The Bear Guide - Cataclysm Edition

[Reesify]

I prefer 20 stats, myself. Better on the mitigation value front, though the difference between the two is fairly small.

[CenariusTheForestLord]

I just farmed few maelstrom crystals to make new enchant on my weapon but now I doubt to change my +130 agi.

What's better between +130 agi (crit,dodge,ap), +600 dodge proc and +1000AP proc ?


Ty

The 1000 AP is useless, wel not entirely ofcourse, but AP isnt your priority at the moment, vengeance covers the threat part quite nicely
The 130 agi is very good since you have 100% +130 agi ofcourse and it is quite cheap compared to the other one
The 600 dodge proc is very nice and has a reasonable uptime, about 30%, but what i like about it is the speed boost, the speed boost on boots is rumoured to stack with the proc which makes this a magnificent tanking enchant, slow movement can be a raid wiper at times

---------- Post added 2011-01-17 at 12:21 AM ----------

Little question.

Whats the better chest enchant?

+20 to all stats OR +75 stamina??

Theyre quite close to each other, depends on your health, if you have about 145k + with MOTW you have enough health to go raid, for heroics people are estimating 160 to be a nice number. When you have those health levels, mitigation is the way to go.
The thing about muitigation is balance, balance between being able to take a few hits and avoiding a few.

[pewpewkachooo]

The 1000 agi is useless, wel not entirely ofcourse, but agi isnt your priority at the moment, vengeance covers the threat part quite nicely

I think you mean that it is 1000 ap lol
But anyways, when you say that agility isn't your priority, that is where you are wrong. Agility boosts a druid tank's major stats, and helps towards SD quite nicely. I went to stacking mainly agility on my druid, and he is an even more beast tank than he was before lol

[Paskgotsheal]

He prob meant AP for both of those

[Smartie]

It's already been said quite a few times now. Hit + Expertise are NOT important. Dodge > Mastery > Crit > Haste > Hit > Expertise for secondary stats.

Why does the opening post seem to favour capping hit and expertise, and value mastery more than reforging to dodge? Which is correct?

[Deleted]

Last edited by Infernix17; 2010-12-11 at 07:44 AM.

That's why.

[Smartie]

Ah, reading 35 pages to get the correct information really sucked :P

O.T. Is rawr importing from the armory yet for anyone?

[MatsT]

What people need to realize regardless if you favor agility or stamina is that the value of each can not currently be compared in any way. The only way Rawr and the spreadsheets etc compares them is that you have to enter manual weights for mitigation and survival (or whatever term that particular author used). If you use a higher value for survival, stamina will win. If you use a higher value for mitigation, agility will win. The correct weighting of these is extremely hard/impossible to calculate or even estimate and likely varies heavily between different fights that contain different amounts of magical damage and weak hitting adds. The numbers you are geting from Rawr is merely a guess, not some calculated value that you should trust above all else.

[Bottom]

Was just curious, is anyone else finding AoEing tanking lacking for druids at the moment?

I only recently started playing again (since the bear changes - i.e Swipe cooldown, Maul cooldown, etc..) and never had trouble controlling big groups of mobs before; while single target is not even close to an issue (20k tps easily at level 83), I find it hard to get initial aggro on multiple targets even when swiping/thrashing off the bat. Any tips?

Armory if it helps:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../bottom/simple

Also, I heard that weapon damage or DPS now affects damage output while in cat form; is the same true for bears?

[bavarcarus]

What people need to realize regardless if you favor agility or stamina is that the value of each can not currently be compared in any way. The only way Rawr and the spreadsheets etc compares them is that you have to enter manual weights for mitigation and survival (or whatever term that particular author used). If you use a higher value for survival, stamina will win. If you use a higher value for mitigation, agility will win. The correct weighting of these is extremely hard/impossible to calculate or even estimate and likely varies heavily between different fights that contain different amounts of magical damage and weak hitting adds. The numbers you are geting from Rawr is merely a guess, not some calculated value that you should trust above all else.

Rawr is meant to be a guide that is adjusted by the player. You judge how much stamina you should have based on how hard you're getting hit and adjust the survivability accordingly.

---------- Post added 2011-01-17 at 10:20 AM ----------

Was just curious, is anyone else finding AoEing tanking lacking for druids at the moment?

