Just put 8agil/12agi gems in and a DPS enchant on it. That way you aren't wasting anything and it's a great helm for both (off)tanking and DPS. If you then want a second for pure tanking, stam gems and the CoT enchant will do well. If you want just one that you can preferably MT and OT in, a 4agi/6 stam gem along with a 12 agi meta, and then put the preferred enchant on it. Just remember that the hit/ap one is of some use while tanking, while the def/dodge one is useless when DPSing.

I'm in the same dilemna. 1st piece for DPS is shoulders (i have 4 pieces, not chest).
If I use my helm I gotta lose hp in tanking gear.
If I use the gloves I've got to lose Dextrous in DPS gear which is a fair step down in stats.

I'm very proud of my tanking gear and loathe to lose the hp from the helm to tool it for DPS. Not to mention the dodge/defense from the enchant.

But using the T4 gloves over GoDM causes me to gain 7.8ap and lose 1.08% crit which is a hefty crit loss.

I'm in two minds now as to this and think it will possibly come to me just flipping a coin.

I've opted to socket and enchant all my T4 for tanking, a quick analysis of what i do on raids shows that i'm (off)tanking far more than dpsing. I still use 2 T4 pieces (i have 3) for catform to get the set bonus, because a 4% chance at 20 energy clearly outweighs the loss of stats.

So it's 12 STA / 18 STA in the helm, 12 STA / 12 STA in the shoulders for me.

Once you're replacing Heavy Clefthoof items, you really don't want to miss out on the KoT head enchant for the defense rating, so even if you decide to socket the helm for dps/tank hybridness, i'd still seriously consider using the KoT enchant.

Has anyone else seen their rage generation go way down as their gear gets better? When I'm running Karazhan, most heroics, and any non-heroic Outlands instance, I really find myself getting way too little rage -- I have to really struggle to get enough special attacks in to stay ahead of the DPS. It's fine towards the end of Karazhan, and in places like SSC and TK.

So what do you guys do gear-wise in situations where you start getting too little rage? Next time through I'm going to try it with 2 pieces of Gladiator gear for crit immunity, rather than stacking +def, and use something else besides Moroes' trinket and other high agi/dodge items. And definitely stack on plus hit. So, basically, wear my DPS gear + 2 pc Gladiator.

Any other suggestions or thoughts?

I just use cat gear. Who cares if Hungarfen crits me? For places where a crit is actually dangerous (I dunno, Maiden for instance I guess) I use the Veteran's bracers, S2 arena mace, and another piece of resilience gear, and cat gear in all the other slots.

Of course rage generation goes down as your tank gear gets better- you're being hit less often for less.

Once you reach a reasonable level of Armor/HP (30K, 15K), start switcing to Shifting Nightseyes instead of Star of Elunes. Your crit rate will go up correspondingly. Last night, pugging kara I had 36% crit in pure tanking gear (33K armor, 18K HP, 40%dodge). Quaffing an elixir or Major Agility is a huge help here too.

This crit will:
(A) Crit more often (more threat)
(B) Generate free rage from those extra crits.

As your gear improves, Swipe becomes more useful, especially in karazhan, I will use it almost exlusively over lacerate (bleed immune+block...)

read the topic...

As for myself I use the T4 helm and shoulders for DPS, while enchanting the T5 helm and shoulders for tanking.

As it has been said, my role in a raid is mainly tanking and the stats upgrades I get from T5 are more useful this way. And I keep the T4 2P set bonus which I truly love.

415 is the magic number, assuming you have Survival of the Fittest. There are some rumors about people getting crit even with sufficient defense/resilience, but these rumors can also be explained by things like the mob having a higher crit-chance, the player accidentally sitting down, etc... So it's quite important that you stay above 415 (or replace some defense rating with resilience).

We seem to be slipping slightly on to cat dps gear so in an attempt to steer it back onto tanking gear:

What do you guys think of +haste items for tanking?
Faster attacks generate more aggro, plus the extra rage gives you the ability to use even more. But is it really an issue? Despite it looking good on paper I'm thinking its a lot less useful in practice and it might be a better idea just going after more mitigation.
I know as MT I don't have rage generation issues and when OT it usually involves being hit by something at some point if only for a short period, the rage generated from that + auto attack has always been enough for me to keep 2nd in the lists.

The main item I was thinking in regards to this was having a pair of [Swiftstrike Bracers] crafted instead of [Veteran's Leather Bracers].

