right. The thing any plate-wearing tank is focusing on most of the time will be gone.
The second change: all tanking specs will do more damage.

If you combine the two you have tanks that do more damage, can equip more damage-enhancing equipment and for the first time actually have threat that scales well with gear. Of course this necessitates other changes. No more threat reduction buffs or auras: Blessing of Salvation and Tranquil Air Totem are gone.


Mitigation
With crushing blows gone, Blizzard feels we have no need for items with exceptional armor. That means no more items with green armor values (this even works retroactively; meaning that existing gear will be changed as well). But there will still be rings, trinkets, etc with armor on them.
We will be in the same ballpark as the other tanks from now on, armor-wise.

But we get two other ways of reducing received hurting. Predatory Instincts gets changed to reduce AoE damage by 15% (instead of 15% chance to completely avoid). This change does not really reduce overall damage taken, but makes incoming damage less spikey and is simply more reliable.
The other is a new talent: Protector of the Pack. This will reduce incoming damage by 3% per party member (12% in a full party, you yourself are not counted). Finally a way to reduce magical damage - Yay!

In addition we now have an active way of reducing incoming damage: Infected Wounds. With this talent our Mangles and Mauls will apply a debuff that reduces the target's attack speed by 20% (stacks two times, 10% per stack). It is no Thunderclap, but still very nice, as it also reduces movement speed by 50%.


Health
In this area we will still have more than other tanks. Not much, and it will not be to compensate for less damage absorption. So don't be afraid we will be the nightmare of all healers ^^


Avoidance
Avoidance has a long history of troubles. In the entry level raids we were way behind other tanks, and in T6 content we were so high, that we came close to not being hit at all (bears were the main reason they introduced Sunwell Radiance).
With the new 6% crit reduction via talents, we no longer need to stack any defense (or resilience) at all, so we will only want to go for higher dodge. Currently in beta we need around 42 agility for 1% dodge (level 80). This is quite a jump from the 15 agility we were used to, but much higher stats on items compensate for that. Also we get an additional 6% dodge via the new talent Natural Reaction.
All in all, we should be able to reach decent dodge percentages.


Threat Generation/Damage
As we now do more damage, we also generate more threat. Especially we druids, who always have been scaling well with damage.
This was achieved in part by increasing the base damage and damage multipliers on abilities. Talents play another important role.
Savage Fury now once again increases damage from Maul and Mangle(Bear) as well. Mangle's cooldown can be reduced to 4.5 seconds via talent. The new talent Primal Precision will give us 10 expertise - not only increasing our threat, but also reducing the amount of parries, which reduces incoming damage a bit. Maul will now benefit from any debuff that increases bleed damage (e.g. the Mangle debuff). In addition it will also do 20% more damage on bleeding targets. Thanks to Lacerate all our targets should be bleeding.
This means, Maul will hit like a truck - as it should, considering the real rage cost is somewhere around 25 (because it replaces a white attack, which would have generated rage). Also, there is a glyph which will change Maul to hit two targets instead of one. Very nice.

Concerning AoE threat there are good news as well. Swipe no longer has a target limit (but still only hits stuff in front of you). Also the talent Feral Instinct now increases Swipe damage by 10/20/30%. Combine that with Maul hitting two targets and Maul+Swipe becomes a really nice AoE tanking combination. If you are afraid that we will not have enough rage for that: The talent Natural Reaction also generates 3 rage for each dodged attack. Rage should not be a problem any more in this situation, even with very high dodge values.

Oh, if you are wondering: the 15% threat increase that was on the talent Feral Instinct is now integrated into bear form form itself.


Panic Buttons
"Panic Buttons? Is that something I can eat?" - this is what druids have to say on this topic on live. We have none. Yes, we can use trinkets, and in some situations can use a cumbersome macro to shift out, chug a potion/healthstone, and shift back (which has a high chance of not really working). Crutches, nothing more. I won't even mention Enrage or Frenzied Regeneration.

But fear not, brothers. Things will change.
Let's start with Frenzied Regeneration. Instead of restoring measly 250 health per second, it will restore 3% of total health - 30% of your health over the whole duration. It still eats up your rage (1 rage per 0.3% restored), but finally scales. Also you can improve it via glyph to also increase healing received by 20% for the duration.

Next on the list: Enrage. "But this is no panic button" you will say. Well, there are two types. One saves your butt when you really get hit hard, the other type makes you hit really hard to prevent you from losing aggro. This is of the second type. Using it really improves rage generation (less armor = more damage = more rage). Now you can also take the talent King of the Jungle, which increases your damage by 15% while Enrage is active. When your healers can take it, using it on every cooldown should improve your threat generation considerably.

Another small change worth mentioning: We can now use stuff in forms. We will no longer have to beceome one-hit-wonders to use a potion or healthstone. But thanks to potion sickness (only one potion per encounter), it is not really that great.

This brings us to the third existing ability that gets changed: Barkskin. Well, it stays the same, but is now usable in all forms. Basically a small Shield Wall on shorter cooldown. 20% less damage for 12 seconds once every minute? Sign me up.

Now on to the new stuff: Survival Instincts. Basically a Last Stand for bears. Grants 30% of max health for 20 seconds; on a 5 minute cooldown. That is nice, and well worth the talent point.

The other new ability: Berserk. Breaks fear, makes you immune for the duration and, most importantly, makes Mangle (Bear) hit three targets instead of one. To make it even better, it also removes the Mangle cooldown for the duration. Very very nice for burst threat. With the three minute CD, I'd not consider it useful for fear breaking in PvE, but you can use it every other pull to establish good threat right away - and to make sure you do not lose aggro on a boss where your DPS is a bit overzealous.

So we go from "Not really having any panic buttons" to "Holy crap! Which one should I use?". I like it :)


Other stuff
There are some other changes as well. Not only can we use all items in forms (as well as eat and drink), weapon enchantments that proc now work also. Mongoose, here I come! Increasing agility also increases dodge as well as crit for us bears - more avoidance FTW.
Feral Faerie Fire has also been altered. It can be trained now instead of having to spend a talent point on it (with Survival Instincts taking its place). Also, its threat has been increased substantially (only when used in bear form), and it does a little bit of damage now (5% of AP + 1). This makes it a better ability for pulling, and as it is free, a good source of threat when you are rage starved and have a GCD to spare. Another nice aspect of this change is, that it now "tags" a mob, so when soloing you no longer need to get in melee distance to make sure a mob is yours.
Another changed ability is Bash; it now also has an interrupt component. This is independent of the stun, so you even can interrupt stun-immune mobs.


Looking at all these changes, I think we will do well with the expansion. Assuming, of course, that we well not be nerfed into uselessness (which I don't think we'll be).

As a nice ending to this post, let me give you an example for a tanking build: 0/60/11
I've not taken Rend and Tear (stronger Mauls are nice, but not worth 5 points) and Brutal Impact (a stun/interrupt every 30 sec instead of 60 sec may be necessary for some encounters, but I hope not).
Edit: changed the build to go for 2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild and 3/5 Furor. Thanks for the suggestion, Felkan!