SSO Neck vs Brooch of Deftness
The most heated topic that arose as a result of the Badge pick order was this one so no point in dodging it, let’s take a stab at it. For reference: Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve, Brooch of Deftness
Differences…
First and foremost, it’s pretty easy to see that the Brooch nets us 9 extra Hit Rating and an additional 3 Expertise which gives the Brooch a clear and obvious edge right out of the gates. The Shattered Sun Pendant is unique though in that once you are exalted with either the Aldor or Scryer faction, the item gains a proc.
The Procs
- Aldor: 100 Dodge Rating over 10 seconds
- Scryer: 100 Expertise Rating over 10 seconds
The Aldor proc immediately reminded me of the talent Improved Revenge. It’s got the best of intentions, but the reality is that gaining a chance for a chance to dodge is likely to get you rage starved more often than result in any real benefit. The Scryer one is more interest, but my gut tells me that this smells far too much of Wrath.
To be a Scryer of sorts
Just like the dodge rating proc of the Aldor, I’m going to discount the survival aspects of this proc for the most part. It’s there, it exists, but it’s certainly nothing to get too excited over and for the time being we’ll ignore it’s benefit. So, let’s examine the two pieces threat-wise. 100 Expertise Rating for 10 seconds with a high proc rate and an internal cooldown of 45 seconds = 22.2 Expertise Rating. (assumption #1) This is calculated by multiplying the proc’s overall rating (100) by 0.2222. The quick conclusion we’ll jump to is OMG that’s way better than 9 Hit Rating and 3 Expertise Rating for threat.
Is it though?
Math Time
100 Expertise Rating / 3.94 = 25 Expertise Skill. Since that passes 23 Expertise, (the mark to remove dodge from a boss’ attack table) we know that 2 points of Expertise Skill are going to be less useful and in terms of threat exactly the same as Hit Rating. The key to finding out how useful this neckpiece is though is seeing just how much our gear has to progress Expertise-wise before the benefit of the proc is inferior to the static bonus offered by the Brooch. (and if this point even exists!?) For simplicity sake even though parry rates are known to vary from boss to boss, we’ll assume the Expertise cap is 46 57 Skill. (assumption #2)
91 Expertise Rating = 23 Expertise Skill (the Dodge cap)
-23.64 Expertise Rating or 6 Expertise Skill (Defiance)
-18.00 Expertise Rating (the neck itself)
= 91 - 18 - 23.64 = 49.36 Expertise Rating
Which tells us that guaranteed only 49.36 of the possible 100 Expertise rating of the proc will go towards the Dodge cap with the remaining 50.64 Expertise Rating being the equivalent of Hit rating since it only contributes towards the Parry cap. Despite the fact that not all 100 will be treated like Expertise and if instead we assume the proc was 100 Hit rating, the average of 22.2 offered by it would still be stronger than the 9 Hit and 3 Expertise rating static advantage of the Brooch. This means that the mark in which the Brooch passes the Pendant is greater than 23 Expertise Skill. So, let’s convert everything to Hit rating.
- Brooch advantage = 9 Hit + 3 Expertise = 12 Hit rating (post-23 skill)
- Pendant Proc Average with 100 rating over 10 seconds = 22.2 Expertise = 22.2 Hit (post-23 skill)
- Pendant Proc Average with 91 rating over 10 seconds = 20.2 Expertise = 20.2 Hit
- Pendant Proc Average with 54 rating over 10 seconds = 12 Expertise = 12 Hit
Point 2 assumes no waste, yet once we are beyond 23 skill, there are only 91 points left in accordance with our 2nd assumption and as a result, there must be waste giving us the following point 3:
Now in order for the Brooch to be greater than the Pendant there has to be enough wasted rating that the proc results in an average under 12. (the static bonus offered by the Brooch)
x * 0.2222 = 12
x = 12 / 0.2222
x = 54
182 Expertise Rating = 46 Expertise Skill (the Parry cap)
225 Expertise Rating = 57 Expertise Skill (the Parry cap)
225 - 52 = 128 rating / 3.94 = 43.9 Skill
The Magic Number
44.
