Questions about end game tankingFollow

Now, I've spent time in every spec, and thought before that Moonkin gear was the hardest to come by for a Druid.
Having recently gone back to Feral, though, I stand corrected.
I've looked through all my loot lists, all of my everything, and can't seem to find anything in the Tier 4 range that's decent for an upgrade for a Druid tank.
I'm sitting at JUST above the required 420 Defense Rating, and -know- I can't afford to lose any.
So I look at all of the leather drops in Kara and Gruuls, and see. . . nothing.
Where does a Druid tank get upgrades to gear? I find it very hard to believe that I'll be tanking 25 man content in my Heavy Clefthoof set.
My armory profile is http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sisters+of+Elune&n=Wakayaja

I know I need a new headpiece and new wrists, and am a short distance from Earthwarden, but I'm stuck on where to upgrade the rest of my stuff. I mean, heck, EVERY piece of leather in Kara is healing or Agility. . . and I'm frustrated.

Any advice is well appreciated.

Imo, join the welfare age, get crit immune from resilience, dodge from agility and more AP, crit and stam over all.

You can more than tank any heroic/kara in S1+ Earthwarden . Gem for agility/stamina pick up the badge rewards that give you steep armor upgrades, your pretty much better geared at this point than a tank who geared through heroics and kara .

Edit- Also resilience mitigates more types of dmg, so in many ways this set up is better than def rating.

Edited, Mar 12th 2008 4:12pm by ClockWerk

In Kara, you will probably take Barbed Choker of Discipline(amulet), the T4 helm, Girdle of Treachery(waist), Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch (trinket) and the Violet Ring that you get trough rep reward by running Kara.

If I were you, I would switch your wrist for Band of the Swift Paw (35 badges) or for Vindicator's Leather Bracers (12k honor, more or less). You have to switch your staff for Earthwarden too, it only need Exalted with CE. The waist you can switch to Vindicator's Leather Belt(18k honor, more or less). If you are lacking some dodge, you can switch your boot for Vindicator's Leather Boots.


Btw, I think you need 415 def, not 420

Edited, Mar 12th 2008 5:46pm by Brisin

Did I mention that I'm Alliance, and long sessions of PvP disgust me? :)
No way I'm spending 20 game hours + grinding up the honor for all the PvP gear I'd 'need.'

So what you guys are saying is, without PvP, I can't Druid tank? That's the message I'm getting, and that makes me a sad Drood :(

The OP wanted upgrades and i gave info on what i thought to be the easy, best path for that. I never said it was the only way, many druids have geared up with no pvp. You need to learn to read clearly.

I do however feel the S1 geared Druid is optimal for T-4 and good into T-5.

I missed where my post had any reference to you.. but if you want it that way than fine.



As true as this statement is you forgot your in the Druid forum. Druids do not have all those types of mitigation resilience would benefit. Druids mitigation comes form tons of armor and DODGE. Resilience does not increase dodge. However, defense does. Therefor, defense > resilience for a druid.



I fail to see where PVP gear is optimal for PVE. Passing us the 2-piece T4 bonus for PVP gear is absolutely foolish.



If he is getting badge rewards that EVERY kara druid tank is getting how does that make his BoJ rewards better? Last time I checked heroics and kara give badges. So are you saying all these other druids your referring to dont use thier badges? Also, the gear that heroics and kara drop are better suited for PVE than S1.

This thread on Emmerald's forums contains all the info you need to prepare yourself to tank Kara. It includes options for all slots including Badge Rewards, Rep Items, Crafted Items, BOE AH specials, quest rewards, Heroic & Regular instances.

A lot of the items are better than the Kara drops. The T4 helm, Gilded Thorium Cloak, T4 Gloves or Gloves of Dextrous Manipulation, Skulkers Greaves, Edgewalker Longboots, Moroes Lucky Pocket Watch are all excellent tanking items. The neckpiece Barbed Choker of Discipline is also excellent, but not as good as the Necklace of the Deep which is a fairly cheap craftable.

Most of the S1 stuff is not as good as the Kara stuff - The S1 shoulders are very good, and the chest is a bit of a side-grade from the Heavy Clefthoof). In almost all cases though, the S2, S3 & Vindicators stuff is a significant upgrade. An arena'd out feral tank would be in amazing shape.

Use the post I linked at the start of this post and Emmeralds Gear List that was mentioned by Thranathiril earlier and you can't go wrong.

There are a few good Kara drops that others have listed above and a lot of your upgrades will probably come from badge rewards.

About the def/res debate:
Resiliance or defense can get you crit immune, resiliance is a cheaper stat than defense, but doesn't add to dodge.

NPCs spells can't crit and dot damage in raids is generally minimal and/or dispellable (at least in early 25 mans), also the amount of resiliance we are taliing about (<140 if I remember correctly) isn't going to reduce dot damage by a significant amount. So resiliance doens't really have an added bonus over defense other than the cheaper cost. Use either to get crit immune and then worry about boosting more important things.

The DoT reduction on S1 is really trivial when you consider how little DoT damage tanks take compared to non-periodic damage, and how much more damage is mitigated by armor. All info below based on Rawr 12.1, rare gems, and fully enchanted.


PvP with: S1/Vindicators/Veterans, Deathblow X11 goggles, Earthwarden, Idol of Terror, Ring of Unyielding Force, Iron Band of the Unbreakable, Badge of Tenacity, and DM Card: Vengance

Unbuffed Stats: 15.6k health, 235 Resil, 35% Dodge+Miss, and 24.3k armor. 235 resil negates ~6% of DoT damage. 24k armor negates ~66-69% of physical damage, depending on the level of the boss.


