Bear tank advice

[Cheezee]

As for using Lacerate on trash, I'd say it isn't really worth it unless you are rolling with the frost idol. Swipe can crit on any mob with multiple mobs, and with over 40% crit (which most druids will have somewhere close to) it's almost guaranteed to proc every single swipe, if not on your mauls.

One last note, who said you can't brez while tanking? It's not that hard, I have done it multiple times. You only lose approx 10% avoidance for a whopping 2.5-3 seconds and a little bit of stam that can be compensated by a cooldown (if truly necessary).

I played with the frost idol during my last ICC25 run. Honestly, I think it's bugged right now but I haven't heard blizzard say anything about it. It procs when you apply lacerate and stacks fine, but the stacks will not refresh unless the lacerate is at 5 stacks. Ie The buff will run out if you have a 1-4 stack of lacerate up and ticking.

You also lose 20k or more armor when you go back to caster. Probably not a big deal in ICC, but I wouldn't try it if you're tanking Gormok or Icehowl or something that actually hits hard.

And yeah, they need to revert the threat increase on Runestrike. Even with the 20% dodge debuff every melee attack a tank DK makes is still a runestrike.

[Syph]

I wouldn't try it if you're tanking Gormok or Icehowl or something that actually hits hard.

I'm aware that you just wanted to give two examples of bosses that can hit quite hard (on HC) but coincidentally, Gormok offers many oppertunities because he's only attacking you +-50% of the total fight, and regarding Icehowl; he is incapacitated inbetween 2-5 times each encounter for quite a generous time ^^

[Cheezee]

I'm aware that you just wanted to give two examples of bosses that can hit quite hard (on HC) but coincidentally, Gormok offers many oppertunities because he's only attacking you +-50% of the total fight, and regarding Icehowl; he is incapacitated inbetween 2-5 times each encounter for quite a generous time ^^

Fair enough but at that point you probably don't need to hit CDs to survive since you're not actually getting hit by the boss.

[Speedycat]

So is that 245 trinket better than that Ick's Rotting Thumb? I noticed it's only like 1% dmg reduction or something. That doesn't seem like a whole lot. With the thumb I have around 40% dodge unbuffed.

Also, some good news. I did well on a H HoR run yesterday. Having a priest shackle one of the ranged before they reached us was a HUGE help. I know it wasn't the healers before. My gf is an excellent disc priest. I think I'm going to blame the dps on this one. They should be cc'ing as much as they can.

[Niter]

I will not comment on your gear because you said H HoR. That is very important to keep in mind.

Try to see n your log what is doing so much damage to you. I tank H HoR as a bear and sometimes the damage is stupidly huge. But the same goes to Warriors and Paladins, because I heal HoR quite often on my other Druid and they too take huge amounts of damage. I will not comment on DKs though since, in my experience, they get trashed really fast in this place, even though I got a 26K HP DK to the chase part once, but that was too much for that tank and we couldn't go on after many wipes.

The thing about H HoR is that you get stunned a lot by those Rogues. You get poisons, you get cursed, you get other debuffs too. Sometimes it happens at the worst possible moment, especially when you are trying to pick another mob and you are stunned with mobs on your back or a damn rogue uses SS and get to your back.

Most healers do not realise that they cannot trust to have their tanks with 50% HP or less in this place. I have had my share of Paladins and Disc Priests thinking they would be able to top me off with a big heal and they got interrupted or whatever happened to them that their desperate heal could not make it and I died. They must understand that they will take damage even if you have aggro on all mobs. Some just like to do a quick switch and and hit somebody else in your party just because it is fun (and it is fun indeed! haha).

Tell your healer to drink in between waves. Tell him to keep your HP high no matter what. If they can remove the debuffs, or if the DPS can, ask them to do it because it really is that important. Ask your DPS to wait a bit, because even if the damn Priest comes along first, you still have other mobs to pick up and if they unload on the Priest they will pull aggro. To make matters worse, if the first hits you take are from magic, you know what that does to bears and warriors, we do not get that great rage quickly out of spellcasters.

Save your Barkskin for those times you are stunned. Be prepared to pop your CDs when facing the 4th and 8th wave. Usually, those are the hardest, especially because of those rogues. I found that using Challenging Roar when I have all mobs close, then SI + FR usually gets the job done, because I know for a fact that I will get stunned and pounded hard at some point by the rogues. I am an Alchemist and a Herbalist, so I use my never-ending potions and Lifeblood to ease the pain a little. When you have mobs close to you, try to get Lacerate going on a few. It means that even if you are stunned, your Lacerate crits will be able to get Savage Defense up and help with the damage a bit.

H HoR is very demanding on tanks and we must plan ahead a little. Unlike Warriors, we do not have Shield Wall and unlike Paladins, we do not have Ardent Defender to help out automatically and save us.

This is the only instance I actually like to have the 4T9 bonus. It helps a lot in the long run.

Good luck

[bavarcarus]

I really think they went a little overboard on HoR (I've started adding w/e to the beginning and end XD).

Being a toc25 and htoc10 geared bear, a random got me a priest that showed a GS of 5100 (though I don't know how good he was) and I was basically popping cds every time they were up. I understand that it should be harder than htoc5 but the combination of tanking multiple aoe range with a poor LOS and having massive incoming damage is just silly.

