The Bear Guide - Cataclysm Edition

[Deleted]

im having some strange experiences while tanking as bear in the last patch. my threat varies a lot from boss to boss, on some bosses i easily keep aggro by having 20-30% more threat then the dps and on some i have a lot of problems and have to taunt the boss when dps get aggro (in the same raid with same ppl dpsing). it's partially because of vengeance decay on tank swaps, but if that has such a big impact it's a serious issue with the mechanic.
another problem i had was that i found myself being rage starved sometimes when i macro-ed maul to my other abilities. the most strange example of that is when i tanked sindragosa 10 man and had to remove the maul macro to keep up my rotation and use it just occasionally. i have no problems with that as having maul macroed and never think about it is boring, but being rage starved on a hard hitting boss while having loads of rage on easy trash mobs makes no sense at all and it's a big problem of the new rage generation system in my opinion.
last thing i noticed is that ppl have posted about having huge dps as bears (hitting mangle for 15k and such) in the new patch. i have been practicing the rotations from the 1st post in this thread and i do it reasonably well all the time and still i cant make more then 4-4.5k dps on fights like saurfang in ICC. my gear is not very good as i returned to raids recently after a 9 months break, but such big differences cant be only the result of gear. is some1 else having having such dps with 250ish average item lvl or it's just me doing something wrong?

[Infernix17]

im having some strange experiences while tanking as bear in the last patch. my threat varies a lot from boss to boss, on some bosses i easily keep aggro by having 20-30% more threat then the dps and on some i have a lot of problems and have to taunt the boss when dps get aggro (in the same raid with same ppl dpsing). it's partially because of vengeance decay on tank swaps, but if that has such a big impact it's a serious issue with the mechanic.
another problem i had was that i found myself being rage starved sometimes when i macro-ed maul to my other abilities. the most strange example of that is when i tanked sindragosa 10 man and had to remove the maul macro to keep up my rotation and use it just occasionally. i have no problems with that as having maul macroed and never think about it is boring, but being rage starved on a hard hitting boss while having loads of rage on easy trash mobs makes no sense at all and it's a big problem of the new rage generation system in my opinion.
last thing i noticed is that ppl have posted about having huge dps as bears (hitting mangle for 15k and such) in the new patch. i have been practicing the rotations from the 1st post in this thread and i do it reasonably well all the time and still i cant make more then 4-4.5k dps on fights like saurfang in ICC. my gear is not very good as i returned to raids recently after a 9 months break, but such big differences cant be only the result of gear. is some1 else having having such dps with 250ish average item lvl or it's just me doing something wrong?

The biggest thing with threat is that it is all dependent on Vengeance. Vengeance does decay and on most fights in ICC you won't see vengeance go past 50% of what its supposed to.

The only fights I have seen high/max vengeance is Festergut and Lich King.

Gear will affect your Vengeance level, but its all dependent on your gear and the DPSers gear. Even full best in slot geared tanks are having trouble keeping threat off of some DPS, especially when Vengeance is low.

I pulled 17k DPS on our Heroic LK attempts, so the high numbers people are talking about are when they have max vengeance levels.

You might want to let Lacerate tick a little longer for extra Berserk procs, but other than that there is nothing you can really do.

[bavarcarus]

I found I had to unmacro maul, I just put it on mangle, then made another macro for mangle without maul. Vengeance will play out differently in cata, our dodge is what's making it inconsistent. When we're raiding with 30% dodge we should be keeping vengeance better.

[Roose]

At lvl 85, since all the rating will be lower, we might need to go all out for agi to make up the crit/ap/dodge lost, and to make our mastery worth. Since everything have SO many stamina (+500 stamina :<?) we will still rock around with huge HP pools. But we will for sure need more agi to avoid being mana sponges, i think it will be really important in a world when mana will matter.

I am not sure that most people understand what has happened to tanks in Cataclysm. Druids are no longer the "huge health pool" tank. My warrior on beta has the same HPs as my druid in premade gear, self buffed. All tank trees have a stamina boosting talent baked in now. 15% for pallies and warriors, 8 or 9% for DKs. My warrior also has 33k armor, compared to 30k on bear.

Obviously things will change with customization of gear, but I really do not see there being much difference in HPs. Now that agility does not give armor, I do not see bears being tops in that area either.

Seeing as how everything works directly with agility, it makes stacking agility seem like the best route. Dodge and crit are so low at 85 that they must be the primary focus. What good is it to boost mastery if you do not have the crit to make it useful?

I really so no way around stacking agility. It has so much of an impact on all other stats. There is no way that Blizz will let stats get as crazy as they did in LK, so I really do not see us reaching a point where we will ever have enough agility.

