Bear Tanking Lack Mitigation?

[stepplax]

So I hit 85 and am accumulating gear. Same dungeons, same healer, approximately same gear level, same pull style (w/out cc), and healer says the warrior was WAY easier to heal.

I know my spec is solid.
I know I haven't micromanaged enchants, reforge, but that shouldn't make that much of a difference.
I know I'm not letting mobs get behind me.
I'm charging in w/ Barkskin on... Demoralizing Shout asap while still making sure to hold everything.
I'm stunning and interrupting as much as I can.
I'm also trying to do as much as possible to get those crits for Savage Defense.
I don't know what else to do!

So I am wondering if I suck, bears suck, warriors are op... or what! I also wonder if it's because Vengeance takes a while to stack up.

On a side note... we haven't met an 85 dungeon that we really have to CC on... but when things get tougher, I want to make sure I/bears stack up against other tanking classes!

Please let me know if I'm missing anything or if you have noticed anything about how bear mitigation has been comparing to any other classes.

Thanks and tank on!

Enki

[Reev]

I'm just taking a stab at this, but warriors start with a reasonably high base chance to block, plus they get Shield Block. With crit chances so low going into a new expansion, bears are getting less savage defense. Maybe that has something to do with it?

[MellvarTank]

Try CC'ing things.

[Destruyen]

not to mention warriors can get blood craze and field dressing. 6% buffed healing on them and a chance to heal over time every time they take damage is pretty big at starting gear levels....

[Fenier]

Is this on packs or on singular mobs?

When Warrior's Shockwave, provided what they are tanking is not immune, they take nearly no damage for the duration. Bears have nothing comparable. Additionally, Thunderclap slows everything it hits, where infected wounds does not hit anywhere near the same number of targets.

I am only 82 currently, but I've tanked the first four instances, and while I don't *have* to CC, It tends to make pulls much more manageable, and more importantly, doesn't tax the healers mana anywhere near as much. Additionally, because you are tanking 2-3 mobs, you are much more likely to have them all attack speed slowed, then if you are tanking 5-6, where you can't easily keep the slow on the entire pack, let alone interrupt multiple casters.

That said, you should be fairly equal on Single Targets.

[stepplax]

@Mellvar: We didn't have problems getting through the instance, and the warrior group wasn't cc'ing things.

@Fenier: This was on packs.

We're talking 4-6 groups

[squats]

Get more def... Duh

You should CC. It's all the rage these days.

But really. You should cc. Idk why you don't think you have to.. If your not having problems getting thru the instance, whats this thread about? And If the healer is having a hard time you do need to. Plus getting back into CC again will help you get ready for raids and heroics.

[stepplax]

I'm basically asking if druids are not sizing up very well w/ other classes in terms of mitigation.

[Tiralthrawn]

@ squats

I'm the warrior he's running with and we actually do cc given the makup of our general group. When stepplax is tanking he has a shammy healer, warrior dps, shadow priest, and the fourth is usually up in the air with what we get (and they generally don't cc or wanna cc or suck at ccing). The instances we are talking about is mainly Grim Batal, lost city of Tol'vir, and halls of origination. In Grim batal, all we really have is the shammy hex since there really are no undead for the priest to shackle, and when in Halls of Origination the priest does shackle the undead when there is one. So in essense we do cc and he still takes a lot of spike damage.

[Mestalocan]

I am having the same problem. I took a look a look at my dodge and I am sub 25% YIKES. It seems no one can heal me and I go through my 110k health pool in no time flat. I also have like 28k armor . What your armory link I'd like to compare stats and gear

[stepplax]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...oodle/advanced

Things are going a little better. Gear helps... knowing what mobs do helps... keeping up pulverize can be helpful also. I think I also reforged away from haste towards mastery since I started this thread also. We'll have to see how I stack up.

[Fetzie]

In grim batol you can hibernate a dragonkin and then switch to bearform while the mobs are running towards you
About a third of the mobs in there are elementals, so your shaman can hex one and chain elemental another.

so on the 5 mob pull:
hibernate 1
hex 1
bind elemental 1
mind control 1
kill them one at a time.

you also have the advantage of being able to pre-damage them

[Terra]

<- Druid tank. My healers have been loving me to tank. The incoming damage is very well easy to be handled. I'm taking healers who are sucesfully healing me without running out of mana even when they are only just barely able to queue heroics. CC is everything and making proper use of Skull Bash and Bash makes a big difference for eliminating A LOT of damage in a lot of instance. Also knowing what the mobs in the trash pack do helps a ton as you can prioritize the kill order based upon getting rid of the most dangerous mobs first. Don't be afraid to use your cooldowns for trash and consider using one of YOUR ccs on the pull to give extra time. Yes this means you have to go to caster form, but you can be a bear again before they get to you.

