Nordh, who has sent in many pet feats, emailed me his wishlist for “easy to get” hunter tanking items. Of course, such items would focus primarily on hit, ap, stam. I started making my own list, and found alot of my choices on his list as well. My list focuses more on LW and Quest items because it fits my playstyle (at the moment) better, but a strong focus on Heroics is likely better for most players.
I am still debating on whether or not to make my own wishlist article for the site, and how to organize it if i do, so until I figure that out, I figured I would share with you what he sent me!
Chest – Polished Regimental Hauberk
Reputation Reward – Argent Crusade – Exalted
Boots – Pack-Ice Striders
Badge reward – 40x Emblem of Valor
Boots – Dragonstompers
Leatherworking – 35x Icy Dragonscale
Hands – Rusted-link spiky gauntlets
Naxx (10) – Faerlina
Hands – Gauntlets of the Plundering Geist
Ahn’kahet – Heroic – Prince Taldaram
Head – King Dred’s Helm
Drak’tharon Keep – Heroic – King Dred
Legs – Leggings of the Stone Halls
Halls of Stone – Heroic – Sjonnir
Shoulders – Massive Shoulders of the Jormungar
Utgarde Pinnacle – Heroic – Gortok
Waist – Vereesa’s Silver Chain Belt
Badge reward – 40x Emblem of Valor
Waist – Belt of Tasseled Lanterns (BoE)
Gundrak – Heroic – Trash mobs
Wrist – Interwoven Scale Bracers
The Nexus – Heroic – Keristrasza
Finger – Greatring of Collision
The Obsidian Sanctum (10) – Sartharion
Finger – Mobius Band
CoT – Stratholme – Heroic – Chrono-Lord Epoch
Cloak – Cloak of the Gushing Wound
The Violet Hold – Heroic – Erekem
Cloak – Ice Striker’s Cloak
Leatherworking
Trinkets – Jewelcrafting Figurines (JC only)
Let the Hunt begin!
I’ve run myself over to wowhead and looked for items myself. A great way to do it is to go to mail items, select a slot, then add a filter for stamina and have it sort by highest stam. It seems like once the arena gear comes out shortly it’ll be among the best pet tanking gear again, but an interesting alternative is the craftable Frost Resist gear. Its devoid of AP for our pets’ threat, but the chest has 169 stam and three gem sockets, so with an armor kit you can get a whopping 259 stamina out of a chest piece.
I’ll likely start pet tanking again soon, and I’ll be interested to see if threat is good enough that I can take purely stamina pieces like this.
By: Durante on December 11, 2008
at 10:27 am
Aye you can get crazy filters going on. After looking things over a bit, I’ve decided to go ahead and build a list, based on how you get the items, since everyone likes different aspects of the game.
Once the pvp gear comes out ill be looking into that too and probably write something up.
The frost resist peices will be great for magic encounters, im also looking into a complete frost set, unfortunately options are limited.
Threat is usually fine, but largely dependent on your group. Hopefully the incoming nerf doesnt hurt pet threat unduly =(
By: ihlos on December 11, 2008
at 11:05 am
It may hurt Scorpid threat with the decrease in Scorpid poison, but I think the 20% buff they’re giving to Growl should keep them from losing too much TPS from the damage nerfs.
By: Durante on December 11, 2008
at 2:08 pm
Yeah, which is why I’m not too worried. Lets hope the final version works out for pet tanking. I suppose i should do a pet focused analysis of the changes
By: ihlos on December 11, 2008
at 2:18 pm
I’m debating on how much merit my new pet tanking build has. it is a 48/0/23
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=cVbh0tgRwzheohZe00iooI
The bonus of it is that Stamina becomes the one stop shop for everything pet oriented. With 3/3 in Hunter vs. Wild you gain more pet attack power per point of stamina ~0.4 than AP 0.22, per stat allocation. Plus with this build you are to stack Stamina which will boost not only your pets DPS but also his HP. You gain massive amounts of pet AP with this build.
The downside is that the hunter himself will do quite a bit less damage, you won’t get to chose from the nice exotics out there, you lose some flat damage increases. 6%, cobra reflexes, Spiked collar.
The pet tanking build i have dreamed up for this build is:
http://www.wowhead.com/?petcalc=M00G0ru0bo
By: Zwicky on December 11, 2008
at 4:04 pm
I think your assesment of that build is correct. Your hunter’s dps will suffer but you will benefit more from you stamina. It would work for sure. Is it the best? I would have to test it to know for sure.
Your pet build looks good but personally I can’t tank without charge. I would take one out of pet barding to make up the point.
By: ihlos on December 11, 2008
at 4:15 pm
Gorilla AoE tanking will become slightly lower with the nerf, but with the buff to growl, I’m quite content with the changes. Nothing that really nerfed tanking that much, more like it buffed single target tanking I’d say. Even if they nerfed pet dps with 20%, growl would still be buffed more because of the growl talent.
Zwicky, it’s a really interesting build. The vs Wild talent is nice for pet tanking, but leaving out taunt and charge is something I’m not really comfortable with. Taunt has a bit too long cooldown, but it can definitely have its uses. And you’re nerfing growl with 10% with that build as well, meaning that even if you get more RAP for your growl, it might still be weaker, depending on how much RAP you had before. What’s the cap/border before growl scales away at level 80 anyway? BM/Surv can be a nice tank spec though, but I’d prefer getting attack power from Int in MM.
Do you know if the hit from Focused Aim gives the pet hit? I’ve seen people say both things.
I’d also take Imp res pet over focused fire any day. As a tank, having infinite combat resses is golden. 10 seconds means wipe, 4 seconds means you can still get in there, especially if you have taunt.
But if I were to take your build and change anything, it would be to remove the points in surv after Survivalist, and put them in MM to get RAP from int. You probably will get more RAP that way anyhow.
As for the list of gear, I’ve removed half of it already as I have that or better from raids =)
By: Nordh on December 11, 2008
at 11:28 pm