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xcal78
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| 3.x Feral Druid - Bear Tanking Guide
I have been asked by a few people both on these forums and on my server to write up a guide for bear tanking. That takes a lot of time and research to do. I've told people I will try to write something up as time permits but until then I compiled a few good articles on bear tanking which will get you started. | |
siscothekid
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Lynwood, CA | any way you can post it? I cant really download or view anything on this com, im so lucky i can eaven view this i dont want to mess it up, I cant eaven view the california zoo page cause its blocked >. | |
xcal78
join:2009-02-27
Waltham, MA
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| reply to xcal78
Bear Tanking in 3.2.2 and beyond!!
I wrote this as a guide for every cub out there who wants to learn to be a Bear!! I will include Gearing, Specs, Rotation and threat
issues and Stat conversions.
Table of Context:
Part 1: FAQS
Part 2: Basic Stats and the Benefits they provide
Part 3: Specs and Glyph choices
Part 4: Rotation, and threat generation
Part 5: Consumables, Gems, Enchants, and Profession Bonuses
Part 6: Macros
Part 1: FAQs
These are the currently most common questions asked in our forums about bear tanks.
Who is Alamo?
Alamo teechs u 2 play DRUID! For more information see the link!
»www.wowwiki.com/Alamo
Can a Bear be a main tank/ do they make good tanks?
Absolutely!! When WotLK was first released the developers made it a core goal to bring all tanks in line with each other and for the
most part do away with gimmicks that didn’t allow certain tanks to perform. Ghostcrawler, beta forum CM extraordinaire, has posted
a big (well, big for a blue post) overview of some of the goals and decisions for tanking in Wrath. It goes something like this:
• All four tanking classes should be viable.
• Tanking should be "a little more fun."
• Most characters in tanking classes (Warriors, Druids, Paladins, Death Knights) should be able to tank a normal five-man just
fine, with heal specs (for Druids and Paladins) being the exception.
• Heroics and raids will require investment in tanking talents, but all tanking classes should be able to tank them if
appropriately specced. Ghostcrawler notes that this is a change of strategy for Blizz; previously, for instance, feral druids were
positioned by the devs as being better off-tanks than main tanks. Now, he says, "If nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT,
we've failed."
This is great news for us and so far has definitely proven to be true. A bear is completely capable of tanking all content currently in
game as a main tank or as an off tank!!
How much Defense do I need to be crit immune?
NONE!! Druids don’t use Defense or resilience to become crit immune in PvE. We have a talent called Survival of the Fittest
(SotF). This talent reduces the chance to be critically struck by 6% and a raid boss only has a 5.6% chance to crit you! So we are crit
immune through talents. Defense is still a decent avoidance stat but it’s not a must have stat for a bear to tank like it is for
all the other tanking classes.
Do weapon and enchant procs work in bear and cat form?
Yes! Ever since patch 3.0 druid have been able to benefit from weapons that have a proc or from proc based weapon enchants such as
Mongoose.
Does my weapon skill out of form affect me in Bear form?
No. You are always at the equivalent of maximum weapon skill while you are in bear or cat form.
I heard that Bears can't use potions, is that true?
Nope!! Ever since 3.0 the developers have blessed us with the ability to use potions while in form!
Can I still be a Hybrid bear and cat?
Depends on the content… There are specs that will allow you to perform adequately as a tank and as a cat but when it comes to
progression content (first kills) you have to give up too many dps talents or too many tank talents to really maximize either role. The
name of the game in Wrath is specialization, especially when it comes to tanking. The Feral tree has been changed so that you pretty
much have to choose to have a bear or a cat spec to truely maximize either role.
What Addons do I need for tanking?
Any raider worth their salt will be running Deadly boss mods or Big Wigs. These addons will help you know when to expect big damage or
other significant events while tanking in raids.
As a tank you also have to have Omen threat meter. Since WotLK, the designers in blizzard now allow Omen threat meter to get exact
numbers on threat levels for a target. Previously they were just estimations. As a tank, you have two main jobs. Keep the attention of
all the baddies and not die. Omen help you make sure you are doing part one.
Am I ready for Heroics, Raids, etc?
There are a few good sites that can give you a general idea of your readiness for raiding.
be.imba.hu
www.wow-heroes.com
Where can I find more information about Bears?
The Druid Wiki: »druid.wikispaces.com - Druidism at it's best
Blogs: »thebigbearbutt.com - Funny blog about general bear problems
Elitist Jerks Druid pages: »elitistjerks.com/f73/ - Great detailed posts
RAWR: www.codeplex.com/Rawr - For gearing questions
www.tankspot.com - For good how to videos for encounters
Part 2: Basic Stats and the Benefits they provide
This section will touch on the basic stats that you will be looking for and the benefits they provide you in bear form. All of the
conversions are assuming you have a proper bear spec including HotW, SotF & Imp. MotW talents. And the numbers in (brackets) are with
blessing of kings. (source: »elitistjerks.com/f73/t36999-fera···3_2_2_a/) Special thanks to Rarebeast from
EJ for this info
Strength – provides attack power
1 Str = 2.37864 AP (2.616504 AP) (Cat)
1 Str = 2.1624 AP (2.37864 AP) (Bear)
1 Str = 2.292144 AP (2.5213584 AP) (Bear with PotP)
Agility – Main tanking avoidance stat. We are in love with you.
1 Agi = 1.18932 AP (1.308252 AP) (Cat only)
1 Agi = 0.0129744% (0.01427184%) Crit
1 Agi = 0.0225641% (0.0248206%) Dodge
1 Agi = 2.1624 (2.37864) Armor
77.075 (70.068) Agi = 1% Crit
44.318 (40.289)Agi = 1% Dodge
Stamina – Provides health, a major tanking stat.
1 Sta = 10.812 (11.8932) Health (Cat)
1 Sta = 14.8665 (16.35315) Health (Bear)
Intellect – Practically useless for tanking.
1 Int = 19.4616 (21.40776) Mana
1 Int = 0.00778464% (0.0085631%) Spell Crit
125.458 (116.780) Int = 1% Spell Crit
Intellect also increases the amount of health & mana regen you get from Spirit - not very important for ferals
Spirit – Even more useless than Intel for tanking.
Spirit increases you’re out of combat health regen and your out of 5sec rule mana regen - not very important for ferals
Crit Rating – Crit does provide us with increased savage defense procs.. But, don’t stack it, it will come on your rogue
leather and weapons most likely anyhow. (Also a decent threat stat)
1 Crit Rating = 0.022% Crit
45.91 Crit Rating = 1% Crit
Dodge Rating – We get more dodge from agility, but not a bad stat to pick up on gear. (never gem for it)
1 Dodge Rating = 0.0220982% Dodge
45.2525 Dodge Rating = 1% Dodge
Haste Rating – Mediocre at best for threat.. no mitigation use. Avoid it if possible (probably won’t be)
1 Haste Rating = 0.03965% Haste
25.223 Haste Rating = 1% Haste
Hit Rating – lowers your chance to miss. Our hit cap is 263 (8%) or 230 with a Draenai.
1 Hit Rating = 0.030% Hit
32.79 Hit Rating = 1% Hit
Cap vs. Level 80 mob = 5% Hit = 163.95 Hit Rating
Cap vs. Level 81 mob = 5.5% Hit = 180.34 Hit Rating
Cap vs. Level 82 mob = 6% Hit = 196.74 Hit Rating
Cap vs. Level 83 mob = 8% Hit = 262.32 Hit Rating (Raid Bosses)
Expertise Rating – Best threat stat per point up till 6.5% then it’s equal with hit.
1 Expertise Rating = 0.0305% reduction in dodge & parry chance
32.79 Expertise Rating = 1% reduction in dodge & parry chance
Cap vs. Level 80 mob = 5%(Dodge) / ?%(Parry) = 163.95 / ? Expertise Rating
Cap vs. Level 81 mob = 5.5%(Dodge) / ?%(Parry) = 180.345 / ? Expertise Rating
Cap vs. Level 82 mob = 6%(Dodge) / ?%(Parry) = 196.74 / ? Expertise Rating
Cap vs. Level 83 mob = 6.5%(Dodge) / 15%(Parry) = 213.135 / 491.85 Expertise Rating (Raid Bosses)
The 10 Expertise we get from Primal Precision is equivalent to 81.975 Expertise Rating so subtract that from the above figures if you
have that talent.
Defense Rating – Gives a chance for the mob to miss us – (actually starts to pass Agility as a pure avoidance stat at around
50% dodge due to Diminishing returns) Agility is still a better all around stat due to the armor and crit rating it provides up till
around 60% dodge
1 Defense Rating = 0.008% dodge and 0.008% chance to be missed and 0.008% reduced chance to be crit (Crit reduction not needed for PvE
if you have SotF )
122.96 Defense Rating = 1% chance to dodge and 1% chance to be missed and 1% reduced chance to be crit (Crit reduction not needed for
PvE if you have SotF )
1 Def Rating = 0.64 Dodge Rating (counting misses as dodges)
Armor Penetration Rating – threat stat.. will come by default on our main gear pieces
1 ArPen Rating = 0.07145% Armor Penetration
13.9957272 ArPen Rating = 1% Armor Penetration
ArPen cap (100%) = 1400 ArPen
Resilience – No need for resilience in PvE
94.27125 Resilience = -1% chance to be crit, -2.2% crit damage, -1% all damage & -2.2% mana drain reduction
1414.06872 Resilience = 33% reduction from crit damage = the cap for this part of resilience's effect
Regular (white) Armor – With the changes to druid armor since BC you are in no danger of hitting the armor cap anytime soon and
can stack it wherever you can find a place. This is a phenomenal mitigation stat! Includes non-bonus armor from all slots except rings,
trinkets, neck & weapon. All armor from rings, trinkets, neck & weapon as well as armor patchs & any bonus (green) armor on items &
armor from Agi receive no bonus from SotF, Thick Hide or the metagem
1 Armor = 6.251 Armor (Bear)
1 Armor = 6.8761 Armor (Bear with Thick Hide)
1 Armor = 7.013622 Armor (Bear with Thick Hide & Armor Metagem)
Damage Reduction from Armor % = Armor * 100 / (Armor + (467.5 * Attacker Level - 22167.5))
DR% for Lvl83 Boss mobs = Armor * 100 / (Armor + 16635)
Armor cap (75% DR) for Lvl83 Boss mobs = 49905 Armor
Part 3: Spec, and Glyph choices
This section will touch on the appropriate specs and a brief explanation
The cookie cutter bear spec is going to look like this:
»www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxGGscr···b:z0ncMz
This spec gives you the top threat producing and mitigation talents. It should be your standard tanking build.
