Feral Tanks. The few, the proud, the people who can draw every hair on their bear’s ass from hours of staring at it. Whilst all the other tanks hide behind plate armor and big shields, we’re going in there, head to head – well, OK, head to crotch – with elementals, dragons, and unpronouncable things with too many apostrophes in their names, with only a thick layer of hair and a bad attitude for protection. Want to get Thrashing Deathwing’s tentacles as fast as possible (eew)? Then hold on, as we take a lightning trip through your talent spec, glyphs, gems, stats and reforging, and rotations and priorities in Patch 4.3.
Updated Dec 12th 2011
Bear tanking changes in Patch 4.3
Bears have been given a significant buff in Patch 4.3, with +10% stamina for all Bears, and a massive armour upgrade for Bear Tanks under level 40. However, this doesn’t change how we play or gear – it just makes us better!
The two-piece set bonus from Tier 13 makes Berzerk a mitigation cooldown too when you get it – woot!
Bear tanking “rotation”
We don’t have an actual “rotation” – instead, we have a couple of different priority lists. Use the highest ability on your priority list that is currently available.
Single-target tanking
- Top Priority Keep Demoralising Roar up. Use Mangle and Thrash if they’re available.
- Second Priority Lacerate up to three stacks or if it’s about to fall off.
- Third Priority Pulverise if the buff has fallen off you and you have 3 stacks of Lacerate. Faerie Fire if it’s not at 3 stacks for some reason. Use excess rage on Maul and yet more Lacerates.
Once you have solid threat, if your DPS is not important (as on most fights), you can prioritise keeping the Pulverise buff up, giving you extra damage mitigation.
Multi-target tanking
- Top Priority Use Demoralising Roar if it’s not up. Use Thrash if it’s available, and if not, Swipe if that is available.
- Second Priority If the current target does not have Mangle and Lacerate up, use Mangle and/or Lacerate.
- Third Priority If the current target has Mangle and Lacerate up, TAB to another target and use Mangle or Lacerate.
Given Swipe has a 3 second cooldown, you should be using it every other ability press. So, SWIPE – something – SWIPE – something and so on.
Buffs: Make sure you’re in Bear form! (Seriously, I’ve seen people fail at that). Use Mark of the Wild on the raid.
The Pull: Use Faerie Fire Feral to pull, then Mangle, Demoralising Roar, and go into your rotation.
Bear Tank Cooldowns: Use Berserk whenever it’s available, and glory in your ridiculous threat and DPS. You have three damage-reduction cooldowns: Barkskin has a 1 min cooldown, and should mostly be used off cooldown unless you know there’s a frequent heavy-damage phase in the fight (like Mangle on Magmaw). Frenzied Regeneration and Survival Instincts are both powerful damage-reduction / healing increase cooldowns – use them as your “Oh, crap” buttons. Note that glyphed Frenzied Regeneration actually increases healing – so it’s great if you’re being healed, not so good if your healer’s out of range or dead.
Feral Tank Interrupts: Skull Bash is your main interrupt.
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Bear Tank Talent Spec
Stats, reforging and gemming for Bear tanks
Stamina, Agility and Dodge are our three most important stats, with everything else being rather secondary. Agility, pound-for-pound, is our best stat in most circumstances. Haste is our worst stat. Strength is now nearly useless.
If you’re having threat problems, which is very unlikely, Expertise and then Hit to cap (aim for 8% hit and 26 Expertise) are our best threat stats.
Reforging: In general, reforge to Dodge. Reforge from Haste first.
Gems: Use Austere Shadowspirit Diamond, and use at least 2 Regal Dream Emeralds in yellow slots to activate it. After that, gem Delicate Inferno Rubies unless a socket bonus gives you significant Agility or Dodge, in which case match the socket.
Meta Gem: Use Austere Shadowspirit Diamond. You’ll need to use two Polished Ember Topaz to activate your meta gem – you can use these to activate socket bonuses if possible.
