4.2 Tank Stages and Cataclysm Gear Guide

Warcraft wrote:Just wondering. For lack of good cloaks this patch, shouldn't you mention Ruthless Gladiator's Cloak of Prowess on the list? If you reforge the resilience into an avoidance stat, it's looks like a pretty decent cloak with lots of stamina and mastery.

You know what? Even throwing away all the resilience, it ties the heroic Permafrost capes as best in slot. I'll put it on the list.

Done. I assume as new tier gear it requires some sort of rating or something, but I don't see that on Wowhead and I have no experience of past seasons. When I figure that out I'll update the source and, if it doesn't require ranked play, give it stage three.

Warcraft wrote:Just wondering. For lack of good cloaks this patch, shouldn't you mention Ruthless Gladiator's Cloak of Prowess on the list? If you reforge the resilience into an avoidance stat, it's looks like a pretty decent cloak with lots of stamina and mastery.

You can't reforge resilience.

Edit: Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd someone beat me to it five hours ago. Whoops.

Digren wrote:Done. I assume as new tier gear it requires some sort of rating or something, but I don't see that on Wowhead and I have no experience of past seasons. When I figure that out I'll update the source and, if it doesn't require ranked play, give it stage three.

I think now you only need rating for certain slots (I think weapons, helm, and shoulders? Other class set slots?). The cloaks will be conquest point only, and a drop from Occu'thar.

I'm going to do some quick and dirty fixes to the failsafe guide as well. First I'll have todo some reality checking, but I suspect some 3000 honor should buy me a strength one-hander PvP weapon at ilevel 359. While not a survival item it runs hogshod over any decently available failsafe tanking weapon prior to the 365 crafted.

The same could be said for the vicious helmet as it clocks in with a good chunk of mastery together with the stamina and strength associated with ilevel 365.

The season 9 weapons and shields require you to earn something like 7500 honor in the current season before you can buy (same mechanic as the S10 gear, but with a lower limit), so even with a 3k-ish cost you'll have to earn more than double that to get one.

I ran into that problem yesterday when I ran over to old town to grab the shield, only to find I wasn't allowed to.

Digren wrote:Hey, what are the options for Flickering Handguards? Drop from Baleroc in Firelands.

378 - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/item/70917

...of the Bedrock +281 Strength, +453 Stamina, +192 Mastery Rating, +192 Parry Rating
...of the Bouldercrag +281 Strength, +453 Stamina, +192 Dodge Rating, +192 Parry Rating
...of the Rockslab +281 Strength, +453 Stamina, +192 Mastery Rating, +192 Dodge Rating

392 - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/item/71458

...of the Bedrock +321 Strength, +512 Stamina, +218 Mastery Rating, +218 Parry Rating
...of the Bouldercrag +321 Strength, +512 Stamina, +218 Dodge Rating, +218 Parry Rating
...of the Rockslab +321 Strength, +512 Stamina, +218 Mastery Rating, +218 Dodge Rating

lythac wrote:

Digren wrote:Hey, what are the options for Flickering Handguards? Drop from Baleroc in Firelands.

378 - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/item/70917

...of the Bedrock +281 Strength, +453 Stamina, +192 Mastery Rating, +192 Parry Rating
...of the Bouldercrag +281 Strength, +453 Stamina, +192 Dodge Rating, +192 Parry Rating
...of the Rockslab +281 Strength, +453 Stamina, +192 Mastery Rating, +192 Dodge Rating

392 - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/item/71458

...of the Bedrock +321 Strength, +512 Stamina, +218 Mastery Rating, +218 Parry Rating
...of the Bouldercrag +321 Strength, +512 Stamina, +218 Dodge Rating, +218 Parry Rating
...of the Rockslab +321 Strength, +512 Stamina, +218 Mastery Rating, +218 Dodge Rating

Awesome, thanks! I ranked them based on guesses of 282 strength / 454 stamina / 191 ratings and 322 / 513 / 216. It doesn't look like I was that far off so effects on the guide are minor.

