[Druidl] Antitanks in Cataclysm part 2: enchants, gems, gear and reforging

Continued from the last post.

While Reesi and Tangedyn (note: no guarantees they'll stay in their feral spec/gear) did an awesome job about what to do for the spec and glyphs for a hybrid build, I didn't see a lot on the gear. And...I still don't. Probably because it's a lot harder to evaluate.

Also a note on the glyphs: don't be afraid to take a stack of disappearing dust and swap glyphs as needed. You should be doing this on a case-by-case basis anyway. If you don't use feral faerie fire, the glyph for it is not great. If you're not hitting multiple mobs, why take maul? The prime glyphs are almost always going to stay the same for any fights that have you using hybridity, but if you're just tanking swap them out!

For this I'll give two choices: max DPS and max survival. The Max DPS will give some credit to survival (and vice versa) but ultimately what you need is up to your role; if you're primarily DPSing with occasional tanking light stuff max DPS should be fine. If you're tanking all the time you'll likely have to go with maximum survival.

Gear choices:

The best stat for a hybrid set is agility. Everything should have it. That's true for DPS or survival. The second 'hybrid' stat is mastery. This is the best secondary stat for cats and the second-best for bears. So far, not a lot changes, though your gemming priorities may change somewhat (favoring agility gems over anything else and disfavoring stamina over agility/hit gems).

For max DPS go mastery above everything else. For reforging, the primary reforging target should be mastery if the gear doesn't have mastery. The second one should be expertise (if below the dodge cap), then crit, then hit. Why? If you're planning on being a bear expertise is going to benefit you from a threat perspective and from a savage defense uptime perspective more than crit or hit as long as you're below the dodge cap. After that crit and hit are fairly similar. As has been shown recently, going hit/expertise/crit/haste/mastery is really a matter of choice more than massive changes in overall DPS value for a cat.

For survival, the best secondary stat is dodge. Reforge the highest non-mastery stat to dodge whenever you can, favoring haste, then hit, crit, expertise in that order.

Avoid tanking rings, necks and cloaks. They'll be basically horrible for dps and do not give enough survival gains to warrant their value unless they're significantly higher ilvl (2 tiers) more than what you have.

Tier pieces:

On Tier pieces: the 4 piece for cat is very, very strong when going cat 100% of the time. The problem is that whenever you switch out of cat the buff disappears completely. That means that on any fight where you're switching back and forth every 30 seconds the buff is just going to not be worth it; using 3 GCDs to mangle just to have the buff for 30 seconds isn't going to be as good as having suboptimal stats for bear or cat.The 4p is pretty nice for bears too, but the actual pieces really vary, and for hybrids (especially ones caring about survival primarily) the biggest importance is ilvl over basically anything else. If you have the choice of getting a heroic non-tier piece to replace the nonheroic tier piece - for a bear, this is a good choice. For a cat it's a harder choice but likely the right one.

Note that the 2p for cats is just perfect in this setup as the rake will keep on ticking while in bear form. Yay threat!

In terms of what nontier piece or pieces you should have, it depends. For non-heroic content, Tsanga's helm is the best. It is the only helm with mastery. The tier helm has hit and crit, the offset from Cho'Gall has haste and expertise (ugh). A second choice is the Poison Protocol shoulders, which also have mastery. The Double Attack Handguards are also not bad compared to tier; at least they don't have haste.

For heroic, the best bet is the Sark of the Unwatched, which has crit and mastery vs. haste and expertise.

The best tier piece is the legs, which have crit and mastery and nothing is better at either level. Then the head, then maybe the chest due to the socket bonus being better. In a perfect world I'd go for (non heroic) Tsanga's helm, Double attack handguards and purchasing Morrie's and then going for tier legs and shoulders. For folks getting most of their gear via valor points by necessity you'll likely pick up the tier chest; buy a helm and then work on shoulders and buy Liar's handgrips. For heroic mode go for tier legs and helm, then Double Attack handguards, Sark and Poison Protocol shoulders.

Trinkets are interesting. Ideally you will swap trinkets as needed for certain fights and use others for others, but there are some 'much more better' ones than others here and there.

Max DPS:

1. Fluid Death has high agility and a reforgeable hit to mastery. Good stuff.
2. Essence of the Cyclone has the raw agility but the proc is almost completely useless for bears.
3. Unheeded Warning has lower agi than many of the choices here and has a proc that is completely useless for bear survival (it doesn't even affect SD). Still, it's one of the highest DPS trinkets that exist.
4. Tia's Grace is almost as good as Fluid Death for cats and actually a bit stronger for bears on most non-Heroic Nef fights due to the extra mastery. (But don't use it for Nef tanking!)
5. Quicksilver Talisman has tons of agi and reforgeable crit. The potion part isn't particularly useful but it's a good alternative for a second trinket.
6. Prestor's Talisman also has high agility but has a meh proc for bears.
7. DM: Hurricane is similar but even more useless to bears.

