Tanking in Cat gear

[Deleted]

I just wondered how much worse it is to tank in gear, optimised for cat dps. This means, Agi in every socket and on trinkets as well as reforging into mastery/crit. Is it really that bad or actually pretty good? I havent found any data on this yet and wondered if some of you have some? In theory it shpuld be pretty good as agi gives dodge, crit and atk points which all provide a higher or more often SD shield and also the mastery stat works very well with this.

Your oppinions/data?

[bobo333]

as long as you have the proper spec and you know what you're doing, and have a good healer, you should be fine for most things i reckon. stay away from raid bosses though

if you have a stam trinket that would be a great help

[Deleted]

I thought it would be the other way round. An agi/mastery tank against a raid boss with massive SD shields could be better than a cat-equipped tank in heroics, because there you tank groups and the mastery is kind of useless (just blocks 1 attack from 1 mob)

[Themessiah]

Depends whether you are unburstable - Tanks should pretty much be in full cat gear once they are unburstable. So full cat gear + tank trinkets means you are good, even for most raid bosses - outside of HC that is where the unburstable threshold is much higher.

[Deleted]

You can tank every normal raidboss with cat optimized gear. Just get one or two stam trinkets. Agi is often underestimated as a tank stat.

[Deleted]

It should be no problem at all. Maybe you lack a bit of reforged dodge, but the agility through the cat gear probably makes up atleast a little bit of it. Depends on what your tanking also. In the fight against Chimaeron you can tank in resto gear if you want to ^-^

[Kagonos]

You can tank every normal raidboss with cat optimized gear. Just get one or two stam trinkets. Agi is often underestimated as a tank stat.

yes. even if you lack stam trinkets, and are wearing agi/mastery or something similar, your spec is what's important. I don't expect you can tank well without the tank specific talents that you ignore in your cat spec. Full agi tanking would actually work just fine for most per-heroic raiding encounters. Although, as I accidentally found out you COULD tank raid trash in a pvp cat spec =)

[exochaft]

I thought it would be the other way round. An agi/mastery tank against a raid boss with massive SD shields could be better than a cat-equipped tank in heroics, because there you tank groups and the mastery is kind of useless (just blocks 1 attack from 1 mob)

Depends what will kill you, honestly. As others have said, as long as you have the tank spec, you should be fine for normal raid content. While some fights are almost a pure tank-and-spank with nothing but melee from the tank's perspective, sometimes it's the magic damage that will kill you (say something like Nef's breath and the lightning machine hitting at the same time... outside of CD's, only way you can survive that is with enough HP to eat it), and all the agi/mastery in the world will not help you mitigate magic damage that you take. Be that as it may, normal modes were designed so that you could just be wearing your class/spec's gear (in this case, agi leather) and with standardized stamina be able to tank just fine, albeit not optimized, no matter how you alter or gem the gear. I guarantee you could probably take all those agi gems out and put in something silly like spirit gems and be able to tank a normal raid.

[frostbiten]

I tank in cat gear with Stam trinkets every other week. (Trade off tanking with another dps.) It works great, haven't had issues with it at all. (Only done normal modes so far, so if you're in heroics, that might be different.) My only different pieces are a helm for the tank meta, and two stamina trinkets.

[tangedyn]

Cat gear is actually pretty decent for tanking in, because Mastery and Crit are the 2nd and 3rd best secondary stats for Bears, behind Dodge.
Your dodge chance will be noticeably lower than in actual bear gear. You will make up for it slightly by getting more out of Savage Defense.

[Bleedinggum]

I tank in mostly kitty gear. Just change out for a stam trinket and a different helm. The healers say it is easier to heal me then the other tank. The really only difference between us is I have more 6% more crit and he has 3% more dodge and more health. I don't under stand why the different makes it easier but that is what my healers tell me. So for normal raids it should be just fine.

[Deleted]

I dont see why it would be a huge problem. Agility means dodge, and mastery means savage defense bonuses. Obviously your gear level should be high enough for whatever it is you are wanting to tank, but i think it will just mean a little harder healing from the healer. Although i can see it being an issue if you dont have enough HP to soak a few raid boss hits before getting a heal.

[Avenn]

You should be able to tank in kitty gear. Earlier in cata thats what I did for heroics. Having a little bit less health was a little nerve wracking (especially with pug healers) but now it shouldn't be any problem.

[Deleted]

In a random dungeon, go for it. Just have those fingers hovering over your CD buttons on meaner pulls, since your healer will have less leeway.

The buff should even things out though.