http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19820543107&postId=198186098095&sid=1#2



Can you raiding Druids read my post and try to help me out with anything u know i can do/get to make myself more inline with other raiding bears.

i'd love to help out, but i haven't tanked since LK shipped. The game has changed a lot since the BC days.

If you're being told you don't have enough HP, then you should focus on that. I wouldn't give up too much dodge to do that though. You could do what a lot of the bears on our server have done, and have a VERY heavy stam set and also a mitigation/dodge set of gear.

I'd be more help if I got to actually tank something. I'm stuck being a tree 99% of the time...so...

Only other suggestion I'd have is to maybe check out other raiding bears on your server that have progressed to the point where you want to be, and compare your stats to theirs. There are quite a few sites out there with gear lists that might help you get an idea of what to aim for when moving on into your progression. Other than that, I really have no idea. I'm still stuck in newbie raids because our guild is brand new.

Well, I was in Des's position for most of Ulduar, but finally convinced my guild to let me tank again in TotC. My gear score on Wow-heroes.com is ~2450, so I am not elite, but more in lines of adequate for content up to TotC25. (Heroic TotC10 raped me)


If you want to look me up, you can find me @:
Realm: US
Server: Cenerion Circle
Toon: Solarflash
(or just follow link in my sig to WoWArmory)

Since the 3.1 Patch, blizzard has basically said..."Feral's use rogue gear". In order to differentiate Bears from Kitties and Rogues, we need to rely on jewelry (necks/Rings/Trinkets/Capes) and enchants/gemming.

Once you are in i219 gear (out of pre 3.1 itemization) you will notice yourself taking a massive loss in stam on just about every main slot (non-jewelry) upgrade. To compensate you have to gem/enchant stam. I personally have favored purple (Agi/Stam) gems to in all red slots and pure stam in blue slots. This seems to keep a pretty reasonable balance.

Raid buffed I sit around 48k HP, 42% Dodge, ~65% Physical Mitigation from armor.

As a bear in i219+ content, I would strongly reccomend you get your HP +42k buffed, even if that means nerfing your dodge. You will notice boss encounters almost all include a huge damage spike to the tank at some point or another. You will also notice that the spike is generally Magical damage (ie. un-dodgable) So you are going to have to eat it, and healers are going to have to heal it. Massive HP pools just buys everyone a bit more time to pop cooldowns.

Don't be afriad to equip a few pieces of PVP gear either, so long as you have a decent threat rotation, your TPS will holdup. WG offers easy honor and marks that can be used to purchase nice upgrades, or sidegrades.

I definatley reccomend Des's thought about having 2 different bear sets. Heroics are just too easy to need 45k HP, but the badges still buy very nice upgrades. Do your group a favor and build a DPS/Bear set for running heroics. Mine involves changing out trinkets, and rings only, and allows me to average ~2k-2.8k DPS overall on most heroic runs.

There's a pretty big chance I'll never get to tank any of this content, so, I'm living vicariously through you guys =D

There's a pretty big chance I'll never get to tank any of this content, so, I'm living vicariously through you guys =D


Ah the curse of a good tree!

So what you're saying is I should...stop...being a good healer? lol

I'll get to tank somehow or another. Even if I have to beat PuGs into letting me...it WILL happen >=)

It's funny i am both Bear and Tree ( Lācerate on misha us server)
but even though i can heal with the best of them,
With having 50k raid buffed and 45ish% dodge they have me tank and not heal. Though, i vastly enjoy doing both.

The tanks in my guild tend to be better geared than I am, unfortunately. So I am forced to heal more often than not. I enjoy both, but have always liked tanking more.

have you found any gear lists for your up-and-coming tanks yet, Talon? Or at least stat goals for them?

Not yet, But as for raiding, ( since the dodge nerf) i dropped 9 sockets with 20 agi in them( all my agi sockets) and only lost 2.5% dodge

I was told to resocket, which i tried, self buffed(just motw) i am sitting at 40% dodge or right below it, got some new feet out of 25 ulduar, So later when i get home , I'll socket them and enchant em,

I guess my whole point that i have found out. is have some mitigation stuff u can switch out. but my current setup is allowing me to soak up alot of dmg and still have good mitigation. 50k hp and 45ish%dodge raid buffed is good in my book.

