View Full Forums : Max Armor druid gear + questions


Dilalamer
09-19-2005, 07:13 PM
First off, the max armor build:

Armor-item name
183 Stormrage Cover
258 Defiler's Lizardhide Shoulders
214 Cloak of Warding
392 Malfurion's Blessed Bulwark
122 Zandalar Haruspex's Bracers
207 Slaghide Gauntlets of the Bear
223 Lava Belt
240 Animist's Leggings
184 Animist's Boots
150 Thrall's Resolve
150 Ring of Protection
150 Smoking Heart of the Mountain
180 Mark of Tyranny
260 Warden Staff

Ok, that's 2913 armor. Also, tauren druids with that gear will have 99 agility, assuming the glove is enchanted with agility and you drink a mongoose elixir, resulting in 3111 base armor. In Dire bear form, that'll give 14310 armor. If you're feral specced, add another 10% to give 15741 armor. Throw on an improved MotW, Librams of protection on head and legs as well as +70 armor to cloak and drink a defense potion (+450 armor), and you'll reach 16895 armor. 142 points over max.

Now, my question/conundrum is, how do we reach max without some of those lesser pleasant things? Like, if i'm in a raiding guild, they'll probably need me to be specced restoration, so it won't be possible to have max bear feral talent armor, dragging the total down to 15464 armor. Further, who in their right mind would have two protection librams? they're expensive and stamina >> armor at those levels, so subtract another 250 armor from the total, putting the new total at 15214. Next, we have the Cloak of warding, with no stats on it. It's not bad if you really need those +5 defense skill points, but it's difficult to rationalize. Something 'better' might include a sergeant's cape, it's easy to get and has a ton of stamina. Then we're down to 14759. That's a whopping 2k armor we've lost.

And that's not even mentioning that some of the items on the list are silly hard to get. Malfurion's bulwark drops deep inside BWL. A more reasonable (although not easy) item to replace it with would be the Haruspex's tunic (revered faction with the ZG trolls), but that drops you down about 500 more armor.

On my own druid, i usually only have around 10300 armor in full "Armor" gear. I'm missing about half of the items on that list. If someone can critique it and offer some suggestions on how to better reach the magical 16500, i'd appreciate it.

I haven't bothered to work on cat form gear yet because I have been a bear form guy since the beginning.

Cenaurius
09-20-2005, 11:07 AM
the amount of damage reduced seems to scale down significantly when you get past like 7.5k armor, so i question the value of acquiring so much armor. i think i'm in the 60-63% range of damage reduction with 8555 armor in bear form; what is your damage reduction at 10300 armor?

Nytewalker
09-20-2005, 11:33 AM
Good Lord. I was excited when My Armor broke 1K.
::Weep::

Nyte

Starfire
09-20-2005, 01:19 PM
You need to get dire bear form Nyte, then you will play with the big dogs.

Ciwt
09-20-2005, 01:49 PM
I dont see why you throw heal stuff and feral stuff in the same set. Or is it just to get maximun AC? In that case.. theres 2k AC pots :p

Rarek
09-20-2005, 02:12 PM
Currently for the bear set I'm working on I only have a few pieces left till I think I can look past it to focus on cat primarily.

head - Ghostshroud (waiting for bone ring, which Ill put a 125 armor so I then can put stats on my other pieces)
neck- 15 agil 10 stam "scouts pendant" (Warsong honored)
chest - Warbear harness
Cloak - Cloak of Warding
bracers - +9 str +10 stamina "of the bear" ( I think level 55)
weapon - Unyielding maul
gloves - blight leather gloves with +7 str (I need a pair of slaghide)
belt - frostbite girdle (I love this belt, but I need the cloudrunner girdle)
leggings - Warbear woolies
Boots - boots of the shrieker (Suggestions for better boots?)
ring1 - Thralls resolve
Ring2 - Band of the ogre king (I have the quest for the ring of protection, just have yet to finish it.)
trinket1 - Mark of tyranny
trinket2 - Rune of the guard captain

9.1k armor in bear

Cat form

head - ghostshroud
neck- 15 agil 10 stam "scouts pendant"
chest - Blazewind Breastplate (needs an upgrade, probably cadaverous chestpiece)
Cloak - Stoneskin Gargoyle Cape
bracers - +9 str +10 stamina bracers
weapon - fist of omokk
gloves - blight leather gloves with +7 str
belt - frostbite girdle
leggings - blademasters leggings
Boots - boots of the shrieker
ring1 - Masons ring from Zulfarrak quest
Ring2 - legionairres band (honored wsg)
trinket1 - rune of the guard captain
trinket2 - mark of the chosen

Nytewalker
09-20-2005, 03:52 PM
You need to get dire bear form Nyte, then you will play with the big dogs.

