I'm at the point in my feral gear progression where it's about to become awkward to be crit immune. I've outgrown my Heavy Clefthoof and Earthwarden. Where do I pick up the 156 defense rating or equivalient resilience for crit immunity?
I get a total of 43 defense rating from enchants. 12 for the profession bracer enchant, 16 for the hat enchant, and 15 for the Scryer shoulder enchant. (Sorry, Aldor, you only get 10). That leaves 113 to get from gear.
Unfortunately
my head, shoulders, legs, and hands are busy wearing T4 gear and won't
be contributing any defense. In addition there are no useful defense
items for wrists or waist. And I'm pretty well set for trinkets; the
few defense trinkets
available require significant compromises. That leaves just a few slots
of gear for defense. Here's what I'm currently wearing, with defense
values:
22 Necklace of the Juggernaut
16 Slikk's Cloak of Placation
19 Violet Signet of the Great Protector
22 Ring of Unyielding Force
0 Vestments of Hibernation
0 Footwraps of Wild Encroachment
So my gear gives me another 79 defense rating. I'm still 34 short.
The
easy way to get more defense is to drop the chest or boots in favor of
Heavy Clefthoof. Switching the chest would get me 24 defense rating at
the cost of 135 tank points
(5.6 points / defense). Switching the boots would get me 21 defense for
134 tank points (6.4 points / defense). Finally I could swap out my
cloak for the Illhoof tank cloak,
8 defense for 102 tank points (12.75 points / defense). But I really
don't want to give those tank points up. Particularly the chest; it's
great for threat, too.
Another option for defense rating
is gems; for Rare gems the choices are +8 agility (53 points), +12
stamina (52 points), or +8 defense rating (24 points). The cost of
using defense gems instead of stamina / agility gems works out to 3.6
points / defense, or cheaper than swapping out my gear.
The
final option is to blow off defense rating entirely and just take
resilience instead. Resilience doesn't help with dodge or miss, but
bear druids can get away with using a little of it. There's a handy calculator for trading off resilience vs. defense, but the rule of thumb is 1 resilience =~ 1.5 defense for crit immunity. I'm short 34 defense, or 22 resilience.
The best option for a single piece of PvP gear for me is the Vindicator's Leather Boots.
I lose 50 tank points for 30 resilience =~ 45 defense, or about 1 tank
point / defense. It's actually overkill to go that far, I only need 22
resilience =~ 34 defense, but the cost is still only 1.5 tank points /
defense. So the PvP gear ends up being a better compromise than using
defense gems or using Heavy Clefthoof.
A second option for resilience is Enchant Chest - Major Resilience for +15 resilience =~ 23 defense for crit immunity. That enchant replaces Enchant Chest - Exceptional Stats, which is worth about 65 tank points, for 2.8 tank points / defense. Not worth it. (2.4 gives us Enchant Chest - Defense for 15 defense, that'll be a winner. 45 tank points, 1.3 tank points / defense.)
Bottom line; optimizing crit immunity vs. other gear is tricky, it's a constraint problem. But it's a lot simpler when you see it as %26quot;get 34 defense in your chest, your boots, or your gems%26quot;.