Shifting Perspectives: Gearing a bear druid in patch 4.2, part 2
by Allison Robert 
Aug 2nd 2011 at 4:00PM
Hail, bears. This week, we're going to finish off our look at bear gear in the post-4.2 world. Our first installment, covering the helm through boot slots, went up last week. Today, we're going to look at rings, trinkets, weapons, and relics.
As a note on the PVE versus PVP discussion that broke out in the comments last week, I have to admit that I'm still not very fond of PVP gear. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say I'm not fond of an overdependence on PVP gear. The more arena and battleground pieces you add to your set, the more that you're likely to encounter threat generation issues.
Even haste (garbage stat that it is) does more for us than resilience, which does precisely nothing in PVE content. So I'm hesitant to endorse widespread use of PVP gear in PVE. If you have the opportunity to use a few suitable pieces, go for it; just check its ilevel to see the gear to which it's roughly comparable. Be aware that its use comes at the cost of stat allocation that could've gone to something useful.
As before, if your bear is completely new to level 85, our first set of bear gear guides may be more immediately useful to you.
Read Gearing a bear druid in patch 4.2, part 1
Rings
This slot is somewhat interesting in that the new best-in-slot item (well, the normal version of it) is available for valor points. Keep saving! The two rings available from questing through the Molten Front are also pretty nice. Unfortunately, neither of them have mastery.
- Splintered Brimstone Seal (heroic) 1,250 valor points; can be upgraded with a Crystallized Firestone
- Viridian Signet of the Avengers Avengers of Hyjal reputation
- Widow's Kiss (heroic) Beth'tilac
- Lightning Conductor Band (heroic) Magmatron
- Bile-O-Tron Nut (heroic) Chimaeron
- Matoclaw's Band Purchase from Zen'Vorka on the Molten Front after completing Through the Gates of Hell; if you can't get the heroic version of the two tier 11 drops above, this beats those.
- Band of Glittering Lights Available from Ayla Shadowstorm on the Molten Front after completing Filling the Moonwell; as with Matoclaw's Band, this beats the two tier 11 drops if you can't get their heroic versions.
- Hornet-Sting Band 1,250 justice points
- Arlokk's Signet High Priestess Kilnara in Zul'Gurub
- Quickfinger Ring Zul'Aman zone drop
Trinkets
As with our previous article on the first set of bear trinkets in Cataclysm, I'm not going to bother trying to rank these by anything other than ilevel. Trinket desirability varies hugely by fight, so the real question is not which trinket is "best," but which is the best for a given encounter.
While I wouldn't ordinarily make note of this here because it's not new on the scene, the Mirror of Broken Images (Alliance)/Mirror of Broken Images (Horde) is still a must-have trinket for all bear tanks who plan on raiding (or pretty much anyone who plans on raiding, period). The passive mastery is very nice, but the activated resistance is something from which you'll get a lot of mileage in raids. If you are gearing a bear, make this a priority.
- Spidersilk Spindle (heroic) Beth'tilac; started out as a pretty uninspiring trinket on the PTR, but got buffed
- Matrix Restabilizer (heroic) Ragnaros; a very interesting little trinket that manages the neat trick of being attractive to agility users who otherwise value three very different stats. Obviously, you're after the mastery proc here, and you should have far more of that than critical strike or haste if you're gearing correctly.
- The Hungerer (heroic) Majordomo Staghelm; tier 12's answer to the Nefarian drop Prestor's Talisman of Machination and unfortunately just as meh for bears. The agility is nice; the proc is not. Really more of a rogue trinket, but if your DPS don't want it, you can always shove a little more passive agility into your life.
- Scales of Life (heroic) Random Firelands trash drop; you can upgrade it with a Crystallized Firestone. As with the Spindle, this got buffed on the PTR, but it's still not quite as compelling as the above trinkets unless you're hurting for health.
- Ancient Petrified Seed Requires revered with the Avengers of Hyjal
- Stay of Execution Requires revered with the Avengers of Hyjal
- Symbiotic Worm (heroic) Magmaw
- Vial of Stolen Memories (heroic) Valiona/Theralion
- Essence of the Cyclone (heroic) Halfus Wyrmbreaker
- Prestor's Talisman of Machination (heroic) Nefarian in Blackwing Descent. I've listed it here because the passive agility is useful, but obviously the haste proc is of very little use to us. Really more of a rogue trinket, unless Blizzard makes good on its desire to improve haste for bears.
