 |
| Welcome to Elitist Jerks |
We're testing some new features on the site regarding OpenID registration and coordination with gamerDNA. If you experience any issues with registering an account, please take the time to fill out a report and send it to this e-mail address. We would appreciate any assistance you could provide in making sure everything is functioning as intended. Thanks!
If this is your first visit, please be sure to check out the FAQ and the forum rules. Users must register to post and new registrations are subject to a one day "mute" period to get acquainted with the community.
|
11/05/07, 8:31 AM
|
#26
|
|
Banned
Tauren Druid
Ragnaros (EU)
|

Originally Posted by Inaiwae
I must disagree here. I've been thinking about it a lot, and my conclusion is that until you reach armor cap against lvl 73 bosses (around 35800 armor), then armor is the best upgrade you can get.
Armor does not have diminishing returns. See e.g. The Druid Wiki ยป Druid_Game_Mechanics. Adding 1000 armor benefits you the same whether you currently have 10000 or 30000 armor.
I created simulation where i had fixed item budget. I set armor, and the program automatically computed agility to fill the budget. Then i run a simulated fight (based on attack table from wowwiki) where the druid was attacked by typical raid boss (so, hits about 5k to bear tank every 2 seconds) with different values of armor and dodge.
The result was simple. The overall received dmg was quite even, but what differed a lot was spike damage. I computed spike damages as maximum dmg received in 10 second intervals. The spikes we're (naturally) smaller when the armor got close to the cap. Once the armor was over the cap, spike damage remained the same while overall dmg taken begun to increase (naturally again - wasted item budget).
Even when i considered priest & shaman buffs for 50% of the fight (25% extra armor), it was not worth to drop armor and get extra dodge to benefit from those. Due to spikes.
Remember that armor is what protects you from crushings. I'd say that 25000 armor is minimum where you can safely tank prince in karazhan during phase 2 (with reasonable HP ofc, about 18000+).
That being said, dodge comes along once you start replacing clefthoof. T4 is great tanking set with loads of agility on it.
|
There are a lot of factors around this issue, and I'm glad someone with the comprehension, in this case; you, has spent time calculating this. However, the bolded statement, in what I quoted, is wrong. This you may see in the following picture from Wowwiki: armor@wowwiki.picture
Now, your conclusion would be much more worth if you posted a table consisting of
Health
Armor
Dodge
Defense
Resilience
Crit
versus Damage Taken during the encounter. One table for both Armor and Dodge tests.
That would be absolutely great, since we then could come to a conclusion once and for all. And figure out if there even is a right answer.
Edit:
I agree with your statement on Druid vs Prince. I have tanked him many times myself, with 25k+ armor and the desired amount of Health, and there have been times when we have either been unfortunate or had slacky heals with that particular phase, with me dying and thus wipe. During that phase my combat log was spammed with "Prince hits you for X damage. (crushing)".
Prince is the type of boss you would have a Warrior Tank, really. Warriors and Druids make great tanking teams in raids, where you have both options.
Last edited by Edenfall : 11/05/07 at 8:36 AM.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/05/07, 10:17 AM
|
#27
|
|
of the HMS Failboat
Tauren Druid
Al'Akir (EU)
|
You picked the wrong graph.
Image:ArmorVsTimeToLive-LVL70.PNG - WoWWiki, the Warcraft wiki
|
However, in terms of absolute time to live with respect to melee attacks, armor has no diminishing return effect. Given a constant melee DPS amount, each additional point of armor (whether it be from 0 to 1 or from 30000 to 30001) will increase the tanks time to live by the same effective amount. 1k additional armor increases time to live by approximately 9.47%, as shown by the graph.
|
That's the correct graph to use when valuing armour. The increase in armour relative to the value you get out of it stays the same all the way through.
As has been discussed to death in many previous threads, stats are not the most important thing, the most important thing is the items you can obtain with particular stats on.
Having said that, as a pure tank, the most important stats are:
Armour > Stam(HP) > Agility.
As an offtank, the most important stats are:
Agility > Armour > Stam(HP).
The reason for the switch is that as an offtank threat generation is particularly important and thinking about what you might do once you finish tanking a mob is also important.
