That shield is going to get nerfed. That's a 12% block chance at 80 roughly. Add 8% riposte and you've got a tower shield with all our double attack. I could see a buckler warrior easily topping over 65-70% displayed evasion with it equipped.
that buckler used to be a round shield. it was mislabeled when it was round shield, when it got fixed i m sure Fyreflite just changed the labelling of the shield to buckler leaving the other stats alone. as much as i hope it doesnt get nerfed i m sure it will .
Drops from Protector's Realm. Pretty nice one, i guess the prot is dropping to 650-700, which would still be great upgrade. Too bad i don't have really high chances to get it from our warriors
Fabled bucklers typically top out at 6-7% block chance at their level. I'd expect it to drop not to 600-700 but drop all the way down to 480-560. That's where T8 fabled bucklers should land. Round shields should pop in around 960-1040 (12-13%), and tower shields around 1540-1620 (18-19%) as rough guidelines. Right now that buckler is in the mid-low range of a fabled round shield. Remember we had a shield with broken block chance before, the flapping wing shield in T7 (it also had round shield level protection) and it was also nerfed into the ground (as it should have been.) Hopefully they will offer a compelling upgrade to Buckler of the Howler. Really it's going to be a very difficult challenge for them to do so. BotH: 438 Protection = 5.475 block chance to an 80 (unless it gets extra penalty for being grey) T8 Fabled: 480-560: = 6-7 block chance to an 80. Half a block chance for 25 dps proc... Going to be real tough for them to provide a viable upgrade without giving us another overpowered buckler. But hey, you never know, they might not fix it and we'll end up with over 30% uncontested avoidance.
Festering Flesh buckler is Legendary has +6 defense and just over 500 Protection, no way should this buckler be LESS than that thing, it's fabled, and it's level 78. I would hope the final protection lands around 600'ish, there's a PvP buckler on the PvP server, where typically PvP items are a tad under fabled raid loot, and it's sitting in the high 500s. I saw a link somewhere of a tower shield that had like 1600-1700 protection *I could be inflating this a little but I remember seeing it going holy crap* with the way mobs hit, I hope they up the protection on all these things. As I said, I'm on a PvP server, and my guild is evil, and we're not the "uber" raiders that speak so much on these forums, they hate how I take spike damage and pretty much leave EVERYTHING to our guardian, and even when we lost our guardian they cried, we need to get one when I said I'd tank it all. It's not about the aggro, it's about the spike damage. I blame that a lot on our healers, for not paying more attention getting by on guardian abilities... A very knowledgeable player in my guild said, drop the buckler get a tower shield, but my avoidance changes like .7% , and I lose 60% double attack for that? No way, figure out how to heal me I say. I say push the shields up even higher and limit them to fighters only, not able to be used by priests, because quite honestly the way these raid mobs and regular mobs hit, I think we need a boost somewhere anyways.
Tower from X2 dragon in Kunzar has over 1700 prot and 3% block chance bonus, no way less than 600 is gonna cut it for me, 650 atleast for legendary, my current T7 legendary has 503.
I guess it could be possible that they've realized that tanks aren't that much tougher than a lot of scouts in some cases and they're trying to bring our defenses back up to par by buffing shields or something. They'll likely never give us worthwhile mitigation, so giving us overpowered shields may be the order of the day. If there's really a kite shield with something like 1700 protection (21.5% block chance) and +3% block chance on that... then yeah. That's a nearly 25% block chance shield. 30% on a Paladin.
\aITEM 2052720707 -1157905432:Shield of the Green Dragon\/a That one Kemt, and i bet there will be better ones in raids.
The ironwood buckler is the best protection value buckler that i could find for tier 6. When compared to the best protection value buckler for tier 7 you see that there is a difference of about 72%. Lets assume that the guard will be the best protection value buckler for t8. The difference between flesh and guard is about 95%. now some would argue that thats a huge % increase over 72% but you have to take into consideration that the ironwood is a mastercrafted, and the guard is a fabled raid drop. I feel the protection value is totally inline with the tier jump. If it were to be nerfed i couldnt see more then 60-80 protection being taken away.
i got a buckler for my brand spanking new zerker in the ROK area. it looks like the wheel of a ship so its kinda neat looking though its only CL 11 or 12ish. maybe they're working slowly up from tier 1.