What this all means! (finally)
The Scryer SSO Neck is surprisingly powerful and assuming you are Exalted with the Scryers, the Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve will be stronger than the Brooch of Deftness until you hit 44 Expertise Skill while wearing the Pendant. (at that point, you should swap them) As a result, even the vast majority of tanks should be dropping the 20 gold to pick up this new rep reward.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Thank you Vene. I knew I had something of a valid argument against the neck piece (tho you do defend it in some aspects, and I appreciate that). Considering I’m already at 33 expertise in my threat gear (I have the shard) and about 50 away from hit capped, I can’t fathom giving up 9 hit rating to gain more expertise.
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April 11th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
No, thank you. It was a great catch on your part and led to an article that I think is going to clear up a lot of confusion surrounding which one to choose.
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April 12th, 2008 at 6:05 am
I’m a bit new to the whole Expertise experience so bear with me here. I see no mention of parry anywhere in there. Isn’t that the real benefit of expertise? Removing dodge is nice, but removing parry is nicer, no? Do I just not understand expertise? Is that not how it really works?
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April 12th, 2008 at 9:08 am
I’m still on the fence regarding the Resolve Amulet. One thing to consider is the absurd amount of expertise that’s obtainable even before stepping in to a 25 man. With Resolve, Fearless, Sunguard, Contempt, Phalanx and Nightstrike you can get 41 Skill for one of us lesser races. Its even very sensible to do this. If you pitch in both rings and Inuuro’s Blade, it jumps to 53. The Scryer neck starts looking very obsolete at this point. At least Exalted with SSO is an easy task and a starter tank gets a pretty sword and shield in the bargain.
The question then becomes is the Aldor version worth it in the long run? The Quel’serrar argument again rears its ugly head with the dubious proc to proc additional survivability. It appears that the SSO necks have a 45 sec internal cooldown with a very high proc chance (like many trinkets). I can’t say I disagree with Vene’s initial assessment of it giving periods of rage starvation. On the other hand, at all levels of progression there’s a hefty physical attacker that’ll make you say: “Please stop hitting me.” and any amount of additional survivability becomes desirable. All this while trying to maintain a particular amount of Expertise.
In the end the Resolve necks are flawed. With the DPS variants procs are more sensible where you can line up additional cooldowns to coincide with procs for more DPS. The Scryer neck functions that way for threat but there is such a thing as too much Expertise. I think I would prefer a static bonus for either factional bonus or something that is more useful like additional armour or block value. Ah well, get it anyways. Its 20g and after hitting Exalted you should have gold coming out of your ears.
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April 12th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I don’t think the Aldor Pendant of Resolve really results in rage starvation. It’s 5% dodge for 10 seconds. 5% dodge isn’t going to stop all attacks from hitting you for that entire duration, but it may slow down one or two hits. Contributing to two misses every minute does not equal rage starvation. It’s more like an occasional breath of air from being pummeled. I think it’s more of a poor man’s [item]Moroes’ Pocketwatch[/item].
It’s a game of cumulative miniscule numbers, but I don’t think the expertise difference between the two pieces is really going to break you. In sum, for the Aldor Pendant, it’s an additional ~5% dodge/minute versus +1 exp skill and +.4% hit. As long as you’re expertise soft capped, I don’t know why you wouldn’t buy the pendant.
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April 12th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
It’s 5.28% dodge added for 1/6th of the fight, which amounts to 0.88% dodge, or a passive 16.67 dodge rating. Why would you wear Aldor SSO neck over Maiden’s Neck (21dodge 16def 39sta)? I could see you wearing it in pvp against a rogue if you wanted to have high dodge AND be able to power through his dodges, but other than that I can’t see it being worthwhile
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April 13th, 2008 at 12:15 am
@ebs2002…because if you’re talking about the Barbed Choker of Discipline, it has no expertise on it. The Brooch is only hit and exp, the Choker is strictly defensive stats. The SSO Pendant gives hit, expertise, -and- an increase to dodge.
