Bear Druid Gemming/Enchanting Puzzle

[Purrfunctory]

I didn't realize that the debate about EH versus TTL was over. There are many people such as myself who believe that once you have reached a sufficient health pool that other attributes provide more benefit. This is confirmed by at least two different highly popular simulation models.

I could be mistaken but I understand that health pools will be sufficient in Cataclysm without exclusively stacking Stamina. Considering that Critical Strike is necessary for Savage Defense in addition to generating additional Threat and Rage, there certainly is significant value in ensuring you have a (as yet undefined for Cataclysm) amount of Critical Strike Rating. Agility is likely the best means to ensure you have sufficient Critical Strike as Agility provides Attack Power in addition to Critical Strike.

[YeahNo]

Well, speaking in regards to Wotlk Raiding, EH is generally seen as the way to go. That view may not be entirely correct, but that seems to be where most of the community is at right now.

As to whether EH will be the "correct" way to gear a tank in Cataclym, I'm not sure. It appears that mana is an issue, and it appears that there will be significantly more value to avoidance in Cataclysm, but until first tier raids can start being theorycrafted, I just don't feel comfortable joining others in slaying the EH dragon. I'd love to be in a place where I can seek socket bonuses, but after about 2 years of not doing so, its tough for me to make that leap.

Odds are, I'll be wrong as soon as we see the first raid content. And I won't mind one damn bit.

As an aside, Kalon makes an interesting point regarding Stamina gemming in his most recent post: Vengeance, which gives AP based on our total HP, will be a bit of a mitigation mechanic for us. Savage defense gives us a shield which is based on our AP, and (decidedly less so, but still important) based on our total HP. Also, we can probably safely assume that we will be healing 8% of max HP every 6 seconds from LotP. I'm excited to see the lively debate among Bears once all the information is in. Perhaps Moar Stam will die. =)

[Richmond]

You have more than enough Stamina for the content you are attempting - As far as your achievements point out, your mid way through ICC 10 HC and you've only done ICC 25 HC Gunship a few times.

You have 40k HP with 1 Stamina trinket, which equates to about 85k fully raid buffed in ICC. If your healers can't heal you through anything your expected to tank in ICC 10 - then you need new healers.

On your gear:

Stop gemming for expertise
Pick up either the Gunship BoE Chest or the EoF chest (not the tier one) - That will sort out any expertise problems
Snap out of the 'Stamina is King' mentality, as i stated above, you have more than enough, after you have, go and pick yourself up some Shifting Dreadstones and put them in your shoulders, gloves and your Tier head piece (when you get it)
Get the tier head piece and lose the tier chest piece to your DPS spec
Get the sons of Hodir dodge enchant on your shoulders
Change your glove enchant to either 20 Agility or 225 armor. 2% Threat + 10 Parry is not an option, its terribly rubbish for druids - You'd be better not enchanting them at all. I personally prefer 20 Agility, but armor is more than a valid option
Pick up the ICC crafted boots if you have the funds
Your UO trinket is OK, but be aware that on a good bunch of fights in ICC, its terrible. I've given it away 3 times so far - It'd only be good on Saurfang, Princes and perhaps the LK depending on your role. Thats 3 out of 12 that its any good. The rest of the time, a stamina trinket would be better for magical fights (ToC 25 trinket or the Black Heart) and the Glyph of imordability (EoT armor trinket) for the melee ones (At least it has a CD you can use) EDIT - Actually, it wouldn't be great for Saurfang due to the frequency of tank swaps

[rated]

Your UO trinket is OK, but be aware that on a good bunch of fights in ICC, its terrible. I've given it away 3 times so far - It'd only be good on Saurfang, Princes and perhaps the LK depending on your role. Thats 3 out of 12 that its any good. The rest of the time, a stamina trinket would be better for magical fights (ToC 25 trinket or the Black Heart) and the Glyph of imordability (EoT armor trinket) for the melee ones (At least it has a CD you can use) EDIT - Actually, it wouldn't be great for Saurfang due to the frequency of tank swaps

UO is an armor trinket with a sick proc. It's not a stam trinket. What I find contradicting is you say a stam trinket is better for magic fights, yet you suggest an armor trinket for blood princes ?

If anything UO is bad for fights like blood princes and LK. On blood princes you're dealing with magic damage so an armor trinket would be silly. On LK you cant always rely on UO's proc to be up when you need it most (soul reaper) hence its better to use a stam trinket instead of UO.

UO shines the most on a fight like festergut & sindragosa.

[Richmond]

UO is an armor trinket with a sick proc. It's not a stam trinket. What I find contradicting is you say a stam trinket is better for magic fights, yet you suggest an armor trinket for blood princes ?

