[__C3__]

I apologize if this should be in the Gear forum, but I put it in Theory because while below I reference gear in a specific question, I am asking a more general question of what's better now a days - EH or Avoidance? I'm actually sitting in a class right now so I cannot pull up my exact numbers (let me apologize in advance, I'll look up correct numbers when I get home), but I've been wondering some things about EH vs Avoidance for tanks as we move through ToC and get ready for the Icecrown Citadel. I've always preferred to be an avoidance tank myself (Tankadin). I took pride in stacking dodge pieces (still always gemmed for stam or threat though), and when dodge got nerfed to the same rating/% as parry, stacked them both. With about 30k-32k unbuffed health, I never had a problem with even ulduar25, once I got fully buffed up I could still hit 40k. Nice thing was, I also had 58% total avoidance unbuffed, where as other tanks I'd be with might have maybe, 2-3k more hp ub while only having 50-55% avoidance.

Now, with all the 245's people are picking up, plus the 2 beerfest trinkets, its quite easy to hit 35k-40k unbuffed. As always, uneducated non-tanks seem to place a tank's ability and quality solely on his unbuffed health. My question is, is it worth it to sacrifice my +108 dodge rating Fervor of the Frostborn - Item - World of Warcraft trinket for the 2nd +170 stamina beerfest trinket (I'm already wearing the first one). Approximately 2% dodge, vs about 1700 unbuffed hp (with kings, i'm nearing almost 2k more health). To sit with 37k unbuffed vs about 35k worth it? Or should I stick with my dodge trinket? I believe I go from about 25% to about 27%. Though I am well aware that not every boss fight is the same, and while I have a good idea where more health might be more beneficial than dodge, they are only assumptions and I would love to hear what you guys think about where I should use each one.

Lastly, I have a quick gear question about a chestpiece (wrong forum, I know, but I want to only make one post). Is the ToC BS chestpiece, the Breastplate of the White Knight - Item - World of Warcraft, worth it? I currently have Chestguard of the Warden - Item - World of Warcraft, from ToC10 Anub. This relates to this topic in that if it IS worth it, should I gem 3 +30 stams in there? Or go with my original plan of a +20 dodge, +30 stam, and a green +10hit/+15stam to get the +12 stam socket bonus. That is basically +20dodge and +10 hit vs +33 stam.


Thanks in advance!

[Azuae]

the reason people are using stam trinkets over avoidance trinkets is because in fights like Gormokk in TOGC 25 you take massive spikes of dmg that you cannot dodge. The only real way to live through it is to have a massive pool of HP.

[krc]

Yeah in ToC so much damage is unavoidable EH is the way to go. For the BS chest piece I think I think it's worth it, around the same avoidance and it has more EH. As for gemming it I would put a either a 30 stam, a 15 stam and expertise, and a 15 stam and hit or just go all with 30 stamina.

What you are asking about trinkets, I think the Brewfest Trinkets are only worth more on fights with HUGE amounts of magic damage, I think Fervor of the Frostborn is better because on a standard boss like XT I think the 2% is dodge is worth around the same as 1700 health not to mention other fights like Vezax or Kologarn where it can shine even more. That being said I think what really puts Fervor of the Frostborn over the Brewfest trinkets is the proc as opposed to the Brewfest trinkets which have no proc or on use at all.

[Kamani]

A few things;
People slob over health pools because with 0 avoidance and 42k unbuffed health you can survive ToGC. With 99% avoidance and 20k health you can't. Health makes it doable, avoidance makes it safer and easier.

That being said, you go off of this. You need to be able to survive worst case scenario, bottom line. If that is 25k instant ability followed by 26k white, then you need 51,001 health. A little more as a buffer if you weren't 100% health at the time. If you are 50k, you will die 100% of the time, because regardless of your avoidance, the worst case will happen over the course of 6 minutes or longer.

Avoidance saves you from the rare white, instant, double parry hasted white.

Being that Icecrown is coming out and boss hits will undoubtedly go up, start gathering stam gear.

[Satrina]

Four years later, people are still asking this totally pointless question. Four years later, the answer still is "wear the right gear for the specific fight". There is no simple "wear this set of gear and you will always win against every fight". There never has been - though across servers, time, and raids, healers and dps have certainly adjusted to work with people's inflexible approach to gearing to compensate.

