Lets talk Gear!

[zenga]

Well the Pal hit 80 last night in AV so I spent like 30,000 to deck him out. Only slot weak is the gloves.

Followed the advise here and went for defensive and Hit points. Didnt quite make it defensive but 32K Hit Points.

I hope you didn't mix up hit with health points right? Since I see 2 expensive pve dps pieces: Wodin's Lucky Necklace and Raging Behemoth's Shoulderplates.

Those pieces are actually pretty worthless tank pieces since you are not def capped at all (you want 535 def rating for mobs 2 lvls above you, i.e. heroic dungeon bosses, and 540 for ?? bosses ,i.e. lvl 83 raidbosses). If you were to outgear the encounters, then it might be valid to equip some dps pieces.

Maybe you go for a ret off spec, but else this seems like a waste of gold to me.

However it should be enough to gather a bunch of mobs out on the questing field, stay alive and dps them down with your troops.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I went Def and Sta, as advised and also according to Pawn, the reason for Sta is to get more hit points right?

Ya expensive is the word.

With the neck I just went with the overall better item, it had 90sta which was up with the most of them, and agi translates to defensive stuffs also. I mean it not like there is a 120Sta item in the neck for a lot less.

All the items with DEF on them also have STR and STA it seems, thats just how they come. I doubleckecked everything with Pawn also and of the available items for sale in the AH these were the highest (and the highest price) most always.

The chest (which I made myself on my blacksmith) seems to be the prototype DEF item;

Breastplate of the White Knight
Binds when equipped
PlateChest
2473 Armor
+103 Strength
+168 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Yellow Socket
Durability: 165 / 165
Races: Orc, Undead, Tauren, Troll, Blood Elf
Requires Level 80
Item Level 245
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 55
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 63

And it has STR and STA and ARM, and then a bunch of defensive, dodge and parry.

The 4000 plus gold neck was:

Wodin's Lucky Necklace
Binds when equipped
Neck
+90 Agility
+90 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Requires Level 80
Item Level 264
Equip: Improves hit rating by 38
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 69
Equip: Increases your attack power by 105

Let me see what AGI turns into sec. Ok level 80 you need 60AGI to get 1 percent more dodge.


Ya maybe you are right the Neck and Shoulders arn't perfect for prot but they did rate a bit higher, let me log in and check why.



Titanium Earthguard Chain
Binds when equipped
Neck
350 Armor
+49 Strength
+63 Stamina
Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Requires Level 80
Item Level 200Equip: Increases defense rating by 34 (6.91 @ L80).

ok pawn says the 4700 gold neck is 45.1 and the other (free as I can make them) is 37.3


Ya its a very very high price to pay for a very little edge for sure but I have gold in the bank, my Pal is my tank and needs the best gear I can afford, but a resonable person who didnt have a ton of gold to spend would for sure take the earthguard chain. I mean I still have over 100K in the bank doing nothing.


One good thing about wow is that someone can not raid at all and get this fairly high ilevel gear from the AH like I did, the gap between Raiders and AHers is no where near as great as in EQ. My gs is 4382 which is about teir 9.15; a bit better then 10 man ulduar and worst then 25 man ulduar .... whatever that is.

Oh you can only have ONE darkmoon card total right? I didn't want to spend 3000 and find out I couldn't have two, but I dont know.

[zenga]

Honestly I don't know what pawn is. I take it's a tool that rates gear for a certain class / spec? Their are quite a few of those, and while it has it's value, I quite often see the wrong items coming out on top.

A main tank and an off tank can have different gear needs (e.g. it's not too big of a deal if the main tank who stays on the boss misses a spell, whereas the offtank needs to pickup the add straight away and a miss or threat loss could mean a dps or healer gets killed, ... or an offtank who picks up and add could really benefit from a dodge use trinket, whereas a maintank goes for max stamina). Not too mention the huge difference between a dungeon tank, a toc tank and an ICC tank, where stacking dodge is pretty useless in icc cause of the flat debuff.