The Max Survival spec would look something like:
»www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZERGscr···z:z0ncMz
With this spec you give up a fair amount of AoE threat so this build wouldn’t be good for general purpose / add tanking, but gives
added survivability by picking up Feral Aggression and lowering the cooldown on our only interrupt Bash.
For max threat (only use if you way out gear the instance)
»www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxGMsfr···b:z0ncMz
I wouldn’t suggest this build for much more than goofing off in heroics after you are in late Uld gear or better. You give up a
fair amount of mitigation but pick up the ability to cat dps decently and do significantly more dps/threat in bear. You would use KoTJ
on CD with this build. NEVER USE IN PROGRESSION RAIDING!
A decent semi hybrid build looks like this:
»www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxGGsfr···z:z0ncMz
This build is the perfect Off-Tank build. You are giving up MSS for KoTJ and Shredding attacks. Shred is your main cat damage ability
and KoTJ offers a good bit of energy regen allowing you to do decent cat dps for playing in heroics or lower lvl raids. I use this as
an off tank build because it gives me added dps in cat at the cost of threat in bear (which I rarely have a problem with anyhow) so I
am not losing any survivability.
Glyphs:
There are really very few good Feral Tank glyphs available
Glyph of Maul: Your Maul ability now hits 1 additional target
A must have... Takes your highest threat ability and doubles the number of people it hits. A must for aoe threat, and a great glyph in
general
Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration: While Frenzied Regeneration is active, healing effects on you are 20% more powerful.
Gives you another dependable Cooldown to use when you are expecting heavy damage, be careful on the usage of this one as it can drain
your rage quickly if you aren’t main tanking big hits. (also works better proactively than reactively)
Glyph of Survival Instincts: Your Survival Instincts ability grants an additional 15% of your maximum health.
This is a very solid glyph as it buffs your go to, reactive oh !*@% button.
Glyph of Growling: Increases the chance for your Growl ability to work successfully by 8%.
Growl is actually considered a spell so it’s based on the spell miss chance.. this glyph will give your growl ability hit cap if
you are at the melee hit cap. Good for situations where missing a growl means wiping your raid. If you take this one, then drop the
Survival Instincts one for it.
Minor Glyphs:
There are two glyphs that directly help you while tanking.
Glyph of Challenging Roar: Reduces the cooldown of your Challenging Roar ability by 30 sec.
Best of what’s around for minor glyphs, brings the CD of Challenging roar from 3min to 2 and a half…
Glyph of Thorns: Increases the duration of your Thorns ability by 50 min when cast on yourself. This helps to guarantee you will have
thorns up the entire duration of a fight.
Part 4: Rotation, cooldowns, and threat generation
I am going to start this section with a brief description of each of our threat producing abilities that are worth noting.
Maul - A strong attack that increases melee damage by 578 and causes a high amount of threat. Effects which increase Bleed damage also
increase Maul damage.
That means that mangle increases its damage. You should have it glyphed and be specced for Rend and Tear. With a Mangle and a lacerate
on a target, Maul will be the highest threat ability you have. It’s also not associated with the GCD. It executes on the next
melee swing (replacing the “white” melee hit with a maul instead.) A best practice is to have it macroed to all your other
abilities so that it is constantly queued up and you produce maximum threat.
Mangle - Mangle the target for 115% normal damage plus 299 and causes the target to take 30% additional damage from bleed effects for
12 sec. Also affects Mauls damage. This ability should be used every cool down for max threat.
Faerie Fire (Feral) - Decrease the armor of the target by 5% for 5 min. While affected, the target cannot stealth or turn invisible.
Deals [AP * 0.15 + 1] damage and additional threat when used in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form. This ability deals almost the exact same
amount of threat as Mangle, and should be used every single cooldown as part of your normal rotation for proper threat.
Lacerate - Lacerates the enemy target, dealing 88 damage and making them bleed for 320 damage over 15 sec and causing a high amount of
threat. Damage increased by attack power. This effect stacks up to 5 times on the same target. Keep lacerate at 5 stacks and refresh
when it has less than 3 seconds left for max threat. With the talent rend and tear, it buffs Mauls damage and with Primal Gore talent
has a chance to crit and provide you with a Savage Defense proc.
Swipe - Swipe nearby enemies, inflicting 108 damage. Damage increased by attack power. Hello AoE threat. Macro Glyphed Maul to this
ability and mash as fast as you can on AoE pulls. You should tab target through the mobs to make sure they are all getting some love
from your maul as well. On single target you want to use swipe as filler when Lacerate is fully stacked, Mangle and FFF are both on CD.
Growl - Taunts the target to attack you, but has no effect if the target is already attacking you.
It functions just like the Warrior's Taunt, which operates in the following manner:
1: sets your current threat equal to the highest player on the mob's threat list.
2: forces it to attack you for 3 seconds
As Taunt, Growl can be resisted by the mob, and certain mobs are also immune.
Rotation and common Mistakes
AoE threat – The key to AoE threat generation for a feral tank is combined use of Swipe and glyphed Maul. I like to keep a little
ahead of my dps so I can get a couple strong swipes in before they start in. Best practices is to queue maul up and charge in, FFF
while charging and smack your target with Mangle on arrival. Then you can spam your swipe/maul macro and tab target your secondary
targets. It’s a very good practice to use raid icons so the dps can focus the target you have the most threat on.
Single Target threat – The key to strong single target threat is keeping FFF and Mangle on cd and make sure you are keeping a full
stack of Lacerate up and Maul queued up at all times. The only time Bears seem to have threat problems is in the first few seconds of a
pull. I overcome this by using FFF till the boss becomes attackable, then immediately smacking them with Mangle, after that I will lay
a single lacerate down and then berserk and mangle/maul macro till berserk is over giving me a good threat lead. After that I work on
stacking my lacerate to five always using mangle and fff as soon as they come off cool down. Once you have lacerate stacked to five you
only need to refresh it when there is about 3 seconds left and you will use swipe as filler. Maul should be qued up as close to 100% of
the time as possible.
Use of Cooldowns -
We have 3 major cooldowns. Barkskin, Survival Instincts, and Frenzied Regeneration
Barkskin - The druid's skin becomes as tough as bark. All damage taken is reduced by 20%. While protected, damaging attacks will not
cause spellcasting delays. This spell is usable while stunned, frozen, incapacitated, feared or asleep. Useable in all forms.
Barkskin is on a short CD, only 1 minute, and should be used anytime heavy damage is expected. Smart usage of this will greatly reduce
the strain on your healers. The glyph for it is useless in pve.
Survival Instincts - When activated, this ability temporarily grants you 30% of your maximum health for 20 sec while in Bear Form, Cat
Form, or Dire Bear Form. After the effect expires, the health is lost. When glyphed it will increase you health by an amazing 45%!!
This is the oh Sh-T button of choice. If you are about to die this is the one to hit, it can save you from immediate death. Longer
cooldown though (3 min) It also works very well with Frenzied Regen because that talent restores health based on max HP.
Frenzied Regeneration - Converts up to 10 rage per second into health for 10 sec. Each point of rage is converted into 0.3% of max
health. This is a very effective CD when Glyphed. The glyph is a near must have. The glyph causes all healing to be increased by 20%
while Frenzied Regen is active. Making it a great CD to live through very healing intensive moments.
As a general rule of thumb it's best to use your cooldowns separately rather than blowing them all at once. This gives you the most
time to live overall. But if you hit that moment of OMGHEMUSTDIENOWORIWILL ... Well, blow them all and become nearly invulnerable.
Part 5: Consumables, Gems, Enchants, and Profession Bonuses
Food Buffs
(Foods all conversions include the kings buff and have been rounded down)
Blackened Dragonfin – 40 Agility and 40 Stamina (654 HP, 0.99% dodge, 0.57% Crit and 95 armor)
Fish Feast -80 Attack Power, 46 Spell Power, and 40 Stamina. (654 HP and 80 attack power)
Rhinolicious Wormsteak – 40 Expertise Rating and 40 Stamina (654 HP and 1.22% expertise)
There are a ton of different buff foods available but these three are the only ones you should ever even look at as a bear. The
Blackend Dragonfin is by FAR the best bear food available. The only time you should substitute anything else is if you are being cheap
and can’t resist the free fish feast in front of you. The Rhinolicious Wormsteak is a better food than the Fish feast for us…
but honestly, if you are going to buy your own food, buy the Blackened Dragonfin.
Potions
Seeing as we have been blessed with the ability to use Potions while in bear form… This section will address what’s available
and what you get out of it. Remember you can only use 1 while in combat.
Runic Healing Potion – Restores 2700-4500 Health (the stereotypical Oh !%## potion)
Indestructible Potion – Increases armor by 3500 for 2min. (3500 armor roughly equal to 2.38% Damage reduction) (More on fun uses
for this in a moment)
Now the Indestructible potion is an interesting Potion… On one hand it’s a little mathier to figure out its benefits and two
you can sort of abuse the 1pot per combat rule. If you use one just before entering combat you can theoretically have 4minutes of
uptime on the armor bonus.
Math behind Indestructible Potion… Standard boss attack speed is 2.0. I have 56.427% Avoidance after DR. That means over 2 minutes
I am taking around 38 mitigated hits. The average melee hits for me in ToC 25 are around 20K (I have 66.58% damage reduction from
armor). That means, pre-mitigation, they are swinging for around 60k. So we take the 2.38% additional damage reduction times the 60k
unmitigated swing means we are shaving off roughly 1428 damage per swing over about 38 swings. Based on those numbers, I am saving
roughly 54,264 health from white melee hits alone. A fair bit more than the health from a runic healing potion. And if we are able to
get a full 4 minutes out of using two pots then that number doubles to 108,528 health saved. (plus the damage reduction from special
attacks that armor has an effect on)
There is an argument for saving your pot CD for a health pot in a bad situation. But the armor pots deliver a lot more mileage.
What to gem:
Agility, Stam, or combined! The decision on what to stack, stam, agility or balanced is determined by the content you are running. If
you are doing hard modes and deep progression it’s usually best to stack stamina.
Nightmare Tear: +10 to all stats - unique and prismatic. This is a great gem for us. Use it to grab a socket bonus you really don't
want to miss.
