The Bear Guide - Cataclysm Edition

[Barawr]

Yeah, I guess I can see how the amount of agility required to gain any substantial crit% or dodge% pushes pure dodge rating ahead. I guess all our talk of gemming agility or agi/stam are out the window for now with the possibility of changes in future tiers.

[bavarcarus]

I doubt it makes a huge difference, but it doesn't look like that accounts for buffs. You'll have to excuse my lazyness...are there still stat modifiers effecting agi in talents that ferals take?

[Barawr]

ATM, it seems to be the usual heavy stam stacking. /sigh

I was hoping it wouldn't start out that way.

[Yohassakura]

I doubt it makes a huge difference, but it doesn't look like that accounts for buffs. You'll have to excuse my lazyness...are there still stat modifiers effecting agi in talents that ferals take?

Just the +5% from Kings/MotW.

243.58281085 * 0.95 = 231.4036703075

Ratio:

Dodge 1 = Agility 0.763682744...

I'd take a guess that the itemization / gear list takes into account buffs + talents (kings + HotW)

[bavarcarus]

That's a shame, I was looking forward to stacking agi.

[Paskgotsheal]

I don't buy this dodge > agility argument. Just doing some quick math let's compare 177 dodge bs 177 agility.

Dodge = 1% dodge, nothing more


Agility = .73% dodge, .55% crit and 354 attack power, which on average would increase our shield by 300 per attack.

I don't know about you, but I'd take agility over dodge here any day. Mitagation from shields and armor help us be less spikey, which I haven't had a problem with anyone healing me in heroic dungeons yet. I plan on doing raids Friday so I will be able to see how it matches up.

I can't bring myself to believe dodge is better after looking at the numbers. Agility also scales with kings which I didn't factor in.

[Yohassakura]

I don't buy this dodge > agility argument. Just doing some quick math let's compare 177 dodge bs 177 agility.

Dodge = 1% dodge, nothing more


Agility = .73% dodge, .55% crit and 354 attack power, which on average would increase our shield by 300 per attack.

I don't know about you, but I'd take agility over dodge here any day. Mitagation from shields and armor help us be less spikey, which I haven't had a problem with anyone healing me in heroic dungeons yet. I plan on doing raids Friday so I will be able to see how it matches up.

I can't bring myself to believe dodge is better after looking at the numbers. Agility also scales with kings which I didn't factor in.

46.2% of 354AP is 163.548 (35% base, plus base mastery i believe), so not it's not 300 per attack. You also need to think about it only has 50% chance of activating on CRITS so the effectiveness is reduced by a lot. (let's say 30% crit) so that's 163.548/2 = 81.774 *0.3 = 24.5322 effective AP on savage defense (just looking at it from the attack power way).

The crit is then reduced from .55% crit to half of that, because it's 50% chance on crit (so that's 0.275% effective crit to increase savage defense proc rate).

Whereas, in your gear you're using stamina (scales well, increases potential attack power through vengeance, increases EHP - very important) and the stam/dodge gems are used to gain mastery rating (which will increase the value of agility on all items). Not to mention, that you HAVE to have at least 2 yellow gems (stam/dodge or other good combo, which with those sets of gears expertise and the like aren't needed) to activate the metagem.

Cataclysm still hasn't arrived for me yet, so i can't give any feedback from my own experiences, however I am disappointed that it has worked out that dodge (and a little disappointed that stamina is still) better than agility (or at least at this moment in time, with those 2 sets of gears).

[bavarcarus]

I'm thinking this might be part of the design to discourage hybrids, if it turned out that the best tanking setup was to stack agility there'd be little difference between a tank set and a dps set. Although having done away with ArP a tank that goes kittie for part of the fight will still put out impressive numbers.

I'm still gonna hold judgement till I get to raiding and see how my survivability seems, I wouldn't mind sacrificing some dodge to get the crit and AP if I feel comfortable tanking.

[redshirtspeedo]

can't wait to level my bear after reading through this!

[HashBrownJM]

4.0.1 - Cataclysm Bear Guide
Weapon:

• Enchant Weapon - Landslide: +1000 AP chance on hit

XI: | Changed/Added Abilities |

Maul - An attack that instantly deals physical damage. Effects which increase Bleed damage also increase Maul damage. 3 second cooldown.

