[Druid]Parries and expertise (or back to the beginning)

bearmount asked:

Here's a question I've been wondering about recently: How adversely does haste affect your survival from additional parry hastes? Basically with all the haste on my new TOC gear I'm wondering if expertise just becomes even more important as a mitigation stat.

One of the very first posts I ever wrote on this blog was about expertise and survival. It's interesting to go back and read that too. The conclusions are sound (stack expertise over avoidance) but it somewhat misses the overall idea, which is whether or not it's actually that important, and whether or not you can circumvent it with simply having more stamina.

Note that it's much less relevant when you can't be crushed. Having two crushing blows in a 40% speed window + a special was much scarier than two normal hits + a special. But that's not what this question is about; this is about how much haste hurts you with parrying.

here's some rough analysis of how haste will affect your survival.
In 240 seconds you have 160 GCDs and 40 cycles of 6 second mangle/x/x/FF. Of those, 3 can be parried. You will also normally have 100 mauls.

So in 240 seconds you have 120 parryable normal attacks (1/4 are faerie fire) and 100 mauls. Let's assume you're soft-capped for expertise, meaning you have 26 expertise. This means that you will have 8.5% parries overall, or 18.7 total parries in the fight.

If you have 1% haste, your attack speed drops from 2.4 to 99% of 2.4, or 2.37. That gives 101 mauls instead of 100, and now you have 221 parryable attacks. You're likely to get 18.78 parries.

How about 10% haste? Your attack speed is 10% faster than normal, or 2.18, and you are expected to have 110 mauls in the same time. Your total parries?

19.5.

So 10% haste means you will, on average, get parried .8 more times than you would have before if you have decent but not stellar expertise in a 4-minute fight.

Can that kill you? Yes, it can. It's not nearly as scary as it was before, but parries can certainly kill you on bosses that parry-haste. Thorim is about the only one I know of that actually has killed anyone recently, but it's theoretically possible.

Should it kill you? Well, even with most hard hitting bosses melee attacks aren't what is going to obliterate you. Thorim is one of the only cases I can think of where it can; most of his damage tends to be scary melee towards the end. Hodir has frozen blows, Vezax isn't really scary because of that at all, Gormok's scary because of impales + melee, Anub is scary because of freezing slash + swarm + melee. Now, if you get unlucky and get two very fast melee hits + a special, you can drop just like that. It's possible.

But I've not seen it happen to me yet.

Why is this the case?

Well, the main reason is the damage profile. Healers have to heal you like they did back in Brutallus days due to how much damage is coming in. They must keep you topped off if at all possible. Because of this, small bursts tend to be wiped out by healing. That's not always the case, but it often is.

Note that before Gormok's parryhaste flag was turned off, he absolutely could parry haste and he absolutely could wipe the floor with someone, especially if they got parried twice in a row. Three quick melee hits within a second is both huge amounts of damage and unexpected for healers to deal with.

Anyway, hope that helps. The long and short of it is that for a pure survival build you should max out expertise if possible and minimize haste if you haven't. If you have, of course, you can safely have as much haste as you want.

[Druid] Some sample values of threat per 100 itemization points

UPDATE: I did more math later on, and it looks like armor penetration is much better. I've changed the tables and the conclusions below. The link to that is here.

A lot of folks have been asking about how to have awesome threat, and that their threat is kinda going through the tubes, and what they can do to help it.

Well...here's the bad news. Threat for bears scales very poorly. That early threat bears get is primarily because of frontloaded awesome threat from maul, lacerate and FFF. As we scale with gear...we will not see as high of gains, especially compared to some other classes who don't have these things.

At the same time, there are things you can do. And if you don't read anything else into it, note this: the best threat stats to stack are expertise (until the dodge cap), then hit, then expertise (until the parry cap), then armor pen.

I did a very basic sim to show this. The basic stats starting out are as follows:
10k AP
40% crit
60% armor on the target
0 haste, hit, or expertise to start (other than the 10 expertise skill we get from Primal Precision)

With this value and a rotation of mangle/lacerate/swipe/FFF (a very boring one), we have a threat value of 4473.88 TPS. Yes, this isn't an optimal rotation, and it's assuming no MSS or improved mangle as well.

