As Wrath is right around the corner, I want to put down some general things to keep in mind for the new Druids and those returning to the game, who want to spec mostly Bear as they level.

First, why spec Bear instead of Cat?

Other folks may have a different view on this, but for me, the main thing is that I see my character’s role in groups as a Tank. As long as I am able to effectively cause DPS and level, while at the same time remaining ready to Tank a group effort or instance at the drop of a hat, then I will spec Tank and accept the reduced DPS output as the price of staying strong.

There will be plenty of times that shifting to Bear will save you pain while soloing, and there will be a lot of fun new instances that you will want to be on top of your game for. When trying new content for the first time, why gimp yourself as the Tank? So yes, I am approaching Wrath as a leveling Tank, and that’s the point of view of the rest of this article. 

Let’s talk about important stats.

First up, Defense Rating.

The Defense skill, and the Defense Rating which we previously collected on equipment to reach 415, provides five benefits. It increases the chance you will be Missed, the chance you will Dodge an attack (not the same thing), increases your chance to Parry, increases your chance to Block, and reduces the chance you will be hit with a Critical Strike.

The main reason Bear tanks formerly stacked Defense Rating was to become immune to the possibility of being hit with a Critical Strike from raid bosses 3 levels higher than us.

Bears don’t Parry, and they don’t Block. Maybe that will change sometime in the future, but as of now, they don’t.

Since Patch 3.0.2, Bears now have a Talent in the Feral tree, Survival of the Fittest, which increases all attributes by 6% and reduces the chance you will be critically hit by 6%.

6%, coincidentally enough, is a little MORE than the amount necessary for Bear tanks to be uncrittable by enemies 3 levels higher than us.

Now, yes, if you continued to stack Defense Rating, you could reduce the number of Talent points you would need to spend in SotF. The problem I have with that, is that the 6% attribute increase is going to be pretty amazing, as our Agility and Stamina continue to roll up into huge numbers at 80. So in my opinion it’s just not worth stacking Defense Rating on gear as we level up, just to save 1 or 2 Talent points.

So Defense Rating is only really going to increase our chances to be Missed and to Dodge.

Is that still valuable? YES! Do not just throw away Defense Rating!

But, as we will only get the benefit of two out of the five things Defense Rating provides, on a point-for-point value, if both items have equivalent item levels, take the one that is pure Agility/Stamina over the item that spends item points on some Defense Rating.

Just briefly, please remember, sometimes we may talk about ‘wasted points’. What we mean by that is, Blizzard assigns only so many points to an item based on the item level, and the item rarity. If two items, both of Green quality and of the same item level, are matched up side by side, if one of them has Defense Rating, it therefore has less ‘points’ available to be distributed on stats such as Armor, Agility or Stamina. That’s all it means.  If one item is Green, and the other is of Blue rarity, the Blue item can have more points available to distribute. Those points may be spent on a stat you don’t want, which means a Blue item ain’t necessarily all that great. It just means a Blue rarity item has more points to spend on more stats than a Green item of the same level.

Next up, stats that you need to watch for on gear.

With Survival of the Fittest providing uncrittability, and with Crushing Blows removed entirely from the game when dealing with raid bosses three levels higher than our characters, our stat priorities have changed a tiny bit.

Previously, we desperately sought Defense Rating to hit 415, and then we sought massive quantities of Armor for high Physical Damage Mitigation. Only after those two priorities were met did we look for Agility to increase Armor and Dodge, and Stamina to boost our Health. Far down the list after these items were Hit Rating and Expertise.

Well, things have changed.

Since we, alone among the tanks, had been unable to push Crushing Blows off the table, we had to compensate for this by having much higher base Health than other tanks, and much higher Physical Damage Mitigation, so we could EAT those Crushing Blows and keep going.

The upside?

When we were doing regular instances, instances without Crushing Blows, our high Health and Armor generally made them easymode.

The downside?

We were very, very weak against magical damage. Armor does not affect magical damage in any way, only Resistances and Talents do.

