Shifting Perspectives: Gearing a bear druid at 85
by Allison Robert 
Feb 8th 2011 at 8:00PM
All right, folks -- time to gear your tanks! As with our previous series on gearing a restoration druid at level 85, we'll be going slot by slot to show you the best available options and where you can get them. I've listed recommend enchants previously in Feral Druid Tanking 101, but I've listed them here as well for convenience.
I received some criticism over the restoration gear posts that they were a bit too thorough, and it was (I think) a correct assessment. I'd been aiming for an Emmerald-like opus, but it wound up being an unwieldy mess in blog format. Here, we'll generally avoid gear below ilevel 333. Why? Because you don't want it. I'm sure it's very nice and it has a great personality, but trust me, I've been down that road. It is the way of pain. I've listed the normal versions of some heroic drops here as a courtesy to anyone who's still leveling up, but items are otherwise ranked according to the desirability of their heroic versions.
This week, we'll do the helm through ring slots. Weapons, trinkets, and relics require a bit more discussion, so we'll tackle those next week.
- ilevel 333 pre-heroic blues and honored reputation blues
- ilevel 346 heroic blues and revered reputation blues
- ilevel 359 normal raid epics and exalted reputation epics
- ilevel 372 heroic raid epics
Enchant: Arcanum of the Earthen Ring (requires Earthen Ring revered)
- Stormrider's Headpiece (heroic) The tier 11 helm.
- Membrane of C'Thun (heroic) Dropped by Cho'gall in the Bastion of Twilight.
- Agile Bio-Optic Killshades If you're an engineer, the agility leather goggles are pretty damn good.
- Tsanga's Helm A BoE from the Bastion of Twilight.
- Helm of Numberless Shadows (heroic) Dropped by High Priestess Azil in Stonecore.
- Mask of Vines Available for 2,200 justice points.
- Dunwald Winged Helm (Alliance)/Shocktrooper Hood (Horde) Quest reward from Doing It Like a Dunwald (Alliance) or Krazz Works! (Horde).
- Hood of the Crying Rogue A BoE drop from the upper-level Cataclysm dungeons and heroics.
- Helm of Secret Knowledge Quest reward from Kill the Courier in Grim Batol.
- Necklace of Strife (heroic) Dropped by Valiona/Theralion in the Bastion of Twilight.
- Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace A BoE drop from upper-level Cataclysm dungeons and heroics.
- Pendant of the Lightless Grotto (heroic) Dropped by Ozruk in Stonecore.
- Mouth of the Earth (heroic) Dropped by Earthrager Ptah in Halls of Origination.
- Acorn of the Daughter Tree Available at revered with the Guardians of Hyjal.
- Brazen Elementium Medallion A jewelcrafting BoE.
- Entwined Elementium Choker Another jewelcrafting BoE.
- Amulet of Dull Dreaming Available for 1,250 justice points.
- Pendant of Victorious Fury Quest reward from Battle of Life and Death in the Twilight Highlands.
Shoulders
Enchant: Arcanum of the Earthen Ring (requires Earthen Ring revered)
- Poison Protocol Pauldrons (heroic) Dropped by Magmatron in Blackwing Descent.
- Stormrider's Spaulders (heroic) The tier 11 shoulders.
- Caridean Epaulettes (heroic) Dropped by Commander Ulthok in Throne of the Tides.
- Embrace of the Night Available for 1,650 justice points.
- Thieving Spaulders (heroic) Dropped by Commander Springvale in heroic Shadowfang Keep.
- Clandestine Spaulders Quest reward from Targets of Opportunity in Lost City of the Tol'vir.
Cloak
Enchant: Enchant Cloak - Protection or Enchant Cloak - Major Agility.
- Cloak of Biting Chill (heroic) Dropped by Maloriak in Blackwing Descent.
- Dory's Finery A BoE drop by upper-level Cataclysm dungeons and heroics.
- Viewless Wings Available for 1,250 valor points.
