[Druid] Heroic LK, or wtf is up with your spec?

The overwhelming large request for further articles was on Cataclysm talent analysis and reports. I am in the beta and was in the alpha, so I can test things out specifically if you're at all curious - and plan to do similar reports to what I did back in the PTR days with savage defense.

So because most everyone wanted my views on Cataclysm, I'm going to talk about Heroic Lich King.

Well, first I'm going to say that Skunkworks is still recruiting, but not a resto druid for the time being. We are recruiting one Holy Priest (as of 7/2) so if you're interested drop us a line. And if you're totally awesome but only want to demonstrate that awesomeness 8 hours a week, drop a line too.

Second, Heroic Lich King. Ugh. It's a great fight, and it's a hard, hard fight. Defile is one of the most horrible mechanics ever to grace a boss fight; it combines all the intricacies of every single 'don't stand in stuff' you've ever seen and combines it with personal fail issues that you have only seen from things like Teron Gorefiend, where you pray to whatever gods might be listening that "That Guy" doesn't get defile, or someone doesn't DC, or whatever.

We are getting better. We got another 17% wipe this week, and this week was short due to our server maintenance - only 4 hours of raiding. Two weeks to go with the 25% buff. I really think we are on the verge of a kill; changing our stuns helped immensely.

Ah, stuns. What am I talking about here? The hardest part of the fight, IMO, is dealing with the valkyrs that carry off three people while defiles are being dropped on random people and the tank on LK is getting WTFPwned. Aka, Phase 2. Tank deaths are actually not that horrible to deal with and we can often recover from a tank death without losing anyone. Defiles are...getting better, though we (and I) have the occasional fail that wipes the raid. The valks, however, we have conquered.

The valks are a neat mechanic. In case you're not familiar, what they do is target three random people who aren't high on threat on LK and pick that person up, damaging them. They travel in a straight line towards the edge of the room, and drop that person off the ledge to be killed and unrezzable. If they go below 50% health (they have 3 million health) they drop their target and fly to the center of the room, and spam the highest threat target they have with random bolts of death. The goal is to get all three valks moving in the same straight line and reduce all three valk's health to 50% as quickly as possible. Both slows and stuns work on them.

Originally we had a stun rotation of an AoE stun first, then two rogues and a feral building up CP and doing their stun, then emergency stuns. And this...didn't work well. It worked some of the time, but the CP generation was slow, the overall stun time was slower, and we'd get situations where the stuns would be staggered so the valks wouldn't be grouped up well enough. We changed this so that the single target stuns are done by paladins and a prot warrior, then the AoE stun hits, and then we go to other single target stuns come in. And we have backups in case those folks are taken.

Which is where my weird-ass cat spec comes in.

The big one here is Brutal Impact. This doesn't affect Maim at all. Why use it? Because the primary stun I provide is no longer maim, it's bash. This increases the duration by a second, but more importantly reduces the cooldown to 30 seconds - meaning it's available on every valkyr phase.

Of course that means I have to go to bear AND have enough rage when I get out of bear to bash right away. Which of course means...5/5 furor. Sigh. I hate this, so very very much. But it's the right choice. After that I had two points to spend pretty much anywhere I chose, so I went with Nurturing Instinct. Partially this helps with healing me, which is good; more survivability on a fight like this is good anyway. But there's a second benefit - it also improves the power of Tranquility.

When would I need to use Tranquility? Well, when a disc priest is picked up and we have to deal with infest. Or in the throne room for some extra heals.

It's not the 'normal' spec, not by any means. It's certainly not DPS optimal; my ferocious bite crits went significantly down, even with the 25% boost. But with this my stuns became far more reliable and far faster to operate, and I could fill in on a quick stun on each valk phase without worrying about the next. It's very useful, and if you've been doing the maim thing I'd recommend doing this instead; you can still build up CPs on your target, but when it comes time for you to stun just switch to bear and bash; you'll have all that energy pooled when you switch back and not lose any CPs on your target, making it far cheaper than maim.

As to strategy on this fight as a feral cat, here's my basic deal.

Stage 1: stay with melee. Pre-pot using a haste pot, blow berserk after the second shadow trap is placed so that I will likely not have to move and most of the rotation has started. Try to get a full rip and fresh rake and 5 CP and a mangle debuff on LK right before he transitions, so I can get a full SR up when the first raging spirit spawns.

Transition 1: run out if targeted by an orb. Innervate a healer. Use CPs from LK on SR when first spirit spawns, then get 5 CPs as fast as I can, rip, build up more CPs, potentially FB or SR depending. Move to second (even if not dead; dots and others will take care of him). Build to 5 CP, rip ASAP. If I had to SR instead, don't rip - FB. Move to third. Build to 5 CP, rip, rake, move to LK.

Stage 2. Stay on LK for the most part. While you would think swipe damage would be insanely awesome, it turns out that it's not nearly as good as damage on LK can be as a cat. The idea is to build CP on LK, keep SR, rake and rip up, and swipe when you can. Run out early for defile to the non-throne side. Watch to stun if necessary. Use barkskin if targeted by valk. Jump over defiles using feral charge. Use Tranquility in an emergency. Don't waste CPs on FBs if you're moving from LK to a valk; refresh SR early instead. Use berserk on the second Valk phase (the one that coincides with Defile) right after the defile lands, and swipe your ass off. If not then, do it on the third phase.

Transition 2: Again, try to get both bleeds and 5 CP for SR on LK right before. Ignore valks. Same basic strategy as before for the raging spirits, though you may want to get bleeds up on both targets if possible at the end. DPS the hell out of the 3rd spirit and waste all your CP.

Phase 3: go into throne room, don't be a retard. Think about using tranquility. Get out of throne room the first time, run like hell, then move back onto the raging spirit. Kill him. Avoid vile spirits or use CDs and bear form to survive them. Get back on LK. Avoid defiles. Then go back into throne room, don't be a retard, use haste pot with bloodlust, use berserk when you can. Ideally you'll use berserk on the first throne room and then the last one.

It's a lot harder than it sounds. :)

[Druid] Druids are OP - the comments

Wow, I stirred up a hornet's nest in that last post.

In the future I'm going to have to make sure that any posts without math are clearly indicated as opinion/fluff pieces and not meant to be taken as gospel. Yikes. Instead of answering all the comments in the comment section, I figured it'd be better to answer 'em here and follow up here. I'll continue to answer here as necessary.

One note here: while I do recognize that most of you didn't like my last article and want other things, I do really appreciate that you told me. I'm very happy that you took the time to write, and regardless of whether you agree or disagree I hope that you'll continue to take that time.

Basically, it broke down into three kinds of people: those who were optimistic and wanted to hear about how good druids have it right now in raids, and those who are pessimistic and are having problems for whatever reasons, and the realists who figured out why things are the way they are. I'll answer all generically before moving on.

For those of you who are optimistic: good to hear. A lot of people are having a lot more fun with their druid tanking than they ever did before. A lot of that is because of the new tools that druids were given to make them on par with other tanks. A lot is that the content really is doable with druids, though quite a bit is harder for a druid than other tanks. Compare this to what it was like in TBC for heroics, and you have to admit bears have it much better. Quite a few of the fights out there in raids specifically favor druids - especially the ones that are hardest on tanks. And it's never been easier to gear up a druid for tanking and even do well at that tanking.

For those of you who are pessimistic: also good to hear. The fact is that druids need work in heroics. Instancing is what the majority of people do out there, even if it's not the majority of what I write about. Heroics are where you meet future guildies, practice new skills, and in general push people some. And honestly, similarly-geared druids are a bitch to deal with in heroics compared to other tanks. Because of the way armor works, they end up taking significantly more damage than other tanks. They don't have the avoidance that other tanks do, which makes them harder to heal. They don't have the snap aggro to pick up mobs early and let DPS start going immediately. They don't have an easy time of keeping aggro or picking up loose adds due to the need to spam swipe. It's a real, quantitative problem. There are very good reasons why healers hate healing druids in heroics, and it's not because they geared improperly or became stam whores; it's because druids aren't well-designed for heroics. They're not balanced.

At the same time, they're really, really good in raids.

I think that a lot of the issue that people had with this was that clearly, I had two pieces of gear that are just ridiculous right now, and without them bears suffer. That's true; it's definitely clear that Defender's Code is crazy good, and Origin of Nightmares is amazing for threat and stam. And yes, I do overgear Naxx-10; it's definitely not progression for us. That being said, I don't overgear the content significantly in terms of amount of upgrades from Naxx-25. I have gotten very lucky with my drops, I'll admit. Others won't have. But I can say that with a couple of those lucky drops, I'm doing significantly better than other guild tanks who have gotten more drops and are general wearing a lot more high-ilvl gear. On similar fights I'm taking less damage and avoiding more attacks. I'm doing more damage. I have more HP. Perhaps when we both get to the end in terms of gear we can compare apples to apples and see.

