Reposting this here as it seems the thread I started got locked. (which I hope didn't piss any Mod's off - i merely started a new thread as this one seems to be going through a lot of different topics and I didn't particularly want it getting lost).

I'm quite interested in seeing exactly what people value as a Druid tank. Personally, I look to stack armour and HP (as that's generally what druid's are good at from a stereotypical view) and then look to get at least a decent amount of dodge (30%+), as well as getting 420ish defence minimum. However with the agility->dodge ratio being so low (14agi->dodge or so) it makes stacking avoidance pretty easy, and I'm considering if this is really the way to go for some fights at least - take in to consideration that I'm practically never MTing things, but I offtank a lot (gruul, magtheridon channelers, hydross adds, etc). Dodge is quite nice but I prefer the armour/hp as a pure buffer. On mag I was tanking an add and with 35% dodge I went through a string of 9 hits without it missing me - if my dodge was higher it's possible that I would've avoided one, but with my armour it may be that I took just little enough damage to be healed without actually dying, and that the higher dodge chance wouldn't have saved me regardless.

This leaves me with a few items that I percieve to be a lot better than many of the alternatives - Verdant Gloves, Umberhowl's Collar and Supple Leather Boots are the main pieces that I use. All quest rewards, and all massive armour-stacking pieces rather than avoidance based although all do have at least a small amount of agility on them. All my items are this basic premise: Get as much armour and health as possible (clefthoof legs/chest for health and sockets for meta gem, the quest rewards for armour, T4helm/shoulders for a mix of both, and looking to get both t4legs/chest) and then worry about getting the dodge% later, mainly by getting one item that stacks it almost entirely, or through enchants.

I'm also wondering how many people value Earthwarden over alternatives - I would personally prefer the epic staff from Botanica - although it's 200 armour less, it's also ~2.5% dodge more, and another 30 or so stamina more which is around 500hp in bear. 200 armour is around 1100 in bear though, which currently is a ~1.2% mitigation difference for me while hovering around 20k armour (although pure mitigation status means it's actually 3.5% difference in incoming damage). Although I like dodge and stamina, I really like to see 70%+ damage reduction, and while raiding with Inspiration proc up i'm just over 72%, which is really nice - however this means I'm pretty close to the cap and it's possible a bit more dodge would be advantageous over stacking more armour. It seems to me as though the natural order of preference would be Earthwarden -> Feral Staff of Lashing -> Wildfury Greatstaff, but I'm still not sure about which way round the Earthwarden and Feral Staff should be.

Also, what do people think about +hit/feral combat skill and it's impact on tanking? I've used both Terestian's and the Earthwarden for tanking, and can't honestly say I've noticed any difference between the two even though the Earthwarden should be coming out on top, mainly from a parry/dodge point of view. Using the FSoL you miss out on the hit/feral combat rating. Generally threat isn't much of an issue, but i still rage when a mob starts moving to me after fairie fire, then I get a parry/miss/dodge on mangle AND maul, and then the lacerate misses straight after too.

I think this: http://elitistjerks.com/showthread.php?t=9725 is the thread for which you are looking.

Aha, thanks, must've missed that.

I've realized my +hit is impressively poor. Only around 2.4% in bear gear. I have noticed far too many occasions where my mob avoids everything for a few seconds, which is enough time for a DPS (even one waiting patiently) to get himself pancaked 10 seconds later. Problem is I honestly don't see much +hit on tanking gear. I'm using a neck right now that's 27 stamina, some Defense, and some +hit, and I'd been eyeing the neck from Maiden (like 36 stamina, defense and dodge) until I realize losing that +hit would be a big impact.

Random tangent: Were clearing to Prince, right after chess our Warrior accidentally pulled all three fleshbeasts and got promptly pancaked. I grabbed them and actually held all 3 for about 1-2 minutes before I finally died. It was pretty amusing. My screen was covered with green.

Boevis, how do you stand versus rogue gear in bearform?
What I mean with that is, do you think http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30942, can be replaced by http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28750 filled with 2 agility sockets for example?
The reason why I ask is that I am wondering if it's possible to make a set which is good for both cat and bear (off-tanking). I take it I'd get pounded to dead if I used that belt on magtheridon's adds though.

