The latest in my series on pet tanking, this one covers gear and glyph choices. I keep a separate “tank set” of gear, and while it includes many pieces from my dps gear, I switch out about half of my gear since what is best for dps will not always be best for tanking.
Also, to remove some confusion we’ve had recently, this and other pet tanking articles written by me (Arth) are intended to prepare a hunter for tanking heroic difficulty 5-man instances in Northrend. These may work fine as leveling or occasionally soloing guides, but that is not their intended purpose.
Major Glyphs
Glyph of Bestial Wrath – A ton of pet dps comes from BW. Reducing the cooldown on it is a must.
Glyph of Mending – More useful for soloing, since you’re the only healer. But also nice to have as a supplement to a healer.
Glyph of the Beast – Increases attack power gained from Aspect of the Beast by 2%. It might not seem like the best glyph, until you realize that literally no other major glyph will affect pet dps or health substantially.
Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Mend Pet – Increasing your pet’s happiness with heals removes the need for pet food and keeps them doing max damage.
Glyph of Possessed Strength – You don’t want to possess your pet often, because without hunter dps you won’t be regaining focus fast enough to maintain maximum pet damage. But on those rare occasions where you need to maneuver a boss manually with your pet, the extra 50% pet dps boost this glyph provides is welcome. I possess my pet briefly on Ingvar in UK, for example, to face him away from the group.
Glyph of Revive Pet – If you do have to emergency rez pet mid-fight, this could help get it off a bit faster.
I. Gear Overview
Six stats transfer, either partially or entirely, from your personal stats to your pet: Armor, Stamina, Attack Power, Hit Rating, Resilience, and Resistances. For exact transfer rates you can see the WHU Conversion Guide.
1. You’ll want to be at the hit cap before anything else, either through gear, gems, or spec. Remember, 6% is the hit cap for heroics, 8% for raids.
2. Next you’ll want to make your pet crit immune. After pet talents, that means you (the hunter) will need 132 reslience to make your pet crit immune.
3. Mail armor should usually be valued above Leather armor, due to its far higher armor value.
4. Once you are sufficiently geared and spec’d for hit, your remaining concern is stamina and attack power. Gems help, and some gear choices which would be better for overall dps in MM or SV will be far worse for tanking. Whether you want to lean more toward AP or Stam will depend largely on what is more difficult for you in instances: threat or health.
4. Crit rating will contribute indirectly to pet dps in the form our pet’s focus regeneration, making it the only other relevant stat to consider. However, it isn’t important enough to weight it above the other transferring stats. Use crit as a tiebreaker between similar pieces, but don’t plan your gear around it.
II. Tier Sets
Tier 5 is popular for soloing because of the extra heals it gives you. But that’s what your healer is for while you’re tanking, and you’re also sacrificing a lot of threat. Possibly useful in a pinch, but I wouldn’t recommend regular use of it.
So my only recommendation is the two-piece tier 7 set bonus, which gives your pet 5% additional damage.
http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=-25
III. Staffs
You’ll probably want a staff or polearm that’s intended for a feral druid. Why? Most are heavy in stamina and attack power, and a lot of them also have armor values. Some examples:
As of 3.2, this will be our BiS tanking weapon:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=48517
The stam and AP are epic, the gems slots are great, and the crit rating is nice as well. There are also identcal sword and axe companions to this staff: http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=48402 and http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=48406
Some other good staffs/polearms:
Grobbulus (25M): http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40280
Heigan (10M): http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39255
Argent Tourney Tokens: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45212
IV. Headpiece
Don’t use your raid dps helm. Get a PvP helmet to convert into a tank piece for increased stamina, or use an older helm. Our typical dps meta gem (Relentless Earthsiege) doesn’t help our pet nearly as much as it could. You’ll need to use a different meta gem (Austere Earthsiege Diamond).
V. Miscellaneous Pieces
Beast Tamer’s Shoulders might be the single best piece we can get for tanking.
The benefits are obvious, and it is a perfect example of the difference between tank gear and raid gear. My guess is that it would kick ass for soloing as well, but that’s more Frost’s realm than my own. It drops from the third boss in Hyjal Summit, a level-70 raid. It can be comfortably 10-manned at 80 with a well-geared group, or 15-manned in a typical PUG.
Beastmaster Set:
The Beastmaster Set looks like it has a lot of awesome pet bonuses; however, you just have to sacrifice too many stats to get the bonuses that you need. In the end this difficult to aquire lvl 60 set is not worth it.
-Arth
Just realized that this is titled “Gear & Chants,” but covers gear and glyphs. My bad. Enchants & Gems will likely be a future installment anyway. Maybe I’ll name it “Glyphs” to balance things out.
I like what your doing here. I secretly wish Blizzard would drop beast mastery as a third damage spec, and make it more of a tanking tree. With the new mount system in WotLK, it would be fun to hop on your pet and ride him into battle tanking.
Back on subject, though, this post covers alot of my remaining questions about pet tanking. A little more help from Blizz (more stat transfers, more threat skills) and pet tanking could really start to be taken seriously.
Any thoughts on http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31328 ? I used to look at those pre LK and think “if only they were useful for something”.
