Small shiny thingies - for bear tanks.Follow

I believe you get one of the best tanking idols from an early quest in Hellfire Penninsula, from the Cenarion Druids by the entrance to Terrokar.
Idol of the Wild adds 52 damage to Bear Mangle.

Getting some PvP gear, if you can, is also a nice way to get some temporary tanking gear. PvP gear offers both stamina, armor and resilience, the poor man's defense.

Add some armor items to the mix, along with some hit rating and agility, and you've got a very nice tanking set.

I have the S1 head, shoulder and gloves, plus Vindicator's bracers and ring, and Sergeant's cloak for the back. The chest, legs and boots consist of the Heavy Clefthoof set and the weapon is the S1 Gladiator's Maul. Not the best for tanking, but I don't have access to better at the moment.

In this gear, selfbuffed, my defensive values are:

13,494 health
16,558 armor
388 defense
23.5% dodge
192 resilience

I'm going to replace some of the defense gems on my Clefthoof set now that I'm crit immune with just the base resilience and defense on my gear. Should increase my dodge and health levels a fair bit, not to mention the hit chance.

Once I get those two rings, that trinket, the cape and the weapon, it'll help a lot with the crappy armor values as well.

Edited, Mar 18th 2008 11:05pm by Mazra

Just go solo good old stratholme for Idol of Brutality. It adds to swipe and maul damage and is arguably the best aoe tanking idol in the game. At 70 you can solo your way to the boss and just farm him until it drops. Enter stratholme from the front entrance and stealth to the back entrance to find the boss that drops your idol. He's called Magistrate Barthilas. If you enter from the back entrance he will run away and you have to go all the way to scarlet side to find him :/

A bit of unrelated trivia. While you are farming for said idol, you should farm Hearthsinger Forresten for "Piccolo of the Flaming Fire" trinket. The boss is a ***** hardly worthy of the "boss" title, but the trinket he drops is one of the funniest in the game ^^

DKDruid - Thanks to your tip, I am now the proud new owner of my very own Idol of Brutality! It is a thing of beauty, especially compared to the lump o' junk I used to have in my relic slot. Solo-camped him 5 times before it dropped, and used it for the first time in Karazhan last night. Thanks again!

I've had my eyes on Braxxis' Staff of Slumber for some time now, but I don't like the loss of attack power and stamina. Though, I guess the stamina loss is minuscule and the attack power doesn't outweigh extra survivability when tanking.

I'm going to pick it up in a few minutes then. Thanks.

Edited, Mar 20th 2008 6:19pm by Mazra

No idea what your doing with your Druid, but Attack power should be the least of your worries. That 550 AC goes a Loooong way trust me.


10 Sta loss isn't a good thing, but easily made up else where.


Well worth the investment, trust me.

If you can stand the pvp'ing switch out your grand marshall's spaulders for the gladiator ones, if you haven't done the enraged spirits of air in SMV go pick up the enraged spirits chain for your manimals cinch, and while your there if you haven't done the cipher of damnation chain's knock them out for umberhowls collar for your wrist slot, it looks like between your defense and resilience your probably between 1.5% and 2% over being uncrittable so hit up http://www.wowwiki.com/Defense and look for the script for druid's to use, you can copy and paste it into your text pane to see how far beyond uncrittable you are then you can use that info to start changing out some defense gems for +stam or +agi. i'm a big fan of tons of hp so i gemmed completely for stam, but i lack in avoidance so whatever floats your boat, but anything beyond being uncrittable is wasted stats...

sorry for the wall of text >.<


edit: spellingz
edit: something i forgot to mention...you know that the +armor enchants you have aren't being multiplied in bear form right?

Edited, Mar 21st 2008 1:06am by Tokijinn

Edited, Mar 21st 2008 1:07am by Tokijinn

No no, Cap'n. It was directed more at myself than anyone else. The entire post, more or less, consists of me arguing with myself, starting with being sceptic about switching out an epic for a blue, leading over to a short math crunch and finally ending with me convincing myself that I should go get it.

I tend to overuse the dubious smiley. It reminds me of a smiley I used to abuse back when I was in one of those chatrooms. The smiley had this weird face, as if it was saying "Don't mind me, I'm just nuts."

The funniest thing about this post is while I was reading everyone's responses (and got a lot of great tips that I have been able to use), I got curious and did an armory check on Mazra. Well, Mazra - your toon gave me one of the best ideas for a "quick fix" trinket for tanks: the Stormpike Insignia Rank 6. It's a very cool trinket that helps a lot with my dodge rating and it's so easy to get especially if you BG a lot (which usually means you honor farm at AV a lot too!). It's been a good upgrade from the trash trinkets I had before. Thanks, Mazra, even if you helped indirectly with that!

1 - Run SV everytime you log on your druid. You want that Earthwarden. Believe me.

2 - You can run Mechanar to get the cloak that drops there (Thoriumweave Cloak) or Slave Pens for another cloak (Bogstrok Scale Cloak).

3 - Commander's Badge (Netherwing revered) is a good trinket. Adamantine Figurine is a great one too, and you only need to run some Shadow Labirinth.

4 - You have some nice rings for the time being.

5 - Same for neck.

6 - Those gladiator stuff are great. You won't need an upgrade for them soon.

7 - Change that enchant you have on your weapon. Get that +35 agi or, at least, +25 agi. Much better.

8 - You could change your wrist. Vindicator's Leather Bracers would be a great choice. That or Band of the Swift Paw (35 badges). Those are the best you can have.

9 - Run Kara. If you are already def capped, you will be ok, at least for an OT, but I guess even for Main tank. It's easyer than most of the heroics.

Edited, Mar 28th 2008 3:59pm by Brisin

For tanking, I prefer Idol of Terror as it procs a +65 agi which translates to about 4.4% increased dodge, 2.6% crit increase, and +65 AP. (for tauren, the numbers may be different for NE) I would think it's better suited for tanking as more dodge = less hit = less bleeding and less healing = less mana wasted.

Thanks Astarin and Grolyn - I took your advice and picked up the Idol of Terror last weekend and I'm already seeing the benefits of burst AGI. It's a cool relic at only 20 badges.

Brisin - Thanks for your advice as well. I managed to pick up my Adamantite Figurine and a few nice AGI enchants over the last week and they have been working awesome =D



Edited, Apr 14th 2008 10:19am by TooRetForYou