It's Raining. I Swear!

So, while I'm not sure I'm ready to commit to blogging on a regular basis again, I really feel inspired to write at the moment. Lately, I've been feeling the urge to return to my furry roots when we start moving into Northrend (Which means The Rambling Bear will likely REMAIN The Rambling Bear, not the Rambling 'Lock or some such). However, I've also been keeping a close eye on WotLK developments, and the current feral druid situation in the beta has me very, very worried. After reading today's installment of the Big Bear Butt (from which today's title comes, by the way), I've come to the point where I have to speak my mind.

Now, before I start my ramblings, let me make one huge disclaimer. I am not in the beta. Nor am I a psychic. And I realize that feral druids are still due a major second pass by the development team. I know that what is currently on beta is not what will be going live. But I also remember what it was like to be a horribly underpowered spec that people laughed at.

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The reports I've been hearing from the Beta are bleak. The most poingant of them comes from a guildmate of mine who plays a healer, and has been in Naxx10 with a variety of tanks. In short, Warriors and Paladins are rock solid, and a breeze to heal. Death Knights are a bit squishy, but their self healing abilities help to mitigate some of that. But bears are about as resilient as a wet sponge, and are a huge pain in the ass to keep alive.

This doesn't surprise me, though. Blizzard has taken away bears' one true claim to fame: our huge amounts of armor. In fact, they've stopped itemizing for feral druids altogether, we now have to wear rogue gear. I read somewhere that a bear in the best set of level 80 blue gear has somewhere around 29k armor. Meanwhile, my T4 geared arse sports 33.5k. On top of that, we no longer get an extremely high Agi->Dodge ratio.

"But Surania, look at all the awesome tanking talents we're getting to make up for that!".

Ok, lets look at those amazing new tanking talents:

We get another 6% "baked in" dodge for three talent points. Adding that to the 4% we already had, that gives us a total of 10% avoidance from talents. Guess what, folks, Warriors and Paladins get that, too, though half of theirs is parry. Our only advantage here is that we only spend 5 talent points, and they spend 10.

We get 12% across-the-board mitigation for three talent points. Warriors have this, more or less, as a base ability. Theirs (Defensive Stance) is only 10% mitigation, but they get a talent that boosts their spell mitigation to 16% (And judging from what Magisters' Terrace looks like, I expect to see more and more spell damage getting flung around in the expansion). Also, we can lose this mitigation during fights, while warriors can not. I don't know if you still get the full bonus if a party member dies, but I imagine it starts dropping if one of your allies gets mind controlled, and wouldn't be surprised if you suddenly lose some mitigation if a raid member loses connection suddenly during a fight.

We get an emergency button on a 5-minute cooldown for our 51-point talent. Last stand, to be exact. It's actually a bit stronger than the warrior ability, in that it has a shorter cooldown (8 minutes for warriors). And it also boosts our ability to generate threat while active, which is a nice side effect for sure. But I'm not worried about threat, really, I'm worried about survival. So great, we get last stand. As a sidenote, Paladins are getting a shield wall of sorts, themselves, in a re-tooled Divine Protection which only reduces damage taken by half, but does not drop aggro any more, and is on a much, much shorter cooldown than shield wall. And it also stacks very nicely with Ardent Defender, since SW tends to get popped when low on health to begin with.

We get crushing blow immunity. As do all tanks. The mechanic has been changed to only happen when mobs are 4+ levels above you. We also retain our crit immunity, as SotF has had its effect doubled.

We do still get a bit more armor than our plate brethren. The figure I've read (which I don't have a link to at the moment) seems to indicate bears will have about 6k more armor than plate wearers, 28k armor to 22k armor. Nothing to sneeze at, certainly, but it's nowhere near what we have now. Oh, and we still seem to have slightly more health, too, an extra 10% or so.

So, we're looking like plate tanks with extra armor, right? Well, kind of, except our one advantage (~6k more armor, and a slight health advantage) is offset by lots of things we DON'T have:

We don't get a block mechanic. Sure, blocking is no longer as critical as it once was, since bosses will no longer crush tanks, but at the same time, blocking has been seriously buffed via a revamped strength->block value formula. I haven't seen any numbers as far as how much a level 80, geared warrior or paladin blocks for, but I imagine it's probably breaking 4-digits per block. That, alone, will likely make up for our armor advantage.

We don't get parry. This alone wouldn't be a problem, but since they're also taking away druids' favorable agi->dodge conversion, and not giving us bear tank gear with +dodge or even +defense on it, our ability to avoid attacks is far lower than our plate brethren.

We don't get as many "Oh, shit" buttons as warriors. I'm not saying we should, but the fact is they get both shield wall and last stand, while we only get the latter.

So, basically, we get to be more-or-less on par with plate wearers as far as mitigating each hit goes, but we also are getting hit a lot more often. I have a solution, though, and it would, I think, both be thematically appropriate (as bear fur really shouldn't be harder to penetrate than iron plates) and a fair tradeoff.

Make Nurturing Instinct apply to all forms. I really think it's as simple as that. We get hit, say, 30% more often than plate tanks, but it's 20% easier to heal us back up from those hits. Combined with our health pool advantage, I think this simple change would make bear tanks able to compete with warriors and paladins, but without overshadowing them. We'd retain a bit of our flavor, as we'd be slightly less resistant to death by spike damage (due to the health pool), but would take a bit more mana to keep up under normal circumstances.

Think about it, Blizzard. The best solution to a problem is often the simplest, after all. Continue reading 'It's Raining. I Swear!'

Paladin Tanking. E-Z Mode? Not So Much.

If I have learned one thing from playing Jasminne, it is that my jealousy over their ability to "Easy-Mode AoE Tank" is more perception than truth. I suppose I had bought into the cries of "Paladin tanks have it so easy, why can't we AoE tank like Paladins" that I see often from warriors (nothing against warriors, mind you, just the ones that yell the loudest on the forums). While it is true that Paladins have the easiest time of AoE tanking big groups (with the added advantage of being able to actually do it while others hit said group with AoE DPS), Druids and Warriors are each perfectly capable of tanking large groups if they know what they're doing (and the DPSers know enough to use single-target DPS), and Paladins give up a lot of what we take for granted.

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Now, before I go any further, let me clarify one thing. Paladins are perfectly viable tanks. In no way is what I am about to discuss intended to imply that Paladin tanks suck, or that they can only be used successfully in specific situations. In fact, my point is the opposite. I have great respect for those who walk the road of the Prot Paladin, and would never think twice about standing behind one on any of my characters, in any situation (Well, except maybe for those damnable "prot warrior only" fights like Reliquary of Souls).

For those who haven't played a paladin tank before, such as myself, you may think they have it easy. Chuck a shield at a group of mobs, keep a consecrate on the ground and holy shield up, and watch as the mobs die around you. And frankly, sometimes that really is how the prot paladin plays. Six mob pulls in Shattered Halls? Talk about a yawnfest. Some instances, like SH, play very well to a paladin's strength: Standing in one place, tanking big groups.

Not all fights in WoW are like that (thank God, we'd all get bored to tears if that was the case). Fights that require the tank to constantly be on the move are tough on a paladin. Take, for example, Grandmaster Vorpil, the third boss of Shadow Labyrinth. The standard method (at least on my server) for doing that fight is to have the tank pull Vorpil around all of the voidwalkers that he spawns to a safe, clear area. Not an unreasonable thing to ask a tank to do (in fact, I really enjoy that fight on Surania), but with a Paladin tanking, this means DPS has to slow it down a bit, because unless that pally stands relatively still (which he can only do once out of the spawns), his Consecrations are only getting to tick once or twice every 8 seconds, if he even bothers blowing the mana on casting them at all. Meanwhile, a druid or warrior tanking that fight can continue full threat generation.

Second, an issue I'm sure everybody is at least somewhat familiar with: Mana. Prot paladins have to focus a lot on standard tanking stats like defense, dodge, stamina, armor, and block. As such, we tend to be lacking on caster stats like mana regen and intellect. Jasminne currently has a little over 4,000 mana, and no form of passive mana regeneration at all. The only way I get any mana back during a fight is by taking large amounts of damage, since Paladins' Spiritual Attunement gives back 10% of all outside heals as mana. Unfortunately, if I'm trying to maximize my threat generation, I'm spending 82.5 mana/second on Consecration, 19ish mana/second on Judgement, 32.5 mana/second on Seal of Righteousness, and 28 mana/second on Holy Shield. 162 mana/second to maintain max threat, meaning if I'm taking less than 1.6k damage EVERY SECOND, I'm either running OoM or using a lower-threat cycle to conserve, most often either dropping/downranking Consecration, or swithcing either my seal or judgement (or both) to wisdom. All three of which reduce my threat generation drastically. I can't just spend 2 seconds autoattacking and get enough mana to pop out a Consecrate the same way I autoattack on Surania once and get the rage for another mangle or swipe.

Even when mana isn't limited, however, a paladin's ability to crank out threat can be diminished signifigantly. I had already mentioned mobility fights, where consecration (which at my gear level generates about 200 threat/second) can't be used as much, but what about crowd control? Usually, with good CCers, and a good plan of action, you can find a way to make it viable, but more often than not, you'll find yourself in situations where the mage was asleep at the wheel, the hunter couldn't peel his mob off of you, or the warlock isn't paying any attention to where his seduced mob is going to go after it breaks, and you suddenly have a moon, square, or diamond-marked mob in your face (at least if you use my marking system). If you're able to handle the extra mob beating on you, then you'll probably just continue to consecrate and tank the mob (while the CCer gets annoyed that you keep breaking sheep/seduce or building threat on trap). If that mob, however, is one of the caster trash mobs in SSC, for example, you must instead move said mob out of your current Consecration, wait for the aforementioned CCer to recast, and then move AGAIN before you can continue to use your signature threat ability.

Casters are another treat. Instead of making it impossible to Consecrate, casters tend to make yet another big aggro builder ineffective: Holy Shield. Some casters, like Kael'thas, will still swing at you from time to time with their staves, giving you at least a few procs of holy damage. Others, like his warlock trash mobs, do nothing but spam spells, thus denying you of a lot of threat (Did I mention every time I block on jasminne, I generate 5-600 threat, depending on my choice of buffs at the time?). On the plus side, casters also tend to do more damage to tanks, allowing your healer to refill your blue bar so you can continue to spam consecrate. Yeah, welcome to the mindset of a paladin tank, the only folks I know that actually use their /sit button as a TANKING TOOL

So, whats my point in all of this? Its simple really: Paladin tanking isn't my bag. Any e-peen envy I may have had for paladins is all but erased, and I am quite happy to do any tanking that needs to be done on my druid (though I do plan to keep Jasminne prot until the expansion, at which time she'll probably go back to her original intent of being a healer).

