I get this question pretty often. It’s true that for survival alone, dodge is the best reforging option for bears. But sometimes, you need to do more than survive.
Expertise is great for DPS.
It blows all our other dps stats out of the water. When we were working on Heroic Rag, we needed more dps for phase 3. I wasn’t having any trouble surviving, so I decided to reforge for expertise. In this case I was comfortable losing about 1.5% dodge, which granted me 22 expertise. My dps rose and became far more consistent, and I didn’t notice any changes to my survivability. If you want to increase your damage done in bear form, expertise is the way to go.
Expertise is great for survival.
The more your attacks hit the boss, the more chances you have to proc Savage Defense. Expertise is still not as great as dodge or mastery for pure survival, but it is an excellent compromise for bears who want to deal consistent damage as well as survive.
Expertise is great for hybrids and bearcats.
Cats value all secondary stats nearly the same, though many favor hit and expertise because it makes their rotations more predictable. If you often play as both a tank and a dps, mastery and expertise are the best way to get the most bang for your reforging buck. There are also many encounters that give us the opportunity to use both forms, and it’s places like these where expertise really shines.
Expertise makes tanking more fun.
Let’s face it: misses, parries, and dodges are not fun. It’s far more entertaining to watch big Mangle crits float across your screen than to hear a parry clang. This is a game after all, and you’re playing it to have fun, right?
In the end, whether you stick to a pure dodge build, reforge for expertise, or even go with a mastery/expertise build is up to you and your personal preferences. As long as you can stay alive, there’s no wrong decision.