Getting your bear into heroics and beyond. Updated.Follow

It's that time again. Remember that hit and expertise have caps and become devalued after reaching them but are very strong up to those points. Also remember you can reforge gear so some pieces that don't have the best native stats can become better as they may have a lot of a bad stat or less desired one.


Head
Helm of Numberless Shadows - H - Stonecore - High Priestess Azil
Mask of Vines - JP - 2200
Helm of Secret Knowledge - Q - Grim Batol - Kill the Courier
Helm of the Crying Rogue - Zone Drop
Dunwald Winged Helm/Shocktropper Hood - Q - Twilight Highlands - Doing it like a Dunwald/Krazz Works! (these have no meta)


Neck
Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace - World Drop
Entwined Elementium Choker - JC
Brazen Elementium Medallion - JC
Elementium Guardian - JC
Pendant of the Lightless Grotto - H - Stonecore - Ozruk
Darkhowl Amulet - H - HoO - Temple Guardian Anhuur
Acorn of the Daughter Tree - R - Guardians of Hyjal - Revered
Mouth of the Earth - H - HoO - Earthrager Ptah
Barnacle Pendant - H - TotT - Zone Drop
Amulet of Dull Dreaming - JP - 1250
The Lustrous Eye - JP - 1250
Darkhowl Amulet - N - HoO - Temple Guardian Anhuur
Mouth of the Earth - N - HoO - Ammunae/Earthrager Ptah
Pendant of Victorious Fury - Q - Twilight Highlands - Battle of Life & Death


Shoulders
Embrace of the Night - JP - 1650
Carldean Epaulettes - H - TotT - Commander Ulthok
Thieving Spaulders - H - SfK - Commander Springvale
Clandestine Spaulders - IQ - LCotT - Targets of Opportunity


Back
Zom's Electrostatic Cloak - H - Zone Drop
Twilight Dragonscale Cloak - LW
Cloak of Thredd - H - Deadmines - Helix Gearbreaker
Razor-Edge Cloak - LW
Kaleki Cloak - H - LCofT - General Husam
Shroud of Dark Memories - H - Zone Drop (might just be GB)
Twitching Shadows - H - Blackrock Caverns - Ascendant Lord Obsidius
Cape of the Brotherhood - H - Deadmines - "Captain" Cookie
Softwind Cape - Rep - The Earthen Ring - Revered
Kaleki Cloak - N - LCotT - Zone Drop
Shade of Death - H/N - Zone Drop
Shroud of Dark Memories - N - Grim Batol - Zone Drop
Cloak of Beasts - LW
Cloak of War - LW


Chest
Morrie's Waywalker Wrap - World Drop
Assassin's Chestplate - LW
Vest of Misshapen Hides - H - Grim Batol - Erudax
Defias Brotherhood Vest - H - Deadmines - Glubtok
Tunic of Sinking Envy - JP - 2200
Hieroglyphic Vest - H - HoO - Setesh
Sly Fox Jerkin - Rep - Guardians of Hyjal - Honored
Hieroglyphic Vest - N - HoO - Setesh
Vest of Misshapen Hides - N - Grim Batol - Erudax


Wrist
Double Dealing Braces - H SfK - Lord Walden
Poison Fang Bracers - H - HoO - Temple Guardian Anhuur
Poison Fang Bracers - N - HoH - Temple Guardian Anhuur
Buildingblast Bracers/Flarefire Bracers - Q - Twilight Highlands - Call in the Artillery
Dragonheart Bracers/Whirlpool Bracers - Q - Twilight Highlands - Dangerous Compassion/Any Portal in a Storm


Hands
Liar's Handwraps/Stormbolt Gloves - Rep - Dragonmaw Clan/Wildhammer Clan - Exalted
Gloves of Haze - H - VP - Asaad
Sticky Fingers - JP - 1650
Safecracker's Gloves - World Drop
Thartuk's Inimitable Gauntlets - Rare mob in Mt Hyjal - Thartuk the Exile
Gloves of Haze - N - VP - Asaad


Waist
Belt of Nefarious Whispers - LW
Sash of Musing - JP - 1650
Quicksand Belt - Rep - Ramkahen - Revered
Red beam Cord - H - HoO - Rajh
Belt of a Thousand Mouths - Oudoor Boss in Uldum - Akma'hat
Red Beam Cord - N - HoO - Rajh


Legs
Leggings of the Burrowing Mole - JP - 2200
Beauty's Chew Toy - H - Blackrock Caverns - Beauty
Leggins of the Impenitent/Swiftflight Leggins - Rep - Dragonmaw Clan/Wildhammer Clan - Honored
Garona's Finest Leggins/Shaw's Finest Leggins - Q - Twilight Highlands - Skullcrusher the Mountain/
Leggings of Fragmented Hope - Q - Deepholm - The Middle Fragement


