Panzerkin options

[Dr. Doom]

Hi there, as some of you may know, during the BC era moonkins were able to stack resilience gear, and tank not only 5 mans, and heroics, but also raids such as Karazhan or Gruul's Lair.

I was wondering how would a panzerkin attempt to pull this using vanilla talents and items would go.

For comparison, the most reknowned panzerkin guide during BC was this one:
http://bbs.ngacn.cc/read.php?tid=1132327

Had to go to a chinese website that stored it since the original blizzard forums thread is no longer available.

[Dr. Doom]

Talent wise, seems to me a good option would be something like this:
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#0x0xIzEstZxVco

Insect Swarm -2% hit debuff is a boost to avoidance. Pairing this with cheaper shapeshifiting (can't cast resto spells as moonking) makes sense, so you can hope to have near full uptime on the spell seems a good use of the resto talents that you'd need to get the in combat regeneration from Reflection. The anti-pushback talent could also have some use if you desperately need to heal yourself (while getting hit), and probably better than healing touch cast time reduction.

Nature's Reach seems less of an issue here as tanking mobs would practically place them right in front of you.

Talents that I considered but skipped.

Nature's Grasp and Improved could possibly help with CC by letting you snare one mob, but with the outdoor limitation it could only be of use in Zul'Farrak from 5 mans, and ZG in raids. Too situational. Same reason for Imp Entrangling Roots.
If you're specifically going to do ZG for a while, I suppose it would be worth looking into them though.

Omen of Clarity. With the moonkin mana limitations a free cast could maybe be a good idea, If pairing it with something like Judgement of Wisdom, it'd have a double effect of regeneration, so you could melee mobs sometimes between casts. Problem that I see is that in order for this to meld in properly with the rest of the build, the proc rate should be quite high. You're just doing minimal threat auto attacking as moonkin, it should at least be reliably quick to regen during those downtimes. I admit I have no idea what is the proc chance of Omen, but considering a number of items in the server, I doubt it's that high.
Regardless, the chief reason why I skipped it, was because 5/5 Natural Weapons and 1/1 Omen, would take 6 talents that would simply make it impossible to get Insect Swarm or Reflection. The trade off seems negative with that in mind.

Thick Hide.
Another idea that crossed my mind was to get 5/5 Demoralizing Roar to pave the way for extra armor in the 2nd tier of feral. It'd then be possible to pull, go bear, cast demo roar for more mitigation, and swap to moonkin immediately after. Downside of this, again, would be losing the -2% hit debuff and the 15 % mana regen.
It'd be worth exploring though perhaps. I don't know if talented demo roar would actually decrease more or less incoming dmg compared to Insect Swarm, and the armor boost would really help in that case. Any input here is welcomed.

[Keftenk]

So the idea is to shift out of Moonkin form to cast Insect Swarm and hope you don't get hit for all your health when you shift back? Sounds risky. In 5-mans it shouldn't be a problem but in 20 mans I'm sure you risk being killed in 1 or 2 hits.

[Dr. Doom]

So the idea is to shift out of Moonkin form to cast Insect Swarm and hope you don't get hit for all your health when you shift back? Sounds risky. In 5-mans it shouldn't be a problem but in 20 mans I'm sure you risk being killed in 1 or 2 hits.

Very true. Hmmm, maybe the Thick hide route is safer.

It'd be possible to get 5/5 thick hide, while keeping max GotW if you sacrifice the other point I had in Nature's Reach:

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#0x0xI0EstV0xZx

This way the only rotating you'd do would be between moonkin and bear, both having the armor bonus.

[catburglar]

LF someone to try this and make videos :d

[Finalflash]

no

[Dr. Doom]

LF someone to try this and make videos :d

I think there's an insurmountable problem for vanilla panzerkin gameplay: There's no anti-pushback talent for either wrath or starfire. That was a core part of the build that made it possible in TBC. With wrath being free of pushback you could get a stable threat generation while taking mob hits to the face. The way it stands in vanilla, the more mobs/faster they hit, the harder and harder it gets to keep anything on you. Bummer.

I shelved this idea for this reason, might revisit it sometime in the future.

[Taladril]

I don't know how well this would work in vanilla. It's not like you can throw on any old gear and tank because tank form magically makes you capable. Maybe the genesis set would allow this to be possible. But tank gear is already odd and finding tank plus caster spec stuff is pretty much impossible.