And of course, there's the issue of the difficulty (or lack thereof). Naxx is easy, and there's no two ways about it. It's much easier than Kara. It's much easier than most heroics are. Saying how awesome druids are after running a couple of Naxx-25s and judging the content of Naxx-10 is kind of like saying how awesome it is that I can solo normal Ramparts at 80. Sure, I can do it - but what does that really say about anything? It's not even a statistically useful fact.

On the realism side, it's clear that I'm overgearing content, that the content is easy, that I have very good individual pieces of gear, that I had good players around me and that it's not so bad, overall, and that there's a lot more to go before seeing the endpoint. All of that is very true.

Onto the actual specific comments. My favorite was Kiluia, who said it best.

Guys, I wouldnt take issue with this post. Kalon is just messing around. Its basically a post that says "I have awesome gear & I'm overgeared for all the content, aren't I awesome everyone!!!" - and its just a bit of fun.

Yep, very true. This wasn't some random forum post saying how amazing we were and to call for the nerfing of druids because we're ridiculous. I don't do that sort of thing (or if I do, I'll use more math). This was me having a nice post after a good couple of nights of raiding. I do actually think that more nerfs of a kind are going to be incoming for druids. I doubt very seriously that the stamina scaling is going to be allowed to continue for long the way it does, for instance; too many other tanks are already getting pissed about druids so clearly dominating the tanking e-peen of stamina. But anyway, this wasn't the most serious post ever. I had a good time raiding, I was proud that a bunch of people who had never set foot in Naxx of any sort did so well, and it was a fun night.

Don - who said:

Yeah, I can main tank Naxx10 and heroics without any issue, but I think the real value is being able to do reasonable dps being a strong off-tank.

This is something that I think I'll need to explore more in other articles. The things that druids do best (tank really huge-ass mobs and take tons of damage) they can do without all the best tanking talents. Heck, right now I have KotJ; it's certainly not a core tanking talent. Sarth doesn't require R&T, for instance, or feral aggression. I don't think that it's possible to get all the best kitty talents, but being able to get most of them and do very good damage is possible. Good to hear that's working out for you. I think I'd like to get back to that situation more; cat DPS is really fun and challenging now.

Shamad's post, as usual, was really on the mark. Other tanks will catch up, and druids are no where near as good as other tanks for heroics and content with small adds. Last night I tried Sarth+1 on 10man, and was doing the add tanking. (if you're wondering why, it was because the other tank wasn't as experienced or geared, and was having problems with the adds). And gods, what a nightmare it was. That wasn't the reason we wiped, but the amount of damage I took was insane. That's something that a druid can't reasonably do and all the other tanks can. I've been on heroics as DPS and seen how effortless it is for other tanks to get quick aggro, take no damage and move from pull to pull; most heroics require some drinking from my healers. There's a lot of room for improvement there.

Anon1's comment was really good and well written. Here's an exerpt:

But - do everyone a favour and quit making definitive statements about EVERY druid in the game based on YOUR gear.

That's fair. This is round one of the 'Kalon makes a statement about his experiences and fun and it must apply to all druids everywhere'. I will say that it's clear that Defender's Code needed to be nerfed now, in case it wasn't before. And I probably should've titled it "_I_ am OP", but I think that might've gotten even more flames. :) Here's what I'd like to see, Anon - I'd like to see druids get nerfed at the raid level. I'd also like to see them get significantly buffed at the heroic level. And I'd like both of those things to be based on stats on gear instead of via talents.

Anon2's comment was the polar opposite:

With your health & dodge & armor and those 2 pieces (!) well, as you know, those 2 items are a big reason for the armor changes... so enjoy their OPness for a short while.

Yep! They're totally ridiculous. With the patch that'll come down to earth some. Not a ton, mind you - more dodge and stamina will help deal with it a bit. But some. It won't stop the silly stam scaling though.

Anon3's comment confused me:

It's all good and well hearing about the huge thing druids can do, but you cannot really comment until your DPS are the the same level of gear as you.

As it stand your a huge amount better than you DPS, and anything you see is skewed.

I'm not quite sure what this means. If the DPS were the same level as me going into Naxx-10 we probably would've finished the whole thing in 3 hours. And we have DPSers in the guild that are that level. The DPS being as green as they were meant that fights took longer, which meant I took more damage. I guess that I was saying that because I was well-geared and a druid it meant the healers didn't go OOM on me and we could deal with longer fights.

Blink, it's all about the staff. Seriously, that thing easily upped my DPS by 200.

Phil Jackson wrote:

So while I love my druid and the stats I can get right now, I'm in no way saying that we are that much better than the other tanks until I can see tanks with equal gear in the same fights.

It's tough to do that, but yes, I agree. Part of my judging this was that my group - which had a lot more new players - went faster and did better than the other 10-man group led by a better-geared warrior tank, and part of that was apparently that it was harder for them. Again, totally anecdotal. It very well may be that all tanks are OP right now; I suspect it is. This is the sort of thing that's totally subjective because the content is so easy.

Kiggster chimed in on that point too:

I agree with several of the other comments here: don't base the entire state of the class on your gearing alone.

That's a tough one, and one that blizzard has problems with too. How do you balance tanks so that they're good everywhere but not insane in one place and weak in another? I think that blizzard got things very wrong this time (and I've said as much previously). I do agree that my doing well doesn't mean that all druids, everywhere, should be fixed. 3.0.8 is going to help a lot of these issues one way or another. Hopefully future fixes will be incoming.

Anon4 agreed with all of that too:

Currently, Druids are underpowered unless they have 2-3 specific drops. Stop spreading things that are not true. You are geared for Naxx 25.

I'm not sure I agree they're underpowered without those drops. Starting raiding druids have it pretty easy; uncrittability, high dodge rating and decent armor right out of the box and without a lot of special gear or drops. Especially now that PvP gear is out. As gear improves though - they get pretty far behind without a good couple of trinkets and a good staff. As many others have indicated, it's a big spectrum of where bears are. With the gear they're a bit overpowered in raids. Without that gear and with other pieces and comparing to similarly geared tanks who got about as lucky on their drops, they're behind. And they're far behind in heroics at any point.

Anon5 was very interesting, given that he apparently has 3 close-to epicced geared tank classes.

My warrior is where mitigation is just sick. After having only crafted BS epics and the LW epic cape, and some instance blues, I tanked Naxx-10 and *solo* tanked Arachnid and Construct quarters, using a MS warrior to hateful strike tank (of which I still took many of the hatefuls).

That's pretty impressive. If I'd done that I'd probably have posted "warriors are OP". :) I do think that it's not exactly the right comparison there. Having three pre-raid or pre-heroic tanking classes who have good crafted gear, I think that the druid loses handily. There's not a lot of good crafted gear for the druid, and they get far more benefit out of slots that aren't craftable. I do know that my healers very much prefer me to tank harder raid content right now. That may change as we all gear up. I also know that they prefer me least for heroics. Still, your main point is solid; without an actual challenging tanking fight, it's very hard to gauge anything meaningful. Sarth + adds is probably the best, and druids work well in one aspect (tanking big-ass dragons) and horribly in others (tanking any adds).

Anon6 got feisty:

Congrats on being OP for a very nerfed Karazhan equivalent. I am sure it was YOUR OP'ness that allowed you to take DPS in greens to a weak instance and dominate the content and get achievements.

Well, yeah. It certainly didn't hurt. I don't think we would have been able to do Faerlina like we did if I was geared similarly to the DPS, for instance. I do know that the other groups that ran it didn't do this. That isn't to say they couldn't, but it was pretty neat that I could.

Bullroar got even feistier:

Oh and by the way, you really should check if other tanks are OP in this content before putting an article out like this. I am really disappointed in your lack of foresight.

I'm a bit baffled by this, honestly. Bullroar, do you think that I have some huge amount of pull in the warcraft community? Heck, does anyone think that? I had thought that it was clear that by relating two specific experiences I personally had that I wasn't speaking for generics for anyone, but I guess I'll make it clearer: this was my experience. It didn't seem reasonable. It still doesn't seem reasonable to have such high stamina, armor and dodge as a tank relative to what I see other tanks at right now, but perhaps that's fine.

I do think that after 3.0.8, it would be a good idea to do a 'state of the tanks' post. That will have math in it, more theorycrafting, and be actually quantitative and generic.

And then the floodgates were released, as anon after anon chimed in (this would be anon7):

So now you're stuck in cat. You can't tank anything in bear.

The upcoming 3.0.8 changes are awesome for all of us not at the very end of the gear spectrum.

This was a very good point, and one that I agree with 100%. 3.0.8 is going to be good for a vast majority of feral tanks out there. It's a nerf for the potential raiding tanks of the future, but there aren't that many anyway - and those that do exist probably aren't going to be affected by this hugely. I've said that in the past too. I don't like the change mostly because it's yet another talent to make bears okay at tanking, which invariably doesn't scale well and doesn't motivate for gear - but I don't mind the nerf at my level, and I'm very glad that others are getting buffed.

Anon8 went back on the feistiness with a really good quip:

You know, if you start a thread saying one tank class beats the others, then you're gonna inspire a lot of backlash. Just look at one poster who's already suggesting DKs are the uber tank. No stats, no proofs, just ppls subjective feelings, healers subjective feelings about tanks they like to heal and blah and more blah and more blah. Welcome to the gutter of the official forums.