- Ricket's Magnetic Fireball Available from Damek Bloombeard on the Molten Front after completing Additional Armaments
- Moonwell Phial Available from Ayla Shadowstorm on the Molten Front after completing Filling the Moonwell
Weapon
There is one really jaw-dropping weapon available from this tier of content, but if you can't get it, you can get a version with the same fantastic itemization from blacksmiths.
Enchant: Enchant 2H Weapon - Mighty Agility or Windwalk
- Fandral's Flamescythe (heroic) All hail the fire kitty staff! Appropriately enough, it's best in slot this tier. If you tank, you probably won't see a lot of the cool visual effect in raids, but you can always enjoy it while you're grinding, right? It's perfectly itemized for bears as well, with a nice meaty smack of both crit and mastery.
- Ranseur of Hatred (heroic) Firelands trash drop; definitely not as good as the Flamescythe. Leave this bad boy to the hunters. The heroic version is obtainable with a Crystallized Firestone, but seriously, why would you bother?
- Witch-Hunter's Harvester Blacksmithing. At least your next-best option after a Ranseur is this, with the same note-perfect itemization you can get from a Flamescythe. It's ugly as hell, but what can you do? Unsurprisingly, expect to pay through the nose for this.
- Malevolence (heroic) Halfus Wyrmbreaker. The heroic version is better than Witch-Hunter's, although they're pretty close overall. Edit: Arielle (@riftmaker on Twitter) is saying heroic Malevolence is actually better than normal Ranseur above. While I'm still seeing a very slight advantage for normal Ranseur, Arielle is usually correct on this stuff. Either way, the two pieces are pretty close to each other, but Malevolence does have the advantage of mastery.
- Jin'do's Verdict Jin'do the Godbreaker in Zul'Gurub. Old WoW hands will recognize this as an update to Jin'do's Judgement, which was actually a caster stave. As with Witch-Hunter's, not exactly my favorite model in the world, but it's not like you'll actually see it much as a bear. However, you can't argue with the itemization here. What did we do to deserve so many polearms with crit and mastery on them lately?
There aren't too many new options available, but they're pretty simple.
- Covenant of the Flame (heroic) 700 valor points. As with other upgradeable pieces in patch 4.2, plan on having a Crystallized Firestone around to get the heroic version.
- Relic of Elune's Shadow Available from Ayla Shadowstorm at the Molten Front after completing Filling the Moonwell
- Relic of Golganneth 700 justice points
Shifting Perspectives helps you gear your bear druid at 85, tempts you with weapons, trinkets and relics for bears, then shows you what to do with it all in Feral Druid Tanking 101. We'll also help you gear your resto druid.
Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Nakoto Aug 2nd 2011 4:09PM
Bah the witch hunter and its blue equivalent (elementium poleaxe) look absolutely awesome. Its my favorite model of the BS weapons. To each there own i guess.
gewalt Aug 2nd 2011 7:23PM
indeed it does look awesome. it just doesnt look druid.
Skarn Aug 2nd 2011 9:59PM
Exactly!
I love the look of the Witch-Hunter. It's a sweet scythe. Fortunately, the Ranseur is pretty cool too. I'll leave the fire kitty staff to our guild's druid tank. Might even want to let our resto shaman have it too, for when she's soloing. XD
Now if the effect applied to a hunter's pet...WOO!
Wellsee Aug 2nd 2011 4:22PM
Ask Mr. Robot has heroic Tia's Grace rated as fifth best among *all* bear trinkets, behind heroic Spidersilk, normal Spidersilk, heroic Ancient Petrified Seed then heroic Matrix Stabilizer. It is rated better than normal Matrix Stablizer! While I don't have complete faith in AMR, and I know Allison was just going by ilevel, the high AMR rankings indicate to me that at least some "old" equipment should be included in the list. To leave them out implies they aren't comparable with the listed gear where at least one theorycrafting community believes they are competitive. Even heroic Left Eye of Rajh is rated better than Ricket's Magnetic Fireball and the heroic version of The Hungerer.
Allison Robert Aug 2nd 2011 6:52PM
I love Ask Mr. Robot, but yeah, it's important to put what it does in context, particularly because trinket desirability is something that's determined on a fight-by-fight basis. The huge (and admittedly deserved) bias toward stacking agility will naturally incline it toward agi trinkets, even when another type (e.g., the Mirror) is the more obviously useful of the two due to encounter mechanics.
