[Ciderhelm]

Source: tamral Your stickied post in the warrior forum on the official boards. I've petitioned like 15 times to get that thing taken down in favor of Quigon's BC guide on the EJ forums.

It's a good thing that stickied guide also links to Quigon's. Again, what are you specifically referring to?

[tamral]

Source: Ciderhelm It's a good thing that stickied guide also links to Quigon's. Again, what are you specifically referring to?

The whole argument within the guide regarding:
1) effective health and stamina always > avoidance
2) Stam + armor stacking is always better

etc...

That may have worked pre-BC, but it is so far from optimal its not even funny post BC

[Ciderhelm]

Source: tamral The whole argument within the guide regarding: 1) effective health and stamina always > avoidance 2) Stam + armor stacking is always better etc... That may have worked pre-BC, but it is so far from optimal its not even funny post BC

It's frustrating to me, too, that I'm constantly cited as advocating that.

I share your thoughts, at least to the extent that there are clearly many bosses which favor Avoidance, and that mindless Stam stacking is not the ideal way to tank. Prince is the very first one I cite. I've posted as much in several threads, including "Exceptions of the Stamina Warrior." I've also backed up Edgewalker on the WoW forums several times on this.

Btw, I appreciate you posting the math, and I do appreciate the posts here. It's one of the best things that can happen for this community.

Expect a revision to the guide stickied guide to address this.

[tamral]

Source: Ciderhelm It's frustrating to me, too, that I'm constantly cited as advocating that. I share your thoughts, at least to the extent that there are clearly many bosses which favor Avoidance, and that mindless Stam stacking is not the ideal way to tank. Prince is the very first one I cite. I've posted as much in several threads, including "Exceptions of the Stamina Warrior." I've also backed up Edgewalker on the WoW forums several times on this. Btw, I appreciate you posting the math, and I do appreciate the posts here. It's one of the best things that can happen for this community. Expect a revision to the guide stickied guide to address this.

A revision would be great. The problem is not so much with you, as with the fact that the damn thing is stickied. My whole thing is it either needs to be revised or removed. Thus you get associated to it, and for people who are not as much into theorycrafting, or into understanding mechanics, will quote the &)&)&ing thing ad verbatim when I try to explain that it is not always the most effective way.

[Satrina]

Nice to see some life coming around here. Following your math Tamral, interesting stuff. I'm curious to hear how you would recommend for people looking at their real-life (as it were) situations. By that, I mean a set {43 Ex, 142 hit, 65% avoid, 21k health} is a nice goal but it is one that not many people are in a position to achieve realistically until pretty far into the Tier 6 world.

When faced with the problem of reaching an optimal X health and Y% avoidance and you can't have both, how would you recommend to people? This sort of thing is what people are wondering about consistently. (Given that not many people have the ability to solve matrix math for themselves)

Since you specifically mention Quigon, I've been interested how you compare your viewpoint against Quigon's regarding gemming.

[Ciderhelm]

Source: Satrina Nice to see some life coming around here.

Sorry, I must quote this for emphasis.

[tamral]

Source: Satrina Nice to see some life coming around here. Following your math Tamral, interesting stuff. I'm curious to hear how you would recommend for people looking at their real-life (as it were) situations. By that, I mean a set {43 Ex, 142 hit, 65% avoid, 21k health} is a nice goal but it is one that not many people are in a position to achieve realistically until pretty far into the Tier 6 world. When faced with the problem of reaching an optimal X health and Y% avoidance and you can't have both, how would you recommend to people? This sort of thing is what people are wondering about consistently. (Given that not many people have the ability to solve matrix math for themselves) Since you specifically mention Quigon, I've been interested how you compare your viewpoint against Quigon's regarding gemming.

Those are raidbuffed numbers and can be acheived without any T6.

But in terms of the t4/t5 instances, I would keep the following pieces of gear in each slot.

I'll break it up into 3 categories. First, the pieces I tended never to swap out, second the pieces for avoidance, and third the pieces for threat.

Never swapped out:
Engineering Goggles
Brooch of Deftness
Devilshark Cape
Warbringer Chestguard
Destroyer Handguards
Girdle of the Invulnerable
Red Havoc Boots
Ring of Sundered Souls
Seventh Ring of the Tirisfallen
Moroes Stopwatch
Aldori Legacy Defender
Mallet of the Tides
Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer

Avoidance
Wristguards of Determination
Warbringer Legguards
Warbringer Shoulderguards
Scarab of Displacement

Threat
Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx
Destroyer Legguards
Destroyer Shoulderguards
Romulos Poison Vial (again, the math shows clearly, that for pure threat, this absolutely, positively, kicks the everloving daylights out of the gnomeregan auto-blocker)

35 hit rating = 23 TPS at all times, plus poison procs.
59 SBV = 8 TPS, use for an extra 30 TPS for 15 seconds every 2 minutes.


