Arpen on tanking gear

[Virtutis]

How terrible is arpen for druid tanking? I'm trying to take the step up from 232 to 245+ gear, and looking for gear that is easily obtainable via emblem/ crafting, but all of it seems to have arpen on it.

[Athael]

Disclaimer: I am completely unqualified to talk about bear tanks. I don't know much about druids, and I've never tanked as one. Take everything I say, at best, with a grain of salt, and at worst, ignore me completely.

That having been said - don't bear tanks only use physical damage? Thus it can't be much worse than a warrior tank using ArPen, right? Probably better, since, iirc, bear druids have more DPS stats on their gear overall, so there's um, less item budget spent on avoidance you get via talents?

Am I completely off base on that one? Not sure.

[Franson]

It's definitely not desirable. It'll buff your threat generation, but agility will do it better. More crits = more threat.

tl;dr

Not good.

[cise4832]

http://wowthinktank.blogspot.com/201...-of-arpen.html

In this situation, arpen becomes the next best threat stat after hit and expertise, and it's almost competitive. At higher rates it does become competitive with expertise - but hopefully as a bear you're not quite at the point where you're trying to reach the hard cap of armor pen.

[Virtutis]

http://wowthinktank.blogspot.com/201...-of-arpen.html

This is exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you!

[Valanna]

Considering Executioner was the highest threat enchant for warriors in TBC, I cannot imagine it is bad for druid threat. However, it would be a waste if you only used 1-2 pieces with it, as it scales exponentially.

[Zreo]

its actually pretty good. im at 30%arp now with 4/5 tier10 264... i dont really want more agi for threat, as i got 60% crit buffed. its a nice stat. there isnt really any stats that are bad for feral tanks.

[getefix]

It has absolutely 0 survival value, but it's a decent stat if your threat is lacking. You should still value hit, expertise, agility, stamina, and crit over it. Haste is meh imo.

[arel00]

It has absolutely 0 survival value, but it's a decent stat if your threat is lacking. You should still value hit, expertise, agility, stamina, and crit over it. Haste is meh imo.

Haste is as much purely TPS as ArP is. And all in all, ArP gives a better TPS increase.

That said, I don't think the two stats will be mutually exclusive very often. If we're talking T10-level, then only belt/bracers/boots have a real choice in between (noone is that crazy to question jewelry, I hope).

[Bearform]

Haste is as much purely TPS as ArP is.

Not exactly 100% true. Since haste means more attacks per minute, it means more crits per minute, which translate into Savage Defense shields--especially since maul will hit more than 1 target a good portion of the time. ArP can't claim it makes more Savage Defense shields.

[Dedweight]

Not exactly 100% true. Since haste means more attacks per minute, it means more crits per minute, which translate into Savage Defense shields--especially since maul will hit more than 1 target a good portion of the time. ArP can't claim it makes more Savage Defense shields.

Fairly certain haste doesn't increase the number of times you crit per minute but simply increases the number of chances you have to crit per minute. With that said and with my limited feral tank knowledge Armor Pen isn't a horrible stat for tanking as it is a direct threat boosting stat however haste does work as a threat boost and as a slight mitigation boost(as I mentioned in the first sentance; more attacks=more chances to crit, more chances to crit=higher savage defense up time).

[Dhurn]

While it's not something i'd aim for in a raid set specifically (crit/ap/haste all have greater utility, especially considering threat is kind of a joke to maintain anyway if hunters and rogues don't suck), I find a great way to speed up heroic randoms is to softcap arpen on tank gear and throw on grim toll (MJ Rs if you got it).

6k dps on a trash pull without a sweat when it procs

[Rambear]

Armour Pen isn't a bad stat as such. It does indeed do nothing for your survivability, yet one can hope that in the hard modes threat will actually become an issue.

Ie, rogues would ideally TotT each other or another dps to increase raid-dps, hunters prefer not having to MD every cooldown to increase their own.