Well, another new Talent, Protector of the Pack, increases your Mitigation against ALL forms of damage, both physical AND magical, by 12%.

As of now, the tooltip says it adds 3% per member of your party, but Ghostcrawler has stated that limitation will be removed soon, so the full value of this Talent will even apply when soloing or helping run a single low level friend through instances.

So Protector of the Pack provides 12% Mitigation against all damage types. Survival of the Fittest provides uncrittability. And there are no Crushing Blows.

Well, there are Crushing Blows, but only enemies 4 levels or more higher than you will dish them out. Raid bosses will remain 3 levels higher, in level 80 raids. Just wanted to mention it though, for clarity.

Anyway, damnit, this means that our previous goals of high Armor and Health to survive Crushing Blows and endure magic damage are somewhat lessened.

Somewhat.

The reason these changes have been made is to allow Leather itemization to be made more… generic. Agility benefits both Rogues and Feral Druids… and so does Armor, and Stamina, and Hit Rating and Expertise. Crit is more valuable to Rogues than Bear Tanks, but it’s not a wasted stat by any means.

Exceptionally high Armor values are mostly going away, and we will be sharing gear drops, for Bear tanking, with Rogues.

We will still be looking for the highest Armor value we can get on our gear. And yes, that includes on our necks, rings, trinkets and weapons. While Ghostcrawler has said that soon armor multipliers will not work with non-Leather items, the base armor still will, and the change has NOT been implemented yet, and may never be. So yeah, armor on items is still tasty.

So first priority is high Armor values, especially on Leather gear. After that, we will be looking for the highest Agility and Stamina values we can possibly get, for Dodge and Health. Dodge Rating will also be very welcome.

After looking to our survivability, we will be looking for Hit Rating and Expertise as much as possible, to ensure our attacks hit when we need them to, increasing our threat generation and reliability.

Only after these values are obtained will we be looking for Haste Rating, Attack Power, and Crit.

Crit is, actually, now incredibly valuable to Bear Tanks, because the Talent Primal Fury adds 5 Rage every time one of our attacks Crit. More on that later, but seriously… if you see Crit, it is NOT wasted on Bear tanks.

As of right now, PvP gear looks to have the highest possible armor values for Leather. You may be tempted to make that your highest priority.

But please remember to look closely at the Agility and Stamina values of the gear. Resilience is wasted now in PvE, as we are uncrittable by default. Since Armor only applies against physical damage mitigation, only take PvP gear over PvE gear of a similar item level IF the extra armor comes along with equivalent high Agility and Stamina. As, right now, it most certainly does.

I cannot stress that enough, though. I know that seeing very high Armor values is immensely reassuring. And it is still very, very valuable.

But now, we need to maximise our ability to Dodge, and to survive magic based attacks, and our best way to do that is to take the best armor we can reasonably get, but really push Agility and Stamina. And Dodge Rating, of course.

Lastly, there have been changes to the tools we use when tanking.

Previously, Swipe only affected a maximum of three targets, and Maul one target, and Mangle one target. We had no Shield Wall effect. We had no Last Stand. And if we tagged a mob with Feral Faerie Fire to pull, someone else could hit it with a ranged shot and take it from us, since FFF did no damage.

All of that has changed.

We now have our own Talented version of Last Stand, called Survival Instincts. A new ‘common’ emergency survival move is to pop Survival Instincts to raise our max Health by 30%, and THEN to pop Frenzied Regeneration immediately afterwards, since Frenzied Regen has been changed to heal over time a percentage based on total health. It’s a very powerful combo, especially when coupled with the Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration.

Another new change is the addition of the 51 point Talent Berserk, which clears Fear effects instantly, makes you Immune to Fear for 15 seconds, and lets your Mangle affect up to three targets.

Berserk is pretty nice, and the Threat generation on three targets when you spam Mangle on all three is simply crazy.

Feral Faerie Fire has been changed so it DOES cause some minimal damage on the target, so your pulls will remain yours from now on. I personally rejoice at this change.