For heroic Gormok who can hit you for 50k unavoidable Impales just before the worms come out, massive health is the right gear for the fight. For other fights, well, it doesn't take long to figure out what the best gear set is for you and your raid to achieve best efficiency if you pay attention and experiment a bit.

[Mert]

Source: __C3__ Lastly, I have a quick gear question about a chestpiece (wrong forum, I know, but I want to only make one post). Is the ToC BS chestpiece, the Breastplate of the White Knight - Item - World of Warcraft, worth it? I currently have Chestguard of the Warden - Item - World of Warcraft, from ToC10 Anub. This relates to this topic in that if it IS worth it, should I gem 3 +30 stams in there? Or go with my original plan of a +20 dodge, +30 stam, and a green +10hit/+15stam to get the +12 stam socket bonus. That is basically +20dodge and +10 hit vs +33 stam.

I think the EH vs Avoidance portion of your post has already been answered fully (in short, it depends on the fight but Coliseum has a bias toward EH in the majority of the fights) so I figured I'd answer your other question.

I would personally say that you should only match the socket bonus on the White Knight piece if you're going to use +Stam hybrids in the yellow and red sockets so don't take the +20 Dodge option or you're cheating yourself out of a lot of Stamina. In my opinion, you either gem with three +Stam or with +10 Agi / +15 Stam (Shifting; purple), +30 Stam (Solid; blue) and +10 Defense / +15 Stam (Enduring; green).

Your choice, therfore, would be between +18 Stamina or +10 Agility and +10 Defense Rating. From an iLevel point of view, 10 Agi and 10 Def is the greater choice but as previously discussed, EH is still king for many of the current fights. It's a very similar decision to whether to take Agility or a Borean Armor Kit on your gloves and a little like the choice between the PvP and Sons of Hodir shoulder enchants.

I prefer my MT set to be relatively rounded and I typically do match socket bonuses that are above +6 Stam. However, because of the additional non-blue socket, the relative value of your socket bonus is lower to the point of being equal to +6 Stam on a piece with only two sockets. I'd therefore be tempted to go for three straight Stamina gems in it.

[Aggathon]

Source: Satrina Four years later, people are still asking this totally pointless question. Four years later, the answer still is "wear the right gear for the specific fight". There is no simple "wear this set of gear and you will always win against every fight". There never has been - though across servers, time, and raids, healers and dps have certainly adjusted to work with people's inflexible approach to gearing to compensate. For heroic Gormok who can hit you for 50k unavoidable Impales just before the worms come out, massive health is the right gear for the fight. For other fights, well, it doesn't take long to figure out what the best gear set is for you and your raid to achieve best efficiency if you pay attention and experiment a bit.

There is ONE and only ONE fight in which avoidance is god, and that's tanking heroic anub'arak adds, and in order to be able to do it you need 101.6% (I think is the number, most tanks prefer higher) dodge+block+parry+miss.

Any other fight in which it is possible for a tank to die first, EH is god because you cannot rely on avoidance streaks for an entire 6 minute fight (the earliest 2 examples were steelbreaker and algalon, I did the gear for avoidance gem for stam thing until I got to these, I had to drop a lot of gold making crafted pieces etc. in order to completely re-do my gear set to increase my EHP for these fights). On Algalon if you get an unlucky avoidance string for a 4 second interval, you can die, really really easily if you don't have the HPs for it.

If a fight doesn't hit hard enough for a tank to die (like normal versions or something) then just wear threat gear.

Anub'arak heroic being the only exception to this.

One of the problems is that many people just view this as an incoming damage mitigation vs. hps over a long duration. Sure you'll take less damage than the stam is worth over a long period of time, but this neglects that A) You'll die in a short amount of time if you die, and B) it neglects the healer's perspective. Healers spam heals, as long as that fat EHP pool stays topped, avoidance doesn't matter because if you do dodge you'll probably get overhealed and you would have been healed if you hadn't dodged. Healing is not reactive, healers spam, this is just the way it is, thank you blizzard.

Also side note: Parry and Dodge rating to %s are not the same, Parry is still less, it just doesn't suck as much as it did.

