Replacing some defense with other stats

Hello Tank Spot,

Ive been reading alot of guides that explain to me the importance of all the stats and why the caps are all you really need and things of this nature. One thing the perticular guides and/or articles dont mention is the best way of replacing the stats with the better stats.

My tank is currently packing a whopping 520 defense in his current gear. I fully understand that i can benifit greatly by droping that defense closer to 490 and replacing them stats with more appropriate stats. But what is the best approuch is my concern...

Maybe i just need to continue progressing and the gear that i will be getting soon will favor the stats id like to have more then they favor my defense at the moment

The World of Warcraft Armory

I will be getting my last few badges tonight to acquire the new badge legs and already have the appropriate leg armor for them. I am also currently farming Heroic mrt for the commendation trinket to replace my compass.

After reviewing my gear would you agree that a focus on my rings to non defense stats would be a great way to relieve some of the defense for perhaps dodge or something of that nature?

any and all suggestions would be apprechiated

Dropping your Defense skill to 490 is generallly a good idea, one thing to keep in mind though is that high Defense also reduces the enemy's chance to hit you. Just so you know.

"Defense is a skill that helps prevent physical damage by reducing the chance to be hit or critically hit. Additionally, it also increases block, dodge and parry. Mobs receive 0.1% per point of defense. Mobs get an additional benefit from defense of Glancing Blows versus players.

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. The formula is constant across all classes. It further decreases the chance of receiving critical hits from any level attacker by 0.04% per point that the target's Defense skill exceeds the attacker's Weapon Skill. Please note that a decrease in your chance to be hit (like the tooltip says) actually increases your chance to be missed. However, all of these chances are based on an opponent of equal level. The rating difference between the attacker's weapon skill and the defender's defense factors into the true chance for miss, parry, dodge, block, crushing blow, glancing blow, and critical hit." - Defense - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Defense may not be the best way to go for avoidance, but it covers all the areas if you don't have items that are more avoidance specific. That being said, if you would like to drop some Defense, I suggest getting some of the following items:

[item]Brooch of Deftness[/item]
[item]Girdle of the Fearless[/item]
[item]Sunguard Legplates[/item]
[item]Bonefist Gauntlets[/item]

Yes some of the above items have Defense, but its in a large chunk. This will allow you to take up more items for pure threat or effective health like the [item]Bonefist Gauntlets[/item]. The Expertise on the items also helps with avoidance seeing how Expertise decreases Parry, as well as being Threat from reducing Dodges. Again, Defense isn't bad after 490, but its not the best way to increase specific avoidance areas. Hope this helps some.

My defense is 578 and if anyone tells me im stupid for it, ill e-punch them in the epeen.

Dodge, defense, whatever, its all avoidance, nothing wrong with using defense as an avoidance stat.

490 def is not a cap, its a MINIMUM

Trying to remove defense just for the sake of being at 490 doesn't make a lot of sense to me, unless you are trying to put together a threat set. If you are trying to tank trash in the gear you are wearing now, it must be painful.

In fact, after looking at your armory I would suggest adding a def trinket or a darkmoon card or a commendation instead of that compass, because that trinket is rubbish and it looks to me like your weakest item. I would rather use an adamantite figurine than that. You also need to get your exhalted shoulder enchant, a nethercleft armour kit for your legs, and replace those stupid gems in your gun and in your shoulders. These will be far bigger upgrades than swapping around your def for other stats (which isn't necessarily even an upgrade).

With the gear you have, i think you can easily tank anything in t5 content apart from vashj kael and tidewalker. For tidewalker and vashj i would recommend an extra 5% avoidance Maybe also for FLK so you only need 1 healer assigned to you if you are MT. For Kael you need more stamina.

You are a tauren, you get extra stam for free, be proud to have high defense, its not a bad thing.

The question as I understand it is that you want to know if you need to drop your defence for other stats. Its a combination of what the other 2 posters have said.

If your tanking 5 man, most 10 man and 25 man trash content staying just above 490 and increasing things like SBV, hit, expertise while maintaining enough health/armour (EH) and avoidance is a good thing. That being said just because you have 520 defense it doesn't mean you need to get rid of it, as you gear up this will increase naturally and most tanks are around 520+ these days especially if you are MT for 25 mans and survivability becomes your first priority.

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and replace those stupid gems in your gun and in your shoulders

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12 stam gems are fine for the shoulders, I would have thought his helm (resilience) as being something more important to re-gem or socketing an item for a +5 parry bonus (parry has the worst investment for return than any other stat).

Even in T4/Badge gear you'll find out that more than 500-510 def is a waste of slots, My dodge is 27%, parry 18% and block 24% w over 20k buffed and I don't have yet any T5 piece but thats enough for most T5 content with only 510 def. hit/exp is almost the cap also. In T6 you can get access to more dodge/parry/block specific items that gives you better avoidance than stacking huge amount of def.
I'd take the blocker once you get the stats capped.

How much avoidance you need versus how much effective health or how much threat varies from one encounter to the next and from one raiding tier to the next. Building multiple sets of gear remains the best way to be able to optimize your stats for each individual fight.

That said, people need to stop clamoring that Dodge is better than Defense for pure avoidance. While Dodge does beat Defense by a very small margin, Defense provides other benefits that easily outweight the minuscule difference in avoidance.


18.92 Dodge Rating = 1% avoidance

18.92 Defense Rating = 0.96% avoidance, 1/3 of which works while stunned or feared and applies to attacks coming from behind you. Also add 0.32% chance to block.


The only situation where Dodge even begins to be a better avoidance stat than Defense is when you get extra avoidance from a socket bonus that you enabled with a red gem (dodge). If you get the same thing by matching a yellow socket (defense), then your 10 Defense rating gem is actually giving you more pure avoidance than a 10 Dodge rating gem would on that item.

I have a set that's 495 defense, another that's 577, and others in between. After 490, defense is just another stat that you can use to increase your avoidance (in the case of building a passively uncrushable set, the block chance counts too). In and of itself, defense is not what you use to measure how "good" your gear set is.

Everytime I come to post in a new thread I read Satrina's post and just think, Umm yeah what he said hehe.

thats the best any tank can do, multiple sets for every type of fight.

Thanks for the replies and i understand much better now... if you recheck my armory i was able to get the [item]Sunguard Legplates[/item] as well as got my rep for the greater shoulder chant.. just got whatever gems i had laying around the bank in the legs right now so i could use them right away... i got the tokens in the middle of a run and socketed them just to use

I ran a MrT to try and get my hands on the [item]Commendation of Kael'thas[/item] but instead i came up with a [item]Shard of Contempt[/item] which correct me if im wrong but is a much better peice then my [item]Argussian Compass[/item]

I was not fully aware of the lack of importance on the Parry and will look to replace that gem asap...

And my shoulder gems??? +12 stam! i thought i wanted as many +stam that i could fit... no?

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Originally Posted by TheMainFrame

I ran a MrT to try and get my hands on the [item]Commendation of Kael'thas[/item] but instead i came up with a [item]Shard of Contempt[/item] which correct me if im wrong but is a much better peice then my [item]Argussian Compass[/item]

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It's the best threat trinket in the game afaik. Very good trinket for when you need it. Hell I would probaly use it over the Compass just because it reduces Parries, since the compass isn't that good anyway.