Those are all things that a tool like that does not take into account.

The thing with the neck is, is that a neck that drops in hc dungeons has more stamina and mitigation on it than the 264 dps neck. Thus making it a worthless tanking piece unless you really outgear the content. If that's the case than more dps will result in a/ a bigger chance of success and b/ easier threat management. But that's just the theory.

I'd really suggest that you check some of the armory links from the many posters here and see how they gear their tanks, that will tell you way more than any of those gear tools can do.

And on a final note: being rich is not an excuse for stupidity or laziness. It makes it way easier to deal with though

[Bot]

the reason why you would go for the earthguard chain as opposed to the dps neck is the defense rating. you aren't close to uncrittable almost 60 points away. your bastardizing the useful portion of gs by boiling it down to a score regardless of gear/role compatability. the addon is only useful if the gear that the score is based on is meant for the role. my feral druid can have a gs of 5000 in all resto gear but that doesnt mean anything. until you hit 540 def rating i'd gem for it in all slots.

your boots, pants and cape are really nice but have 0 defense you could replace them with blues from the wyrmrest accord and argent crusade faction vendors to get a little boost... except you have like no faction rep in wrath.

as for darkmoon cards. i dont know but if i were you id chain run toc5 man until the black knight drops:

The Black Heart
Binds when picked up
Unique
Trinket
+126 Stamina
Requires Level 80
Item Level 200
Equip: Each time a melee attack strikes you, you have a chance to gain 7056 armor for 10 sec.

i'm not at all familiar with pawn but it seems like you would do better without it. at least on the tank. tank stats are pretty easy. def till 540 > stam> str the other stats associated with tanking come naturally for the most part. there may be an arguement to getting some hit/expertise to knock misses and parrys off the table but in the content that i think you would be doing i dont know that you need to worry about that too much.

speaking of what i think maybe you should tell us what type of content are you looking to get involved with?

hope i could help

[Zub]

speaking of what i think maybe you should tell us what type of content are you looking to get involved with?

That's really the main question isn't it?

Sam, what do you want to do with your toons now that one has reached max level?
i mean, as we told you ages ago, there isn't one big boss of doom that you can take on without going into a raid instance, and all of them have already been killed solo by boxers.
Still if that's your goal, then the gear you have will not be sufficient, you'll need to gear up step by step (from the several instance/raid levels) to get there.
The gear you have on your paladin will be great however for farming heroics and lower raid tiers (Naxx/Ulduar) but yeah, get crit-immune first.


If your aim is to mass pvp, then you don't need a 'tank' as such, as taunts/tanking doesn't work on players.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Im going to the tables in IC to tag bost my whole crew, when the mages get to 77 and can hit those level 80 mobs. After that is something else but first step is to get everyone to 80 / 85

[Iceorbz]

fire is the way to go when you get super geared, and in cataclysm its AMAZING

Eh ive played alot of areana, and raided a bit to -- never seen a fire mage =p.

[Iceorbz]

Sam,

- dump your meta gem, get the + defense rating.

- Get rid of the neck, pickup titanium earthguard or the level 80 blue neck (its still better). Stop looking at just "sta", the defense adds avoidance and crit reduction (The most important)

- Look on the auction house for some ilvl 200 (maybe 213) epic shoulders that drop from naxx, if not get saronite shoulders, enchant them with the PVP enchant for 10k honor, unless you have hodir rep up.

- Chest - Replace your enchant with 22 defense

- Shield - Replace titanium spike, its garbage... get defense to shield.

- Your gloves will last you till you can replace the ring, neck, ect ect...

- Purchase the epic ring from ICC

[Zub]

come on guys, the gear he has on his paly is more than enough to tag large packs of mobs in Icecrown while he levels his other toons.

[zenga]

Eh ive played alot of areana, and raided a bit to -- never seen a fire mage =p.

Well fire mages in 264/277 gear will surprise you i guess