Failsafe gearing guide, 4.3

Shoju wrote:First, Thanks Yappo for continuing your failsafe guides. I appreciate the work that you put into it.

I wrote up something very similar to this on my guild's website. I noticed a couple of differences between our lists and wanted to bring a couple of them up.

• I personally do not think that Justice Point Shield is worth overlooking Twilight Mirrorshield- Quests : Twilight Highlands.
  
  You can have this shield within ~30-60 minutes of time in the zone (actually you end up going back to SW/Org to finish this quest, and unlock the zone), and you can put those JP's towards other items, and save the shield for once you are ready to roll into raids if you don't have a heroic shield yet.
  
• The main reason that I am going with the rep order that I am (dragonmaw -> Ramkahen -> Hyjal -> ER/Therazane), is that the enchants, while an obvious marked improvement over the WotLK versions, are just not as noticable of an upgrade as the gear is.
  
  I also based it on personal experience to a degree. I didn't quest out any single zone before 85. I did Vash'jir (100 or so), Hyjal (to get the tabard), Deepholm (to unlock Therazane Tabard), Uldum (to unlock Ramkahen tabard), and then Highlands, while I was tanking dungeons. I think Priority #1 for a "non hardcore" tank is revered with their Highlands rep (dorfs or orcs). The JP helm wastes too much itemization on STR for my tastes.
  
• There is only 1 other guaranteed tank trinket in cata quests, and i'm sure you left it off the list because of low ilvl, but it is Insignia of Diplomacy In deepholm for those who struggle getting tank trinkets.
  
  
• I would suggest adding the chest piece from Grim Batol to the list as a pre-cursor to the JP Chest.
  Item Breastplate of the Witness - Quest - Grim Batol 5 man dungeon. While the JP piece is clearly superior, I think that the BP of the Witness is good enough to stand on your own until you get the JP piece.

Again, thanks for the list, wanted to toss a couple of things out there as intermediary pieces / stopgaps while working on other things. I think the big difference between your list and my list comes down to where they are looking to end up. I did mine mainly as a guide for those who are looking to get heroic ready, and yours is geared towards those looking to get into raids. With my guild not raiding for another 22 days, and most of my audience moving at a slower pace than most, there are obvious differences.

I am personally geared with the Twilight Mirror Shield, which goes to show I'm still having the living hell beaten out of me on heroics.

You (as in all readers of this list) have to keep in mind that it's being designed from a point of view that is indeed more progressed than I personally am.

I'm assuming that the reader of ths list (today or in a month's time) is already clad for heroics.

I'm also adamant that the price/performance curve for gaining rep rewards finishing all zones as far as quests go, and that, in turn, will leave the tank honored with all factions, not to speak of geared in all available quest-rewards.

Based on the above 'rules' you either already have access to the Earthen Ring head-chant, or need a very minor dungeon-run to get revered, and you're honored with Therazane, giving you access to the minor shoulder enchant.

As long as we agree that this is correct, then it remains to gear for raids, for which this list is supposed to help if RNG screws you over.

Less than one month will see you exalted with Therazane, so just leave that tabard aside (apart from tabard-achievement).

We're thus left with Hyjal, Uldum and Highlands rep to clear out. My argument for hitting the Hyjal/Uldum facts with a tabard is that you gain rep with Highlands from daily quests.

Being heroics ready (and actually running heroics to get geared for raids) you're supposed to ramp up JP at an alarming rate (which I personally am not). I would expect one JP piece per week seems reasonable.

Thanks, however, for valuable input. It shows how and whyI need to be clearer in the guide. I'll make changes to it in order to rectify those weaknesses.

I've completed only four heroics and figure I am now raid ready - average item level 346. One does not need to grind a lot of JPs to get to that position. I think only four of my slots are filled with JP items. It seems different from late stage wotlk, I guess because the heroics dungeon drops and some reputation items are as good as, or better, than the JP items. But that cap of 4000 JPs carried forward from Wotlk was a big blessing that players won't have in future.

Having attained exalted with Wildhammer and facing the uphill climb with Ramkahen I now fully agree with your rep recommendation. Indeed it saddens me that I no longer need to do the Wildhammer quests - there are few things more fun in WoW than flying while under the influence of Dwarven ale.

yappo wrote:I am personally geared with the Twilight Mirror Shield, which goes to show I'm still having the living hell beaten out of me on heroics.

You (as in all readers of this list) have to keep in mind that it's being designed from a point of view that is indeed more progressed than I personally am.

I'm assuming that the reader of ths list (today or in a month's time) is already clad for heroics.

I'm also adamant that the price/performance curve for gaining rep rewards finishing all zones as far as quests go, and that, in turn, will leave the tank honored with all factions, not to speak of geared in all available quest-rewards.

