Bear DefenseFollow

A link to your armory would be very helpfull, but since you don't mention earthwarden i suggest farming cenarion rep for that one. There's also a trinket from first boss in shadlow labs (adamantine figurine). It gives you 32 defence rating

While the Clefthoof doesn't quite get you all the way, they get very close. I would suggest getting the adamantite figurine off Blackheart the Inciter in Shadow Labyrinth, and as any druid will tell you Earthwarden is the best tanking weapon for druids until you get to SSC. Those two will put you over the top.

As to your second question about stamina, Defense is used to keep from getting critically hit, while stamina is to allow you to survive until the healers can heal you. As a rule, I prefer druids to have over 12k hp in bear form unbuffed to start kara.

On a side note, it is possible for a druid to do the first quest inside kara solo if you are willing to die. None of the mobs can see through stealth so you can get there without being seen. Just be sure to finish the quest before the mobs kill you.

This is a great guide to help you gear up your bear for Kara. (It covers gemmies and enchants too)

Guide: How to gear your Bear before raiding

Don't forget that Resilience can also help you get to the 415 uncrittable cap.
So you may look into some light PvP if you have particularly weak slot like wrists (Vindicator's Dragonhide Bracers: 11,794 honor and 20 Warsong Gulch marks)

Also if you can't get your paws onto the almighty Earthwarden.. (I know I'm still trying) The Braxixis' Staff of Slumber. (550 armor, 39 stamina, +234 attack power in feral forms. Level 64 required) is a great tanking staff while you work for Earthwarden. It's a world drop and usually can be found on the AH for about 30-60g depending on your server.

Edited, Mar 17th 2008 1:59pm by GryphonStalker

I currently have 13.5k in bear, and it took a fair share of work. ..but I'm a Night Elf. Taurens have a bit easier time because of their racial. Trade off being my dodge will be higher because of my racial.

One thing you may want to consider is the welfare epic game. =)

Resilience can be used to up your uncritability which can be earned rather readily via arena gear. This is unreasonably easy to get, until you can work your way up to earning PvE gear. Some pieces are actually keepers until after T4 & T5 depending on your other gear.

I have yet to see this math elsewhere in this forum, maybe im just not looking hard enough, but i'll post it here just for fun anyway.

***

You need 415 total defense (with talents, as a druid) to become uncritable.
OR
You need 102.44 resilience rating (with talents, as a druid) to become uncritable.

2.36 defense rating = 1 defense = .04% lower chance to be critically hit.
59 defense rating = 25 defense = 1.0% lower chance to be critically hit.

39.4 resilience rating = 1.0% lower chance to be critically hit.

therefor:

25 defense = 39.4 resilience rating
.63 defense = 1 resilience rating
1 defense = 1.576 resilience rating

OR

59 defense rating = 39.4 resilience rating
1.4868 defense rating = 1 resilience rating
1 defense rating = .668 resilience rating

***

So, if we need 65 extra defense in bear form (350+65=415), then we can instead use 103 resilience rating from PvP gear if thats easier to get for you. which incidentally, can be made with only 2 0r 3 pieces of gear. Now you just gotta figure out if its faster to wait for arena points to roll in, or go earn some badge gear.

Cheers

I totally agree that defense is a more worthwhile stat for PvE, I was merely offering an alternative method for becoming uncritable as a temporary solution while he works on getting better gear.

(also why i referred to it as the "welfare epic game")

=)

cheers

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's -bad- to have PvP pieces, I'm just suggesting to round out your defense +/- a couple points instead of filling it with resilience.
Sure, be.imba.hu cries at me for being over the cap, but I'm sitting at 415 defense, and some 100 resilience. The resilience ONLY exists because, well, the S2 shoulders are some of the best shoulders out there for tanking.
And the S3 gloves ARE arguably the best Feral gloves in the game. Why? The equip bonus.
It adds an interrupt to maim.
With the new instant shifting / shifting between forms, you can make a tanking macro using these gloves. It's a tiny bit risky, and if you're low on HP or Armor I would NOT suggest it (or if you have high latency).
I don't know the exact terms, btw, this is just the general idea.
/cast CatForm
/cast rake
/cast maim
/cast DireBearForm

What this does is an almost instant interrupt.
It assumes much, the biggest assumption being that you have the talent that adds energy / rage as you shift. The second assumption is that your healer can keep up with the added damage in kitty form. An alternative is to add /cast Barkskin to the beginning of the macro to help with mitigation.
If you have higher latency, it can take too long to be useful on short casts.
The reason Rake is present is because it's a cheap combo point, and you need one combo point to maim.

Other than the shoulders and gloves though, I don't -really- see many other pieces of Arena gear being terribly useful.
Maybe the Headpiece if you're like me and stuck using an AH green. I believe there's a nice leather tanking head from the Gorefiend questline in SMV, but it could be DPS. I haven't completed it yet due to severe laziness :)
The weapon is, IMO, not worth it for tanking. You're either going to spend a TON of time farming AV, or more than a month in arenas.

In that time, you SHOULD be able to scrap together enough SV runs to hit exalted and get your Earthwarden.

Also, you can get Defense Rating shoulder enchant from Aldor (I -believe- Scryers has one too), and an Defense Rating head piece enhancement from Keepers of Time to fill in small temp gaps.
Chances are, though, if you have the Clefthoof Set, the Necklace, and the Earthwarden, you're going to end up overcapping your Defense Rating. It's no biggy, but at that point you can add the Attack Power or Dodge Rating enchants to your head and shoulders, and remove any DR gems you've got in there and stick in Stamina or Agility / Crit / Dodge / Hit rating gems in.

Please don't listen to this. With 5/5 Furor, you get 40 instant energy when you shift to cat form. Rake takes 40 energy. For one thing, Mangle also takes 40 energy, and is better in every way than Rake. For another, you're now sitting in cat form waiting on enough energy to Maim. Energy ticks every 2 sec, but the timer doesn't start when you shift. It's constantly running in the background, so you may shift and be .5 seconds away from the first tick, or 1.5 seconds. The first energy tick is normalized (this also happens w/ high latency), which is why you see unusual numbers when you powershift frequently. Best case scenario is that the first 2 energy ticks after shifting are 15+ and 20, so you can Maim after ~3.5 seconds. After the Maim GCD, you can shift back into bear form, having spent 4.5+ seconds in a form with 66% of your bear form health and 1/2 the damage mitigation.

You have on DPS gear in the armoury, but your short answer is this:

You said you used Necklace of the Deep. Until you can make up the Def Rating elsewhere suck it up and use Strength of the Untamed or the Quest reward necklace from Sethekk Halls (Raven..something..Necklace). To finish the last part of the crit immunity needed either grind BGs for an afternoon and get a piece PvP gear (I suggest Shoulders or Bracers), Or you'll have to give up a slot like a Trinket or Cloak for a high Def Rating item at the expense of your other stats.