[General] Tier9 bonuses for all tanks

MMO champion has the procs for the various T9 abilities for all the gear. And...well, let's just say that apparently the even-numbered sets will be 4 fite, the odd will be 4 bear.

To be really, really clear: These are almost certainly not the final versions. They might not even be correct. Some of the bonuses make zero sense, like adding .01 seconds to the damage of immolate. So take these with a grain of salt and don't get too attached to them.

But let's take a look at all of them, starting with the druid:

• Druid T9 Feral 2P Bonus (Class: Druid) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Growl ability by 2 sec and increases the duration of your Rake ability by 3 sec.
• Druid T9 Feral 4P Bonus (Class: Druid) -- Increases the damage reduction granted by Barkskin by 10% and increases the critical strike chance of Rip and Ferocious Bite by 5%.

This is an interesting change for bears. The 2p bonus is decidedly lame unless we're facing huge amounts of random dorks or something (more on that in a bit).

The 4 piece, to me, reads "We're very sorry about your bad cooldowns. We're very sorry about your bad cooldowns". A 30% barkskin every minute is approaching IBF-levels of awesome. If they wanted Druids to be the next DKs, this is a good way to do it. Between a druid's innate damage soaking ability and this set bonus, they'll be in pretty good shape. A really excellent ability.

Blizzard got a bit lazy with the set bonuses in general though. For instance, here's the DK version:

• Death Knight T9 Tank 2P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Dark Command ability by 2 sec.
• Death Knight T9 Tank 4P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Unbreakable Armor, Vampiric Blood, and Boneshield abilities by 20 sec.

Dark Command, shockingly, is the DK taunt. Hmm. The 4P bonus improves each tree's 2-minute cooldown to 1 min 40, which doesn't sound awe-inspiring. Helpful, sure - it's basically a 16% improvement in the cooldown if you're using it every time - but that's over a long duration. On a lot of fights that'll mean you might get to use it once more than you would have.

The Paladin one is awfully familiar...

• Paladin T9 Tank 2P Bonus (Class: Paladin) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Righteous Defense ability by 2 sec.
• Paladin T9 Tank 4P Bonus (Class: Paladin) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Divine Protection ability by 30 sec.

Wow...another 2 seconds off of taunt. Thrilling. The 4p bonus is similar to the DK one; cutting it from 2 minutes to 1.5 is good, but does it actually do much? It's not nearly as game-defining as the barkskin one. I also bet they forgot about forbearance stopping this from working at all, but I bet that's at least their intent.

Finally, warriors! And I bet you can guess what the 2p bonus is:

• Warrior T9 Tank 2P Bonus (Intervene) (Class: Warrior) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Intervene ability by 5 sec.
• Warrior T9 Tank 4P Bonus (Shield Block) (Class: Warrior) -- Decreases the cooldown on your Shield Block ability by 20 sec.

Oh, those tricksy Blizzard people. Intervene with a shorter cooldown - that might be actually more useless than growl having a shorter cooldown. Though at least it doesn't run into the stupid diminishing returns that the taunts do.

The 4-piece for shield block, however, is really intriguing. This would cut shield block down to 20 seconds, which basically means shield block is active fully half of the time. While this isn't as game-changing as the 4pT8 bonus in the sense that you can't plan on stopping special attacks with it, the amount of threat and damage mitigation this should stop should be decent. This effectively allows for a much higher block rate overall (half of all attacks will be blocked for sure, and they'll be blocked at the 200% block value) as well as a much higher amount of damage blocked. Depending on gear, this'll be close to a 2% mitigation boost by itself.

I'll have to figure out more on what the cat bonus is, by the way, but for now it doesn't look that impressive to me. Rake's duration increased is nice and should add another shred in the cycle, but 5% more rip crit and FB crit just seems not all that hot.

Oh yeah, one last tidbit: the tanking T9 idol:

• Druid T9 Feral Relic (Lacerate, Swipe, Mangle, and Shred) (Class: Druid) -- While in Bear Form, your Lacerate and Swipe abilities have a chance to grant 200 dodge rating for 9 sec, and your Mangle and Shred abilities have a chance to grant 200 agility for 16 sec.

Before you go gaga, I'm assuming that the mangle only applies to cat, not bear. If it didn't, it would be one amazing idol. As it stands it's going to be a nice way to combine the best of two idols without having to go crazy to get both. 200 dodge rating is a bit higher on avoidance than Corruptor, and 200 agility is a much better boost than Ravenous Beast or Worship.