Tanking Troubles?

[mgp84]

Just curious @ OP:
- I noticed you changed your spec around a bit: getting different changes?
- Can't see you playing online, but did your attack sequence change?
- I've always found that the feral community is quick to respond on potential problems in mature fashion, so I was quick to throw in some comments of my own (PS You guys have helped over the past 2 years).

[Barney]

There's more to tanking than just swinging at 5 bosses in a night. Bash is a must for a proper tank against trash. You want mitigation? A mob can't hit you if it's not swinging or casting. Interrupting AoE and mind-control channels, stunning MC'd players... yeah, you don't do any of that, I guess. Growl down? Charge and bash something hammering your casters.

If you want to be a dumb meat shield just for bosses, yeah, you can ignore brutal impact. If you want to be a dynamic and effective tank for the whole instance, keeping bash close is a necessity, and brutal impact makes it all the better.

Having a second or two longer bash transcends us from meat shield to proper tank.

I'm off to respec.

[Nyctete]

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0ZyMMscbdceRcIuAo

that's the spec I go with
The armor buff just doesn't seem worth it anymore, with all items getting such a huge reduction in armor, I just don't see the need to gain like 2k-3k more armor. Ya, it's a little more mitigation, but between the amount we have which should be around 60% + the 12% from talents, that puts us at around the 75% we were at before anyway, and saves us 3 points. I take the atk power reduction because it keeps the warriors from having to spam it, and in certain situations (tanking adds on mu'ru) you may or may not have a warrior on your side with the increased atk pwr reduction.

With less armor, you shouldn't be rage starved. My philosophy has always been, if you're rage starved, put on more dps gear. At level 80 we won't even have tanking gear to use, so why are you trying to use it now? use your kitty gear, you'll probably be a lot more effective with it.
Stamina is still a great stat to have, so I usually use my stam trinkets now more then ever.

as others have said, maul is now an increadable source of threat, especially with RaT, so I would def pick that up. Also, King of the jungle gives a nice threat boost every min which is nice especially for initial aggro, or if you have mongoose, wait for that to proc and use it, or if you're picking up berserk, then combine all three and I've gotten over 6ktps on a single target while rage starved(tanking kil'jaden)

Berserk should be superior to omen for tanking because u shouldn't be rage starved, not with all the new abilities, and not with ur increased survivability in kitty gears. Omen just gives you a free move, berserk gives u 1.5sec mangles.

I agree with the lacerate on single targets for tanking. Don't worry about 5stack, it doesn't make much difference in terms of threat. The bleed damage does very little threat, it's the application of lacerate that does the threat(which yes, it too can crit) but maul does so much more threat on bleeding targets, that u should be trying to save rage for that. if I have max rage, and a bleed is on the target, I swipe spam as well, but I have 8 piece t6. for you with 4piece t4, I would say if a bleed is on the target, just maul, mangle, and FF unless u have the rage, then lacerate

also, if u get 4 piece t6 bonus, I would shift 3 points from ferocity to feral instinct

also, I agree with whoever said to pick up imp brutal impact. in this day and age, usually the easiest things to tank are the bosses. with the amount of aoe people are putting out on trash, and chain pulling, spells like 30sec stuns are a great resource, not to mention it gives us a 30sec interupt from melee range in bear form which is also very useful

anyway, that's been my experience, and I've main tanked or OTed everything and every boss in BC
druids are probably one of the most situational tanks out there, we have the ability to change are gear in big ways, and now even more so then ever. before we still had to stay crit immune, now that that's out the window, the sky's the limit with the ability to stack whatever stat is needed for every situation.
get a mod that keeps track of your gear and make a different set for every situation you're working on. I have a different set for every boss in sunwell and different sets for different trash packs as well. Some are designed to max mitigation, others to max single target threat, and still others for max aoe threat. The main thing you should remember is that each situation is different and should be treated with your gear choices accordingly.

GL, and happy face biting!

-Nyc

[Lysiander]

Mongoose has an overall better agility gain over a period of time than 35 agi does. http://teethandclaws.blogspot.com/20...=1223486940000 for those who are mathematically inclined. Read the whole post before saying anything. S/he corrects themself in the "update" section.

Most of this game is statistical values. If you didn't care about them, you wouldn't care about avoidance.

I know the math, I read the posts and I never said anything about not caring for statistics. I stated that statistics only get you so far.

Seriously, we are tanks. It's our job to stay alive. It's not our jo to stay alive "most of the time" or "as long as variables x y z are true". There are variables in a fight we can't control and plenty at that. Damage spikes, latency, healer stupidity, overagro, the list goes on. However, there are also variables we can control. One of them is to make sure our baseline avoidance is a high as possible. If you want to rely on a proc to save you in a pinch, you are basically jeopardizing your raid. You are trading an overall higher mitigation in situations where you do not need it for a potentially lower mitigation when you *do* need it.

