Feral Tank gearing for Firelands, Gem question.

[Jenzali]

This is 100% true - on fights like rhyolith/baleroc where you only really need one tank. Otherwise, like many have said, it's finding that balance between stats to provide as much mitigation as possible without being one of those bad 6-8k single target dps tanks.

This can be accomplished by simply swapping trinkets and drinking a different flask from the cauldron. No reason to waste gold on stamina gems and gimp your kitty DPS (or bear DPS on alysrazor hatchlings).

[Bearshield]

This can be accomplished by simply swapping trinkets and drinking a different flask from the cauldron. No reason to waste gold on stamina gems and gimp your kitty DPS (or bear DPS on alysrazor hatchlings).

That depends on your healers as well. You cannot say "this is how you should gem" to every bear because not every bear is raiding the same content with the same healers. You have to do what works for you and your guild. And frankly, if you are a MT, your primary focus in gearing should be tanking, not dps. Not hard to build a second set of gear for dps rather than trying to hybridize your tank gear.

[Clawtrocity]

I will however add to Bearshield by saying that if you are an Off-tank then I implore you to focus on a hybridization of cat/bear gear. Go with the Agility/Agility-Mastery/Agility-Stam gems to fill your sockets.

2 Agility trinkets and 2 Stam trinkets and TB Trinket all at hand ready to go.

You obviously won't be able to swap out of bear and do superb cat DPS, but you'll do a hell of a lot more damage than a paladin/DK who's not getting attacked.

[Beachbum]

I will however add to Bearshield by saying that if you are an Off-tank then I implore you to focus on a hybridization of cat/bear gear. Go with the Agility/Agility-Mastery/Agility-Stam gems to fill your sockets.

2 Agility trinkets and 2 Stam trinkets and TB Trinket all at hand ready to go.

You obviously won't be able to swap out of bear and do superb cat DPS, but you'll do a hell of a lot more damage than a paladin/DK who's not getting attacked.

Unless you're in a HM guild with an enrage timer which you're struggling to meet, what's the rationale?

Even if a bear gemmed full stamina, bearcatting he'll still do more damage than any other class in a tank spec; however, there's multiple fights where two well geared tanks are required. In your scenario there's just not much dps lost with 40 dodge vs. 40 mastery in kitty assuming the typical bear/kitty gemming strategy, which look remarkably similar anyway.

Sure there are some fights where you play kitty, but regardless of MT or OT designation, you are still a tank... and this is your primary goal as a bear with regards to gearing. As Bearshield correctly pointed out: build an off-set when you can. I've been pretty surprised how quickly VP generation has gone this patch compared to the number of buyable bear items, within probably two weeks I'll be buying kitty specific items.

@Loriden: I'm not certain you read my posts fully but whatever. Dodge is our best secondary stat, and the harder bosses swing, the better off it is. In my case I sit north of 50k armor, and 44.87% dodge self-buffed in raid gear... and in general all I can say about dodge: moar please. I'm already at BC armor levels (which I never thought I'd see again, I'm expecting an armor reset in the next expansion somehow), and my threat is fine as I don't run screaming from expertise on my tanks, and I have no problems killing my hatchling. More agi while it helps, I'm not convinced that all the benefits it provides scale equally at certain ilevels, and when I saw Reesi's numbers for HM Rag (and she is better geared than I am absolutely), I'll take 20 dodge over 10 agi every day and twice on HM raid days.

[Stevoman]

The anecdotal evidence of "my healers say it's easier to heal me with 220k health" is a placebo effect on their part and nothing more. They see your little bubble on Grid going down slower and assume that means you are doing better. They conveniently forget what happened afterwards: when they had to spend 20% of their mana spamming Divine Light to get you back to to full health to buy you a few more boss swings.

There are very few bosses in their tier of content that require you to have a huge HP cushion. Heroic Rag (and Baleroc if you have bad RNG in the first 30 seconds) is about it. The theorycrafting has been done time and again to prove that dodge is far and away the best thing you can have this tier. There are few, if any, fights in this tier where and extra 40k health will save you from anything. Conversely, 5% extra dodge can make or break a heroic Decimation Blade. Additionally, with several bosses having such tight enrage timers, being able to shift cat and pull 15k damage during downtime is VERY beneficial.

This goes for both normal and heroic, and is even more true on normals. There isn't a single normal mode fight where you need huge survivability.

(<----- Off tanked Baleroc in my DPS gear with 1 stam trinket at 184k health last week. Main tank whined, I told him too bad. Surprise, surprise, it was cake. My record was 3 DB dodges in a row, meanwhile he had to be brez'd halfway thru. )

[Yohassakura]

I find that with my healers, a mix of agi and stam is best. I'm slowly trying to creep more agility in when I can... Although there are times when I've survived by 1k HP then get that delicious LoH or just a ton of spam heals, and thought to myself - Damn, that was lucky, though if RNG was on my side, I would have simply dodged more

We're working on Heroic modes 25m, (Got shannox down plenty, just need a bit more work on others). I also find myself main tanking most encounters (except Majordomo, where I DPS because our other tank doesn't have a DPS kit).

As a side note, I Hope that Staghelm drops the staff for once I'm actually the only one who needs it, as seem as everyone else bought the Ranseur (and one dropped for us, which went to someone)

Armory link is in sig.

