4.01 gear guide?

[bjanssen]

With 4.01 dropping very soon I've been trying to figure out what will change and how it will affect my tanking. The talent guide is really great but I can't find any information about what will happen to gear. Even if gear doesn't change at all surely the new talents will change some gear choices.

So has anyone worked up a gear guide for the couple of months of playing between 4.01 and Cataclysm?

[Fenris]

I dont see much changing because of talents

I guess the things that'll can change the status quo are
-bonus armor on items being lowered badly (i guess that will make most of the 277-items better than 264-armor ones...Or at least balance things more)
-reforging and mastery (CTC or Onyxia blood talisman arent that usefull now....When you can reforge 50+ mastery rating out of both,who knows)
-last,agility not giving dodge or armor anymore (if i'm not mistaken) that will impact on gems and enchants

[econ21]

Digren has started work on a guide to enhancement to gear, but it is still in the Cataclysm sub-forum:
http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/ ... =viewtopic

I think under 4.01, agility does still give some dodge, but less than currently. Digren reckons parry would be what we should now go for instead of agility.

I've read about people reforging all dodge to mastery, but am unclear on why that is a good idea.

What will happen to the defence stat on gear and gems? Will it become dodge?

[Fenris]

From what i've seen,all the def. rating on items got converted into avoidance ratings (with dodge preferred when both are there)

About reforging dodgeinto mastery...I might be wrong but going by memory i managed to reforge 1% dodge into 3-4% block (thanks to being into deep dodge diminishing return level) so the trade of isnt bad

[Syncognition]

-bonus armor on items being lowered badly

...


......

%^$*&#&%@

(I just had Pillars of Might crafted about 2 days ago.)

>:^0

I hope there is at least SOME bonus armor on them still. I was working towards 2 PC T10 (head and hands) with high armor/stam offset pieces for everything else. I know there is little point now with Cata so close, but my guild is on LK 10 normal and we'd like to try and down him before the expansion.

[Fenris]

Some...Tiny...Bits...

I lost something like 8k armor from live to ptr

[Garath.Gorefiend]

Surprised no one has brought this up earlier.

Basically though, Blizzard has given tanks the high middle finger salute on their gear changes.

Defense is gone...nothing newsworthy about that...avoidance is also well down since we no longer get the avoidance from the missing defense rating and we only got about half the amount of avoidance from dodge/parry rating in exchange.

Armor is down, thanks to the bonus item armor nerf...like someone else said, if your in endgame gear (mostly) then you probably lost around 8k armor.

HP is up a bit...but not nearly enough to offset the loss of avoidance and armor that has resulted.

Expertise is down as there is no longer a combat expertise talent.

Nutshell, Blizzard didn't screw us too badly in the elimination of defense...at least we got some dodge or parry rating for it.

We got totally screwed on the armor reduction though, in that we got nothing, nada, zilch for the lost armor.

This makes some of the gear many of us ignored before, BiS....

Simple examples would be the Verdigris Chain Belt versus Belt of Broken Bones...

Pre 4.01, the Verdigris had more EH...less HP and avoidance...but more armor

Post 4.01, Belt of Broken bones is clear winner

same goes for Gargoyle Split Bracers vs Bracers of Dark Reckoning...

Pre 4.01 Gargoyle (heroic version) were the clear winners...Post 4.01 it goes to Bracers of Dark Reckoning...

I personally don't care that Blizzard had to change some items, but I do care that they did not ensure that BiS items REMAINED BiS....many of us spent months farming specific items...(passing on stuff that wasn't optimal, so that people could have them for offspec) and now we are screwed...

Times like this, make me wonder why I play this damn game anymore

[Flex]

Defense is gone...nothing newsworthy about that...avoidance is also well down since we no longer get the avoidance from the missing defense rating and we only got about half the amount of avoidance from dodge/parry rating in exchange.

Half true. I'll have just a bit less dodge, about 5% compared to live so just the talent change. I'll have the same if not more Parry due to the new Strength to Parry conversion.

[Digren]

I'm working on organizing guides, but there's so little information that most of the content is rather sparse. See here for what I'm looking for at the moment.

[Digren]

Defense is gone...nothing newsworthy about that...avoidance is also well down since we no longer get the avoidance from the missing defense rating and we only got about half the amount of avoidance from dodge/parry rating in exchange.

Half true. I'll have just a bit less dodge, about 5% compared to live so just the talent change. I'll have the same if not more Parry due to the new Strength to Parry conversion.

Yeah, I'm assuming for now that most tanks are going to favor dodge over parry in most cases, not because dodge is better any more (the rating conversions and DR are now equal) but because most tankadins will have more parry due to the strength conversion. Thus, parry DR will always be further down the path, making equal points dodge rating always better than parry rating.

(This assumes the parry from strength is subject to DR. I assume it is or else that's horribly, horribly broken.)

[Bladesong]

Does bonus armor just refer to armor that shows up as green on a character sheet, such as Sentinel's Winter Cloak and Cataclysmic Chestguard or does it also refer to armor on pieces that normally don't have armor, such as Devium's Eternally Cold Ring and the Bile-Encrusted Medallion?

[Flex]

Does bonus armor just refer to armor that shows up as green on a character sheet, such as Sentinel's Winter Cloak and Cataclysmic Chestguard or does it also refer to armor on pieces that normally don't have armor, such as Devium's Eternally Cold Ring and the Bile-Encrusted Medallion?

Both of those.

[bjanssen]

See here for what I'm looking for at the moment.

I'm really looking forward to your guide Digren but it isn't going to be quite what I was asking for help with.

What I'm trying to figure out is what gear I want for the 6 weeks that I'll be expected to be a viable tank between 4.01 and Cataclysm. That's a lot of wipes if I get it wrong .

Belt of broken bones versus verdigris belt is the kind of thing I was thinking about but I don't have enough experience with comparing gear to do more than guess.

[Meloree]

Basically take every piece of gear I recommended in the progression gear guide and do the opposite.

That's gearing in 4.0.1.

[RedAces]

hey,

We got totally screwed on the armor reduction though, in that we got nothing, nada, zilch for the lost armor.

At least "Chill of the Throne" is gone, mh ...

Bye, RedAces.