I have a question with [Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves]: does the effect on Maim to interrupt spell-casting works on bosses that are usually immune to the stun effect of maim itself? I'm thinking about Aran/Julianne and other bosses where spell-casting interruptions are essential part of the strategy to kill them. If thats the case, this is another nice (and pretty huge in my opinion) upgrade to a feral druid PvE-kit only obtenable from PvP rewards.

Sorry if this has been posted/answered already, couldnt find it anywhere.

I heard from a buddy that it does work on Julianne. Thats as far as he tested it though. Seems logical it would work on other bosses if it works on that one though.

Yes it does, which is one of the reasons i picked it up first thing.

It worked for me on Reliquary of Souls yesterday.

Hmmm now I need to figure out which T4 I am going to shuffle to use these gloves and keep the T4 2pc bonus. I picked up the S3 head and chest and have been using T4 shoulders/gloves.

Shoulders/hat or shoulders/bp should work.

I'll probably wear t6 legs/shoulders and t4 hat/bp as my t6 hat is set up for tanking and I havn't grabbed t6 bp yet.

Well, that's the idea. They should not be a dps replacement, basically, just used for specific fights and pvp.

Just to clarify, I'm assuming these gloves work against mobs which can normally be kicked or CS'd? Which is certainly not true for maim normally or bash which does not interrupt most raiding content. But we aren't getting anything beyond what a rogue would get with kick?

It basically just gives Maim a kick component that is independent of the mob's immunity to disorient. If the spell is interruptable but the mob is immune to disorient, the spell will still be interrupted when the gloves are equipped.

I am curious to see what you guys think about the following 2 items. I am currently using [Deathblow X11 Goggles] and recently just picked up [Grimgrin Faceguard] from ZA (no rogue in the group that day). I am not sure how the ZA helm compares to the goggles as it doesn't have a meta socket but it does allow for more agi gems and overall stats.

You lose more DPS by losing the Metagem than any stat on that item. It's basically useless except for pre-Kara geared characters.

It's huge but not as much as you make it seem. 3% more damage on ~45% of your crittable attacks. That's maybe 1.2% overall damage increase - an equivalent of ~20-25 agility. Also, since you no longer care about a meta gem, you don't need to "waste" gem slots for purple or orange gems.

Dukes, would you be able to add in the boss mobs in ZA to the bear tanking section?

True, it is equal to ~25 agility, however effectively it is equal to ~25+12 agility because of the agility already on the metagem. Assuming equal stats and a helm with meta + normal versus 3x normal, the closest you could get without a meta is 17 agility short, minus whatever is needed in non-dps stats to make the metagem work.

The ultimate reason to always* take the metagem is because of the crit % scaling involved with buffs.

*unless the gear difference is really, really big

Edit: nevermind. misread above post.

I will do if someone will give me a good description of said tanking list. I stopped playing about a week before 2.3 came out, so I haven't had the pleasure of experiencing ZA.

For nalorakk I would also add that using a hit oriented tanking set is worth it since a missed taunt will lead you to a wipe.

Also for the bear boss note that warriors do mitigate a bit more of the bleed damage due to defensive stance. A warrior is more ideal to tank the bear phase IMO, then a druid.

Bears typically have way more avoidance than warriors, and you can avoid the bleeds. Bears will take less bleed damage if they have much more avoidance than the warrior in question.

I really doubt Bears have "way more" avoidance than Warriors. I have 53% dodge with raid buffs, including GoA plus around 7% miss so that is 60%. An equal geared Warrior is going to be within that number, probably 3% less. That isn't what I would call having way more avoidance really.

Then again, when people decide which tank to pick they usually keep the worst case scenario in mind, that is getting hit (assuming no avoidance) since you are going to get hit and you want to be good enough to take the worst possible damage. And for that, the Warrior does better.

I do not mean to say Druids cannot tank the Bear because they can without problem. I was just theorizing the what ifs. Like "What if I had a Druid and Warrior tank with equal skill, equal latency, equal gear, equal <blah blah>...". In reality, this is bollocks. You will be hard pressed to ever be in a situation where you actually have a Druid and a Warrior tank with the exact same criteria anyway.

That seems rather high avoidance for a warrior to me. More typical for T5 level of gear seems to me like it would be 60% for bear, 45% for a warrior. But perhaps I'm off on that, I'm not as familiar with warriors as I am with Bears.

The 'worst case' is when both bleeds are up. It would seem to me that reduced chance to have both bleeds up at the same time would be better than 10% less damage from both bleeds. But, like you said, it's not a big difference, and you rarely are in a situation where there's a bear and a warrior with equal gear, either can do either phase. You just put your squishier tank on the troll phase.

My Guild's MT, Spur has 55.4% Avoidance, and raid buffs don't help much (~3% more from Flask, Kings, and GoA) Just about every feral I know right now is Resto for Arena, but 60% avoidance raid buffed sounds about right. So it's going to be very close overall. My personal preference on the Bear Boss is to first have the better geared tank handle Bear, as that's the larger damage, if both tanks are capable of handling the Bear then put the one with the better threat on Troll so DPS can go big sooner.

I would say the only thing that makes any ZA boss favor a warrior over a druid is that since all but 2 Bosses only need 1 tank (Dragonhawk doesn't need 2 though I suppose you'd need to OT on Malacrass) Feral Druids are going to be more useful in catform doing DPS.