Ghostcrawler - will you lock this thread now?

As we all know, there's nothing that stirrs up conflit amoung players faster than suggesting one class is more powerful than another. You should know better.

Oh and if you want to boast about how awesome you are... can you do it in front of the mirror in the privacy of your own room instead of on your (genereally awesome) blog?

Heh. Nice on the official forum bits. From what I've read DKs are pretty awesome for Sarth+3 adds, as they can reliably deal with the Shadron/Vesperon breath evils for a while thanks to their special cooldowns. I don't think that makes them particularly the best tank ever; Sarth + 3 adds is kind of like Brut in that shorter cooldowns with smaller effects (like Barkskin) are better than long cooldowns with big effects (like shield wall) since the time you'll need the cooldowns happens every minute. That doesn't make DKs the best tanks for everything, it just makes them better for this one specific instance. Of course it doesn't help that that's the only hard content that exists right now.

I will say that I'll try and write more about what people want to see articles on; clearly my audience wants math, theory, and objective hard-hitting news journalism instead of fluff and reports on how much fun I'm having. That's fine, by the way. I don't promise I won't write about the good times and bad times I'm personally experiencing, but I will try and make sure that they're otherwise marked as "Do not take this as a generalization about ferals, druids, other tanks or global warming."

And the last comment (at least for now) from Fathul:

You guys are missing the point. Kalon isn't saying that bears need to be nerfed because content is too easy. Everyone knows that content is easy right now.

What makes bears OP right now (which we certainly are) is our power level relative to the other tanking classes. The armor, health, and dodge values that Kalon posted are simply unobtainable by the other 3 tanking classes.

I think that's true, and I think that come Ulduar we'll see this a bit more - especially for harder-hitting bosses. It's going to be interesting to see how Ulduar shakes out, because they're going to have to be exceedingly creative to make pulls that are unique and actually challenging to tanks without reusing the same mechanics over and over. It's especially going to be interesting to see how they balance having one class with the highest mitigation against hard-hitting mobs and more stamina than anyone vs. having huge weaknesses against multiple targets while making every tanking class 'viable'. If you make something challenging for one tanking class it's probably going to be trivial for another right now. That's something that Blizzard has specifically stated they don't want. I personally really like that; I think the idea is great that tanks have a niche and that things are doable (but hard) with one tank and easy with another. That's not the direction Blizzard has stated they want to go, but with the mechanics of tanking as they stand I'm not sure that they can go any other way.

I'll put it this way. Druids having more health and more mitigation by a significant amount vs. hard hitting bosses is not going to be unnoticed and will be a non-trivial advantage on progression content in the future. I don't know if it'll be required for a druid to be in a raid, but I do think that there will be a number of fights that without a druid become significantly harder, at least as they are now. That's just my idle conjecture. If there aren't fights like this, my fear is that the content is just going to be simple again.

[Druid] Bears are OP.

Other bloggers like Flyv and Currant have recently spoke about what their experiences in general with tanking are right now in various environments. That's pretty topical for me, since I've had a couple good ones recently.

This weekend was the first time I was able to do a Naxx-10 run. Prior to this I had been able to get in on a couple fights here and there, but hadn't done most of the fights at all. I was with 7 other people who hadn't done a full run either, and a few had been 80 for about 1 day.

I got to lead it.

I fortunately had a couple of very experienced players with me (hi Mortos) who knew the fights from both the 40-man and the new versions, so there was not a lot of learning mechanics. That helped tremendously. The inexperienced players were the DPS and the other tank, which also helped; the healers were all very good, had good gear and had done many of the fights in 25-man. That makes up for a lot. And the inexperienced or undergeared folks all were very good players too. That is nice. :)

It also helped that druids right now are seriously broken. Really, truly, seriously broken. But I'll get to that in a minute.

Despite having folks that were still in quest greens we went for the Faerlina achievement and did it fairly easily. We almost got the Maexxna achievement - we were about 2 minutes shy - and if we hadn't done loot council we would have had it easily. We one-shotted Spider wing, Plague wing, and everything up to Thaddius. Military wing gave us issues because of inexperience, but at the end of the night we only had Sapph and KT up. And we did those the next night in about an hour, 2-shotting Sapph and 3-shotting KT. For a bunch of people who hadn't ever seen the fights, were low-geared and getting upgrades on every boss downed, it was a seriously good showing.

But again - a part of it that made it easy was that bears are broken. We had a priest for Faerlina, but we decided that with my gearing it would be easier and more fun to try the Faerlina achievement. If you're not familar with this, it is that Faerlina has adds that must be mind-controlled to dispell or delay her enrage. If you don't, she does massive damage to the tank. The massive damage in question was, on me at least, about 12k hits (up from 5k hits). And honestly, it wasn't an issue. I got to 40% once, popped survival instincts and trinkets, and watched my health steadily climb up as dodge-dodge-dodge filled the screen. Easiest achievement ever.

I was offtank on Patchwerk and took barely more damage than the main tank. Hatefuls either missed me completely or only did about 6k a hit. I had to watch threat and stop mauling because I'd overtake the main tank. And they were doing great threat; it was just that between hateful threat and mine, my threat was insane.

I was regularly 4th or 5th on DPS. This wasn't a sign of bad DPS; I was doing 2k-2.2k depending on the fight. Anything with adds was good, clearly, but without adds it was still pretty high.

On KT, we decided to go for the achievement of getting 18 aboms down. That involves pulling at least 3 extra packs of aboms (so 9 in total, coming in waves of 3 each). These were really hard on our DK tank; they did about 4k average hits and peaked to 7.5 hits, all in 1.5 second intervals and adding a 10% healing loss debuff per hit. On me? 2.5k average, peak 5k, didn't hit me as much. I could tank three without the healers having any real issues. In the same fight, KT's adds come out and are supposed to be tanked by an offtank. Instead, we just had me tank them along with KT. And again, no serious issues; the only reason I died was that I failed to see a shadow fissure at one point because of giant insect butt. The next time it was easily done despite the other tank dying early to an unlucky streak of frostbolt and frost blast.

I don't know whether or not well-geared tanks of other specs can do this sort of thing regularly. What I do know is that it's kind of silly to have 43k health with 38k armor and 50% dodge, and on many fights other tanks simply can't compete with that.

A second example of OPness. We were doing my favorite instance - heroic AN - hoping for that stupid Essence of Gossamer to drop, again. (try 14: still nope). On the last boss, my wife died on the third set of adds and improved death dropped just as Anubarak surfaced. I had me and 1 DPS alive. With no heals, I managed to survive 2 pounds, carrion swarm and normal hits from 25 to 0. I had to blow cooldowns aplenty, but I lived and we didn't wipe. Being able to tank a boss a quarter of their health with only one dps alive and no healer? That's ridiculous.

Like I said, I don't know what the experiences of other tanks are like in these situations. My anecdotal evidence suggest they are taking more damage and avoiding less often than druids are. I do realize that I have some really amazing pieces like Origin and Defender's Code, and that these will be reduced in effectiveness in the future. At the same time, losing 4k armor is not going to kill me, especially with added stamina and avoidance.

I expect that druids get nerfed here soon, at least for raids. I think they'll also get buffed a bit for heroics, getting some kind of static mitigation based on the base AP of their gear that will give them a second mitigation source independent of armor. But right now, they're clearly ridiculous.

The last bit is that we'll be working on Sarth + 2 adds tonight, and in anticipation I built my stam set (the other two pieces of polar gear). In my stam gear - which is missing a LOT of pieces (the aforementioned Essence of Gossamer being a good example) - I have 37k health unbuffed in any way. That's pretty insane. I gain 300 stamina from Blessing of Kings alone. Buffed, I should be up to 48k. How can any other tank even come close to this? It doesn't seem all that fair. Add to this that I still do the most DPS as a tank, put out very good threat...yeah.

We're OP. We're imba.

If, by the way, you're wondering how I can complain about the state of druid tanking (and agree with Currant) while saying how awesome we are - note that I'm not complaining about the mechanics of druid tanking. Druids have everything they need to tank right now. In fact, we've got more than we need. It still feels like bears are this 3rd-party addon class that borrows odd things from everyone (rogue leather, plate tanking jewelry, hunter weapons), but those combine into what is honestly the best tanking class for the content on hand. I do think that druids should be toned down, and the armor nerf that's upcoming is not going to be nearly enough. But I also think that more needs to be done to make druid gear desirable to druids and make tanking fun. Swipe spam is just boring as all hell, as Karthis pointed out. It works fine, but it's not fun. Gearing up is, for the most part, not that fun. The old system was also not fun - relying on rare drops to make you go from suck to awesome is bad. This is bad too. The old system was bad but somewhat fun, in that getting those drops was Really Awesome. The new system? Not so much.