[felhoof]

Any other fight in which it is possible for a tank to die first, EH is god because you cannot rely on avoidance streaks for an entire 6 minute fight (the earliest 2 examples were steelbreaker and algalon, I did the gear for avoidance gem for stam thing until I got to these, I had to drop a lot of gold making crafted pieces etc. in order to completely re-do my gear set to increase my EHP for these fights). On Algalon if you get an unlucky avoidance string for a 4 second interval, you can die, really really easily if you don't have the HPs for it.

And similarly, if you don't have a high amount of avoidance on Algalon you can die because your healers simply can't keep up with the incoming damage.

EH is great, but understanding that EH is not health and what armor does for you is also good. Understanding what avoidance gives you and the principles on why EH is good is also important; too often people ignore the fact that it actually takes time for tanks to be healed up to full. That 0% avoidance tank would die just as fast as that 99% avoidance tank - probably faster, as it turns out.

My rule of thumb is to figure out what the minimum health is that gives you a "survive all of this and a bit more", and go for that. For instance, on Gormok it's 5 impales (4 is normal, but 5 is the worst case if taunts miss twice). If that happens I need to have about 57k health. I'm aiming for a bit more than 60k currently to cover variance. That so happens to be the limit of my gearing, but at the same time it's not pure EH; it doesn't need to be.

For Anub'arak EH is still awesome - but it needs to be about armor and resistance, not health. Health is detrimental when MTing.

Basically, your argument comes down to "EH is great for all the fights that it's great except when it's not". Which is true, but I would posit there are just as many fights that stress tanks in other ways than EH as there are fights that stress via EH. Ignoring one just makes your argument weaker. As Satrina says, know the fights and your raid.

[Bashal]

Every boss fight requires a balance between EH and avoidance. Nobody walks into a fight with 99% avoidance and 20k health, or 0% avoidance and 80k health (or whatever).

Depending on the fight, the balance point shifts in favor of one or the other. Even in EH-weighted fights, there is still usually some avoidable damage, and the healers will be glad if you avoid a decent portion of that. I hate healing tanks that seem to get hit by every damn thing the boss throws at them.

But yes, you do need to be prepared to take a significant amount of damage in some fights and not die; you just can't completely neglect avoidance as if it doesn't matter.

[Mert]

Source: Aggathon There is ONE and only ONE fight in which avoidance is god, and that's tanking heroic anub'arak adds, and in order to be able to do it you need 101.6% (I think is the number, most tanks prefer higher) dodge+block+parry+miss.

As the adds are Level 82, 101.6% is precicely right. The reason most tanks prefer higher is that 102.4% is the magic number to be "unhittable" against Level 83/Skull mobs. Any higher than that and you're just pushing Block Rating off the hit table, meaning you're wasting iLevel budget on Block that's not being used at all (just as a Mage having 500 Spell Hit is no different to one with 446).

[Aggathon]

Source: Bashal Every boss fight requires a balance between EH and avoidance. Nobody walks into a fight with 99% avoidance and 20k health, or 0% avoidance and 80k health (or whatever). Depending on the fight, the balance point shifts in favor of one or the other. Even in EH-weighted fights, there is still usually some avoidable damage, and the healers will be glad if you avoid a decent portion of that. I hate healing tanks that seem to get hit by every damn thing the boss throws at them. But yes, you do need to be prepared to take a significant amount of damage in some fights and not die; you just can't completely neglect avoidance as if it doesn't matter.

You pretty much do have to actually. You take whatever avoidance your gear can give you, but you don't gear/enchant/gem for avoidance. And when we talk about EH we mean armor too, which healers should love 'cuz when we take damage we take less. Everyone is gonna have around 60% natural parry+dodge+miss from gear, but even when not stunned the 40% chance to only block or be hit can mean a dead tank if they don't have a big EHP pool, see: Algalon.

[Aggathon]

Source: felhoof And similarly, if you don't have a high amount of avoidance on Algalon you can die because your healers simply can't keep up with the incoming damage. EH is great, but understanding that EH is not health and what armor does for you is also good. Understanding what avoidance gives you and the principles on why EH is good is also important; too often people ignore the fact that it actually takes time for tanks to be healed up to full. That 0% avoidance tank would die just as fast as that 99% avoidance tank - probably faster, as it turns out. My rule of thumb is to figure out what the minimum health is that gives you a "survive all of this and a bit more", and go for that. For instance, on Gormok it's 5 impales (4 is normal, but 5 is the worst case if taunts miss twice). If that happens I need to have about 57k health. I'm aiming for a bit more than 60k currently to cover variance. That so happens to be the limit of my gearing, but at the same time it's not pure EH; it doesn't need to be. For Anub'arak EH is still awesome - but it needs to be about armor and resistance, not health. Health is detrimental when MTing. Basically, your argument comes down to "EH is great for all the fights that it's great except when it's not". Which is true, but I would posit there are just as many fights that stress tanks in other ways than EH as there are fights that stress via EH. Ignoring one just makes your argument weaker. As Satrina says, know the fights and your raid.

