Bear tanking Stone Guard

[Tova 6]

Yes, I've compared a number of our logs. Between me and my warrior OT I take about 10k less per tick on average and that's about my armour difference.

Logs from last kill

take a look through damage taken and I take about 55k ticks and he take 65k ticks.

[Arilith 0]

Warriors take 25% less damage from all attacks due to Defensive Stance. Bears take 12 % less damage from all attacks via Thick Hide. So TL:DR, Bleeds ignore armor. It's how we killed people way back in WotLK, you bleed up plate classes and use stuff like Shred/Ravage on clothies.

[Scottyfaic 0]

I'm mainspec guardian and this is what I understand from the stats and this fight.

MT and OT take about the same damage. They both take an equal amount of damage from the bleed effect (because it doesnt stack) and the MT takes double the melee damage that the OT takes. But the bleed is the majority of the damage anyway. For this reason, mastery and dodge are put much lower on the priority list.

Now I tank the two dogs at once with our warrior tank on the 3rd, and imo, crit and haste are great for this fight.

This is why:

Everytime you get a critical strike with an autoattack or mangle, you gain an instant 15 rage and you heal 4% of your maximum health everytime you crit with ANY melee attack (6 second CD).

Haste will increase your autoattack speed, and your GCD allowing you to get more mangles in (especially when using incarnate). This should be where you should dump points when you cant get any more crit.

When tanking the dogs, I use mangle on CD, keep thrash up, and keep 3 stacks of lacerate on both dogs (haste makes this very easy). The tooth and claw debuff from maul is still just as effective as any other fight, due to it taking away a flat amount, but Frenzied Regeneration is still your primary rage dump. Savage Defense should be ignored. Barkskin should also be used on CD, and Survival Instincts can either be used on CD (Not at the same time as Barkskin) or saved for explosions (if you guys have trouble with swapping). Also Incarnation macroed with Nature's Vigil is great for the smart heals and dps increase, generally making you not need heals when tanking 2 dogs. If you are only tanking one dog, Incarnation will still be somewhat useful, but Nature's Vigil will become pretty much worthless, and you should probably just go heart of the wild for the stam.

Also if you are only tanking one dog, all you need to worry about is mangling on CD, keeping up thrash debuff, and your positioning. All rage should be going to Frenzied Regeneration because Savage defense is TWICE as worthless when compared to tanking 2 dogs. Only use maul when you are at full health and 80+ rage. As OT your top priority is to always keep the 3rd dog at a perfect range from the other 2, where he isnt getting the buff, and you can taunt either dog off the MT when he calls for it.

As for gemming, like another poster said above me, focus on stamina, gem agil/stam, crit/stam, or flat stam. Also getting 7.5% hit and expertise is preferred too so you dont lose rage.

So basically: Stam > Agility > 7.5% Expertise > 7.5% Hit > Crit > Haste > Mastery > Dodge.

You can get 15% Expertise at high enough ilvl but if you are only offtanking stoneguard dont worry about it.

[Krazyito 521]

Thanks for the tips. =)

Since this post I ended up switching to Monk and only use my druid for various alt runs and such.

At the time I was tanking on my druid only because my raid needed a 3rd tank for 25 man. I now can tank on my monk, but i don't tank for our main runs any more. Just heal.

Again, thanks for the advice. It will probably help when I am using my druid every now and then.

Edited February 7, 2013 by Krazyito