Bear Guide: 4.1+

[backyellow]

First time poster...LONG time reader.

My bear is a scribe and currently I'm using the 195 stam 25 dodge shoulder enchant but I'm wondering if the 130 agi 25 mastery enchant is better for me. In most of the guides I see them rank the stam enchant higher but with agi being so valuable it had me thinking. Which enchant is better for my tank? Thank you!

BTW my armory is below if you want to look at it. us.battle.net/wow/en/character/blackhand/Backyellow/advanced

[Auroro]

First time poster...LONG time reader.

My bear is a scribe and currently I'm using the 195 stam 25 dodge shoulder enchant but I'm wondering if the 130 agi 25 mastery enchant is better for me. In most of the guides I see them rank the stam enchant higher but with agi being so valuable it had me thinking. Which enchant is better for my tank? Thank you!

BTW my armory is below if you want to look at it. us.battle.net/wow/en/character/blackhand/Backyellow/advanced

There is no major different between the two shoulder enchantments than the head enchantments.

It is a matter of your choices.

You should never have to enchant haste at all. That remove the Head enchantment choice and couple other.

[Deleted]

Long time feral dps but entirely new to bear tanking and i was wondering if it's possible to tank ZG/ZA when gemmed for agi and reforged for mastery without putting too much strain on a poor healer?

Gear is a mix of 359, 365 and 378 and i'm sitting around 144000 health and 34% dodge

I'd like to have the option to dps without reforging and regemming

[Deleted]

Long time feral dps but entirely new to bear tanking and i was wondering if it's possible to tank ZG/ZA when gemmed for agi and reforged for mastery without putting too much strain on a poor healer?

Gear is a mix of 359, 365 and 378 and i'm sitting around 144000 health and 34% dodge

I'd like to have the option to dps without reforging and regemming

I had exactly the same issue as you, I'd been playing DPS for a long time and decided to take up tanking again. You should be okay in ZG/ZA with what you ghave, you have good dodge and i'm assuming you have fairly high mastery. However, again making assumptions here i'm guessing youve also reforged haste on your dps gear? if so this is totally wasted while you are tanking so you may find agro an issue if you have a high dps in your group.

What i would suggest (and what i've been doing) is get 2 sets of gear, so your best set (FL gear probably) is your most used spec. So in my case my new Firelands gear is gemmed and reforged for dps, and the item it is replacing is then gemmed and reforged for tanking. I still have a few items which crossover between both sets of gear but over time you get a very good dps set and a tier below tanking set (which is fine if you are doing the occasional tanking in ZG/ZA and not in FL)

[Deleted]

I had exactly the same issue as you, I'd been playing DPS for a long time and decided to take up tanking again. You should be okay in ZG/ZA with what you ghave, you have good dodge and i'm assuming you have fairly high mastery. However, again making assumptions here i'm guessing youve also reforged haste on your dps gear? if so this is totally wasted while you are tanking so you may find agro an issue if you have a high dps in your group.

What i would suggest (and what i've been doing) is get 2 sets of gear, so your best set (FL gear probably) is your most used spec. So in my case my new Firelands gear is gemmed and reforged for dps, and the item it is replacing is then gemmed and reforged for tanking. I still have a few items which crossover between both sets of gear but over time you get a very good dps set and a tier below tanking set (which is fine if you are doing the occasional tanking in ZG/ZA and not in FL)

I've reforged every piece for mastery since i don't raid at the moment and am using my tanking spec for soloing old raids for 4.3 gear so no haste other than what i couldn't reforge

Dps with all mastery is ok in 5 mans (around 20000dps) so would be nice if i could use the same set for tanking

[Deleted]

you should be okay, only way to find out is try it, if it turns out that healers struggle (and they are half way decent healers) you may have to consider putting some tank gems in to up your survivability. But to be honest i've often forgotten to change gear to tanking stuff in 5 mans and cleared most of it before i even noticed. thats mostly 378 gear with a bit of 359 and 365

[Deleted]

you should be okay, only way to find out is try it, if it turns out that healers struggle (and they are half way decent healers) you may have to consider putting some tank gems in to up your survivability. But to be honest i've often forgotten to change gear to tanking stuff in 5 mans and cleared most of it before i even noticed. thats mostly 378 gear with a bit of 359 and 365

Ty

Yea, guess i just have to jump in and see
I hate carrying multiple sets since i'm short on bag space as it is so i'd love to use the same set for both roles

Apologies in advance to the first healer i get when i try this

[Deleted]

I am a feral tank, although taking a break from it atm. Before I did, I actually regemmed a lot of my gear to agil/dodge and reforged mastery to dodge anyway which I found to be generally easier on the healers. Your health pool is a little on the low side, but you will be far better off than those tanks who stack stam, have no avoidance and just oom healers.

