I'm levelling my char to 70 and experimenting with talent trees with an aim to give my druid a feral build that includes mangle and OOC.
I've come up with this 'combat endurance' build which I'm hoping will give me the ability to remain an effective tank whilst challenge in the pvp environment.

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/druid/talents.html?0000000000000000000000532321323221051 3125105503001000000000000

Fellow druids, I'd be grateful for your thoughts.

For some of the higher level instances, you need Survival of the Fittest. If you don't have that maxed, you'll be dead as a doornail the first time the big baddy crits you on a crushing blow and you take 15k of damage.

Personally I'd say that the build is quite balanced. It is suitable for both PvP and PvE, it has a nice dps output and merely any downtime.

About the above reply of Allahanastar:

Survival of the fittest decreases the chance you get critically hit by melee attacks, 3% if maximized. It is not likely that 2% will prevent a crushing blow critting you for 15k, like you said. There is this thing called "Defence" and "Resilience" that would do the trick. 2% is not a life saviour, it is however a nice bonus, and it's not critical at all.

Interesting point by Allahanastar, looking at it, to do that I'd prob sacrifice 1 point in naturalist and 1 point from shredding attacks. However, wot do u guys reckon? Will it be worth losing those in order to get the plus 2% in survival of the fittest?

y previous line of thought was the same as 'Ieatlocks':

"It is not likely that 2% will prevent a crushing blow critting you for 15k, like you said. There is this thing called "Defence" and "Resilience" that would do the trick. 2% is not a life saviour, it is however a nice bonus, and it's not critical at all"

It is possible to sacrifice some points to maximize Survival of the Fittest but imo I would not count on it that this skill will be able to prevent you from dieing. As a tank you should never ever rely on pure percentages, it s the whole build that makes you effective, not just one skill. In this build you have almost the best balance I can imagine, Don't spoil it because of one skill that needs to be "Maximized"

The point I was making is that it allows you to target a defense rating of 415 instead of a 490 defense rating. 3% makes a huge difference. Being crit immune to boss mobs is critical for a tank. Otherwise the healers just can't keep up when a crit does 8k followed by some crushing blow that does another 5-8k. Instead of nice steady damage with the occassional crushing blow thrown in, you get huge spikes in damage.

I've talked with several healers in instances. They prefer bear tanks because of two main factors:
1. The damage is soooo consistent. Once you get the rhythm, you can pretty much just have to deal with the occassional crushing blow.
2. Bear tanks have a piss ton of HP. This gives them more room for error in those "oh s$%^" moments.

You should make room for Survival of the Fittest if you want to do endgame tanking. 415 vs 490 defense is a huge deal when you're gearing, as you may have to sacrifice a lot of other stats to get to 490 defense (think of all those sockets you'd have to put defense gems in that you could put something else in!). If you only need 415, that's pretty easy and leaves a lot of room for you to pick up other useful bear stats like agi/dodge and stamina.

SotF is a must for endgame tanking for the reasons Ziada listed.

The build is pretty much a standard Feral build.

Only one thing that would bother me are the 5 points in Feral Aggression. Compared to the use you'd get out of Ferocity they are wasted IMHO.

I'd suggest http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/druid/talents.html?0100000000000000000005032321323221053 0125105503001000000000000

Thanks for the gr8 advice so far, lots of stuff I'm taking in for endgame feral play, particularly the points raised on SoTF.

That said I'd be interested to hear in peoples opinion about what Abies had to say with regards to 5 points in feral aggression.

Feral aggression or ferocity, what do you think and why?

I am with Abies, Feral Aggression is a waste of points if you ask me. Lets just say FB hits for 1000, now add on the 15% and you get 150 extra dmg. I would rather know I can land my mangle a bit sooner and more often then fuss over the small dmg add and lower AP of the target.

You basically have my build, though I dropped impvroved bash cause I am tauren and if I need that extra time I just bash+war stomp for the increase resist to fear which I find helping me a lot in instances. Many times my group has been feared and yet I am still tehre swinging away keeping aggro on me instead of the boss mob or mob runing around chasing a clothie only to have me running back to range charge to regain him after fear is off.

Feral Aggression is nice for solo and small group ventures. This includes any non-warrior pve and most pvp. The increased damage on FB makes you feel good. When you see a >3k FB crit, you go DAMN! But keep in mind, the majority of your damage is not coming from awesome FB crits. It's coming from your white damage (and your consistent bleeds).

In a PvE context, 15% on your ferocious bite is not really significant because it takes you anywhere from 10-20 seconds to build up the combo points to use the FB. During this time, someone that has ferocity can probably lay an extra combo point ~ 600-1000 damage non-crit. This means you'd need to have FB hitting for 4k-6.7k with feral aggression to compensate for that 600-1000 damage.

I agree with the mangle bit. You should have a pretty good idea of whats going to happen in a fight before you head in. The reduced energy costs can reduce your cycle time for attacks and greatly increase your survivability (1-2 extra seconds on maim in the same amount of combat time).

Saving 5 rage is quite nice in bear mode. I already feel like i'm waiting for rage in pvp. I can't imagine needing 5 more.

Rel's Build (http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/druid/talents.html?0000000000000000000005032021323221053 3125105502201000000000000) is what i currently use. But I still use the staff of natural fury to take my shifting costs down even further.

Especially in PvE, Rip is generally a better finisher than FB, so I don't have Feral Aggression either(I wouldn't anyway). Ferocity is the way to go, it'll make a massive difference in your dps. 5 energy on Mangle doesn't seem like much but it is.

Agree about SotF as well, a druid could potentially get to 490 defense for crit immunity, but he'd be a gimp at that point. Never being crit is absolutely required.