Krag

If you are short being uncrittable an [Elixir of Ironskin] is nice and cheap to make and goes well with an agility pot.

 

• Astrylian

Hey all. I just posted Beta 3 of Rawr, my program for bear theorycrafting, as first mentioned a couple pages back. Give it a try if you would, and leave some feedback.

WoW Forums -> >>> Rawr (Beta 3) Now Available (UPDATED)

 

Tasonir

I played around with rawr 3 a bit today. Looks nice, only some minor issues. A feature that would be nice is to be able to remove a gem from a socket. I added a third gem to the necklace of the deep and the only way I could get rid of it was to delete the necklace and import it again. Also, the impossibly socketed item still showed up on the graph after being deleted from the items list. As a result, I'd really like a necklace of the deep with 3 sockets now.

One thing that interested me though was that it reports that the necklace of the deep, socketed with +4agility/+6stamina gems, is the best necklace in the game. It beats out the barbed choker and the juggernaut necklaces (although juggernaut is only behind by a hair: 3630 vs 3605*).

Do players agree with this? Should we all be wearing blue necklaces? And if so, are the 4/6 gems ideal for general use? One caveat would be to not lose uncritable status, of course, but let's say you can deal with the defense loss (such as having too many stupid arena pieces...grrr....)

*exact item values are based on your character and buffs...This is raid buffed with my gear, roughly T4 with some t5 equivalents.

 

• Astrylian

Ahh... Very good point. Heh. I'll add that for beta 3a.

EDIT: Regarding it showing back up after you deleted it... If you have something equipped and delete it, it'll add it back in. Unequip it first. If that's not what was happening, there must be some bug going on, please let me know. I guess I should put some sort of error dialog up when you delete an equipped item, or it should unequip it or something.

Well, potentially... Yes. Crittable vs. Uncrittable doesn't really have a quantifiable 'value' to it; you just really want to be uncrittable. So the ratings just assume that you are. It's up to you to find the best set of gear, while maintaining uncrittability. So, if you're uncrittable without the def on the juggernaut or barbed choker... Then yes, Necklace of the Deep is better (with either delicates, or shiftings, depending on how much agi you already have).

 

Tasonir

I'm wearing the barbed choker of discipline while playing around with the neck. When I reloaded the program today, the 3-gemmed neck showed up on the item list again, and the graph. After deleting it, it stops showing up on the item list. Also, which I didn't notice yesterday, it will not show up on the graph. But when you load the item editor again, it will recreate itself, and then regraph itself unless you delete it before leaving the item editor. Completely exiting the program and bringing it back up inserts the neck back into the item list also.

I am currently running with a lot of resilience I wish I didn't have, but even I don't think I'd have enough to go completely defenseless on my neck. I would, if I had a better cloak (still using thorium weave), but I can't replace my neck until I've replaced my cloak.

Also, while I don't think you should assign any weight to the other stats, it would be nice to see what the other stats the item has. +strength, +hit may not be mitigation stats, but they may break ties in some cases, or make the difference between 12 stamina vs 4/6 gems in the necklace.

 

• Astrylian

Huh... Odd... Could you do me a favor and e-mail me your itemcache.xml? cnervig at hotmail dot com

 

Farstrider

As far as tanking trash, what you have to remember is that you generally (always?) are only tankign 72s. We obviously have 3% of crit immunity already from SotF, so we can shirk a little on the crit immunity for tanking trash. Personally I'm a big fan of the school of thought that says, wear as much dps gear as possible, and swap in trinkets/rings/cloaks/necks if necessary. I'm almost always tanking using [Mithril Chain of Heroism] and a dps ring now, since I don't value armour much above 26k.

It depends on your dps really, but given how hard a lot of my guys dps, and how little head start they give you, I'd never want to run with less than about 1800 AP in bear form, these days.

John O'Groats to Lands End 2009 for Leukaemia Research

 

dukes

It also depends on what group you're in. I generally end up in the melee DPS group, even when tanking, and because we're too lazy to switch it on trash it means I can just use my tanking gear and not worry (unless the paladins are slacking on salv, but that's a given).

 

Rurik

I never switch out the tanking neck from morogrim (unless I'm on pure DPS duty). The 18 hit rating makes it quite valuable for when I tank the first trash mob then go DPS.

Atleast the way I've seen it. Also some hit rating is very nice for the spike aggro needed when you tank the first mob. I perhaps value hit too high (looking at the values in the DPS thread), but especially when tanking mobs that need high threat (first trash mob, Leo, VR), I prefer stacking hit over anything else.

Edit: That came out wrong. I prefer stacking hit over any other 'offensive ability' is what I meant.

 

Farstrider

Yeah I'd agree, but I've never killed Morogrim, so I don't have access to that neck sadly. Hit rating is nice for trash when the guys just don't really watch Omen. For tanking bosses, sod it, frankly, the dps can learn to watch the damn meters.

John O'Groats to Lands End 2009 for Leukaemia Research

 

dogy

I though I had all the math figured out on what to wear for "DPS tanking" then a [Wildfury Greatstaff] dropped. I am assuming the additional FAP makes up for the loss of the FCR in terms of what you would use to DPS tank.

What would you use?

 

Rurik

I'd use the Wildfury if you need the stam and EW if you need the def to reach def cap. From some testing on morogrim (switching back and forth between EW and Wildfury it results in approx the same TPS for me).
Granted, Morogrim is a lvl 73, so I'd prolly just use Wildfury for lower lvl mobs you want high threat on.

Some theorycrafters input would be nice tho.

 

seminarca

Favoring Wildfury over Earthwarden is probably one of the harder things I've had to reconcile, and not just for threat. Consider that fewer boss parry/threshes also reduce effective incoming damage. Of course, it's hard to quantify such gains.