• Maul is still your overall strongest ability, always keep on CD.

• Maul has been changed to have a 3 second cooldown rather than "on next attack."

• Macro everything to maul, because it is still off the GCD. **See section "XV: Macros" for more information.

Lacerate - Lacerates the enemy target, dealing damage and making them bleed for damage over 15 sec, and causing a high amount of threat. Damage increased by attack power. This effect stacks up to 3 times on the same target.

• Lacerate has been changed to only stack 3 times and the Lacerate Dot is bad now, Lacerate(non dot) does an insane amount of damage and you should be pulverizing every 10-15 seconds, so make sure you always have 3 stacks of Lacerate on the target.

• The only good thing about the Lacerate DoT is that it gives you a 30% chance to refresh the Cooldown of Mangle.

Swipe - Swipe nearby enemies, inflicting 2610 damage. Damage increased by attack power.

• Swipe now has a 6 second Cooldown, but has been compensated by a huge damage increase.

• This does hurt our AoE tanking a little, but easy to fix. **See "XIV AoE Tanking" for more information.

New Ability: Thrash - Deals damage, and causes all targets within 8 yards to bleed for damage over 6 sec.

• Very strong new AoE ability in Cataclysm! Does not share a CD with Swipe, so AoE will be much easier.

I notice this came out for 4.0.3a and I didn't bother to read through everything (namely people complaining about the changes), so please forgive me if this has already been addressed. I'm sure you picked up Landslide for the AP boost and how it modifies the above abilities, which is great for our overall DPS and more importantly, our TPS, but is there any particular reason why you didn't even consider the Windwalk enchant? It seems that survivability would be our #1 goal, and 600 dodge rating for 15 seconds doesn't seem like anything to ignore.

Just wondering if you could offer some insight! Thanks.

EDIT: After macro'ing Maul to Lacerate, Swipe, and Mangle, I'm also wondering if anyone noticed they were being rage-starved in battle? Maul is a whopping 30 rage, a lot to be dropping every 3 seconds.

[Lyren]

Could we have some less incorrect information?

You will see more overall damage from Maul, because it scales with AP and is being used twice as often than Mangle

Are you implying that Mangle doesn't scale with AP?

FFF > Mangle > Laceratex3 > Swipe > Mangle > Pulverize > Laceratex3 > Mangle > Swipe > Pulverize > Laceratex3 > Mangle > Swipe > Pulverize

Why are you hitting Swipe when Mangle is available. You have time for 3 abilities between regular Mangles, why are you using and letting Mangle sit? Better yet, why are you hitting Swipe at all in a single target rotation.

[Infernix17]

Could we have some less incorrect information?


Are you implying that Mangle doesn't scale with AP?


Why are you hitting Swipe when Mangle is available. You have time for 3 abilities between regular Mangles, why are you using and letting Mangle sit? Better yet, why are you hitting Swipe at all in a single target rotation.

Thank you for catching some mistakes.

Both questions are irrelevant to when this guide has been last updated, so hopefully this will answer your questions.

#1 Sure Mangle scales with AP, it's more of a typo than anything else.
#2 Mangle's damage was increased and Maul's damage was decreased, so we should be seeing more overall damage from Mangle now. Just needs to be updated.
#3 This rotation was setup before 4.0.1 was even out yet and when 4.0.1 did come out Swipe was doing some crazy damage and was a high priority ability. Once again, just needs to be updated.

I haven't been playing the game/raiding much, due to time constraints. So my ability to work on this guide has been minimized. Since I don't play much anymore, I don't want to change the guide until proper/correct information is released.

I will of course continue this guide into cataclysm, but changing very little mistakes (like the ones you pointed out) are not on my high priority list, especially when I skip over them. I thank you again for catching some mistakes in my guide, and I will change them immediately .

---------- Post added 2010-12-11 at 06:29 AM ----------

I notice this came out for 4.0.3a and I didn't bother to read through everything (namely people complaining about the changes), so please forgive me if this has already been addressed. I'm sure you picked up Landslide for the AP boost and how it modifies the above abilities, which is great for our overall DPS and more importantly, our TPS, but is there any particular reason why you didn't even consider the Windwalk enchant? It seems that survivability would be our #1 goal, and 600 dodge rating for 15 seconds doesn't seem like anything to ignore.

