Theoretical Defense Capped Feral Druid +4HM rant

[MrCer]

Yes, keep in mind I did say Theoretical. I've been told many times and I've read many times, that druid tanks simply cannot get Defense capped. And if they Theoretically could get defense capped, and what cost of what stats?

I'd like to say in advance, I apologize for my rant.

I've been trying to put together a Theoretical setup that would allow a Druid tank to get as close as possible to defense cap while trying to maintain optimal stats. I won't beat around the bush. Lets jump right in

First off all, my understanding of randomized stats from greens and rare blues for "of the defense" is very simple. For example, Atal'ai Spaulders. These can come with "of the agility" which will be 20 Agility max. Where as, "of the defense" comes as 12-13. This is because (for whatever reason), "of the defense" is counted as two stats instead of one, when trying to come up with randomized stats. So it will make it pretty easy to know what blue/greens items will give "of the defense" if you know what a 2stat verison of it will give. IE: Atal'ai Spaulders of the monkey will give 12-13agi and 12-13 stam.

I am also inquiring another thing in Bear Tanking. Regardless of the acceptance of Bear tanks not being able to get defense capped, people still try to push themselves to get the best possible gear that compliment bear tanks. Knowing that, there's currently guilds on the PvP server that allow and have bear tanks in their progression raids. Yet the end results of Progression Raiding will lead to Naxx40, which will lead to the 4HM raid encounter.

The 4 HM encounter. According to several sources, requires 8 Geared tanks with T3 4pc bonus in order to properly tank the encounter without relying on major RNG luck. Now according to the 4pc bonus, it state:

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(4) Set: Improves your chance to hit with Taunt and Challenging Shout by 5%.

Now it clearly states: "Chance to hit". Meaning, equivalent to having 5% hit on your gear. Wrong. Taunts don't miss, they get resisted. and if you do put together 5%+ hit on your tank gear, it will still get resisted. Which means this bonus is an affect towards Spell Hit and/or Reducing the chance your Taunt can be resisted by 5%. Which brings me to this lovely item:

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?item=21355

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Equip: Decreases the magical resistances of your spell targets by 10.


I cannot confirm or disprove from any sources that Genesis Boots do indeed affect Taunts. Taunt spells/abilities are Physical School but do not benefit from Hit Rating. Since Hit rating does help towards Physical Abilities, but not taunt; Not to mention Taunt can be "resisted" --- That leads me to believe that This will indeed make Taunt less likely to be resisted. By how much? I have no idea seeing how These are not going to be available for another 5-6 months. However if this is the case, Druid tanks would be able to compete in all content, including 4 Horsemen encounter.


Now that that rant is over, Lets get into the Defense Cap Gear. For those who don't know. Defense Cap is 440 (300 Default + 140)

Head - Genesis Helm (3pc Bonus)
Neck - Mark of C'Thun (10 Def)
Shoulders - Atal'ai Spaulders of Defense (13 Def)
Back - Cryptfiend Silk Cloak (7 Def)
Chest - Genesis Vest (3pc Bonus)
Wrists - Cinderhide Armsplints of Defense (9 Def)
Hands - Slaghide Gauntlets of Defense (14 Def)
Waist - Adventurer's Belt of Defense (14 Def)
Legs - Adventurer's Legguards of Defense(19 Def)
Feet - Genesis Boots (3pc Bonus = 15 Def + Spell Resist)
Finger 1 - Ring of Emperor Vek'lor (9 Def)
Finger 2 - Heavy Dark Iron Ring (5 Def)
Trinket 1 - Styleen's Impeding Scarab (13 Def)
Trinket 2 - Onyxia Blood Talisman (8 Def)
Weapon - Warden Staff (10 Def)


Defense Enchants:

Core Armor Kit - Chest/Legs/Hands/Feet = (12 Def)
Bracers - (3 Def).

This setup will give you a grand total of 161 Defense. Now this is Theoretical and I cannot confirm if all these items come with "of defense". However, take this as you will. Not sure if this was helpful to anyone. But I had a major Rant-acking sensation and these are my results. Not even sure if these are the best possible stats or if the stats are available. Anyways, enjoy ^-^

[Flaat]

I like the idea, but you should really compare the stats you are losing aswell. How much stamina do you have left at that point? And how much dodge are you removing?

This being possible doesn't mean it is viable, you are basically going to be a tank decked out in greens and blues for 4horsemen...

[TheNIF]

I tried putting together a theoretical max defense gearset with 3-set Genesis and whatever defense item I could find. Set is as follows:
Genesis Helm, Vest and leggings 3-set bonus: +15 defense
Neck - Mark of C'thun: +10 defense
Atal'ai spaulders of defense: +13 defense
Cryptfiend Silk Cloak: +7 defense
Qiraji Execution bracers
Slaghide gauntlets of Defense: +15 defense
Thick Qirajihide Belt
Hive Tunneler's Boots
Ring of Emperor Vek'lor: +9 defense
Signet ring of the Bronze Dragonflight: +7 defense
Styleen's Impeding Scarab: +13 Defense
Onyxia Blood Talisman: +8 defense
Blessed Qiraji War Hammer: +8 defense
Eternal Rod of Defense (green offhand): +16 defense

Total: 121 defense. It is not possible to get any better gear than this without utterly gimping your stats. This gearset would give you about 10.300 armor (65% reduction), 9865 hp and ~27% total avoidance (dodge+chance to be missed) with full consumables and raidbuffs. And you still aren't defense capped.