If I'm already crit capped I can discount the loss of resilience. Would lose a tiny bit of crit for and gain a bit of stam, some armour, 29 ap and obviously the haste rating.

If I've done the math right the haste rating of 27 would increase my bear form auto attack speed to:
100-2.6=97.4

2.5/100 - 0.025

0.025*97.4 = 2.435 auto attack speed.

Now that seems wholly unimpressive. Assuming a 10 minute fight with no movement involved:
10x60 = 600
600/2.5 = 240 auto attacks with 0 haste.
600/2.435 = 246.4 auto attacks with 27 haste rating.

Assuming a 300 dmg white hit (honestly can't remember what I hit for, decided on that as I think its roughly right, correct me if I'm wrong).

Rage Gained from dealing damage = ((300) / (274.7) * 7.5 + (2.5* 3.5))/2

So per hit its roughly: 8.47 rage

So you'd gain about 39 extra rage over a 10 minute fight.

Thats obviously a VERY rough forumla not taking into account many factors like maul adding damage and glancing plus boss avoidance. But I think its a safe assumption that were those factored in they'd only reduce the rage generated, not increase it.

So I think I just proved my own question as I went along there, even if were having rage or threat issues, haste is a bum stat for feral tanks.

This is the dilemma I am looking at too, it isn't helped by the tier four pieces not dropping for weeks either
I expect I will go for DPS on the Malorne hat when I eventually get it and I have been looking at the badge reward one for straight tanking, its certainly worse than Malorne but it is better than other options.
Given that my guild has too many warriors I tend to DPS more so it fits that role better.

I have been looking at trying to get crit immune with as few pieces as possible for OT followed by DPS roles.
The [Veteran's Leather Bracers] and [Veteran's Dragonhide Bracers] seem like a good option for this, I think the ones aimed at druids look a bit better for this role but I was wondering if I am missing something?

I am not a huge PvP fan and haven't even been inside an arena so going for a two piece set bonus isn't very high on my options list, I do have just over 7000 honor left from the PvP I did post Naxx guild explosion until the expansion came out.

If there would be a rest chance to get crit, than there would be much more whining about Encounters being luck based across all boards. Since mobs like Morogrim, Mother Shadowres or other hard hitting boss would basically one-shot tanks with crits every now and then and you couldn't do anything about it. Therefore i call that rumor BS. There is no chance for the mob to crit you after you are def capped in general. Otherwise as mentioned before there some sitting involved or some buffs for the boss. Don't know if it works, but maybe a MC'ed cat druid giving the boss 5% crit or something like that.

As for the magic number for druids Rannasha already mentioned the 415 defense skill. I would like to add that you should not look at the defense skill in the character sheet but on the rating. Therefore 156 def rating is the more magic number Since the charakter sheet is rounding up you could end up with 154 def rating and 415 def skill displayed and still be crit by bosses.

So would 17 resilience (PVP bracers) make up for 5 defense? Assuming that I have 410 at the moment?

Yes.

39.4 resillience is 1% less chance to be crit, or 1 resillience is ~0.025% less crit.

25 defence is 1% less chance to be crit. 1 defence is 2.4 defence rating which means you need 60 defence rating to get 1% less chance to be crit, or 1 defence rating = 0.016666% less chance to be crit.

I'm pretty sure you can work out exactly how much -crit you have from that. 5 defence is 0.2% less chance to be crit, while 17 resillience is ~0.4% less chance to be crit. It's more than enough.

Now I know this seems on one hand slightly unimpressive.
But if you look at TPS angle in an unlimited rage scenario, haste could make an interesting difference. Specifically this would be 6 extra Mauls you could use.

My horrible paper napkin math says:

6 attacks * 2000 (bad average Threat per Maul) /600 = 20 TPS.

Granted, when have Bears ever had Threat issues. But it is an interesting way to look at haste. (Imagine with a few more haste pieces)

In the end, with the only really proc of Bear Form being OOC, the numerous other benefits most classes get from haste will not be present.

Have you given no consideration to the 4T4 bonus for tanking? I am having a bit of a dilemma planning an upgrade path because of it, it makes each individual item that much stronger. Current plan is to get T4 chest and T5 shoulders (4/5 and 1/5 respectively), but after that, it's pretty much just get T5 and not use until I have "enough" defensive stats to warrant losing 4T4 (or use it for dps), or pass on it until everyone else has it.

I have a specific question about the Badge of Tenacity.