If you’re getting one-shot: If bosses are taking you out faster than the healers can heal you, replace some Agi with Stam until you’re confident you can survive a few more hits.
Druid tank enchants
If your profession provides you with item improving “enchants”, like Inscription or Tailoring, use your profession enchant instead of a general enchant if it provides useful stats and you have a choice- for example, Inscription of the Earth Prince on shoulders from Inscription.
| Head | Arcanum of the Earthen Ring – Arcanum of the Ramkahen is nearly as good. |
| Shoulders | Greater Inscription of Shattered Crystal |
| Back | Enchant Cloak – Protection |
| Chest | Enchant Chest – Greater Stamina or Peerless Stats if you don’t need more HP. |
| Wrist | Enchant Bracer – Agility |
| Hands | Glove Reinforcements from Leatherworking. Yes, really. |
| Belt | Ebonsteel Belt Buckle |
| Legs | Charscale Leg Armor |
| Feet | Enchant Boots – Assassin’s Step |
| Weapon | Enchant Weapon – Mighty Agility |
Note: If you’re low on Stamina, use Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz on shoulders instead.
Glyphs
Prime: Berserk, Lacerate, Mangle
Major: Maul, Frenzied Regeneration, and Faerie Fire.
Minor: Unburdened Rebirth and one other of your choice.
Links
- The Inconspicuous Bear guide – excellent and extremely thorough.
- Elitist Jerks Bear Tank Guide Not as thorough as most EJ guides, but still good and useful.
- WoW Insider Shifting Perspectives – One of WoW Insider’s best class columns, well worth reading.
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{ 53 comments… read them below or add one }
Great guide! You cover most things very well.
There are a few things I wanted to note, however.
1. For raiding bears, you absolutely must have Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration as a major. Not so vital or useful for a 5 man bear, though it still is very powerful. It also removes that whole “rage starved” aspect.
2. The “significant diminishing returns” on dodge is a myth. There are definitely diminishing returns, but there is no point where dodge actually loses value (except if you’re at 102.4% to cover the entire combat table, but that’s not possible for bears).
Quoting from http://theincbear.com/dodge-diminishing-returns, because they explain it so well.
“To illustrate this, imagine that you currently have 20% dodge. Increasing your dodge% by 1% does not just reduce the amount of damage you take by 1%. Because your chance of receiving damage has been reduced from 80% to 79%, your average damage reduced by the 1% dodge is .80/.79 = 1.266%. It gets even better when you have 50% dodge, where 1% dodge reduces your damage received by .50/.49 = 2.040%, and at 99% dodge, an additional 1% dodge will reduce your damage received by .01/.00 = infinity because that is where we become completely invulnerable.”
Alright so other than those two things, very good guide! I’m truly impressed.
You misunderstand the point of DR. It’s not that we get less damage reduction per percent of dodge, it’s that it takes more points of dodge to gain an additional percent of dodge. The damage reduced by 1% increase in dodge is a steady scale of course, however the amount of dodge gained per point is where the returns per point invest diminishes. At some point theoretically, the mitigation per point of mastery or another stat affecting your savage defense could start to outweigh the gain of a point of pure dodge.
Glad you liked it! I’ve not tanked as Feral for a good long while, so it was one of the ones I was more nervous about.
I’ve checked the Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration, and yeah, that should have been in there – thanks. Added.
As for Dodge – this looks a bit like the Armor math of yesteryear. My head hurts whenever I look at it hard! Regardless, Dodge seems to be the best stat to reforge to as Feral period, so I’ve updated the guide to reflect that (and also remove a potentially confusing aspect – thanks).
Hey I wanted to say thanks! Reading your guide really let me see some things i needed to change.. going from plate to bare skin imo there are some differences between the two type of tanks that would need to be changed! Thanks again!
Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration is absolutely NOT necessary. My FR will heal me for 3200 – 3400 a tic and crits for almost 10k. That kind of self healing entirely too powerful.
