Malazaar

I'd definately go with my Idol of Brutality though Idol of the Raven Goddess may be better in some situations, depending on your group.

 

Boevis

Major Fortitude (250 HP and 10 HP5) and Ironskin (30 Resilience) are my favorites for MT and OT respectively, I dislike Major Defense (550 armor) simply because of the mats to make it. However, Earthen Elixir certainly has it's uses for OT (Tidewalker, Hydross) where Multiple mobs and magic damage/AoE are your primary concern.

 

Emily

I have a druid alt, and am wondering what the best order to buy PvP honor rewards would be. I don't raid on the alt, and don't have an arena team. Which honor rewards represent the best use of my Honor as tanking upgrades over quest/5man/heroic gear?

 

• sordee

Wrist and then Belt, and then maybe throw in PVP Trinket. Epic boots isn't really needed as you can use Clefthoof Boots in that slot.

 

Malazaar

Also, 2 pc Arena/ Honor Reward is a very cheap and easy way to get yourself crit immune.

 

Daenerys

I was wondering about that trinket. I'm about to embark on my epic flight form quest (thank GOD I am finally done with Shadow Labs rep-farming runs!) and I saw this being a reward along the way. Maybe this is the wrong thread, and I appologize if it is, but how does this Idol stack up compared to others in a DPS situation (assuming a group setup with all physical DPSers)?

Back to tanking...so the Idol of Brutality is worth farming up? I did one run yesterday and it was a huge pain in the rear getting around all the stealth-immune mobs. =( Anyone have any tips?

 

dukes

Everbloom idol: If you use a shred every 5 seconds (about right with energy returns from 2pct4/OoC) then you end up with ~100 extra damage per shred (taking ~40% crit, 20% armour mitigation, 13% crit bonus). This works out as 20 dps (100/5). It's possible it's as high as ~25dps contribution in a 1 shred per 4 second model.

Raven lord: If you consider 0.4% crit (9 crit rating) to be 0.4% extra damage on all members of your party (more or less depending on class), you give them ~4dps each (@1000dps) using the Idol of the Raven Lord. If you're doing a lot more than this in your DPS group, scale it up accordingly.

Once you get to BT/Hyjal level, the raven lord is probably better overall really.

Tanking wise I'll always use the Raven Lord. There will always be 1-2 other people who gain from it (normally 3-4 as I'm generally in the melee dps or hunter group) unless you're in a pure caster group, which is far from optimal. Crit returns more damage and rage back, which is very handy, as well as the group wide return.

 

• Neshalin

If you weren't doing so already, go through the main entrance, not the side. The magistrate would run away to alert the baron and dodging all the gargoyle patrols is a pain. The level difference should mostly be enough to pass the sentry mobs. Their group composition is random, so sometimes you might get lucky with the sentries in the middle, and other times they're right at the edge where you want to pass. Generally you should just keep moving. The sentries will look in your direction, but not detect you immediately. If all else fails you could always kill them, but they leave a nasty disease dot with a long duration.

Took me over a dozen tries to get the idol, by the way. Hopefully you're luckier.

 

Unraveller

This can't be better than Idol of the Wild. Idol is what, 51 damage on Mangle? On our last WWS parse, my mangle did 30% of my damage (while tanking). Mangle does an average damage of 500. Factoring in armor reduction mangle is increased by 40, then I have a 9% increase in mangle damage.

This is a straight .09*.30 = 2.7% increase in threat and damage. It's Vastly superior to Raven goddess for tanking. Even if you give the crit bonus party wide, it wouldn't make up for the 27 TPS you are losing.

http://wow.tachyonsix.com.nyud.net:8...69069zFVFo.png

 

dukes

You seem to be ignoring the fact that the Idol of the Wild is only useful if you're having threat issues.

Buffing the party for more RDPS is much better than increasing your TPS by 27 when the top DPSer isn't ripping off you in the first place.

You should never be having serious threat issues as a druid unless it's either at the very start of the fight and you've had a slightly unluck avoidance streak, or your DPS'ers don't have salv/other threat reduction talents.

 

Unraveller

Threat generation should be a concern of every tank.

But, even if you ignore the threat generation (a mistake), you're neglecting that the 3% more damage from mangle Counts as DPS for your party!

Rogue 1 1000DPS
Rogue 2 1000DPS
YOU 400DPS

Under this assumption, you increase the parties DPS by 9.6DPS. (1000*.004 + 1000*.004 + 400 *.004)

If you used Idol of the wild, your 400DPS would increase by 3%, or 12DPS.

You lose in this case, not even including the lost threat possibility. You need a 4th PURE dps class before you break even. And a 5th DPS in a Tanks party before you benefit...

http://wow.tachyonsix.com.nyud.net:8...69069zFVFo.png

 

Daenerys

I tried the front entrance and didn't get far; there we just too many stealth-immune mobs packed too closely together. Using the side entrance, the Magistrate did indeed run away, but going by way of the cryptfiend boss I didn't have nearly as many stealth-immunes to get past. Course then I got lazy on the way back out and got seen, but either way it was a rather large hassle for an item I wasn't convinced at the time was worth getting.

