Tanking T 10 Sets Getting Armor Buff

I'm glad we're seeing t10 get an upgrade that might make it competetive with the off-set gear, but the idea that i've passed on a lot of tokens and taken what may essentially be side-grades is depressing indeed. It took months to build the set i've got now. Logging in to find that making the smart decision landed me hundreds of badges in debt is not my idea of a good time. I had intended to get t10 eventually too, but i'm not enthusiastic about another couple months of ICC to get to where I should have been already. I would have had my 4-set very soon if that had been a smart decision.

Here's hoping they allow trade-in's or refurnds of some kind.

Nevertheless, your initial plan of getting T10 after offset hasn't changed much :P

My first 3 purchases were all T10. Went gloves-->shoulders-->chest. Then got the badge cloak cause it's sexy. Used my upgrade token on the chest. When I made these purchases I was thinking very long term as how they'd fare at the 25man heroic versions. I knew I was getting shafted initially by not going after Kraken gloves and Cata chest. I highly doubt Blizzard will buff the T10 to match the armor values of the offset without taking out a lot of stuff on the current setups. Or find a medium at least. If I were you, I wouldn't worry too much over it. I think the ilvl264 T10 (figuring in set bonuses) is supposed to match offset in overall value, and ilvl277 T10 would be superior. This was clearly not the case. You have badge gear that is on par with the equivalent T10 gear. By the time you have access to the ilvl277 all of ICC is open and badges will be coming in at a faster rate.

Just to clarify this effects dks palas and warriors sets? poor druids :<

I think it will be a good change, im hope'ing lower hit just tad on the gloves its slightly too much imo.

Hoping they change that lackluster Warrior 4pc. Otherwise I'm sticking to buying the offset chest/gloves but I think i'll buy the t10 shoulders/helm first only to see what exactly is gonna be the change (since i already got the crafted boots, belt, cloak and trinket).


Btw, is this change going in today or in the frostwing wing patch?

By the time heroics open up you're going to be swimming in badges even if you bought the offset chest and gloves. If the gloves for instance turn out to be better, all you need to do is get 60 badges and you're good to go upgrading them all the way to heroic.

I'm not swimming in badges right now and heroics are potentially only 2 weeks away. Not sure where you get your math skills, but I hope you can magically apply them to my emblem drop rate.

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Originally Posted by markv

I'm not swimming in badges right now and heroics are potentially only 2 weeks away. Not sure where you get your math skills, but I hope you can magically apply them to my emblem drop rate.

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Maybe you won't be swimming in badges just yet, but until you get 277 tokens, the offset pieces are probably still better, and I doubt that it'll really take you an excessive amount of time to farm up the badges for your gloves or your chest piece.

My main issue is expertise with this change. I love that you can get both the 4pc bonus and not lose out on any +armor gear now, but the two biggest pieces to help carry your expertise are the badge chest and the tier legs. With these new changes, if you want to stack armor then blizzard has laid that path out as tier head, shoulders, chest, gloves, and badge legs. That leaves your expertise choices as grinning skull boots + facelifter + a boatload of guardian's dreadstones. My newest gear plan would put me at 7% expertise, mainly from the 8 guadian's dreadstones with heroic versions of the only 2 pieces of expertise gear available. I don't even wanna talk about how low my hit will be =P

Hopefully the Lich King drops a shield with expertise I guess.

Does this mean the head and shoulder from the tier also get bonus armor? That would be sweet. I am a bit anoyed thoough because today I got the armor chest and the crafted legs were not cheap :(
If I had known before my decision might have been different.

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Originally Posted by Aggathon

they're doing it so that the 264 level stuff wouldn't be better than the 277 level stuff.

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My reply might be slightly off-topic in regards to the specific items in question, but there are still other items, in my opinion, that will be item level 264 and reign supreme over the 277 alternatives. Pillars of Might, Sentinel's Winter Cloak, Verdigris Chain Belt, and the heroic Gargoyle Spit Bracers come to mind, and that list is excluding an item like the heroic Unidentifiable Organ which is far superior to either of the 277 tank trinkets.

While I have no problem using a lower item level item if it is in fact "better" for a specific situation, I feel like this change to tier chest and gloves only addresses a minor portion of the itemization issue many of us are facing in Icecrown where even with access to every item in the game there are still quite a handful of less-than-max-item-level items that would appear to be a superior choice over the 277 alternatives.

It is what it is I guess, but it's still a little disappointing to me.

No, pretty sure it said just the gloves and chest. Personally, depending on how the gloves pan out, I'll probably still just take the offset chest and 4-piece legs/gloves/helm/shoulders. I probably still lose a little armor from the gloves, and a lot from the Pillars of Might, but I have neither the gold nor Emblems to craft them quickly anyway.

Current Warrior Tier-10 Pieces (item level 251)

Ymirjar Lord's Handguards

1579 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 63.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.


Ymirjar Lord's Breastplate

2526 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 76.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 68.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 68.

Updated Warrior Tier-10 Pieces (item level 251)

Ymirjar Lord's Handguards

2461 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.


Ymirjar Lord's Breastplate

3590 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 60.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 76.

Current Death Knight Tier-10 Pieces (item level 251)

Scourgelord Handguards

1579 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 63.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.