[bavarcarus]

I am not sure that most people understand what has happened to tanks in Cataclysm. Druids are no longer the "huge health pool" tank. My warrior on beta has the same HPs as my druid in premade gear, self buffed. All tank trees have a stamina boosting talent baked in now. 15% for pallies and warriors, 8 or 9% for DKs. My warrior also has 33k armor, compared to 30k on bear.

Obviously things will change with customization of gear, but I really do not see there being much difference in HPs. Now that agility does not give armor, I do not see bears being tops in that area either.

The fact that our mastery does not receive any boost from stamina makes stacking stamina a lot less desirable. Seeing as how everything else works directly with agility, it makes stacking agility seem like the best route. Dodge and crit are so low at 85 that they must be the primary focus. What good is it to boost mastery if you do not have the crit to make it useful?

I really so no way around stacking agility. It has so much of an impact on all other stats. There is no way that Blizz will let stats get as crazy as they did in LK, so I really do not see us reaching a point where we will ever have enough agility.

There's still alot to figure out before we make a choice. Stm buffs vengeance, which buffs AP, which buffs SD, which is modified by mastery rating. If bosses hit hard and slow, the benefit of mastery is going to go up (slower attack speed means higher chance you will have SD up). If they hit fast and light, agi will be the better stat (SD being consumed by hits that didn't utilize the full absorbtion wasting your mastery, thus higher uptime and more dodge from crit would be better). I'm sure there's also going to be bosses that do alot of casting. I haven't looked at the gear enough to know, but the stats are different enough that we'd benefit from having a dodge set and a mastery set.

[Infernix17]

I am not sure that most people understand what has happened to tanks in Cataclysm. Druids are no longer the "huge health pool" tank. My warrior on beta has the same HPs as my druid in premade gear, self buffed. All tank trees have a stamina boosting talent baked in now. 15% for pallies and warriors, 8 or 9% for DKs. My warrior also has 33k armor, compared to 30k on bear.

Obviously things will change with customization of gear, but I really do not see there being much difference in HPs. Now that agility does not give armor, I do not see bears being tops in that area either.

The fact that our mastery does not receive any boost from stamina makes stacking stamina a lot less desirable. Seeing as how everything else works directly with agility, it makes stacking agility seem like the best route. Dodge and crit are so low at 85 that they must be the primary focus. What good is it to boost mastery if you do not have the crit to make it useful?

I really so no way around stacking agility. It has so much of an impact on all other stats. There is no way that Blizz will let stats get as crazy as they did in LK, so I really do not see us reaching a point where we will ever have enough agility.

I don't know where you are getting your information from, but you are semi-wrong.

1) Blizzard doesn't want any tank to gem for full stam. They want avoidance to be something we want. So HP pools will be a little off.
2) Right now, in item level 346 gear, my druid on Beta fully buffed has ~145k HP. Paladins, Warriors and Dks all have ~125k fully raid buffed. Thats still a pretty significant difference.
3) Leather Armor gives 2x more armor than it used to. So armor values are exactly what it used to be. Paladins and Warriors should have more armor, thats the way they are designed with using plate and a shield. We have more health they have more avoidance, it has always been that way.
4) Stamina = Mastery. Maybe if you don't count vengeance, but the more Stamina we have the more our Savage Defense is going to absorb.

I think the general consensus right now is that we will be gemming mostly Agility, but it all depends on the boss fights.

There's still alot to figure out before we make a choice. Stm buffs vengeance, which buffs AP, which buffs SD, which is modified by mastery rating. If bosses hit hard and slow, the benefit of mastery is going to go up (slower attack speed means higher chance you will have SD up). If they hit fast and light, agi will be the better stat (SD being consumed by hits that didn't utilize the full absorbtion wasting your mastery, thus higher uptime and more dodge from crit would be better). I'm sure there's also going to be bosses that do alot of casting. I haven't looked at the gear enough to know, but the stats are different enough that we'd benefit from having a dodge set and a mastery set.

Exactly what he just said, kind of hard to tell at this point.

[Ihnasir]

it took me a bit to catch on, but I'm happy we now get to use berserk, i used to have 8-9k tps just spamming swipe/maul and that was retarded. more use of Mangle, Lacerate, Pulverize (YES!) and Berserk Mangles for AoE, it's not hard, you just have to adjust and pay attention. Yeah I can't tank and watch tv but ehh, nothing good on anyway

[hadry]

I am not sure that most people understand what has happened to tanks in Cataclysm. Druids are no longer the "huge health pool" tank. My warrior on beta has the same HPs as my druid in premade gear, self buffed. All tank trees have a stamina boosting talent baked in now. 15% for pallies and warriors, 8 or 9% for DKs. My warrior also has 33k armor, compared to 30k on bear.

