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Armor is a class of items that mitigate physical damage and are equipped in the different armor slots (head, shoulder, back, chest (aka body), wrist, hands, waist, legs, feet, and off-hand for shield). This sort of armor contributes to the Armor attribute

Armor types[]

Four armor types of generally increasing levels of effectiveness are available for Player characters to equip:

a Leather wearers can also wear Cloth.
b Mail wearers can also wear Leather and Cloth.
c Plate wearers can also wear Mail, Leather and Cloth.

Additionally, shields can be equipped by certain classes.

  • INV Shield 05 Shield - Paladin, Shaman, Warrior

Pre-Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Inlinegfx/img_link_data.json' not found. Legion pre-patch[]

Questionmark-medium This section concerns content that is potentially inaccurate.

Before Patch 7.0.3, some classes would only have access to a less protective armor type until they reached a certain level (usually level 40) and then they could wear their final armor type.

Here are the classes and the armor types they could use:

Armor equipment slots[]

There are nine core slots that a character can equip armor items into and — depending on their class — a character can optionally carry a shield in their off-hand. The nine slots for equipping armor to are the character's head, shoulder, back, chest (aka body), waist, legs, feet, wrist, and hands. If a shield is held in the off hand the character is limited to using weapons that require only one hand to use.

Note: There are rings, necklaces, trinkets, off-hand items, and weapons that provide armor; certain spells and profession-based items can provide temporary armor bonuses as well.

Damage absorption[]

Armor augments a character's health to a higher number (if the armor is positive), which represents the amount of physical damage a player can withstand. For instance, a character with 5000 health and 50% armor would be able to absorb 10000 damage before dying.

The formula for determining damage absorption is:

DA = (player health) / (1 - (% damage reduction given by armor in decimal form))

For example, a character with 1000 health and 31.24% damage reduction would be able to absorb 1000 / (1 - .3124) = 1454 (rounded) damage.

A character with 1000 health and 99.98 damage reduction would be able to absorb 1000 / (1 - .9998) = 500,000 damage.

Damage absorption only applies to physical damage.

Armor damage reduction formula[]

Questionmark-medium This section's content needs citations, references, or sources.
The formula for a level 110 player (Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Inlinegfx/img_link_data.json' not found. Patch 7.0)

DR% = (Armor / (Armor + 7390)) * 100

The formula for a level 100 player (Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Inlinegfx/img_link_data.json' not found. Patch 6.0)

DR% = (Armor / (Armor + 3609.9)) * 100

The formula for a level 90 player (Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Inlinegfx/img_link_data.json' not found. Patch 5.3)

DR% = (Armor / (Armor + 46257.5)) * 100

Level 70 lower[]

Questionmark-medium This section's content needs citations, references, or sources.
Armor

Armor vs. Damage Reduction for Level 70 Characters

According to the Blizzard UI elements, the formulas for damage reduction are as follows for Patch 2.0.8 in which Attacker = either player or mob.

Attacker Levels 1 - 59

DR% = Armor / (Armor + 400 + 85 * AttackLevel)

Attacker Levels 60+

DR% = Armor / (Armor + 400 + 85 * (AttackerLevel + 4.5 * (AttackerLevel - 59)))

Simplified, the formula becomes: DR% = Armor / (Armor + (467.5 * AttackerLevel - 22167.5))

Consider the following table which can be derived from the above formula for a lvl 70 tank taking 1000 DPS of "raw" damage:

Stat Base AC1 AC2 AC3 AC4 AC5 AC6
Armor 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 25k 30k
DPS taken 1000 666 500 410 350 300 260
DPS reduced by the last 5k armor 0 333 166 90 60 50 40
Relative DPS reduction by the last 5k armor 0 33% 25% 18% 15% 14% 13%

As can be seen, the effectiveness of adding another 5k of armor is getting lower, there is a "diminishing returns" effect with respect to the DPS reduction. It isn't as pronounced as it may seem looking at the absolute numbers, though. The last line shows that the relative value of 5k armor drops from 33% to 13%, meaning that at the start, one point of AC will be about three times as effective in terms of DPS reduction as near the end. Thus, armor exhibits diminishing returns with respect to the total amount of healing needed to keep a tank alive.

The following is the same formula for a lvl 80 tank against a level 83 mob

Stat Base AC1 AC2 AC3 AC4 AC5 AC6 AC7 AC8 AC9 AC10
Armor 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 25k 30k 35k 40k 45k 50k
DPS taken 1000 769 625 526 454 400 357 322 294 270 250
DPS reduced by the last 5k armor 0 231 144 99 72 55 43 35 28 24 20
Relative DPS reduction by the last 5k armor 0 23% 19% 16% 14% 12% 11% 10% 9% 8% 7.5%
ArmorVsTimeToLive-LVL70

Armor vs. Effective Time to Live for Level 70 Characters

However, in terms of absolute time to live with respect to melee attacks, armor has no diminishing return effect. Given a constant melee DPS amount, each additional point of armor (whether it be from 0 to 1 or from 30000 to 30001) will increase the tank's time to live by the same effective amount. 1k additional armor increases time to live by approximately 9.47% (6.01% at level 80??), as shown by the graph. The formula for calculating time to live with respect to melee attacks is:

Effective time to live = 1 / (1 - DR%) * Base time to live

Where DR% is calculated according to the above formula. In this way, armor can be thought of as increasing the effective health of the tank with respect to melee attacks. Since DR caps at 75%, effective time to live caps at 400% of the tanks base time to live (time to live if the tank had no armor).

Prior to hitting the cap, armor is certainly a very desirable stat for tanks, but difficult to find. Most items of similar quality and rarity have similar armor values, and extra armor can be found only very rarely.

Armor caps[]

The armor caps for various attackers are as follows:

Attacker
Level
Armor
Cap
70 31,672
75 38,684
80 45,697
81 47,099
82 48,502
83 49,905
84 51,307
85 52,709
86 54,112
87 55,514
88 56,916

Patch changes[]

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References[]

See also[]

External links[]

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