ICC Chill and bearFollow

Dear druids,
My baby bear is almost all grown up. She hit the heroic circuit and has had her successes and failures, but always kept her chin up. I am so proud of her. I have (hopefully) given her the proper upbringing that a druid needs but I am still a bit apprehensive at letting her stay out late. It's not that I don't trust her... it's her friends.

You see, they want her to go to the new hotspot in town and muck it up. Now I have given her plenty of advice and wrapped her in as much protection that I was able to afford on my measly priest income. (I know we drive nice cars, but srsly, we ain't rich.) The clothes she wears are fine when she is at the old school places, but this new place makes you strip at the door! I sent her out of the house suitably dressed and what happens? They force her to take some of it off! I have half a mind to go punch the bouncer right in the nose.

So what's a druid daddy supposed to do when his little girl has to expose 20% more of her best features to the naughty bosses in ICC? Her friends seem to think that she should just show more of herself and stack her health. I am not so sure...

A couple questions about the ICC -20% dodge...
-Does it make sense to stack stamina in regards to this debuff? It seems that since one of the druids' key defensive stats (dodge) is chopped, you may as well stress the other (Stam). But...
-Is the -20% calculated after DR? I am not sure if I am doing the math right, but let's say you have this trinket, Ick's Rotting Thumb. It's benefit to dodge could be greatly reduced if dodge is calculated and then 20% is chopped off the top. But if the debuff is a starting point, then DR won't affect the higher amounts of dodge nearly as much, making it a stronger stat...

If I seem overly redundant or am just repeating myself, please indulge a confused father's worry. I only wants what's best for my girl. (I catch any of youse gawking at her and we're taking it outside.)

Horse is refering to Idol of the Corruptor, the tier 8 i226 idol.

I'll second the 50k health buffed threshold. I've healed DK and Warrior tanks (on my shammy) that were sitting around 40k buffed in ICC 10. It wasn't pretty. We never got past Marrowgar because they took too much damage right after bonestorm was up before they could properly stack and have a healer in range. Of course, this was a pug, and it didn't help that everyone scattered to the 4 corners of the room and 3 healers couldn't cover everyone like that. Conversely, my druid could solo tank Marrowgar on 10-man. I have enough health to soak the melee damage and a full saber lash.

I hate it when they do that. Bad enough to run to the other side of the room, but then to stand in the fire once you get there? Yay.



I was wondering if other guilds were doing that. After our Warrior overslept and missed the raid we had our Pally solo-tank it. Worked surprisingly well... *shrugs*

Is there really no room for improvising with the gems? I thought putting a hit/stam gem in this would be a smart tradeoff given that I am trading 245 health for .3% hit, .11% crit, .2% dodge and 19 armor... hrmm now that I put the numbers on paper, I see what you mean. That tradeoff doesn't really make sense when you are working on increasing your EH.

I'm guessing +275 health to chest would also be a better option than the +10 stats I have currently?

I really need to get out of my "strike a balance" mindset when gearing for tanking. =/

On a side note, this is the first time I have ever been raid tanking, and I must admit that it can be both fun (with gearing up) and mundane (actual fights seem less hectic than when I am healing- All the work goes into preparation, and execution can be boring if done properly.)

+8 Agi is tempting, but hit isn't really important. I mean you can glyph for Growl these days on taunt sensitive fights. Id you are dead set on the socket def/stam would give more benefit IMO.

+10 stats to chests for a bear is still the way to go. You get 22x health after all scalars and kings, plus agility to boost armor/dodge and strength for AP.

The balancing act is done when picking upgrades and matching old gear with new gear. Saving strong pieces that are a tier or so back is a good idea as it may have they hit/expertise you want when you get a new bear piece that cripples one of those stats. I usually send old bear gear to the cat set and maybe keep a piece or 3 in the bank that didn't fit on the cat set but could easily join a gear set up again.

And yes many raid tanking fights are rather dull, especially when every one else does there job. New fights are exciting though but ya tanking is more about being prepared that many other roles.

I've only got 53k and I tank fine in ICC 10 and 25, not even remote risk of death unless we lose multiple healers...but I fear I'm going to have to do a lot of regemming to full 30 stam everywhere to beat Lich King, what with that nasty Soul Reaper skill he has.

Trying to get Putricide to put out an Unidentifiable Organ for me in 10s but he's not being very forthcoming. Still got a few tier pieces yet to buy (badges can't come fast enough!) and we haven't managed to down Sindragosa yet, so I'm not worried right this minute, but it's going to become a concern sooner than later.

Dodge isn't any more (or less, relatively speaking) important now than it was before. You want to be breaching 50k to tank comfortably. I hit 52k in 10 man, 56k in 25. I've just done a bit of regemming to get rid of some green gems that I must have put in while asleep or something and that'll boost it up a bit more I'm sure.

If you haven't seen LK's abilities, they kind of expect tanks to have a healthy amount more than 50k by the time you face him. He does a 50k hit on a semi regular basis and from what I've seen in videos his melee swings are hitting for 15k on top of that. So gemming straight agi is probably a bad idea. If they're getting that idea from Rawr, tell them they need to a) check Chill of the Throne in debuffs, and b) increase their survival softcap and raw boss damage values. Progressive content will always demand more stamina from tanks, not more avoidance.

30% after chill isn't too terribly hard to reach though, just natural agility increases on gear and dodge rating will get you close. I have 44% pre chill and no buffs.

Edited, Feb 17th 2010 4:09pm by Norellicus

Silly question, but if the yellow socket is good, could you just gem a nightmare tear? +10 all stats? Or would the 5 stamina you would miss gemming defense / stamina be that huge?