Before I get into this, let me say I'm not asking for a nerf. In fact I'd be happy with even more evasion. Very much so. But I simply want people to think about the design problems at stake with them providing such powerful shields. You guys are looking at protection as a raw stat when it is a relative stat. Comparing previous tiers like that won't work because every level has a different divisor. In fact, every tier that is added to shields should result in a smaller percentage change because it uses a more constant growth than a multiplicative growth model. Let's compare shields that provide a 6% block chance across the board: A level 10 shield with 6 block chance = 60 protection "" 20 "" = 120 (100% growth over previous tier) "" 30 "" = 180 (50%) "" 40 "" = 240 (33%) "" 50 "" = 300 (25%) "" 60 "" = 360 (20%) "" 70 "" = 420 (16.6%) "" 80 "" = 480 (14.2% growth over previous tier) Where we should be seeing roughly 14% growth on shields from t7 to t8 we're seeing over 90%? That should sound alarm bells. Generally/Roughly the formula for protection is to block chance is: Protection / Level of Opponent = Block chance Typically speaking, the formula of shields was roughly Level * Quality * Type Where: Level = Level of Item Quality = .8 when common, 1.0 when treasured, 1.2 when legendary, 1.4 when fabled Type: = 4-5 when buckler, 8-9 when round, 12-13 when tower/kite. Now this is pretty rough for recent tiers, but you'd find this formula hardly strayed at all for much of the earlier tiers. The end result was that a fabled buckler was always around 5-7% block, a roundshield was 11-14%, and a tower/kite was 17-21 or so. Block chance was built to "Tread water" and never make meaningful progression, just provide an always constant part of the game. Much like how they've nerfed mitigation down to provide a near constant effect for all tanks, and made mitigation into an exercise in treading water. So let's look at the Guard: 985 / 80 (we'll say 80 since most players will be 80) = 12.3125% block chance That's a -buckler-? No, that's clearly in round shield territory. Though if you take the formula and treat it as a level 78 fabled roundshield: 78 * 8 * 1.4 = 873.6 (Low end) 78 * 9 * 1.4 = 982.8 (High End) Clocking in at 985 it is only 2 points of protection off what I'd expect a high end fabled roundshield to be at 78. But with new shields like the ones coming out they're allowing significant progress into block chance. It's not treading water if we're gaining up to 5% or more across the board. You can bet that's going to step on Brawler's toes. Especially when combing all of the items we can equip now that give us uncontested avoidance. Now I'm not asking for a nerf or anything. In fact, as an evasion built tank I'm all but salivating at the idea of approaching 65-70% evasion. If they leave it as is you won't hear a single complaint from me. That said, it doesn't take rocket science to see that they're taking steps into the "unsustainable growth" type item design like they did with mitigation before. Next stop diminishing returns on Protection. If the next tier had another +90% growth rate we'd be stepping into bucklers with more than 20 block chance. Now I'm sure people are going to find every exception to the formula they can to try to prove me wrong, and you're right. Exceptions do exist. Some items are heavily itemized to single stats. If that's the Guard's case, then cool. Like I said, I won't complain, I'll try to get one. It might be that this is the new design decision, and these shields may be a reflection of the devs' choice to make shields more important to tanking. But I wouldn't hold my breath.
Kemt@Venekor wrote: I agree, at this point the highest T8 Fabled Buckler I have seen has had 553 protection, pretty much falling directly inline with your calculations. Let's look at it vaugely per tier: Tier 8 Master Crafted Buckler is 397 (Mahogany) Tier 8 Master Crafted Round is 788 (Mahogany) Tier 8 Fabled (Can't remeber the name off the top of my head, looks like a curled up Dragon with its wings out, shoot Gambini on Runnyeye a tell for a link, he has one), 553 Protection. Tier 8 Fabled Round is 985 (Virtues Guard) Tier 7 Master Crafted Buckler is 343 (Ebony) Tier 7 Master Crafted Round is 686 (Ebony) Tier 7 Fabled Buckler is 438 (Howler) Tier 7 Fabled Round, dont have any on hand but I would guess it is around 790 roughly. For starters, there is no way in hell that the Virtue Guard is suppose to be a Buckler, none, zero, zilch. It is a Round shield by correct calculation and its protection value clearly shows that, just look at all of the other round shields. Skel, the reason your comparison doesn't come close is because your compairing T6 master crafted to T8 fabled......not to mention one is a Buckler and the other is a Round shield, and correctly so, so says the protection and Kemts calculations are pretty much on the money.
New buckler choice from RoK- From LU41 Notes- Virtue's Guard is now a Buckler, and adds +Combat Arts damage. Not sure if any of the other stats were adjusted...
I saw Virtue's Guard linked in WW Berserker today. It has 30 str, 34 sta, 30 agi, 200 health, 195 power, 1134 heat, mental and disease resists and +65 combat art damage. It's 986 protection. My question is, what zone does it drop in? Does anyone know? Given that it's level 78 and in the shape of the Sathirian Iksar symbol I'd guess Protector's Realm or Venril Sathir's Lair, but I can't seem to find that info anywhere. Anyone know?
Its the skele in protectors that starts with a W, I suck at names so don't remember the whole name. However, on the second page of this thread, someone posted that it drops in protectors =p
Kemt@Venekor wrote: There is, from a **** x2 in the Jungle. Shield of the Green Dragon, which provides something like 24% block chance, about what you stated. And we need all the block we can get. Buckler is not a viable option for tanking if it only has 5% block or whatever it is that Howler has, vs tier 2 and above epic mobs in RoK, it simply doesn't cut it. Even with 12.5% block chance, you're still talking half of the Kite shield from Sev. Again, it's really not viable to tank these new mobs with an ordinary buckler. With the new Virtue's Guard? Maybe, if you and your healers are gutsy, but I have a feeling that most tanks who actually have to tank mobs are still going to go with the tower shield alternative even in the presence of a 1k protection buckler. I hope they don't nerf it, because a) it looks cool, unlike any of the other bucklers we've seen in previous tiers, that made us look absolutely ridiculous, and b) it actually might stop me from speccing for tower, due to the obscene amounts of damage VP (but really any tier above 1) mobs do with their double attacks. Healers have had access to very high protection bucklers for a while (900+ prot on the one from a heroic named in Chardok, the one with 800 protection from Shard of Fear which is t7, etc), and while I know priests aren't tanks and itemization is different between the two classes, the fact that clerics can and do make use of the Shield Ally line pretty much makes the impact of high protection shields very similar between us.
