4 Peice Warrior =/< Armor stacking

[Verdekins]

I'm personally armor stacking at the moment.

Crafted Leggs, Badge belt, Chest, Cloak, Trinks, pretty much whatever I can get. But at this point theres nothing more I can pick up for armor and was starting to wonder about working in the 4 piece while still maximizing armor.

Obviously the tier gloves and chest are decent for armor stacking wondering if anyone has taken the other route and picked up there 4 piece yet and how it works out.

Set up would look something like Tier Shoulders, Helm, Gloves, Chest, Badge Cloak / Belt and Crafted Leggs.

Suggestions, personal views, critisizm and comments all welcome.



Here's an armory as well. http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...s&cn=Verdeloth

[Fitzlestick]

Set up would look something like Tier Shoulders, Helm, Gloves, Chest, Badge Cloak / Belt and Crafted Leggs.

That's what I'm going for too atm. It looks like the best choices for progression.
I already have the badge chest too, I know you can ticket a GM to get it reimbursed, but I don't have 4 264 tokens yet, and by the time I do, I should have plenty badges to go around anyway, and expertise item will be usefull anyway. I also have the crafted boots, but I might not make the defense minimum with all 4 items without defense (don't forget the gun).

I am kinda wondering why you are using 10exp/15sta gems. 30sta or 10dodge/15sta is superior. Expertise is nice for threat, but it's hardly needed.
Titanium Plating on your shield also seems like a bad choice, unless you have it specifically for anub-25m hardmode add tanking.

[krc]

I am using the same method as you Verd, going for all of the offset pieces then deciding which T10 pieces I will use depending on my luck with drops when the situation occurs, with all the avaliable gear the head and gloves are the best while not getting any drops the best combo is the helmet and shoulders. The 4pc isn't really anything special, it could be very good for a situation in heroic mode so I would pick it up after you have got all of your frost pieces. I would make a few changes in your gear, put 30 stamina in your neck piece, in your shoulders put a 30 stamina and 15 stam 10 defense, all 30 staminas in your chest, Blood Draining or Mongoose to your weapon, all 30 stamina in your legs and switch your Harbringer's Bone Ring for the Cluth of Fortification the Cluth's armor makes up for the loss in stamina. That being said a suggestion for the future is when gemming gem all stamina unless the socket bonus is 9 stamina or higher and only requires one non blue gem then put in a 15 stam 10 agility/dodge for reds and 15 stam 10 defense for yellows.

[Rune]

That's what I'm going for too atm. It looks like the best choices for progression.
I already have the badge chest too, I know you can ticket a GM to get it reimbursed, but I don't have 4 264 tokens yet, and by the time I do, I should have plenty badges to go around anyway, and expertise item will be usefull anyway. I also have the crafted boots, but I might not make the defense minimum with all 4 items without defense (don't forget the gun).

I am kinda wondering why you are using 10exp/15sta gems. 30sta or 10dodge/15sta is superior. Expertise is nice for threat, but it's hardly needed.
Titanium Plating on your shield also seems like a bad choice, unless you have it specifically for anub-25m hardmode add tanking.

I can't rem the exact figure but there was some analysis done on the contribution of expertise to survival and it was something like 80% of the value of dodge.......I stand to be corrected and/or have the exact figure posted.
And the way it would work would be a reverse of the gained difficulties from avoidance with spiking damge input in theat it smooths out damage intake instead.
The fact that it is also from analysis the best gain per point threat stat at the same time gives a lot more value after that.

[Papapaint]

That's what I'm going for too atm. It looks like the best choices for progression.
I already have the badge chest too, I know you can ticket a GM to get it reimbursed, but I don't have 4 264 tokens yet, and by the time I do, I should have plenty badges to go around anyway, and expertise item will be usefull anyway. I also have the crafted boots, but I might not make the defense minimum with all 4 items without defense (don't forget the gun).

