Spooncraft

Upcoming feral tanking itemization changes
I have made so many Feral threads that I actually chilled on it a little because there were so many cries of favoritism. But I think on reflection, and as this thread suggests, I can’t win on that regard so I might as well just reply to whatever threads I want to.

If your Ulduar gear has more armor on it than your Naxx gear (and it does), then it scales. You still need rings, necks and trinkets with tanking stats on them. You are just free now to look at other things beyond just the bonus armor value (which is still useful BTW).

Your Dodge diminishes, but it diminishes slower than warrior Dodge, since it’s all you have. You get a huge benefit to Stamina (around 50%), so it scales very well.

We’re not that worried with what Feral tanking stats will be in later raid content, but as always, if one class ends up outstripping the others, we’ll compensate for it. (src)

Swipe
One quick question. I’m sure you’ve seen all the threads– do you still believe bears are adequate AE tanks? Can you please answer our concerns with swipe’s limitations and thorns’ lack of scaling?

Thorns really isn’t designed to be something like Damage Shield. That is an avenue to explore if bears started to fall behind for any reason.

I don’t personally have any difficulty using Swipe (and I’ve tried all four AE abilities). It requires slightly more positioning to use, but not so much that I really fear that bears won’t be brought on raids. Although I understand why Ferals like to downplay it, warriors do have concerns that bears will be more desired because of heals, Innervate and Rebirth. It’s going to be difficult to really make everything identical, and that’s not really the goal. (src)