Survival Instincts: A (Somewhat) Official Guide to Druid Guardian Tanking

[Gont]

I have looked all over the place and been unable to find a clear answer as to the issue of Hit and Expertise capping. Everyone says what the caps are and that it is a good thing to reach them. However, is it important enough to merit gemming and reforging at the outset when just reaching LFR where you need to work to get to the cap for Hit and the first cap for Expertise?

I have been referencing Rawr to determine reforging and gemming and it pointed me towards this current configuration. Does this seem wise? Or instead, is it better to reforge for Mastery and Crit. This guide has approached the question, but not actually said whether it is worth it. (or if it did, I apologize for missing it.)

My profile is at http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../gont/advanced (and it matches to 95% what Rawr recommends) This is simply to provide a reference point for the situation/equipment setup a new LFR tank may encounter.

[sifuedition]

Savage Defense no longer procs on crit which means the extra rage when mangle crits is the true benefit. Having said that, it is still unreliable/spikey in nature. Haste would give a similar rage return, from the little I've seen, assuming hit and expertise caps but would be more reliable at that point. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you don't hit, you can't crit. Well, technically a miss can crit but you don't get any benefit from it from my understanding.

Some of the more bear-focused tanks will be along to correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure.

[Tielyn]

Hiya Gont --

The reason the guide doesn't commit to one way or the other is that there wasn't enough data to support recommending only one way, and it is very much a 'what suits your personal playstyle' choice.

For me, not being hit/expertise capped means that I am getting less overall Rage generation, since only white swings and Mangle hits generate Rage, and as a secondary consideration, my other attacks not connecting means that I don't get a chance at bonus Mangle procs.

Stacking Crit nets you the benefit of a shot at bonus rage when your Mangles and white swings connect.

Stacking Mastery reduces the Physical damage you take, but does not seem to affect Bleed damage (such as the Rend Flesh debuff on Stone Guard) and does nothing for magic damage. So on fights with high melee damage, Mastery wins if you can't keep your SD up enough or get hit anyway, on fights with high magic damage, Crit is better since you will have more FR at your disposal, but on most fights, you'll want to try and balance both abilities as much as possible.

Stacking Dodge with Mastery means that you can focus on the fight more and less on Active Mitigation, because it raises your base Dodge when you don't have SD active and gives you a higher total Dodge when you do have SD up.

To answer your question directly:
You are 1% off hit cap and 2% off soft expertise cap. That should be okay to work with, because that won't generate -too- many extra misses and dodges. If you're finding yourself rage-starved, though, that should be the first place you go to get extra Rage.
The other thing you might want to do is change your weapon enchant to Windsong -- it procs often, and gives you either Mastery, Crit, or Haste, with multiple separate buffs possible simultaneously.

I recommend reforging to get hit/expertise capped anyway, because I prefer having as many of my attacks connect as possible. I am hit/soft expertise capped, and the 13 melee and 4 Mangle parries in a recent fight log I have represent a loss of roughly 239 Rage (numbers from averaged melee Rage of (11 base + (15 on a crit * my crit chance, .35)=16.25 and 7 per mangle)) which would only go up when you start adding more misses and dodges in there for not being hit/expertise capped.

-Tielyn

[Telamir]

To those who still think dodge/mastery is the way to go, could you post logs?

I've seen a number of dodge bears, and I've seen Tielyn and other hit/expertise bears, and it seems that with the high DR of dodge this expansion, reforging anything to dodge is wasting a reforge that could be better spent on either getting to hit/expertise cap, or elsewhere. Tielyn and I are not far off from each other in dodge percentage when we're both bearing it up, and it seems that even reforging everything to dodge nets you at best maybe 3-4% extra dodge. To me, that isn't enough to warrant the reforge.

Also, Tielyn. If one is going the hit/expertise cap and hits it, where would you recommend stats be focused next? Haste, Crit, or Mastery?

[Tielyn]

*chuckles* Hi Tela. (And no, I did not put her up to this.)

My opinion is to go with Crit next - the benefits of higher Crit is getting more of the bonus 15 Rage you get from Primal Fury (which is added to the base Rage from a non-crit) and it's one of the two stats that get the 50% bonus multiplier (Haste is the other), so you get a bigger stat gain from reforging into Crit than you would from Mastery.

Others feel that Mastery is the way to go next - it increases your armor, which decreases the damage you get from Physical hits. The other benefit of going with Mastery for you in particular is that since you double dip your armor as Feral gear, it'll bring up your damage when you're using those pieces as a cat. I'd say that if you can't get to the next percentage point of Crit via reforge, you may as well get the extra point of Mastery if you can. Right now, though, I'm reforging out of Mastery, since my current gear is short on Hit and Expertise.