If you want a good Bear/Cat set, stack agility. Offtanks typically don't have to handle spike damage, so you can skip a bit on HP and stack armor/agility. Agility is an excellent DPS and Tanking stat, especially since crit has recently become a hot druid stat because it helps keeping up DPS cycles with Primal Fury (especially important now when druids have to keep Mangle up as well) in addition to Predatory Instinct which adds damage on crits.

Y'know, on the subject of druid gear... I'm wondering if anyone shares my thoughts on this - it's been touched on briefly by various people on quite a number of threads, but not really ever planted out in a concise description...

Whereas for most classes, effectiveness scales pretty much with item budget (barring stupid design decisions like dodge on rogue raid gear), druids seem to be able to squeeze the most utility out of the smallest item budgets possible.

Two very obvious examples would, of course, be how much armor benefits tanking vs its item budget (lolgreens!), and how much cat dps gets out of Str+Agi itemization compared to other classes.

To a lesser extent, Sta benefits druids a healthy amount more than other tanks, as does Agi->dodge. Our Agi->crit ratio is ridiculously good for both threat generation and cat dps.

What I mean to say is, if you were to give each class a template set of item budget for each slot, and gave them free reign to allocate the budget to whatever stats they want, most classes would come up with a min/maxed set of gear that are pretty comparable in effectiveness; except the druid set, which would pull out waaay, way ahead in terms of resulting numbers.

I think, to quite a large extent, this is why we don't really see much feral-itemized epics (yet, anyway, other than Zierhut/Chess neck/Windslayer Wraps) and end up making do with socketable rogue gear. Also, take T4/T5 for example... it's not that druids get much out of Int/Spi other than utility, but more that druids scale too well with item budget, hence some "wasteage" goes into those stats as a design consideration.

Now granted, T4/T5's 'nerf' in those regards were probably overdone, and are pretty crud for tanking due to the armor values. We'll see how they're adjusted in 2.1.0, I guess.

Basically, the point I'm trying to get across in the jumble of text above is more or less, from the item design crew's perspective, is that for most classes ilvl represents the power of the gear when itemized as best as possible, while for druids, the itemization *HAS* to be neutered somewhat to prevent druids from scaling way ahead of other classes.

Thoughts on this?

For me anyway, when raid buffed, the Girdle with 2 Agi gems works out to be .3% better than Manimals for overall mitigation, and has more sta. The higher AP/Crit it provides should more than make up for the loss in rage from the extra dodge.

I personally think our overpowered returns from Armor are why there isn't a +Armor Gem, Blizzard wants direct control over that aspect of druids. A +Armor gem would, for the record, be around +80 Armor.

I personally think Bear is the only form that scales too well compared to other classes. Cat cares little (but still slightly) about our Agi:odge conversion, and really needs the +AP weapons and Str scaling in order to compete with other classes. Moonkin Scaling is terrible (+int, and more +int ... oh wait +dmg is still better every time!) and Resto scaling is on par though the tree is horribly bloated still.

Bearform on the other hand, when tanking gets simply overpowered returns as you stated. Between Armor being so very cheap, our +50% Scaling on Stamina, and the piece de resistance Agility. As soon as Blizzard gave us megadodge(tm) we started stacking Agi quite a bit, which also means more Crit. Compare Primal Fury with a Warrior's Unbridled Wrath, I get on average 2 rage per second from PF a 2 point talent. Warriors get on average .5 rage per second from a 5 point talent. UW is horribly underpowered compared to their other talents, yet for DPS they don't really have any other choice for their 6-10 Fury talent points, I compare it to our Improved Mark of the Wild for resto - a terrible talent that you take anyway from lack of options.

That depends if it'd scale with bear form buff. See: Enchants

Just finished off heroic Botanica. Very very painful...

But it was so worth it! Feral staff of lashing didn't drop, but we got a +6 stam +10 AP gem that's almost as good!oneone eleven!!1





No-one wanted the gem.




But atleast I know it's doable now.

16K life seems awfully low to me for doing prince. Ironically, the second I broke 17.3.k life, I've never died to spikes unless the healers have to move. He wasn't treating our well gear warrior any better.