I thought I'd make a seperate thread to discuss the viability of high armor itemization for cloth in arenas. The discussion should be about Warlocks, Priests and (especially after 2.1.0) Mages. Feel free to comment on specs for these various cloth classes, but I'm looking for survival suggestions specific to existing Blizzard itemization. I've been adding my 2C in both the Warlock and now Priest threads but wanted to get this out in the open. I'm not inventing the wheel, but BC has added some pretty amazing drops that make cloth arena tanks even more viable.

Note: Itemization like this isn't what I would wear vs. all teams or even in certain brackets. These are simply Itemrack ideas for my fellow clothies to take the squishy out of us, or at least make Warriors work a little harder. I have a regular Spellpower & Resilience set for heavier magic DPS teams. Bear in mind that with Defense comes dodge, miss/crit chance. The idea here is to make up for Resilience on select pieces of PVP gear. It's not a 1:1 ratio but it softens the blow a bit.

* All given stats are post 2.1.0

Cloaks (+120 Armor enchant)

Gilded Thorium Cloak - 345 Armor, 27 Stamina, 21 Defense
(Terestian Illhoof) - Karazhan

Resolute Cape - 289 Armor, 30 Stamina, 21 Resilience
(Crafted)

Thoriumweave Cloak - 390 Armor, 35 Stamina
(Mechano-Lord Capacitus) - Mechanar

Rings

Violet Signet of the Great Protector - 392 Armor, 37 Stamina, 19 Defense
(Violet Eye: Exhalted)

Ring of Unyielding Force - 294 Armor, 31 Stamina, 22 Defense
(Heroic Badges: 25)

Shermanar Great-Ring - 195 Armor, 33 Stamina, 20 Defense
(Shade of Aran) - Karazhan

Trinkets

Adamantine Figurine - 32 Defense, Use: Increases armor by 1280 for 20 sec.
(Blackheart the Inciter) - Shadow Labyrinth

Zandalarian Hero Badge - Use: Increases your armor by 2000 and defense rating by 50 for 20 sec. Every time you take melee or ranged damage, this bonus is reduced by 200 armor and 5 defense rating.

Defense is useless if you only have dodge. Have you compared it to the PVP reward rings with resilience?

Getting that an extra 1000 AC and 10~ extra stam will result in going from 10~% reduction to 17%~, for the cost of 20 -resist, 1~% crit, 30~ int, 50~ resil, and 50~ + dmg.

I suppose if you're a warlock tanking for your team and fearing, or a priest who won't miss the mana and you expect physical, or will switch right before the fight it might be useful if you expect to recieve that much damage AND die from it otherwise.

Other special armor items is the Oracle Belt of Timeless Mystery, it has an armor mod on it getting 205 armor, while epic belts have 100 armor.

Let's compare two rings. Also, don't forget that nearly all of the armor rings are getting buffed. The stats on Ring of Unyielding Force are from live only. This makes the benefit even more obvious when you consider at least two physical DPS classes are assisting you.

1. Band of Dominance
Finger
+27 Stamina
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 15.
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 25.

2. Ring of Unyielding Force
Finger
200 Armor (294)
+27 Stamina (31)
Equip: Increases defense rating by 21. (22)
__

Now let's compare the upsides and downsides of each on a 1:1 ratio. (The armor is what my Warlock has with and w/o)

1. 1234 Armor, 337 Resilience, 350 Defense
Armor: 10.47% mitigation
Resilience: -8.55% to be crit, -17.10% taken from crits
Defense: 4.36% dodge
Spellpower: 25

2. 1434 Armor, 322 Resilience, 358 Defense
Armor: 11.96% mitigation
Resilience: -8.17% to be crit, -16.34% taken from crits
Defense: 4.67% dodge, .32% reduction to be hit and crit
Spellpower: 0

What did you gain/lose by using the tank ring, vs. heavy physical DPS teams only?

Mitigation: Gain 1.49%
Crit % reduction: Lose .06% (Taking defense into consideration)
Crit dmg reduction: Lose .76%
Dodge: Gain .32%
Miss: Gain .32%
Spellpower: Lose 25

I'd say the choice is pretty obvious when you have 2 of anything physical assisting you. Now take the stats above, and buff the Ring of Unyielding Force as shown in the (2.1.0) indicator. Overall, the lost Spellpower is very minor. You can't DPS anything when you're dead.

I think resolute cape is something like 380 armor after the patch, I'm looking to get one made for me

Do you have a better purple PVP ring in mind, that you'd like me to compare?

(That I don't have to be part of a PVE raiding guild to get)

What about the Argussian Compass(http://www.thottbot.com/i27770)? You trade some def for stam, and an on use armor effect for -68 damage per hit. Seems like a good all purpose survivability item to me. And the -68 damage per attack will particularly help against rogues.



