No Excuses! Pre-Karazhan gear that will let you tank Black Temple.
Pretty unbelievable heading, I know. What’s more unbelievable is it’s true. The following represents the best gear you can get your hands on outside of raiding without stepping foot in Karazhan or even forming an Arena team!
Back
Slikk’s Cloak of Placation
Chest
Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian
Feet
Red Havoc Boots
Rings
Ring of Unyielding Force
Band of Impenetrable Defenses
Hands
Bonefist Gauntlets
Head
Tankatronic Goggles
Legs
Unwavering Legguards
Neck
Brooch of Deftness
One-hand
The Sun Eater
Ranged
Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer
Shield
Gladiator’s Shield Wall
Shoulder
Gladiator’s Plate Shoulders
Trinket
Darkmoon Card: Vengeance
Adamantine Figurine
Waist
Iron-tusk Girdle
Wrist
Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx
That’s the works. Yes, I realize that you’ll have to do an absolutely insane amount of heroics, you’ll need to do some serious spending, and you’ll even have to spend a little bit of time in Battlegrounds, but the point is that you can’t use the excuses of “My guild doesn’t do Kara” anymore when someone says your tanking gear sucks.
December 12th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
I’m bored…
BoP Instance Drops:
The Sun Eater
Adamantine Figurine
BoE World Drop/AH:
Band of Impenetrable Defenses
Furies Deck (Ace - Eight of Furies)
Mats:
4x Primal Nether
130x Adamantite Bar
48x Fel Iron Bar
32x Eternium Bar
23x Khorium Bar
25x Primal Fire
12x Primal Air
6x Heavy Knothide Leather
2x Talasite
Others:
26,250 Honor
20x Eye of the Storm Mark of Honor
20x Arathi Basin Mark of Honor
400x Badge of Justice
Did I miss anything?
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December 12th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
You need to raid SSC or The Eye to get the Red Havoc Boots. The item is bind on pickup and the plans are a random drop from either of the two raid-instances
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30324
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December 12th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
The plans are BOE though Markus. You just buy them for another guild
Add thanks Talisman for some excellent supplementary information!
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December 13th, 2007 at 7:54 am
http://wowdigger.com/character/view/44131/venebuild#o1
EH build: Put it together with my current build, KoT enchant, Scryers Exalted, Mongoose, all Solid Stars, Armor + Health enchants everywhere possible.
35% avoidance, 16.3k HP unbuffed, 17.1k armor, 36% avoidance, 495 def
Nothing to sneeze at! ;-p
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December 13th, 2007 at 8:40 am
Too bad to get all those badges you’d be retarded not to do Karazhan:)
Also the Jungle Stompers are comparable to Red Havoc Boots (and way cheaper!) and don’t involve stepping in Karazhan. I leveled blacksmithing just to get the Red Havoc Boots, then a month later they release those gd jungle stompers. Can I have my 2000g back Blizz????
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December 13th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Aren’t jungle stompers from the bear boss in ZA? That kind of defeats the whole pre-Kara premise of this post.
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December 13th, 2007 at 9:49 am
You don’t want to put all solid stars in there.
Certainly in the goggles, you’ll want a +4 Def / +6 Stam gem, to get the +6 stam set bonus.
I’d argue that the Bonefist you’d want to consider a getting one of the heroic red gems. Either parry / stam or dodge / stam. Trade a little stam for some extra avoidance. And when those BT bosses start to hit you for 6k while doing an enormous amount of raid damage, giving healers more time to watch the raid instead of you is a big plus!
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December 13th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Every tank who has ever whined about not getting easy gear from his guild should read this post!! Rawr!
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December 13th, 2007 at 11:28 am
don’t forget the KoT buff on the goggles. =D I’m currently getting 505def with all my gear on. I switched out the bogstok cloak for the one that drops in BM since that has much better tanking stat increases and you only take a slight hit in stam and armor. The hit was more than made up for when i got the S1 gladiators shield. S2 gladiators shield like the admin mentioned, would be the next goal once i get an arena team.
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December 13th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Don’t forget
http://www.tankingtips.com/2007/07/10/zg-is-still-the-place-to-be/
for helm enchant!
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December 13th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Stacking stamina (read solid stars of elune) = you lose.
