So, you want bonus armor. The best deal.

[orcstar]

Currently there are some excellent pieces with bonus armor you can buy for emblems of frost.
Those are:
Sentinel's Winter Cloak - Item - World of Warcraft 50 emblems 560 bonus armor
Verdigris Chain Belt - Item - World of Warcraft 60 emblems 658 bonus armor
Gauntlets of the Kraken - Item - World of Warcraft 60 emblems 658 bonus armor
Cataclysmic Chestguard - Item - World of Warcraft 95 emblems 1176 bonus armor
(it's crafted so you might get your emblems somewhere else but still listed as if you had to spend your emblems on the primordial saronite)
Pillars of Might - Item - World of Warcraft 184 emblems 1190 bonus armor

Let's divide the bonus armor by the number of emblems you spend on it and you'll get the following list:

Best deal on top
#1 Cataclysmic Chestguard - Item - World of Warcraft 12.38 armor/emblem
#2 Sentinel's Winter Cloak - Item - World of Warcraft 11.2 armor/emblem
#3 Verdigris Chain Belt - Item - World of Warcraft 10.97 armor/emblem
#3 Gauntlets of the Kraken - Item - World of Warcraft 10.97 armor/emblem
#5 Pillars of Might - Item - World of Warcraft 6.47 armor/emblem

If you're going for highest armor set don't forget to pick up: Glyph of Indomitability - Item - World of Warcraft and Clutch of Fortification - Item - World of Warcraft for triumph badges.

Band of the Twin Val'kyr - Item - World of Warcraft and Bile-Encrusted Medallion - Item - World of Warcraft suit an armor heavy set well but there are also other options.

As a weapon you ofcourse go for Ardent Guard - Item - World of Warcraft

Ofcourse you enchant an armor heavy cloak with........even more armor: Formula: Enchant Cloak - Mighty Armor - Item - World of Warcraft and armor heavy gloves also with more armor: Glove Reinforcements - Item - World of Warcraft

Indestructible Potion - Item - World of Warcraft is your friend. Drink 1 right before the pull so you start with 2 minutes of benefit and during the fight you can drink another.

Last: kill Professor Putricide on 10 man and get this baby: Unidentifiable Organ - Item - World of Warcraft

Dragaan told me about http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50802 which I hadn't noticed before. An excellent choice in the braces slot and drops when you kill Saurfang in 10 men.

[Darksend]

Dam, I was thinking about doing this same post last night. Going to be a nice reference to have.

[krc]

As a warrior you could get very close to the boss armor cap at around 49,000 and buffed be about 100-200 armor away from the level 80 boss cap at 45,700. If you were to go completely armor crazy getting the best armor piece at every slot, gem agility in every socket and enchant as much armor and agility as you can unbuffed you could reach 40,761 armor with 34k hp unbuffed while buffed reaching 45,307 and 46,k hp.

Obviously there are unrealistic numbers and you would not be favoring EH but in current content you certainly could get huge amounts of armor. In heroic you would see even bigger numbers since the armor on the drops will be increasing.

[orcstar]

As a warrior you could get very close to the boss armor cap at around 49,000 and buffed be about 100-200 armor away from the level 80 boss cap at 45,700. If you were to go completely armor crazy getting the best armor piece at ever slot, gem agility in every socket and enchant as much armor agility as you can unbuffed you cold reach 40,761 armor with 34k hp unbuffed while buffed reaching 45,307 and 46,k hp.

Obviously there are unrealistic numbers and you would not be favoring EH but in current content you certainly could get huge amounts of armor.

At the moment I'm sitting at over 33k armor unbuffed without the cloak, belt and chestguard and missing the unidentifieable organ.

Last raid with and indestructible potion I was over 40k armor buffed.

[Proletaria]

I'm loving the bonus armor gear myself. Though from what i've seen of the organ's proc rate, i'll be leaving it in the bank for a while.

At some point i'm going to get my hands on another ardent guard so i can create my bonus armor set of doom.

[krc]

According to Koijayma the Unidentifiable Organ's uptime should be around 4 stacks making it the best EH trinket in the game since the armor is worth around 170 stamina and the procs is on average going to be at 108 stamina and could even get to 270 stamina making it just insane.

[Dragaan]

There's an item you forgot to put up there. Gargoyle spit bracers off of saurfang10. I'm usin those atm and I don't think I will replace them even if the ones off of marrowgar drop. I bought the chest, gloves, belt, and legs so far and I'm sitting at 36.3k unbuffed in my armor getup, which is around 70.42% reduction against a lv80. Still waiting for putricide to drop his trinket. I'll be over 38k unbuffed with that thing!