Delicate Cardinal Ruby: 20 Agility
Solid Majestic Zircon: 30 Stamina
Shifting Dreadstone: 10 Agility and 15 Stamina
Meta Gem: Austere Earthsiege Diamond: 32 Stamina and 2% increased armor value
What to Enchant:
This is assuming you don’t have any profession buffed chants.
Head: The tanking helm enchant from the Argent Crusade is the only choice.
Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector – 37 stamina and 20 defense.
Shoulders: The shoulder enchant comes from Sons of Hodir
Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle - 20 Dodge rating and 15 defense rating
There is also an alternate from Wintergrasp PvP zone
Greater Inscription of the Gladiator - 30 Stamina and 15 resilience
Chest: Powerful Stats - +10 to all stats is the best of what’s around
Belt: Add a buckle and drop any one of the gems we talked about into it
Legs: Frosthide Leg Armor – 55 Stamina and 22 agility is absolutely amazing for us
Boots: We actually have two good options. Either Greater Fortitude – 22 stamina… or Tuskarr’s Vitality which provides
minor run speed increase and 15 Stamina
Bracers: Major Stamina – 40 Stamina is the cat’s meow.
Gloves: Major Agility- 20 agility is the best option available on gloves
Cloak: Major Agility- worth an additional 22 agility
Weapon: This one has brought about some debate lately. Mongoose or Blood Draining.
Mongoose - On fights that I have a boss on me the entire fight I see about a 45% uptime on Mongoose.
120 Agility = 2.978% dodge, 1.71% Crit and 285 Armor
2% haste = 2% haste (threat, yummy maul)
Blood Draining - Permanently enchants your weapon to sometimes grant Blood Reserve when striking an enemy or inflicting damage with
bleed attacks. When you fall below 35% health, Blood Reserve restores 360 to 440 health per stack and can crit. Lasts 20 sec.
Blood Reserve Buff stacks up to 5 times with a 10sec ICD between each stack. Receiving the heal removes the buff (all stacks) but
doesn't affect the ICD for the buff.
Blooding Reserve has a 50% chance to apply 1 stack per attack. (Lacerate ticks count towards this)
Blood Reserve Heal:
One stack: 360 to 440 healing
Two Stacks: 720 to 880 healing
Three Stacks: 1080 to 1320 healing
Four Stacks: 1440 to 1760 healing
Five Stacks: 1800 to 2200 healing
Both enchants are worth looking at. I feel that Mongoose is the better enchant for most situations but I haven’t found any
accurate way to mathematically determine which is best. It would seem that the only time the Blood Draining out scales Mongoose (IMHO)
is for situational Hard Mode tanking. We have had some very good discussions about the two and either choice you make will benefit you.
Personally.... I roll with Mongoose.
Profession Bonuses
(all conversions include the kings buff, only take into account the gain from a non profession based bonus and have been rounded down)
Jewelcrafting – Very Flexible, Allows you to equip 3 Dragon’s eye gems that are much more powerful than standard epic gems.
(They are no longer prismatic)
3X Solid Dragon’s Eye - 63 stamina (1030 HP)
3x Delicate Dragon’s Eye – 42 Agility (1.04% dodge, 99.9 armor, and 0.599% crit)
Blacksmithing – Allows you to add two Blacksmith only sockets to your gear
2x Solid Majestic Zircon – 60 Stamina (981 HP)
2x Delicate Cardinal Ruby – 40 Agility (0.99% dodge, 95 armor, and 0.57% crit)
2x Shifting Dreadstone – 20 Agility and 30 Stamina (0.496% dodge, 47.5 Armor, 0.285% crit and 490 HP)
Leatherworking – You get a much improved Wrist enchant
Fur Lining – 102 Stamina. A 62 stamina increase over the standard tanking bracer enchant (1013 HP)
OR a resistance enchant worth 70 additional Resistance to a specific type of magic… could prove very useful in Icecrown.
But you also get a couple of other raid worthy perks from LW.
Drums of Forgotten Kings – 8% to all stats for the entire raid for when your pally is MIA (doesn't stack with kings)
Drums of the Wild – Useless to a druid LW because you will always have Gift of the Wild. (doesn't stack with Mark/Gift of the
wild)
Mining – Flat stamina bonus
Toughness – 60 stamina (981 HP)
Enchanting – Gives you the ability to enchant your rings
2x Enchant Ring – Stamina -60 Stamina (981 HP)
Inscription – Gives powerful shoulder enchants
Master’s Inscription of the Pinnacle – 60 Dodge rating and 15 defense rating
An improvement of 40 dodge rating over the Son’s of Hodir enchant (0.88% dodge)
Alchemy – Mixology - You receive an increased effect and duration when you drink any elixir or flask you are able to make.
Flask of stone blood – gives 650 more hp and lasts 2 hours instead of 1.
Tailoring – Special Tailoring only cloak enchants
Swordguard Embroidery - Embroiders a magical pattern into your cloak, causing your damaging melee and ranged attacks to sometimes
increase your attack power by 400 for 15 sec.
You have to give up 22 agility for this enchant… Terrible profession for us…
Herbalism – Lifeblood, self heal
Lifeblood – 3600 healing over 5 seconds. Scales slightly with Max health, and isn’t affected by the GCD… Good to macro
with Barkskin. Not worth a profession slot based on this bonus alone. (You may still want it for the ability to pick herbs.. but never
pick herbalism for this heal.)
Skinning – Critical strike rating increased
Master of Anatomy – Increases your Critical Strike Rating by 40 (0.88% crit)
Engineering – harder to explain
Flexweave Underlay – 23 agility and parachute to cloak… So 1 more agility and a parachute..
Reticulated Armor Webbing – 885 Armor at the cost of 20 Agility
Jeeves – Repairs for your raid!!
And many other weird and random gizmos and gadgets… some of which are near useless and some of which you just need to be creative
with to maximize.
Part 6: Macros
I mentioned Macros that add Maul to each of your abilities. Here are those macros. Use the ? icon and copy and paste, it will
automatically fill in the correct picture of the ability and show the cooldown like normal. I will also be adding more macros as I
think of them / as people remind me 
Mangle:
#showtooltip
/cast Mangle (bear)(rank 5)
/cast !Maul
Feral Faerie Fire:
#showtooltip
/cast Faerie Fire (feral)
/cast !Maul
Lacerate:
#showtooltip
/cast Lacerate
/cast !Maul
Swipe:
#showtooltip
/cast Swipe (bear)(Rank 8)
/cast !Maul
For marking your targets I suggest Keybind the raid target icons to your Numpad.. or you can use this
This next macro sets whomever you FFF to have the Skull Icon.
#showtooltip Faerie Fire
/cast Faerie Fire (Feral)
/script SetRaidTarget("target",8)
/startattack
For emergeny rage generation when you can't afford the cost of the debuff from enrage you can spam this: Press it twice and you will
get a quick 20 rage without the armor debuff
#showtooltip Enrage
/cancelaura enrage
/cast Enrage
Walk up to a vendor and open it up the click this next macro to sell every gray quality item in your bag... Nothing to do with
tanking.. but great for getting rid of a bunch of stuff when soloing as a bear!!
/script for bag = 0, 4 do for slot = 1, GetContainerNumSlots(bag) do local name = GetContainerItemLink(bag,slot) if name and
string.find(name,"ff9d9d9d") then DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Selling "..name) UseContainerItem(bag,slot) end end end
Ref:
»https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa···02&sid=1
[Druid] Some sample values of threat per 100 itemization points
A lot of folks have been asking about how to have awesome threat, and that their threat is kinda going through the tubes, and what they
can do to help it.
Well...here's the bad news. Threat for bears scales very poorly. That early threat bears get is primarily because of frontloaded
awesome threat from maul, lacerate and FFF. As we scale with gear...we will not see as high of gains, especially compared to some other
classes who don't have these things.
At the same time, there are things you can do. And if you don't read anything else into it, note this: the best threat stats to stack
are expertise (until the dodge cap), then hit, then expertise (until the parry cap), then haste.
I did a very basic sim to show this. The basic stats starting out are as follows:
10k AP
40% crit
60% armor on the target
0 haste, hit, or expertise to start (other than the 10 expertise skill we get from Primal Precision)
With this value and a rotation of mangle/lacerate/swipe/FFF (a very boring one), we have a threat value of 4473.88 TPS. Yes, this isn't
an optimal rotation, and it's assuming no MSS or improved mangle as well.
Here's how adding 100 of any given rating (except AP, since that's 2 AP points for every one rating point) increases that base TPS:
100 expertise (below cap): 296.26
100 hit: +164.32 TPS
100 expertise (after cap): 147.3
100 haste: 68.12
100 armor pen: 60.8
200 AP: 57.5
100 crit: 52.12
Hit and expertise are insanely good here. But what about more realistic numbers? Let's say you're 100 points from the cap on hit and
parry-expertise - how do the values fall in then? This means you have 163 hit and 279 expertise rating; in this case, your base TPS is
5418.8.
100 hit: +162.5 TPS
100 expertise (after cap): 147.5
100 haste: 84.5
200 AP: 67.5
100 armor pen: 66.7
100 crit: 63.5
Even here, expertise and hit are far, far better as threat stats. Up until the cap, of course. Then you're hosed.
Now, this definitely doesn't do a good job of modeling armor pen, and I didn't want to go into the insanity of that; it's quite
complex. It does do a decent job of it given that in general, bears aren't going to have a ton of armor pen. But really - the most
important thing here is that hit and expertise are the only stats that scale with the threat multiplier on bear attacks. That's the
key; AP, crit, armor pen, agility - all do not scale.
Haste is an exception, in that it scales with the amount of mauls and thus kind of scales with that threat multiplier. But only barely.
Otherwise no dice.
So if you're having threat problems? Make sure your expertise is above 26 expertise skill. Make sure your hit is reasonable. Then go
for more hit and expertise and have fun.
Ref:
»wowthinktank.blogspot.com/2009/0···per.html
[Druid] So...how good is Glyph of Indomitability?
Reader and blogger Darksend (of I'm not feral I'm a bear and various Tankspot videos) had a question for me:
now one thing that we have discussed in the past is that the rings, trinkets, and necks on that list are using the armor value of armor
that gets modified by bear form etc. How good really is that trinket. I want to try switching but I really just cannot bring myself to
do it. hell I vendored defenders code the day the armor nerf went live. I still am one of the largest armor whores I know, hell up
until a month ago i still used origin of nightmares but with dps in full 25 man hard mode dps gear I just could not put off anymore i
needed the extra threat armor be damned. But even still 162 stam for 1800 unmodified armor... I really don't know.
