Gemming and reforging feral tanks

One of the best things introduced in to WoW is being able to reforge your gear. Although a great tool, reforging is a bit of a tricky thing.  It fine tunes your gear, but the second that your gear changes, it becomes the first thing to change to rebalance everything. I have found through my time as a feral tank that reforging should go in the following order:


Expertise Soft-Cap > Hit > Dodge > Mastery > Crit > Haste

Now, lets make a couple of things more clear, this is the base diagram if you need EVERYTHING. Now, if you are at the expertise soft-cap and are hit capped, then you would start looking at dodge next.  Some will tell you that you need to only reforge in to dodge or some will say mastery. My experience has shown me that you will always get the best results by getting that expertise and hit up to where they should be.  Remember, if you can't hit them, you can't hold them and all the other stats seem to become meaningless. If you are not where you should be with hit or expertise, always reforge haste or crit in to the needed stat as these are the last stats you will ever need to worry about.




Gems are also a wonderful tool that Blizzard has given us.  It really can make all the difference if you add the correct gems to your gear.  Gemming should be done in the following priority:

Expertise Soft-Cap, Agility, Stamina, Mastery, Crit, Haste.

You might notice that hit is missing.  You should, as a general rule, avoid gemming for hit.  You can get this through gear, enchants or reforging. People will argue with me on this order, and I'm ok with that.  Everyone is allowed to have an opinion.  However, this order is what I have found works the best as a priority list. Remember, if you can't hit them, you can't hold them.  Secondly, you will have good amounts of stam on your gear as is, getting your dodge rating up should be the highest next priority next to hit and expertise. You won't need huge amounts of health if the mobs can't hit you.

Now the biggest discussion is always "should I got for the socket bonus?".  The answer is yes.....and no.  Let me explain, deciding on if you should go for the socket bonus is entirely based on your stats and what you really need. For example, if you are wearing:


Cuirass of Calamitous Fate
Binds when picked up
Chest Leather
1282 Armor
+120 Agility
+180 Stamina
O Yellow Socket
O Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +12 Attack Power
Durability 165 / 165
Requires Level 80
Item Level 245
Equip: Increases your critical strike rating by 90 (1.96% @ L80).
Equip: Increases your haste rating by 90 (2.74% @ L80).


As a tank, you will most likely be able to make better use of this chest by tossing in agility and stamina gems.  You could toss in some multi stat gems to get the bonus, but to be honest the +12 attack power is just very much to make it very useful to a tank as opposed to the stats you'd get some solid color gems and forgetting about the bonus.

However, if you had:


Assassin's Chestplate
Binds when equipped
Chest Leather
1669 Armor
+321 Agility
+512 Stamina
O Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +10 Agility
Durability 165 / 165
Requires Level 85
Item Level 359
Equip: Increases your hit rating by 173 (1.44% @ L85).
Equip: Increases your critical strike rating by 243 (1.36% @ L85).


You will every definitely want to put in an agility gem or expertise gem to get this bonus.  The bonus is a sizable plus in a a key tanking stat that it is worth getting.

I hope this helps out and answers some question.  If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to comment on here and I will asnwer them very quickly.


Remember bears, keep up the good work!  We have to show these other tanking classes how it's done!

What we can expect at this point for feral druids in patch 4.2.

Well, it would seem that so far on the PTR, Blizzard likes us.  There are not to many changes for feral druids.  In fact, it seems that most of the feral changes are going to affect cats more then bears. The official patch notes for the PTR 4.2 state:

• Ferocious Bite damage has been increased by 15%. In addition, its base cost has been reduced to 25 energy and it can use up to 25 energy, for up to a 100% damage increase.

• Mangle (Cat) damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 530% weapon damage, up from 460%.

• Ravage damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 975% weapon damage, up from 850%.

• Shred damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 520% weapon damage, up from 450%.
• Frenzied Regeneration's health bonus is now reduced by 50%.

• Swipe (Cat) now deals 600% weapon damage at level 80 or higher, down from 670%.

• Glyph of Berserk duration increase is now 10 seconds, up from 5.

• Omen of Clarity clearcasting buff from now lasts 15 seconds, up from 8 seconds.

Look at these notes, the changes to Glyph of Berserk and Omen of Clarity are the only ones that really affect bears at all, and both of these are changes for the good. 

•  First, I know that I'm not the only one that feels that getting an extra 5 seconds to really pound on mobs with Mangle is a good thing. Mangle does large amounts of damage and when you use Berserk, you hit 3 targets instead of 1.  How can this be a bad thing?  No way I can see, lol.

• Second, the change to Omen of Clarity is a great one. Omen of Clarity reads:

Your damage spells and attacks have a small chance to cause you to enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the Mana, Rage or Energy cost of your next cast-time damaging or healing spell or offensive feral ability by 100%.

If specialized as a Feral Druid, Omen of Clarity will also have a chance to occur from your auto-attacks.

To add on to this timer is nothing short of awesome.  You now get more time to use this buff that makes your next attack cost no rage....ZERO!  I know that through my own experiences, it will in fact proc often from your auto attacks. Heck, I've had it proc just from changing in to bear form.  Come on, I get a free attack from the word go?  Thank you Blizzard, you must really like us, lol

The only changes that I am aware of that will be a change for some tanks is Blizzard making strength an undesired stat for us.  At the moment, 1 strength gives us 2 attack power.  This obviously has an advantage in threat since as you hit harder, you build more threat.  Blizzard wants us to focus more on stats like agility and get away form rolling on rings and other items that other tanking classes would use that have strength on them.  This is not a horrible thing they are doing.  Yes, some of us will be forced to make some changes in our gear, gems or enchants.  But with all the gear available in the game, and with the heads up you are getting now, you should b able to make yourself ready for the patch to hit.  The other is the changes to Frenzied Regeneration. Although this might seem like a large hit, but between glyphing in to it and the fact that it will still be a very viable resource in a pinch, I think that this will go almost completely unnoticed.

I'll keep you updated here on any ad all feral changes that come up on the PTR, until then...

Keep up the good work bears!  We gotta show those other tank classes how it's really done!