sal

Can Thoim be parry-hastened? Can melee be DPSing on the MT or should it be expertise capped tanks or casters? I have a video of our first kill in my comment. Biggest differences were: increasing healers from 5 to 6, dropping tanks from 3 to 2, dps-tank evokers disarm champions. Facing the boss direct west, away from the door the tank does not need to move (much) for lightning. Ranged group for minimal movement, three melee groups. If the boss is mis-positioned its almost a wipe as ranged group within the falling ice. I have never lived past, but typically live up to 12 stacks 90% of the time.

I use:

1 hateful, 4 deadly, 3 furious main pieces
boundless neck, shadow sun back, gatekeeper + fortress badge ring
origin 2H, corruptor's idol, defender's code, gossamir

sta/def helm, sta/resil shldr, defense chest, sta bracr, agi glove, sta/agi pant, sta boot, mongoose.

Stam gems everywhere except agi/stam in hat and pants, wintergrasp 20 resil gem in the boots.

Growl, Frenzied Regen, Maul - I havn't tanked anything except sarth since sunwell.

options: Item Enhancements (Permanent) - Items - World of Warcraft

[Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector] vs [Arcanum of the Savage Gladiator]
[Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle] vs [Greater Inscription of the Gladiator]
[Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Titanweave] vs armor vs agi
[Scroll of Enchant Chest - Exceptional Resilience] vs [Scroll of Enchant Chest - Greater Defense] vs 18 stam armor kit vs +10 stats
[Scroll of Enchant Bracer - Major Defense] vs 40 stam
+20 agi vs glove reinforcements
[Earthen Leg Armor] vs stam/agi
stam boots vs agi boots.

Of course we then compare obtaining additional resilience + PvE or Frost resist core pieces vs full resil main.

Druid Armory - Youtubes - RD Guild

 

kalbear

Thorim doesn't parry haste. However, you shouldn't have your melee on top of the tanks because there's a very good chance that a chain lightning from the melee will obliterate your tanks.

 

Liar

Question for my fellow furballs :

If this stacks with PotP, Feral Druids could get nearly 17.7% passive spell damage reduction. Do you think a spec that includes Balance of Power is feasible on fights where threat is a non-issue (something like how Sarth3D was)? I tried playing around with the WoWhead calculator but I realized I am not really up to date with how important all the threat talents are so figured I'd ask here.

Is a 27/42/2 spec situationally feasible?

EDIT: Corrected spell damage mitigation number.

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

kalbear

So let's go with something like this 27/42 spec. What you lose from this is:
Rend & Tear (about 12% threat)
Primal Gore (about 3% threat and more SD procs)
Berserk (some threat, but not a huge amount)
Naturalist (10% threat roughly)

As the 'core' talents. In addition to that, you're losing imp mangle, NS/MS, and any 'nice' talents like KotJ or Furor or IW. What you're not losing, just so we're clear, is anything that boosts your armor, health, stats, or mitigation/avoidance.

So we're looking at roughly a 25% loss of threat for a 6% gain in spelldamage prevention. It's theoretically possible that there exists some fight where this could be the make-or-break thing, but at the end of the day you're trading 25% more threat for the chance to have slightly more spell mitigation than a paladin.

 

Liar

Thanks for the answer. Now the follow up question would be: How noticable is the lack of 25% threat for you currently? We don't run a feral tank so I am not sure how well they are doing in terms of threat. Also, you are right that Paladins have ~17% spell damage mitigation but Bears still have the advantage of super stamina scaling (at the expense of avoidance, I know. But it was an option for bosses like Sarth 3D where magic is the killer).

Do you think there is any chance some dedicated Bear MTs would roll with a Balance of Power secondary spec any time soon?

EDIT: Changed numbers again. Hopefully they are right now. <_<

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

killets

I think it would have to be determined by the fight. Looking at the most difficult fights in Ulduar right now, they all seem to be mildly threat intensive.

Firefighter -- 6% spelldmg isn't the limiting factor here. While it could help on Plasma Blast, I think holding aggro would be more important for P1 if you're trying to shave off some time there, and P2 you're totally useless instead of just mildly useless.
Hodir -- definitely threat intensive.
Thorim -- the most dangerous damage is melee based (melee+unbalancing)
Freya 3x -- Depending on how many tanks you use, I guess it could be feasible to use this to off-tank freya, if you have enough tanks for everything else, but I know for us we don't use that many tanks for this fight.
Algalon? (I've only done 10man... again, a 25% loss in threat could be bad).