Magmaw can hit me for 45-55k. I don't think warriors have it any better??????

[Fetzie]

Magmaw hits me (paladin) for about 30-40k after blocking 40% of the hit. Around 20% of the hits are unblocked, they deal around 55-65k damage.

[stepplax]

Well like I said originally... it's not like we weren't making it through the pulls, it was just that it seemed like a lot of damage compared to a warrior under near exact conditions.

[Terra]

The hits from Magmaw were the ones that went through unmitigated. I haven't killed Magmaw yet, but let me pull out the hits against me and I'd be interested in seeing one from other tank classes for comparison sake... Editting this post soon....

[uglie]

I would definitely get some stam trinkets since your current ones are more threat/dps trinkets. Since you're a jc i would go out and get http://www.wowhead.com/item=52352 and it's very easy to get. In current gear levels and with all the unavoidable magic damage being thrown around in heroics stamina i going to be your best bet. http://www.wowhead.com/item=55816 is also another nice stamina trinket from the last boss in stonecore.

[Terra]

Normalization method that I used (seeking input to make this more meaningful):

Step 1: Parse logs and take all entries where Magmaw was the source and tank is the target.
Step 2: Remove all "Magma Spit". Magma Spit should not under normal circumstances be on the tank.
Step 3: Lava Spew should be analyzed independently. It's now where the big hits are and it will hit random targets. As near as I can tell, Lava Spew is undodgeable. I added Absorbs back into what I was being hit for (Is this healer mitigated damage or self mitigated in some way?) (I'm assuming "A:" in worldoflogs combat log means Absorbed and "R:" means resisted. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Fill in the following:
Hits:
Average mitigated damage:
Average unmitigated damage:
Percentage of time mitigated:


Step 4: Analyze the hits to the tank and fill in the following:

Attacks:
Percentage dodged or missed:
Highest hit: <- Remove absorb benefits for this calculation
Lowest hit: <- Remove absorb benefits for this calculation
Average hit: <- Remove absorb benefits for this calculation
Highest mitigated: <- Take into account all mitigation including absorbs
Lowest mitigated: <- Take into account all mitigation including absorbs
Average mitigated: <- Take into account all mitigation including absorbs
Total Damage taken:
Damage per attack:

--------------------------------------

Here's my data as a Feral Bear.

Lava Spew:
Hits: 132
Average mitigated damage: 14184.55
Average unmitigated damage: 17719.48
Percentage of time mitigated: 88.6%

Hits:
Attacks: 178
Percentage dodged or missed: 37.08% (66/178)
Highest hit: 70,362
Lowest hit: 19,160
Average hit: 55,309
Highest mitigated: 70,355
Lowest mitigated: 7,584
Average mitigated: 47,690.6
Total damage taken: 5,341,348
Damage per attack: 30,007.6 (5,341,348/178)

70% of the attacks that weren't dodged or missed against me had some type of absorb affect. Are these healer absorbs or are they my own absorbs? I'm uncertain.

Also: Note the boss only hit me about once every 3 to 7 seconds. The logs I looked at did not involve phase 2 as the DPS that night were having problems w/ getting the worms down.

[stepplax]

Well we haven't started raiding yet, but I do have the JC stam trinket and have toyed around with it. It's just so hard for me to get rid of those agi procs though! I really want to avoid being "that guy" aka an all out stamina mana sponge. I do want the heroic stam trinket though with the armor proc. I'm wondering if it is the magic damage which is the difference. I know my warrior buddy is loving the spell reflect right now.

[Terra]

Spell reflect is cool. So is the aoe stun.

With proper CC a lot of magic damage is avoidable. (Skull Bash, Bash, Silence from DPS in the party).

If you haven't reforged, do so. The extra dodge will help a lot. I made a spreadsheet for myself that uses EJ's stat values for feral bears to tell me how to reforge stuff. I'm still tweaking it, but take a peak if you like: http://files1.guildlaunch.net/guild/...arReforge.xlsx