Druid Guardian Gear/Stats

[crowdx]

Hi all,
so I finally hit 90 and tried to do heroic brewery, got my A** handed to me. It seemed to me my tank was taking too much damage. I am at ilevel 432 ish and so wonder what I can do to push up my stats or gear a little higher.
Here is my character.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/uther/Ruthger/simple

[JohnGabriel]

Elitist jerks says for Guardians Agility>Dodge>Mastery>Crit>Haste>Expertise>Hit

I suppose reforging is a start, but that might be a very minor improvement. When boxing you usually have to out-gear the place by alot more, you have many greens.

[Lyonheart]

Apatheist (http://www.dual-boxing.com/members/57070-Apatheist) has cleared all heroics, might get some advice from him. I think he used a bear tank as well.

[Apatheist]

My Druid was in the bare minimum gear for heroics when first did Brewery and I barely noticed a difference between heroic and normal. Only reason I can think you'd be getting hit that hard is if you're not keeping Savage Defense up on cooldown. I have Savage Defense in my priority keymap so it casts immediately whenever I get 60 rage.

Stat priority is pretty much the same as it was in Cata. Dodge and Mastery are roughly equal. I reforge everything to mastery since I prefer guaranteed mitigation over a slight % increase in avoidance. If it already has mastery, I reforge the second stat to dodge.

You're also using DPS trinkets. Queue for Brewfest and pick up the stamina and dodge trinkets!

If you haven't done so already, take your healer to a reforger and reforge everything you can to spirit. Get spirit enchants/gems/food. Spirit is huge now, even more so than it was at the start of Cata. If you can boost your healers spirit by 1000+ through reforges, etc. you should see a big difference in how long you can spam before OOM-ing.

Also, set up click bars for all your DPS healing-type-abilities. Shamans have Healing Stream/Tide. Priests have VE. Rets have Selfless Healer/WoG, etc. You can save a lot of mana on your healer by using DPS cooldowns effectively.

[crowdx]

Well I reforged my Druid to mastery or dodge depending on what was available on the gear. With Shammy I also respecced as much as possible to spirit. On the second mob in the Brewery I still take too much damage for my resto shammy to keep him up. With the shammy I am basically spamming greater healing wave and have earth shield up on the tank. My tank macro is below.
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=combat Mangle,thrash, swipe, lacerate,mangle, lacerate, swipe, lacerate, mangle, lacerate,swipe
/cast Maul
/cast Savage Defense

[Ualaa]

What are the classes on the team?

Bear tank.
Shaman heals.
3x ?

[crowdx]

What are the classes on the team?

Bear tank.
Shaman heals.
3x ?

Bear with 4 Shamans. 3 ele, 1 Resto

[Apatheist]

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=combat Mangle,thrash, swipe, lacerate,mangle, lacerate, swipe, lacerate, mangle, lacerate,swipe
/cast Maul
/cast Savage Defense

That's the problem. Your Maul is using all your rage, so your SD is never (or rarely) firing. Take it out. I don't even have Maul on my action bar. It does terrible damage/threat and delays your dodge buff. I'm also pretty sure your Mangle will be sitting off cooldown for quite a while with that rotation. You shouldn't be using swipe at all for single target.

Rather than using a cast sequence, bind the abilities through ISBoxer. Every ability you have has a cooldown now, so you simply want to mash whatever is up - prioritizing Mangle and SD.

What I do is make two keymaps. First is a "priority" map set to "Pressed or Released". This has Mangle and SD in one step. Second keymap has two steps, first step references the Mangle / SD keymap, the second step spams the rest of my abilities (Thrash, FF, Lacerate). I have another keymap that replaces Lacerate with Swipe for AoE, but everything else is the same.

This way, your Mangle and SD always fire first and then it just cycles through whatever's off cooldown. Nothing is ever "waiting" to be used, as it sometimes is with a cast sequence. Added advantage to this is when you pop Berserk, it will spam Mangle (which your castsequence won't).

If you want to bother, you can also make a second identical keymap but replace SD with Frenzied Regen for bosses that only do magic damage, but it's not necessary, really.

Also, my Resto Shaman spams lightning bolt whenever he has no mouseover target to heal. Helps with your mana quite a lot and adds ~4-5k DPS to your group.

