Druid Tanking

[Arcdelad]

to go in concert with the great pally conversation...this is probably the single most enlightening post ive ever seen about bear tanking...

Okay, so I have been doing a lot of research and math lately. With help from various Posters from both VN and WoW forums, and many websites I think I have compiled most answers to questions about tanking as it refers to stats and gear choices.

For a long time I thought (for PVE) ARMOR was the best thing for bear form, and i believe most druids still think this. I believe this comes from the 400% added armor bonus we recieve as a bear. When you really break it down though, armor actually is not even close to the top when it comes to damage mitigation.

I'm going to start off With DEFENSE and RESILIENCE because it is a popular topic of late and is Very important to have as a tank. At Level 70 you have a base of 350 Defense SKILL. For everything after 350, it takes ~2.36 Defense RATING to achieve 1 Defense SKILL. This means you need to have 154 Defense RATING in your gear to achieve 415 Defense SKILL. Why does one need 415 Defense? Well, Each point of Defense SKILL above your attacker's weapon skill gives you -0.04% chance to be crit and +0.04% to be missed and to dodge. A mob's base crit chance is 5%, but a level 73 mob has 15 extra weapon skill over your level, so a boss's base crit chance is 5.6%. Survival of the Fittest reduces this to 2.6%, and 415 Defense SKILL is what you need to get that last 2.6% and not take any crits. After you hit the Crit% Reduction cap, each point of the Defense SKILL only gives you the +0.04% to be missed and to dodge.
As for Resilience, it also reduces your chance to be crit (even by spells, why it's good for PvP as well). Every 40 resilience Gives you 1% chance to not be crit and reduces the damage you take from crits by 2%. If you don't have 415 def and have some nice resilience tank gear, it's a nice way to fill in the -crit%; if you DO have 415 defense, you aren't being crit anyway so resilience does nothing more than reduce the damage you take from crits. If you have some resilience, you won't need as much defense to be uncrittable.

Now that that essay is out of the way, It's time for Stats, Dodge, Armor, etc.

STAMINA: If you have Heart of the Wild, which I assume you do, your stamina goes up 20% (*1.2). Bear form gives you another 25% (*1.25), and if you multiply those together you get (conveniently enough) 1.5. So, bear form plus HotW gives you exactly 50% bonus stamina, which means 10 stamina is worth 15 hit points. Survival of the Fittest also gives you 3% bonus to all stats, so 10sta would actually be 15.45 hit points, but that's a much smaller bonus. So all in all, 1pt of Stamina gives you 1.54 Health as a NElf and ~1.9 as a Tauren. More health = it takes more hits for you to die.

AGILITY: In bear form, every ~14 agility gives 1% to dodge and 28 Armor. Dodging means you don't get hit at all, therefore taking less damage in a fight. Agility also gives you ~.5% crit chance, which helps you hold agro.

DODGE RATING: In bear form, it takes ~18.7 Dodge rating to get 1% dodge. Obviously 1 pt of Agility is superior to 1pt of Dodge.

ARMOR: The Armor formula is [%Reduction = (Armor / (Armor - 22167.5 + 467.5 * Enemy_Level)) * 100]. Against level 73 bosses, this becomes [%Reduction = (Armor / (Armor + 11960)) * 100]. The Diminishing Returns idea is misleading; a lot of people notice that as your armor goes up, it takes more additional armor to get each additional 1% on their damage-reduction tooltip, but forget that as your armor goes up, each additional 1% is actually worth more. Think of it this way: if you have 50% reduction and go to 51%, you're now taking (.49/.50)=98% as much damage as you used to. If you have 70% reduction and go to 71%, you're now taking (.29/.30)=96.6% as much damage as you used to. So Armor reduces the amount of physical damage taken by Attacks.



For finding what gear is best, you can use a mitigation calculator. Using that this is how the stats rank up:

1pt of Stamina: ~3.89 mitigation
1pt of Agility: ~3.45 mitigation
1pt of Dodge: ~2.49 Mitigation
1pt of Defense: ~2.35 Mitigation (Before Crit Reduction Cap)(NEED 154pts of this)
1pt of Resilience:~1.37 Mitigation (Before Crit Reduction Cap)
10pts of Armor: ~5.58 Mitigation


As for gear, a site that uses this calculator is http://www.gurgleblaster.net/emmerald/Bear_Mitigation/Head.html
Remember that when it is an item w/ slots he's usually using green gems, so you can actually get higher mitigation in those slots normally.

Speaking of Gems, Let's go Over SOCKETS and ENCHANTMENTS.
Some people don't know this, but just because the socket is yellow doesn't mean you have to put a yellow gem in it. Using the right color gem just ensures you the socket bonus that goes w/ the gear. Most of the time though you probably want to use the +12 Stam B Gem, or the +6 Stam, +4 Agi RB gem. In fact The only yellow Gem I use is the +6 Stam, +4 Def just so I could cap my defense.

For Enchantment Choices, sometimes it's very easy to decide whats best, other times it's not. Quick Rundown of what my thoughts on them are.
Head: +17 Dodge, +16 Defense
Shoulder: +15 Dodge, +10 Defense
Back: +12 Agility (Remember, armor added to an Item is NOT multiplied! Armor is multiplied then added armor is added, and even if it wasn't, 12 agi is better anyways)
Chest: +150 Health (Some People opt for +6 to all stats)
Wrist: +12 Stamina
Hands: +15 Agility
Legs: +30 Stamina, +10 agility (+35 stam, +12 Agi if you can afford the Primal Nether)\
Feet: +12 Stamina
2H Weapon: +35 Agility

Well It's easter and I'm going to go eat with my family. I will add more later I'm sure, just wanted to get all that out there. Hope it's Helpful!

