From http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12065155975&sid=2000
ARMOR
We are changing the way bear armor works so that bonus armor on items does not receive the bear armor multiplier. Specifically this means that trinkets, rings, necks and cloaks with bonus armor will not be multiplied by the bear bonus. The normal armor on leather will still be multiplied by this bonus. We are also going to remove bonus armor from Feral staves. You’ll get your bonus armor from the leather you acquire.

Examples:
1) A ring that grants 100 bonus armor will now grant a bear 100 armor (not ~470 armor).
2) Leather legs with 253 armor will still grant a bear ~1190 armor (not 253 armor).
3) A feral staff will now grant 0 armor.

We are making this change because armor is such a good stat for bears that it makes taking pieces with bonus armor a non-decision and we don’t want acquiring these pieces, which tend to not be common, to be so much of a barrier to a druid who wants to tank a raid.

This change will NOT be in effect when Lich King ships. We are letting you know this now so that you don’t go through heroic efforts to acquire items like the Badge of Tenacity, or Defender’s Code. Defender’s Code, with 850 armor, will still be a good trinket. But it won’t be an insanely good trinket for a bear.

We will adjust the bear armor modifiers so that your net mitigation does NOT go down with these changes. Let me repeat: this is not a nerf to Feral armor. It is a change to the amount of armor you get from gear with bonus armor.

ANA
We are adding an effect to a deep Feral talent (something like Primal Tenacity) to further reduce the cost of shapeshifting into cat or bear by 50%. This talent will stack with Natural Shapeshifter for a total cost reduction of 80%. PvP-focused druids can get both talents to shift easily and often despite, no longer having Int on gear at level 80.

PROTECTOR OF THE PACK
We are removing the group requirements from this talent. The new tooltip will say: “Increases your attack power by X and reduces the damage you take in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by Y.” The values of X and Y themselves are not changing.

Again, these changes will NOT be in Nov 13 for Lich King’s launch. We will add them in a patch that will come out sometime before the major Ulduar content patch. We're letting you know now so that you can choose quest rewards and loot drops accordingly.

Well I can't wait to see my new modifier... it better be totally freaking spectacular or Feral druids are gonna get screwed hard core on armor. Nothing like having to bump our modifier to 480% to accomodate for the fact that rings trinkets, etc won't really help us much.

gah! you beat me to it!

okay, now im curious as to how the shapeshifting talent will affect where i take other points...

im happy and scared all at the same time

/confused

on the other hand... i guess i don't need that badge of tenacity so much after all

Wonder what, if anything, they are going to replace the armor on staffs with?? More +sta?

What does this mean for those of us that thought we could tank 5-mans with a cat spec while leveling? Will I need to pick-up a few bear talents in order to tank reg 5-mans from 70-80?

tbh this sucks.

this really annoys me.

why not just make us the same as other classes.

/tar Blizz /spit

I think, in the end, we (as bears) will like the change as it will allow us to use different necks, rings, trinkets for different purposes than just mitigation without costing us mitigation. Need more threat use ring X, need more burst TPS use trinket Y all without fear of losing overall mitigation.

well i'm sorry but i think it sucks.

its just more lets make us all the same idea of blizz.

I think Blizzard just wanted to prevent another BC senario in which bears were gods early (becuase we reach the armor cap so soon) then weakened later on (because we couldn't give up our armor to gain mitigation elsewhere).

so after already nerfing the multiplier, they decide, at the 11th hour to announce that bigger armour nerf ?

and after it became clear we needed to look to rings / trinkets etc for our armour bonus not legs/chest etc ?

i paid big money for the Badge cos it was so good for bears. it was worth it though cos it made a big difference to me as a bear tank.....

now just like the 100 badge items etc i spent hours getting its going to become a pile of sh1t ?

sorry - this change is gonna make my wife very happy cos i see myself quitting wow. fed up with these 'changes'.

they may help high end raiders / they may help pvpers / they may help those no lifers who play 90 hrs a week.

but to me as a 4 yr veteran with limited time and only 1 lvl 70 they suck.

so after already nerfing the multiplier, they decide, at the 11th hour to announce that bigger armour nerf ?It is not a nerf. They are replacing the armor with some other form of mitigation and/or changes to bear armor multiplier. What that change will be is still TBD.

FWIW, the changes won't happen until you probably reach lvl 80, so what you have now will still be good until then. And frankly, it doesn't make sense to have BC items (BoT, Kara ring, etc.) still be great items at lvl 80 as it punishes those that didn't play BC for months at lvl 70.

it is a nerf - most certainly til the prove its not. TBD doesn't cut the mustard does it......

it does not matter when they happen - the fact they are is enough.

ofc not - there should be lvl 80 equivalents.....just like there were big upgrades to items at 70 from those i played a lot for at 60.

did my T2 cut it at 70 ? no. did my Smoking Heart of the Mountain ? did my Thrall's Resolve ?

I know this won't make you feel better, but it seems as though the vast majority of feral druids love the change and are singing praises....

@Sorry about the way you feel Kheldar

But it's the way the game works.
U said u spent endless time and money for badge of tenacity.
But it happens to all of us. I spend endless raids for my T4-pieces, then spent endless times for my T5-pieces.
Endless raids for T6 and with the patch it's all like nothing cause the next blues will replace my gear.

I see the changes with 2 different sides.
y fear is, will the mitigation stay at the level it is now.
But i like the fact, that u can use damage rings/trinkets or something like that for more TPS.
I also love the PotP talent-change, cause now it is a really good talent for a hybrid PvE-PvP built.
Before it was useless in 2v2 or 3vs3.
I also love the fact about the mana-cost-reduction-talent for shapeshifting.

So much positive things and the only negative thing is a change on gear-decision (hopefuly).
So heads up :grin:

yeah i know many will like it.

i really dont. still the more they tamper with my druid the more likely the wife will get her wish very soon.

gear becoming useless only happens with a big new retail release when they raise the level cap. in between that does not happen.

this says to me that Blizz still dont understand druids. this announcement at the 11th hour is comical in the extreme.

this should have been announced months ago and it should be part of Wrath if that's their intention.

not some half baked thread now that does not even contain all the necessary info ?

I have to say, I am a little excited!!! I have banked or vendored so much Stamina on rings/trinkets/necks etc because there was no +armor on the item. I can easily increase my HP pool by 1k-1.5k by dumping the high armor items in favor of high stam.

I need some advice on the badge of tend: I have it but only use it for kitty form now. I thought my Pocket Watch (moroes) and Commendation (H-Mgt) were better. Is that a wrong assumption? Keep in mind I almost always used trinket "use" talents as part of my "Oh shizzle" button, so the badge of tendancy really didn't serve much purpose.

As long as they keep our mitigation the same...thats big if...we only stand to gain other stats like stam and agi that can easily be found on items for DPS classes.

