Vaccine

I've been thinking of rerolling Leatherworking due to this. Its a really nice bonus for tanks that you can get your pick of resistances as an armour enchant, as well as the normal stam/offensive bonus that most professions grant. Have to see if the rumoured Green Dragon nature res fight on PTR comes to pass or if they really are just placeholders for real stat items.

 

kalbear

I do believe that leatherworking is now the best tanking profession simply because of the resistance ability; it's come in handy in two hard fights now, and no other profession comes close to being able to give that level of benefit to a tank. My gut feeling is that at least one fight in icecrown will be resistance-based or resistance-affected to the degree that it would help a lot (if not the green dragon, Sindragosa is a likely culprit), and leveling LW is fairly cheap.

 

Leucetios

So I was playing around with RAWR today (for the first time really) and I noticed something odd. I selected pretty much every 25 man raid buff option and it is telling me that Slikk's Cloak of Pacification, yes the lvl 70 badge cape, is the 6th best cloak in the game for me (with heroic 10 and 25 man ToC removed since i will most likely not be getting there). I was wondering if anyone could offer some insight as to why. I realize it has twice the armor of anything currently available but it is VASTLY inferior on every other stat.

Not sure how to link an item to the forum as of yet but the stats are as follows:
346 armor
16 def
25 dodge
37 stam

 

Blazefire

I noticed that as well and the only thing I can think of is that the AC listed on the cloak wasn't broken down into the base armor that comes on a cloak and then bonus cloak, so basically it would apply armor multipliers to all the armor instead of just the base armor. As an example, if you tooltip over Slikk's Cloak in RAWR, it just says 346 AC, but if you tool tip over Cloak of the Shadowed Sun, it lists 154 AC and then 336 Bonus AC. That would cause RAWR to overvalue the cloak because it thinks that it has much more armor value than it really does.

 

Protagonist

Like Blazefire points out, this is due to incorrect stats for the item in Rawr's cache. Right click and select Refresh Item Data from Wowhead to correct the issue.

 

Valean

I haven't really posted here recently, but currently I'm one of three MTs for 25 ToGC, and we just got to Twins last night. I'm hoping to get some advice on my gear. Should I be gemming for staming like I am or should I be going for more agility? Would the Glyph badge trinket be a huge upgrade for me? I use rawr a lot but I find the items suggested are never really 100% accurate

Any tips are appreciated

 

Bonemage

For hard modes stam is generally king, no matter how good your avoidance you will have bad luck strings. In ToGC it only takes a moderately bad luck avoidance string and 1 of your healers with a snobold on their back, running to change light/dark, legion flame, etc to risk a tank death wipe. When we started doing ToGC all of our tanks (Warrior, Pally and my Druid) all found there were a lot fewer wipes if we started sacrificing threat and avoidance gems for Stam stacking. The reason Stam is generally better is, its always there, it gives you the highest time to live vs. non physical damage and assuming you and a pally healer or two are at the right gear level for the encounter tends to increase their effective healing more than it turns you into a mana sponge.

Twins specifically the only thing that’s universal across strats would be to make sure and blow barkskin and/or bearstand when the twin you are not tanking gains the shield, since the unshielded twin receives a substantial haste and damage buff during that period.

The one exception being Anub where due to the percent based life drain, you’re better off getting some resist on a couple items and stacking avoidance, so long as you can maintain enough life that your healers won’t lose you during a melee, freezing slash, melee combo.

 

Nicarras

I also have a Druid Tank at 80 that does pretty well in ToGC so far.

I see the problem you are describing is less a Druid question and more just general tank question as they are happening in the other class forums as well. You can gem stamina if you want or agi, the issue is that it comes down to the particular fight and your healers. For Twins I tend to favor stamina over avoidance, the trinket you mention is nice as its good mitigation and great for anub. Twins I'd just make sure you are managing your cooldowns between shields/hastes.

