Warriors of all shapes and sizes have one thing in common, their need for a good shield. They are the life blood of any tanking strategy. They give us health, protection, and threat. For a protection warrior, the shield is often time the most important part of their inventory. This is both a blessing and curse. While a good shield can't help a bad tank become good, a bad shield can easily make a good tank bad.There are a few key stats in a shield to look at. First, the armor – one of the most important stats for a tank. It lets us take less damage from each hit, which means our health lasts longer and our raid survives more. Block Value is another important stat, and helps determine how much damage a shield will outright mitigate when an attack is blocked. Finally, stamina and defense are also always present on a shield, and are again, a key stat for a warrior.
While these stats are beautiful all in their own way, their infrequency in upgrades presents a problem for some warriors. To show what I'm talking about, let's take a look at what shields are available for the protection spec warrior at level 70.*
Platinum Shield of the Valorous – Shadow Labs
Ogri'la Aegis – Orgri'la faction
Aegis of the Sunbird – Botanica
Crest of the Sha'tar – Sha'Tar faction
Shield of Impenetrable Darkness – Nightbane in Kara
Bulwark of the Amani Empire - Jan'Alai in Zul'Aman
Aldori Legacy Defender – Gruul
Kaz'rogal's Hardened Heart – Kaz'rogal in Mount Hyjal
Bulwark of Azzinoth – Illidan in Black Temple
As you can see, there are four shields initially available to the protection spec warrior when turning 70. These can be picked up relatively easily by grinding instances or faction reputation. They offer "good enough" stats to get the warrior through the first tier of end game content, and won't really degrade the tanks performance through encounters up to Mags.
However, after T4, a problem appears. There is quite literally no shield that drops for a tank in any T5 instance. Tanks have to be lucky enough to get the shield off of Gruul or Jan'alai to drop for them. This in itself is a problem, since guilds usually do not run Gruul that often once they've killed him.
It is often times that a tank will end up doing most of SSC and TK with either the shield they got from Sha'Tar rep grinding or from Nightbane in Kara. Worse things have happened, that's for sure, but eventually all of the other tanking gear will be upgraded, except the shield. When that happens the shield becomes a bad shield for the warrior, and causes problems for him. It provides less stats than necessary, and does less threat than necessary – all the while DPS is increasing and bosses are hitting harder.
It is quite possible for a tank to go through killing Vashj, Kael'Thas, and everything up to Kaz'rogal with a shield that is a full 41 item levels less than the rest of his gear. This is the point where a tanks shield becomes a liability, and needs to be replaced in short order. I have heard first-hand accounts of tanks having awful luck and making it as far as the Illidari Council with the Crest of the Sha'Tar.
Fortunately, for the tanks lucky enough to make it to the tier 6 instances (and get lucky with a drop or two), options quickly become available from Kazrogal and Illidan. But the journey from Kara and Gruul, to Kaz and Illidan, can often times take the better part of a year – if not more. During that journey the shield's utility steadily decreases until it becomes almost worthless.
What can be done about this? Well, besides Blizzard putting in a few new shields in the game at the tier 5 level, the tank has to become proficient with mastering their skill rotation. Threat output from abilities that do not rely on the shield have to be learned the hard way, and classes often times find themselves threat capped from an equally geared tank.
How do you cope with the lack of adequate T5 shields?
*I'm not including PvP shield since they don't offer correct itemization for PvE, which is what this article is about.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
3-22-2008 @ 2:15PM
Alex said...
You forgot the ZA shield which is on par with the one from Gruul
Reply
3-22-2008 @ 2:18PM
Super_Duck said...
What about the arena shields? i've seen a warrior in t6 using s2 shield. Surely the resilience is almost wasted, but there is plenty of armor shield block value and sta.
3-22-2008 @ 2:38PM
Adam Holisky said...
Ah, gotta love not copying the list correctly from MS Word over to the blogging software.
Thanks for noticing this!
Best,
Adam.
3-22-2008 @ 2:23PM
Kamulus said...
The Season 1 Gladiator shield (and it's follow-ons from S2 and S3) are excellent shields for PvE content. I've been using the S1 shield to clear Kara and the first few bosses in ZA and it has served me well.
Even when the Shield of Impenetrable Darkness finally drops (zero drops in about six or seven tries...he won't drop the chest piece either) I'll probably stick with the S1 most of the time.
The PvP shields may not be perfectly suited for PvE, but they get the job done. It's the one "welfare epic" piece I probably won't replace anytime soon.
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3-22-2008 @ 2:24PM
Ben P said...
I know you said you are leaving out the arena shields, but a vengeful gladiator shield wall has 6132 armor, 162 block and 52 stam. None of those are wasted stats, and if you can gear right you can make the resilience useful too.
Since everyone has been complaining about not enough defense rating on their new gear, the shield wall takes away .72% chance to be crit. Honestly, it's something everyone should check out if they can't find a better shield than the crest of the sha'tar.
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3-22-2008 @ 7:06PM
Seanos said...
I agree 100%. The s2 shield isn't hard to grind for when compared with the Crest of the Sha'tar, and the stats are superior.
To those relying on a drop to upgrade from the Sha'tar shield, i say this: I've tanked and killed Nightbane that many damn times, and I've never seen the shield drop. Ever. I use the Gruul shield, but had this not dropped, I would have grabbed the s2 shield for sure. Some would argue for the shield wall over the legacy defender, but i like the hit rating.
