Bear tank build

[Trien]

While tanking a boss add, maybe, if you have a lot of health.

Still probably not a good idea:)With the time it takes to shift out, throw the innervate, and get back into bear, adding network lag into the factor...

For the majority of situations, it is quite true that warriors will end up as MT. They're designed for it, the class has the skills for it, and as many have noted and worked out, overall mitigation is better for a warrior than for a druid. It is quite uncommon for a raid to have started with and stuck with a druid MT, but not unheard of either. With everyone rolling alternate characters these days, the picture may be slightly different, but typically... you're short healers:). So, guess what the druid is often called upon to do.

one with equivalent gear (a major caveat given the rarity of Druid tanking items).

With my own druid, I've tried to have an all-around mentality, but a lot of druids which I know have pretty much specialized in healing and not much else... namely due to the nature of raid makeup and all. I've got gear for healing, bear tanking, and cat DPS, and even though the majority of the time I do end up healing, I have everything ready to swap into the other role (hence why I run around with 6 free bag slots:P)... with the usual druid caveat/complaint about not being able to switch the gear to fit the role mid-battle of course. The druid who does this seems to be an uncommon thing though, at least among the ones I know. But my recommendation as a druid is to take the time to gather this gear, and play with all the different roles. That's why I find the druid so much fun: despite being a 'lesser' version of the 'pure' classes, it's nice to be able to switch around.

It's been a long time since my druid stepped into MC, but I was probably at a good 9000 AC at that point; would have been more so if I had done enchanting to get my Smoking Heart of the Mountain and managed to scrounge a group together to summon the LBRS guy for some Slaghide Gauntlets. These days I can hit some 14000 AC (no thick hide), though my preference is for somewhere in the 13000's but which gives me a good chunk more health (+22 sta from Dragon's Blood Cape [116AC] vs none from Cloak of Warding [214AC]), since as mentioned one advantage of the bear tank is the possibility to have a huge HP sink. We were working our way through Naxx last week and for kicks decided to throw ourselves at Patchwerk. With full raid buffs, no flasks or other items other than a +8 sta well fed from some food someone happened to have brought along (please also see discussion about advantage of Paladin BoK:)), and missing a health enchant on my tanking legs which I hadn't managed to afford yet, I was sitting at some 9000-some HP and about 13500AC. Granted this is with some of the nicest (though not all... there's still stuff on my wishlist) druid tanking gear you can pick up. It's something I've worked on throughout my druid career, even despite being healer 99% of the time, to be ready for when I need to do something else, and I can probably comfortably tank much of what's out there (resistance sets are something I'm lacking in). Though admittedly, being an avid PvPer is a large part of it, as my PvP gear is a hybrid of everything, healing gear for mana pool, AP gear for damage, and tanking gear to survive the ever harder hitting warriors and rogues.