All I want is travel form. I'll be happy then. I can't stand running this slow. Its rediculous. How do other people survive. Its not about outrunning mobs and PvP gankers for me. Its about outrunning trees and mountains. In a world as big as this one, running this slow is just WRONG. I understand now why people will pay 400g or whatever it is for those epic mounts.

Nyte

Cenaurius
09-20-2005, 04:02 PM
i wish they were only 400g, they cost 800g if you get the faction and pvp discount :).

Dilalamer
09-21-2005, 04:55 AM
Armor scales down as you begin reaching very high numbers. However, there are a number of important things to remember about this. As has been discussed to completely retarded levels in warrior circles, while the % reduced goes down as armor value goes up in an exponential form, eventually capping at 75% damage reduction, the SURVIVABILITY as a function of armor value continues to increase in a more linear fashion.

This is to say that if you have 8k armor in DB form, you get a 59.26% damage reduction. At 9k (12.5% more armor) you have 62.07% damage reduction (about 2.8% increase). However, if you would have taken 1000 damage/minute with 5000 life, you'd die in 5 minutes with no armor. With the first case, you'd live 12.27 minutes. In the latter case, you'd live 13.18 minutes, a 7.4% increase. So while it may not seem like you get much from high armor, you actually do. In pvp it can be even more extreme, because other things happen. Like warriors gain rage based upon their damage to an extent. I've had warriors literally lose their minds trying to kill me because they couldn't get rage, even when they were landing the majority of their hits.

About mixing gear, the mixture of healing and melee gear is just to achieve the maximum armor value possible for illustrative purposes. In PvP, i've found the mix of gear is actually a fairly big boon. As the PvP reward armor would seem to demonstrate, a balanced mix of stats can pay big dividends in PvP. And in general, the added flexibility is invaluable. Alot of the gear is not practical in all situations and is not even practical in the general sense. For example, I've promised myself i wouldn't do LBRS again unless forced, and so that basically means I won't be seeing the slaghides. Not a big deal since i picked up some Aged Core leather gloves from MC, but that's not necessarily an option for all our druid buddies.

Starfire
09-21-2005, 11:04 AM
Its not about outrunning mobs and PvP gankers for me. Its about outrunning trees and mountains. In a world as big as this one, running this slow is just WRONG.


LOL! Yeah, I am so paranoid about how slow tauren run I used to bear form myself just to make it seem like things are speeding the hell up.

Thankfully we don't NEED mounts. Kodos are gay, anyway.


Besides, all I do if I'm getting hit by lots of mobs or I happen to be 5-man raiding ashenvale and I can't unflag myself, I am in cat form anyway if I'm bailing, I'll just pop into the ocean or a good lake, pop into sea lion form so they lose me, then use regrowth and a couple rejuvs and I'm back in the fight. =) ... I gotta edit that sig.

Nytewalker
09-21-2005, 12:04 PM
I'm just spoiled. I had a Druid, a Necro, and a Bard in EQ. 2 of those classes had early runspeed buffs available, and the world was much smaller with zone lines to make me feeli like I had made progress.

Sorry to hijack,
Nyte

Starfire
09-21-2005, 12:47 PM
Alright, Nyte.


Here's what you do. Beg a group of level 60s to buff you as high as you can get. Go and mob **** until you find a Nifty Stopwatch. 5% run speed increase over 10 seconds each use.

Rarek
09-26-2005, 08:19 AM
I just picked the bonecrusher, cadaverous chest, and flamescarred shoulders up.

I switched the pants and gloves out for the cadaverous pieces... so I have 3 of the set now. (+15 to resists, +10 attack, +3 defense).

808 attack power with Motw in cat form.

Cenaurius
09-26-2005, 10:10 AM
rawrr, you are a scary kitty.

Rarek
09-26-2005, 10:19 AM
Gearing up your rogue friends so you get the leftovers help :).

Badgemagus
09-26-2005, 07:58 PM
Now, my question/conundrum is, how do we reach max without some of those lesser pleasant things? Like, if i'm in a raiding guild, they'll probably need me to be specced restoration, so it won't be possible to have max bear feral talent armor, dragging the total down to 15464 armor. Further, who in their right mind would have two protection librams? they're expensive and stamina >> armor at those levels, so subtract another 250 armor from the total, putting the new total at 15214. Next, we have the Cloak of warding, with no stats on it. It's not bad if you really need those +5 defense skill points, but it's difficult to rationalize. Something 'better' might include a sergeant's cape, it's easy to get and has a ton of stamina. Then we're down to 14759. That's a whopping 2k armor we've lost.