Feet
Crafty's Galters - H - LCotT - Siamat
VanCleef's Boots - H - Deadmines - Vanessa VanCleef
Boot's of the Predator - H - SfK - Baron Ashbury
Crafty's Gaiters - N LCotT - Siamat
Boots of the Hard Way - IQ - HoO - Penetrating Their Defenses
Martial Sandals - Unknown
Camelhide Treads - World Drop


Rings
Elementium Destroyer's Ring - JC
Signet of the Elder Council - Rep - Earthen Ring - Exalted
Elementium Moebius Band - JC
Gilnean Ring of Ruination - World Drop
Band of Blades - JC
Skullcracker Ring - H - Blackrock Cavern - Rom'ogg Bonecrusher
Terrath's Signet of Balance - Rep - Therazane - Revered
Ring of Blinding Stars - H - HoO - Isiset
Entwined Nereis - H - TotT - Lady Naz'jar
Ring of Dun Algaz - H - Grim Batol - Forgemaster Throngus
Nautilus Ring - H - TotT - Neptulon's Cache
Mirage Ring - Unknown likely in H LCotT
Felsen's Ring of Resolve - Rep - Therazane - Revered
Ring of Blinding Stars - N - HoO - Isiset
Ring of Dun Algaz - N - Grim Batol - Forgemaster Throngus

There are too many rep and JC related rings for me to want to continue to list more than two non-heroic drops especially since if you are trying to do heroics/raid you should be working on Therazane rep and they have two rings that will easily last into heroics.


Weapons
Elementium Poleaxe - BS
Seliza's Spear - H - LCotT - General Husam
Darkling Staff - H - Stonecore - High Priestess Azil
Mobus's Vile Halberd - Outdoor Raid Boss in Vashj'Ir - Mobus the Shark
Berto's Staff - H - Blackrock Caverns - Zone Drop
Spear of Trailing Shadows - Rep - Hellscream's Reach/Baradin's Wardens - Revered
Seliza's Spear - N - LCotT - General Husam
Staff of Draconic Pacification/Torth-Slayer's Staff - Q - Twilight Highland - Narkrall, The Drake-Tamer/Fury Unbound
Staff of Old Woes - Drops from level 84 instances on H/N and mobs in TH/Uldum
Forged Elementium Mindcrusher - BS
... Skipping some to list a BoE BS weapon easily obtainable at level 81 so grab one early if you can as it will last until you are 85
Obsidium Bladespear - BS


Relic
Sandshift Relic - H - Blackrock Caverns - Ascendant Lord Obsidious
Silver Inlaid Leaf - Inscription
Relic of Arathor - H - SfK - Lord Godfrey
Stalagmite Dragon - H - Stonecore - Slabhide
Relic of the Waywalker - Q - Deepholm - The Wrong Sequence
Exhausted Flashgrowth Mote - Q - Twilight Highlands - Breach in the Defenses


Trinkets
Leaden Despair - H - Stonecore - High Priestess Azil
Heart of Thunder - H - VP - Asaad
Porcelain Crab - H - TotT - Mindbender Ghur'sha
Grace of the Herald - H - BRC - Corla, Herald of Twilight
Left Eye of Rajh - H - Rajh - HoO
Key to the Endless Chamber - H - Stonecore - Corborus
Za'brok's Lucky Tooth - Q - Twilight Highlands - Four Heads are Better than None

The trinkets all have a normal version and I listed one quest one that is easy to get. These are some of the better ones out there for bears. Leaden Despair is far and away the cream of the crop, get one. After that is is preference and what you need for stats. Remember you can never have enough trinkets.


Used this as the stat weighting. Based off numbers churned out by the folks at RAWR and EJ. Strength pieces are can be easily avoided but take them if they are better. Agility jewelry is good once again, Strength piece that make it tend to do so as they have dodge and either mastery or expertise. Making them well itemized compared to the prevalence of haste on Agility gear which is only winning do to the strength of Agility as a stat these days.

Be careful when using the list as some pieces at the top are not better because of reforging. This will happen mainly when a piece has a large amount of haste and no dodge, expertise or mastery. As haste is hands down the worst bear stat and the others are some of the stronger ones or harder to find. The hit/exp combo can also swing gear as once you have 'enough' it can be reforged as well. Personally, I will likely reforge into Dodge or Mastery assuming I have 'enough' hit/exp.