Glyphing FR means your healer is 100% alive, on top of you, not LoS’d because of some random rock on the ground, and able to output that much healing that quickly, which most can’t.
FR as a glyph doesn’t compete with anything else, fortunantly, and it’s up to you whether or not to use it, but just because a glyph drastically changes something doesn’t mean you should “oooh” and “aaah” all over it. The Ranseur of Hatred has haste on it, for example, and is therefore terribly itemized for Bear. But that’s useful because of the raw Stam and Agil. Glyphed FR doesn’t compare to unglyphed.
BS low – ratoiainlty high! Really good answer!
What about the 4 peice bonus though? For instance if you have a specific raid spike in a fight where you know healers will be blowing big aoe heals such as tranqulity, that 30% bonus heals to raid will deffinantly out weigh 3-4k ticks. I don’t think it’s cut and dry. I think the fight and the timing of damage spikes makes a big difference. And btw, if your FR isn’t scheduled to be used for the raid, you’re probably using it when you’re under 30% hp (i hope) and if you are ever under 30% hp, I hope for your sake your healer is laying some big heals on you. So your point about needing the perfect situation for bonus healing to be useful doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Do you usually find yourself without heals when you’re under 30%? Sounds like your healers need to step it up if so.
Good solid mini guide for any aspiring feral tank wanabee’s out there looking to get started.
I’ve tanked 12/12 without reforging to dodge and without any stam gems/enchants up to now as i was always a DPS that had to tank when a tank didnt show for a raid but the other day i reforged all my gear to dodge and gemmed 20agi / 20stam and enchanted all feral tank enchants and did my glyphs for outright tanking (bye bye 28k dps).
But it has made me go from easy to heal to omfg im so freaking invincible. Glyphed FR = 300k health in a raid when popped + 30% increased healing (i have a pocket healer every raid).
The only time i lack threat is multi-target as we really shouldnt stack hit and exp. Trash and Swipe are good but missing is a problem. Then again i got a DK tank alongside me on trash who holds aggro like a kid with a lollipop!
I didnt learn anything from your guide that i didnt already know but we need more guides like this to get more tanks in the game. So thanks for a good guide and for putting in the time and effort to help others.
Mel
Oh boy!I was playing WoW(only Druid tank)for almost 3years and I stopped playing for 8 months.When I started again on Cataclysm I said “WTF dude,how I will tank now?they’ve changed everything”But!Thanks god I googles right and I saw your guide,I mixed it with my experience and I made a great sense.I don’t have to plus something in your article ,you say the thing correctly.I have only one question,you know,now thorns is 20and something seconds from 10minutes,do u know a macro with instant cast and bear form?(I mean cast thorns on bear form,)or this is not gonna be work?I am using a macro like /cast thorns /sequence /cast bear form.It works but I don’t want to go on Tauren form and then bear form cause maybe inside the fight I’m gonna be dead.If you can answer to me please and sorry for my bad English.Congratz again for your guide du(du)de! Hehe (:
@Mel I do not have the FR glyph, but would consider it especially for when we start 25 mans. We still run a lot of heroics and only raid 10 man at the moment.
Your comments are correct, but are thinking in terms of just one healer, but if you had 2 healers then you really see some benefit. Macro a call for super heals to let the heals know to add a little something extra for a few seconds and it could probably be a huge lifesaver. Make sure they know what you are talking about in your macro.
I have a quick question. I have been bear tanking since just about the beginning of time and for that reason I’m probably stuck in my ways…I have been stacking stamina in gems etc…I got a whisper from an over talkative/opinionated guildie saying it’s pointless. Am I right in saying that stacking agility is better than stam when moving into FL raiding??
Thanks for any advice
@Stu – yeah stam is old school. Stack agility for your gems with the exception of two yellows for your meta. Reforge your gear to get dodge. Take out as much haste out of your gear to get dodge. Glhf
@Stu – One thing to add to Nudged – you should stack ENOUGH Stam that you can take a couple of hits from whatever boss you’re working on. That might not require any gems or enchants at all, but you should definitely make sure that you won’t get splatted before your healers can cast!