[Lyonheart]

Well I reforged my Druid to mastery or dodge depending on what was available on the gear. With Shammy I also respecced as much as possible to spirit. On the second mob in the Brewery I still take too much damage for my resto shammy to keep him up. With the shammy I am basically spamming greater healing wave and have earth shield up on the tank. My tank macro is below.
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=combat Mangle,thrash, swipe, lacerate,mangle, lacerate, swipe, lacerate, mangle, lacerate,swipe
/cast Maul
/cast Savage Defense

I found you really have to pay attention to the bosses breath and his whirl wind..also make sure your keeping the adds off your team, and boss away from your team. It takes some practice. Make sure you keep hammers and don't spam the hammer..it wastes it.. use it on groups of mobs and wait for them to land after you smash the hammer to smash it again!

I am using Paly tank btw..1 resto sham and 3 eles like you. Last boss is kicking my ass, so good luck on that one hehe

[Apatheist]

I posted a video HERE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvJKlpq1FS8&feature=plcp) showing how I handle the bunny boss. Drag all your toons to the top, run them across and position them at the opposite end of the room from where you enter. Tank the boss at the entrance and when he whirlwinds, let him get about half way towards your group and then taunt him back. He'll spend most of his whirlwind time travelling between your two stacks and doing no damage. The breath I just ignore, it does next to no damage and doesn't knock you around if your Shamans are backed up against the wall at the end.

Check your recount and see where most of your damage is coming from. The only real damage in that fight is if you're letting the bomb bunnies go off, which is easily avoidable by picking up hammers on your tank and smashing all the adds.

That video was made when I was in entry level gear, barely high enough to queue and you can see, with SD used on cooldown, my tank never goes below 75% and my healer spends most of his time casting LightningBolt.

[crowdx]

For setting priority roatations, how do I get ISBoxer to use Action Bar 4 or 5? I do not want it using 1 and 2 due to there are manual spells etc I use on those.

Btw, I took out maul and it does seem that damage has dropped quite a bit to my tank, GREAT Catch :)

[Apatheist]

ISBoxer doesn't recognize which action bars you're using, it just sends keystrokes. To use a different action bar, just change the keybinds on that action bar to something you wouldn't normally use. Since ISBoxer is sending the keystrokes for you, you can use binds like CTRL+Shift+Num1, etc.

The only bind that needs to be convenient is the one to execute the keymap.

[Ualaa]

You have two basic choices with IS Boxer.

You can have it output key combinations to the game.
And have your macro/ability on a button which has that combination as the hot key to activate.
http://isboxer.com/wiki/Key_mapping?useskin=chick/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin

Or you can have the macro reside within IS Boxer.
And have your mapped key do the macro itself, rather than send the key combination to the game.
http://isboxer.com/wiki/Named_World_of_Warcraft_Macro_Action

[olibri1]

I have cleared all heroics with a bear tank. As stated above, stop using Maul. Make sure to use SD when it falls off. That has an enormous impact on the damage you take. If you are finding that you don't have enough rage (after using Maul) pick up a little bit of hit and expertise.

[Lyonheart]

I posted a video HERE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvJKlpq1FS8&feature=plcp) showing how I handle the bunny boss. Drag all your toons to the top, run them across and position them at the opposite end of the room from where you enter. Tank the boss at the entrance and when he whirlwinds, let him get about half way towards your group and then taunt him back. He'll spend most of his whirlwind time travelling between your two stacks and doing no damage. The breath I just ignore, it does next to no damage and doesn't knock you around if your Shamans are backed up against the wall at the end.

Check your recount and see where most of your damage is coming from. The only real damage in that fight is if you're letting the bomb bunnies go off, which is easily avoidable by picking up hammers on your tank and smashing all the adds.

That video was made when I was in entry level gear, barely high enough to queue and you can see, with SD used on cooldown, my tank never goes below 75% and my healer spends most of his time casting LightningBolt.

I use your strat, however, the adds seems to run to my group, and when i go over there to smash them, he ends up doing his stupid whirlwind right then lol.

[crowdx]

What Shaman Macro are you using? I feel a little under powered with my Shamans. Are you using priority?

[Apatheist]

I use your strat, however, the adds seems to run to my group, and when i go over there to smash them, he ends up doing his stupid whirlwind right then lol.

Keep one of the hammer rabbits targeted as you run through and kill it before the boss pops out. That way you have a hammer ready to go as soon as the adds spawn. The only adds you really need to kill are the ones with the barrels, anyway. The rest really don't do anything.

I'm still amazed by how easy heroics this tier are. I hear challenge modes are - more of a challenge? Maybe that's the new format. Heroics are more like level 90 normal modes and challenge modes are the new heroics.

I took a week off work, which is why I managed to gear my Shamans so fast. Now I have to wait until my next rotation off before I can gear up the Paladins properly, then I'll have a go at harder stuff and post some more videos. I may even bother to edit them and upload some better quality ones this time. The others were just 5 minute lazy jobs to show positioning, mostly.