[dharq]

Funny thing is, this is always how I've prioritized gear on my druid...

AGI/STAM
STAM/Armor or STAM/Def

AP or STR has always been a lower priority for me than those top 4. Monkey gear was always my best friend until the bandit gear started popping up in outlands, and I've always stuck to the rule to go with more AGI than STR once you get to 800+ attack power.

Doing that, my crit & dodge rates at lv70 were around 27% with just the trash gear I picked up questing in HFP, Zang, TF, and Nagrand. I still haven't done the quests in the other areas. I had just over 11k hp fully buffed, and had ~12k armor (~50% reduction). I found that tanking was pretty easy even with the low armor I had at the time.

Also, with the improved dodge rates that bears got in the xpak, I think dodging will start playing a much bigger role in druid tanking... After all, if you can dodge 1/3 of the attacks that come at you outright, that's 1/3 less healing the priests have to do.

At least that's always been my hypothesis...

[Arcdelad]

oh i agree 100% darq...

doing damage in bear form is my absolute last priority too, even though more damage will let you hold aggro better...bears get an instant AGI upgrade as soon as they hit bear form (opposite in cat form, we get a nice STR upgrade), and most tanking gear i have on has high AGI on it...

I think im only at 25%-26% dodge in bear form...I agree though it is waaaaaaay important for a bear tank...we don't have spell reflect like warriors do, so this is kind of how I think we make up for the gap, especially with our talents to dodge AOE spells and such...

I am currently back up to about 20k armor, 12.5-13k health, 25-26% dodge, and 480 DEF...I think I could sac some +DEF if i had to make a choice per that post...im also right now using cheap gems in my clefthoof armor set, so I could easily add another 1k health I think if i get around to getting the good STA gems...

one current thing I dont like about bear tanking is that they made swipe such a great aggro keeper - that can rarely be used in the current climate of "CC everything"..a lot of times ill be in a heroic instance or kara and the mob im tanking is immune to taunt, so using swipe is critical, EXCEPT ty has a guy iced next to me, or a priest shackle is sitting right there in reach of my swipe...our imitation crab-sunder doesnt work on a whole bunch of bosses and mobs in heroics+, and its hard to guage its effectiveness when it isnt stacking but just doing like 26 instant damage...

..which is why its great that gren has as much health as I do...it takes two shots instead of one to kill him in these things

[dharq]

Yeah, sadly moonkin have a better aggro gen against taunt-immune and bleed-immune mobs than bears now...  CrAzY

I wish they allow bears to have a second, non-bleed taunt attack. Doesn't even need to stack. Just something that can be rapidly spammed for threat and works against mobs that are immune to bleeds & taunts.

[Vengeance]

sunder? 

[Tolwen]

gr8 post Arc, i didn't even know half these things
I'm not 100% sure of this but i think demoli... roar ( something like that ) makes some threat on mobs that are immune to the other attacks

[Arcdelad]

it definitely does tol...but its not a whole lot at all, certainly not enough to grab aggro from someone else if you wanted too...I know ill cast demo roar after hunters have had a shot at their target (to pul them into a trap) and it doesnt even phase them...also in back morass I demo roar even when whelps and such are around and it doesnt draw them...I have improved demo roar (so it is 40% more effective or whatever), so i use it mostly on bosses to help the healer not have to heal me for as much (every bit helps)

Im typically okay holding aggro on a non bleedable, lacerate-able target...my favorite aggro grabbing moves are:

faerie fire (small amount of aggro gain)
swipe (good amount of aggro gain - if you can do it and not break traps and such)
mangle (very good aggro gain...especially if you crit...next patch is going to make this even better)
base bear attack (dont remember the name..does okay aggro gain)

on a bleedable boss target, is usually will do the following..start with a taunt, follow with a mangle, throw on 2-3 lacerates, do a swipe, re-taunt, add other 2 lacerates, then mangle, swipe, standard attack and retaunt as CD's allow (swipe is a great rage generator too), always keeping FF and demo roar on the boss to help DPS and damage mitigation...

[fiere redfern]

This means you need to have 154 Defense RATING in your gear to achieve 415 Defense SKILL.

Question: is that base DEF rating/skill in bear form or caster form before the bonus is applied? I currently have 169 def rating in my gear for a total of 421 def skill - in bear form. Outside it... er, don't know offhand because I'm logged off in bear-form >.< but I'm guessing it's lower when I look at your own armory profile, arc. Should I be applying your calculation to my bear-formed self, or should that be the base before I even shift into bear form?

[Shadowwolf]

You want to get your dodge up high too in bear form. It helps a lot on bosses since as a Druid you cant parry or block attacks like a warrior or pally can. Id imagine you need that much def rating in your gear before Bear form. Arc's Armory profile is a tad misleading as I dont think thats his "tanking outfit". I believe thats his Cat/DPS outfit there.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Defense

Thats a good rundown on Defense rating and it cites some examples for Druid tanks.