Over at Of Teeth and Claws, (a feral druid site you really should be reading), Karthis posted about the wonderful upgrades he received at Gruuls Lair recently, and how it got him to thinking about the Armor Cap… especially now that he’s actually nearing it, something I doubt I’ll ever see.

Grats to Karthis, BTW… AWESOME!

Karthis brings up an EXCELLENT point in his post. When comparing Bear Tank gear looking for upgrades, how do you balance the value of Armor versus Defense Rating, Agility and Stamina? At what point do you decide your current armor value is good, and it would be better to pass on a potential upgrade because it would weaken you in other areas?

And that’s the can of worms I’m going to ramble about today…

I’m not going to attempt to address the entire topic. It’s massive, and there are some excellent folks that are working very hard to master this for you. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I’d rather point you to their incredible and valuable work, and let you play with it yourself.

First, I’d like to send you to see Hugehoss’s work, which was originally posted in the US Forums, but now resides in the Druid Wiki space here. Not only has he ranked gear and provided Mooire (At Ferocious Bite, of course, silly!) some powerful data, but his Excel spreadsheet is right there for you to download and play with yourself.

The other tool is talked about in Mooires’ article… Rawr!

Now, Rawr is not an in-game addon. Instead, it is an MS Windows app that uses the .NET 2.0 framework to do gear evaluations for you to use evaluating your bear mode. It pulls it’s data on what your character has equipped from WoW’s Armory (so make sure you log out of game wearing your bear set!), and it pulls the item data from the interwebs too. I’m not sure which data site it uses for it’s source, but it has an ‘add new item’ feature that lets you enter in an item number from WoWhead or Allakhazam or Thottbot, the same item numbers that Blizzard assigns to gear, and it’ll use that number to go out and pull the data itself for you, no hard coding required.

The flip side to this, is that if the website it is datamining from doesn’t have that item number live yet, you can’t get the data. No PTR stats for you! At least, not until the website refreshes their data.

Rawr really is an amazing tool. It addresses the two key issues that Bear Tanks must deal with… Mitigation versus Survival. To quote Astrylian@US-Kilrogg server from his own description of Rawr and the work that went into it;

There are two primary things that a tank needs to do when tanking any boss. First, take the damage from the boss in a manner which can be healed through by their healer(s). Second, generate enough threat to allow the DPSers to kill the boss within the time available (limited by enrage timers, healers running out of mana, etc.). Threat generation is typically not a serious concern for bears, since we already generate rather high threat, since one of our primary tanking stats, agility, increases threat generation in addition to aiding in survival and mitigation, and also because much of our best tanking gear, especially tier set gear, comes liberally coated with strength, to further improve our threat generation. So, the problem almost always comes down to taking the boss’ hits.

Taking the hits also comes down to two things. First, burst damage. While dodge and miss are great for reducing the average damage you take, they aren’t reliable. More often than you’d like, a string of hits will happen, with little to no healing between them. Back to back to back crushes, crushes along with instant strikes, or just long unlucky strings of no dodges that stress your healers healing per second, can all kill a tank suddenly, when the fight was previously going fine. Second, long term overall damage. Even if you take very steady, non-burst damage, it’s quite possible that you could take too much damage per second to be healed through, or more likely would take so much healing that your healers run out of mana before the DPS can kill the boss. These two things are the basis for my two ratings, ‘Survival’ and ‘Mitigation’.

Survival Rating is the measure of how much damage you can take between heals, in a worst case (no avoidance) scenario. A character with 20% dodge, 36k (capped) armor, and 20k hp would have very high Survival Rating, though low mitigation rating.

Mitigation Rating is the measure of how much damage you take, over a long timespan. A character with 80% dodge, 25k armor, and 10k hp would have very high Mitigation Rating, though low survival rating.

These two concepts really drive our balancing choices. You want a balance between the two. You need to reduce how much damage you take over the long term, but you must be able to survive damage spikes and Crushing Blows, which CANNOT be eliminated entirely. Prince Malchazeen in Karazhan is a good example of a Survival fight, as he can pour out massive one shot damage that only having high health can get you through.

Understanding this, you can see that you CAN’T just rely on Emmeralds’ Gear Ranking lists as your brain-free basis for upgrades. His lists are an excellent reference, and for a quick comparison of stats, they are indispensible. “Oh shoot, something for cats dropped, and I was thinking about bear gear… I didn’t know that dropped here, and the Raid is asking me if I need it… shit, I dunno, do I? How does it’s stats compare to my stuff on Emmeralds lists?”

You get my point. Sometimes, you’re busy actually PLAYING the game (shocking concept, I know), instead of obsessing about every possible drop from every instance.