Excellent. Thank you for the advice. Very much appreciated to you both!
I really don’t understand. I read guides like this one that gemming for agility is best but actually I see best tanks gem like this:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/lightnings-blade/Sejta/advanced
So explain me, how comes Sejta – the guild master of DREAM Paragon – the guild that downed Ragnaros HC 25 first, is gemming for stamina?
http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/07/19/world-first-paragon-defeats-heroic-25-man-ragnaros/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez1pRo1sywY
He was gemming for stamina because he was likely pushing progression heroic content without having fully geared from other heroic farming. In these cases a lot of tanks will stack stam in order to survive the damage from the fights. However as they gear up more, most of them swing back towards mitigation stats as the base levels of stamina rise dramatically from the gear they have farmed. There are plenty of druids out there who got server first Madness kills stacking pure agility. Look up Ashmare on the US Frostmourne server. His mitigation stats and stam look pretty bad to me, the guy doesn’t even wear tanking trinkets, and yet he’s repeatedly pwned progression heroics as a tank while ranking top 5-10 for damage in his role. It looks insane to me, but you can’t argue with success.
Looks like he is gemming all Agility now.
@imperia – It’s not generally a good idea to follow how the top-end raiders are gemming, strange though that may sound. Looking at his gemming setup, I’d guess that he’s gemmed specifically to deal with content that’s very different to what most of us are facing – HC Ragnaros, specifically – and probably using strategies that most raid groups wouldn’t be able to pull off.
If you’re on the same content as Paragon at the same time, with the same group composition, it’s probably a good idea to follow their gemming approach, but if you’re in that situation you’re probably more expert than I am anyway!
@imperia – There are also threads on various sites about how Paragon and other top-level Guilds hide what their real equipment is, to preserve their slot at the top – before logging out they’ll switch gear, change enchants and gems, or even drop to untalented and unequipped versions of their characters, just so that you can’t copy them.
@imperia – i agree with hugh, gem based on the encounter.
@Hugh Hancock –
Here is my cowform:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/alakir/Jabber/advanced
And yea, I am actually at HC Ragnaros
@Neill –
Maybe that’s possible but here is what I did. I went to http://www.wowprogress.com and opened all top guild armory links. I went to Roster and set Filter to Druid class only. Then in top 10 guilds all bears I found were gemmed for stamina only. I provide you links of the bear with highest iLVL I found:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/auchindoun/Dexie/advanced
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/tarren-mill/Santisen/advanced
They all should have alternative fake gear or regem before every logout?
I doubt this is true now when all top guild have downed HC Ragnaros – hiding gear is not needed anymore.
Furthermore I went and downloaded HC Ragnaros 25 World First torrent and watched the fight.
Here is the screenshot proving all this gear hiding is just a myth.
http://imageshack.us/f/812/1sejta226k.jpg/
By the time they did World First on Ragnaros I guess Sejta had few heroic pieces of gear.
Yesterday before I got HC pants and with Hallowed End buff I had 223K health.
So Sejta played with full stamina gear. At least on Ragnaros and that’s not fake.
That’s very interesting. I’ll be completely honest – I don’t have the level of expertise with Feral Druids and the Firelands HC modes necessary to say whether Stam gemming rather than AGI is appropriate for that encounter. However, I’ll check with some more expert theorycrafters next week and see what they say.
Not entirely sure why the formatting has gone a bit funny up there – sorry about that!
I would say a top-end raiding spec is not a good guideline for tanks not on the same content, because to be top-end means to play week-in week-out with other players who are also top-end and have a good understanding of their role.
From that perspective, the only gear-specific requirement for a tank is ability to hold aggro mid-fight. Beyond that, making the healers’ job easier takes precedence – in which case, Stam is preferable as Dodge doesn’t avoid spells and the tank will take fewer “spikes” to his HP%.
