Prot T10 4 piece or 264 items.

[Maythor]

Firstly I need to say sorry for the horrible formatting, as I am posting from my iPhone.

Now, I am trying to figure out if I should be going for the T10 4 piece or get the off set pieces and just pick up the 2 piece. I will say this, as of now my pally has access to 10 man loot only, and it will be a few weeks before we will attempt Arthas, so hard modes are out of the question.

So basically what I am looking at is 264 Chest, 264 Gloves and then 251 T10 shoulders and helm, or should I go for all 251 T10 pieces and hope for 25 man VoA drops?

[kakefarmer]

I don't tank myself, but the 4-set seems rather sweet seeing you actually lose 20% dodge in ICC.

The 4-set is just like a new ability imo. It can become sort of a defensive CD which you can pop in the middle of a boss fight seeing as DP will be up anyways.

[Iselian]

Unfortunately, you lose a lot of bonus armor from off-set pieces, going for the 4 piece, and I believe some stamina (though I haven't done the full comparisons myself). While the 12% dodge sounds nice, and certainly is against powerful physical-swing bosses (hi thar festergut) it's lackluster on many other areas.

Consequently, you also gain benefit from the bonus armor against those same physical bosses and on a consistent basis, instead of an all-or-nothing roll with dodge, and on a cooldown.

Dodge also does nothing against unavoidable attacks, ie Sindragosa's breath (and other various magic attacks).

Personally, I'm going to try to hold the 2set and see how that works. The 4set for me isn't quite worth it.

[Maythor]

That was my thinking also, I was planning on getting the shoulders and helm and getting the gloves and chest offset and the crafted pants. Already have the crafted boots and belt, and with the recent nerf to Sacred Duty the stamina just looked nicer overall.

[Cardolan]

From what I remember, the difference between the nonset chest, gloves and crafted legs and the 264 versions of the T10 items for those slots was somewhere in the region of 1300 armor and 60 stamina, before talents and buffs. The difference between the nonset items and the 251 versions of the T10 is going to be larger still, and the 4 set bonus really isn't worth it.

[balloonknot]

Its not worth it, i'll assume your talking about the 264 T10 and there is no question at all on the 251 T10.

The T10 helm is a solid piece, i'll probably use this anyway.

The T10 Gloves are 'OK' with the boost but kraken is still a better survivability piece.

The T10 Chest sucks mostly because the chest without def means wearing the crafted pants is going to be hard to do and stay over 540 which is a huge loss as the crafted legs are amazing for EH (armor/stam). Getting soft capped on exp with 1 item with the cata chest is also great.

The T10 Pants just don't compare to pillar's of might

The T10 Shoulders are fine and comparable to the gunship shoulders.

If you want the 2pc pick up the helm/shoulders.

The 4pc bonus is really pretty meh, yea 12% dodge on divine plea use is cool but it amounts to a 16% up time so the bonus is worth about 2% dodge over the course of the fight, which is less than the dodge libram if your using it as a every CD type of tool.

Clearly most people are going to say they would use it as a high damage cooldown (festergut 3rd inhale) but thats a pretty big roll of the dice. There difference between 40% avoidance and 52% avoidance isn't a massive survivability increase, there is still a very high likelihood your going to take hit strings. Your best off gearing to survive those hit strings and the way to do that is to stack armor and stam, which is exactly what the badge pieces offer over a 4pc T10 setup.

[Cardolan]

The T10 Shoulders are fine and comparable to the gunship shoulders.

If you think trading 22 stamina for 8 parry rating is comparable, then sure. Wasting 60 emblems and a token for shoulders that are subpar in comparison to an easy drop to obtain is stupid. If people want the 2 piece bonus, they should reconsider.

[Offhand]

Unfortunately, you lose a lot of bonus armor from off-set pieces, going for the 4 piece, and I believe some stamina (though I haven't done the full comparisons myself). While the 12% dodge sounds nice, and certainly is against powerful physical-swing bosses (hi thar festergut) it's lackluster on many other areas.

Consequently, you also gain benefit from the bonus armor against those same physical bosses and on a consistent basis, instead of an all-or-nothing roll with dodge, and on a cooldown.

Dodge also does nothing against unavoidable attacks, ie Sindragosa's breath (and other various magic attacks).

Personally, I'm going to try to hold the 2set and see how that works. The 4set for me isn't quite worth it.

You don't lose any significant bonus armor from picking up the four piece. Assuming you craft the legs and fill in the 4 set around that you're still using 3/5 bonus armor pieces in those slots. There are no bonus armor shoulders or helms as far as I'm aware.

I also think it's a bit silly to discount dodge against magic based attacks but neglect to mention armor does nothing either. You should have multiple sets of gear for different fights, including a high armor one for heavy physical fights, and a high avoidance one for gunship/saurfang.

Regardless of how you build your 4 piece, the cost basically comes down to 3 gem slots on your gear. This is assuming you're using the tier helm (which is widely regarded as BiS).

[eternityshard]

Why settle for one or the other? Get the 4-piece (sans gloves) and also craft/purchase legs and chest to swap in on extreme physical fights.

The big kicker is that the fights that favor the extra armor from the offset pieces also arguably favor the extra (on-demand) avoidance from the 4-piece.

[balloonknot]

If you think trading 22 stamina for 8 parry rating is comparable, then sure. Wasting 60 emblems and a token for shoulders that are subpar in comparison to an easy drop to obtain is stupid. If people want the 2 piece bonus, they should reconsider.

My comment was made under the assumption you would use them to gain the 2pc set bonus. Also 22 is wrong even going straight +30 stam the difference is 18 stam going straight +30. Most people would still use a 10def/15stam to pick up the +9 bonus tho.

So:

Gunship:
211stam
73 def
55 dodge
55 parry

T10:
199 stam
63 def
55 dodge
63 parry

So T10 to gunship is actually
-12 stam
-10 def
+8 parry
+2pc set bonus.

That being said, i'm not advocating picking up either T10 bonus nor do i plan to till 277, but if you want to get the head/shoulder is probably the best trade.

[balloonknot]

Assuming you can stay def capped, I would say the 4set is worth it.

I'd like to see the gear set to achieve this, with just he crafted pants and boots and mostly 264 items i am over 540 by the skin of my teeth. Chest pieces usually have a large amount of def, i know with my current gear set even going to different boots i couldn't wear the T10 chest and pillars at the same time.

[Offhand]

It's possible that's you're just at a low point in def from gear. Most BiS setups I've made ended up comfortably above the def cap by at least a few points.