Based on the above 'rules' you either already have access to the Earthen Ring head-chant, or need a very minor dungeon-run to get revered, and you're honored with Therazane, giving you access to the minor shoulder enchant.

As long as we agree that this is correct, then it remains to gear for raids, for which this list is supposed to help if RNG screws you over.

Less than one month will see you exalted with Therazane, so just leave that tabard aside (apart from tabard-achievement).

We're thus left with Hyjal, Uldum and Highlands rep to clear out. My argument for hitting the Hyjal/Uldum facts with a tabard is that you gain rep with Highlands from daily quests.

Being heroics ready (and actually running heroics to get geared for raids) you're supposed to ramp up JP at an alarming rate (which I personally am not). I would expect one JP piece per week seems reasonable.

Thanks, however, for valuable input. It shows how and whyI need to be clearer in the guide. I'll make changes to it in order to rectify those weaknesses.

I figured that it was a difference of intended audience for the most part, though I don't know if I follow you on

I'm also adamant that the price/performance curve for gaining rep rewards finishing all zones as far as quests go, and that, in turn, will leave the tank honored with all factions, not to speak of geared in all available quest-rewards.

Are you saying that you expect people to have quested out all zones before they are ready for your guide / heroics? I don't see that many people who quest out entire zones (especially tanks) when they are moving on and leveling. I went back and checked. At the time of hitting 85, I had done

Vash'jir - 106
Hyjal - 16
Deepholm - 84
Uldum - 34
Highlands - ~50 I was questing in Highlands when I hit 85.

Because I went to Vash'jir, and was tanking dungeons while I leveled, I never went to Hyjal. I didn't go to hyjal until i was ready to move on to deepholm, and decided I would get the tabard on the way. I was 84 when I left deepholm, and moved to Uldum to get the tabard, and then stuck around leveling there while waiting on a guild group to get ready so that I could summon them to Lost City.

I think expecting people to be honored with all factions is an unrealistic expectation. Especially for a tank. I could be wrong, and if I am, I will retract my statement.

If I would have stayed in a zone and quested it out completely before moving to another zone, I would have been further behind on Ramkahen, Hyjal, and Highlands rep, as I would have leveled to 85 somewhere in Deepholm due to dungeon runs. I also would be lacking several quest rewards from higher level content, because of this.

I personally feel that maximizing your upgrade potential is the best way to work the tabards, even at heroic running levels. Especially when the Exalted level reputation piece is not just a 359 epic, but on par / better than 359 raid drops. In the case of both the boots from the highlands rep, and the bracers from Ramkahen, These are both on par with drops from T11 content, in the issue of the bracers, they are the only alternative to a single pair of tank bracers in Raid Content.

As far as being close on the Earthen Ring Reputation, Remember that some people quested before the earthen ring reputation hotfix in Vash'jir, and we were not compensated for our lost rep.

Shoju wrote:I think expecting people to be honored with all factions is an unrealistic expectation. Especially for a tank. I could be wrong, and if I am, I will retract my statement.

It is not "questing out the zone" but finishing the quests for that faction.

- Not doing Vashj'ir and starting at Hyjal you will get Revered with Guardians of Hyjal from questing alone. Every quest there gives rep for them.
- You should hit honored with both Earthen Ring and Therazane from Deepholm, testing out Earthen Ring on my other paladin at the moment as she did not do Vashj'ir.
- Just doing the basic Cat People quests in Uldum will get you honored.
- Questing out your faction in TH will get you Honored with them quite easily.

If you're planning out the best path to get geared as a tank you will plan out the best Rep from Questing path which basically means Hyjal and Earthen Ring to honored for the two pieces there, Therazane to Honored/Revered depending on race, Wildhammer to Revered, and Cat people to whatever from questing, the ring at revered is dripping with mastery.

Combined answer to both of you.

As far as the repis concerned, yes, that honoured part is a baseline coming from padding out all the rep you can from regular questing. This simply because it's extremely time-efficient.

If you're hitting 85 before you reach honored with everyone really doesn't matter all that much. You'll start out with your dailies but should consider the remaning normal quests as additional 'dailies' available for you.

Then, I WOULD recommend questing out the zones anyway. The reason for this is two-fold. However, none of them, arguably, has much to do with this failsafe guide.

1) You're part of a 10-man raiding guild. Until your guild hit guild-level 25 you should help padding out the guild-xp needed not to fall too far behind larger guilds.

2) The gold gained from finishing the quests is simply astonishing for any player not used to playing the AH.

I have an extra toon just for handling the AH. Nothing fancy, but enough to set me up with around 30k gold after paying for 310 riding. I was originally planning to use the 25k (out of that 30) sitting on my bank-toon for making certain my main never suffered from wanting blacksmithing and/or BoE but being unable to pay for it. I haven't even attempted to start running the AH during Cataclysm, but my main still has 3k gold left after buying materials and BoE for well in excess of 15k gold. Note that my tanking main effectively PAYS for each and every dungeon he runs (less now than earlier) due to punative repair-costs for handling wipes.