Just wondering if you could offer some insight! Thanks.

EDIT: After macro'ing Maul to Lacerate, Swipe, and Mangle, I'm also wondering if anyone noticed they were being rage-starved in battle? Maul is a whopping 30 rage, a lot to be dropping every 3 seconds.

It's more of a preference than anything else. If you are having threat issues then go with Landslide. Landslide will increase your threat and survivability. If you are not having threat problems, go with Windwalk. Bears want dodge now, most of our reforging is pure dodge.

I have never ever been rage-staved in a raid setting. If you do happen to have rage problems, take out Swipe in your rotation (unless you are picking up adds or there are adds around you.) Maul > Swipe for threat, if you start complaining about threat then something needs to be fixed, because Swipe's damage is so trivial now that you will see no difference.

[Paskgotsheal]

Yeah after doing raids last night, skimming some logs, I never had threat problems. On omnitron kill my savage defense healed(shielded) me for 600,000 damage over a 8 minute fight. That being said the advantages of more AP is nothing to shake a fist at - I'm closing in on 35%+ 60% savage defense from mastery; and my AP was over 24,000 during the raid. My shields were absorbing around 20k which is ridiculously nice. The way savage defense scales I don't see me using dodge gems over agility, it just doesn't seem intelligent. Also I'm using the 130 agility to staff enchant, I prefer the stable agility over the proc of 600 dodge or 1000 AP.

Anyone else done some raids and have an opinion on the matter?

[bavarcarus]

I haven't tested myself, but I had a friend say he swapped out some rings and found that dodge rating was about equal to agi. Did they change the combat ratings since that EJ post about beta?

[Paskgotsheal]

I haven't tested myself, but I had a friend say he swapped out some rings and found that dodge rating was about equal to agi. Did they change the combat ratings since that EJ post about beta?

No idea; I can check later. But agi is relatively close to dodge rating anyways, and scales with kings, and gives crit and gives AP which is why I can't bring myself to gem for it. I can see that it might give SLIGHLY more avoidance, but for overall mitigation + avoidance + threat I'd go with agility.

[Castnicke]

Couple of days ago I had 40k armor.. and now I'm down at 30k armor.

I asked the other tanks in my guild and they are at 40k armor now.

What's up with that? :/

[Yohassakura]

Couple of days ago I had 40k armor.. and now I'm down at 30k armor.

I asked the other tanks in my guild and they are at 40k armor now.

What's up with that? :/

Thick hide was bugged... No idea why they have plenty more armor than us though ^^

[Infernix17]

We just keep getting nerfed. Fun times.

[Milocow]

"1) Find your Mastery% and how much Savage Defender provides. (17% Mastery = 70% from Savage Defender Savage.)
2) Find your Savage Defense + Mastery% ( To figure out Savage Defense + Mastery you multiply .35*Your Savage Defender %)(.35 is Savage Defense, Savage Defense is 35% of your AP and 35% turns into .35)
3) Find your HP fully raid buffed.
4) Find your Attack Power fully raid buffed
5) Find your Max Vengeance attack power (To figure out your max Vengeance divide your HP by 10%(Multiply by .10)).
6) Find your total AP by adding your Max Vengeance AP + Regular AP together
7) Multiply your total AP by your Savage Defense + Mastery amount. (SD + Mastery= Your Step 2 number.)

Example:
17.52% Mastery and 70% from Savage Defender.
Savage Defense + Mastery= .65*1.7= 1.105 = 110.5%
94,000 HP fully raid buffed.
7,200 AP, before Vengeance, fully raid buffed.
Max Vengeance is 9,400 fully raid buffed.
Total AP is 16,600 fully raid buffed.
Multiply 16,600 by 110.5%: 16,600*1.105= 18,343.
Savage Defense + Mastery total absorb= 18,343"

How you get 0.65..? shudnt it be 0.35 of AP?
And is it
1. (0.35 x AP) * Mastery
2. (0.35 * Mastery) * AP?
or both the same?
sorry nt sure abt savage defense here

[camy011]

Figured I'd share a macro I made for cataclysm. Since we have 2 new moves it is nice to compact things ;P

Swipe/Thrash one key
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Thrash(Bear Form),Swipe(Bear Form)
/cast !Maul(Bear Form)