Arguably, the job of a PUG tank is more difficult than that if an end-game raiding tank, so may need some different gear-priority to compensate. All those players who don’t understand that competing for DPS is not nearly as important as everyone still standing at the end of the fight, plus damage-dealers whose DPS is below-par so the tank’s DPS becomes relevant.
Bottom line: if a tank can hold aggro when DPS is full-on, any more threat-generation is wasted – he should then get more Stam, not more TPS.
@Ian – Any specific changes you’d make to the spec to make it more PUG friendly? Whilst in general I’d agree with you – both for PUGs and progression raiding – that mitigation > threat once you’ve got aggro under control – I’m not sure I can immediately see which talents you’d prefer to move to achieve that.
In addition, is there a specific reason you’d rather a PUG tank had Stam? Personally, if I’m healing a PUG, I’d rather my tank had concentrated on mitigation with enough Stam to not get one-shot – taking less damage means needing less healing. Stam doesn’t actually affect the amount of healing my tank needs.
I am not much into mechanics stuff but I think stamina helps by:
Increasing self-healing from Leader of the Pack.
Increases my shields from Savage Defense.
Yesterday in some of the new dungeons I saw my Attack power was 42k. I like seeing Mangle criticals for over 60k and 30k Savage Defense shields.
Agro is kinda issue for me only at the start. I have very little expertise and very little hit and if I miss a hit and boss parry another, some mages that have the legendary staff can easy overagro. Tricks of The Trade, Misdirection & Salvation come into play here. Midfight I never had issue with agro. And all that for 4.2.
Haven’t played much raids in 4.3 but now Vengeance is instant, so I expect better agro at start now. (I expect pvp nerf here btw!)
@Hugh -”Stam doesn’t actually affect the amount of healing my tank needs.”
Agreed. But would you prefer a tank who’s able to avoid damage, or more able to just soak it up like a sponge… assuming the healer is not always able to stay in 1 place and spam GHeals?
I’m no healer, but +Stam would seem to be able to offer more healer-flexibility … provided the tank has enough of it. He takes more damage, but buys time. Stack Agi and you, as healer, have no choice – you Must land a GHeal before the next big hit lands.
If there was ever an option for 100% dodge and spell-avoidance, I would go that route.
In 5-man green/blue levelling gear, I’m not sure if the Stam-stack-ability is sufficient… nor is the healer’s SP and mana pool sufficient. So avoidance is more preferable pre-end-game.
“But would you prefer a tank who’s able to avoid damage, or more able to just soak it up like a sponge”
I like to mention that stamina bears still have >40% dodge!!!
@Ian – for a newly-dinged tank, I think you’re right, but damage-prevention abilities become more important than damage-absorption abilities very early on – certainly well before end-game content. Cataclysm changed the way Stamina affects your gameplan quite significantly. That’s not to say it’s no longer a significant stat: it definitely is, but you’ll start to see diminishing returns pretty quickly, at which point your other stats become the more valuable. Once you’re confident that you can soak two or three big hits, prioritize other stats over Stamina. As the guide states
I’ve been bear tanking since Wrath…and a lot has changed I personally wouldn’t stack stam cause I would rather have a better chance at dodging an attack than taking a massive hit, especially since I run 10mans and normally only run with 2 healers so it’s less of a drain on the healers if you can dodge most of your attacks and save your healers mana for raid heals. as for keeping aggro I have no problems even in the new instances I have yet been able to do the new raid since I’ve been needed for healing on my shaman so as from a bear tank and a healers prospective I’d go with agility over stam
The Stamina Vs Agility think is simple. It has nothing to do with threat which is a joke regardless especially after the threat boost and not to mention the changes to vengeance.
You will take less damage overall Stacking Agility there can be no argument with this. Sims and math and logs prove it. Agility increases, dodge, increases SD size and increases SD proc rates via crit. Together this is a unmatchable equation for damage reduction.