I am kinda wondering why you are using 10exp/15sta gems. 30sta or 10dodge/15sta is superior. Expertise is nice for threat, but it's hardly needed.
Titanium Plating on your shield also seems like a bad choice, unless you have it specifically for anub-25m hardmode add tanking.

I don't know that there's anything wrong with using expertise/stam gems, particularly in hit-heavy ICC gear.

[Hamburglar]

I've found you really don't need expertise all that much to be effective. It would be nice to stay around 26 but its not the end of the world if you can't. We got spoiled by ToC gear! I have a set for add fights that's around 26 so I don't lose snap aggro on one of them.

[felhoof]

That's what I'm going for too atm. It looks like the best choices for progression.

Progression on what?

I'm still curious where this armor is massively helping in ICC. The only fight that hits at all hard and where armor would reign supreme (vs reduction of damage incoming) is Festergut. None of the other fights remotely reward physical damage soaking, and many are hugely balanced in favor of magical damage soaking. I mean...do you really think that the Lich King is going to be hard on a tank because of how hard he physically hits - knowing what we do about how DKs do damage?

[Eravian]

I mean...do you really think that the Lich King is going to be hard on a tank because of how hard he physically hits - knowing what we do about how DKs do damage?

lol... that would be ironic if the vast majority of his damage was magic, and ignored all that armor Blizzard threw at us.

[Bashal]

lol... that would be ironic if the vast majority of his damage was magic, and ignored all that armor Blizzard threw at us.

And, sadly, very possible. :P

[Eravian]

They still planning on putting in that buff you get from the Faction leaders while in ICC? The one that gets bigger the longer it's open?

I wonder if they'll factor that into the encounter tuning, were you'll need that extra 5% damage or whatever to clear Arthas. It'd be lame, but if they're trying to slow progression, that'd be the way to do it.

Edit: Sorry that's off-topic, it just popped into my head.

[thecrazyman]

Knowing them it will be a mixture of hard hitting melee and spell attacks. The only thing is if that is true then why adjust the armor values on the tier gear? It doesn't matter what fight the tank is always going to look at what gives him the best benefit for the fight infront of him. If its armor they will stack it and the same to EH by stm stacking.

What would be interesting to see is that not only does the boss hit decent with melee but the same damage as spell's too, be it still the lower damage but more often trend found in ICC. That way nethier stacking stm or armor pay's off too much because you trade one for another. Armor would still be nice but the idea would be around max EH with armor at the best place.

[Brage]

From what i gathered from various sources pre-Icc, the extra amour was added onto those items simply to counter the -20% dodge inside Icc without nullifying the debuff - making tanks taking lower but more sustained damage as opposed to the random hard hits. I don't think blizzard designed any encounters as "hard hitters" as such in which armour is required in massive ammounts, allthough an unlucky tank could get battered from Putricide phase 3.

Personally i started on the armour route myself, took the 2 tier pieces for head/shoulder slots and was proceeding towards getting the badge chest/belt/gloves and getting the leggings made. But with 3.3.2 incoming i'm gonna go tier10 head/shoulder/hands/legs, badge chest/cloak/belt.
Eventually we'll be swimming in badges any, so getting all the pieces isn't impossible either.

[felhoof]

It's just very difficult to me to conceive that blizzard would create a tier set for every single tanking class that gave them an extra 1-minute cooldown and then not have encounters that showcase said cooldown.

I'm saying that I not only expect LK to do significant spell or bleed damage - something to bypass the armor - I expect the fight to have significant parts where a cooldown rotation or use will be very good. Perhaps the shield on a big attack won't be optimal, but I strongly suspect that it'll be better than mitigating a bit of damage from physical attacks now and then.

