I have found that some FR gear for Azgalor is useful. and possibly archimonde since I end up nearly surrounded by fires and then feared into them, the one fight where I think my +30% cat run speed is a disadvantage, all it does is makes me get to the fire faster.

Archimonde's fire is completely unresistable, so don't worry about the FR gear.

For Archimonde be sure to have the 15% aoe resist talent, the 15% fear resist talent and your pvp-trinket on (the new one with 2 min cd). I usually catch only 3-4 fires per evening (when we are working a hole day on archimonde, still happening sometimes :/). Here is what you do to avoid them:
- be alerted when fear cd is ready and when he casts the fear, run in a direction without fire.
- only use your pvp trinket JUST before you get into the fire, so you don't waste it on no-danger fears
- when you shift out of form, you change fear-direction. You can use it to avoid fires, when feared. Of course the new direction is random too but usually it works well.
- Don't hesitate to wait a few seconds more in safety before running into melee range, especially if the place looks like inferno. dps should be no problem at all on archimonde.
- If you still manage to catch fire, barkskin, put all your HoTs on you and resume what you where doing. (t5 setbonus helps a lot, instant regrowth).
- if your (melee) group got surprised by a fire coming through Archimonde and most of them are burning, you should pop out to cast Tranquility.
- there is no need for FR gear at all.

Dieing is a no-no.

I was thinking about that 15% resist talent just for this fight, but I can't find any place to drop 3 points. What are you sacrificing to get 3 points into that talent?

deleted lol

I personally find the 2 points for Savage Fury to much for this little boost to a ability which I'm only using for getting a debuff on the mob/boss, but thats maybe just me.
The third point could come from Natural Shapeshifter or Intensity, although i like both of those talents to.

edit: Regarding Weidekuh...he has not skilled Intensity nor has he the Natural Shapeshifter talent. As i just looked it up

I don't have intensity for the mana regen... As Mangle is my "snap-aggro" attack at the start of a fight, I like Intensity because without it, I can't use Mangle as an opener.

Savage Fury does seem like a good place to find some points, and then the extra from Natural Shapeshifter/Intensity. I might give that a go tonight and see how helpful PT is on Archi.

Regardless of using it for a quick 10 rage, the 10 rage is in addition to the rage enrage generates. That's key for ensuring that at the start of any fight, you can really pour out the TPS.

Yes thats the point why i have it to. And its quite nice boost to rage generation for fights like Gruul or VR which are currently on our everyday raid schedule.
Nevertheless this is no talent discussion thread its about itemization.

aww yeah totally forgot. XD
newb me

But since i never ever had rage/aggro problems on any encounter i really don't see the necessity of it. Enrage alone gives you enough for 1 Mangle at the start anyways.
/offtopic

Lol, are you sure you play a Druid? =P Enrage only gives 10 rage. Mangle costs 15 (with talents).

Intensity is only really helpful to start an encounter, but that's a pretty important part of the encounter from an aggro generation standpoint, so I find those points to be extremely valuable.

Edit - Oh, you're probably including Furor, too. Nvm, my bad. >.<

Enrage is actually 20 Rage over 10 seconds, not even counting Furor. It's kinda funny how easy it is to forgot the stuff we use like daily, isn't it (talking for me, too)? Oo

I have Primal Tenacity myself and I had to drop Natural Shapeshifter for it and it is worth it IMO. Especially since you can make up for the increased mana costs for shifting with pots (I use the ones you get from freeing the Skyguard Prisoner because they are free and I am cheap <_<) while you cannot in any way make up for the loss of 15% Stun/Fear resistance.

I've always had either Intensity or Natural Shapeshifter, never both; on an Intensity bender at the moment 'cept my liberal use of shifting and the 2t5 bonus means I use mana pots far more than I used to. NS would fix that, but I just love that extra rage from Intensity, it's useful on a lot of fights where I offtank and hit low rage points.

