The 1 point was just floating anyway, so I figured it would be most useful there for a little more snap aggro on a pull with enrage up, and for an energy booster for the rare times when I do go cat form.

Honestly that's a bad build if it's trying to be a MT build. Predatory Instinct doesn't even work in bear form last I checked so that's three points wasted. Also Primal Tenacity really wont save your life in any raid boss fight. I think one might that has a stun mechanic is in wrath at the moment. Let's not forget that as soon as your dps are geared they will be pushing much more threat and you are taking away your biggest threat talent(s) by not getting Rend & Tear and Berserk.

It's quite a bad build as Blackhand said, PI indeed does not work in bear form, and Primal Tenacity is pretty much pointless for everything but Maexxna, so unless you're having serious issues with her it's wasted talent points. On top of that you say you don't really care about threat, yet you take Shredding attacks, which is nothing but a threat talent and a bad one at that, those points are much better spent in RnT/Berserk.

Lastly, if you want to go for a full AP reduction on the boss you need 5/5 Feral Aggression. I'm one to argue that with how easy the game is right now this isn't really neccesary, but if you're having problems with bosses hitting too hard, 5/5 is needed to reduce their AP to the minimum.

I have a couple of questions, looking to further tweak my spec as my gear, and guild raids progress.

1) TC overrides IW as I'm understanding things, but what I don't know is what other classes have the ability to override IW, Mine is constantly being removed in favor of another, even when not grouped with a warr, and I'm having a hard time narrowing down who it is.

2) It was my understanding that bash was to have a spell interrupt function that would work on raid bosses, is this the case? and if so, how many raid bosses would it actually be useful for?

3) Does the mana return portion of ilotp apply only to me, or does it also apply to my caster dps?

I'm currently using the 'full' tank spec posted by mijae, with the modification of 2/2 imp motw, and 3/5 furor since I am the only druid always in our raids currently, and our warrs do not have imp demo shout. What I'm looking at is if my IW will effectively never be applied, then I can remove those 3 points, and spend them on ilotp for added mana regen for our casters, and at least 1 more point in furor, or brutal impact to interrupt boss spells

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.

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.

Hey! I am sort of new to the WotLK tanking, but not new to the class or game. Just verifying that this is a SOLID pure-raid/heroic tanking spec.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.


Dieselz - 80 Human Death Knight <Shattered Hand>
Cowmooflauge - 80 Tauren Druid <Demon Soul>

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).

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.