T7 is murdering me

[Spectrum]

yeah, i don't envy DK's right now.. there are a lot of misc non-set drops with shield block or block value... and as much as I love those items, I sympathize with the dk cause. Still, minus one slot isnt that big a deal, it just makes the balancing act that much harder.

I think you will be lucky if they remember to consistently design enough gear without block for you DKs.

Bears have had this problem for a long time too. Hopefully now they're having an easier time with the changes in talents to support new itemization, but from what I've heard the life of bear is that no item is optimal these days.

They got their uncrit from talents to make up for things. I'm not surprised they'd try to make DKs a little different, but if they are really having trouble I think Blizzard will help out like they did for bears.

[Nebuchadneza]

Repelling Charge solved a lot of my problems with Defense. Admittedly I saved my Scarab of Displacement specifically to assist until I got it.
Red Sword of Courage is my backup weapon for Titansteel Bonecrusher and covers things pretty decently

[tbolt]

I don't see why the DKs are making such a big deal, I was able to reach uncrit quite easily once I hit 80 without the use of the defense on my shield. Crafted BS gear has a crazy amount of defense on it and once u have uncrit and start doing instances it's just a matter of balancing your gear as you get upgrades. I think 25 defense skill is kinda ridiculous since it makes hitting uncrit pretty easy and gives them a great deal of room for customizing the rest of their gear.

[Rhiannon]

I don't see why the DKs are making such a big deal, I was able to reach uncrit quite easily once I hit 80 without the use of the defense on my shield. Crafted BS gear has a crazy amount of defense on it and once u have uncrit and start doing instances it's just a matter of balancing your gear as you get upgrades.

That's kinda the point. It's easy to get uncrittable starting out using crafted gear, but a lot of raid drops, despite being better pieces overall, tend to lack in the defense department. I'd rather upgrade my blue cloak with 45 defense rating on it to the emblems of valor cloak with 38, rather than my blue ring with the emblems ring, as I'm fairly comfortable with the amount of expertise I have (and a lot of the valor ring's ibudget is spent on expertise) and would love the overall avoidance upgrade on the cloak (which has a good chunk of dodge), but losing 7 defense rating would mean regemming and the knock on loss of stamina would make the upgrade considerably smaller. Whereas gaining 26 def rating from the ring upgrade would give me a lot more breathing room.

In certain gear setups I already have to use the red sword of courage, which is overall a poorer piece than slayer of the lifeless, just to maintain def cap.

[lakhesis]

Oki... I've gone waaay over defense & really haven't found it that hard, but I've also been really quite lucky with drops (thank god.. makes a pleasant change). My comments:

I think tanks are going to have to start looking at stats in a much more similar way to healers. My BC primary was a resto shaman. I tried to maintain slots so that, as much as possible, for each socket I had a haste or +heal or mana-regen option.

Considering I was never part of an absurd-progression guild that would get me kil'jaeden gear for my off-set, this generally revolved around finding a few slots - typically ring, trinket, neck & one of wrist/gloves/belt/boots - where I could get some pieces to interchange.. one with craploads of haste, one with craploads of mp5, et cetera.

OK, this is seriously elementary stuff. But I really get the impression people are underrating it. Sacrificing one slot to an inferior item which happens to have buttloads of +def is a pretty standard trade-off really. Sacrificing one ideal for another necessity should also be a standard trade-off (i.e. 102.4% vs. uncritability with solid avoidance/stam).

A quick run of wowwiki's numbers is telling me Seal of the Pantheon gives me 2.11% combined avoidance+block (75% of that being avoidance) + it's 13.21 defense-towards-uncrittability... versus Lavanthor's Talisman giving me 4.51% block. And i'll leave out the on-use's, that just complicates things.. but I really like armour ;)

This is probably one of the more arguable examples I could've gone for, but in my book: about half as good + boatloads of my uncrittability requirements vs. the 2.42% extra 'half' towards my 102.4% preference is an easy choice in favour of the first (assuming I have any hassles maintaining defense at that point).

Personally, I'm just using very little tier gear - I agree, it tends to be very low comparatively - and that's my problem solved. The down side of this is that I'm nowhere near 102.4%... which hasn't been a significant issue so far in naxx - IMO the place is coordination over gear & deep down I'd still just rather be miss/dodge/parry-ed than block. On pure number-crunching I might be off but, from my practical feel of the situation, I'd still rather stack a solid combo of def/stam/avoidance over the sacrifices I'd have to make to maintain 102.4% (and my guestimate is the sacrifice-factor will be true until you're packing an awful lot of best-in-slot or close to items).

- Lakhesis.

[Crathus]

Absolutely agree Lakhesis; its much more important to remain uncrittable than it is to be block capped. In my experience it is also more efficient to gimp one or two slots a bit, ie. blues with loads of def, in order to gear up other slots. Generally the gimped slot(s) are more than made up for with the combination of better gear in all other slots.

[Ratanna]

gear up like me

[Crathus]

Holy stamina batman!!

When I grow up I want to be just like Ratanna...

Very nice, rly makes me want to drop my Eng. and lvl LC. Monarch Crab and 41 Stam gems make me cry.

[masterpoobaa]

im having no issues with def.
559 with 3 titansteel items, JC purple neck, couple of wyrmcrest blues, and tempered saronite/daunting items.

Sure when i get my tier gear ill drop some def, but it will be a long time before i fall down to 540.

[Sonic]

Ratanna, a perfect example of what you'll be like once you get fully raid geared. Also 24 stam on each ring enchant + the crab JC stam trinket... dear lord. @_@

What's your HP fully buffed? Gotta be real close to 40k...

[phaqueue]

People seem to be forgetting all too quickly how it was gearing in TBC...

I remember the terrible stats on the plate "tanking' gear that dropped in heroics (def/agi/str - before str was good)

basically, instead blizzard is giving you blue/epic gear with a ton of defense and stam on it... but not as much straight avoidance...

when you are getting into naxx/tier gear... it is using more item points on avoidance than it is on defense, so you are losing the defense... my suggestion is simple...

keep your pre-raid stuff and play the stat-dancing game...

remember the terrible stat dancing game that was uncrushable? at least the defense one is infinitely better (at least IMO it is)... it's one stat... and you basically just have to balance things while looking at your character sheet...

keep extra trinkets to be able to move them around based on what you need... is it a pain collecting extra gear... sure is - but I guess that's the price to pay...

IMO - I don't ever see a tank taking tanking gear as being a lootwhore... obviously consideration of huge upgrades for other tanks comes into play... but honestly... tanks should have multiple pieces for different slots... just for this reason... because being unable to change on piece of gear because of 1 stat... is terrible...

just guess it's something we have to deal with until blizz decides to change the way they do it...

and for the record... I'm wearing 2 piece t7 and the nerubhide cape and can get to 540 unbuffed without a defense trinket equipped... it's doable... just might have to suffer through using some offset/heroic gear to balance it out...