Haste only benefits you when it comes to melee swings - if it reduced the cooldown of Mangle/Thrash/Lacerate like haste reduces Crusader Strike and Judgement through Sanctity of Battle, I'd be more inclined to reforge to that next, but since it doesn't, it's my other thing to reforge out of at the moment.

(heh, I said it a little more clearly this time...)

-Tielyn

[sifuedition]

I've read some "theorycraft" that says that haste may not be as bad as it seems at first glance. I put that in quotes because they reference sims but don't show their work so I can't verify it. They indicate that after hit and expertise hard caps, haste provides 94% of the rage that crit does. That would make it almost 1 to 1 with crit but with the bonus of being reliable vs random with crits. I am not sure if that work has been duplicated/verified anywhere else though. Also, expertise hard cap may be out of reach at the moment, not sure, at least, not with still having room to reforge anything else.

[Tielyn]

Haste isn't bad, per se, because like the theorycrafters say, more haste = more swings over time, and potentially more Rage when you do connect with the crit attached. It's whether you gain more by having an extra swing versus an extra couple of percentage points of crit -- when you can only have one or the other. I figure I'll be going haste when I hit the crit cap (~32%) and see how that works out versus putting the rest into mastery or trying to get to the hard expertise cap.

-Tielyn

[Tielyn]

General heads up for folks buying valor gear:

If you can get to Exalted Golden Lotus, you get a free neckpiece.
If you can get to Exalted Klaxxi, you get a free ring.

On the PTR, there are upgrades to the boots and waist from August Celestials and Klaxxi, respectively, coming, which out-ilvl the current valor points offerings. If you haven't bought for those slots yet, it's probably a good idea to wait.

-Tielyn

[Turuurism]

Hey

Thanks for the very informative guide. I got few things which is very confuses me.

1. As a Guardian I prefer Mastery>Crit>Hit/Exp>Haste. Which is to gain rage by crit to keep up SD=FR. But Hit/Exp are way below cap. Can you look at my char for some advise? Do you require Dodge>Mastery?

- Full buffed and flask food HP is 611k, Not sure if it's normal or high HP. Anyone record more than 611k HP?
- Armor is approx. 100k, Also not sure how are other classes. How about yours?

2. Dancing steel or River song?

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

[Mackon]

Hey Turuurism, from having a quick look at your char you might want to get to the Hit/Exp cap otherwise your attacks will miss and all that crit you have is wasted as your attacks won't crit if they don't hit. As far as I was aware Agility wasn't a big thing for tanking so you may want to think about swapping out some of your gems for a more usefull stat or to help you reach the Hit/Exp caps

[jere]

Misses, Hits, and crits are independent events. You don't have to hit to crit. There should be a post somewhere on this site about the combat table which is true except for Block (since that actually was put a on 2 roll system this expansion). Hit and expertise turn misses into hits, but have no impact on crits. If you have a crit rate of 20% and are not crit capped, then you will crit 20% of the time regardless of how many times you hit or miss.

[sifuedition]

While that is true Jere, there is still an impact, correct? So to use easy numbers for example:

Assuming 20% crit on character sheet.
10,000 swings with no misses = 10,000 hits with 2,000 crits(20% of total) and all of them landed
10,000 swings with 10% misses = 9,000 hits with 2,000 crits but only 1,800 actually landed

That was my understanding. Technically, your crit rate on the character sheet will be what you crit over a significant number of swings combining hits and misses. However, some of those crits are "wasted" as they rolled on a missed swing. Therefore, whatever benefit you would have received from a crit is effectively limited by how often you miss/dodge/parry?

Edit:

Even if I understood that incorrectly, then wouldn't the 20% crit be 20% of the 9,000 in that example instead of 20% of 10,000?

[Airowird]

Assuming 20% crit on character sheet.
10,000 swings with no misses = 10,000 hits with 2,000 crits(20% of total) and all of them landed
10,000 swings with 10% misses = 9,000 hits with 2,000 crits but only 1,800 actually landed

That was my understanding. Technically, your crit rate on the character sheet will be what you crit over a significant number of swings combining hits and misses. However, some of those crits are "wasted" as they rolled on a missed swing. Therefore, whatever benefit you would have received from a crit is effectively limited by how often you miss/dodge/parry?

Edit:

Even if I understood that incorrectly, then wouldn't the 20% crit be 20% of the 9,000 in that example instead of 20% of 10,000?

