Armor Armor is a class of item s that mitigate physical damage and are equip ped in the different armor slot s ( 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 : Additionally , shields can be equipped by certain classes . Pre - Legion pre - patch . 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 , , , ( aka body ) , , legs , , , and . 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 : codice _ 1 " ( % damage reduction given by armor in decimal form ) " codice _ 2 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 . codice _ 3 codice _ 4 codice _ 5 Level 70 lower . 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 . codice _ 6 codice _ 7 Simplified , the formula becomes : codice _ 8 Consider the following table which can be derived from the above formula for a lvl 70 tank taking 1000 DPS of " raw " damage : 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 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 : 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 :