Failsafe gearing guide, 4.3

I am in mixed cata epics and blues, i see tons of tanks rolling with 180k health all the time but i can't really see their mitigation levels. My mitigation is at 73% with only 132k unbuffed, is that ok to start raiding. I have been to ZG/A and got most of the stuff.

Dirtypally, Black Dragonflight US

dirtypally wrote:I am in mixed cata epics and blues, i see tons of tanks rolling with 180k health all the time but i can't really see their mitigation levels. My mitigation is at 73% with only 132k unbuffed, is that ok to start raiding. I have been to ZG/A and got most of the stuff.

Dirtypally, Black Dragonflight US

You're fine for raiding but there are quite a few things you should sort before raiding.

Missing 3 enchants, your other enchants are a very low quality, a few pieces can be reforged for more mastery, missing 4 glyphs and some of the ones you are using are not great (Exorcism).

Sorting your enchants will net you 7k hp unbuffed.

Also your CTC is 78.47 - you get 5% miss as well.
Raid buffed you have 81.46 CTC.
Raid buffed, reforged and enchanted you have 87% CTC.

thx for the look, i am going shopping for some faction gear that i need to get and gem them properly, the exo is just for fun glyph, i know if i really tweeked her i could be higher. I'll do that when i get on next and see what happens, thx again for the look and advice.

After quite some thinking I've decided against adding a drop based BoE section.

While the AH is well stocked on cheap 353 BoE, they're still not failsafe.

BoE drops will have to end up in another guide. This one is for those who are not merely paranoid -- they're actually correct about RNG deliberately targetting them.

So I'll stick to my list of what's guaranteed to be available for you. Horribly expensive in some cases, but guaranteed.

dirtypally wrote:thx for the look, i am going shopping for some faction gear that i need to get and gem them properly, the exo is just for fun glyph, i know if i really tweeked her i could be higher. I'll do that when i get on next and see what happens, thx again for the look and advice.

Did some more tweeking. Got the tanking legs from Wildhammer, gemmed and put them on. I couldn't find windwalker enchant in AH or didn't feel like 3k for the other expensive one for some other peice of gear enchant, couldn't remember what the enchant was. But i got 5 other enchants and redid my glyphs, but I'm gonna miss my exo it's always fun pulling a demon boss with a guaranteed crit and a dot.

Dirtypally, Black Dragonflight

Warning:

Agility gear will probably become useless for tanking come patch 4.2.

My gearing list stays as it is until things go live, but be careful with the more expensive agility-orientated items you find in it.

Come 4.2 I'll change the disposition of the gearing guide slightly, and move a bit in the direction of Digren's guide.

The reason is that we'll have two types of non-RNG gearing tankadins.

The green tank who recently dinged 85 and thus can't get inside a five-man heroic and even less a raid.
The hc-farmer and casual raiding tank.

Given that it's mid June and I'm sitting with a grand total of one raid-drop we can assume RNG could posit a problem even for someone who do indeed get to raid.

However, those are two distinctly different stages, and while I won't follow Digren's definition of stages I'll split gear into what can be had without setting foot in an instance, and what requires JP/VP/funny reputation gained from killing crap in instances. That way I won't feel bad when I argue that a 2200 VP raiding piece is indeed a failsafe item.

I have obsoleted the entire guide as 4.2 is being released and this guide is not yet updated. An updated version is in production.

And the guide should be current again. Please yell at me if you find glaring mistakes.

What is your opinion of http://www.wowhead.com/item=70992 and its heroic counterpart http://www.wowhead.com/item=71415.

I know the agility is useless (except for a bit of crit chance), but stick two 40 mastery gems in there and you have a normal mode cloak with 175 mastery rating and a heroic mode cloak with 193 mastery rating (reforge the hit to avoidance).

Dont forget that any other cloak would give about 200+ str, thats about as much avoidance as the hit conversion would give.
But sure, its a lot of mastery with 2 sockets.

Pyrea wrote:What is your opinion of http://www.wowhead.com/item=70992 and its heroic counterpart http://www.wowhead.com/item=71415.