As for gemming, I do it on an individual basis. I basically measure the effectiveness of the 3 most ideal gems for color + socket bonus against 12/15 stam in each socket. Whichever wins, wins, and oddly enough, with few exceptions, the socket bonuses usually win out.

[Ciderhelm]

Source: tamral Romulos Poison Vial (again, the math shows clearly, that for pure threat, this absolutely, positively, kicks the everloving daylights out of the gnomeregan auto-blocker) 35 hit rating = 23 TPS at all times, plus poison procs. 59 SBV = 8 TPS, use for an extra 30 TPS for 15 seconds every 2 minutes.

This follows the line of questioning from earlier -- what are you responding to?

[Edgewalker]

Source: tamral Exactly. I don't wear avoidance gear on VR, Najentus, Rage, or any other boss that hits like a fairy. But I can easily sustain 1200 TPS (~500 DPS) with 29 dodge and 20 parry. For Mother Shahraz, where threat isn’t an issue at all, I run with 34.57 dodge, 21.9 parry, and almost 540 defense. Can still pump out 400 DPS and maintain over 1000 TPS. That’s why these stats called hit rating and expertise rating exist. 142 hit is almost 110 more TPS 27 expertise rating (80 expertise rating) is more than 130 TPS Sure I may not HS as much as I would like to at times, but maintaining 2x dev, rev, SS can almost fully be maintained with white swings when I go into a dodge-fest. Just maintaining that simple cycle with white swings = 950 or so TPS with healing aggro and secondary aggro (auras, thorns). When I take the big hits, the HS rage dumping begins and I spike back up. Either way, you can easily normalize to a healthy 1.2k TPS number.

What does that post have to do with my post?
What does that combat log have to do with your statement?

[Rasmfrackn]

The trade-offs between stam/armor gearing and avoidance gearing seem reasonable to me. It makes sense that EH is a breakpoint-driven criteria. (Can you survive 3 hits or 4 without heals?) It makes sense that avoidance scales faster as you add more. It makes sense that certain fights lend themselves to avoidance, and others lend themselves to EH. Prince Malch and Morogrim (and apparently brutallus) hit fast enough that you simply cannot give enough EH buffer to your healers to make a significant impact time-wise, so adding avoidance gives you better odds to win the lottery. Got it.

However, I think I take issue to a lot of the details in the post. For example:

Now if I were Mr. StamStack and had my 20k HP gear on with maybe 45% avoidance, his chance of hitting me those four times in a row would be 0.55^4 or 9%. Well a 9% chance is not that bad, because if healing is remotely there I'll live anyway. But with my avoidance gear on I'm at about 65% avoidance, and the chance there is only 0.35^4 or 1.5%.

This is an anecdote, not a good supporting plank. There's a 2k hp difference between you and Mr. StamStack, but a 20% avoidance difference? Anecdotes are hard to work with because they're limited by what gear you're actually using. 2k hps and 20% avoidance are far from the same item budget.

Of course, it's hard to compare EH gearing to avoidance gearing with proper item budgets, because we're limited to what's actually created. If we had gear with nothing but sockets, we could have gear with nothing but stam, defense, and dodge rating on it... but we don't have that luxury. Nor can we gem for armor or block value. There are a lot of limitations on the boundaries of both EH and avoidance gearing. It would be nice to actually compare realistic gear configurations in different situations. I.e. actually pick an appropriate set of same-tier-and-lower gear, pick a fight, and show the REAL differences.

And sure, there are always some breakpoints. I was just going over this with someone, and picking numbers out of thin air he showed me that, given the following cases:

6 successive hits are lethal with 50% avoidance
5 successive hits are lethal with 60% avoidance

The EH build actually has a higher chance of a lethal streak than the avoidance build. Of course it still requires that extra period of time for the 6th hit to land, but the basic point is that there are certainly break points where death is more probable with an EH set. (I realize this isn't exactly what EH is for. It's for surviving bursts and for surviving unlucky streaks just long enough for your healers to react. If you're taking 6 hits without direct heals, something's horribly wrong. But let's ignore that for now. )

Generally speaking, I think it's safe to say that the fewer consecutive hits required to kill you, the better EH gearing performs. (Basically what Ciderhelm's original EH post says... tanking beyond your gearing level and whatnot). However I can also acknowledge that the breakpoints of how many consecutive hits are required to kill you without healing are nebulous most of the time and can be larger than is feasible within the gearing options as they are created by Blizzard.

Basically for something like the example above, the actual numbers (# of hits before death, AND avoidance %) are very important on a case-by-case basis, and neither may be as potent compared to the other as some people think. This is probably obvious to the people who are actually creating these posts in the first place.

Thoughts?