Discussing expansion woes with my guilds MT tonight it seems he is rather worries about tank itemization and conversion. Specifically in the form of losing large chunks of Parry and Dodge when Blizzard converts Defense to Resilience on the old items.

Does anyone know if:
a) +Defense is completly going away on items? From everything I've heard so far it is.
b) Resilience is the direct replacement but only adding to crit reduction?
c) Blizzard might actually do something smart and add Parry rating and Dodge rating in addition to Resilience for all the items that currently have +Defense?

If I'm doing the math right its 100 defense to remove the crit from an equal level mob, with that you also gain 4% Parry and Dodge. In order to keep it the same(at 60) Blizzard would have to add slightly more than 1 Parry rating and 1 Dodge rating per 2 points of +defense and that would likly skew the itemization values if for nothing else you are splitting up the bonuses to multiple stats.

I guess it all comes down to: Has anyone seen the new versions of Might, Wrath or Dreadnaught?

Unfortunately, anyone who does know the answers to your questions can't really answer as they would still be under NDA for Alpha (barring Tigole or someone similar from Blizzard answering).

There's been some screenshots of items with Defense Rating stats. Resilience is just a new stat which main point is PvP, but could be used for PvE by non warrior tanks to compensate for itemization I guess. Guess Resilience costs less than Defense on items too, so you could create a balance between both, to get more direct avoidance stats(example, instead of getting 440defense equivalent, you could get 400defense, then add 40defense worth of resilience on like 1 or 2 items, and use the rest to get +4%dodge/parry on gear without any defense)

I must be missing something here... they're going to update all the pre-xpack items with new stats?

I think so, all hit, crit and defense is updated to a rating.
Else pre 70 geear would be better if they had %crit on it.

Oh my understanding had been that the +2% to hit on a Nelth's Tear for example was simply going to become a diminishing curve as you increased in lvl. But hey whatever works I guess.

These 2 changes are actually 2 different things.

1. Most all abilities that are worth much more than 1 stat point (crit, hit, weapon skill, dodge, parry, etc) are being changed to ratings. First off, the ratings firstly allow more exact itemization (Blizzard can put 1.1 crit on an item, rather than 1). Second, they allow "1 crit" to be put on lvl 20 items - by the means of putting some crit rating on it. When used by a lvl 70 character however, these items are still inferior, due to the fact that the crit rating put on the lvl 20 iems is nowhere near a full crit. This works the same going from 60 to 70. If an item had 1 full crit at 60, it has a fraction of a crit at 70. Basically, items with 2% crit on them, won't automatically trump lvl 70 raid gear with less than that.

2. Defense and Resilience both exist, separate of each other. Defense is the same stat it is now (roughly? not sure on exact numbers per defense point, but it does the same thing overall I believe), and Resilience is just critical avoidance (spell and melee) afaik. Resilience is more useful for non tanks, in general, especially in PvP.

Linbog its actually +125 def u need to totally remove crits from equal lvl mobs (they got a 5% crit chance) so +140 for tanking bosses.
I havnt so far seen any tanking items only pvp sets and items for warriors so u cant really say anything about def being removed.

http://wow.rpgbeacon.com/news.php?ID=76

"Equip: Increases defensive rating by +16."
"Socket Bonus: Defensive Rating +3"

Is your MT seriously worried that Blizzard will not be providing tanking gear good enough to tank level 70 bosses?

If the bosses put out X damage, the gear and bosses will (eventually) be balanced to allow them to tank the bosses with Y gear.

On the other hand I am pissed that my Savage Gladiator Chain won't be both unique and useful anymore.

defense will still exist. resiliance is a different stat.

Well not only that, but to keep improving from the Naxx level of gear you'd have been looking at rogues with 40-45% crit in BC gear if they stuck with the old system.

I don't think there's been any released info on how resilience works out either. I mean if you make the simplest assumption that 14 resilience = 14 crit rating, and consider that mobs only have something like a 5% crit rating on an MT with 300 defense, then you can eliminate almost the entirety of that in just 5+ items instead of the 10+ you need now. Hence if you stack up on resilience you'll still have plenty of room for grabbing those +dodge, block parry items.

Should it work like that, tanks won't be any lesser for it. They'll just have more choice now.

I'm curious to see what crit rate will be like in PvP. Lots of crit rating on gear, lots of resilence rating on gear...

Does 1 resilence subtract as much crit as 1 crit rating adds? Anyone heard murmurs about this in the testing so far?

Are we even sure Resilience works against mobs?

The people that know are under a NDA, assuming they could even test the PvP gear (I haven't seen resilience on PvE gear).

Looking at the Arena sets, I would say it takes more than 1 resilience rating to cancel 1 melee/spell crit rating, especially since it cancels out both melee and spell crits.

Well, resilience reduces ALL crits, so would probably be more use in caster fights than +def.

As of now, caster mobs can't crit (which is a damn good thing when you consider things like shadowflame would 1-shot almost anything).

Well, I was just paraphrasing Kalgan (who posted that on the beta forums, I have been told). So take that for what it's worth.

Currently I dont believe mob spells can crit. So that function of resilliance will be PvP only.

This is all assuming that things continue to work like they do now.

/edit I apparently read and type very slowly, sorry for the repeat info.

Operative term being as of now. They aren't going to add a tanking stat (and it's on tanking gear) that is useless for tanking.