[Petninja]

Source: Dizzy I'm real sorry to ask again, but what does the abbreviation EH stand for? Im missing the point to some of the threads as I dont know

It's Effective Health, and our dear Ciderhelm has a somewhat old but useful post here.


That aside, I'd like to remind everyone to learn what all their talents they are taking do. I have no crit rating on my gear, and no agility either that I know of. Yet I have roughly 20% crit on many of my primary tanking abilities. This is what makes using DW viable.

[Grombrindal]

Source: Dizzy I'm real sorry to ask again, but what does the abbreviation EH stand for? Im missing the point to some of the threads as I dont know

EH is effective health, it's a combination of actual hps and armor value, so increasing either increases EH.

[Oa-]

Source: dyls I really can't see this coming into fruition. A bad tank might do 800dps; a good tank wearing the same gear might do 1100dps. A bad dps might do 1300 dps; a good dpser wearing the same gear might do 2100 dps. I just can't see Blizz factoring in the damage done by tanks as that important (excepting, in cases like Leo the blind where you have to kill mobs solo, for example).

In my last naxx run i was getting about 1800 dps on some of the fights(Not ones
that have a damage modifier). I would like to see our damage come into play.

another thing i was thinking about, in the upcoming content the bosses are
supposed to have a lot more armor, deep wounds ignores armor so will this
talent start to shine even more?

[Síhrtogg]

I'm running Naxx 10 with 2 healers and our raid's biggest concern is them going oom. In this situation, I wouldn't want to give up any damage reduction for any amount of damage: with 6 damage dealers, dps isn't the issue. I'm specced in 5/5 shield spec, 2/2 improved spell reflect and 2/5 improved demoralizing shout, although I'd love to know how many points exactly are required to cap boss AP currently. If there's any way I could help with collecting data by means of a couple of respecs and some WWS sheets, please let me know how.

[Ranx]

Source: Canariensis "within reason", i think the gem choices remain the same: Blue = Stam Yellow = DEF (if under 540); Sta/Def Red = ??? Red is "probably" the gem choice most people who gem for "survivability" have been putting: Dodge, Dodge/Stam, Parry, or Parry/Stam, or in some cases Str/Def (note at this time there is no monarch Str/Def pattern) Originally, I had considered giong sta/str for red, but again like the monarch gem..there isn't a "rare" cut sovereign. So gemming for "damage" but still having a focus on tanking, it seems reasonable to gem Red: Expertise or Expertise/Stamina. Those are gem colors, but you could also look at enchants of gear too. Going Agil for cloak and gloves, Expertise for Gloves and Bracers, etc. I don't think proponents of 15-5-51 are saying skip thinking about "living", but also what can you do in addition. There is a good guide on the front page discussing +Hit and Expertise. I think HIT/Expertise go hand in hand with being a tank. In terms of EH, I don't think anyone would advocate ignoring EH. Maybe instead of going Pure Expertise gem...go sta/expertise. If you're at 540 defense and have a yellow slot, maybe go Stamina/hit. Finally, I am not saying it's not going to happen...but I think the days of just pure Stam gems might be a thing of the past. That's not to say it's a horrid idea, but if you look at a lot of the socket bonuses...lets use Valorous Helm as an example. I can put a solid (+24 stamina) in the red slot, but putting in a Guardian's (+12 stamina / +8 expertise) I still get +24 stamina but add +8 expertise. yes, that's a perfect example...but lets say the socket bonus was +10 stamina or +8...Gemming guardian, I gain +8 expertise. Gemming Solid, I would get +2 or +4 stamina. At this time, with tihs build I would go with the Guardian over +4 stamina (but I reserve the right to change my mind.) =)

Don't get me wrong im all for 15/5/51 i have been using it for a while now and im very happy with it.
But i think we have all seen the mad brust that is in LK now that is why i think EH is really importent if not more now than before. Also i do agree that some of the socket bounses are now worth getting, which is the second reason why i took JC as one of my proffesions, the dragon eyes counts for any gem color so this in effect alows me to have stam gems in all my sockets while still getting the socket bounes that are worth getting.

[Rime]

Source: Roana Notwithstanding the fact that expertise is also a mitigation stat, I would like to point out that "diminishing returns" on avoidance stats is not exactly a fully accurate description.