Perhaps the biggest change is simply that Swipe affects an unlimited number of targets in a cone in front of you, and in fact can affect targets that are just slightly out of your normal melee Mangle or Maul range. It is not a 360° attack, but it’s an incredible improvement.

I would be remiss if I did not point out that, with Primal Fury, Swipe can Crit on many, many targets at once and shoot your Rage through the roof. It’s one reason we DO want Crit Chance on our gear now. Add that to Natural Reaction causing us to generate Rage every time we Dodge an attack, and you can see that once battle actually starts, we have lots of tasty Rage. And stacking tons of Agility for Dodge means we don’t have to drop gear when tanking lower difficulty instances just to get hit more often to generate Rage.

And of course, you now have the choice of equipping a Glyph of Maul, which causes your Maul to hit 1 additional target.

This is both a blessing and a curse. Maul now does crazy damage, and hitting two for the price of one is amazing. Seriously, my Maul is pounding some amazing damage levels.

The curse part is simply that, by adding the Glyph, you remove the ability to use Maul as a surgical strike while tanking in a close CC environment. If you have Sheep and Ice Trap in close proximity, you already have to cease Swipe or you’ll automatically break it. With Maul affecting two targets, and you’re being unable to effectively control which two, you get left with Mangle and Lacerate on one target, and frankly, Maul does some sweet damage. It’s a damn shame to lose that when tanking single targets that everyone else is also pounding on.

Just… be aware of the dangers of Glyph of Maul. Remember, in tight CC, either back off out of Maul range of the CC, or restrict yourself to Mangle and Lacerate.

In parting, I will leave you with two Bear Tank Talent builds;

• A level 70 Feral Bear spec
• A level 80 Feral Bear spec

A few words on the builds.

The level 70 build is what I have been using, and I’ve enjoyed strong success. The lack of Omen of Clarity has not been an issue. Once my tanking gets rolling, Rage is not an ongoing concern.

The problem I have been encountering is early Rage generation, especially when synchronizing with some else’s pulls.

When waiting on a Sheep cast or Mind Control, and hanging ready to pick up the incoming before they hit the caster, sometimes Rage just drains away so fast that it’s a mad scramble.

The reason why, of course, is that in order to push 10 more points into the Feral tree to get Berserk at 70, we are leaving Intensity untouched. 

That instant 10 Rage from Intensity you get when you pop Enrage is incredibly important to early pulls.

If you shift into Bear and get that instant jolt of 10 Rage from Furor, pop Enrage and get an instant 10 Rage jolt from Intensity, and THEN have the +20 Rage over time come trickling in… it lasts a lot longer before Rage fade drops you too low to hit Mangle or Swipe.

That is why, in my level 80 build, you will find 3/3 in Intensity instead of King of the Jungle.

Another difference in my 80 build, is that I did invest 2 points into Brutal Impact.

My reasoning on this one is that Ghostcrawler has said, a few times, that Bash WILL serve as a spell interrupt, even on bosses that are immune to stun effects. A shorter cooldown on Bash will therefore be a good thing for more frequent interrupts… maybe.

I honestly am on the fence as to whether the increased frequency of interrupts can overcome the value of King of the Jungle. I’m sure time will tell.

You may find me changing my level 80 build, in actual practise, to something like this after playtesting in person. I think both are perfectly viable builds, and since Armor is being decreased in criticality, popping Enrage while tanking might actually become something it is possible to do. God knows in a serious tanking fight it’s been suicide up to now, but who knows?

One last thought… the tooltip has not been updated, so PLEASE, know up front that no matter WHAT Predatory Instincts sounds like, it does not, in any way, apply in Bear form. It’s a Cat Talent ONLY. It’s a great Kitty DPS raid Talent, but DO NOT TAKE for a Bear tank spec!

I hope that this helps prepare my Bear brothers and sisters for Thursday.

Oh, one last thing… Darkmoon Faire went live outside Shattrath this morning.

I went and got my Tree Frog from Flik, and hit 50 pets this morning.

I like Stinker… he’s my new buddy. :)

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 8:29 am and is filed under Druiding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.