Post by Sorcha'Rei on Feb 1, 2006 6:47:36 GMT -5
((I'm raising this issue here, even though I don't have a feral druid on Feathermoon, because I know there are people here who are deeply interested in feral druid matters. Whole post, and all my future posts in this thread, should I make any, will be OOC.))
As anyone who has read my rants knows, I am firmly of the opinion that for Cats, strength is a far more important stat than agility, largely because Cats need high attack power to do damage. When I have one set of gear for a feral druid, I focus on strength because it does help both feral forms. (It helps bear tanks by making attacks do more damage, drawing more aggro.)
However, as I am starting to put together sets of purple armor for Dev, I am starting to come to the rather surprising conclusion that for Bears, agility is more important than strength. Here's why: crits and dodge. Bear tanks have two things they are trying to do. First, absorb damage and last a long time. Second, generate hate to hold aggro.
Lately, I've been duo'ing devilsaurs with a protection warrior. Usually, I Cat and he tanks, but for kicks the other day, we started both tanking and essentially having aggro-grabbing contests. I HIGHLY recommend this for both the warrior and the druid, by the way: we each learned tons about ourselves and about each other. Much more than we ever had in instances. It was a direct contest to see who could acquire and hold targets, in fights that lasted a long time but weren't going to kill us.
I'd already had this theory that warriors have an easier time grabbing aggro up front, but that over time, my threat would build higher. What I learned was that it only take 1 or 2 crit mauls to grab aggro from a very skilled prot warrior in a way that he will never be able to get it back. And where do crits come from? Well, +crit gear, +crit talents, and agility.
At the same time, one disadvantage druid tanks have is that there is little decent +defense gear available. The best +defense is usually green gear, and you give up a lot to wear green gear just for the defense. So high health, high armor, and the ability to avoid being hit help keep you alive. Where does the ability to avoid being hit come from? Dodge and parry. And druids can't really parry very well, so it's gonna come down to dodge. Which comes from agility.
So. Even though Cat gets extra attack power from agility, I stand by my belief that for a Cat, agility is highly overrated until AP is at least 1000. (Crits on low-damage attacks aren't as useful as a steady stream of higher damage attacks.) At the same time, I am considering getting a high agility set of gear for Dev to use in Bear and seeing if my ideas work out the way I think they might.
The first thing I am going to do is to go out and run some numbers on damage taken and damage done with the current set of gear she has. Then I'm going to change one thing: take that +15 str chant on her Warden Staff and turn it into a +15 agi chant. Then go kill the same stuff, and see what the stats say.
What I am curious about is whether any other Bear tanks have an opinion about this.
P.S. I'm firmly convinced that Enrage builds hate -- so convinced that I am about to respecc to get Imp Enrage off the restoration tree and see what that does for my ability to grab aggro early. I know a Bear tank who swears by it, and while my Cat out-DPS's his every time, I can't pull aggro off him worth a darn.
As anyone who has read my rants knows, I am firmly of the opinion that for Cats, strength is a far more important stat than agility, largely because Cats need high attack power to do damage. When I have one set of gear for a feral druid, I focus on strength because it does help both feral forms. (It helps bear tanks by making attacks do more damage, drawing more aggro.)
However, as I am starting to put together sets of purple armor for Dev, I am starting to come to the rather surprising conclusion that for Bears, agility is more important than strength. Here's why: crits and dodge. Bear tanks have two things they are trying to do. First, absorb damage and last a long time. Second, generate hate to hold aggro.
Lately, I've been duo'ing devilsaurs with a protection warrior. Usually, I Cat and he tanks, but for kicks the other day, we started both tanking and essentially having aggro-grabbing contests. I HIGHLY recommend this for both the warrior and the druid, by the way: we each learned tons about ourselves and about each other. Much more than we ever had in instances. It was a direct contest to see who could acquire and hold targets, in fights that lasted a long time but weren't going to kill us.
I'd already had this theory that warriors have an easier time grabbing aggro up front, but that over time, my threat would build higher. What I learned was that it only take 1 or 2 crit mauls to grab aggro from a very skilled prot warrior in a way that he will never be able to get it back. And where do crits come from? Well, +crit gear, +crit talents, and agility.
At the same time, one disadvantage druid tanks have is that there is little decent +defense gear available. The best +defense is usually green gear, and you give up a lot to wear green gear just for the defense. So high health, high armor, and the ability to avoid being hit help keep you alive. Where does the ability to avoid being hit come from? Dodge and parry. And druids can't really parry very well, so it's gonna come down to dodge. Which comes from agility.
So. Even though Cat gets extra attack power from agility, I stand by my belief that for a Cat, agility is highly overrated until AP is at least 1000. (Crits on low-damage attacks aren't as useful as a steady stream of higher damage attacks.) At the same time, I am considering getting a high agility set of gear for Dev to use in Bear and seeing if my ideas work out the way I think they might.
The first thing I am going to do is to go out and run some numbers on damage taken and damage done with the current set of gear she has. Then I'm going to change one thing: take that +15 str chant on her Warden Staff and turn it into a +15 agi chant. Then go kill the same stuff, and see what the stats say.
What I am curious about is whether any other Bear tanks have an opinion about this.
P.S. I'm firmly convinced that Enrage builds hate -- so convinced that I am about to respecc to get Imp Enrage off the restoration tree and see what that does for my ability to grab aggro early. I know a Bear tank who swears by it, and while my Cat out-DPS's his every time, I can't pull aggro off him worth a darn.
