I have been told by more than ne person, some of which are druids, that resilience is the new way to go over defense. The reason for this is that it takes less resilience to be uncritable which then in turn allows us more freedom of options when it comes to gear and gems to increase our stam and other traits. So true or not???

So true or not???not

It helps to distinguish between PvE and PvP as well as spec. As a Feral druid who is geared for PvP, Resilience is my #1 stat and I wouldn't spec Defense over Res, Agility, Stamina, AP, Str, Crit, Armor Penetration, Int... hell they'd have to be giving away +def.

However, Bear mitigation benefits very heavily from both. PvE gear doesn't generally even have Res on it. IMHO, if you have 3/3 SoF (-3% crit reduction) you then only need 103 Resilience to be uncrittable to a 73 mob. Defense *I believe* is going to also play into your Dodge chance a bit. But in some ways the stats are redundant it seems and it takes a sh1t ton more Def to be "uncrittable" then it does Resilience it seems.

I think it comes down to your spec and whether you are geared for PvP or not. If so, eschew Def for Res most if not all of the time. If you are a Bear tanking heroics, gobble em both up as much as possible.

If there's reasons why Defense is preffered to Resilience, I'd like to hear what it is. But I believe it will come down to what you want to do with your toon.

If there's reasons why Defense is preffered to Resilience, I'd like to hear what it is. Dodge. For PvE aim for +def where possible, but you will find that at some point you will need to use some +res to become uncritable because of the lack of +def on gear. Do NOT gem for +def, or +res, on your PvE gear unless you only need a coupe more points to become uncritible with your current tanking kit.

From http://www.wowwiki.com/Defense...
Each point of +Defense skill adds 0.04% to the chance to be Missed, to Block, to Dodge and to Parry for players. This means +25 Defense will grant you an extra 1% Miss, Parry, Dodge, and Block

Put on your tanking gear and run...
Use.../script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(2.6-(GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)*.04+GetCom batRatingBonus(CR_CRIT_TAKEN_MELEE)),1,0.5,0)...to determine if you are uncritible to a lvl 73 mob. Assumes you have SotF and are at 350 base defense. If the number returned is 0 or negative you are ok.

Resilience is better than taking suboptimal gear and gem choices. Considering that some of the best tanking and DPS pieces of armor in the game have resilience, and given that there are new options for resilience and defense enchants, you should not have to gem for defense or take bad defense options.

The real key is that it only takes a total of 103 resilience to get uncrittable compared to 156 defense. Defense is not a good avoidance stat for druids (they only benefit from the miss and dodge), so it is better from a per-point basis to go with more resilience and agility or more resilience and dodge.

The real key is that it only takes a total of 103 resilience to get uncrittable compared to 156 defense. Defense is not a good avoidance stat for druids (they only benefit from the miss and dodge), so it is better from a per-point basis to go with more resilience and agility or more resilience and dodge.
Taking Resilience over Defense is never a better option. It's an acceptable alternative, but it is not better.

I think what kalbear is trying to say is that many of the items with +res offer more +agi than gear with +def on it. So this additional +agi (may) offset the advantage +def has over +res.

IOW, +res with +agi > +def.

In short, there isn't one "best way" to become uncritible. It all depends on the gear you have access to and where you are in PvE progression.

That said, if you just reached lvl 70, you should have no issue becoming uncritible with +def items and a few of the new nearly free PvP items. Where you go from there is up to you.

I think what kalbear is trying to say is that many of the items with +res offer more +agi than gear with +def on it. So this additional +agi (may) offset the advantage +def has over +res.

IOW, +res with +agi > +def.

In short, there isn't one "best way" to become uncritible. It all depends on the gear you have access to and where you are in PvE progression.
True, it all depends on your progression and what equipment you have.

Exactly. I'm saying that if you have a choice between taking gear that has resilience and agility (or multiple pieces of gear that give you resilience and agility) it's better to do that than it is to take gear that just gives you defense.

In other words, don't kill yourself trying to get defense gear when you can take resilience + other things instead.

Man, there is still so much confusion on this really quite simple issue.

It's like this druids. Against a level 73 mob, or any boss such as Gruul, Nightbane, etc, you have a 5.6% chance to be critted whilst tanking.

By getting the feral talent "Survival of the Fittest", you can reduce your chance to be critted by 3%. That means you need 2.6% more.

