The Bear Guide - Cataclysm Edition

[Karanan]

I registered on this forum specifically because of this thread.. just wanted to thank OP and everyone who has helped crunch the numbers and help make sense of the new bear mechanics. Keep up the good work!

[sparks]

Tiolith you must be new

that is blizzard math.
They use it in everything


great spot I never looked just saw 8% and went on

[Koumaru]

Basically, one hit from any end game boss will give you up to your maximum Vengeance.

Just nitpicking, but it'd be at least three hits. Capping your Vengeance in a single hit would require being hit for twice your maximum health. When a boss hits for 180,000 damage post-mitigation, someone's guild didn't beat the enrage timer.

[hadry]

First thing, thanks for the great threat. It was a great help for me atleast, with all this crazy changes going around hehe.
I have a question, about the reforging. Im atm sitting close to hit cap and at 14 expertise. Im not sure tho if i should go all for mastery since its so OP now or i should try to cap hit and expertise first. I made a hit and expertise cap set and yes, threat was awesome. But im not sure if its worth doing, since if no1 is overagroing you by a large margin, that agro stats r being wasted when it can go to more mastery -> less dmg taken.
Any advice about? Thanks .

[sparks]

someone's guild didn't beat the enrage timer.

YEP DAMN TANK lol

[Neji]

Likewise! I'm really impressed with the quality and content of this post and these forums in general. Keep up the great work!

[uzumati]

Playing around i capped Exp at 56 just to see and tanking Rotface halfway through the fight i could of gone for a cup of coffee and not been missed. I then reforged and dropped Exp to 40 picking up extra Mastery. Threat did not take that much of a loss while SD really picked up some nice numbers.

[Infernix17]

please stick to the topic and answer my hit riddle >__<
sadly Armory doesn't support reforging yet

I'm sorry, thank you for catching that! I was going off of Patch 3.3.5.

---------- Post added 2010-10-15 at 09:26 PM ----------

Hit scaling dropped with 4.0.1 it only takes 246 to get to 8% now

Thank you, changed it!

---------- Post added 2010-10-15 at 09:28 PM ----------

Boomkins dont switch out of form to cast thorns since we are technically already in "caster" form. Me and the other boomkin in my guild switched off on keeping thorns on our guilds MT in raid wednesday night. Really no different than throwing an innervate on a healer.

I see, well I still wish they would change it!

---------- Post added 2010-10-15 at 09:38 PM ----------

Just nitpicking, but it'd be at least three hits. Capping your Vengeance in a single hit would require being hit for twice your maximum health. When a boss hits for 180,000 damage post-mitigation, someone's guild didn't beat the enrage timer.

I didn't "actually mean" in the first hit. I shouldn't of said it like that, I was trying to imply that you will hit max Vengeance very early on.

Vengeance can only stack to 10% of our health, so lets say you have 90,000HP fully raid buffed, that means the most you can ever get out of vengeance is 9,000AP.
Vengeance states Each time you take damage, you gain 5% of the damage taken as attack power, up to a maximum of 10% of your health.
If a boss hits you for average 20,000 damage then you will receive 1,000 AP per hit which then would take 9 hits to reach maximum.

Thanks for pointing that out though, don't want people to get confused. =]

---------- Post added 2010-10-15 at 09:40 PM ----------

Playing around i capped Exp at 56 just to see and tanking Rotface halfway through the fight i could of gone for a cup of coffee and not been missed. I then reforged and dropped Exp to 40 picking up extra Mastery. Threat did not take that much of a loss while SD really picked up some nice numbers.

Yeah, Mastery doesn't exactly affect threat, but 56 expertise is overkill anyhow, the chance the boss will parry your attacks is low as is. So you would see very little threat difference, but you should see amazing survivability.

---------- Post added 2010-10-15 at 09:43 PM ----------

First thing, thanks for the great threat. It was a great help for me atleast, with all this crazy changes going around hehe.
I have a question, about the reforging. Im atm sitting close to hit cap and at 14 expertise. Im not sure tho if i should go all for mastery since its so OP now or i should try to cap hit and expertise first. I made a hit and expertise cap set and yes, threat was awesome. But im not sure if its worth doing, since if no1 is overagroing you by a large margin, that agro stats r being wasted when it can go to more mastery -> less dmg taken.
Any advice about? Thanks .

If you are having threat problems or people are complaining about low threat then you should find a way to fix your expertise and get it up to dodge cap(26). Hit doesn't matter as much, the more you have the better off you will be, but its not a big deal.

I would say, try to find other pieces of gear to get the expertise otherwise gem for some. Then reforge your gear into Mastery.

[uzumati]

but you should see amazing survivability.

Absolutely, on BQL I was my top healer for the fight between LotP an SD. Poor ole pally had almost all of his heals go straight to overhealing.

[Odinbane]

Considering the AoE tank rotation in the OP message, the one listed actually has room for a 4th ability before the cooldown of swipe finishes, and actually helps the rotation work alittle smoother. Debating between FFF and Lacerate though I figured I should point this out. (Apologies if this was forementioned, first post on here)

Macro

#ShowTooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Swipe(Bear Form), Mangle(Bear Form), Lacerate, Lacerate
(this is considering you have maul on a seperate button and use it when its up)

Thank you very much for putting this post together, was having some issues with my macros and finding a way to break the low aoe barrier.

[Infernix17]

Absolutely, on BQL I was my top healer for the fight between LotP an SD. Poor ole pally had almost all of his heals go straight to overhealing.

Haha, I had 450,000 healing from Savage Defense on Heroic BQL. It is absolutely ridiculous.