Plus, the Choker hasn’t dropped for me.
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April 13th, 2008 at 1:46 am
I made the same mistake tonight… I passed the Shard of Contempt to a dps feral druid. Still kicking myself in the ass for that one. Sometimes I’m just too nice a guy for my own good. >.
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April 13th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Shard of Contempt was the first epic I picked up from H MgT and let me be clear… the proc rate on it is unbelievably amazing. Do not pass this up; TPS feels almost effortless at times with this. Also handy while mob grinding…
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April 13th, 2008 at 11:28 am
@bosephus, yes, but why would you want an item that has SOME threat stats on it and SOME avoidance on it? Normally, you want to have a threat neck, or an avoid neck. Min/maxing and all that jazz.
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April 14th, 2008 at 12:56 am
@bosephus yes and no, you want more threat related items and more avoidance related items. However, at the point I am at I’d rather see items that have a little of both. In the end-game content you see pieces doing this more and more as well - neck’s from SSC and upward have both aggro and avoidance stats for instance, T6 waist etc. A lot of tanking items in BT have +hit on them or +expertise on them.
A tank not keeping high aggro is in general an issue for a raid. The same goes for a tank that takes to much damage for his healers to cope with. A mix of both is in general a good route to go.
Threat-gear in general has really sky-rocketed at least for us Warriors now with the expertise and hit-gear around (given I’m at Black Tempel level now). Last ZA raid I had 2.2 K TPS on Nalorak and on last weeks Maggie run people didn’t even use salvation. The expertise and hit-items also scale a lot better than block-value items which is nice when doing that Kara-run ever now and then.
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April 14th, 2008 at 12:58 am
Wrong name in the above post - @ebs2002 of course
Also, expertise soft-caps at 23 but scales a lot higher which shouldn’t be neglected for avoidance and threat.
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April 14th, 2008 at 2:12 am
Very interesting argument, and I can clearly see Brooch beating the SSO neck at 23 Expertise for sheer threat, but the question I have is whether or not the added survivability of the SSO neck from the proc (via removing parries) is worth the loss in threat over the Brooch.
I’m kind of pressed into using the SSO neck for hard hitting bosses simply because that proc has a large chance of saving my life by not parrying, even if it only procs once - which would definitely be worth the loss of a few threat stats.
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April 14th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Also, on average how much threat are you really using by using the SSO neck over the Brooch at 23+ Expertise? It’s got to be under .6% hit worth.
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April 14th, 2008 at 5:01 am
Quote: Erik:
“The expertise and hit-items also scale a lot better than block-value ”
This is true to a point… Once you get hit capped and are at 23 or so expertise, the odds of an attack not getting through on trash is next to impossible. I don’t consider bosses since threat should almost never be an issue on bosses since you are HSing with every attack pretty much, and parries that do occur will grant you more rage to HS (more incoming dmg) assuming you don’t die lol. Short of getting a higher dps weapon, the only thing you can do to increase your threat at that point is stack more block value.
Which is why I won’t be getting the new badge legs. I have enough expertise, I’m not giving up 59 block value. And hence why the auto blocker will always be part of my threat set.
Again, however, I iterate that I’m not hit rating capped and I’m expertise capped. Hence, I will not give up my brooch due to the loss of hit rating.
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April 14th, 2008 at 5:10 am
Oye! I am still confused. Once I hit exhalted with SSO, I plan on picking up the new neck to see how the Scyer proc feels. I will have to play around with both the SSO Pendant and the Brooch of Deft to see where it works best in my gear sets.
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April 14th, 2008 at 5:51 am
Vene.
Its more an issue for me of wasting badges.. I do NOT yet have the Brooch. I will be exalted with the SSO tomorrow and can get that necklace. I am scryer. So my question is more.. is it worth wasting the 35 badges to get the brooch when I can get this neck piece? We are about half way to the anvil… maybe a week….. so 35 badges towards my new belt seems a better option for me than the brooch when I can get a neck piece that is very good.