Minor edits made to take into account the good advice given in this thread.

First, thanks for putting this together, it's very useful.

I ran my dailies today and got the following:

Wildhammer - 5 dailies - 1,553 rep - 70g 62s
Therazane - 7 dailies - 2,128 rep - 79g 96s
Ramkahen - 2 dailies - 460 rep - 18g 31s
Baradin's Wardens - 6 dailies - 1,725 rep - 99g 24s

For a total of 268g 13s per day, not including sale of any loot or repairs.

(I'm a human in a level 4 guild, so I'm getting the 5% rep guild bonus)

Thanks for the data on rep.

In all likelyhood I'll have to make some rather horrid changes to the list. I'm beginning to suspect that dps-gear with good chunks of mastery might be better tanking items than corresponding tanking gear with dodge/parry and zero mastery.

Hypothetical example: 100 mastery and 100 haste (the worst possible dps-stat for us) actually looks better to me than 100 dodge and 100 parry, despite the latter screaming: I'm a dedicated piece of tanking gear!

Before I start juggling around too much with strange equipment I'll need to verify those suspicions.

79.68 mastery rating gives 1% block
For me, around 206 dodge rating gives 1% dodge.
So gear with mastery plus something reforgeable will certainly get you further towards the block cap than pure avoidance gear.

However, in terms of overall damage reduction, I think dps gear with mastery is only more attractive (for survivability) if it comes with agility rather than strength.

A unit of dodge gives me 0.004854 (i.e. 1/206) damage reduction.
A unit of mastery rating gives 0.00502 (0.4/79.68)

These differences seem quite small - mastery is not 42% better than avoidance. However, given that agility gives 60% dodge whereas strength gives only 25% parry, it could be that mastery plus agility gear is better for damage reduction than avoidance gear (the Earthen ring epic ring has been cited as such a case).

I cannot see a huge amount of plate items with agility on them being available in honesty. I think we are probably only going to be looking at rings and trinkets with regard to agility.

Barathorn

Edited and added commentary to the links.

In your description of the epic crafted chest you say not to buy it because of the lack of sockets. The patch notes for 4.0.6 say:

"A socket has been added to all crafted epic armor pieces that did not already have one."

http://www.wowhead.com/patchnotes=4.0.6-ptr

Not sure if this will come to pass or when 4.0.6 will go live, but I thought I'd add that. (mostly cause I'm wearing that chest and hoping it adds sockets).

nalenb wrote:In your description of the epic crafted chest you say not to buy it because of the lack of sockets. The patch notes for 4.0.6 say:

"A socket has been added to all crafted epic armor pieces that did not already have one."

http://www.wowhead.com/patchnotes=4.0.6-ptr

Not sure if this will come to pass or when 4.0.6 will go live, but I thought I'd add that. (mostly cause I'm wearing that chest and hoping it adds sockets).

I aim at keeping this list up-to-date, so when I can see the 4.0.6 items on live I'll change my recommendations accordingly. However, I won't change them based on premonitions

Personally I hope the socketing will make the crafted chest better than the blue. I have mats waiting for that to happen

First off, thanks for the great guide!

This is as much a question as a possible item to mention for an upgrade that (I think )

1) Is better than the earthen ring legs and could save one the JP's to spend on other stuff.
2) comes from a heroic that's so easy and fast, I feel its kinda between reg and heroic.

Legguards of Winnowing Windhttp://www.wowhead.com/item=56367

These legs dropped so much for my guild I eventually won one greeding and was going to sell then when noticed all the mastery (even the socket bonus is mastery), so after reforging the crit to Dodge they seemed far superior to my Earthen ring rep pants.

I kinda consider heroic VP the easiest of heroics so I thought it might have a place for small guilds not fully random heroic ready but fully able to finish the easiest one (if that makes any sense haha) I know for several weeks random heroics for VP's just were not an option for me as I only run with guildies and they were a bit behind getting geared.

-cheers

thayne183 wrote:1) Is better than the earthen ring legs and could save one the JP's to spend on other stuff.
2) comes from a heroic that's so easy and fast, I feel its kinda between reg and heroic.

Legguards of Winnowing Windhttp://www.wowhead.com/item=56367

While there are several drops from heroic 5-mans which are better than those listed here, they all share one component -- they're drops. This list consists exclusively of gear that you're 100% guaranteed to get.

Edited the list to acknowledge that the 4.0.6 changes made the crafted tanking chest a little less awful, and outright interesting for fights where you depend on generating Holy Power.

