That was, perhaps, a poor abbreviation on my part, the AP there was Armor Pen, not attack power.

Now as for the bracer enchant, even with both the my helm and shoulders enchanted for defense, and jewelry with defense on it, along with a shadowmoon insignia, I'm still not defense capped unless I put defense on my bracers or gem for defense (and defense to bracers is far better in terms of budget then).

Honestly, I see no point of removing a superior piece of gear to gain the 4T6 set bonus, unless you are tanking several mobs at once and swipe threat actually matters.

If lacerate outperforms swipe without 4T6, and swipe barely outperforms lacerate with 4T6, at the cost of a worse piece of gear, why bother? Even when you reach the point where swipe puts out more than the base threat of lacerate (which is 285 or 290 I believe), there's still the bleed damage. Despite the massive threat reduction on the bleed damage, it is still a decent amount of threat, and I don't think swipe currently reaches the point where it is more efficient to simply spam swipe entirely and ignore at least keeping lacerate up (all theoretical of course). Now we're talking about really minor differences in tps here anyway. So looking at it like that, unless you're actually using swipe to tank multiple mobs, or the extra tiny bit of damage matters that much, I can't see a reason to swap out a piece to get 4T6 swipes, instead of just using lacerate.

Course swipe does benefit from all that armor pen, while lacerate doesn't really. ><

It's an identical ilvl to the Stanchion of Primal Instinct.

I agree, 2pc T4 is useless for tanking. I actually tank 5 man regular/heroics in full dps gear, with a good healer I haven't had any issues with rage and TPS is always high in dps gear along high high amount of dodge.

Doesn't the stat allocation work so that the more of 1 stat you put on an item, the more item budget it uses? So all of the stam you added to your weapon might cost more than you're thinking.

http://files.wowace.com/ItemValue/ItemValue.zip
That addon does essentially just that. And you can create different "sets" which are just different formulas for stat weighting. For instance i have 1 for weighting healing gear assuming I'm in a tank group where it counts spirit as both an aura and as mana regen, and a different formula that counts spirit as only regen, and it just lists both values on the tooltip of any item. So you could setup a tanking formula, a dps formula, a low armor boss dps formula, a mitigation over sta formula, and whatever else you wanted.

Then general formula is:

StatValue: the amount of the stat on the item
StatMod: the value associated with the stat (Most stats/ratings are 1, stamina is .666, armor is .1, armor penetration is .15)

((StatValue1*StatMod1)^1.5 + ... + (StatValueN*StatModN)^1.5)^.666

All the stats assigned have either been direct swaps (i.e. 350 armor penetration = 525 Armor) or have been based on the formula above.

As per the stamina:
The original was
75 Agility
50 Stamina

And these value were directly swapped, however Stamina has a lower value than the standard stats, so this swap yields
112 Stamina
33 Agility

If you plug these value into the above formula (noting the StatMod of .666 for Stamina), you will get the exact same ilvl.

Drakescale hauberk of strength is 60 strength.

Drakescale Hauberk of the Invoker
619 armor
+ 31 int
+ 36 spell dmg/heals
+ 31 spell crit

of the elder
619 armor
+41 Stamina
+31 Intellect
+12 mana per 5 seconds

of the boar
39 spirit
39 strength

of the eagle
39 intell
60 stam


of of these are the same item level. strength and spirit are (aside from being obviously worthless as an item, but yeah, that's beside the point) both worth the same amount, but the version of it with the stats split evenly has 78 total stats, the pure strength one has 60. The ones using 3 stats are even better, as that invoker chest is even more points by your formula.

basing things on the formula works. direct swaps ignoring the formula do not. if it adds up right in the formula, its fine. However, because of the part of the equation where its raised to the 1.5, that's where stacking 1 stat gets penalized.

If it turns out to be 100% of your agility as +healing I know I will try it out for pvp. Could be pretty nice for that then. 500 +healing from agility and switch in a healing weapon and you get 400 more.

Are you disagreeing with me? , thats the same formula?

I never ignore the formula. Take the of the eagle gear 39/60 int/stam. Swapping all the Int for Spi yields the exact same ilvl. Moving any amount of Int to Stam does not.

To everyone (and no one in particular): this isn't about ilvl, it was just a suggestion with an example. I don't think we should go through the basics of the ilvl formula here. If you have a problem with my item, prove it with the formula, otherwise go read the wiki and other articles and don't post about ilvl:P.

This may be a bit off the current topic, but, I have some questions regarding bear tanking. Specifically: How do you do it?

The common knowledge floating around online is that tanking is typically one of the more difficult things to do for PvE content. Having sat through excruciating heroics with terrible tanks, it would seem that this is true. However, in practice, I find it to be extremely easy... boring really. As a bear offtank, I'm currently sitting with full t4, having done most of the game's pre-raid and beginning raid content. As I move through SSC, I'm not really finding encounters very difficult.

The most work I have to do to hold aggro and mitigate damage is to autoattack and spam 3 button at once.

If you compare this to how much effort my guild's MT, a warrior, is putting into his tanking it gets pretty pathetic. I'm falling asleep while he's drinking his third mountain dew!

I understand that Blizzard can't give one form too much utility- because a Druid has to be thought of in terms of all of its forms. But as a tank, you're not going to be swapping forms- you're stuck with a very small moveset. It's simply too risky to shift.

So am I doing anything wrong? Is it this boring through the entire game? Should I just reroll a more active/reactive class?

Ugh I hate tanking Leo, at least once per fight I miss a post-Whirlwind/post-switch-to-human pickup because I was in the wrong place, and feral charge loves to send me way way too far from him. Not to mention how often I miss/get my Mangos parried, argh bear gear needs more hit/expertise!