Healing is part of your job too.

Now I know that people think, "You're the healer. it's your job to heal, not mine!",  or "I'm here to dps, not heal.". Well, for a feral tank, this is just not true. Healing yourself is part of your job and makes the healing easier for the healer and will keep you alive longer.  Now, this is not something you have to go out of your way to do. Part of it comes totally natural from talent points alone:



Leader of the Pack
While in Cat Form or Bear Form, the Leader of the Pack increases critical strike chance of all party and raid members within 100 yards by 5%.  In addition, your melee critical strikes in Cat Form and Bear Form cause you to heal for 4% of your total health and gain 8% of your maximum mana.  This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 sec.


This alone is a big heal in the long run.  Any healing you do to yourself here is mana not being used by the healer and mana that can be utilized in a "crunch time" situation.  I share this here as some people take a tank build that they see from a blog (I've posted mine here in an earlier post) or off the wow armory or from other places, which is fine.  Problem, some people don't take the time to read the talents and why they should be chosen.  This is one that should be.



Another thing you can do it use a glyph for your Frenzied Regeneration:



Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration
Major Glyph
Classes: Druid
Requires Level 52
Item Level 52
Use: Permanently teaches you this glyph.


While Frenzied Regeneration is active, healing effects on you are 30% more powerful but causes your Frenzied Regeneration to no longer convert rage into health.


Now this is a big step for some tanks as this makes you put full trust and faith in your healer and takes some of your self healing abilities away from your.  To me, this is a great glyph to have since it infact boosts the healing done to you by the healer AND by your Leader of the Pack talents. At the point you hit Frenzied Regeneration, you will want to do something very important. Keep your eye out for a Lightwell or any kind of AoE healing effect on the ground.  If you see these, get in them.  Some would argue that a Lightwell is really only for the dps so that the healer can focus more on the tank and not so much on dps.  This could not be farther from the truth.  Any and all healing you can do to yourself will help save the healer mana for use when it is truly needed to keep your bear butt up, lol.

Remember, tanking is part of the team effort.  If you want to succeed, you need to think like part of the team and not as just the tank. Any and all thing you can do to help the healer must be high priority. The healer and dps will thank you for this.  If the healer goes out of mana (oom) or dies, you will not be standing for very long after.

Keep up the good work tanks.  Remember we all want to get through a run alive, working together will make that happen.