Prot Warrior ToC & Ulduar Hardmode Gear List

[Doormat]

You list the t9 shoulder as BiS but it seems obvious that Shoulderplates of Enduring Order is better and only costs a few more badges. Care to explain?

[Squirrelnut]

work in progress, thx for the tip i'll go check em out and add to the list. As far as ranking I am prioritizing shoulder/hands for the 2pc bonus because they seem to be itemized better then head/chest/legs. Feel free to ignore the current rankings however because it will be changing soon as I re-work the gear layout based around eh/t/av/block

[gabbu]

work in progress, thx for the tip i'll go check em out and add to the list. As far as ranking I am prioritizing shoulder/hands for the 2pc bonus because they seem to be itemized better then head/chest/legs. Feel free to ignore the current rankings however because it will be changing soon as I re-work the gear layout based around eh/t/av/block

Thanks Great list I was looking for this somewhere.

Thisis off topic (and feel free to delete my post) but where did you get the forum sig picture it looks pretty sweet and I would like to get something similar.

Thanks !!

[Squirrelnut]

I made it in Photoshop. Used renders of the axe/shield/character from wowhead profile viewer: Profiles - World of Warcraft

Then put them together in Photoshop and added glowing eyes. Background was an icecrown free desktop background cropped to fit my needs. Text and effects I put on top so that things fit together fairly well.

If you decide to make a sig keep in mind your image & any text combined need to be 150px or less in height see: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f56/5...ignatures.html

[Henqetnetjer]

First of all, thanks for posting this list.
It is a good list and although there is a lack of depth in the gear choices ("Oh really 258 > 248?! NO!" ), the list you have made seems quite close to mine.
I always like to compare my personal lists with those posted here and on other sites (EJ).

My thoughts/questions:
1. The helm ("hats" as I call them") section is slightly different than my personal lists. I run a EH, threat and block/trash set, each with individual pieces. That being said, I do not think I that the 75 badge hat (Headplate of the honorbound) is a better tanking hat than the tier. To me it seems stacked better for threat (The large amount of expertise) as opposed to the tier with the block value. While I understand this list is not intended to differentiate between tank sets, and thus you do not distinguish between when to use what hat...I still think the tier helmet (At very least the 258, the 245 would be arguable) is a bit better than the Headplate of the Honorbound.

EDIT: I wanted to add that although I haven't gotten to try out the t9 4pc bonus yet, not sure if anyone has, I think that putting together that 4pc bonus would require the tier hat. I think you hit the nail on the head with the odd piece being the chest. The towering monstrosity chest looks like a great piece to me. Especially with the 3 sockets and the large amount of defense. Though I understand the arguement that it has expertise over the tier which runs parry...as I used a similiar argument above. I believe the chest is going to be the piece that is left out of the tier bonus sets. (That or the pants, cant decide)

EDIT#2: I must have missed where you said you were personally unimpressed with the 4pc so you were favoring non tier. Completely explains some of my questions. Although I am not chomping at the bit for it, I think I would still like some time with it once I can put the pieces together.

2. The trinkets this time around are...lacking to say the least. I posted a rant about it on my guild's tanking forums but to recap: I believe The Black Heart to be better than the majority of the trinkets listed here. Again, I understand the title of the thread is "TOC and Uld hard mode bis gear", thus meaning only gear listed has to come from both. But, in my opinion at least...which may or may not be worth much, I would not run any of those trinkets over the combination of Heart of Iron with The Black Heart.
The stamina on the Juggarnaut's Vitality(heroic version) is quite attractive and that alone may move that into my main raid set...though I do think the USE ability is not even close to the proc ability of the Black Heart.
The Oath seems more druid built to me. The on USE (again with the on use?!?! Who wants ON USE abilities that are not avoidance?) seems nigh unplayable to me unless you are on a quick hitting boss and your avoidance is stacked appropriately to gain the 5 stacks as quickly as possible. IF you can get full stack before the 20second limit, you are looking at slightly less armor than is provided by the Black Heart. So while the dodge may be attractive in an avoidance set, I think the Black heart would be ranked higher than this.
The Glyph of Indominability seems slightly more playable to me. The armor bonus is nice being active at all times. And the ON USE dodge increase is exactly what I enjoy the Heart of Iron for, as I use it in conjuction with other cooldowns for greater survivability. I could see this being played in a specific raid boss encounter where cd's need to be timed out very specifically, but I would not say it is better than the Black Heart for a general raid encounter setting. The ~25% active time on Black Heart would give an overall higher mitigation of dmg than the standard 1756 armor bonus, plus...the extra stam is always welcome.
The Vengeance of the Forsaken is completely threat set based. As stated early, I realize this is just a list of gear from Uld and TOC, and it does not distinguish between sets. But I doubt anyone would run this over The Black Heart in a normal raid encounter, as I rarely switch to threat set for raid bosses as it is. Only those that I outgear.

Please excuse the long rant, and the unformatted style, but I have some time on my hands today at work and wanted to bring up those two points.

Again, thank you taking the time to put this list together for everyone.

[Squirrelnut]

Updated the original post with some quick-links, gems, specs and hope to revise the gear rankings in the near future so that they are organized by EH/Threat/Avoidance/Block to improve benefit for everyone based on their approach to gearing.

[gom]

I think with the new gear from ToC it's very easy to get expertise capped while maintaining good EH. there are items with tons of expertise (chest, helm, legs, neck, back,wrist) with the U25 + 10 HM you can add ring and boots. with ulduar loot it was already possible to get 37k+ hp and nearly expertise capped so with the ToC loot it should be no problem.

I wonder how big the diffrence is between a expertise capped tank compared to a expertise soft capped tank. in terms of " Damage Taken" Is there any information available on that? (EJ)

[Squirrelnut]

I agree I do see the expertise caps much more easily reached in TOC gear however a new issue may become remaining hit capped.

[Mookey]

Indestructible Plate Girdle is still better then Girdle of Nether Champion from normal mode.

Due lack of hit on ToC items, it's advisable to rate em higher, it's not everything in numbers, but also in balance.

[Squirrelnut]

Indestructible Plate Girdle is still better then Girdle of Nether Champion from normal mode.

Added to the list. Can't really say that it is "better", similar but slightly different:

Girdle of the Nether Champion (ilvl 232)
1332 Armor
+89 Strength
+134 Stamina
Item Level 232 Equip: Increases defense rating by 47.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 57.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 30.

Indestructible Plate Girdle (ilvl 226)
1321 Armor
+84 Strength
+103 Stamina
Blue Socket
Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina
Item Level 226
Equip: Increases defense rating by 36
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 45
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 37

Comparison:
Girdle of the Nether Champion: 11 armor, 5 strength, 31 stamina, 11 defense, 12 dodge
Indestructible Plate Girdle: 2 sockets, 7 parry

Due lack of hit on ToC items, it's advisable to rate em higher, it's not everything in numbers, but also in balance.

True but hit is basically the least important stat in general and many tanks (such as Xav according to his armory) frequently have very little hit. Everyone ranks gear differently according to their priorities.

[Kazeyonoma]

woo just picked up that girdle today (the ToC one) and because I was overcapped on hit due to ulduar gearing.... I still have 8.4% hit chance =P Now how to get my exp back in line...

[Squirrelnut]

One option would be:
Chestplate of the Towering Monstrosity (69) + Headplate of the Honorbound (69) + Titanskin Cloak - Item - World of Warcraft (31) + Greaves of the Iron Army - Item - World of Warcraft (43) = 212 which is about 26 expertise right there

Also Fate's Clutch - Item - World of Warcraft and Titanstone Pendant - Item - World of Warcraft and Sorthalis, Hammer of the Watchers - Item - World of Warcraft are fairly accessible for another 109 (13 expertise) and are very nice.

EDIT: and Hellscream's Pauldrons of Triumph

[Galdor]

Nice work!
Can you share your used item stat weights, as i have compiled few days ago a list for my self that almost matches this one, but there are few differences. I would love to find out the reason behind.

[dirt]

Wow...nice work Squirrel, was wondering when someone would tackle this.

I had both my hit & exp capped prior to last night, I got the boots from 25man ToC...back to the drawing board again...lol

Thanks again for the hard work.

[Squirrelnut]

Nice work!
Can you share your used item stat weights, as i have compiled few days ago a list for my self that almost matches this one, but there are few differences. I would love to find out the reason behind.

These are not really sorted yet, it was more an effort to just get everything out there. I intend to update the listings to emulate Halandir's thread organization of listing each piece by EH/Threat/Av/Block

[Squirrelnut]

Updated the list with more links from Wowhead (allowing nice popup stats). It would appear they have finally caught up so that all the items that are currently available in-game now appear on wowhead. The only ones that are not included yet are the ones coming from sections that are not open yet (likely to avoid getting in trouble for data-mining).

Updated the links for:
Headplate of the Honorbound (i will be buying this from the vendor on Monday)
Endurance of the Infernal
Pride of the Demon Lord (my guildy nabbed this last night grrr)
Girdle of Bloodied Scars
Girdle of the Nether Champion
Legplates of Feverish Dedication (have had these since last week w00t)
Dawnbreaker Greaves

[Thad]

is there some reason as to why the craftable bracers and chest aren't included on the list?

[Mookey]

is there some reason as to why the craftable bracers and chest aren't included on the list?

Chest
- Breastplate of the White Knight (ilvl 245 - Crafted)
Wrist
- Saronite Swordbreakers - Item - World of Warcraft (ilvl 245 - crafted)

Is there some reason to not read twice first?

[Thad]

Is there some reason to not read twice first?

bizarre that despite checking several times to make sure i didn't make an ass out of myself i still managed to miss em on the list.

o well.

[Squirrelnut]

You might have been looking at a cached version depending on your browser settings? When the thread was originally made I was missing those crafted pieces but it was updated a while ago to include them.