The list he's referring to is the bear itemization weighings at wowhead, which does use the value of armor for both leather and
nonleather. For the most part it ends up working well anyway, mostly because items with armor have a lot of it, and items without it
don't (and the stats they do have in place of it aren't that valuable). Which, if you looked at the bear gear guide for ToC...doesn't
actually use that weighing. It uses Rawr's. But it doesn't really matter, because all that matters is this:
How good is armor?
Armor's a lot tougher to evaluate than stamina is. Stamina never changes, so we know exactly how much we're getting. For each point of
stamina on gear, bears get about 15 health after all raid buffs are factored in. But armor? Armor depends on the level of the attacker,
how much you have beforehand, how much you're going to have, how hard the attack is...it's really nebulous.
And most people don't work well with nebulous.
Okay, I'm here today to tell you: armor is AWESOME. Armor is the only stat that improves both effective health (how much total damage
you can take) and mitigation (how much damage you take per hit). Armor does have its flaws though, and I'll show you some of them. I
can do some graphs and show you how its diminishing returns don't matter since the time to live for armor is a linear function, but
that doesn't tell you anything.
So instead, I'll point out to you how much damage you can take and how much armor helps in each specific case. I'll be comparing two
trinkets: Glyph of Indomitability and Juggernaut's Vitality. (The awesome version, in case you were wondering).
Glyph is essentially Defender's Code's bigger brother. On a side note, I want you to think about how insane Glyph would have been if
the armor change hadn't happened early on. That's right - over 8000 armor from it alone. Yeesh. It gives 1792 armor that isn't
multiplied by anything other than the metagem.
Juggernaut's Vitality is 216 stamina, which translates to the absurd 3200 health. Yep, all by itself.
3200 health is a lot. So is 1792 armor. Which is better?
Ultimately you have to think about it. Having tools handy is good, but there's no one set that will be optimal for all situations. When
you've got a nail, use a hammer. When you've got a screw, use a screwdriver.
Okay, case study one: Algalon-25. Algalon isn't the best fight for a bear relative to almost any other class, since he attacks so
often. With higher avoidance DKs can get more reasonable streaks. With block, paladins and warriors can mitigate more damage. But you
still may be called to do this fight, so let's see how you can do. We're going to start with the base armor of 32000 - a nice, round
number after buffs and whatnot. Algalon can do a 35,000 damage quantum strike, a 10,000 phase punch (not apparently physical), and more
importantly can do a 60,000 main hand and a 35,000 offhand hit.
Those main hand and offhand? Can happen in a second. In the same second.
How does armor help with them?
In the 32,000 armor case, here's what it does. I'm assuming full raid buffs on the bear, meaning PotP is up, inspiration is up and
grace is up. The total mitigation would be .741 in this case, meaning you only take 25.9% of all damage. (1*armor mod*potp mod*grace
mod * inspiration mod)
MH: 15561 damage average
OH: 9077 damage average
Quantum: 9077 damage average
With Glyph:
MH: 15004 damage
OH: 8752
Quantum: 8752
Difference:
MH: 556
OH: 324
Quantum:324
Assuming you get hit by both a MH and OH, you will have stopped 880 extra damage using glyph over juggernaut. However - and here's the
important thing - in order for this to make you actually live when you wouldn't have, you would need to take 4 MH+OH in a row to
mitigate the same amount of damage that Juggernaut can stop.
Also reasonably, you need to survive MH+OH twice, which is just below 50k health. Any more than that and it's nice but not essential.
Any less and you're playing with fire. With the glyph though, that maximum only is 47.5k.
That doesn't take into account another factor: endurance. The theory of effective health assumes infinite mana and assumes healers will
always heal you to full, but the problem is that...it's not true. Tank death often happens because a tank hasn't been topped off and is
sitting at a low state until the tank gets lucky with avoidance or a healer blows a big heal. In those situations, armor is far more
useful than stamina; it means you don't get in those situations as often (because you've taken less damage) and you don't need as much
health to survive (because you'll mitigate it).
Which do you think is better for Algalon? I used Defender's code for a while along with elixirs of armor and pots of indestructibility.
And it was okay, and worked better for me than the pure stamina situation. In the stamina situation I survived at 2k once, but I also
died more often due to the healers simply getting unlucky and not being able to catch up. Armor helped a lot more in that regard. It
turned out, sadly, that avoidance trumped both of these considerations, and bears just don't have the avoidance that other tanks do.
How about something a bit more up a bear's alley: Heroic Beasts. Or more importantly, Gormok. Gormok, as the fight continues, hits for
absurd amounts of damage. Really absurd. The normal attack can be as high as 100,000 damage, and impales can be as high as 120,000.
Then there's the bleed stacks the impales put up and the stomp, which is another 40k hit. How does armor deal with this:
32k armor:
25935 normal, 31122 impale, 10374 stomp
Glyph armor:
25007 normal, 30009 impale, 10003 stomp
Differences: 927 normal, 1113 impale, 371 stomp
Those are kinda huge.
And yet they still might not make up for the worst case scenario - where a normal hit + an impale at the highest amount of damage is
just too much to take - and that worst case is an impale + a normal attack within a second. In that case, you need to have 57k health
to survive the worst situation and 55k health to survive with a glyph. Even if you're well-geared, those are hard to meet; the best bet
there is another cooldown use and prayer.
Again - armor here helps tremendously with healers being able to catch up. Over time you'll take significantly less overall damage and
if you're down, are more likely to survive. But that worst case scenario is likely better dealt with via stamina, especially given the
amount of bleed damage you'll be taking. My personal strategy was to go with Defender's Code and Heart of Iron, so that I could use
both trinkets for another mini-cooldown early on to help out. There was at least one wipe that was caused by me taking just over enough
damage to die this way, though, so I'll be going to double stamina trinkets - especially since I just got the awesome version of
Juggernaut's vitality.
So in two cases where there is heavy physical damage, stamina still is competitive and/or wins out and the Glyph doesn't. Why do I have
it ranked so highly?
Well, part of it is Rawr's ranking system. Rawr ranks based on average damage taken and survivability/time to live, and honestly it's
somewhat flawed for these kinds of fights. You don't often care about average time to live; you're not sitting there for multiple
seconds while your healers get their thumbs out of their asses and remember that you're tanking. It's more often the case that you care
about the worst case scenario in a short period of time and whether you can survive it at all. That's not average damage, that's burst
damage. Fortunately, Rawr is coming up with a solution to that.
Rawr likes Glyph (and DM:G) because they average to less damage and gives avoidance which will over time reduce average damage. That
might not be that useful to you, depending.
That isn't to say avoidance doesn't have its place; like I said above, avoidance was much better overall for our attempts at Algalon
due to his speed of attacking; it meant our healers weren't put into horrible positions and if a healer had to move because of smash,
it wouldn't be the end. But it does mean that it also isn't useful everywhere.
So...okay, you say. Armor isn't the best thing ever, and you get that - but is there ever a time where it is awesome and way more
awesome than health?
Yep. Heroic Anub'arak. On this, health is a detriment as it heals the boss while doing more damage to you as a percentage. That
Juggernaut's Vitality heals Anub'arak by itself for 600 health every second, while dealing you 600 damage a second (before resists, of
course). Meanwhile he hits like a truck, and he can hit you with a stun and then normal attacks that hit even harder. The only thing
you can do here is use armor. Armor does not improve leeching, it does work when stunned, and does not rely on any RNG components. In
this situation, Glyph is absolutely the best trinket you can get; reducing (on average) 800-900 damage a hit is much better than having
a 3k buffer that also heals the boss for 600 and does you 600 more damage.
So it's really, really awesome there. But I don't know if it's worth spending 50 emblems on it over a T9 piece.
The really long and short of it is this: get health when you need to make sure you can survive the absolute worst case situation, as
health scales far more quickly for a druid than armor does any more. If you know you can survive the worst case situation reasonably,
health is much less useful and you should either go for more avoidance (which will help overall damage intake on average) or more armor
(which will also help damage intake, but more reliably) depending on what the encounter is like. Finally, stamina does something that
armor and avoidance do not: it helps with magical soaking. If the fight has a lot of magic damage (twin valks, Jaraxxus, Mimiron)
stamina is going to be better than armor.
Again, ultimately you have to think about it. Having tools handy is good, but there's no one set that will be optimal for all
situations. When you've got a nail, use a hammer. When you've got a screw, use a screwdriver.
Ref:
»wowthinktank.blogspot.com/2009/0···-of.html | |
xcal78
join:2009-02-27
Waltham, MA
·RCN CABLE
| reply to xcal78
[Druid] Bear's 3.2/Coliseum loot ranking (UPDATED 10/5)
UPDATED: this is the list from wowhead. The primary change I made to this ranking is that I increased the value of expertise relative
to everything else by about 25%. This is based on the scarcity of expertise and the importance of good threat in a few of the fights.
This includes all PvP gear and gear from Onyxia and uses the ranking system from Wowhead, so the numbers are very different. Still, the
order is basically the same.
Note that only the heroic 25-man drops the Regalia of the Grand Vanquisher token, and they drop only from the tribute chest at the end.
No tribute chest? No 258-level tier tokens. Thus I did not list where these drop.
On tier items: because the tier piece bonuses for bears are so lackluster (the 2 piece is only threat-related, and the 4-piece is
equivalent to the 4pT7), I've not included any special tier bonus here. Feel free to have 3 pieces of tier gear planned + legs and
chest off-tier. Definitely don't waste your precious emblems on getting early pieces of tier gear. The bonus (at least for bears) just
isn't worth it. Cats are a different matter entirely, and I'll be getting to that later this week.
In the meantime - rankings!
Back:
1. Vereesa's Dexterity/Sylvanas' Cunning - from Tribute (25) chest. 60?
2. Magni's Resolution/Cairne's Endurance - from Tribute (25) chest. 58?
3. Pride of the Eredar/Pride of the Demon Lord - heroic(25) Jaraxxus. 56.85
4. Cloak of the Silver Covenant/Cloak of Serrated Blades - Tribute (10) chest. 53.88
5. Drape of the untamed Predator/Cloak of the untamed predator - heroic(25) Icehowl. 53.88
6. Cloak of the Unmoving Guardian/Cloak of the Unflinching Guardian - Tribute (10) chest. 52.18
7. Pride of the Eredar/Pride of the Demon Lord - normal (25) Jaraxxus. 48.85
8. Cloak of the Shadowed Sun - 25-man Maexxna (among others). 45.19
9. Drape of Icy Intent - 25-man Hodir (hard) - 45.57
10. Titanskin Cloak - 25-man Mimiron (hard) - 45.49
11. Drape of the Faceless General - 25-man General Vezax (hard). 44.37.
12. Drape of the Untamed Predator/Cloak of the Untamed Predator - normal (25) Jaraxxus. 44.18
13. Platinum Mesh Cloak - Dalaran Vendors. 36.36
UPDATED: while most of the rankings stayed about the same, some of the lower ones moved around due to my valuing armor more than Rawr
does. Also, wowhead still has not seen much from the Insanity tribute, so the highest of high end cloaks does not show up here.