My only compliant is that they haven't announced the "replacement" portion. So, while we no longer have to try to get trinket X because it has high armor, we have no idea which trinket will be better in the future. What if I pick the wrong one while leveling? Or pass on loot because I thought it would suck. I so often pick healing quest rewards when I know the DPS/Tank option is weaker than what I have now. But I won't be able to do this until we know what they are going to do...

Basically this means we have to horde every trinket, neck, ring, staff, etc. we can get our hands one while leveling as we currently have no idea which one will be "good" in the future.

FWIW, I think we will see some sort of AP-->armor (or DR) conversion. This fits nicely with using rogue leather on a tank. Some have suggested Crit-->armor (or DR), but Blizzard seems to not want us to stack crit, so that option doesn't' make much sense. But AP-->armor (or DR) does. Maybe Str-->Armor (DR)??? But rogue leather doesn't have much str. Though the "shared" tanking trinkets, necks, rings, etc. do have quite a bit of str.

FWIW, I think we will see some sort of AP-->armor (or DR) conversion. This fits nicely with using rogue leather on a tank. Some have suggested Crit-->armor (or DR), but Blizzard seems to not want us to stack crit, so that option doesn't' make much sense. But AP-->armor (or DR) does. Maybe Str-->Armor (DR)??? But rogue leather doesn't have much str. Though the "shared" tanking trinkets, necks, rings, etc. do have quite a bit of str.

I guess I assumed they would apply the same mechanics to the trinkets/rings/etc that they did to chest/Legs/etc. They removed +armor ratings and offset the item level with DR to keep it on par with the preconversion item level. My concern here is what is diminishing returns on DR. I would assume most T4+ druids are +40% dgd already.
EDIT: But that assumption is because I don't read well apparently. The items will remain with +armor, it just won't do us any good.


I think the only real concerning part of this conversion is the timing. Changes that surface in the 11th hour are always concerning.

I would definatley reccomend rolling on all potentially applicable loot and banking anything that ins't useful now just to be safe (because you have all that extra space since they modified healing/melee stats). As for quest rewards, my TBC policy was always to take off-spec loot options from quest reward and picking up main spec loot from dungeon/crafting. This worked well because TBC was unfriendly to bear druids with quest items, and it always kept my healing set competitive without having to put too much effort into maintaining it.

While there is a positive element to all this (I think) - it certainly seems half-baked.

We've gone through a major patch change, a fix-patch toay (we get all our talents back) and then out seeps this warning about something that's going to happen somewhere down the line.

Oh - and there's an expansion coming.

Given the significance of this change how come it's missed all these three major milestone changes?

/sigh

This is one of those instances where I'm happy to be a newb and just learning how everything fits together.

I'm not a veteran who's had my bear at 70 for most of TBC, so I haven't seen all of the amazing tanking gear (t4-t6 that some of you have) in action. I still have my heavy clefthoof set, my staff of slumber, etc. I haven't even seen 20K armor. So when I log in and see 14k armor, I'm still a happy bear.

It's good to be fairly new at the game. Less pressure and less fear I think. If my guild leader reads this she'll want to have some stern words with me, but sometimes it's good to have no idea what you're doing. LOL!

We will adjust the bear armor modifiers so that your net mitigation does NOT go down with these changes. Let me repeat: this is not a nerf to Feral armor. It is a change to the amount of armor you get from gear with bonus armor.

I really wanna know, if they adjust the bear armor modifiers sooo high, that we dont need the armor-trinkets/rings/necks to be competetive.
Because when u sum up the armor on rings and trinkets known right now in WotLK, they boost armor for 2-4k.

y opinion:
We will still need the high-armor-rings/trinkets/necks/backs for tanking. It's just not as good for us as before... but still they give us 1/5 - 1/6 of our total armor. Even without the bear-modifier.
So i doubt, that we can switch out all these items to put in damage-items for better TPS.
But we will see....

This change allows us some flexibility in how we achieve our stat goals. Don't forget that Ghostcrawler has warned tanks that the days of stacking effective health to the exclusion o everything else are over. Threat will matter again in Naxx and above. Tank dps will matter to the success of the raid. I am happy to be unchained from high armor trinkets. My Badge of Tenacity is worth about 2% mitigation in today's game. A trinket with that much value is extremely difficult to replace.

Here's the solution posted by GC
This is an update to my previous post on Feral armor changes.

ARMOR
As previously announced, we are changing the way bear armor works so that bonus armor on items does not receive the bear armor multiplier. Specifically this means that weapons, trinkets, rings, necks and cloaks with bonus armor will not be multiplied by the bear bonus. Only cloth and leather will benefit from the Bear and Dire Bear multiplier.

We are compensating Ferals for this armor loss by improving the Survival of the Fittest talent. In addition to its current effects (stats and crit prevention), it will now also increase armor contribution from cloth and leather items by 22/33/66%. That should be very close to your current armor bonus. This makes Survival of the Fittest rather over-budget by talent standards, but we figured it was one talent we can be pretty certain most tank-oriented druids will have (and to be honest nearly all Ferals).

FERAL ATTACK POWER
We are no longer going to have weapons in the game which improve feral attack power. Instead, your attack power will scale based on the dps of the item. Practically speaking this means almost no change for any gear you currently use -- you should not see your dps change. What it does mean is that we can create the occasional dps staff that could be used by druids or hunters (or very undergeared warriors), and that Ferals may occasionaly use two-handed dps maces. We are going to convert all existing Feral staves over to this new system (but again, you should not notice any change to your dps). We are also adjusting the UI so that when druids look at these weapons, you will see what the improvement will be to your damage in forms. This does not mean we are no longer going to create bear and cat weapons, just that those weapons will be slightly less niche than they are now.

These changes will be in place in the next patch. This patch will ship sometime before the 3.1 major content patch featuring the Ulduar raid.

Saw that... strange to make it rely on a talent, but I guess they have a reason for it.

Saw that... strange to make it rely on a talent, but I guess they have a reason for it.They use a talent so that non-Feral druids don't get the bonus. What I wonder is if the bonus applies to bear form only??? He mentions that SotF is taken by all Ferals, so do all Ferals get the bonus? Is it applied before the bear multiplier?

Really the weapon change is much bigger. It means all of us will need to start looking at weapon DPS (speed????) and damage ranges, which we never have had to before. The theorycrafter types will need to update their tools to take this into account.

Really the weapon change is much bigger. It means all of us will need to start looking at weapon DPS (speed????) and damage ranges, which we never have had to before. The theorycrafter types will need to update their tools to take this into account.

Agreed, the weapon change is much more concerning. Well weapon speed will determine the "DPS" of the weapon, but I think slow weapons tend to have higher DPS also, big slow weapons have the best stats.

Also, they mention hunters using druid staves...did they change Ranged AP to be just regular AP? Are we going back to the days of melee huntards?