However,
You will have a bigger effective health (time to live without being healed) by stacking Stamina.
With the increased health pools and generally more restricted healer mana in Cata most people prefered to go with Agility. Generally most bears can get by with using essentially pure agility gemming. In some hard mode raiding however more health may be needed/desired and if they need additional health they switch in Stam flasks and Sta trinkets to make up the difference.
That said though if your healers don’t have an output problem with the additional heals you will require stacking stamina, they may find it easier if you have more health as they have more time to react and can be more efficient in healing you making up for some of the additional damage you take. Most healers though prefer a tank that just takes less damage.
If you are pushing content undergeared like World first guilds then there is even more reason to have stam gems as you are likely undergeared not having spent weeks working through normal mode and earlier heroic bosses.
You shouldn’t stack stamina because world first guilds do as their healers and gear level and organization is likely to be very different than yours.
You should do it if you understand the trade offs vs agility stacking and your healers are happier healing more damage but with a little more time to react on their part.
@Levarock – That’s an excellent summary. Thanks!
It used to be the case that bear tanks preferred Effective Health (Armour plus Health, basically) over mitigation because in the short term, mitigation was unreliable. Dodge has a chance to not work. Stamina doesn’t. Given the speed and quantity of damage in end-game Wrath, coupled with the fact that healer mana was close to unlimited, Stam stacking was king.
As Levarock says, in world-first level content this argument still holds to a fair extent – you’re more concerned about dropping dead in a second than most Cata tanks are. And, as the guide says, any time you’re going to die before a healer can heal you, you do indeed need Stam.
However, over the long term, the unreliability of mitigation balances out. It’s unwise to bet on a coin toss, but over a thousand coin tosses, you’ll be pretty safe expecting more than 50 heads to come up. Likewise, over an entire encounter, mitigation becomes a dependable source of damage reduction – and unlike Stamina stacking, AGI and Dodge (and Mastery) do actually reduce the amount of damage we take, thus saving the healers mana.
So, TL:DR – if you want to live longer without healing, both mitigation and Stam/Armor help, but Stam/Armor’s more reliable. If you want to help your healers to not run out of mana, though, or reduce the healing throughput you need over the fight, only mitigation will do that to a significant extent.
I am confused now over this guide…
Some people are saying, and I see this on many bear armoury pages, that you DO NOT need hit and exp cap now.
It doesn’t make sense to me why you don’t need it, hence why I am researching this and found your guide.
Can anyone shed some light on this please, as this guide seems very good, but it still states that hit and exp cap is needed.
TY for the excellent information.
CC.
@CCCC – As the guide says, “If you’re having threat problems, which is very unlikely, Expertise and then Hit to cap (aim for 8% hit and 26 Expertise) are our best threat stats.”
To put it a different way, ONLY reforge for Exp or Hit if you’re having problems keeping threat on mobs. If you’re at least reasonably geared, that should be very unlikely, so the chances are you don’t need to do that, and can concentrate on mitigation.
Ok good that makes sense.
I found it confusing because I see bears with 2% hit and 6% exp and I’m guessing they are finding that just fine.
But the to go from 2% to soft cap seemed unusual rather than saying to increase those stats a little more.
I see what you’re saying now, thanks.
Actually without hit and expertise there are _less_ SD procs! I was playing with 2% hit and 6 expertise but that was when I was stacking stamina. I didn’t cared about SD much
. Now I am trying with hit/exprtise cap because new gear has plenty of those stats. I have nice damage now and SD is up all the time 
.
@imperia – The SD procs are nice, but are extremely unlikely to provide more mitigation than reforging to Dodge. However, if you need high DPS for whatever reason and you’re not in any danger of dying then the SD addition is a nice bonus.