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April 14th, 2008 at 6:28 am
This article makes the same mistake as many warriors do, wear one piece of gear for every fight. Forget the numbers, think of the aldor necklace as a free mongoose proc that gives you 5% dodge (I’ve checked wws, it has the same proc rate as mongoose). This necklace owns when you’re dealing with heavy melee bosses like azgalor, it’s not so good on something like lurker or leo. When it comes down to it, it’s about using the right necklace for the right boss. To me this is the most important thing a tank can learn.
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April 14th, 2008 at 7:15 am
@Darlene: The Belt is definitely a much stronger investment than the neckpeice.
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April 14th, 2008 at 8:01 am
After many hours spent scouring gear lists, comparing stats, saving badges, and wrestling with the Chest, Legs, Belt, Neck, Bracers etc. arguements, I have learned that there is no true “badge order pick list.”
I want to be clear that this site is incredible, and the Admin’s listing is indeed detailed, clear as to why he put things where he put them, and has all of the layout and commentary that I am looking for. Its an amazing job.
But for those looking for a “badge order” silver bullet. It just doesn’t exist. There are so many individual factors for you to consider when selecting your own gear that no single list could possibly address your needs unless it was custom built for your situation.
Here’s a good example:
1. Your guild has Kara down cold, but you maybe are missing 1 or 2 slots. Say a ring.
2. Your guild is into a few 25 mans, but perhaps you need to sit out sometimes and its more difficult for you to have access to finishing T4 starting T5 pieces.
You may be wearing a blue ring today, and a purple chest, but the chance of you getting Aran’s ring is WAY higher than you seeing a T5 chest anytime close to soon.
When you are doing your relative comparisons, DO take into account gear that is obtainable for you rather than what you are wearing today.
What did I do you ask ?
I took the chest. And yes it is awesome due to its armor and dodge.
Why not the legs? - Well the relative gains aren’t as good except for the expertise. And there are some blue items that give +22 expertise that I can get while saving up the additional badges.
Remember, everyone will be in a different situation based on guild progress, your gear based on luck of drops/rolls, your status, and the 100 other things that are available as a minor substitute. Case in point: the SSO Neck being almost as good as the badge neck and saving you 35 badges for a higher relative upgrade in a different slot.
Good luck! (and I love this site so please keep it up as it encourages the discussion)
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April 14th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Vene, perhaps you should devote a future article to explaining the soft cap vs. the hard cap in greater detail. I’m not entirely sure I follow.
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April 14th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Also RE Hydrix’s comments.
Very well thought out but I think you are somewhat missing the arguement.
The comparison is for people that do not yet have the Brooch of Deftness.
Having an obtainable neckpiece that is “close” but does not surpass the Brooch allows you to use the 35 badges on other gear that would give you a much bigger relative jump in any of your favorite useful tanking stats: (expertise, hit rating sta, avoidance, SBV you get the idea).
Since you already have the Brooch, you don’t need to make this decision
Its basically an arguement on how “close” are the two. Which is great because it defines the “change baseline” and helps with comparisons to other upgrades.
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April 14th, 2008 at 8:57 am
I didn’t think about it that way Drg. Thanks. As someone who already has the brooch (and happens to be aldor lol) I don’t see any purpose in getting the SSO neck piece.
But if I had the choice, and didn’t have either and I happened to be scryer, I still wouldn’t rely on a proc to save my arse
Except maybe the proc on the shard, but let’s face it, the shard could NOT have a proc and still be amazing.
On another point, Vene made this list as someone who has not bought a single badge item yet and is probably doing Kara or entry level 25-mans. If you’re already full T6 geared, then obviously some items on this list are not so much of a priority. It is relative, I agree. However, I don’t think anyone can argue that the belt is just down right incredible.
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April 14th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
@Orenus:
The soft cap is the point at which you remove dodges from the attack table against a boss. Typically, this is 23 expertise (remove 5.75% dodge).