(I haven't even logged onto my hunter since WotLK was released... /frown)

Great, we'll now have to roll against hunters.

"HUNTAR WEAPUN NEED!!1"

/sigh

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out with the weapon...

And I guess this puts to rest the idea of people stacking +def so that they can skip SotF to put points elsewhere ...

Erm .... they might have told us before we started casting aside quest rewards in Lich King.

/facepalm

They warned us they were making a change (to armor), but did not tell us what the change would be, so I haven't sold any armor I thought was even close to being useful.

And the weapon change is a bit of a surprise, last time I saw GC mention it, I thought it wouldn't happen in this XPac. Things must be going better for them than they thought so their idle heads/keyboards got busy making a change.

akes me glad I'm only lvl 71.75 right now. Not sure how folks level so damn fast. I easily did 15+ quest last night using quest helper and only got 25% of a level (full rest). Took me about 2 hours??!

They warned us they were making a change (to armor), but did not tell us what the change would be, so I haven't sold any armor I thought was even close to being useful.

And the weapon change is a bit of a surprise, last time I saw GC mention it, I thought it wouldn't happen in this XPac. Things must be going better for them than they thought so their idle heads/keyboards got busy making a change.

akes me glad I'm only lvl 71.75 right now. Not sure how folks level so damn fast. I easily did 15+ quest last night using quest helper and only got 0.25% of a level (full rest). Took me about 2 hours??!

yea, i heard SK-Gaming has cleared Naxx already. Crushridge's premier PvP warrior, Golrath, was 80 when i logged in Sunday evening... I personally can't comprehend it...

with the tweak to SotF, it sounds like everything will balance out, and maybe even a little bit to our advantage.

as far as removing FAP bonuses to our weapons, im definitely more concerned about that. Like Claritondeus said, the thought of rolling against huntards is pretty frightening. It appears that my policy, once this change is implemented, will be to roll Need on any staff or 2 handed mace that drops, and figure the stats out later (at least until the theorycrafters and number crunchers over at EJ have broken down the maths)

Im not afraid of the weapon-change.
I think the weapon-speed wont affect us at all, cause we have a 1 sec kitty-attack and this will stay the same.
To roll against hunters sucks.
and figure out whats the best item currently for us we have to activate our brains. didnt do that in a long time in WoW ;-D

So let's see how it works all out.

Makes me glad I'm only lvl 71.75 right now. Not sure how folks level so damn fast. I easily did 15+ quest last night using quest helper and only got 25% of a level (full rest). Took me about 2 hours??!
/signed

am only 72.9 currently. not sure i will have playing time now til sunday or even monday :(

also glad due to these armour changes etc cos any items i've discarded so far have been grreens which i will improve quite easily during further levelling so i dont feel i've wasted any q rewards items so far.

Im not afraid of the weapon-change.
I think the weapon-speed wont affect us at all, cause we have a 1 sec kitty-attack and this will stay the same.

Yeah, weapon speed shouldn't matter, as Feral AP is now calculated on the DPS of the item. I originally thought that it was gonna be calculated on the Damage of the item (i.e. slow 2h'ers with a high top end would = higher AP for Ferals).

This should open up a lot of doors, as there are a TON of items with generally the same DPS, but different stats. More homogenezation, but I guess its for the best.

So let's see how it works all out.

Agreed.

Yeah, weapon speed shouldn't matter, as Feral AP is now calculated on the DPS of the item. [...]

Agreed.

Umm, the DPS of a weapon is determined by its weapon speed, so in a round-about way, we will care. But if two items have the same DPS and one is fast the other is slow, it shouldn't matter.

Umm, the DPS of a weapon is determined by its weapon speed, so in a round-about way, we will care. But if two items have the same DPS and one is fast the other is slow, it shouldn't matter.

...

Yeah. A fast weapon and a slow weapon can have the same DPS. However, even if they have the same DPS, the slower weapon will still have a higher top end damage range than the lower speed weapon.

y comment was that because AP is now based on dps of the weapon, not damage range, there is no benefit to taking a slower weapon over a faster weapon (again, assuming that we are comparing two weapons with the same DPS).

Thus weapon speed wont matter.

There was another blue follow-up, but it didn't contain any new information. Just a "those numbers look interesting, I'll have to check them out" sort of message. That was in reference to the fact that many believe we lose a significant amount of armor (more than 5K) at T7 due to this change.

given i'll never see T7 i dont mind if i dont lose too much at badge reward level ;) :p

Blizzard's giving me headaches with all these changes and gearing up for raids for druid tanks is becoming really annoying so far.

All tanking rings/trinkets have a mixture of defense (which we don't need), parry (same), shield block (same), and dodge. They are also 90% of the time stamina + strength. There was only one or two things that were pure dodge. I have yet to see a tanking ring that has any agility. I suppose our agi is all supposed to come from our rogue leather. If they take any more armor away from us we might as well be evasion tanking rogues.

Our tier tokens give us the lovely pleasure of rolling against Death Knights, Rogues and Mages. On the bright side, since no one plays those classes it'll be easy to get tier gear. =P

No more feral AP should be interesting. Let's see how great that turns out to be. I'm trying to not QQ and be upset but druid tanking seems to be going further and further away from what I pictured druids as being and more and more towards making everything homogonized and boring.

Part III from GC... (http://blue.mmo-champion.com/26/12891372479-upcoming-hunter-changes-part-iii.html)
Here is a thread where you can continue your discussion on the previously mentioned Feral druid changes.

I do urge you to confine the discussion to the armor and FAP changes only. The threads fill up too quickly as it is, so this is not a great place to chime in with totally unrelated questions, even druid ones.

The changes should be a buff for any druid not in full Naxx 25 gear (and I'm pretty sure that means ALL druids for the moment). One of the reasons we are announcing this change early is so you can make your preparations accordingly. A druid with every possible item from Naxx 25-level content loses about 3700 armor, but to be honest, those armor trinkets and weapons were so insanely good that they were likely going to be nerfed anyway.

Also note this is a reasonable buff for PvP, since you typically don't wear a bunch of +armor trinkets in those situations.

We don't want to make any changes to the way Feral druids work at this point to make them more like warriors. Now we also don't want druids to be inferior tanks to warriors, but we see no evidence that is happening at the moment and only speculation that it might happen in the future, at which point we will make additional changes if needed. You can say you don't believe we will make changes, which sort of ends the conversation. :(

The goal was not to make you ignore +armor trinkets. The goal was that a bear lacking those trinkets wouldn't be at such a disadvantage. We would rather you use a new level 80 trinket with a little bit of wasted block on it than a blue trinket from level 62 or something with silly amounts of armor.