In order to rectify this, I will probably wind up having to do a column on trinkets and trinkets alone. Ilevel is otherwise (mostly) fine for gauging gear quality ever since Blizzard standardized primary stat allocation across different drops on the same ilevel, but trinkets don't like playing by that rule.
Kal Aug 2nd 2011 4:52PM
I'm really surprised you didn't mention the PvP gear that's available- especially the leather slots. Honor is easy to get via conversion from justice points and the head and shoulder pieces are ilvl 371, are reasonably itemized and even give a big agi bonus if you have two of them. The 384 pieces are also comparable to the normal raid gear and can be obtained by valor points. Both are great for those bears who aren't killing Fandral/Ragnaros just yet.
meringue Aug 2nd 2011 5:22PM
You know how I know you didn't rtfa?
The Dewd Aug 2nd 2011 5:27PM
I just recently spent points to get shoulders and bracers from the honor vendor. It may not be optimal but I was using 353 gear from the Zuls so it was a big step up in both Agility and Stamina. I figure if nothing else it'll hold me until I get can get better PvE ones. Not that I was totally cheesing the [Cataclysmically Epic] achievement, no no, not me, not at all. ;)
Kal Aug 2nd 2011 6:59PM
Yes, this was a response mostly to the first article. But it still is sad that they're not ranked at all, and rings/amulets/cloaks are still better than the 353 gear.
Allison Robert Aug 2nd 2011 7:10PM
I really don't have issues if people want to shove a few PvP pieces into gear slots, but there's a definite difference in threat generation between a PvE- and PvP-geared bear. Otherwise, it all comes down to -- compare it to your current gear, and if it's an upgrade, bung it in. I'd be the world's biggest hypocrite if I didn't acknowledge this, given how much use my main's gotten from the stuff.
But my biggest worry is seeing bear tanks who are reliant on PvP gear tanking for DPS who are advancing through Firelands. The more PvP gear they've got, the more that threat tends to be an issue, particularly for DPS rocking the more godlike weapons and trinkets.
I'll start adding PvP gear if people really want (and you're entirely right about the two-piece bonus), but I still think the slightly higher ilevels per tier makes it look deceptively useful in relation to its PvE counterpart, and I don't want a preponderance of PvP gear in guides to be construed as a wholesale endorsement of it.
Granted, misses/dodges are also like nails on a chalkboard for me...
Gendou Aug 2nd 2011 4:55PM
Witch-Hunter's Harvester is ugly as hell? How could you say something like that?
It's a beautiful piece of kit that my bear is proud to have strapped to his back those rare times when he's in Tauren form.
I feel so betrayed now.
"I know it was you, Allison! You broke my heart. You broke my heart!"
Allison Robert Aug 2nd 2011 7:12PM
Bleh. I miss feral staves. /sniffles
furry Aug 2nd 2011 5:29PM
In part 1, you mentioned that the stat priority is armor, stamina, agility, mastery, crit, expertise, hit, then haste.
While I generally agree with this, I do want to know why it is stamina>agility and not Agility over stamina. Of course, most gear of the same item level will have the same amount of stamina, but this is more of a question for gems and enchants, and the like.
What I've always done is gem for agility, usually going for blue and yellow socket bonuses with the Shifting Demonseye and Adept Ember Topaz. I do this because, while extra stamina obviously means that at full health I am farther from death than if I had less stamina, as far as the tank for a group of 5, 10, or 25, the raid as a whole would benefit from me having the agility more than the stamina.
The whole design idea for cataclysm was bigger health pool, better healer mana management and less overhealing. That being said, extra stamina just means a 70,000 point hit will take us down from 190,000 health to 120,000 health instead of from 170,000 to 100,000, for example. Agility, on the other hand, helps mitigate damage in three ways at once:
-better dodge chance
-higher crit chance (more savage defense mitigation procs)
-more attack power (better savage defense mitigation procs)
(-while also at the same time giving us more dps/threat to help the slacker dps and the overpowered mages)
When we are not overgeared, on a clean run with few mistakes, the wall we hit is either the dps causing us to hit the enrage timer and/or the healers running out of mana. With Agility over stamina, that will help the healers more overall.
furry Aug 2nd 2011 5:31PM
oh also, you mentioned a couple pure dodge trinkets in here too... say i were to get stuck with one of those - where would that stack up in the priority? I'd rate it after crit but before expertise.