Max survivability:

1. Fluid Death has high agility and a reforgeable hit to mastery. It's likely the best hybrid trinket.
2. Tia's Grace is almost as good as Fluid Death for cats and actually a bit stronger for bears on most non-Heroic Nef fights due to the extra mastery. While Fluid Death has more overall agility the mastery can overtake it, especially when taking smaller hits. (thanks, Nica!)
3. Mirror of Broken Images only has a survival proc, but that it is mastery as the main stat helps both specs and the actual on use ability is amazing for this tier's raiding content.
4. Vial of Stolen Memories is horrible for DPS, but between the high stamina and the huge dodge use (which will be very high in an agi-centric gearout), it can be very good - especially on magic-heavy fights.
5. Symbiotic Worm is a good but not great stamina trinket; use it if you don't have the vial or need a ton of stam for some reason.
6. Quicksilver Talisman has tons of agi and reforgeable crit. The potion part isn't particularly useful but it's a good alternative for a second trinket.
7. Prestor's Talisman also has high agility but has a meh proc for bears.
8. Bedrock Talisman is good for survival but completely useless for DPS.
9. Essence of the Cyclone has the raw agility but the proc is almost completely useless for bears.
10. Unheeded Warning has lower agi than many of the choices here and has a proc that is completely useless for bear survival (it doesn't even affect SD). Still, it's one of the highest DPS trinkets that exist.
11. DM: Hurricane is similar but even more useless to bears.

For me personally the choice is clear - Fluid Death is a win for both specs. An alchemist is probably in luck too. After that the generic one would be something like Unheeded warning or Prestor's talisman depending on what you have. For harder fights swap to a stam trinket + mirror of broken images. Trinkets are the easiest, best way to customize your gear on a fight-by-fight basis, so really do collect them all.

Enchants:

Head:

Max DPS: Arcanum of the Ramkahen

Max Survival: Arcanum of the Ramkahen or Arcanum of the Earthen Ring

While 90 stamina is quite hefty you may be fine with the stamina you have - in which case the 60 agi beats 35 dodge rating any day. The haste is useless for bears, but it's okay for cats. Note that this is a very good place to get a ton of stamina cheaply, so consider doing so if you need more health.

Shoulder:

Max DPS: Greater Inscription of Shattered Crystal

Max Survival: Greater Inscription of Shattered Crystal

While the Unbreakable Quartz enchant is solid, getting both agility and mastery makes up on the hybrid side compared to both. Again, if you need the stamina go with stamina - but otherwise this is a good place to compromise in favor of DPS and avoidance.

Chest:

Max DPS/Max Survival: Peerless Stats

No real debate here. The stamina is nice but this gives enough overall value that it's worth it.

Legs:

Max DPS: charscale leg armor/dragonscale leg armor

Max survival: charscale leg armor

Okay, so technically the dragonscale leg armor wins for DPS - but it's much closer than you think. 55 agility gives 110 AP as well as crit; based on weighings right now that's about 85 EAP vs 55 EAP, which is way smaller. So is 30 EAP worth 145 stam? In most cases you're not going to be able to find a better tradeoff than that. So I'd recommend in either case to go with the charscale legs.

Feet:

Max DPS: Major Agility

Max Survival: Assassin's step

If you can afford it I'd go with assassin's step in either case, but technically major agility is better for cats since they gain nothing from the movement speed increase while in cat form. Lavawalker is also a good choice for a hybrid that favors a bear.

Wrist:

Max DPS/Max Survival: Enchant Bracer Agility

Easy choice here. For leatherworkers it's a bit more tempting to go for the stamina enhancement,but I'd recommend going for the superior agility there as well.

Gloves:

Max DPS: greater mastery

Max Survival: Glove reinforcements (old world)

Yes, the glove reinforcements are still just that good for bears. Sigh. The mastery enchant isn't too bad though.

Cloak:

Max DPS: Greater Agility (old world)

Max survival: protection

For this I'd recommend having two cloaks if you can or going max survival here; the old world enchant is not super strong (22 agi isn't huge) and 250 armor is quite good for bears (it's worth about 40-50 agi for bear survival depending on the fight).

Weapon:

Max DPS/Max survival: Mighty Agility

Fortunately this is an easy choice.

Gems:

The primary goals for both specs is getting agility whenever possible. Where things differ is mostly in which hybrid gems you use and which sockets you go for.