The argument that people have 0% avoidance and tons of hps is hyberbole since unless stunned no tank has 0% avoidance. What comes naturally on gear is enough.

edit: I can't type.

[jere]

Whether or not it is hyperbole really depends on the content. In ToC, that situation is fairly common in fights of interest. On Northrend Beasts, for example, the tank killer is Gormok, where you cannot really avoid the DoT, so your effective avoidance against that is 0% (though the avoidance still helps against his melee). The same for Icehowl. His point of interest is typically a knockdown+melee. Again, 0% effective avoidance for the point of interest. For Anub, it is the freezing, which again gives you 0% avoidance. For other fights, avoidance has a larger impact, but the majority of the ToC and heroic ToC tank killers either bypass some or all of the tanks avoidance. That is probably less true in Ulduar though.

[Aggathon]

Source: jere Whether or not it is hyperbole really depends on the content. In ToC, that situation is fairly common in fights of interest. On Northrend Beasts, for example, the tank killer is Gormok, where you cannot really avoid the DoT, so your effective avoidance against that is 0% (though the avoidance still helps against his melee). The same for Icehowl. His point of interest is typically a knockdown+melee. Again, 0% effective avoidance for the point of interest. For Anub, it is the freezing, which again gives you 0% avoidance. For other fights, avoidance has a larger impact, but the majority of the ToC and heroic ToC tank killers either bypass some or all of the tanks avoidance. That is probably less true in Ulduar though.

Which proves my point that EHP is God right now. All I was saying is that gemming/gearing for avoidance is fairly meaningless since you have enough avoidance on gear as is, and that it is far more important to have a large EHP pool.

I'm not saying that's a good thing, it's just how things work at the moment.

[felhoof]

Which proves my point that EHP is God right now. All I was saying is that gemming/gearing for avoidance is fairly meaningless since you have enough avoidance on gear as is, and that it is far more important to have a large EHP pool.

Okay, but what is the best way to get that EH?

Too often EH is synonymous with health, and that's simply wrong. It can be the case that the best way to boost your EH is via health, but it's often the case that it's much better to boost it in other ways.

For example: Iron Council Hard mode. One of the best ways to boost your EH on that fight isn't health or armor - it's nature resistance. Both Fusion Punch and Static charge are nature and are resistable, and cutting 10-20% off of either of these results in significantly less damage overall and significantly smaller spikes. There's almost nothing you can equip that will help you nearly as much; 4k damage off of fusion punches beats the heck out of 500 health or so. Similarly with Anub'arak - Nature Resist wins out handily due to the mechanics of the fight, and armor is a close second.

How many people when they thing "EH" think "resistance"? I doubt it's very many.

The other point is that past a certain threshold, EH via health does nothing for you at all. If there's no reasonable chance that you're ever going to take 54k damage in a row without healing at least enough to take the next threshold hit, there's no reason to have 55k health, much less 60k. That stamina is utterly wasted. At that point, avoidance or threat are better choices to consider depending on the encounter.

Finally, EH is only good inasmuch as it assumes unlimited healing power and nearly unlimited HPS. With hard modes stressing so much damage output neither are as easily given as they were. Vezax is the obvious example, but things like Alone in the Darkness, Algalon, Anubarak (both adds and MT), XT before his nerf, Thorim hard - all of these had very aggressive enrage/failure timers, and all pushed to have as few healers as possible. Some of these fights absolutely encouraged gearing for more avoidance and/or supporting tanks that had higher avoidance numbers.