For threat related situations, I like use Earthwarden on Hydross adds where snap aggro through lesser miss/dodge/parry is probably better for threat than a bit more FAP (although, Wildfury has gobs of Sta and Dodge which are also useful, but then Earthwarden has defense for crit immunity), and for my Magtheridon channeler so he doesn't get away at the start. Weapons are switchable in combat, so you've got a lot of flexibility in that regard, e.g. switch to your DPS weapon once Hydross adds are down and then switch back on the transition, switch to your mitigation weapon once Mag breaks free etc.

 

Allev

I've got a question which may be a little strange, but I believe this is the best place for it.

How long will these item comparisons matter?

Druids which wish to remain main-tank-capable are going to want the best of every slot. But I'm the 4th tank in most raids (2 prot warriors, 1 prot pally). I'm sitting comfortably above 30k/18k/40% or so in mostly tier 4. depending on the fight (typically w/o shout or imp). Does my max-mitigation gear need to improve to reasonably serve as the 4th tank on most fights?

My view is that Tier 5 isn't worth upgrading wholesale until you can get at least 3 pieces to break Tier 4's 4pc bonus. I don't know if I'll need those incremental upgrades. So-- when OTing, is there still stress on stam rating, or is it ideal in my position to push towards DPS enchants and gems in lieu of having "good enough" tanking gear?

 

seminarca

Item comparisons will always matter as long there is a choice in what you can do in any particular slot, whether it's choosing between 2 items, or deciding what gems to put in it, whether to ignore the socket bonus, etc.

Spreadsheets and maths can only give a certain level of valuable input, much of the rest is situational and preferential. There are constant tradeoffs you need to make, sacrificing mitigation for avoidance, or avoidance for stamina. Ideally, one needs to evaluate one's "main" role in their raid (MT, 2nd MT but some DPS, mostly dps but some OT, only DPS) and gear accordingly.

You've said you are the 4th tank on most raids. Your gear choices should reflect that. Agility is a great stat for that, as it nets you a good amount of dodge and crit (avoidance and threat for Bear) whilst simultaneously allowing you switch to cat once your channeler is dead (for example) and still put that agility to good use (AP and crit for cat).

2T4 is ridiculously good for DPS, and 4T4 isn't worth breaking for tanking until you get ~3T5 where the sheer stats will start to outweigh the 4T4 bonus. But in your role, you're still better off gemming pure agility, using CE enchant over KoT, DPS shoulder enchant over the tanking one, and then making up crit immunity in other ways (KoT exalted trinket, PvP bracers/belt etc, there are many options) if and when needed. Stamina is probably not good value in your role as you will get "enough" from raid buffs.

Again, a lot of these decisions are highly situational based on exactly what you do in your raids.

 

Fredi

my original post now irrelevant, please ignore.

 

Allev

This is essentially the root of my question. Does the 4th tank get put in situations where they need MT-like mitigation in Hyjal and beyond (Like Alar, VR, and the shaman on Karathress do now)? You make some statement about gear which have been made already in this thread, but what wasn't here was-- is every fight going to be a compromise? Note that we generally do use our warriors and pallies to tank in any situations we wouldn't gain an advantage using a feral.

-edit: removed a redundancy.

 

dukes

There is no fight in Hyjal or BT which requires more than 3 tanks (except council, but in that case the 4th tank is a mage). In fact, Karathress is the only fight I can think of which requires more than 3 tanks, if you ignore caster tanks (maulgar/leo/council/illidan). A fourth tank is useful for trash, but will never be in an MT or OT role on a boss, iirc.

 

Allev

Thanks Dukes, that's exactly the answer I was looking for.

 

Rurik

Do guilds usually run with more then 2 prots? We never use more then 2 prot warriors ever, making the bear that 3rd tank rather then the 4th

 

Malazaar

Unless you are consistently swapping around players in your raid, using a feral druid as third or maybe even another as second tank is very useful. While some fights actually require 3 Tanks, there are others which only need one or two. While a third protection warrior will be almost useless there, a feral druid can still output a lot of dps.

 

Rurik

Aye, that's our reasoning pretty much. We don't swap around alot of players mid raids so I just switch to the roll the fight requires, be it dps or tank (or even heal).

 

• Astrylian

Posted a very detailed description of Rawr's rating system at WoW Forums -> Theorycrafting: Method for Rating Bear Gear

 

Allev

We run with 2 prot warriors and a prot pally because we have several excellent prot warriors who don't want to DPS and an excellent prot pally who doesn't want to heal. It has worked for us thus far.

 

Benita

Hydross, Alar and Kael are the fights we also use a 4th tank on. On Hyjal trash it is very useful to bring a 4th tank and as thats more of a pain than all but the Archimonde bossfight in there, not having it available is doable but not desirable in my opinion.

I guess you can do Hydross with only one add tank or at this point let the free maintank grab the first add. Alar p2 adds can be tanked by a dps warrior aswell. We learned Kael with 4 tanks to get more control over the fight, i guess that aswell can be done with some relearning and reworking of the tactic with 3 tanks.

The same you could say about Karathress aswell tho. I tanked the healer already as a moonkin and im guessing a dps warrior in tanking gear has no problems after you entered BT even if he only took leftover items.

However i see a problem here because you will want to bring the 4th real tank for learning those encounters, but then in BT you dont have much use for him anymore. The best solution would be a good dps warrior/druid who doesnt mind respeccing alot while learning the encounters.

3 tanks on 25 people was a good change for BT, but messes a bit with guild setups. I hope they keep it for the next 25 man instance.