[Satrina]

Very nice! I'll read it again tomorrow to digest it fully.

Can definitely tell you're a technology professional; 11 uses of "impact"

[Hypatia]

Oh god. Shoot me now.

At least I didn't say anything about "the customer".

[Hypatia]

Yes, I just did tests with a pally friend, and it looks like all of Vitality (5% warrior), Sacred Duty (6% paladin), Combat Expertise(10% paladin), and Blessing of Kings (10% anyone) are multiplicative. I will presume for now that Dire Bear Form and Heart of the Wild also act multiplicatively.

I'll put up new charts and numbers based on this some time this week.

[Foolishness]

Wow.

This stuff really takes tanking theory to the next level. You sir, are legendary.

I really appreciate the effort you have gone to.


Edit: changed epic to legendary

[brain9h]

Amazing job, congratulations. I'll re-read it carefully later before making any comments

[Icefall]

You should also consider a hunter's scorpid sting, and how it changes numbers and thus changes how a tank needs to gear itself.

[Kazeyonoma]

I stare at these graphs and can only come up with 1 thing.












ze goggles zey do nazing!

[Tiarnach]

Something you ought to look at is taking the information from a gear spreadsheet and using it to min/max for Burst Time as a result of the available combinations of gear. It would pretty much give you a comprehensive approach towards optimal gearing.

[Thedom]

Man as much as I am sure this information is amazingly useful I am still attempting to digest it all hehe o.0

Great work, keep it up cause I know I am incapable of doing it!

[Gzipper]

So basically its a "make sure you survive 'one' hit" after that avoid them, if you get oneshot your simply undergeared. Gear with whats hard to get, ie avoidance. As you reach ~20k hp each point of more stamina does less for you than avoidance as your gear increses in avoidance (meaning gem avoidance gear with sta) since of burst damage. Sounds to me that EH recieves a 'diminishing relevancy' as avoidance gets better in terms of survivalbility, not because EH is bad its just avoidance gets so good.

Any debuff's such as scorpid sting, insectswarm value increases with the type of gear you have and its avoidance level.

Im sure this is not the end of this matter but I really appriciate your work Hypatia, I've always been a big fan of avoidance, I just hope I understood it all.

EDIT:removed some and clarified some.

[brain9h]

So, I re-read it again and I think I have grasped it, and have some remarks.

Correct me if I'm wrong please.

My understanding:
(1) You built a metric that has in itself both avoidance and health, Burst Time, measured in average number of swings until full death if no heals lands and no emergency buttons are used, right?

(2) As I see it, it looks like a new version of Effective Health, but taking in account additional factors: the average hit size of the boss and adding avoidance, and also measuring in swings (h/H)

(3) The metric is built such that increasing Burst time is desirable, and you plot charts for different values of a, h and H (avoidance, average boss hit and your total health), including a delta-stamina and a delta-dodge comparison.

(4) As the above poster mentioned, in really gross terms, your results point that after 20k HP you will usually get greater Burst Time from dodge gems, with increasing results if you stack them in good numbers.

Now, I think your work is great don't take me wrong, let me just add one thing.

All this is based on the concept of "average". It doesn't sound adequate to model a metric that assumes "time until death if no heals" (or as you stated, time for someone to heal you) using averages, more specifically, using the average size of boss hit, instead of the largest possible. I think sometimes we want to look at "burst time" during bad cases.

o I think it may be worth for someone to look up the Burst Time charts assuming h = maximum boss hit, instead of average, because there are two distinct ways of gearing.

Sometimes you want to gear for average situations. Farm content maybe? On this you measure your performance based on 'most of time'. "Most of time I don't take any damage", "Bosses don't usually hit me hard", "I'm quite easy to heal except when something goes bad and I die, but that's quite rare". Other times, you absolutely don't care for anything else and just want to survive worst-cases, because they DO happen. Rarely, but they do, and you want to be better prepared for them even it it costs you an overall increase in damage taken. Call it the old avoidance X EH debate if you want. A good tank will know when to switch gears to suit the needs of the encounter, and for that matter this good tank could use metrics for both situations.

So, I think you should add a remark for tanks reading your article that the charts could also be read using h = maximum hit size of the boss, instead of average. So, if you want to gear for Archimonde, you could look up at h = 8000 for average results, or if you're interested in bad cases, you could lookup at h = 10000 to see how to maximize Burst Time when he suddenly hits you harder (bad luck, you let demo shout down, etc).

Do I make sense here?

[Kazeyonoma]

what brain said actually makes more sense. All things considering, max boss hits is what kills tanks, not average hits. Average hits do make sense for a general minimum, but max hits allow for definite maximums.

[Radhja]

I can tell this is going to be a fantastic read once I wrap my head around what the hell you're talking about.

Balance ftw, but this extra effort on Hypatia's behalf will really let the elitests hyperanalyze what's already been rehashed time and time again, only this time they might have some math to back up their proclamations.

Kudos, Hypatia.

[Hypatia]

Source: brain9h So, I re-read it again and I think I have grasped it, and have some remarks. Correct me if I'm wrong please.

Nope--everything you said pretty much makes sense, and is really what I would hope people get out of this. This work is really just a starting point. I think that this idea of "expected time" in general could be a very powerful technique for figuring out what avoidance actually buys us. "Burst Time" in specific is my attempt to turn it into a number that's related to more than just avoidance.