Have you ever tanked the two melee princes? They hit for a fairly respectable amount of damage (Back when the 10% buff was around, Druids were practically the only tanks that could take 2) and with them being melee attacks, that would pretty much ensure a 100% uptime. So you get 240 stamina and 1890 armor if you use the UO. On the other hand, if you was the orb tank then a static stamina trinket would obviously be better.

UO shines the most on a fight like festergut & sindragosa.

Really? For the first half of the fight your stacks will fall off due to air phases and for the second half of the fight they'll fall off due to tank swaps? With the amount of magic damage that floats around on that fight i couldn't think of a worse trinket to use? With the exception of the Glyph armor trinket? Stam/Stam always on that fight

[bavarcarus]

I pretty much pretend UO does not have a proc...I still love the armor.

So what was the explanation of why tanks should not gem expertise?

[rated]

Have you ever tanked the two melee princes? They hit for a fairly respectable amount of damage (Back when the 10% buff was around, Druids were practically the only tanks that could take 2) and with them being melee attacks, that would pretty much ensure a 100% uptime. So you get 240 stamina and 1890 armor if you use the UO. On the other hand, if you was the orb tank then a static stamina trinket would obviously be better.

Getting killed by the princes melee attacks was never a problem while tanking both princes for me. The magic damage during the fight how ever can be. You're going to have a hard time justifying to me how valuable armor is on a boss fight that's mostly magic damage.

Really? For the first half of the fight your stacks will fall off due to air phases and for the second half of the fight they'll fall off due to tank swaps? With the amount of magic damage that floats around on that fight i couldn't think of a worse trinket to use? With the exception of the Glyph armor trinket? Stam/Stam always on that fight

I have enough stam with out using stam trinkets to tank sindragosa. I use armor trinkets because its not the frostbreath that kills you its the parry haste + a bunch of melee swings after a frost breath that kills you.

[Yohassakura]

Get the gunship chest & 4pc t10 consisting of the other pieces.

Depending on what content you're doing (7+ heroic 25m): Use 1 or 2 agi/stam gems an the rest stamina. Use armor enchants on gloves & cloak while trying to maintain the soft caps maybe a bit more for hit & exp (look at my armoury in my sig for an example).

Anything less and do whatever you want. You only stack stamina if your current content is really Sindragosa & LK 25 heroic. People stack stam because they can deal insane spike damage which can't reliably be avoided (thus stacking stamina + armour) to reduce the hits that they would be taking.

Other thread clarifications: If you're tanking the 2 melee adds go for the armour trinket, as you shouldn't be taking any substantial magic damage (some 2-5k ticks maybe?)

We no longer have an armour advantage considering a lot of plate items had their armour increased (see the frost emblem belt for example).

I believe that we will be mainly stacking agi to begin with, or in a 5:1 ratio pure agi to pure stam (it will change as required). So far there's no killer mechanics that are unavoidable thus far (one-shot mechanic in BRC you can just run out of by having half a brain). So reduce damage as much as possible (where possible) rather than absorb as much as possible all of the time. This will also help healers out with their "new style" of healing.

[jmkiser33]

Thank you very much for helping me out with this. I definitely needed to learn more about what bear druids benefit from doing what. Thank you Richmond for checking out what content I'm working with because that definitely makes a difference.

For all the times I've done H Lootship so far, sadly, the chest has not dropped :-/ That still is my goal (stupid lootship)

From seeing the discussions and thinking about the content I'm doing (8/12 H 10 with no end wing bosses and 11/12 Reg 25), so far I haven't had any issues with survivability. Threat has been my main concern which I probably 'oversolved' with capping expertise and hit (although I swear fury warriors taunt sometimes even though they promise they don't ;-)). Working on progression, my survivability or threat for that matter hasn't been an issue and I'm a successful MT.

What I'm wearing is the best gear that I have available to me at the moment. The day I get a straight stam trinket or the sack, I will replace.

Regarding enchants/gems, I focused on hitting expertise/hit cap and then stamina the rest of the way. In my current content, my threat/survivability is more then fine, but would I be improving my gear by putting more of a gem/enchant focus into agility?

------

In my raid, our other tanks are often switching around specs, but I'm always a bear so I'm delegated the "main tank" slot. Instead of being a typical bear as a dps/OT, I'm tanking every fight (even soloing Sindy in frost gear). The only fights where I'm officially "on the adds" is Lootship and Princes (I tank Keleseth). Other then that, I have the boss myself or I'm in the taunt rotation. Is there a different stat focus for me then there would be for your typical kitty/OT?

