King of the Jungle

When I got my 4 piece bonus for t10, and using enrage every time it's up, I started wondering whether it would make sense to get King of the Jungle. I did some research to see what other bears thought. The first thing I came across was a Tankspot post by the author of ThinkTank:

Posted by Felhoof on 2/22/10 here

Why pick up king of the jungle?

The absolute best situation for it is that you're using it every time it's off CD, so once every minute. That gives you 15% more damage (not threat, just damage) for 10 seconds every minute, or a bit less than 3% damage extra per minute. Or, if you like, a bit less than 1% damage per talent point.

Primal precision gives you 1.25% more THREAT per talent point, and that's assuming you're dodge-capped. If you're not dodge capped on expertise, it gives a whopping 2.5% more threat per talent point.

So point per point, primal precision is far better.

But that's if you use it every minute. I don't know about you, but the 4pT10 isn't great because I get more rage; it's great because it's another cooldown. That's hugely important. And it turns out that cooldown use isn't really a 'once every minute' kind of thing. It's used when it's needed. And there are plenty of cases where it's simply better to wait until I need to use it, like on Arthas beatdowns.

In which case, KotJ is completely wasted.

Now where kotj is better is on snap threat - having 15% more damage at a certain point (like on a berserk) is good. But that's a very narrow area, and typically only at the beginning of a fight. The other reason to get it is if you're swapping to cat a lot. But even then, primal precision wins out.

So he's not so hot on King of the Jungle, especially when someone mentioned that they dropped Primal Precision for it. But I wouldn't even consider dropping Primal Precision in a tanking spec (unless something crazy happened with expertise on gear). But I disagree with him about whether the enrage cooldown is a "once-every-minute" kind of thing. If I am actively tanking a boss, I almost always use enrage as soon as it's up, chaining it with Barkskin (and sometimes Glyph of Indomitability if it's a fight where I'm stacking as much armor as possible) for a lot of overall mitigation. 3% more damage per minute sounds nice if I'm going to be using enrage that often.

There's also a short thread on mmo-champion about taking King of the Jungle over Improved Mangle here.

Posted by Richmond on 3/11/10

King of the Jungle - In its original state (Untainted by 4pc T10) is actually reduced armor, so no self respecting Tank would spec into this. Now that we have 4pc T10, what is going to change? Nothing. Why would you use the new damage reduction ability you have, in conjuntion with a threat increasing ability? Why? Can you even think of a situation when the two of them would be used hand in hand?

So I decided to give King of the Jungle a try last week, dropping Improved Mangle for it. Basically, I think people are thinking about the question backwards. Instead of asking, "when would you want a dps boost at the same time as damage mitigation?" I think of it as "When would I want damage mitigation as a bonus to my a dps boost?" Well, I like the idea of being able to nudge out just 3% extra damage per minute, and taking less damage because of it. In my experience so far, it has been useful in the following 3 circumstances:

• Tank switching is a great time to for a damage boost and mitigation to go "hand in hand." When I'm the second or third in line to taunt Deathwhisper, Saurfang, Stinky and Precious, Festergut, or Putricide, I really like knowing that I can drop a lot of threat as soon as I taunt and get way ahead of the tank before me. I attach enrage to Berserk when possible too. True, I probably don't strictly NEED to go that far to be sure the other tank won't get aggro back by accident, but I like having the burst on demand while taking less damage with the target switch. 

• As I mentioned, if I'm solo tanking a boss for an entire fight, such as Rotface or Sindragosa 10, I was already using enrage whenever it was up anyway. So King of the Jungle definitely isn't completely wasted. 

• There are some bosses where I'm cat in the first part of the fight because a second/third tank isn't needed until the final phase, like Sindragosa and Putricide. In those situations I really like having King of the Jungle over Improved Mangle for going kitty while in tanking gear/spec, and my dps has gone up some.

Ultimately I like King of the Jungle, but I'm still not 100% convinced that it's worthwhile. Dropping Improved Mangle has made my rotation much more rhythmic and enjoyable, so if I don't decide to keep King of the Jungle, I'll probably take my talents somewhere new.