- Wrap of the Great Turtle One of the few exceptions most bear commenters are willing to make to the Agility Uber Alles rule, due to the ease of getting it and the nigh-perfect itemization (if you don't count the strength). Available at exalted with the Guardians of Hyjal.
- Zom's Electrostatic Cloak A BoE drop from upper-level Cataclysm dungeons and heroics. It's the strength equivalent of Dory's Finery above; I'm listing it here in case Zom's drops instead of that.
- Cloak of Thredd (heroic) Dropped by Helix Gearbreaker in heroic Deadmines.
- Kaleki Cloak (heroic) Dropped by General Husam in Lost City of the Tol'vir.
- Razor-Edged Cloak A BoE from leatherworking.
- Twitching Shadows (heroic) Dropped by Ascendant Lord Obsidius in Blackrock Caverns.
- Cape of the Brotherhood (heroic) Dropped by Cookie in heroic Deadmines.
- Softwind Cape Available at revered with the Earthen Ring.
- Cloak of Beasts A leatherworking BoE.
Enchant: Enchant Chest - Greater Stamina or Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats.
- Sark of the Unwatched (heroic) Dropped by Atramedes in Blackwing Descent.
- Stormrider's Raiment (heroic) The tier 11 chest.
- Morrie's Waywalker Wrap A BoE world drop from upper-level Cataclysm dungeons and heroics.
- Assassin's Chestplate A leatherworking BoE.
- Vest of Misshapen Hides (heroic) Dropped by Erudax in Grim Batol.
- Defias Brotherhood Vest Dropped by Glubtok in heroic Deadmines.
- Tunic of Sinking Envy Available for 2,200 justice points.
- Hieroglyphic Vest (heroic) Dropped by Setesh in Halls of Origination.
- Sly Fox Jerkin Available at honored with the Guardians of Hyjal.
Enchant: Enchant Bracer - Agility will be the best choice in patch 4.0.6. For the time being, your choices are Enchant Bracers - Dodge or Enchant Bracers - Major Stamina.
- Parasitic Bands (heroic) Dropped by Magmaw in Blackwing Descent.
- Double Dealing Bracers (heroic) Dropped by Lord Walden in heroic Shadowfang Keep.
- Poison Fang Bracers (heroic) Dropped by Temple Guardian Anhuur in Halls of Origination.
Enchant: You'll have several choices here: Glove Reinforcements, Heavy Savage Armor Kit, Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery, Enchant Gloves - Major Agility.
- Double Attack Handguards (heroic) Dropped by Chimaeron in Blackwing Descent.
- Stormrider's Grips (heroic) The tier 11 gloves.
- Stormbolt Gloves (Alliance) or Liar's Handwraps (Horde) Available at exalted with the Wildhammer or Dragonmaw Clan respectively.
- Gloves of Haze (heroic) Dropped by Asaad in Vortex Pinnacle.
- Sticky Fingers Available for 1,650 justice points.
- Thartuk's Inimitable Gauntlets Dropped by the rare spawn mob Thartuk the Exile in Mount Hyjal.
Enchant: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle.
- Belt of the Fallen Brood (heroic) Good luck snagging this one right now -- it's a Sinestra drop.
- Dispersing Belt (heroic) Dropped by the Twilight Ascendant Council in the Bastion of Twilight.
- Belt of Nefarious Whispers A BoE from leatherworking.
- Sash of Musing Available for 1,650 justice points.
- Quicksand Belt Available at revered with the Ramkahen.
- Red Beam Cord (heroic) Dropped by Rajh in Halls of Origination.
- Belt of a Thousand Mouths Dropped by the rare spawn mob Akma'hat in Uldum.
Enchant: Charscale Leg Armor.
- Stormrider's Legguards (heroic) The tier 11 legs.
- Aberration's Leggings (heroic) Dropped by Maloriak in Blackwing Descent.
