armor trinkets underrated?

The two armor trinkets of wotlk seem to be treated almost like a joke, my guild just called the defender's code a bad trinket when it dropped and i was the only one of 3 tanks who wanted it, and I don't even see it at all in the gear ranking thread. I was looking at what my damage reduction through armor did when i equipped and unequipped it, and I think it would be accurate to think of this trinket as equivalent to about 1.2% chance to dodge in damage reduction, and about 600 hp in effective health before considering the semantics of steady damage reduction vs. bursty damage reduction.

there's also 15 ap, but meh.

link: The World of Warcraft Armory

I personally use the armor trinket for main tanking, I prefer the armor to say dodge from the badge one. Matter of preference I guess.

All depends on the fight really.

Personally I'd go for defense and then stam.
Hence why I have repelling charge + Essence of gossamer

the armor is preferable against bosses that hit really slow and hard since a fatal string of hits is much more likely

versus fast hitting bosses that favor avoidance, since a fatal string of hits is much less likely

its also good for patchwek OTing, since you need as much mitigation as possible to be able to take two hateful strikes in a row if you aren't topped off fast enough

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Originally Posted by Niian

Personally I'd go for defense and then stam.
Hence why I have repelling charge + Essence of gossamer

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but if my math is right, then the armor trinket would provide more than half the effective health of the essence and more than half the damage avoidance (not counting block) of repelling charge in only one slot. Logically you should try to find a slot to give this armor trinket priority and use the essence or repelling charge as the situation determines.

For Starters: I do agree those armor trinkets are a bit underrated, however, at the moment (for me at least) I don't see Defender's Code as worth the DKP. Really Defender's Code is a Druid Tanking trinket (even if it's getting nerfed for them in the next patch), for druids it's currently best in slot. It's still good for warriors but I think you're overselling how good it is.

Whenever I look at how good armor is versus Stam (or more accurately hp) I enter the competing numbers into the Effective Health Calculator here at Tankspot and see how the effective health totals come out. What I determined back at level 70 is that about 1 stam is close to 20 armor in the amount of EH they both give you. 20 Armor was actually more, but stam scales with Kings while armor doesn't. So generally back then I used that 1to20 conversion as just the "quick and dirty" number when making those decisions on the fly.

So, my question is this: Is the Effective Health Calculator still valid for level 80? I believe it is, but I don't actually know.

Based on that question there are two answers:

1) The Effective Health Calculator is still valid. In this case I question where you're getting the 600hp number from. According to the Effective Health calculator 850 health ends up about equal with approximately 484 in terms of Effective Health. So between 48 and 49 stam (and right around 44 stam when you take Kings into account, unless you're using the 2% armor meta...). No matter how you slice it, I don't see the number getting up to 600 hp.

2) The Effective Health Calculator isn't valid any longer. In this case you're right and it's a better trinket that I thought (and I think than most thought). Though personally I still doubt I'll ever want to spend the dkp on it (at least not until I get last laugh, Helm of Vital Protection and a few other pieces)...mostly because more so than other slots in my gear I like to use my rings and trinkets in particular to min/max values...and in my opinion this trinket doesn't know what it wants to be. It's got Armor which makes it an ok (but not great) effective health trink but then the use is dodge which makes it a great (on use, but not passive) avoidance trink.
What all that means is it's a good trinket for any set (except threat), but it's not the best for any set. So it's simply not the trinket for me.

Regardless of which answer is right in regard to the Effective Health Calculator this is not a trinket I'll likely be picking up anytime soon.

For my math I looked at my damage reduction values through armor to basically convert the trinket into how much it reduces my damage compared to an empty slot there. To do this I looked at 1 - damage reduction through armor to see my damage taken with and without the trinket:
without trinket: 61.21% reduction, or 38.79% damage taken
with trinket: 62.13% reduction, or 37.87% damage taken
Then to convert to damage taken in comparison i divide:
37.87 / 38.79 = 0.976 or 97.6% damage taken.
Then I can take this number and divide my hit point total by it to get a value of what my relative effective health would be through the mitigation of the trinket
25571 hp / .976 = 26200 hp, a 629 hp increase.
with kings, stamina would scale up to 11 hp per point, but you should also use the buffed hp value when you have blessing of kings, since the effective health change scales up as your hp pool increases. I should have probably used a buffed value for my hp pool, which I believe would've been about 30k hp leading to about a 700 hp increase but I don't have those values on me at the moment.