Scourgelord Chestguard

2526 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Strength
Equip: Increases defense rating by 60.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 76.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 76.

Updated Death Knight Tier-10 Pieces (item level 251)

Scourgelord Handguards

2461 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.


Scourgelord Chestguard

3590 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Strength
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 60.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 76.

Current Paladin Tier-10 Pieces (item level 251)

Lightsworn Handguards

1579 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 63.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.


Lightsworn Chestguard

2526 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 76.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 60.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 76.

Updated Paladin Tier-10 Pieces (item level 251)

Lightsworn Handguards

2461 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.


Lightsworn Chestguard

3590 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 60.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 76.

No defense on the new chests is interesting. Guess they figure we've already got a surplus and don't want us to stop thinking about it as a stat.

Well, with some gear choices it might be a toss up between tier chest and Pillars of Might, at least for warriors (no real math done, but wearing those two items without +defence could bring you very close to minimum needed defence value).

The breastplates having no defense is already going to force you to skip out on one or two bonus armor pieces to remain def capped.

I mean, this is my armory right now. I have 540 defense exactly. The Valithra Dreamwalker ring is already going to cost me 13 rating and force me to regem some defense. There's no way I can equip that breastplate.

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Originally Posted by Xequecal

The breastplates having no defense is already going to force you to skip out on one or two bonus armor pieces to remain def capped.

I mean, this is my armory right now. I have 540 defense exactly. The Valithra Dreamwalker ring is already going to cost me 13 rating and force me to regem some defense. There's no way I can equip that breastplate.

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I'm not sure if there's something I'm not thinking of regarding Paladins, but for Warriors I think it can work, at least in optimal gear. Now, whether it's worth using 4pc 277 + Pillars or still not getting 4pc is another story, but I think we'd be able to make use of that chest when we have some other 277 gear at least. The biggest thing I noticed from a quick glance at your armory was your boots. I'm planning on picking up the boots from ICC25 which have defense, so I think that right there might make or break the ability to use both the tier chest and Pillars of Might. I'd have to do the math to be absolutely certain, though.

*editing for clarification: Using my current gear, which is far from BiS still, if I were to wear a Tier10 chestpiece and Pillars of Might, I'd still be at 534 defense, which is just 2 shy of 536 (the crit immunity cap when using the stam/resil shoulder enchant). So, with that being said, I think it's possible to work that out still when we have access to more 277 gear for sure, if not sooner. Now, if you want to use the crafted boots as well, you may start to run into problems, but I didn't have those on my list personally.

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Originally Posted by Reev

No defense on the new chests is interesting. Guess they figure we've already got a surplus and don't want us to stop thinking about it as a stat.

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Unfortunately Defense Rating is better for Warrior survival time than Dodge or Parry rating for an ICC-geared tank, even past the 'cap' due to how it affects the DR curve and also given the Critical Block buff some time ago. Defense Rating is ridiculously underrated and most don't realize how much better it is than "pure" Dodge/Parry at the upper ends of the DR curves.

Removing Defense Rating is a very non-optimal thing to do. Parry Rating should be the first thing to go--or, if they were feeling like actually trying to buff the items, reduce points roughly equally from both Dodge and Parry Rating.

The Chest changes are very poorly approached from an itemization point of view.

I'm completely torn now with these changes but Koji, you make it sound like the set pieces are still just as awful. I was originally thinking of going helm+shoulder for 2 pc and going kraken+chestguard +pillar for the other pieces for Armor goodness, but with the glove buff, i'm actually considering going shoulder+glove, and hoping for the non-set helm dropping, and still being able to get more armor from the chest and legs. Am I missing something here or does that sound mroe optimal?

Well, hard to say. The real question with the chest change is watching your Def to make sure it doesn't drop below 540, especially given that some of the other good supplemental pieces don't have Def on them either. (The TotC chests also had more Def on them than the T10 chest already had, so the delta is even larger in those cases--I'd be losing 102 Def Rating from the chest alone!)

The gloves are not terrible, but still don't seem to outperform the badge ones.

I'm going to wait until we see the 264 stats to make any definite judgements about it, but I don't really feel like the changes did much to 'sell' me on the set pieces. They have a higher EH bias now--which is nice--but they still stand out as being sub-optimally itemized. Based on projected stats, I still see the T10 gloves as being inferior to the badge ones--although they are less inferior than they were before so not such a bad sacrifice for the 4-set bonus.

Oddly, my feeling about how to prioritize my badges really doesn't seem to change much. Helm + Shoulders are the least questionable pieces due to lack of competing items, and the off-set chest and gloves still 'feel' like stronger pieces. The only real difference I see is that the sacrifice for swapping the Chest + Gloves for the 4-set is decreased quite a bit and therefore makes the set bonus a bit more viable.

I'm still very torn as to if it's a good way to go--the loss of the Expertise, Defense, 2 sockets, and avoidance in general seems to still not be worth it.

The idea of losing 102 Defense Rating and 78 Expertise Rating in one slot really sours my opinion on the chest, even if it's a slightly stronger piece now overall.

Kaze, one thing you have to take into consideration if you are counting on drops is that the offset helmet is pretty much equavilent to the T10 while the Bone Commander Pauldrons http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50003 gives you an additional 18 stamina over the T10 shoulders because of a socket.