Timelapse Shard and the epic craftable resilience cape are awesome tools to have in your arsenal, along with the Veteran Bracers and Belts. Enchant/gem everything else as if you were over the cap and swap in those pieces as needed. It saves a lot of headaches and quite a bit of gold in the long run.

For example, you don't want to have to swap between 12def and 12sta on your bracers multiple times when you collect gear in other slots, bumping your immunity levels up and down. Those four slots also give enough options that you can see which is the smallest tradeoff for other stats.

Best thing is, all four aren't drops, so you don't have to grind X instances over and over for them and rely on the luck of the draw.

If I'm not mistaken, there's also a blue resilience neck drop from Heroic Durnholde (Vitality Locket?) and the 'pvp' ring off Hydross (armor/res/spell damage) which could help, even though there's quite a lot of stat wasteage.

The bracer is a good spot to choose the defense enchant over the stamina one as both are +12.
Everywhere else you would be trading 8 defense for 12 stamina.

While I agree that having those items is very valuable, I have to question why you would feel the need to get so far into min-maxing your tanking that you'd consider switching bracer enchants multiple times, the difference between 12 sta and 12 resil isn't going to make a difference often enough on that one item.

Hey fellow theorycrafters. I'm new to posting here, but have been reading for a while. Much of the information I've read here has helped me to creating Rawr. Rawr is a little program for Bears that I've been working on, and I think you all might be quite interested in it.

Here's my thread about it on the official WoW druid forums: Rawr

Would really appreciate anyone checking it out, and posting some feedback on how it works for them. Thanks!

Very neat tool.

Some things i noticed:

If i add a new gem, it asks for the ItemID, but it actually doesnt load the gem and its stats.

Some Hyjal/BT items are missing of the default list.

Armor cap and -crit cap is not checked, which would make a recalculation of the points on the right side really interesting.

Hello,

Regarding tanking the illidan´s fire elementals which are pretty optimal for bear tanking.
Crit immune with 270 unbuffed fire resist is what I have achieved with craftable LW
fr(boots,legs,belt) and heroic badge (chest,gloves) rewards + green lvl 70 "of fire resistance"
bracers 30sta/21fr.

As this phase represents hardest part of the encounter I want my gear to be maxed.
Question is how much HP and fire res did u have, and how much resilience u used to get crit immune or did u do it via defence or a mix of both?

And what is the best feral staff to use ? PoF or Wildfury or EW? got 0 hit in FrR gear so i thought
EW would give the best threat and some anti crit. Armor doesnt play any role here.


br. Jupe

I'm using the Pillar for tanking fire elementals, just because the stamina is really nice, but if you're missing defence by a significant amount the earthwarden isn't bad, although I'd probably go for the S2 mace (33 resillience > 27 def by far). Using a flask with raid buffs (no imp or comm shout, just kings/stam/motw/fire res aura) I'm crit immune, fire res capped, and have 21k health. The setup I'm using also lets me keep 2t6, which is nice for threat generation (as the fire res pieces are pretty awful for keeping offensive stats).

In terms of fire res I have the heroic chest (60), heroic gloves (40), crafted boots (40) legs (30) and boots (30) with the neck from SMV chain ([Amulet of the Torn-Heart]) and ring from the magtheridon/TK attunement ([Phoenix-Fire Band]), [Wyrmcultist's Cloak] (with 15 enchant). That's 293 (or 363 with aura) which means that I needed 2 more to get the cap, so I went for a +3 resist to all gem. I have 8 stam on gloves, 15 resil on chest, 40 stam/12 agi on legs, 12 stam on boots, 15 stam gems in all slots on the crafted FR other than one (for the +3 resist gem).

For crit immunity I have the timelapse shard (27 resil), scarab of displacement (42 def), PvP bracers (generals, not veterans - 13 resil), 15 resil on chest, and band of the abyssal lord (27 def). Total of 55 resillience (~1.35% crit reduc) and 67 def rating (~30 def, 1.2% crit reduc). Then sticking a flask on top (~0.1% crit reduc) caps me out.

Hi fellow druids. This isn't a 'bear tank item comparison' at all, but i think it fits here.