Now, if only I could tank murlocs and solarian adds with swipe. . . oh, right, then I never would have been a paladin tank in the first place. . . Continue reading 'Paladin Tanking. E-Z Mode? Not So Much.'

The Jump To Heroics

Ah, heroic dungeons. Every time I level up a new character nowadays, one of the things I look forward to is getting them into heroic runs, both because the loot is better, and the challenge is. . . well, existant. Honestly, whenever I run a nonheroic instance, even on a character who isn't decked out in blues and purples yet, I look forward to one of two equally unappealing outcomes: The group is good, and the instance is a snorefest, or the group is BAD, and the instance run makes me want to tear my hair out.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago (yeah, I miss posting 5 times a day too), Jasminne hit the big 7-0. And much to my surprise, it was only a couple of days until she found herself decked out in blues from doing a few select quests, grinding some rep, and buying some BoEs from the Auction House. I found myself going through the nonheroic instance loot lists, and thinking to myself "Wow, these are extremely minor upgrades, at best". And yet, I look at my stats and cringe: 12k health, 12.5k armor, 45% avoidance. . . the only decent stat I have is my spelldamage! Great, I'm a tank who can hold aggro just fine, until I die to a trio of lucky 4k hits. Hence my current dilemma: I'm stuck in-between normal instances and heroics!

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So what is a tank to do, faced with such abysmal stats? Well, fortunately this isn't the first time I've faced this dilemma, but since Surania was in this situation well over a year ago, I had forgotten about it. Not to mention that at the time Surania was first hitting heroics, it was the norm to struggle running them. Heck, I can remember the excitement I felt the first time I got asked to tank a run for what was THE raiding guild on the server at the time, and how amazed I was at how few wipes we experienced by the time we finally killed. . . Quagmirran!

Alas, these days most people are used to Kara/PvP geared epic tanks with 16k+ health and tons of avoidance and mitigation. Nobody wants the scrub who just got his first set of blues to tank. Heck, if I were a healer/DPS, *I* wouldn't want me to tank particularly! But like I said, to get the gear I really need to run heroics the way people are accustomed to running them, I have to get the gear FROM those heroics. But how?

Well, your first option is to just keep chugging away at those nonheroic runs, using them to grind reputation with various factions for their rewards. But if your server is like mine, you'll never get enough Shadow Lab runs to buy that sweet spelldamage mace, or Tempest Keep runs for that lovely shield, or Steam Vault runs for the ever-so-sexy hammer. Grinding rep with the Aldor/Scryers for your shoulder enchant, or the Shattered Sun for an epic necklace and shield, is a reasonable pursuit, but many factions are likely to be out of reach (and anyhow those faction grinds are obnoxiously long). So, back to the drawing board. . .

New approach. First of all (and this applies at all points in your WoW career), know what the hell you're doing. I've always said that Skill > Spec > Gear, and even in a situation like this, where your gear is a major limiting factor, I hold that to be true. Skill can make up for a lot of blue gear, especially when it comes to knowing those fun little tricks to things like Dash Pulling or rezzing people while tanking. For example, last night Jasminne tanked heroic Slave Pens. An easy instance for most of us, but let me tell you that she was just BARELY staying vertical. And one of the biggest saving graces for me was being able to use my bubble, even while tanking (Note: if you are a tank, you should have a macro set up for divine shield that both casts DS and /cancelaura's it. Hit it once to put up the bubble, hit again to drop it). My bubble saved my butt many times, including a couple times I bubbled to give the healer time to bring my health back up, then broke bubble just before the mobs got to said healer and tossed my shield at them to regain their attention, and the time I dumped Rokmar on the poor enhancement shaman long enough to get a heal and drop the debuff (poor guy got hit for 95% of his health, bet he's glad for every point of stam his gear had!)

Secondly (and this applies doubly to Paladins), you have to remember your crowd control. Yes, this coming from the guy who does 30 minute Heroic Shattered Halls runs with no CC for fun. The fact is, if you dont have the gear to survive getting beaten on by half a dozen heroic mobs at a time, you need to not be GETTING hit by half a dozen mobs at a time. I think that as Jasminne I surprise people when I start putting up marks for sap, trap, and sheep on pulls, but I know that if I try to, for example, tank all 4 Bogstroks at once, I'm going to faceplant real quick. Don't be afraid to ask for unusual forms of crowd control, either. I'm sure that rogue will be glad to toss stuns on one of the mobs, and I know of at least one frost mage who revels in frost kiting mobs around SH just because.

Third, don't be afraid to go to Karazhan. No, you wont have the gear to maintank Malchezaar and Nightbane, but if you're in a decent set of blues, even if you're like me and have yet to reach crush immunity, you should do just fine as an offtank. Most of the trash in there is actually MORE survivable than your average heroic pull, and you probably have 2-3 healers there instead of just one (albeit one will be working on keeping the MT up as well). Of course, if your guild doesn't have Karazhan on farm yet, it may be a bit more challenging, but I assure you, it isn't going to be as bad as you think. And with 22 badges and at least 23 epics dropping on every full clear, you'll have TONS of opportunities to upgrade as you go!

As I mentioned, I'm still crushable. But thats not as big of a deal as you might think. Most of the fights in Karazhan aren't so bad that getting crushed occasionally will spell your doom. Crushing blows on Nightbane will mess you up, granted. Getting crushed by Netherspite can really hurt (though one of the effects of the red beam on that fight is actually a stacking defense boost, so you're not likely to stay crushable for long). And Prince Malchezaar in phase 2 will really mess up a crushable paladin. . . but at the same time, Prince Malchezaar has a huge Dual wield penalty during that phase, so even if you are for some reason trying to tank him in the crappy gear I have, you probably ARE crush immune during that phase. But I digress. . .

On a similar note, you could always try to get in to some heroic runs as an offtank, or respec to DPS or healing for them. You don't have to be the tank to pick up tanking gear, necessarily (though I would advise making sure the tank for said groups doesn't need what you're looking for). The fact of the matter is, its a lot easier to make a group run with undergeared DPS than it is to do the same run with undergeared tanks and (to a slightly lesser degree) healers. There's no shame in taking a slightly easier road to purple bliss. Just realize that running heroics as an undergeared tank can teach you a LOT about your class and capabilities!

And finally, some of us are lucky enough to be able to obtain crafted epics to tank in. There's a cloak thats great for starting bear tanks, some really nice plate bracers, a handful of beautiful belts (And if you happen to be a blacksmith or leatherworker, a set of matching boots), a couple of great stamina trinkets, etcetera. Sure, crafted epics will cost you a pretty penny, but these days its easy to do a week of dailies and buy a purple with the proceeds. And as an added bonus, some of those dailies have a chance of giving you a shiny Badge of Justice as a reward (Just don't count on getting them, so sayeth the paladin who has been at 34 badges for the last ten Supply Pouches, just one shy of a new cloak)

I leave you with one small piece of advice that I had to (re)learn the hard way. Remember that not all heroics are created equal. Slave Pens, Underbog, and the Mechanaar are good places to start earning epics. Shadow Labyrinth, Magisters' Terrace, and Black Morass are not. Continue reading 'The Jump To Heroics'

Two Tanks. . . This is Madness!

So, a couple days I posted about the tank shortage that seems to exist in my guild (and on the server, as well, though that may just be the "Tanks don't generally PuG" phenomenon). Well, far be it from me to just be part of the problem. I'm now also one of those level 70 tank ALTS that I spoke so much about. Yep, thats right, last night Jasminne dinged her last ding (until WotLK anyhow), and is my newest level 70 character. And additionally, despite my levelling her with the intent of her becoming my healing alt, recent developments are making it very likely that she will remain prot for a long time to come.

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Why the change of heart, you might ask? Well, it wasn't actually that I fell in love with paladin tanking (though I have to admit its fun, if a bit too easy at times). Nor was it that I decided I dislike healing (though I would still kinda prefer to have a resto druid over a holy paladin, I just didn't feel like levelling a second druid). The change of plans stems entirely from guild events. Prophecy once had four raid-ready paladins (maybe not four at once, but at least three). One, a high ranking member of the guild, got burned out on the game and left. Might be back someday, but I kind of doubt it at this point. Another, a personal friend of mine, had her computer blow up on her a couple months back, and she probably wont be able to afford another until Wrath comes out. A third we hired as a raiding paladin, but ultimately had to demote them because they couldn't come to raids often enough, and a couple weeks ago they quit entirely. And number four, who for a while now had been our primary prot paladin, had to leave because our raid times and his availability just didn't match up, and raiding with us was causing a huge strain on his life.

No big deal, right? We still have prot warriors and feral druids, and both of those classes can tank just fine. . . well, not exactly. You see, while Tier 4 content can legitimately be tanked fully by any of the three tanking classes, higher end content doesn't share that distinction (or would that be a lack of distinction? Meh.) The most commonly cited examples are Illidan and Reliquary of Souls, both of which put bears at a severe disadvantage due to our lacking shield block and spell reflect to deal with those bosses' special abilities. Kael'thas often makes that list too (Any bear who has been oneshotted by Magisters' Terrace's version of Kael on heroic knows about his deadly pyroblasts. . . he does it three times in a row in the "real" fight IIRC.)

But in addition to bear-unfriendly fights, there are a number of fights that practically REQUIRE a prot paladin to tank. Morogrim Tidewalker and High Astromancer Solarian. On top of that, Mount Hyjal is pretty much build around the assumption that every raid has at least one prot paladin in it, and while not required, Zul'Aman is also much, much easier with a paladin tank. So whats a guild to do when they're in this content (Yes, we're peeking into Mt. Hyjal these days, and have downed Rage Winterchill a couple of times now), but suddenly have no prot paladins to tank these fights?

