Bear Guide: 4.1+

[Arctagon]

The only section that been updated is the 346 BiS.

372 will be add later this week same with the Spell list.

Are you trying to say that nothing beside the list and some code is updated in the guide yet? I need to know whether or not it is safe to use it yet.

[oathslayer]

Cursory glance says yes, you can use the guide. Like any guide treat it with a grain of salt, but it's a good reference point.

[Mortimer]

Has anyone considered whether it's actually needed to spec into Endless Carnage on most fights? In my experience, I end up refreshing Pulverize long before it's actually fallen off even when I'm not spec'd for increased duration. I can see the value on some fights, i.e. where you have to tab-lacerate multiple targets in a way that means you probably wont be able to Pulverize most of those stacks, or ones with heavy target switching.

I suppose the real question is "what else should we spec?", since there really aren't many options.

[HuntersAreBoring]

I gem all agility

i am confused

Fully regemming agility, including JC gems (and this is to pretend that you were going to gem straight delicate reds) gives you 460 agility. You personally gain another 95 agility over how I enchant my gear, through your enchants. That all translates into a little less than 2% dodge, and obviously the AP for savage defense. For heroic modes I'd rather have the extra health, but if the raid group is good enough you could probably make it through more than half the heroic fights with half intellect gems.

[oathslayer]

Has anyone considered whether it's actually needed to spec into Endless Carnage on most fights? In my experience, I end up refreshing Pulverize long before it's actually fallen off even when I'm not spec'd for increased duration. I can see the value on some fights, i.e. where you have to tab-lacerate multiple targets in a way that means you probably wont be able to Pulverize most of those stacks, or ones with heavy target switching.

I suppose the real question is "what else should we spec?", since there really aren't many options.

Endless Carnage is going to probably give you the best return for your points. Anything else is largely irrelevant for tanking (meaning it's a dps talent or Nurturing Instinct). Maybe KotJ if they removed the damage debuff, you were switching to kitty a lot per fight, and you refreshed pulverize more often than you theoretically should. maybe. I know that because I get dodged and parried a lot I start trying to refresh Pulverize around 5 or 6 seconds, which is how long Endless Carnage increases my pulverize buff. It is a TPS loss to pulverize instead of lacerate, so refreshing it super early isn't helping anything but keeping the buff up.

I would keep the points in endless carnage for now.

[Paskgotsheal]

Fully regemming agility, including JC gems (and this is to pretend that you were going to gem straight delicate reds) gives you 460 agility. You personally gain another 95 agility over how I enchant my gear, through your enchants. That all translates into a little less than 2% dodge, and obviously the AP for savage defense. For heroic modes I'd rather have the extra health, but if the raid group is good enough you could probably make it through more than half the heroic fights with half intellect gems.

An extra 2 % dodge adds up over the course of a fight. Nothing hits hard enough for you to need more then 170k health as a tank. It's all about mitigation and avoidance, which agility provides both of.

[Arielle]

Has anyone considered whether it's actually needed to spec into Endless Carnage on most fights? In my experience, I end up refreshing Pulverize long before it's actually fallen off even when I'm not spec'd for increased duration. I can see the value on some fights, i.e. where you have to tab-lacerate multiple targets in a way that means you probably wont be able to Pulverize most of those stacks, or ones with heavy target switching.

I suppose the real question is "what else should we spec?", since there really aren't many options.

Yes, because it gives you 5 more GCDs to spend on things other than Pulverize. If you aren't using those, you should be.

[HuntersAreBoring]

An extra 2 % dodge adds up over the course of a fight. Nothing hits hard enough for you to need more then 170k health as a tank. It's all about mitigation and avoidance, which agility provides both of.

Difference in opinion then. I like the extra health especially with some of the fights being heavy on movement or involving some mechanics that can cause a delay in me getting a heal, and with the majority (not all) of the furthest progressed bears also stacking stamina it's probably a common feeling. But if agility is working for you in your raid group then that's cool. Grats on your 11 heroic kills either way .

edit: 2% dodge obviously adds up over the course of the fight, but our healers don't have mana issues with me stacking stamina. It's just kind of gearing for the worst-case scenario of rng and bad luck.
2nd Edit: I got bored and decided to chardev my set with stamina vs. my set for agility. The tradeoff was 32k hp for 2.9% dodge and 4% crit and a little under 3k ap. That is with equipping double agility trinkets. If you gear for agi but use double stam gems the tradeoff is miniscule either way and it looks like it would rely on what your healers' mana situation usually is like. The double stam trinket-full agi setup leaves you with warrior-esque health but nothing resembling their mitigation. Gonna stay with the stam :x. Gains don't seem to be enough across the board for swapping in agility. If agility still granted armor the numbers looks like they would favor agility.