But, ArP> agility, crit, haste and AP for threat generation. Seeing how most bears do not stack agility, but mosty stack stam or mix stam/agility in gemming, all these other stas become secondary. I mean, I have never seen a druid pass up on an item that granted +20 stam and +15 agility and more armour through ilevel just because the extra threat stat changed from crit to haste.

In the same vein, if many of the highest stam/agi items have ArP, be happy about the extra threat. Highest stam configurations in ICC (coincidentally also highest agility), also include ArP:
4T10, wrists from Saurfang, Belt from Professor, boots from Marrowgar, staff from Arthas (even more true for the 277 items). You aren;t going to pass these items up for anything else anyway. It's good threat, aswell as max survivability.

[Lyren]

Fairly certain haste doesn't increase the number of times you crit per minute but simply increases the number of chances you have to crit per minute.

And statistically, with 50% chance to crit, if you go from 2 attacks per minute to 4 attacks per minute, you've gained crits per minute... It's no different if you go from 40 attacks to 44 attacks. More is more.

[arel00]

And statistically, with 50% chance to crit, if you go from 2 attacks per minute to 4 attacks per minute, you've gained crits per minute... It's no different if you go from 40 attacks to 44 attacks. More is more.

Actually it is different, because of game mechanics.
On a theoretical level, more attacks means more crit, RNG permitting. They don't, however, translate into a bigger uptime of Savage Defense.

The "problem" with Savage Defense is that is doesn't matter how many times you crit, but how many attacks you absorb. If, making an extreme example, you have so much Haste and Crit to proc SD once per second, and the boss has a 2sec swing time, you're gonna absorb all his attacks. Critting twice per second won't give you any more mitigation that that.

In other words: SD doesn't scale linearly, neither with Crit nor with Haste. It depends on the boss attack speed and your buffs as well. While it is true that going from 90% to 91% uptime it's, even if small, an increase in mitigation, it's not so immediate to predict.
And it's not enough to start seriously considering Haste a mitigation stat.

I know you weren't arguing about that, so don't take this as a critique on the whole thing. I just like to point out that the mechanic behind SD is slightly more complex than just "crit * haste", because it depends on external factors (namely, the mobs).

[xebtria]

Don't take RNG into argumentation... If you do so, you could say "lets remove agility completely, because you can theoretically have 99% dodge and don't dodge a single attack over a 2hr fight."...

Calculations are made to get a average value of something. BECAUSE OF RNG there are no absolut values which are fixed for every fight, no matter if it lasts 10sec or 24hrs. If you now take RNG into that calculation itself, you mess up everything - see above.

(Btw: The probability of this example going to happen is a complete different question, though. )

[Deleted]

The stat weights I use for tanking atm are as follows:



Leather/cloth: http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4&filt...03:2.12:-39.22

Jewelry/weapons: http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter...4.06:4.03:2.12

Keep in mind that i calculated these based on tanking in ICC raids.

Expertise is worth double if you have less than 26 expertise.

[BeerMug]

Im at roughly 450 Apr in my tanking kit, I have noticed my Tps is amazing very dificult to pull of me now even with the 12 to 14k dps trying to mess with me(for fun). When I Aoe tank the trash mobs with just swipe No issue there ether. Not sure it is from the Apr but I bet it doesn't hurt. I am way over hit cap 384 and my expertise is 199. I'm sure the three stats together = very high threat.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...ull&cn=Beermug

[BeerMug]

Threat is never a problem. Most of the time the dps doesn't even have to hold back or use any other threat dropping ability thus giving them more dps in the end. So in my opinion Apr is great for Bear tanks.

[littlepiggy]

Threat is never a problem. Most of the time the dps doesn't even have to hold back or use any other threat dropping ability thus giving them more dps in the end. So in my opinion Apr is great for Bear tanks.

uhh not to be a jerk, but you're using a strength weapon to tank? the only way that could be better than an agility weapon is if all you have is a journey's end... a kitty i could see doing this, but not a bear.