What 'enough' hit/exp is will largely be a personal choice and depend on what else your gear is doing. They are extremely strong threat stats and exp also can give some mitigation where parry hasting is an issue. They will also likely end up having changing caps based on the raid tier. So having gear with them and reforging it off may end up being wise was hen the next tier rolls around and you need more it is all ready there.

Regardless, the reforging changes has made looking at your tanking, well any to be honest, gear as a whole more important. Just grabbing the best piece may not be a good idea as a lower ranked piece will often fit better into the whole. Sum of parts greater than the whole and all that jazz.

Good luck and have fun.

Edited, Dec 15th 2010 12:35pm by Horsemouth

I'm quite please to see several JusticePoint items as "BiS" at that level. Means we don't have to worry about forking over the points for a piece only to have something drop in ou next heroic that is better........

I have this search on Wowhead bookmarked which shows basically what info you show in the original post. It uses the basic Wowhead feral dps stat weightings which I figure will do me until Rawr is up and running again.

What does the H and N stand for? At first I thought it was Horde and Neutral, but then I noticed that there weren't any A for Alliance.

IIRC there is a very nice weapon available from archeology.

Looking at Wowheads archaelogy stuff, there are a couple of swords, and axe and a couple of caster staffs - no feral love (at least in the way of weapons).

If you internet properly you should already have a greasemonkey script running that will make wowhead links mouseover. So there's really no problem

I'm impatient. Also just a normal [link=http://wowheadlink]item[*/link] link will work?

Good cause that's what I did. :)

Finished the list up and added some explanation text at the end. The summary basically boils down to reforging has changed the way you look at gear lists and how you gear. I'll likely be consulting RAWR for tanking setups and DPS ones as well. More so with DPS than tanking but still with the amount of control you have over stats using modelling tools will likely become more important. As taking gear with a good stat and a large amount of a meh stat can easily become better than a perfectly itemized piece.

Also not doing trinkets for a while. Just hoard as may as you can.

You can never have enough trinkets. NEVAR!!11!!!

Haste being bad for Cat DPS has less to do with our innate 1.0 attack speed and more to do with how relatively little our auto-attack contributes to total DPS.

Haste: Besides increasing white damage, Haste gives a slight increase in OoC procs and Fury Strikes (which proc off auto attacks), and slightly faster energy regen.

Hit/Expertise: Hit and Expertise are also less valuable because we aren't GCD-capped and we're only out 20% of the energy cost on a missed special. It's a little difficult to explain, but if, for instance, a mage misses a 3 sec cast on a 5 min fight, that's damage lost; instead of 100 spells hitting the target for x damage, it's 99. His limiting factor primarily is time. Ours is Energy. Over 5 minutes, we have 100 (starting energy) + 10x300 (rough estimate of energy/second x duration in seconds) + 9x60 (Tiger's Fury), or about 3640 Energy. We have 300 GCDs to use our Energy, but only need 91 GCDs to use it all (assuming an average cost of 40 energy per ability). It would take 5 missed/dodged specials before we lost 1 use over a fight.

Crit: Since bleeds can all crit now, 1% crit affects all our damage, plus gets us some bonus CPs to use our higher damage-per-energy finishers.

Mastery: Mastery increases our damage from Rip and Rake, which should be a little over 1/2 of our damage.


For ~180 rating points, we can get 1% crit, 1 Mastery (3% bleed damage), 1.5% hit, 1.5% haste, or 6 Expertise (1.5% fewer dodges). Hit and Expertise lose ~80% of their value on special damage, not counting lost OOC procs. Haste's value on specials is dependent on how much it increases energy regeneration, but it seems to be not enough to make up for being an otherwise unimpressive stat.

Edited, Dec 7th 2010 1:54am by AstarintheDruid

My dictionary just imploded.

Interesting point, the feral Q&A at EJ has a post with stat weights for T11/25 man with Haste behind Mastery but ahead of hit/crit/expertise.

Readjusted the tank loot lists as mastery had been to highly valued in the last iteration and dodge to low. Pushed a bunch of pieces around and Strength pieces make a come back. Oddly enough a strength relic wins in that slot so thank pally/DKs for that one. Barely any parry items showed up in the jewelry slots. I think Blizz pushed parry itemization onto plate, which is a very welcome change.

The strength pieces on the list are very well itemized as they all typically have some combination of dodge, mastery, hit and expertise. Which are very strong stats for tanking and not as common on leather these days. Especially expertise, it is very rare and should be grabbed where ever you can get it so you can reforge into dodge or mastery if you have 'enough' avoidance.

Trinkets are not really ranked beyond the clear winner and I only listed the heroic versions as they all have a normal equivalent and are more situational then any other piece of gear.