[Dragaan]

I'm loving the bonus armor gear myself. Though from what i've seen of the organ's proc rate, i'll be leaving it in the bank for a while.

At some point i'm going to get my hands on another ardent guard so i can create my bonus armor set of doom.

Even if it rarely procs, it's still a static ~1900 armor. That alone makes it competitive with all the other current best tanking trinkets. The fact that you can get up to 240 extra stam is just icing on the cake.

[Proletaria]

Even if it rarely procs, it's still a static ~1900 armor. That alone makes it competitive with all the other current best tanking trinkets. The fact that you can get up to 240 extra stam is just icing on the cake.

Check the "unreliable organ" thread on the WoW tanking boards. Also, if you have it yourself, check your WoL parses to see how much uptime you were getting in practice. The use effect on glyph of indom. generally out-performs the stam proc (obvious exceptions include: airship, and a few others are contested).

You're not getting anything from the stam effect if you aren't actually being hit, also, anything with a tank swap or a phase where the boss isn't attacking you works against it.

I don't discount it as an armor trinket, but the proc rate makes it just as occasional as the other armor trinkets around.

[Dragaan]

I don't have the trinket, but I really don't see how it can be so terrible. I browse WoL a lot, and I've come across quite a few logs where the tank was using the trinket and it seemed to have a decent uptime. It doesn't show how many stacks were up, but the overall uptime (with at least 1 stack) was fairly decent. I guess I'll have to try it out for myself. I have seen people bitching about it on random forums, but most of the complaining is about how it's not giving them the full bonus all the time. I guess a lot of tanks were expecting a solid 240stamina from it.

[Proletaria]

I don't have the trinket, but I really don't see how it can be so terrible. I browse WoL a lot, and I've come across quite a few logs where the tank was using the trinket and it seemed to have a decent uptime. It doesn't show how many stacks were up, but the overall uptime (with at least 1 stack) was fairly decent. I guess I'll have to try it out for myself. I have seen people bitching about it on random forums, but most of the complaining is about how it's not giving them the full bonus all the time. I guess a lot of tanks were expecting a solid 240stamina from it.

I'm not suggesting it is 'terrible,' but i think the expectation for it to be a best-in-slot EH trinket for almost all cases is illogical given the present proc rate. Most of the logs i've investigated show a 2-3 stack average on encounters that actually favor it's use. Some encounters will have you lucky to grab 2. Not terrible when you are talking physical damage that you'd wear an armor trinket for anyhow, but certainly not all around uber trinket that some people suggest it to be.

[orcstar]

Updated with: Gargoyle Spit Bracers - Item - World of Warcraft after I saw Dragaans post.

[Dreador]

I'm not suggesting it is 'terrible,' but i think the expectation for it to be a best-in-slot EH trinket for almost all cases is illogical given the present proc rate. Most of the logs i've investigated show a 2-3 stack average on encounters that actually favor it's use. Some encounters will have you lucky to grab 2. Not terrible when you are talking physical damage that you'd wear an armor trinket for anyhow, but certainly not all around uber trinket that some people suggest it to be.

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f97/5...tml#post357657

[Proletaria]

This is for Warriors, though, so it could be slightly different for Druids but as Armor's EH value scales with Health and Druids have tons of Health, I wouldn't imagine it being much different results unless you are already Armor-capped.

I'd imagine it could be slightly diffirent for a dk aswell, espcially pushing toward 40k unbuffed armor with that thing on.

[gom]

As a warrior you could get very close to the boss armor cap at around 49,000 and buffed be about 100-200 armor away from the level 80 boss cap at 45,700. If you were to go completely armor crazy getting the best armor piece at ever slot, gem agility in every socket and enchant as much armor agility as you can unbuffed you cold reach 40,761 armor with 34k hp unbuffed while buffed reaching 45,307 and 46,k hp.

Obviously there are unrealistic numbers and you would not be favoring EH but in current content you certainly could get huge amounts of armor. In heroic you would see even bigger numbers since the armor on the drops will be increasing.

Hi folks.

I think this is a very interesting topic. I also think at the end of Icecrown you could come very close to the physical damage reduction cap which is 75%. In fact I created a few profiles on wowhead and made some easy calculations and comparisons.