I only recently started playing again (since the bear changes - i.e Swipe cooldown, Maul cooldown, etc..) and never had trouble controlling big groups of mobs before; while single target is not even close to an issue (20k tps easily at level 83), I find it hard to get initial aggro on multiple targets even when swiping/thrashing off the bat. Any tips?

Armory if it helps:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../bottom/simple

Also, I heard that weapon damage or DPS now affects damage output while in cat form; is the same true for bears?

Our AOE is worthless untill you get vengeance stacked up in my experience. You just have to coax people to wait a few before aoeing.

[Arielle]

What people need to realize regardless if you favor agility or stamina is that the value of each can not currently be compared in any way. The only way Rawr and the spreadsheets etc compares them is that you have to enter manual weights for mitigation and survival (or whatever term that particular author used). If you use a higher value for survival, stamina will win. If you use a higher value for mitigation, agility will win. The correct weighting of these is extremely hard/impossible to calculate or even estimate and likely varies heavily between different fights that contain different amounts of magical damage and weak hitting adds. The numbers you are geting from Rawr is merely a guess, not some calculated value that you should trust above all else.

Agility will always beat Stamina for mitigation 100% of the time. You have to know how to read the results generated when you put in said information.

[Strut]

Our AOE is worthless untill you get vengeance stacked up in my experience. You just have to coax people to wait a few before aoeing.

You just need to make sure you are in good position to hit all the mobs during the pull, but an opener of Trash -> Swipe -> Maul if enough rage should keep them glued to you. Fill the gaps with tab Mangle or lacerate if you have time. You can also just Beserk Mangle if you have 3-5 mobs while just tabbing around.

[Deleted]

Okay, before you flame me, ive read the last few pages and I know that dodge is the stat you should reforge for. But Im still confused which stat you should reforge to dodge. Always the highest stat on the item?

[Arielle]

Okay, before you flame me, ive read the last few pages and I know that dodge is the stat you should reforge for. But Im still confused which stat you should reforge to dodge. Always the highest stat on the item?

Not necesarrily. The reforge order is (in order from first to last):

Haste -> Hit/Exp (after soft cap) -> Crit/Exp (before soft cap).

The order of Crit/Exp can change depending on how much Crit you have. Once you have a bunch of T11 gear Exp will be more valuable.

[bavarcarus]

You just need to make sure you are in good position to hit all the mobs during the pull, but an opener of Trash -> Swipe -> Maul if enough rage should keep them glued to you. Fill the gaps with tab Mangle or lacerate if you have time. You can also just Beserk Mangle if you have 3-5 mobs while just tabbing around.

I do ok, but swipe and thrash don't hit for shit till I've been getting hit for a while, glyphed maul is nice but really gobbles rage.

[Yohassakura]

I think that we're a bit lack lustre when it comes to intial threat on aoe packs, but the damage we do is >crazy<.

On trash in Bation of Twilight i was pulling 23k~ dps (yay for vengeance). The only problem i found was building threat to split mobs with the other tank. (Could have easily started out with berserk first i guess, but meh - still requiring a CD to do that much is lame).

[pewpewkachooo]

Not necesarrily. The reforge order is (in order from first to last):

Haste -> Hit/Exp (after soft cap) -> Crit/Exp (before soft cap).

The order of Crit/Exp can change depending on how much Crit you have. Once you have a bunch of T11 gear Exp will be more valuable.

The reforging order is never Crit/Exp as top priority. Dodge, other than SD, is the only form of midigation that druids have, so reforging to dodge is a must. It can add up to about 2-3% extra dodge.

[Barawr]

Katarn isn't saying to reforge TO crit/exp, but instead what to reforge into dodge. Haste being first followed by the rest.

[bavarcarus]

I think that we're a bit lack lustre when it comes to intial threat on aoe packs, but the damage we do is >crazy<.

On trash in Bation of Twilight i was pulling 23k~ dps (yay for vengeance). The only problem i found was building threat to split mobs with the other tank. (Could have easily started out with berserk first i guess, but meh - still requiring a CD to do that much is lame).