In the 20% crit, 10% miss situation, you will...
Miss 1000 swings (10%)
Crit 2000 swings (20%)
Hit 7000 swings (70% = whatever is left)

The thing to remember though is that crits get pushed off the table once your miss+crit is over 100%. e.g. Shado-Pan Moenstary last boss (forgot his name), you get 90% miss chance when you reach full Hatred. At that point, you miss 90% of the time and crit 10% of the time.
The game simply gives miss the 0-90% range, then crit right behind that at 90.00001%-110% and then rolls a dice from 0 to 100%, checks if it is in the miss/crit/whatever range, and if it isn't, it's a simple hit.

[Tielyn]

Hiya Turuuism -

1a. Ordinarily I'd say 'definitely get your hit/expertise up to caps', but I see that you have your kills all the way up to Spirit Kings, so you must be doing something right. *grin*

That being said, your own experiences should tell you the answer. I'm running almost at hit/crit caps (over 7%, but just under 7.5%) and the worst thing you want to do is miss when you need Rage the most. The best test I can say for you is answer the following questions:

a) Do you notice the DPS pulling off of you at the start of a boss fight, or the other tank pulling back off of you after you taunt? Both of these are symptoms of initial misses on the pull.
b) Do you notice that you have long pauses between getting to 60 Rage? As in, can you keep up SD back to back consistently, or are there points where you are out of Rage, and have to pop Berserk to get enough?

If the answer to either of these questions is 'yes', then add more hit/expertise. Personally, I'd like to reliably have the ability to hit one Mangle and snap threat anything back on me if it tries to wander - I use Growl in an emergency situation and to swap with the other tank; wipes happen when you're supposed to have the boss and the other tank outhreats you because you're missing.

1b. 611K Stam buffed is very nice. That's 200K over the bare minimum (400K) and is probably good to get you into Heart of Fear.

2. River's Song will give you about 1.25% dodge extra, roughly 4 times per minute (source: Wowhead).
Dancing Steel will give you about 1.2% crit, 3300AP, and less than 1% dodge, 2 times per minute.
(I may need to adjust these numbers later when I get home; I'm at work.)
Definitely Dancing Steel over Rivers Song, and I'd even suggest keeping the Windsong on your weapon if 10 Sha Crystals are hard to come by. Windsong has a better than advertised PPM because it has multiple possible procs (I've seen all three of Crit, Haste, and Mastery up simultaneously, and according to Skada it's up something on the order of 75% of the time) and all three secondary stats are fairly good to have.

3. I still keep Dodge as the lowest priority stat, personally -- I have been encountering tanks who reforge into Dodge heavily and they're sitting at 15% Dodge, 21% Crit, whereas when I don't reforge to dodge I'm still at 13% dodge, 29% Crit because of the 50% multiplier. Mastery isn't bad for you since I see that you're doing the feral/guardian mix, but the passive Armor is only helping versus Physical strikes, not against magic attacks.

-Tielyn

[Tielyn]

I would like some help writing the one of the 'empty' sections in with the following:

What's your favorite Symbiosis power for Guardians, and why?

So far my favorites are:
Defensive: Monk (extra 10% dodge button every minute)
Threat: Paladin (Consecrate), and gives a Holy pally a battlerez
Utility: Warlock (Life tap means you can start a fight with a Savage Defense on queue), but the Warlock gets a Rejuvenation spell. I've actually tanked the first two bosses in Scholomance with _no_ healer, except for the warlock and a hunter with Spirit Mend, because the healer kept crashing....

No real opinion:
- Rogue and Warrior - has anyone found any particular boss mechanic where the reflection abilities are useful?
- Death Knight - because we don't have an active raiding DK, I don't have a lot of chances to steal off of one.
- Healing Priest - Fear ward... -are- there bosses with a fear mechanic in MoP? (I like Darksend's giving Shadow Priests Tranquility, but healing priests get Cyclone instead.)

Least favorite:
Shaman: Lightning Shield (minor threat bonus, and the shammy gets Solar Beam)

Honorable Mention:
Mage - I sometimes give the mage my Symbiosis on Feng so he can heal himself when he gets trapped in the Spirit Realm without a healer. The Frost Shield is underwhelming. Might be useful on Elegon's adds.
Hunter - Maybe the Frost Trap would be useful on Elegon's adds, too.

[Tengenstein]

Don't Rogues provide Feint, a 10% aoe damage reduction with no CD seem pretty nice against any Boss AoE, agianst something like force and verve it could be extremely potent. likewise the DK's bone shield can be very nice if combined with SD the next 3 attacks you don't avoid are reduced by 10%

[Tielyn]

Aha. Yeah, if we actually HAD a raiding rogue then I might have noticed that it had no cooldown, which makes it _really_ useful for bosses like Feng and Elegon. The few times I've run into rogues in 5 mans, there haven't been a lot of AoE effects to use it on (Stormstout Brewery, Scholomance, and Mogushan Palace were the dungeons in question), and the one time we had a rogue in the raid the feral druid nabbed him for Redirect. The warrior one is on a 2 minute cooldown, and it's a spell reflect that lasts only 5 seconds. Figured that the rogue version would be the same.