Well, actually, the first thing we did was to have our guildmistress' Enhancement Shaman boyfriend switch mains from the shaman to his paladin, and then had the entire guild come together to gear the hell out of him. It's truly amazing what a group of people can do in short order when they set their mind to it, one week into the switch we had him tanking Hyjal waves. He's really doing a great job. . . but I have this thing about not hinging a guild's success on a single person. I, and a few others, really wanted to see us have at least two capable prot paladins, the second being more of a backup plan should the one we have not be able to come for whatever reason.

And what can I say, I'm a sucker for a challenge. While I'm not going to get geared up NEARLY as quickly as the other paladin was, I fully plan to make Jasminne that backup paladin. In fact, I have two distinct advantages over our current paladin tank: I have a lot of raid tanking experience under my belt already, and I have no need to gear Jasminne up to be a raid MAIN tank, as I already have a character fully able to fill that role. Crushing blows? Don't care. Paladin T4? Hell yeah, I'll tank in that!


. . . Oh God, what have I gotten myself into . . .

Continue reading 'Two Tanks. . . This is Madness!'

Tank Shortage: Do You Believe?

Today's post isn't really a blog post at all. I just got done with a forum post in the Prophecy boards discussing what seems to be a growing problem: the dreaded tanking shortage. I used to not believe there was a shortage, but since I started playing level 70 alts, I've gotten to see things from a different perspective. In fact, I think the existance of alts, itself, is perhaps the biggest contributor to the problem. . . but I'll explain that later. So, here in its entirety, the seven reasons I see for the apparent tank shortage in Prophecy, on Steamwheedle Cartel, and I suspect in general.

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1: Legitimate tank unavailability. I don't get on until very late. [Prot Warrior 1] has been largely unavailable. I haven't seen [Prot Warrior 2] online in weeks. This is, I think, what people have been noticing most. We have tanks show up for raids, but outside of those raiding timeslots, many of our tanks just aren't available. However, I do not think this is the primary problem, just a part of the puzzle.

2: Lack of motivation to play. As I see it, there are four basic modes in which most people play the game: Grinding, Instancing, Raiding, and PvPing. Lets drop raiding from that list, since we're talking about activities outside of raid times. DPS classes/specs are good at all three of the remaining playstyles. Healers are good at two (not so good at grinding). Tanks are only good at instancing (Barring feral druids, of course, due to our dual nature). If a tank player wants to do anything other than run instances, they're better off logging on to a DPS or healing alt to do it, or respeccing to DPS (and thus still being unavailable as a tank), especially considering how dead our server is when it comes to instance running. Who wants to sit hopelessly on LFG while grinding on mobs as a prot spec?

3: Lack of alt tanks. This is where I see a large part of the problem being. We have a decent contingent of main characters who are tanks. But look at the active alts in our guild, at least at 70, and . . . well, I cant remember the last time I did anything with somebody's tank alt (It was probably a run with [Paladin Tank], who is now a main due to our losing our only other Prot paladin, and needing one for much of the upper level raid content). There are some healing alts, and plenty of DPS alts, but no tank alts, thus shifting the balance of available characters away from tanks.

4: Emphasis on alts. This one combines with #3 and further complicates matters. By and large, this guild's main characters are pretty geared up at this point. Most people, at most raiders, don't really have any upgrades they need from normal instances or heroics. At most they want the badges from heroic runs so they can buy pity-raid-epics from the badge vendor on Sunwell Island once the anvil is built. So, if our main characters have little to no reason to run instances, and our tanks are all main characters, we apply the transitive property (LOLmath) and come to the conclusion that our guild's tanks have no reason to run instances. THIS, I believe, is probably the biggest reason there are never any tanks available.

5: Stricter requirements. This is something that I think might contribute to the lack of tanking alts. Tanks need to be better at their job, and better geared, than other classes just to function at a basic level. Not trying to knock anyone's skill here, but I really, truly believe it. We're at the point now as a guild where we could probably bring a freshly minted DPS character geared in WHITES, have them sit in a safe corner in a heroic run, and 4-man the place to get gear for that person. Healers cant afford to be as undergeared, but ultimately with a T5-geared tank taking the hits, we've already proven that an offspec healer with so-so gear can heal through some rough heroics. An undergeared tank in a heroic, on the other hand, it a recipe for disaster. No matter how good a healer is, they cant keep a tank alive if they're being eaten by chain crits and have only 9k health. No matter how good the DPS is, they cant kill a mob fast enough to keep that from happening, because said tank doesn't have the gear to generate enough threat to keep the mob's attention, and the DPSers end up biting the dust first. So, while we can pretty easily gear up DPSers right as they hit 70 just by babysitting them through some heroics, tanks are a whole other ballgame, and having to gear up an alt slowly isn't that appealing, especially when, as I mentioned before, instance runs are few and far between on our server.

6: Tank demand burnout. A self-fulfilling dilemma, stemming initially from #1, but ultimately perpetuated by all of the points here. Because we have fewer tanks available, when a tank DOES come online they become an extremely hot commodity, like when a mage joins LFG -- Heroic Magisters' Terrace. And while its great to be wanted, its easy to get to the point where tanking runs turns from something fun to an obligation to be fulfilled to your guild. And unfortunately, we tanks are often the sort of person who finds it hard to say no to people. I personally have learned to say no somewhat, but for the record I still feel like an ass whenever someone asks for a tank in guild, I'm on Kirari, and I just stay silent, selfishly spamming the LFG channel for a heroic run for badges to buy his new dagger, wishing the damned tanks would come online.

7: Repair bills. I don't know if this is an actual reason or not. I personally am not fazed in the slightest by my repair bills any more (Even a deathless H-SH run will cost me the better part of ten gold for repairs), but maybe the plate wearers are more sensitive to it, since they dont have a catform to earn the money back with. The fact is, your tank is paying more in repair bills than you. I'll almost gurantee it. Unless you're in T5 epics, your tank is in dungeon greens, and you're wiping like its going out of style, your tank is taking the brunt of the repair costs on himself, simply because every time they get hit, there is a set chance for one of their items to incur a durability hit (and every time they block, their shield has an additional chance to take a point of damage, hence why Jasminne carries two shields with her at all times). And while that 40 gold repair the prot warrior just racked up is just a couple primals to a DPSer, for him to get those primals takes him at least twice as long as you take due to his spec and gear.


Just some points to ponder the next time there are 20 DPSers, 3 healers, and (maybe) 1 tank online in your guild. Continue reading 'Tank Shortage: Do You Believe?'

Epic Tanking Weapons. Yep, All Three!

So, I was recently surprised to see someone say that the Earthwarden was a druid tank's best option until the legendary LOL that is the Pillar of Ferocity. And while I'm not sure if he felt that the weapon commonly regarded as our best tanking staff (Wildfury Greatstaff) was inferior to the Earthwarden, or if he simply didn't know about it since its a trash drop, I felt compelled to compare the three items formally.

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The Suspects:
All translated values assume a standard spec with all tanking talents taken.

Earthwarden
Drops From: Cenarion Expedition Exalted Reputation
500 Armor
39 Stamina
27 Defense Rating
24 Expertise Rating
712 Feral AP

--Which Translates To--

0.46% Crit Reduction
2750 Bear Armor
0.91% Avoidance
663 HP
712 AP
3.05% More Accuracy (Dodge/Parry Reduction)


Wildfury Greatstaff
Drops From: Serpentshrine Cavern Trash
500 Armor
75 Stamina
54 Dodge Rating
992 Feral AP

--Which Translates To--

2750 Bear Armor
2.86% Avoidance
1275 HP
992 AP


Pillar of Ferocity
Drops From: Anetheron (Hyjal Summit, Second Boss)
550 Armor
47 Strength
96 Stamina
1059 Feral AP

--Which Translates To--
3025 Bear Armor
1632 HP
1166 AP


Round 1: Earthwarden V. Wildfury Greatstaff

Earthwarden Advantages:
0.46% Crit Reduction
3.05% More Accuracy (Dodge/Parry Reduction)

Wildfury Greatstaff Advantages:
1.95% Avoidance
612 HP
180 AP

The Lowdown: Crit immunity comes first. If you ned that defense on Earthwarden to stay crit immune, by all means stick with it for the timebeing. However, once you find a way to replace that with a few gems or some PvP bracers (for examples), the story changes. Earthwarden's only advantage here is the 3% effective hit provided via Expertise (and some slight avoidance via reduction in parrys, though not enough to make up the 2% gap). Assuming 2500 AP and 30% crit with the Earthwarden, if we plug in the threat stats into the handy, dandy threat calculator, we find that the hit and AP almost exactly cancel each other out (Wildfury comes out 1 TPS ahead). So it appears that Wildfury is a cut-and-dry upgrade from Earthwarden, with more health, more avoidance, and the same average threat.

Hold on, though, don't go vendoring that hammer just yet. There are situations where you just might want to swap it in: Pick-ups. No, not those horrendous groups of slackers you get for 3AM Steamvault runs, I'm talking about picking up mobs on pulls and after threat dumps. Three percent more effective hit makes it much less likely your Maul/Mangle combo will miss. Lets say you have 82% effective hit without EW, and 85% with it. Earthwarden increases the chance both Maul and Mangle will hit from 67.2% to 72.3% (Yes, 5% more likely, funny how that works huh?), and reduces the chance both will MISS from 3.24% to 2.25%, which means more than 1 in 4 of your double-whiffs would no longer happen, causing a very sensitive threat situation. Normally, this isn't a big deal, but on threat-sensitive fights like Hydross and Leotheras, losing a bit of mitigation for some increased threat reliability can be a very good idea. And you can always switch back to the Wildfury once you've picked up your target.


Round 2: Wildfury Greatstaff V. Pillar of Ferocity

Wildfury Greatstaff Advantages:
2.86% Avoidance

Pillar of Ferocity Advantages:
275 Bear Armor
357 HP
174 AP

The Lowdown: First of all, lets remember where the Pillar drops: Early T6 content. At that point, most bear tanks are already going to be butting up against, if not exceeding, the armor cap, making the extra armor on the Pillar more or less useless. Even if we don't take that into consideration, though, 275 armor isn't a whole heck of a lot (Probably about 0.6% less damage taken), and even combined with the 357 extra health the Pillar affords us, I would much rather be hit 3% less often, thankyouverymuch. So even though the Pillar drops from a later instance, its actually the inferior mitigation weapon.