I'll be an offtank on Shah most likely, and although we're alliance (one dwarf priest), I doubt I'll ever tank Archi. Why? Partly because a stance-dancing tank frees up that priest to FW himself, giving extra fear protection (not many of our healers have the trinket). Partly because of good ol' raid utility - plus we've enough decursers that I dps, but spot decursing if i get bursted is useful. Partly because of oh-shit buttons - so many of our kills lately have used SW/LS. Partly because another officer throws "druids take more damage especially with an ironshielded/dev aura'd tank" theorycraft at me, and having both our prots sit for a night would make 'em growl. But mostly the fear ward thing.

Still, we didn't manage to kill him yet, so maybe having me tank could be the key. :p

Tonight out of the 3 fights we did I used the benefits of Intensity in all of them at various points not during the start.

1. During Morogrim I tank the murloc adds. During the fight, I had to innervate the grave healer. Intensity gave me a lot more rage to swipe with as I was running down Murlocs. To be fair with how much agi I run with once I started swiping it fed itself.
2. During Al'ar I had to battle rez. Intensity gave me more rage after I went back into feral and had to chase down the adds.
3. On Void Reaver, every extra bit of rage helps when you are trying to get above shadow priests and shaman and dps warriors that have no aggro wipe capabilty (Anhking doesn't count).

I have intensity for both the additional rage it gives as well as the 15% mana regeneration while casting.
Due to us not having a huge roster I am sometimes called on to backup heal and without intensity mana can be a problem, I assume if you are in a situation where you are never asked to help on healing you could get away without it but the extra rage is still nice.

I used to have Natural Shapeshifter but after my last respec I left four points unspent to see if I really missed it, I didn't find myself short on mana so I put three of them into Primal Tenacity which I have a love hate relationship with.
I hadn't respecced since before the patch where they lowered our shifting costs so I thought I should try it out, I have also found I have more intellect now as I am picking up more set pieces.
I should note that I don't power shift, playing with 500ms average latency poses enough of a challenge

I put the fourth one into Nature's Grasp so I only have two points in Thick Hide but even at my gear level I have enough armour.

@junakit
Why fearward a priest? Fearward the shaman in the group and let him put down tremor totem right after the fear. 40 yard instant fear dispel !

'fear isn't going to be significant in tbc raiding' How i love blizzard. :p

Fair enough, each to their own.

I just like the two trinkets working together to provide us with a much needed panic button as our class lacks one in this role.

I do often switch to [Brooch of the Immortal King] on fights where theres no chance I'll die to switch in some DPS gear as you said, but on stuff like MTing Morogrim or the Karathress Shaman I much prefer the ability to become extremely hard to hit for a short time to a little extra avoidance over time.

I'll pick the trinket up eventually to replace my brooch but only after no one wants it.

I like Intensity on fights where I have to stay 2nd on threat, or where I'm off-tanking, and where I can be rage starved. I can use enrage every minute for an instant 10 rage and click off the debuff when needed. "Powershifting" in bear form can be quite lethal :-)

And 15% mana regen is really good on fights where I need to shapeshift/cast spells often.

we had a craptastic gruul kill tonight. 1st and second tank died at ~9%. I was only melee left alive, and at 18 growths was able to survive simultaneous melee hits and hurtfuls, barely. Improved Lay on hands put me over the armor cap, and I had ~21k health after commanding shout wore off. I shouldn't brag about such an ugly kill, but I thought it was cool.

Why are you running Gruul with three tanks?

@Bear itemization topic:

What do you guys think about the new Hyjal Trash cloak? An upgrade after [Phoenix-Wing Cloak] or rather an sidegrade?
I think the hitrating is quite nice for aggrosensitive fights but the lacks of defense makes me somewhat unsure.
The lack of bonus armor should be no problem with the numbers you should be running when entering T6 instances i think.
It would be really nice imho when the dodge rating would be replaced with agility though

I was thinking about this last night when I first saw the new Hyjal cloak. I don't usually have issues with aggro, so I'm not sure the new cloak would really be much benefit to me. Our Warriors, on the other hand, could probably use the extra threat gen...

I think a cloak like that is absolutely perfect for fights where we're offtanking in partial DPS gear or managing groups of adds that have to be tanked and killed quickly. Al'ar and Shade of Akama come to mind, but I can see it being really useful for Leotheras as well.