First of all the context:
- guilds on my server haven't got very far yet, I think the best ones are starting The Eye at the moment and I don't think anybody has downed Vashj yet, this is important because the market (or target audience) for the Badge might be quite small, and also very few ppl will run the Shar'tuul event
- the guild I'm in has cleared Kara and we plan to start Gruul (slowly but surely...)
- I got the badge for 2k at the AH, it was the 2nd time I saw it (first time it sold for roughly 3k)

Now I would have 2 questions:
- is the badge really useful for Gruul and Mag, or is it a case of over-gearing and I should wait a couple of months more that we start maybe SSC/TK to buy it for less gold?
- is the badge still useful in SSC/TK and beyond? I read all the time about ppl saying they have hit the armor cap and that t5 will have even more armor, basically meaning this trinket will be phased out quite quickly (in relative terms of course)?

The 150 agi for 20 seconds makes it a fantastic trinket for fights where you'll be tanking for part of it and dps for the rest. It's just over 6% crit in addition to the AP, and just over 10% dodge. It doesn't share a cooldown with the Pocketwatch, so you can use the pair for a silly amount of dodge for short periods of time. It's a very versatile trinket.

I've used it through a good bit of SSC and TK, and would definitely say it's a very useful addition to your collection of trinkets.

Is the badge useful for Gruul/Mag? I'd say yes. Offtanking on Maulgar/Magtheridon, you can use the badge for a boost to your bear stats and an emergency button, then continue to use it during the rest of the fight for an AP boost. It's a great way of offsetting lower AC DPS gear if you're in hybrid gear. For Gruul, it's nice to have coupled with the Pocket Watch for emergencies (such as MT dying) as well as giving you extra crit for aggro and rage.

Beyond? Well, my guild is just starting Hyjal and I've already hit the armour cap in full tank gear; 10% dodge on demand just isn't *that* useful to me when getting spamhealed, so I often wear the spyglass instead, but it depends on the fight. The badge is still in my OT set, usually coupled with Living Root or Dawnstone Crab/Pocket Watch. Since I spend a *lot* of time offtanking and then switching to DPS, the badge ends up equipped for most fights. Well worth the gold IMO.

So many varied views on that damnable Badge of Tenacity. I'll present my perspective.

I'm in a semi-"casual" guild (no forced specs, 3 raid nights of which only 1 is typically progression, minimal performance requirements etc). We're currently 2/6 SSC and 1/4 TK with Gruul/Mag down. Our raids usually consist of 2 DPS Warriors and 2 Ferals, no prot Paladins. Sometimes we have 1 Prot Warrior. Unfortunately, Prot Warrior for us is one class/spec which has been hard to get a solid person for. The one we usually bring is strictly "passable", but not quite MT material for many reasons (not diligent with SBlock uptime, relatively low TPS, high-ish avoidance low mitigation/hp etc).

The burden of MT usually falls on myself. Therefore I like to gear up MT style, preparing for worst case scenarios. Solid Stars all around, armor as high as I can reasonably get it. Dodge won't help against chain crushings. Inspiration / Ancestral Fortitude won't be up all the time.

I plan on using Badge for a very long time. Haven't yet seen a compelling enough reason to do otherwise. I doubt anyone has hit the armor cap without Inspiration / Ancestral Fortitude / Imp Lay on Hands.

As to whether it is actually useful for you, you'll need to evaluate the type and amount of tanking you'll be doing. Main tanking any sort of hard hitting boss, Badge is really attractive. In a mostly dps/OT capacity, the value diminishes, but IMO 2k is worth it considering what gold is worth nowadays. And having a versatile selections of trinkets onhand is hardly a bad thing. And, as people have mentioned, Badge has decent hybrid use as well with the "Use" being both defensive and offensive.

Huh?

I don't mean to sound condescending but how can anyone say the Badge's value is diminished for an OT capacity. From a pure DPS viewpoint, it's a 73.5 AP equivalent trinket, certainly it's no Bloodlust, Crystalforged, or Dragonspine, but it is one of 3 trinkets that serves the dual purpose of DPS and Tanking in any remotely useful fashion (the other 2 being Alchemis's Stone, and Living Root of the Wildheart)

Further, why worry about overgearing an encounter? Threat isn't an issue for feral versus bosses. On trash, just throw on some cat gear for more hit/crit and your rage generation will increase back up, increased raid DPS with same survivability.

Diminishes relative to the value you get out of it whilst MT'ing 0o