It is fine, helpful even, to alert us to situations where you think bears might not be competitive at surviving encounters compared to other tanks. Our goal is they are roughly similar and we will continue to make changes if they are not. While I understand some of you want more different tanking stats to focus on, that is not our goal for the moment. We think it is perfectly possible given the current design to make bears able to stand up to the damage they need to. In other words, the numbers may still need to be tweaked on occasion, but there is nothing inherent to the calculations that says a tank must have block and parry as tanking stats in order for the math to work.

Some more details to help answer some of the questions we've seen:

-- Cloaks do have base armor which gets multipled by the bear bonus.
-- There is no multiplier on any bonus armor. Not the bear bonus. Not the talent bonuses.
-- There is a 2% armor benefit you can get from a metagem.
-- The ultimate bear modifier should be 4.7 (Dire Bear form) x 1.66 (Survival of the Fittest) x 1.1 (Thick Hide) x 1.02 (meta gem).
-- The best bear we can create in current itemization has 35,907 armor, which is 68.34% mitigation vs. level 83 bosses or 70.21% mitigation versus level 80 mobs.
-- Before these changes, you might have been able to build a bear with nearly 40,000 armor, but that relies on using Defender's Code and Origin of Nightmares, items of such ridiculous power that we were going to nerf them anyway before this change. (Now they're fine.)
-- Note how close that 40,000 armor is to the cap already. :(
-- We do have concerns block may be too good a stat for future raids, and we'll keep an eye on it.
-- Equipping a weapon will still boost Savage Roar (and everything else) the way it does currently.

Bottom line: armor was too good for druids. That was a blessing if you could get the items and a curse if you could not.

The counterarguments we get are: 1) Well, I can't be competitive without that armor, or 2) Give me something else to focus on then.

We think number one is a concern, but we're not convinced it's a problem at the moment and totally solvable if it gets to be. Number two is just a different design. We designed Ferals with fewer mitigation stats than other classes. You still have tanking stats, and gear can still provide upgrades. That's not to say it will always be the case, but we have no plans to change it at the current time.

tbh i'm sure they understand what they want us to be now, if they ever did.

the addition of DK's seems to have hurt us as they now have another tanking class to consider.

it still smacks of something they suddenly came up with on a quiet day after finishing their Wrath programming :(

I'm actually pretty happy with that answer. i DO trust that GC will implement changes if it's deemed necessary. I think that overall, he's does an AWESOME job rising to the challenge of catering to 11 million customers.

I think they will get the numbers right in the end. I've been following GC's posts for months now and he has never lied or broken a promise or failed to address a concern. Things get fixed too slowly for my taste usually, but I have to acknowledge that I have no idea of the technical hurdles they have to jump to make those changes. Also, corporate environments are rarely conducive to quick fixes.

The bigger concern for me is that people will think we're bad even if we're not, because the average WoW player doesn't understand the complex math.

Now there's the nub of it you see - that phrase 'complex math'

You see I'm crap at that and tbh I've just dinged 74 and am still struggling to get to grips with the implcations of all this number crunching.

The upshot is I keep fiddling around with gear I'm getting to see which is giving me good numbers in my melee panel for dps gear, and defence panel for tanking gear - but I know this is a far from exact science. (thought hardly anything's yet to come close to the dps stuff I've got)

Still the early instances are a disappointing push-over so I guess we're still a little way down the road from the 'serious' tanking stuff by which time we might be a little more clearer on what the hell's going on.

The Lich King content is great fun tho :)

tbh .... with all these changes I have neglected to play my druid ... he is currently 73 ... just dont have the interest for now; been spending all my time with my hunter

are we going to get the armor-multiplier on our necks?
Cause im in a decision to make:
Titanium Earthguard Chain (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42646)
or
Chained Military Gorget (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40679)

The first gives 350 armor on neck + a socket. which is kick-ass i thing.
But the 2nd one gives hit + dodge + 12 more stam.
Im thinking towards the Military Gorget. But not sure.

What do you guys think?

i'd be incnlined to go with the Titanium Earthguard Chain, just because it would be easy to socket for stam, (or dodge or hit) and you'd have more armor. I don't think neck pieces get the multiplier though.

I think only "leather and cloth" items get the multiplier. And for those slots, only base armor gets the multiplier, not the "bonus armor" if present.

Question:

There is a 2% armor benefit you can get from a metagem.(Quote)

What metagem is this?

Also is our threat in bear based more on DPS now? If so should I trade out stam gems for str or agil gems?

Thanks
Windsaber

did they state that this will be out quite quickly, ie in the next patch or was I imagining I read that somewhere ?

It will be out before 3.1.

but i guess not before xmas.

Question:


Also is our threat in bear based more on DPS now? If so should I trade out stam gems for str or agil gems?

Thanks
Windsaber

bear form still gets a threat modifier to boost your agro. Bears are already highest single target threat generators in the game and we're doing alot better on multi mob pullz. I wouldn't worry about threat genation. All your sockets should be used for either stamina or agility. Possibly expertise if your is horrible. but all you need is 7% undodgable from expertise for tanking. Don't worry about getting unparryable. debate between stamina and agility is arguable either way. I still hink you should make sure you have atleast 25% more health than equivalent geared warriors, then gem for dodge.

side benefit of agility is more crit/ threat production obvioulsy

Another huge upside to Agility is its ability to generate rage. I am not to Naxx yet, but I have had several encounters with trash pulls when I needed Rage in order to generate threat.

Agility gives:
Dodge = +Rage/Mitigation
Crit, = +Rage/Threat
Armor = Mitigation

Stam = Mitigation/Survivability

im into naxx. MT and OT-Duties.
And i only socket for stam if the socket is blue and a good socket-bonus is there.
I dont need to go for mass stam right now.
Standing Raidbuffed with about 38k hp in bear. thats 4-5k over a warri and its really enough for naxx.
STAM comes with items.

I would rather aim for +armor and agi for max. mitigation.

I gem and enchant exclusively for agi and mitigation now, and I hit 35k health with shouts up. More than enough for two hateful strikes from Patch with no heals.

I gem and enchant exclusively for agi and mitigation now, and I hit 35k health with shouts up. More than enough for two hateful strikes from Patch with no heals.

Agree. I just socket 2 purple (agi/stam) for the meta-gem purpose.

@Oiysters: I think it was you who posted:
"I have 31k armor, 30k hp, 37% dodge"

I ran around with about 25k and thought WTF. How did he manage to go up to 31k armor.

Looked at my gear again. Got 1 blue random naxx-drop from AH (50g). Swapped 2 Items and now im there too. :grin:
Thx for waking me up. :blow:

Trinket wise i think i made a mistake trading my badge of tenacity for my new azjol-nerub trinket (111 stamina, chance on hit to reduce damage taken by 140 per hit.) I think my new blue is better for heroics so its not a total loss but the badge of tenacity was probably better for naxx, atleast until the armor changes come. I hate this looming time span where i'm gearing for the new changes before they happen. So in the mean time my bear isn't optimized for armor. only about 28k armorwhen it could be close to capped.

lol /bow @ S3rge.

