Shifting Perspectives: Yummy treats for bears to eat
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week John Patricelli, the Big Bear Butt Blogger, brings you some choice tidbits of knowledge on level 70 consumables for the beary furry crowd.
We’ve talked about the gear you can get to build your tanking wow gold set up to Karazhan, but to actually tank in a raid, you need to bring along plenty of tasty consumables to buff you up to tip-top shape. And that’s what we’re going to cover today.
There are four basic types of consumables you can have active buffs from.
You can have active at one time;
-
Flask or Elixir buffs (One Flask, or One Guardian and One Battle Elixir effect)
-
Multiple scroll buffs (as long as the buffs do not overlap with player spell casting)
- One Weapon buff
- One food buff
Also, there are tons of potions and items that can be darn handy to use in the middle of a fight, especially when things are looking their bleakest, and with the changes to how Druids shift forms in Patch 2.3, there are some very simple macros that you can use to make your own ‘oh no!’ buttons. Use at your own risk!
What will help you in your fight is situational, but knowing what you have to choose from can make creating your own shopping list a lot easier.
Hopefully, this post will help you plan ahead!
As a bear tank, the benefits you are looking for most are agility for increased dodge, damage reduction, and increased health. If you can get all that, then a little boosted damage for added threat generation is a nice bonus.
Which buffs you want at any given time will vary depending on your wow power leveling current raid targets, but there are plenty of different options to choose from.
Flasks
Only one can be active, counts as both a Guardian and a Battle Elixir, lasts for 2 hours. Effects persist through death.
- Flask of Chromatic Wonder - +35 Magical Resistance to all schools, increase all stats by +18.
- Flask of Fortification - +500 Health added to maximum, +10 Defense Rating.
- Flask of the Titans - +400 Health added to maximum.
If you are going to be learning a new encounter and can reasonably expect several deaths, than using a Flask of Fortification or a Flask of Chromatic Wonder may be a very cost effective choice. The Flask of Chromatic Wonder, in particular, is extremely well rounded for bear tanks, as one of our greatest vulnerabilities is to magic damage, plus it increases our Agility and Stamina by 18 each.
However, the boost you receive from either Flask does not, in my opinion, provide greater benefits than using a Battle and Guardian Elixir in combination. Plus, as a wow leveling tanking bear, you should already have your Defense Rating maxed out to be uncrittable, so the extra +10 Defense Rating from the Flask of Fortification is, technically, irrelevant.
There are other raiding Flasks available, Flasks that can only be used in certain zones or areas. These are designed as cheaper alternatives for guild that are steadily working on progression past Karazhan.
Shattrath Flasks
The Shattrath Flask of Fortification and Shattrath Flask of Relentless Assault are BoP from vendors in the two Shattrath banks, and cost one Mark of the Illidari each. A player must be exalted with The Sha’tar, Cenarion Expedition, and either Aldor or Scryers to interact with the vendors.
Marks of the Illidari drop from trash mobs in Tempest Keep, Serpentshrine Cavern, Mount Hyjal and Black Temple. The Shattrath Flasks may only be used in these zones.
As you have to use Marks of the Illidari to purchase these Flasks, and bear tanks get limited utility from Shattrath Flasks of Fortification, it is my opinion that the Marks should be saved for Flasks that have more of their utility applied to other classes, such as the Shattrath Flask of Pure Death for example. Your Guild’s rate of progression and frequency of obtaining Marks may cause them to be cheap enough for all your classes to use. If you are using Flasks due to learning new content, however, I suggest you rely on the Flask of Chromatic Wonder instead.
Unstable Flasks
Unstable Flasks can be used in Gruul’s Lair and the Blade’s Edge Mountain plateaus only.
There are two varieties of Unstable Flasks.
The easiest Unstable Flasks to purchase can be obtained from the Crystalforges in Blades Edge Plateau areas.
-
Unstable Flasks of the Sorcerer can be purchased at any time from the Bash’ir Crystalforge in the northern plateau area.
-
Unstable Flasks of the Beast can be purchased at any time from the Fel Crystalforge objects in the western plateau’s demon camps.
The other, more difficult to obtain Unstable Flasks are sold by the Aether-tech Assistant vendor, who only appears during a scripted attack just west of Felstorm Point in Blade’s Edge. The attack begins every even-numbered hour according to server time. Players must hold off the attack for a series of vendors to spawn. The Flask vendor is the first one to appear, FFXI Gil and sells;
-
Unstable Flask of the Bandit
-
Unstable Flask of the Elder
-
Unstable Flask of the Physician
-
Unstable Flask of the Soldier
All Unstable Flasks cost 10 Apexis Shards each. The Apexis Shards drop from plateau mobs and can be obtained by completing daily quests for the Skyguard and Ogri’la on the western plateau.
Unlike the Shattrath Flask of Fortification, the Unstable Flask of the Beast and Unstable Flask of the Bandit are highly useful to bear tanks, providing a solid Agility boost coupled with a good Health increase, and boosting your attack power a bit for a nice icing on the cake.
The Unstable Flask of the Beast is ridiculously easy to obtain in large quantities, and if you are frequently raiding in Gruul’s Lair, make the perfect choice for your liquid consumable.
Elixirs
Elixirs can be used in place of Flasks. There are two kinds of Elixirs, Guardian and Battle, and only one of each kind can be active at any given moment. Because you can have one of each kind active, you have a greater variety of options to choose from to tailor your Cheap FFXI Gil active buffs for your current situation.