Obviously things will change with customization of gear, but I really do not see there being much difference in HPs. Now that agility does not give armor, I do not see bears being tops in that area either.

The fact that our mastery does not receive any boost from stamina makes stacking stamina a lot less desirable. Seeing as how everything else works directly with agility, it makes stacking agility seem like the best route. Dodge and crit are so low at 85 that they must be the primary focus. What good is it to boost mastery if you do not have the crit to make it useful?

I really so no way around stacking agility. It has so much of an impact on all other stats. There is no way that Blizz will let stats get as crazy as they did in LK, so I really do not see us reaching a point where we will ever have enough agility.

You say pretty much was i wanted to say, sorry but i have a really crappy english and i think my post wasnt clear.
About the huge HP pools, i wasnt speaking aobut us having more HP than the others tanks, but we have so many stamina in our gear that i dont think stamina will be a problem. The crit/dodge loss worried me more. I think tanks (being them warrs, druids, dks or palys) have a lot of HP at lvl 85, i havent tryed beta, but with the removal of def and others ratings, gear have way more stamina now. I know they have balanced already around that, but i think Blizz will take care of making stamina stack NOT worth, since when mana and regen is important because you have to take care of this, dodge and SD should become way more important.

[Cheezee]

I think the general consensus right now is that we will be gemming mostly Agility, but it all depends on the boss fights.

I sincerely hope this ends up being the case with the major difference between dps/tank sets being trinkets and maybe a different piece here and there. Having to collect 2 sets of T10 sucked horribly.

[mamaduck]

This thread is the most amazing thread ever.
Thanks so much for the help. <3

[Sylvenmyst]

I would say plate has more mitigation rather then sheer avoidance, pretty sure bears still lead the charge there. But as far as stacking stam or agil, the thing people are over looking is the ability to gem for mastery. Along with all of the soft/hard caps going up in cata(hit/crit/exp) I think that a proper mix of stam/agil/mastery is going to be in order with the reforging for secondary stats, imo ATM more than likely hit maybe? Just remember, while our dodge crazy as it is now, we are still going to need the survival factor that makes up for no parry/block that others have. This coming from stam, period. Not saying be a stam whore, but consider the package as a whole, obviously adjusting gems as needed by your current gear state, guild fight strats, and position (MT/OT).

[Auroro]

I would say plate has more mitigation rather then sheer avoidance, pretty sure bears still lead the charge there. But as far as stacking stam or agil, the thing people are over looking is the ability to gem for mastery. Along with all of the soft/hard caps going up in cata(hit/crit/exp) I think that a proper mix of stam/agil/mastery is going to be in order with the reforging for secondary stats, imo ATM more than likely hit maybe? Just remember, while our dodge crazy as it is now, we are still going to need the survival factor that makes up for no parry/block that others have. This coming from stam, period. Not saying be a stam whore, but consider the package as a whole, obviously adjusting gems as needed by your current gear state, guild fight strats, and position (MT/OT).

Well I was looking at the heroic dungeon gears in Wowhead and i found myself with 19% hit chance, 39 EXP.

Reforging hit might be the best idea.

[Infernix17]

Well I was looking at the heroic dungeon gears in Wowhead and i found myself with 19% hit chance, 39 EXP.

Reforging hit might be the best idea.

You have to remember that hit changes depending on boss level.

1% hit= 9.3793 hit rating points at level 60.
1% hit= 14.7905 hit rating points at level 70.
1% hit= 30.7548 hit rating points at level 80.

Not sure what the hit rating is in Beta right now, but it will be somewhere around 55 hit rating per 1%.

If it is 55 hit rating per 1% then 440 hit rating = 8% at level 85.
Since you are comparing hit rating at level 80. 440 hit rating = 14.3% at level 80.
Sure its still 5% more hit rating than we need, but I am sure it will all equal out.

Same thing goes for Expertise, just different formula.

Just to make myself clear, 8% is still melee hit cap, it just takes more hit rating to hit 8%. The hit cap doesn't change.

[Vaio]

Cheers for a nice guide. Great to catch up after a six months break from the game.
I noticed in the professions section that mining is not mentioned, have they changed the passive effect of toughness through mining or is it simply forgotten? Would be a pity to not use that instant flight form for at least one gathering profession.

[Infernix17]

Cheers for a nice guide. Great to catch up after a six months break from the game.
I noticed in the professions section that mining is not mentioned, have they changed the passive effect of toughness through mining or is it simply forgotten? Would be a pity to not use that instant flight form for at least one gathering profession.

I just never considered gathering professions as "helpful" although looking at it, toughness is actually pretty nice.