Also noted that the crafted tanking belt went from good to better.

I realize it's in direct competition with the trinkets, but Hellscream's Reach now has a 1h Str weapon (I can't remember the name of it off hand or I'd give the link.) Not sure how good that would be, but it's another option. Also there are now agi/str trinkets from alch. Obviously threat isn't a huge issue, but the agi might be useful for dodge.

Skye1013 wrote:I realize it's in direct competition with the trinkets, but Hellscream's Reach now has a 1h Str weapon (I can't remember the name of it off hand or I'd give the link.) Not sure how good that would be, but it's another option. Also there are now agi/str trinkets from alch. Obviously threat isn't a huge issue, but the agi might be useful for dodge.

I'll check that weapon.
I'm not listing BoP items from professions (as you need to be, for example, an alchemist to get them).

Added the Tol Barad weapon to the list. Marked it as low priority as five man heroics simply rain weapons over people. However, the TB weapon is indeed a failsafe solution for the hysterically unlucky.

It might be worth adding an AH "watch list" for BoE epics:

[Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace] : BoE Dungeon Drop
[Heaving Plates of Protection] : The Bastion of Twilight (Normal) BoE Raid Drop
[Pauldrons of Edward the Odd] : BoE World Drop
[Icebone Hauberk] : BoE Dungeon Drop
[Soul Blade]
[Blockade's Lost Shield] : BoE

They won't come cheap, but I think a failsafe guide is particularly useful for people - perhaps like ourselves - who struggle to get raid drops and may be willing and able to fork out where possible to compensate. I list them because, with the exception of the hauberk, they are very nice items that you won't want to replace in a hurry.

econ21 wrote:It might be worth adding an AH "watch list" for BoE epics:

[Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace] : BoE Dungeon Drop
[Heaving Plates of Protection] : The Bastion of Twilight (Normal) BoE Raid Drop
[Pauldrons of Edward the Odd] : BoE World Drop
[Icebone Hauberk] : BoE Dungeon Drop
[Soul Blade]
[Blockade's Lost Shield] : BoE

They won't come cheap, but I think a failsafe guide is particularly useful for people - perhaps like ourselves - who struggle to get raid drops and may be willing and able to fork out where possible to compensate. I list them because, with the exception of the hauberk, they are very nice items that you won't want to replace in a hurry.

I would have added them long ago hadn't it been for my experience of a low pop server. It took until today until I could lay my hands on the Soul Blade. Party due to gold-constraints, but mostly because today was the second time I even SAW one on the AH. I have yet to see the necklace or shield. I bought the only copy of Heaving plates I've ever seen, and I bought the only copy of Edwards I've seen for a guildie. I got the Hauberk cheap for my threat and interrupt set (two different sets, and I guess I COULD build the crafted chest for better threat, but the Hauberk is less bad for a tank than the crafted due to two yellow sockets). Once again that hauberk was the sole copy I've ever seen. Thus 'failsafe' doesn't really ring true.

Updated to take the new gemslot for the crafted shield into consideration.

I'll see if 4.1 comes with any other changes as far as the failsafe list goes. The quests I've completed in the new heroics haven't yielded anything worth adding, but I haven't done them all.

In the new ZG/ZA we have a few BoE drops which might be worth adding, especially since some of them can go for very little due to being items for which there are exalted rep alternatives or just not a lot of demand:
http://www.wowhead.com/item=69801 - baby version of the Ramkahen bracers, but with more strength
http://www.wowhead.com/item=69800 - dodge/parry cloak, on our high population server there's a shitton up for 600-700g each, possibly an option for someone who wants to focus on grinding other reps than Hyjal first I guess
http://www.wowhead.com/item=69802 - hit/expertise ring, obviously not an optimal tank piece but it might be worth a look for some aspiring tanks
http://www.wowhead.com/item=69803 - hit/haste mace, not great but on some realms they go for as little as 500g

Archeth wrote:In the new ZG/ZA we have a few BoE drops which might be worth adding, especially since some of them can go for very little due to being items for which there are exalted rep alternatives or just not a lot of demand:
http://www.wowhead.com/item=69801 - baby version of the Ramkahen bracers, but with more strength
http://www.wowhead.com/item=69800 - dodge/parry cloak, on our high population server there's a shitton up for 600-700g each, possibly an option for someone who wants to focus on grinding other reps than Hyjal first I guess
http://www.wowhead.com/item=69802 - hit/expertise ring, obviously not an optimal tank piece but it might be worth a look for some aspiring tanks
http://www.wowhead.com/item=69803 - hit/haste mace, not great but on some realms they go for as little as 500g

Thanks.

I'll probably add a BoE -section as I'm seeing the AH getting swamped with the items.

Updated.

Fixing some errors and added a short section on gearing for farm-content.