Thread: Bear Tanking?

Page 2 of 3 FirstFirst
1
2
3
LastLast
  1. #21
    Thats not true, ferals have 18% passive magic damage reduce, thats as far as i know the highest, with bark skin and tb resist trinket we are in a good spot in regard of magic damage.
    It's actually 17.28%. But I'm just splitting hairs at that point.

  2. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Findme View Post
    Thats not true, ferals have 18% passive magic damage reduce, thats as far as i know the highest, with bark skin and tb resist trinket we are in a good spot in regard of magic damage.

    The most problems had the warrior with magic but they are getting a buff for incoming magic damage, so in this regard all tank classes are in a relative good spot with patch 4.1.
    Regardless of how "good" we are, Paladins and DKs are in far better shape on the magic front, and guilds are swapping them in on magic-heavy fights.

    Recruiting all casters
    9 hours/week

  3. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by Stevoman View Post
    Regardless of how "good" we are, Paladins and DKs are in far better shape on the magic front, and guilds are swapping them in on magic-heavy fights.
    Which "guilds" are you talking about? Exluding the top 0.1% of course.

  4. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by Katarn View Post
    It's actually 17.28%. But I'm just splitting hairs at that point.
    how do you calculate that 17.28%??

    As far as i know:
    Natural Reaction: Reduces damage taken by 12% in bear form
    Perseverance: Reduces all spell damage taken by 6%.

    Thats 18%

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Findme View Post
    how do you calculate that 17.28%??

    As far as i know:
    Natural Reaction: Reduces damage taken by 12% in bear form
    Perseverance: Reduces all spell damage taken by 6%.

    Thats 18%
    They don't add, they are applied consecutively.
    For example: 1000 magic dmg will be reduced by 12%=880 dmg. Then the 880dmg will be reduced by 6%=827,2. Overall thats a reduction of 17,28%

  6. #26
    In regards to gearing, get all the Epic BoE you can afford, in terms of the substats of the gear its Mastery > Crit > Exp > Hit > haste. In other words, look for items with Mastery+X on them, ideally all your items should have mastery, best is of course Mastery + Crit. From there reforge the non Mastery stat into Dodge.

    It is useful to have spare pieces of gear with large amounts of +Hit for when you have to interrupt the boss, Halfus,Maloriak,Nef,OmNomNomTrons, etc.

    With that in mind, if you are upgrading from 346 -> 359 it does not matter so much what the sub stats are, the biggest boost in tanking power comes from the agi + stam which is hard locked into the ilvl, so don't worry about not getting perfect stats in this case.

  7. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Katarn View Post
    Which "guilds" are you talking about? Exluding the top 0.1% of course.
    Red herring alert! But I'm dumb enough to bite anyway...

    Any guild that chooses a bear over a DK for a magic fight is just stupid. We're not even talking the so-called top 0.1% here, even my lowly almost-3/12H guild knows better than to put me on Cho'gall.

    Recruiting all casters
    9 hours/week

  8. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Hydrex View Post
    1: Do YOU enjoy tanking and a bear? Is it something you will continue doing?

    2: Is gear hard to obtain, especially for someone who has been playing a caster for a very long time? (I don't expect gear to be handed to me, I just want to make sure that I won't be running countless dungeons and not finding the gear I need)

    3: What are the flaws to bear tanking? (Do you have a hard time keeping aggro? AOE problems? Low amount of aggro spells? Ect)

    4: Which gear stats should I be looking at? I'm guessing stamina, dodge rating, maybe mastery and agility?

    5: And the wonderful rotation, is it hard to follow or is it simple? Does it require quick fingers and nimble hands?
    1. Been a Druid tank since vanilla along with having a tank of every class, so yeah I enjoy tanking and I enjoy my Bear As long as I'm playing WoW I will most likely be a Druid tank.

    2. Gearing a Druid is probably the easiest of the 4 tank classes. There is no real tanking gear for Druids, we tank in dps gear so really any agi leather you come across can be modified to tank in. If you're just starting, you'll want to pick up the crafted stuff and the rep pieces and whatever you have badges for.

    3. The biggest challenge to Bears right now is AoE tanking. It is doable, but the other tanks (particularly DK's and Pallies) will have an easier time and the shield tanks will by far take less dmg when AoE tanking. Another "flaw" is the lack of a ranged interrupt, though this is more of a quality of life thing and not a big deal.

