Bear Guide: 4.1+

[Arielle]

thebearinc has been on a dps kick for a while now (seriously, who does she think she is?)

It's like there aren't any other writers for TiB that are Bears or anything. Shocking. /sarcasm

and I can't find a current bear FAQ on EJ

I can pretty much universally guarantee that any relevant Bear info you find on EJ will have come from us first.

[Embermoon]

Awesome! That's the info I was looking for - thanks, guys.

[Ticktac]

What is the benefit of having [Glove Reinforcements]: +240 Armor. How much does armor benefit a Bear vs having Mastery or Agility.

[thehordemage]

It will improve your survival very marginally if you main tank every fight in Bear. If you off tank or DPS any other fight Agility would be stronger.

[Troyan]

If you believe taking the least damage during a fictional encounter with set melee hits at a constant 1.8 sec interval that lasts 6 minutes makes you the best tank then take all the advice here and live happily ever after. If you understand tanking, use your head, play the game and kill big monsters, let others play with the calculators.

[Executionur]

I checed Sejta's Bear gear (DREAM PARAGON GUILDMASTER) and he is stacking Stamina, so whats going on here? Does he stack stamina because he is already walking with uber gear with enough agility? Or what?

[Deleted]

Pretty sure he just recently competed in a competition to see who could clear dragon soul the fastest without the 20% buff. Presumably this valued tank survivability quite highly, as a death could mean a wipe and probable failure. Couple that with overgeared healers and you can probably see why he did it. He was agility stacked before though when they were just clearing stuff on farm with the buff on.

side note: the sooner people stop checking these people's armories who are doing very specific things with their gearing, the sooner they'll stop being confused.

[Deleted]

I agree with Buraan, people should stop blindly copying other people's armory values

[rated]

I checed Sejta's Bear gear (DREAM PARAGON GUILDMASTER) and he is stacking Stamina, so whats going on here? Does he stack stamina because he is already walking with uber gear with enough agility? Or what?

No offense to you, but who gives a flying fuck what Sejta does. Worry about what YOU do instead imo.

[Ticktac]

I'm sorry this doesn't lend to the conversation, but what's with the rude replies in this forum. I'm sure I'm just feeding trolls by responding, but it's ridiculous. Of course people are going to look up what is believed to be the best of the best and try to emulate what they see. As an active member of this community you have no right to say

No offense to you, but who gives a flying fuck what Sejta does. Worry about what YOU do instead imo.

Where are the moderators at? I respect this site as a whole and come here often for information. I even attempt to help out with answers when I can. This is just disappointing and disrespectful to others.

Again, I'm sure this will just feed the trolls, but I see it far to often and felt compelled to address it.

[Arielle]

Of course people are going to look up what is believed to be the best of the best and try to emulate what they see.

And for tanks especially, they would be wrong to do so.

Tanks (more so than any other role) gear for their raid's needs/preferences after hitting the minimum survivability requirement. Since that requirement is easily met by simply putting on the appropriate gear, any further customization after that is entirely optional. Evaluating what a tank (even a high level one) does in a vacuum gets you nowhere. You have to consider their encounter strategy, how much their raid stands in stuff they shouldn't, how effective the healers are, etc. Any one of these (or other) variables can skew your gearing strategy towards one direction or the other.

Unfortunately the people that ask these sorts of questions about "Why is player X doing Y" don't bother to consider any other variable.

[Deleted]

I agree with you Katarn, but ticktac has a point, I personally think that rated's comment could have been worded less aggressively.

[Embermoon]

I agree with you Katarn, but ticktac has a point, I personally think that rated's comment could have been worded less aggressively.

Agreed. The old maxim "if you can't say anything nice (read: civilly)..." should hold true here. It boggles my mind how many posters seem to want to vent their spleen in [self-]righteous indignation, over someone *gasp and shock* asking for knowledge, so as to better understand their toon. I mean that in the most general sense across forum boards everywhere.

Katarn, I don't read Executionur's post as not bothering to consider other variables; rather, simply falling into the very human tendency to look at an "expert" and expect them to be "doing it right." And, to his credit, instead of simply arguing that "YOU GUYZ R RONG, CUZ SEJTA STAKCS STAM," he's seeing a discrepancy, and asking another group of (professionals?) for clarification.

Is that not what these boards are for, in general, and this thread, specifically?

[Arielle]

Katarn, I don't read Executionur's post as not bothering to consider other variables; rather, simply falling into the very human tendency to look at an "expert" and expect them to be "doing it right." And, to his credit, instead of simply arguing that "YOU GUYZ R RONG, CUZ SEJTA STAKCS STAM," he's seeing a discrepancy, and asking another group of (professionals?) for clarification.

I wasn't speaking in the specific sense, but the more general.

I agree with you Katarn, but ticktac has a point, I personally think that rated's comment could have been worded less aggressively.