[Verdekins]

I regem depending on the raid content for the night / week. I feel at the moment my threat is lacking as im like 2.5% under dodge cap while be hit capped. if something rolls along where i need to change it i usually do.

i also only pop em in sockets where i can easily keep high stam / socket bonus's

[Brage]

@ Felhoof; I have to agree. I almost expect an encounter where that bonus will be incredibly usefull borderlining mandatory. But even in general, it's really not as bad a bonus as people make it out to be.
Get 60k hp's raid buffed and you're getting a 12k absorb every minute after armor/resistances are factored in. One that lasts until depleted even as i understand it. Factor in the fact that you most likely will avoid some blows and that absorb could go quite a long way in a melee based fight.

[Molecule]

Progression on what?

I'm still curious where this armor is massively helping in ICC. The only fight that hits at all hard and where armor would reign supreme (vs reduction of damage incoming) is Festergut. None of the other fights remotely reward physical damage soaking, and many are hugely balanced in favor of magical damage soaking. I mean...do you really think that the Lich King is going to be hard on a tank because of how hard he physically hits - knowing what we do about how DKs do damage?

It's not just a matter of looking at what % of damage you take during a fight is armor-mitigatable. It's a matter of what's likely to actually kill you. Now, currently there isn't anything in the game aside from Festergut that requires/heavily incentivizes armor stacking. But that's because there isn't anything in the game aside from Festergut where tank death is very likely. If we assume that the only things that scale up during heroics will be raw numbers, and that they will scale up to the point where tanks are actually threatened on every/almost every fight, here is what it will look like:

Marrowgar - Armor is a winner here. Coldflame is going to be a very small portion of any damage spike you take as long as you move out of it in time. And in 25 man you hardly ever get targeted with it anyway.

Lady Deathwhisper - This is probably the fight that most incentivizes stam stacking at the moment (aside from BQL OT), and the fight where armor is least useful.

Airship - Everything here is physical damage unless for some reason you stand in rockets.

Saurfang - Just about everything here is physical damage.

Festergut - Enough said here really.

Rotface - MT can take a bit of armor ignored damage if the mob gets moved into a slime quadrant. But not very much. Armor would still be very useful here if tanks were really threatened at all (in normal mode I'd actually say avoidance is better at the moment). OT shouldn't really take much damage at all, and most of the damage they do take is magic, but if they take a spike it's probably from ooze melee, so I could see that going either way.

Putricide - Everyone's taking some magic damage at the end of P3, but if you have high DPS it's not a significant damage dealer to tanks. Every time I've died in P3 putricide has been during melee hit chains. If your DPS is low and the debuff stacks high then magic damage at the end might become significant on the tank. I'm not sure if it can become a significant source of damage on the tank without wiping the raid though.

Blood Princes - Valanar and Taldaram tanks are taking almost exclusively physical damage. Empowered shock vortex probably ignores armor but it's also very unlikely to spike you to death unless you're tanking both princes at once, since you're not receiving any melee hits during the cast.

BQL - The MT here wants either armor or avoidance depending on how much they are spiking. I'm not sure of the interactions between damage reduction and blood mirror, but the OT probably wants to stack stam since I'm assuming blood mirror doesn't double dip into armor reductions. This is probably the single most heavily armor/avoidance slanted fight in the game for the MT though right now, since their health pool is effectively doubled.

Edited because I was mistaken about the MotFC mechanic.

[krc]

You are incorrect about Saurfang, Mark of the Fallen Champion does not help avoidance since it does damage every swing not just when the tank is hit. And I wouldn't really say Marrowgar favors armor as opposed to EH since on that fight since it is all physical armor is only worth standard EH value relative to stamina in survival. Just like Marrowgar Festergut doesn't make armor worth more than its EH value since EH is designed for pure physical damage which Festergut is. This only applies of course with trinkets since with gear you can only trade armor for avoidance or threat. Long answer short in ICC go with EH on Festergut when how a tank gears matters anywhere you might as well try to increase your damage to reduce your chance of hitting an enrage timer since survivability won't be a concer.