[Arctagon]

Anyone familiar with how stamina works?

As already known the stamina -> health conversion coefficient is 14. This is confirmed by a quick calculation. 41509 + 20 + ((107 - 20) * 14) = 42747, which is the amount of health we have with nothing affecting us. Or if I should equip all my gear: 41509 + 20 + ((4800 - 20) * 14) = 108449, which is the amount of health I should have in-game. By looking at the character tab, I get this confirmed, and so it confirms what I said in the first place.

In Bear Form the coefficient should be 15.4. 41509 + 20 + ((4800 - 20) * 15.4) = 115141 is the amount of health I should have in Bear Form. Looking at the character tab this is wrong. My health is 115155. According to the character tab my stamina is 5279. 4800 * 1.1 =/= 5279, but rather 5280. That made me think that maybe the increase only accounts for the points of stamina that grant you 14 health each. ((4800 - 20) * 1.1) + 20 = 5278, so it's still wrong.

It is definitely not concealed decimals that are screwing up here, as multiplying an integer with another integer cannot yield a fractional number obviously. Unless our base health contains decimals, but I doubt that.

[tangedyn]

Truncation of the decimal places occur just before multiplying by 14.
You can check the computation on my Bear spreadsheet (link in sig). There is "Real Health" and "Health", the former is what shows on the character sheet, the latter (skipping the rounding) is used for actual calculations to smooth out EP.

Also, you are missing the 6% buff from Heart of the Wild

[Arctagon]

I always landed on the right amount of health in-game and mathematically when multiplying by 14. It's when I multiplied by 15.4 that problems occured. Also, I was leaving out Heart of the Wild intentionally, as I was starting out blank, building it up to eventually reach HotW, but I didn't get that far.

Edit: Putting my stats into your spreadsheet gives me slightly less than 140k health in Bear Form. What exactly do you account for here? The 1.1 factor is Bear Form, the 1.06 factor is HotW, and the 1.05 factor is MotW. There is also another 1.05 factor, where does that come from? You also add 585 and 90, where 585 is likely to be the stamina buff. Could you give a quick explanation of your computation and what you do in order to calculate real health?

[Auroro]

I always landed on the right amount of health in-game and mathematically when multiplying by 14. It's when I multiplied by 15.4 that problems occured. Also, I was leaving out Heart of the Wild intentionally, as I was starting out blank, building it up to eventually reach HotW, but I didn't get that far.

Edit: Putting my stats into your spreadsheet gives me slightly less than 140k health in Bear Form. What exactly do you account for here? The 1.1 factor is Bear Form, the 1.06 factor is HotW, and the 1.05 factor is MotW. There is also another 1.05 factor, where does that come from? You also add 585 and 90, where 585 is likely to be the stamina buff. Could you give a quick explanation of your computation and what you do in order to calculate real health?

1.10 (Bear Form) * (1.06 GoW) * (1.05 Leather Specialization)* (1.05 MotW)

[Midnightdoc]

Great guid thank you very much for your time Auroro

[tangedyn]

585 is stamina buff, 90 is food buff.

[Imthebadnews]

For Yellow Socket is a Mast/Stam a good choice? (I currently gem this route).... I am reading reviewing and all that normally is mentioned are dodge/stam or dodge/agl gems... Trying to decide on regemming my mast/stam to one of those choices but I cannot confirm...

[Auroro]

For Yellow Socket is a Mast/Stam a good choice? (I currently gem this route).... I am reading reviewing and all that normally is mentioned are dodge/stam or dodge/agl gems... Trying to decide on regemming my mast/stam to one of those choices but I cannot confirm...

YOu just need to ask yourselves, do i need more health, if not then grab the Agility/dodge.

[Imthebadnews]

Yeah, I went back through an regemmed for last nights raid and it seemed to be pretty decent...

[Angrydruid]

Good read nice guide

[rated]

Anyone read this yet ?

For Savage Defense the change we're thinking about would probably be instead of reducing the next physical attack for X damage, it would instead absorb X damage for some duration. Big single target hits would probably drop the shield either way, but all the dinkier hits from pack pulls would be mitigated rather well. It's probably something you'll see fleshed out on the PTR.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...1924?page=5#96

[JaymzBond]

Anyone read this yet ?



http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...1924?page=5#96

dodge multipliers lowered by %x afterwards ...