Source: Roana It is important to remember that pre-WotLK, avoidance stats had significant increasing returns with respect to your relative survival gain. That is, gaining another 1% avoidance when you already were at 50% increased your chance of survival more than when you had only 40% avoidance. True, numerically it was the same increase as before, but you did get more mileage out of the same increase if you had higher avoidance already (as an extreme case, consider going from 99% to 100% avoidance). WotLK fixed that. Now you're getting not that much extra benefit from the extra rating points, regardless of whether you're at 40%, 50%, or 60%. In fact, even now you're often getting more than 1% extra survivability out pre-DR increases of 1% in dodge or defense or even parry rating.

Roana, I could kiss you. This cannot be stressed enough. Whether valid or not, the attitude of tanks these days seems to be "there's so much avoidance on my gear that if I gem for it I'll only get half the value!" Avoidance was overvalued in BC. .5% avoidance is not always less gain than 1% - it depends entirely on your current gear, and that's what the "diminishing returns" are designed to balance around. In fact, it should always be equal in value the same way armor is. Which leads me to my next point:

We treat armor the same way. How many times have newer posters been backhanded for making statements like "armor isn't very useful because it gives less benefit the more you have." Armor is still king when it comes to tanking, and always will be. Avoidance now functions effectively the same way - heck, they even have the same cap.

In regards to the actual topic of discussion, I'm inclined to say that deep wounds is a fabulous choice of spec and frankly, depending on how many mobs you're tanking, will probably cause slower weapons to be superior to faster weapons assuming equal dps. On a single mob (like a boss, where it counts) it's six of one and a half-dozen of another. Faster weapons will likely come out ahead, but DW helps close the gap.

I myself will still be optimizing gear like there's no tomorrow. Armor goes on avoidance pieces, which get gemmed for avoidance, and EH pieces chock-full of BR and defense will still be modified to promote even more EH. My opinion is admittedly skewed as a pally - while many abilities can still miss or be avoided, pallies have a baseline of damage from abilities which are independent of hit and expertise: SoV dot, HS reactive damage, consecrate (*hiss*), et al.

[Rime]

Not to mention 10 free expertise skill.

I'd still give my right foot for glyph of blocking, though >_>

[Ciderhelm]

Source: Rime We treat armor the same way. How many times have newer posters been backhanded for making statements like "armor isn't very useful because it gives less benefit the more you have." Armor is still king when it comes to tanking, and always will be. Avoidance now functions effectively the same way - heck, they even have the same cap.

What? Armor reduces every hit in a stable and reliable way. Avoidance produced beneficial streaks, and now produces less of them.

The way you're writing makes it sounds like Avoidance somehow got buffed to be as good as Armor. It was already worse in the early gearing process in TBC and is now significantly worse as a stat to try and stack.

[Rime]

That was meant to be read in terms of "diminishing returns." Not indicating that avoidance is now equal to armor. If I phrased it poorly I apologize, hopefully that makes more sense now.

I'm trying to point out the similarity in mechanics - there are never diminishing returns to the benefits of avoidance, simply to what we see in our tooltips (or what we should see in our tooltips, @lazy blizz). It has a lesser effect than avoidance did in BC because blizz had not yet addressed the potency of avoidance in late gearing in such a graceful manner (instead opting to implement sunwell radiance). Sunwell radiance and a plentitude of virtually useless block rating on BC gear weren't designed to increase incoming tank damage, they were designed to increase the frequency of spikes.

For my part, I simply don't agree that avoidance isn't effective to socket for. That it does less than it did in BC doesn't make it better or worse than any other gearing method - these are all relative terms. I agree with Roana that avoidance was overvalued in BC, so smacking it with the same DR system armor gets doesn't necessarily make it useless on gems.

I do, of course, take issue with the statement that avoidance produces beneficial streaks - but that's probably a topic for another thread at another time. And one that's been hashed over for years, anyhow.

[Rime]

I guess I should add a little disclaimer: avoidance was absolutely and definitively worse for gearing early in BC. That's because early in BC tank gear was poorly itemized. It's also because of the tiny loot table tanks got to work with - this was back when the only badge gear available was offhands, awful jewelry, and fire resist.