Agreed.

Is that not what these boards are for, in general, and this thread, specifically?

*Shrug* I dunno. I'm only here to correct general misinformation about Bears/Guardians.

[Deleted]

Katarn, I don't read Executionur's post as not bothering to consider other variables; rather, simply falling into the very human tendency to look at an "expert" and expect them to be "doing it right." And, to his credit, instead of simply arguing that "YOU GUYZ R RONG, CUZ SEJTA STAKCS STAM," he's seeing a discrepancy, and asking another group of (professionals?) for clarification.

Is that not what these boards are for, in general, and this thread, specifically?

Indeed, it is very common when figuring out what to do to look at "the best" and just copy, and to be fair, that can work to a certain extent, depending on what you are doing and the desired quality of your own play. This approach will often fall short though, particularly in a game such as world of warcraft where gear can make significant difference in how you play, how you gem and how you spec.

I do however do it myself on my alt chars from time to time, but I rarely check "the best" normally its respected friends of myself who play their respective class well. Let me explain:

When examining the armory of a player who is so-called "the best" there are several things to take into account:

1. Their raid size 10 or 25 man, this has little effect on dps, but can have significant impact on tanks and healers, if they aren't raiding the same size raid as you, think about why they may be doing what they are doing with regards to this. (specifically, healers having more well defined roles in 25 man such as raid/tank healer as opposed to 10 man, and tanks are more likely to solo tank content in 10 man whereas 25 man tanks can get hit significantly harder. Also there are more cds available in 25 man vs 10 man, etc etc...the list goes on)

2. Their gear level vs yours, gear significantly changes how people gem enchant and spec at times. It may be things as big as playing arcane mage instead of fire because of the available gear, to things as small as they can get to a different haste plateau or have a different set bonus that you don't have. For tanks this means that the better gear you have, the more hp and avoidance you have naturally, which can leave you more space to play with your stats, or do silly things like gear for doing more damage.

3. Always check their history of most recent activity, the number of times you'll look at someone's gear and be like "wtf? why is he doing that" can be quickly explained when you see things like Trial of the crusader kills as recent activity, or random achievements. I regularly tank lfr in strange gear that I probably wouldn't tank normal content with (well...maybe, its nerfed so much).

3b. In addition to 3, you can also check logs, perhaps they were doing achievements, perhaps they were missing a buff, did they get di, did they get FM, did they get UF, were they off-tanking, etc etc.

4. The quality of the guild, top guilds are going to face different issues and challenges than others, like less people standing in fire (although, on farm you probably couldn't tell...damn dps whores)

5. Experts get it wrong sometimes....its true, it happens. One particular example that annoys me is rigg's bear using mastery gems when reforging exclusively to dodge.

Anyway, as an alternative to looking at an expert, getting a friend's armory is often better, as you usually know all of the above information straight away, and if you don't you can ask.

But despite all this, I still think the best way is to just google "<insert class/spec> guide" and go from there, once you understand some of the reasoning and debate around why you should do what you do, it makes taking a sample of "good people's" armories much more useful.

With regards to the eternal stam/agi thing for bears, I keep contemplating whether to write up some sort of explanation of how to approach it and figure out what to do for yourself, but a) I doubt people would read it, b) I wouldn't know where to put it, and c) it probably wouldn't stop people posting asking the question.

TL;DR Yes people do check the "expert's" armory and then come asking questions, this should be fine. Some people start to get frustrated at the amount of times this happens though I think.

[rated]

I agree with you Katarn, but ticktac has a point, I personally think that rated's comment could have been worded less aggressively.

Ticktac does have a point. It wasn't my intention to be rude, but I understand I did come off way more aggressive than needed to be and for that I am sorry, Executionur. It was not anything personal, we just hear way too much about Sejta and what he does is really irrelevant to the rest of us. None of us are world first tanks raiding in world first guilds.

Ticktac is not a mod though and I don't believe he has the right to playing mod by quoting posts in random threads to call people out and call them trolls either. If you have an issue with me Ticktac, report my posts or send me a PM, I promise ya I'm not a troll. I may be a dick sometimes, but not a troll

[Auroro]

I agree with Rated, and Katarn (shocking).

This why i said You can do whatever you want dealing with Stamina and Agility. There are great druid tank that have dive into all Stamina or all Agility.

Also i did said that balance is the keys.

Buraan, I would be happy to have you write that explanation and add it to this guide and the New bear guide for MoP because i am having a feeling that Agility/stamina battle will not be over.

[cmdrcod]

Druids are the most versatile tank currently. In an off tank situation switching to cat can boost raid dps. Gemming agility puts out more damage. Great for 10man raids.

For a main tank going all stam can give your healers more time to react against hard hitting bosses. But its not huge something like 1/2 a swing.