Just need Kaz'rogal/Illidan to cough up the goods.
3-22-2008 @ 2:26PM
achefsalad said...
I don't play a tanking class, but if sheilds are so important maybe blizzard should make them a part of the armor sets.
Reply
3-22-2008 @ 2:50PM
sblnk4 said...
The guild I'm in is progressing through t6 content (having started relatively recently) and I find myself using the shield off Nightbane. My threat is keeping up through expertise itemization and careful use of hit gear (all situationally of course). It'd be nice to see Gruul's shield from my weekly PuG group, or the ZA one at some point. It always boggled me (especially pre-ZA) why there were no shields from SSC/TK. One must make due with what one has, I take pride in the fact that I'm called to the forefront for any tanking job the guild needs involving threat sensitive encounters.
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3-22-2008 @ 2:57PM
ObiChad said...
I'd add Azure-Shield of Coldarra to the list as well.
Reply
3-22-2008 @ 5:52PM
JessPachWay said...
ya it's my prot warrior's current shield, and it comes with a cotton ball glued to the center of it
3-22-2008 @ 3:18PM
Petrus said...
I agree, I find that the Azure-Shield of Coldarra is a nice fit for how easy it is to get. Add in the additional shields in 2.4 and the problem is beginning to be solved.
There's also the Netherwing quest shield easily available at 70, too.
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3-22-2008 @ 3:37PM
Anenome said...
I currently run with the S2 shield, and the ZA shield, and switch them out as needed depending on the encounter. Once again, Adam puts up a brain-dead article.
Reply
3-22-2008 @ 4:55PM
Wiedmaier said...
I know this is a coloumn about warriors, but pali tanks use shields as well, and the Shield of the Wayward footman is a exceptional one for us to wear as well, its huge amount of block rating go a long way towards our uncrushability.
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3-22-2008 @ 6:36PM
Niru said...
I'm really disappointed by this article. The number of shields left out by this article, including ones that have yet to come out (Shattered Sun shield anyone?), is really just disheartening. I feel that people not in the know about shields and upcoming warriors are being misinformed by this article.
Here's a link to all the Burning Crusade shields that are expected to exist when 2.4 comes out:
http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4.6&filter=cr=110;crs=1;crv=0
Reply
3-23-2008 @ 11:52AM
Yuri said...
That list includes all of the spell damage and healing shields in the game, none of which are any use for a warrior. The article was specifically about warrior gearing.
3-22-2008 @ 7:13PM
Rhysati said...
"guilds usually do not run Gruul that often once they've killed him."
Really? In my experience - and that of everyone I've mentioned it to - Gruul is the 25-man that's run the longest. The main reason being the DST. A trinket that beats anything available in Tier 6 content for many classes is easily worth the half hour a week needed for Gruul, expecially when your farming of T6 is completed in 2 nights,
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3-22-2008 @ 7:39PM
Sl0th said...
My guild's main tank has been incredibly lucky with shields. He got Gruul's off one of our first kills, got the ZA one fairly early on, and on our first kill of Kaz, he got his hardened heart.
Frankly, raids have been good to all our warriors in general. And healers. Our melee, ranged, and caster DPS gets reguarily screwed over. We killed Gruul at least 40 times in total (We only hit him now if there are enough bored people online on our off days.) and never once seen a Dragon Spine Trophy. It took 7 FLK kills to finally get something other than a defender legs. BT and Hyjal haven't been too bad so far, but we've only been in there a couple weeks so far, so it hasn't had time to break our hearts yet.
To quote our guild leader (who is also our main tank,) "If our DPS were as well geared as our healers and tanks are, they would be dangerous."
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3-22-2008 @ 7:54PM
Milktub said...
Every time someone says you don't need a shield to be a warrior tank, I explain one simple fact:
It will make up about 25% of your total armor.
Reply
3-22-2008 @ 8:30PM
Adam Holisky said...
w.r.t. 2.4 items - Patch 2.4 is not out yet. It won't be for a bit longer. Further more, the delinquency of tier 5 shields will continue, despite the latest content patch. Sure others will be obtainable through 5 man instances and rep grinding, but I don't talk about my Christmas presents before I have them. Of course my Christmas present this year was a food processor, but that's beside the point.
As for the arena gear shields, perhaps I should have included a few paragraphs on why they are not appropriate PvE items. Instead of going back and doing a long edit of my article, I'll write up a separate one tomorrow on the subject.
Cheers all,
Adam.
Reply
3-22-2008 @ 9:02PM
dan said...
Vengeful Gladiator's Shield Wall is second in game only to the Bulwark of Azzinoth in terms of mitigation. It's entirely appropriate for pve. Is it worth the hassle of nickle and diming your way to specced prot in the arenas or the constant respecs to do it faster? Not in my opinion but that's different than saying it's not good for pve.
On a similar note, the Vengeful Gladiator's Longbow is also great in terms of threat. Probably even less worth the hassle though. But both pvp arena items have solid use in pve content.
I'd also argue with the sentiment that guilds do gruul once and then move on. Just take a look at wowjutsu to see just how long most guilds spend lootfarming him.
That all said, your basic premise is valid. A t5 shield maybe even located in tk would be great. Further a badge shield or even bringing crafted shields into the game would be a godsend.
And like one of the earlier commenters suggested it'd be nice if blizz made a shield somewhere part of a set. Dual wielders have had high-end rare/blue mh/oh weapon sets in both vanilla wow and bc. Share the love with the tanks, blizz