[Viridios]

Well, it's happened again. I'm confused about gearing for bear, and more so for cat.

In the past, I've used the following different theorycrafting aids to help me gear: FeralByNight values in Lootrank, Rawr Overall ranking, Rawr Mitigation ranking, Rawr Survival ranking, and Rawr Threat Ranking with minimums set for survival / mitigation. So far, I have been happiest with Rawr/Survival - my threat isn't horrible [though warlocks that chain crit at the start of fights still pull off me, particularly when they start attacking before the mob gets to me...]

I just plugged in all my gear into Rawr the other day. Yes, all of it - main/off spec and the specs I don't use [tree/boom] - I have a little over 100 pieces of gear all told. It's getting scary.

I tell Rawr to optimize, and it starts giving me answers I consider to be nonsensical. I'm trying to deal with it, and I'm not sure about what it's taking into account when and where.

Highlights:

-Using Rawr/Survival gearing, Polar Vest and Polar Boots beat Icewalker Treads [normal] and Vest of Shifting Shadows [Heroic].
-Using Rawr/Survival, Relentless Dragonhide Gloves [Caster] beat Conqueror's Handgrips [with 2-pc bonus].

-Using Rawr/Overall, I lost about 5k health and 3% dodge, and had 312 hit. Oh, and it considers Furnace Stone to be superior to Brewfest charms, though this is more of a situational thing.

Add to this it deciding to drop my 2-pc T9 bonus [in both variations] for about 15 extra Stam and a small amount of expertise and I think there's an issue.

And then - for cat - I do cat DPS on a semi-regular basis [less lately than I used to though]. I would like to have a pure cat set of gear, gemmed properly [as opposed to my current "hey, here's a pair of stam gems in my cat gear", since so much of it is shared between the two specs.].

Does anyone know of a way to tell Rawr [or use another program] to build the best possible set out of any and all pieces of gear available, without changing gems every spec change? Do I need to do it manually? Is there a combined cat DPS and bear tank spreadsheet I could use and assign gear with?

Does anyone else have this problem? Am I just confusing myself by trying to build multiple sets, or should I return to the FBN lootrank? Can anyone offer any suggestions? Is there really much of a point to getting "ideal" tank gear, when I can tank most or all of the hardmodes [10 man, at least] without having tank death issues [barring mitigation / healer screwups]? Should I start concentrating on threat gear now?

Oh, and what and how I do: I'm in a guild working on ToGC10 Anub, ToGC25Beasts, U10&U25 Keeper Hardmodes. The other tanks are generally a bear and a warrior or a bear and a paladin; the other bear is not specced into 5/5 FA. I have actually noticed that I am getting rage starved at odd times [I ran out of rage during Hodir/10, Freya+3/10, Thorim/10 and XT HB/25] due to dodge strings [In last nights's 10 man I peaked at 49% dodge, no procs].

[klor]

Rawr is a finicky... tool... at best. I am not a huge fan of using it for basing all my judgement calls from it.. because it is a tool, which is something to remember.

It has three purposes.. Survival/Mitigation are a mixture of armor stam and avoidance. So of course if you set it for survival, it is going to put the most emphasis on stam/armor gear. That is why it tells you to use the polar frost resist gear. If you do overall, it puts a HUGE emphasis on threat gear. Heck, most of the top items for prot warriors are actually dps items on overall simply because of this.

My best advice is to use Rawr as a way to guesstimate what YOU think is better. Dont rely on a program to tell you. Part of being a tank is learning what is best for each situation Honestly the only thing I have found Rawr to be useful for is knowing what upgrades are out there and what my exact stats will be with said upgrades so I know what I need to do/have in order to be able to use said upgrade.

[Bovinity]

Part of the reason for the confusing results is that bear gearing really is kinda funny.

Those Polar items its telling you to get? It's right...from a pure damage soaking standpoint, the absurd amount of stamina plus the large number of sockets for epic gems actually give the Polar items an absurd amount of stamina. Heck, all told the Polar chest has 33 more stamina than the 245 crafted leather piece. If you have the survival settings set way up to something like ToGC 25 level, it's going to value that stamina really, really, really high. Well over anything else.

Of course, you're missing out on threat and avoidance stats that way. A lot of em. But nonetheless you'll find people putting things like the Polar Cord on in their bear set because they can't find anything better and it's a great way to pump up your HP to at least get to that gib-survival point.

Would I wear em now? Nope.

As for the bear T9 2-piece...it's pretty unimpressive in my opinion, if it's trading it out for some stamina and expertise, that actually just about makes sense.

So yeah, bear gearing is goofy. Don't take Rawr as gospel, but do consider some of the things that it says. Also keep in mind what you've told it to think...if you set the survival cap settings waaay up to max, it's going to tell you that 1 stamina is better than 50 agility, hehe. (Yes, that's an exaggeration.)