Now we have a massive spread of blue tank gear available, more than 2/3 your gear available from badges (which is very consistently superb), and two full clears worth of naxx, sarth, and malygos every week doable in mediocre gear. This is not early BC, is what I'm trying to say

[obtuse]

I agree with this deep wounds reasoning. Avoidance has officially been thrashed. You can not go for it. I am taking what the gear comes with now and treating as just another thing like crit immunity, you can not increase your survival with any sort of comparison using avoidance as you can with block and armor/health. This used to be different for the endgame in BC. Avoidance procs/trinket tricks may be another story. Do not go for avoidance on gear however.

[Horacio]

At the end of the day, the thing that matters most is defeating the content, no matter how you go about it. I do not think that taking up a traditional tanking spec is "doing it wrong" per se and the theory behind this discussion is undoubtely reasonably sound.

The obvious answer to all of this is to ninja about a dozen more talent points from somewhere but since that isn't going to happen.....eh, I'll play with it.

Tonight wasn't bad. With 1/2 Impale and an otherwise heavy tank spec, I did ~1350 DPS. I have only a ring from Naxx 25 and nothing yet from Naxx 10, just crafted/heroic gear. I was 4th on the damage meter as we cleared Spider and Military in 2.5 hours. Obviously, me being 4th is an issue as is requiring 3 healers. I think once we get our OT some gear (hit 80 yesterday) I will be more inclined to pick up some more damage talents.

[Omok]

I personally love the spec that Ciderhelm has detailed in this post. I did a ten man Naxxramas tonight and did 2032 DPS as the main tank. Deep wounds came out to be 11% of my total damage, nothing to scoff at.

Wow Web Stats

[Viggo Vickers]

I actually was using a more traditional spec, without Deep Wounds. I have been tempted but never saw anything highly suggesting to pick it up before, so I've just shifted spec now to try it out and see how it plays out.

[Roana]

Source: Ciderhelm What? Armor reduces every hit in a stable and reliable way. Avoidance produced beneficial streaks, and now produces less of them.

This is not a good way of looking at armor (or rather, effective health) vs. avoidance. Both effective health and avoidance reduce the chance of tank death -- neither does eliminate it, at least not in general.

There is one case where effective health is the better choice: When you can stack so much effective health that it is practically impossible for a boss to kill you before you get topped off again and if healers have effectively greater healing output than the max damage output from the boss. And granted, that may even be a very common case at the moment.

However, that case aside, both effective health and avoidance simply reduce the chance of a catastrophic event, i.e. tank death: They do not eliminate it. For any given boss encounter, an increase in effective health may even be almost entirely ineffective, because that boss's attacks may so big that they leapfrog the increase. But if you cannot guarantee that you can avoid the catastrophic event, then the goal is to minimize the chance of it, to where it is as unlikely as being struck by lightning twice. This is also where emergency tank and healer abilities (Shield Wall, Last Stand, Swiftmend, Nature's Swiftness, Guardian Spirit) come into play. They allow you to deal with near-catastrophic events, so that near-catastrophic events have to occur multiple times in a fight to actually kill you.

I have no experience with the WotLK raid encounters yet, but the BC definitely had bosses where a different balance was called for in order to maximize your chance at survival: Jan'alai (after enrage) and Prince Malchezaar (phase 2) come to mind, assuming typical gear for first encountering the instance. Both had burst damage that could overcome the maximum effective health a tank could attain at the gear level in question. In those cases, properly balancing avoidance vs. effective health was a choice that could significantly increase your chance of survival.

This is not counting that Blizzard has indicated that they would prefer (for future raids) changes where healers have to actually worry about their mana, which would introduce many additional concerns in constructing a good model for tank survival in raids.

[Ciderhelm]

Source: Roana This is not a good way of looking at armor (or rather, effective health) vs. avoidance. Both effective health and avoidance reduce the chance of tank death -- neither does eliminate it, at least not in general. There is one case where effective health is the better choice: When you can stack so much effective health that it is practically impossible for a boss to kill you before you get topped off again and if healers have effectively greater healing output than the max damage output from the boss. And granted, that may even be a very common case at the moment. However, that case aside, both effective health and avoidance simply reduce the chance of a catastrophic event, i.e. tank death: They do not eliminate it. For any given boss encounter, an increase in effective health may even be almost entirely ineffective, because that boss's attacks may so big that they leapfrog the increase. But if you cannot guarantee that you can avoid the catastrophic event, then the goal is to minimize the chance of it, to where it is as unlikely as being struck by lightning twice. This is also where emergency tank and healer abilities (Shield Wall, Last Stand, Swiftmend, Nature's Swiftness, Guardian Spirit) come into play. They allow you to deal with near-catastrophic events, so that near-catastrophic events have to occur multiple times in a fight to actually kill you. I have no experience with the WotLK raid encounters yet, but the BC definitely had bosses where a different balance was called for in order to maximize your chance at survival: Jan'alai (after enrage) and Prince Malchezaar (phase 2) come to mind, assuming typical gear for first encountering the instance. Both had burst damage that could overcome the maximum effective health a tank could attain at the gear level in question. In those cases, properly balancing avoidance vs. effective health was a choice that could significantly increase your chance of survival. This is not counting that Blizzard has indicated that they would prefer (for future raids) changes where healers have to actually worry about their mana, which would introduce many additional concerns in constructing a good model for tank survival in raids.