Here's how adding 100 of any given rating (except AP, since that's 2 AP points for every one rating point) increases that base TPS:
100 expertise (below cap): 296.26
100 hit: +164.32 TPS
100 expertise (after cap): 147.3
100 armor pen: 98.396

100 haste: 68.12
200 AP: 57.5
100 crit: 52.12

Hit and expertise are insanely good here. But what about more realistic numbers? Let's say you're 100 points from the cap on hit and parry-expertise - how do the values fall in then? This means you have 163 hit and 279 expertise rating; in this case, your base TPS is 5418.8.

100 hit: +162.5 TPS
100 expertise (after cap): 147.5
100 armor pen: 98.396

100 haste: 84.5
200 AP: 67.5
100 crit: 63.5

Even here, expertise and hit are far, far better as threat stats. Up until the cap, of course. Then you're hosed.

Now, this definitely doesn't do a good job of modeling armor pen, and I didn't want to go into the insanity of that; it's quite complex. (UPDATED: complexity over here.) And as it turns out, bears are going to likely have a decent amount of armor pen given the leather in T10 - close to 500 with good gear without trying. But really - the most important thing here is that hit and expertise are the only stats that scale with the threat multiplier on bear attacks. That's the key; AP, crit, armor pen, agility - all do not scale.

Haste is an exception, in that it scales with the amount of mauls and thus kind of scales with that threat multiplier. But only barely. Otherwise no dice. And because it doesn't scale with as many attacks as armor pen, you're out of luck.

So if you're having threat problems? Make sure your expertise is above 26 expertise skill. Make sure your hit is reasonable. Then go for more hit and expertise and have fun.

[Druid] So...how good is Glyph of Indomitability?

Reader and blogger Darksend (of I'm not feral I'm a bear and various Tankspot videos) had a question for me:

now one thing that we have discussed in the past is that the rings, trinkets, and necks on that list are using the armor value of armor that gets modified by bear form etc. How good really is that trinket. I want to try switching but I really just cannot bring myself to do it. hell I vendored defenders code the day the armor nerf went live. I still am one of the largest armor whores I know, hell up until a month ago i still used origin of nightmares but with dps in full 25 man hard mode dps gear I just could not put off anymore i needed the extra threat armor be damned. But even still 162 stam for 1800 unmodified armor... I really don't know.

The list he's referring to is the bear itemization weighings at wowhead, which does use the value of armor for both leather and nonleather. For the most part it ends up working well anyway, mostly because items with armor have a lot of it, and items without it don't (and the stats they do have in place of it aren't that valuable). Which, if you looked at the bear gear guide for ToC...doesn't actually use that weighing. It uses Rawr's. But it doesn't really matter, because all that matters is this:

How good is armor?

Armor's a lot tougher to evaluate than stamina is. Stamina never changes, so we know exactly how much we're getting. For each point of stamina on gear, bears get about 15 health after all raid buffs are factored in. But armor? Armor depends on the level of the attacker, how much you have beforehand, how much you're going to have, how hard the attack is...it's really nebulous.

And most people don't work well with nebulous.



Okay, I'm here today to tell you: armor is AWESOME. Armor is the only stat that improves both effective health (how much total damage you can take) and mitigation (how much damage you take per hit). Armor does have its flaws though, and I'll show you some of them. I can do some graphs and show you how its diminishing returns don't matter since the time to live for armor is a linear function, but that doesn't tell you anything.



So instead, I'll point out to you how much damage you can take and how much armor helps in each specific case. I'll be comparing two trinkets: Glyph of Indomitability and Juggernaut's Vitality. (The awesome version, in case you were wondering).

Glyph is essentially Defender's Code's bigger brother. On a side note, I want you to think about how insane Glyph would have been if the armor change hadn't happened early on. That's right - over 8000 armor from it alone. Yeesh. It gives 1792 armor that isn't multiplied by anything other than the metagem.

Juggernaut's Vitality is 216 stamina, which translates to the absurd 3200 health. Yep, all by itself.

3200 health is a lot. So is 1792 armor. Which is better?