I believe I also used a guess and check method on the eh calculator and found that i would need to increase my hp value by about 580 to achieve the same eh if i didn't have the trinket equipped (using unbuffed values again), the difference from this may be due to my calculations here being against a level 80 mob and the ones through the calculator being used with a level 83 mob.

also, yes, this is obviously less of an eh increase than the essence of gossamer, but this increase is through damage reduction, so it is like you have a trinket that both adds a value to your effective health and provides a bit of damage mitigation, which I found through a similar method to be the same for me as about 1.2% to dodge, on the same trinket. There's also the whole advantage of steady vs. bursty mitigation making it easier on the healers, but that advantage is difficult to quantify so we can only say that it is superior to exactly the same amount of equivalent dodge, and can not really say how much more it should be valued.

I did not factor the on use ability of the trinket into any calculations.

The EH calculator is still valid, I recently fixed it with the help of Satrina.

I raided overtime last night and the coffee hasn't kicked in yet so I may be dumb right now but... is it valid to calculate the value of armor by basically adding the flat EH increase AND the % mitigation increase? The increase to EH takes into account (in fact is caused by) the % mitigation increase so aren't you kinda doubling up there?

That being said I still think it's an awesome trinket. I think it happens far too often that warriors instantly disregard high +Armor items as "Bear loot" and increasingly now I see items with Parry being disregarded as "DK loot", when in fact these items can still be some of the best available to us.

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Originally Posted by nykken

but if my math is right, then the armor trinket would provide more than half the effective health of the essence and more than half the damage avoidance (not counting block) of repelling charge in only one slot. Logically you should try to find a slot to give this armor trinket priority and use the essence or repelling charge as the situation determines.

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You're saying the armour one gives around 1/2 the effect of both trinkets, but in the one trinket.
However the avoidance given by repelling charge, including block, would outweigh the armour trinket. The armour trink may be able to provide 1/2 the effective hp + 1/2 the effective avoidance, without block, of the essence + charge, but isn't armour contributions from trinkets and such going to be removed from armour % increases from tallents/gems?

Even then, using armour over a raw HP increase would be situational, especially if a boss/mob was removing that armour.

/shrug.
Way too early to be thinking, and watching Top Gear late at night probably wanst the best idea for me >_<

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Originally Posted by Talisman

I raided overtime last night and the coffee hasn't kicked in yet so I may be dumb right now but... is it valid to calculate the value of armor by basically adding the flat EH increase AND the % mitigation increase? The increase to EH takes into account (in fact is caused by) the % mitigation increase so aren't you kinda doubling up there?

That being said I still think it's an awesome trinket. I think it happens far too often that warriors instantly disregard high +Armor items as "Bear loot" and increasingly now I see items with Parry being disregarded as "DK loot", when in fact these items can still be some of the best available to us.

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yes, it should be valid to consider the eh boost and the mitigation boost separate. EH is a measurement of how much raw damage you can take while damage reduction is a calculation of how much damage you prevent taking. stamina contributes only to EH because it doesn't actually reduce your damage, it only increases the hp buffer. avoidance doesn't contribute to EH because bad luck would mean every attack connecting and your avoidance not actually contributing to anything. Armor however reduces your actual damage taken in a way that you can depend on so your effective health is increased.

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Originally Posted by Niian

You're saying the armour one gives around 1/2 the effect of both trinkets, but in the one trinket.
However the avoidance given by repelling charge, including block, would outweigh the armour trinket. The armour trink may be able to provide 1/2 the effective hp + 1/2 the effective avoidance, without block, of the essence + charge, but isn't armour contributions from trinkets and such going to be removed from armour % increases from tallents/gems?

Even then, using armour over a raw HP increase would be situational, especially if a boss/mob was removing that armour.