So I would like to see a big bear revamp, similar to what they did to prot pallies. Make more stats on rogue leather and jewelry desirable to druids so they can ignore non-rogue gear aside from weapons. Let them dual wield weapons just for the stat sticks so they can use fist weapons more often (and thus use even more rogue items). Give them more sources of mitigation than armor so that they scale more linearly and can do well in both heroics (where block value is better than armor) and raids (where armor is better than BV). Give them more tools to tank with and fix the ones they have.

Give bears some god damn new graphics!

But don't improve us any more. Don't give us more armor. Don't give us more dodge. For gods sake, don't give these things via talents.

Anyway, don't worry about being nerfed. Bears aren't just fine right now, they're insane, and they're insane on the hardest content that exists. Enjoy being imba for a while. It's not going to last. :)

[Druid] The bear T7 list - pre and post 3.0.4, part 2.

The link to the first part of this guide - leather, leather, leather.

Welcome back to the second part of the bear gear guide for T7.

Unlike the leather gear, the non-leather gear has weights that are very different between classes. I tried to keep the agility/stamina/armor/dodge ratios the same from leather, but it didn't always work well that way (specifically for trinkets and weapons). In general, it's consistent with the other system. Note that the numbers in parenthesis are the values as if the armor change in 3.0.4 has not happened, so that you can choose good gear now and good gear for later. And unlike leather ,this significantly changes the ordering of gear, though oddly not at the top spots.

This is the list that I suspect will get the most feedback on, as a lot of it is more subjective and not perfect, mathematically.

Tomorrow I'll post a priority list of gear and what you should do to get it based on this. That's the sort of thing I do for myself when trying to gear up via dkp; hopefully it'll help you as well.

Weapon (weight used post-3.0.4; weight used pre-3.0.4)

1. Origin of Nightmares - 72.25 (120.65). Heroic Grobbulus.
2. Staff of the Plague Beast - 64.52 (107.20). Normal Heigan.
3. The Undeath Carrier - 62.16 (63.42). Heroic Heigan.
   
4. Enraged Feral Staff - 58.41 (105.56). Heroic Utgarde Keep
5. Staff of the Plaguehound - 56.82 (58.45). Normal Kel'Thuzad.
6. Staff of Trickery - 55.04 (56.15). Heroic Violet Hold
7. Inevitable Defeat - 54.51 (0).Heroic Naxxramas trash
   
8. Journey's End - 50.58 (53.36). Heroic Kel'Thuzad.
9. Witch Doctor's Wildstaff - 48.76 (48.89). Normal Gundrak.
10. Lightning Giant Staff - 41.04 (42.47). Heroic Halls of Lightning.
11. Stave of Shrouded Mysteries - 40.24 (62.85). Revered with Kirin Tor.
    
12. Wildfury Greatstaff - 34.01 (67.81). Serpentshrine Cavern
    
13. Pillar of Ferocity - 27.29 (65.09). Mount Hyjal
14. Bloodwood Greatstaff (63.76)- 14.97 BoE

- Note: this assumes that ghostcrawler misspoke the first time when saying that armor would be removed from staves and that armor would exist on them, we just wouldn't get a bonus from them. This also includes the FAP changes. The staves with armor still win out, but the undeath carrier comes a lot closer to Staff of the Plague Beast.

Idol

1. Idol of Terror - Badges
2. Idol of the Plainstalker - Quest in Borean Tundra
   
3. Idol of Perspicacious Attacks - Grizzly Hills vendor
4. Idol of the Wastes - Quest in dragonblight

- There exists no epic tanking idol in Wrath. None. It sucks hard. Idol of Terror and Plainstalker at least provides some mitigation. Everything else is pure threat.

Really poor choice, Bliz.

Ring (weight used post 3.0.4; weight used pre-3.0.4)

1. Keystone Great-Ring - 32.78 (65.31). Heroic Drak'tharon keep
2. Gatekeeper - 32.26 (60.20). Heroic Sapphiron.
   
3. Titanium Earthguard Ring - 29.81 (27.81). Jewelcrafting BoE.
4. Signet of the Impenetrable Fortress - 28.77 (26.83). 25 emblems of valor.
   
5. Deflection Band - 28.16 (26.16). Normal Anub'Rekhan.
   
6. Hemmoraging Circle - 27.91 (26.04). Heroic Gundrak
7. Strong-Handed Ring - 27.43 (25.59). Heroic Anub'Rekhan, Patchwerk, Noth, Faerlina, Razuvious
   
8. Sand-Worn Band - 27.25 (25.42). Heroic Patchwerk, Anub'Rekhan, Razuvious, Faerlina, Noth
   
9. Signet of Edward the Odd - 26.43 (24.65). World drop BoE
   
10. Titanium Impact Band - 25.82 (24.09). Jewelcrafting BoE
    
11. Band of Torture - 24.41 (50.05). Heroic Oculus
12. Greatring of Collision - 24.32 (22.69). Normal Sartharion + 2 adds.
    
13. Nerubian Shield Ring - 23.50 (52.97). Heroic Ahn'katet.
14. Mobius Band - 22.91 (21.37). Heroic CoT Stratholme
15. Ring of Earthen Might - 22.59 (44.60). Jewelcrafting BoE
16. Signet of the Accord - 22.37 (20.87). Normal Sartharion.
17. Surge Needle Ring - 21.47 (20.03). Normal Malygos
    
18. Ring of the Stalwart Protector - 20.78 (45.73). badges
19. Band of the Kirin Tor - 20.75 (19.36). 8000g in Dalaran
20. Sealing Ring of Grobbulus - 20.09 (18.74). Normal Grobbulus.
21. Ring of Invincibility - 19.97 (18.63). 25 emblems of valor.
    
22. Iceforged battle-ring - 18.23 (48.99). quest in storm peaks
23. Violet Signet of the Great Protector - 16.67 (40.76). Karazhan
    

-Keystone Great Ring remains the best druid tanking ring, and Gatekeeper remains #2. Titanium Earthguard ring is a very good avoidance ring, and Signet of the Impregnable fortress should be a very good threat ring. And the nice thing is that they're all fairly close. Still - expect to either run Drak'Tharon keep a lot or buy a ring or two.

Amulet (weight used post-3.0.4; weight used pre-3.0.4)

1. Boundless Ambition - 34.39(54.66) - Heroic Kel'Thuzad.
2. Heritage - 31.80 (29.66 ) - Heroic Faerlina, Patchwerk, Noth, Razuvious, Anub'Rekhan
3. Favor of the Dragon Queen - 31.09 ( 29.01) . Heroic Malygos (from quest turnin)
   
4. Amulet of Autopsy - 30.69 (52.15) - Normal Heigan, Gluth.
5. Nexus War Champion Beads - 29.28 (27.31 ) Heroic Malygos (from quest turnin)
   
6. Titanium Earthguard Chain - 29.19 (50.75). Jewelcrafting BoE
7. Chained Military Gorget - 28.23 (26.33 ). 25 emblems of heroism.
8. Pendant of the Dragonsworn - 28.21 (26.32). Normal Malygos (from quest turnin)
9. Titanium Impact Choker - 25.82 (24.09). Jewelcrafting BoE
10. Pendant of the Outcast Hero - 24.55 (22.90). 40 emblems of heroism.
11. Drakescale Collar - 24.28 (22.65). Normal Malygos (from quest turnin)
12. Icy Blast Amulet - 24.21 (22.58). Heroic Sapphrion.
13. Shadowseeker's Pendant - 24.04(22.42). Heroic Ahn'kahet.
14. Fool's Trial - 23.14 (21.59). Heroic Noth, Patchwerk, Razuvious, Faerlina, Anub'Rekhan
    
15. Amulet of Wills - 21.34 (42.49). Normal Halls of Stone
16. Gem of Imprisoned Vassals - 21.24(19.81). Normal Kel'Thuzad.
17. Necklace of the Deep - 20.84 (19.44). Jewelcrafting BoE.
18. Necklace of the Chrono-Lord - 20.72 (19.33). Normal CoT Strat.
19. Medallion of the Disgraced - 20.19 (18.83). Normal Naxx trash drop
    
20. Collar of Dissolution - 19.67 ( 18.35). Normal Anub'Rekhan.
    
21. Torta's Oversized Choker - 18.80 (37.30) . BoE drop
    

- My, how the mighty have not fallen. Boundless ambition is definitely the best regardless of anything like an armor nerf due to the high stamina, avoidance and some armor thrown in. Note how close Amulet of Autopsy is to Heritage or Favor of the Dragon Queen. If you can't get any of these, I'd recommend saving for the Chained Military Gorget. Don't bother with the Titanium Earthguard Chain any more. It'll be too expensive for too minimal of a gain.

Trinket (weight used post-3.0.4; weight used pre-3.0.4)

1. Darkmoon Card: Greatness - 27.12 (24.94). Darkmoon Nobles Deck
2. Defender's Code - 18.63 (85.64). Heroic Heigan, Grobbulus, Maexxna, Gothik.
   