Ultimately you have to think about it. Having tools handy is good, but there's no one set that will be optimal for all situations. When you've got a nail, use a hammer. When you've got a screw, use a screwdriver.



Okay, case study one: Algalon-25. Algalon isn't the best fight for a bear relative to almost any other class, since he attacks so often. With higher avoidance DKs can get more reasonable streaks. With block, paladins and warriors can mitigate more damage. But you still may be called to do this fight, so let's see how you can do. We're going to start with the base armor of 32000 - a nice, round number after buffs and whatnot. Algalon can do a 35,000 damage quantum strike, a 10,000 phase punch (not apparently physical), and more importantly can do a 60,000 main hand and a 35,000 offhand hit.

Those main hand and offhand? Can happen in a second. In the same second.

How does armor help with them?

In the 32,000 armor case, here's what it does. I'm assuming full raid buffs on the bear, meaning PotP is up, inspiration is up and grace is up. The total mitigation would be .741 in this case, meaning you only take 25.9% of all damage. (1*armor mod*potp mod*grace mod * inspiration mod)
MH: 15561 damage average
OH: 9077 damage average
Quantum: 9077 damage average

With Glyph:
MH: 15004 damage
OH: 8752
Quantum: 8752

Difference:
MH: 556
OH: 324
Quantum:324

Assuming you get hit by both a MH and OH, you will have stopped 880 extra damage using glyph over juggernaut. However - and here's the important thing - in order for this to make you actually live when you wouldn't have, you would need to take 4 MH+OH in a row to mitigate the same amount of damage that Juggernaut can stop.

Also reasonably, you need to survive MH+OH twice, which is just below 50k health. Any more than that and it's nice but not essential. Any less and you're playing with fire. With the glyph though, that maximum only is 47.5k.

That doesn't take into account another factor: endurance. The theory of effective health assumes infinite mana and assumes healers will always heal you to full, but the problem is that...it's not true. Tank death often happens because a tank hasn't been topped off and is sitting at a low state until the tank gets lucky with avoidance or a healer blows a big heal. In those situations, armor is far more useful than stamina; it means you don't get in those situations as often (because you've taken less damage) and you don't need as much health to survive (because you'll mitigate it).

Which do you think is better for Algalon? I used Defender's code for a while along with elixirs of armor and pots of indestructibility. And it was okay, and worked better for me than the pure stamina situation. In the stamina situation I survived at 2k once, but I also died more often due to the healers simply getting unlucky and not being able to catch up. Armor helped a lot more in that regard. It turned out, sadly, that avoidance trumped both of these considerations, and bears just don't have the avoidance that other tanks do.

How about something a bit more up a bear's alley: Heroic Beasts. Or more importantly, Gormok. Gormok, as the fight continues, hits for absurd amounts of damage. Really absurd. The normal attack can be as high as 100,000 damage, and impales can be as high as 120,000. Then there's the bleed stacks the impales put up and the stomp, which is another 40k hit. How does armor deal with this:

32k armor:
25935 normal, 31122 impale, 10374 stomp
Glyph armor:
25007 normal, 30009 impale, 10003 stomp
Differences: 927 normal, 1113 impale, 371 stomp

Those are kinda huge.

And yet they still might not make up for the worst case scenario - where a normal hit + an impale at the highest amount of damage is just too much to take - and that worst case is an impale + a normal attack within a second. In that case, you need to have 57k health to survive the worst situation and 55k health to survive with a glyph. Even if you're well-geared, those are hard to meet; the best bet there is another cooldown use and prayer.

Again - armor here helps tremendously with healers being able to catch up. Over time you'll take significantly less overall damage and if you're down, are more likely to survive. But that worst case scenario is likely better dealt with via stamina, especially given the amount of bleed damage you'll be taking. My personal strategy was to go with Defender's Code and Heart of Iron, so that I could use both trinkets for another mini-cooldown early on to help out. There was at least one wipe that was caused by me taking just over enough damage to die this way, though, so I'll be going to double stamina trinkets - especially since I just got the awesome version of Juggernaut's vitality.

So in two cases where there is heavy physical damage, stamina still is competitive and/or wins out and the Glyph doesn't. Why do I have it ranked so highly?

