Improvments for a tanking druidFollow

Hi everyone I need some help with my feral druid and gear to improve ext.

Basically its the summer now, no school yay, and I now have time to raid, do heroics, dailies and all that wonderful stuff. I realized that my gear is subpar to that of other tanking druids and I really should improve it so I can move up in the raiding world.

So I have two things

The first is my warcrafter sandbox with current gear ext. http://thunderlord-us.warcrafter.net/Charade
**The Cape should be the tanking cape from the new seasonal boss.....**

The second is my warcrafter sandbox of gear improvements from heroics only http://www.warcrafter.net/sandbox/78614

My questions are the following;
A) Are the planned changes enough assuming no raiding or badge gear (other then idol)?
B) Assuming the items I have changed do not drop on the first run, would adding the badge chest and staff be a good idea?
C) I realize that fully raid buffed with new gear I would have 26k health, 33k armor, 49% dodge, and 388ish defence rating. Should I use gem sockets to add def rating to 415 or w/e?
D) Are there any other changes to spec, gear, enchants, gems ext. that you would make?

-Charade

Here is my armory just incase http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thunderlord&n=Charade

I'm no math guy and the percentages get kinda wonky in my head, but self-buffed you're looking at the following.
You must be getting much better raid buffs than I get to hit the numbers you're talking about. : /
- Base armor of 5,271 puts in the neighborhood of mid-to-high 20s armor in bear form...jump of another 6-7k with raid buffs?
- Base HP of 12,000 plus the 20% stam boost of bear form puts you in the neighborhood of 15-16k -- jump of another 10,000 with raid buffs?
- Base dodge change of 31.53% puts you at 35.5% in bear form -- jump of another 15% with raid buffs?

That gear you have picked out looks fine except for the cloak. And the cloak off the summer seasonal boss isn't nearly as good as the cloak off Capacitus in normal or heroic mech, nor the cloak off Kael'thas in heroic MgT.

Emmerald's guide to pre-raid druidic tank gearing FTW.



Edited, Jun 26th 2008 2:02am by JeeBar

Yeah my appologies on the 26k health, that was raid buffed with all the buffs.......my bad. I just updated the sandbox with the cape from MgT, and checked my health in Dire Bear with self buffs, along with exilers, and food. I have 19.4k, with 27k armor and 43% dodge, which seems a little high...and is Earthwarden really better then the staff I have from heroic Bot?

Just so ya know, "we" typically talk about our bear form stats self-motw-buffed with no consumables. Eliminates the variables of which uberbuffs or elixirs you might have at any given time.




For raw survivability/tanking, yeah.
-> 1,000 more armor
-> 27 def rating make up for the loss of it when you upgrade from heavy clefthoof set
-> 24 expertise results in less misses

Feral Staff of Lashing is badass, though. Since it and has more crit/dodge and dps I'd personally use it for situations where maxing damage/threat becomes more of a problem than not dying. I have the ghetto equivalent of that choice: Braxxis Staff of Slumber for pure tanking, Staff of Natural Fury when damage/threat becomes more important or difficult than stayin alive.

I'd agree with the use of Rawr. It's very helpful, other lists such as Emmeralds can be useful, but Rawr does the best of comparing in relation to your other gear. Also from getting a general idea of what your starts are in bear with motw, I'd say your (in comparison to your other stats), that your armor is pretty low

I'm entry level raider, just into Kara, and never done a 25-man, but how the heck do you plan on getting 5,000-7,000 extra armor from raid buffs?

You can see now why we compare self-buffed-no-consumable stats now...I recommend you post yours and the conversation will get back on track. They are probably comparing your 24k armor with the 19k health you supposedly have just self-buffed and downing some stambuff food. With 19k base health 24k armor would indeed be low.

Even accounting for the food, elixirs and scrolls, though the numbers you threw out of 19k hp, 27k armor and 43% dodge are way way WAY beyond what you should set as "next step" goals if you're just getting into heroics and Karazhan, and you're saying those are your CURRENT stats? Something continues to be squirrelly.

I'm not sure what change you have made in your gear but i realize one thing when i began to switch the old clefhood set with the new awsome badge one.

The clefhood with gem have plenty of stamina on it.The gear you may want to get dont have more but still be better, cause iy improve all your other stat armor, agi str etc...

I don't not if it's what you ask for but it's my 2c.

Locklear druid 70 (eradar)

I take a look on your choice of gear and my may suggest what i prefer.

bracers: If you dont mind doing some pvp the vindicator dragronhide can be a ittle bit better then the forest one since resilience help your for crit immunity, the gem can be usefull and they are not to hard to get.

back:the slikk's cloak of Placation cost only 35 badge i think and its the better back of the game.

Your other choice seems good. But if you can run heroic and kara get badge for the new chest pants and boots really whort it

Have fun in your gear improvement

Locklear (druid 70, eradar)

Pretty sure it wasn't mentioned but you will absolutely need to get a minimum of 415 defense. 388 would be too low because at 415 you become uncrittable. Just my two cents :)