3. Valor Medal of the First War - 20.71 (19.04). 40 emblems of heroism
   
4. Essence of Gossamer - 21.19 (19.57). Heroic Azjol-Nerub.
   
5. Offering of Sacrifice - 12.05 (55.42).Heroic Gundrak
6. Repelling Charge - 14.96 (13.75). Normal Thaddius
   
7. Badge of Tenacity - 6.75 (31.03). BC BoE drop

- There just aren't that many good tanking trinkets for druids, at least not ones that are non-jewelcrafting. JC gets Monarch Crab, which would rank between the code and Gossamer. The Indestructable Alchemist Stone is the second-best trinket in the game when 3.0.4 comes out at 26.71. The values are the weights, but the ranking ignores this as weights cannot reasonably factor in the values you get from on-use. If you have any doubt why the armor nerf in 3.0.4 was done, look at the pre and post scores for defenders code. Darkmoon Card: Greatness is by far the best tanking trinket for druids, giving about 190 agility on average. Defender's Code is still strong for both the pure mitigation and the on-use. As always, you should have a collection of trinkets. For normal use I would go with Greatness and Gossamer, but have those, Valor Medal, Defender's Code and Offering of Sacrifice if you can.

Cloak (weight used post-3.0.4; weight used pre 3.0.4)

1. Cloak of the Shadowed Sun - 40.79 (67.35 ). Heroic Grobbulus, Gothik, Heigan and Maexxna
   
2. Gale-Proof Cloak - 35.39. (42.17) Normal Sartharion
3. Platinum Mesh Cloak - 35.31. (42.33) 25 emblems of valor.
4. Durable Nerubhide Cape - 30.25. (37.33) BoE Leatherworking.
5. Cloak of the Gushing Wound - 29.63. (36.45) Heroic Violet Hold
6. Drape of the Deadly Foe - 29.39. (36.94) Heroic Kel'Thuzad.
7. Cloak of Mastery - 28.74. (35.91) Normal Sartharion.
8. Cloak of Armed Strife - 27.98 (55.07). Normal Maexxna.
   
9. Aged Winter Cloak - 26.86. (34.38). Heroic Gothik, Heigan, Grobbulus and Maexxna.
   
10. Cloak of Holy Extermination - 26.86. (33.55) Honored with Argent Crusade
11. Ice Striker's Cloak - 25.97 (33.31). BoE leatherworking
    
12. Shroud of Reverberation - 25.92. (32.96) Heroic Halls of Lightning
13. Hammerhead Sharkskin Cloak - 24.52 (32.18). 25 emblems of valor.
14. Flowing Cloak of Command - 24.15. (52.53) Heroic CoT Strat
15. Slikk's Cloak of Placation - 23.64. (42.70) 35 badges
16. Cloak of Darkening - 23.34 (30.83) Normal Razuvious
    
17. Shadow of the Ghoul - 21.78 (29.60) Heroic Naxx trash drop
    
18. Cloak of Tormented Skies - 21.76 (40.40). Leatherworking BoE

- This is a bit tougher to gauge, as no rating system out there rates both armor and additional armor separately. Still, this is what I'd be going for. The best cloak pre-3.0.4 is the best cloak post 3.0.4. The extra armor makes up for the lack of avoidance, and given the slightly greater stamina it goes ahead. Interestingly enough with this change, DPS cloaks show up here. Agility is simply that much better than dodge.

[Druid] The bear T7 list - pre and post 3.0.4, part 1.

The link to the second part of the gear list - jewelry, idols and weapons.

Here's the first installment of the gear list for bears. It's very large, so I decided to break it up into leather and non-leather items. This is all about the leather. I'll provide a link back when I do the non leather later today.

As you might have noticed from recent posts, I've been favoring agility over stamina stacking. Why? Because while stamina does help time to live and does give your healers a buffer for healing you, after a certain point it simply isn't useful. If you never dip below 30% health, that 30% health is basically wasted itemization. Sure, it looks great when you do LFG and it's nice to impress the n00bs with that 55k survival instincts/defender's code proc. But it doesn't really help with, ya know, tanking.

Agility, however, is always good no matter what. While dodge is subject to diminishing returns, each point of agility provides the same survivability no matter what. This is the same principle as armor; while armor doesn't give the same value for each point in terms of percentage reduction, each point gives a linear reduction of damage from the next. If you think of it that way, you can see why stacking agility makes sense. Agility also provides the most avoidance per point (raid buffed or not), crit, and a bit of armor. It is the only stat that gives mitigation, avoidance, and threat for a druid.

So here's the deal: you should have a good amount of health. That good amount is entirely based on your raid setup. I can't tell you how much you need. But here are some benchmarks to consider:
Patchwerk-25 hits the offtank for about 22k if you're a heroic-geared druid. 20k if you're naxx-geared.
Malygos-25 has a breath attack that can do 30k, plus a quick melee attack that does another 4k.
Sartharion-25 + 3 adds can (depending on the debuffs) hit for 35-39k.

Personally, I'm aiming for 42k raid buffed. That's enough to eat two hateful strikes with only HoTs rolling - and in practice that will not happen due to the other tank having more health at that point. It's enough to take on all other bosses. But again, this is entirely depending on what your situation is. And I won't cry all that much if I end up with only 40k.

Because of this change in philosophy, I've changed the rankings to favor agility heavily over stamina. This does alter the pre-naxx list, which is why I've kept these separate. I still think the pre-naxx gear list is correct because gearing up for naxx, you do want stamina aplenty. However, once you start collecting pieces that goes a bit lower in priority.

Threat and damage is still not a consideration in this list. I can understand why it might be - and if there's enough interest, I'll go back and revisit what I think the best threat stats are for a bear and how to optimize for it - but for normal tanking, at least right now, threat is simply not important.

The rating system I use is based on wowhead, and this is the weight:
Agility 110
Dodge 75
Stam 70
Defense 65
Armor 50
Expertise 22

That's for the leather pieces only. The nonleather pieces will have their own separate ranking system.

A big, special note here: this will be applicable and weighted for 3.0.4 changes. When there is a significant difference, I will list the values pre and post-nerf. Note that this only really affects jewelry and to a lesser extent a couple of leather pieces (the 226 ilvl pieces vs the 187 blues, if you're wondering) In general, there are very few pieces with no armor that also have good druid stats. In any case, the pre-3.0.4 change will be blisted in parenthesis.

A quick look into this reveals that if you're going to keep T6 gear for some reason (threat, perhaps?), the best pieces to keep are the bracers and belt. The worst are the legs and head.

Onto the rankings.



Chest

1. Valorous Dreamwalker Rainments - 127.02 Heroic Gluth, Heroic 4 Horsemen, Archavon the Stone Reaper
2. Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Robes -126.81. Arena rating, arena points.
3. Chestpiece of Suspicion - 122.32. Heroic Instructor Razuvius, Heroic Gluth.
4. Tunic of Dislocation - 119.92. Normal Gothik the Harvester, normal Gluth.
5. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Robes - 119.80. Arena rating, arena points
6. Heroes' Dreamwalker Rainments - 119.72. 80 emblems of heroism, normal Gluth, normal 4 horsemen
   
7. Tunic of Indulgence - 119.64. Normal Grobbulus, Normal Gluth
8. Chestguard of the Recluse - 119.35. Heroic Malygos
9. Polar Vest - 117.37. *Leatherworking BoE.
   
10. Blade-Scarred Tunic - 113.47. Normal Sartharion.
11. Savage Gladiator's Dragonhide Robes - 111.97. honor
12. Harness of Carnal Instinct - 109.59. Sunwell Plateau
13. Darkheart Chestguard - 108.60. Exalted with Knights of the Ebon Blade
14. Crystal-Infused Tunic - 104.80. Heroic Nexus
15. Exotic Leather Tunic - 101.55. quest in Utgarde Pinnacle
16. Eviscerator's Chestguard - 98.90. Leatherworking BoE.
    
17. Thunderheart Chestguard -94.31. Black Temple

-The Valorous gear wins! Just barely. The Polar Vest is included because, honestly, it's not that bad and would be a good starting piece if you didn't have T6 or a quest reward. I'd still take the Exotic Leather over it for starting due to the expertise and AP, but I can see a reasonable disagreement - especially if you used it for stamina here. Still, it will quickly become outpaced by anything in Naxx. Also note how close things are to each other here - upgrades aren't big until you get to the top few.

Feet

1. Footwraps of Vile Deceit - 89.31. Heroic Loatheb, Heroic Gluth.
2. Deadly Gladiator's Boots of Triumph - 89.23. Arena rating, arena points.
   
3. Hateful Gladiator's Boots of Triumph - 83.83. Arena rating, honor points
4. Polar Boots* - 82.78. Leatherworking BoE.
5. Boots of the Worshipper - 76.76. Normal Faerlina, normal Gluth.
   
6. Slag Footguards - 76.38. Heroic Halls of Lightning
7. Boots of Captain Ellis - 76.33. 40 emblems of valor.
8. Dawnwalkers - 74.97. Heroic Anub'Rekhan, Heroic Gluth.
9. Boots of the Whirling Mist - 74.29. Heroic Halls of Stone.
   