[Deleted]

@ jn2002dk
do you have a link to your character in the arsenal?
I'd like to compare your stats, gems, equip and so on with mine as I don't dare queueing as tank even though I'm used to tanking as a bear, habe ~30% dodge and around 160k hp (buffed with mark of the wild, some items at 359, some at 346).. (my main is a healer so I fear being a bad tank as I have many bad memories of healing bad tanks myself xD)

[Deleted]

I am a feral tank, although taking a break from it atm. Before I did, I actually regemmed a lot of my gear to agil/dodge and reforged mastery to dodge anyway which I found to be generally easier on the healers. Your health pool is a little on the low side, but you will be far better off than those tanks who stack stam, have no avoidance and just oom healers.

the stat priority changed in 4.2. think its now

Dodge --> Mastery --> Crit --> Hit --> Haste

[Deleted]

@ jn2002dk
do you have a link to your character in the arsenal?
I'd like to compare your stats, gems, equip and so on with mine as I don't dare queueing as tank even though I'm used to tanking as a bear, habe ~30% dodge and around 160k hp (buffed with mark of the wild, some items at 359, some at 346).. (my main is a healer so I fear being a bad tank as I have many bad memories of healing bad tanks myself xD)

Yup, here
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Ewendir/simple

[Sysunia]

Hiya bears!

Normaly im a noobkin but one of my guilds tanks has gone on vacation and I will have to fill in for him. Im in a 10 man guild and we are curently on 6/7hc so I want to focus on rag hc since all the other bosses are pushovers now...

I was wondering what stats are the best? I read the guide on page 1 but it only says what the stats do and doesnt list any prio, i gemmed all out stamina but im not sure if thats right. Also im not sure if tanks get more fire dmg or physical on rag, if its fire wouldnt this be a better meta?. This is my offspec so i dont have any tier pieces and got every thing from 359 to 391. So is my build/gems etc. ok? What would you change?

[Selverein]

I was wondering what stats are the best? I read the guide on page 1 but it only says what the stats do and doesnt list any prio, i gemmed all out stamina but im not sure if thats right.

I really wouldn't suggest gemming straight Stam, especially with both Stam trinkets. It's just unnecessary, unless your healers are extremely slow.
The general "rule" (using the term loosely since some people still don't fully agree) is to go Stam til you have enough health to take 2 hits and not die, then go for avoidance to save your healers some mana, going with Agi>Dodge>Mastery>the rest.
Try to grab all the +Stam and +Agi socket bonuses in general using Agi, Agi/Stam, Agi/Mastery, Agi/Dodge and Dodge/Stam gems.

Also im not sure if tanks get more fire dmg or physical on rag, if its fire wouldnt this be a better meta?

I only have logs of regular Rag but my tanks usually take 1.5-2 times more melee damage than fire damage. Probably wouldn't make a big difference in any case.

This is my offspec so i dont have any tier pieces and got every thing from 359 to 391. So is my build/gems etc. ok? What would you change?

See above for gemming, but enchanting follows a similar idea. No need to go all out Stam. Getting one of the speed chant on boots is always helpful. I would go with 20 stats to chest but it's a small difference. Strangely on gloves it's the old 240 armor patch (LW) that is still considered the best. And Windwalk is nice but I prefer 130 Agi just cause it's constant. Again though, small difference.

Reforging-wise, I would reforge the crit on the boots rather than the mastery. And your relic isn't reforged.

Spec is fine and fully functional. I would change a few things but it also comes down to personal taste so obviously take it with a grain of salt. I would pick up Brutal Impact, likely dropping 2 points from Furor or KotJ. I would also swap the glyph of Maul with the Feral Charge one. Since it's only 50% damage, meh, and sometimes you don't actually wanna hit any other than your main target. Might not be a big issue in FL though. Shorter CD on FC is nice, too.

But yeah this is me being picky now, spec is fine.

Edit: Meant to mention, check out the Bear guide on the official forums, it's really awesome.

[Auroro]

Hiya bears!

Normaly im a noobkin but one of my guilds tanks has gone on vacation and I will have to fill in for him. Im in a 10 man guild and we are curently on 6/7hc so I want to focus on rag hc since all the other bosses are pushovers now...

I was wondering what stats are the best? I read the guide on page 1 but it only says what the stats do and doesnt list any prio, i gemmed all out stamina but im not sure if thats right. Also im not sure if tanks get more fire dmg or physical on rag, if its fire wouldnt this be a better meta?. This is my offspec so i dont have any tier pieces and got every thing from 359 to 391. So is my build/gems etc. ok? What would you change?

The reason why there is no stats priority, because Bear is a very unorthodox type of tanking. It is also why we keep having controversy dealing with it.

One of the debate is dealing with Stamina VS Agility.

It is best for you to build your gears on how good your healer are.

We have three different style of Bears: Arielle (Agility Heavy), or Sejta (Stamina Heavy). I would have chosen Reesi for the between those two but somehow she also went Agility Heavy, . I would have to give you my shopping list as in between, Auroro (In Between). The only thing I would like to change is the chest enchantment to the +20 Stats but I just can't get it to switch while keeping the head and shoulder enchantment to Stamina/Dodge. All three style works for Firelands.