But, as with the Earthwarden V. Wildfury comparison, the Pillar of LOL does have one redeeming quality: Superior threat generation. If we assume the same basic stats as before, Wildfury would boost our threat by about 31 TPS. Not a whole heck of a lot, but if you're really struggling to stay ahead of your DPSers on threat, it might be an option to swap this in. As a bonus, you'll be getting hit more as well, so will have extra rage to work with (Yeah, even lower mitigation can be an advantage sometimes).


Round 3: Earthwarden V. Pillar of Ferocity

Earthwarden Advantages:
0.46% Crit Reduction
0.91% Avoidance
3.05% More Accuracy (Dodge/Parry Reduction)

Pillar of Ferocity:
275 Bear Armor
969 HP
454 AP

The Lowdown: So, since Wildfury wins out against both of its competitors, I guess we should go ahead and compare Earthwarden, obtainable via rep, to the Pillar, obtainable through deep endgame raiding. The good news is, the Pillar comes out ahead in my opinion. The bad news? Not by much. In terms of threat, I'd call it even between the Expertise rating of the Earthwarden and the extra AP on the Pillar, as the pillar's overall threat advantage is counterbalanced by the earthwarden's higher reliability. In terms of mitigation, though, I would actually have to give the advantage to the Earthwarden. The Pillar's armor gives about 0.6% less damage per hit, granted, but assuming you're around 50% dodge, the 0.9% avoidance on the EW actually translates to about 1.8% fewer swings landing (I refer you again to "The Diminishing Returns is a Lie")

Why, then, to I give the Pillar top billing on this matchup? Nearly 1000 more health, thats what. While I'm a firm believer in getting enough health and then focusing on mitigation, that amount of health would take over 5 Solid Stars of Elune to make up, and thats a lot of gems I could switch from, say, +12 stamina to +8 agi to make up the avoidance difference.


Putting It All Together

So, in terms of overall quality as a tanking weapon, it seems that the Wildfury Greatstaff is better than the Pillar of Ferocity, which in turn is an upgrade from the Earthwarden. Not surprising results, really, as most druids already knew that the Pillar is one of the worst itemized pieces of gear Blizzard has ever come up with. Not that the Living Root of the Wildheart is terribly incredible either, mind you. Seriously, though, hold on to that Earthwarden for making those critical pick-ups, since having a bit less mitigation is always preferable to that mob going and beating on a clothie or three because your aim sucked. Continue reading 'Epic Tanking Weapons. Yep, All Three!'

Pulling With . . . Cat Form??

Usually, when a druid talks about making a pull, they either talk about using Feral Faerie Fire to do it from bear, or they fire off some balance spells and then quickly shift to bear. Details of such pulls have already been covered in a previous post, but there's one more type of pull that I find myself using, in specialized situations mind you, to great effect. . . the Cat Form Pull!

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The cat form pull is, at its most basic, simply another form of Line of Sight pull. Pulling using line of sight refers to aggroing a group, and then ducking behind some form of solid object in order to force those mobs (mainly the casters and ranged mobs) to follow you. In most situations, this can be done simply by pulling from next to a doorway, corner, or other solid construction, then taking a few steps to one side or another. However, in some situations, such as the four ghost pulls immediately before and after the Shade of Aran in Karazhan, there may not be convenient obstructing materials near your pull site. This is where the cat pull comes in.

The key difference for pulling in cat form is that you need to move a significant distance, for whatever reason, between the place you aggro the mobs, and the place you use to move out of LoS from them. As you may have guessed by now, the reason for using catform is Dash, also known as the "I can recover from wipes faster than you schmucks", or the "Oh shit, I didn't notice Malchezaar's enfeeble!" button. Bearform has the armor to take a hit, but catform has the speed to avoid taking any hits in the first place, and as we all know, the only thing better than taking a hit for the team is that hit never happening in the first place!

Now, since not everybody who reads this blog is necessarily in Karazhan, I'd like to first discuss this pull in a context most of you should be familiar with: Shattered Halls. One of, if not my favorite instance to run. So, lets assume you have gone through the first hall, done the slime gauntlet (or picked the lock on the door), killed the first boss, run the orc gauntlet, and killed Porung to end the event.

Now you're staring at the training hall, with gladiator groups sparring in the alcoves to the sides, some single-pull orcs beating on training dummies in the hall, and most importantly, two big groups of orcs in the middle of the rooms. Now, if you're here with a decent group on nonheroic mode, you may very well just kill off everything in here.

But lets assume that you're going to leave those groups be, either because your group cant handle them (they're not the easiest trash pulls in the world), you dont want to bother with them, or you dont have the time to deal with them (you're on heroic mode and want the badge/potions/primals from the Executioner). You pull the patrol, pull the first big group into Porung's room using the doorway to LoS pull, and clear the orcs sparring with training dummies. And now you're faced with a second large pull, deep into the hallway. You dont want to fight them where they stand, because the third and fourth group of gladiators are right nearby and likely to get pulled (either accidentally or via someone getting feared by the Darkcaster). You cant pull back to where the first group is via LoS because gladiator groups 1 and 2 are still there. Your options are to fight them where the training dummies are, leaving it up to the ranged DPS to take out any casters ASAP (which wont be for a while, due to the urgency of killing the Legionnaire) or pull all the way back to Porung's room.

Obviously, we're going to pull back. First off, mark the pull. The Legionnaire needs to die first, and the casters should either be next, or should be sheeped/trapped/seduced. Once the group is marked, and the rest of your party is patiently waiting in the previous room, its time for the magic. Target the Legionnaire, and drop a Hurricane on the group (remember to use proper hurricane positioning). After a couple of ticks, quickly do a 180 degree turn while shifting into catform, running down the hall toward your companions, and hit your dash. As long as you didn't cast hurricane for too long, and have good mobility, you should at most get hit by a single shadowbolt while running. once you get to your group, take a hard left (or right, but left takes you to a more open area to kill in), shift to bearform, and prepare to mangle that Legionnaire the moment he sticks his head around the corner! Congratulations, you just used 3/4 of your class on a single pull, more or less (Balance spells, catform, and bear form).

There is one other place where this pulling technique is highly recommended, and that is the four-ghost pulls in Karazhan on either side of Aran's room, specifically the first two and the last one, all of which are found just after an upward ramp. Here, the issue is not the potential for adds, but instead the not-so-ideal terrain itself. Your options with these groups are to fight them where they stand (which can lead to some nasty line of sight issues on the initial pull), fight them on the ramp (a fairly cramped area), or pull the group down the ramp to the previous room. Obviously, I prefer pulling down the ramp, and its not that long of a pull, but there's a catch: The LoS issues at the top of the ramp means you have to pull at close range.

Because of the range issue, I pull the ghosts a bit differently. Instead of pulling with a couple ticks of hurricane, prowl to the top of the ramp in catform, face back down the ramp, and when the time is right, pop dash, pull with a feral faerie fire on your tanking target (or one of, if you have multiples) and run like hell. Once the ghosts arrive at the bottom of the ramp, pick up yours as normal. Assuming the other tank and crowd control pick up their targets in a timely fashion, you should only ever get hit by your own tanking target.

Now, while the dash pull is extremely situational, it does illustrate an important point. Always be on the lookout for ways to use your skills that may not be obvious. A healing spell may be the perfect way to grab aggro on mobs (Tidewalker's Murlocs). Rebirth may be usable while main tanking, even when it may not seem like it (Gruul, before shatter). Sometimes tanking a mob means rooting them to the ground (Scouts on the way to Dragonhawk Boss). Sometimes bear form can be used to increase the time you spend doing damage (Feral charge after Aran's AE). Figuring out the little tricks is how a good druid becomes a great druid.

Or so I hear. . . Continue reading 'Pulling With . . . Cat Form??'

Are You Cat or Bear Specced?

I imagine that for the majority of druids, the answer is "both". But while most feral talents dont favor one form or the other, it is still possible to build a spec that leans further one way than another. So today lets take a look at the feral talent tree (and the extension to it in the resto tree) to get a good idea of how our talents break down. Note that this is strictly from a PvE raiding standpoint, as well. Oh, and dont worry, I'll still be playing with the new pages on my calculator, but I'm a sucker for a special request, and this topic was big enough to warrant more than just a casual reply in comments.

Please note, I am not advocating cat-only or bear-only builds. No matter how good you, your gear, and your skills are, you WILL be asked to perform both roles during your career as a feral druid, so you wont want to skip the critical skills for these roles.

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Universal Talents: These are the core talents that any feral, whether bear, cat, or balanced between the two, will want to take.

Sharpened Claws 3/3: More crits means more rage and threat for a bear tank, and more damage and combo poitns for cats. A must have.

Predatory Strikes 3/3: 105 attack power ups your DPS and threat a little bit, but the real reason this talent is a must have for all specs. . . its a prerequisite for Heart of the Wild.

Primal Fury 2/2: This talent ups your rage efficiency in bear form (ESPECIALLY while swipe tanking), and speeds up combo point generation (Remember, keeping rip up is our first priority) for cats. Cool beans.

Heart of the Wild 5/5: The shining star of the feral tree. Incredibly good bonuses in both forms (and if you powershift, you get the extra bonus of a much larger mana pool). If you dont take it, you're insane.

Leader/Improved Leader of the Pack 3/3: These two talents combined give us our incredibly valuable raid buff, with a group-wide total of 25% crit, and a lot of health returned if in a fully melee group.

Predatory Instincts 5/5: Ups your crit damage by 10% (Making crits hit for 220% damage, not 210%). More damage is. . . well, more damage in cat form, as well as more threat for bears. Also helps you against those hard-to-avoid AoE spells, like Tidewalker's Tidal wave (assuming you're tanking it) or Magtheridon's fire patches (assuming you get shaken into it during an earthquake, or are having a blonde moment).

Mangle 1/1: I was tempted to say this is skippable for cat druids (as long as you have another feral druid keeping mangle up in a raid), but really, for one point, every raiding feral druid should have mangle, especially since sometimes you just cant get to a foe's backside to shred (Aran during flame wreath, for example).

Furor 5/5: I recommend this for both flavors of feral druid, if only because Improved Paw is such a crappy talent, you need one or the other to get to the rest of the resto talents, and your friendly neighborhood tree druid probably has it anyhow (And nice side bonus: You dont have to help rebuff *snerk*). Its a very nice talent though, giving bears another 10 rage to start a pull with (and 10 rage to start with after hitting the Hunnypot). But the real beauty is cat druids with this, as they can use it to powershift for extra DPS (and if you're trying to get into a raid as pure DPS, you should probably be looking for all the boosts you can get).