See the thing is, Rogue/cat/bear gear are mostly alike. except for some suddle differneces . But for the most part even ghostcrawler said they weren't gonna break gear down like that for all 4 specs of a druid anymore. i guess three different gear sets is enough for druids. Hince why our feral tier set bonuses share on cat and bear.

See, but that's not "entirely" true. For the most part, you can look at a piece of leather caster gear and easily determine that it's either boomkin or resto gear. For feral leather- that definitive "line" is blurred a lot more, and that's sad. Boomkins get a tier set bonus that buffs one of their spells, as do resto druids. Feral druids? Not so much. It's a little sad, but understandable, considering we're the only class with 4 different roles we can play. Just my .02.

And I agree that having gear to swap in and out is probably your best bet. It'll allow you the ability to adapt to just about any situation that comes up. I hope I get to see some other content before the level cap goes to 85...but that's not looking so likely. /shrug

FYI, they did add a nice "Bear" set bonus on the T9 stuff. (-2 sec CD on growl for 2x set bonus)

T8, bears took it in the rear.

T9= Conqueror's Gear?

I get so confused sometimes between my healing and my tanking gear and which is what Tier.

T9 (i232) = Is purchased with badges of triumph.

The vendor is on the west side of the arena in the Argent Tourney grounds.

The conquest badge vendor in Dalaran sells T8.5 (i226)

There's actually three levels of tier 9.

Tier 9 (10) is i232 gear and bought with badges. Tier 9(25-N) is i245 gear and bought with trophy + triumph emblems. Trophies of the Crusader drop from bosses in Trials of the Crusader 25 or Trials of the Grand Crusader 10. Tier 9(25-H) is bought with Armor Tokens that drop out of tribute runs in Trials of the Grand Crusader 25. All and all it's a pain in the ass.

To be honest, you can not just think that accesories are what differentiate tanking gear from DPS kitty gear. There are a lot of stats to factor in. Personally I'm not a huge fan of getting any haste gear in kitty but I don't mind it in bear because more mauls = more threat. Also I stack expertise to the moon in bear set but for cat I go the minimum.

Hit should be about the same. But to be perfectly honest, Effective Health is where it's at for hard modes. -_- As much as I love being an agile bear I'm leaning more towards becoming a stam stacking bear because the bosses in the new raids hit like a freight train.

Honestly though anything above 30k HP is fine for heroics and Ulduar. Ulduar 10 you can get away with about 34-36k hp though it's on the lowish end. By the time you hit up Coliseum you should be around high 30sk low 40s for health depending on buffs.

I'm at about 49,000hp raid buffed which is low to be honest because I do focus a lot on threat and mitigation versus pure stam. In a stam set I'm at about 56,000.

To be honest, you can not just think that accesories are what differentiate tanking gear from DPS kitty gear. There are a lot of stats to factor in. Personally I'm not a huge fan of getting any haste gear in kitty but I don't mind it in bear because more mauls = more threat. Also I stack expertise to the moon in bear set but for cat I go the minimum.


The point was, besides "accesories" there simply isn't other options for bears besides the same crap rogues and kitties use.

Stacking expertise to the moon is not a great idea. The soft cap is 6 or 6.5% I believe (you can free up 2 talent points if you get it with gear) after that its like stacking hit for DPS...wasted itemization.

Haste for kitty is almost useless since your attack speed is darn close to the 1 sec gcd cap (you can't reduce your gcd lower than 1 sec). It is an excellent stat for bears, but again...you get whats on the gear. There are typically 1 maybe 2 items of each iLvl above 219 for each slot that we can equip. So again, there isn't a lot of room for diversification.

It's not wasted itemization. Expertise reduces your chance to be dodged/parried/blocked. Mobs can not parry or block from behind so most melee classes go for the dodge cap which is 6% (25)

Parry cap is high at 14% which is something like 55 expertise rating and hard to make with itemization. A tank is always in front of a mob and subject to parry and blocks and therefore needs more expertise. I generally run around 10% in bear.

After a mob parries an attack, not only is that a missed attack and less threat, the majority of mobs will parry thrash which leads to gibs. Anub'arak on 25 man normal hits for 25-30k on tanks, plus his 15-16k frost strike. Being parry gibbed on that fight blows and the bosses in heroic TogC hit like mack trucks.

