Saturday, February 13, 2010

Is Glyph of Berserk Good for Bears?

Yes, yes it is. In fact, Glyph of Berserk is even better for Tanking Druids than it is for Feral dps. In Cat Form, your energy will be more than empty by the time your Berserk runs its normal duration. The benefit you gain from extending your Berserk effect by five seconds is then more than marginalized. In Bear Form, however, it is a different story.

Assuming you are taking heavy enough damage, you should be able to spam Mangle throughout the entire duration of your Berserk without worrying about rage. Glyph of Berserk would then give you an extra five seconds of spamming Mangle while it continues to hit three targets. The benefit from this varies according to your spec and situation, but is appreciable either way.

Berserk itself activates a 1.5 second global cooldown, so assuming no haste, you first Mangle drops at the 13.5 second mark. This allows for a total of 10 casts before Berserk expires without Glyph of Berserk and 13 with it. At least one of those casts will need to be used to refresh Lacerate, so you can spam out 9 and 12 Mangles respectively.

If you do not have any talent points in Improved Mangle, the spell will be on a six second cooldown and you would not be able to fit in another spell cast during the five extra seconds which would have benefited from Glyph of Berserk. If you did take the talent, you would be able to squeeze in one.

Assuming a single target, Glyph of Berserk then lets you squeeze in 3 extra Mangles every 3 minutes if you do not have Improved Mangle and 2 extra Mangles if you do. A nice boost, but nothing to write home about.

Now, however, let's assume multiple targets. When dealing with at least three targets, each Mangle during Berserk is functionally three Mangles. That means that the return from Glyph of Berserk becomes 9 additional Mangles without Improved Mangle and 6 with it when you use Berserk. Clearly, that is an appreciable boost to both your threat and damage per second.

Glyph of Berserk is then a great tool for increasing a Druid tank's damage and, by proxy, threat generation. It also carries the incidental benefit of 5 extra seconds of fear immunity. If you can afford to sack Glyph of Survival Instincts or Glyph of Growl for it, you might want to give this Glyph a second look.

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