Naturalist 5/5: 10% Bonus damage means a lot of extra DPS and threat. Dont even think about skipping it.

Omen of Clarity 1/1: Who can complain about free attacks? With how amazing the 2-piece T4 bonus is for us, who would dare pass up a 1-point talent that gives us twice the effect or more (assuming equal proc rates).

This gives us a total of 33 talent points that any feral druid would be INSANE to skip. Notice that I didn't include quite a few talents that most people consider core abilities. . . I'll explain why a singleminded druid might possibly skip them as I get to them.


Bear-Focused Talents: These are talents which a druid focusing on only bear tanking would take, while one who only cared about catform might possibly skip.

Ferocity 5/5: For bear druids, ferocity is a crucial part of our arsenal, making our Mangles, Swipes, and Mauls cost 5 less rage each. If you never plan to don your bear skin, you might be able to skip it, though, since these days, a raiding kitty only benefits from the reduction on Mangle, an ability you only use once every 12 or more seconds, and may never need to use if you have a bear tank or other cat druid putting up the debuff for you. I'd still recomment getting it though, since there are some fights where getting behind the mob may not be an option (Aran during flame wreath comes to mind), and at that point you have to use Mangle as your main attack.

Feral Instinct 3/3: This is absolutely critical for maximum bear threat generation. All that a pure cat would get out of it is a bit stronger stealth, something that is by and large useless in a raid, since you're unlikely to be grouped with 24 rogues and druids doing stealth runs on Tidewalker.

Thick Hide 3/3: Although some folks say that you can drop this talent once you get armor values over the cap, I think keeping this talent and using some lower armor, higher stamina/agility/hit gear would be preferable, or just keeping the extraneous armor for mobs that sunder and the like. For cats, this would give a minimal reduction in damage taken by physical AoEs, and as most such AoE attacks are avoidable, can be safely skipped.

Feral Swiftness 2/2: 4% pure avoidance is, well, at the very least 4% less damage taken, and taking less damage as the tank is always a good thing. For cats, the movement speed is completely moot unless you mainly raid ZA, and the dodge is, once again, only good for dodgeable AoEs, which are generally avoided entirely.

Feral Charge 1/1: Its a bear form ability. One that I wouldn't skip as a bear tank, as it allows you to quickly get to a mob that may have peeled off of you to taunt/threat dump it back to you. Generally, if a cat needs that much mobility, they need to run AWAY from a mob (and lucky us, we have dash for just such occasions).

Faerie Fire (Feral) 1/1: Feral Faerie Fire is extremely helpful as a pulling move, if nothing else. It can also give you something to use if you're rage starved for a small bit of extra threat. Honestly, I'd advise all druids to get this, since its just one point, and cat druids are in the best position to reapply Faerie fire mid-fight, since they often are stuck autoattacking to regen energy.

Survival of the Fittest 3/3: Another absolutely crucial bear talent. This is the only way a bear will ever reach uncrittability without heavy investment in PvP gear. Cat druids may find that 3% extra Agility, Strength, and Stamina are helpful as well, and thus I advise both cats and bears to pick this one up.

Primal Tenacity 3/3: This is something only bears will probably be interested in. It'll give you a small chance of resisting things like Nightbane's fears, or those annoying stuns that leave you unable to dodge or build threat. Ultimately, though, I find this talent to be too unreliable to, well, rely on, and thus feel it is an optional talent for bears, and quite nonessential for cats (though resisting those same fears from nightbane can save you from some painful cleaves, tail swipes, and the like). Nonetheless, a bear-focused druid would probably pick this one up.

Intensity 3/3: This does absolutely nothing for cat druids. For bears, it lets you, when combined with Ferocity, start any fight with at least 40 rage, enough for a very respectable front-loaded threat pile. Another one of those talents you can live without, but if you're only focusing on tanking, a very good choice.


Cat-Focused Talents: These are talents which a druid focusing on only cat DPS would take, while one who only cared about tanking might possibly skip.

Feral Agression 5/5: Especially when 2.4 comes out and makes undead and mechanical mobs bleedable, this talent is not that great for most boss fights (which I always focus on, trash mobs are called trash for a reason). But a focused cat build would likely pick this up (as well as Ferocity) to improve their trash DPS, especially since the second tier feral skills are largely useless in catform on raids. PS: You'll notice I don't even mention the improved Demo Roar component of this talent. Thats because, even improved, a warrior's unimproved Demo Shout will overwrite our shout, and a warlock's Curse of Weakness will drop any mob's AP to 0 (I dont remember the exact number, but mobs only have something like 250 AP)

Shredding Attacks 2/2: Shred is your bread and butter DPS ability in groups. Reducing its cost by 18 energy is HUGE. If you dont have this talent, you have no business being in catform on a raid. Bear druids will generally want this too, at least until they reach the breakpoint where swipe is better threat on single mobs, since its basically one free rage per second on your typical Mangle->Lacerate x3 threat rotation.

Savage Fury 2/2: This talent falls into the same category with Ferocity, really. It only affects your mangles, and if you're in a raid group where someone else is keeping the mangle debuff up, this does nothing for you. But, once again, if you ever cant get to a mob's back, this talent will up your yellow DPS signifigantly. Absolutely WORTHLESS to bear druids since 2.0.10.

Natural Shapeshifter 3/3: In a raid setting, the only reason you really need this talent is if you're using Furor to Powershift in cat form. a 30% reduction in shifting cost means you can powershift nearly 43% more often. A bear tank will only really shift into form once every 2 minutes at most (to pot), and should regen more than enough mana in those 2 minutes to forego this talent.

PvP Talents: These two talents (as well as Nature's Grasp) are not likely to be taken in a pure raiding spec, and are more geared toward PvP purposes.

Brutal Impact 2/2: The only time I ever stun in raids is when my growl is resisted while reacquiring a rogue mob (in which case if I cant get aggro back in 4 seconds, I'm probably not getting it back in 5), or to pounce those annoying drum-pounders on the way to dragonhawk in ZA (But usually just spam Entangling Roots on them instead). Generally, you only need that one extra second of stun in PvP (or if you prefer using stealth tactics when you solo, but we're talking raids here).

Nurturing Instinct 2/2: Feral druids make CRAPTACULAR offhealers, since they wear absolutely zero spell gear (save for maybe a couple pieces of gear with a little int on it). If you find yourself needing to shift out to heal often, a macro to switch to a healing weapon/offhand/idol is going to do you much more good than this talent. In 2.4, it looks to be getting a buff, but even then, I doubt cat offhealing will be a very viable strategy, and the only reason to get this for raiding would be the 20% extra healing recieved while in catform (which I dont see warranting 2 talent points).


Putting Together Specs:

So, lets use this breakdown to put together a cat-only spec and a bear-only spec. First, we pick up our universal talents, giving us a 0/22/11 core build that must be common to both specs. It leaves us with a lot of holes to fill in our feral tree, especially near the bottom.

Filling in our bear spec will all of the bear-focused talents, we come up with a 0/43/14 spec, though we still have a single talent point hole before the 25-point talents. Going back a second time and picking up all the cat talents that are recommended for bear (That is, shredding attacks), we fill that hole in, and come up with a 0/45/14 + 2 spec.

If we instead fill in our cat spec, we first come to a 0/31/14 build, with plenty of holes in the feral tree. Picking up the recommended bear talents for cats, we still come up short, with a 0/40/14 build. Lets say we pick up Feral Swiftness to fill in that hole (and giving us a better chance to survive when we're stupid and stand in front of that cleaving mob). So our final cat-focused build is 0/42/14 + 5.

Now, both of these builds are similar, but not *quite* similar enough to allow us to make them the same with those few extra talent points left over. HOWEVER, lets say we drop Feral Agression (Trash killing and soloing/PvP talent, we can live without it in our raiding build) and Primal Tenacity (Personal choice, you can drop Furor or Natural Shapeshifter if you don't need the extra 10 rage on pulls, or don't powershift). Now, looking at our cat spec, we have 10 talent points to blow. Just enough to pick up Feral Instinct, Thick Hide, Feral Charge, and Intensity. And in our bear build, we now have 5 spare points we can put into Natural Shapeshifter and Savage fury. And guess what, doing either of these two things gives us something interesting. . . MY spec! And I really dont miss the talents I lack from both the cat- and bear-focused builds, so its not like I'm sacrificing to be a hybrid, we can literally get the best of both worlds. Continue reading 'Are You Cat or Bear Specced?'

"And if the Rogue Blows Past Your Aggro, Let Her Die, oh, Let her Die"

(10 points to the first person to identify the original song lyric today's title is based on. . . not that I'm keeping a scoreboard. Or am I?)

Today I want to ask my readers another question: How much do you pamper, or abuse, your group members? Tanks hold a lot of power in a group, being the layer of steel or fur separating the squishy DPS and healers from the ravenous, bloodthirsty baddies' teeth. If a damage dealer gets cocky, and starts pulling aggro off of said tank, it is fully within that tank's power (at least in heroics and raids) to let that DPSer die by denying them a taunt. If the tank doesn't feel the group is prepared for the next pull, they can quite simply not pull it, forcing the group to wait/prepare (unless, of course, you're grouped with a level 70 hunter, and they decide to use their veto power). So, do you use your powers for good, or for evil?

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I personally tend toward being more of an evil tank. If a DPSer pulls aggro off of me once or twice, fine, I'll taunt it back, mistakes happen. Any more than that, though, and you had better hope you have some way of saving yourself, because I'm done, for this run if not forever0. PuGgers do that to me all the time, usually by attacking a target other than the next one marked on the kill order, or opening up on DPS before I get anything off on the first mob in a pull other than a faerie fire. Guild members do it to me too, though, and the treatment they get, at least in 5-mans and Karazhan, is no different. Hitting bladeflurry while I swipe spam may sound like a great way to improve your DPS, but you might not want to do it right at the pull, because believe it or not, your bladeflurry is hitting "X" for a lot more threat than my one swipe every 2 seconds.