It is really worth having some gems cut or ready to be cut in your bags and a few stacks of glyphs so that you can swap things around from boss to boss if you need. There really isnt a 'gear this certain way' for all of ToGC, the bosses are diverse and you can really tweak your gear to each boss if you wanted to max/min that much.

I'd basically start in an EH setup, and talk to your healers and ask them if you are a mana sponge or not. If so then start to work towards an avoidance setup.

 

MalaclypseTY

Hey Bears!

I just transferred my Alt druid over to play with some friends that re-rolled alliance so I have been playing it a lot recently and messing around in rawr to check things out and plan my gear up path. My main is a mage and it is much easier to interpret rawr for that.

Currently I have rawr set up as MT, ToC 10/25 normal level. I am under the dodge expertise rating by 21 (but will probably be short 42 because I plan on buying the 213 badge cloak). Rawr is currently showing expertise as my number one stat value followed by agil then stam (both these very close. Stam was way ahead until some recent upgrades). Currently I am just gemming all stam except for Red slots where I do agil/stam to get w/e socket bonus. If it is yellow I just throw stam in except for one nightmare tear. Would you guys recommend gemming in some exp/stam or straight experise gems to reach the dodge cap for expertise?

I don't really know if threat is a problem yet as my buds are still in the gearing up phase. I have had some pug 5 mans where people were closer than I would like, but I am often rage starved in those so it might not be an issue with harder hitting raid bosses.

Here is my dude for ref if you want to have a look. You can ignore the chest enchant just got chest/legs last night in a GDKP run and didn't get a chance to enchant the chest yet.

The World of Warcraft Armory

 

lairpie

There are fights where gearing for avoidance and armor are better, ones where sta and avoidance are better, and ones where sta and armor are better. The thing though is sta is going to do a lot better for you in an avoidance fight than avoidance will in a sta favoring fight. I generally gear around sta and armor, and then let swapping trinkets be a huge shift in stats. Like beasts for instance, is very stamina favoring because a very substantial portion of the damage is either bleed, magic, or while stunned with armor being useless against the first 2 and avoidance against all 3. On Jaraxus about the only time you could actually die would be if nether power isn't dispelled and only sta can really save you from that. Twins is all magic damage. Totc/totgc seem very sta favoring other than of course anub, but if in doubt, stamina is probably the way to go.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

Ashurbanipal

Item - Icecrown 10 Normal Tank Trinket - Each time you dodge an attack, you gain 24 stamina for the next 10 sec, stacking up to 10 times.
Item - Icecrown 10 Heroic Tank Trinket - Each time you dodge an attack, you gain 27 stamina for the next 10 sec, stacking up to 10 times.


Depending on stats and uptime, these look real nice for Bears.

 

Kirbie44

I can only guess that this is an Equip Effect, along with an Equip Effect like Increases Dodge Rating by 138; or whatever number mind you. They are going to have really nice trinkets to beat out ToC 25 Trinkets.

Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity.

 

lairpie

Wait, seriously, its stamina that goes away when you most need stamina? That seems kind of counter intuitive. Plus, at best its 240 stamina. Making it not that much better than Satrina's even if it doesn't ever fall off.

Like for instance, I died last night while tanking the worms on heroic beasts, they submerged, popped up, hit me 5 strait times and I died while my healers were dealing with some burning melee. Anything with phase changes where you're not getting hit for a bit, or even a boss ability with a cast time or anything would let a 10 second effect clear a bunch, and at the worst times.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

Valerian

As stated these are only the effects of the new trinkets. There's almost certainly some sort of static effect on them as well (dodge would be good synergy I'd guess).

 

kalbear

Even with an armor/stam type of use (which is unlikely; it's almost certainly an on-use effect given what we've seen of other stacking buffs like this such as jetze's bell), this still has the problem of failing to be extra health when you need it most, and only building when you need it least. It does favor druids due to their higher dodge #s, but it's going to be very situational whether it's better than jugs for encounters. For instance, it's horrible on Gormok; the buffs would presumably disappear after every tank switch, and it's random whether or not you'd even get 10 stacks before a tank switch. Same with the worms, and same with Icehowl. Anub'arak would be similar as well; every burrow you'd lose the stacks.

