If you like tanking (sure, we all do) you may be interest in this update to
yesterday's post about tier 10 tanking gear: the dodge on gloves and defense on chests is being removed and the
armor is being increased to bring them in line with the off-set tanking pieces due to the popularity of higher armor in Icecrown Citadel, and we now finally have hard numbers. So far, it looks as if the armor increases are pretty significant (882 armor on iLevel 251 gloves, 1064 armor on iLevel 251 set chestplates) and should make up for the dodge or defense lost, especially as armor has increased in popularity due to the Chill of the Throne debuff in ICC. We're told that the armor increase scales with iLevel so the iLevel 264 and 277 versions will also have proportionate armor increases. This is a patch
3.3.2 change so don't panic if your gear doesn't have the armor yet.
This makes me even more happy that I chose to focus on my tier set over offset pieces to get the four piece bonus as soon as possible. It makes these pieces far more attractive when compared to the high armor offset
Cataclysm Chestguard and
Gauntlers of the Kraken. (the Sanctified 264 versions should have exactly the same armor). I'd like to have seen a little more armor on the pieces, myself, but it's still pretty solid.
Tags: Armor, chill-of-the-throne, patch-3.3.2, Tank-plate, wow-death-knight, wow-dk, wow-paladin, wow-paladins, wow-pally, wow-pally-info, wow-patch-3.3.2, wow-warrior
Filed under: Paladin, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King
Jan 26th 2010 at 6:36PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Beldoro Jan 26th 2010 6:46PM
Feeling a little pain here, as I decided to go with getting the offset Gloves and Chest first...
Tim Jan 27th 2010 10:29AM
I got lucky because the Cloak was the largest increase for me. I feel for you.
Blizzard should allow you to switch. Who's with me?
rjk6 Jan 26th 2010 6:47PM
I thought the chest piece had its defense removed, not it's dodge. For warriors, at least.
Matthew Rossi Jan 26th 2010 6:53PM
You are absolutely correct. I'll make that change now.
rjk6 Jan 26th 2010 7:20PM
Zarhym just updated his post again; the Gauntlets of the Kraken just had their armor increased by 350, at the cost of 15 parry rating. Looks like they still want the offset pieces to have slightly more armor than the tier pieces.
ben Jan 26th 2010 6:49PM
While I see how this is good for ICC, what about when cataclysm comes? Sure, the health pool will be larger, but tanks will still be meatshields without dodge. Doesn't a balance between health, armor, and dodge make it easier on the healers?
rjk6 Jan 26th 2010 7:04PM
Well, firstly, keep in mind that gear stats will be changing a LOT in Cataclysm. There won't be defense anymore.
Secondly, they might just do the same thing in Cataclysm that they've ended up doing in Wrath of the Lich King; the earlier tiers will have dodge and parry on it, and then, in the final tiers of the expansion, to prevent avoidance from getting too high, they'll start throwing in pieces with high amounts of armor.
N-train Jan 26th 2010 7:04PM
Don't forget that Chill of the Throne goes away when you leave ICC, and even with it im still running roughly 40% avoidance on my DK and hes strictly 10 man geared. There are also some fights that are ideal with more avoidance (Saurfang) and some fights that are ideal with more health and armor (Marrowgar), it's not always about a perfect balance.
Also, we have no idea how avoidance is going to be restructured in Cata (at least not that I've heard) seeing that defense skill now accounts for dodge and parry and it's being removed in Cata, so I assume that all items with a removed stat (defense, SP) are getting some kind of reworking to be moderately useful.
Anyway, I wouldn't be concerned about it.
Ozzard Jan 27th 2010 7:16AM
As a healer, give me predictable damage over unpredictable damage any day of the week :-). If a tank's damage taken increases by (say) 3% due to fewer completely dodged hits, but decreases by 3% due to increased armour and hence smaller hits, then I'm one happy tree!
Tyr Jan 26th 2010 6:57PM
Isn't dodge just as good as it has been before Chill of The Throne? Is this a change based purely on popularity?
rjk6 Jan 26th 2010 7:06PM
Well, effective health has always been more popular than avoidance, for the most part. Armor is really just another way of putting more effective health on tanking gear.