Sometimes, DPSers try to be helpful by using inventive (or not so inventive) forms of crowd control on off-mobs, even though I didn't ask for it. Often times, their initiative gets them in over their head. And when that happens, my willingness to come to their aid rests largely on my mood, and how unusual what they were trying to do is. A hunter who simply takes the initiative, pulls a mob off of me, and gets a trap resist/feign resist will probably find me in a benevolent mood, and find himself alive after a quick feral charge/growl. The warlock who decided to fear kite a mob, but didn't count on that mob getting off a silence/stun/counterspell? As long as the 'lock otherwise seems to know what he's doing, and I'm not in a terrible mood, I'll probably rescue him, but if he's fearkiting right next to another group, or I'm downright pissy, he had better hope he self-soulstoned. And the mage/shaman/hunter who decided to try kiting a mob around the room? A novel approach, certainly, but if I didn't ask you to do it (and I never have, save for the druid on the hunter boss in Underbog), you're on your own, pal.

As far as I can recall, I have NEVER willingly allowed a healer to die, though. If a healer is getting beaten on, that means either I didn't do my job by building threat on that mob, or the healer had to put out a ton of healing for some reason (Either I was taking unusually large amounts of damage, or the healer was trying to save the bladeflurrying rogue from before). Either way, the only healers I've ever truly felt deserved to die were the ones that sucked so badly there was no way I'd be able to force aggro upon them (and unfortunately, they never seem to be in the instances with mobs that cleave or have other AoE *grin*). And anyhow, a dead healer means I probably have to waste a reagent at the end of the fight to rez their sorry butt, and sometimes even means a total wipe (though its amazing how often a skilled group can recover from healer death).

That being said, I have been known to spoil my groups as well. As I've mentioned before, I tend to tank heroics and Karazhan in my DPS gear (at least the trash). At first, I started doing it because it let the DPSers go full out on the trash, leading to faster runs. Eventually, though, I realized that many of my healers also appreciated my switching to the DPS gear, as it gave them something to do (Did I mention that healers find me boring to heal in heroics? Yeah.) Heck, I even spoil myself that way, since swipe spam is actually really good DPS (I figure I get at least 500 DPS out of swiping every 2 seconds, alone). Its not just the pally tanks that can give the DPS a run for their money on the meters!

I also tend not to ask for any crowd control unless absolutely necessary. Sure, I'll have the mage sheep the mobs that mind control near Murmur (while we kill off the one that summons), and get some sort of crowd control on the two champions in the pulls near the end of heroic slave pens (Seriously, 3 mobs with CC in one pull? No thanks). But I will happily tank every mob in an Underbog run, hold all the mobs in the last pull before Attumen the Huntsman (though I usually have to let the other tank take one, at least), or even run the entirety of heroic Shattered Halls without so much as a sap (and in plenty of time to save all the prisoners, at that, yay for 7-badge daily runs!).

One more thing: I'm always the benevolent tank when in a raid beyond Karazhan. I'd rather let careless group members learn their lessons later, in lesser instances, than make the whole raid group suffer due to my desire to play god. Raids are already long ordeals, so I want to take every opportunity I can to make it go a little bit faster.

So how do you treat your PuGgers and Guildmates? Are you a benevolent threat god, or a cruel, merciless tormentor of souls? . . . hmm, speaking of souls, all this talk of fear kiting has me wanting to play my warlock. . . Continue reading '"And if the Rogue Blows Past Your Aggro, Let Her Die, oh, Let her Die"'

Macro Polo

Today's theme came about partly because of something I omitted in yesterday's post about catform DPS. When doing catform DPS on a boss, if you're fairly confident you wont need to be using it to heal, you can utilize your mana pool to get extra attacks for free by abusing Ferocity via "Powershifting". And since 2.3, powershifting has been easier than ever due to the change in how shapeshifting (and indeed all spells) are handled by the game, as a power-shift can be performed simply pressing a macro. . . one of the three I want to present to you all today. And so, with no further ado, my four favorite (only) feral macros of all time!

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1: The Hunnypot
#showtooltip Super Healing Potion/Mad Alchemist's Potion/Super Rejuvenation Potion
/cancelform
/use Master Healthstone
/use Charged Crystal Focus
/use Super Healing Potion/Mad Alchemist's Potion/Super Rejuvenation Potion
/cast Dire Bear Form

(Yes, the Hunnypot. Named so because Surania is actually my Fiancee in RP-terms, and she is absolutely obsessed with Winny the Pooh.)

What it does: Pretty much any feral druid who hasn't been living under a rock knows about this by now. Due to changes in how spellcasts are handled by the client and server in WoW, druids can now shift out of form, consume a potion and a healthstone, and shift back into form with a single press of a macro (and with little, if not absolutely zero, time spent out of form).

The first, second, and last lines are fairly straightforward. The first line is there so your macro will display your potion of choice as its icon, and more importantly, the cooldown on your potion. No point in hitting the macro if you're not actually able to use the potion/stone, it'll just shift you out and back in, with nothing to show for it but a reset rage bar and a thousand less mana. The second line takes you out of whatever form you're in (most likely bear, but can also take you out of catform if, for example, you accidentally pulled aggro while DPSing and need to both get your health back and switch to a more durable form until the tank re-establishes aggro). The last puts you into bear form. The second line will consume a warlock-provided healthstone, or if you dont have one, the third line will instead eat a self-farmed Charged Crystal Focus. The fourth line, in turn, chugs a health potion of choice, regardless if which, if any, stone was consumed.

A few notes: First, you have to be VERY careful when using this macro. NEVER hit this button unless you're sure you are not currently on global cooldown. GCD wont stop the bulk of this macro from going off, as shifting out of form and using potions/healthstones are independant from it, but shifting back INTO form triggers, and thus is prevented by, GCD. That means if you hit this macro immediately following a lacerate, maul, faerie fire, demo roar, growl, or anything of the sort, you will shift out, drink your potions, STAY out of form, and probably get smashed by Mr. Big Bad Baddie MacBadderson for much, much more than you just got from the potions. If you think you're going to need a health infusion at any moment, stop mangling and lacerating to avoid issues (you can, however, still use Maul, as its cooldown is your swing speed, not the GCD).

Second, I want to HIGHLY recommend that all tanks, bear or otherwise, spend some time and farm up a stack of Charged Crystal Foci. They aren't quite as good as even an untalented healthstone, but they're a heck of a lot better than nothing when you don't have a warlock, or already used your stone(s).

Third, I give you three choices of potion. Most of you will probably just use Super Healing Potions, as they're relatively easy to get, and usable by anybody. Mad Alchemist's Potions are for alchemists like me, since they're only usable by us. They also have the added benefits of slightly higher average healing, a free random buff (if not elixir buffed, IE tanking easy stuff), and they're dirt cheap to make, taking only a couple ragveil and a crystal vial to make. And the Rejuvenation potions have the same health return as mad alchemist potions (And PS: They give mana too, though you're not likely to need it if you're tanking), but also take much more expensive mats than healing potions, and the health difference is not all that much.


2: The Power Shift:
/cancelform
/cast Cat Form

What it does: This is basically a super-stripped down version of the potion macro. It simply shifts you out of whatever form you're in and puts you into cat form.

Sounds pretty useless, eh? Well, not if you know about powershifting. Basically, powershifting is a tactic used to convert your caster-form mana into cat-form energy via the Furor talent. To do that, you need to do 2 things:

1: Use up all, or nearly all of your energy.
2: Press this macro while NOT on the global cooldown.

Essentially, hitting your power shift macro will reset your energy to 40, no matter what it was at beforehand. If you had full energy, you just lost 60. But if you had, say, 3 energy, you just got 37 more. Note, however, that it is not so easy to do this effectively, because once again, we have to be off global cooldown in order to shift back into cat, and we need to be in cat before the next "tick" (which occurs every 2 seconds and gives us 20 energy). On the plus side, catform abilities only have a 1 second GCD, instead of the 1.5 seconds most other abilities have. However, that only leaves us a 1 second window to powershift, due to the order of events that have to occur (Energy remaining in parenthesis, note that this is assuming a perfect powershift, you wont often actually get to 0 energy):

(22) -> Energy Tick (42) -> Shred (0) -> Power Shift (40) -> Energy Tick (60)

Oh, and if you do a lot of powershifting, its highly advisable to pick up Natural Shapeshifter, as 3 points in NSS lets you powershift nearly 50% more before running out of mana. I'd also advise picking up a DruidBar or similar addon that tracks your mana while in forms, or you're likely to try to powershift when OoM, and end up stuck in caster form.


3: Stealth and Stuns:
/cast [modifier:shift]Prowl; [combat] Maim; [stealth] Pounce; Prowl

What it does: This is one of two macros I use to save space on my cat bar. I'm really proud of this one, because I managed to combine three skills into one button, and it automatically chooses the right skill for the current situation:

First, the macro checks to see if I'm in combat. If I am, prowl can't be cast, and pounce either can't be cast either, or would be useless to me (because being in combat means I either already got hit, thus am not stealthed any more, or means a boss put me in combat, and bosses are immune to stun). Therefore, the macro assumes I wanted to use maim to incapacitate my target.

If I'm not in combat, the macro then checks to see if I'm stealthed. If I am and am within range of my target, it assumes I wish to pounce upon whatever I'm targeting, stunning it so I can run behind the mob and shred it to death.

And finally, if I'm neither in combat nor in stealth, the macro knows that I WANT to be stealthed, and casts prowl for me.

Basically, the only time this macro doesn't do anything if I push it is when I'm in combat, but have no combo points. Handy, no?

EDIT: I improved on this macro today, but wanted to test it before I posted. . . I added the [modifier:shift] Prowl to the beginning. All this does is give me an easy way to DEstealth if I should so desire, just hold shift and press the button.


4: Backbiter:
/cast [stealth] Ravage; Shred

What it does: Well, after the conditionals of the last macro, I imagine you already know what this one will do. If I'm in stealth, I unleash my most devastating non-finishing move, Ravage. If I'm not in stealth, I instead shred. And of course, given the nature of these two abilities, this macro does NOTHING if I'm not behind my target. Which of course means I'm soloing, and the mob isn't stunned/incapacitated. Because a druid in catform will never be standing in front of a tanked mob, right? RIGHT? Right. Continue reading 'Macro Polo'

Sum Bare R 4 MOONFARE?!?!