At 32.6k armor now with metagem. With PotP that puts me at 72% mitigation. Theoretical best possible is 78%, but that assumes capped armor, which is not currently possible to do.

lol /bow @ S3rge.

At 32.6k armor now with metagem. With PotP that puts me at 72% mitigation. Theoretical best possible is 78%, but that assumes capped armor, which is not currently possible to do.

I never had badge of tenacity, so i'm looking forward to the heroic-gundrak trinket. will swap out the badge-trinket for it.
Until the armor-change comes, the trinket will shoot me to 35k armor. :D

What is the name of this metagem that gives armor?

Thanks

Armor-Meta-Gem:
Austere Earthsiege Diamond (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=55401)

the trinket will shoot me to 35k armor. :D

Woot grats S3rge! Race you to the cap!:lmao:

I have the pattern for that cut, but I'm stuck at like 402 JC. Getting to 420 is a complete PITA. They made BS, LW and Engineering stupidly easy to level and made JC a complete nightmare to level now. You pretty much have to do dailys, hunt down rare patterns to max out and even then, it takes such a metric ton of mats that its very innefficient and random to level.

I never had badge of tenacity, so i'm looking forward to the heroic-gundrak trinket. will swap out the badge-trinket for it.
Until the armor-change comes, the trinket will shoot me to 35k armor. :D
what are the stats of this heroic trinket ? (also what are the badge trinket stats ? i've yet to look at any of the new badge loot as i'm stil not 80!)

I have a dumb question but I need to ask;
I'm level 76 right now, can I use this meta-gem now?
Armor-Meta-Gem:
Austere Earthsiege Diamond

Thanks
Windsaber

what are the stats of this heroic trinket ? (also what are the badge trinket stats ? i've yet to look at any of the new badge loot as i'm stil not 80!)

Offering of Sacrifice (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37638) from Heroic Gun'Drak. 550 armor and 3025 health increase for 15 seconds.

Valor Medal of the First War (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40683) from Emblems of Heroism. 84 dodge rating on equip and 335 dodge on use.

cheers Oyi.

not sure i'd aim for the Sacrifice post armour nerf tbh.

but the Valour Medal looks rather nice.

Nice armour meta gem to :)

I have a dumb question but I need to ask;
I'm level 76 right now, can I use this meta-gem now?
Armor-Meta-Gem:
Austere Earthsiege Diamond

Thanks
Windsaber

If you have a meta gem slot and meet the requirements, then yes. Yes you can.

not sure i'd aim for the Sacrifice post armour nerf tbh.
but the Valour Medal looks rather nice.


I'm not a friend of the Valour Medal.
aybe one reason is, that i am Alchi and the
alchemists-stone gives me 75 stam and 50 dodge-rating.
And the use effect of the Valour Medal is like nothing...
not an "O-****"-button at all.

@Kheldar:
I think u will want that trinket even with the armor-changes.
Cause with the armor-changes the over-all armor stays almost the same. Difference is, u will get 80-90% of the armor out of the "leather"-items. but the other 10-15% u will still get out of armor on rings, necks, trinkets. And what about dodge-rating? Only on those items there is dodge-rating for bear-tanks.

For off-tank-duties it is wonderfull, cause u can boost your damage sooo much when swaping tank-stuff vs dps.
But for a MT, the Items will stay the same in my eyes.
max. armor,stam and avoid only on those items.


@Oiysters: got the trinket!! 34.5k armor!! badabähm *cheers*

BTW: tanked this week Naxx (25) and tanked our warri into the ground.
First try patch-werk i was off-tanking and i had to make pauses of 5-6 secs to not steal aggro from the warri-tank.
2nd try i was MT and was over 200k over the other tanks!!!!! Bears are dangerous!!! *ROARRRRRR*

to me S3R the Valour looks nice with all that dodge.

i guess i felt we now have a 'oh sh......' button or 2 so another one on a trinket is not that high on my agenda (again remembering i dont raid so i wont be tanking any high level end raid bosses).

i'm still not convinced on the armour trinket. but once we see the actual effects of the armour nerf patch i may change my mind.

I'm not farming any of the armor trinkets. If I get them... great, but farming them while getting them immediately nerfed isn't going to make good sense. Right now my tanking set still includes my tanking rings from Kara and SSC, but I don't see the point of replacing them until after the armor nerf/change. I actually hope my armor goes UP overall after the change as I haven't been stacking armor too much on trinkets etc.

Armor > all for druids, all the analysis proves it repeatedly. Even after the change, armor on rings/trinks/neck can add up to 1500 armor. Like S3rge said above, with DR on dodge it will be very hard to replace the mitigation from that armor with avoidance of any kind. I will still aim for Defender's Code, even after the nerf.

Armor > agi > defense=dodge > stam for bears.

I agree that armor is great for druids. I don't think that's the point. I'm just not going out of my way to get it. Knowing that the rings, necks and trinkets won't be providing me the current benefit, I want to assess the impact of my current armor and the items I have instead of looking at what might be "overblown" numbers right this instant and reduced in the near future.

I guess I view Armor as important, but just one stat among our many. Will dodge keep you alive when you should have died? Yeah... I proved that in Gruuls. Growth 18 you shouldn't be able to live to as a tank... but I did it... by not getting hit for almost a minute straight. (Dumb luck... is my friend...)

Balanced approach will win out in the end I think. Will I pick up those high armor trinkets, rings and necks? Yes... I just don't think I'll kill myself trying to get them right out of the gate knowing in two weeks the worlds gonna change and their value diminished.

Armor > all for druids, all the analysis proves it repeatedly. Even after the change, armor on rings/trinks/neck can add up to 1500 armor. Like S3rge said above, with DR on dodge it will be very hard to replace the mitigation from that armor with avoidance of any kind. I will still aim for Defender's Code, even after the nerf.

Armor > agi > defense=dodge > stam for bears.
i'm surprised you rate stam last above Oiy.

I thought of it as more important.

i'm surprised you rate stam last above Oiy.

I thought of it as more important.

STAM will come with high-lvl items.
but the others u need to aim for to get them high.

Balanced approach will win out in the end I think. Will I pick up those high armor trinkets, rings and necks? Yes... I just don't think I'll kill myself trying to get them right out of the gate knowing in two weeks the worlds gonna change and their value diminished.

You and I agree I think Alla. I do what I can do in the game and don't worry too much about it. The point I was trying to make is that regardless of how we get our armor (old way, current way, new way in a week or two), armor is still our most valuable stat by a long shot.

Dueling anecdote time :blow: :

I pugged a Naxx 25 in boomkin spec. MT was a feral druid with 42k health raid buffed. On the surface pretty impressive. We get to Patchwerk and he gets rocked, taking 22k+ hits. We are forced to skip Construct Quarter. I check his gear and he is full of stam gems and enchants. Pally OT same gear approach, same outcome. The MT and the OT are mana sponges and oom the healers. Turns out the MT only had 28k armor raid buffed.