First of all a BiS ICC 25 HC gear. (without arthas loot) gemmed and enchanted for max stamina.

note: I have overwritten a char with BS + Mining. I don't know if the hp from mining was added, so I decided to ignore that and use my professions: Enchanting + JC

Profiler - Wowhead
HP: 52422
Armor: 26536

EH -> 136097

in comparsion a max armor gear. again without arthas loot gemmed for stamina enchanted for max. armor:


Profiler - Wowhead

HP: 45342
Armor 37182

EH -> 145933 !

I also made some calculations with replacing the stamina gems with agility you gain about 800 armor or so but lose about 6000-7000 hp which is really bad.

I used this calculator for the EH Effective Health Calculator: How much damage can I can take? - TankingTips.com (lvl 83 NPC)

37182 armor is 70.92% damage reduction according to wowhead @ lvl 80. However the armor calculation is somehow bugged @ wowhead. you probably noticed that dragaan has already 36022 armor (The World of Warcraft Armory - Dragaan @ Mal'Ganis - Profile) so I compared it to the wowhead profile (Profiler - Wowhead) and found out, that there is a 2925 armor difference. I compared other profiles too and I noticed, the higher the armor the higher is the difference. So let's say you can add approx. 3000 armor which brings you to ~40182 armor unbuffed!

Buff it:
Buffed: 40182 armor + 800 (elixir) + 1050 (Imp. MotW) + 2008.5 (Imp. Dev Aura) + 1380 (Guardian Totems) = 45420.5 and if you add a Indestructible Potion (3500)
you get 48920.5 which is capped at lvl 80 and at lvl 83 it is 74.624% damage reduction according to this calculator World Of Warcraft Armor Damage Reduction Calculator

Even if the EH-calculator is not correct or in case I missed something (pls comment if this is the case) it shows definitely that the EH difference is huge between the 2 sets. The difference in damage reduction between the bis and max armor is about 6-7%! Huge!
So conclusion would be that you start farming your max. armor gear for intense physical fights.

/discuss

[krc]

The real question is at what point of magic damage does the non armor heroic gear become favorable. In those sets you are trading 710 stamina for 10,646 armor. Using TheckHD's formula Maintankadin • View topic - "Total" EH - incorporating different damage types into EH you can see the EH trade offs at each percentage of magic level.

On a pure physical fight the stam to armor ratio is 1:11 making the armor worth 967 stamina, a clear favorite. At 90% physical and 1 stam to 13 armor the armor is worth 818 stamina a clear favorite again.

At 80% physical is where it gets interesting, the armor is worth 728 stamina but the stamina ultimately ends up being a close favorite because of stam buffed scaling. 70% physical the stamina is the favorite with the armor worth 637 stamina.

[Proletaria]

IIRC the bonus armor badge gear has more stam (and sockets) than the tier and drops at ilvl 264. With few deviations at ilvl277 (the tier gear is still nasty for most of us) you're looking at a BiS set from a stam AND armor viewpoint with relatively similar gear (swap out the trinkets, rings, etc).

[gom]

The real question is at what point of magic damage does the non armor heroic gear become favorable. In those sets you are trading 710 stamina for 10,646 armor. Using TheckHD's formula Maintankadin • View topic - "Total" EH - incorporating different damage types into EH you can see the EH trade offs at each percentage of magic level.

On a pure physical fight the stam to armor ratio is 1:11 making the armor worth 967 stamina, a clear favorite. At 90% physical and 1 stam to 13 armor the armor is worth 818 stamina a clear favorite again.

At 80% physical is where it gets interesting, the armor is worth 728 stamina but the stamina ultimately ends up being a close favorite because of stam buffed scaling. 70% physical the stamina is the favorite with the armor worth 637 stamina.

Wow nice that is some pretty delicious theorycrafting there. I just skimmed over it but I need to read it one more time when I have more time.
Anyways btt. It would be nice if someone could confirm krcs results. If they are correct then the max. armor gear favors a lot of fights in icc. Pretty much all bosses except Lady DW are heavily based on melee damage (>80%).

[Proletaria]

the max. armor gear favors a lot of fights in icc. Pretty much all bosses except Lady DW are heavily based on melee damage (>80%).

That is indeed the case.

Welcome to uhh, early December, I believe.

[orcstar]

The difference in damage reduction between the bis and max armor is about 6-7%! Huge!

The difference in damage reduction is even bigger then it seems at first glance because, you're probably talking about roughly a 63% vs a 70% damage reduction scenario.

This basically means a 100k hit becomes a 37k hit at 63% and a 30k hit at 70% damage reduction.

so let's compare 37k and 30k, 30k/37k=0.81. In other words: that about 19% less damage because you stack armor.