I saw those but chose not to include them. Unfortunately, the stat buffs aren’t much larger than what you’d get from a regular raid piece (for example, t7 chanted and gemmed for tanking). They just look sexier because it’s wrapped in the words “increases your pet’s…” That particular piece is also crazy-hard to farm, as it doesn’t drop from any particular boss, and tops out at 0.6% drop rate from a mob in a 40-man Outlands raid (Serpentshrine). Not one that can be actively worked toward like the others.
I also had the time this weekend to confirm that the Beastmaster set I linked is also not going to be worth your while. The gear is just too old, and the stats too low, for the pet buffs to make up the difference. Only the armor one comes close, since there’s actually a substantial armor boost, but it sacrifices too much stamina. The Hyjal shoulders, however, remain excellent.
Pet tanking will never be taken very seriously. But by taking it seriously ourselves, we can contribute to our guilds, have some fun, and probably gain quite a bit of respect.
Aaaand a thanks to Frost for reading comments diligently and updating the blog title.
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Betty
http://smallpet.info
Hm. Seems like advertisement spam to me there Betty. I’ve seen similar throwaway posts followed by an unrelated link before in internet forums/blogs…it’s rarely someone actually interested in the material. I hope that’s not the case.
Might have to keep an eye out for this sort of thing, Frost/Arust. I’m guessing you can edit comments if it becomes an issue. The good news is that maybe the WHU is getting enough hits to attract such attention. A mixed blessing, granted, but not a bad sign.
Stealing internet at work since mine is down =(. Lot of catching up on some great material here! The only question I have is: Do you find the situational need of the EotB Glyph greater than the benefit of Mend Pet? I have just grown so accustomed to recover quickly from a revive that would be sad to lose it. I can only assume I being lazy and silly, but wanted to ask nonetheless.
I’m not sure I understand your question Jhenson. With the glyphs, it’s possible to have both the Mend Pet boost and the EotB boost. So I don’t know which has the greater benefit, but we need not choose between them.
I think I am just a dork and forgot I could sub away revive pet instead of EotB. Nevermind, I’m good
.
Couple updates on gear. One, this drops from the new ToC instance (regular difficulty):
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47216
The proc for the armor is unfortunate, but it’s still a truckload of stamina. And farming regular ToC isn’t terribly hard these days. Finding a group with a tank that already has it (or better trinks) may be tougher.
Speaking of trinks: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40431
…a mainstay of dps anyway. If you have it from OS25, consider yourself lucky. It’s probably the best pure AP trinket available. The Mirror of Truth, for example, is about the same for dps. But it isn’t steady AP for your pet. And we’re not looking for “burst” threat, which it would provide, but sustained threat.
I have neither. Go f-ing figure. But I’m working on it.
Just out of curiousity, wouldn’t you rather have Glyph of Feign Death over Glyph of Possessed Strength? I would think a shorter cool down on FD would be more valuable over all in comparison to Possessed Strength
You should never really be pulling aggro off of your pet. In fact, when I’m tanking it’s almost impossible for me to do. It only happens when I accidentally leave Cower on or something, and even then it’s tough. FD glyph is a wonderful minor glyph for a raid dps spec. But not for tanking.
Sounds good. I’m anxious to try it out.
um t9 set seems to give way bigger boosts and u can farm emblems for it compared to t7 also t9 gives way more stam and more armor pen as well as crit and some hit and also more gem slots
dwayne – Everything you said is true, but we’re talking about pet tanking here. Stats like armor pen. are worthless for tanking because it only helps you, not your pet. And the slight stat increase doesn’t make up for the 5% dmg. boost your pet gets with the t7 bonus.
Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with t9 for tanking. The extra Serpent Sting crits from the t9 bonus can contribute toward our pet’s focus (because of Go For the Throat). And a 2-piece t10 will also help with tanking, even more so than t9. Just don’t replace t7 for them.
My god…this page I have bookmarked, it’s now my bible!!
It would be better to use Glyph of Feign Death instead of Glyph of Possessed Strength. It decreases the cd of your FD by 5 secs and on a 5 min fight that’s nearly 2 Feign Deaths.
Oxym – Feign Death should never need to be used when you’re tanking. Currently I can’t come close to my pet’s threat even if I remove MD and cooldowns. The only times I’ve had to use it are when I forget to hit MD before a pull, and even then there’s no benefit to a reduced cooldown, since one FD is enough.
I’ll be honest and say that the Possessed Strength glyph is pretty much useless as well, but so is FD in a BM tanking spec. So if you’d rather have it, go for it. But it’s not a necessity.
Set your life more easy get the business loans and all you need.
Hey, I’ve been reading your forums for a little bit now. I agree and support just about everything you say and i’m impressed with what you’ve done. I personally made a spreadsheet myself. The t7 2 set bonus of the 5% increased pet damage is now becoming less and less important as we are obtaining better gear. The t10 2 set bonus of the chance to increase your pet’s attack power has proven to end up about 3% more damage overall. If we are talking t9 though, i would say that the t7 is prevalent. The stats on the t7 just nerf your stam and AP as others have said. Just a thought. Thanks
Be careful with spreadsheets. What they won’t tell you is that the t10 procs are inconsistent. I’m happy to know I’ll be getting a slightly lower buff, rather than crossing my fingers for some good RNG numbers on a slightly better one. Also, these guides were originally written for heroic tanking. And in heroic tanking, the tough pulls are trash pulls, where you often will never have Serpent Sting up, so a 4-piece t10 bonus will never proc.