One week later I MT Patchwerk, 37k amor and health raid buffed. 40% avoidance, about the same as the guy above. Biggest hit I take is 17k, average hit between 15 and 16k. Easy kill.

Druids are no longer avoidance tanks. That title goes to DK's now. We have the lowest avoidance of the four classes with current gear due to DR on dodge and our lack of block and parry. Really big stam pools worked well when we had really high avoidance. We are now mitigation tanks.

The guys at EJ have it right; I don't claim credit for the analysis. All you want is 'enough' health, then stack mitigation and avoidance. Consensus is that 30k health raid buffed is plenty for Naxx, and that matches my experience. Anything above that is 'wasted' stats. Lucky for us, 'enough' health comes standard on our gear and there is no need to stack more. Doubly lucky for us, stacking mitigation and avoidance (agility gems and enchants) also increases our damage and threat output. It's a nice synergy.

S3erge: I checked out your Armory but you must have logged in your dps gear. What is the English translation of your guild name?

Druids are no longer avoidance tanks. That title goes to DK's now. We have the lowest avoidance of the four classes with current gear due to DR on dodge and our lack of block and parry. Really big stam pools worked well when we had really high avoidance. We are now mitigation tanks.

This is a priceless post, much appreciated. I'll keep your comments in mind when I'm getting ready for Naxx.

Question:

For Tanking what stats should I try to go with?
Agil or stam?

Right now I have mostly stam gems and enchants, should I trade out some for agil to raise my dodge? or get more defense to raise my dodge?

I just turned lvl 80 last night.

Another question is high Expertise worth it for tanking?

Thanks

Once you start hitting T7 level gear (heroics etc) gem in accordance with slot color. Not because socket bonuses are so uber but because it forces you to mix you gems. Enchants I go for Agi where I can and stam up the rest. You will find most T7ish gear to be over itemized for stam already.

Slot : Gem
Red: +16 agi
Blue: +24 stam
Yellow: Use Orange
Orange: +8agi/+8Hit


I would say avoid defense all together. You will get enough on tanking rings, capes etc to help your dodge, and Agi just provides more benefits anyway. So don't gem for defense and avoid the heavy def trinkets etc.

As for expertise, yes its important but don't gem/enchant for it. Much like def, you will find so much of it already on gear that you will have plenty. I am sitting at about 7.5% reduction to dodge/parry atm just from the experise already on items. (I am not positive but I think the exp cap used to be around 6.?% or somthing, not sure if that is right though)

Another question:

I thought Blizz. changed agil so you can't dodge from it anymore?
It only applies to armor and crit?
Is that correct?


Thanks

They nerfed the agility to dodge ratio so we get a much smaller increase in dodge per point of agility than we used to. It is still the best stat for druid tanks after armor.

I pretty much agree with Solarflash above on gemming and enchanting, with the exception that I wouldn't recommend using blue gems at all. Defense isn't ideal for us, but it does give us an increase in dodge and in our chance to be missed, which imo is more valuable than yet more stam. YMMV, of course.

My only arguement for stam is weight it < agi but still important until you crest 40k HP raid buffed. One encounter with patchwerk will give you a good idea why.

Also, dodge is SUPER important, but so much of my damage comes from magic or poison so far in the content I have seen, neither of which we can dodged. So if you don't have a druid/shaman/pally with you, you better be able to eat all 10 secs of the poison debuff in Gundrak or one of the many other similar encounters.

Also, all of the blue gem slots (that I have seen) have a +agi bonus to using them, so, for example you could put a +16 agi in instead of +24stam, or use +24 stam and get a +8 agi bonus for gemming with the slot. So in the end you are weighing +16agi vs 8agi/24stam, or 24stam for 8 agi. The stam seems more beneficial.

I had 37k+ stam for Patchwerk and he kept my "Commendation" from Mgt procced most of the fight. (yes, I know, its time to upgrade my trinkets)

So then I should get my stam to over 40k HP then go for agil to tank?

Thanks

I had 37k+ stam for Patchwerk and he kept my "Commendation" from Mgt procced most of the fight.

I would argue that it was your healers that did that, not Patchwerk. I only got low once in my first 25 man Patchwerk as a tank while soaking Hatefuls, and that was after the other Hateful tank (a DK that stacked stam instead of armor and avoidance) took a 30k hit and forced the MT and I to split the hatefuls between the two of us. The healers did a great job of keep our health high and we only lost one non-tank melee to a Hateful.

DK from WWS, 25 man Patchwerk:

Avg 20911
ax 29921

e from WWS, 25 man Patchwerk:

Avg 17507
ax 23598

This is not a comment on DK's in general, or this DK in particular. He's a good player. This is only to illustrate the value of armor over stam. My average hit is not nearly enough to proc Commendation, and even my max hit wouldn't if I was topped when I took the hit. The DK however did consume far more healer mana than I did because he required so much more healing. The math is clear. Do not stack stam if you can get more mitigation. I had 37k health and 37k armor raid buffed in that fight.

am i imagining it or was there a gem mentioned recently with +41 stam ?

@Kheldar: Juwelcrafters can make gems ONLY for them selfes with +41 STAM and can equip 3 of them but not more.

@Oiysters:
I agree with you at patchwerk.
Im taking 17k min and 20k max hits from patchwork.
im at 41k hp 37k armor and 38% dodge at the moment.

Our warri tank takes hits of 23k - 26k.

I would like to main-tank patchwerk but im better for the hateful-strike-tanking cause of my lifepool and mitigation.
our tank(which MT patchwerk hasnt got the gear to do a hateful-strike-tank)
the only problem is, i need to make pauses cause i would get aggro of the boss when not watching (even with our MT-warri-aggro-steal-spell).

I'm looking forward to get Defender's Code (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40257)

damn S3R...i was looking forward to +41 stam gems !

damn S3R...i was looking forward to +41 stam gems !

+24 will do the job.
and your leatherworker so you will get +90stam on wrist!!!! :curse:

+24 will do the job.
and your leatherworker so you will get +90stam on wrist!!!! :curse:
i was hoping you would not remember that :biggrinfl

@Oiysters:
I agree with you at patchwerk.
Im taking 17k min and 20k max hits from patchwork.
im at 41k hp 37k armor and 38% dodge at the moment.


Hmm, I think this is where we differ in opinion. I can barely cap 30k armor, and only do so by sacrificing a ton of other good mitigation stats (by using TBC rings/trinkets & armor stacked cloak)

And I think anyone gearing up to Naxx won't be anywhere near your armor, so the stam is just a more realistic option.

y armor sits about 25k-26k atm, and I honestly can't tell you how hard the hits were that I was taking from Patchwerk, but I think that our druid heavy healing core resulted in me perhaps taking 2 hits in a row, or in a short time without being topped off, so yes, he may have only been hitting me for 15-20k per but if you aren't topped off (which is gonna happen) the stam buffer is really nice. Although honestly for that fight I think dodge is a more important stat. Saves the healers a lot of mana drain.

