Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian

The new badge chest is nice and I'm going to get it, but I'd replace it with T5 the moment I get it.

I'm looking to get the Cape, Chest, and Legs.

I've been having a hard time figuring out which to go for first.

The Cape and Chest would be for heavy hitters and the legs would mostly be for add tanking I think.

Jere, the way I see it if I want to use the Gaurdian chest it will be in a situation where I won't want to where 4 pieces or T4 and it may even be a situation where I could get away with only 1 piece.

The chest and the cape will be used in situations were I want either max HP or max Avoidance.

The more I think about it the more I think I'll hold off on the legs until after the chest/cape as I have T5 legs already.

I may also consider the Boots for OTing mass adds like on solarian or tidewalker or al'ar. If they had better aviodance/mitigation I'd consider them for Leo and VR.
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Dragonzbane - 70 Paladin - Khadgar

Regarding mana issues and the size of your mana pool, I can see situations where a larger pool is nice. Say you have high avoidance and damage is pretty spiky, it's easy to get a string of complete misses/dodges/parries and wind up with zero mana left after a couple max-rank cycles, I think this has happened to me a few times. I suppose you could be paying better attention and stop spamming spells, but this is not always safe to do.

This would be magnified in a situation where you're not always receiving damage, like say on Lurker's adds or OTing Gruul. If you had a bigger pool you could be saving up more mana that would sometimes have gone to waste from being healed at full mana at one point.

Is everyone mostly planning to socket this with 3x SSoE's?

The chest seems to take a hit on defense compared to the vindicators hauberk which I am using atm, I haven't done the maths yet to see how this reflects on crushability for me personally, but looking at the stats it would still be an upgrade without 3x SSoE's in it.

I think the chest is my first purchase then the cloak and bracers.
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I never have problems with mana (except Morogrim where I really chain drink those mana pots). If I know a boss fight doesn't require so much in the way of defensive stats and I am to focus on threat then I "downgrade" my gear somewhat. On Vashj I used to get very mana starved tanking the nagas so I stopped using holy shield and now I am okay. The extra mana I get from my gear is really trivial compared to what defensive stats I could get instead.

I find that T4 is fine with intellect, it prepares you nicely for threat tanking in SSC/TK. T5 and T6 though I think the item points used on intellect are really wasted.
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Hmm, about this chest, I think I'm going to have to put off getting it. I just got the T4 chest, and the set bonus is nice. Eventually this is going to be nice to have, but I will prioritize the following replacements:

Gilded Thorium Cloak -> Slik's Cloak of Placation
Wrynn Dynasty Greaves -> Unwavering Legguards
Belt of the Guardian -> Girdle of the Protector

The belt I'll switch in for boss tanking to maintain a high dodge rate, and the spell hit is unique and interesting for that as well. With these pieces and T4 chest instead of Stoic Guardian I should have the same-ish avoidance and a small loss in stamina.

Then the next two pieces to get are the bracers and chest.

The way it's working out in my head is this:

I'll have the t4 helm and chest. t5 shoulders. maiden's gloves (they're just too sexy to ignore at the level of progression my server is at). wrynn greaves (until 2.3 baby!). i really like the 2.3 cloak, but I love my devilshark too. void reaver bracers.

I really like the 2pc bonus of our t4, since 70% of my guild's dps far outgears me on the threat generation levels. Every little bit helps for me.
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If you are MTing a boss, mana is not an issue. If you are on adds that need to die quickly that don't hit all that hard on you, then it becomes a problem (Al'ar is the prime example, especially with BT/MH geared DPSers, on progression kill it won't hurt as much but it does begin to show). I am very thankful for my decent mana pool gear, I can be at 7.5k mana with 18.4k HP buffed and 460 spell dmg ish, around 16/17% dodge/parry and ofc uncrushable, this is my gear of choice for add/trash situations usually. This is not to say that mana is the be all and end all of add tanking. Al'ar imo is a special case, it's such a long and boring fight. On Anatheron say I can nuke the adds to pieces with everything I have and come out with 100% mana. Same goes for Azgalor. Hydross is middle of the road, just need to control/feel how much threat you actually need without wasting mana.

This chest is a Main Tanking style chest, therefore needs no int tbh. There are far better items for aoe tanking and stuff like that. I am glad to see some more dedicated MTing items like the Black Temple Boots/Belt/Bracers being added, rather than mix matching some stuff thats suited better to other roles. I will be picking this up along with the cape immediatly. Legs - will have to see if I get T5 legs or not this week :p. Also need 100 badgers (yeah, badgers) for the FR gear. I am at 145 atm and need around 365 +30k honour for the trinket for all the stuff I need/want.
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