And that's not even mentioning that some of the items on the list are silly hard to get. Malfurion's bulwark drops deep inside BWL. A more reasonable (although not easy) item to replace it with would be the Haruspex's tunic (revered faction with the ZG trolls), but that drops you down about 500 more armor.

On my own druid, i usually only have around 10300 armor in full "Armor" gear. I'm missing about half of the items on that list. If someone can critique it and offer some suggestions on how to better reach the magical 16500, i'd appreciate it.

I haven't bothered to work on cat form gear yet because I have been a bear form guy since the beginning.


As fun as having huge armor can be, it means nothing without a huge ammount of +def gear. I cant speak for someonw with 16000 armor because, well I dont have that much and dont really care to either. But regardless, at level 60 if your defensive skill is not at 415+, your tanking abilities in bear form are pretty much for support. YES, I have MT'd instances such as DM, UBRS, etc, and truthfully, bear form can not compare to a well equiped warrior.

But otherwise, good luck on your quest for 16000. Report back and let us know how that works out for ya.

Dilalamer
09-27-2005, 12:10 AM
Badgemagus has an excellent point. And, sad to say, working in enough + defense gear to tank effectively is difficult. In general, without sacrificing max armor, but utilizing max luck, you have:

Weapon: Warden staff: +10 defense skill
Defense neck: Talisman of protection, +9 defense skill (ZG drop)
Heavy Dark Iron Ring: +5 defense skill
Overlord's Crimson Band: +7 skill
Onyxia Blood Talisman: +8 skill (Onyxia head quest)
Force of Will: +7 defense skill (BRD emporer)
4 core hound armor sets: +12 defense skill (in total)

We don't have much gear we can wear directly that'll give + defense like warrior gear. and, wearing alot of those items listed above will seriously hamper our high armor gear. Which is why i was asking if there was any other way to reach maximum armor. Without shields to block damage or weapons to parry, we need the very high armor as well as a high + defense in order to tank effectively.

Ndainye
10-04-2005, 09:09 AM
You don't need 16000 AC. 10k AC is more than enough to tank anything you might be asked to tank. Dimishing returns makes anything about 7.5ish pretty pointless. Don't expect to be asked to tank much at all though. +Def is good but +Def on a Druid does not equal +Def/Dodge/Parry/Block/Shieldwall of a Warrior.

Cloak of Warding has +5def on it as well.

thardruid
10-05-2005, 01:24 AM
the amount of damage reduced seems to scale down significantly when you get past like 7.5k armor, so i question the value of acquiring so much armor. i think i'm in the 60-63% range of damage reduction with 8555 armor in bear form; what is your damage reduction at 10300 armor?

In regards to diminishing returns on increased AC amounts, read this:
http://conquest.teamgbu.com/viewtopic.php?t=470

The post is about warriors but damage mitigation from AC is the same for all of us.

Battlehorn
10-05-2005, 07:33 AM
god look at u guys.....lvl 60 captain of the red shirts....lvl60 this lvl60 that ... ifeel sorta small compared to u guys i mean im a lvl 17 and i can barely get a third of the way to 18.... if u guys have some leveling up tips plz share em with me =) by the way imeant all this as a good thing. i respect lvl 60 people wow it must have taken ages :P. =)

Aflat
10-05-2005, 09:37 AM
god look at u guys.....lvl 60 captain of the red shirts....lvl60 this lvl60 that ... ifeel sorta small compared to u guys i mean im a lvl 17 and i can barely get a third of the way to 18.... if u guys have some leveling up tips plz share em with me =) by the way imeant all this as a good thing. i respect lvl 60 people wow it must have taken ages :P. =)


Find someone to partner up with. I started grouping with a mage at about level 20 or so and things went soooo much faster. We can survive, but our DPS is lacking. Mages are the other way around. Now at level 47 I group with 2 mages and a lock. We can kill just about anything many levels above us. With their DPS, a pet tanking, and my offtanking/healing we do very well.

Get partner or small group with similar playstyles and times, and you guys will all benefit.

Cenaurius
10-06-2005, 09:55 AM
god look at u guys.....lvl 60 captain of the red shirts....lvl60 this lvl60 that ... ifeel sorta small compared to u guys i mean im a lvl 17 and i can barely get a third of the way to 18.... if u guys have some leveling up tips plz share em with me =) by the way imeant all this as a good thing. i respect lvl 60 people wow it must have taken ages :P. =)

it did take me months in RL, but you'll get there in due time. grouping is definitely faster than solo play for leveling up, so if you're not pleased with the rate at which you're progessing, take aflat's advice. while i enjoy being 60 for lots of reasons, i think WoW is more fun on your way there, not at 60, so keep that in mind when you look at our levels :).