Honestly, the only fight I can think of where threat isn't an issue is Sarth3D. On things like Mimiron P2 where there is no threat, you still need to DPS him in cat form, and a 27/42/2 dramatically gimps your feral damage.

 

Mijae

You're missing a talent point. As long as you're building a pure defense spec I'd say to drop Primal Fury, Feral Charge, and Feral Instinct to max out Feral Aggression. I'd also probably take Celestial Focus over Imp IS, but that's super minor.

25% threat is pretty huge. I don't tank much in our 25 mans, but our druid that does needs to have threat constantly pumped into him by rogues to keep up on fights like Vezax. If we're considering a future fight similar to Sarth 3D it would definitely be worth it though. However, I can't see anyone dedicating two specs to bear unless they absolutely never dps'd (which I'd say is rare). It might happen for pure progression if there is a single fight being worked on for whole night(s) or an ultra min/max guild that swaps players often.

Feral DruidStats spreadsheet
v3.2.0.0.xls - updated 8/4/2009

 

Boevis

Thorim Definately parry hastes. I have hours of logs showing his swing timer varrying between 1.0 and .3

Sal: Position Thorim in the center of the room (a little off center actually, toward the east where he was standing watch before) the 2nd diamond away from the center will never get hit by the lightning stream. Whichever tank is in the hallway needs to be the one to aggro him up top, and jump down quickly (don't trigger p2 with a ranged attack) so they get early control over him (when I was in hall, I liked doing 3 abilities and then ripping) If you need to reposition him, since it's very important with streams to have him in the same spot every time, have the other tank run west and taunt, and then you can ping-pong taunt him back into place.

We use 2 melee groups, and never run with more than 8 melee + 2 tanks with melee in 2 groups of 4 and then the 2 tanks. In theory, a caster could stand on the tanks without issue.

As for Balance of Power ... I'm shocked anyone would consider going 27 into Balance with a 25% threat loss as Viable. Keep in mind it's also a DPS loss and tank DPS is a concern as well. I suppose it would work for gimmick feral-on-sarth, but that's still just unnecessary.

I'm kinda curious if, with the doubling of block, we'll see an increase in Savage Defense (which is already weaker by 25%)

 

Phoa

We've tried the 1 tank Thorim thing, and honestly it has worked out remarkably well. I am in awful pvp gear (Hateful/deadly with almost pure stamina) with Tortured Earth gemmed with stamina + mongoose. I generally tank in the arena, mainly pulling aggro on champions and letting DKs in frost presence handle most of the others, though keeping aggro with swipe/glyphed Maul.

When the hall group finishes the hall tank will generally engage Thorim while the groups clean up adds and continue to build threat on him. I taunt after the first UBS and get a decent threat lead. Being in mostly pvp gear I have almost no threat stats but it is not really *much* of an issue however, since you will always have full rage.

At 5 growths I pop an indestructible potion and that will generally last the length of the fight, around 6-7 growths we start a cooldown rotation on me, whether it is sac, pain Sup, Guardian spirit, etc. I used to die around grow 10 after using Barkskin and the warrior would pick him up and blow his cooldowns while I soulstoned and got rebuffed, after he died I would use my remaining cooldowns and collect loot. In hindsight I don't believe that ever actually worked though. Generally the times we win, (Past 2 weeks we've 1 shot him) I haven't died, could be a coincidence.

The biggest thing with Thorim really is positioning, he has a ridiculously small hit box, moves when he shouldn't and overcompensates a great deal sometimes. I tried initially standing in his hit box, and when he starts to cast the lighting where I am tanking inch sideways, but more often then not he would step over me and hit me from behind. Its pretty much imperative that he remains in the middle of the room, or damn close to it, at least inside the circle, or you'll have a complete side get lightning and on hardmode that kills close to any one.

What I have found to work the best is stand outside his hit box a little bit, maybe a inch? and when he casts the ground lightning don't run to the side, don't strafe, hop a little bit, just inch your way over sideways then forward little by little. I'm not saying it is perfect, but it seems to work for me, if he gets off center, wait till he starts to cast a chain lightning, then run to where you want him and hopefully he will reposition himself correctly. For hard mode so much of that fight is just having the tanks get the hang of it.

 

kalbear

That doesn't mean he parry hastes. There's a lot of reasonable anecdotal evidence that indicates Thorim has a fairly variable swing timer, and it's also well known that his attack speed speeds up with the debuff.

if you have strong evidence that shows that he doesn't speed up normally but does speed up right after being parried via logs, that would be great.

