Gearing a Bear

[Fobo]

Hi all, I just leveled my druid to 85 and became a tank and I had a few questions about gear. The first is, is it terrible to wear PvP gear? I know that PvP gear for other tanks is bad because of lack of avoidance stats but it seems to me that bears are an exception. Since agility gives us dodge, crit, and attack power and you don't find dodge on PvE leather gear, is it so bad to start out with? My other question is, since I want to switch between cat and bear, can I just gem for agility instead of stam? I'd rather not have to have 2 of every piece of gear. Thanks in advance for the help .

[Cheezee]

Hi all, I just leveled my druid to 85 and became a tank and I had a few questions about gear. The first is, is it terrible to wear PvP gear? I know that PvP gear for other tanks is bad because of lack of avoidance stats but it seems to me that bears are an exception. Since agility gives us dodge, crit, and attack power and you don't find dodge on PvE leather gear, is it so bad to start out with? My other question is, since I want to switch between cat and bear, can I just gem for agility instead of stam? I'd rather not have to have 2 of every piece of gear. Thanks in advance for the help .

The pvp gear isn't bad to start out with. The only real down fall is that you can't reforge resilience into a more PVE friendly stats but other than that it's definitely usable. The staff is actually really good if Halfus hates your guts like he hates me (/cry). It's fine to stack agility for normal mode encounters if you feel comfortable with your HP pool. Don't be afraid to carry around trinkets and/or other pieces of gear that you can swap for more HP if necessary (heroic drops or rep stuff you can double up on easily).

[Auroro]

If you look at the new bear guild, I have updated the Heroic gear.

The only problem i see is that Bear and Kitty reforge/enchantment can be different.

[Djuntas]

Nope OP... go for pvp gear, it even tops 359 gear. Go get 2/5 vicious set (1 part being gloves, then maybe chest cause it got 2 sockets for loads of stam VS LW crafted chest/world BOE/Antramedes drop).

PvP gear been fine for tanking since Season1. It gives more AGI, Stam and armor and in some cases gem slots. Dont be fooled by the nay-sayers, I tanked Black Temple back in the days mainly pvp geared aswell (5-6 bosses inn only trough).. :9.. pvp gear is fine, but dont over-do it to much.

[Phosphori]

Epic PVP gear will be better than almost all heroic blues, and even a great deal of 359 epics. Keep in mind that even though resilience is useless, so is haste, and the pvp gear almost always has enough extra agi, stam, and armor to compensate. So with this in mind, pvp pieces with mastery or crit would be definitely be better than any 359 with haste, and equal to or better than pieces with expertise or hit.

I'd recommend using some kind of sim to weigh it out, but off hand, rawr values the pvp pieces very highly.

[Arielle]

Epic PVP gear will be better than almost all heroic blues, and even a great deal of 359 epics. Keep in mind that even though resilience is useless, so is haste, and the pvp gear almost always has enough extra agi, stam, and armor to compensate. So with this in mind, pvp pieces with mastery or crit would be definitely be better than any 359 with haste, and equal to or better than pieces with expertise or hit.

I'd recommend using some kind of sim to weigh it out, but off hand, rawr values the pvp pieces very highly.

Since there's so much misinformation going on out there, I thought I'd clear this up.

1) Piece for piece, equal tier (352 vs 346, 365 vs 359) PvP gear is inferior to PvE gear.
2) 4pc 352 PvP (Head, Shoulders, Chest, Legs) is roughly equal to BiS 346 gear (it's actually very slightly inferior, but not by any noticeable amount).

There are a couple of outstanding tests I need to do though:

1) 346 vs 352 Shoulders
2) 352 2pc (Head + Shoulders) vs 346
3) 365 vs 359 (although I'm 99% positive it will have the same result as 346 vs 352).

Gloves are the last piece you would drop from a PvE set.

This is no longer Wrath. PvP gear is no longer BiS.