Going back to the point above though, it's the items you can obtain that are the most important thing along with the balance of stats, not the pure stats themselves. Going all out for agility won't get you very far (unless you can get to ~103% dodge, which may be possible and is one of Boethius' pet projects) unless you have a good balance of health and armour.
Anyway, the main point was that 25k armour is pretty much too low. Considering the gear available at level 70 at any point once you're 70 you should be able to put together a set that has around 30k. 30k is a reasonable point to stop as:
A) You will get marginally less benefit from armour past that point if you have a priest or shaman healing you.
B) You will get less benefit from armour past ~31.5k against same level mobs (which is of concern if tanking normal/heroic 5 mans, and possibly trash mobs elsewhere).
C) Using items for armour past that point is slightly limiting in other gear choices if you set yourself a cap of say 35k. The lower the cap, the more variety of items you can set yourself for each slot, but setting it lower than 30k is limiting in terms of damage reduction.
As for Dodge vs Armour - armour will always give less spikes and more durable damage return values, in comparison to dodge giving more spikes but possible periods of rest in between. Having played a healer for a significant period pre TBC (since euro launch) and questioning a number of other healers, I can say with some certainty that most healers would prefer a less-spiky tank for the majority of encounters. Averaged out over time, they will both give a fairly similar amount of mitigation (50% avoidance vs 50% armour mitigation should give the same returns over a statistically significant period).
Maybe adding a note to start looking at quest rewards before you hit 70 would be useful too. I vendored a number of items (manimals cinch/the armour legs, ash tempered or something?) before hitting 70/thinking about tanking gear, just because I didn't realise they had extra armour on.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/05/07, 10:20 AM
|
#28
|
|
Piston Honda
Night Elf Druid
Blackrock
|
(edit : Dukes beat me to the punch with a better post.)
Last edited by Nathariel : 11/05/07 at 10:29 AM.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/05/07, 10:40 AM
|
#29
|
|
Piston Honda
Night Elf Druid
Sylvanas (EU)
|
edit: same as the poster above
Still one comment:
|
A) You will get marginally less benefit from armour past that point if you have a priest or shaman healing you.
|
I would not overestimate the 25% armour gain once you start tanking raid bosses. If the available gear allows you to go over 30k armor, do so. For example, i dont think that [Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch] is a good tank trinket choice. [Badge of Tenacity] and [Darkmoon Card: Vengeance] are my personal favorites at t5 level (provided you are under armor cap). Moroes trinket does not increase your survivability reliably. Yes, i believe in the "effective health" theory :-).
Reasons is that any armor which is not permanent does not reliably prevent spikes. Over 10 minutes boss fight, it will happen thay you get series of crushings without armor bonus from priest / shammy.
Also, most common single target healer (at least on aliance side) is paladin. Priests / shammys are usually better at raid healing duty.
Last edited by Inaiwae : 11/05/07 at 10:57 AM.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/05/07, 10:55 AM
|
#30
|
|
Banned
Tauren Druid
Ragnaros (EU)
|

Originally Posted by dukes
You picked the wrong graph.
Image:ArmorVsTimeToLive-LVL70.PNG - WoWWiki, the Warcraft wiki
That's the correct graph to use when valuing armour. The increase in armour relative to the value you get out of it stays the same all the way through.
As has been discussed to death in many previous threads, stats are not the most important thing, the most important thing is the items you can obtain with particular stats on.
Having said that, as a pure tank, the most important stats are:
Armour > Stam(HP) > Agility.
As an offtank, the most important stats are:
Agility > Armour > Stam(HP).
The reason for the switch is that as an offtank threat generation is particularly important and thinking about what you might do once you finish tanking a mob is also important.
Going back to the point above though, it's the items you can obtain that are the most important thing along with the balance of stats, not the pure stats themselves. Going all out for agility won't get you very far (unless you can get to ~103% dodge, which may be possible and is one of Boethius' pet projects) unless you have a good balance of health and armour.