But if you are going into something massive, say for example Karazhan, with 9 bosses, three different Opera events plus the Chess event, plus three critter bosses, all with different loot lists, each of whom drop two epics per kill…. well shit, you had BETTER take the time to research what drops from each boss or event, make a list of which drops could POSSIBLY interest you, and then go ahead and do Rawr comparisons on em, or at least some eyeball judgments. With your existing gear, how would getting that item change your Survival Rating? Your Mitigation? How about Overall?

Trying to decide on a Profession? Maybe you have the [Stylin’ Purple Hat], and you wonder if the [Deathblow X-11 Goggles] are worth switching over to Engineering, or would the stuff you can make in Leatherworking be better in the long run? Are you good until the [Cowl of Defiance] drops? Or god help us, the [Tier 4 Helm (Stag Helm of Malorne)]? Well, for some serious answers, check it out in Rawr.

Farting around and something drops, and you’re curious if it’s worth keeping over something else, and you’re in a hurry? Then go ahead and compare it on Emmeralds’ list, and see the stats of each… but be prepared to actually check it out later.

Let’s do something fun… as a live example of how all this crap works together, and how you should always be reevaluating your gear as stuff changes.

In this example, gems and Defense Rating will be what we address. And for the sake of my money reserves, we’re gonna limit our gem talk to Blues and Diamonds. mmmkay?

For those of you that look at these things, I don’t use an active link in my Banner signature up at the top of the Blog. I tend to be soloing in cat when I log out, and the awesome MMO Champion signature generator gives your stats in whatever form, or gear, you had equipped at the exact moment when you last logged out. So periodically, I’ll make SURE that I log out in bear gear, in bear form, with zero raid buffs so the signature I generate is the real deal… unbuffed bear tank stats. What I figure you want to see. Then I generate a new sig and save it as a picture to upload. From the one I currently have displayed;

You can see that my Defense is at 426 right now. And astute Bear Tanks will know that for Feral Druid Bear Tanks with 3/3 Survival of the Fittest, anything over 415 is pretty much wasted compared to the benefits of Agility or Stamina. And the reason it’s like that is that I have tons of +Defense gems slotted, and I have not changed them yet after getting some good upgrades over the last two weeks.

Well, let’s evaluate this stuff together, and determine if anything needs to be changed, shall we?

I have 426 Defense right now, and I only need 415. So, I can reduce my Defense by 11 points, and remain crit-immune.

But my gear isn’t rated in Defense, it’s Defense Rating! WTF?

Here’s the math part… 2.36 Defense Rating (at level 70) = 1 Defense. OR, 1 Defense Rating = 0.423 Defense. Ugh. Freaking decimal points.

Fortunately, I’m an engineer. I can haz calculator?

I have 11 extra Defense skill… that means I have an extra 25.96 Defense Rating. Let’s call that a flat 25… I don’t want any roundings that’ll leave me at 414 Defense, thank you very much.

I currently have 5 [Enduring Talasite] equipped. I also have a [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond] in my Meta Slot.

5 [Enduring Talasite] give me +20 Defense Rating and +30 Stamina… and if I replace every one of them with a [Solid Star of Elune], I’ll gain +30 Stamina, without losing ANYTHING… except my Meta Gem requirements won’t be met anymore. +30 Stamina more… the [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond] requires me to have 2 Red, 2 Yellow and 2 Blue gems equipped to get the effect… and 2 of the [Enduring Talasite] are counting as Yellow right now. To get rid of the [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond], I’d lose 3% Increased Crit Damage, not a big deal in Bear, but I’d also lose +12 Agility… and I HATE losing Agility for my Dodge. Hmmm….

What if I install a [Tenacious Earthstorm Diamond] instead? I only need 5 Blue gems equipped to get that effect… and then I can not only replace all the [Enduring Talasite] with [Solid Star of Elune], but I could also drop the +12 Defense Rating enchant on my Bracers, because the Meta Gem would be adding +12 DR all by itself. So suddenly I can add another +12 Stamina from Bracers… hmmm… still losing +12 Agility, though. Oh. OH! CRAP!!! Ummm yeah, maybe I should dump that old +15 Strength enchant on my gloves for the +15 Agility enchant… you dumbass old bear. I swear I thought I did that last month. Grumble.

So let’s see… my plan is, I drop the 5 [Enduring Talasite], the [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond], the +12 Defense Rating Bracer enchant, and the +15 Strength Glove enchant. Then I install 5 [Solid Star of Elunes], the [Tenacious Earthstorm Diamond], the +12 Stamina Bracer enchant, and the +15 Agility Glove enchant.