30k armor is really easy to achieve. You just have to take items, with armor on it.
For example:
- Rings (cheap crafted juweliers ring, drak'tharon hero)
- Cloak (halls of stone non-hero or nerubhide)
- Neck (random drop in naxx, 300armor/50stam for 50g on AH)
- Staff (rep. staff from kirin thor or heroic utgarde keep)

If u have decent armor on those items, it will get you easily to 30k armor.

...Although honestly for that fight I think dodge is a more important stat. Saves the healers a lot of mana drain.

If your healers aren't chain-casting heals they wont keep you alive. If you dodge, there heal/mana will land in an overheal.

DrakTharon refuses to give me that ring....9 tries, 0 drops...

I have the Nerubhide cloak (~150 armor)? I also have the HoS cloak with 504 armor on it, which is part of my "Max Armor" set that still gets me just over 30k. And the stats on the HoS cape are junk.

What is the name of the Naxx neck you are speaking of? I have the neck from HoS that has 334 armor on it, but i am wondering if the one you are speaking of would be an upgrade?

I have the staff as well (700 armor one), and T7 chest. Still without my TBC rings and trinkets I am at 25-26k armor. I know that ring from H-GT is ~1.8k armor with the current multiplier, but I would still be well south of 30k.

I think my biggest weakness is not having a helm with a meta slot, so I do not have the +2% armor meta yet. Would that be the issue? Unshifted my armor is -7k, so 2% = 140 armor x 3.7 is only 518 extra armor.

y armory is below, but I am not in full bear there...long story short, we had a rough PUG in H-GD last night and half my gear was broke, so rather than leaving to repair, I just swapped out some of my healing gear for the broke gear! Lol, gotta love being crit capped in any gear. Anyhow, I promise, I don't normally tank in spell power pants/old DPS chest! But have no fear, we did clear...eventually! One shotted the final boss in about half caster gear!

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Cenarion+Circle&n=Solarflash

@Solar:
Your neck is better^^
I never had the drop-luck of it.

1)
I would recommend, that u farm gundrak'hero for the legs and the trinket (it's not progressive aiming for items, its just one heroic a day ^^)

2)
Let a jewelcrafter make you this: Ring of Earthen Might (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=58147)
Has armor, stam, and dodge... all u need. And is very cheap: 2 Titanium Bars and 2 Eternal Earth

3)
On mitigation-fights i would choose the 500 armor cloak over nerubhide. (... until the armor-change goes active)

These items will give you about 650 armor (about 3k+ in bear)
and should get you to 30k armor. (i left the cloak out cause i think you are a bigger friend of the nerubhide)
With the cloak u would be at 1k+ caster-armor.

Thank you so much for the advice! The DK ring actually dropped for me last night. Lucky number 10! Needless to say, I will not be in H-DK for a while...pretty sick of that place. The pants and trinket have evaded me aswell in H-GD. Maybe the troll instance hate Solar??? Although I have seen the pants drop once there, I lost the roll to a rogue. Ah well, I seem to be midigating Naxx-10 without any trouble with much lower armor, but I will have to see how I fair this week with a bit more armor mitigation.

Another big boost to my armor came in the form of adding Savage Gladiator gear to the badge vendor! As a bear tank there were really only two badge items (Heroism) that are better than crafted gear. The T7 Chest token, and the Dodge trinket. Other than that....all crap. But with the addition of the savage glad gear I picked up the Dragonhide helm which was a large uprgrade for me.

If your healers aren't chain-casting heals they wont keep you alive. If you dodge, there heal/mana will land in an overheal.

Doesn't the same thing occur with armor mitigation then? If my healer is spamming 10k heals it doesn't really matter if I am taking 5k hits or 8k hits...the same mana is being exhausted, so that would suggest again that HP pool is critical. Without down ranking, I think overhealing is happening regardless of where you stack stats.

y hope, and it may be completely ignorant, but I aim to have a HP pool that allows me to take a hit, have my OT hit, and then eat another hit without heals. To do so I would need about 40k HP. Also, by having that large HP pool it allows you to maintain more HP than your DPS, so you don't have a squishy taking the hateful if somthing happens and heals don't land exactly when they should.

From a healer pov:
What healers like is steady consistent damage.

Ts on Patchwerk take very steady damage, especially a druid since they get hit more often. A pally blocks, dodges and parries a lot as does a warrior so the damage is less consistent and predictable.

Overheal is overheal, be it 100% overheal of 10% overheal, the only thing you're reducing is the healers manapool. Healers hate overheal, but some fights you just have to ignore it and keep your target topped off or risk them getting gibbed. On a fight like Patchwerk healers are going to be spam healing b/c of the hits, if you take 2 of the hatefuls you're dead.

If my healer is spamming 10k heals it doesn't really matter if I am taking 5k hits or 8k hits...

In that circumstance you would be correct, although if you are running with HoT healers the disadvantage of all that extra damage is fairly obvious. However, take another look look at the WWS numbers I posted above:

DK from WWS, 25 man Patchwerk:

Avg 20911
ax 29921

e from WWS, 25 man Patchwerk:

Avg 17507
ax 23598

Using your hypothetical 10k heal, it will take 3 of them to heal the DK after an average Hateful, and only 2 to heal me. However that also assumes a synchronicity between incoming damage and incoming heals that is pretty rare, even for a fight like Patchwerk.

I aim to have a HP pool that allows me to take a hit, have my OT hit, and then eat another hit without heals.

Your goal as a tank should be to prevent such a situation by being as easy as possible on your healer's mana pool. If you have to take two out of three Hatefuls with no heals, you're likely going to wipe anyway because the healers are already in trouble.

Also, by having that large HP pool it allows you to maintain more HP than your DPS, so you don't have a squishy taking the hateful if somthing happens and heals don't land exactly when they should.

Again smaller incoming hits = almost zero risk of this, especially if you make sure the melee click off their Fortitude buffs and/or jump in the slime right before the pull. A 30k hit will put you below the melee every time, even with 40k health.

A very enjoyable debate!

How do you get good mitigation for tanking? is it Agil?

Also how do you see what your mitigation is?

Thanks

How do you get good mitigation for tanking? is it Agil?

Also how do you see what your mitigation is?

Thanks

Armor
Agility
Defense
Dodge

ouse over the armor number in your character sheet, it will tell you your mitigation. Mouse over the defense number, and it will tell you your additional chance to be missed. Add your chance to be missed to your dodge and you get your total avoidance.

Don't forget to account for the 12% additional mitigation you get for you Protector of the Pack talent, which is not included in your character sheet numbers.