Needless to say if those drop, you should try and get them. 
Because there are so many rewards from the tribute chest, and all of them are great, you get a lot of theoretical options - but really,
you have the Jaraxxus cloak at 25 man normal, an upgrade to that later, and then potentially a couple upgrades if you manage to not
wipe a single time in heroic. The upgrades in general are fairly low here; I wouldn't worry about it too much, as it's likely any
upgrade at the very top will be bigger for another player.
Chest:
1. Cuirass of Calamitous Fate/Vest of Calamitous Fate - Heroic (25) Jaraxxus. 112.61
2. Malfurion's Rainments of Triumph/Runetotem's Rainments of Triumph - Regalia of the Grand Vanquisher (heroic 25). 106.85
3. Relentless Gladiator's Dragonhide Robes - arena rating, points, Koralon. 103.49
4. Knightbane Carapace - BoE Leatherworking via Crusader Orbs. 100.2
5. Embrace of the Gladiator - 25-man Thorim (hard). 98.54
6. Armor of Shifting Shadows/Vest of Shifting Shadows - heroic (10) Valkyr. 97.45
7. Malfurion's Rainments of Triumph/Runetotem's Rainments of Triumph - 75 emblems of triumph + 1 trophy of the crusade. 97.2
8. Cuirass of Calamitous Fate/Vest of Calamitous Fate - normal (25) Jaraxxus. 97.14
9. Malfurion's Rainments of Conquest/Runetotem's Rainments of Conquest - 50 emblems of triumph. 88.19
10. Armor of Shifting Shadows/Vest of Shifting Shadows - normal (10) Valkyr. 87.70
11. Conqueror's Nightsong Rainments - 58 emblems of Conquest. 86.83
UPDATED: about the only thing different (aside from the pvp ranking) is the ranking of Embrace of the Gladiator, which became slightly
better than all the normal-25 mode and hard-10 gear.
The chest slot is interesting in that it breaks the pattern of other gears - unlike every other slot, a normal item is worse than the
tier, but better than the tier at heroic level. This is entirely due to the extra socket on heroic, something the tier piece doesn't
have. As you'll see, more sockets almost entirely determines higher quality. I would definitely not spend your 258-level token on the
chest first, either; there's a craftable that's quite good, a drop in normal that's very close to as good, and it's not even best in
slot. Also make sure you don't get the 232-level chest; it's about as good as the T8.5 chest. Also if you have Embrace of the Gladiator
don't bother upgrading until heroic versions either.
Feet:
1. Icewalker Treads/Treads of the Icewalker - Heroic (25) Faction Champions. 79.39
2. Acidmaw Boots/Acidmaw Treads - Heroic (10) Beasts. 74.03
3. Relentless Gladiator's Boots of Triumph - arena rating, Koralon. 70.47
4. Icewalker Treads/Treads of the Icewalker - Normal(25) Faction Champions. 68.48
5. Runed Ironhide Boots - 25-man Iron Council (normal). 63.47
6. Acidmaw Boots/Acidmaw Treads - Normal (10) Beasts. 63.40
7. Footpads of Silence - BoE craftable from Runed Orbs. 61.41
UPDATED: PvP boots move up a slot, but not a lot else changes.
This will be part of a pattern for most leather items; there simply aren't that many drops from Coliseum, and the general rule of thumb
is 25 heroic > 10 heroic > 25 normal >= Ulduar hard > 10 normal >= Ulduar normal. The icewalker treads are a great piece to double up
on for cat and bear as the multiple sockets, high armor pen and good hit make it very usable for both specs.
Finger:
1. Band of the Twin Val'kyr/Loop of the Twin Val'kyr - Heroic(10) Valkyr. 61.80
2. Signified Ring of Binding - 25-man Onyxia. 57.43
3. Clutch of Fortification - 35 emblems of triumph. 56.63.
4. Runed Ring of Binding - 10-man Onyxia. 50.41
5. Band of the Twin Val'kyr/Loop of the Twin Val'kyr - Normal(10) Valkyr. 49.59
6. Band of Callous Aggression/Ring of Callous Aggression - Heroic (25) Faction Champions. 48.20
7. The Leviathan's Coil - 25-man Flame Leviathan (easy). 46.3
8. Band of the Traitor King/Signet of the Traitor King - Heroic (25) Anub'arak. 46.23
9. Fate's Clutch - 25-man Thorim (hard). 43.51
10. Planestalker Signet/Planestalker Band - Heroic (10) Jaraxxus. 42.80
11. Signet of Winter - 10-man Hodir (easy). 42.16
12. Keystone Great-Ring - heroic Drak'tharon Keep. 41.14
13. Gatekeeper - 25-man Sapphiron. 40.97
14.
15. Band of the Traitor King/Signet of the Traitor King - Normal(25) Anub'arak. 38.47
16. Planestalker Signet/Planestalker Band - Normal(10) Jaraxxus. 38.28
17. Dexterous Brightstone Ring - 35 emblems of Triumph. 37.98
18. Mark of the Relentless - Heroic Trial of the Champion (first boss). 33.59
UPDATED: Not surprising, but the rings from Onyxia are very strong - with the high stamina and highest armor, they get a huge ranking.
They're especially good for Anub'arak with the resistance, so definitely prioritize running Ony if you can. Also with this ranking Mark
of the Relentless drops and Keystone Great-Ring rises up.
Yep, the best ring for bears comes from the 10-man hard mode, and the second best comes from badges. This is due to all that parry
rating on the Anubarak ring. If I hadn't mentioned that Clutch of Fortification should be an early priority, I'll mention it again; you
won't replace this until Icecrown. The Mark of the Relentless is about as good as Keystone Great-Ring, but is a good swap-out if you
need the stam.
Hands:
1. Malfurion's Handgrips of Triumph/Runetotem's Handgrips of Triumph - Regalia of the Grand Vanquisher (heroic 25). 75.37
2. Relentless Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves - arena rating, points, Koralon. 72.73
3. Malfurion's Handgrips of Triumph/Runetotem's Handgrips of Triumph - 45 emblems of triumph + 1 trophy of the crusade (normal 25,
heroic 25, heroic 10). 68.13
4. Gloves of the Silver Assassin/Sunreaver Assassin's Gloves - Heroic (10) Faction Champions. 66.05
5. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves - honor and arena points, 50 emblems of triumph. 62.69.
6. Conqueror's Nightsong Handgrips - 25-man Mimiron (easy). 61.90
7. Malfurion's Handgrips of conquest/Runetotem's Handgrips of Conquest - 30 emblems of triumph. 61.50
8. Gloves of the Endless Dark - 10-man Algalon. 60.46
9. Valorous Nightsong Handgrips - 10-man Freya (easy). 58.57
10. Gloves of the Silver Assassin/Sunreaver Assassin's Gloves - Normal(10) Faction Champions. 57.25
11. Gloves of the Blind Stalker - 28 emblems of conquest. 55.14
UPDATED: The biggest change here is the addition of the PvP gloves, right where you'd expect them. The furious gloves are actually
pretty strong here, and could be a good choice for triumph emblems if you've gotten unlucky (50 emblems).
There are other options of course, but these are the more popular ones heading in that I figure people will have. And really...there
aren't many choices. Despite it being the gloves this may be one of the better slots to upgrade with a Regalia token simply because
there were no hard mode Ulduar pieces to upgrade from and the prior tier pieces were likely ignored in favor of others.
Head:
1. Malfurion's Headguard of Triumph/Runetotem's Headguard of Triumph - Regalia of the Grand Vanquisher (heroic 25). 106.53
2. Relentless Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm - arena rating, points. 100.04
3. Malfurion's Headguard of Triumph/Runetotem's Headguard of Triumph - 75 emblems of triumph + 1 trophy of the crusade (normal 25,
heroic 10). 96.66
4. Stormrage Coverlet - 25-man Onyxia. 94.12
5. Hood of Lethal Intent/Mask of Lethal Intent - 75 emblems of triumph. 93.14
6. Malfurion's Headguard of Conquest/Runetotem's Headguard of Conquest -50 emblems of triumph. 87.49
7. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm - honor and arena points, 75 emblems of triumph. 86.98
8. Stormrage Helm - 10-man Onyxia. 86.72
9. Garona's Guise - 25-man Yogg (easy). 82.88
10. Conqueror's Nightsong Headguard - 58 emblems of Conquest. 79.71
UPDATED: The Ony helms come in below the Tier pieces largely because of the expertise on the tier piece. The PvP piece comes in again,
right where you'd expect it to. Not a lot of changes here.
As pointed out by several commenters, this tier piece is one of the few leather pieces out there with any expertise. As such, it should
probably be an early grab if possible. It's also one of the higher differences between itself and prior tiers/other pieces. Other than
that, not a lot of specialness here.
Legs:
1. Leggings of the Broken Beast/Legwraps of the Broken Beast - heroic (25) Beasts. 110.42
2. Malfurion's Legguards of Triumph/Runetotem's Legguards of Triumph - Regalia of the Grand Vanquisher (heroic 25). 105.35
3. Relentless Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards - arena rating/points, Koralon. 102.21
4. Malfurion's Legguards of Triumph/Runetotem's Legguards of Triumph - 75 emblems of triumph + 1 trophy of the crusade (normal 25,
heroic 10). 95.79
5. Leggings of the Broken Beast/Legwraps of the Broken Beast - normal(25) Beasts. 94.75
6. Legguards of Cunning Deception - 25-man Yogg (hard). 94.72
7. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards - arena points/honor, Emalon, 75 emblems of triumph. 89.06.
8. Titan-Forged Leather Legguards of Triumph - 40 wintergrasp marks of honor. 88.96
9. Conqueror's Nightsong Legguards - 25-man Freya (easy). 88.05
10. Malfurion's Legguards of Conquest/Runetotem's Legguards of Conquest - 50 emblems of triumph. 86.88
11. Leggings of Wavering Shadow - 39 emblems of conquest. 83.76
UPDATED: the PvP gear, as almost always, falls in squarely between the hard 25 and normal 25 content. The only real change is a slight
swap between the 245 tier piece and the legwraps of the broken beast.