[Edgewalker]

Source: felhoof The other point is that past a certain threshold, EH via health does nothing for you at all. If there's no reasonable chance that you're ever going to take 54k damage in a row without healing at least enough to take the next threshold hit, there's no reason to have 55k health, much less 60k. That stamina is utterly wasted. At that point, avoidance or threat are better choices to consider depending on the encounter. Finally, EH is only good inasmuch as it assumes unlimited healing power and nearly unlimited HPS. With hard modes stressing so much damage output neither are as easily given as they were. Vezax is the obvious example, but things like Alone in the Darkness, Algalon, Anubarak (both adds and MT), XT before his nerf, Thorim hard - all of these had very aggressive enrage/failure timers, and all pushed to have as few healers as possible. Some of these fights absolutely encouraged gearing for more avoidance and/or supporting tanks that had higher avoidance numbers.

This entire statement is absolutely untrue. The extra health still serves as a health buffer for additional heals before you become capped...
if you have 55K HP and get hit for 50K combined, you only need 45K healing to survive the next combo.
If you have 50001 HP and get het for 50K combined, you need 50K healing to survive the next combo. It's not rocket science.

Also, on all the fights you listed above, the damage spikes were unavoidable or got high enough that you needed stacked HP to live. Having 60% avoidance vs 55% avoidance but 5K less health made you a much greater liability. The same is true in TOC, where EVERY SINGLE situation where a tank will die (exception being Anub adds) are situations where the tank simply can not avoid the incoming damage.


P.S. This topic is stupid. I feel like I have answered it 30000 times over the past 5 years, and the answer is constantly shifting depending on the current raid and design philosophy, AKA there is NO correct answer except "gear for the current fight".

[felhoof]

This entire statement is absolutely untrue. The extra health still serves as a health buffer for additional heals before you become capped... if you have 55K HP and get hit for 50K combined, you only need 45K healing to survive the next combo. If you have 50001 HP and get het for 50K combined, you need 50K healing to survive the next combo. It's not rocket science.

Right - but I'm not talking about those thresholds. I'm talking about when you have 50k health and the maximum damage without healing you can take is (for example) 35k, and damage always comes in no greater than 15k intervals. Past that point EH doesn't do a lot for you (if anything).

Also, on all the fights you listed above, the damage spikes were unavoidable or got high enough that you needed stacked HP to live. Having 60% avoidance vs 55% avoidance but 5K less health made you a much greater liability.

I disagree. Simply because after looking at logs (for example on Algalon), it turned out that despite having much higher stamina and EH than the next tank, my avoidance was simply too much of a liability relative to other tanks for that fight. I took too many strings of hits relative to other tanks and would be too far down. It does happen that way.

I do agree that as one of those tanks that gets a ton of avoidance naturally and not a lot of EH by comparison, you probably shouldn't go for avoidance. But warriors and paladins aren't the only tanks in existence.

The same is true in TOC, where EVERY SINGLE situation where a tank will die (exception being Anub adds) are situations where the tank simply can not avoid the incoming damage.

So on every single situation a tank can die - which is what, 3 situations in ToC (gormok, Anub MT, Anub adds) EH is better, except when it isn't?

That's exactly the sort of hyperbole I was talking about earlier. And even there EH isn't the same in each fight; stamina most certainly isn't king on Anub'arak MT, and MEH is as important or moreso than EH. Each of those three fights have three very different gearing profiles, and following the old 'more stam = more EH = teh bestests!' argument is fallacious at best.

[Aggathon]

Source: felhoof Okay, but what is the best way to get that EH? Too often EH is synonymous with health, and that's simply wrong. It can be the case that the best way to boost your EH is via health, but it's often the case that it's much better to boost it in other ways. For example: Iron Council Hard mode. One of the best ways to boost your EH on that fight isn't health or armor - it's nature resistance. Both Fusion Punch and Static charge are nature and are resistable, and cutting 10-20% off of either of these results in significantly less damage overall and significantly smaller spikes. There's almost nothing you can equip that will help you nearly as much; 4k damage off of fusion punches beats the heck out of 500 health or so. Similarly with Anub'arak - Nature Resist wins out handily due to the mechanics of the fight, and armor is a close second. How many people when they thing "EH" think "resistance"? I doubt it's very many. The other point is that past a certain threshold, EH via health does nothing for you at all. If there's no reasonable chance that you're ever going to take 54k damage in a row without healing at least enough to take the next threshold hit, there's no reason to have 55k health, much less 60k. That stamina is utterly wasted. At that point, avoidance or threat are better choices to consider depending on the encounter. Finally, EH is only good inasmuch as it assumes unlimited healing power and nearly unlimited HPS. With hard modes stressing so much damage output neither are as easily given as they were. Vezax is the obvious example, but things like Alone in the Darkness, Algalon, Anubarak (both adds and MT), XT before his nerf, Thorim hard - all of these had very aggressive enrage/failure timers, and all pushed to have as few healers as possible. Some of these fights absolutely encouraged gearing for more avoidance and/or supporting tanks that had higher avoidance numbers.

