Icy Touch will currently remove the first stack of Infected Wounds if it's not fully applied and prevent new ones from being applied while active. It's been noted, but no fix has been announced.

At the moment the only interruptable raid boss in the game is Kel'Thuzad's frostbolts, so taking Brutal Impact for raiding would be a waste on every single encounter besides KT, so you'll have to decide yourself if having an interrupt every 30 seconds on that encounter is worth two talent points to you, I'm fairly sure it is not.

The mana return only works on yourself.

Death Knights have [url=http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=49909]Icy Touch[/item] and the improved version. Paladins have Judgements of the Just. It's almost certain to be the DKs though, as they'll be doing it to spread disease regardless of whether they're tanking or DPS. The rest (tclap, judgments) are all going to be prot-specific.

Bash does have a spell interrupt function, even if you get the 'immune' message. There aren't that many raid bosses that have interruptable mechanics right now that matter. Kel'Thuzad is okay here, but the long cooldown makes it unreliable at best. I don't know of any others off the top of my head in raids where it matters.

The mana return portion only applies to you.

You can remove IW if you know that someone will always be applying that effect to the mob. That's not always guaranteed; the classic example is Sarth3D, where no one is attacking him for 3+ minutes and there is no way he'll be debuffed by anyone other than you.

Single target Tank build (MT role)
Current gear setup

I am currently trying to maximize my spec/gear to be optimal for a MT role (link to current talent build above) and just had three questions.


1. Expertise/Hit cap:

I am currently at 15% expertise and 4.21% hit. It is my understanding that the 15% exp puts me at the 'parry cap' (dodge@ 6.5% and parry 8.5% on top of that for a total of 15%) and w/ a capped amount of exp, it makes hit less important. I have read several opinions on this and also the values of what is the actual cap to all of the above mentioned stats. Any help here would be appreciated.

The way that I understand all the mechanics to work is that you 'roll' on your chance to hit/crit/miss/parry/etc all at once and each value compliments the other (ie 30% crit moving 30% miss off the table) and it is determined on what you will land from that one 'roll'. (If that makes sense, lol).

Is the hit cap in WotLK 8% or 9% for melee/ranged dps?

All in all, threat is not an issue at all for me, but at what point can you afford to drop +hit / expertise. I would assume being exp parry capped is a must (ie resetting a boss' swingtimer) and hit can be shortchanged a bit as long as you can maintain legitimate threat.


2. Talent build:

The reason I dont have 3/3 for Feral Instinct is due to building the spec for a single target encounter (MT role). I just wanted to get some feedback on this and also inquire if the 3 pts in IW is worth keeping. If anything I could drop those 3 and put 2 in FI and the other in Feral Aggression. I see zero reason in getting the stun resist due to it being VERY fight dependent and majority of the time being a waste. Any info/commentary on this spec would be helpful.


3. Armor pen / haste / crit

Out of those values I am just curious of the priority they should hold. IMO its haste/crit/armor pen. Any disagreements with this I would like to discuss.


I am sure to come up with some follow on questions and edits to this since it is hard to get my thoughts down the way they are going through my head. Thank you for your help upfront and hopefully I can get some answers to these questions.

Being parry capped is absolutely not a must. The effects of a hasted attack are not trivial but not nearly as important, itemization wise, as more stamina or agility. Hit is even less important. The primary reason to stack expertise and hit is for threat, and that's all.

For a MT role, you should expect that no one else will be around to debuff your mob. This is true on Sarth3D, for instance. Because of that, IW is very much required. If you can guarantee that you'll have Icy Talons or Thunderclap up on your target, you don't need it - but there are times when you simply cannot guarantee this. As to feral instinct, chances are that the 20% more damage on swipe is going to outshine the 4% overall damage you do, especially with swipe having a 50% multiplier for threat. Swipe is going to be your most used attack. In addition to this, it's going to be hugely useful for tanking multiple mobs.

Haste is a good threat stat, but has the disadvantage of adding the number of parries you may get. Of course, if you're parry-capped it isn't an issue. Crit benefits all of your attacks equally, and gives more rage. I find crit to be more valuable in general. Armor penetration is a very subpar stat.

