The New Gargoyle Runeforing thing...Follow

i think ur missing the point lol :P

The whole point being that as DK its hard to get Def cap to START raiding..
they solved that (or atleast trying) with Defense weapons and the runeforgign thingy...
It was never meant to be used in full epix if u ask me :P

You kinda said yourself. The only way to hit 540 Def pre-raid is to sacrifice every other stat in favour of getting that Def up. Gargoyle IMO is just there to give you breathing room. I agree 4% parry is awesome so the SSG won't make Swordshattering obsolete, it will merely make it not the sole choice of tanks.

Are you Def capped and happy that you couldn't make your stats better by re-gemming-enchanting for something else? Take Swordshattering.

Otherwise, SSG is your boy. He's there to give you a hypothetical 'free' 25 Def when you're planning your gear set.

using the def runeforge enchant

25 defense skill...

1 def skill = .04% dodge, .04% parry, and .04% miss
25 def skill = 1% dodge, 1% parry, and 1% miss. = 3% avoidance....

so...you lose 1% avoidance compared to sword shattering....before diminishing returns.
really you'll probably end up losing 1.5ish % avoidance for most avoidance rates, you'd need to use an avoidance calculator to see exactly how much, but either way you only lose about 1-1.5% PLUS you can now ungem and un-enchant def and take stam and avoidance on other pieces, more than making up for it

Edited, Dec 30th 2008 11:22pm by EnthalpyTheBurninator

...

well, i suppose i can speak for all of us when i say that we keep you around for your looks more than anything else.

:)P

I agree, however at the same time you get a fair amount of avoidance + stam from the enchant, plus most of the epic tanking gear doesn't have enough def on it, so you lose your epics sometimes to maintain 540 def. (I had to make that decision last night, i picked up 2 epic pieces and i could only use 1 and stay above 540). Waiting for the patch to come out...

I think what its working out right now it's worth it due to considerations to the diminishing returns on other mitigation stats AND that IBF will scale with defense. Also you mentioned the gemming which I bet alot of DKs will be doing.

Considering what GC said about us being only in T7 and the itemization isnt 'optimal' i have a feeling that the gargoyle enchant will be the main enchant through t7, as much of our tier gear doesn't supply enough defense as it is.
In T8+ i'm willing to bet that we wont need it as much anymore, and will be able to switch over to, what will be, the superior enchant in swordshattering

The only class that gets "defense" from talents at the moment is feral druids, and even then it's just a reduction in their chance to be critically hit, so they're not getting the reduction in chance to be hit overall, nor are they getting the +dodge that would come from an equivalent amount of defense.

Think of gearing to tank starter 80 heroics/raids as like getting ready for that "first date". You put on the clean clothes, the expensive cologne, get the hair behaving properly, etc. because you want to make a good first impression. By the time the 50th date rolls around, she's having to tell you to go shower, do something with your hair, and why, oh why must you always wait until you're standing right next to her to fart?

Tanks that need defense (aka all but druids) stack defense because that's the priority. Eventually, every tank reaches a point where they can safely start swapping out defense for other options (ie. stam, dodge rating, etc.)

A thought just occurred to me...when we're talking about class representation in PvE, if gearing a new level 80 DK to tank was as easy as gearing a warrior or a paladin, not only would you have an enormous number of well geared but fully incompetent tanks running around, you'd have way more tanks than any realm could possibly need. Making it easy to gear DK tanks would have killed warrior and paladin tanks. Think about it...despite class buffs that made prot warriors and paladins less of a chore to solo with, speccing protection still comes with a big tradeoff in terms of solo performance. Not only are DK the flavor of the month class, they're also very much like druids in that they can tank or dps (ie. solo well) with a simple gear swap and presence change if they invested points into the 3 "must have" tanking talents. So if you're a warrior or a paladin thinking about donning the mantle of a tank and within a week or so you realize that nobody is looking for tanks on account of all the DK running around in heroic-ready crafted sets with nicely balanced stats, what would be the incentive to become/remain protection specced?

A first glance at starter options for DK tanks might seem like Blizzard totally botched it, but I'm starting to think that maybe they delayed the viability of DK tanks until pallies and warriors could get a foothold in the heroic/raiding scene. Not so that warriors and pallies could dominate, but so that Blizzard wasn't scrambling to make warriors and pallies more viable 6 months from now because everyone was so used to picking up 1 out of the 20 DK tanks available for their PUGs.

A flat 25 defense on a weapon is enormous all by itself. That's ~120 defense rating that frees up gems/enchants for other things like stamina (survivability) and strength (bit of parry and threat). Throw in the stamina with the enchant and any DK who complains about the difficulty in getting geared to tank might as well reroll a pet class....

finally, i've been trying to find answers about what gets effected by DR, now that we know def. isnt this is so much easier to model.

time to fix my spreadsheet