Weaker by 25% how? Just in general? Remember, it's only BV on items, not from strength or the shield itself; a good paladin I know said that his BV will go up by something like 150 right now, and if he wanted to go all out his BV could increase by an amazing 700. Nothing earthshattering. And even with that, druids will still remain kings of mitigation.

 

Deathwing

Phoa, are you recommending that for the tank or any melee(the cone AE)? The tanks should be standing in the safe area, they never have to move for the cone lightning. The problem we're having probably isn't solvable except through luck. We have too many melee(3 rogues, 2 ferals, 3 dps warriors, 1 DK). Obviously we can't do the two melee group strategy as 5 melee in one stack means one of them will die to chain lightning later in the fight.

So, we split them up into 3 groups of three, and it works pretty well. The chain lightning stays withing the melee groups even though the DBM range finder says I'm withing 10 yards of them(must be an 8 yard jump). The problem is that none of the melee has a safe place to dodge lightning cones. We've been trying wait until the last second to move, but even then Thorim can decide to cast chain lightning and kill 2-3 people. Is the only solution dropping a melee?

 

◊ Thaeryn

There's not really a good spot to stand to avoid all lightning cones. We 3-tank the fight with a warrior, dk, and myself eating UBS until our cooldowns run out and then the next tank taunting. Typically we won't even move for a lightning cone while tanking, because any repositioning of the boss leads to all kinds of problems with people repositioning and ending up chaining lightning.

As far as running that many melee.... by far your best approach is dropping a melee. The 3 group strategy can work but, as you've already noticed, chains will still happen while dodging lightning cones because your melee have no wiggle room. If you are only using 2 tanks, just move a melee up front with them. Otherwise, you're better off dropping the extra melee as it's making the positioning requirements much more difficult then they already are.

 

Supahflii

You can run with 7 melee and 3 tanks, that's how my guild usually does it. In front of the grate (entrance to the gauntlet) is the safespot, so you might want to stack healers there. Movement should be used, its not THAT hard to reposition Thorim, you just need to be careful and take small steps. Also, we cheese the fight heavily with two Priests in full FR MCing Warbringers from the add phase (the haste buff stacks). They stand under where Thorim is before the gauntlet is finished- no lightning, but the Blizzard ticks pitifully.

 

nightcrowler

We run with 8 melee. 2x4 groups. We simply soak the cone of light using CDs near the end (surv, bark for me ferals, CoS for rogues and so on).

 

Salazay

We kill Thorim with 9melee (2 tanks), 4 Spot taktik. I'm tanking Thorim until about 12 Stacks solo until i die (fearl). I dont use PvP gear, just gemmed pure Stam. We start using cd's after the 8th Stack. I'm soaking the cone of light too, because moving does make it alot more different for the ranged dps.

 

angi

Has someone thought about the resilence change and the impact on bear tanking itemization?
Assuming it reduces incoming damage in PVE like reducing critdamage, wouldn`t resilence become THE stat to stack as feral tank?

I don`t really like this, i hope they do something that it doesn`t work in PVE or have i overlooked the post where they say they do?

Edit: OK i found it, this means with 3.2 we can`t use PVP gear anymore for crit immunity.

 

• Polynices

Where does it say that? On the official patch notes page it says, "The other effects of resilience (reducing critical chance, critical damage and mana drain effects) have not changed."

I looked on the official forums and don't see that they've eliminated the reduction in chance to be critically hit at all. See MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Resilience change for all the blue comments about this subject.

 

Vaccine

No it isn't.

On a gimmick fight where threat wasn't an issue yer maybe, like if it had been out at Sartharion or something where you spent 80% of the fight on the boss with no one else attacking it. Any fight where your target being attacked swiftly then I'd say a definite no-go as threat is bad enough as it is, without losing a massive chunk of it. They don't really exist in Ulduar, maybe Steelbreaker would be an argument for it as you could abuse other tanks threat generation but for what you lose, both DPS wise and threat wise, I'd say it still isn't really worth it to shave another 3-4k off Fusion Punch and carry a gimp spec around instead of a DPS offspec. I absolutely would have used this whilst learning Sarth 10 +3 though.

 

kalbear

You've overlooked it.

 

sal

Review the full quote: All source DoT's are no longer reduced by resil, All player damage is reduced instead. The reduced critical chance from resil is unchanged, resil is less useful for PvE. It might still work it might not.