For max DPS go for these choices:

Red: Delicate (agi)

Yellow: Adept (agility/mastery)

Blue: Glinting (agi/hit)

For max survival, go with these:

Red: Delicate (agi)

Yellow: Polished (agi/dodge)

Blue: Shifting (agi/stam)

Then we get to the metagems. And that's a problem. The metagem for DPS is at least a 3% dps gain overall; no single item or enchant or gem comes remotely close to how good it is. The metagem for tanking, however, boosts the one thing that bears are great at - armor. While that's a clear sacrifice, the second sacrifice is that the tanking gem also requires having multiple yellow gems, which are also a somewhat contentious choice. Ultimately what you choose is going to have a big effect, and since helms are hard to come by this may be really tough. Since I think that the hybrid build is about tanking first, DPS second I'd likely go with the austere - but either is a reasonable choice. Just make sure you understand what you're choosing.

[Druid]Antitanks in Cataclsym

(the antitank image from that article oh so long ago - because russian dogs with explosives strapped to them charging tanks needs to be shown at least one more time)

Recently we've got a lot - and I do mean a LOT - of various bloggers talking about the joys of feral hybrids and the greatness that is being able to do tanking and DPS in the same spec and the same gear. Reesi and Tangedyn from the Inconspicuous Bear do a great job of illustrating where it's useful and what the tradeoffs and considerations are for doing it. Alaron brought it up again (and that came from Wowinsider too). Even Jacemora got into the mix.

Hell, it's not like I hate it. I talked about it way back in the day. (Ironically the build is actually a bit less friendly now than it was then for this sort of thing.

It's all the rage! It's awesome! It makes you 100% more awesome than just having flight form!

And it's also really, really bad for some folks who want to play ferals. But I'll get to that at the end.

Here's the build I'd use (and am likely to switch to soon), if you were curious. The biggest pain point is the loss of feral aggression, which hurts. For doing dailies having nothing that boosts ravage also hurts, but not so amazingly. Because I took nothing that boosted FB, I did not take Blood in the Water either; while it is a DPS boost it is not such a tremendous one that it's required, and more importantly the chances to actually use it when you're tanking and swapping are pretty low, as you're not usually able to get a rip up and then reapply it with the CP necessary. The primary reason I'd switch is simply to get an idea of how to play a moonkin.

Here are some guidelines on when it is good and when it's not that useful.

When it's good:

• When the tank is not tanking 100% of the time. Any time that you have downtime on tanking and would otherwise DPS is a time when the hybrid gear/hybrid spec can be significantly advantageous. As Reesi points out, doing 8k more DPS than the next tank is a good reason to bring you over another tank. Being able to do that regularly means that you can either afford to bring an extra tank and drop a DPS slot with little loss to raid viability or be able to bring more utility and survivability in your DPS and make up for raw damage with what you can bring. There are a lot of encounters in this tier where there are significant portions of the fight that you aren't actively tanking and which threat is not a primary concern (such as tank swaps) and Reesi does a good job of talking about them.
• When you need to tank only for short amounts of time. Any time you're only tanking for a small chunk of time and that time can largely be covered by defensive CDs is a good time for a hybrid build. Druids are great for this because of things like barkskin.
• When your raid for whatever reason likes letting tanks die. This is the herobear case Alaron talks about above, and it's vanishingly rare to happen - but if you find it happening a lot in your raid, consider this as a very useful piece of utility.
• When bosses don't hit for a lot or avoidance is otherwise awesome. This one is crucial. This was the primary reason it was okay when I talked about the antitank stuff for WotLK - because bosses hit for almost nothing and avoidance was great since druids hit their stamina check very early, avoidance was much better - and because of that, agility was a big win. Aside from heroic Nef, the bosses this tier don't hit for a huge amount. As a result you can simply adjust gear slightly (using things like stamina trinkets) and have enough health to deal with most bosses while actually taking less overall damage. And since mana is an issue right now, this is a Good Thing.

Now the thing is that all of these things are true right now. That's good to realize. That's good to understand. But it's not necessarily going to be true in the future. Encounters will be designed with all tanks in mind, and those other tanks don't do things like get gear loaded with strength and crit on it. Bosses will hit hard enough to scare those tanks who are stacking stamina. Keep that in mind and make sure you understand when it's bad.