There aren't a lot of choices but there are choices you can make depending on your gear sets. I'm not saying you can't share pieces but some pieces are just naturally better for bears than cats and vice versa.

Sytaera, This is going to sound incredibly noobish I'm sure...but I know I'm not the only bear running into this problem.

Say you need 55k to be able to tank the high end raids now.
You also need X amount of Expertise, X amount of Dodge (Otherwise you're just a damage sponge that's hard to heal, I'm told), X amount of threat generation...X amount of Hit...

I'm not sure really what type of stuff drops from the high end raids, but I'm finding it hard to balance all of this and come out with the "right" amount of everything, even for the content we're in. (Being Naxx25, starting Uld 10). It seems like if I aim for Hit, I have to give up HP or mitigation =( and end up "having too small a health pool" and being a PITA for healers.

Maybe it's just because I'm not further along into progression that I'm finding it difficult to get everything capped off and balanced? Tanking has sort of become a secondary role for me because our guild doesn't have a load of healers...maybe I've just become too unfamiliar with it O.O

It's not wasted itemization. Expertise reduces your chance to be dodged/parried/blocked. Mobs can not parry or block from behind so most melee classes go for the dodge cap which is 6% (25)

I stand corrected on the expertise. I was under the impression that 6% was the cap.

I would still not ever gem or enchant for anything besides Agility or Stamina. The hit/exp will come with gear, as you progress Des. I think you will find that short of Tier pieces there is nothing in Ulduar10 for bear tanks...it just worked out that way :( I was in my Naxx25 stuff until we started TotC for the most part.
For example, before TotC10 or (i232 gear) there is not a better weapon than OoN. Marrowstrike could be argued to be better by a tiny bit with the gem slot, but for the most part, you are stuck with what you have. Thankfully the badge i226 gear should be a reasonable side grade from i213 as far as defensive stats, but an upgrade for your offensive stats. So I would make the switch to that as soon as you can.

I suppose I should put together a new gear list, now that I've gotten some of my conqueror's tanking gear and stuff =\

I tend to gem/enchant for the same, Solar, ignoring socket bonuses for the most part since they seem to be mostly aimed at DPS.

We need the same hit rating as melee dps, plus additional expertise?

We need the same hit rating as melee dps, plus additional expertise?

So far as I know your hit cap is the same as melee DPS, but you don't "Need" to hit it. Its nice to have, but not a focus (especially if you use the glyph of growl)

So then, if I'm looking at our gear stat priorities...

1. Stam
2. Expertise
3. Mitigation/Threat stats

Give or take? Expertise soft cap, as I understood it was 6%-ish, what % to never be blocked/parried/dodged?

Ooh, I guess I should have clarified a bit when I said I stacked expertise. I was mostly talking about gearing choices between thinking all leather could work for both specs because Blizzard sucks with itemization.

Don't ever gem for expertise or hit. You should primarily be gemming for agility or stamina. Basically when I go for lots of expertise, when I gear I look at the stats on it and I'll take way more expertise gear for bear. Runed Ironhide Boots (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45232) are a good example. They're alright for cat but the blue socket and high stam makes them really awesome for bear.

Also Destinae, yeah the item balancing will come on time. Also expertise is not your second most valued stat. You are really gearing for stamina/mitigation first. So agility/stam.

As a newer tank in the lower content, really don't worry too much about hit and expertise. And when it comes down to it, expertise after 6% is pretty much the stat to trim down as much as you can. If you find DPS is always right on your tail, might think more into it but chose pieces to augment that, don't gem or enchant for it.

55,000HP is a little much to expect. For 25 man, normal Tier 9 content, you should aim for 45-50k fully raid buffed. Tier 8 is about 39-44 fully raid buffed. Tier 7 you can get away with 30-35.

Expertise soft cap is 6% for dodge. After that it's 14% for parry for tanks. Melee DPS should never be in front of a boss. It will be very, very hard to hit 14% without trashing your survivability so I wouldn't worry about that too much. I think a lot about hit/expertise because I like giving the DPS some room (I currently have the highest single target threat of any of our tanks) and horrors of parry gibs.

Making sure I understand...

1. Stam
2. Agi
3. Anything else (hit, crit, expertise, AP, ArP, etc)

I was wondering...how exactly does agility<-->attack power/threat for us? I found that since I've upgraded my gear, I'm having more trouble holding agro- which doesn't make sense since...well I have more AP, lots more Agi...so confused...

I think a lot of people think that gearing for threat as a tank has to do with attack power and other things. It's actually not really the case. If you're looking to up your threat, try expertise/hit (if you're not capped). You'd be surprised how much you get parried or miss attacks if you go through a combat log.

Bears get 1AP for each 1Agility. Along with this you get crit which can help your threat. But threat is mostly for tanks about rotation versus the pure DPS they do. Or if you're a paladin, threat is about dropping consecrate, hitting two buttons and going off to make a sandwich and coming back to collect loot.

The other thing is rage starvation? Are you running out of rage? Rotation has a lot to do with it. Generally maul every auto-attack, mangle off CD, lacerate @ 5 stacks, feral faerie fire off CD, and then spam swipe in between.

Also it's not your job to completely babysit the DPS. They have omen for a reason and if they don't they should get it. In fights like Hodir/General Vezax, the casters especially get a really ridiculous DPS boost. If they pull threat sometimes it is their fault. So don't worry so much. On raid bosses, it might benefit you to wait until you get your first big slap in the face and pop beserk.

I tend to notice that I have way too much threat on the primary target (70%+ over the second highest) but then have random mobs occasionally pulling away from the group do to AoE, Particularily early on in a fight/pickup.


A few tricks I use to simplify my rotations:

1) Bind Maul and Mangle to the same action button. That is my "always spam" button (#3), and then I aternate between Swipe(#4) and Lacerate(#5).

2) Once initial aggro is established (likely helped with ToT or MD) flip to the next target and just apply a single lacerate, and jump to the next and repeat (while mixing in swipes/maul/mangle). The goal is that you maul will likely be hitting a second target. If that target has a lacerate ticking, it will hit much harder...ie threat. You will also be changing the primary maul target, so almost all if not all targets will be catching either the primary blow from you maul or the secondary blow (glyphed) fairly regularily. Maul is your #1 threat ability.

I have found this heads off issues with the "kill order" deficient DPS. It isn't you job to manage the DPS's threat, but doing your best to head off disaster saves everyone a bit of a headache.

Rage starvation for me only happens on mobs that do more magic attacks than physical...Novos the Summoner for Example. I almost never have rage for him, but can usually hold onto him.

It may have just been an unfortunate set of circumstances...H:VH, two pulls with enrage on CD and no rage leftover, plus a warlock doing insane dps...Since then, I haven't had too much trouble as long as I have the rage to start with swipe.

I am a habitual tab-targeting tank already. I imagine this is a leftover habit from back when swipe only hit 3 targets and bears had to TT in order to grab everything's attention.

Do you all still use Demo-Roar in your rotations?

I do still mix Demo-Roar into my rotation, but only on bosses or extremely hard hitting trash (since it only perpetuates your rage starvation).

TBH, H-VH is a nightmare to tank with trigger happy DPS. I am always rage starved in there even when I am wearing 100% kitty gear. The only way I can manage to get through is to stop all Rage-based attacks with about 20% health left on the main mob (maybe toss out a single swipe if a new trash mob spawns). The base auto attack is bound to crit at somepoint in there and you should have enough rage to at least swipe at the start of the next pull. This is just a simple case of the tank out gearing the content. All rage based tanks suffer from this.

(muters)...OP pallies!!!!::

lol >.> Paladins...ugh...as much as I hate to admit it, they're usually REALLY easy to heal. -_- They're just so perfect...

I <3 Growl and AoE Growl in H:VH, but have to admit that even the first time I tanked it, I had rage/threat issues.

Hey, been out of town =x

For Demo Roar, if there's not a DPS warrior/warrior tank/ret paladin I do tend to keep it up. otherwise I don't really waste a GCD on it.

Yeah paladins blow for being the only class practically that never has to worry about rage/rune power. I actually innervated our paladin tank once. WTB rage innervate.

I generally pop enrage a lot during H VH or any heroic in general.