[Druid] Feral Tanking and Defense
 

My question is what druids are doing about losing their Defense as the upgrade gear in SSC and TK? I have been under the impression that Druids need 415 defense to hit the uncritable line, but all of the druid gear from here on up have no defense. I'm looking at the upgrades that are in the near future and and i'll be losing alot of defense.

Heavy Clefthoof Vest > Brestplate of Malorne -24 Defense
Earthwarden > Wildfury Greatstaff -27 Defense

I'm at 422 Defense with about 29k Armor and 14k HP and around 34% Dodge.

We just Killed Hydross, We have 4 groups clearing Kara and Farm Gruul, Mag and Kazak. What direction do I go from here? I have been using Emmerald Table and most of my gear is in the top 5.

Should I just forget about the defense loss and say 371 is good enough, or should I grab the defense trinket off Hydross (better for warriors IMO), or is there some other option?

Current Gear
Head: Stylin Purple Hat
Neck: Necklace of the Juggernaut
Shoulders: Mantle of Malorne
Back: Gilded Thorium Cloak
Chest: Heavy Clefthoof Vest
Wrists: Umberhowl's Colar
Hands: Verdant Gloves
Waist: Tree-Menders Belt
Legs: Greaves of Malorne
Feet: Zierhut's Lost Treads
Ring: Violet Signet(Revered)
Ring: Ring of Unyeilding Force
Trinket: ArgussianCompass
Trinket: Maroes' Lucky pocket Watch
2HD: Earthwarden

One option is to grab a few pieces of the Gladiator feral gear, while it's not as well itemized for tanking as some things are (They lack as much extra armor mostly), the Resilience those pieces offer is a good alternative to defense for getting crit immunity.

The PVP bracers are also a reasonable choice and, regardless of a the resilience, roughly equal with Umberhowl's anyway. Using them (hopefully an upgraded version come the patch next week) with a +12 defence enchant gets you a decent chunk of crit change reduction. There's also the +15 resilience enchant to a chestpiece which, while it stings having to give up +6 stats, has the potential to be worthwhile if it means a larger upgrade in another slot.

Definitely wouldn't settle for being non crit immune for raid tanking - avoiding that sort of burst damage is one of the key priorities I personally feel.

The more set gear you get, the more opportunities you have to socket gear with defense-related gems.

I forgot about sockets... so in that case I lose another 8 defense from the chest.

As you get more upgrades from SSC/TK, your armour will increase substantially higher than before, and you may loose some defense along the way, but you'll have the gems to make up for it, and aslong as you've got atleast 13.5k - 14k HP and 30% dodge unbuffed in bear form, all should be ok, just make sure you're always at/above 415 defense.

You're confused about defense rating and defense skill.
If you have 422 defense and un-equip your Clefthoof Vest and Earthwarden you'll lose 51 defense rating, not 51 defense skill. At level 70 2.4 defense rating = 1 defence skill point so you'd go to ~400.75 defense.

A Timelapse Shard with 27 Sta and 24 resilience rating (-0.615% chance to be crit) would be a minor downgrade from the Argussian Compass in terms of stamina but would go a long way to keeping you crit immune.

I'm not THAT concerned about +def at present. We are sort of forced into using +def gems anyway once you get into T4 and start looting SSC items, not only due to lack of def on items, but because I'm finding more need for +hit by then too. The Feral combat loss from Earthwarden -> Staff is more of concern in this regard.

It would be useful to have a few items with +def on, but my biggest wish is for trinkets/rings with def/resil and +hit really.

You can obtain crit-immunity using mix of items with defense and resilience ratings, bellow is the list of items I'm going to use:
Glyph of the Defender - +16 def, +17 dodge head enchant
Necklace of Juggernaut - +22 def
Aldor shoulder enchant - +10 def (or +15 from Scryers' one)
Gilded Thorium Cloak - +24 def
Marshals' Dragonhide Bracers (with Shifting Nightseye) - +13 resilience rating
A'dal's Signet of Defense - +20 def
Violet Signet of the Great Protector - +19 def
Timelapse Shard - +24 resilience

That gives you 1.84% critical chance reduction from 111 defense rating (+46 defense) and 0.94% reduction from 37 resilience, 2.78% from both.

Wow, do we really need all these Feral druid threads? We're already discussing a lot of this stuff over in this one

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