---------- Post added 2010-10-15 at 10:55 PM ----------

Considering the AoE tank rotation in the OP message, the one listed actually has room for a 4th ability before the cooldown of swipe finishes, and actually helps the rotation work alittle smoother. Debating between FFF and Lacerate though I figured I should point this out. (Apologies if this was forementioned, first post on here)

Macro

#ShowTooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Swipe(Bear Form), Mangle(Bear Form), Lacerate, Lacerate
(this is considering you have maul on a seperate button and use it when its up)

Thank you very much for putting this post together, was having some issues with my macros and finding a way to break the low aoe barrier.

The AoE rotation is just to point out that we need to be tab targetting to do it effectively.

Lacerate is stronger than FF, threat and damage wise. Basically tab target and spam Lacerate until Swipe is back on CD.

[Karanan]

I find (especially in 5 man random heroics) while tab targetting, it'll tab to a mob off in the distance.. how do you guys prevent that, or do you just have to try to be as aware as you can about it and tab to another mob quickly? Also, do most of you use enemy name plates? It's broken for me for some reason.

[uzumati]

I try to position so that distant targets are behind me to minimize that, as far as the nameplates go......

Here are some console commands to fix issues with mobs nameplates not showing correctly or not at all. Appearently Blizz forgot to enable the options in the Interface GUI. You need to run all 4 (one at a time) to set it back to pre 4.0.1 defaults

/console bloattest 1

/console spreadnameplates 0

/console bloatnameplates 1

/console bloatthreat 1

[Auroro]

While Agility may be good. Remember that Blizzard want all the tanking class to use the same items, Cloak, Necklace, Rings, and Trinkets. We will also be sharing Tanking Relic with Blood DK and Paladin.

We talked about druids in bear form also getting AP from strength. Strength won't appear on leather and no piece should have Str and Agi together, so it's not like they would really double dip. That let us still have tanking necks, rings and cloaks with strength on them that are attractive to all 4 tanking classes.

Str is still 2 AP for bears along with 2 AP from Agi.

I just want to said that since couple of you and the OP want to go all Agi.

[Kosma]

I think +275 health might be preferable to +18 stamina to chest now. Before, kings was 10%, and there were other talents that increased stamina by X%, so it made the stamina enchant worthwhile. Now you only have 5% kings/motw, 10% heart of the wild, and 25% bear form. ( 1.0 + 0.05 + 0.10 + 0.25 ) * 18 = 25.2 means you only get around ~250 health. Anyone agree?

[uzumati]

When your sitting at ~83K HP in ICC does 40 -50 HP really matter?

[Argothea]

Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Gladiator (+30 Stam and +15 Resilience) or Master Inscription of the Pinnacle

I am an Inscriptionist, and I found, to my dismay, that the shoulder Inscription that used to increase dodge rating by 60 and defense rating by 15, converted to increase dodge rating by 60 and parry rating by 15. Obviously, parry is pointless. I may be missing some of the math, but unless the DPS version of the Inscription-only shoulder enhancement (120 AP and 15 critical strike) is actually better than the Hodir tank one (20 dodge and 22 stamina), I am very frustrated that my profession-specific benefit is not longer actually a benefit.

I would love to be wrong--has anyone run those numbers?

[Bearshield]

While Agility may be good. Remember that Blizzard want all the tanking class to use the same items, Cloak, Necklace, Rings, and Trinkets. We will also be sharing Tanking Relic with Blood DK and Paladin.

We talked about druids in bear form also getting AP from strength. Strength won't appear on leather and no piece should have Str and Agi together, so it's not like they would really double dip. That let us still have tanking necks, rings and cloaks with strength on them that are attractive to all 4 tanking classes.

Str is still 2 AP for bears along with 2 AP from Agi.

I just want to said that since couple of you and the OP want to go all Agi.

They may want us to share tanking accessories but that doesn't mean they'll design them to be optimal for us. When DPS gear has the same or more stam than tanking gear, why would I take the piece with Str on it over the piece with Agi? Agi = dodge, crit, and AP while Str = only AP. And when it comes to relics, I'd rather reforge Haste into something useful on an Agi relic than be stuck with parry on a Str one since you can only reforge part of the stat. Not to say that no tanking accessories will be good for us, just that as of now it appears that Agi gear will provide more benefit. I still expect to use tanking trinkets though.

[dombow]

So after reading up some more in this thread and doin some debates, I swapped out some gems (relic gem from stam to agi and then stam gem in distant land to agi and got the socket bonus). Then I reforged everything dropping haste and bumped my mastery rating to 12.31. Im interested in seein how the changes will affect our icc raid on tues. We got sindy and then MOAR LK ATTEMPTS!! lol. (yes im lame and dont have kingslayer yet, we started way late in progression and have had a bitch of a time finding a solid 10th for our group)

[Auroro]

They may want us to share tanking accessories but that doesn't mean they'll design them to be optimal for us. When DPS gear has the same or more stam than tanking gear, why would I take the piece with Str on it over the piece with Agi? Agi = dodge, crit, and AP while Str = only AP. And when it comes to relics, I'd rather reforge Haste into something useful on an Agi relic than be stuck with parry on a Str one since you can only reforge part of the stat. Not to say that no tanking accessories will be good for us, just that as of now it appears that Agi gear will provide more benefit. I still expect to use tanking trinkets though.

Do you know that only the plate item get parry?

Tanking Cloak, Necklace, Relic, Rings, and Trinkets will not have parry. In fact if you look at the cata tanking Relic, Relic of Khaz'goroth, there is no parry, just mastery rating.