I’m a little behind in getting this post out, but I guess I still have some time left before the first few tankadins start rolling over to 85 and begin the arduous journey of becoming raid geared. In any case, compiled below is a list of the best survival enchants for you prot paladin for each slot and (in some cases) who sells them or what profession they are exclusive to.
Head
- Arcanum of the Earthen Ring, from Earthen Ring revered.
Cloak
- Enchant Cloak – Protection
- Flexweave Underlay if engineer. (Stacks with the enchant.)
Shoulders
- Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz is the superior shoulder enchant from Therazane when exalted.
- Lesser Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz is the lesser shoulder enchant from Therazane when honored.
- Inscription of the Earth Prince is the best choice, if you’re a scribe.
Chest
Waist
- Ebonsteel Belt Buckle is the baseline choice for everyone, regardless of professions.
- Grounded Plasma Shield is the clear choice for engineering belt tinkers. Keep in mind that if the belt backfires, it will taunt all mobs within 40 yards to you.
Wrist
- Enchant Bracers – Dodge is probably the best overall survival enchant. There’s also Enchant Bracers – Major Stamina, but in terms of ROI dodge is probably better, especially with any avoidance that pushes you towards block capping being so powerful.
- Draconic Embossment – Stamina if you’re a leatherworker. This is the clear winner.
- Socket Bracer if you’re a blacksmith.
Hands
- Enchant Gloves – Mastery is the best choice for survivability. The Glove Reinforcements from TBC are nice too, but Mastery gives a much larger benefit than what the amount of armor brings to the table.
- Socket Gloves for blacksmiths.
- Quickflip Deflection Plates for engineers. Macro this (/use 10) to Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous so you just use it off cooldown for a rolling average of damage reduction of the course of a fight.
Legs
- Charscale Leg Armor
- Charscale Leg Reinforcements if you’re a leatherworker. Same as the other one, but cheaper to make.
Feet
- Enchant Boots – Mastery if you are specced into Pursuit of Justice.
- Enchant Boots – Lavawalker if not.
Weapon
- Enchant Weapon – Windwalk. Sidenote: the proc‘s speed increase currently stacks with Pursuit of Justice (or so I hear).
Shield
- Enchant Shield – Block is a weird enchant. I’m not sure exactly what block percent the 40 rating turns into [correction: Thanks to a link tweeted to me by Shathus, the 40 rating is worth about .45% block], and with block capping is as desirable as it is, anything that gets us towards that goal is very, very welcome. The alternative is Enchant Shield – Protection when over the block cap.
Coming next week are more posts on gear and gearing for the new end game that will be launch starting Tuesday. Stay tuned for posts on the best pre-heroics tanking gear, the best pre-raid tanking gear, and a new gemming flowchart for Cata gems.
@Rigear
Ebonsteel Belt Buckle – http://www.wowhead.com/item=55054
Is for ilvl 300+ gear.
@Rhidach
Thanks for the correction Ri, fixed now!
@thorianar
The belt buckle can’t be attached to items with level higher then 300. You’ll need Ebonsteel Belt Buckle for that.
(Did a quick check and I think all Cataclysmic belts are beyond ilvl 300, but I could be wrong.)
@Rhidach
Good catch, thanks for the correction!
@vsureaper
Do we think armor will be that important in Cata, to the point that we are going to choose newer armor enchants over older stam chants (think stam to shield and stam to wrists).
I remember watching some videos from the beta and it looked like there was a lot of magic damage going out, more than the physical.
Also, will mastery be trumping stam? I was planning on sticking with tuskars vitality as a boot chant if they did not produce a Cata equivalent.
Short answer: maybe.
Long answer: It depends on what kills tanks in Cataclysm – I expect we’ll be maintaining multiple gearsets much more religiously than has become common in Wrath. Sometimes, pure stam will be required, other times you’ll have enough stam and be more concerned with damage reduction. On some light-hitting bosses you may be required to wear some ret gear due to low vengeance stacks.
@Rhidach
It definitely does depend on the environment. I can see myself, on say, a very-heavy magic damage fight (that rewards maximizing stamina) swapping out my mastery enchants/pieces to emphasize effective health. In an environment with more physical damage (which I suspect will be the norm, typically), we’ll be rewarded for avoiding/blocking more hits and saving healer mana.
Armor is a stat that gets better the more of it you have, and my thinking is that at the beginning of Cata (when armor numbers are low) and avoidance and mastery is low as well, there’ll be more advantage pushing avoidance and mastery over armor. Then, when we get to later tiers where diminishing returns are in full swing and we’re dancing with the block cap, armor will be much more desirable to enchant.
It’s a balancing act for sure, and one we don’t really know the answer to yet.
Armor does not have increasing returns. The relative damage reduction from any one point of armor is essentially identical, whether you’re at zero armor, or one point away from the cap. It’s value relative to avoidance may increase, though, given static itemization budgets and diminishing returns on avoidance. However, IF we can realistically block cap, that will likely be more important than armor, and bonus armor will likely be the prime statistic after block-capping.
@Rhidach
Pedant!
My understanding was always the opposite, but I confess to being a words man, and the numbers behind armor’s inner workings have always been strange and confusing to me. Like a solar eclipse to a simple Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.
Nonetheless, we agree on the important of block capping, which is good enough for me.
If anyone follows the official paladin forums at all, please help me out by posting a link to this in Xayton’s tanking guide:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1020823291
I’d do it myself, but I earned a 3 day ban for contributing negatively to a thread where someone was whining about prot being broken. *Sad face*