Japith Aug 2nd 2011 6:40PM
Yes, Agility is what you want over Stamina. The only exception is when you swap trinkets to go with particular fights. Make sure to keep a few trinkets on you.
Don't forgo Expertise though. A healthy reforging of Dodge and Expertise will make you a very effective bear, able to hold agro on trash as well as do major damage on bosses. This will only net you about 1 - 1.5% dodge loss if you gear correctly.
My current set-up in 368 average item level has 20 mastery, 27 expertise, and 37% dodge. Firelands bosses have not given me any trouble and the healers have said that I'm easy to keep up.
Hope that helps :)
shaydwyrm Aug 2nd 2011 6:05PM
The VP ring listed (and the neck listed in the previous post) are not upgradeable using Crystallized Firestone. The only VP items that can be upgraded currently are the relics and thrown weapons.
dickywayman Aug 2nd 2011 6:41PM
Seriously, do you even play a bear tank?? telling people to go get that mirror trink over anything else is a complete waste of time and as far as wanting the mastery proc from matrix resabilizer if mastery is your highest stat then you are definatly doing something wrong, as crit will undoubtably be higher as you should never reforge for mastery just take what you can get from gear. The best combination of trinkets as far as I am concerned would be Unheeded warning (the increase to weapon dmg is massive for us) and heroic vial of stolen memories (the stam can be nice if needed and the extra dodge is a great oh crap button). All you need is 140k health unbuffed ppl, after that go for agi agi agi all the way. check out Mystar and Janul from chamber of aspects on EU armory they are 2 awesome druid tanks and their gear set ups perfectly represent someone well through firelands (Mystar) and the best of tier 11 (Janul). Allison I think you need to seriously step your game up as your thinking is very outdated, agi is king.
Kal Aug 2nd 2011 7:01PM
Why would the upgrade to weapon damage matter for a bear? Yes, you do more damage as a bear but that's all it is. It doesn't increase shield size whatsoever.
Fluid Death is far better as far as that goes.
Allison Robert Aug 2nd 2011 7:21PM
Agility is indeed king, but trinkets here are ranked purely according to ilevel; any discussion of how "good" they are is pretty specific to individual fights and the type of damage dished out by raid bosses. I don't recommend that the Mirror be a universal trinket for all bear tanks, but it *is* a trinket from which any raider is likely to get some use, particularly in heroic raid content. The 1-minute cooldown and huge resistance increases are very attractive to tanks for what should be obvious reasons.
Kalon is also correct about the weapon damage issue; it doesn't have any impact on Savage Defense, which is calculated from attack power alone. The proc is useless to us outside of a bit more damage, which doesn't really mean much, particularly at max Vengeance.
towermac Aug 2nd 2011 6:47PM
I had a friend make me the Witch Hunter's Harvester, and I can tell a difference over the honor polearm. Otherwise I'm totally in honor 371 gear - 3200ish resilience. I assume it's the mastery on that makes such a big difference.
I was able to solo HoR in it, although the bear couldn't make the dps race at the end. I had barely made it through the second icewall, only to die suddenly at the third; I assume because the LK caught Jaina. Second try, I went to cat for about half of it, (cat swipe crits ftw!) and made it through.
In PvP, I end up going to bear a lot. I love the bear. I am the bear. The bear is hard to kill, but his dps is crippled. To make him like other "tanks". I'm not a tank (anymore), I'm a bear.
Why can't I be a dps bear? Why are bears verboten in PvP? (cause their dps sucks). When Cata first came out I was critting bear mangles for 25K, in much worse gear obviously than now. They hurt us too bad. And Allison kinda accepts that, by going to stamina and dodge over agility and expertise.
Course, I'm not arguing with dodge; but I almost always take agility over stamina, ever since I figured out how to play a bear in ICC, and quit trying to tank it like other tanks. Now shes raiding and I'm not, but I wonder about the stam over agility thing. Shes right, I'm finding out, about mastery being the best second stat.
You want avoidance? Burn the freakin' monster down faster; after he's dead your avoidance is 100% on him ;) You think that makes me overpowered? Just bring a mage in that case; I catch fire very easily. I want haste to mean something too. Things that proc on crits should happen more often if you hit the monster more often. I'd love to try it out, but again, our dps is capped so badly it cant make a difference even if it could.
Rant over :) Love to read you Allison.