PvE pre-Kara: HC 3-piece, Verdant gloves, Cowl of Beastly Rage, Neck of the Juggernaut, Slikk's, Shoulders of Assassination, Swiftpaw, EW, Idol of Terror, Treemender's, same rings/trinkets.

Unbuffed Stats: 15.3k health, 0 Resil, 35% Dodge+Miss, and 26.8k armor. 26.8k armor negates 69%-71.5% physical damage, again, depending on the level of the mob.


PvE upgraded to T4

Unbuffed Stats: 14.9k health, 0 Resil, 43% Dodge+Miss, and 33k armor. 33k armor negates 73.4-75% of physical damage depending on the level of the mob.


If your armor negates 66% of incoming physical damage, a hit for 10,000 is reduced to 3,400. If it negates 69%, it's 3,100, and at 73%, it's 2,700. Per swing, the PvP tank is taking 700 more damage, so a DoT would need to tick for ~11,700 in the same amount of time as a mob's swing timer and be undispellable for the PvP tank to take less damage.

PvE: 11,700 + 2,700 = 14,400
PvP: 11,700(.94) + 3,400 = 14,398

This scenario doesn't take avoidance into account, but since the PvE tank has 8% more total avoidance than the PvP tank, adding avoidance to the math favors PvE gear.

Edit: Increasing physical damage taken also increases the gap between the PvP-geared Druid and the PvE-geared Druid. IE, at 4k hits on the PvE bear, you'd need a DoT ticking for 17,750 per melee hit to favor the PvP bear.

PvE: 17750 + 15,000(.27) = 17750 + 4,050 = 21,800
PvP: 17750(.94) + 15,000(.34) = 16,685 + 5,100 = 21,785

Edited, Mar 13th 2008 2:18pm by AstarintheDruid

Oh what care bears will say to avoid pvp lol ..

S1 is optimal for a few reasons.

1. you reach your crit immune state faster.

2. You have the dodge you need

3. You still mitigate more TYPES of dmg

4. You have more AP and Crit to go with it

You are the same brick wall, except you have a ton more dps ( not a tanking stat i know but, why not ? )

As i said through T-4 and into early T-5 your still better for the task at hand.

The S1 set is so insanely easy to get, it is still the easy fast way to gear.

Like i say it is not the only way to gear, but it is the best way to gear for starting raider.

Heroic leather drops are a joke next to S1, There are nice badge reward upgrades but you wont get them as fast as PvP rewards if your half decent..

If you are sitting in a full T-4 set then we can debate, but it isn't until T-5 where pve gear is clearly better than S1.

As the poster above pointed out, bring arena gear into the mix and we can strech this welfare epic debate out a long time..

I fail to see the point of this comment in any way. One person posted maths to show that the S1 gear is about equivalent in mitigation to the non-PvP gear (I agree it is quite easy to get). They then showed (mathematically) how gear obtained from T4/Kara surpasses the S1 gear for tanking.

How does this equate to being a care bear and avoiding PvP?? I PvP a lot and have all the Vindicator's stuff and a few of the S1 items as well (plus bought several pieces of the S1 healing set). The fact is, I use whichever piece is better to tank with and that does not include and S1 gear (I do use some of the Vidicator's stuff though).

Easiest way is just to use Emmerald's list and use the best pieces you have available to you.

To reach the cap it doesn't matter which you choose as long as you reach the cap. You need 156 Defense Rating or 103 Resilience or a combination of the two. After the cap, resilience gives you a little less dot damage, but as AstarintheDruid worked out, this is only a very small amount. At 70 you need 14.75 of defense rating to get 0.25% increases to each of miss & dodge. So basically 14.75 defense rating is equivalent to 0.5% dodge.

To put this in perspective, you would need about 7.35 Agi to get the same amount of dodge.

So while Def Rating is of some use after hitting the cap, it is not worth stacking. Stay at the cap and then gem & enchant for Agi or Stam is the way to go.

The majority of feral PvE upgrades are in out T4/5/6 pieces. Slots not covered by tier gear are covered by Badge of Justice gear. It's not like DPS gear, where different classes and specs need different amounts of different stats.

Head: Tier

Neck: Necklace of the Juggernaut (until you get Kae'ls head or in BT)

Shoulders: Tier

Back: Slikk's Cloak of Placation, best cloak in-game

Chest: Tier

Wrist: Bands of the Swift Paw, best bracers you can get

Hands: Tier

Belt: Waistguard of the Great Beast (or Belt of Natural Power if you can get it crafted)

Legs: Tier

Boots: Footwraps of Wild Encroachment until you get to BT

Rings: Top 3 are the ring from VE rep, the ring from turning in Mag's head, and the BoJ Ring of Unyielding Force

Trinket: Badge of Tenacity is #1, other choices are Moroes' Watch or anything with +Stam.

If you're choosing between PvP and, say, your heavy clefthoof, your heavy clefthoof pieces will let you live a little longer, but won't help you build threat as much. If your DPS is holding back because they're right below you in threat, the PvP gear may be woth the time investment until your T4 pieces drop.

And for ClockWerk, if you can find a boss that does >50% of it's damage from periodic effects, or SS a boss getting a crit with a spell, I'll concede that Resil has some PvE utility beyond crit immunity.

Edited, Mar 14th 2008 4:10pm by AstarintheDruid