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Although it was hinted at, it wasn’t specifically articulated that I’m assuming you have access to Kara, but not necessarily to anything higher for these little guides.

I stopped in my last post I looked at necks, belts, bracers, and cloaks. This week I’ll look at other “non-core” items.

Rings:
In an environment where we don’t need defense rating, a lot of druids in who weren’t doing the big 25-man raids had to pass over the Ring of the Stalwart Defender for something with defense. Not anymore. It’s about the best tanking ring a Kara druid can obtain after 3.0.2 because it has dodge rating. On the other hand, most of the rings with high armor bonuses will still have defense on them. The Violet Signet of the Great Protector or any of the Violet Signets leading up to it all have defense. But they have a boatload of armor and stam too, which makes them worth keeping or pushing to get. Other useful rings: Band of Determination and Shermanar Great-Ring.

It should be no surprise that the best tanking trinkets for Druids will be Badge of Tenacity and Commendation of Kael’Thas. Moroes Lucky Pocket Watch will also remain very valuable. But you alchemist druids will want to drop your Guardian’s Alchemist Stone. Quite frankly, after the big three, right now you will want to focus on Stam on trinkets. Those of you who are close to getting a Darkmoon Faire card, should press to finish it. Engineers and jewelcrafters also have some good choices.

As far as I’m concerned, there was only one idol the Kara druid tank should have had before the patch, and only one after the patch: Idol of Terror. It doesn’t cost that many badges and it procs all the time, so it is invaluable to druids tanks (and kitties, for that matter).

The Kara level tank should also be looking to get his/her rep with Cenarion Expedition to exalted if it isn’t already. Earthwarden is likely the best tanking weapon you will find until you are well into the expansion. Staff of the Forest Lord has tons of stats on it, but at this point, if you aren’t completely decked out in badge gear for chest, legs, helm, hands, and shoulders, you probably need the armor more going into the expansion.

For core armor, you will find that T4 peices and badge pieces will still be what you are looking for as a non-25 man druid tank going into WOTLk. I fyou can get the 2 piece T4 bonus, it’s well worth keeping. (If you can somehow hitch along to Gruul’s with a larger guild or guild alliance, the 4 peice T4 bonus is well worth the effort).

We have seen the upcoming changes for druid tanking. There will be some fundamental changes to the way druid tanks do things. Amongst the biggest of them is how we gear. Defense is no longer at all necessary for the druid tank, with Survival of the Fittest offering a 6% crit reduction.

If you have moved past the Strength of the Clefthoof, this isn’t terribly likely to affect your core armor pieces (chest, legs, shoulders, helm, gloves).

However, the tanking druid often makes up his defense gap with extra armor slots, like cloak, waist, boots, trinkets, and rings. It’s time to reassess what you want out of these items. One assumption I’m going to make is that the average tanking druid is probably doing KZ, ZA, but not likely to be spending tons of time in high end 25-mans. Why am I making that assumption? Numbers, basically. About 90% of guilds are running KZ. Only about 30% are running SSC.

The way I see it, the most important stats for these items now will be armor (especially given that we are having to use rogue leather, bleah), Stamina, Agility, and Dodge Rating, with tertiary consideration given to Strength.

So, it’s time to look at what we might need to farm for best positioning ourselves in the new world of bear tanking.

I’ll start with necks. Under the current regime, necks are a great place to get some extra defense. Pick up a Necklace of the Juggernaut or a Barbed Choker of Discipline and the pre-SSC/TK druid tank was pretty well set.
After 3.0, we’ll want to be looking more towards Necklace of the Deep which is a crafted item from Jewelcrafters. On my server, it runs around 70-80g. That’s about the best we can get before going into the 25 man raids. It has two red gem sockets. With level 70 gear, you’ll probably want to go ahead and socket Agility gems. As you level, you might wish to replace those Agility gems with Strength gems.
If you simply can’t get your hands on a Necklace of the Deep, you will want to look to Karazhan and try to pick up either the Sabreclaw Talisman from the Shade of Aran or a Mithril Chain of Heroism from Chess. At that point, you are again looking at the Necklace of the Juggernaut or the Barbed Choker being your best options.

Turning to cloaks next, we are likely to see that Stam and Armor are our best bets for looking at cloaks. I know I was delighted to get my Slikk’s Cloak of Placation for my 30 badges. To be honest, it’s still pretty high on my list. It’s got a ton of armor and Stam with a healthy dose of Dodge rating. But the Thoriumweave Cloak from Mechano-lord Capicitus is nearly as good if you don’t want to spend badges. Maybe even better with all that extra armor. Another choice would be the Cloak of Blade Turning from Magister’s Terrace. Truth is, almost all the cloaks with armor on them also have either defense or resilience. But those are the three I think will be best in the new environment.