    4. Stats you care about are: Agi, Stam, Dodge, Mastery and the order you want them in depends on the content you are doing.

    5. Bear rotation remains the easiest tanking rotation in the game.

  9. #29
    I must admit that I do miss the old bear tank from WotLK and TBC. The higher armor and health than the other classes made the spec feel more special, and those has ALWAYS been the "trademark" for druid tanks. Other than that I don't really see much difference since WotLK, though it's slightly harder to keep threat, but not really a problem.

    I'm positive that I will stick with my dear bear, at least for the foreseeable future, but who knows what Blizzard might mess up next.

    Gear is not that hard to obtain, expect to use several days at least if you don't go all out 24/7 heroic farm with guild members.
    Single-target threat is more or less the same as the other tanking classes, though our AoE threat is lacking a bit, but it's getting buffed quite a bit in the next patch so I'm still hopeful. In heroics and normals you won't really have much AoE problems, probably none at all, but in raids a long side a tank with approximately the same level of gear and skill, then you might be lacking a bit, but nothing to set you off too much.

    The annoying thing is with caster mobs or boss phases of spell casts, but it's not really a big issue though I have to start punching out some fancy tricks to make it.

    The most boring thing about the spec is that we basically only have Mangle and Maul that is crucial to our tanking. I'm not saying that Lacerate, Pulverize and FFF don't produce enough threat, but it's just that Mangle and Maul are the only buttons really necessary to spam which gets very boring after a while. So it would be fun with some more abilities to avoid us from falling asleep.

    According to ElitistJerks, for heroic mode bears, stamina is the best stat to gem for, but that of course implies that you have the gear to keep your dodge up as well. I put stam gems in the blue slots and then mix it around on occasion with some stam/hit, stam/dodge, mastery/agi etc. Stacking a little bit of stam isn't bad, but just make sure that your healers don't have any problems keeping you up. I stack almost all stam and I'm not doing heroic modes, but I do have all my gear slots in Ilvl 359+ gear and my healers are fine with it
    I run with 2.40% hit and 3 expertise and I'm not having any threat problems except that I need at least 0.5 seconds of DPS-free threat time at the beginning of the fight to keep those pesky epeen-raging-DPS-horny bastards from taking aggro.
    Reforge haste to ANYTHING else, preferably dodge, same with crit. Mastery you should leave alone. If hit and crit is on an item, reforge the crit, same with expertise. Your threat stats go: Expertise (up to 26, then it becomes equal to hit) > hit > crit > haste.

    The rotation is very simple, just spam mangle whenever it's off CD, throw in a maul whenever you have enough rage for it. Keep your Pulverize buff up and pummel in a few Lacerates every now and then to get it up to 3 stacks. And don't forget your FFF. That is all to it basically, but of course there are mobs where exceptions should be made and you have to mix and tricks with the abilities at your disposal.
    Last edited by Drihan; 2011-04-08 at 01:45 AM.

  10. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Romobama View Post
    I'm kinda wanting to play my druid as a bear tank as well..... though I have been hearing that bear aoe tanking is kind of lacking, so I've been holding off. next patch I heard it's going to be a little better with the cd on swipe being lowered.
    My mains are a decently geared Fire mage,Uh DK and Elemental shaman. A good bear tank can aoe tank just fine but in my experience ive seen more bad feral tanks than bads. Today in Lost City, had a Feral druid tank I ended up around 20k overall and I got a few high threat warnings but he held boss threat and aoe threat. Im not bragging about the dps just that it isnt common for most Feral tanks ive got in Lfg with.

  11. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Stevoman View Post
    Red herring alert! But I'm dumb enough to bite anyway...

    Any guild that chooses a bear over a DK for a magic fight is just stupid. We're not even talking the so-called top 0.1% here, even my lowly almost-3/12H guild knows better than to put me on Cho'gall.
    Sejta tanked Cho'Gall. So has Reesi. I'm missing your point.

  12. #32
    Titan Arbs's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
    Location
    Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    12,899
    I love Bear and i still play Bear and always gunna play Bear
    I don't always hunt things, But when I do, It's because they're things & I'm a Bear.


  13. #33
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Katarn View Post
    Sejta tanked Cho'Gall. So has Reesi. I'm missing your point.
    They are good druids.

  14. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by Firefly33 View Post
    They are good druids.
    Which is to imply you are not? Or the rest of us are not?