All that said, for 90% of my tanking I use two pieces of BOTH t10 and t7.
Ah, but I can see the confusion, since t10 isn’t listed in the guide. This was written well before ICC was out, so there was no t10 bonus to consider.
In any case, I think we’re pretty much in agreement Huffle. I stand by t7 though. Less important than it once was, yes, and it will eventually become irrelevant, but 5% pet damage is still worth a lot of AP, since it doesn’t transfer in full to our pets.
If you’re using two pieces of t10 and two pieces of t7, how do you get your resil? Other pieces of PVP gear?
Pretty much, yeah. We only need 132 resilience to d-cap our pets. That’s like 3 pieces these days with the ilvl 264 honor gear we can buy. And a lot of my stamina comes from trinkets and gemming. So I’m actually mixing a fair amount of raid gear into the other slots.
How up-to-date is the gear in here? Ive convince my guild to let me have a go at this and would like to be sure im still heading for the right gear.
I wanted to try using my bear spec as you suggested in you best pet tank spec to try to tank sin. I’ll be in BM spec and I speced like you suggested for the best tank spec. I was wondering if it was a bad thing to just wear my pvp gear, I have practically every wrathful piece i can get fromstrictly honor points, and I am 2 out of 5 wrathful for the set bonus with the other 3 pieces relentless. I figured all the stamina I get from the pvp gear would benefit the bear and make the healers job easier. I am hit capped and all my sockets are gemmed for +40ap. Any recommendations,should I fair ok using that gear or go with the t7 set. Oh and i forgot to mention there will be two hunters in the group for MD’s.
There’s no hard answer to that Nygma. It’s whatever you need with the group you have. I ditched my t7 for Sindy, but we had 3 hunters. So…maybe? Just have all of it on you when you attempt the fight, and be ready to switch between attempts. My gut tells me you won’t need the t7, but it’s just a guess.
Also, croc, turtle, or possibly worm (in some groups) are a better pet option for that fight. A bear’s fine, but you can do better. I’d also recommend tanking something before Sindy (unless you already have). Good luck and have fun, but it’s a helluva fight to make your first as a tank.
What are your stats for holding aggro? I’m usualy finding a problem of my pet not being able to hold decent aggro without sacrificing some stam in the process. I’m trying to find a good balance but it varies for each boss.
Right now I’m only 2 manning old instances like AQ 40 and MC. Kara and ZA in BC content and H BC raids. But my friend is a enhance/resto sham. We like to clear efficently but sometimes his malestrom stack healing in enhance isnt good enough/ my pet cant hold aggro off of ether of us if its more then 3.
I’ve kinda looked around and tried a bunch of pets but untill cata I’m stuck with only one pet tank slot open. (Too many spirit beats/Surv pet for raiding)
But again its situational. He can’t be too squishy and has to hold aggro. The line between the two is so hard to find sometimes!
Tsubaki – There’s no quick answer to more threat other than stacking more attack power. Make sure you’re using the recommended pet and hunter specs for tanking, located in my other articles: http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/category/pet-tanking/
The lone alarming thing about your comments is that you sometimes pull too. In a BM spec, with Misdirection and Feign Death, you should never pull from your pet. If necessary, make a kill sequence for yourself during pulls so that you’re not focusing on a different target than your pet.
And if you only have one stable slot and have aggro issues, make sure that one slot holds a croc. Good luck!
I’ve picked up a pretty green croc and trained it. Testing him this week has brought mixed results. I’m going to take a chunk of stam out and stack some straight AP and try it then. He is rarely in AQ 40 or MC low on health so I think I’ll just have to stack more AP. (which is probably a good thing. I put some tanks in my randoms to shame with 33k health)
For some reason (I thought was a feature in the game to just mess with me while doing group quests) I randomly get 100% aggro still. Just auto attacking. I’m guessing it was a taunt miss. Which suprised me with over 7% hit rate and it being a 60 raid. Didn’t think I would have a problem with it. But I’ll have to step it up to at least 8% as well.
What would you suggest for trinkets? I finally got my hands on a Black Heart. And I hop between the 264 war token and grim toll(for more hit). My guess would be the gossomer 111 stam trink from H AN. or wait around for the brewfest… since I deleted all my brews last year :d
For old 40M’s you may need 8%. I’m not sure sure how it works. Taunt should be a last resort though, not something you rely on for aggro. Frequent MDs, attack power stacking, spec into MM for Go For the Throat, focus on the same target as your pet, etc.
Black Heart is a great trinket. Only Brewfest and the 264 stam. trinket are easily attainable and better. Both my trinkets are stam. but Stam. or AP is fine depending on need. Sounds like you don’t need much more hit. I’d gem for it to 8% if anything. If you’re already at 7%, most of a trinket’s hit will be going to waste.