Clarification on a possible misconception of trinket use.

[Aggathon]

There has been a prevailing mantra recently of "use 1 armor and 1 stam trinket for X fight and 2 stam trinkets for Y fight." Typically X fight is Saurfang and Y trinket is Sindragosa.

Armor only loses its value on non physical fights, but even the magic heavy fights have some pretty tough physical damage too. You should really take a log of your damage intake and use this: http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?f=6&t=26831&sid=e2afdefdec87011494f881adf7986a49&rb_v=viewtopic
And calculate your EHP based on the proportion of physical to magical damage (depending on fight mechanics this could be overall damage or total burst damage required to kill you without a heal or only light heals, but light heal considerations get a lot more complicated, rough approximations will be sufficient especially since when faced with actual gearing choices it should be pretty evident which trinkets are better I highly doubt any calculation will come out to be X trinket is 2 EHP better than Y trinket). If there is enough magical damage that say glyph of indominability drops below 100stam worth of EHP, then yes, use something like the black heart even if it is less raw EHP, but if it does (and you'd need around 35ish percent magical damage to do that, just a guess by eyeballing it) then go for the black heart over glyph of indom. Don't just say "oh this fight needs armor" or "this fight needs stam." Run the numbers based off of your current gear and the MEH (Magic Effective Health) and PEH (Physical Effective Health) of various trinkets to find your TEH (Total Effective Health) for a given fight to min/max your survivability.

I am still a huge proponent of EHP and Armor stacking, however you must be very careful about armor trinkets, especially the glyph of indominability. From a raw EHP standpoint, glyph of indom really isn't THAT great, it just barely passes Heart of Iron in terms of EHP and there's actually an inflection point you have to reach for it to be better. Yes the cooldown is very good, but not as good as say Juggernaut's Vitality.

Yes you can make the argument that Armor is "better" EHP since it is absorbed damage and not healed, but you should go take a gander at your healing meters. There is a LOT of overhealing in instances, and unless your healers are having problems keeping you up, chances are raw stam is still better than armor IF it provides more EHP than the equivalent gear. This is NOT to say that the value of armor is diminished. You absolutely should stack armor, and especially on other pieces of gear go for the ones that have lots of armor and stam. HOWEVER, do not overvalue armor. If it is close in the EHP calcs to the equivalent stam items then yes I would say that the marginal benefit of it being absorbed damage is greater than the raw stam, however you should NOT sacrifice large amounts of potential EHP just because it's armor (for example using glyph of indom over the skeleton key). That's not to say the skeleton key is more valuable than other frost items to pick up, but once you do get it, you should use it over glyph of indom if you have another better trinket like Jug's Vit or Unidentifiable Organ.

[Raysere]

Point taken. I was kinda working under the premise that anyone trying to make an informed choice on trinkets would probably have realized that substituting Glyph for a higher EH trinket like Key just because it had armor on it was probably not the best idea. Armor/Stam or Stam/Stam works as a loose rule of thumb though, perhaps with the addendum that it only holds true on trinkets that are on a similar level to one and other.

One thing to keep in mind is that the majority of visitors here want quick and easy answers to things. EH calculations aren't quick and easy answers, most people don't understand the concept and have no interest in learning. Those that do understand it were probably already aware of what you've pointed out to some degree. Thanks for the link though, if I can get my head round its workings I might stick it into a spreadsheet or a quick php script or something, would probably come in handy.

[MellvarTank]

Any time we attempt to give a broad guidline for people there will always be an exception (or in the case of WoW... lots of exceptions). One would hope that people understand the situationality of any trinket, and also understand the why of it instead of just a "do this".

Unfortunately, for a lot of people the simple "do this" answer is all they want, and the actual EH concept is lost.

[krc]

I completely agree Agg, too many times people consider an armor trinket to be better because a fight is all physical even though the EH numbers are signifanctly lower then stamina trinkets, the problem is EH is considering pure physical damage. People often underestimate how little magic damage can devalue armor so much, consider the Glyph of Indom. The Glyph of Indom is in pure EH is worth about 162 stamina, once you get to the point of 20% magic damage that kills you its EH value goes down to only 122 stamina. Even of a boss like Festergut with only a little magic damage because of 10% magic that kills you the Glyph's value goes down to 137 stamina.

[Aggathon]

I completely agree Agg, too many times people consider an armor trinket to be better because a fight is all physical even though the EH numbers are signifanctly lower then stamina trinkets, the problem is EH is considering pure physical damage. People often underestimate how little magic damage can devalue armor so much, consider the Glyph of Indom. The Glyph of Indom is in pure EH is worth about 162 stamina, once you get to the point of 20% magic damage that kills you its EH value goes down to only 122 stamina. Even of a boss like Festergut with only a little magic damage because of 10% magic that kills you the Glyph's value goes down to 137 stamina.

Exactly, but conversely some might say "oh that fight has magical damage, my other stam trinket is the black heart, but because the fight is magical I'll use the black heart over glyph of indom," when in reality glyph of indom might still be more EHP than the black heart (procs aside of course). Just because there is magical damage doesn't mean that the physical damage isn't significant too, i would site festergut and H-Blood Princes as two such examples. Yes there is magical damage floating around, but if you're not tanking keleseth, then you are going to be getting hit like a truck from the other two. I tanked the fire guy on there one night when my guild needed a 3rd tank since 2 of the couldn't be there that night (I've quit, but still like my guild so I come in and help randomly) and trust me, any magic damage done on that fight is negligible compared to how hard he hits for melee. With festergut, while the explosion might do a lot of damage, when festergut has 2 or 3 stacks is what you REALLY need to survive and you want whatever trinket gives you max physical EH.