10. Boots of the Neverending Path - 72.55. Exalted with Argent Crusade.
    
11. Gorloc Muddy Footwraps - 72.47. Heroic Gundrak
12. Jormscale Footpads - 70.25. Leatherworking BoE
13. Thunderheart Treads - 67.82. Sunwell Plateau
14. Rhino Hide Kneeboots - 64.59. Quest in Gundrak
15. Shadowmaster's Boots - 63.09. Black Temple
    

- The boot slot has so little, it's not funny. The Polar boots are actually pretty good largely because of how little there is and the ratio between agility and stamina compared to the next best thing; if you must get one polar piece, this is the best one to get. The difference between the three heroic drops is very small, so don't kill yourself to get one if you've already gotten another.

Gloves

1. Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves - 84.64. Arena rating, arena points.
   
2. Handwraps of Preserved History - 81.68. Quest in CoT Strat
3. Valorous Dreamwalker Handgrips - 80.61. Heroic Archavon, Heroic Sartharion
4. Gloves of Fast Reactions - 80.61. Heroic Sapphrion
5. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves - 79.36. Arena Rating, arena points
6. Rapid Attack Gloves - 77.82. Normal Razuvious, normal Gluth.
7. Dislocating Handguards - 77.13. Heroic Faerlina.
8. Frosted Adroit Handgrips - 75.33. Heroic Malygos.
   
9. Heroes' Dreamwalker Handgrips - 75.33. 60 emblems of heroism.
   
10. Savage Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves - 73.80. honor
11. Gloves of the Forest Drifter - 66.35. Sunwell Plateau
12. Eviscerator's Gauntlets - 65.38. Leatherworking BoE.
13. Seafoam Gauntlets - 65.15. Leatherworking BoE
14. Gloves of Immortal Dusk - 63.09. Leatherworking BoE (requires sunmotes)
    
15. Discarded Slaughterhouse Gloves - 57.83. Quest in icecrown
16. Thunderheart Gauntlets - 58.65. Mount Hyjal

-Even with a higher weight on base armor, even with the agility changes, the Handwraps of Preserved History remain the best PvE bear tanking gloves. The gap is pretty small between this and the Valorous, so I'd recommend the Valorous to get the 4-piece bonus.

Head

1. Hood of the Exodus - 116.40. Heroic Gothik or Gluth.
   
2. Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm - 114.44. Arena rating, arena points
   
3. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm - 107.68. Arena rating, arena points
4. Valorous Dreamwalker Headguard - 107.07. Heroic Kel'Thuzad.
   
5. Weakness Spectralizers - 105.36. Engineering BoE (requires engineering rating)
6. Helm of the Vast Legions - 103.49. Normal Sapphiron.
7. Heroes Dreamwalker Headguard - 101.71. Normal Kel'Thuzad.
8. Savage Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm - 100.36. honor
9. Mask of the Watcher - 92.25. Heroic Oculus
10. Shroud of Darkness - 90.92. Heroic Violet Hold
11. Mask of the Fury Hunter - 86.43. Sunwell Plateau
12. Thunderheart Cover - 79.90. Mount Hyjal
13. Cover of Silence* - 95.79. Heroic Thadius or Gluth.
    
14. Headguard of Retaliation* - 87.35. quest in Utgarde Pinnacle
15. Eviscerator's Facemask *- 86.28. leatherworking BoE

- Hood of the Exodus is a superb bear piece, and better than the T7. This should likely be the thing you go for over KT's head if at all possible. Note that the pieces with *s do not have metagems, and this ranking does not quite do the metagem system correctly. You should always, always have the Austere Earthsiege Diamond. Always.

Legs

1. Valorous Dreamwalker Legguards - 117.94. Heroic Archavon, 75 emblems of valor, Heroic Thaddius.
2. Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards - 117.63. Arena points, arena honor, heroic Archavon.
3. Leggings of the Honored - 116.25. Heroic Sartharion + 2 adds.
   
4. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Legs - 110.87. Arena rating, arena points
5. Heroes' Dreamwalker Legguards - 110.62. Normal Thaddius
6. Leggings of Fleeting Moments - 110.46. Heroic Gothik.
   
7. Gored Hide Legguards - 105.13. Heroic Gundrak.
8. Savage Gladiator's Dragonhide Legs - 103.29. honor
9. Leggings of Discord - 103.20. Normal Maexxna.
   
10. Mind-expanding Leggings - 102.66. Revered with Kirin Tor
11. Infectious Skitterer Leggings - 101.68. Heroic Maexxna.
    
12. Ravenous Leggings of the Furbolg - 101.15. heroic utgarde pinnacle
13. Chain Gang Legguards - 97.17. BoE from Violet Hold
    
14. Leggings of the Immortal Beast - 93.78. Sunwell Plateau
15. Eviscerator's Legguards - 90.48. Leatherworking BoE.
16. Constellation Leggings - 90.28. Normal Halls of Stone.
17. Tameless Breeches - 80.38. Badges.
    
18. Tattooed Deerskin Leggings - 80.00. Quest in Violet Hold
19. Thunderheart Leggings - 78.98. Black Temple
    

- Leggings of the Honored may deserve to be #1 here - they have a ton of stamina and a lot of armor due to their being level 226. They just don't have the agility that the Valorous or Deadly legs do, and if you're going for your 4-piece it's not worth it to remove this and have to get your T7 head. Per commenter Tygrathel, the Gored Hide leggings are really strong going into Naxx, and are better than a few options from there (thanks Tygrathel!) though I'd still recommend something with more stam when starting out.

Shoulders

1. Valorous Dreamwalker Shoulderpads - 93.83. Heroic Loatheb, 60 emblems of valor.
   
2. Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders - 93.83. Arena rating, arena points
3. Trollwoven shoulders - 89.84. Leatherworking BoE
4. Heroes' Dreamwalker Shoulderpads - 88.29. Normal Loatheb.
   
5. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders - 88.29. arena rating, arena points
6. Concealment Shoulderpads - 87.23. Heroic Sartharion.
   
7. Spaulders of the Careless Thief - 83.83. Heroic Nexus
8. Spaulders of Egotism - 82.78. Heroic Razuvious.
   
9. Savage Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders - 82.47. honor
10. Spaulders of Resumed Battle - 79.75. Normal Noth.
    
11. Sprinting Shoulderpads - 79.32. Heroic Ahn'kahet
12. Demontooth Shoulderpads - 74.13. Sunwell Plateau
13. Eviscerator's Shoulderpads - 73.80. Leatherworking BoE.
    
14. Thunderheart Pauldrons - 70.15. Black Temple

- The trollwoven shoulders remain very strong and should be a high priority pre-Naxx. Note how small an upgrade the T7 are over the Trollwoven; these should be a low priority to get until other gear has been achieved, and should be one of the later emblem purchases.

Belt

1. Deadly Gladiator's Belt of Triumph - 79.92. Arena rating, honor
   
2. Hateful Gladiator's Belt of Triumph - 74.77. arena rating, honor
3. Trollwoven Girdle - 73.94. Leatherworking BoE
4. Polar Cord* - 73.47. Leatherworking BoE.
   
5. Sharp-Barbed Leather belt - 73.36. heroic utgarde keep
6. Stalk-skin Belt - 71.13. Heroic Heigan.
   
7. Belt of the Tortured - 69.72. Heroic Patchwerk.
   
8. Jorach's Crocolisk Skin Belt - 69.17. Emblems of Heroism
9. Blistered Belt of Decay - 69.13. Normal Grobbulus.
   
10. Ley-whelphide belt - 65.94. normal and Oculus
11. Glitterscale Wrap - 62.78. Revered with Oracles
12. Eviscerator's Waistguard - 61.17. Leatherworking BoE.
13. Thunderheart Waistguard - 56.30. Sunwell Plateau
    
14. Don Alejandro's Money Belt - 55.48. Mount Hyjal
15. Waistguard of the Great Beast - 52.40. 60 Badges.
16. Belt of Natural Power - 52.30. Leatherworking BoE

- The belt availability for bears is horrible. Just atrocious. At least that makes it easy. If you get lucky and get the belt from UK, go with that. Otherwise, make a trollwoven girdle and be done. The deadly belt is a big upgrade and is likely worth grinding honor for, whenever it comes out.

Wrist

1. Thrusting Bands - 60.30. Heroic Noth.
   
2. Deadly Gladiator's Armwraps of Triumph - 59.77. Arena rating, honor
   
3. Sinner's Bindings - 57.25. Heroic Maexxna.
   
4. Hateful Gladiator's Armwraps of Triumph - 55.71. arena rating, honor
5. Wristwraps of the Cutthroat - 52.76. BoE, 60 emblems of valor.
   
6. Bindings of the Tunneler - 52.55. Heroic Utgarde Keep
7. Dragonfriend Bracers - 52.04. Exalted with Wyrmrest Accord
8. Cuffs of Dark Shadows - 50.92. Heroic Heigan.
   
