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.

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.

The band of dominance is also blue while the ring of unyielding force is purple (the 2.1 version is also 10 ilevels higher). It's not fair to compare the two.

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)

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.

When you're part of any 2k+ rated team, let me know how not gearing for survivability works for ya. You have some wierd setups. The Rogue/Priest 2v2 makes sense but Rogue/Priest/Priest? That's just odd as hell.

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.