Because of the third socket the northrend beasts win the heroic battle, and because of haste vs. crit they win the normal battle
(barely). Not a lot to say here; the leg slot is also kinda boring given there aren't many options, and the tradeoff is basically
whether you want haste or crit.
Neck:
1. Legionnaire's Gorget/Arbiter's Muse - heroic (25) Valkyr. 66.21
2. Legionnaire's Gorget/Arbiter's Muse - normal (25) Valkyr. 56.18
3. Fortitude of the Infernal/Endurance of the Infernal - heroic (10) Jaraxxus. 49.36
4. Charge of the Demon Lord/Charge of the Eredar - heroic (25) Jaraxxus. 47.86
5. Eskhandar's Links - 25-man Onyxia. 43.47
6. Mark of the Unyielding - 10-man Kologarn. 43.29
7. Collar of Unending Torment/Collar of Ceaseless Torment - heroic (10) Beasts. 41.25
8. Pendulum of Infinity - 25-man General Vezax (hard). 41.13
9. Boundless Ambition - 25-man Kel'Thuzad. 39.66
10. Bronze Pendant of the Vanir - 25-man Freya (hard). 38.44
11. Fortitude of the Infernal/Endurance of the Infernal - normal (10) Jaraxxus. 39.02
12. Charge of the Demon Lord/Charge of the Eredar - normal(25) Jaraxxus. 38.75
13. Eskhandar's Choker - 10-man Onyxia. 38.55
14. Shard of the Crystal Forest - 19 emblems of Conquest. 35.21
UPDATED: The Onyxia necks by comparison are not nearly as strong as the rings, but they're still very solid pieces. Some small movement
of older pieces due to the armor on them, but nothing too surprising. The neck is still characterized by Gorget/Muse.
If you've been following my gearing advice, you'll know that I advocate picking up jewelry as early as possible (and tier pieces as
late as possible) - and this is by far the best piece of jewelry to pick up. The gorget/muse is a stellar itemized piece, and there's
simply nothing really good about anything else.
Shoulder:
1. Malfurion's Shoulderpads of Triumph/Runetotem's Shoulderpads of Triumph - Regalia of the Grand Vanquisher (heroic 25). 76.77
2. Shoulderpads of the Intruder - 25-man Iron Council (hard). 76.29
3. Relentless Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders - arena points/rating. 75.23
4. Spaulders of the Snow Bandit/Shoulderpads of the Snow Bandit - heroic(10) Anub'arak . 71.49
5. Malfurion's Shoulderpads of Triumph/Runetotem's Shoulderpads of Triumph - 45 emblems of triumph + 1 trophy of the crusade.
69.56
6. Duskstalker Pauldrons/Duskstalker Shoulderpads - 45 emblems of Triumph. 69.38
7. Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders - arena points/honor, 50 emblems of triumph. 65.22
8. Malfurion's Shoulderpads of Conquest/Runetotem's Shoulderpads of Conquest - 30 emblems of triumph. 62.93
9. Conqueror's Nightsong Shoulderpads - 25-man Yogg (easy). 61.07
10. Spaulders of the Snow Bandit/Shoulderpads of the Snow Bandit - normal(10) Anub'arak . 60.79
11. Valorous Dreamwalker Shoulderpads - 60 emblems of Valor. 59.22
12. Valorous Nightsong Shoulderpads - 10-man Thorim (easy). 58.25
UPDATED: not a change to be seen in terms of the rankings, and still the second-best shoulders are off of Iron Council hard mode. These
have only increased in value as they also have expertise on them; between that, the high stamina and the amount of sockets it's really
hard to go wrong.
Yep, that's still right -the second best shoulders are off of Iron Council. And for a similar reason, the third best are off of hard
mode Anub'arak. It's all about the sockets. Nothing really stands out here for me, and the upgrades aren't large.
Trinket:
1. The Black Heart - the Black Night (normal 5-man). 15.4
2. Glyph of Indominability - 50 emblems of triumph. 14.8
3. Satrina's Impending Scarab/Juggernaut's Vitality - heroic (25) Faction Champions. 14.5
4. Satrina's Impending Scarab/Juggernaut's Vitality - normal(25) Faction Champions. 12.9
5. Darkmoon Card:Greatness - BoE inscription. 11.9
6. Heart of Iron - 25-man Ignis. 9.7
7. Royal Seal of King Llane - 10-man Yogg (easy). 9.3
8. Defender's Code - 25-man Naxxramas. 8.0
9. Figurine - Monarch Crab - BoP Jewelcrafting. 7.5
10. Essence of Gossamer - heroic Azjol-Nerub. 6.7
11. Eitrigg's Oath/Fervor of the Frostborn - heroic (10) Faction Champions. 5.5
12. Eitrigg's Oath/Fervor of the Frostborn - normal(10) Faction Champions. 5.5
UPDATED: no changes here, as I used rawr before for the rankings and use it now. If anything, I'd rate Glyph even more highly than
before.
As always, take trinket ratings with a grain of salt; trinkets should be swapped out regularly depending on what you're facing and how.
Ideally you'll have all of these. Still, the Black Heart should be on every tank's wish list; it's a stellar item that will reduce
incoming damage nicely. Glyph of Indominability is basically an upgraded Defender's Code and should be bought eventually. Eitrigg's
Oath looks okay, but I think it's not going to end up being as good as Black Heart.
Waist:
1. Belt of the Merciless Killer/Belt of the Pitiless Killer - heroic (25) Valkyr. 78.03
2. Relentless Gladiator's Belt of Triumph - arena rating, Koralon. 69.02
3. Belt of the Merciless Killer/Belt of the Pitiless Killer - normal (25) Valkyr. 67.04
4. Soul-Devouring Cinch - 10-man Yogg (hard). 64.23
5. Death-Warmed Belt - BoE leatherworking from Runed Orbs. 60.68
6. Furious Gladiator's Belt of Triumph - honor, emalon. 59.92.
7. Waistguard of the Creator - 25-man Mimiron (easy). 58.79
8. Belt of the Twilight Assassin - 28 emblems of conquest. 58.01.
9. Titan-forged Belt of Triumph - wintergrasp emblems. 53.84.
UPDATED: a bit of movement here; the pvp gear goes up a bit, the soul-devouring cinch from yogg-10 hard mode increases in value because
of the expertise, but otherwise things stay mostly the same in terms of relative value.
It's a huge wasteland here, really. One thing you should take from this is that if you can at all hold off on getting the Twilight
Assassin belt, you should - save your conquest badges or spend your money on the Death-Warmed belt instead. And once again, sockets
rule the day for the hard mode item.
Wrist:
1. Armbands of Dark Determination/Bracers of Dark Determination - heroic(25) Anub'arak. 61.61
2. Bracers of Swift Death - Leatherworking BoE via Crusader Orbs. 51.81
3. Solar Bindings - 25-man Algalon. 48.78
4. Relentless Gladiator's Armwraps of Triumph - arena rating, Koralon. 48.44
5. Armbands of Dark Determination/Bracers of Dark Determination - normal(25) Anub'arak. 47.75
6. Fluxing Energy Coils - 10-man XT (hard). 44.23
7. Furious Gladiator's Armwraps of Triumph - honor, emalon. 41.59
8. Titan-Forged Armwraps of Triumph - 15 wintergrasp marks of honor. 40.71
9. Mechanist's Bindings - 25-man Flame Leviathan (easy). 40.57
10. Armbands of the Wary Lookout - heroic Eadric in Trial of Champion. 35.21
11. Wristwraps of the Cutthroat - 60 emblems of valor. 31.61
UPDATED: I hadn't realized quite how much of an upgrade the heroic piece from Anub'arak is; it's huge. The Bracers of Swift Death are
great too, but
This is probably a good choice to spend crusader orbs on; wrists are often hard to come by, and they're not that much worse than the
best in slot overall. Still, there's lots of other things to get first and the upgrade compared to much of the Ulduar gear isn't that
high, though they're excellent for cats when the time comes. I totally spaced on the Titan-Forged gear. It's a good substituted if you
don't have much better.
Weapons:
1. Relentless Gladiator's Greatstaff - arena rating/points. 147.46
2. Archon Glaive/Hellion Glaive - heroic (25) Anub'arak. 134.77
3. Lupine Longstaff/Twin's Pact - heroic (25) Valkyr. 134.11
4. Relentless Gladiator's Staff - arena rating/points. 131.69
5. Furious Gladiator's Greatstaff - arena rating/points (old). 124.53
6. Fordragon Blades/Anguish - heroic (10) tribute chest. 122.93
7. Attrition/Paragon's Breadth - heroic (10) tribute chest. 119.07
8. Lupine Longstaff/Twin's Pact - normal(25) Valkyr. 118.05
9. Furious Gladiator's Staff - arena rating/points (old). 117.44
10. Dark Edge of Depravity - 25-man Yogg(hard). 117.22
11. Archon Glaive/Hellion Glaive - normal (25) Anub'arak. 116.55
12. Origin of Nightmares - 25-man Naxxramas. 115.54
13. Reinforced Thunderstrike - 25-man Onyxia. 112.81
14. Dreambinder - 25-man Freya (hard). 110.02
15. Catastrophe/Grievance - heroic (25) tribute chest. 108.43
16. Tortured Earth - 10-man Vezax (hard). 107.16
17. Fordragon Blades/Anguish - normal(10) Anub'arak. 104.30
18. Twisted Visage - 25-man XT(normal). 101.54
19. Silvery Sylvan Stave/Staff of Feral Furies - 50 champion's seals. 99.90
20. Reclaimed Thunderstrike - 10-man Onyxia. 99.14
21. Lotrafen, Spear of the Damned - 25-man Vezax (easy). 96.83
22. Marrowstrike - Heroic Paletress in Trial of Champion. 93.19
23. Hammer of Crushing Whispers - 10-man Yogg (hard). 85.48
UPDATED: this changed a lot with using Wowhead. And pointed out that I seriously need to rethink the ranking. For instance, Reinforced
Thunderstrike has good damage, high stamina and expertise, yet is ranked fairly low compared to other weapons. Origin of Nightmares is
ranked way too high even with all that armor; it just can't do the damage other weapons can, and that's too important right now. I'll
revisit this when I have time and redo the rankings so they make a bit more sense.