Anyway, the main point was that 25k armour is pretty much too low. Considering the gear available at level 70 at any point once you're 70 you should be able to put together a set that has around 30k. 30k is a reasonable point to stop as:
A) You will get marginally less benefit from armour past that point if you have a priest or shaman healing you.
B) You will get less benefit from armour past ~31.5k against same level mobs (which is of concern if tanking normal/heroic 5 mans, and possibly trash mobs elsewhere).
C) Using items for armour past that point is slightly limiting in other gear choices if you set yourself a cap of say 35k. The lower the cap, the more variety of items you can set yourself for each slot, but setting it lower than 30k is limiting in terms of damage reduction.
As for Dodge vs Armour - armour will always give less spikes and more durable damage return values, in comparison to dodge giving more spikes but possible periods of rest in between. Having played a healer for a significant period pre TBC (since euro launch) and questioning a number of other healers, I can say with some certainty that most healers would prefer a less-spiky tank for the majority of encounters. Averaged out over time, they will both give a fairly similar amount of mitigation (50% avoidance vs 50% armour mitigation should give the same returns over a statistically significant period).
Maybe adding a note to start looking at quest rewards before you hit 70 would be useful too. I vendored a number of items (manimals cinch/the armour legs, ash tempered or something?) before hitting 70/thinking about tanking gear, just because I didn't realise they had extra armour on.
|
Oh, just darn me for posting at work hours. Thanks for correcting me about the armor picture.
However, the Armor vs Dodge still lingers with an argument in my head.
Sure 50% dodge vs 50% physical damage reduction mitigate the same, statisticly, it's pure logics. However, going for dodge will not delete your armor, and going for armor will not delete your dodge. At some point you have X dodge and Y armor.
Now, some time ago, while lvl 70, I had 19k armor, 14-15k hp and 22- or 25% dodge, selfbuffed. Something like that. Then I was going for my first heroic: Slave Pens. I was raped. My party was raped. /tryagain was raped. I simply could not handle the mobs /spamheal. At that point I remember it was easier to attain the most mitigation through Dodge, not Armor.
Bah, got to run....
Now, I'm leaving work and looking forward to clearing this up=)
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/05/07, 11:16 AM
|
#31
|
|
of the HMS Failboat
Tauren Druid
Al'Akir (EU)
|
Unless you stack dodge to a point where you're at the cap (i.e. 103%) armour will always be better in pure survivability terms.
No matter how much avoidance you stack, until you hit the cap there's still the chance of getting 10+ hits in a row. I run at around 60% avoidance raid buffed (over 52% dodge, 5% base miss, ~2% miss from defence) and still get situations where I take 4+ crushings in a row and don't avoid anything within a reasonable timespan ( see here)
Armour is permanent mitigation. No matter what damage you take, it's reduced by exactly that amount of damage. This is why stacking armour and HP are the most important things in terms of maintanking most fights, as it increases your time to live no matter how much you avoid. Avoidance is purely long-term mitigation, as over the course of a long fight you can't ever rely on it.
Then again, dodge is good sometimes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/05/07, 11:36 AM
|
#32
|
|
Piston Honda
Tauren Druid
Genjuros (EU)
|
Since druids get very near the armor cap early (T4 gear), the comparison should be between stamina and dodge(although since we are OT the dual use of agi will make 4agi 6stam gems allways better than 12stam gems,the high end game itemization sucks that's why i talk only about gems).
Edit: Dukes down post is right, got carried away sorry.
Last edited by spartakos : 11/05/07 at 11:54 AM.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/05/07, 11:45 AM
|
#33
|
|
of the HMS Failboat
Tauren Druid
Al'Akir (EU)
|
Spartakos, this thread is entirely about Pre-Raid gear, i.e. before T4. In fact, it's supposed to cover the pre-heroic period too, in which armour is still a critical stat.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/05/07, 12:03 PM
|
#34
|
|
Banned
Tauren Druid
Ragnaros (EU)
|
I feel we have been discussing too much high end game relative things between the lines - not preraid to low raid. I bet most of you know what Rawr is. So I propose that those who want to engage and discuss can use Rawr to make a gear setup and compare the stats between our gear setups.