The snippet you guys are arguing about does not say "Avoidance is bad," it says "Content just doesn't warrant" gemming for it. Stamina matters for Malygos (breath/vortex) and Sartharion with drakes (breath/health debuff). Armor is helpful for Patchwerk tanks. Avoidance helps in the same circumstance, but not gemming for it will not make the encounter less stable nor will it cause the raid to require another healer.

Current raid content can be completed in Heroic quality blues, entirely, with the exception of Achievements. A tank putting optional itemization into -- yes -- minimal gains in Avoidance is almost always going to hurt the raid more than help it.

There is currently not enough burst or sustained damage to warrant an overarching physical damage reduction gearing strategy. As someone who regularly evaluates gear for each encounter and swaps in gear when appropriate, I switch a single trinket for Stamina on Malygos and switch back to my Crit trinket for everything else. I do this in a raid that peaks at 6 healers, but normally runs with 5.

[Roana]

Source: Ciderhelm The snippet you guys are arguing about does not say "Avoidance is bad," it says "Content just doesn't warrant" gemming for it. Stamina matters for Malygos (breath/vortex) and Sartharion with drakes (breath/health debuff). Armor is helpful for Patchwerk tanks. Avoidance helps in the same circumstance, but not gemming for it will not make the encounter less stable nor will it cause the raid to require another healer.

I have no problem with the claim that current raid content may not warrant gemming for avoidance -- in fact, as I said, I have no personal experience regarding current raid content.

But I did take issue with the following, far more general statement:

What? Armor reduces every hit in a stable and reliable way. Avoidance produced beneficial streaks, and now produces less of them.

Which I find misleading.

[Ciderhelm]

Source: Roana Which I find misleading.

Given equal amounts of Avoidance and Armor, Armor is superior in every situation we're currently seeing. Avoidance got hit, and it got hit hard. Even if we measure Avoidance scaling in terms of time to live, it is even less reliable than the already unreliable stat it was in early TBC gearing.

The discussion of Armor was irrelevant to the original post. I disagreed with it because I don't think it's sensible at all to suggest Avoidance is in the same league as Armor in stabilizing encounters with burst damage. Using an example like Prince from Karazhan to suggest Avoidance is still strong is problematic because it hinges on a dual wielding boss capable of dealing Crushing Blows, two mechanics which weighted heavily in favor of Avoidance but also two mechanics we're not currently dealing with.

More importantly than whether Armor or Avoidance is superior is the broader point that Wrath encounters, with Patchwerk being the sole exception, do not have notable physical burst.

[tPaste]

I've seen a few builds that are like this, I intend to try one out tonight in heroics as our guild is taking time off from raids for the holidays to see how it does damage wise...there is one thing I don't get that I'm hoping someone can help me out with:
Impale and Deep Wounds both are based off crit...yet in these specs rather than going for 5 of 5 Cruelty they always take 3 of 3 in AttT and 2 of 5 Cruelty...despite the fact that our "go-to" move...the move we use whenever it's up, shield slam, is not based off attack power and Impale and Deep Wounds should have better performance from more crit than more AP.

Choosing 3 of 3 in AttT over putting those points in cruelty in this particular build based off what I think you'd want to maximize seems slightly counterintuitive to me. Have tests been done that show that Armed is simply superior to Cruelty no matter what? Or am I missing something else in this regard...something I'm not considering?

Please help me out here.

[Dizzy]

Still trying it out, but dont come above average off 1200-1450 dps. Must be doing something wrong. Especially if i here of other warriors getting 2k+ dps. Also deep wound doesn't come above 6% off total average

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