Emblem Gear for the New Level 80 Part 3: The Bear Tank

We have arrived to part 3 of the series about gearing up a new level 80 with nothing but Emblems of Triumph or lower.  This time, I'm gonna focus on my offspec, which is a feral bear tank.  A few notes before I start listing my gear choices.  First, I'm gonna keep listing hit as a stat, but hit is less important for a bear tank.  If you can get hit capped, great.  If not, it is fine, because you are doing so many actions so quickly that you will hold aggro.  The other place where hit would be important is your Growl taunt.  However, you should have Growl glyphed to always hit, so it makes it even less important.  I'm not wild about the Maul glyph, but I will get to that in a later post.  Second, the stats I will be listing at the end will be armor, stamina, agility, dodge rating, critical strike, expertise, and hit.  So with no further ado, let's get started with the list.

Head:  Hood of Lethal Intent - 75 Emblems of Triumph
Neck:  Shard of the Crystal Forest - 19 Emblems of Conquest = 19 Emblems of Triumph
Shoulder: Duskstalker Shoulderpads - 45 Emblems of Triumph
Back:  Platinum Mesh Cloak - 25 Emblems of Valor = 25 Emblems of Triumph
Chest:  Malfurion's Raiment's of Conquest - 50 Emblems of Triumph
Wrist:  Wristwraps of the Cutthroat - 60 Emblems of Valor = 60 Emblems of Triumph
Hands:  Malfurion's Handgrips of Conquest - 30 Emblems of Triumph
Waist:  Belt of the Twilight Assassin - 28 Emblems of Conquest = 28 Emblems of Triumph
Legs:  Furious Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards - 75 Emblems of Triumph
Feet:  Boots of Captain Ellis - 40 Emblems of Valor = 40 Emblems of Triumph
Ring 1:  Clutch of Fortification - 35 Emblems of Triumph
Ring 2:  Dexterous Brightstone Ring - 35 Emblems of Triumph
Trinket 1:  Glyph of Indomitability - 50 Emblems of Triumph
Trinket 2:  See Notes
Relic:  Idol of the Corruptor - 19 Emblems of Conquest = 19 Emblems of Triumph

A few notes on this list.  First, unlike the mage and moonkin, you noticed that I did not recommend the 4 piece tier 9 set.  Main reason is the 4 piece bonus, which is shortening the Barkskin cooldown by 12 seconds, does not do enough to pick it over the higher 245 items where available, mainly the head and shoulder slots.  Bear tanks look for 3 major stats, which are armor, stamina, and agility.  Having a smaller cooldown on something you use in emergency situations only is not entirely helpful.  Second, you will notice I went with the PvP legs.  They have the same gems and armor as the tier 9 legs, but they have +1 agility and + 18 stamina over the tier 9 legs.  Plus they have resilience, which although not as useful as it use to be for bear tanks, it still good.  Third, you noticed I left the second trinket out for a couple reasons.  One, there is no good second tanking trinket between 213 - 245 for emblems only for bears.  Second, and the bigger reason, is you should be farming regular ToC 5 man for The Black Heart, which is an absolutely incredible trinket and will likely only be replaced by either a Darkmoon Card: Greatness, a 10/25 man ToC tanking trinket, or an ICC tanking trinket.  Finally, you may have notice that I went with the 226 Idol of the Corruptor versus the 245 Idol of Mutilation.  The reason behind this choice is mostly thanks to Kalon at the Think Tank blog (see sidebar).  He ran the numbers between the two and determined that the Corruptor is actually better for tanking versus Mutilation and will only be replaced by the Tier 10 Idol, Idol of the Crying Moon.  

So what is the cost for all of these goodies. It is cheaper, at the cost of 586 Emblems of Triumph, than the mage or the moonkin.  What do you get for all this?  Here are  your base stats.  I tried to do the math to calculate how much armor you will have in dire bear form, but I will tell you I don't know how accurate I am.  So here is just the base stats of the gear.

Armor:  5954 (which by my terrible calculation and Excel skills comes up a little more than 28k armor in Dire Bear Form and appropriate talents and meta gems added in.)

Stamina:  1302

Agility: 738

Dodge Rating:  120

Critical Strike:  308

Expertise Rating:  57

Hit:  257

Resilience: 80

The tough thing in this list is the expertise.  The cap is 132 expertise rating if you are properly specced, but the ToC or lower gear does not have a lot of expertise rating.  Hopefully, you can find a staff with some expertise on it.  Until then, just be careful with threat generation.  Otherwise, you have a good amount of armor, good amount of stamina, and be almost hit capped with this gear without gems or enchants.  Also, remember the higher the critical strike rating, the higher change for Savage Defense to proc, which gives you more survivability.  Agility also helps with this rating as well as helping to increase  your dodge.

So we are done, we have reached the end of how to gear the new level 80 with emblem gear for three specs.  This series has been one of the tougher ones for me to write, but it has also been one of the most enjoyable.  Hopefully, you will get a chance this weekend to play with your alts and maybe get them closer to 80.