Dodge Mastry Stam Agility??

With the changes Blizz made to int and other base start to make them pretty basic and make game easier...... I am still at a loss for words towards bear tanking stats. I have been tanking for a while and gemmed accordingly to what was needed at the times. However now i am so confused as to what is best for us.

Agi = dodge + AP + crit instant gain to AP before vengence smaller health pool

Mastery = Better savage defense by X percent

Stam = Survivability + Vengance going higher + Bigger Savage Defence procs?
Stam guarenteed health giving me more ap due to vengence scaleing to a percentage of your health which translates into bigger savage defense procs? and more threat? but still has a build time

Crit = Higher chance to proc savage defense. Have to get a crit in between boss hits for mastery to be usefull on average i will proc a 10k - 15k absorbe. If i can knock that off every hit could out way gemming stam...help overall raid dps output. and improve threat
Effective HP by 10-15,000

Dodge = good against multi mob but I can only dodge a boss once before getting clobbered in the face for what whatever ammount of dmg he feels like. If RNG is against you you could techinically take every hit..

I am currently Stacking AGI / Mastry but am kinda just shooting from the hip as i am not a number cruncher and dont know what actually will benifit me most.

120 views and 0 replies i figured someone would be able to help in this area.....

Maybe because you posted this in the wrong section. If you want help you should have posted this in the HALP section.

I see your point on it being HALP but it is also theory/mechanics. did not want a quip reply just some insight. have people done any research toward the avoidance VS. Effective HP for bears... as there has been a decrease in bear tanks reciently i still enjoy tanking and would like to be going for the right stats, However it is not a simple choice. As a bear we have the highesy HP of all tanks normally. Is the over all Stam gain from bear form enough to offset not having alot of mitigation by vengence being able to scale higher because it is based on your percentage of health. And would this gain in vengance scaling our attack power be viable due to savage defense working the way it does thus actually giving a bear avoidance.... i wish i only had to worry about block and parry and dodge..... but thanks for the attempt at clarafying my question it was very helpful lol.

Crit never effects your effective health. Mastery never effects your effective health. You are wrong on both counts there. Anything that is ever random is never considered part of effective health. The only thing which you mention effects your effective health is stamina. And effective health is largely only a concern for heroic raid content in cataclysm thus far. Outside of that context a balanced approach is recommended.

Dodge is the highest value secondary stat because it is the only true tanking stat that is a secondary stat which effects you. As such, any item which does not have dodge (which will basically be everything) will be reforged to have dodge on it.

Gemming and enchanting works a little bit differently because in that category you have the option of effecting primary stats as well. As a relatively simple rule, you will almost always go for socket bonuses. Red or Prismatic sockets you would generally gem with pure Agility. Blue sockets would be Agility/Stamina. Yellow would be Agility/Dodge. Meta is still Stamina/Armor. Though some flexibility is available in gemming, because generally you will favor your primary stat heavily. Stamina can generally be augmented a fair bit by tanking trinkets, as a druid you will favor trinkets with dodge or stamina unlike the shield classes which will often prefer a mastery trinket. Enchanting would also follow relatively standard tank priorities of Stamina and Armor where available and Agility elsewhere.

thats a better response. i am not looking to run reg raids forever and i find that there are alot of people who are not very good at this game so if i can make it to where i am cake for even a bad player to heal then that would be my perferred route....

im not saying dodge is bad i dont reforge it off of my gear. Crit is random but how random this is my point there. between boss hits i only need one hit to be a crit and i just put up a 15k shield it is the same as a disc priest bubble or a druid living seed excetra. which is a reason they are looked at for tank healers they stop damage before it actually hits so you could effectivley say they increase a tanks Effective HP tank has 50k hp left gets hit for 51k but had a disc bubble on him he would live where he would have died before.... im pretty sure you are familiar in this concept and will not attempt to explain it further..

What im asking is more toward if you had enough crit you could possibly have that savage defense proc up more because it is activated by critical hits.... if you can keep it up i would say be good and increase overall HP i can hit a boss multiple times befoer he hits me but i only get one chance to dodge.. straight crit i agree would not be the best stat... so atack the hell out of AGI? to improve crit dodge and AP which may prock savage defense more. but does nothing for bad RNG. Im just trying to figure out the better of the 2 or if they are both actually equal. I keep seeing posts about stam stacking and how it is bad it that as critical for druids since agi is agi works alot for our mitigation regardless of if our gear has dodge on it or not.

agi > dodge > mastery > crit = expertise > hit > haste is pretty much the priority for bears. if you are transitioning into heroic mode raids then you should replace agi gems with stam gems until you get a few 372 pieces. i was full agi gemmed basically for h chim/h halfus/h atra until i got to h maloriak and found out tanking dark phases that i didn't have enough stam to survive a whole cast and the melee swing right after it. if all you are doing is 359 raid encounters then agi gemming is the way to go until heroic modes.

Again...

Anything that is ever based on any randomness will never be included in effective health. Even if you had 100% crit and 100% hit, what happens if you get a boss that stuns you. Poof, now you don't swing, therefore you don't get that shield. Like Halfus Wyrmbreaker who repeatedly knocks you down several times in a row. What happens if he decides to take a swing at you before your swing timer is up after that last knockdown?

Random is random. Effective health is not random.

I am not sure if anyone disagrees with you there, but it still increases survivability so it has value. It is considered mitigation, and that mitigation should be taken into account.

Crit for bear will increase Savage Defense uptime, increasing mitigation. Now I would not give that a huge amount of tanking value, but its another thing that makes agi slightly better then dodge. You are correct in saying that it is not Effective Health, but EH is not king anymore, its still important but its not the era of WotLC where if it did not increase EH it was not worthwhile.

To my knowledge EH only goes up with Armor and Stamina. In this current teir it seems mitigating (smoothing out your damage) is much more important then surviving as long as possible before a heal comes out (EH). Now obviously there is a bench mark EH value needed for many heroic bosses, but overall its mitigation that seems to be the key, once you hit the benchmark.

Cattebrie, Emerald Dream (US)

has anyone done the numbers for bear?

Fasc had a spreadsheet out a while ago but since he quit playing I do not think there is an up to date one.

Personally, while I consult spreadsheets, I just listen to my healers. It helps having 3-4 sets of gear so you can have every conceivable gem and enchant combo though

Also, druids have a very weird relationship with dodge. The more we get the more unreliable vengeance becomes making our SD lower, which lends itself more towards mastery since the more dodge we get the better our SD uptime is even at lower crit values.

All that said, it depends what you are raiding. What I did and what I think a lot of top raiders did was we started hard mode raids with mostly full 359 gear, with full stam gems, enchants, and 2 trinkets. As we started upgrading to 372 gear, the base iLvl of the gear made it have more stam ungemmed an unenchanted than a fully stamed up 359 item. So because of that we started using agi and mastery gems and enchants on the 372 gear, and were able to swap out out a stam trinket for an agi trinket.

The only fight you need full stam gems and enchants for is really heroic maloriak for tanking the black phase when you are immune to heals. (AND MAYBE omnitron and conclave if you are tanking the frost guy)

http://theincbear.com/ has a working bear spreadsheet