WTB free Vengeance

[Deleted]

Hi everyone! (my first post on here)

I've been on a kitty+resto dual spec for quite some time now but recent tank shortages in our guild have led me to have a look at the beary side of being a druid.. needless to say it was great news to find out that kitty and bear gear are even more indistinguishable since Cataclysm (except for maybe trinkets+rings). And since I'd also like to keep my heal spec if I can (we're short on anything but DDs, really..) I've come up with this hybrid spec (for a single feral in a raid group), comments are welcome:

wowtal.com/#k=-wZ4hvZyG.aei.druid.wl4lqK
(sorry not allowed to post a proper link since this is my 1st post)

Infos regarding hybrid specs are cluttered all over the place and most of them date back to November so here's a quick recap of why and what and the viability of a hybrid spec in general:

TALENTS

The spec includes ALL relevant bear talents with the exception of Perseverance which, according to some calculations on fluiddruid, only leads to about 0.5-1.5% overall reduced damage anyway (and if you avoid tanking fights with a lot of spell damage it becomes completely irrelevant).

Some cutbacks were necessary regarding cat talents but I don't think there's a significant DPS loss:

* Predatory Strikes + Stampede both 0/2:
While the free Ravage is kind of cool I didn't find myself using it that often, and the contribution of Ravage to our overall damage is almost negligible anyway (I guess it's safe to assume that those people/cats who run out of the fight and charge back in just to get another free Ravage already stopped reading this post when they spotted the word "hybrid".)
* Primal Madness 0/2 - a pretty weird talent IMHO, its only real utility is to keep your energy from capping during Tiger's Fury which you can (and should) also avoid in other ways
* Blood in the Water 1/2 - this is the only thing that somehow hurts, but there's hardly another way with a hybrid spec unless you have other ferals in the raid which take care of some of the debuffs (see below). It's a great talent and 0/2 is a no-go, but since you don't have to spend combo points on Rip itself during the last quarter of a cat fight you have a lot more combo points to spend on Ferocious Bites during any given 5p Savage Roar uptime anyway, i.e. Rip not being reapplied once (or even twice) will probably not result in it falling off the target. Worst case you can start hitting 1cp Bites just before it's about to run out but I doubt this would ever happen. Unfortunately I can't give you any numbers since Mew doesn't support modeling Blood in the Water with 1/2 points..

Potential changes depending on your group setup:
I already had Infected Wounds instead of Predatory Strikes in my old cat spec anyway since I'm the only feral in the raid. If you're lucky enough to have another feral applying Infected Wounds and/or FFF you'll want to move the two/four points to Blood in the Water, Stampede, Nurturing Instinct and Predatory Strikes (in roughly that order). If you have plenty of other people on interrupt duties you can move yet another two points away from Brutal Impact.

GLYPHS

The 3 prime glyphs are all cat glyphs but they're all vital for high DPS since the interaction of the 3 keeps Tiger's Fury and Rip in sync as well as Rip damage high, while the standard bear prime glyphs are all DPS-related rather than about tanking skills. (Your mileage may vary in which case you could drop Tiger's Fury in favour of Berserk or Mangle. But if you were going for DPS you should be in cat form anyway.)
Major and minor glyphs on the other hand are not very relevant cat-wise so you can go for the bear and general utility glyphs.

GEAR

As already noted everywhere else cat and bear gear are pretty much identical with the exception of rings and trinkets. The stamina vs. agility gems discussion is still ongoing but even if keeping the cat agi gems might hurt a bit it's definitely not much. Enchants for cat and bear are somewhat compatible: bears would go for some extra stamina in place of agility but hey, blame your healer! 130agi on weapon and peerless stats is a good choice for both roles, so you only really have to trade off the smaller enchants. The only single significant difference lies in the head enchant and meta gem, but as long as you don't have a T11 head yet it's perfectly possible to simply buy a second Mask of Vines (by now you probably have way too many Justice Points on your hands anyway) with the Earthen Ring Enchant instead of the Ramkahen cat one and a Stamina gem instead of the Agi one and you're settled!

In terms of reforging the options for cats are quite bad given the irrelevance of all of our secondary stats (<<1% of our DPS) so you can safely reforge to Dodge (there will be a slight impact yes but it's absolutely necessary for survivability and the effect on DPS will be very small).

Just my 2 cents for those who are interested and still want to keep their Resto or Moonkin specs. I think the impact on cat DPS is really minimal and largely due to reforging, although I don't have numbers right now since Mew can't handle the 1/2 in Blood in the Water.