Pre-raid versus Raid loot for tanking

[Argint]

Apologies if this has already been requested, but I have had a look and didn't see anything.

In your opinion is it worth replacing preraid BiS with gear from MC? A lot of tier one has much better stats than my current gear, however it has a cost of massively cutting my defence rating. Is the extra stamina and strength worth it?
At the moment I equip might and other bits for trash, Whelps ect but on bosses I'm at a loss whether it's better to equip my old blues with defence or tier one with a lot more stamina.

As my guild is progressing into BWL soon I feel this will be a much bigger issue than it is in MC and I'd like your opinions.

[Heldunder]

Apologies if this has already been requested, but I have had a look and didn't see anything.

In your opinion is it worth replacing preraid BiS with gear from MC? A lot of tier one has much better stats than my current gear, however it has a cost of massively cutting my defence rating. Is the extra stamina and strength worth it?
At the moment I equip might and other bits for trash, Whelps ect but on bosses I'm at a loss whether it's better to equip my old blues with defence or tier one with a lot more stamina.

As my guild is progressing into BWL soon I feel this will be a much bigger issue than it is in MC and I'd like your opinions.

yes and no.

youre normal tanking set will be the new gear from MC/BWL/ZG BUT youll want to keep a second set for def cap, and FR. the end goal is to replace statless def items with gear that has both more stats and enough def to hit cap. currently with my normal prot gear i only switch my weapon and shield for def cap.

first item you want to replace is the22 def zero stam leggings. even with 100health thats a huge waste of stats for def.

replace it piece by piece knowing what you need to keep to maintain def cap.

[zmandude24]

Apologies if this has already been requested, but I have had a look and didn't see anything.

In your opinion is it worth replacing preraid BiS with gear from MC? A lot of tier one has much better stats than my current gear, however it has a cost of massively cutting my defence rating. Is the extra stamina and strength worth it?
At the moment I equip might and other bits for trash, Whelps ect but on bosses I'm at a loss whether it's better to equip my old blues with defence or tier one with a lot more stamina.

As my guild is progressing into BWL soon I feel this will be a much bigger issue than it is in MC and I'd like your opinions.

Unless you are in a situation where a crit will hit you for 70%+ of your max hp, defense cap isn't worth passing the stats on the T1 gear. Unless you are the MT, those situations won't happen for a long time. Even if you are the MT, you only need to have a defense cap set for bosses like Chromaggus while having roughly 420 defense for bosses where physical crits can't take an insane amount of your hp.

[Armilus]

Few things...

1) "Def cap" is a terrible term and I hate it. Defense is still an awesome stat even if you are beyond the "cap". The ONLY thing that changes when you hit 440 defense is that any additional defense will not lower your chance to be crit by a boss because you are already at 0%.

Many people make a huge deal of this because a crit hits for 200% (double) normal damage. The thing is, it doesn't matter if you have 440 defense or 300, bosses still have a 15% chance to land a crushing blow which hits for 150% (1.5x) normal damage. Aside from the situation where a boss might 1 shot you on a crit, crushing blows are statistically worse (half the damage increase BUT it happens 3 times more).

The only reason anyone would NEED def cap outside of a couple bosses in BWL is if you are a really bad tank and can't push shield block every 5 seconds.

2) You are massively under valuing armor and stam. Going from pre-raid to T1 is a HUGE upgrade in armor and stam. On top of that, there is enough avoidance (dodge/parry) on T1 pieces to make up for the avoidance you lose with the defense reduction. Then there are the set bonuses which are actually quite nice, especially the 8pc.

3) The only places where I would care at all about def cap are broodlord, nefarian and maybe chromaggus (depends on the breath).

Broodlord uses 2 melee abilities, knockback and mortal strike. These are in addition to his auto attacks which means you can't rely on shield block to push crits off the attack table. If you are crit with a mortal strike you are in for a bad time because not only are you low on HP, your incoming healing is also greatly reduced. I wouldn't worry too much about being a bit below the def cap on broodlord. If you gain 1,500 HP and 1,000 armor but drop from 440 to 415 defense, I would say that is definitely worth it on broodlord.

For Nef, when he uses a warrior class call you are stuck in zerker stance and can't use shield block. So for nef it is nice to be def capped but again, I'd rather have the stam/armor of T1 and be slightly under the cap.

On Chromagus you will get stunned often and can't use shield block while stunned so def cap is kinda nice but most of chromag's big damage are from nasty breath attacks and defense does absolutely nothing for that.

4) These are the only pieces I would consider using over T1.

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?item=19894
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?item=14552
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?itemset=444 (If you have 300 blacksmithing, T1 is still SLIGHTLY better for mitigation but 4% hit is amazing).

5) By the time you are on bosses where it really matters (AQ and Naxx) you will have 425-440+ defense just by gearing BiS with def cap ignored. At that point, it's easy to just shuffle a couple pieces of gear around and be at the cap when needed.


tl;dr: Def cap is massively over rated.

[Whiskra]

Hey, at least the raid gear HAS some defense on it now.