After giving Rython a chance to expand my (and hopefully your) knowledge of tank prep, I got to thinking, “Who else could I tap with extensive raid knowledge?” ideally to pump them mercilessly for information and gleefully pass it along to you. Soulecho came to mind immediately. In BC Rython and Soulecho were the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid of tanking. No, no the metaphor works I swear! Two tanks holding up a boss, keeping him busy while the rest of us (the Wild Bunch) loot to our hearts content. (Or am I the only one that sees raiding as a western?)…
Where was I? Oh yes! Soulecho has been a fuzzy tank since I started raiding with my hunter in BC and he still does OT duty come Lich King. So with all this bear experience who better to give aspiring fuzzy tanks some tips and hints along the way?
Do you know who Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are? And if so which would you be?
I’d like to be Butch, but the way raid leaders treat me as primarily as an OT all the time, although I have Mt capability, I’d say I’m the Sundance Kid atm.
I know that the mechanics for bear tanking works different from say Warrior or Pally tanking. What would you say is one of the biggest misconceptions you find about bear tanks?
The first is in alignment with my entering statement, that we can’t be Main tanks. The idea that most fights have to be done by warrior, pallies, or even now dk’s is ridiculous. I know most bear tanks, which are good at what they do, are very good and have the capability, given the place and time to do it, are main tanks. Really that’s the one that comes to my head at the moment when it comes to misconceptions
I hear a lot of new bears talking about how they are ready to tank because of their huge health pool, but is that all there is to it?
Health is a big part of it, but I find the idea of bears stacking 24 stamina gems into all of their slots, a very bad move. Mainly because druid tanks are not only about health, they are about health, dodge, and armor. So if you avoid putting any dodge or agility on and in anything you lose a vital part of what bear tanking is and will be vulnerable to taking more damage. Because no matter how much health you have, if you have no dodge or armor you will die super fast.
For that new to 80 bear just now looking to heroics how do you start weighting your stats?
The main stats as a tanking spec to worry about are stamina, agility, armor and dodge. Now dodge comes with a lot of agility as well as armor. You want to build these all respectively while gearing up. But once you feel comfortable with a good enough dodge and armor check, then good idea to build into health
What are your go to abilities/talents? Is there an ‘OH SHIT!’ one, or one to pull it out of the fire?
My “oh shit” abilities are frenzied regeneration + survival of the fittest. With these two combined I get a big boost in health plus a boost form healing cause of my frenzy glyph
Is there an ability lot of people over look that you find is a gem?
Barkskin end of story
Take on upcoming 3.10 patch changes?
Well so far the only druid change is a big one, and currently I don’t like the idea one bit. I mean a temporarily shield that takes one hit then we go back to normal, plus having lower overall armor to somehow compensate for giving us a damage shield. It’s blizzards version of trying to fix things. But as usual they fail at most things
Best advice for new Bears?
Don’t do more than you can handle, start light, and build up. When wrath came out I was stuck dpsing for a while because the gear I had from BT and Hyjal didn’t scale for shit so I had to back off and chill out a bit until I build up again. Now I’m on top of the world once more.
Summarized: Use BARKSKIN! Start slow and build your tank gear, keep your stats balanced between health, dodge/agility, and armor, and last but not least always remember to…have fun! (Ok I added that last one but come on!)
Lenelie's Voice 
nice news 🙂