Durability

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.

Heirloom items do not suffer durability loss, making repair bills slightly cheaper for characters with heirlooms.

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:
 * [[Image:pointer repair on 32x32.png]] interact with repairing vendor [[Image:pointer repair off 32x32.png]] 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.

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 20 possible combinations of type and quality, this formula correctly calculates the durability:


 * Durability = 5 x round(25 x Cquality x Ctype)

With Cquality and Ctype 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:


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

With Cwtype according to these values: