Reply With Quotedps or tank?
Looking at the available T9, I'm thinking of just going for shoulders and hands, and stop at that. The emblem pieces are very well itemized and are cheaper to get, not to mention the T9 stats aren't even top notch.
dps or tank?
If you are talking tank gear then you warriors are in the same boat as DK's, the 4pc bonus is less than stellar. The 2pc set is nice for threat, past that I'll just gear for BiS as it's available.
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I think that situationally the 4pc bonus will be very valuable to have. With the way Shield Block is designed having it on a 30 second cooldown instead of a 40 second cooldown effectively means that we can have 100% block rating for 1/3 of every fight. With critical blocks this can turn into an effective chunk of mitigation.
Looking over the gear I would probably wear the Hat, Shoulder, Gloves, Legs for the 258 Tier9 set. The legs in particular would be a good item to have as they are one of the few tank items out with hit rating this Tier.
I've notice that there are a variety of tank stun mechanics in ToC. Gormok's stomp, Icehowl's headbutt, Anub's freeze thingie. Even in the 5 man, the warrior's rolling throw turns you around and immobilizes you.
Seems like Blizz is starting to experiment with mechanics that counter avoidance (and block). So I'd agree that this bonus is situationally good, but coming fights may circumvent it's use.
Personally I'm not going for the 4pc bonus, since I question if I can collect enough emblems to complete the 4pc bonus before icecrown anyways. So I'm just shooting for hands and shoulders for threat. And the ranged weapon and non-set hat will be nice if I can get them. Of course things will change if Koralon gives me some shiny new legs.
I plan to grab shoulders and legs of t9, so with my helmet and gauntlets of t8 I got a pretty strong devastate.
cant get 'em all, so this is my restricted wish for my gear
i grabbed the shoulders and gloves but not sure about other pieces, definitly don't care about the 4pc though.
Yeah I'm definitely talking about the prot set. I kind of thought talking about protection would be default at tankspot, though there are lots of discussion on DPS stuff as well.
Anyways, glad I'm not the only one who sees the tier pieces as bad. Here's to hoping that T10 will give us super awesome itemization and set bonuses.
From where i stand im going to use 4 pc and the chest off the first boss in heroic 25.
In my opinion (and reading threads like this one i see im not alone) the hands and the shoulders are extremely appealing , no block rating no block value , just avoidance in the hands and avoidance and expertise in the shoulderpads.
Then i pick the legs just for the hit , the lack of hit in the 258 gear is disturbing as it has been pointed out around here before , if the legs didnt have any hit i would stick to just gloves /shoulders.
But since i will be already wearing 3 pcs i have to decide if i want to use the 4th piece, the logic would say i should go to the chest which is just avoidance but there is an easy and ready available 258 chest in the first boss of coliseum and there is NO 258 helmet , so i will take the tier helmet.
No block rating in either item , just 480 BV , taking into account that the highest level shield (hence highest armor shield in the game ) is easily available too in the first boss of coliseum and it also brings some BV (310 or something?) the 4 pc set bonus starts looking better.
Just my 2 coppers , hope more ppl discuss this thread as it is really releavant for most warriors tanking coliseum.
I'm personally only going for the 2 set bonus (shoulders/gauntlets) in combination with the helm from badges (atleast until hardmode tier) and the normal/hardmode 25 versions of the chest of towering monstrosity and leggings.
what I did notice though is that even though quite a few people complain about the "hit" on certain pieces it's actually pretty nice to get some pieces with that exact stat on it as everything else seems to be crammed with expertise.
I'm currently wearing the badge helm, non-set chest and "medium"-set shoulders + gloves and due to the cloak having expertise, my sor'thalis having no hit, shield having no hit etc etc etc etc I dropped down to 2.8% chance to hit. I luckily got the 10 man hardmode boots yesterday and I'm crafting the bracers today so my hit will be back up to ~5%. Getting the tier leggings just for the hit really seemed to be something to think about.
Threatwise this isn't an issue obviously as in return I'm at ~40 expertise but on gormokk/jormungars we had loads of issues with taunt resists. The solution I'm using now is throwing vigilance on the other tank before taunting but this obviously makes things slower and in addition it doesn't really help when it comes to preventing him from going taunt immune due to DR.
Additionally when it comes to aoe tanking (i'll be fair, the amount of aoe tanking in totc is minimal though) hit is far superior to expertise threatwise due to thunder clap and shockwave mechanics.
As the above poster mentioned it's probably wise to eventually go for the 4 pieces on hardmode in order to keep a healthy amount of hit and replace the badge helm with the tier helm while using the chestguard as off-set piece.
I'm a big fan of shield block as an ability, I would like to get the 4pc in the fullness of time, but it's certainly not my priority. I'd agree with the concensus here - tier set shoulders/gloves and offset the rest... at least until tribute runs (a little way off for me I think)
I suppose the real question here is: What is the value of Shield Block?
The Tier9 4 bonus increases Shield Block's up time by about 25% (assuming we all have 2/2 Shield Mastery). It seems that most of the Tier9 gear is focused on Block Value and completely dropping any Block Rating we might have had previously (Tier8 helm). This means that between the Shield Mastery & Critical Block talents & the Tier9 4 bonus & Glyph of Blocking we are going to have a 10 second mini-shield wall (100% block rating) on a 30 second cooldown where you have some significant modifiers to increase your block value and crit block value.
With a pretty modest gear focus on block (Tier9 legs, Tier9 helm, Folorn Barrier) I am looking at 2433 block value which I imagine would translate into a good dose of mitigation as well as some really big shield slams.
I personally don't think the itemization on the tier 9 set is really all that bad, particularly when you get the 258 items... although it has shield block over straight avoidance on several pieces, it DOES carry an awful lot of defense rating, which translates to higher avoidance stats in addition to the dodge and parry found on some pieces. As for the 4-piece bonus, it can certainly have it's uses. Even if a block only stops 2-4k, blocking every hit means you're reducing 20-40k every ten shots... it can add up.
Besides... who knows what encounters they're planning on placing inside Icecrown? It's possible there may be some fights were that extra Shield Block is very handy indeed.
The tier pieces aren't terrible, but the 4 piece doesn't make em that enviable over other pieces with slightly more interesting stats on them. They seem to be designed to give us some nice tie breaker options. When I calculated the blocked amount gain for the 4 piece bonus I was a little underwhelmed (I didn't do it perfectly either but it would still hold up against a very hard hitting boss). I look at the setbonus as a nice armor increase.
I tend to work out my sets as I get loot(some stuff just doesn't drop - don't get me started). The general rule of make do with what you can get still apply!
My lack of proper signature actually is a proud minimalistic stand
The warrior 4p is interesting. This is the first time I think we've ever gotten a cooldown reduction on anything. I have mainly been buying non-tier pieces so far tho, since I see little application for the 4p on current fights. The 1 fight in heroic ToC where I think it might prove very useful is Anub add-tanking (post-stun nerf). Other than that, it seems like it would be more useful for threat/damage. Too bad we can't double-up with 4p t8 and 4p t9 (although I don't really see a huge benefit to doing that either). For now, I'm just praying that I can get a few of the pieces out of VoA to mess around with. Using my badges elsewhere. At least this way I can make use of the 258 non-tier pieces out of heroic 25man. Once I have access to heroic t9 I will focus on using it in my main progression set.
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