If you have a better alternative to Rawr to do this, then please let us know.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/05/07, 12:06 PM
|
#35
|
|
Piston Honda
Night Elf Druid
Eredar (EU)
|
Originally Posted by spartakos
Since druids get very near the armor cap early (T4 gear), the comparison should be between stamina and dodge(although since we are OT the dual use of agi will make 4agi 6stam gems allways better than 12stam gems,the high end game itemization sucks that's why i talk only about gems).
|
Currently I still have my 4/5 T4 on MT duty for Morogrim so no space to swap the enchants there and in early progression you do not swap the 12 Stamina if your are part of the backbone of the raid. Till Morogrim is on farm we will swap in the warriors into my MT spot but till the I need to keep T4 for pure tanking.
Nevertheless Pre-Raid it is crucial to stack armor and HP as much as possible. When the first drops from Karazhan and other early raid contnet comes in as a progress oriented person you should start gem and enchant for tanking. The sooner your tanking gear is there the better you can focus on DPS gear.
[Cobrascale Hood] haven't looked at this for a long time but might be really good as an expensive alternative to the [Stylin' Purple Hat].
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/06/07, 8:06 AM
|
#36
|
|
Banned
Tauren Druid
Ragnaros (EU)
|
Allright, I made a preraid gear setup just now with Rawr. Here are the stats calculated by Rawr, followed by the setup items, (gems) and enchants:
Basic Stats
Health: 15240
Armor: 24651
Agility: 341
Stamina: 1108
Defense Rating: 209
Dodge Rating: 38
Resilience: 19
Calculated Stats (rounded)
Dodge: 30,24%
Miss: 7,88%
Armor Mitigation: 67,33%
Dodge+Miss: 38,13%
Total Mitigation: 77,34%
Damage Taken: 22,66%
Chance to be Crit: -1,37%
Overall Points: 77541,79
Mitigation Points: 30888,99
Survival Points: 46652,79
[Stylin' Purple Hat] +
07:11:38 called in wowhead_item::start:324 Item not found!
[Necklace of the Juggernaut]
[Mantle of Shadowy Embrace] + [Greater Inscription of the Knight]
[Thoriumweave Cloak] + 12 agility
[Heavy Clefthoof Vest] + (6 stamina 4 defense)x2 + (12 stamina)
[Veteran's Dragonhide Bracers] + (4 agility 6 stamina)
[Wastewalker Gloves] + (4 agility 6 stamina)x2
[Tree-Mender's Belt]
[Heavy Clefthoof Leggings] + 40 stamina 12 agility + (12 stamina)x2 + (6 stamina 4 defense)
[Heavy Clefthoof Boots] + (4 agility 6 stamina) + (6 stamina 4 defense)
[Ring of Unyielding Force]
[Iron Band of the Unbreakable]
[Badge of Tenacity]
[Darkmoon Card: Vengeance]
[Earthwarden] + 35 agility
Now personally, when looking at this, it is a really strong gear setup. Note that all the stats mentioned are unbuffed. I would say this is enough to tank Prince, though more stamina would be favourable. It might not be a oneshot, but it's more than enough for lower level raiding.
This particular setup includes [Darkmoon Card: Vengeance], which is expensive, and does not include [Barkchip Boots]. Replacing the Clefthide boots with the Barkchip boots the stats changes would be:
- 95 less Health
- 191 less Armor
- 0.78% more Dodge
- 0.41% less Miss
- 0.17% less Armor Mitigation
- (no change in Damage Taken)
- 532,66 less Overall Points
- 0,05% more Mitigation Points
- 532,70 less Survival Points
less
less
more
less
less
Null
less
more
less
6 less + 2 more + 0 Null = -4
Which, oh, actually concludes this was a bad change.
sec...
Heavy Clefthoof Boots are actually better for tanking than Barkchip Boots.
The 24 Strength on Barkchip would mean a slight increase in threat generation,
however the Set(3) Bonus of the Chefthoof set gives 20 Strength. I believe this proves a conclusion about the boots, and in this case more Surivivability was lost than the gain of Mitigation.