The hard cap is theoretically unknown since some bosses can have upwards of 15-18% parry. It is unknown at this point but since it is much higher than the dodge rate, more expertise never hurts. Think prince phase 2.
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April 14th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I’m scryer exalted and had the brooch of deftness and was at the expertise cap, but I still use the SSO neck now.
The reason? The proc may average out over time as equal threat or so to the brooch, however, the proc has a high chance to go off right at the start of a pull, as it’s such a high proc chance (albeit with cooldown).
What this means is that the 10 seconds of 100 expertise tends to happen within the first 20 seconds of a pull, which is the time when bosses dodging/parrying your shield slams and such has the most impact as you have so little of a threat lead. As a result, whilst passive expertise tends to be more useful than random high bursts of it, the fact that this proc happens so early in the fight makes it indespensible really.
Wearing this neck as a scryer, I’m basically guaranteed of a very smooth initial period of threat on anything I tank, which is where the parried/dodged threat moves matter most generally.
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April 15th, 2008 at 2:55 am
@ Sapphidia:
On trash you shouldn’t need more than the soft cap. With the new badge gear, you can easily obtain that. On bosses, if your dps won’t give you 10-15 seconds to establish threat (or just wait for you to say go nuts), they need to be booted from your guild.
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April 15th, 2008 at 6:23 am
@Hydrix:
Oh, that’s all it is? Straightforward enough. Thanks for the explanation.
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April 15th, 2008 at 7:53 am
@ Orenus
The hard cap / soft cap is a bit of a misnomer. “Dodge cap” and “Parry cap” might be more accurate…at least more descriptive (not knocking Vene here…that’s just the jargon that has caught on).
Anyway…dodge cap: mobs have a 5% + 0.2% * level difference chance to dodge your attacks. For raid bosses, that’s 5.6%. To push 5.6% dodge chance off the table, you need 23 expertise skill (not rating). This is commonly referred to as the soft cap.
Parry cap: bosses have at least twice the chance to parry an attack as compared to dodging it…so 11.2%. To push 11.2% parry chance off the table, you need ~46 expertise skill (not rating). This is commonly referred to as the hard cap.
Now, there is some debate on the actual amount of parry bosses have and, from what I can gather on ElitistJerks, there’s contention that it varies slightly from boss to boss as a tuning mechanism. Unfortunately I haven’t found a list of the parry % of given bosses…if anyone knows of such a list I’d love to see it!
The last thing to note here is that you should always tailor your gear to complement the other items you’re using for a given fight. I’ve got gear sets that use the brooch and gear sets that use the SSO neck, depending on the amount of expertise on the rest of the set.
Thanks for all the work you do maintaining the site Vene!
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April 15th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
@Maddfez
“Parry cap: bosses have at least twice the chance to parry an attack as compared to dodging it…so 11.2%.”
I think it’s 10.6% minimum parry, not 11.2%. The 0.2% level change is only applied once. Base 5% dodge, base 10% parry. Add 0.2% per level (assuming your weapon skill is capped, of course), and you get 5.6% and 10.6%.
Of course, the rest of what you said is that parry% appears to be variable above the minimum as a tuning mechanism (my personal belief is to give tanks a separate threat-only stat without having to affect other melee dps’s stats)
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April 15th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I’m not sure about that. I’ve run at 44 expertise (-11%) and still been parried. I’m leaning towards 12% to 12.6%.
Kind of a fluke that this works out pretty close. Shouldn’t be taken as hard evidence at all, since it’s just one log. A decent example though.
http://wowwebstats.com/rcexj6y1imee5?s=5813-6222&a=25
@ 44 Expertise (11%) 8 Parries on 499 total attacks, 1.6% Parry. Of course, it still could be a variable on mob type, and Azgalor could certainly be on the higher end.
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April 15th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Ya.. The SSO pendant is out of the question for me atm.. I’m about 12k away from scryer exhalted and there aren’t enough runs around for me to do to get that pendant. I’ll focus on getting my breastplate of teh bold replacement if we ever get the badge rewards open.. Our server is about 12% into phase III.
