Badges, We Need Lots of Badges

We went back and finished up the Kara we started. This was mainly an alt group. Most of the people in it were either alts new to 70 or fresh 70 mains.

We killed Curator after two wipes due to people DC'ing. I picked up a 2nd T4 token. There were only two Paladins in the Raid, and Reddrick passed on it. Since I have the S2 gloves, I went with the Ret set gloves.

Then we went and tried Illhoof.

This was the first time Aoesrus had been to Illhoof, and I have to say I was impressed with his showing. His DPS is decent considering he's Frost spec and he was quick to Ice Block out of Demon Chains.

We took 3 attempts to get Shade of Aran down. The downside to not having any Warriors or Rogues was we were a "bit" light on interrupts.

We defeated Chess on our way to Prince. We 2 shot him due to an unlucky Infernal drop in Phase 2.

We made a couple of attempts at Nethrespite. I wish Blizzard hadn't turned him into a Dragon, instead of leaving him a Demon as he was. He's a little tougher to pick up on the transitions. I not sure if it was people new to the fight or what, but he would get a little healing (blue?) beam on him every attempt. Twice we hit the enrage timer. Ouch.

It was a long and expensive night. I never complained much about Repair bills but mine are starting to get a little pricey. I don't mind this at all on Progression. Spending 30g on a farm night is a little tough, but it's worth it to be able to run with Aoes. I've really been looking forward to him getting to the level cap so we can run stuff together.


I farmed up another 11 badges in Kara, but I think it might be time for me to take a little break from there and start concentrating on ZA/Mag/SSC/TK, and see if I can get subbed in for Attumen/Moroes only. Moroes STILL owes me his Pocketwatch. It's the one drop that there just isn't a replacement for. It's basically an OH NO!! button for a class that doesn't really have one.

I missed out on a ZA run last night that formed up about an hour after the Kara did. I was bummed, but at least ZA is on a short reset.


I'm now up to 61 Badges and that means it's time for another upgrade.There are currently 8 upgrades I'm considering for my badge purchase.Iron Tusk Girdle, Girdle of Protector, Sabatons of Righteous Defender,Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx, Brooch of Deftness, Bonefist Gauntlets.

Let's go back and review how I evaluate gear for a Tankadin.

First goal is to get to 490 defense, then to get to 102.5% combined avoidance. Next we stack Armor, Stamina and Block Value until we meet the Effective Health minimum for a fight, and lastly we stack up our Pure Avoidance.

So I decided to plug each piece into http://www.warcrafter.net/. This is simply an amazing site. It reads your Armory and then lets you "sandbox" with different pieces of equipment. The really cool thing is that you can enchant and gem your new piece and see what your stats are going to be.


After running the numbers, I can stay above 490 Defense with any of these upgrades. Getting the Brooch of Deftness or the Bonefist Gauntlets would take me out of Uncrushable, so they are not an option at this point.


At this point the upgrades are all very close and I'll likely want to get them all. None of them offer the huge increases I saw when I got the Badge Chest, Legs or even Cloak.

Really I think I'm down to either the Girdle of the Protector or the Sabatons of the Righteous Defender.

Girdle of the Protector versus Crimson Girdle of Indomitable
+88 Armor
+4 Stam
-13 Def
-20 Block Rating
+27 Dodge
+ 18 spell hit
+23 Spell Damage

Sabatons of the Righteous Defender versus Elusion / Battlescar
+107 Armor/+107 Armor
+11 Stam / +17 stam
+0 socket / +2 sockets
-5 Def / -5 Def
-21 Parry / -38 dodge
+30 Block Value / +30 Block Value
+23 spell damage / +23 spell damage
+18 spell hit / +18 spell hit

Basically the spell hit and spell damage that attracts me to Belt also attracts me to the Boots. I'm trading Parry/Dodge for Block Value, Armor and Stamina on the Boots, and trading Defense and Block Rating for Dodge, Stamina, and Armor.

It seems like a classic Effective Health versus Effective Damage Frequency debate.

Given my choices, and the fact I'm tanking Mag tonight, I'm going to buy to the Sabatons of the Righteous Defender.

Comments

Raydz said…
If the plan is to run more ZA lately would you be better off buying the belt instead of boots since some really nice boots drop off bear?
CyberZombie said…
I'm pretty sure you meant http://www.warcrafter.net rather than ...warcraft.net
Ardent Defender said…
Just killing time reading your old Kara posts on my IPhone at work. Anyway I could use a lot more badges as well. As of right now I seem to be somewhere where you are here in gear with badges. Just picked up the old pre 2.3 Helm the Faceguard with 50 badges. I need 6 more badges then to get the badge cloak. So by tomorrow I'll have the badge cloak. Yeah need lots of badges. Be pugging heroics all weekend as usual farming badges.

After that think will go for the badge boots. Think my gear is coming along fine. I'm up to 13.9k unbuffed. Badges make a lot of difference. I just need to keep grinding dem badges in heroics.

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