Armor Penetration (ArP)

[blincoln]

I am sure this has been answered somewhere on the site, but I can't find a clean (or at least simple) answer... I apologize if I am making a redundant post...

I am a prot warrior with a fury offspec. I find that I am going DPS more and more in our 25-man runs due to the number of tanks that we have. As such I want to make sure I am maximizing my DPS. I have a solid rotation and decent enough gear (WoW Heroes Link). My question (hopefully) is simple enough... At what point (or how do I determine when) should I start to gem armor penetration (ArP). This also warrants a follow up question: When I hit this point, should I replace all of my gems with ArP versus Strength.

Thanks, and again I apologize in advance if this has already been answered.

[MellvarTank]

Usually I find the "line" is around 232-245 level gear. The reason you can't get a straight answer is because there isn't one. I recommend getting to the ArP softcap (~53%) with an ArP trinket, then as you acquire more on gear start to switch out the rest of your gems for ArP.

[bling581]

I'm not a warrior but I play a feral druid and DK and the rules seem to follow across the board. The exact point at which you want to gem for ArP is more difficult and is probably on an individual basis based on the rest of your gear/stats. Between the stickies here, the WoW forums and Elitist Jerks someone has probably gone into more detail on when to make the change. It's best to go for high passive without a trinket but for starters I would pick up a trinket and work towards the soft cap first. NES is the easiest to get and has the highest item level, but the uptime is actually less than Grim Toll or MR. It has a lower proc rate and only procs off crits, the other 2 proc off normal hits. A good tool to help you is Rawr but there is also a spreadsheet that warriors seem to live by that's very good.

[MellvarTank]

Landsouls.

[Kazeyonoma]

Moved to HALP forum.

[Metasynaptic]

The NES being easiest to get might be true, but it is still a very annoying trinket to chase. Most melee DPS in FoSH are after it as well, you can only run it once per day, and it's drop rate isn't awesome.

If you are after this trinket, you have to do FoSH everyday to have a chance. I know people with 12-20 attempts and no drop/no won roll.