- Leggings of the Burrowing Mole Available for 2,200 justice points.
- Beauty's Chew Toy (heroic) Dropped by (who else?) Beauty in heroic Blackrock Caverns.
- Shaw's Finest Leggings (Alliance)/Garona's Finest Leggings (Horde) Quest reward from Skullcrusher the Mountain (Alliance) in the Twilight Highlands or Skullcrusher the Mountain (Horde) in the Twilight Highlands.
- Swiftflight Leggings (Alliance)/Leggings of the Impenitent (Horde) Available at honored with the Wildhammer or Dragonmaw, respectively.
Enchant: Earthen Vitality or Assassin's Step. As a tank, you really do need a boot enchant with increased run speed.
- Storm Rider's Boots (heroic) Dropped by Halfus Wyrmbreaker in the Bastion of Twilight.
- Treads of Fleeting Joy Available for 1,650 valor points.
- Crafty's Gaiters (heroic) Dropped by Siamat in Lost City of the Tol'vir.
- VanCleef's Boots (heroic) Dropped by Vanessa Van Cleef in heroic Deadmines.
- Boots of the Predator (heroic) Dropped by Baron Asbury in heroic Shadowfang Keep.
- Boots of the Hard Way Quest reward from Penetrating Their Defenses in Halls of Origination.
- Lightning Conductor Band (heroic) Dropped by Magmatron in Blackwing Descent.
- Bile-O-Tron Nut (heroic) Dropped by Chimaeron in Blackwing Descent.
- Signet of the Elder Council Available at exalted with the Earthen Ring.
- Elementium Destroyer's Ring A jewelcrafting BoE.
- Skullcracker Ring (heroic) Dropped by Rom'ogg Bonecrusher in heroic Blackrock Caverns.
- Terrath's Signet of Balance Available at revered with Therazane.
- Ring of Blinding Stars (heroic) Dropped by Isiset in Halls of Origination.
- Gilnean Ring of Ruination A BoE drop from higher-level Cataclysm dungeons and heroics.
- Band of Blades A BoE from jewelcrafting.
- Ring of Dun Algaz (heroic) Dropped by Forgemaster Throngus in Grim Batol.
- Nautilus Ring (heroic) Dropped by Neptulon's Cache in heroic Throne of the Tides.
What race should you choose for your druid? What happened to Tree of Life? How can you get started as a bear or cat in Cataclysm? Shifting Perspectives has the answers!
Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Galenar Feb 8th 2011 8:43PM
Its a good guide but I have to point out one mistake. You listed the Earthen Ring arcanum as the shoulder enchant instead of the Therazane exalted enchant.
Qeww Feb 22nd 2011 12:54PM
But still, this is an EXCELLENT gear guide. I can't count the times I've back here to reference this guide.
In game, I'm sitting at ilvl 350 but the Armory shows me at 349. Either way, I'm still in a great tank spot.
Thanks and I'm looking forward to the next installment!
buzzrick Feb 8th 2011 8:40PM
You didn't mention trinkets :-/
Task Feb 8th 2011 8:46PM
If you read the little paragraph before the list, it says she'll do them next week.
Golle Feb 8th 2011 8:58PM
"This week, we'll do the helm through ring slots. Weapons, trinkets, and relics require a bit more discussion, so we'll tackle those next week."
Henry Feb 8th 2011 9:03PM
I made a spreadsheet for the pre-raid gear available for Feral Druids. It doesn't say what exactly the items are, but it says what slot they are, where to get them, and their iLVL
http://goo.gl/cXVfm
Noetical Feb 8th 2011 9:29PM
This whole list is riddled with mistakes.
First off, are the numbers the BiS list? Cause they're not right, the BoE helmet is the best (non-heroic), better than the engineer ones. I wouldn't even list the Cho'Gall one they're so bad.