On Defense Rating, I had 25 points extra… I’m dropping 20 DR from [Enduring Talasites] and 12 DR from the Bracer enchant, but gaining 12 DR from the Meta Gem… I still have 5 extra. That is not a bad thing, because there’s nothing left to cut it from that I can see, without new gear upgrades… which will probably cause me to LOSE DR, not gain it. On the other hand… if I do need more DR from [Enduring Talasites] in the future, the Meta Gem will accept them as Blues just as well as Solid Stars. I’ll still be flexible when things need changing again :).

I’m losing 15 Strength from the enchant, … something that helps DPS and therefore Rage Generation… but it’s not nearly as valuable as pure Stamina or Agility would be.

I’m losing +12 Agility from the Meta Gem… but gaining +15 Agility from the Glove Enchant. So that’s actually an increase overall.

Final results after changes will be… +42 Stamina, +3 Agility, and a small chance to restore health when I do damage. And the net loss of 3% Increased Damage from Crits. Oh yeah, and it’ll likely cost a fortune. Again.

BUT… there is another option. What if, instead of Solid Stars of Elune, I replaced those [Enduring Talasites] with [Shifting Nightseye]? What if, instead of going from +20 DR/+30 Stamina to +60 Stamina, I went to +20 Agility/+30 Stamina instead? According to wowwiki, at level 70 14.7059 Agility= 1% Dodge… god, where do we get these numbers? Freaking 15 Agi is sort of 1% Dodge. Whereas 30 Stamina, in Dire Bear form and with 5/5 Heart of the Wild, is increased by 45%, for an extra 13 Effective Stamina. So, 1.25% Dodge, or an extra 430 health.

This is where knowing your Mitigation and Survivability is important… because right now, looking at my Armor, my Defense, my Health and my Dodge, I can see that my Health is my weakest link. Right now, it would be more valuable to have increased health than to stack on more Dodge. Especially since some of the upgrades I’m looking at soon will have large increases to Agility on them. Nope, I think my plan is the right one for me right now. So my mission for tonight is to look for more Solid Stars, get my enchants replaced, and to begin searching for a Tenacious Earthstorm Diamond.

I hope that this look at methods of balancing gear, and some tools you can use to help you out, has been of some use. I know that, if nothing else, I now have some new goals… and some new irritations. How the hell did that +15 Strength enchant get on there? Grrrr.

One last last thing, I promise.

We started out with Karthis talking about the Armor Cap. But I never really gave you any guide on what armor value equals what towards the cap. And it can help a lot to understand.

For Armor, the things to understand are that Armor reduces damage that you suffer from attacks. Think of it like absorbing damage from a blow… the more armor you have, the more of a cushion it provides. But your armor cannot reduce damage by more than 75%. Flat. And thats where the Armor Cap comes from, because if 75% Damage Reduction is the most you can have, then there must be an armor value that will let you reach it… and any armor over that value would be wasted. Thus, ‘capped’.

Also, you hear talk about Damage Reduction ‘diminishing returns’, that the more armor you have, the more you need to actually make any improvement. The phrase conjures up images of a steep slope, and vast quantities of armor needed to eke out one more slim percentage of DR.

To make it plain and simple, at level 70 vs level 73 mobs, the ‘diminishing returns’ scale means that from 10000 armor to 14000, you get about 9% DR, from 14000 to 18000 you get about 6% DR, from 18000 to 22000 it’s about 4% DR, and from 22000 on, you get about 3% DR per additional 4000 armor. That’s it. Here, I’ll show you, in rounded off flat rates.

Armor at level 70, against level 73 mobs (the bosses you’ll face in instances);

• 10000 Armor = 45% DR
• 14000 Armor = 54% DR
• 18000 Armor = 60% DR
• 20000 Armor = 63% DR
• 24000 Armor = 67% DR
• 28000 Armor = 70% DR
• 32000 Armor = 73% DR
• 36000 Armor = 75% DR

That’s rounded off, but in general it’s true. If you have about 24k in armor, you’re getting about 67% Damage Reduction.

And since this is all supposed to relate to your evaluating your gear when you look at it… at level 70, in Dire Bear form, the listed armor value of an item is multiplied like so;

Item Armor Value (as listed)+ Item Armor Value (as listed) x 4 = Dire Bear armor value.

If a piece of gear, say a Cloak, has 100 armor on it, then at level 70 in Dire Bear form it is worth 500 armor. If a potential upgrade has 100 more armor than your existing piece, then it’s worth an extra 500 armor to you.

And one final last super-last note, because you would be AMAZED how often I see this when I’m inspecting other druids’ gear….

ARMOR VALUES FROM ARMOR KITS AND ARMOR ENCHANTS DO NOT GET DIRE BEAR BONUSES!!!! EVAH!!!

You know, that armor enchant you gots on your cloak? For the sake of druids everywhere, ditch it and get a +12 Agility enchant. Please. Please? Do it for the kids?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.