I know the agility is useless (except for a bit of crit chance), but stick two 40 mastery gems in there and you have a normal mode cloak with 175 mastery rating and a heroic mode cloak with 193 mastery rating (reforge the hit to avoidance).

To start with I don't think it's failsafe. Drops from some Ryl guy?

The normal mode cloak is possibly a sidegrade to the 365 quest cloak for survival. The 40 inherent difference in mastery give the agility cloak a disadvantage of one gemslot. The remaining 40 mastery should be matched against 134 dodge rating and 54 parry rating, minus 56 avoidance from reforging the hit-rating (can't reforge into mastery).

It's a marginal gain in CTC, 41 mastery versus 130 avodance. MDR should be about similar due to higher armour in the 378 piece, and the agility cloak wins on EH with the extra stamina. That it's a loss in threat goes without saying, but we shouldn't need threat.

Overall the 378 agi cloak is a minor upgrade to the 365 tanking cloak, and the 391 obviously is a distinct upgrade.

I finally caved in and added the PvP helmets.

Comparing with Digren's list the 371 helmet qualifies as a lack-luster 359 proper tanking helmet, but not an outright bad one. The 384 one joins the club as a slightly worse Firelands normal mode tanking helmet comparision. For the failsafe tank the helmets come as a godsend, even though I'm personally slightly unhappy to see PvP gear rank that high for a tank.

Keeping me happy, however, isn't what this gear guide is about. Those helmets are simply too good not to be mentioned.

That's a very comprehensive updating, Yappo, thanks!

There is a mastery/strength on use trinket (Essence of the Eternal Flame) from the Avenger's of Hjyal Revered. Two or three trash runs would remove the need for a second Tol Barad trinket.

Have you looked at the S10 lower tier shield and weapons? The high item level on the weapon might make it good for threat/farming 5 mans. If we were in wotlk, the shield might be good for effective health but no one talks about that anymore. I know you need to earn a certain amount of honor per season to get them, but a failsafe tank might do that sort of thing. (I'll probably grind out a full PvP set eventually.) Personally, I'm more interested in the lower tier PvP items than the conquest ones - I don't do arenas, but am going to be converting excess JPs into HPs.

The report item levels for the top three legs are typos (they are not 346).

econ21 wrote:That's a very comprehensive updating, Yappo, thanks!

There is a mastery/strength on use trinket (Essence of the Eternal Flame) from the Avenger's of Hjyal Revered. Two or three trash runs would remove the need for a second Tol Barad trinket.

Have you looked at the S10 lower tier shield and weapons? The high item level on the weapon might make it good for threat/farming 5 mans. If we were in wotlk, the shield might be good for effective health but no one talks about that anymore. I know you need to earn a certain amount of honor per season to get them, but a failsafe tank might do that sort of thing. (I'll probably grind out a full PvP set eventually.) Personally, I'm more interested in the lower tier PvP items than the conquest ones - I don't do arenas, but am going to be converting excess JPs into HPs.

The report item levels for the top three legs are typos (they are not 346).

Fixed the legs. Thanks for catching that!

And about the trinks, yeah, I think I'll add two of them. The on-strength is kind of a no-brainer as it's a direct upgrade to the TB one. The agility on-use is a bit more iffy, but it does come with higher static mastery.

I'll skip on the Honor shield, because it's still 359 and just can't compete with the crafted one. I'll have a look at the Conquest one though. I'll also take a very close look at the weapons again.

I don't really agree that people don't talk about EH any longer. We just don't use that word While stamina doesn't receive much in the way of recognition, I still believe we're supposed to just know, by means of mind-reading, that armour has a place. I haven't seen the current numbers, but anything between 5 - 10 armour per point of mastery sounds reasonable. The wide range depending on how you value the new on-use effect of Holy Shield.