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April 16th, 2008 at 7:11 am
@ ebs
Yup, my bad…good catch!
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April 16th, 2008 at 11:02 am
You divide the proc benefit by 6, which means you think the uprate is 1/6. So you’re assuming that the internal cooldown is 60s? Where has this been tested. Comments on wowhead and tankspot seem to agree to a 45s cooldown. Assuming it’s up just 20% of the time, then SSO is better threat until you have 80 expertise rating on gear (ie not including Defiance).
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April 16th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
You are correct, it is not 1 PPM. It’s been confirmed to be a high proc rate with a 45 second internal cooldown. As a result, the average is going to be 22.2 Expertise Rating rather than 16.7. The rest of the math on the article will be updated shortly to reflect that.
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April 16th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
For the Scryer trinket: Its all about how much expertise you have now. I’m at 37 expertise skill, so it would push me way over the hard cap. For someone at 20, the scryer trinket is worth it. (But Im not scryer).
For Aldor: Dodge is random anyway, and we’re talking about relatively small %ages. I’m going to treat the proc as being basically equivalent to 16-17 dodge rating.
So its:
9 hit + 3 expertise vs 16-17 dodge rating.
Imo its worth having both, for if I want a little more threat or a little more expertise. (But if I didnt already have the Badge neck, I’d wait to get it as a last priority).
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April 16th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
““Parry cap: bosses have at least twice the chance to parry an attack as compared to dodging it?so 11.2%.”
I think it’s 10.6% minimum parry, not 11.2%. The 0.2% level change is only applied once. Base 5% dodge, base 10% parry. Add 0.2% per level (assuming your weapon skill is capped, of course), and you get 5.6% and 10.6%.”
Actually:
Dodge % for a level 73 is 6.5%. There have been tests showing people with 6% dodge reducuction still getting dodges, and people with 6.75% not getting dodges, so the value is either 6.5% or very close (but 6.5% makes sense). Its +.5% per level not +.2%.
For parry the exact value is unknown, but it seems to be at least in the 12% range. Its possible its just 2xDodge, or 13%.
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April 16th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Article updated. The new Magic Number is a rather staggering 33. (Expertise Skill)
I swear to god if they nerf/buff this item and I have to update this sucker again, I’ll scream!!!
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April 17th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
I think it is worth mentioning that Blizzard has stated before that parry is a mechanic used to tune certain encounters. Don’t be so set-in-stone about the parry per cent, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the numbers are much different for certain bosses.
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April 18th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Now I know some of you have been discussing this, but I failed to notice a definitive breakdown, so I’ll ask for your idea:
For an Aldor Exalted Tank, for melee encounters, is Maiden’s neck or the SSO neck better?
Or in other words, would you rather have a high burst of dodge from time to time, -or- prefer a steady dodge % all throughout a fight?
Thanks in advance
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April 23rd, 2008 at 4:01 pm
^ I’d take maiden’s. For the same reason stacking EH is better than Avoidance, steadyness is much more controllable.
Although, I’m still getting my Aldor SSO neck and give it a shot for prot AoE/old content farming, I have a feeling it’ll have a positive result, if at least on my repair bills.
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April 24th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
@Galabriel. SSO neck procs for 100 dodge instead of 100 expertise for Aldor and scryer respectively. It seems like from the tone of vene’s post, it seems like the pendant would be more helpful to scryer tanks.. That is if you are exhalted with scryer which is a b**** and a half trying to attain compared to getting exhalted with aldor. If i get exhalted with scryer, i’d try to get it.
and WEWT! Our badge vendor finally opened yesterday on Drak’thul! It was utter mayhem trying to look for the vendor in the crowd of maybe 100 at a time. Shift+V helped a lot.
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May 8th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
At least on my server, getting exalted with Scryer is a lot easier now due to the flood of Sunfury Signets on the AH. Check it out if that’s your bag.
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