WoW Journal - 1-August-2005

If you ever spent several hours with a group in an instance, or going on a raid, you probably know that "I never win anything" feeling. To find an item which is better than what you are wearing, first it has to drop, and second you need to win a roll against the other people in the group interested in the same item. With all these random factors, it is perfectly possible to spend hours and hours without getting anything but vendor fodder. Then again, sometimes your luck turns.

I was with Raslebol on a UBRS raid with 14 guild mates last night. And while the last couple of raids only dropped cloth, leather, and mail armor, this time the plate was dropping heavily. With only 2 warriors in the raid, and the other one already having this or better equipment, I got it all. Skull of Gyth, Warmaster Legguards, Handcrafted Mastersmith Girdle, and Brigam Girdle. Three blue items, and one green, all of them better than what I had. My lucky day!

The only problem that these items are causing is that the Skull helmet and the Mastersmith girdle belong to a class of objects which have a very high armor class, but relatively mediocre stats. If I put on these in a raid, with the usual level 60 buffs on me, I reach an impressive armor class of 7059, giving me a 56.2% damage reduction. But with the other gear, with better stats, I have about 5% more hitpoints and damage per second. So it seems I need to find room in my bank for a alternative equipment: One set of "raid armor", with the highest possible armor class, and one set of "soloing armor", where I'd rather have a better damage output and more hitpoints. For lower level monster farming I can switch from sword and shield to wielding the huge two-handed mace, and further increase the damage output at the cost of armor.

What I should do is sit in a corner and put on and off different pieces of armor, noting every time my armor class, and the amount of damage reduction that gives. I have very much the impression that this will give a curve of diminishing returns, and I'll have to see whether AC 7000 is really much better than lets say AC 6000. And I need to determine with the DamageMeters utility how much damage I take in a typical fight, and how important it is to have 1% or 5% more or less damage reduction.

A similar question mark is the Medallion of Grand Marshall Morris, which I found in Stratholme. It only gives +7 stamina, but also adds +15 to defense. Now is that better than my previous amulet, which just gave +15 stamina? With the amulet I have a defense of "300 (+15) / 300", does that count as 315? The description of defense says that this would make me "harder to hit", but I have no idea whether that is worth giving up 80 hitpoints. Anyone know a site which explains the exact effect of the defense skill?
- posted by Tobold @ 10:43 AM Permanent Link