The effect will occur far more frequently than any clickable trinket on sunwell bosses as well.

Destruction warlocks aren't exactly "non-team-players". Any affliction warlock beyond the first (assuming non-retarded gear level, aka best of kara/badge/crafted at minimum) will be a dps loss to the raid over being destuction (when gear is high enough destruction even outdpses the raid dps benefit of malediction). If you want an imp, you make sure you have an affliction warlock every raid. If people lack consistency, they'll have to either consistently respec (and keep 2 gearsets) or you'll have to live with a suboptimal raid every so often. If you're asking a destruction warlock to camp an imp you're killing raid dps and giving up on shadow embrace which is probably way better than the imp in terms of survivability, on top of an affliction warlock being quite more dps (actual difference depends on gear leve) than a no-sac destruction warlock.

If you don't have an affliction warlock every raid then it's not the warlocks to blame, it's the guild officers that tell who to spec what. Or if you're casual there's nothing you can do really as you'll always have someone missing and end up with a suboptimal raid since you can't coordinate specs and can't force respecs. I wouldn't make up for it by having a destruction warlock put an imp out. Demonology probably loses a lot less though, but why are you raiding with demonology in the firstplace??

BTW, I won't be updating the guide until this stuff goes live. Obviously the devs are doing a decent job retuning stuff - including the commendation.

[Girdle of the Fearless] and [Sunguard Legplates]

Datamined recently and speculated to be among the upcoming badge loot (from an unlocked stage of the island). Whatever the source, additional plate options for stacking expertise and generally nice threat/tank pieces.

edit: not an expertise piece, but [Chestplate of Stoicism] may be from 2.4 badges as well.

Anyone else pissed that there doesn't seem to be a dedicated tanking weapon upgrade for us in Sunwell, the badge loot, or the heroic, not even a bad one?

As a human, I am liking the Dragonscale sword a great deal. Just because it doesn't have defense on it, doesn't mean it's not a tanking sword.

Still have to wait and see about the weapons, but if there's nothing then mabye Blizzard intends that 1.5 speed sword w/ haste and expertise to be shared by rogues/wars.

With regards to that trinket, I think I posted this in another thread but in it's previous state below 35% health the 20% dodge would put a lot of tanks around 90% avoidance making you nigh invincible every 30 seconds. In its nerfed state it's still quite strong and I'll defiantely be using it.

I wonder if the new expertise items will be better than T5 for a threat set? Since we can pretty much remove all dodges already more is only going to be removing parry.

A quick question for those who tank more regularly than I, do you think the new cuttable 4dodge/6stam Nightseye will be worth socketing in red slots where there's a decent socket bonus to be had, or are red slots still basically worthless?

The heroic gem is better (5dodge/6sta), but I would still use 5agi/7sta over that. They might also just add an epic cut with 5dodge/7sta later.
There are a few socket bonuses worth using a red gem, mostly those that add 6sta while still being able to socket all other slots with 15sta gems. That would be Illidan helm, T6 helm and the new chest + legs from Sunwell.

Yeah, the heroic gem is better, but requires farming heroics. As for 5agi/7stam, it also seems better, but obviously not everyone has access to epic gems (my guild is 5/5 7/9, but I'm a DPSer so I won't get epic gems for my 'offspec' tank gear), and it seems better than 4agi/6stam.

Because Stamina is not the benchmark by which all tanking pieces are measured, especially compared to tanking set pieces.


I've started socketing everything with a minor stam bonus with it's mitigation equivalent gem (exception being 3 socket pieces). They balance hit amounts on non-Tauren tanks, so I can achieve equal health values with more avoidance than my other race counterparts.

haha -- Did the same to both T6 and Illidan. 2 stam vs. 5 agility --- 2 stam!! 10 Minutes later. "why did I just do that?"

To be fair though, I've played his character more than he has apparantly, and he DOES have a 5 agility / 7 stamina gem in it.

Taken from the 2.4 discussion thread since this topic seems to stir lots of discussion. This is about Block Rating and about it's usefulness/uselessness.

I think it's pretty much useless in the context of a normal set (it does have it's use in a crush immune set but this is IMO just a novelty and has it's own drawbacks so I'll not focus on that). That means your current avoidance + block is below 102.4%-15%=87.4% because if you are already at this point then BR (and other avoidance) actually eats into your chance to get crushed. Every discussion about BR is in this specific light, if you want to discuss it in a crush immune environment, be my guest, but my post is not about that.

The biggest misconception I have seen is that people think that having lots of BR will reduce your chance to get crushed if you somehow got hit more often than you have SB charges. An example:

Even having lots of BR wouldn't save you there; if a boss wants to crush you, he will crush you because crushing blows basically override everything. BR here would only have eaten into a normal hit but not a crush.

So yeah, what do you think of BR? It's quite useless IMO.

Yep block rating is useless except when stacking it specifically for some sort of gimmick fight. I am so, so happy blizzard has not included block rating on the new tank gear and is giving us boatloads of dodge, parry, defense, and expertise. "offset" tank pieces are still fine to put block rating on - and they're doing a bit of that. (The shoulders. I think most tanks wouldn't use them right now, and would stick with T6 - especially those that managed to get a sapphiron enchant for their onslaught). Although now if they upgrade the armor of the shoulders they might be pretty damn good. That massive block value is quite a bit of mitigation.

AOE tanking will also benefit from block rating, as not only will shield block be down most of the time, the mobs in certain cases actually hit weak enough for a block to reduce a significant amount of the damage. Nothing I'd gear for, though...

Exactly. Gimmick shit that really doesn't matter a damn anyway. Oh look I can solo old content or non elite mobs or super easy things or can have all these mostly-easy elites in this Raid Instance hitting me and take no damage, too bad the paladin tank is going to have to truly tank them so we can aoe and kill them anyway!

I just read that 2.4 notes thread and the mass amount of uninformed people there is amazing. Lots of people just flat out clueless and wrong and spreading misinformation. Game is hard.

The only thing I could think of were those mobs in the Illidan's harem (Concubines and such). You can actually fully block the stuff they throw at you easily but unfortunately they stun so it doesn't really matter what gear you wear :/

Almost all the new armor values for the 2.4 stuff is wrong. It looks like Blizzard took existing items (most glaringly T1 Eng Goggles and ilevel 128-151 plate) and increased their item budget without updating (read: increase!) their armor values for all the new gear. The T2 engineering goggles have the exact same armor as the T1 goggles. The T6.5 DPS chest (1728) actually has less armor than both Glory of the Defender (1765) and T6 chest (1825). Doesn't it seem odd that Kil'jaeden drops would have the same armor as the Illidan helm? So for the time being, I wouldn't try to compare items by their armor.

Another thing: the rogue gear spreadsheet shows that Blade of Savagery is superior to Dragonscale-encrusted Longblade for DPS.

I read that blizzard acknowledged the armor values are a bug, however, I have no idea where the blue post is. And searching on wowblues seems futile. If anyone has the link, it would be appreciated.

To play the Devil's Advocate for a second regarding Shield Block Rating.

Block Rating is still the cheapest of all the defensive stats in terms of item budget on just about any item.

While it may seem gimmicky to become an uncrushable tank, it's also easiest if you use items with block rating, the new meta gem next patch gives you a free 10% Block, I'd argue that without having to sacrifice much of anything and using maybe 2-3 items with block rating, you'd be able to become uncrushable with ease while still having over 20k+ HP in a raid environment.