Hit cap is 8% for melee against bosses. After you are anti-dodge capped, before you are hit capped, hit and expertise have the same value in threat. Expertise has the secondary benefit of reducing parries, hit has the secondary benefit of also affecting taunt, FFF, and demo shout, so, essentially also lowers the chances of wasting an extra GCD or two failing to refresh those. For many fights its not really important to be hit or even dodge capped (though i'm not currently able to get under the dodge cap w/o gimping other stats anyway) so it may be best to figure out a gearset that allows you to put on the hit and expertise when you need it, and drop it where you don't. Having things like [Deadly Gladiator's Boots of Triumph] for pure living gear versus [Footwraps of Vile Deceit] for a balance of living and threat is quite nice. You can also just pop on a bit of dps gear with good hit and expertise numbers for many of these fights where threat is a big issue. Oh, [Idol of Perspicacious Attacks] versus [Idol of Terror] is another way to pick up some threat without lowering your living much, and even better since you can use the former to get out to a nice threat lead, then swap to the latter.

Someone had mentioned that it actually came out to less raid dps for a bear to spec and use demo than for a warlock to spec and use CoW. I'd be interested to see the math done out on that. Especially being that a warlock can virtually always debuff your mob easier than a warrior which would have to run over, shout at least once to get it on, then run back to what he was killing. In the case of like Sartherion, it wouldn't even lower his damage on the drakes much because its a separate target so it would cost nothing at all other than the GCD. It sounds somewhat absurd that a bear would do more damage, but its essentially a 4% damage increase (i know for me the choice is feral aggression or master shapeshifter) and a freed up 1-2 globals here and there compared to basically 0 loss of damage from talent changes for the lock, and losing CoA if its a single target fight, or nothing but a gcd in a multi target fight. With CoA needing refreshed more often than CoW, they basically get a free shadowbolt or something out of the deal every 2 minutes to help ease the loss of CoA.

I had one loose point after my last respec (out of PT/BI ... I decided they just weren't worth the point cost for their tank ability) and decided to drop my 5th point of Furor and put 2/2 MotW.

Got to say, I think it's been an effective use, given that we usually don't have any other raiding druids -- that 5th point in Furor's always seemed like a little bit of a blow-off to me, due to the GCD, and that when if it misses on a shift to bear, either I'm getting beat on and don't need it, or I can just re-shift (pre-combat).

How many other bears have been doing this as well? I don't always have a resto druid at my disposal when I am raiding.

I have been 2/2 IMotW 3/5 Furor for a while now and like it as I feel I get more bang for my buck than by increased Furor points, especially since I rarely cat form DPS and if do have more than enough time pre-fight to go from 60 to 100 energy anyway.

If the 10 rage doesn't proc I will just switch forms until it does if I am not in combat. If I am all ready in combat then I usually have some rage built up anyway. So its not like I am missing the rage.

I have 3/5 Furor and 2/2 imp MotW. There's just not that compelling a reason to get 5/5 furor. It's occasionally annoying to spam bearchange, but it's not that special most of the time, and I've not noticed an issue when I need to go to bear and have rage so far.

It's also because either we don't have a resto handy or they've done something else with their points. This is especially true on 10-mans.

An interesting thought. Depending on the way they set up the "dual-spec" idea, you could have one spec with the imp.MotW and one without and switch after buffing - They really are going to have to think the mechanism of this through well when the implement it!. I personally ususally have a resto druid or boomkin in raid with me so I go 5/5 furor just for the convenience of the 100% chance. But then, I have always liked having intensity for the convenience of instant rage as well (shame I can't afford the points there anymore).

Putting the 2 points into Improved MOTW is generally worth it for pure PVE. If you PVP much, though, the Furor points are handy. There's a lot of shifting involved even as a pure feral, when going up against Mages or Death Knights.

It will be interesting to see how all this looks once we have dual specs to switch between, depending on our role in a raid at the moment.

No, Maul is the best attack you will ever have, the only thing that has priority over maul if you're rage starved is keeping up a stack of lacerate, and mangle. Any other filler attacks including swipe spam, are worth much less threat per rage than maul is, even when you include the rage lost due to not getting a white hit.

What does more damage (or which combination of) R&T/IM/MSS?


(I deleted the rest of this post as it was confusing.)