On some fights it's essentially 270 stamina, which is great (assuming it's subject to bear multipliers, which is also a potential problem). On other fights it'll average far less than that.

 

Leucetios

So i notice a lot of people talking about doing TotGC. Are there any bench marks from a tanking standpoint that i should be shooting for? We have ToC 10 basicly on farm status but from what i hear hard mode is significantly harder.

 

saranna

It seems to me that, in my experience, its not as much of a "gear difference" as it is "player quality" difference. If you have people constantly standing in fires, getting killed by spikes, and not able to run the other way when the DK is beating on em in Fac champs, then heroic mode isn't for you.

On the other hand, if you can clear reg mode in 1/2 hour, by all means go nuts. Like the previous posts state, stack effictive health (notice i didn't say stam) as much as you can and go get you're feet wet.




cheers

 

Fetkossa

My guild has finally reached Anub'arak on heroic mode and I will probably be tanking him so I have some questions about gear setup. Earlier in the instance I stacked stamina to survive Gormoks impales and bursts from Icehowl and with better gear I am now running with ~57k health buffed.

First question is shall I replace stamina gems with Enduring Eye of Zul to get agi from socket bonuses or replace them with 20 agility ones?

Is it better to have 4p T9 set bonus so I can use barkskin more often or use heroic non-set pieces for better mitigation?

And final question is what trinkets I shall use. I have Glyph of Indomitability but unfortunately I sold Defenders Code a while ago and thinking about using Eitrigg's Oath instead.

 

Superalpaca

Stick with Stamina, this fight does not favor Agility very much.

4pc T9 is great for this fight, I would recommend getting it.

For MTing Anub the most vital stats are probably Stamina and Armor solely because the boss is more than capable of gibbing you with a leeching swarm tick, freezing slash and a melee swing all in unison. Healers really shouldn't have any trouble healing you during P1 and P2 gives them a huge regen period meaning you just want to be able to take as much possible damage as you can in P3 because this is the phase where your death becomes a possibility.

 

ranorn

I opted to go for armor/agi instead of stam for heroic Anub, and it worked very well. I used 4pT9 + Relentless pvp legs (had the best stats of legs available to me), and random 245 leather in most other slots. I used the Cloak of the Shadowed Sun from Naxx 25, and Glyph of Indomitability/Black Heart for trinkets. Stam/def gems in helm/chest for the socket bonuses, one 51 stam, the rest was pure agi and a couple agi/stam. Raid buffed, I only had around 48k hp.

Popping an armor pot pre-pull, another at the start of P3, and using a lesser resist flask for the entire fight, between procs and consumables, I was at 40-41k armor most of the fight.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis (you'll have to look back a bit, as VM stopped raiding after our first kill). The healers commented that I was very easy to heal, and didn't spike much.

 

saranna

did you opt for the stam/reduced magic meta then? i've been debating

 

ranorn

No, I used the normal stam/armor meta.

Should also mention that I used NR helm/cloak enchants. Those + lesser resist flask helped a lot in p3.

 

Hoochy

I just powerleveled LW this past weekend to pick up the Fur Lining in addition to the above enchants. I was sitting at around 320 NR last night (with Mixology/resistance flask) and it was a noticable difference compared to last week with only 130 NR.

 

Leucetios

So i am just getting into ToTGC with a group on my server. I have noticed that my taunt doesn't always work (not missing i don't believe since my hit is 8.66%), it just seems to dissipate. Has anyone else seen this/have any suggestions? Possibly immune during staggering stomp or something? As a side note i have talked to some DK's and they also have problems but the pally i run with doesn't seem to have any...

 

lairpie

Taunt is a spell, you need 17% spell hit to make it not miss. This is why the glyph is useful.

Brewmaster of WBC