Another big mitigation that most people like to forget about is Barkskin. 20% reduction for 12 secs every 60 secs is nothing to shake a stick at! In theory thats a 20% reduction in damage 20% of the time (not really feasible in practice thouth). Particularily once you have experienced a fight and run a boss mod. Its pretty easy to time your barkskin well!

Thanks for all of the info guys!

/Hug for all the armor items reccomendations! I picked up the Ring of AH for almost nothing! Apparently this ring is used to level JC for relatively cheap mats or somthing, because people were giving them away! Nothing like a heroic level item for <20G. Spent way more on the gem than the ring!

My hope, and it may be completely ignorant, but I aim to have a HP pool that allows me to take a hit, have my OT hit, and then eat another hit without heals. To do so I would need about 40k HP. Also, by having that large HP pool it allows you to maintain more HP than your DPS, so you don't have a squishy taking the hateful if somthing happens and heals don't land exactly when they should.

40k HP is nothing when u aim for HP. Im at 41k HP raidbuffed with my 37k armor.

/Hug for all the armor items reccomendations! I picked up the Ring of AH for almost nothing! Apparently this ring is used to level JC for relatively cheap mats or somthing, because people were giving them away! Nothing like a heroic level item for <20G. Spent way more on the gem than the ring!
what ring Sol?

stats ?

having just hit 80 am on lookout for AH bargains to improve my armour and hp.

Let a jewelcrafter make you this: Ring of Earthen Might (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=58147)
Has armor, stam, and dodge... all u need. And is very cheap: 2 Titanium Bars and 2 Eternal Earth


quote myself^^

Ring of Earthen Might:
Finger
350 Armor
+38 Strength
+34 Stamina
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +4 Strength
Requires Level 78
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 26 (0.76% @ L78).

thanks, ohhh that does like its worth getting mats together for :)

40k HP is nothing when u aim for HP. Im at 41k HP raidbuffed with my 37k armor.

Thanks to your help I was at 39k HP and about 33k armor for our Naxx-10 last night. And I could have easily broke 40k by gemming differently, but I have been filling most of my slots with +agi gems.

I think I may have to regem in the near future though, my +hit is abismal. I had 2 or 3 taunts miss in Naxx last night, and that is unacceptable.

I've been flasking for hit. I actually bought the elixirs that offer +45 Hit.

I started using Glyph of Growl. Much better option, imo.

hit was always my problem as no hit geat seemed to fall in BC heroics nor be on the badge items.

i always had the +20 hit food with me as it was quite easy to farm and find someone to cook for me.

is there any sorta news on when this patch will be coming out that's going to change our armour modifier on gear ?

i didnt find anything yet.
but i expect it going live on wednesday or the week after.
(the week after is more realistic)

Right now I have 30K armor, but I think I'll take a big hit since I have 1 trinket (BoT) and 2 rings with high armor. Though I've read that almost everyone should see an increase in armor. But having so many de-listed items with high armor makes me think I'll drop some.

yeah same tlb. and my armour has already suffered enough with nerfs !

I think blizzard is painting themselves into a corner with this mod!

If they change the mitigation per armor to allow the same mitigation without the multiplier then, those will the armor items will be OP...

If they change the mutiplier without changing the mitigation per armor we will not be competitive as tanks...

So, what are we trying to accomplish again?

While we will have to wait and see, the whole point of this most recent armor change to give druid's the option to choose different rings, trinkets, necks, weapons and backs other than the 1 and only 1 item for that slot that has the most armor (Badge of Tenacity, Silk's cloak, ring of violet protector, etc.). In BC if you did not get lucky with the right drops you couldn't be a well geared bear tank. I think Blizzard wants to allow us to have some options for a few slots (like other tanks do). Do we want more threat? More DPS? More dodge? If so, pick the neck, ring, trinket, etc. that gives you want you want. Rather than being suck with one and only one trinket that has the most armor.

From what I have read, those that are not full T7 and the current "best" rings, trinkets, etc. should notice a slight buff in their armor because their leather items will provide more armor than they currently do today. But if you are getting 4K armor from an uber trinket, you will see some loss in armor.

According to Rawr, I will get a negligible buff (around 300) to my armor when the patch hits, and I am in full t7.10 and about 33k armor unbuffed. My armory (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kel%27Thuzad&n=Oiysters) for details. I've been away from the game for a couple weeks, so have still haven't gotten the trinket to drop out of Gundrak, so still using BoT.:devil:

Patch is coming soon.
And im afraid i will loose a ton of armor...
Cause blizzard said something like:
"Those hardcore players with all the +armor-items will notice a nerf in armor!" :-(

In my max.-mitigation-gear i now sit at 38% dodge and 39k armor unbuffed. so i think i will loose really much...
I pray that its not a nerf in the area of 4-5k armor!

BTW:
should i go for 1% dodge or 2% damage-reduction?
what would you take?

Just copied my druid over to the PTR. I got there around 28k health, 30k armor, and 31% dodge. (self buffed that is)

y armor is 22k on live, so its a nice buff for me. (with same talents that is)

should i go for 1% dodge or 2% damage-reduction?
what would you take?
2% damage all the way. And grats on your gear Serge, that armor number is crazy!

...
BTW:
should i go for 1% dodge or 2% damage-reduction?
what would you take?

How do you mean 2% dmg reduction? From Armor?

The reason I ask, is so much dmg comes from magic/poisons these days, that I would probably take the extra dodge if the 2% is increase mitigation from armor contribution. I know magic/posion can't be dodged, but many of the attacks that apply poisons/magic DOTs can be.

Easy math I use when deciding these things:

Assume 10k base hit over 100 hits (easy numbers)

10k base * 100 hits = 1M dmg
10k base * 2% mitigation = 9800 dmg * 100 hits = 980k dmg
10k base *99 hits (1 dodge) = 990k dmg
2% dmg reduction is better...in theory!

2% damage all the way. And grats on your gear Serge, that armor number is crazy!

Yeah. Gear comes with naxx 25. And my guild has it on farm.
And currently im one of the most active tanks so the items keep rolling :-D
Looking forward to T7-chest. I wanna look all green. :elfbiggri

Yeah. Gear comes with naxx 25. And my guild has it on farm.
And currently im one of the most active tanks so the items keep rolling :-D
Looking forward to T7-chest. I wanna look all green. :elfbiggri
Dang, you logged in your PvP gear...

Off topic, but what is the English translation of your guild name?

just wish the patch would come soon !

translation of my guildname:
hmmm^^
schlachten bummler
1. means battle (or war)
2. dictionary says "saunter"

It just means we dont rush our content, we do it slower but with more fun enjoying it.


Logged out in my usual tank-gear.
At hard hitter(non-caster) i swap alchi-stone for the gundrak trinket with 550 armor.
If i would swap in a neck-piece with +armor i would go above 40k. But i dont have a good one right now :-(