When it's bad:

• When you're tanking 100% of the time. If you're the single tank with no swaps, there's not a lot of advantage to being a hybrid. You have more avoidance thanks to your gear selections, but you could have done that anyway if it was better - and chances are that you've reforged primarily to mastery, not dodge, which isn't as good. The difference between a bear in DPS gear and a bear in stam gear in terms of damage isn't so amazing; you get your dividends in dps not from doing it in bear with dps gear, but from going cat. So you're tradiing utility and potentially damage reduction (especially if you skipped infected wounds or perseverance) for...nothing.
• When you're DPSing 100% of the time. Herobear notwithstanding, you are losing DPS if you're speccing this way. Even with pure DPS gear you lose somewhere between 5-10% DPS just from going this route depending on your talent choices. You can also lose some utility that most will expect from you - Nurturing Instinct is often the one that goes by the wayside, and a NI-powered tranq is about twice as good as a non-NI powered tranq. In this case, you're trading DPS and utilty for the ability to not get crit when...nothing attacks you.
• When specialized gear really matters. Being able to hybridize is mostly a function of gear choice, not spec choice. The spec differences are fairly minor, and the glyph differences aren't going to necessarily kill you (though the 'important' ones are almost all kitty), but the gear choice is huge and is easily a 20-40% difference in damage for a cat. Between the meta, the enchants, the gemming and the reforging it's a very large swing in stats. If as a bear you need to have 200k health and a ton of dodge and mastery doesn't matter (like, for example, if you're going up against heroic Nef as the MT) being a hybrid won't help you. This was the primary death of the antitank in Ulduar times - things just hit too damn hard.

As Reesi illustrated above right now the number of encounters that require a 100% tank is not nearly as much as the ones that don't. And the fights that benefit from more DPS from a tank are more common than the ones that wouldn't. Right now, it makes quite a bit of sense.

Except...well, except the bad parts.

What are the bad parts? They're basically TBC all over again, is what.

If bears are the best tank to do things like tank some of the time, they will almost never be the tank that tanks 100% of the time on fights. If you like being a tank on every single encounter, this is bad news for you. If you like tanking 100% of the time on a single encounter this is also bad.

In raid guilds, bears will be deprioritized for tanking gear over the 100% tanks - and rightfully so. Why should they get that awesome tanking trinket if they only use it half the time? This is tough to deal with for some.

It's sometimes going to be a fight to get gear as a DPS as well. Why give it to you when you're just using it for offtanking? Shouldn't it go to a DPS who will use it to do more DPS more often?

Bears already have a prejudice towards them as being 'bad' tanks (mostly for their AOE threat and AoE mitigation). This isn't going to help.

And if you like being a cat - it's also bad news. If you don't care about tanking at all, if that's not interesting to you whatsoever and you like being a feral cat, chances are this is a huge hit. Feral DPS was already meh - but having the trend being doing DPS while not tanking and then tanking something? That's what raids are starting to expect from ferals. Being an awesome offtank means that a lot of time that's what they'll expect from you. They'll want that to be the case and want you to go tank and if you suck at it, or don't like it, or whatever - that'll be a knock on you.

And yes, it sucks hard for heroics. You'll miss having things like IW or skull bash on a 10-second CD, you'll miss that utility, and it'll not feel right. That's not a big deal, but it's something to consider; it's something I went through when I had my awesome spec for HAnub that didn't have 5 rage reduction on abilities. For HAnub it didn't matter; I was getting tons of rage and I didn't need it early. But for heroics? Ugh, it was like molasses.

And honestly? Feral DPS is so meh in raiding right now and ranged is so awesome that it makes a lot of sense to go feral hybrid/moonkin as your two specs; it gives a lot more flexibility while doing a hell of a lot more damage when not tanking. That's sadly the way it is this tier.

For me, personally, this is fine. I enjoy tanking, I enjoy DPS, and I plan on doing both in raids when I'm raiding. If it makes sense to go hybrid on fights because of tight DPS checks, then it's great. Being able to make other tanks cry unfair can be fun.

But it can also be fun being the main tank. And it can also be fun being competitive with rogues and warriors on DPS. And as long as hybrid builds are possible and having 'high dps while tanking some of the time' is a feature, it will be very, very hard to get improvements to tanking or DPS for ferals. Keep in mind that for every TBC-era feral that loved being the best offtank and loved being able to do tanking or DPS depending on what mood fit them and loved the herobear, there was a feral that was pissed off their class wasn't being considered for MT and didn't want to screw around with being a DPS - or a feral that loved being a cat but didn't want to tank at all. Hell, in Fire and Blood we had all three kinds of ferals at the same friggin time.

I guess that's where my animosity comes from (if I have any) - from remembering the arguments from people in my own guild that said that I clearly couldn't get the things like barkskin or shield wall or even a reliable interrupt because I can dps, and you shouldn't be able to both be as good a tank as anyone AND be as good a DPS as anyone. The niche of being the best offtank is not the most fun for a lot of people, and there is some genuine frustration there. Or not being able to be buffed for DPS because hey, you can tank! That changed quite a bit in WotLK, but there's a chance that things are going back to the old way.