Forgive me for being narrow minded and disagreeing with the marjority of tanks out there, but I’d rather avoid an extra 10 - 20 % of those 5k hits from raid bosses than have an extra 2 or 3k life. The day I consistently die by a 7k hit when having an extra 2k life would have saved me is the day I change my attitude.
“But if you are at 100% for a long time then suddenly take a string of attacks in a row the healers won’t have time to heal you. Extra stamina gives you the buffer for them to get a heal off in those situations.”
A) With extra avoidance you have to deal with those a LOT less if EVER and
B) If you’re healers aren’t casting/stopcasting the entire boss fight, you need to find new raid healers. Period.
http://evilempireguild.org/guides/avoidance.php
You’re a warrior tank, you have ridiculous amounts of avoidance for a reason. Stop trying to be a bear druid.
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December 13th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Lol I should have known I would start an argument about EH vs Avoidance. I just put in all Solid Stars to give ppl something to work with, then you can figure out for yourself what tailoring the set would do.
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December 13th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Hydrix, if you’re going to reference EvilEmpireGuild, you might as well counter from … EvilEmpireGuild:
“The key concept here is this: It’s not about taking less damage; it’s about being able to take more damage.”
http://evilempireguild.org/guides/after490.php
But that’s arguing the other side, which I won’t do. In the end, everything is situational, which is why multiple gear-sets are the way go.
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December 13th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Isn’t stacking Stamina more effective and easier than stacking dodge pre-kara?
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December 13th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Lets not exagerate too much. 10-20% more avoidance requires 24-47 +8 dodge gems. That’s 3k-6k extra health in SSoE’s. We’re usually only going to have 12-18 gem slots.
Avoidance is solid if you’ve got the EH to take a hit, but the gem argument usually comes down to 12 stam v 8 dodge or (4 def / 6 sta)
Go for the socket bonus only if it makes up for the loss.
[i]B) If you
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December 13th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
@Hydrix:
You’ve made some excellent points.
1. The more avoidance you have the less times your Effective Health matters.
2. You are going to have to rely on your healers to survive.
3. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
However, it’s foolish to blindly say that stacking stamina is bad when it’s an accepted, successful practice by a lot of the tanking community. This kind of comment really is more fishing for argument than actually saying anything meaningful.
Furthermore, the idea that “You
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December 13th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
I’ve been tanking karazhan/gruuls for a while now….my question is, why doesnt anyone ever try to come up with a good mitigation set up that also achieves good avoidance?
since 2.3 has arrived I see it very possible to have good avoidance and also be able to have high mitigation, this is what I want to see…so you end up having 1k less HP end game then a full mitigation tank…but overall better rounded I would think for all encounters, I’m not saying there is a perfect item set for all encounters in the game but I dont see why it couldnt be done, avoidance is part of being a warrior.. stop trying to be a full fledge druid. “i personally take avoidance into some account with my current gear, I switch out trinkets on some occasions but thats about it, I want to be able to parry and dodge attacks as well as be able to meet then necessary mitigation for that raid, I’ve done this in karazhan..why cant it be done in black temple?” I’ve noticed that the tanks from death and taxes have high mitigation and pretty dam high block rating and avoidance, which basically proves my point that it can be done and I consider the best set up at this time, if I wanted to be a druid I would of rolled one.
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December 13th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Technically you’re right, but why bother?
This game is all about how much time and effort you want to put into it, you can’t just say “no excuses if you’re not doing Kara”, it still takes an immense effort of time to get all this stuff.
The excuse is simply: They don’t want to spend as much time as you playing WoW, that’s all.
And if you’re too lazy to form and arena team or run kara, wtf are you doing in BT?
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December 13th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Having played both a tanking warrior and a holy paladin, I have to say I definately prefer knowing how much damage the tanks are going to take give or take some…than to have to constantly stop casting (and end up losing Lights Grace) cause the tank is dodging everything then all of a sudden “oh shit” sets in cause he just got crushed for 10k cause he went for all the tank gear with +dodge rating and put dodge gems in it than stacking stam and block rating/value.