Unlike Flasks, the benefits of an Elixir only last for one hour, and the effects are lost upon character death. For these reasons, many guilds look at the comparative costs of Flasks and Elixirs on the Auction House, and decide that using a Flask is far more cost effective for raiding.
While this is especially true if your guild raids so frequently that there is little time to farm and craft your own Elixirs, the reality is that most raiding guilds will have at least one Alchemist with Elixir Mastery available to take raw herbs and create your own Elixirs, with the added chance to create extras. Flasks require a Fel Lotus to craft each one, and the Fel Lotus are random drops obtained while gathering herbs.
If your guild members are strapped for cash and have the time between raids, it is a wise choice to farm the specific herbs you need for a given Elixir, and consider any Fel Lotus you may get as a lucky bonus.
I do not personally raid very much anymore, but when I did raid four nights a week I chose to maintain at least one full stack of each of my favorite Elixirs to mix and match on the run rather than use Flasks, with the Unstable Flask of the Beast used for Gruul’s Lair.
Elixir (Guardian)
- Earthen Elixir – Prevents up to 20 damage done by a physical or magical attack. This is per attack. This is a very nice tanking effect, especially for bear tanks that do not have special defenses against magical attacks.
- Elixir of Major Fortitude - +250 Max Health and +10 Health daoc platinum per 5 seconds.
- Elixir of Major Defense - +550 Armor. This does not multiply in Dire Bear form, it provides only the listed +550 armor.
- Elixir of Ironskin - 30 Resilience rating.
For most battles, the normal Guardian Elixir used is the Elixir of Major Fortitude. It provides a nice increase to your max health, which is useful all the time no matter what you are fighting.
However, if you are looking more closely at your individual fights, the Elixir of Major Defense and the Earthen Elixir are both a bit more useful, depending on the situation.
Against enemies that deal out strictly physical damage, the Elixir of Major Defense provides better damage mitigation than the top end health buff of the Major Fortitude, so long as you are not already maxed out on your mitigation.
Likewise, against enemies that deal out mainly magical damage, such as the Maiden of Virtue, the Earthen Elixir is an excellent choice to buttress our weak magical defenses.
And finally, if you are new to bear tanking and haven’t quite gotten your gear uncrittable, the Elixir of Ironskin is a perfect short-term solution. 30 Resilience goes a very long way.
How much effort you put into matching your Elixirs against your opponents’ abilities is up to you. Many bear tanks stick to the Elixir of Major Fortitude to simplify their consumables cost. I personally prefer to roll with a stack each of Earthen Elixir and Major Fortitude and switch off as needed, with Earthen Elixir used for most of the trash in Karazhan.
My advice is to play with each, and find a mix that suits your style.
Elixir (Battle)
- Elixir of Major Agility - +35 Agility and 20 critical strike rating.
- Elixir of the Mongoose - +25 Agility and 28 critical strike rating.
- Elixir of Mastery - +15 to all Stats.
I’m sure there can be a great deal of debate over which of these is better.
On the one hand, you get +35 Agility for a dodge bonus of about 2.45%. On the other, you get +15 Agility, +15 Stamina and +15 Strength, and if you are shifting into an occasional backup healing role, extra Wisdom and Int as well.
For myself, I consider the boost to dodge from +35 Agility to override the other benefits, but if you are already happy with your dodge and would like to increase your top end health just that little bit more, the Elixir of Mastery is a very well rounded choice.
I include the Elixir of the Mongoose here because, while it does have less agility than the Elixir of Major Agility, and we don’t worry about the crit rating much when tanking, these are much cheaper in materials cost to make. If you are tanking on a budget, and dying frequently, you might want to get the mats for a ton of these until things get better.
Scrolls
You can have one Scroll of each type active at a time. The Scroll of Stamina will NOT operate if you have the Priest Fortitude buff, so the only time the Scroll of Stamina is useful is when you do not have a Priest in your party. The Scroll of Agility and Scroll of Protection, however, both can be applied at any time and do not conflict with any other buffs. If you are doing serious tanking, I recommend keeping a supply of both at all times, and due to their rarity, keeping them in reserve for difficult boss encounters.
Scrolls of Agility, Strength and Intellect can often be purchased from the Field Repair Bot 110G, and the mats for the Field Repair Bot are not that expensive. If you find the cost of Scrolls are too high on the AH, and you don’t have time to farm for them in the hope of getting them as a random drop, then one viable, although silly, option is to make a stack of 20 Field Repair Bot 110Gs JUST to activate them and buy the scrolls, and share the Intellect with your guild bank. I have done this as a test myself and obtained ten+ of every type of Scroll by using twenty bots. Your own mileage may vary.
- Scroll of Agility V - Agility +20 for 30 minutes.
- Scroll of Protection V - Armor +300 for 30 minutes. This does not multiply in Dire Bear form, but still provides excellent mitigation if you are not maxed out on your armor.
- Scroll of Stamina V - Stamina +20 for 30 minutes. This cannot stack with Power Word: Fortitude or Prayer of Fortitude. Scroll of Stamina is therefore very useful when you do not have a Priest in your party, but otherwise unnecessary.
- Scroll of Strength V - Strength +20 for 30 minutes. Not that critical for tanking, but added AP for higher threat is always nice if you have it available.
We supply the cheapest WOW Power Leveling Service Online.
is better no best wow power leveling.