You can get this crit reduction from either defense skill or resilience. You can mix and match each - as long as they add up to 2.6% or more, you're at (or above) the crit cap.

You can discover how much crit reduction you have by opening your character sheet (default keyboard shortcut is "c"), then click one of the drop-down menus and select the Defenses tab. Mouse over defense and resilience entries, and in the tooltip it says how much crit reduction you have. Resilience and Defense crit reductions must add up to 2.6% or more for you to be at the cap.

Your base defense skill at level 70 is 350. To achieve the crit cap from only defense skill, you would need 65 points for 415 defense skill = 2.6% crit reduction.




So what is different about the two stats?
Well, defense skill is theoretically better because it also gives you dodge chance.
However, resilience is better for pvp because it's a "cheaper" stat, and because you are never able to reach a crit cap in pvp, therefore the fact that resilience reduces the amount of damage you take from crits as well is useful.
In pve you should never be critted so that component of resilience is essentially wasted.



A lot of people in this thread have made some pretty sureptitious claims about various stuff. There is a lot of wrong information or opinions stated without justifying evidence. Hopefully this post will clear up any confusion.



-Annikk

Well *I* wasn't being sureptitious. :p I'll call myself out. Apparently it doesn't take a sh1t t0n more defense than resilience to be uncrittable. Thanks for that clarification.

I couldn't tell if the OP knew that "uncrittable" was a PvE term so hopefully it was obvious I was only talking about PvP. Except for what I just learned about Defense! :clap:

Thanks.

what about the fact that reilance give you dmg reduction to spells were def doesn't?? Is that true or just another fish tale?

And is there a different number for being uncrushable Vs. uncritable?? If there is what is that number for Druids??

Put on your tanking gear and run...
Use.../script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(2.6-(GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)*.04+GetCom batRatingBonus(CR_CRIT_TAKEN_MELEE)),1,0.5,0)...to determine if you are uncritible to a lvl 73 mob. Assumes you have SotF and are at 350 base defense. If the number returned is 0 or negative you are ok.


Is there a way to determine when u r uncritable to a lvl 73+ boss mod with this??
y number is like -0.35#### does this mean anything more than uncritable or no?

what about the fact that reilance give you dmg reduction to spells were def doesn't?? Is that true or just another fish tale?

You are sort of right. Resilience also reduces the damage you take from damage-over-time effects, such as bleeds (eg rip) and also things like warlock dots, corruption, curse of agony, and others as well like shadow word pain. Dots aren't a major source of damage in pve generally speaking. Resilience is more for pvp.



And is there a different number for being uncrushable Vs. uncritable?? If there is what is that number for Druids??

Druids will always be susceptable to Crushing Blows. This is due to the fact that we cannot parry or block. This extra types of avoidance allows warriors with sufficient gear to "push crushing blows off the table".
What we mean by this is that their parry, block and dodge chance adds up to a combined level that is great enough to push the chance of a crushing blow off the roll table. Every time you get hit, a roll is performed to find out the result of that hit. Say you have 10% chance to dodge, and 90% chance to be hit. If you roll 5, you dodge. If you roll 55, you get hit. Increasing dodge pushes the chance of getting hit further off the table.

I have seen druids with over 100% dodge chance with various trinkets up. This means that they have effectively become uncrushable too (since nothing can hit them) but having over 100% is due to trinkets being up etc.

In general, the druid tanking tactic is to go for loads of armor and health so that we can ride out the crushing blows. Dodge chance helps a great deal as well. Crushing blows are just something we have to live with.


Is there a way to determine when u r uncritable to a lvl 73+ boss mod with this??
y number is like -0.35#### does this mean anything more than uncritable or no?

There is a very easy way.
Open your character panel, the default keyboard shortcut is 'C'.

Click a drop down box and choose the Defenses tab.

Now mouse over your Defense skill, and on the tooltip it will tell you how much your defense chance reduces your chance to be critted. Take a note of this number.

Now mouse over your resilience. Again, the tooltip will tell you your chance to be critted.

Now add these 2 numbers together.
If the result is 2.6%, you are uncrittable by a lvl 73 mob (ie a raid boss).
If the result is less than 2.6%, you need to stack some more defense or resilience.
If the result is more than 2.6%, you can afford to drop some defense or resilience.



-Annikk

My number is like -0.35#### does this mean anything more than uncritable or no?If the number is negative (and you have a 350 base defense and SotF) from the above script, you are uncritable. That's it. If you look at the script closely it just does...