My gut feeling is that because this is the opening tier things aren't hitting super hard - but they will. That tank damage and danger will start ratcheting up, and EH will start ruling the roost once again. When that happens and stamina, armor and resistance start making more of a sway on gearing choices I suspect that it won't matter on hybridization, and if you're a hybrid you'll be doing tanking only very rarely because you'll need two tanks who can be hit like a nail. But that's just a guess.

[Druid] The Anti-Tank part 3: blowing stuff up

Earlier this week I covered how the anti-tank gear set and spec worked for bears. And it was pretty good - 7k threat on KT, able to survive it okay and still be basically versatile. Well, other than killing the guild leader. That may have been a flaw.

And on trash, kitty totally rocked too. 7-8k swipe dps was pretty fun. Didn't get to do a lot of DPS/tanking other than that, and nothing that was a great benchmark.

In fact, later that week we did Malygos, and again the antitank leapt into the fray - the MT went down at one point (stupid pets), and I tanked it for a while. Too many people had died, but we made it to P3. Was able to dps in P1, tank and dps in p2 without a hitch.

But...what about dps? 3.2k dps is marginally acceptable and certainly better than what the other tanking classes can do when not tanking under most circumstances - but is it worthwhile dpsing?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah baby.



It's a pity I died - one of our tanks died early and I was this close to switching to bear right before I died. But DPS wise, it was pretty phenomenal and went right around what Rawr predicted given my gear. I need to be better with using berserk and the timing, but I'm pretty pleased with 5200 DPS.

On Gluth I DPSed for a while until we needed more add tanking. Then I tanked zombies. When decimate hits, going to cat and swiping the hell out of them with berserk was quite nice. Got up to 50 stacks of the debuff too, but the high armor came through just fine. Hooray for offtanking!

Thaddius kind of sucks though. It might suck in general for cats, but it especially sucks in this build. Only 6800 DPS. A lot of this is because about half of the time there are no shreds, and this build does not do as well with manglespam as it could. Part of it is the fight itself; it is crucial that you never apply bleeds until after you've gotten the charge buff. Which also means you should try and time it so that you put up your bleeds right before the polarity shift so that they're ticking during the shift. It's tough, and I messed it up more than a few times. This is true in general; the problem with the cat dps spec in general is that it is very position and dot dependent to maximize. Sometimes this can be an advantage (Sapph loves those dots ticking on him while he's flying) and sometimes not (hate Loatheb and his moving ass, same with Grobbulus).

I don't honestly know how much real MT tanking I'd want to do with this. The HP is awfully low. The avoidance is nice, and there's plenty of armor, but having a bit more would be good too. It does work in a pinch to save the raid though, which is pretty awesome.

But having the ability to do pretty decent DPS and tanking in the same spec? That's awesome. That's the fun I missed a lot from TBC days. And it comes at the cost of threat, basically, and a smidgen of utility for soloing.

So thanks, Blizzard. 3.0.8 wasn't the best for bears, but it's definitely a huge buff for ferals, and it's made me a heck of a lot more excited to raid.

[Druid]The Anti-tank part 2: stats, case study and more

This is a followup to my previous article on maximizing tank DPS and cat DPS in the same gearset while being a good tank. the Apparently I'm reporting on trends that have been going on for, like, ever - as the readers let me know how they'd been tanking in DPS gear for ages now. Oops. Sorry for jumping on the train late, guys. :/

First off, Mekias recommended that I post the unbuffed stats in the same gear to give folks an idea of where they should be, roughly. Here's the bear ones:

Health: 27949
Agility: 1463.724
Armor: 33738.45
Stamina: 2035.2
Dodge Rating: 20
Defense Rating: 15
Resilience: 0
Dodge: 43.56819%
Miss: 4.523326%
Mitigation: 70.93945%
Avoidance PreDR: 55.48667%
Avoidance PostDR: 48.09152%
Total Mitigation: 84.91512%
Damage Taken: 15.08489%
Missed Attacks: 7.6306%
Highest DPS Rotation: 1958 DPS, 4409 TPS
Highest TPS Rotation: 1926 DPS, 4445 TPS

And the cat:

DPS Points: 3165.549
Survivability Points: 214.38
Health: 21438
Attack Power: 10519.55
Agility: 1324
Strength: 111
Crit Rating: 382
Hit Rating: 235
Expertise Rating: 146
Haste Rating: 339
Armor Penetration Rating: 326.4
Avoided Attacks: 0.8331783%
Crit Chance: 42.70936%
Optimal Rotation: Mangle+Shred+Rip+Roar5
Optimal Rotation DPS: 3165.549

I'm not thrilled with the small amount of stamina on the gear; having only 27k unbuffed is pretty flimsy for a bear. But it's certainly doable for the content, especially with that high of avoidance. The biggest slot that I dislike is the trinket slot. There's just really no good choices for double-duty items there other than the DM:G agility trinket. This might be a reason for me to go JC after all; the trinkets they get can be tailored for some tanky-goodness and some DPS fun.