Whilst I realize you have decided to not go into much detail you may have held back a little too much for instance, the itemization of many pieces are such that they only become better when they're heroic, otherwise others take their place, another example being the reputation gloves being far and above the t11 ones which shouldn't be a prio piece if you're not clearing heroic content as 2pc is so bad and there are a lot of good OS pieces (shoulders, head, gloves, chest), only the t11 legs are worth putting up the points for.
Lastly, you might want to mention that everyone should be firstly looking for gear with as much agi as possible, pre-patch this was 4pc pvp gear (or heroic ofc) but is now normal pve gear with maybe the pvp relic, just because of the bonus ilvl. After agility, which all 359 leather gear should have the same amount, you want gear with Mastery and Crit, reforging the crit off to Dodge. Gem everything without an +agi bonus with pure agi. Use stamina enchants and the stam meta to try and hit 160k buffed for raids.
VF Feb 8th 2011 10:36PM
What you fail to mention is that every druid is now a healer, a kitty, or a moonkin because druid tanking is terrible now.
Matt Feb 8th 2011 11:12PM
This is SOOO right...
In Wrath, I was a druid tank from beginning to end and I loved it. Now I can't stand tanking on my druid. I have an 85 DK tank, an 83 Paly tank, and a 45 War tank, and I love tanking on them, but druid tanking just plain sucks. Every ability we have other than lacerate is on a CD, Thrash is meh, and swipe just plain sucks for aoe threat (it should do more aggro than thunderclap, dnd, or consecration b/c other than thrash, it is the only aoe tool we have. all the other tanks have multiple)
Oh, and let's not forget that druids have less mitigation/avoidance than other tanks. Our dodge % should be about equal to other tank's dodge+parry+block % (maybe just dodge+parry since Savage Defense is almost like block). OR, if Blizz intends for us to have less mitigation, we should have more health to make up for it.
Kurash Feb 8th 2011 11:13PM
She mentions the unhappy state of bears regularly. Look at a few of the links at the bottom of the article that refer to her other articles.
Boobah Feb 9th 2011 1:55AM
"Every ability we have other than lacerate is on a CD..."
As opposed to, say, Warriors where every ability other than Devastate is on a cooldown. Or Paladins where every ability is on a cooldown. Or Death Knights, who have few attacking abilities with direct cooldowns, but none of them are really spammable.
"Thrash is meh, and swipe just plain sucks for aoe threat (it should do more aggro than thunderclap, dnd, or consecration b/c other than thrash, it is the only aoe tool we have. all the other tanks have multiple)"
Oh, well, other than Thrash. Which means you can hit every mob in melee range every other GCD, since both Thrash and Swipe are on six second cooldown. (Unless they share a cooldown; I've no post-80 druids). And you've also got Berserk (admittedly not an every trash pack ability) and Glyph of Maul.
Don't get me wrong; Druid AoE threat is pretty bad compared to the other tanks, but it does everything it needs to. Any groups that should be AoEd down will die before it matters that you lost threat.
"Oh, and let's not forget that druids have less mitigation/avoidance than other tanks. Our dodge % should be about equal to other tank's dodge+parry+block % (maybe just dodge+parry since Savage Defense is almost like block). OR, if Blizz intends for us to have less mitigation, we should have more health to make up for it."
Okay... It was my understanding that bears were looking at 40% or so dodge in heroic gear. My warrior is in the 30% range for parry + dodge (or would be if I didn't keep reforging the parry and dodge to mastery); that's my only heroic tank at the moment. I've been hearing that with the current patch (bug or no) bears are at something over 65% armor mitigation which isn't giving up any ground to the plate tanks, especially when bears have talents that take an additional percentage of damage off the top.
And as far as more health; you don't want to be the mana sponge. The only guildie who I know has spent time healing heroic PUGs has averred that bears are probably the easiest tanks to heal, with less total health being acceptable to him as a healer (for what it's worth, his order was Druid-Paladin-Warrior-DK.