Moving Rogue to the top list, then. Thanks.

The DK bone shield is a 10% reduction on the first three attacks you take a minute, so it depends on how fast you take damage as to how long it stays up. I'm definitely not going to say no to damage reduction, but since we don't have a DK, I don't have a feel for it.

Most of the time our group has one warlock, one or two mages, one or two hunters, one warrior, one priest, one resto druid, one or two paladins, sometimes one monk, and maybe a shaman. No rogues or DKs are currently raiding with us, though we have two of each on our roster - they just tend not to raid.

-Tielyn

[Tjomek]

Aha. Yeah, if we actually HAD a raiding rogue then I might have noticed that it had no cooldown, which makes it _really_ useful for bosses like Feng and Elegon. The few times I've run into rogues in 5 mans, there haven't been a lot of AoE effects to use it on (Stormstout Brewery, Scholomance, and Mogushan Palace were the dungeons in question), and the one time we had a rogue in the raid the feral druid nabbed him for Redirect. The warrior one is on a 2 minute cooldown, and it's a spell reflect that lasts only 5 seconds. Figured that the rogue version would be the same.

Moving Rogue to the top list, then. Thanks.

The DK bone shield is a 10% reduction on the first three attacks you take a minute, so it depends on how fast you take damage as to how long it stays up. I'm definitely not going to say no to damage reduction, but since we don't have a DK, I don't have a feel for it.

Most of the time our group has one warlock, one or two mages, one or two hunters, one warrior, one priest, one resto druid, one or two paladins, sometimes one monk, and maybe a shaman. No rogues or DKs are currently raiding with us, though we have two of each on our roster - they just tend not to raid.

-Tielyn

i prefer :

Sinlge target slow hitting bosses (will of emp): DK bone shield or pala conc (even tho lightning shield from shammy is theoretically higher dps, the point of a guardian is dodging aka no lightning shield procs.
SIngle target high magic dmg bosses: doesnt really matter but i go with pala conc.
Boss with adds (Mel'Jarak): pala conc all the way


Also Tielyn, you may wanne move rogues back down to the bottom of your list, here is why ^^
A rogues feint costs 20 rage, while tanking the 20 rage will always be more powerfull spent on a FR. Unless the AoE is gigantic.
A high vengeance 60 rage FR heals me for about 300-400k. 20 rage of feint would heal you for about 100-133k hp so to reduce the damage you with feint compared to without the aoe would have to be over _1 million_ damage over 5 seconds (aka 200k dps incomming) in wich case you would reduce that damage with feint to 900k over 5 seconds. Hardly the case unless its a wipe mechanic ^^. So imo feint remains useless due to the rage cost.

[Tielyn]

Tjomek:

You bring up a good counterpoint. I'm thinking that Feint would be really useful for reducing the damage on Feng and Elegon's breath/the Total Annihilation explosion specifically -- anything that reduces the AoE damage I take when I know it's coming is an extra button I have at my disposal. I'd probably use it if I was nowhere near big Vengeance numbers (for example, when I am not currently tanking the boss, but I know there's a big damage spike incoming) and/or if I had a full Rage bar -- preventing incoming damage and then healing more on top of it would be a good thing.

I'll move it to mid-range importance, situational-type, then.

Thankya!
-Tielyn

[Tielyn]

Minor notes: I am currently running with -zero- Haste on my gear, with ~30% Crit in caster, that turns into upwards of 40% Crit in bear. Using Incarnation, I have occasional rare patches where I don't have enough Rage for a Savage Defense when I want one, when I have to resort to Frenzied Regen casts, but it's admittedly kinda nice having burst Mangle when I know I'll have the boss for a bit.

Another data point which I need to fold into the guide somehow:

3000 Mastery Rating = 6.26% Mastery Percentage = 1.28% Armor Absorb. Found by clicking off the buff from a friendly Paladin.
3386 Haste Rating = .27 off the base swing timer (2.5->2.23) in Bear form with no other haste. Which means to get to a 2.0 swing timer you'll need something on the order of 13000 Haste rating or so. In an extreme Haste versus Crit world, a 2.0 swing would be required to get a third swing in during the 6 second window of Savage Defense, which would guarantee you that extra 10.5 Rage, at the cost of the extra chance percentage of 15 extra Rage on Crit that you gave up to reforge into Haste over Crit.

-Tielyn