Source

There is one gimick fight. The result of using resilience doesn't really make the fight easier. A tank will get gibbed at the same stack (7-8), there is less cooldowns (missing 1-2 tanks rotating), less TPS.

If they make crit reduction inapplicable to PvE they remove the ability for new/poor geared plate tanks to use resil to reach the 5.6% crit cap (20 resil gem, 30 stam 15 resil shoulder etc).

Druid Armory - Youtubes - RD Guild

 

◊ Talanik

I came on here to ask a question about Thorim hard mode, and ended up with another one.

Why does moving the boss cause any problems at all for the ranged? Why are some people advocating ANYONE take soak the lightning cone, whether it be tanks or melee DPS? Taking 20k+ spike damage is something you usually try to avoid.

And my original question; I've seen some people using druids with PvP gear do it - my guilds normal tanks are a warrior/DK, as I've been DPSing since the patch. My tank gear is limited to BiS naxx pieces (Except for the Darkmoon Card, which I've still not managed to save up for). I do however have several pieces of PvP gear, all from last season. I have Deadly gladiators Belt, Boots, Bracers, Neck, Cloak, Chest, Gloves and Hateful legs/Helm. I could easily regem all for stamina.

My alternatives in case I have too much PvP gear is 5/5 Valorous T7, Boundless Ambition/Heritage, Cloak of Shadowed Sun, Thrusting Bands, Belt of the Tortured, and Footwraps of Vile Deceit.

How much resilience is recommended to go with for tanking Thorims hard mode? And with the druid tank in full resil, I assume the strat would be to eat all the UBS's, start popping cooldowns around 7-8 stacks, and then when/if you die, have your 2nd (and possibly 3rd, if we decide to use one) tank take it and pop their cooldowns, and hopefully the DPS can get him down around 12-14 stacks?

 

◊ Thaeryn

The issue with moving him is that your ranged and melee are all positioned within a couple of yards of where they need to be. If you dodge to the right to avoid a lightning cone, and the boss moves, suddenly one melee group is out of range. They move closer to hit the boss, and now they are within 10 yards of the second group who has to move. Someone may get chain lightening'd down. Second melee group moves, now they are in range of one of the caster groups. Same thing again, they've got to move and someone may get chained down. Now your caster group is standing out further then they did before and is having to eat blizzards or spend a lot of time dodging them.

A slightly minor issue, but still to be considered, is that the lightning cones center on Thorim. If he's off-center of the room, the lightning cones are going to be larger on one side then the other. This can make it very hard for some of the ranged groups to get out of the way without getting within 10 yards of another ranged group.

Tank him where he lands and don't move him at all for the entire fight. It's just easier that way.

 

lairpie

We've never had any problems with me getting crit to death solo tanking thorim with just normal (well, mitigation stacked rather than stamina) tanking gear. I usually get crit once or twice but its never been much of an issue. I just work on building threat and use Twisted visage till he's around 50% then swap to Origin and start rotating 2 barkskins, a couple hands of sacrifice and/or divine sacrifice, pain suppression, guardian spirit, all timed to make sure they're up when the strike hits to mitigate the actual damage from the unbalancing strike, not because I'm afraid I'll die after it. Then I use a glyphed frenzied regen the first time I actually feel threatened and just pop SI when I think he's about 30 seconds from dying.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

sal

The fight is a question of reducing damage and avoiding gibs. For normal tanking the crit cap is the most important stat to reach, for thorim this can be considered the same because no matter how fast your switches or healers are RNG will eventually land an unbalancing + critical on you within ~0.1 seconds without resilience.

From my comment's video at 7 stacks his unbalancing was 32k, his melee was 18k 50k total so light cooldowns become important. If the melee crits for +100% damage 32+36k = 68k. 50% reduction is required to bring damage down to ~45,000 near-instant damage. At ~12 stacks 40+k crit + 40+k unbalancing requires 60% damage reduction to come down to 50k requiring stacked cooldowns or a heal in that 0.1 second window it can occur. A resil tank takes the RNG of crits out of the equation and a tank with the 2+ cooldowns required to survive the final moments of the fight.

Druid Armory - Youtubes - RD Guild

 

◊ Talanik

But if you soaked the lightning cone, wouldn't it be highly likely you could be instant gibbed by a combination of the lightning, a UBS, and possibly a regular melee hit?

Edit: And what is the magic number of resilience to be uncrittable with the -200 defense?