So I've been really wrapped up with this whole "Swipe is now useless" problem which is currently plaguing Bear tanks. I've done a lot of math on the problem (which has been linked everywhere from Ri to MMO Champion - go me!), and apparently people just don't understand how Base Damage + AP Coeff abilities work. It's very frustrating.

Regardless, I should be updating this more often.

Anyways, latest info in the Bear world.

1) Swipe iz broke.

As previously mentioned, Swipe is broken. It doesn't do what its supposed to do. Worse than that, it does less damage (at least according to current info) than Thrash. This means that once you hit 81, you take Swipe off of your actionbar. Period.

WTF?!?!

Granted I won't know for sure what will be happening until I hit 85 myself, but that just sounds absurdly dumb. More info will follow after Dec 7.

Additionally the tooltip for Swipe doesn't account for the recent 17% nerf. So if you're attacking an unarmored target and wondering why the numbers don't match, multiply your TT damage by 0.83 to get the actual damage. The TT also includes any damage modifiers to Swipe (2pct10), so don't remove things that shouldn't be.

2) Fasc made a spreadsheet!

Link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1083360391

This is Fasc's Bear Mitigation spreadsheet. It breaks down the various stats into different weights to give you an idea of what stats are valuable, and what aren't. As expected Haste has the lowest value of all (by a factor of 4 - lol). So if you find Haste, change it to Dodge ASAP.

In that thread I asked him about the possibility of making a "Bearpoints" mod. If you have (or still do) tank as a Plate tank, you'll know of a mod called "Tankpoints" which breaks down the various stats on an item to tell you how valuable it is with a common value. It'd be pretty cool if Bears finally got something similar.

3) Ri made a levelling guide to 85

Ri (Reesi, @Reesify on Twitter) made a levelling guide from 80-85. I'm a big fan of her work, it's all really good stuff. Go check it out.

Additionally we're trading back and forth on a pre-raid gear guide. I'll hopefully have my selected choices up this weekend. Maybe. We'll see.

If you're interested in following her stuff, go to http://www.theincbear.com - I definitely recommend you check it out.

4) Thick Hide iz broke.

It's granting far more bonus armor than it should be. Don't know why it hasn't been fixed yet, but it sure is amusing.

5) I'm going to be making a Bear damage / coeff spreadsheet from 10-85.

That's right. I'm gonna be doing a spreadsheet.

To be fair I will likely only do this once. I don't fancy re-levelling a Druid every time Blizzard introduces some changes to Bear abilities. That said it is definitely something I'm interested in doing, if only to give myself a better understanding of how the abilities all work. I'm scared I might find out things that I don't really want to know.

That's all for now. Hope to do another post this weekend.