[Heavy Clefthoof Boots] + (4 agility 6 stamina) + (6 stamina 4 defense)
vs
[Barkchip Boots]
Edit:
The stats and calculations were based on the Tauren race. A Night Elf would have
- 776 less Health
- 24 more Armor
- 1,82% more Dodge
- 0,61 less Damage Taken
- 853,04 more Mitigation Points
- 2346,47 less Survivability Points
Last edited by Edenfall : 11/06/07 at 8:32 AM.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/06/07, 8:17 AM
|
#37
|
|
Solution complicated; Dispense enlightening graph.
Blood Elf Warlock
Mal'Ganis
|
Originally Posted by Edenfall
As for Stamina/Armor versus Avoidance, a Tank in general should always favour avoidance as it is 100% mitigation. There's a solid difference between a 40% dodge tank and a 20% dodge tank
|
This is patently incorrect from the point of view of _every_ serious progression minded raid lead I've talked to in the last year.
Tanks are concerned with maximizing their "time to live" without recieving a heal in the worst case available. This means you ignore dodge/parry for the most part and consider instead your Armor/Block Value/Stamina values.* Even with the grossly amazing benefits of agility that a druid tank has in terms of dodge and crit per point (making it a highly desirable stat in the abstract) you still care far more about statistics that increase your time to live in the worst case.
The worst case for a typical pre-raid geared tank is going to be "4 healers graved" on morogrim, a bad infernal on prince requiring you to move away from your healer group, or a high stacked gruul. In all cases, you would much prefer the ability to live through the following damage sequence without relying upon a random number generator to falling back on "if I dodge I live, if I don't dodge we wipe". At the moment, mana is rarely the limitting factor on an encounter - you will wipe far far far more often to the tank having an unlucky sequence of hits/crushings lining up on top of special abilities than you will wipe to out of mana healers.
Great thread, but don't encourage new tanks to gear for avoidance as their suggested set - even with the amazing returns on agility for druids, it's not going to save them repair bills in the long run.
*A caveat, avoidance does have it's place - and you certainly shouldn't ignore (for instance) 2% dodge entirely if the only other difference between the two pieces of gear is 5 AC - just don't consider avoidance your primary concern.
|
Math is very easy, explaining math is quite difficult.
|
|
|
|
11/06/07, 8:43 AM
|
#38
|
|
Banned
Tauren Druid
Ragnaros (EU)
|

Originally Posted by Anias
This is patently incorrect from the point of view of _every_ serious progression minded raid lead I've talked to in the last year.
Tanks are concerned with maximizing their "time to live" without recieving a heal in the worst case available. This means you ignore dodge/parry for the most part and consider instead your Armor/Block Value/Stamina values.* Even with the grossly amazing benefits of agility that a druid tank has in terms of dodge and crit per point (making it a highly desirable stat in the abstract) you still care far more about statistics that increase your time to live in the worst case.
The worst case for a typical pre-raid geared tank is going to be "4 healers graved" on morogrim, a bad infernal on prince requiring you to move away from your healer group, or a high stacked gruul. In all cases, you would much prefer the ability to live through the following damage sequence without relying upon a random number generator to falling back on "if I dodge I live, if I don't dodge we wipe". At the moment, mana is rarely the limitting factor on an encounter - you will wipe far far far more often to the tank having an unlucky sequence of hits/crushings lining up on top of special abilities than you will wipe to out of mana healers.
Great thread, but don't encourage new tanks to gear for avoidance as their suggested set - even with the amazing returns on agility for druids, it's not going to save them repair bills in the long run.
*A caveat, avoidance does have it's place - and you certainly shouldn't ignore (for instance) 2% dodge entirely if the only other difference between the two pieces of gear is 5 AC - just don't consider avoidance your primary concern.
|
I pretty much agree with you, and I must say I've changed my opinion on Mitigation versus Survivability. This has made me a lot more clear-minded on their purpose. Mitigation will save mana and in some cases help you avoid additive debuffs from physical attacks (if there are any?), while Survivability makes a Tank more independent and predictable.
Last edited by Edenfall : 11/06/07 at 10:17 AM.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/06/07, 9:31 AM
|
#39
|
|
Piston Honda
Night Elf Druid
Eredar (EU)
|
Nearly the same question has been raised in another thread in this forum.