The math is correct and has its place, but at the end of the day, our job is to maximize our performance for the worst case scenario. That's when you have to perform reliably. You do not want to burden your healers with keeping track of your procs so they know when to heal more. You do not want to die and wipe the raid because you could have dodged a couple of more attacks, which would have been healed anyway and are now overhealed.

Procs are nice and they have their place, but do you really want to tell your raid "sorry guys, we could have killed him but my mongoose didn't proc."? I didn't think so.

[Nyctete]

I know the math, I read the posts and I never said anything about not caring for statistics. I stated that statistics only get you so far.

Seriously, we are tanks. It's our job to stay alive. It's not our jo to stay alive "most of the time" or "as long as variables x y z are true". There are variables in a fight we can't control and plenty at that. Damage spikes, latency, healer stupidity, overagro, the list goes on. However, there are also variables we can control. One of them is to make sure our baseline avoidance is a high as possible. If you want to rely on a proc to save you in a pinch, you are basically jeopardizing your raid. You are trading an overall higher mitigation in situations where you do not need it for a potentially lower mitigation when you *do* need it.

The math is correct and has its place, but at the end of the day, our job is to maximize our performance for the worst case scenario. That's when you have to perform reliably. You do not want to burden your healers with keeping track of your procs so they know when to heal more. You do not want to die and wipe the raid because you could have dodged a couple of more attacks, which would have been healed anyway and are now overhealed.

Procs are nice and they have their place, but do you really want to tell your raid "sorry guys, we could have killed him but my mongoose didn't proc."? I didn't think so.

I would have to disagree, 35 agil after 50% dodge isn't so much for dodge anymore as it is for maintaining threat. With the addition of all of our new ways to keep ourselves alive during "oh shit" scenarios(hp pot, healthstone, SI, barkskin, frenzied rejuv, trinkets) I think that if you still have an issue tanking and staying alive with all those abilities either:
a: your healers blow
b: you lag real bad on a regular basis
c: you are in cat form
d: you need to put on more mitigation(armor or stam)
e: you need to move yourself from group 7 with only yourself in it to a group that has 4 other people in it for your 12% mitigation in bear

there realistically shouldn't be so many situations that happen during a given fight that staying alive is still an issue between all the additions to bear survivability and the nerf on all BC mobs//instances

instead, you should more often then not, be concerned about threat(and perhaps even maxing your damage), which i believe is what this post is concerned about in the first place, and mongoose is better for threat since you can use abilities+trinkets during a mongoose proc for massive tps boosts(and a lot of times in fact doubling your tps)

<3 all you fellow mother bears out theres
-Nyc

[Lysiander]

Well, I'd agree that once you have passed 50% dodge the weapon enchant shouldn't be that much of an issue anymore. However, the question was asked by the OP who doesn't quite seem to be past that point.

Still, I'd rather keep +35 agi on my weapon and replace a couple of agi gems with sta or swap out avoidance for threat trinkets than use a proc, but that may be me.

[Nyctete]

Well, I'd agree that once you have passed 50% dodge the weapon enchant shouldn't be that much of an issue anymore. However, the question was asked by the OP who doesn't quite seem to be past that point.

Still, I'd rather keep +35 agi on my weapon and replace a couple of agi gems with sta or swap out avoidance for threat trinkets than use a proc, but that may be me.

ya, again, it's mostly preference, but I prefer it because it's a very OP proc that when used properly will greatly increase threat generated.

and o ya, did I mention, it pwnz all others for aoe tanking as the proc is up almost all the time when tanking a large number of targets.

[Alski]

The armor buff just doesn't seem worth it anymore, with all items getting such a huge reduction in armor, I just don't see the need to gain like 2k-3k more armor. Ya, it's a little more mitigation, but between the amount we have which should be around 60% + the 12% from talents, that puts us at around the 75% we were at before anyway, and saves us 3 points. I take the atk power reduction because it keeps the warriors from having to spam it, and in certain situations (tanking adds on mu'ru) you may or may not have a warrior on your side with the increased atk pwr reduction.

the % values arnt additive PoTP reduction comes in AFTER what the hit would be
eg :
boss hits for 10000 you have 60% DR from armor, that leaves you with a 4000 damage PoTP reduces that by 12 % which = 480 so the final damage is 3520

PoTP is designed badly imo because it gets worse in terms of damage mitigation when we get more armor

[Stormrage]

All abilities like that (defensive stance, rf, potp) work like that. Its still magic damage reduction and a small mitigation boost

