Durability Durability is a property of equippable item s 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 weapon s or armor ( or Blacksmithing supplies ) can repair durability . Item repair is not currently an available skill for Player Character s , but engineers can craft repair bot s . Repair cost . The base cost to repair an uncommon armor piece ( no weapons or shields ) assuming you are neutral with the vendor is : The base cost to repair a rare armor piece ( no weapons or shields ) assuming you are neutral with the vendor is : The base cost to repair an epic armor piece ( no weapons or shields ) assuming you are neutral with the vendor is : 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 : 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 . 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 : With Cquality , Ctype and Carmor according to these values : 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 : With Cwtype according to these values : 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 :