As to how well it works - well, last night was the first time this week that we've been able to raid. Stupid lag. I got to be in on a lot of the fights with this gear strategy. Here's what I found:

• Swipe - cat is insane. Just insane. Hit something with a rake, SR, swipe, TF, swipe swipe. Things die. If you want to make other people feel bad, after that TF hit berserk. Get 7k DPS for a trash pull. Profit.
• For trash at least, this is perfectly fine for tanking. No problems at all.
  
• I was able to reliably get about 3.2k DPS on most fights, and that's with substantially less gear than I posted. Some fights were better than others, and I need to get better at the rotations, but it was certainly competitive dps if not ideal.

The end of the night had me on DPS on KT. I was feeling pretty good on this. I had done decently on Sapph and was starting to get into a groove. Went through the waves in phase one just fine, got ready to start DPSing -

And then our MT went down almost immediately to two uninterrupted frostbolts. I switched to bear, taunted and tanked him till the end. I had about 34k HP, I believe. I don't think there were many problems keeping me up. There were some...amusing side effects of me tanking that I hadn't thought of.

For starters, having that low of HP while tanking (yes, _only_ 34k) made his frostbolts hurt quite a bit. Not insurmountable; one time I had to hit SI, but that was about it.

In 25-man, I cannot stress how important it is not to maul (when you have the glyph) when a melee gets MCed nearby you. Because maul? Does a lot of damage. It does enough to kill your guild leader and your best warrior DPS. If you aren't thinking about it and are swiping to maximize threat like you should be, you might really pwn their asses. (sorry, Baelor and Juliand) You can't stop doing threat moves, of course (he drops aggro at that point) but you can stop doing some of the multitarget threat moves.

And with all of this, I did 2700 DPS as a tank. Yikes. Of that, probably 50-100 DPS was on my own guys. :p

So the beta test of the antitank system appears to be pretty decent. I am tempted to recommend using Essence of Gossamer instead of Grim Toll in it; you'll gain almost 1500 health, not lose a ton of DPS or TPS, and would be more well-rounded. Really depends on the encounter, I think.

A couple people asked about what spec I'd recommend for this. This is the one I'm using. It sacrifices imp Mangle and imp LotP for shredding attacks, KotJ and primal instincts. I miss imp lotp quite a bit soloing, but I don't miss it at all in raids. I'm still tempted to switch out primal instincts for ilotp, since I do a lot of soloing.

And as luck would have it, the loot gods were pretty favorable to me last night too - both the T7 chest and Journey's End fell into my hands. Those are going to be pretty big for DPS, the chest is great for normal tanking, and threat should be fun. I would like to upgrade my boots, my neck, my rings, my cloak and a trinket - but those should all be minor upgrades at best. I also got berserking on the staff. I'll let you know what the uptime I see is. My math says that it's going to not proc that much at all, but we'll see.

One thing's for sure - being able to look at gear and wanting the DPS stats on it makes me a lot more interested in raiding and gearing up.

[Druid]The Anti-tank: maximizing DPS for fun and profit

The above was what I found when I searched for 'anti tank' in images. It turns out that there were such a thing as 'anti tank dogs' in Russia which had explosives wrapped around them and then were sent to go kill tanks. They didn't work because, well, they were trained to find food under Russian tanks, which meant they tended to blow up their friends as well as enemies. But the image was too awesome to pass up. There's your history lesson for the day.

A disclaimer: This is not for starting tanks. This is not for those struggling on progression content. This is not a guide on how to gear up for Naxx if you haven't already.

As Karthis pointed out recently, kitty DPS is now really, really fun and challenging. Runy at UnbearablyHoT linked to a couple addons that help manage the difficult priority scheme of kitty rotations. Flyv's talked about doing cat and bear for a while now.

And now I've caught the bug.

I think it starts innocently. "Hmm, I wonder how much DPS manglespam can actually do?". Then you look, and it's not so bad. Then you wonder if you got King of the Jungle for a bit more energy, whether you could get a nicer rotation and take advantage of that juicy 50% crit bonus on ferocious bite. Then you start wondering about whether things like improved mangle are REALLY that important, and get shredding attacks.

You know, just to try it out. Just for a bit. Just to see how it feels.

Then you start beating other DPS players on fights. You start beating other melee in your crappy, unenchanted blues and suboptimal spec. "This is pretty good", you think. "I'm almost at the point where I can tank with the best of them and DPS pretty well with the same spec! All I need is a gear swap, and I'm good to go for whatever! "

Welcome back, TBC ferals. We missed you.