For most tanking classes, pulling is a rather straightforward affair. Warriors can fire their sidearm of choice at a group to get their attention. Paladins can channel the essence of Captain America/Xena, Warrior Princess. Both also have the option to run up to the mobs to initiate combat (albeit warriors get to do so a little bit faster). Druids, on the other hand, have options. Lots, and lots, and lots of options. Starfire, moonfire, wrath, hurricaine, faerie fire, feral charge, body pulling, tossing a sacrificial gnome, all are options in our arsenal (well, except for the gnome).

All of our options have distinct advantages and disadvantages, but alas, spellcasting is not the strong suit of most of our feral brethren. And while, generally speaking, pulling is only a small part of our job, its still part of what we do, so those of us obsessed enough with our class to, say, read blogs on a daily basis (let alone write them *cough*) should really know what we're doing when we decide to call down orbital lazer fire from space.

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First of all, lets meet our arsenal. Lets just go ahead and assume we have 0 bonus damage and 0% chance to crit, because thats basically what we should have in tanking gear:

Starfire: That would be the big laser with the long cast. Averages 588 damage for 370 mana. 3.5 second cast. 168 DPS, 1.59 DPM


Wrath: The big ball of nature's . . . well, wrath. Averages 405 damage for 255 mana. 2 second cast. 202.5 DPS, 1.59 DPM


Moonfire: The little lazer that burns for hours. . . or at least 12 seconds. With DoT, averages 931 damage for 495 mana. 1.5 second global cooldown, instant cast. 620.7 Damage Per Second of effective cast time, 1.88 DPM.


Hurricane: Why hit one when you can hit 'em all? 206 DPS for 10 seconds on all mobs under it. 1905 mana.


Faerie Fire (Feral): Proof that druids now how to cast fire spells. Or not. Free cast in forms, generates just enough threat to get the attention of your enemies.


One of the first things you might notice is that, without any spelldamage gear, Wrath is just as efficient as, and has higher DPS than, Starfire. Starfire has the advantage of being a bigger single hit, though, something that will come into play later, and make Starfire a favorite choice of this bear.

Second, Moonfire is actually more efficient, and has much higher DPS, than either of our straight nukes. Note, however, that this is only true if you use moonfire only once per target. Multiple casts on the same target wont stack the DoT portion, which is 2/3 of the actual damage.

Third, hurricane kicks the crap out of everything else on pulls of 3 or more, though its damage is more spread out. It does, however, eat a signifigant chunk of your mana, especially if coupled with barkskin.

Now that we've met the players, lets look at one of the game rules that you may know about, but might not have considered when it comes to pulling groups to your furry behind: The Global Cooldown *cue ominous sound effects*. For those who don't know, the GCD is a game mechanic which makes it impossible to start casting a spell if you have started another spell within the last 1.5 seconds (or 1 second for energy users). This is why spamming your moonfire key wont bring down an endless rain of lasers, and why resto druids don't maintain triple-stack lifeblooms on 25 people at a time.

Now, you may have noticed one tricky fact about the GCD. Unlike the five-second rule for mana regeneration (whose namesake 5 second timer starts counting whenever a spellcast is completed), the global cooldown timer starts ticking the moment you START casting. Thats why it tends to really only be noticable when casting instant spells, such as moonfire or lifebloom, and not on casted spells like Starfire or Wrath (save for balance-specced druids and their occasional 1-second Wrath cast).

Why is the GCD stuff important? Well, at first glance, it may look like Starfire and Wrath are pretty pointless to use if you only want to get a little threat on as many mobs as possible. Starfire looks especially worthless here, until you consider the cooldown. Lets say we open our pull sequence with a moonfire, since its the highest DPS/DPM spell in our arsenal. Great, you've effectively applied about 931 damage/threat to a target with your pull. However, you have also just engaged the global cooldown, and must wait 1.5 seconds before performing another action, such as firing another moonfire or shifting to bear form. If you instead open with a Starfire, the global cooldown expires 2 seconds BEFORE that initial burst of aggro, meaning the moment Starfire's 588 damage/threat goes off, alerting the mobs to your presence, you're able to follow it up with another spell immediately (possibly even that same moonfire you would have pulled with before this paragraph). This is, as far as I'm concerned, the best (and only) way to use Starfire as a bear tank, the initial, free (since really, mana doesn't matter as long as we have enough to shift) shot.

Small Group Pulls:

So, lets say you come to the pull just after the first boss in Sethekk Halls: 2 melee mobs. Not really worth busting out hurricane here, best to stick with the single-target damage. How do we want to pull them? Well, lets assume that once our mobs are pulled, we have 3.5 seconds before they're in our face smacking us on the head. Lets also assume we want the bulk of the threat on our primary kill target, because our DPSers have a tendency to jump the gun a bit, especially after seeing a bunch of lasers rain down on the mobs' heads. Standing at max range, we target the primary mob and begin to cast Starfire. Then, with starfire still casting, we switch targets to the secondary mob, and hover our mouse over the primary mob. The moment starfire casts (0 seconds after the pull starts), we fire off a moonfire (which immediately fires, since the GCD expired two seconds ago) on our secondary target, as that was the mob we had targeted, and then immediately click on the primary target again to regain focus. As soon as the global cooldown from that cast expires (1.5 seconds after the pull starts), we moonfire again, this time hitting our primary target. And when THAT cooldown expires (3.0 seconds after the pull starts), we shift to bear form to prepare for taking our first hit 0.5 seconds later. By pulling in this way, we have built up over 1500 initial threat on our primary target (though it will be another 10 seconds before the full effect of the moonfire has been felt) and nearly 1000 threat on our secondary target (again, once moonfire takes full effect).

Two things to note here: While waiting for global cooldowns, you can extend the time it takes for your foes to reach you by either backing up, or turning and strafing/running away from them. I usually just back up to maintain visual on the mobs. Second, even though you're building up some nice initial threat, DPS can NOT immediately lay into the mobs. It would not be hard at all for someone to out-aggro you by the time the mobs got there, especially in your caster-stat-free gear. This is merely an extra buffer for your DPSers to make them safer to go all out once you get a mangle and some swipes into the mobs, and some leeway for the healer to keep you up should your initial attacks all miss.

Now, lets say you had a little more time than that to build threat. This is a rare occasion where wrath might be a good pulling option. Lets say you now have 4 seconds, and can extend that time to 5.5 by backing up during global cooldowns on 2 moonfires (obviously we're assuming a good bit of foreknowledge regarding the particular mobs here). If you're feeling daring, and really want to build some threat on your primary target (or just want to put up some better numbers on the damage meter), try this on for size: Starfire on the primary target to open. When the starfire goes off (0s), start casting a wrath on it, and switch to the secondary target. When the wrath goes off (2s), starfire, switch targets back to the primary target, and start backing away. When the global cooldown is up (3.5s), moonfire again, this time hitting the primary target with it, and keep backing up. Once you're out of that GCD (5s), its time to shift to bear and lay into them both when they reach you half a second later. Same amount of threat on your secondary target, but another 400 threat and damage on your primary.

Large Group Pulls:

Now that we've absolutely obliterated that pull, lets move a bit deeper into the instance. Eventually, you go upstairs, kill off a wind serpent and 2 guards, and are then faced with the biggest pull of the instance: 10 hawks. Now, I know as well as the next guy that these guys are a joke, but lets pretend this is serious business, and we absolutely need to maintain aggro on all ten while not getting hit by any of them outside of bear form. Now, your first reaction to this pull is probably to pull out hurricane, center it over the birds, and fire. However, we want to build maximum threat here, so we're going to do this a little differently. First of all, we're going to target the closest bird and get to maximum starfire range. Then, we're going to start casting starfire, since we already noted that starfire is essentially a freebie when looking at a max-threat pull. Then, while starfire is casting, we are going to click hurricane and get it targeted (yes, you can be targeting it while another spell is casting, aren't you glad starfire takes so long now?). But we're not going to try to center the hurricane over the mobs. Instead, we want to drop it closer to us, hitting the area in between ourself and our targets.

Why target hurricane like this? Well, the answer is simple. If you center it over your targets, those targets only have to pass through part of the hurricane to get to you. If you drop it in between you and them, however, they have to travel the full width of the spell to approach you, and thus spend much more time getting bolts dropped on their heads. More bolts = more threat. Just make sure there is a little distance between you and the near edge of the hurricane so you have a chance to switch to bear form before the mobs start hitting you.

Ok, now, lets get real here. Those birds are a joke, and as long as they get heals, a mage could "tank" them with little problem. So, instead of worrying about getting hit, lets just do as much damage as we can to them. This time, we'll still start with a starfire, but instead of targeting hurricane while its casting, we get ready to run toward them. Once starfire goes off, cast barkskin, and run toward the group. Then, once you reach the mobs, drop that hurricane right at your feet and enjoy the rain of numbers. Just be sure to watch your health, in case the healer cant keep up with the damage you're taking. Bear tank DPS at its finest, my friends.

At this point, I've shared with you what I consider the major tricks a druid can use to build maximum threat on a pull: Always start with a Starfire (unless you cant due to aggro range or arcane immunity). When building threat on multiple enemies, either hit as many of them as possible with moonfire, or drop a hurricane where they have to walk through the whole thing before getting to you. If you need to build as much threat as possible on a single mob before it gets to you, spam wrath, and use moonfire as your last spell before going to bear (takes less time than the wrath, and allows you to back away while waiting for GCD). Additionally, you can do things such as precasting HoTs on yourself, though this will really only give your healer a little more time before they have to start healing you, especially since HoTs cast outside of combat apparently generate no threat (at least thats what I hear, I have never actually tested this, maybe I'll do that tonight).

But, there's one more spell you can pull with. . . Faerie Fire. Specifically Feral Faerie Fire. Practically no threat, but it will bring the mobs to you. And frankly, its what I use for 90% or more of the pulls I make. While FFF isn't going to build you any sort of threat cushion, it has some great advantages. First of all, theres no risk of a sudden lagspike leaving you stuck in caster form with mobs beating on you. Second, once the mob you hit with it gets to you, you can open up with a slightly stronger Maul/Mangle combo because of the mob's reduced armor. Third, if you have a lot of rage built up from the previous pull, you dont have to lose it by shifting out of form. And fourth . . .

You really shouldn't need the extra threat from all those silly balance spells in the first place. Yes, thats right, while optimizing your pull sequence is a fun little exercize in theorycraft, it is also by and large unnecessary, despite what I said about knowing how to call down the lazers at the start of this post.

