defence or plating on northern barrier

Finally got an upgrade to my old badge / titansteel shields - Got a northern barrier of hodir last night.

With it's massive defence, it will already allow me to gem out one or even two defence gems and still be capped - Opinions on if I should enchant it with more def for more regemming, or put a plate on it?

I'm at a bit over 32k hp unbuffed, fairly low on avoidance and not block capped in 'main' gearset.

Perrigrin wrote:Finally got an upgrade to my old badge / titansteel shields - Got a northern barrier of hodir last night.

With it's massive defence, it will already allow me to gem out one or even two defence gems and still be capped - Opinions on if I should enchant it with more def for more regemming, or put a plate on it?

I'm at a bit over 32k hp unbuffed, fairly low on avoidance and not block capped in 'main' gearset.

I am concerned by the bolded words in your quote. Are you saying you are low on avoidance in your main tanking gear?

With regard to the what should I put on my shield question. Defence enchant for flexibility. Plating for survivability.

Choose which you need.

Put defense on your shield and get +armor on your cloak or +HP/stats on your chest if you want more EH.

Elsie wrote:Put defense on your shield and get +armor on your cloak or +HP/stats on your chest if you want more EH.

This is the sensible way to do it. [Thanks Elsie].

Barathorn wrote:

Perrigrin wrote:Finally got an upgrade to my old badge / titansteel shields - Got a northern barrier of hodir last night.

With it's massive defence, it will already allow me to gem out one or even two defence gems and still be capped - Opinions on if I should enchant it with more def for more regemming, or put a plate on it?

I'm at a bit over 32k hp unbuffed, fairly low on avoidance and not block capped in 'main' gearset.

I am concerned by the bolded words in your quote. Are you saying you are low on avoidance in your main tanking gear?

With regard to the what should I put on my shield question. Defence enchant for flexibility. Plating for survivability.

Choose which you need.

What I meant is that my avoidance isn't that great compared to the fact that I have 32k hp at my gear level, ie I've been gemming and enchanting almost exclusively for EH, leaving avoidance at what it is.

What I meant is that my avoidance isn't that great compared to the fact that I have 32k hp at my gear level, ie I've been gemming and enchanting almost exclusively for EH, leaving avoidance at what it is.

By the time you're in a good bit of ulduar gear the diminishing returns on avoidance is so bad it makes little sense to gem/enchant for avoidance (though 8 agility / 12 stam is still a good gem). The difference is though you'll need some extra source of +Defense via chest/armor/shield to maintain the defense minimum. Numerically speaking, the gains from swapping out your cloak or chest enchant are better than swapping out your shield enchant. In fact, I would swap out my shoulder enchant before the shield (going from 20 dodge / 15 defense to 30 stamina 15 resilience).

For example, I'm about as far into stamina and non-avoidance you can go and still hit 29%+ dodge with raid buffs it seems.

So what would be the choice if you're both past the 102.4% and safely over the Def min (say 545-550)?

sfrog wrote:So what would be the choice if you're both past the 102.4% and safely over the Def min (say 545-550)?

Armor rings