Durability

Were you looking for information about the Blizzard Repair tool?

Durability is a property of equippable items that determines how much damage they can take before being broken. Broken items can always be repaired; gear never breaks permanently. Durability damage is not the same as normal damage.

When using the tracking system with the minimap NPCs that can repair will appear with an anvil () at their locations.

All armor slots take durability loss excluding: Neck, Tabard, Back, Finger, and Trinket slots.

Repairing items

Any NPC who sells weapons or armor (or Blacksmithing supplies) can repair durability.

• As of Patch 2.3, your pointer changes when you move it over a repair-capable NPC:

  interact with repairing vendor repairing vendor out of range

• Repair all items (button should look like an anvil with a gold +).
• Repair a single item (button should look like a hammer).
• The "repair all items" button also repairs items on your inventory. It's useful after you've lost durability on them by resurrecting at a Spirit Healer
• If you belong to a guild and have the required access, you can also use your guild's funds to repair (there is a specific button to do this, to the right of the "Repair all" one.

Item repair is not currently an available skill for Player Characters, but engineers can craft repair bots.

Repair cost

The base cost to repair an uncommon armor piece (no weapons or shields) assuming you are neutral with the vendor is:

Durability points to be repaired * (ilevel - 32.5) * 0.02 silver

The base cost to repair a rare armor piece (no weapons or shields) assuming you are neutral with the vendor is:

Durability points to be repaired * (ilevel - 32.5) * 0.025 silver

The base cost to repair an epic armor piece (no weapons or shields) assuming you are neutral with the vendor is:

Durability points to be repaired * (ilevel - 32.5) * 0.05 silver

The reputation discounts are taken from the prices above as follows: 5% for friendly, 10% for honored, 15% for revered and 20% for exalted.

Durability loss

The following situations can reduce an item's durability:

• Being in combat at all will cause all equipped items to gradually lose durability, regardless of whether any damage is taken or dealt.
• There is a small chance with each hit by your weapon that it will lose 1 durability point.
• There is a small chance with each spell cast that you will lose 1 durability point to your weapon.
• There is a small chance with each hit absorbed by your armor that it will lose 1 durability point.
• When you die, 10% durability is lost on all equipped items (that have a durability rating). This is 10% of maximum durability, not remaining durability. You will not lose 10% durability on death if you are killed in PvP combat by another player (if a PvP flagged guard or other NPC kills you, you still lose durability) or if your death is suicide through using an item or spell that kills you (this excludes environmental damage, such as falling) or if the death is due to an encounter's mechanic (like tanking Steelbreaker with him dying as the last member - Meltdown).
• When you use the services of a Spirit Healer, you lose 25% durability on all equipped items and items in your bags, on top of the 10% durability loss on your equipped items you already lost when you died.

• It is possible to use a macro or Equipment Manager to remove damageable equipment if you know you’re about to die (such as if you’re falling or mid-wipe) to save yourself some or all of a repair bill but such macros will not remove all items while in combat (only changeable slots, like weapons, shields, ranged weapons; Relics do not take damage so they don't need removing) but even a few items removed will save a little. Such macros will not remove ANY items if you do not have AT LEAST the minimum number of slots free in your bags as items you’re trying to remove (there are 11 damageable equipment slots, 8 armor slots and up to 3 additional: main-hand, off-hand, and ranged).

Low durability

From Blizzard: "Items remain at full effectiveness until they have no durability. Their power does not degrade."

When the durability on a specific item drops below 25%, a small stick figure (looks like an armored soldier) appears below the Mini-Map and the corresponding part of the stick figure (head, shoulders, chest, etc.) appears in yellow.

When the durability on a specific item reaches 0%, the corresponding part of the stick figure (head, shoulders, chest, etc.) appears in red. Once the durability of the item reaches 0%, the player can still wear or wield the item, but he does not receive any stat benefits (stats, resistances or armor). If a weapon breaks though, you fight as if unarmed. Items cannot permanently break!

Note: if the broken item is a set item, the set bonuses will still be active.

Maximum durability

The maximum durability of an item depends on its quality, its type (slot, armor type, weapon type) and for items of level 28 and lower also on item level. The tables below show the durability of items of item level 29 and higher.

Armor maximum durability

Slot	Poor, common, and uncommon				Rare				Epic
	Cloth	Leather	Mail	Plate	Cloth	Leather	Mail	Plate	Cloth	Leather	Mail	Plate
hands/waist/wrist	25	30	35	40	30	35	40	45	35	40	50	55
feet	35	45	50	55	40	50	60	65	50	60	70	75
head/shoulder	45	50	60	70	50	60	70	80	60	70	85	100
legs	55	65	75	85	65	75	90	100	75	90	105	120
chest	70	85	100	115	80	100	120	135	100	120	140	165

Weapon and shield maximum durability

Slot	Poor, common, and uncommon	Rare	Epic	Legendary
wand, dagger, fist weapon	55	65	75	?
bow, crossbow, gun	65	75	90	110
1h-axe, 1h-sword, 1h-mace	75	90	105	125
shield, staff, polearm, 2h-mace, 2h-sword, 2h-axe	85	100	120	145

Calculation

The numbers presented in the previous section can also be calculated reasonably well using the following formulae.

Armor

For all 60 possible combinations of type, quality and armor class, this formula correctly calculates the durability for 57 combinations. For three combinations the predicted durability is either 5 points too high or 5 points too low:

Durability = 5 x round(23 x Cquality x Ctype x Carmor)

With Cquality, Ctype and Carmor according to these values:

Ctype values

Slot	Ctype
hand/waist/wrist	0.35
feet	0.49
shoulder/head	0.59
legs	0.75
chest	1.00

Carmor values

Type	Carmor
cloth	0.63
leather	0.76
mail	0.89
plate	1.00

Cquality values

Quality	Cquality
epic	1.37
rare	1.17
uncommon	1.00
common	?
poor	?

Weapons and Shields

There is a similar formula that can be used to calculate the durability of weapons and shields which correctly calculates the durability for all weapons, except for epic two-handers and shields, for which the value is 5 points too low:

Durability = 5 x round(17 x Cquality x Cwtype)

With Cwtype according to these values:

Cwtype values

Type	Cquality
wand, dagger, fist weapon	0.64
bow, crossbow, gun	0.77
1h-axe, 1h-sword, 1h-mace	0.89
shield, staff, polearm, 2h-mace, 2h-sword, 2h-axe	1.00

Legendary items

At the moment the only legendary items with durability that are in game are two-handers or one-handed axes, swords, bows or maces. However, using the known durability of these items and the formula in the previous section, it can be determined that the Cquality for legendary items must be approximately 1.68.

It is now possible to make a prediction of the durability of armor items of legendary quality, and in the same vein, the durability of the remaining types of legendary weapons:

Legendary armor predictions

Slot	Cloth	Leather	Mail	Plate
hands/waist/wrist	45	50	60	70
feet	60	70	85	95
head/shoulder	70	85	100	115
legs	90	110	130	145
chest	120	145	170	195

Legendary weapon predictions

Type	Durability
wand, dagger, fist weapon	90
bow, crossbow, gun	110
1h-axe, 1h-sword, 1h-mace	125
shield, staff, polearm, 2h-mace, 2h-sword, 2h-axe	145

Patch changes

• Patch 1.8.0 (10-Oct-2005): The cost per point of durability to repair plate, chain, and leather items has been reduced to be equal to the cost of repairing cloth items of the same quality.
  
• Patch 1.3.0 (07-Mar-2005): Fixed bug where melee weapon abilities were causing durability damage to ranged weapons.