For hit: is important not to confuse tanking with DPS. Provided I have aggro, I don’t mind missing 90% provided I’m comfortable being able to pull aggro off someone else when I need to. DPS needs to consider +hit, tank doesn’t (although it’s nice to have in a group with undergeared DPS).
no hit = hot crit = no savage defense. i thought its good.
Ive been seeing a lot of sites saying that mastery is now better to reforeto than dodge after a certain point. I was just wondering why that was sense reforging and gems are the only way to get dodge right? I try to not delve to deep into the numbers and such, im a casual player but still would like to make sure my gears okay if I do decide to pop into more than my one weekly raid. Thanks a lot!
I am also on a tablet, auto correct is ftl!
@Jelleybeanss – That’s a very good question! The answer at the moment appears to be that whilst there’s a theoretical point where Mastery outperforms Dodge, we aren’t hitting it yet on current content. However, if you’re really concerned, the best way to test is to download Simulationcraft or Rawr and sim your current gear set. Make sure you’re simulating with an appropriate amount of damage for the raid boss you’re currently on, thought!
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/lightnings-blade/Sejta/simple
This looks like another gear-specific thing… iLvl >= 397, drops in Dragon Soul… set bonus: SD activated upon Mangle Crit + Pulverize.
Mastery boosts SD, so with sufficient +Crit and +Mastery it might provide more than Agility. Again, not something the average PUGger would be concerned about.
Everything seems good, just like to suggest one change to the spec by taking the 1 point out of stampede and putting it into king of the jungle you end up building more threat on the pull and for a raiding bear like myself you actually use it more than once a boss fight. now if your not a raiding bear then the haste might be better for 5 mans, but imo def not for boss encounters
As a druid who plays a healer MS and tank OS, I would have to say that the only fights where I can’t keep up with my tank is when the fight runs too long. For that reason, i can see why the average instance would be better served by Agility… More damage and the fight ends faster. On the other hand, large raids are often meant to be marathons. For the healer, this marathon involves keeping your mana up, and for the tank, I think the stamina gems help them hold up their side of the bargain. The tank is always a healer’s #1 priority, but if I don’t have to worry about my tank so often, a lot more of the DPS is going to survive tough fights.
I hate playing with squishy tanks…
If you’re concerned about mana, you’ll be better served by a tank who stacks Agility – Stamina increases their time to live, meaning you’ve got longer to get any individual heal off, but does very little for their damage reduction. Meanwhile, Agility increases Dodge and damage mitigation through Savage Defence.
hey just a quick question my druid tank is sitting at over 37% dodge when my polearm procs and i was just wondering what the cap was for dodge and if i was well over it.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated as i dont want to be wasting stats by having a overkill on another.
Don’t worry, there’s no cap for dodge – it does suffer from diminishing returns, but under normal circumstances, there’s no real way to overkill on it provided you’re following the gemming and reforging recommendations above.
Just over 37% dodge is pretty bad to be honest. Not only are you in no need to worry of hitting any caps (even if they did exist), you are actually in need of a considerable amount of additional dodge. Anything under 40% is pretty friggin low for current content. In my opinion, you should figure out some upgrades or reset your gear to gain a bit more if you don’t want to stress your healers.
I read everything you guys post here
and now I’m more confuse that before
I thought the priority for the bear tank
was dodge ( hard cap 56%) and mastery rating at least 80%
go figure it out..!!
Hi,
I was wondering, if I could/should use a strength mace 378ilvl over a agility 333ilvl staff.
I am a causal player (5 men hero only) and so far I had no luck, getting a decent agility weapon.
Thanks,
Tom
Just a question regarding that Diminishing returns point where, from what I’ve been told, mastery becomes more viable to stack than dodge. I have heard that point is at 40% dodge but have not found any evidence/calculations to support that and a lot of information I’ve reviewed has said that hit is a low priority and can be left at a low percentage whereas expertise must be capped.
I was just wondering if anyone had any accurate information supporting those values and their priority and breakpoints. Secondly, thanks for the helpful posts. I play every class and generally refer to yours first to get the information I need.