I like your thought about max hit. That's definitely an interesting one. I will admit that I'm not entirely happy with the question of how one should decide what number of hits to be watching out for. I chose h/H (max health/hit or expected health/unmitigated hit), but that's certainly not perfect. On the other hand, choosing an arbitrary number between two and four isn't all that great, either. (And this is essentially the scale we're working with if we consider a range of pretty-weak-hitting bosses to very-strong-hitting-bosses at the T6 level.)


I think that the best direction to go at the moment is probably to collect data. Unfortunately, that's a bit of a hairy thing to do. I might throw together a simple addon for myself to track information about my avoidance and EH, hit and miss strings, and what's gone on when I've died. I'll have to think about that.

[Elecktra]

Great stuff - and as tried to say in a thread some time ago "The World is not Flat" ... this post works very well for me and brings together EH and avoidance in a universal framework, which as a new tank I was struggling to cope with due to the flaws in the logic and over simplicity of maximising EH. This work now objectively allows me to decide at any point in time whether I should add more EH or Avoidance to get closer to an optimum given an expected set of circumstances and my current stats.

[Gzipper]

As I see this is when going on towards Sunwell (Im not close to Sunwell but read a lot of it) this explains why, for example Brutallus, needs avoidance since after 20k hp +500hp and armor wont help you as much as avoidance will ('diminishing relevancy' of EH). Looking at the numbers thats what they are telling us (me). Its not anymore about single hits. Its about burst damage. Its a transition from the old gruul thinking towards high end fights. With T6 your gear supports already a high EH though you have to gear "right" gear. Having both still wont help you from the worst case scenario (except 'full avoidance') as you can also see from the numbers.

As Brain9h says it is more interesting if it were max burst time, where as rection time is nice too. And as he says it's an extension of the old EH theory and which explains a more complex world.

My 2 cents.

[Aesir]

Incredible post Hypatia. The concrete math proving that EH and Avoidance are mutually inclusive rather then exclusive is excellent.


You should show this to Blizzard because I highly suspect that you have cracked the math behind this better then they have.

[TheAlmightyWarrior]

Let me first say:
OUTSTANDING WORK!
"Are you sure you're not a Mage in disquise"?
You're throwing some sick looking runes up there.
Poor warrior like me with intel in the single digits might cross his eyes about halfway through.
I noticed you did some of your work based on the +15 Stamina gem. Uh OH! I've stacked +12 Stam!
This of course just makes your point even clearer (and exposes the fact that I've been a lazy/cheap/poor
tank in not seeking out and stacking the better STAM gem(s)).
My avoidance ( if you mean Dodge Parry Block) hovers right around 19.5% respectfully (20.93D, 18.85P, 19.06B). Getting these numbers to move takes a pretty good upgrade. I went from Felsteel leggings to Sunguard Legplates and those percentages only jumped 1-2% and that was a pretty big upgrade.
Replacing all my +12 stamina gems (13) with +15 stamina gems will be painfully expensive (guess that what I deserve for my lack of due diligence). Replacing them with avoidance will be equally as painful. That being said, I'm learning that I can no longer AFFORD to make mistakes in judgment in this area, as there are many many people depending on me to be the best tank I can be, and be as well geared as possible. The thought of cries of "No rezzes for the noob" or worse "Don't take him, he's under geared", send chills up my spine.
Most of what you get is "Dude, you got to stack stam and defense cause the guild ain't going to take you into <insert instance name here> unless your HP is X and your Def is Y". OK that is a little simplistic (but it has been said by many warrior class leads in many many guilds). What's a warrior tank to do. To get the gear you got to make the runs. To make the runs you have to have HP and avoidance that doesn't make the healers completely hate you. I think it's going to come down to guild/raid leaders. They, not I, determine who IS Main Tank. If they're looking at HP and I've stacked avoidance (and they're not currently reading Tankspot.com) haven't I just put myself in the OT position?

Just some thoughts. I'm off to buy some +15 STAM Gems (and maybe a couple dodge and parry gems .

[Gzipper]

Source: TheAlmightyWarrior Let me first say: OUTSTANDING WORK! I noticed you did some of your work based on the +15 Stamina gem. Uh OH! I've stacked +12 Stam! My avoidance ( if you mean Dodge Parry Block) hovers right around 19.5% respectfully (20.93D, 18.85P, 19.06B). (...) Just some thoughts. I'm off to buy some +15 STAM Gems (and maybe a couple dodge and parry gems .

Avoidance is Parry, Dodge and miss (from defense skill).

Block is not an avoidance stat. Its a way for pushing crushings off and in that case a avoidance stat. It has a bonus of doing some relative good mitigation becuase of SBV. Block has other uses (such aoe tanking).

If your not in the +20k hp range don't bother with +dodge gems (if not fighting prince). Parry is a bad gem to get since it wont give you as much avoidance as a avoidance gem (plus other negative effects).

If you're not in MT/BT raiding dont bother with gearing up with +15 gems, if you dont like running heroics day and night.

What the model says, if Im not way off, is that for lower tier (availible gear) EH is more superior than avoidance but when reaching higher tiers, avoidance and EH the favor is tilting towards avoidance, and where as getting dodge gems are adding more survivalbility than +15 gems as where your gear already support high EH, but as you gain more avoidance it gets increasingly more powerful.

[Henjam]

Your math is spot-on from what I can see. Thanks for adding some long-overdue credibility to avoidance tanking.

I have personally tanked every boss up to 5/5 Hyjal and 6/9 BT (except Vashj and Kael) in pure avoidance gear (about 75-81% pure avoidance.) I can say that the practical results reflect to a great extent the theory you've laid out in this post.

Henjam - Zangarmarsh (US)