Resistance equipment Resistance gear is the major source of the Resistance stat . It has next to no general usefulness , and is usually used only in a raid ing environment . Several boss es simply cannot be beaten without sufficient resistance of the appropriate type . Resistance gear quality . While leveling , resistance gear is usually not needed . There are some rare instances where it might be useful , but there hardly exists any low - level items with resistance . Prior to BC , the Molten Core was the first place which required high amounts of a resistance ( Fire ) . Nearly every raid instance since then had one or more bosses which required some type of resistance - sometimes only on certain players ( like the tank ) , sometimes on the whole raid . Resistance equipment frequently has only two stats - a resistance and a high amount of stamina . In a wider sense , stamina can be interpreted as " resistance to all " . In another sense , extra stamina while prolonging the time to die , does not mitigate damage as armor does . Using increased stamina in magic heavy fights , goes hand in hand with an increased healing requirement . The problems with resistance gear are that it ' s rarely used , hard to find or manufacture , and wearing it increases survivability in a certain environment , but gimp s most other character functions . Some advantages of resistance gear are , the ability to ignore some encounter mechanics . During the air phase of the Sindragosa fight , hiding behind the ice tombs becomes less important with enough frost resistance , allowing more time to dps and heal , leading to more total damage or total healing . In some 10 player encounters , enough raid resistance will allow using 2 healers instead of 3 , perhaps increasing raid dps . Resistance gear can lead to greater raid flexibility when a less that optimum mix of classes are in a raid . This tradeoff , survivability vs . efficiency , always needs thorough consideration when choosing resistance gear . Use the best items available . Low - quality gear ( like the green random BoE drops ) is not really useful . It ' s much better to wear just one blue ( or purple ) item instead of a collection of greens . A similar example are warrior tank s using mail or leather resistance items instead of plate . Even in the most resistance intensive fights there is almost always some physical damage , and tanks should not nerf their physical mitigation too greatly . If there ' s no other choice such a measure might do the job , but the instances are designed such that good gear is available when a certain resistance is needed . Farming marks ( like ) or materials ( e . g . ) for appropriate resistance gear may still be an unavoidable part of raid progression . Resistance & PvP . In theory , resistance could be quite useful in PvP . Unfortunately , most experienced PvP opponents wear large amounts of Spell penetration gear , which negates resistance . Therefore it ' s usually not a good idea to wear large amounts of resistance gear in PvP . Knowing this , one might consider buffing stamina instead of resistance since stamina provides you with more hitpoints , therefore allowing you to soak more damage from both magical and physical attacks .