Anyway, somewhere down the line we'll have to decide if we're going to shop proper tanking items for Valor or the best tanking items. I'm aware that shields and weapons require us to amass a big chunk of Conquest, but look at it this way: You pick up the cloak and the helmet. Now you 'only' have to pad out some 4k CP on 'crap' PvP gear before you can start collecting for the weapon. I don't know if the shield can be bought before the 11650 CP (ie if it could be shopped in the 'crap' interval). The overhead is still 'only' four weeks, even if you collect zero CP the 'natural' way.

Ah, the honor weapons and shields are 359. I missed that - I'd assumed they were 371 or something. Yes, forget them then.

Very easy to follow your guide, which is what I've always liked about it. You do have a typo in the Vicious Gladiator's helm name. (I keep thinking it says Viscous, which is pretty amusing for some reason. =p Blizzard should give us a Sticky Helm of Goo with appropriate graphic.)

While leaving out profession gear is reasonable, I think it could help those who have a profession to see where they can benefit from it. For example, the "problematic" head slot is solved for engineers, provided they know where that helm falls in the comparison. And alchemists and jewelcrafters have better trinket options (though maybe the JC trinkets aren't failsafe? I'm not sure how those drops work).

I've added trinkets and the 378 PvP weapon. PvP shields will have to stay out unless you convince me that the extra stamina and armour is worth it.

Thanks for catching the typo, Digren

I'll look at the profession self-only alternatives.

Digren wrote:While leaving out profession gear is reasonable, I think it could help those who have a profession to see where they can benefit from it. For example, the "problematic" head slot is solved for engineers, provided they know where that helm falls in the comparison. And alchemists and jewelcrafters have better trinket options (though maybe the JC trinkets aren't failsafe? I'm not sure how those drops work).

Following the wowhead comments, I got all my paladin's JC trinket quest items within about an hour. How fast you get them is RNG but I'd still consider them failsafe because you can farm the quest items solo, for days (which won't be necessary).

I see you have listed the PvP Helmet, Back, and a few other items, but not the waist item.

What do you think of that one?
http://www.wowhead.com/item=70326

Khami wrote:I see you have listed the PvP Helmet, Back, and a few other items, but not the waist item.

What do you think of that one?
http://www.wowhead.com/item=70326

Added. Sorry for the delay. It's a high stamina CTC option.

And I'm now obsoleting this guide until I have rewritten it for 4.3. Sure, it's valid for a few days more, but as it includes advice involving grinding dailies and whatnot, this guide needs an update valid for the upcoming patch.

I'll label the guide obsolete, then as WiP and, when I believe I'm finished with the update, finally I'll simply remove any temporary labels.

yappo wrote:And I'm now obsoleting this guide until I have rewritten it for 4.3.

Looking at Vexryn's list, it seems now is a good time to be a failsafe tank. The list of VP gear in 4.3 is particularly impressive. I thought removing tier gear would mean a return to putting a distance between raiders and non-raiders, but the reverse if anything seems to be the case.

And while not strictly failsafe, the new 5 mans seem to fill the remaining slots with Firelands standard gear and I suspect the drops there will be de facto failsafe, at least for anyone capping VP points via 5 mans.

On the downside, it's another lengthy VP grind. I'll have to replace every gear slot, I reckon and with SWTOR around the corner, am not sure I will have the staying power. But at least, I will have stuff to do if I want to.

econ21 wrote:Looking at Vexryn's list, it seems now is a good time to be a failsafe tank. The list of VP gear in 4.3 is particularly impressive. I thought removing tier gear would mean a return to putting a distance between raiders and non-raiders, but the reverse if anything seems to be the case.

The main problem I see with the failsafe gear (as listed from PTR-sources), is that it seems to be mostly avoidance/avoidance and avoidance/threat. It could mean that the failsafe tank will either have to rely on 378 five-man drops to reach 102.4 or bite the bullet and go for the 39x VP gear for superior stamina, but accept that the occasional attack will land in the face.

With the ilvls and reforging, you don't think it would be possible to get full CTC from failsafe choices even if they're A/A? I could see an issue maybe if you have a lot of A/T, and with the VP cap raised slightly (and much easier to obtain) I would suspect using VP items as "failsafe" wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.