9. Drake-champion's Bracers - 50.05. Heroic Oculus
10. Thunderheart Wristguards - 46.23. Sunwell Plateau
11. Eviscerator's Bindings - 47.07. Leatherworking BoE
12. Njorndar Furywraps - 46.45. Quest in Icecrown
13. Vindicator's Dragonhide Bindings - 45.94. BC PvP honor
    
14. Band of the Swift Paw - 38.78. badges

- The thrusting bands, thanks to their balance of stam, agi, and expertise come out very strong here, just barely edging out the PvP bracers. The badge wristwraps are an okay alternative, but I would spend this after you've gotten basically everything else you might want, as heroics and pvp and vendor items are close to it, and 60 emblems is quite a bit.

[Paladin] what would you like to see?

My wife recently noted that despite this blog being about, well, ya know, tanking, there are more posts about cats than there are non-druid tanks.

And "ThinkCat" doesn't really have a good ring to it.

Looking into this, I found out that one of the most popular articles I've wrote happens to be the post on a paladin getting uncrittable. So I'm neglecting a fair amount of people who read this and want info on plate tank wearers. Sorry, guys.

In the future I'll be writing more about Death Knight tanking, I'm sure. Death Knights look to me like the odd bastard child of a paladin and a druid; they have the ability to do good dps and good tanking with one build while sacrificing very little (and in every single talent tree, no less), they can do good AoE tanking, and they have to do weird juggling with their gear including wanting armor aplenty. Plus they're damn cool. I'm not making a death knight my main right now; I don't have the time to get a DK to raiding-level in time for Wrath. But I'll be making one and hopefully using it as a nice alt in the near future.

For now, though, I'm at a loss. I was thinking about doing a gear guide similar to the bear and cat posts I made for Pre-naxx...but this has already been done. At Maintankadin, Zamach has put out a great list of pre and post-naxx gear. One thing it doesn't do is compare BC with WotLK gear, but fortunately honorshammer has done that as well, in an easy to use spreadsheet. There's no need to do a FAQ for paladins, as that's what mine was modeled after. While paladin mechanics were tweaked early on, and they're still getting nerfed thanks to ret fallout, in general they've been very stable and solid - so no 'OMG the sky is falling' posts similar to druids. And unlike druids, their gear is basically the same as a warrior in terms of what they want so their gear is pretty solid too. Their rotation hasn't changed since early beta, and the 969 rotation is still the best. There are plenty of arguments on how poor paladin mitigation is relative to warriors and druids - and that may see some value - but right now they're very close to warriors and have significant enough advantages that I don't believe it'll be an issue. The biggest issue right now is the amount of damage a paladin does relative to a warrior, but that's still a bit silly; it doesn't matter how much threat you do so long as you're doing enough, and right now it's definitely enough. There's even cool addons that show things like AD avoidances and values of your gear as a paladin.

In short, the paladin basic stuff is well covered. Whereas the druid stuff...hasn't been.

So I ask you guys - what paladin or warrior or DK information would you like to see? Or heck, what druid information would you like to see?

[Druid] Cat item list and rep list for Pre-naxx

Naturally a couple days after I compile the big-ass list for bears, they announce the change to how gearing works for bears. Expect them to make huge changes to cats - possibly requiring cats to all use spellpower or something - shortly after you read this. The phrase "barring some last-minute surprises" is especially amusing.

At least cats shouldn't be so surprising, right? RIGHT? Sure.

While I'd like to do a list of gear with and without hit/expertise rating and how they're valued, the truth is that at level 80, pre-naxx you're likely not going to be at either cap, and the differences between the gear pieces are fairly minor. I've put the overall gear ranking in to allow you to judge how much better something is than something else, but keep in mind that the gear values for you, specifically, are going to vary as you get closer to the hit/expertise cap. For dealing with this most optimally I recommend using Rawr when it gets done with a cat model for Wrath.

The hit cap is 296 at level 80. The Expertise cap is 214 rating without primal precision, 148 with it.

The same rules for gear for bears apply to cats too:

1. If it costs arena points, list only the best of the arena points
2. If it costs honor, list only the best of the honor
3. List the best heroic drop
4. List the best non-heroic drop
5. List the best craftable
6. List the best quest reward
7. List the best BoE
8. List the best and often second-best item from BC

I've listed pre-Wrath items in Italics.

The basic rankings for values are centered around agility, and take heavily from Toskk's research on the druid wiki and Nightcrowler's values on EJ:

Hit: 1.1 effective Agility points before cap, 0 after
Expertise: 1.1 effective agility points before cap, 0 after
Strength: 1.05 EAP
Agility: 1.00 EAP (duh)
Crit: .9 EAP
AP. .45 EAP
Haste: .65 EAP
ArPen: .2 EAP

Onto the rankings!

Shoulder Enchants:

1. Greater Inscription of the Axe - Exalted with Sons of Hodir
2. Greater Inscription of the Blade - Exalted with Scryer
3. Lesser Inscription of the Axe - Honored with Sons of Hodir
   
4. Greater Inscription of Vengeance - Exalted with Aldor

-if I can impress on you one thing, it's to start as early as you can grinding rep with Sons of Hodir. They start at hated and it's a similar questline and grind to Netherwing dailies.

Head Enchants

1. Arcanum of Torment - Revered with Knights of the Ebon Blade
2. Arcanum of Ferocity - Revered with Cenarion Expedition

-This isn't nearly as important to grind rep with, as CE gives hit rating and is perfectly acceptable if you're below the cap.

Weapons:

1. Staff of Trickery -146.92. Heroic Violet Hold
   
2. Lightning Giant Staff - 129.59. Heroic Halls of Lightning.
3. Stave of Shrouded Mysteries - 112.86. Revered with Kirin Tor
4. Hewn Sparring Quarterstaff - 111.64. Normal Halls of Lightning
5. Staff of the Sorrowful Chieftain - 95.67. Quest in Zul'drak.
6. Stanchion of Primal Instinct - 93.70. Sunwell Plateau
7. Staff of the Forest Lord - 85.31. 150 Badges
   

- No surprises or odd rankings here. If you were lucky enough to get the Stanchion or the Brutal Gladiator staff, you won't find a meaningful upgrade for it until Halls of Lightning.

Idols:

1. Idol of Worship - Naxx-25 badges
2. Idol of the Ravenous Beast - 15 Emblems of heroism.
   
3. Deadly Gladiator's Idol of Resolve - Arena points, arena ranking
4. Savage Gladiator's Idol of Resolve - honor
5. Idol of the Wastes - Quest in Dragonblight
6. Idol of Terror - 15 Badges

- yeah, I know. No ranking values and even gear that you can only get from Naxx. There just really isn't that much to get here. Idol of the Wastes is likely fairly good though I've not tested the proc rate. Same goes for the Idol of Resolves. The real big winner is the Idol of Worship, which thanks to the smaller frequency of shreds, the buffing of armor on bosses and the improvement of rip time should be the winner.

Ring:

1. Surge Needle Ring - 24.13. Raid BoE
2. Hemmoraging Circle - 19.02. Heroic Gundrak
   
3. Band of the Kirin Tor - 18.57. 8000 gold, Dalaran
4. Ring of Scarlet Shadows - 16.69. Jewelcrafting BoE.
5. Mobius Band - 15.94. Heroic CoT Strat
   
6. Titanium Impact Band - 14.10. Jewelcrafting BoE.
7. Signet of Edward the Odd - 13.50. Raid BoE
8. Deadly Gladiator's Band of Victory - 13.46. Arena points, arena rating.
   
9. Bjarngrim Family Signet - 13.04. Normal Halls of Lightning
10. Signet of Bridenbrad - 12.91. Quest in Icecrown
11. Hard Khorium Band - 10.64. Jewelcrafting BoE (from Sunwell)

-you'll definitely be upgrading your rings soon; armor penetration really isn't all that strong, and there are a lot of great rings out there. The Surge Needle ring is not only the best you can get pre-Naxx, it's the best you can get post-Naxx; I'd be shocked to see it on the AH. But maybe you'll be lucky. Otherwise, start saving that 8k gold...

Amulet:

1. Pendant of the Outcast Hero - 18.13. 25 emblems of heroism.
2. Necklace of Arcane Spheres - 15.40 . Heroic Violet Hold
3. Titanium Impact Choker - 14.13. Jewelcrafting BoE.
4. Necklace of the Chrono-Lord - 13.78. Normal CoT Stratholme
5. The Severed Noose of Westwind - 13.64. Quest in Icecrown
6. Hateful Gladiator's Pendant of Victory - 12.03. Arena rating, Honor
7. Choker of Endless Nightmares - 11.65. Black Temple
8. Draconic Choker of Ferocity - 10.93. World BoE.

-the Violet Hold neck is pretty sweet, but it takes a lot of luck to get the right boss. The emblem of heroism neck is the biggest upgrade from non-badge gear to badge gear you can get for a cat, so it should be a high priority to spend if you're so inclined.

Trinket:

1. Mirror of Truth - 40 emblems of heroism.
   
2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness. From Darkmoon Nobles deck
3. Meteorite Whetstone. Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle.
   
4. Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood. Heroic Nexus.
   