2.6 - (your anti-cri total) == number.

So, if the 'number' is negative you have more "anti-crit" than you need.

I was looking at the new resilience/stamina enchant for head and crunched some numbers to see what I would gain/lose, and thought about this thread. No matter how you look at it, resilience is not a better tanking pve stat than defense.

-1% crit reduction = 59.25 defense rating = 39.4 Resilience Rating

60 defense rating also gives you +1% dodge and -1% chance to be hit. If you were to use 40 resilience and the remaining 20 stat points on agility, you get 1.42% dodge from the additional agility (1.57% with Kings). So you end up getting hit 0.58% more of the time (0.43% with Kings). It certainly is close, and you get added threat and dps from the additional agility. But from a pure tanking perspective, resilience is not better than defense. An acceptable alternative certainly.

what about the fact that reilance give you dmg reduction to spells were def doesn't?? Is that true or just another fish tale?
As mentioned above by Annikk, resilience reduces all DoT's whittling away at you. Nice to have, but not necessary.

Another way it reduces dmg is decreasing dmg from spell crits & melee crits. But only player spells can crit; additionally once you have your magic 5.6% vs. level 73 elites, only player melee can crit vs. you. So as been said, leans to the PVP side of things.

The great part about defense rating was mentioned by Falloraan. Even when capped for uncritability, more of it adds to dodge % & to-be-missed %.

Wowwiki has pretty complete information on resilience. (http://www.wowwiki.com/Resilience)

I have all zeros when I do the mouseover on defense. Disabled all mods and still no change =/

That's odd. I take it you do have some gear equipped which gives defense rating?


-Annikk

Not yet. I should probably say I am level 68 at this point so don't have 350 defense. I wouldn't imagine that makes a difference since the % should be a running calc but is the only thing that jumps out at me.

Edit: and that was the key. I wasn't playing close enough attention to the tooltip and hadn't equiped anything with just +dodge (ie "of eluding"). I was a bit turned around by what was feeding what. Hit 70, equiped my heavy clefthoof gear and the numbers lit up like a christmas tree...a very very small christmas tree.

Okay, we'll look at some of the real-world tradeoffs that you can get with resilience, since that's the part that isn't being talked about.

For instance, the glyph of the defender vs the glyph of the gladiator. The Glyph of the defender provides 16 defense and 17 dodge. This is 1.43% total avoidance and another .27% crit reduction. The Glyph of the gladiator provides 20 resilience and 18 stamina. This is .50% crit reduction - nearly double what the defender gives - and is also another 18 stamina. So is double the crit reduction + 18 stamina worth 1.54 avoidance? That's something that you'll have to answer for yourself, but usually the answer is yes, especially given the higher value of stamina compared to avoidance for bear tanks. Does it give you anything extra? No; the item budget is the same for both. What it does give you is extra flexibility in your gearing choices, and that's huge.

Another example: the vindicator bracers vs. band of the swift paw. Band of the swift paw is by far the best tanking wrist in the game before sunwell (and probably there as well). Assuming you gem with an enduring talasite, you'd be trading 19 resilience along with some crit rating for 81 armor and 4 defense. That's a huge savings - and you get that savings because the vindicator's bracers don't have int on them. Now, the armor is a big loss, but you can get 1/5th of your total uncrittability out of the way by wearing that one piece. That's a huge deal.

That's what I mean about resilience tending to be better. It's not better by itself; if you can get defense easily, it's a better stat than resilience by itself. But you never can. You always have to make tradeoffs, like the glyph of the defender vs. the glyph of the gladiator or the bracers. It's even worse as you upgrade your gear, as the best items in slot tend to have reduced defense as you go up in value. An example is Slikk's Cloak of Placation (16 def) vs Gilded Thorium (24 def). You want Slikk's because of the extra stamina and the extra dodge rating; it's better on both avoidance and stamina. But you lose 8 defense. The ring of Stalwart determination is similar too; you gain huge amounts of armor and stamina but lose some defense compared to other rings. Resilience allows for more options here; instead of having to have subpar trinkets, rings, cloaks and amulets, you can concentrate on one or two slots that are only slight downgrades in exchange for some massive gains elsewhere.

I wrote up a longer analysis on my blog (http://wowthinktank.blogspot.com/2008/05/druid-value-of-resilience-for-tanking.html).