Protection warrior: Stamina VS mitigation
The problem sometimes in this forum is that a lot of people are already through the content and answers are based on more higher lvl items. I am currently at exactly Morogrim in the MT position to ease the encounter a bit.
Still I stack stamina for tanking and try to get most out of it, while in SSC/TK maintaining an offtank postion and need to focus on the DPS to be a good raid member.
I started early with nearly exactly the set you have below into Karazhan except things like Darkmoon, Badge of tenacity and some others I was working on.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/06/07, 9:42 AM
|
#40
|
|
hates having a job
Tauren Druid
Hellscream (EU)
|
Wait a sec, is that set actually not uncrittable?
Maybe it's pre-raid but what is the likely objective of such a tank? It might be to move into Karazhan, in which case he'll certainly want to be uncrittable!
[e] It is uncrittable, it actually has around 3.96% anti-crit, and is uncrittable from defense rating alone.
Not sure why you have put -1.37% or something as the anti-crit.
|

John O'Groats to Lands End 2009 for Leukaemia Research
|
|
|
|
11/06/07, 9:50 AM
|
#41
|
|
Piston Honda
Night Elf Druid
Eredar (EU)
|
with 179 def rating he is well above 415. Enough space tobring in other items like Zierhut's.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/06/07, 10:07 AM
|
#42
|
|
Don Flamenco
|
While yes, that's the ideal pre-raid setup, I think it's a waste of time to acquire many of those pieces before you enter the raidgame. I don't think you'd farm 50 badges for the ring and neck, for instance, before setting foot in Karazahn. I don't think you'd farm 50 badges before downing Maulgar in a guild, either.
So the setup isn't realistic-- you'd at least have the Kara rep ring in any reasonable character timeline that eventually involves the gear you listed and raiding (given that it's "pre-raid", I assume the goal is to gear up to raid).
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/06/07, 10:08 AM
|
#43
|
|
Piston Honda
Night Elf Druid
Sylvanas (EU)
|
I would use [Verdant Gloves] over [Wastewalker Gloves]. The HP on that pre-raid set you created are enough to tank anything in SSC/TK, while the armor is a bit low.
When i entered Karazhan, i had just blue gear and i did fine (we entered Karazhan sooner than heroics). Apart from the blues you have in your set, i used:
[Strength of the Untamed]
[Shoulderpads of Assassination]
[Manimal's Cinch]
[Umberhowl's Collar]
You receive violet signet after your first steps in kara, so that was probably what i used instead of the badge ring.
And i probably had Earthwarden ..
Just for your "lower" level set, if you will create something like that.
edit: i had to ask GM to return the green belt to me, since i sold it the moment i got it while leveling. Silly ages :-)
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/06/07, 10:12 AM
|
#44
|
|
Banned
Tauren Druid
Ragnaros (EU)
|
Originally Posted by Farstrider
Wait a sec, is that set actually not uncrittable?
Maybe it's pre-raid but what is the likely objective of such a tank? It might be to move into Karazhan, in which case he'll certainly want to be uncrittable!
[e] It is uncrittable, it actually has around 3.96% anti-crit, and is uncrittable from defense rating alone.
Not sure why you have put -1.37% or something as the anti-crit.
|
I understand that the minus values are confusing.
- A positive value means there is a chance to be crit
- A negative value means not critable ++
Which in this case, means that the Tank can sacrifice some Defense Rating / Resilience for other stats, if he or she wants, and still be crit-immune. Hehe, I'm not insane.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/06/07, 10:16 AM
|
#45
|
|
Banned
Tauren Druid
Ragnaros (EU)
|
Originally Posted by Inaiwae
I would use [Verdant Gloves] over [Wastewalker Gloves]. The HP on that pre-raid set you created are enough to tank anything in SSC/TK, while the armor is a bit low.
When i entered Karazhan, i had just blue gear and i did fine (we entered Karazhan sooner than heroics). Apart from the blues you have in your set, i used:
[Strength of the Untamed]
[Shoulderpads of Assassination]
[Manimal's Cinch]
[Umberhowl's Collar]
You receive violet signet after your first steps in kara, so that was probably what i used instead of the badge ring.