Edit: Oops, actually I'd forgotten to reforge the Bouldercrags. That moved them quite a ways up the lists and caused a pretty big reorg.

The Bedrock/Rockslab jumped just ahead of the tier pieces on the list, but it's a virtual tie. Tier is still the way to go for both normal and heroic.

Digren

Trinket: [Essence of the Eternal Flame] is linking to spidersilk spindle

Think you had a copy/paste without updating the item id

The cape tied with the heroic Al'akir, that's a Season 10 cape isn't it?

The PvP helmets have a place here as well due to the mastery. They're a bit expensive in terms of availability for what they do, but arguably the 365 piece for 2200 honor merits a mention as we don't get any free helmets in 4.2. I haven't done the math on the 384 piece for the same amount of CP.

I'll review all the PVP gear, though I don't understand yet what they all require in terms of rankings, etc. If something requires a particular rating, I'll probably decline to include it. If something just requires losing enough (i.e. straight honor points or a PVP faction like the baradin hold stuff) then yeah it should all be included, at stage three.

While I like finding interesting ways to use gear (hence my support of agility gear until Blizzard banned it), this is ultimately a PVE list. I wouldn't ask nor expect anyone to be good at PVP just to get a better item, even if it is somehow best in slot.

For the failsafe guide I'm only reviewing honor PvP items. They basically require you to be bodily present enough times to collect the honor, unless you convert superfluos JP to honor at a rate of 375 to 250. Arguably the same could be said for CP items as the conversion rate is 1:1 from VP, so eventually we'll sit on VP we no longer need.

As for BiS slots when compared to heroic drops you could argue that in order to get the best of the best you're simply required to get the 2200 or whatever ranking needed in arena/rated BG. Especially in the case of rated BG it shouldn't be all that much harder than knocking Sinestra over. My stance in this case is based on the assumption that the ability to produce WoW gold doesn't correlated to the ability not to walk in fire, and thus expensive crafted items are no more easily attainable than PvP gear.

I believe that [Dreadfire Drape] with 2x [Fractured Amberjewel] is also a candidate for BiS cloak.

Code: Select all

Dreadfire Drape: 745 armor | 384 stamina | 193 mastery | 63  avoidance (hit reforged)
S10 PvP Cloak:   718 armor | 360 stamina | 160 mastery | 68  avoidance (parry from strength)
Al'akir Cloak:   673 armor | 321 stamina | 143 mastery | 203 avoidance (rating + parry from strength)


Thanks for the guide!

Digren, are you certain you want to rank all JP items as rank 2? It's some 10k odd JP, which is brutally hard to come by in three weeks without running heroics.

yappo wrote:Digren, are you certain you want to rank all JP items as rank 2? It's some 10k odd JP, which is brutally hard to come by in three weeks without running heroics.

That was the decision I meant when I said that your ranking might result in me reconsidering my own. I figured that any one item could be in stage 2, so how am I to say which ones couldn't be?

If I can find a better way, I most certainly will fix it.

FYI, the Pauldrons of Roaring Flame (off Ragnaros) have had their mastery changed to hit. Wowhead hasn't been updated to reflect the change. The rating numbers themselves are unchanged.

yappo wrote:Digren, are you certain you want to rank all JP items as rank 2? It's some 10k odd JP, which is brutally hard to come by in three weeks without running heroics.

I am not sure what the items are ranked as matters that much, does it? The model for the rank 2 tank has only one JP item and generally looks very reasonable.

It might be worth saying that a rank 1 tank should be able to get to rank 2 very quickly. I did it within a day of hitting 85, if I recall. New 85s may not have the 4000 JPs our mains brought with them from wotlk, but still should not have to spend anything like three weeks without running heroics.

econ21 wrote:New 85s may not have the 4000 JPs our mains brought with them from wotlk, but still should not have to spend anything like three weeks without running heroics.