N-train Jan 26th 2010 7:09PM
In terms of overall avoidance, I'm seeing 20% less but not really feeling it, then again the damage is structured a little differently.
This is a change based on the popularity and overall abundance of armor, all the tanking pieces from the frost vendor have extra armor, as do many of the drops in ICC, without dodge it's much more useful now (not that it ever wasnt). The whole point of Chill of the Throne was to counteract overinflated avoidance, so to keep cramming dodge and parry into t10 gear would have defeated the purpose.
Tom Jan 26th 2010 7:11PM
Dodge performs the same way and has the same effect on TTL that it does outside of ICC. Most of the "get out of Dodge" sentiment is knee-jerk reactionism.
Now, that said, it is true that the more Dodge we have (CotT doesn't count) the worse Diminishing Returns get. It could also be that ICC winds up like TotGC, where the tank-killer abilities bypassed Avoidance entirely and thus made Stamina more attractive.
Dodge is just as good as it was before. Whether or not it's as *valuable* remains to be seen.
Ianmis Jan 26th 2010 7:00PM
From what I've seen at MMO-Champion.com, it would appear that the dodge has been removed from all the t10 251 hands and the defense from the t10 251 chest for all plate classes. They also lowered the dodge on the chest for both DKs and warriors but increased the parry on the chest for warriors. My guess, they are not done with the modifications. I suppose we will know for sure when it actually comes out. Not looking forward to having to rework my defense stack with it not being on the chest. Hopefully there is enough on the rest to go around.
MusedMoose Jan 26th 2010 7:11PM
"If you like tanking (sure, we all do)"
Now, I wouldn't quite say I love tanking. I tried it, briefly. The results, like Hastur's name, are better off unspoken.
I do, however, have absolutely ridiculous amounts of love for tanks and the beatings they take. Huge thanks to everyone who suits up in plate or fur so that my mage's dress-clad purple arse survives the dungeon intact. ^_^
Snuzzle Jan 26th 2010 9:38PM
See? And bears were all worried about plate tanks' set armor being buffed. They get a rough increase of 1k armor, a good buff for them and really no sweat to bears.
As for the loss of defense on the chest, well, I suppose it sucks, but I really think more 251 tankss are swimming in overabundant def than are lamenting the loss of 70 points of the stuff. The only mention I hear of defense from plate tanks is how ridiculously easy it is to get def capped and how they wish they could dump some of it (much like how I hear hunters and rogues whine about swimming in +hit).
All in all, a good change, bravo.
Matthew Rossi Jan 26th 2010 10:46PM
It's only on one piece. I often drop my defense chest for heroics as it is and I'm still 20 points above the cap.
Atortanks Jan 26th 2010 11:33PM
From the looks of the new armor stats, looks like they're planning on making it so the first upgrade to the tier set will push the armor values over the bonus armor pieces. A bit annoying to anyone, including me, who's already gotten the bonus armor pieces, but more in line with what the tier armor should be. I still like the expertise on the Cataclysmic, and since there's no tier belt, the glove would be the only thing to shoot for. So long as your guild is able to do 10 man heroic ICC at least? Or am I being doomy, gloomy.
pfunkmort Jan 27th 2010 1:29AM
If I'm reading the stats correctly on MMO-Champion, the increased armor is white...meaning it's not bonus armor...meaning that it will be boosted by things like armor % increase talents and the 2% from the meta. Which gives Paladins, for example, 12% additional armor from the armor increase (by which green bonus armor is not affected).
As a side note - in reaction to the "ewww, no def on gear" comment...the high levels of avoidance and therefor the high levels of dr on your various avoidance stats (especially miss) as you get to 560 def and above (which you'll be at fully decked in icc gear)...means that defense actually continues to decline in desirability as a stat to stack...but that's just my understanding of it. I could be wrong.
Radu Jan 27th 2010 2:15AM
And another reason the bonus armor is nice: Armored to the Teeth.