I recently remembered that someone (i think it was Boevis) was collecting data about the maximum possible avoidance for feral druids a while ago. He used mostly green "of agility" items for his calculation along with every possible agility/world-buff available which lead to more than 100% dodge with an activated Moroe's Pocketwatch. But the change to the consumeable system made many of these buffs unattainable and i don't think anyone really used this megadodge-method while tanking a raid boss (you don't have your pocket watch up all the time anyway).
I had the idea to give the theory about it another try and calculated the maximum possible avoidance using a mix of t6-set/bt/kara/blue items. I compared them to each other rating agility highest, followed by dodge rating and defense rating.
This is the compiled list of items i got, using a 10-agi gem in each socket:

Headpiece : [Thunderheart Cover] 61 AGI, 49 STAM, 17 DODGE, 16 DEF
Neck : [Necklace of the Deep] 41 AGI, 20 STAM
Shoulder : [Thunderheart Pauldrons] 56 AGI, 34 STAM, 10 DODGE, 15 DEF (yeah i'm Scryer)
Back : [Phoenix-Wing Cloak] 37 STAM, 27 DODGE, 22 DEF
Chest : [Shadowprowler's Chestguard] 76 AGI, 18 STAM
Wrists : [Insidious Bands] 38 AGI, 28 STAM, 12 DEF
Weapon : [Halaani Hammer] ...of Agility 91 AGI
Hands : [Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation] 70 AGI, 22 STAM
Waist : [Belt of Deep Shadow] 52 AGI, 14 STAM
Legs : [Skulker's Greaves] 74 AGI, 68 STAM
Feet : [Shadowmaster's Boots] 62 AGI, 38 STAM
Ring1 : [Band of Eternity] 33 AGI, 47 STAM (+4)
Ring2 : [Delicate Eternium Ring] 29 AGI, 19 STAM, 16 DODGE (+4)
Trinket 1 : [Shadowmoon Insignia] 32 DODGE, 36 DEF
Trinket 2 : [Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch] 38 DODGE

This Set grants a total of 695 AGI, 140 DODGE, 101 DEF. There are propably better greens(or blues) for avoidance, if you find a better alternative, let me know.

We can add 79 AGI for a naked lvl 70 Nightelf (not sure about that, can't log in right now), 88 AGI from improved Grace of Air, 19 AGI from improved MotW, 35 AGI from Battle-Elixir, 20 AGI from Food for a total of 936 AGI.
With BoK and SotF we get 1060 Agility in our Char Screen. 1060 Agilty / 14.73 = 71.96% chance to dodge. 140 dodge rating / 18.9 = another 7.41%. 101 defense rating / 2.37 * 0,04 grant another 1.70% dodge. All summed up we have an 81.07% chance to dodge. Now let's add Nightelf-Racial and Feral Swiftness for another 5% totalling 86.07% dodge.

On to the miss chance:
Base = 5%
Scorpid Sting = 5%
Insect Swarm = 2% (yeah we got a doomkin!)
miss from defense = 1,7%
Total = 13,7% chance to be missed!

If we add dodge & miss we get a total avoidance of 99,77%... whoohoo! Hey, let's convince a friendly resto druid to wear 2 pieces of moonglade for another 2% dodge.

Now we are melee-immune to lvl 70 mobs. What's the total avoidance we would need to not get hit by a lvl 73 boss? I know there is a thread discussing this, but i can't find it anymore.

And can anyone tell me how to get those fancy mouse-over itemlinks for wowhead? Thanks.

Use a tag like this:

{item}Earthwarden{/item}

Just use [ instead of { so it will actually show up.

and you get this:
[Earthwarden]

Thanks. Looks much better.

Thanks!

Yeah... Alla doesn't offer up the stats of gems. The ID you give for a new gem really doesn't matter, apart from making sure its unique. I'm going to be making this more user friendly (though you'll still have to type in stats for gems), in the next beta, where I'm going to be merging the item and gem editors.

You can add them yourself by typing in just the ID of the items. Also, I'm going to be adding some functionality in the next beta to add items that the armory things are potential upgrades for you.

While the values over the cap are displayed on the left, they *are* checked for the further calculations on the left, and for the graph on the right. You can see that by going over the cap, and you'll find that items with high dodge, low armor, end up higher on the list on the right. For example, go way over the cap (use scroll of protection and malorne bonus), then look at gloves. Dexterous Manipulation will be way high.

Does a scroll of agility stack with an elixir of agility?

Absolutely.

Scrolls of Agi, Prot, and Str stack with *everything*.