Well, part of it is Rawr's ranking system. Rawr ranks based on average damage taken and survivability/time to live, and honestly it's somewhat flawed for these kinds of fights. You don't often care about average time to live; you're not sitting there for multiple seconds while your healers get their thumbs out of their asses and remember that you're tanking. It's more often the case that you care about the worst case scenario in a short period of time and whether you can survive it at all. That's not average damage, that's burst damage. Fortunately, Rawr is coming up with a solution to that.

Rawr likes Glyph (and DM:G) because they average to less damage and gives avoidance which will over time reduce average damage. That might not be that useful to you, depending.

That isn't to say avoidance doesn't have its place; like I said above, avoidance was much better overall for our attempts at Algalon due to his speed of attacking; it meant our healers weren't put into horrible positions and if a healer had to move because of smash, it wouldn't be the end. But it does mean that it also isn't useful everywhere.

So...okay, you say. Armor isn't the best thing ever, and you get that - but is there ever a time where it is awesome and way more awesome than health?

Yep. Heroic Anub'arak. On this, health is a detriment as it heals the boss while doing more damage to you as a percentage. That Juggernaut's Vitality heals Anub'arak by itself for 600 health every second, while dealing you 600 damage a second (before resists, of course). Meanwhile he hits like a truck, and he can hit you with a stun and then normal attacks that hit even harder. The only thing you can do here is use armor. Armor does not improve leeching, it does work when stunned, and does not rely on any RNG components. In this situation, Glyph is absolutely the best trinket you can get; reducing (on average) 800-900 damage a hit is much better than having a 3k buffer that also heals the boss for 600 and does you 600 more damage.

So it's really, really awesome there. But I don't know if it's worth spending 50 emblems on it over a T9 piece.

The really long and short of it is this: get health when you need to make sure you can survive the absolute worst case situation, as health scales far more quickly for a druid than armor does any more. If you know you can survive the worst case situation reasonably, health is much less useful and you should either go for more avoidance (which will help overall damage intake on average) or more armor (which will also help damage intake, but more reliably) depending on what the encounter is like. Finally, stamina does something that armor and avoidance do not: it helps with magical soaking. If the fight has a lot of magic damage (twin valks, Jaraxxus, Mimiron) stamina is going to be better than armor.

Again, ultimately you have to think about it. Having tools handy is good, but there's no one set that will be optimal for all situations. When you've got a nail, use a hammer. When you've got a screw, use a screwdriver.

[Druid]Pesky PvP gear again

An anonymous reader had a nice question about PvP gear:

It seems like the higher gear levels are focusing more on secondary stats (armor penetration, etc) and less on stamina and agility. This has led to me sticking more and more PvP gear in my tanking set.

I'm wondering what the effect of filling more and more slots with PvP gear will be? That resilience must mean wasted item-budget somewhere. Will I eventually end up with threat issues? Mitigation issues? Or is PvP gear fine for raid tanking?

This site has a long habit of alternately hating and envying PvP gear for bear tanking. This season is no different, though there are at least a lot of options out there that are competitive with PvP (until you get to weapons, that is).

And it's a very good observation that the gearing has more of an emphasis on secondary stats (particularly armor pen) and less on base stats, especially compared to PvP gear. This is a really easy (and sad) thing to explain. As the item level goes up, not only are more stats on the piece, the items tend to be better itemized. This is by design; they want people to want the hard mode gear over the normal, they want people to look and drool, and they want in general there to be significant upgrades. The easy way to do this most of the time is to give somewhat poor itemization early on, then improve it so that by the time the endgame hits, people are fairly happy with the gear.

So why is this a problem for bears? Well, early on you get things like Hood of the Exodus - which has poor secondary stats and an abundance of stamina, something no rogue or cat wants. As gear advances, stamina is reduced in priority on this gear and armor pen is increased - exactly what rogues and ferals want. The problem is that bears want badly-itemized leather. They want a ton of expertise (no rogue does), they want a ton of stamina (most rogues don't), they want some hit (rogues like more), and they don't really care that much about AP, arpen, crit or haste (rogues care much more about this stuff). Thus as gear gets better, it tends to get relatively worse for bears.

