So I heard the uncrushable cap for bear tanks is 415 defense with survival of the fittest
I have Heavy Clefthoof set which is 64 defense and the kara ring with 16 defense so 80 defense all together
but my character sheet is only showing 380 and when hovered over it says 350 + 40. 350 being the base defense skill and despite my gearing saying it gives more than 40, only gives 40.
Maybe I’m just being stupid but I’m still getting crushing blows and it sucks 
That’s crit cap, not crush cap. Bears can never get crush immune. Defense rating converts to defense, its not a 1 to 1 ratio.
Taken from wowtavern guide
Like any tanking class, Druids have a required amount of Defence skill to obtain in order to be deemed uncrittable. This just essentially means that no mob (trash or boss) will be able to critically hit you. Because critical hits are 200% of their normal damage, it’s imperative that we push the chance to receive critical strikes off the table as soon as we possibly can. If you are NOT defence capped, and a boss would normally hit you for 3,000 damage, there is potential for them to hit you for 6,000 damage, which even as a Druid with Dire Bear Form and Heart of the Wild, can be the difference between life and death.
There are two armor caps: Soft and Hard. The Soft Cap is 31,672 against trash mobs (level 70) and the hard cap is 35,880 against bosses (level 73) Because Druids are unable to block or parry in Dire Bear Form, they are unable to reach crush immunity and to combat this, Druids are the only class to be able to reach each armor cap. Crushing blows deal 150% of normal damage (So, at 3,000 normal damage, you would take 4,500 damage)
tyvm i understand now 
Although I have noticed many of the top ranked bears on logs are getting crit, and its is just a tad more than a crushing blow. They are ignoring the def cap to go for more threat so the dps can pump and the boss’s fall faster. Not sure if it will ever matter, but currently top ranked druids are getting crit.
Not sure if this is still accurate, but don’t some bears dabble in arena gear for the resilience stat?
yes but the bears i looking at are not crit capped. we can use res +def or just one. But look at the top druids and u see crits here and there. I might start doing it because the crit dmg they are taking is not bad.
I’m guessing the top guilds can get away with it because they have the heals to keep you up through any possible crits you’d get and also like you said, you might need the extra theat if your DPS are putting up big numbers.
By “top Druids” you mean the highest DPSing Druids. The highest DPSing Druids doing it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea defensively.
Note that T4 content, outside of a few bosses, doesn’t hurt tanks a whole lot. It’s perfectly understandable to do it for T4. It’s much riskier to do it in T5/T6.
I agree, but when the crits are not much more dmg than a crush does it really matter? Being armor capped helps a lot vs that I assume. I personally run crit capped and threat has not been a huge issue yet for me. But as my team gets stronger and stronger and my threat stays the same, a change has to be made.
If I was a in pumper raid I personally wouldn’t worry too much about being absolutely crit proof. I’d imagine they’re more worried about threat on the pull and reducing any variance there.
That’s not to say I wouldn’t worry about survivability but I wouldn’t be swapping my Shapeshifter’s Signet for something else for just a little more res or def to be crit proof. We’ll always have a 2% chance to get double crushed which in my mind is just as bad as a crit.
I mean, you see parses with dudes wearing flesh handler’s gloves. It’s clear their priority is to not get parried on the pull and have one of their DPS get deleted.
Ya i have flesh handlers but have not felt the need to use yet. With exp gloves/ring/pants/weapon you can only remove dodge from the table and chunk parry a good bit, but can not pull parries off table until phase 2 i believe. I am not arguing at all, and like the banter here. I have always just been afraid of crits, and to now see what the dmg really is on logs. I been worried for nothing.
resil is the most effective path to crit immunity with the added benefit of freeing up stat allocation towards more threat.
I’m not sure if parries can ever be taken off the table completely, only dodge. That’s why expertise-capped DPS still have to attack from behind, because mobs can’t parry from behind, but they could still dodge if that hadn’t been moved off the hit table already.
I played a rogue in Wrath so I’m reaching way back in the depths of my brain here. This info may not be 100% accurate.
Back in the first TBC, I remember a very active Druid who was a big-time well-respected Bear min/max theory crafter. If my memory serves me correctly, I remember he said if you can live through 2 unlucky back-to-back crushing blows, then you’re going places.
Parry can be taken off the table completely. The problem is that the parry chance is extremely high, somewhere around 15% although I don’t remember the exact numbers. It takes a lot of expertise to fully eliminate that, and that takes stat budget that’s better spent on other DPS-increasing stats when the workaround of attacking from behind is so easy to achieve.
Note that even if parry were eliminated, DPS would still attack from behind as block is still an attainable outcome when attacking from the front. Block’s effect on DPS is rather minor, maybe in the tenths of a percent for most specs, but it’s still a DPS loss to get blocked.
Like the others said you meant uncrittable.
However, I did read somewhere that a Bear can be uncrushable with a 480ish defense rating. Is this not true? This would make a huge difference in Nightbane fights because the back to back crushing blows are just not nice lol.
If a bear tried to push to a defense high enough to be uncrushable, you’d also do so little threat that healers would pull off of you. Bears mitigate crushes with armor and alleviate dtps pressure with dodges. That’s just how they work.
No. In order to eliminate crushing blows, one must have 100% combined avoidance/block, after factoring in the level difference between the player and the boss. That means 102.4% combined miss/dodge/parry/block for Warriors/Paladins that can block & parry, and 101.2% combined miss/dodge for Druids.
There’s very little to heal if a Druid tank reaches unhittable (= uncrushable for bears). The healers wouldn’t be pulling healing aggro just because the only damage left to be healed are the breath on the tank and the fire patches on the ground.
There’s very little to heal if a Druid tank reaches unhittable (= uncrushable for bears). The healers wouldn’t be pulling healing aggro just because the only damage left to be healed are the breath on the tank and the fire patches on the ground.
You’d also do no damage, have no rage and thus no threat so even in those direct tank and spank fights where no one else takes literally any damage for any reason, the DPS would rip off of you by sneezing. It’s not worth itemizing to try and reach that cap in any fashion.