Bear Tanking with Cat Gear

[Squishy2]

Back in WotLK, I tanked heroics for instant queues after Ulduar, it was pretty easy to tank heroics wearing kitty gear and I picked up tanking gear as I went on. After Cataclysm hit, I didn't play much but slowly got my cat decently geared and now with the Call to Arms bonuses for Tanks coming in 4.1, I'm thinking of going to tank but was wondering if it would be difficult to tank in my current cat gear? if so, what kind of quick tanking off-pieces I should be looking for (neck, ring, trinkets etc?). I know my health pool in bear should be enough, it's at about 150k when buffed in heroics but not sure if I have enough dodge etc...

link to my armory --> http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...oon/iamsquishy

TL/DR; want to try tanking using cat gear - if it's not a good idea, what kind of gear for quick upgrade I should be looking for?

[Finn mac cool]

If you are gemming agility you should be more than fine to tank heroics, as long as you take the bear tanking talents. If you just plan on doing the 5 mans I wouldn't worry about it, I wouldn't even bother reforging.

[exochaft]

If you are gemming agility you should be more than fine to tank heroics, as long as you take the bear tanking talents. If you just plan on doing the 5 mans I wouldn't worry about it, I wouldn't even bother reforging.

Yeah, even if you weren't gemming agi as a kitty, you'd be fine to tank heroics in kitty gear. Gear is normalized enough that it won't matter for 5man heroics. Also, I've seen tanks with 130k HP in heroics with a full Luck of the Draw buff perform fine, what really makes a tank a good tank is control, whether that be control of damage taken via cooldowns/positioning/etc or just controlling mobs in general.

[Puffinstuff]

There is no huge gear difference between feral bear gear (many bears gem agility instead of stamina currently) and feral cat gear. The key is not the gear it is the spec, as long as you have 3/3 Thick Hide and 2/2 Natural Reaction you won't get hit like a truck. Possibly even pick up 3/3 Perseverance from the resto tree, if you don't have the tanking talents it will be like healing a dps in prot gear.

[Squishy2]

I probably should clarify - I do have a tanking spec that I intend to use for heroics. I guess my biggest question was whether I have enough mitigation to do heroics.

Hearing from some of you, looks like it won't be a problem - I guess I'll brush up on some tanking rotations

[tangedyn]

You'll be ok if you are gemmed for agility and reforged for mastery/crit.
Although for raid tanking you'd prefer to be reforged for dodge/mastery.

[Stevoman]

Get a bear spec, use your cat gear, the difference is small.

Heck, I used to do this pre-4.0 in my armor pen gear.