The primary reason for the defense cap is to make yourself immune to melee critical hits. With the addition of the Survival of the Fittest talent, you can spend 3 points in that talent and become immune to melee critical hits without having any gear with defense rating.

Defense is still useful as it helps your dodge and chance to be missed, but it’s not as helpful as agility or dodge rating, point for point. Feral druids cannot block or parry, so the fact that defense rating increases those chances doesn’t matter.
Kaethir´s last blog ..Tier 10 and the Bear

Im just wondering, im changed to tanking when i get the rest gear needed. I tanked naxx at the start of Wotlk with hc/rep gear and got t7/t7.5, when we startet to do maly/ulduar i chaged specc to boomkin. Now i wanna tank again! :) But, there only dr00d tank in guild tells me that defense dont matter anymore. That def isnt necessary, how can that be? Presuming that he´s right ofc :P

I would choose def, cause it benefits to “all” the tanking stats, such as dodge :P

Hit rating is 263 (8%) soft cap (special abilities). Once you pass this it only applies to your auto attacks and it works differently. It decreases your chance to be missed by auto attacks rather than your chance to hit as is such with special abilities. If you happen to surpass 263 no biggie but if you can trade in some of your extra hit for other stats such as agility or expertise or even crit it will benefit you more.

I’m not sure where this ‘bear druids don’t need hit’ myth comes from but I would like to say its is just wrong. 263 is very easy to achieve. If you are not hitting your target your not generating threat. Soft hit cap is a must for all tanks. Also remember you still have spells such as Growl(taunt) and Faerie Fire which will not be hit cap and can still miss. Spell hit cap of 446(17%) will make all spells hit but this is way too much hit and tanks should never stack hit over the hit cap. Once again extra hit won’t hurt but stacking any one stat will hurt you more than it will help.

So now you ask well if my taunt misses what can I do? Easy. Glyph of Growl will give you an extra 8%hit on your taunt only. If you are only at 263(8%) hit this will mean that your taunt can still miss by 1%. This is where extra hit doesn’t hurt. For ToC I think Glyph of Growl is a must when you compare it to Glyph of Maul which only helps for aoe threat the extra chance for you taunt to work is far better. Bosses can and will become taunt immune after several failed attempts at taunting. The other two glyphs that are must have for feral tanks are Glyph of Survival Instincts and Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration.

Expertise. Tanking expertise soft cap is 26 expertise (214) expertise rating. This will prevent raid bosses from dodging you since you are attacking from in front vs. behind like dps does. This is what you should aim for for serious raiding. Don’t immediately sacrifice agility for expertise rather find gear you can achieve both with. Never gem for expertise. Unless and until you are around 51% dodge and even then only with the purple stam/expertise gem. Even then defense will be a better mitigation stat. Unless you are having issues with parry gib. Parry gib = boss parries palyers attack = boss does more damage usually you only see this when mele dps are in front of the boss such as on auriya. Parry gib isn’t a big concern for now only think about it when your tanking ToGC25

Rings, neck pieces. There are a very select few out there that are truly good for feral tanks. Remember just because it has agility on it doesn’t make it the best choice. You want all your gear to support you which means for these three items you will be looking for tanking ones. Try for ones that have a good amount of stamina, dodge, and expertise if you can get it. Strength wont hurt you so favor more stamina/dodge/expertise over strength. These three items with the exception of your cloak should be the only ones with any strength on them. Parry and block rating on rings neck and cloak won’t hurt but certainly won’t help.

Dodge try for around 40% this means ~1150 agility as this is the largest contributer to your dodge.
Armor. It comes on almost all of your gear and you should have the talent Thick Hide maxed out to maximize your armor it is your only other mitigation stat other than dodge. You should try to aim for 30k armor.

Stamina shoot for 40k unbuffed in bear form this is about 30k in caster form. This will provide you with more than enough health to tank ToC10/25 for Anub.
Remember stamina only provides a large health pool it doesn’t reduce any damage for you.

Crit/attack power. Surprisingly both help with mitigation for druids but not as much as dodge and armor. This is due to savage defense the more you crit the more often you get this buff and the more ap you have the more damage is mitigated. This was given to druids in 3.1 to help equalize all tanks due to our lack of parry. Aim for 5.5kap and 40%crit. Your crit also helps to heal you through the talent Improve Leader of the pack.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bleeding%20Hollow&n=Lasco
Talents. This spec is for raiding. I use it even for heroics and just swap out for a dps trinket for more threat gen as over geared bear tanks tend to have rage issues. There are many talents that are definite tanking talents that help with mitigation and stats then there are some that will increase your threat and still others to will make you more rage efficient.

I have thought over this talent spec many many times and for raiding it is the best spec out there per talent point it provides for maximum stats,mitigation, and threat. The talents left out aren’t good tanking talents they are not talented because the other talents are better per talent point. A few things I will add. Furor 3/5 is more than enough it can help to generate rage before a pull but enrage is more than enough and you can always shift a few times then enrage once you get that initial 10 rage. Feral aggression is worthless there are so many better talents to spend your points in and there are several classes that reduce attack power by much more both talented and untalented. Still use your demoralizing roar just remember it doesn’t stack with similar abilities. King of the Jungle is also not good you don’t need ever want to enrage on a boss because of the armor reduction and it doesn’t significantly increase your threat or dps for that matter. You don’t want to sacrifice a boost in threat for a loss in mitigation. With ~30k armor you lose ~4k when you enrage a very significant amount. Infected Wounds is the only talent that some might argue about its up to you. This talent is similar to other tanks talents so talk with the tanks you regularly raid with. I prefer it cause I pug 10mans and never know who I might be tanking next to. I can’t really see putting these three talents points into any other talent. If I wanted to move them elsewhere I would go 2/2 Shredding Attacks 4/5 Furor.

Stat Recap bear form unbuffed

Stamina 40k
Hit rating 263
Dodge 40%
Armor 30k
Dodge 40%
Crit 40%
Ap 5.5k
Expertise 26(226 rating)

Also Stinkyfur is correct T9 will not get 32k armor, i have 4/5 T9.0 with Stormrage Helm, 1211agility and the 2 rings he is talking about “Clutch of Fortification +560armor ” & “Loop of the Twin Val’kry +490armor” and obviously Thick Hide talent my armor is 29687 i also have “Runed Ring of Binding +700 Armor” if i swap that for Loop of the Twin Val’Kry i have 29897 armor. i’d say T9.5 Triumph set would get close to or maybe slightly over 31k armor, But 32k – 34k not gonna happen until the T10 sets are released.
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bloodfeather&n=Disgostu

Stam: 2973
Agi: 1368
AP: 5282
HR: 447 (6.27% I believe)
Cri Str: 44.85
Expertise: 25 (Rating is 126)
Dodge: 40.27

My question is this….how does haste fit into this? Or would it even help? I have no problems keeping aggro. My HR is a little high, but it’s pretty much due to my gear, not to enchants or gems. I changed out some Agi gems for Expertise/Sta gems, which consequently made my Dodge and Crit strike come down a small amount. In raids, buffed up, CS goes up to slightly over 50% and dodge goes up to around 48%. It’s nice, but I think my dodge is starting to affect my rage. I seem to be back to losing rage faster than I can generate it. Dodging generates 3 rage everytime I do, but none of my attacks use less than 10 or 15 rage., which is the other problem I was going to ask about. It’s mostly in Heroics that I have the problems with the rage. I don’t lose aggro over it or anything, it’s just a nuiscance.

Any suggestions?

Draygoon
Bladefist

Draygoon
Bladefist