While that may be true, rank 2 is defined as three weeks without the requirement of running heroics.

As for the time needed, I'm even prepared to go as far as saying that my own estimate of two weeks in normals in optimal conditions is overly pessimistic, but it still takes time ro ramp up reputation. Add that a 329 geared tank is likely to get kicked from the instance more or less immediately, so I'll stick to my estimate.

In reality I believe that the 'ready to heroics' tank will hit the instances after little more than a week in a strange mixture of 365 gear and levelling greens. Said tank is likely to have a better than average wow-conomy as gemming and enchanting will cost more than the gold aqquired from dailies during such a short time-spam.

I am not sure of the HP rate outside of an AV weekend, but this weekend I was pulling at least 900 JP an hour (which a freshly dinged tank can do).

375 HP > 250 JP

Kamenev wrote:I believe that [Dreadfire Drape] with 2x [Fractured Amberjewel] is also a candidate for BiS cloak.

Code: Select all

Dreadfire Drape: 745 armor | 384 stamina | 193 mastery | 63  avoidance (hit reforged)
S10 PvP Cloak:   718 armor | 360 stamina | 160 mastery | 68  avoidance (parry from strength)
Al'akir Cloak:   673 armor | 321 stamina | 143 mastery | 203 avoidance (rating + parry from strength)


Thanks for the guide!

that sounds interesting!
Other opinions on that Back?

lythac wrote:I am not sure of the HP rate outside of an AV weekend, but this weekend I was pulling at least 900 JP an hour (which a freshly dinged tank can do).

375 HP > 250 JP

1350 honor per hour sounds like an awful lot for a fresh tank. Anyway, the freshly dinged tank should pull an average of about 0 honor per week. Prot PvP has a bad reputation to begin with, and spending that time getting killed for honor without getting a single point of reputation with the factions seems like a slightly unlikely road for a new 85 to take. Not to mention that the tank would gain gear but zero experience from the instances he/she is supposed to tank.

yappo wrote:

lythac wrote:I am not sure of the HP rate outside of an AV weekend, but this weekend I was pulling at least 900 JP an hour (which a freshly dinged tank can do).

375 HP > 250 JP

1350 honor per hour sounds like an awful lot for a fresh tank. Anyway, the freshly dinged tank should pull an average of about 0 honor per week. Prot PvP has a bad reputation to begin with, and spending that time getting killed for honor without getting a single point of reputation with the factions seems like a slightly unlikely road for a new 85 to take. Not to mention that the tank would gain gear but zero experience from the instances he/she is supposed to tank.

Well it was AV weekend so the 1350 honor is for anyone who was moving with the pack regardless of gear. Most were rewarding 250-450 HP and queue+battle time were roughly 15 minutes in total.

It is an unlikely road to take (esp as it doesn't generate VP) but for the tank who is getting kicked for low gear an evening spent in BGs for a couple of Tier 11 pieces (or the 365 PvP helm) seems worthwhile. Maybe only in AV.

lythac wrote:
It is an unlikely road to take (esp as it doesn't generate VP) but for the tank who is getting kicked for low gear an evening spent in BGs for a couple of Tier 11 pieces (or the 365 PvP helm) seems worthwhile. Maybe only in AV.

You have a point here, even though not the one you actively made

You just made me understand I ought to follow Digren's example and create a few 'end of rank' failsafe tanks to reality check my own guide.

yappo wrote: ...a 329 geared tank is likely to get kicked from the instance more or less immediately, so I'll stick to my estimate.

Oh grief, that's started again? I guess the start of an expansion are the best time to start to tank - everyone is clueless and gearless, so your party are forgiving of your shortcomings.

I've just tried the Zuls and found them surprisingly enjoyable for the same reason: people are cool if you wipe and there is less "gogogo".

Conversely, I did not dare tank Ahune on my warrior alt - even on my pala it was rather hard work aggroing everything and I could not imagine the party tolerating me.

[Sorry for going off topic, Digren.]