Taking that into account, I’ve modified how I gear myself as a tank and have gotten a lot of positive feed back from the healers on how much easier them being able to estimate and predict the damage I’m taking made their jobs. On top of that since SBV goes into SS which is a major source of threat, being able to nail insane SS crits for threat allows dpsers who would normally hold back (geared rogues, warlocks, shadow priests etc) to increase their dps and ensure more of a margin exists until the bosses enrage timer expires (and if you notice there’s a ton more of those than compared to the pre BC whopper of Patchwerk).
Although I’ll sit both sides of the fence and say that avoidance sets are amazing for heroics and smaller scale things where you have 1 healer who has to pay more attention to the whole group instead of just tossing a HoT/Flash here and there. So 1 set isn’t exactly the answer, but as far as raiding goes (and honestly what I think all of our mindsets should be focused on) high stam and high block rating/value are key to helping the guild progress into bigger and better things.
Ridly
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December 13th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
If druids could avoid crushing blows… everyone one would use them.
Wait that’s us.
Everyone that’s going crazy over this way and that way of gearing, read:
http://www.tankingtips.com/2007/06/12/the-3-sets-of-tanking-gear/
Now true that post is a tad outdated, but the point is to use different setups of gear for different situations. (this is part of the reason why armoring your favourite warrior from guild X is often pointless) When you need a ton of avoidance, use a ton of avoidance. When you need a ton of armor and health, use a ton of armor and health.
The skill is knowing which set of gear to bring to which encounter. No matter what gear setup you advocate, if you advocate only 1, you are incorrect. That is one of the few hard and fast truths of this game.
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December 13th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
With the way that the various classes are geared and how they work with tanking, if there’s a fight that requires high amounts of avoidance I’ll step aside/sit out/OT a fight to let a druid MT the fight, or if the fight requires multiple mobs to be controlled in precarious threat situations…I’ll step aside and let our prot pally take care of it. That way I can minimize the amount of sets in my bags beyond group/solo and let other classes use “off specs” since they’re more viable.
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December 14th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Death and Taxes tanks have high avoidance because BT/MH gear has both high stamina and high avoidance.
Stacking stamina allows your healers to plan out a fight. When they pot, what heals they use and how often, etc.
I stack stam as much as possible and I still have fairly high mitigation. You talk as if stacking stam means you’re never going to avoid a hit.
I personally use moroes trinket in my effective HP set to act as an avoidance buffer. On fights where I can expect to not be healed as much, or at all for periods, such as Morogrim, Nalorakk, Gruul, etc. I make sure to activate my trinket as much as possible.
Getting an avoidance streak at the wrong time can be a raid wiper. Plus I like having enough rage to Heroic Strike every auto attack:)
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December 14th, 2007 at 11:07 am
the only gear I’m switching in between right now is mainly my trinkets, I still need to get the autoblocker and Darkmoon Card: Vengeance, I basicallt plan to switch between them and moroes + adamantite figurine…but I havent had a need to switch any other gear besides my trinkets in all of karazhan as of yet, you can look me up zodran: illidan pvp server.
I know its bound to change as I still need my breast piece from nightbane who yesterday dropped the shield so I’m at least half way there, also the shoulders from netherspite wouldnt hurt too much but they arent amazing.
Its my only toon and has /played of 48 days, I’ve gotten alot of good feedback about my tanking and really enjoy websites like this and other sources for tanking. if you have any feedback for me about my gear set up or enchants/gems (i’m aware i dont have mongoose on kings will get it when I’m feeling up to spending some gold which I could right now)
(also after I take the adamantite figure off I still have over 490 defense, I plan on replacing it permanently with darkmooncard: vengeance for the 51+ stamina.
feel free to give me a buzz, I think different raiding levels have different demands…its just important to know when to change, so its important people know where they are and change according to themselves, not to an end game tank that has different gear options then you do.
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December 14th, 2007 at 11:16 am
uh, I just realised I logged with buffs on.
my stats unbuffed are:
HP = 14.6K
Armor = 16.1K
Block rating = 27%
Block value = “dmg my blocks absorb I believe* 436 (roughly it could be a bit more, I’m at work right now cant check)
dodge = 19%
Parry = 16.9%
of course they all change by a pct or so depending on which trinkets I use, “block instead of moroes” Violet signet isntead of adamantite (pushes base HP to over 15k) figurine which usually is always on, only use violet signet againts curator and I dont even need to do that.