5. Oracle Talisman of Ablution - Exalted with the Oracles.
6. Incisor Fragment - Heroic Drak'tharon Keep
7. Vestige of Haldor - normal Utgarde Pinnacle.
8. Fezzik's Pocketwatch - Quest in Icecrown.
9. Chuchu's Tiny Box of Horrors - Quest in Icecrown

- This is, honestly, the hardest one for me to evaluate; without ideas on what the proc rates, internal cooldowns and values are, it's hard for me to stack-rank these. That being said, I think the Darkmoon Card: Greatness is going to turn out to be exceptionally strong for a class that likes strength and agility so much, and keep in mind you can get a +90 strength version of the trinket as well, and the uptime of it seems to be about 33% - meaning you'd have about +190 of a stat over time. That's pretty incredible. Mirror of Truth is a great crit/AP trinket similar to BC trinkets, and should scale well. Meteorite Whetstone appears to be another DST-like ability. Sphere of Red dragon's blood is just amazing for the hit rating, but otherwise meh. Vestige of Haldor could be really, really fun if it procs on per hit instead of per swing. More testing is required. :)

Cloak:

1. Cloak of the Gushing Wound - 14.51. Heroic Violet Hold
   
2. Embrace of Sorrow - 14.22. Normal Halls of Stone
3. Ice Striker's Cloak - 13.58. Leatherworking BoE
4. Hateful Gladiator's Cloak of Victory - 11.94. Arena rating, honor
5. Cloak of Unforgivable Sin - 11.58. Sunwell Plateau
6. Bloodbane Cloak - 10.75. Quest in Icecrown.
7. Shadowmoon Destroyer's Drape - 10.54. Black Temple

-I totally forgot about the back slot! Oops. Heh. The Ice Striker's cloak is good enough to get most people by before heading to Naxx.

Chest:

1. Heroes' Dreamwalker Rainments - 37.33. 80 emblems of heroism
   
2. Custodian's Chestpiece - 35.77 - Heroic Azjol-Nerub
3. Carapace of Sun and Shadow - 29.87. BoP Leatherworking in Sunwell
4. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Robes. 27.49 Arena points, arena ranking
5. Bladed Chaos Tunic - 26.71. Sunwell Plateau
6. Darkheart Chestguard - 26.66. Exalted with Knights of the Ebon Blade
7. Savage Gladiator's Dragonhide Robes - 24.04. Honor
8. Exotic Leather Tunic -22.48. Quest in Utgarde Pinnacle

- Because of the gem slots, the Carapace of Sun and Shadow gets very good. Same with the PvP gear. Midnight Chestguard and Nether Shadow Tunic are both quite strong too. I would recommend against buying the badge chest until you've gotten everything else; the expense is very high.

Feet:

1. Boots of the Neverending Path - 26.06. Exalted with Argent Crusade
2. Boots of the Whirling Mist - 22.19. Heroic Halls of Stone
   
3. Hateful Gladiator's Boots of Triumph - 20.10. Arena ranking, honor.
4. Slag Footguards - 19.68. Heroic Halls of Lightning
5. The Darkspeaker's Treads -18.10. Quest in Icecrown
6. Thunderheart Treads - 17.38. Sunwell Plateau
7. Jormscale Footpads - 17.37. Leatherworking BoE.
8. Nyn'jah's Tabi Boots - 16.85. 60 badges

- While they're #1, I'd not recommend grinding rep for the Boots of the Neverending Path; the big reason they're #1 is because of that huge hit rating.

Hands:

1. Gloves of Fast Reactions - 28.71. Raid BoE.
   
2. Gilt-Edged Leather Gauntlets - 26.28. Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle
3. Heroes' Dreamwalker Handgrips- 25.24. 60 emblems of heroism.
   
4. Handwraps of Preserved History - 22.92. Quest in CoT Stratholme
5. Gloves of Immortal Dusk - 19.37. Leatherworking BoE (from Sunwell)
6. Shadowed Gauntlets of Paroxysm - 19.14. Sunwell Plateau
7. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves - 18.92. Arena points, arena ranking.
8. Sidestepping Handguards - 17.12. Normal Oculus
9. Eviscerator's Gauntlets - 16.38. Leatherworking BoE

- The high hit on the Gilt-Edged Gauntlets are what puts them over the top (and make them arguably better than the Naxx-10 gear). The Handwraps of Preserved History are already the best pre-Naxx piece for bears; they'll do really well for cats too. The badge hands are not that strong either. Save the badges for bigger upgrades.

Head:

1. Weakness Spectralizers - 31.88. Engineering BoE, Engineering rating
2. Mask of the Watcher - 30.26. Heroic Oculus
3. Duplicitous Guise - 28.20. Sunwell Plateau
4. Cursed Vision of Sargeras - 27.01. Black Temple
5. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm - 26.10. Arena points, Arena rating
6. Headguard of Retaliation - 24.39. Quest in Utgarde Pinnacle
7. Savage Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm - 22.66. Honor
8. Eviscerator's Facemask - 22.16. Leatherworking BoE
   

- while the best is the engineering helm (and it's better than Naxx-10) I can't recommend engineering; the item is just too easily replacable and the overall benefits aren't there compared to the other professions. I really, truly want to find where Mask of the Watcher drops.

Legs:

1. Gored Hide Legguards - 33.17. Heroic Gun'Drak.
2. Mind-Expanding Leggings - 31.14. Revered with Kirin Tor
3. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards - 27.49. Arena points, arena rating.
4. Azure Strappy Pants - 27.36. Revered with Frenzyheart Tribe
5. Leggings of the Immortal Night - 26.98. Sunwell Plateau
   
6. Leggings of Visceral Strikes - 25.58. Leatherworking BoE
7. Savage Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards - 24.04. Honor
8. Trousers of the Scryer's Retainer - 23.06. 100 badges

-The Gored Hide Legguards are going to be this expansion's version of Midnight Legguards. I put in a second rep reward because I want every druid out there to be wearing strappy pants. STRAPPY PANTS. There really aren't any good quest rewards compared to this stuff.

Shoulders:

1. Spaulders of Egotism - 27.88. Raid BoE.
   
2. Trollwoven Spaulders - 22.50. Leatherworking BoE
3. Spaulders of the Careless Thief - 21.85. Heroic Nexus
4. Hateful Gladiator's Dragonhide Shoulders - 20.10. Arena rating, arena points
5. Demontooth Shoulderpads - 19.75. Sunwell Plateau
6. Savage Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders - 17.62. Honor
7. Charred Leather Shoulderguards - 17.07. Quest in Halls of Lightning.
8. Thunderheart Pauldrons - 16.96. Black Temple

-As usual, the shoulders are the most ostentatious and the least actually useful piece of gear you can get. The difference between T6 and wrath is very small. This time there's a treat though - the best pre-Naxx shoulders you can get are crafted and BoE, and shouldn't be too insane to make.

Waist:

1. Jorach's Crocolisk Skin Belt - 28.18. 40 Emblems of heroism
   
2. Sharp-Barbed Leather Belt - 24.71. Heroic Utgarde Keep.
3. Trollwoven Girdle - 24.41. Leatherworking BoE.
4. Hateful Gladiator's Belt of Triumph - 20.10. Arena rating, honor.
5. Ley-Whelphide Belt - 19.09. Normal Oculus
6. Belt of One-Hundred Deaths - 18.25. Serpentshrine Cavern
7. Thunderheart Waistguard - 18.08. Sunwell Plateau
8. Belt of Deep Shadow - 17.04. Leatherworking BoE
9. Belt of Njorndar - 15.96. Quest in Icecrown.

- The Trollwoven Girdle is almost the best in slot here, but is beaten out by the gem power in the Sharp-Barbed piece. The only other surprise is how good the BC gear is. If you're still wanting to keep a 2pT6 bonus this is not a bad candidate, though the boots and (surprisingly) the shoulders might be better. The emblem of heroism belt is a clear #1 as well, though I'd get the neck before getting this.

Wrists:

1. Dragonfriend Bracers - 18.71. Exalted with Wyrmrest Accord.
2. Drake-Champion's Bracers - 16.58. BoE from Heroic Oculus
   
3. Wristwraps of the Cutthroat - 16.50. Raid BoE
   
4. Advanced Tooled-Leather Bands - 16.32. Heroic Halls of Lightning
5. Hateful Gladiator's Armwraps of Triumph - 14.92. Arena rating, honor.
6. King's Square Bracers - 14.23. BoE drop from Stratholme
7. Eviscerator's Bindings - 12.39. Leatherworking BoE
8. Insidious Bands - 12.39. Black Temple
9. Shackles of Dark Whispers - 12.20. Quest in Drak'Tharon Keep.
10. Thunderheart Wristguards - 11.10. Sunwell Plateau

-I wouldn't grind to get exalted for the dragonfriend bracers either, though that's a lot of nice crit and are really good if you're hit-capped already. I was pretty surprised at how poor the T6 bracers are here. The Drake-Champion's Bracers are a great BoE surprise; see if you can find 'em on the AH or get lucky running Oculus.