This will change with more info on the PvP gears, obviously; the top end staff has something like 230 stamina + two sockets. The
top-end weapons are ridiculously close, and either would be good; get the Archon/Hellion if you favor more stam, get the Twin/Lupine if
you favor more threat. Do try and leave catastrohpe/grievance to the warriors/DKs/paladins in your guild; while it's good, it's much
better for them.
Ref:
»wowthinktank.blogspot.com/2009/0···ng.html" | |
xcal78
join:2009-02-27
Waltham, MA | reply to xcal78
None of the above is mine. I just think it's very good for information reguarding bear tanking as it pertains to today's bear tanks. That covers threat by stats, glyphs, talents but not that well, armor vs. sta, gear rankings, and more. | |
xcal78
join:2009-02-27
Waltham, MA
·RCN CABLE
1 edit | reply to xcal78
Here's something that's been requested as well.
"The odds of a coin landing on heads is 1 outcome out of 2 possibilities, or 50%.
For two coins landing on heads, you multiply the chances - 1 out of 4 possible outcomes. 1/2 x 1/2 or 1/4, 25%.
For three coins landing heads, add in another 50/50 chance - 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2, or 1/8. 1 outcome out of 8 possible outcomes. 12.5% chance."
The answer to can you reliably proc Savage Defense in 5 seconds for a Nova type ability.
1.5 GCD you can get 3 mangle/swipe/maul's in before a nova goes off. With that said the odds of failing to get a crit at 12.5%. Take note your crits never pass the 50/50 aka 50% mark on any single try so 3 tries is still 50% but the statistics involved in 3 consecutive tries failing are 12.5%. Basically your 50% crit ratio becomes 87.5% accumulative over 3 attacks on a single target.
Here's all the possible outcomes where S = Success aka Crit and F = Failure.
S/S/F - S
S/F/S - S
S/F/F - S
S/S/S - S
F/F/S - S
F/S/F - S
F/S/S - S
F/F/F - F
If you have haste that reduces your GCD and/or more then 50% crit it's possible to further increase your proc changes. Feel free to hit up the heroic dummy in town to test out the odds yourself. The same thing casino's run on to win on a daily basis works here for bear's to proc SD.
Let's randomly generate some number to see how it working in the real world shall we?
"Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers:
97 16 5
79 87 66
50 65 90
16 37 16
47 73 54
28 69 74
5 65 23
97 72 98
100 10 16
69 55 78
62 11 94
25 72 13
65 27 37
76 51 54
3 77 79
49 78 73
2 88 64
12 14 35
47 24 65
83 41 5
47 7 99
29 18 17
97 76 5
94 53 97
99 32 56
71 25 100
94 17 29
93 39 51
14 73 32
81 11 87
96 51 87
3 11 40
46 65 39
Timestamp: 2009-10-05 18:29:03 UTC"
If 1-50 is a crit then there is 6 failures out of 33 or 18.1% change to fail.
If 51-100 is a crit then there is 4 failures out of 33 or 12.1% change to fail.
Average those out at 10 in 66 for 15.1% change to fail which gives your 50% crit an effective chance to crit of 84.9%.
I don't know about you but given a 84.9-87.5% chance on anything I'm playing the odds in my favor.
Ref:
»www.random.org/integers/ | |
siscothekid
join:2009-08-28
Lynwood, CA | reply to xcal78
Re: 3.x Feral Druid - Bear Tanking Guide
Awesome man you answerd everything i wanted to know. | |
xcal78
join:2009-02-27
Waltham, MA
·RCN CABLE
3 edits | reply to xcal78
Here's a nice comparison between warrior and druid max health. The highest a warrior can get is about 58,900 while a druids max is 72,000 health. If your going STA tank aka mana leech then you've picked the right tank job! Of course going lower on health but higher on mitigation will work better so with this info in hand you should try to shoot for say 60k health and pump the rest into mitigation stats/gear. Realistically most bears will be able to get to 50-55k health plus enough mitigation to make that 50-55k health function as well if not better then a 60-65k health mana leeching STA bear. If the fight can take advantage of mitigation then mitigation will win over STA. If your fighting Lord Jaraxxus for example STA is more useful. About 10-15% of fights favor STA so be ready to switch when needed. You'll want to get a balanced set to start with like 50% STA 50% mitigation (50/50) then slowly work on some extra pieces on both sides so that you can change gear to the fight from the 50/50 point.
-----------------------------------------
[Druid]It's time to play that game again - NERF THAT DRUID
Okay, not really. But this is getting kinda silly.
I've talked in the past about how druid stamina scales somewhat stupidly, and how they can wear gear that is just wrong (like pvp gear) and not really care. I've shown what that means and how it means before. And I've even talked about how to nerf bears the right way, once and for all.
That's not what this is about though. This is about stupid things. Like how much health you could conceivably get now.
And according to Rawr - it's 72.0k assuming LW/JC and a Tauren, and all raid buffs.
I realize this set is a bit ridiculous - it relies on a fair amount of pvp gear - but it's also kinda silly that it's even possible. Here's the full list of gear. Everything save one piece is gemmed for stamina (the second ring has a red gem for the meta). Everything has a max stam enchant. Otherwise it's just like you'd expect:
Head Relentless Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm
Neck Legionnaire's Gorget
Shoulders Shoulderpads of the Intruder
Chest Polar Vest
Waist Polar Cord
Legs Legwraps of the Broken Beast
Feet Polar Boots
Wrist Armbands of Dark Determination
Hands Relentless Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves
Finger1 Band of the Twin Val'kyr
Finger2 Band of the Traitor King
Trinket1 Juggernaut's Vitality
Trinket2 Juggernaut's Vitality
Back Cairne's Endurance
MainHand Relentless Gladiator's Greatstaff
Ranged Idol of the Corruptor
Health: 72056.19
Agility: 1462
Armor: 34329
Stamina: 5952
Dodge Rating: 156
Defense Rating: 196
Resilience: 303
Dodge: 43.474%
Miss: 8.859%
Strength: 750
Attack Power: 8137
Crit Rating: 290
Hit Rating: 190
Expertise Rating: 47
Haste Rating: 102
Armor Penetration Rating: 0
Avoided Attacks: 14.589%
That's the worst part - this includes about a 50% avoidance rate. Yeesh.
Okay, you say - what if we take out the polar gear and the pvp gear, and we don't use things like Band of the Traitor King? That sounds almost like it'd be okay...except that the best in slot gear is perilously close to polar gear anyway. Still, let's take a look at what that would be like.
(here's a fun game - guess what the health will be!)
Head Runetotem's Headguard of Triumph
Neck Legionnaire's Gorget
Shoulders Shoulderpads of the Intruder
Chest Vest of Calamitous Fate
Waist Belt of the Pitiless Killer
Legs Legwraps of the Broken Beast
Feet Icewalker Treads
Wrist Armbands of Dark Determination
Hands Runetotem's Handgrips of Triumph
Finger1 Band of the Twin Val'kyr
Finger2 Signified Ring of Binding
Trinket1 Juggernaut's Vitality
Trinket2 Juggernaut's Vitality
Back Cairne's Endurance
MainHand Anguish
Ranged Idol of the Corruptor
Health: 69256.19
Agility: 1866
Armor: 37249
Stamina: 5672
Dodge Rating: 119
Defense Rating: 206
Resilience: 15
Dodge: 47.940%
Miss: 8.926%
Strength: 649
Attack Power: 8165
Crit Rating: 321
Hit Rating: 402
Expertise Rating: 133
Haste Rating: 343
Armor Penetration Rating: 165
Avoided Attacks: 7.194%
Wow, a 3k loss in health. Ouch. For that we gain almost 2k TPS, 8% fewer avoided attacks against us, and another 4% dodge.
Oh yeah - we're still over 69,000 health! And the funny thing about this gear set is that it's very, very approachable by many out there. The T9.258 gear is a bit harder to reach - but there are only 2 pieces of them, and things like the non-tier pieces will likely be achieved by many bears before Icecrown hits. The hardest thing to get here is the cloak, but that's only a gain of about 20 stam. The weapon is actually from the hard mode 10 man. The rings are from 10-man and Ony-25.
Heck, realistically? I could likely obtain this in the not-so near future, or close enough to it that it wouldn't matter.
Here's the thing, though - this doesn't matter by itself. 69k is a huge number - it's nearly 3 times as much health as a sunwell-geared bear had back in the day. But as long as this doesn't confer a significant advantage, I doubt you'll see it nerfed. Also, as long as it's not significantly higher than the next tank, you probably won't see it nerfed.
Still, it's pretty nuts, isn't it?
The worst part? The best I could get a similarly-geared tauren warrior to was 58.9k. That's...not a good sign. The druid would at that point have 17% more health than a warrior without pvp gear; with pvp gear, it pops up to 22% more. That's close to where blizzard starts thinking about nerfing.
Ref:
»wowthinktank.blogspot.com/2009/1···ain.html | |
xcal78
join:2009-02-27
Waltham, MA
·RCN CABLE
| reply to xcal78
Here's the standard bear build: (0/55/16)
Feral Combat (55 points)
5/5 Ferocity
3/3 Feral Instinct
2/2 Savage Fury
3/3 Thick Hide
2/2 Feral Swiftness
1/1 Survival Instincts
3/3 Sharpened Claws
3/3 Predatory Strikes
2/2 Primal Fury
2/2 Primal Precision
1/1 Feral Charge
3/3 Natural Reaction
5/5 Heart of the Wild
3/3 Survival of the Fittest
1/1 Leader of the Pack
2/2 Improved Leader of the Pack
3/3 Protector of the Pack
3/3 Infected Wounds or 3/3 Improved Mangle (Put 3 in Imp. Mangle or nothing)
1/1 Mangle
5/5 Rend and Tear
1/1 Primal Gore
1/1 Berserk
Restoration (16 points)
2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild
3/5 Furor
5/5 Naturalist
1/1 Omen of Clarity
3/3 Natural Shapeshifter
2/2 Master Shapeshifter | |
xcal78
join:2009-02-27
Waltham, MA
·RCN CABLE
1 edit | reply to xcal78
*This is under construction but I’ll edit it as I work on it so people can read it as it gets done.*
PvE Talents:
Survival of the Fittest - Critical
Each point of the Survival of the Fittest talent (max 3) reduces your chance to be crit by 2%, making it so that Druids are 100% crit immune immediately if they have 3/3 in this talent.
Protector of the Pack - Critical
Each point of this talent (max 3) reduces all damage, including Magic, by 3% per talent point spent. This means that you will take 12% less damage from all forms of attack. This is our primary magic damage reduction ability.
