[Druid] Bear Discussion

He's saying that the 397 valor point neck is better than the 403 conq point neck. The 397 ragnaros heroic neck is better than both. There is no neck in dragon soul. There's absolutely no question that the 397 valor point neck is worth more dps than the 403 conq neck, survivability wise there's not a lot in it though Darielle says the 397 neck is still better, regardless bear tanks in dragon soul should be optimised around DPS unless they're in some weird double feral setup given the nature of the encounters. I've tanked complete normal mode (well, morchok heroic but meh) pugs dps-reforged (but mastery reforge rather than haste) with full agility gems (dps meta even) with no survivability issues, and topped dps on the one tank fights, so gearing for the tiny bit of extra stamina from the pvp neck may only possibly be worth it on a couple of heroic modes, and with the nerf in place I very much doubt it.

Except on the fights that paladins/warriors are very poorly suited to (hagara heroic) and madness heroic using a two tank strategy, but that's very rare on 10 man, I can't see the point of stam stacking at all for bears. Just stick a stamina trinket in if you desperately need more hp for an encounter.

im just going to bow out of this discussion now
yeah nough said

btw, INCBear now linked in first post

Everything that I have read has also stated that Higher ilvl PvP gear for a druid is more often than not, going to be better than the PVE gear. The reason being that bears 3 most important stats are

Armor
Stamina
Agility

And all three of them are ALMOST solely affected by the ilvl of the item.

Now, obviously, there are going to be outliers to this ideology, but on a whole, this is what has been explained to me, in what I have read about druids since I leveled mine to 85.

elitistjerks wrote:Generally speaking you want to look for the highest item level agility gear you can find. This is because armor, stamina, and for the most part agility directly correlate with item level. Agility jewelery is better than even perfectly itemized strength tanking jewelery. You'll want to reforge haste/hit/expertise to dodge, crit, or mastery if possible. Use Rawr or the spreadsheet to determine which of the three is your best bet.

Now, you could go on to say that Haste is the weakest stat for a bear, so you are going to be looking for PvP gear that is both Higher item level than your own, a piece that isn't going to be replacing a perfectly itemized Crit / Mastery piece (that you will have reforged to Dodge), but even then, as long as the PvP piece has higher ilvl, and isn't a Haste Piece, you are going to be good with using it.

It's been the standard of bear tanking for the expac.

From a survivability point of view I've no idea which is better out of the 403 CP neck vs the 397 VP neck. I can well imagine that despite the higher savage defence proc rate from the VP neck, the CP neck works out better from a survival pov, though Darielle has stated otherwise. I don't think that aspect is important enough to bother testing out both situations in mew personally.

The key point, and what renders that generalisation you quoted invalid when considering the wasted resilience on pvp gear in my opinion, is that tank survival, at least for the roles that you would put a feral tank on in dragon soul heroic when you had a choice between a feral and another tank, is not particularly difficult, and that you will spend a large amount of time DPSing. E.g. on Ultraxion you'd want the feral to spend as much time in cat as possible. Even on blackhorn heroic there's decent opportunity to cat, though this is probably the fight that will test your survival the most. Morchok heroic is trival both tank survival wise and dps requirements wise. Spine heroic, you should be optimised for dps both for faster amalgamation burns and better tendon dps. Only madness heroic using two tanks (which isn't common on 10 man anyway) stamina is a major issue, but the quicker everything dies, the easier tank survival becomes just the same.

If you're in the situation where you as a bear are main tanking every fight, then possibly the 403 cp neck might be better. I'd check with mew. That's an inefficient use of tanking resources though, with the possible exception of hagara heroic, given you and the other tank have comparable gear, and from an optimal progression point of view I'd definitely use the 397 neck.

Mew just works off Stat totals. When you import your character from the armory, it just imports the haste, hit, agility, etc., of everything you have and just calculates based on that. To compare an equipped piece to a different piece (say, I have Heroic Rag neck atm and I want to compare it to Cameo), all you do is subtract/add the relevant stat (so I'd subtract 176 Mastery and add on 176 Hit, or 106 hit, 74 mastery if I was reforging to Mastery, etc.)

If you actually wind up doing the comparison, the Cameo is better for all aspects (damage reduction, spike reduction, tank dps etc.) EXCEPT "I absolutely must have this 24 Stamina" - which will never come up, not even on Heroic Madness, because once you cross the threshold for the cooldowns available, that's all. You'll never be in a situation of having to use a PvP neck because things like using a stam trinket, a few agi/stam gems instead of pure agi etc., are flat out better for that role anyway.

"Now, you could go on to say that Haste is the weakest stat for a bear, so you are going to be looking for PvP gear that is both Higher item level than your own, a piece that isn't going to be replacing a perfectly itemized Crit / Mastery piece (that you will have reforged to Dodge), but even then, as long as the PvP piece has higher ilvl, and isn't a Haste Piece, you are going to be good with using it. "
^ That's why this doesn't apply. It's a lot of clauses that wind up still being wrong in the case of 403 gear. Just put it in Mew - if it's close enough, use the more easily obtainable piece. Unless it's a weapon or Shoulder, the PvE piece is easier to obtain anyway considering what's actually available with Valor Points and LFR atm - you COULD buy stuff like 403 boots and be like "Well, this'll tide me by until I get the Valor boots or get a pair to drop in the instance", but since your benefit is miniscule (if you actually follow the numbers, that sort of upgrade barely touches your survivability/spike damage and even the fairly irrelevant measure of average dtps shifts only by maybe 100 which is beyond meaningless) - unless you're just begging for more stam urgently or replacing a 318 green with a 377 placeholder for cheap, there's no point, unless you were planning to PvP with that item anyway.