I will add gathering professions to the list.

[axxey]

lolz at full mastery full cat dps gear in ICC, vengeance is OP. Tank died on 2 fights in H25 and 2 top20 bear ranks just from going bear and doing pick up. 75% avoidance and less damage taken per hit than DK main tank, horray for hybrid. http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZfMGfou0zrsk0c:Mzda0zMmz
Bear attacks hitting over 20k...

On a side note, if you're casting thorns before a pull do it from cat form. Thorns will cast using your attack power or spell power as a co-efficient, whichever is higher, cat->thorns is strongest in game currently, if you cast your thorns in caster form as feral they'll be extremely weak.

[Infernix17]

lolz at full mastery full cat dps gear in ICC, vengeance is OP. Tank died on 2 fights in H25 and 2 top20 bear ranks just from going bear and doing pick up. 75% avoidance and less damage taken per hit than DK main tank, horray for hybrid. http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZfMGfou0zrsk0c:Mzda0zMmz
Bear attacks hitting over 20k...

On a side note, if you're casting thorns before a pull do it from cat form. Thorns will cast using your attack power or spell power as a co-efficient, whichever is higher, cat->thorns is strongest in game currently, if you cast your thorns in caster form as feral they'll be extremely weak.

Yeah, if you have good enough healers, you could be in full DPS gear with full agility gems and rape shit.

On a more serious note, you can't cast thorns in any other form than caster form... If you try to pop thorns in cat, bear, or boomkin form it will automatically shapeshift you out.

Sorry to disappoint you, but you can only cast it from caster form and it is best benefited by spell power, so even if we could cast it in Bear or Cat form, it would make no difference.

Thorns damage formula: 400 + (SP * .421)
So its best to be cast by a healer or boomkin.

Also realize that Thorns is in the balance tree and thats why it benefits from SP and not AP. (If you were going to ask. =P)

[Embermoon]

Does anyone see a real benefit to macroing maul anymore? I had it macrod to mangle, lacerate, and swipe, but since the patch, I've been using it on it's own, whenever it was off CD. Specifically, I'd rotate on adds in a pack: Swipe on the pickup, then lacerate one. Tab-tar and mangle and maul. Tab tar again and lacerate and mangle another. Tab tar and back to swipe and probably a maul. Basically, just using as many of those abilities to ramp up threat on multiple mobs. I haven't needed to use berserking much, but I might start, just to make life a little easier. Heh, I've been enjoying tab-tar again.

As for threat issues, I'm not really understanding where anyone is having a problem, unless they're talking about a raid setting where they're up against highly-geared dps who don't wait at all. Over the course of a fight, I've been watching my threat steadily outpace every dps by a huge margin.

[Deleted]

Well I have mine macro'd to all my abilities but it don't seem to work. Do we no longer need the ! in front of it anymore?

[Yohassakura]

Well I have mine macro'd to all my abilities but it don't seem to work. Do we no longer need the ! in front of it anymore?

No, as we can't "toggle" it on or off. (The exclamation mark or "!" was used so that you didn't turn maul off while mashing all of your keys). As it's a use-as-you-mash-your-buttons-if-it-isn't-already-on-cooldown key now, instead of a on-next-attack ability, it isn't needed

Edit:

I understand the logic behind saying that, but at the same time, that logic is largely based on Pre Patch numbers. For anyone still doing Icecrown before Cata officially kicks off, with the Chill of the Throne debuff gone...

Sorry for not addressing this sooner. I thought that this was a 4.0.1 (Pre-Cataclysm thread), so i'd give a pre-cataclysm answer.

At the moment, our numbers are stupidly crazy as it is. Take this example from bloodqueen heroic 25 (Whilst i was main tanking):

Take a look at Damage Taken

DmgTaken    Dam%   hits  Average DmgTaken   Total dmg taken     absorbed    dodged   missed    Total % misses
318452 	|  52.2 %|   27 |	11794.5    |	318452 	    |     377923|      34  | 	2   |      57.1%

If you then look at the damage that i took, compared to the rest of the raid... Raid damage taken... I was 14th of 25 people on damage taken, whilst main tanking. Do i really need more dodge at the moment? I don't think so. - Although I must factor in Savage Defense to make this fair:
Savage Defense / Healing Done

Healing Taken| Overall %| SD absorbed # Times| Average Absorb| Total Absorb| Time and uptime of SD|
486224 	     |   40.3 % |	    99       | 	       4911.4| 	     486224| 	    03:07 (78.2 %)|

This also makes mastery out to be kinda crazy. I think i'll stick to my stamina, as seem as we're still killing ICC25 heroic bosses, namely trying to kill LK heroic 25.