/shrug.
Way too early to be thinking, and watching Top Gear late at night probably wanst the best idea for me >_<

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I said it contributes more than half that each of those trinkets contributes, i didn't consider block since on bosses a block doesn't really contribute that much. And I'm not really sure what the repelling charge tends to add on an actual tank after you consider diminishing returns. Armor is not really that situational, bosses that do primarily magic damage are in the minority, and armor reduction I believe is even more rare.

If the trinkets are not gaining anything back from the changes in the next patch, which I wouldn't really understand since I think every tank has at least 10% of an armor boost through talents, it may be time to point out that nerf to blizzard, but I doubt it would make too much of a difference because I'm pretty sure these trinkets are a fair bit ahead when you want a balance of EH and mitigation.

Ignore my comment about armour nerf, thats only for bears!

According to wowheads weight scale the Defender's Code is worse for a pally tank than Essence, and worse than Repelling Charge.

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Originally Posted by Niian

Ignore my comment about armour nerf, thats only for bears!

According to wowheads weight scale the Defender's Code is worse for a pally tank than Essence, and worse than Repelling Charge.

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the entire point of this thread and my math is that people undervalue armor.

Undervalued to me because its more situational than a HP boost, or an avoidance boost.
Extra armour may reduce the amount of constant damage taken, but doesnt give you extra cushion to fall back on. The same goes for essence.

And charge I keep because of the 84 defense rating, which is so tasty and frees up other gems/chants.

How is it more situational than an hp or avoidance boost? it does give you extra cushion, it does reduce damage taken, and it does apply to all physical damage that comes your way. It is probably one of the least situational stats we have access to.

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Originally Posted by nykken

yes, it should be valid to consider the eh boost and the mitigation boost separate. EH is a measurement of how much raw damage you can take while damage reduction is a calculation of how much damage you prevent taking. stamina contributes only to EH because it doesn't actually reduce your damage, it only increases the hp buffer. avoidance doesn't contribute to EH because bad luck would mean every attack connecting and your avoidance not actually contributing to anything. Armor however reduces your actual damage taken in a way that you can depend on so your effective health is increased.

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Well aware of all those things, I was probably unclear.

Specifically what I was referring to was the claim that the armor gave half as much damage reduction as the avoidance trinket and half as much EH as the stam trinket so add them both together and BAM it's as good as either one! The increase to EH is purely a cause of that damage reduction so you can't add both together.

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Originally Posted by Talisman

The increase to EH is purely a cause of that damage reduction so you can't add both together.

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except you can. armor increases both your total damage reduction and your effective health, just because effective health is affected by the damage reduction doesn't diminish its affect. The armor trinket provides more than half of the effect of my stamina trinket, and more than half of the effect of my dodge trinket. the stamina and dodge trinkets provide effects completely separate from each other that do not intersect at all. so my armor trinket is in general superior unless I want to increase EH or damage reduction despite a larger cost to the other.

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Originally Posted by nykken

I said it contributes more than half that each of those trinkets contributes, i didn't consider block since on bosses a block doesn't really contribute that much.

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nykken what class do you play? block is a massive amount of damage mitigation, right now warriors can block over 5k with the right procs and a at least 1k when geared in epics. if you don't think thats a large contribution then theres no way any one could trust the rest of your math.

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Originally Posted by nykken

I was looking at what my damage reduction through armor did when i equipped and unequipped it, and I think it would be accurate to think of this trinket as equivalent to about 1.2% chance to dodge in damage reduction, and about 600 hp in effective health before considering the semantics of steady damage reduction vs. bursty damage reduction.

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Exactly, it's 600hp (if you're right). Why equip something that if you need EH only gives 600 when you can equip Essence of the Gossamer for 1.2k, and the jewelcrafting (if you have it) trinket that gives about the same. And since those hp trinkets works on spells to they are better then the armor.

If you needed avoidance you would take 2 avoidance trinkets.

So in my opinion those armor trinkets are leftovers from before they decided to reevalue armor for druids and DK's. And is now more or less worthless.