Level 70 Gearing Guide + Heroic / Kara Gear requirements

Feel free to add to this guide with your own class/race specific gear recommendations for level 70. I`ll be adding to this over time as well.

Level 70 Gearing Guide

Feral Druid

Bear Form

As a feral druid either having leatherworking or knowing someone who is a max leatherworker is extremelly beneficial to getting some early tanking blues. Which tanking blues you ask? The heavy clefthoof set which consists of leggings, chest and and boot pieces with good tanking bonuses all round.

- Heavy Clefthoof Vest
- Heavy Clefthoof Boots
- Heavy Clefthoof Leggings

With legs, chest, and boots out of the way that still leaves head, neck, shoulders, back, wrist, waist, both rings, both trinkets, weapon, and relic. Long way to go :p. But with those 3 should be your absolute first 3 you get before anything else.

Now some of the later parts require going into heroics to get so we`ll leave them till later. Next up we`ll tackle the neck piece. Now there are usually + stam necklaces on AH quite often, but you want the best that you can get outside of a heroic/kara raid to start with so the best starting item is the "Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve" which as the name suggests you get once you obtain max reputation with the shattered sun offensive faction.

- Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve

The above pendant gives you a huge stam bonus of 48 + adds to expertise and gains you access to another necklace which is good to have for early good cat form dps gear.

Now to tackle the first of the two rings. For a good starting tanking ring your best bet is in magisters terrace. The 2nd boss Vexallus drops the "band of determination".

- Band of Determination

This nifty little ring adds 35 to stamina, 17 to expertise and 252 to armor.

Now for the back. To get a good tanking cloak be sure to to drop down to The Mechanar. There Mechano-Lord Capacitus drops the "Thoriumweave Cloak".

- Thoriumweave Cloak

This cloak adds 35 to stamina and 390 to armor.

Now to get an alright trinket. If you go by the original entrance to the Alterac Valley battleground at 39,42 in the Alterac Mountains you`ll pickup a quest to go and find a flag within a harpie cave within the battleground. After completing this quest you will gain the Stormpike Insignia. Over time as your reputation with Stormpike improves come back to this cave entrance to receive the new version of the insignia. So why is this worth getting? For the +24 to dodge, 5 health per second and +10 to frost resistance that the final version of this trinket will give you. Excellent as a starting trinket to begin with.

- Stormpike Insignia Rank 6 (obtained at max rep with stormpike)

Now to tackle the head piece. I left this one until this point, because it takes a good while to get either the mats or sufficient money to obtain what is needed to make this from leatherworking. The best helm your going to get as a starting item is the "Cobrascale Hood".

- Cobrascale Hood

As you can see from the link this hood provides +42 to stamina, +37 to agility, +18 to hit rating and +74 to attack power. All of these together make this an awesome starting hood for both your cat form dps set, and your tanking sets. If you are a leatherworker than use a few spare heavy knothide leather to make a "heavy knothide armor kit" to add another +10 to stamina to it.

If you`ve been following this guide then you are now at the point where you can do heroics, though your best still on dps and not as a tank. Using this to your advantage drop by the heroic version of Blood Furnace to get the "Mantle of Shadowy Embrace".

- Mantle of Shadowy Embrace

Not only do these shoulders look awesome, they can be used in both your bear form tanking set, and in your cat form dps set which makes them a must have. These shoulders add +39 to agility, +33 to stamina, 262 to armor and +34 to attack power. A must have item. This item will last you a long time, even after you start raiding.

By this point you should have a maximum of 8 greens left. To take 3 of the final 8 out your best bet is to start hitting the battlegrounds to pick up the Guardian's Dragonhide belt, bracers and boots. Adding 3 good starting epics to your collection then can be used both in your cat form dps set and your bear form tanking set.

- Guardian's Dragonhide Bracers
- Guardian's Dragonhide Belt
- Guardian's Dragonhide Boots

For the final ring starter I suggest doing atleast one run of Karazhan even if its only for a few bosses to get your rep with the violet eye up. Through raising rep with them, you have the choice of many different rings. Choose the tanking one. At max rep with them you will obtain the "Violet Signet of the Great Protector".

- Violet Signet of the Great Protector

The final version at max rep adds +392 to armor, +37 to stamina and +19 to defence.

For a second trinket there are numerous quests that you should done along the way from Hellfire Penninsula onwards. There are several cases of blue +attack power trinkets given with them. As a starting point this is fine. Though getting the dps trinket from the Black Morass is much better. This trinket is called "The Hourglass of the Unraveller".

- The Hourglass of the Unraveller

This leaves you with 3 possible greens, everything else should now be either a blue or an epic. For an easy blue 2 handed feral druid weapon do the ring of blood questline in Nagrand that awards you with the "Staff of Beasts".

- The Staff of Beasts

This staff adds +31 to strength, +45 to stamina, +30 to agility and 375 to attack power in any form you are in other than elf form.

By this point your defence skill (read the later part of this bear form guide to why defence is important) should be around 375 if you`ve got all the previously mentioned items. Now to get it to the uncritable amount of 415 for a bearform druid. Heroics are your best friend here. Specifically though, doing heroics of the Coilfang instances (Slave Pens, Underbog, Steamvaults) which get you above and beyond 415 defence through the reputation gained with the Cenarion Expedition faction. At revered with them you will get the "Strength of the Untamed":

- Strength of the Untamed.

This necklace adds 27 to stamina, 19 to defence and 18 to dodge. So all in all very useful at this point.