Reforging is a lot easier.

You just need to pick the magic number for dodge %, many Bears like to keep their dodge around 40% to 45%. As you get "better" gears less you have to reforge toward dodge due to agility being a lot higher. As you can see Arielle is reforging some of his stats to Hit and Exp creating a huge amount of threat control and DPS increase where as Sejta reforge for mastery making him harder to die.

Like what Reesi said. "Both of these gearing strategies cater to different playstyles, yet don’t gimp us so much as to render us helpless. Well, so long as your focus isn’t Haste. Like I said… time and place. Haste is neither here nor there for Bears. "

Or

Like I would said, " We as a Bear need to build our tanking gears that fit with our healers, and finding the balance for that is the key point."

---------- Post added 2011-09-29 at 04:30 AM ----------

Edit: Meant to mention, check out the Bear guide on the official forums, it's really awesome.

That guide have not been updated since 5.02.11. I know I am guilty of not updating the guild as well, but it is too much work for one person.

[Selverein]

I would have chosen Reesi for the between those two but somehow he also went Agility Heavy,

Just for the record, Reesi had to go Cat/OS Bear, that's why she's straight up Agi now. Also why there's no more Dodge reforging and such.

[Auroro]

Just for the record, Reesi had to go Cat/OS Bear, that's why she's straight up Agi now. Also why there's no more Dodge reforging and such.

When did that happen?

Also I thought all of us agree that going Hybrid is a shaky ground for feral. I can't wait to see the info on that ideal.

Ok, well if reesi was here i guess she would be delighted that she is my number one choice for between Agility stacking and Stamina stacking.

[Selverein]

That guide have not been updated since 5.02.11. I know I am guilty of not updating the guild as well, but it is too much work for one person.

Mhm, you're right. I thought it was updated whenever the original post was which is on the Inc Bear here.

When did that happen?

Also I thought all of us agree that going Hybrid is a shaky ground for feral. I can't wait to see the info on that ideal.

Ok, well if reesi was here i guess she would be delighted that she is my number one choice for between Agility stacking and Stamina stacking.

Recently enough, just saw it in either a blog post or a Twitter update. Few weeks maybe.

Not sure what you mean by hybrid though. From what I understood of her posts she's an actual Feral Kitty now, but if they need a tank she can switch back to tanking. I'm guessing that would include some reforging and such, dunno the details. It's not some weird spec that tries to do both.

[Auroro]

Mhm, you're right. I thought it was updated whenever the original post was which is on the Inc Bear here.


Recently enough, just saw it in either a blog post or a Twitter update. Few weeks maybe.

Not sure what you mean by hybrid though. From what I understood of her posts she's an actual Feral Kitty now, but if they need a tank she can switch back to tanking. I'm guessing that would include some reforging and such, dunno the details. It's not some weird spec that tries to do both.

Look at the first spec.

No sane kitty would take the 6% spell damage decease. Unless it is a hybrid build.

I do think Reesi is testing hybrid build.

If you look at my char, you will find that I have both Bear Spec and Kitty spec.

[Deleted]

Elitist Jerks Combat Ratings says :

243.58281085 Agi = 1% Dodge at LvL 85 Druid !

Anyone knows if there is DR ?

Im at 38% Dodge selfbuffed and when my Trinket stacks up 38 Agi per Stack x 10 i dont get the Dodge-Amount I should have.

380 * 1.05 = 399 ~ 1.638 % Dodge , but I only get 1.08% Dodge. From 38.05% -> 39.13% .

Anyone knows anything about it ?

Armory : http://eu.battle.net/wow/de/characte.../Jaqumo/simple

[Arielle]

Mhm, you're right. I thought it was updated whenever the original post was which is on the Inc Bear here.

We don't bother with the Official Forums sticky much anymore except for huge changes because:

1) Character Limit makes it impossible to format correctly.
2) Post-capping for stickies is stupid and they should've fixed that in the original spec of the new forums.
3) The entire thing gets deleted if Reesi gets banned for calling someone a moron (even when they deserve it).

It's much easier to maintain a guide on forums we control. Albeit I have been lazy and haven't updated the heroic gear list yet.

Recently enough, just saw it in either a blog post or a Twitter update. Few weeks maybe.

They decided to do it because it's easier for a Feral to switch to passable DPS than any other tank. So Ri is now tank #3 instead of their Warrior. So she'll be MS'ing Cat and OS'ing Bear. As for when, about two weeks ago.

No sane kitty would take the 6% spell damage decease. Unless it is a hybrid build.

Over what? Furor is useless, IW is useless, Thick Hide is useless, BI is useless for raiding Cats, PotP and Pulverize are Bear only.

Wherease Persreverance actually has a tangible effect for all raid encounters.