[kittyrawr]

Wow, thanks for all the great advice everyone. So I have respecced to the master shapeshifter build. It seems better so far. I also swapped out http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47735 and got http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50235. I think that will help too.

Why would you ever do that? That trinket is horrible.

[Speedycat]

Why would you ever do that? That trinket is horrible.

So you are saying that the 245 trinket is better than the thumb? And I do this because im still learning the class :P

[enigmaran]

yes, the glyph is def. better than ick's by a lot - the armor is huge, and the on use is far better.

[Gimvarg]

If you have 45% dodge, you'd get hit 3 times of 6 or 4 times of 8. Exaggeration just makes the argument much weaker.

Equally-geared tanks of any class have roughly comparable avoidance, factoring in dodge/parry/miss.

kuz 45% means i get hit 4.5 times every 10 swings, kuz those are the rules of wow. each swing has a 45% chance to be dodged, in it's own right, and i have pretty good luck with mongoose and my idol always being up making me hover around 53%ish

[enigmaran]

no - 45% dodge does not mean you have a 45% chance to dodge any 1 incoming attack. The dodge on your character sheet considers after diminishing returns, so technically you have a higher chance to dodge an initial attack that goes down with each successive swing - balancing out at 45%.

[Selverein]

kuz 45% means i get hit 4.5 times every 10 swings, kuz those are the rules of wow. each swing has a 45% chance to be dodged, in it's own right, and i have pretty good luck with mongoose and my idol always being up making me hover around 53%ish

While you may sometimes get a dodge streak resulting in 7/8 attacks dodged, the opposite is also possible. The reason why it is assumed that with 50% dodge you avoid 1/2 attacks is simply because over the course of a whole fight, that's what happens. You'll dodge 10 in a row, then get hit 10 times in a row, but in the end it's 50% dodge.

So saying that with 45% dodge, or 53%, you are avoiding 6 or 7 attacks out of 8 is false. You may feel that way, but if you look at Recount you'll see it isn't so.

no - 45% dodge does not mean you have a 45% chance to dodge any 1 incoming attack. The dodge on your character sheet considers after diminishing returns, so technically you have a higher chance to dodge an initial attack that goes down with each successive swing - balancing out at 45%.

Whoa, wait, what?

I don't think you understand what diminishing returns means. It doesn't mean that with each hit you're more likely to get hit. It's just that agility progressively loses its dodge value as you gain more.

Using completely random numbers, if 500 agility gives 10% dodge, you'd expect 1000 agility to give 20%. But because of diminishing returns, that second 500 will not give the full 10% and 1000 agility might end up giving 17% or something.

[Cheezee]

no - 45% dodge does not mean you have a 45% chance to dodge any 1 incoming attack.

That's exactly what it means.

For every attack made against your character the server basically rolls out of 100 and you get something similar to the following (note this is simplified math based on an equal level mob):

1-45 you dodge the attack
46-51 the attack misses you
52-58 the attack crits (negated by talents or defense/resilience which shifts it to hits)
59-100 the attack hits

RNG being RNG you may take more hits during a fight or you may take fewer but it should average out in the end.

The dodge on your character sheet considers after diminishing returns, so technically you have a higher chance to dodge an initial attack that goes down with each successive swing - balancing out at 45%.

That's not what diminishing returns means. In a nutshell for every percent of dodge or avoidance you acquire the next percent becomes that much harder to attain (ie. it takes more points than the last percent). This prevents things like rogue tanking sets because it makes it impossible for a character to obtain enough dodge/miss/avoidance in general to reach 104.xx% avoidance.

[enigmaran]

I probably should have been a bit more clear about what I was saying. What I was trying to get at was that the decay in dodge value conversion to dodge as you get more dodge is already incorporated on your character tab. So even if your gear would make you think you have x% of dodge just looking at the stat values, you actually have less due to DR which is already reflected on your character tab when you equip the gear.

the whole math and stuff is located here:

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f63/4...avoidance.html

In hindsight I explained it poorly and seemed to have confused some people.

[Cortano]

I don't think you understand what diminishing returns means. It doesn't mean that with each hit you're more likely to get hit. It's just that agility progressively loses its dodge value as you gain more.

Diminishing Returns ends up meaning "roughly linear"

The amount you get hit is approximately proportional to your dodge rating

If you dodge percent went from 40% to 80%, you are getting hit by significantly less than half as many hits, you are reducing the number of hits by three times: (1 - 0.4) / (1 - 0.8 ) = (0.6 / 0.2) = 300%. Instead of getting hit 60 times for every 100 blows, you are hit 20 times.

If you went from 40% to 70% dodge, you cut the amount you are hit from 60 per 100 to 30 per 100. Therefore going from 0 to 40% dodge should cost you the same as going from 40% to 70% dodge. So, the same dodge rating is getting you less 'dodge percent' but is still working just as hard.

The same amount of dodge rating that went from 0 to 70% would take you to 85% (which again cuts in half the damage you receive!!!)

Its not that agility or dodge loses "value" so much as you get linear returns for it.

(It is more complicated than that, particularly for classes with block/dodge. There are some real caps for other classes, for bears it is more straight forward until you hit very high gear levels.)