[Zheryn]

5.) Reforging: Reforge the least desirable stat to dodge on EVERY SINGLE PIECE. By far the worst stat for bear is haste, so always reforge that. After that you should reforge hit and if necessary reforge expertise or crit. Do not reforge mastery unless it is the only stat (see pvp gear). Mastery is by far the best secondary stat for bear.

I don't understand why a bear would reforge to full dodge if mastery is the best secondary stat?

[Stevoman]

I don't understand why a bear would reforge to full dodge if mastery is the best secondary stat?

Every piece of gear has 2 secondary stats.
No pieces of gear have dodge, but dodge is the best stat.
For every piece of gear, take the least desirable of the 2 stats and turn it into dodge.

[razisgosu]

I don't understand why a bear would reforge to full dodge if mastery is the best secondary stat?

Most pieces have mastery + another stat. Therefore you reforge the crap stat into dodge. According to theincbear if a piece does not have mastery you want to reforge into that first however. For heroic firelands at least.

[axxey]

Tanked full clear of normals on 10man with alts when missed our 25man this week(normally boomkin/resto).
180k health nearly all agi apart from chants and never felt like i needed more the full clear.

[Reesify]

Most pieces have mastery + another stat. Therefore you reforge the crap stat into dodge. According to theincbear if a piece does not have mastery you want to reforge into that first however. For heroic firelands at least.

Wait what? No it doesn't. Dodge, dodge and more dodge.

[razisgosu]

Wait what? No it doesn't. Dodge, dodge and more dodge.

Well I suppose that's what sources are for. If you have another stat weighting can you please provide it? I know I've seen you around as a very knowledgeable bear, but these are the only stat weights I have found to go by. While I agree dodge is very important, I found myself losing only approximately 1-2% dodge and gaining about 20-30% savage defense absorption.

My bear for comparison of the pieces I have reforged to Mastery > dodge - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...zisgosu/simple

http://theincbear.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=67
Heroic:
Stat Weights

Armor-0.6057
Agility-1.0000
Strength-0.4488
Stamina-0.2547
Critical-0.3568
Haste-0.0760
Mastery-0.7104
Dodge-0.4520
Hit-0.1986
Expertise-0.3972
Bonus Armor-0.1378

[Beachbum]

Well I suppose that's what sources are for. If you have another stat weighting can you please provide it? I know I've seen you around as a very knowledgeable bear, but these are the only stat weights I have found to go by. While I agree dodge is very important, I found myself losing only approximately 1-2% dodge and gaining about 20-30% savage defense absorption.

My bear for comparison of the pieces I have reforged to Mastery > dodge - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...zisgosu/simple

http://theincbear.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=67

<snip>

Where the confusion is coming in, is early in 4.2 Jey posted a list which you noted that had mastery higher than dodge: subsequent testing / simulation refuted that.

Finding different numbers required digging through various threads and it was not consolidated in a nice, obvious, list. That's since been corrected looking at the link now.

Edit: to be clear, rarely do you need absolute min-maxing to be successful in WoW: much like Alaron pontificated over at TFD for kitties, it really doesn't matter that much (for many of the same reasons), and frankly Blizzard does not design their game like that. At 378 ilevel you'll have substantial amounts of dodge from AGI / armor on your gear alone and reforging is utterly secondary to that for even tackling HM's.

That does not negate the fact that the harder and faster bosses swing for, dodge gets better, and mastery gets worse. Unfortunately that's an inescapable result in current game mechanics: SD does not scale with boss damage; however, we get large amounts of dodge and stupid levels of armor to make up for that.

[razisgosu]

Where the confusion is coming in, is early in 4.2 Jey posted a list which you noted that had mastery higher than dodge: subsequent testing / simulation refuted that.

Finding different numbers required digging through various threads and it was not consolidated in a nice, obvious, list. That's since been corrected looking at the link now.

Thank you. I see that as well. A thanks to you Reesi as well, it looks like you're the one who edited the weights. I guess I have some reforging/regemming/reenchanting to do.

[Reesify]

Thank you. I see that as well. A thanks to you Reesi as well, it looks like you're the one who edited the weights. I guess I have some reforging/regemming/reenchanting to do.

:d

I figured it was either faulty weightings or the exp/crit/mastery setup for a full-hybrid. So I stopped being lazy and fixed the weightings. - The original weightings were done with a much, much lower unmitigated hit that you wouldn't see in Firelands. That's what causes the anomaly of Mastery being better than dodge and you will often see that in content you outgear (which is also where the exp/crit/mastery build can excel in addition to bearcatting).

[Unproven]

Well ive chosen to go like this
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...otionel/simple
Giving me raid buffed 210k HP and still maintaining 40% dodge and 17% mastery.

ATM we got 3 HC's down in Firelands
havent seen or heard anything about me being harder to heal.
as a matter of fact, on Spidy boss being in top floor getting AOE'd with fire
ive gotten told i was easier to heal than our Warrior tank.

[Deleted]

ATM we got 3 HC's down in Firelands
havent seen or heard anything about me being harder to heal.
as a matter of fact, on Spidy boss being in top floor getting AOE'd with fire
ive gotten told i was easier to heal than our Warrior tank.

6% Spell damage reduction makes a difference