[Alski]

All abilities like that (defensive stance, rf, potp) work like that. Its still magic damage reduction and a small mitigation boost

yea i know that, i was just pointing it out to the stupid person i quoted who thinks 60% + 12% = ~75%:P

[Nyctete]

yea i know that, i was just pointing it out to the stupid person i quoted who thinks 60% + 12% = ~75%:P

My point is not that it ='s but that it's close enough. with all the additional boosts from damage mitigation that we get plus all our new "oh shit" buttons, plus the increased mitigation we can receive from healers healing us, we're close enough and for the most part, u shouldn't be dying. If you're not dying, and tps is an issue(which is what this post is about) then I was just pointing out that he could probably stand to lose a stat like armor, especially if he's not working with a full rage bar and survivability isn't an issue.

I also like how it says "~" as in "about" as in a generalization, but gratz to you on being helpful in a thread.

Some posters are for POINTLESS!

-Nyc

[Alski]

if we have 60% reduction from armor PoTP is only going to give us about 5% reduction (from melee) which brings us to 65% with other things healers bring sure it pushes it higher but if you had more armor those things could push you over 75% mitigation

[ajthebest1]

My point is not that it ='s but that it's close enough. with all the additional boosts from damage mitigation that we get plus all our new "oh shit" buttons, plus the increased mitigation we can receive from healers healing us, we're close enough and for the most part, u shouldn't be dying. If you're not dying, and tps is an issue(which is what this post is about) then I was just pointing out that he could probably stand to lose a stat like armor, especially if he's not working with a full rage bar and survivability isn't an issue.

I also like how it says "~" as in "about" as in a generalization, but gratz to you on being helpful in a thread.

Some posters are for POINTLESS!

-Nyc

Its not even ~. Its more like if you have 60% DR from armor.. you get ~65% when potp is added. Armor is now the BEST stat for druids. The armor contribution talent is probably one of the best talents we have... if you don't pick it up you are pretty wrong.

Level 70 is hella easy so you don't really have to worry about a spec right now, but 80 is going to be different and even if you survive normal fights, the second the boss enrages even your barkskin won't help.

You might've opted out of armor talent pre-3.0 (though I can't justify that either) since we had shit loads of armor back then.

[deathsclaw]

thats exactly the point. I don't know IF I use the right skills. maybe I do it wrong? dunno...

that's why I asked.

One big point is your missing naturalist which adds to your damange done. Here is my current spec at 70 and I sucessfully tank everything up to Hyjal without issues. I would look for the strange staff in KZ versus EW now that we are defense capped. The AGI and AP is more important.

Good luck!

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0ZxGGscrzceRcczMZ0E0z

[deathsclaw]

lacerate can also crit - at least the initial damage portion.

and I assume that first put lacerate up to 5 stacks (besides mangle and maul spam), and if it is 5 stacks up, switch to swipe spam instead of further lacerate spam, and simply refresh it if it drops in 1-2 seconds?

or does it mean: not using lacerate at all, just mangle + swipe/maul spam?

My rotation.. With rend and tear you need to have the bleed affect of lacerate going to get the additional TPS from the maul attack.

Mangle, maul, lac,lac,lac, mangle, maul, lac lac, then i run swipes too and only drop lacerate to keep it topped off.

[Nyctete]

Its not even ~. Its more like if you have 60% DR from armor.. you get ~65% when potp is added. Armor is now the BEST stat for druids. The armor contribution talent is probably one of the best talents we have... if you don't pick it up you are pretty wrong.

Level 70 is hella easy so you don't really have to worry about a spec right now, but 80 is going to be different and even if you survive normal fights, the second the boss enrages even your barkskin won't help.

You might've opted out of armor talent pre-3.0 (though I can't justify that either) since we had shit loads of armor back then.

you're forgetting to add in the fact that the bosses themselves do less damage now, not to mention the fact that they no longer CB a target, which is the main reason for stacking armor and mitigation as a druid in the first place. w/o the crazy burst we used to take from 2-4 cbs in a row(under very bad rng) we just don't die with proper healing. Which once again brings us back to the original point of this thread. Tps. If tps is an issue, and your survivability isn't in question, and you're rage starved, armor is a good stat to drop in areas like rings or trinkets where they have basically useless stats of defense or just straight armor anyway, and throw on a dps trinket or ring instead. or expertise, or hit.

there isn't enough gear in the game atm to hit armor cap, nor is there any reason to. most bosses in sunwell I tank with around 22k armor after 3.x with the exception being brut since he reduces your armor, I still wear my armor rings and trinket and weapon on him and still only have around 26k armor and do fine.

-Nyc