Infected Wounds – Critical*
This talent causes your attacks to apply a wound that reduces the attack speed of your target by 20% including most bosses. When applied, this will greatly reduce the incoming damage taken and is considered a very important tanking talent. It also applies a 50% movement reduction but this is more useful for pvp then pve.
* = If you have someone else who applies this ability on a consistent basis then drop this for 3/3 Imp. Mangle
Thick Hide - Critical
This ability increases your armor by 10%. This is a very good increase and definitely worth the 3 talent points.
Feral Swiftness – Critical & Natural Reaction - Critical
Together these talents increase your total Dodge by 10% - a very big and very important increase. As well, you gain 3 rage from Natural Reaction every time you dodge an attack - a very nice boost to threat especially when low on rage.
Survival Instincts – Critical
This talent gives Druid tanks an emergency button for when their health begins to get low. For one point, this talent is very much worth it.
Mangle - Critical & Improved Mangle – Medium*
Mangle is a great threat attack and you can’t afford to pass it up. You need to use Berserk to start some fights for threat and without Mangle you can’t do that so Mangle is a critical talent to pick up. Improved Mangle reduces the cooldown from 6 seconds to 4.5 seconds allowing you to use Mangle more often in your rotation. So while Mangle is critical, Imp. Mangle isn’t that good but it does add a marginal amount of threat if you can spare the 3 points. I wouldn’t get Imp. Mangle without having the Idol of the Corruptor as well.
Note on Improved Mangle - If you are going to put any points into this talent, you must go 3/3 because if you only get 1/3 or 2/3 no benefit is gained whatsoever for Druid tanking. I’d skip this over Infected Wounds.
* = If you have someone who applies a similar ability to Infected Wounds on a consistent basis then get this instead of Infected Wounds else keep Infected Wounds.
Berserk - Critical
This ability allows the tank to produce huge threat very quickly by removing the cooldown of Mangle so that it can be spammed for 15 seconds. It is best to wait until you have a near full Rage bar before you use this ability so you don't waste it due to being rage starved. Also, be careful not to break CC as it causes you to attack up to 3 targets at once instead of 1.
Savage Fury - Critical
This is a very important talent for increasing threat. Considered must have for the damage increase it provides for just 2 talent points.
Primal Precision – Critical*
This is a very important talent for increasing threat. It is considered a must have for improved chance to hit with attacks & avoid dodge/parried attacks, which greatly increases your threat & reduces damage in the case of a parried attack.
* = You can drop this if you have 213 Expertise and no threat issues. I’d advise people to get this no matter what unless your at the parry cap which is very unlikely. Dollar for dollar this is one of the best threat talents you can get.
Feral Instinct - Critical
This talent gives a bear’s only AOE Tanking ability, Swipe, a 30% damage increase making it extremely important to have.
Omen of Clarity - Critical
This talent is a very significant DPS boost in that it very often gives you free attacks.
Note: OOC only procs off of White damage making it scale very effectively with Haste.
Rend and Tear - Critical & Primal Gore - Critical
These talents boost the damage Maul does on bleeding and Maul is your primary threat ability so anything you can do to boost that is great.
In progress:
Ferocity – Critical
Sharpened Claws – Critical
Predatory Strikes – Critical
Primal Fury – Critical
Feral Charge - High
Heart of the Wild – Critical
Leader of the Pack – Critical
Improved Leader of the Pack – Critical
Improved Mark of the Wild – Critical
Furor – Critical
Naturalist – Critical
Natural Shapeshifter – High
Master Shapeshifter – High
Shredding Attacks – Low
Feral Aggression – Low
Brutal Impact – Low
Nurturing Instinct – Worthless
Primal Tenacity – Worthless
Predatory Instinct – Worthless
King of the Jungle - Low | |
Zyncotl
Zed X
Premium
join:2002-09-13
Wayne, MI
4 edits | A lot of bears forego the natural and master shapshifter. Since you aren't shifting forms often you are using the 5 points for 4% more damage. Neither way is going to make or break you and your own personal raid composition (if consistent) would change your bear build for optimization.
AP Reduction of Demoralizing Roar:
Untalented
Level 77 Rank 8 Demoralizing Roar: -408 AP
Talented
Level 77 Rank 8 Demoralizing Roar: -571.2 AP
--
I'd take the time to insult your intelligence, but you probably wouldn't get it. | |
xcal78
join:2009-02-27
Waltham, MA
·RCN CABLE
4 edits | said by Zyncotl  :A lot of bears forego the natural and master shapshifter. Since you aren't shifting forms often you are essentially tying up 5 points for 2% more damage. Feral Aggression is often considered a better use of the 5 points for the improved Demoralizing Roar. Neither way is going to make or break you and your own personal raid composition (if consistent) would change your bear build for optimization. 4% overall damage not 2%. To quantify that the extra 4% damage equates to ~90 DPS and ~170 TPS buffed with MoTW only. Those numbers scale when 5, 10, or 25 man buffed.
5 points in shapeshift 25 man buffed the numbers are ~110 DPS and ~240 TPS. Compare that with the threat article above.
"Here's how adding 100 of any given rating (except AP, since that's 2 AP points for every one rating point) increases that base TPS:
100 expertise (below cap): 296.26
100 hit: +164.32 TPS
100 expertise (after cap): 147.3
100 haste: 68.12
100 armor pen: 60.8
200 AP: 57.5
100 crit: 52.12"
As a comparison 5/5 Naturalist 25 man buffed will provide you ~275 DPS and ~560 TPS.
Most bears are between about 4,500-6,500 TPS all things considered so your looking at ~4-5% increase in threat from 5 points in shapeshifter.
*I'll cover what demo roar really does later this week hopefully by the numbers.* | |
Reanimator
join:2008-11-22
Matthews, NC
2 edits | reply to xcal78
Is OOC really still a mandatory talent? I ask this because most of your white attacks are mauls now. I rarely see my ooc trip when tanking cuz my maul is bound to my mangle and swipe. The bigest upside of this talent would be if you were asked/expected to dps catform while in bear gear as it would help with the auto attacks there. As a bear tank you should have almost endless rage anyway. I took it just because there isn't another great place to put that point. | |
xcal78
join:2009-02-27
Waltham, MA
·RCN CABLE
| said by Reanimator :Is OOC really still a mandatory talent? Thinking about it that's a great question. Eventually I'm going to try to give math behind every talent to show people exactly how good/bad it is then people can decide for themselves if it's worth it. EJ and other sites are still marking OOC as a mandatory talent but I see it more as a nice to have but not required thing since bosses give so much rage. I guess I'll figure that out down the road but my inital guess is that OOC is better OT's then MT's. The other question is going to be if you skip OOC what do you do with that 1 point to give you the same or better talent wise? I'll move this talent up my list to work on sinec you brought up a great question. | |
Reanimator
join:2008-11-22
Matthews, NC
| reply to xcal78
Yea due to the tree bloat, you are kinda stuck if you are going for a true bear spec and not a hybrid. If you droped OOC and you had a garenteed melee speed slower, you could go full imp mangle and toss that point into infected wounds, for 5man runs...I guess... | |
xcal78
join:2009-02-27
Waltham, MA
·RCN CABLE
| reply to xcal78
Does anyone know for sure if Maul procs OoC? I'm going to test it out this week-end but in the meantime I'm finding some stuff that says it does and some that says it doesn't. I'm looking into if FFF procs OoC also. Anyone know if that works? Once I can figure out how OoC procs these days and how many you get per minute then it's all about rage to its usefulness. I read the proc rate use to be 3.5 procs per minute but I'm unsure if that's still true. Anyone know that? | |
Reanimator
join:2008-11-22
Matthews, NC
| reply to xcal78
I can tell ya that its not anywhere close to 3proc/min for me. I use badkitty and it pops up a big buff box behind my countdown bars that is hard to miss. And it definetly doesn't pop up that often with maul tagged to my mangle and swipe. I would think that FFF could trip it though. And becareful on what you count as an OCC proc. The 2T8 bonus is very simmilar. In fact if you have 2T8 on I would say OOC loses even more weight in a true bear spec. | |
xcal78
join:2009-02-27
Waltham, MA
·RCN CABLE
| reply to xcal78
A fellow feral druid did some testing on 'Clearcasting' for me. He got a proc rate on 'Clearcasting' in kitty form of ~2.5 PPM yesterday. That was with the 2T8 bonus as well as OoC talented. For a bear tank I personally never got 2t8 as the bonus wasn't worth it to me. I use 2t9 now until I get 1 more trophy for 4t9. The 232 version is a fair downgrade to my existing shoulders to consider the non-trophy version for 4t9.
For a pure bear tank OoC doesn't appear to be a very useful talent most of the time. I can't seem to find something else to blow 1 point on that's roughly the same or better on the other hand.
FYI: 2T9 is better for a kitty then 2T8. | |
xcal78
join:2009-02-27
Waltham, MA
·RCN CABLE
4 edits | reply to xcal78
Simple bear macro commands:
Engage your Auto Attacks
/startattack
Use Mangle
/cast Mangle (bear)(rank 5)
Use Swipe
/cast Swipe (bear)(Rank 8)
Use Lacerate
/cast Lacerate
Use Feral Faerie Fire
/cast Faerie Fire (feral)
Put a 'Skull' icon on your current target
/script SetRaidTarget("target",8)
Queue Maul if it's not already queued
/cast !Maul
Cancel Enrage
/cancelaura Enrage
Use Enrage
/cast Enrage
Place this above any 'cast' command to show that commands tooltip
#showtooltip
Equips the Idol of the Corruptor if you don't have it equipped
/run if not IsEquippedItem("Idol of the Corruptor") then EquipItemByName("Idol of the Corruptor")end
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Example Macro's:
Pull
/startattack
/cast Faerie Fire (feral)
/script SetRaidTarget("target",8) - Optional
Mangle
/startattack
/run if not IsEquippedItem("Idol of the Corruptor") then EquipItemByName("Idol of the Corruptor")end
/cast Mangle (bear)(rank 5)
/cast !Maul
Lacerate
/startattack
/cast Lacerate
/cast !Maul
Swipe
/startattack
/cast Swipe (bear)(Rank 8)
/cast !Maul
Enrage or get 20 instant rage - Single click for Enrage & double click for 20 instant rage
/cancelaura Enrage
/cast Enrage
Remove BoP - Great for Gormak's impale!
/cancelaura Blessing of Protection | |
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