Bear-ing aroundFollow

right off the bat, my armory page would go here if wowarmory.com didn't have it's head up its rear, but you could search for me, Zenithal on thunderhorn, but don't get your hopes up.

Alright, some of you may remember me from a while back when I first hit 70 and asked what to do. I've been kinda messing around admittedly, but I've gotten 2 of the blue honor PvP peices, the Arena S1 shoulders, and gloves of dextrous manipulation and edgewalker longboots out of kara, and an array of blues and greens from elsewhere, feeling that I can now dps at least some instances efficiently, and even off tank from time to time. But, the way my guild is going, it seems that all of our tanks are leaving, and I have been considering making the switch from cat dps to bear tanking, having tried it a few times and enjoying it when I wasn't being killed instantly for being in crappy gear. I've been researching what gear to go after, looking mainly at Emmeralds list of pre-raid bear gear, and found myself wondering about the consequenses of my actions.

Mainly this: do I need to keep a seperate cat gear set for soloing/PvP/dpsing if I'm a bear? Or should I go into BG's with my enormous amount of dodge and laugh at people trying to hit me? My spec could work with dps and tanking, give or take a few points, so thats not really my concern, but is it worth keeping two sets, or can I dps and tank efficiently with one set of armor?

Anyway, sorry about the wall of text.

tl;dr version : no, go back and read it ya ****.


This is a lot funnier if you read it like yhatzee from zero punctuation.

A good starting tanking set that you can get crafted is the Heavy Clefthoof Set, it's a great set with tons of defence that can help you get uncrittable pretty easily. You can Gem it with +12 stams or mix in some +4hit +4agil to get the socket bonuses (which are dodge).

But basically some of your gear will be the same (like shoulders and maybe gloves) but you want way more stam and defence out of your bear set and more agil and strength out of your cat gear.

::chuckles::

In our very hybrid essence we need 3 sets of gear regardless of spec. Tanking, DPS, Healing. So the meat of the matter..




You will need separate gear. One for Cat focused on your DPS. One for Bear focused on survivability. With one set of gear you'll never be as good as you could with two because either your damage will suffer or your repair bill will.

As for PvP, with resilience now. You basically need a separate set for PvP/Arena. Luckily with the lastest patch they have some blue gear available from each outland faction (Need to be Honored, if I recall), that is consider 0.5. It's a few gold, but is a great starting point for a PvP set until you can cash in some honor and tokens!

I'm probably gonna be saving up for S2 once it becomes honor available, but on my server, horde never wins BGs and it gets infuriating after a while. Anybody know when 2.4.whatever is coming out with Arena season 4?

Thanks for all the input.

One more thing, sorry, if I decide to offtank, should my gear be cat oriented with pieces swapped out for fights where there needs to be more than one tank? Or should I get a PvP set and stick with that?

While ferals do get screwed a bit with itemization, and can wear a little of PvP gear for PvE. You *really* do not want to go tanking Kara in full PvP gear. A full PvP set is best for PvP. ...If I've miss your point please correct me. ^^

On the nose. ^^

In the same vein as the argument made before about; an item gets X points. (I'm getting a little foggy so lets hope I've remembered this straight.) Lets say a pair of shoulders gets 100 points; in a PvE environment it would look like +50 STA, 25 AGI, and 25 STR. While lets say there is a PvP equivalent, it would be +50 STA, 25 AGI, and 25 resilience. So in essence while it's a upgrade over either areas green. It still takes a bit away if used outside it's environment. I forgot whom I saw originally post it, but it's always made a lot of sense to me. That of course doesn't also take into account blizzards poor itemization for feral in our current state of the game. Where many need to incorporate PvP gear to stay uncrittable. S1 offers some great upgrades (Vindicator's Bracers and Belt, Dragonhide Helm; which I admittedly got because it had antlers... ^^;) but I wouldn't show up to raid Kara in my "Dragonhide Robe" any more then I'd run AV in my "Heavy Clefthoof Vest". Strategic upgrades are one thing, full gorilla is another.

Based on personal experience and the comment "have been considering making the switch from cat dps to bear tanking, having tried it a few times and enjoying it when I wasn't being killed instantly for being in crappy gear." I'd say you should focus on your tanking set first.

When you're DPS, subpar gear keeps you at the bottom of the damagemeter(and from having to worry about threat, lol) and can slow down fights a bit if your other DPS isn't pickin up the slack, but when tanking crappy gear will cause you to die which leads to costly and time-consuming wipes and/or require your healer to heal the bejesus out of you which is likely to draw aggro from secondary mobs.

And there's a really well-defined set of pre-raid-available gear for tanking, whereas DPS gear is more "grab it where ya get it." You seem to be wearing your DPS gear atm so I can't point out the specific pieces you'd benefit from.

An important note on your gemming in what appears to be your dps set: you're gemmed for a lot of +hit, +crit, +ap, and +strength. Generally speaking it's "Agility FTW" as it boosts attack power and crit, plus dodge and a negligible amount of armor. Gem for agility whenever possible, sacrificing a bit only when you need to go for a socket bonus.

Weapon-wise, too, you can do a lot better than Staff of Beasts, by the way. If you're rich buy Staff of Natural Fury, if not consider going for Dreamer's Dragonstaff off Thorgrin the Tender in Botanica, or just do the quest chains for either Fleshling Simulation Staff or Wildcaller. Both are soloable except for a final step that takes a 5-man party, but with a 100% drop rate quest rewards rule. : ) I assume you have Braxxis Staff of Slumber for your tanking set.