Green Rings/Neck with "Of Eluding" are superior to what you have listed, but at the cost of a lot of Sta. They come with 21 Agi/21 Dodge

I'm pretty sure that all the listed items for neck/rings are better than 21 agi/21 dodge, especially when you factor in kings (unless it's an item which already has agility on it?)

A ring with 21 agi/dodge would indeed be superior to the band of eternity, dodge-wise. It's 8 agi vs 21 rating. That way you will break the 100% as a nightelf
Along with 20 Agility from a Scroll we are at ~102% total avoidance.
But then again, i have no idea what values you need against lvl 73 mobs.

I don't see any problems with their gear at all. If you are looking at their melee AP in the Armory, keep in mind when they go Bear form that number will go up a bit. Both of them should be generating plenty of aggro with the gear they are in. You certainly don't need a ton of AP in tanking gear, but if they are really doing minimal tanking, have them switch in some of their cat gear at the expense of mitigation so they can do some quick/easy tanking duty then go cat and do decent DPS.

General advice as armory takes an age to load at work:

Tier pieces are good.
Earthwarden is good (and if not, S1 and 2 maces are good too, esp S2).
PvP Bracers/Belt
Zierhuts boots, or the crafted SSC drops are good.
Armour rings are generally better than anything else for their slots, same with some form of armour cloak (thoriumweave/gilded) and Necklace of the Juggernaut is good, or failing that Necklace of the Deep.
Any form of trinket, either resillience or defence if you need it for crit immunity (timelapse shard, scarab of displacement, plenty of other blue +def trinkets and even the PvP trinket is good for some fights).

That should cover just about everything. Gem wise, going with hybrid gems (agi/stam or similar) is probably the best thing to do, as it will boost HP along with dodge, crit and a bit of AP for if they switch mid-fight. Enchant wise, +all stats (bracer/chest), +15 agi on gloves, +12 agi on boots, and helm/shoulder enchants to suit (crit cap related).

I wouldn't worry too much about their AP really. If you consider they gain about 200 from form itself, 600+ from a half-decent feral weapon, 300+ from BS, 150+ from a str totem, and then kings and possibly might on top of that they won't be doing badly, whatever they start with.

If they're going to be offtanks, they really want to be going for the above mix of gear, as it will serve them a lot better than using heavy clefthoof/etc pieces.

Scymoril's got enchants wrong... Head needs the KoT enchant, back needs 12agi, bracers needs 4stats, gloves needs 15agi. Those should be easy to fix. Otherwise, his gear is fine. One thing he could work on is getting the belt from Heroic Ramparts

Silvara needs to get exalted with CE asap, for earthwarden. He's got a dps enchant on his head, not a tanking enchant, get the KoT one. Shoulders have no enchant, get the aldor/scryer one. Back should have 12agi, chest should have 6stats, bracers should have 4stats, gloves should have 15agi, he could get the Heroic Ramparts belt as well, and his boots need 12sta or 12agi.

Looking over their armories right now.

Regarding Scymoril, tell him/her to get rid of that +120armor enchant to cloak. Enchants do not get the bear form armor modifier. Swap 120armor to 12agility. He/she seems rather emphatic on threat generation (at least I get that impression from +15str gloves and +24AP bracers), when the truth is the gear in general looks fine, there's no reason for him not to grab +15agi to gloves and either +12stam to bracers, or +12 defense (Personally, I would tell him/her to stop being lazy and run his ass over to CoT and buy the helm enchant -- he's revered, yet, no helm chant. Get +12defense on bracers, and drop all that +defense gem crap he's wearing in favor of either more hp or avoidance)

Regarding Silvarana, avoidance is too low. He/she's got 24% avoidance in bear. No cloak enchant, no weapon enchant (I can understand the weapon, it's a Braxxis, so, should be working towards an [Earthwarden], but still, it's not a very expensive enchant, and it's a lot of avoidance. Also, 8stam to chest is far from optimal, +6 all stats will net him/her much better returns. Overall, this person just seems to be short budgeted (armor patches over enchants), maybe come together as a guild and get this guy the right enchants, because right now they're being the difference between being at a comfortable avoidance level, and a mana-hog.

102.4% to fill the hittable against a lvl 73.

Thanks mate, so you would effectively be unhitable for all raid bosses out there with a druid wearing 2/5 moonglade keeping rejuv on you. Your crit rate would also be insane, so TPS shouldn't be an issue.
I'm really keen on trying this out, but getting the gear will take a while though.