There are only two reasons to seriously use your non-FFF spells for pulling in general: Polymorph/Seduce, and huge pulls like those 10 birds, or the big pulls in Shattered Halls. The former case, the cast time on Starfire gives your mage/warlock the chance to coordinate with you on the pull. I shed a tear of joy when a mage polymorphs his target a split second after my starfire goes off, because I know I wont have to worry about that sheep straying anywhere near my swipe killzone. And my healers shed a tear of joy when I hit a 7-mob pull with 3 ticks of Hurricane, because they know that 600x7=4,200 damage I just did to the mobs means their first heal on me isn't going to send 4-6 mobs barreling down on them.

Oh, and there is one other reason to put effort into your pulls. If you're like me, and have run pretty much every heroic a dozen times, and at least that many karazhan clears, unloading a bunch of flashy spells into mobs on a pull can be a way to keep from getting bored. Heck, I once moonfired all 6 mobs of a pull while bringing them all back to the second boss' room in heroic Shattered halls for fun (and because I thought the hunter that was with me might be amused by the fact a druid tank was jump-shotting with moonfire in a heroic. Jumpshots: they're not just for hunters any more!) Continue reading 'Sum Bare R 4 MOONFARE?!?!'

Stamina is for Warlocks!

Ok, first of all, I feel I should apologize for not posting anything yesterday. While technically I am not bound to any schedule at all, I made it a personal goal to post every weekday. Alas, yesterday I was in a particularly foul mood, and decided it was better to fall short of my goal than subject you to whatever I might have come up with while in that mindset.

Today, I want to talk a bit more about my personal gear philosophy, specifically addressing what I find is a health pool which is much smaller than most tanks. My views on stamina seem to fly in the face of what I see preached on the forums, and even most other bloggers (who I find usually have an IQ higher than 37).

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There are four things which I consider key factors on tanking gear, and two secondary items I also try to keep an eye on. In order of dicussions, these are Crit Reduction, Armor, Dodge/Agility, Stamina, Strength, and Hit/Expertise. The first four factors directly affect our ability to take hits, while the last pair are strictly related to our ability to dish out threat.

Crit Reduction: 2.6% crit reduction is ESSENTIAL TO TANKING. I repeat: Crit Immunity Is Not An Option (CIINAO, pronounced See Now). Last week, I saw one druid tank on the forums claiming he has tanked all the fights in the game a druid concievably can (Everything but Reliquary phase 2 and Illidan, if I remember correctly) without maintaining 2.6% crit reduction. And maybe he had. But the fact of the matter is, if you are crittable, you are a liability to the raid. Steady incoming DPS doesn't kill tanks, burst damage does, and crits are about as burst damage as it comes, especially if you get two in a row. You can get away with taking crits in normal 5-man instances. You can even probably get away with it in Karazhan and Heroics (In fact, I know you can, since I tank those in cat gear mostly nowadays). But for progression raiding, you would be sidelined if I knew you didn't have full crit immunity.

Armor: Due to our huge 5.5x modifier, armor is perhaps THE most important tanking stat for a druid. As I have mentioned in the past, it was the driving force behind all of my gear choices until I hit 29k armor (where crit heal armor buffs start first are able to push you to the cap against level 73 mobs, actually about 28,750ish). Even past that, I have valued armor on gear, though I have started to favor high armor gear with agi and stam on it over the higher armor with less stats type gear. As far as I'm concerned, other than that one (minor) turning point, the only diminishing return on armor happens at 35,880.

But why is armor so important? Well, in addition to the fact that we get so much more bang for our buck from it, the reason armor is so awesome is that it is so reliable. Armor reduces the damage of EVERY incoming physical hit, regardless of whether its an auto-attack, crushing blow, cri. . . right, we don't ever get critted, CIINAO and all. . .

Anyhow, armor is a constant, reliable source of mitigation, which leads to a more constant, reliable stream of incoming damage for the healers to deal with. And that makes the healers' jobs easier, as well as making it less likely they need to blow their cooldowns and expensive "Oh, sh**" buttons just to keep your fuzzy butt vertical (er, does it really count as vertical when you're tanking on all-fours? Bah, whatever).

Dodge: Once a bear tank starts wandering into the 30k+ armor club, mitigation upgrades start to show up more as increases to dodge than as increased armor mitigation. This is both a function of the gear we have available to us, and also the fact that there is in place a 75% mitigation crap . . . er, I mean cap, to keep bear tanks from scaling. Dodge is a great thing, since even when you have 75% mitigation, dodging an attack still means you take 100% less damage than you would. Heck, when people were first wandering into Karazhan, there was a vocal section of the druid community preaching "Hit 20k armor, then stack dodge". While that group seems to have died out (I suspect they were re-roll players who thought all tanks should sit at warrior-level armor values, but I digress), the value of dodge is unquestionable, especially since it the value of more dodge actually goes UP the more of it you already have.

There ARE some drawbacks to dodge, however, that are not there when it comes to armor. First of all, if you've ever run an instance a dozen or more times waiting for that one item with a 25% droprate to actually drop, you know how much the Random Number Generator (RNG) sucks. Relying on dodge to keep you alive is like betting your life that the Stranglestaff will drop on your next Kara run. Additionally, the more you dodge, the more likely the hits you DONT dodge are to be crushing blows. Note: I did not say dodge increases the frequency of crushing blows, I am simply pointing out that dodging more makes you take fewer regular hits, but does not reduce the frequency of crushing blows. A bear tank with 0% dodge takes 85% regular hits, 15% crushing blows, while a tank with 85% dodge would take nothing but the 15% of swings that would crush either way.

Because of this, I do not view dodge as a mitigation stat, per se. I instead view dodge as a way to help the healers with mana efficiency. Every time I dodge an attack, the healers have to pump fewer spells into me, and can cancel their casts, saving them the cost of their spell, and possibly even allowing them to enjoy some spirit regen outside of the 5-second rule. Ultimately, though, I imagine that if I never dodged an attack, it would be hard to keep me (or any other tank) standing even if the healers had infinite mana.

Stamina: Stamina, or more generally health pool, is perhaps the most simplistic, most basic tanking stat. The more health you have, the more damage it takes to kill you. Having a large health pool is critical to any tank, to be sure.

So why do I list it last in terms of mitigation? Well, I dont really, it actually has a value similar to that of defense and resilience. That is, if I dont have enough to reach uncrittability (enough stamina to survive long enough for the healers to get me back up), I need to do everything in my power to get enough, but if I DO already have enough crit reduction (stamina), stacking more is pointless. Yes, thats right, all those people who are constantly saying "Stick 12 stamina gems in ALL of your sockets, and enchant all of your gear with stamina enchants" are neglecting the simple fact that there is, in fact, such a thing as enough stamina. Sure, it never hurts to have more than you need, but frankly, if you never drop below 30% health, the truth is at least 1/5 of your health pool is superfluous, and you would do better pulling out some of those 12 stamina gems in favor of, say, 8 agility for some extra dodge, since stamina does NOTHING for your mitigation, it is merely a health buffer. As an added bonus, that extra agility will also make it less likely for your health to drop down as fast, so you may not even see yourself dipping lower!

That having been said, my unbuffed health pool currently sits between 13,600 and 14,400 health, depending on whether I'm using my pocketwatch or my Darkmoon card (which I tend to wear for tanking 25-man content). This is considerably smaller than what many tanks of my gear level run with, but I find that it is basically all I need. For the most part, I use agility gems in my gear instead of stamina gems, for two reasons. First, I have enough stamina (though I'm working on scrounging up a bit more at the moment, as I do seem to be drifting close to empty on the health bar more often than I like lately), and second, agility is a universal stat, used for both tanking and DPS. Not only does socketing agility let me NOT gimp my dual-use gear in terms of DPS, but it also lets me better fill the most common druid tanking role, that of an offtank who can DPS when not needed for tanking (add tank on Lurker, shaman tank on Maulgar, etcetera).


Strength: Honestly, I dont even pay attention to strength when it comes to my tanking gear. It IS an important tanking stat, giving us the attack power needed to generate threat, but pretty much any high-armor leather (that is, druid tanking gear) already has a bunch of strength on it, if only because that gear is hybrid cat/bear stuff. Dont ever add more strength to your gear, its not worth it (this goes for cat gear too, agility is always the better bet unless you cant get it on a particular piece).

Hit: Unlike Strength, hit is something that I actually actively factor into gearing choices, on the rare occasions I actually find a tanking piece with any on it. While also purely there for threat generation purposes (unless you stretch a bit and consider Idol of Terror needing Mangles to hit for it to proc), hitting reliably can be especially important in a couple of situations.

First of all, as of 2.3, hit rating affects warrior and druid taunts. And while not every fight is conducive to taunting, it is very bad news if your taunt resists at critical times (Such as Nalorakk transitions). Secondly, hitting is CRUCIAL when first engaging a mob. If your first 2-3 attacks all miss, you had better hope that the mob missed too, or your healers are likely to get a surprise when that first green number flies overhead. And even if you dont get hit either, its likely in that situation that your DPS is going to lay into the boss before you get a decent amount of threat, and they're going to eat the dust. Often times, this situation can be avoided by having hunters misdirect to the tank, but sometimes that just isn't an option, at least not for all tanks involved (trash pulls, Hydross transitions, High King Maulgar).

And if you're fortunate enough to be able to fit some expertise rating into your tanking gear, you dont just benefit by hitting more often. Expertise has the unique advantage of reducing a mob's chance to parry your attacks. And as you all (should) know, whenever a mob or player parrys an attack, their next autoattack comes SOONER. I have seen WWS reports before of a tank geting absolutely torn to shreds on Gruul when the melee DPS, cut off from Gruul's backside by a badly placed Cave-in, moved to the front arc where parrys occur, and Gruul getting something like 8 parrys in short order from all of those dual-wielders, each. Trust me, parrying attacks can be an INCREDIBLE boost to DPS, take that from someone who now has a prot pally who delights in fighting half a dozen mobs at a time.

So, to summarize: CIINAO, armor is a bear's best friend, Dodge helps healers conserve mana, it is possible to have enough stamina without fully socketing/enchanting for it, strength can be safely ignored given current itemization, and hit, while a secondary concern, can nonetheless be a big help if you can get it on tanking gear. Continue reading 'Stamina is for Warlocks!'