Of course, I'm still looking at all this from the perspective of heroics, not raids, and the way things scale in raids may make a difference; for example, Savage Defense likely won't scale as well against raid bosses as the other tanks' masteries (although I confess that that evaluation isn't even up to back of the envelope quality).
Bulbasaur Feb 9th 2011 7:02AM
Correction:
Druid tanking isn't terrible. YOUR druid tanking is terrible now.
I've done hc and raid with my dk tank who has 30k more hp than my main bear, refreshing correctly my blood shield and stuff, and all the healers of my guild suffered as bitches from my irregular up-and-down health.
As always, we bears shine in massive physical damage bosses as Chimaeron, and don't have any problem with heavy magic damage ones if you time your cd's correctly.
It's true that we don't have a lot of specific tanking attacks as other tanks. And we could't care less.
Insanity Bear: Other tanks have more resources. MAUL THEM WITH COCAINE.
Rainkeltoia Feb 9th 2011 7:08AM
The armor buff is nice, but I know my husband is having trouble holding aggro until he adjusts, but unlike your comment, many druid tanks don't give up, they adjust because they love playing a big fuzzy bear butt.
Damage HAS gone down due to the insane reduction in damage to bears, but its something that I'm confident bear tanks will work around and adjust to, finding new ways to get threat up.
Jorges Feb 9th 2011 8:35AM
@Matt: Welcome to how tanking was in BC for bears. I learned to tank there, from normals to Hyjal Mt., and I loved it. It was a pain but very rewarding when you came out victorious.
Fast forward to Cata and it is the same stuff, with more toys and more damage. The thing is that you can't lolswipe everything like in WotLK, your team have to actually work with you, learn to CC and follow the Kill order. They have to learn that we're not a warrior, we have to LOS adds and we don't have ranged silence, but we can back a little and then charge to get almost the same effect. I'm not saying that bears are fine, because they aren't, there's a lot of room for improvement. But it not in a sorry state either. So far, there's no heroic I can't tank with a group that follow orders.
I've yet to tank raids, and I fear we'll be relegated to off-tank duty. But that's fine I guess, we can tank and do good dps too.
thepunctuator Feb 9th 2011 10:52AM
Wow, I feel really silly for tanking 12/12 as a bear then. I didn't know I was terrible!
alpha5099 Feb 8th 2011 10:56PM
A bit off topic, but looking over your list reminded me:
Why was the Agi crafted gear the only stuff not to get sockets in 4.0.6? All the Int and Str gear was given sockets, but the crafted Agility chests and belts, both leather and mail, weren't given a socket. What's up with that?
Sterb Feb 9th 2011 8:02AM
An oversite to be corrected in the next patch.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2046835719
Matt Feb 8th 2011 11:16PM
For bracers, what about the draconic embossments available if you are leatherworking?
They are FAR better (and cheaper) than any of the enchants listed. (though maybe you were just going for enchants available to everyone regardless of profession)
Zoop Feb 8th 2011 11:32PM
I like that this BiS list gives you enchant suggestions, whereas most lists don't. You should also check out Mr. Robot's Gear Optimizer, not only does it give a BiS list, but tells you the optimal gems, enchants and reforges. It also takes gear set bonuses and weapon combinations into account.
And while you're waiting for your BiS items to drop, Mr. Robot will tell you how to optimize your current gear set.
@Matt Mr. Robot will take professions into account when suggesting gems and enchants. Check it out.
@VF and Matt, re: tanking: We're working on a set of stat weights that will give you optimal gear for the bear/kitty hybrid.
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear
revulva Feb 17th 2011 11:37AM
Just thought I'd mention that our complete overhaul of bear stat weights is now included in the Mr. Robot optimizer. A post explaining some of the math is here:
http://forums.askmrrobot.com/index.php?topic=937.0
A much more detailed article is forthcoming, but, rest assured that Mr. Robot has been upgraded substantially to take into account many of the complicated interactions between stats for tanks.
Bear tanks are the most difficult spec in the entire game to optimize gear for.