Feral Tank Kara -> Gruul's ?sFollow

The guild I'm in has Kara more or less on farm and is pushing hard to develop the roster for Gruul's. Since Gruul's is more or less the 25-man extension of T4 content, I'm thinking that the gear/stat requirements would be relatively similar. Currently in self-buffed bear form, I have 13.5k health, 26.8k armor, 29% dodge, and 423 defense. I can possibly do a bit of re-gemming and up my health at the expense of a bit of dodge and defense, but other than that, there's very little from the already sparse feral tanking upgrades I could get out of Kara (Moroes trinket, T4 head, upgraded rep ring). I'm not counting badge gear upgrades because most of them would be 3+ weeks away if all I did was run Karazhan.

I'd offer an armory link but I hardly ever log out in bear form which means all you'd likely see is my hodge-podge of caster gear.

So based on those stats, do I still have some tweaking to do, or might I be adequately geared to get my foot in the door for Gruul's?

your armor and dodge is mostly fine, but as peq noted, your health is rather lacking. you have less than my warrior does, and granted hes a bit overgeared for gruuls (he has some ZA pieces and a badge piece) its still quite possible (and necessary) for you to pump your life up.

best bet? grab a few pieces of season 2. likely the shoulders and chest, but use your discretion. the armor and resilience will make up for any loss of defense or other tanking stats, and the flat stam bonus youll receive will help immensely. pvping for pve may not be your idea of a good time, but aside from badge upgrades, its the best way to fill in the weaker spots of your setup.

To make things easily comparable...it's recommended that stats are listed in bear form with MotW.

Sure he doesn't crush?

think all the raid bosses in gruuls can crush. i know i get 2-3k crushes on my pally when the lock fears me.

You should keep doing Kara until you have enough badges for better gear or until you have what you need from there. I had better stats than that the first time I ever stepped foot into Kara as an off-tank. In fact I tried a pug Gruul's a few weeks back(NEVER AGAIN AS A PUG IN MY LIFE), but I had like 25K hp, 29K armor, 40-45% dodge with all the raid buffs, and I felt a weee bit under geared yet, but that's just me. I hate when people try to skip stuff or go into progression that they dam sure should not be into yet.
Because I try dammed hard to be the best geared that I can be for the others I'm playing with. I would never throw a healer or a group under the bus for being **** geared, but once again, this is all my opinion.

/end rant on **** geared players!

I am very sure, I have no reason to lie. I tank Kara at around 19-20K hp, and sometimes we don't use/have all the beneficial classes with us like locks(BP), or pallies(kings).

I'll link tonite because I'm at work and not in tank gear but... I have 100 Badge Chest peice, 100 badge legs, earthwarden, trink from MagT, etc... And it's 90% gemmed for strait stam since my other stats are just fine. The only reason for not having been past Kara is that I hate to pug Raids, and our guild can't seem to make the jump(player base wise) into 25-mans yet.

Sorry, the difference between 15k HP and 25k HP is well upwards of 800 stamina (accounting for +20% in bear). 2 badge pieces, a trinket, all +12 Stamina gems and stamina enchants in every slot available isn't going to make up that difference. Fort + Blood Pact + Flask of Fortification won't even give you 1/4 of that. If you're dumping all of your gems/enchants into stamina, it's going to gimp you in the agility/dodge rating category making a raid-buffed dodge of 40-45% highly unlikely and you will probably also run into defense issues given that you lose an enormous chunk of defense rating when you upgrade from the Heavy Clefthoof set.

Would prefer if you're going to make a post attacking me for my gear that you'd at least be honest about yours.

Just for giggles, I ran Rawr and got the best stuff you can get from 10-mans / BoJ gear / honor, fully 25-man raid buffed.

(This is a NE). 24.6k health, 32k armor, 50% dodge, 56% crit, and almost 1800 AP. But this would take a LOT of badges, honor, and marks. Okay, so the marks aren't that bad. 50 AB and 30 AV, 40,250 honor, and 385 BoJ. But this is with talented buffs, and a stacked MT party (enhance shaman, warrior, warlock).

Was it that hard to be honest... 16.5K hp and 20k are a huge difference

My unbuffed HP in bear form is just shy of 14k atm. Fully raid buffed (fort, blood pact, warrior +HP shout, flask of fortification, kings, +20 stam food) tops me out at about 18.5k HP. That's a difference of 4.5k HP. Your base unbuffed HP is 16.5k, yet raid buffed you claim to gain an additional 8.5k HP?

If you feel compelled to embellish, knock yourself out. Just remember that your embellishments reflect that much more poorly on you when you use them to attack someone else.

I dont want to judge anyone here, but he maybe saw the 25k with all raid buffs + temporary buffs, like command shout (i think thats the name of it) and others that are casted during a fight.
I dont have a so great bear equipment and can get quite easily to 19~20k with the right buffs and raid composition, so 25 hp isnt all that impossible.

For instance, this here:

http://www.warcrafter.net/sandbox/30621

with kings, bp, commanding shout, feltail delight, MotW, imp fortitude, grace of air, devotion aura and unstable flask of the beast (we are talking about gruuls, arent we?), I got to 36.7k armor and 26.3k health and 53.67% avoidance(46.91%dodge). ANd I could get up to 27k ish health and 56.8% avoidance if i switched the staff for the staff of forest lord, the problem is, I would lose a lot of armor (dropping to 34k) and expertise. Furthermore, if everything was Imp., I'm sure I could get up to 28k health.


Add some scrolls there and aybe he saw his hp with all those buffs up or something like that and he could get it done. Add the procs from trinkets and idol, we would be unkillable for a small amount of time.

ps. the t5 leg there is easily switched out with the badge leg (tameless breeches). actually, the badge leg is kinda better.


My unbuffed hp in caster form is 12k ish. In bear form its 19k ish. I just showed I could get to 27k ish hp if I wanted. Proved an 8k hp difference is doable.


Edited, Aug 2nd 2008 2:47am by Brisin