This is why Vendorstrike is good as well; who in their right mind would want a weapon that has 180 stamina and only 90ish agility? It's horribly itemized for feral cats and hunters and most DKs and ret paladins, but it's great for the bear.

By comparison, PvP gear emphasizes all of these points for bears. It wants high stamina, it wants high survivability, and it doesn't care at all about secondary stats. It does waste some item points on resilience, but is it a big deal? Let's see by comparing the Relentless set with the T9.245 set. Now, the Pvp gear is slightly higher in itemization level, so that will make a difference, but it won't be ridiculous. I'm also assuming going stamina normally and only going after slot bonuses when they're easy and good and would make me not go out of my way (6 agi with one red gem will cut it; 4 agi will not, and no yellows will period).

Relentless Gloves vs Runetotem Gloves:
+9 armor, + 6 agi, 21 stam, -27 AP, -59 hit, -4 crit
Relentless Head vs Runetotem Head:
11 armor, 8 agi, 28 stam, -4 AP, -74 expertise, -10 crit
Relentless Legs vs Runetotem Legs:
12 armor, 8 agi, 13 stam, -4 AP, -74 hit, -10 crit
Relentless Chest vs Runetotem Chest:
13 armor , 8 agi, 28 stam, -36 AP, -4 crit, -90 haste
Relentless Shoulders vs Runetotem Shoulders:
10 armor, 6 agi, 21 stam, -27 AP, 63 crit, -59 arpen, -67 haste

Total difference between relentless and Runetotem:
55 armor, 36 agi, 111 stam, -98 AP, -133 hit, -74 expertise, 35 crit, -59 arpen, -157 haste

So the answer is yes - you are spending a lot of budget on resilience, and you are losing a fair amount of threat stats. The AP loss is negligible but the loss of 133 hit, 74 expertise and 157 haste is fairly large, even with the extra agility and crit to make up for it some. Don't overlook the armor either; 55 armor pre-buff corresponds to almost 400 armor with bear buffs. Resilience is useless outside of Thorim and other gimmicky fights like that.

Is the loss of that much threat stat worth it? Could be depending. Note that this to me speaks to cherry-picking the best PvP gear and going with tier gear otherwise. The head, for instance, is a great spot to pick up expertise on the tier gear - and the legs lose the least amount of stam on the tier gear and give hit. The chest by comparison only grants haste, and the shoulders haste and armor pen.

To even further muddy the mix, note that getting things like the chest and gloves allows for a kitty-specific gemming strategy in those slots that may allow for interesting mixing and matching; for instance, I have the PvP gloves, and I gem/enchant them for stam. I have the heroic Sunreaver Assassin Gloves and they're gemmed for agi and enchanted for agi. Depending on the fight, I can use either; I use the Sunreaver for Anub'arak and the Relentless for Beasts.

Also note that you may be fine without all that threat anyway. It very much depends on what your gear is and more importantly, what your raid is like. Heck, it depends a lot on your talents too. Whether it's the right choice for you is really going to be your decision. Just bear in mind that the pvp gear is certainly competitive, and from a pure mitigation/health perspective is definitely superior.

[Druid] Vendorstrike==bear strike

Onyxia's back, and this time she's pissed. Okay, she's probably fairly upset, what with her head being mounted in cities for years now, her kids being killed, and her plot to usurp the crown of Stormwind kinda blowing up in her face. But hyperbole aside, she's back.

How hard is she? Reports are that if you're familiar with the old encounter she's not too bad, and only spawns an extra add during Deep Breaths phases. Her loot level is on par with ToC 25, so I'd bet that she's not much harder than anything in normal ToC. Especially since Blizzard wants her to be experienced by a lot of people as part of their anniversary.









In terms of the patch, the biggest affecting thing is the nerf to armor pen, which has been discussed to death here and elsewhere. That's really it; ferals aren't changing significantly otherwise, and things like the infected wounds change and the predatory instincts change are both more geared towards PvP and quality of life. Otherwise, ferals are likely going to remain pretty similar to what they were before, though all ferals will take a slight hit to their dps.

Now, the loot list for her: I have no idea. Blizzard has remained somewhat tight-lipped about the gear. A lot of it was gear that had simply been given a higher ilvl but had exactly the same values as before, and that's clearly not going to work now.