Trinket
+36 Stamina
Use: Reduces damage from each attack by 68, up to a total of 1150 damage absorbed. Lasts 20 sec.(2min cd)

Yeah I wanted that for a long time.. but overall, passive effect trinkets are just flat out better. I have plenty of health at like 11,400 right now. The stamina is nice, but I don't "need" it as SL. Maybe if I was UA, I'd take that.

It all depends on what scenario you will be faced with. Survival stats are useless if you're not being hit, and then you're putting your team at a huge disadvantage by greatly reducing your damage/healing output.

In arenas, it's a good idea to bring two sets of gear and have a mod that can switch between them depending on the oppositions setup like you said, i.e all your resilience is useless against a DoT heavy team, all your armour is useless against magic heavy teams, etc.

I'd also make judgement based on what kind of healing backup you have, i.e how good you know you healers are, and how many you're running.

Personally I'd avoid investing heavily into pure armour/defence items as you generally lose a good deal of other crucial stats in return for pure melee mitigation, and instead take advantage of resilience and stam, because it gives you a more broad defence. But thats just my playstyle, you'll only achieve meaningful results from field testing.

Timelapse shard would probably be better to go after than Argussian, stam, resilience, and a pve on use.

If you're getting the same team all night and you know you can beat them by dropping survivability for damage, it might work. But in general, it's just too risky, since at least for my class changing into pve gear doesn't net me uber dps at the cost of a bit of stamina. It's nets me a few hundred ap and decent mana regen at the cost of a few thousand hp and some resilience.

The only time I've ever really switched out gear is mid fight if I'm running oom and the other team isn't doing much damage.

Armor values have changed enough with the inception of the burning crusade that at least in my opinion, striving to achieve high amounts doesn't have anywhere nearly the viability it used to. When I hit 70 and noticed that my 2500 or whatever armor was giving less than 50% of the damage reduction it used to, I took that as a sign to disenchant my ZHB. With regard to armor we simply have to give up too much else(resil/stam, and for priests, int as well) to get to a relevant level. A few hundred hit points, or a decent chunk of resilience goes further, and moreover applies bonuses for us against all classes, not just melee. Now, I'm not writing it off entirely, and having it as an extra stat is great(cloaks in particular come to mind), but actually sacrificing other important stats for it just doesn't seem wise anymore.

Agree with Oren: it just doesn't seem plausible to aim for +armor in amounts for it to actually matter in the long run. I'm guessing that's also one of the reasons for all the new-found hatred towards warriors (and physical damage in general) from cloth-wearing classes.

AC use to be quite worth it back in the day!

I was in fact 2k+ rated for a while in my 2vs2, but my partner server transferred. We ran priest/shadow priest. The teams I'm in right now are merely 10 game teams so my tragically geared friends can get some arena points before I finish off my shaman and start up a 5vs5again.

I never said "don't gear for survivability", I said gear for your role.

When I was playing with my ex-partner, I did substitute certain items for higher survivability, but we won because of strong silence/fear timing and the huge nukes that follow. I found when I put on very heavy stam/res peices (unyielding set, couple peices of gladiators, few heroic drops), we certainly lasted longer, but we didn't have enough killing power either. In most cases it became mana bar vs mana bar, and generally we were fighting far more efficiant opponents. In my scenario it was always favourable to keep above the 1k+damage mark, and I generally could without much hiderance because I had a strong healer.

Obviously it's favourable to lose items like Bracers of Havok and Cloak of the Black Void for their marshal counterparts, you lose minimal damage and usually gain exceptional stam/res, but when it comes to itemising yourself with loot that is pure stam/def/armour, you've practically resigned to being a cloth tank.

I also agree with Oren, pre-BC I horded a good deal of armour from enchants/trinkets and such, but in BC cloth armour didn't scale well, and now with resilience it seems even more of a waste of item points.

My former warlock class leader is in a 2k+ rating 2v2 team right now with my former guild leader, a rogue. He is Nightfall/Shadowfury (geared for damage), the rogue is 41/0/20 Mutilate, and the team composition and spec shocked me. Both are awesome PvPers, and I think the setup catches a lot of people offguard. I think they'll run into trouble against the "outlast" archetype, but it shows warlocks can conceivably reach 2k+ rating without speccing and gearing for survivability.

His name is Wisdikin if you want to look him up on Armory.

Gearing for survival in 2v2 vs. 3v3 and 5v5 are DRAMATICALLY different things.

..you really need the right group setup to make Destruction work in 5v5. In other words, a UA Warlock who can take some pressure off you to cast. Otherwise you'd always be the first assist target without Soul Link. However! Our 5v5 has been wanting to try this:

UA Warlock, Destro Warlock, AP/Pyro Mage x2, Paladin

Sounds like a fun team to run against teams that heavily rely on its warrior anchor. I'd love to see a video of that team in action. It's possibly more gib-a-licious than Taco's 3 AP-Pyro mage 3v3 team.