And i probably had Earthwarden ..
Just for your "lower" level set, if you will create something like that.
edit: i had to ask GM to return the green belt to me, since i sold it the moment i got it while leveling. Silly ages :-)
|
Hehe, I can refer to your post i the main post, but right now I've got to run. I will be making a pre-Heroic gear guide soon also, and that belt will be in it. Please come with suggestions, if you have any=)
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/12/07, 8:00 AM
|
#46
|
|
Piston Honda
Tauren Druid
Terenas (EU)
|
Well, it was some time ago, but I did a tanking gear progression list, with mostly items from quests and normal 5-mans, plus a few from heroic. It covers the basics, and in the same thread I also put the same kind of info for cats. It's a starting point if you need one.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/12/07, 11:36 AM
|
#47
|
|
Glass Joe
Blood Elf Paladin
Altar of Storms
|
Some comments on the OP's gear list:
Since BoJ items are being included, then [Cowl of Beastly Rage] is probably better than [Stylin' Purple Hat]
With Survival of the Fittest this gear set pushes you well beyond crit immunity, so [Necklace of the Deep] properly gemmed becomes a better tank neck piece than [Necklace of the Juggernaut].
If you're going to include BoJ and BG rewards, might as well include Arena rewards as well and list [Merciless Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders] instead of [Shoulderpads of Assassination].
And at this point, are there any realms where someone can't find [Boots of Natural Grace] on the AH for a reasonable price (reasonable considering you won't replace them until BT). May as well note them, since any druid serious about tanking can have them before their first raid... Of course, this might then push you below crit immunity and change the best neck back to Juggernaut...
And [Braxxis' Staff of Slumber] is always floating around my realm's AH for a few hundred gold. It's a great tanking weapon until you can get CE Exalted.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/12/07, 1:18 PM
|
#48
|
|
Piston Honda
Tauren Druid
Terenas (EU)
|
Originally Posted by Iceman69
|
I'd say so... since they are BoP.
|
And [Braxxis' Staff of Slumber] is always floating around my realm's AH for a few hundred gold. It's a great tanking weapon until you can get CE Exalted.
|
Usually more like 50g, or even less. Very good item indeed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
11/12/07, 7:06 PM
|
#49
|
|
King Hippo
|
Originally Posted by anathor
I'd say so... since they are BoP.
|
I'm pretty sure he meant the pattern (which is BoE), from which anyone capable of running a heroic can craft the actual item (they require Primal Nether, not Nether Vortex).
On topic: I've been tanking since pre-TBC and have always been an Armor/HP whore. However, I was doing Kara back in the post 2.0.x Druid nerfs, but pre 2.1 gear buffs (that brought Clefthoof, T4 et al into prominence). I first successfully tanked Prince and Nightbane in something ridiculous like 22k armor ~14k hp unbuffed with dodge somewhere around 30%.
I was using most of what Edenfall posted, except Assassination Shoulders, Chestguard of the Talon (low hp but incredible Armor / Dodge), Umberhowl bracers, Verdant Gloves, Manimal's Cinch, Ash Tempered Legs, and a pair of green high armor boots from a Blade's Edge quest (gosh, can't even remember the name now). I had gotten the heroic Badge neck/ring by then, and had the Violet Eye rep ring too. For trinkets it was, yep, good old Mark of Tyranny and Smoking Heart of the Mountain (Moroes was a cunt for aaages with his Pocketwatch).
At the time, I was using Hugehoss' spreadsheet (which is remarkably similar to rawr, or vice versa?) to get "tankpoint"-like AEP values, and plugging them into my own spreadsheet to rank/select gear and gems. Armor/HP always came out tops.
|
|
|
|
|
|
12/14/07, 4:26 AM
|
#50
|
|
Banned
Tauren Druid
Ragnaros (EU)
|
The main post of this thread has been updated with Pre-Heroic Gear, Feral Druid Enchants and some editing to fit the post Patch 2.3 environment.
Feel free to post tips and improvements or ask questions.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|