But.

But, if what we've seen holds, bears get a gift. And that gift is Reinforced Thunderstrike:

Reinforced Thunderstrike

Epic

Binds when picked up

Polearm

Two-Hand

Speed 3.10

634 - 951 Damage

(255.6 damage per second)

+89 Agility

+180 Stamina

Durability 120 / 120

Requires Level 80

Item Level 245

Equip: Increases your expertise rating by 71.

Equip: Increases attack power by 190.

Equip: Improves haste rating by 63.

Blasts up to 3 targets for 150 to 250 Nature damage. Each target after the first takes less damage.

This ranks just barely below Twin's Pact (normal) in Rawr, and will be a superb threat weapon due to all that expertise - expertise that is lacking almost everywhere else in ToC land. It will also have some of the highest stamina possible outside of PvP gear and hard mode gear. And the best part? Almost no one will want it. The only other class that might - might - have any interest is a DK, and they'd almost certainly rather have a strength-based weapon.

Now, how do you get it? By getting Reinforced Shadowstrike, I believe. Which happens to also be a decent choice as a weapon, especially for cats:

Reinforced Shadowstrike

Epic

Binds when picked up

Polearm

Two-Hand

Speed 3.10

634 - 951 Damage

(255.6 damage per second)

+120 Agility

+126 Stamina

Durability 120 / 120

Requires Level 80

Item Level 245

Equip: Increases attack power by 157.

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 73.

Equip: Increases your armor penetration rating by 89.

Summons a new Reinforced Thunderstrike.

Steals 100 to 180 life from target enemy.

I don't know if they're still going to do that mechanic. My hope is not; while it would be awesome to have both a cat and bear weapon that you can swap back and forth with - or even have two weapons from one, essentially - I'm not sure double the enchanting mats are awesome. If you're curious, this ranks slightly below Twin's Pact and Hellion Glaive for cats (from normal mode) and will be a good choice if you can get it.

So keep a look out for those, and for any other wacky items from Ony. As people start trying it and we get an idea of what the 245 table is like, I'll update the cat and bear loot lists too, as well as the LIKE A BOSS list. In the meantime, if you don't already have an awesome weapon - consider rolling on this one.

Incoming comments about how the best itemization for ferals comes from vendor trash in 3, 2, 1...

[Offtopic] What a night

The new guild seems to be working out pretty well, in case you were at all curious. On Tuesday we continued our attempts on 25-Firefighter and managed to get it down after only an hour, which left us time to start work on hardmode Yogg.

It also meant that Algalon-25 was unlocked.

Last night we intended to work on Algalon, then go to ToC and work on hard modes there. We specifically moved our Algalon-10 attempts up to give people some experience at the encounter beforehand who hadn't seen it.

And in our first hour of attempts, Algalon died! Last pull, with only two people alive at the end (gogo Ardent Defender and Guardian Spirit), DoTs finished him off through the last big bang; we weren't sure that we got him until he just kinda stood there and looked emo. I'm amazed at this; having one hour to work on him and getting him down in that time is really outstanding, even if having all that gear from ToC helped and it wasn't what you'd call the most impressive kill shot. That was realm first, so now Fellhoof is sporting the groovy title "Celestial Defender". That's probably my favorite one since Hand of A'dal.

ETA: Here's a great log of how much damage was done after basically everyone in the universe died a horrible death. All I can say is that rip is AWESOME. And I should've just refreshed rakes.

I was expecting people to not be on their game after that awesomeness, but we then proceeded to go to ToC and one-shot beasts, kill Jaraxxus after a few attempts and one-shot Faction Champs on heroic - the last two were also progression for us. We got a few attempts in at heroic Twins before we were overcome with pain and huge amounts of ball jokes.

Pretty incredible work for a guild that does 8 hours of raiding a week.

Finally, to end the night, I was promoted from a trial membership to full-time.

I've talked about it before, when people felt like things were on, everyone was in a good mood, etc - and this was one of those nights. I felt like this when Fire and Blood downed Kael'Thas for the first time, too. It's a rare joy, and it doesn't happen often, but when it does it makes you understand how great raiding can be.