Then 3.0.8 hits, and yeah, for some of you (like me) your armor got reduced in your better tanking spec. It's a bummer, but your threat should still be pretty strong and you're still scaling ridiculously with stamina for things like Sarth3D. You still have stupid mitigation on Patchwerk. You still do great damage on trash.

Then you accidentally put on your cat gear and look at your character sheet in bear...and are shocked as your armor increased by 50%.

Then you start wondering...what's the difference between cat and bear gear any more?
Both have stamina.
Both have agility.
Both have the same amount of armor, at least on leather.
Furthermore, because of the change to armor on jewelry, agility on those DPS jewelry pieces becomes pretty valuable, and those DPS rings, amulets and cloaks start looking really decent.

So what's the difference? Really, it's about how you gem and enchant it. Otherwise it's basically exactly the same.

The question then becomes whether it's possible and reasonable to tank in cat gear with a cat hybrid spec. That's the holy grail, right there - can you tank reasonably well without switching gear for cat? Can you do kitty DPS reasonably well without switching gear? Can you have one spec AND gear set that does great cat damage and great bear damage while being able to tank?

Because if you can...you're the best slot for an OT, bar none. You can DPS on KT for the first half of the fight, do competitive DPS, and then go tank a couple adds in the second half. You can tank one of Thaddius's friends and then jump down and kill Thaddius while the other tank goes nuts. You can obliterate trash as cat and if something goes wrong or you draw aggro, just switch to bear and beat the hell out of 'em that way. You can DPS on Malygos in P1, tank and DPS in P2 and go to town later.

Or you can just tank the hell out of things and put out so much threat even paladins get jealous.

So what would this mythical gearset look like? Well, there are two approaches we can do, and I'll cover both. The first is to maximize survivability while trying to do the most damage as bear and cat. The second is to maximize damage as cat while doing okay on survivability as bear.

Maximizing Damage

For maximizing damage, the main thing is the enchants that we don't normally want in bear. The amount of DPS we gain from agility vs strength is pretty small - but the big enchants change a lot. The secondary thing is things like trinkets and to a lesser extent rings. But we'll get there shortly.

For your weapon and idol, remember that you can swap gear when you change forms, all on the same GCD. So we can have a totally different weapon and idol. This will allow you to get a lot of expertise and a different enchant on the weapon for bear and pure dps for cat. Something like...Inevitable Defeat would be good if you want to maximize threat. Still, it's going to lose out to Journey's End, but that's a good placeholder. This also allows you to enchant your DPS weapon with massacre or berserk, which is much better than mongoose too. :)

So gem like crazy for agility, hit and expertise. This sounds suspiciously like the guide for bears already, and you'd be right - except for certain slots. Those slots are the ones with DPS-centric enchants, and that's what I'll cover now.

For the head, you'll want to get a head with a metagem and use relentless earthsiege and the arcanum of ferocity. Both of these are strictly DPS-only, so you don't want to wreck your normal set with them. (or maybe you do, but I'd advise against it). The difference between this enchant and gem is about 4% DPS alone, so that should give you some motivation. Since it's DPS, you should go for strength or hit too.

For the shoulders, it's the better axe vs better pinnacle enchants from Hodir. This is actually something that you can skip out on if you want to; the gain from the enchant is not that much. Still, I find that leather dps shoulders drop often, so you should be able to pick them up okay.

For the legs, well, leg quality differs drastically from item to item, but the big thing is the leg enchant. The DPS leg enchant is roughly 1.5% more DPS as well, by itself. Try and get Leggings of the Honored if at all possible (yes, this is Sarth2d), as they have more armor and a huge amount of hit, great for both roles.

For the bracers, it's mostly whether you have leatherworking or not. The huge AP bonus is another 1.5% DPS right there, but giving up 90 stamina is really tough. Again, try and get another good set of bracers and use them.

For your jewelry Favor of the Dragon Queen gives great DPS and is one of the better survival necks in the game now. For rings, the Greatring of Collision is exceptional but hard to find (drops off of 10-man Sarth2D). The Strong-handed ring is another good option for both. Hemmoraging Circle is a nice compromise too, but not great. On the cloak, try and pry from their cold, dead hands the Drape of the Deadly Foe, but more likely spend the badges on Hammerhead Sharkskin Cloak.

For trinkets, the #1, by far, is Darkmoon Card: Greatness. Good benefits for both specs. For the other, I'd recommend a hit trinket like Grim Toll if you can do it.