[bavarcarus]

The only difference between offtank and MT would possibly be sacrificing threat for stm, or mitigation for stm (like afk OTing bql or princes shadow tank). I typically try to get the health I want while wearing 1 or 2 armor trinkets so I can swap out for encounters that benefit from it. These days it doesn't seem to matter much though, if you're doing reg 25m ICC with the 30% buff the only difficult part is LK (at 264 ilvl). I sometimes do festergut in a special dps set so I can lol at outdpsing dpsers.

[Thalruin]

Getting killed by the princes melee attacks was never a problem while tanking both princes for me. The magic damage during the fight how ever can be. You're going to have a hard time justifying to me how valuable armor is on a boss fight that's mostly magic damage.





I have enough stam with out using stam trinkets to tank sindragosa. I use armor trinkets because its not the frostbreath that kills you its the parry haste + a bunch of melee swings after a frost breath that kills you.

"and with them being melee attacks, that would pretty much ensure a 100% uptime. So you get 240 stamina and 1890 armor if you use the UO."


You even quoted it....

[Infernix17]

Most of these people are wrong, most likely because they don't actually play a bear.

Follow my armor: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...n&cn=Bullchitt

First: You want to put a +30 stam in your head piece. The socket bonus is +8 agility and 30 Stam > 8 agility for ICC.
Second: You want to get the +30 stam/15 resilience shoulder enchant.
Third: Put a +10AGI/+15Stam in a +6 stam socket bonus. (Ring or neck) This will activate your Meta
Fourth: Gem Stam for everything else, yes it sucks and I am sorry, but thats what ICC has done to tanks.
Fifth: Enchant +18 stam on your gloves and chest.
Sixth: Put +225 armor on your cloak.

As far as Expertise and Hit goes, Expertise is easy to solve with the chest off of heroic Gunship. You will be low on hit no matter what you do, you can solve it by doing Heroic Anub and getting [Armbands of Dark Determination] and/or getting the Cape off of Princes [Royal Crimson Cloak]. Although, hit isn't important so don't worry about it.

Once again, follow my armory link to help with glyphs, talents, and gear/gem choices.

[YeahNo]

Deciding how to gem and enchant your gear is actually a truly basic process. I think as theorycrafters, its easy to make it too complex. Ask yourself a couple questions, and the answer becomes clear:

Are my healers in any danger of going oom?
If the answer is no, then gemming or enchanting avoidance is nearly pointless.
Is my threat capping the DPS to the point that it is making the encounter more difficult?
If the answer is no, then gemming or enchanting threat is nearly pointless.

I asked myself those questions back when I started tanking (wrathlol), and the answers haven't changed. As a result, since then, I have gone for stamina. If your answers are the same as mine, stamina is probably the way to go.

[Richmond]

Most of these people are wrong, most likely because they don't actually play a bear.

Follow my armor: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...n&cn=Bullchitt

First: You want to put a +30 stam in your head piece. The socket bonus is +8 agility and 30 Stam > 8 agility for ICC.
Second: You want to get the +30 stam/15 resilience shoulder enchant.
Third: Put a +10AGI/+15Stam in a +6 stam socket bonus. (Ring or neck) This will activate your Meta
Fourth: Gem Stam for everything else, yes it sucks and I am sorry, but thats what ICC has done to tanks.
Fifth: Enchant +18 stam on your gloves and chest.
Sixth: Put +225 armor on your cloak.

As far as Expertise and Hit goes, Expertise is easy to solve with the chest off of heroic Gunship. You will be low on hit no matter what you do, you can solve it by doing Heroic Anub and getting [Armbands of Dark Determination] and/or getting the Cape off of Princes [Royal Crimson Cloak]. Although, hit isn't important so don't worry about it.

Once again, follow my armory link to help with glyphs, talents, and gear/gem choices.

Your pushing LK Heroic where as the OP is only 8/12 in HC 10 man, there is a huge difference in content. He doesn't need any more stamina. And for reference, i do play a Druid.

[YeahNo]

...He doesn't need any more stamina.

Respectfully, I don't think he needs anything in particular for his content other than a good group. However, if your threat is fine, and your healer's mana is fine, then why not just gem stamina? The slight increase in HP is more likely to prevent a wipe than gemming either of the other two options. I agree that given his current level of content, he could probably gem agility and it wouldn't have a huge impact. But that's like gemming up to 17% hit because you only run normal mode ICC, and you don't need any stam gems to complete said content.

In my humble opinion, gear for the toughest content, and work your ass off trying to get there.

[bavarcarus]

Gear for what you're doing, or are expecting to be doing. I don't see anyone gearing for cataclysm content atm.

Healer mana isn't an issue, but their GCDs are. Dodging an attack means they can heal someone else. I'm often using 2 armor trinkets these days since I don't think I need 85k health for normal ICC25 content. I have no expectation of doing HICC25 in the next week before everything drastically changes, so I'm not geared to do so (though I'm sure I could do most of it in my current gear). On that point, this is all pretty pointless don't ya think?