Next week we're going back to Ulduar to finish off some of the hardmodes that people have missed and then work on Yogg+1, the last major hardmode that has yet to be completed there. If this week is any indicator, that means we'll have time to work on Twins again. Twins is a really interesting fight; much like vehicles a lot of your success has nothing to do with how you play your toon and everything to do with managing the balls. Unlike vehicles, this somehow is way less frustrating to deal with and is downright fun. I also like it because it's not the kind of fight you'll ever really be able to brute force; it will require strategy, and the strategy is definitely going to make a huge difference in quality. I'm anxiously awaiting Bellwether's report on how she dealt with the fight.

[Druid]My specific goal on armor pen

Really, I think everything should be about armor pen. It's just so fun to talk about. Poorly understood non-linear scaling stats with odd mechanics that are hard to model?

SIGN ME UP.

In the ongoing saga, you should definitely read Runy's take on armor pen, which has loads of good numbers, good suggestions for gearing, and awesome cartoons. As well as showing what you can do if you're going through ToC and have a dream list of awesomesauce.

But here's a more concrete setup: my current gear listing. In case armory isn't working well or isn't current, here's a chardev link too.

And the Rawr report:

Head Conqueror's Nightsong Headguard
Neck Collar of Unending Torment
Shoulders Duskstalker Pauldrons
Chest Vest of Shifting Shadows
Waist Relic Hunter's Cord
Legs Legwraps of the Broken Beast
Feet Runed Ironhide Boots
Wrist Armbands of the Wary Lookout
Hands Sunreaver Assassin's Gloves
Finger1 Dexterous Brightstone Ring
Finger2 Planestalker Band
Trinket1 Darkmoon Card: Greatness
Trinket2 Banner of Victory
Back Shawl of the Shattered Giant
MainHand Anguish
Ranged Idol of Mutilation

And buffed stats:
Attack Power: 11276
Agility: 2333
Strength: 380
Crit Rating: 459
Hit Rating: 241
Expertise Rating: 56
Haste Rating: 202
Armor Penetration Rating: 999
Crit Chance: 58.67081%

Note that unlike Runy's OMG loot list, this isn't close to being optimal. I have a few ToC 10 normal mode pieces (including the weapon), no T9 gear at all, a couple pieces from Ulduar (boots, head, belt), two fairly meh trinkets (and no Runestone), and a really crappy cloak and bracers (at least relatively).

ETA: In case you were specifically curious, the breakdown of that armor pen is as follows:
Gear (including socket bonuses) 677
Food 40
Gems 282

That's just what's dropped for me. I haven't gone out of my way to grab nothing but armor pen gear. I picked up the shoulders because I haven't had a trophy piece yet (and would replace the head first, anyway). I have gotten very lucky on drops in ToC hard 10 man, being the only leather wearer and having almost exactly what I wanted drop.

But still, the important thing: it's gear that you can reasonably expect to obtain in the next month or so. No 258 pieces, no hard mode loot from Ulduar. Only 10-man hard mode gear. No trophy gear either. Hardest pieces come from heroic 10-man, which should be challenging but not insane.

Ironically, the upgrades I do want are going to drop my armor pen a bit. My next piece is going to hopefully be the T9.245 helm simply because with this level of armor pen missing a lot starts to hurt a lot more, and it has loads of expertise. A cloak upgrade would be stellar, but that's more luck than anything else; we're going for the Insanity 10-man tribute this week, so perhaps Cloak of Serrated Blades will drop. And who knows, maybe some day I'll actually get a wrist improvement, though most of them will drop my arpen too. The important thing here is that I'm fine with it dropping; it's not essential that it stays high compared to other stats. And while armor pen is scary good at this level (even after nerf), it's not so good that it will make up for 20 levels of itemization.

One thing that would significantly change my gearing strategy is getting a runestone. Even post-nerf I'm well over the armor pen cap with a runestone, so I'd be going for more agility. But I'm not betting on getting that either, and I'm not going to kill myself if I don't get it.

Anyway, point of all this was to toot my own kitty horn and to also show you that yes, you can get significantly high amounts of armor pen without having stupid gear.