[Molecule]

You are incorrect about Saurfang, Mark of the Fallen Champion does not help avoidance since it does damage every swing not just when the tank is hit. And I wouldn't really say Marrowgar favors armor as opposed to EH since on that fight since it is all physical armor is only worth standard EH value relative to stamina in survival. Just like Marrowgar Festergut doesn't make armor worth more than its EH value since EH is designed for pure physical damage which Festergut is. This only applies of course with trinkets since with gear you can only trade armor for avoidance or threat. Long answer short in ICC go with EH on Festergut when how a tank gears matters anywhere you might as well try to increase your damage to reduce your chance of hitting an enrage timer since survivability won't be a concer.

Ah you're right about Saurfang, my mistake.

My main point was just to contend that armor IS roughly worth the EH it provides for most fights in ICC, which the poster I was responding to seemed to disagree with. I'm not suggesting stacking armor past (or at least not FAR past) the point where it stops being the best physical EH stat.

[felhoof]

Okay - that's a reasonable analysis. My point is that I don't think all of those fights are going to be hard on tanks. From what we know of hard mode Marrowgar flames are the hard part - but mostly because of spikes. Him hitting hard isn't the issue. On Deathwhisper, the adds and ghosts are the thing that are dangerous. On Gunship - who knows. On Saurfang, nothing hits hard; people die because of raid damage, and tanks aren't threatened at all.

Fester is physcal, sure. Rotface? Who knows?

Putricide - do you really think that in hard mode the dangerous thing here is going to be physical damage?

Same with the princes and BQL.

Now on Valithria - the adds hit super hard apparently. Sindragosa is mostly spelldamage that's dangerous.

And the LK - well, looking at it so far, it looks like a TON of magic damage.

The important thing isn't just to figure out what the primary damage is; the thing is to figure out what burst will kill you and whether or not it's risky on the tanks at all. And so far...we only have one fight that's remotely risky for a tank to die on, and it's physical - but most of the fights that have bursty damage have a lot of magic damage and there are plenty of 'things blow up' pats that add burst damage and would be helped more by another cooldown.

So I don't know. But I suspect strongly like I said above that for progression you'll end up wanting that cooldown more than raw armor.

[Molecule]

Okay - that's a reasonable analysis. My point is that I don't think all of those fights are going to be hard on tanks. From what we know of hard mode Marrowgar flames are the hard part - but mostly because of spikes. Him hitting hard isn't the issue. On Deathwhisper, the adds and ghosts are the thing that are dangerous. On Gunship - who knows. On Saurfang, nothing hits hard; people die because of raid damage, and tanks aren't threatened at all.

Fester is physcal, sure. Rotface? Who knows?

Putricide - do you really think that in hard mode the dangerous thing here is going to be physical damage?

Same with the princes and BQL.

Now on Valithria - the adds hit super hard apparently. Sindragosa is mostly spelldamage that's dangerous.

And the LK - well, looking at it so far, it looks like a TON of magic damage.

The important thing isn't just to figure out what the primary damage is; the thing is to figure out what burst will kill you and whether or not it's risky on the tanks at all. And so far...we only have one fight that's remotely risky for a tank to die on, and it's physical - but most of the fights that have bursty damage have a lot of magic damage and there are plenty of 'things blow up' pats that add burst damage and would be helped more by another cooldown.

So I don't know. But I suspect strongly like I said above that for progression you'll end up wanting that cooldown more than raw armor.

Rereading your original post and assessing the context I suspect we actually largely agree with each other. I had thought that you were making a blanket statement about the value of armor in ICC rather than the value of armor loss from attaining 4pc compared to the value of 4pc. Given that there actually is no armor loss anymore (or so I've been led to believe; I haven't actually logged on since the patch yet) as long as your non-set is Pillars of Might, I don't see the issue with armor stacking, since in almost every case (except where it takes you below the defense cap and you need to regem) it's a question of avoidance vs. 4pc (at least with my understanding of how defense rates for warriors) rather than armor vs. 4pc.