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December 14th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Hotness a fellow Illidanite, but i can’t really say hi cause i’m on the other side…I’ll wave if I see you doing dailies in Ogri’la =P look for a NE on a Ghost Cat
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December 14th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
koo, its nice to know I might not get pked by one less person on the alliance side when I’m trying to do my dailies as a dedicated full time prot warrior =)
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December 17th, 2007 at 11:01 am
What do you guys think should be the order of acquiring this stuff? I am a prot-war with mostly pre-heroic gear. I have the revered Violet Eye ring, Gladiator’s Plate Shoulders, and just got the Crest of Sha’tar, but for the rest it’s all blue (top of the line though..:)) I have a couple badges that I was saving up for the Auto-blocker, but looking at it, i should probably spend them on something else, such as the bracers, just to secure a better stam base, while in the meantime grinding BGs for this shield. My guild does raid kara, but my schedule generally allows me 1 or 2 runs a month, which, along with drop rate dissapointment, mostly puts me in the non/barely kara catagory. Just asking for some opinions.
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December 17th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
i guess I look at the stamina issue this way assuming you are above the magical 490def limit. The less health you have, the more amplified the damage.. The more stamina you have, you might take the same damage, but it seems like a drop in the bucket because you have so much health. Healers can be smarer on their heals and not have to worry a whole lot about having you being 100% one second and 40% the next. take it from a person who has played a healer as well.
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December 17th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Trarr, the leggings/belt/ and brooch necky are the most important pieces you could get with your badge items, then followed by the cloak.
but thats alot of badges, having a more regular weekly karazhan raid going makes it easier to get that many, unless you like doing 2-4 heroics a day to keep that consistency, I personally do karazhan every week and do one or two heroics a day..but I’ve already acquired all the badge items except for the auto-blocker which isnt really a rush for me since I’m having no issues with threat or tanking anything I’m doing at this time at my tanking level.
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December 18th, 2007 at 10:52 am
I think both Vene and I went for the legs first. They’re unbelievable. Because it gives you a giant upgrade in not only stam, but threat generation too.
From your standpoint Trarr, I’d say focus on improving your stam first. The way I always looked at my gear was “what slot could use the BIGGEST improvement.” The brooch and bracers are great upgrades for threat generation. The Auto-blocker, like Vene has said, is kind of obsolete now. If you get the neck, bracers, and gloves, you can replace your auto-blocker with a defense trinket to make up for what you’ve lost in that department.
My vote:
1. Legs
2. Neck
3. Bracers (if you have attumen’s, you may want to get the cloak instead)
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December 18th, 2007 at 11:31 am
All I know is, of all the tanks in my guild I have the least avoidance…but I have the highest HP of any tank of my server cause all I enchant/gem is stam stam stam. My healers always say that I’m the easiest tank to heal. Granted…some fights I do wear more avoidance gear…like dual-wielding bosses just so I can take a bit less dmg…but in most fights where the boss swings slowly, avoidance does next to nothing for you outside of avoiding crushing blows. End of story. :/
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December 18th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
If nothing else, the autoblocker is still worthwhile for fun shield slams, burst threat, and Leo shades. Bosses with frequent threat wipes are great for having an extra 253 block value.
Avoidance does a lot more than avoid crushings, especially as you stack it higher. You start to see exponential returns on incoming damage reduction. I’ve always been a big fan of stacking absurd amounts of armour, but as we move into harder T6 content, avoidance really starts to pay off.
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December 19th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
I don’t think the Autoblocker will ever really be obsolete. It simply great for burst threat and at least at Tier 5 content provides acceptable mitigation. I’ve noticed I’m a little shy about letting my block value go below a certain level. I’m usually sitting around 600 and I’m knocking ~15% damage off of incoming attacks. Its very good synergy with strong armour and raid debuffs.
If you’re starting out however, its hard to say depending on how much time you have. Legs and Bracers are probably best simply because they strike a good balance between survivability and threat. They’re also not suffering from weird stat deficiencies that force you to wear another piece of gear that you would otherwise try to avoid (ex Adamantine Figure). In the end, the Brooch, Gloves and Autoblocker are utility pieces for threat.
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February 2nd, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Are the S1 shoulders better than spaulders of dementia?
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February 4th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Yes!
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