[Kazeyonoma]

This post was made on the maintankadin forums regarding a druid who could beat any stam total out there (since 2.3 gave paladins 10% more stamina).

Source: Joanadark regarding druids: A druid who stacks the absolutely maximum possible stamina would indeed easily beat either total. They generally don't do this though. The reason being that the druid will hit the armor cap fairly early, as well as get a very height amount of stamina, but will be taking an exorbitant amount of damage due to lack of avoidance. Once armor cap has been hit, the common trend is to start working on their Dodge statistic, as well as their threat-stats AP and crit. We had an interesting discussion on tankspot.com where a warrior described his guild's experimentation using a druid tank on Archimonde. Essentially, while the druid was taking noticeably smaller hits than the warriors had, he was also taking noticeably more frequent and unpredictable damage spikes, which made him harder to keep alive over all. It's easy to overlook the value of high avoidance or to dismiss it in all the fixation (from myself included) on our hp insecurities, however this gives a great example of how powerful avoidance really is. I like to describe avoidance in terms of being a "damage-spreader", rather than zooming in on it being a "chance to negate each individual hit". That way of analyzing avoidance is something people like Satrina have gradually started to pick up on and adopt. Think of the boss's attack speed in slightly different terms. Instead of looking at how often a boss will attempt to attack you, define instead how often you can expect to receive damage; how often you get hit. This is your Effective Damage Frequency. Avoidance works by decreasing your EDF, by "spreading" hits apart. This is an important element of tanking, just as much so as Effective Health. The two work hand-in-hand and neither is enough on its own. Effective Health deals with single hits. One single all-at-once receipt of damage. As is often quoted in discussion of EH theory, no amount of avoiding will prevent damage from eventually landing, and when it does, you must be ready for it. This is why rogues are not tanks, despite being capable of incredible avoidance statistics. They do not possess the attribute of tanking-adequate effective health. Effective Damage Frequency points out something different, something often missed in all the idea circumstances of EH math. It works because people are human. It works because servers will lag. It works because the attacks of bosses do not function like DOTs, with steady ticking of equal, orderly, predictable damage. It works because the heals that keep you alive, the ones you rely upon no matter what your EH may reach, have casting-times. One of the easiest and most frequent mistakes when analyzing tanking is to idolize “Damage-In”, to operate as if all the healer mana in the raid is essentially water in a bucket, and the damage reduction of the tank is the size of the hole in the bottom. But looking at things that way leads very quickly to problems. EDF says that tanks DO in fact die while healers still retain plenty of mana. Healing-In and Damage-In are not merely two equivalent sides of an hourglass, the one filling the other. Damage on a tank, if that tank is to function, must not only be “survivable”, it must also be “healable”. Additionally, it is a salient characteristic of the arsenal of every healing class in the game that, the faster and more powerful the healing spell, the less efficient the use of the healer’s mana. EH works because it makes incoming damage survivable, and therefore react able. EDF works because it makes incoming damage react able, and therefore survivable. This symmetry is why the two must be taken together. Avoidance is random in nature. 25% avoidance does not result in every fourth hit being avoided. However, the mistake many tanks make is thinking that avoidance being random makes it unpredictable. It is not. The reality is that the greater amount of avoidance a tank gains, the more reliable it becomes. Additionally, while a quantity of avoidance may seem insignificantly small, its actual contribution is really larger than it appears. When a tank has 40% avoidance, it means they are receiving damage 60% of the attempted swings. Adding 5% more avoidance does not mean a 5% reduction in incidences of taking damage. Instead, 5% more avoidance represents the removal of 8.33% of the successful swings, a much more impressive number. Viewing avoidance in this way is viewing it in terms of EDF. When the amount of successful swings is reduced, the result is that, overall, the interval between one successful swing and the next is lengthened by that amount. You are “spreading out” the hits. The goal of avoidance is not to negate individual attacks. Individual attacks are (should be) completely survivable. Being hit is not what is dangerous. EDF and EH share the same mutually amplifying effect of Armor to Stamina. EH grants you the ability to live through single, and then multiple individual successful hits. The amount of hits you can survive with a finite amount of EH is also finite. If you are taking damage very quickly, the value of X-quantity of EH is low. If those same number of hits take a longer time to all land, the value of the same X-quantity of EH is much higher for your survivability. Conversely, if you achieve the ability to spread the EDF so that only one damaging hit per 4 seconds is expected, it’s value if you are able to go THREE such hits before dying is much higher than if you can only go two. To return to the issue of druid tanks, while a feral druidic grizzly is certainly capable of climbing to massive heights of EH, it is generally less valuable for them to sacrifice development of their EDF stats in order to do so, just as it is unadvisable for a tank to wear a piece of cloth “of Stamina” gear instead of a plate item.