If you have your Guardians or Vindicator’s Dragonhide Bracers, at this point it doesn’t look like they are taking the huge armor nerf that the rest of our armor is. At least, it isn’t showing up on Wowhead as that at this point. That would certainly make those the best tanking bracers for a druid at this point. If you simply can’t stomach PvP, look to be the badge gear Band of the Swift Paw, for all of the huge armor nerf it’s taking, or the Bracers of Maliciousness from the Maiden.

Belts shouldn’t change much, as they weren’t really a source of defense. But the easiest one to get is still likely the Guardian’s Dragonhide Belt. which again, doesn’t seem to be getting the armor nerf at this point. Crafted items like the Belt of Natural Power will remain good, if nerfed. If you have the badges to spend but not the gold, the Waistguard of the Great Beast would be your next choice. And if none of those work for you, make a quick Chess run, hoping for the Girdle of Treachery!

I’ll look at rings, trinkets, and other useful items in another post.

on Tuesday Oct. 14th, as expected, I think will be going with this as my level 70 tanking spec. The only thing I’m really questioning is whether to move the two points in Brutal Impact into Primal Precision. Thing is, Primal Precision, for all the value expertise has to the druid tank, is really a cat talent. Whereas Brutal Impact, for all the value of the extended Pounce stun, is a tanking talent for dealing with casters.

We shall see. I’ve played with it a little bit on the PTR. I really need a gear reset. The problem is that I’m a tank. So I have a lot of defense gear. Well, defense gear is now pointless for a druid. I’m going to have to get several new enchants. I guess I’d better start doing (ugh) dailies…

I don’t have a beta key, but I have been on the PTR.

I have lots of thoughts on what’s there (I think Bears aren’t going to be wanted as tanks, Hunters will be thrilled with a month to play with before Wrath to get their devilsaurs and gorillas up to 70, And it’s going to take a month for Pallies to relearn their class). But I think I am noticing something that doesn’t have to do with any of the classes.

Does anyone else think they have started tweaking the graphics engine a bit on the PTR? Things look just enough different that I think they have. Not a ton. You won’t see eye blasting differences, but there are little things. Edges are a little more sharply defined. That sort of thing.

I’m suspecting there will be several larger changes to the graphics engine when the xpac comes out. But I think they are sneaking some smaller changes into 3.0

Most people have lives. I didn’t used to have a very busy one, but fate has intervened and I’m now doing something besides playing WoW 7 nights a week while the rest of my family watches television. Stuff that involves getting out of the house and such.

That doesn’t mean I’m not playing, WoW, however. Grobber, my dwarf hunter, dinged 70 last weekend! Woot, 4 70s!

And going through what I have enjoyed and not enjoyed lately, I have decided that my paladin is not going to be my sole leveling project next. The whole class is just kind of boring right now, so, instead, I will be spending a lot of time leveling my priest (who is now at 40) and some time on my rogue (who is at 38). I hope to get one of the two to 70 as well, probably the priest, so I have a healer.

I’ve also continued to stockpile herbs for leveling inscription, but I’m going to need more than I have now.

Monitoring the Beta stuff, druids tanks are less unhappy than they have been for a while with the feral tanking talents. But there is still a lot of issues with the itemization that Kaplan/Chilton have decided to screw us over with. And frost mages are really excited. Too bad I’m arcane. Warlocks are less than happy. However, hunters!!! BM Hunters are so delerious that as long as they don’t nerf rhino or devilsaur too much, I think they will pretty much go along with whatever.

The real impact that WOTLK is going to have, though, aside from not achieving their stated goal of having 4 tanking classes (bet you can’t guess which one I’m thinking is getting left out), is that they are making finding healers even more difficult. Healing is going to be retardedly difficult in WOTLK compared to TBC. And when you look at small guilds like mine that have been having healers leave left and right for something more fun, like stabbing themselves in the eye with ice picks, we are going to be suffering even more in WOTLK. The problem is that only about 1 in 90 million people actually thinks healing is fun. So both of the anomalies playing WoW are on other servers than mine and would be in a larger guild than mine. But i’m thinking small guilds are going to take a real hit for the next several months. Until someone gives in and rolls a healer. Which will drive them out of the game. It’s a vicious circle really. Se la vie. *don’t whine about my spelling of French phrases*