 

dukes

Average DPS in our melee DPS party is ~1200. If I'm in the melee DPS party (very likely) it ends up as being ~5dps per person, or 20 dps (ignoring my own benefit). I'm ignoring the threat issue because it isn't a concern over a long fight, ESPECIALLY if i'm in the melee group.

If I'm in the tanking group, which does happen occaisionally, then that extra generation for the other tank(s) in the group helps too.

Of course, this is actually a complete non-issue in my own case as I seem to have vendored the Idol of the Wild a long time ago, so I don't have any alternative.

 

Daenerys

You can get the item restored pretty easily, btw. =) Just submit a ticket...if the first GM gives you a hard time, just re-submit. They can do it, but sometimes GMs are lazy and will say they can't because they don't want to.

Can anyone point me towards a good resource for Druid macros? I'm looking for anything that can help me tanking. I'd love to be more specific, but I've found with macros that I rarely know what I'm looking for until I've found it and go "wow, you can do that with a macro?!?!". =P

Along the same vein, is there a macro command that will cancel a feral form without being specific as to which form? Such as "/cancel fom" that would take you out of bear or cat or whatever form you're in regardless.

Hopefully this isn't too off-topic, but I figure this thread is about more than simple gear choices, as thre is some discussion of tanking methods as well. =)

 

dukes

I think /cancelstance will work for removing forms.

I don't really want to use my item recovery on an item that is of very specific use and gives a very, very marginal upgrade.

/use 13 and /use 14 are the only macro's I have (they are the trinket slots - saves me having 5 trinkets on my bars and moving them into hotkey slots).

 

Malazaar

If your counting the Idol of the Raven Goddess as 20 dps, i think Idol of Brutality is still better when tanking.

When i have any serious mob hitting me, i can maul every autoattack, plus (depending on situation) i do a swipe about every 3-6 seconds (lets assume 4.5s).

That would be 50/2.5 + 10/4.5 = 22.2 dps unmitigated before crit. (easily 25 dps).

And that is not counting the possibility of hitting several mobs with swipe.

 

◊ Ulfgar

You were just talking about threat and how one should always be concerned about it, and now you're using swipe over lacerate? In a single target situation?

 

• sadris

Swipe is more TPS than lacerate, and it can't be fully blocked.

 

Meddler

That's going to depend on your AP, Crit and the AC of the mob in question - last calculations I saw had the break even point (assuming Idol of Brutality) around 1900 AP or so for a mob with average armour and all the usual debuffs. As you say Swipe also can't be fully blocked so the true break even point's going to be slightly lower but for a lot of druids lacerate's still going to be the superior agro holding tool assuming they're in full mitigation gear/not in a group getting a large number of AP buffs.

Certainly true though that it's not wise to just write off Swipe even as a single target TPS tool though as opposed to lacerate, just need to ensure certain assumptions are being met when using it.

 

Boevis

Unraveller =/=Malazaar

If I'm in melee group I use Raven Goddess for party buff. If I'm in tank group or in threat sensitive situations, I use Brutality. Wild is for PvP/solo farming. When discussing personal damage/threat, there's no immediate comparison to Brutality except *maybe* White Stag.

 

Malazaar

Concerning Lacerate and Swipe - i'm almost always over the break even point so i only use lacerate to build up 5 stacks and just refresh every 10-12 seconds. In between i use mangle and the rest of my global cooldowns - provided i have enough rage - goes to swipe.

There are a lot of situations where i don't ever use swipe (max tanking gear, sheeps in my vincinity) and there are a lot of situations where swipe is just sick (always hitting 3 targets).

However, even not using swipe at all, brutality is still netting you 20 dps just from maul spam.

 

◊ Ulfgar

My apologies. Don't know how I managed that.

Re Idol choice - this all feels fairly marginal, but it's not quite as simple as taking increase in crit rate and multiplying by average DPS because of the manner in which crit feeds certain second order effects for other melee DPS (Unleashed Rage, Flurry etc). I realise we're talking about tenths of a percent of DPS though.

 

dukes

The problem comes when you're in a situation where you aren't using maul (mostly when you're building agro on a mob you aren't hitting and so the only things you can really afford to do are mangle on cooldown and then lacerate/swipe in between). In that situation, crit is even more important due to rage back and more rage from white hits.

Although Lacerate can be blocked, it also costs 2 less rage (which is important in a secondary-tank situation, and you won't be getting blocks in that situation). I'm not sure where the boundary is, but I normally use lacerate regardless of what group I'm in.

Has anyone checked KTM/Omen to see if they include the 2t6 bonus for mangle btw?

Edit: As far as I can see, neither includes it. KLH spells out all set bonuses and doesn't include it, whereas omen has a more generic string to check for if there's a bonus from sets, but I can't tell if it works or not.

 

TheOnly

The threat bonus from Idol of the Wild is even bigger than that.

Mangle has a threat multiplier on it. I'm not sure what it is anymore, since they have changed the damage (but not threat) of mangle a few times in recent patches. Also, natural weapons and other talents increase the bonus, so it ends up ~ 60 damage * 1.45 threat per mangle extra, not counting crits. The bonus to Maul is 50 * natural weapons and other modifiers and reduced