Iron Counil: I did this fight pre-nerf, look at my achievement, it's June 16th iirc. (at least as far as I'm aware there weren't any nerfs then, it was definitely still a hard fight that requires extensive tank rotations, and even then I actually sat this fight for a while because DKs were OP at the time, so my guild actually killed it a few weeks before me, you could armory Eraduun or Proxximos [maelstrom] to confirm).

Absolutely NO ONE was advocating tanking this fight with NR. What you did is had a pro dispeller so the fusion punch ticks did zero damage and you used a cooldown for when he punched. We literally ran rotating cooldowns so that for the last 2 rotations a tank always had a cooldown running on them and the 2nd rotation our tank (DK) used his personal cooldowns and our 1st tank still used a cooldown for fusion punch.

This fight was about RAW EHP. The ONLY things that are EHP (which is for physical fights, you can talk differently about magical fights, but then you're getting nit picky, and even then you just go for stam over armor: see Hodir, that fight absolutely did not require Frost Resist, or hell even 3D sarth back in January you had feral druids in frost resist because it had so much STAM) are Stam, and Armor. Everything else that mitigates physical damage is reliant upon RNG.

Also: I've been hit by steelbreaker for 47k melee, don't tell me the magic part of that fight is the reason you should go with NR... that's just innane.

I have to agree with Edgewalker whole heartedly...

...although to an extent I feel like at this point I'm nerd raging so hard I'm really just getting trolled...

Also: I've come to the conclusion that I really enjoy parenthetical statements in the middle of sentances.

Edit: I read your most recent response, I'm sorry but you're just flat out wrong.

[Edgewalker]

Source: felhoof Right - but I'm not talking about those thresholds. I'm talking about when you have 50k health and the maximum damage without healing you can take is (for example) 35k, and damage always comes in no greater than 15k intervals. Past that point EH doesn't do a lot for you (if anything). I disagree. Simply because after looking at logs (for example on Algalon), it turned out that despite having much higher stamina and EH than the next tank, my avoidance was simply too much of a liability relative to other tanks for that fight. I took too many strings of hits relative to other tanks and would be too far down. It does happen that way. I do agree that as one of those tanks that gets a ton of avoidance naturally and not a lot of EH by comparison, you probably shouldn't go for avoidance. But warriors and paladins aren't the only tanks in existence. So on every single situation a tank can die - which is what, 3 situations in ToC (gormok, Anub MT, Anub adds) EH is better, except when it isn't? That's exactly the sort of hyperbole I was talking about earlier. And even there EH isn't the same in each fight; stamina most certainly isn't king on Anub'arak MT, and MEH is as important or moreso than EH. Each of those three fights have three very different gearing profiles, and following the old 'more stam = more EH = teh bestests!' argument is fallacious at best.

What aboid Anub'arak leads you to think avoidance is remotely worthwhile? Armor has it's place, but Avoidance/Armor are in different boats. Regardless, the 10% Hp effect of leeching swarm doesn't change the gearing profile for the MT. Slash/Melee/Swarm still has a strict minimal you must meet.

Tanks can die on Jaraxxus adds, you can die during Twin Spikes without CD's, you can die during Worms, Gormokk, Icehowl... sure the chance isn't great, but why not gear optimally 100% of the time?
I'm a DK, not a warrior, and you still naturally end up with 65+% avoidance with no extraneous avoidance gear and double stamina trinkets.

I don't know what to say about your experience on Algalon. But there is a lot of magical damage involved, and I can't see an argument for anything but stamina/armor there either, Glyph of Indom. has it's place on that fight for sure though.

Even in your listed example, the difference between 50K and 55K at 15K a hit is a rejuv tick saving you or letting you die... not really the best argument winner.


Edit - NR for Steelbreaker? Really?

[Kazeyonoma]

Dead horse being beaten here maybe?