[YeahNo]

Healer mana isn't an issue, but their GCDs are. Dodging an attack means they can heal someone else.

Atm, that isn't really how healing works though. You have raid healers that generally don't spend a lot of effort on tanks, and tank healers that don't spend a lot of effort on the raid. Holy priests are not doing their job very effectively if they use GCDs on the tank. e.g. A Holy Paladin isn't going to decide between using cast time on a raid member or a tank. They'll just keep dropping 27k heals on both tanks at once.

All I'm saying is, you probably will never wipe from gemming too much stamina. Even on regular mode LK (which everyone who raids has seen or will see soon) there is ample reason to gem stamina. (as a soak tank for shadow damage, or the LK tank taking reapers)

[Purrfunctory]

Cataclysm is a puzzle at this point. I am not certain I would expend to much effort rethinking Bear tanking at the moment.

Savage Defense - Each time you deal a critical strike while in Bear Form, you have a 50% chance to gain Savage Defense, reducing the damage taken from the next physical attack that strikes you by 65% of your attack power.

Mastery: Savage Defender - Increases the damage absorbed by your Savage Defense ability by 32%. Each point of Mastery increases the absorb by an additional 4%.

Vengeance - Each time you take damage while in Bear Form, you gain 5% of the damage taken as attack power, up to a maximum of 10% of your health.

Our key tanking abilities seem to point us in different directions; Attack Power, Critical Strike and Mastery for Savage Defense and Stamina for Vengeance. Of course, Agility provides Armor, Attack Power, Critical Strike and Dodge so Agility is clearly an important stat as well. Reinforcing the importance of Agility and Stamina further is the change to Mark of the Wild in that the buff now increases primary stats 5%. Stamina is, as always, a good stat but we might have enough Stamina without stacking Stamina considering Armor Specialization increases our Stamina 5% as well.

I have noticed that a large number of people seem confused about Pulverize but with Savage Defense having a 50% chance to upon a Critical Strike I can definitely see the Pulverize buff with Lacerate spam (and the subsequent use of Glyph of Lacerate for an additional 5% critical strike to Lacerate) becoming "critical" to Bear tanking. With beta testers indicating that Critical Strike %s are much lower at level 85 (>30% is apparently very good Critical Strike) it makes that additional 9% plus another 5% that much more significant.

[utopianh]

Respectfully, I don't think he needs anything in particular for his content other than a good group. However, if your threat is fine, and your healer's mana is fine, then why not just gem stamina? The slight increase in HP is more likely to prevent a wipe than gemming either of the other two options. I agree that given his current level of content, he could probably gem agility and it wouldn't have a huge impact. But that's like gemming up to 17% hit because you only run normal mode ICC, and you don't need any stam gems to complete said content.

In my humble opinion, gear for the toughest content, and work your ass off trying to get there.

If your survivability is high enough, why not gear for damage?

I've seen so much in this thread about the ridiculous tanking mentality that has been around here, even though most of the tank deaths that happen now adays are due to poor use of cooldowns or improper strategy that gearing doesn't solve. Even when people way outgear the content, such as the OP, people still stack stamina pointlessly, when he should be swapping to a damage/threat trinket to get the encounters over quicker and allow the dps more padding. Feral threat is one of the weakest per damage done, which is why actually increasing our dps stats has more of a noticable effect on dps than other classes, and I never understood why people didn't take advantage of it.

I highly recommend any bear buy the War Token; the haste is one of the largest threat/damage increases available for bear in the game currently. Every boss in ICC besides LDW and sindi have their parry haste mechanic turned off, so being expertise capped really is pointless and haste is more threat past dodge cap than expertise.

Of course for cata haste becomes the weakest tank stat, even from a threat standpoint; we'll likely be balancing Agi, Sta and Mastery with hit/expertise padding come that content.

[YeahNo]

...haste is more threat past dodge cap than expertise.

Hate to nitpick, but this is just not true. We have some very dedicated theorycrafters in the Bear Community, and I'd like to reference Fellhoof's (Kalon) post on January 13th of this year on his wowthinktank blog. Feel free to check it out, but in short, hit up to cap, expertise (even past 26), and armor pen are all better threat stats than haste.

Additionally, my point is this: it is impossible to over gear H LK 10 or H LK 25. Even in full 277 gear, stacking stam is the way to go on those encounters. If you plan to do those encounters, stack stamina. If not, and you plan to run content that does not challenge your raid very much, you can gem literally any way you would like, even strength, and probably get away with it. But imho, the optimal strategy for difficult to survive encounters is to gem stamina.