If you're following along, this is what you'd have assuming good gear elsewhere:
Head: Valorous + Relentless and arcanum of ferocity and agililty gems
Neck: favor of the dragon queen
Shoulders: valorous + greater axe + agility gems
Cloak: drape of the deadly foe + major agility
Chest: Chestguard of the recluse (better for threat thanks to the expertise) + powerful stats + agility
Wrists: Wristwraps of the cutthroat + attack power (I'm assuming leatherworking here)
Gloves: Valorous + major agility
Belt: Belt of the Tortured + socket & agility
Legs: Leggings of the honored + icescale + agility/expertise stam (for meta)
Feet: Footwraps of vile deceit (or dawnwalkers) + superior agility + agility/hit (for metagem)
Rings: Greatring of Collision + 6 all stats, Strong-Handed ring
Trinket: Darkmoon Card Greatness, Grim Toll
Weapon: Journey's End + Massacre (for cat), Origin of Nightmares + Mongoose (for bear)
Idol: Idol of Worship for cat, idol of terror for bear

Now let's plug that in for Rawr.
Stats for bears, raid-buffed: 36.8k armor, 56.3% avoidance, 37k health. 3621 DPS, and a nice even 8000 TPS.
Stats for cats, raid-buffed: 5081 DPS, 48% crit

That's pretty awesome. It's also ideal in terms of buffs, single target rotation, etc. And has some really absurd gear. Still...this is what's possible. Note that there's nothing here that really is a make or break item, either. Grim toll is nice, but mirror of truth will do well too. Favor of the Dragon Queen is great, as is Chestguard of recluse, but a lot of the ilvl 213 items will do similarly.

Something to note is that if you replace all the agility gems with strength and replace the compromise slots (DM:G with strength, one of the rings) you only gain about 40 DPS, but lose a good couple % of dodge. Honestly, I don't think it's worth it.

Maximizing Survivability.
For this, we're starting with the bear first and then making a couple compromises for cats. That means more stamina and mostly changes in the enchants.

The first thing to realize is that we don't have to change much of the gear. This was kind of a surprise to me too, actually; I was rallying to make the tanking rings, amulets and cloak not as good as they are, but really it doesn't take all that much. Agility is just that good, and a lot of the time the stamina is very competitive. Still, we're going to swap one ring at least, and one trinket; there's no need to go for a pure threat trinket here. Note that if you can get your hands on two Darkmoon cards (one for strength, one for agi), in theory those would be the two best trinkets in the game for bears and two of the three best for cats. I'm not sure whether you can do that though - they're unique-equipped, but they're different item registries.

So we'll change the greatring to a gatekeeper. We'll get back our 2% meta and normal head enchant. We'll get our tanking leg and shoulder enchants back. And we'll go with those wrist enchants.

Head: Valorous + Austere and arcanum of Stalwart Protector and agililty gems
Neck: favor of the dragon queen + agility gem
Shoulders: valorous + greater pinnacle + agility gems
Cloak: drape of the deadly foe + major agility
Chest: Chestguard of the recluse (better for threat thanks to the expertise) + powerful stats + agility
Wrists: Wristwraps of the cutthroat + stamina (I'm assuming leatherworking here)
Gloves: Valorous + major agility
Belt: Belt of the Tortured + socket & agility
Legs: Leggings of the honored + frosthide + agility/expertise stam (for meta)
Feet: Footwraps of vile deceit (or dawnwalkers) + superior agility + defense/stam (for metagem)
Rings: Gatekeeper, Strong-Handed ring
Trinket: Darkmoon Card Greatness, Valor Medal (or essence if you wanted)
Weapon: Journey's End + Massacre (for cat), Origin of Nightmares + Mongoose (for bear)
Idol: Idol of Worship for cat, idol of terror for bear

Bear stats: 37900 armor, 55% dodge, 38.2k health (or 40k health with essence long with 53.8% dodge). 3043 DPS, 6747 TPS
Cat stats: 4565DPS, 46% crit

The difference in the mitigation and avoidance values isn't that high, shockingly - but the difference in the TPS/DPS is pretty amazing. This should illustrate the new math: the difference between DPS and tanking gear is overall quite small.

Now clearly you shouldn't use this on Sarth3D. And this takes advantage of all the raid buffs you can get normally, so if you're doing 10-mans this might not be perfect (though it won't be far off, and having a tank who can DPS regularly in 10-mans is pretty advantageous).

Also, this is Rawr. Rawr's damage models aren't perfect. I think it overvalues armor penetration significantly, for instance, which is why Wristwraps of the Cutthroat are showing up so high. But it's going to be close, and it's going to be spot-on with respect to avoidance, mitigation and survival in bear form.

Since my gear set for Sarth3D is basically set, I think I'm going to start working on this set now. And yes, I'll be using that dps set full time, thank you very much. :)