Compare this to the best possible bear gearset: 11.300 hp, 14.630 armor(about 73% reduction), 26,5% total avoidance (dodge+chance to be missed). With devotion aura, superior defense pot and crystal ward you can pretty much armor cap yourself without inspiration.

Going for maximizing defense at the sacrifice of armor and health is in my opinion not worth it.

[TheNIF]

With the gear you suggest you'd be at around 9K hp, 9K armor and about 30% avoidance. That's worse stats on all three fronts than a comparable warrior at the same level of content. The only thing a druid can bring that would make them perhaps viable is more health and armor than a comparable warrior, but sacrificing that just so you can get def capped is counterproductive.

[Guanyin]

As druid tanks were used (to a very small extent) in retail vanilla, including on 4HM, I dont see a reason to prove that it works. Hell, there was even a druid main tank all the way up to C'tun. Dont remember what Guild, but shouldn't be that hard to google for if one is interested.

[Stalk]

...or you could just reach armor cap and giggle when those critical strikes bump your health bar down a few millimeters.

[Armilus]

"Reduces enemies spell resistance by 10" is NOT the same as +10% spell hit.

Spell resistance is way more complicated than melee hit/miss. I don't know the exact numbers but spells use a 2 roll system so first there is a chance for an enemy to completely resist your spell (I believe this is based purely on level) and this applies to ALL spell types. If you have something crazy like +50% spell hit, this means you will never got a full resist on that first check; however, the second effect still applies in full force which is a chance for your spell to do 0%, 25%, 50%, or 75% damage. This is based on a specific resistance type, for example frost/fire/nature/etc. So if a boss has say 200 frost resist, there is a chance that your spell will hit for 0% damage which the game also calls "resist" but really it is a different result than the "resist" that happens in the first check. Technically speaking, your spell hit, it just did 0 damage.

SO.... what does this mean for druids with genesis boots?

Well, unfortunately the boots won't do anything at all for your chance to hit with taunt. The boots reduce your enemies frost/fire/nature/arcane/shadow resistance by 10... which has absolutely no impact on Taunt/Growl. Since taunt doesn't have a spell school (it is still physical) all bosses already have 0 spell resistance towards it.

In order to avoid a resist on taunt you need stats that say "Increases your chance to hit with spells" and you need about 5%.

...or you could just reach armor cap and giggle when those critical strikes bump your health bar down a few millimeters.

I played a druid in retail and often made these same arguments.. then I played a warrior on private servers and realized that with full buffs, warriors can easily hit armor levels very close to what druids have.

Greater Stoneshield pots give 2000 armor and on horde both priests and shaman increase your armor by 25% when they get a crit heal. On alliance paladins can use lay on hands to increase your armor by 30% for 2 minutes. In my experience on alliance, the priest armor buff is up at least 70% of the time and on fights where high armor really matters, the paladin buff is up 100% of the time. On horde I assume the priest/shaman buffs will be up almost 100%. These buffs also increase the armor from the stoneshield pot.

Druids will still have more armor but unfortunately it isn't as drastic a difference after you account for full raid buffs because DR from armor is capped at 75% and druids end up way above that with these buffs.

[Theloras]

Even warriors with T3 4 piece bonus use this to cheese the 4HM encounter:

Nat Pagle's Broken Reel
Binds when picked up
Unique
Trinket
Requires Level 60
Use: Increases the chance to hit with spells by 10% for 15 sec. (cooldown 1.25 min)

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?item=19947

[Stalk]

I played a druid in retail and often made these same arguments.. then I played a warrior on private servers and realized that with full buffs, warriors can easily hit armor levels very close to what druids have

On the retail version of World of Warcraft, players were limited on buff slots before patch 1.12 because enchantments, stances, and some set bonuses occupied part of the 32 buff slot limit. Also, there are some encounters in raiding where armor reduction effects can come into play. A highly, armored druid would do well in those encounters usually. The other argument for using a druid is the extra health afforded to them over warriors. A good portion of damage from some of the horsemen was elemental which was not mitigated by armor, dodge, parry, miss, or block but having the extra health could warrant some extra time for the healers to recover that deficit.

Edit: Also, this is a thread about the Four Horseman who did not hit very hard with melee attacks and you would be lucky to see 50% uptime on Inspiration or Lay on Hands in an encounter requiring that much mobility.

[Theloras]

I played a druid in retail and often made these same arguments.. then I played a warrior on private servers and realized that with full buffs, warriors can easily hit armor levels very close to what druids have

On the retail version of World of Warcraft, players were limited on buff slots before patch 1.12 because enchantments, stances, and set bonuses occupied part of the 32 buff slot limit. Also, there are some encounters in raiding where armor reduction effects can come into play. A highly, armored druid would do well in those encounters usually. The other argument for using a druid is the extra health afforded to them over warriors. A good portion of damage from some of the horsemen was elemental which was not mitigated by armor, dodge, parry, miss, or block but having the extra health could warrant some extra time for the healers to recover that deficit.

I would agree with this and my advice to the OP would be that you would be better off OT for Patchwerk in order to soak Hateful Strikes where your armour cap and HP pool could be used to max benefit rather than gimping stats in order to achieve def cap to face 4HM.

My 2 cents at least.