Predatory Instincts only helps cat form. It does absolutely nothing for bears.

Infected Wounds isn't a must have. If you have any warriors or DKs it's probably easier for them to put up that debuff, though there are times such as Sarth3D where you won't have that luxury. I think you should have it, and it does work on most mobs and all the raid bosses I've dealt with.

As to the math, I worked on it on my blog a while back. Improved mangle is about 3% threat and damage for 3 talent points. Master shapeshifter is a bit less than 4% threat and 4% damage for 5 talent points. Rend & Tear is worth 12% threat and damage for 5 talent points (this assumes maul is about 60% of your overall threat, as it is for me. If it isn't, this will go down, but not hugely). Thus, Rend & Tear is by far the best use of points.

ha just read that... it only applies in cat form... that changes things up quite a bit have been speccing into it for a while now. thanks for the reply.

So that said would you say this is probably the best MT spec?

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft


As you were saying you could put the 3 points of IW somewhere else if you have a DK or another Feral put on the debuff (for example points could go in PT if you were focusing on KT).

KT doesn't stun or fear the MT. It would do nothing for him. PT is a waste of talent points for PvE.

For pure independence I'd go with 5/5 feral aggression over NS/MS. 4% more damage is really unnecessary for bears, and 4% less damage taken is great if you don't have a warrior to cover that debuff. But really, it very much depends on your role in the raid. If you're doing only tanking, that's a fine build. If you're expected to tank and dps some, it's quite horrible. It's really bad for soloing without the imp LotP.

Meters don't tell the healing story. The value of ILotP is highly situational, and depends on your group composition and the fight you are looking at. It's a lot more useful on, say, Sapphiron than on Patchwerk, and a lot more useful if you are stacked for physical DPS than if you're caster-heavy.

It's not worthless, but I've run without it from time to time. Under most circumstances I'd keep ILotP and drop points somewhere else, but there are times (such as multiple ferals) where you can put the points elsewhere for greater benefit. If you're not a serial respeccer, and want something you can just use for good tanking and decent DPS without mucking around all the time, take it.

I'm in a 10-man guild as a classic OT -- I switch from tanking to DPS from fight to fight or night to night so I need the best mix of cat and bear talents I can get. I just haven't been able to find room for ILotP. I'd have to dump Primal Precision or some other critical talent for it and it has never felt more than "nice", never necessary. Even soloing I rarely do more than cast an occasional heal and almost never, ever eat or drink.

So don't feel bad if you can't squeeze it in, though of course this topic is tanking so if you don't have to DPS you can dump a cat talent for it.

You could actually dump 2 points (or one each) from improved mangle or infected wounds. IW can actually be a hazard in certain cases, depending on your role (by causing extra enraged blazes on Sartharion, for instance), while improved mangle isn't worth as much to an OT/DPS as it is to a MT who's in a lot of long term situations where they need to really pump their threat. Pre-3.0.8, I main tanked with 1/3 improved mangle and got along fine, though I know there's a lot of concern about our current threat generation in some circles, so I'd perhaps be more nervous about it now. Of course, you'll want the glyph of mangle if you're going to go that route, but one assumes that a 'classic OT/DPS' would most likely already have it (I assume you've gone Rip/Mangle/Maul for glyphs).

All that being said, if your raid is getting along fine without ILotP, no reason to respec just to get it, obviously.

Just a clarification to thalys: there is no point for bears in taking 1 or 2 points in improved mangle. It doesn't help at all.

The glyph of mangle is pretty useless; you'll still want to use mangle every time it's active when you're tanking one target, and two times in 6 seconds is more than adequate. Plus it's not as critical to a bear that mangle be up any more, given how much better swipe is on threat.

Yes, sorry, I should have probably been more clear that the only reason for fractional improved mangle or the glyph is for cat form--the rare occasion when you're rage starved and therefore not riding the GCD isn't common enough to justify the reduced CD, and of course swipe threat went up and mangle threat went down (along with its DPS). So, if you're not in the TBC role of OT with good cat DPS when available, there are unquestionably better glyphs for a tank. In this case, though, he is, so if he doesn't have it, I'd be surprised.

So Kalbear are you saying that we should use swipe during a normal (single target) tanking rotation? I do not understand how mangle/IM effects swipe?