Bear tanks

[Bearbaws 0]

So guys and girls, bears are weird and straight up hard to gear for if you don't want to take a butt tonne of damage am I right ? I understand bears take more damage than most sometimes, and in return we have way more health and increased healing done to us, not to mention you want constant uptime, CONSTANT, of iron fur, which means we have huge Armor too. But in reality I still feel like I'm missing out. 

why have none of the best hardcore bear raiders made guides on anything to do with actually gearing properly and how you can go about it, ie in mythic + dungeons. The only good gear for bears that drop in Emerald nightmare on all the modes is a belt and a few trinkets. I'm incredibly confused and I'm sure a lot of other people playing bears are too and really just want some feedback from people that actually know something about bears and there stats/caps. I'm currently ilvl 878 if I want to be. But equipping that gear means I lose a fuck tonne if not all my versatility. So in stacking versatility and mastery I'm now 866. The lowest in my raid guild by far, if anyone actually knows real things about bear tanking please help me out here and tell me there's another way apart from hoping for the best in high mythic + dungeons for high ilvl vers/mast stats only gear. <3 please help me bears

[Shells 64]

Probably would be better to ask a kindly mod to move this to the druid forums and ask for help there. 

I would not be too bothered about dropping your ilvl to optimise your stats, ilvl is a trash metric right now and will be up until they address it in 7.1.5 (Jan=Feb 2017) . If your RL judges your raid members worth by ilvl , do yourself a favor and get a new raid group. 

I dont think  you can straight up stack one stat either as you would likely be aiming for a mix of stats but I will leave that to a bear driver to answer as I can only chat from a BDK pov. 

Gear wise, meh, mythic + offers the best gear and will likely do until nighthold comes out in the new year and tier sets are at thing now. 

What content are you aiming at?

Ideal gear is ideal and rarely do  you get it all, make the most of what you have and have a bit of fun, its a game after all.

[kekpop 0]

Vers/mast are the best secondary stats. But your best stat as a bear is armor/stamina. Armor multiply with your bear form and iron fur, and stamina with your mastery. It's almost always better to equip a +10 ilvl item, even if you loose vers/mast (with the exception of ring, neck and trinket obviously).

[CaptainFizz 1]

As said, item level wins. 

 

But if you have an 865 Crit/Haste and you have an 860 Vers/Haste, the 860 would probably be better.

Just go with ilvl generally though.

 

Also I take less damage than any of my co-tanks.  DH / DK / Pally...  Ironfur is awesome.  You have many cooldowns, use them.  If you are dead and still have a cooldown, what was the use of it?

With regards to ironfur - You have enough rage even with brambles to have 2 stacks of it at all times.  You can even have 1 MoU and 1 IF up pretty much constantly.  It should be easy to keep IF up at all times when tanking.  Even stack 3 x stacks if it for Spear effects.

 

[Daemon 11]

On 12/22/2016 at 9:43 AM, CaptainFizz said:

As said, item level wins. 

 

But if you have an 865 Crit/Haste and you have an 860 Vers/Haste, the 860 would probably be better.

Just go with ilvl generally though.

 

Also I take less damage than any of my co-tanks.  DH / DK / Pally...  Ironfur is awesome.  You have many cooldowns, use them.  If you are dead and still have a cooldown, what was the use of it?

With regards to ironfur - You have enough rage even with brambles to have 2 stacks of it at all times.  You can even have 1 MoU and 1 IF up pretty much constantly.  It should be easy to keep IF up at all times when tanking.  Even stack 3 x stacks if it for Spear effects.

 

Ilvl does not win unless you are talking about 15-20+ ilvl upgrade. Stamina is a bears most important stat and ofc you get more stamina from higher ilvl, but a piece of gear with ver/mastery will almost always beat a piece of gear with crit/haste, unless of course the gear is 20+ ilvls higher. For optimised stats use pawn with Noxxic's Guardian druid stat weights. Dont forget, mastery also increases health and healing received, and also, bears naturally have high stamina so focus on vers as your main secondary stat. Dont bother using stamina trinkets unless your health is below 4 million.