At max rep with Cenarion Expedition you will gain access to "Earthwarden":

- Earthwarden

This 2 handed mace adds 500 to armor, 39 to stamina, 27 to defence, 24 to expertise and 712 to attack power in Cat, Bear, Dire Bear and Moonkin forms. By now you should be well and truelly beyond 415 defence and uncritable . By this point your one and only green should be the idol. No`one really bothers you if you have a green for this one so I leave what you get there totally upto you.

Its not essential, but if you want a good tanking blue idol item then I suggest doing heroic Underbog as the 1st boss Hungerfen drops the "Idol of Ursoc":

- Idol of Ursoc

If you keep a dps and tanking set (as any good feral druid should) hang onto whatever idol you had and keep this for your tanking set. It adds an extra 8 dmg to all laceration damage. Its not a major damage altering item, but it will lead to increased threat and overall damage, which is always better to have than not in tanking.

In either case by this point your now at the point where you can Off Tank in Karazhan and Main Tank in heroics. Improved gear to get you to the point where you can Main Tank in kara is only obtained via heavy raiding. Happy hunting .

Stat Expectations

Paste from a really good feral druid wiki guide:

Tanking Stats

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As a tank it's very important you have the proper gear for it. The more damage you take, the more healing you will require; the more mana a healer has to use on you, the faster they'll run out of mana, and once they're out of mana it's game over. Minimizing your damage intake via a combination of mitigation and avoidance should be your primary aim.

The first thing you want to attain as a druid tank is to "crit immunity". This means that critical hits are pushed off the attack table, meaning a mob will be unable to critically hit you, which is very desirable especially in heroic instances as well as raid content. To reach crit immunity you will need 475 defense skill. This is quite a lot. However Druids have a talent (Survival of the Fittest) that reduces the chance of being critically hit by 3%; if you have this talent you will only need 415 defense to reach crit immunity. If you have some resilience gear you will need less defense skill, but defense skill also grants dodge chance and chance to be missed. Level 70 mobs and bosses have a base crit chance of 5%. Most raid bosses are level 73 and thus have correspondingly higher critical chance, meaning you will need more crit avoidance to become immune. Monsters have a weaponskill of (5 * Level), giving a level 73 boss a weapon skill of 365, giving him 3 * 0,2 = 0,6% increased chance of getting a critical strike. Hence you need 5,6% reduced crit chance when tanking level 73 mobs/bosses. When you put your tanking gear together, make sure that together with the Survival of the Fittest talent and Defense and Resilience rating you end up with at least 5,6% less chance of being critted. This will make you immune to crits in PvE.

Now that you have made sure you can't be critted, you gotta make sure you take less damage from the normal hits. More armor is the key to that. The more armor you have, the less damage you will take. I suggest you get a minimum of 20k armor if you want to be serious in tanking heroics and starting Kara. More is always better until you reach what is known as the damage reduction cap - at 35,880 armor you will be unable to improve the level of damage mitigation you have.

Armor won't help you against spell damage however, so having a large pool of health points is also very desirable. It also gives your healers more room to heal, and a relaxed healer is a good healer. 12k HP is the recommended minimum for heroic instances or starting Kara. It can be done with less, but more health means your healers have lots of time to react, which is vital.

Besides being crit-immune, having alot of armor and health, you will also need to be able to avoid hits all together. It is nice that your armor will decrease the amount of damage you take, but it is still damage that your healers need to heal up. With enough dodge you can avoid melee damage to a certain degree. If you dodge a lot of attacks your healers will have to heal less, meaning their mana will last longer. The downside of high dodge is that you generate no rage from hits that you dode, and you can't maintain high threat with no rage. So if you dodge so many attacks that you don't have enugh rage to hold aggro on all the mobs, remove some dodge items and replace them with high stamina or armor items. If you have no problems with rage then more dodge is very welcome. 30% dodge is a good starting amount for Heroics and Kara. Agility should be your primary source of dodge. Even pure dodge rating provides less dodge than agility. Agility also increases your crit, which will increase your threat.

The above stats are primary to reduce the amount of damage you receive. In order to hold aggro and generate enough threat on all the mobs you are tanking, you will need to do damage to all the mobs. To do that you need some decent Attack Power and Crit. Crit also gives you additional rage if you got the Primal Fury talent. Both are aspects of druid tanking you shouldn't be neglecting. If you can't keep aggro on all the mobs while doing all the ability's described in the previouse sections you might need to hit harder (or your party/raid didn't do exactly as what you told them to do ). If it is the first, then you might need to get more items with Attack Power, Strength and/or Agility.

Heroic / Kara Gear Requirements

For the heroic / kara gear side of things it varies greatly depending on what role you`ll be fulfilling in the party or raid. If its a healer or tank you wish to fill, then you mustn`t have any greens on you at all and preferably a few epics.

For dps and other roles gear is alot more lenient and you can get away with having a few greens. Try not to have more than 2-3 before venturing into heroics however.

Thanks for guide

Thread updated

Not that I'm quite to 70 yet - but this is what I'm following for my protection warrior:

Yakra's Theories on Tanking

Its a wowhead forum post - so if you search for 'Pre-Kara Gear List' you'll get what you need - has some nice links to his character in the gear on www.warcrafter.net

The emphasis of all these pre-kara lists is that they are guaranteed items - either quest, crafted, badge or reputation rewards (with one PVP reward too). Also has a nice pre-heroic's list as well which I've already started on.