    I highly doubt it makes any difference who plays the druid when it comes to pure math: How much magic damage does class a take versus class b.

    The only skill point for Cho'gall might be standing in fire or smart cooldown use, at least when it comes to magic damage incoming.

    Ergo, you make no sense.

    Druids can tank all content, the question here is, how much worse are druids at tanking magic damage?

  15. #35
    Deleted
    The only content that we have a hard time tanking at the moment is multiple targets because of how crappy Savage Defense is against them. That will change in 4.1.

  16. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by Nodata View Post
    The only content that we have a hard time tanking at the moment is multiple targets because of how crappy Savage Defense is against them. That will change in 4.1.
    I tanked H-Halfus Whelps + 2 drakes at the same time.

    .......

    And I didn't take much in the way of damage.

  17. #37
    Deleted
    The fight has been considerably nerfed, Katarn, you know that. I did it too after the nerf, it was impossible before.

  18. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by Nodata View Post
    The fight has been considerably nerfed, Katarn, you know that. I did it too after the nerf, it was impossible before.
    I was a little /sadface when I saw that the drakes were only hitting me for ~18k after armor.

  19. #39
    Deleted
    True, that nerf was actually quite stunning in terms of values. I remember thinking for a split second "crap, we pulled him in normal mode - no wait... what." :]

  20. #40
    1: Do YOU enjoy tanking and a bear? Is it something you will continue doing?
    I enjoy being druid, but im starting to feel of more and more going for pure classes for all 4 specific tasks. But yes, most likely i will stick with druid and tanking for atleast few more expansions (as its my first chara i sticked with sincxe bc)

    2: Is gear hard to obtain, especially for someone who has been playing a caster for a very long time? (I don't expect gear to be handed to me, I just want to make sure that I won't be running countless dungeons and not finding the gear I need)
    If you have money, you can buy some boe epics. You can also craft yourself some. If you are resto, run some hcs for justice points, buy some tanking gear for jp. Same with valors, if you have some, buy the some gear for them. To a degree even pvp epics will do for starters. Plus, when you run hcs, there are almost noone to roll against, i rarelly see any rogues in lfg tool. There is usually odd resto, one in a million boomkin and 1 in a billion bear. Oh wait, i cant count myself :] Just that i still to see druid tank on my 85 alt.

    3: What are the flaws to bear tanking? (Do you have a hard time keeping aggro? AOE problems? Low amount of aggro spells? Ect)
    These are just my problems, other people say they don't have any. If they are trolling, prolly, but you may never know.
    So I find agro not hard to keep, buuut, dps really needs to watch their omens at start. This could ofc be changed with using potions, blowing berserk at start etc, but if dps does the same, well itll get interesting. Aoe problems... well there arent any, except we have no snap initial threat move. This can be fixed by telling dps to hold on for few globals (time ofc depends on players) but lets say after good old 5 sunders aoe tanking becomes ok, more or less. Amount of agro moves... well to a degree, but on next patch swipe should get a 3s cd so this will probably make things easier. As for one problem you didnt mentioned, i sometimes feel that im rage starved, especially on pull, sometimes even in combat (but last thing is prolly due to bad rage management, misses etc, which 4.1 should fix to a degree with enrage penalty removal).
    Also the fact we dont have competent ranged attack/ silencer doesnt help alot.

    4: Which gear stats should I be looking at? I'm guessing stamina, dodge rating, maybe mastery and agility?
    Agility is our best stat now(it gives armor, dodge, attack power, crit), then its armor(most likely cant actually gear for it), dodge, mastery, crit.
    But due to new savage defence fix the lineup might change for mastery as its suposed to increase the shield. Still need to wait for smart people to test it and give us the final results

    5: And the wonderful rotation, is it hard to follow or is it simple? Does it require quick fingers and nimble hands?
    Aoe "rotation" requires tab lecarating all the time with mangle, pulverize, demo roar, swipe, thrash.
    Single target is abit easier. You sometimes may even have few gcd for other things. And when fight goes on, and you have a significient lead on threat, you get even more gcd.
    Imho aoe rotation feels like a real work for me, just to tank simple hc. I feel like im some sort of world class pianist on those aoe pulls.
    Single target feels alot more relaxed, but still nothing as easy as it used to be. Basically, you want challange, roll druid, work your ass off and die from boredom.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •