Not so unbalanced bear tank on Thorim?


I have been thinking a bit today, and I hope that some of my readers that are more into theorycrafting than me could correct me on this one…

I was thinking about Thorim’s Unbalancing Strike ability, which reduces the defense skill of the affected target by 200, making them crittable.
At first I was thinking about how high his crit chance would become when the tank got that debuff, and, if the math is the same as with defense above 400, this is what I calculated:

According to wowwiki, 1 point of defense skill reduces the chance to be critically hit by 0.04%, so
200*0.04%=8%

What now if the tank somehow manages to overcome that 8% gap?
(This mainly applies to druids, I don’t think the other 3 tanking classes would have any chance of gaining an additional 984 defense rating)
For druids, we must somehow get 7.6% less chance to be crit, which is basically 623.2 resilience rating, and that should be fairly easy when thinking that our 3.1 BiS tanking gear might probably be the S6 stuff.
Basically, I was thinking that it might be possible to tank Thorim with just one tank without having to rely on taunting the boss, which would allow the other tanks to do a bit more damage (switching forms, stances, or presence) and therefore beating him more easily.

I came upon this idea after thinking that a feral druid might use glyphed Barkskin to survive being hit by the Unbalancing Strike, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to find any information on the cooldown of that ability, so barkskin might not be ready every time one might need it…

Comments and corrections are appreciated.

4 Responses to “Not so unbalanced bear tank on Thorim?”

  1. Gingershnaps Says:

    I had been doing this exact same thinking last Friday. The idea came to me when I was checking out PVP gear for my feral since it does seem BiS for tanking. I’m glad I’m not the only one with this crazy idea. 🙂

    I think it is quite possible to achieve this using PVP gear and some defense/resilience enchants. I just started building a pvp set this weekend (hooray for having 150 Emblems of Valor to burn!)and I’m already up to 400 resilience.

    I’m wondering if we’ll get hit with the nerf stick though if we become the best possible tank for that boss by a large margin. Here’s hoping not!

    btw Eglador, on Flyv’s site you wrote:

    “This is huge for soloing ferals. Every day I switch my spec to tanking so I can solo Threat from the Sky, but it takes me forever to get my mana back to shift into bear even when I pop Innervate on myself. Now I can do it pretty much instantly.”

    I’ve found that you can shift to bear first and then switch your spec. You can do the spec switch while in forms so you don’t have to wait for the mana.

  2. Gingershnaps Says:

    wish I’d thought of this before I posted so I wouldn’t have to reply again right after the first one. As a follow up to the resilience idea, you can also reduce the resilience requirement by getting jewelry with defense rating like these two trinkets:

    Seal of the Pantheon
    http://www.wowhead.com/?item=36993
    Gives 65 defense rating so you only need 580 resilience in addition to it. It’s easy to farm since it’s from a normal mode 5 man.

    Repelling Charge
    http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39292
    Gives 84 defense rating so you only need 568 resilience in addition to it. It comes from normal mode Thaddius though it only has an 8% drop rate.

    my math might be a little off (not good with math) but it’s pretty close I think 🙂

  3. Eglador Says:

    First: thanks for your comments! 😀
    Second: Changing talents in forms removes LotP, and I rarely solo elites without using iLotP, that’s why I have to get back mana for switching into bear form.
    Edit: That comment on Flyv’s blog wasn’t from me, although I might have written the same 😀

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