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Okay so i've been talking to people and looking at my own gear. I currently have a VERY avoidance oriented set. I like it alot but i tend to be rage starved in simple things like heroics and some bosses. so i guess what my question is, what sets should a tank carry? Avoidance set and block value set? should there be more sets? also gear/enchant/gem ideas would be great :)
Avoidance set
Effective health set
Threat set
Block set/ Heroics set (not really needed)
Resist set (if needed)
Dps gear (although you can keep it banked most of the time)
this, plus a balanced/general purpose setQuote:
Originally Posted by Dygrav
okay so 1 set that provides the most possible avoidance. 1 set that provides the most possible health. one set that provides the best tps (but wouldn't that kinda mix with the BV set as BV raises dmg done?)
Somewhat, but because you would be using expertise and hit items. Your block value wouldn't be as high as if you went for straight block items.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grimz666
Yeah, but you can form that by mixing together pieces from your EH and your threat set.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreg
the thought of a threat set always confused me. i think of it as a hit capped expertise capped tank with okay mitigation and lots of BV and Attack power and a decent health pool
I was about to start my own thread on this but i guess i can continue with this one.
I have a few questions on sets as well.
Should you gem/enchant fully to compliment a given piece's current stats? For example, it seems obvious you would gem EH pieces with full stam, but what about threat pieces? Full expertise? And avoidance? A mix of stam/expertise?
Also, i'm very new to raid tanking, so this may be a silly question, but what exactly is the specific purpose for each set? I have some ideas but i'm not sure, i.e., threat set for trash mobs or bosses with damage modifiers to DPS? Or avoidance for when you're tanking adds that aren't going to be killed for a while or at all? Or am i way off? And what exactly is EH set for? I've heard it's best for new content but what is the reasoning behind this?
Sorry if i hijacked this thread but the topic seemed relevant to my interests.
Thank you.
The point of a threat set is to give your dps more room to open up and get bosses down quicker.
I generally find that as the gear level of your raid improves
1) Healers are able to keep you up much easier
2) Dps start to put out more and more threat
Adding in pieces focused towards building threat lets you kill those bosses faster, and the loss in EH and avoidance which generally comes with threat pieces is balanced by the increase in your healers' ability to push through heals.
Each fight is different, for some it would be beneficial to have more avoidance (Archimonde in Hyal), for some it would be beneficial to have more threat (Gorefiend in BT), for some stack stam (Kael'Thas in TK).
In the current level of content, I find a shield block set is fantastic for add tanking on Sarth-3D for example. Trash has no real danger of causing me to die, so I stack block and AP to increase the chances of them sticking to me and not a lock or mage.
As for EH vs Avoidance theory, there are lots of great threads on them in the Warrior Reference Library.
well the way i had been taught was the avoidance set was to be used on bosses where you have more time to set up threat. bosses where adds have to go down and such. on bosses where threat is imperative and you need it fast and strong, say like malygos where you're guild is putting out TONS of dmg from sparks. you'll need a bonus in tps. every fight is going to have a certain set that is best for it.
I have never found the point to a full stam set. like as a warrior i pride myself on having really good avoidance, or really good tps. those two sets make sense to me. my avoidance set has 30k health and i do not die unless a healer has an issue like lag/death/misclicks/w/e... or a wipe has been called.
so in my opinion the only two sets a warrior needs is a threat set/and an avoidance set
Effective Health Set: Focus is on Armor and Stamina. For bosses with huge spike damage. Especially if that spike damage is magic-based, like Malygos and Sartharion (avoidance is useless against a breath weapon). In some of these fights, you also need high threat, like Malygos. In others, you don't, like Sarth 3 Drakes, where your mob is being killed last, so you can go for Maximum EH and not worry at all about threat stats.
Threat Set: Focus is on Expertise, Hit, and Block Value. For trash, and for bosses in which you dying is not much of an issue, but killing the boss faster is. Also for easy farm bosses that you outgear. If there is no worry about you dying, you might as well raise your damage and threat so the DPS can go all out more, and you contribute more damage as well.
Avoidance Set: Focus is on Dodge, Defense, and Parry. As MT, I have rarely used this set. Most high damage bosses, I have always just gone with high EH mainly, although with a good mix of decent avoidance. This is a good set, though, if you are offtanking something that is not first to die, which also does not have high spike damage. Threat is no issue and spike damage is not an issue, so you might as well minimize incoming damage. There is no reason not to. Also, haven't seen one yet in WotLK, but the prime boss example in BC where Avoidance was king was Bloodboil in Black Temple. He stacked a high damage DoT on you. He was untauntable, so it wasn't always easy to swap tanks timely (like Gluth). You had to wait for his knockback to lower your threat. High avoidance helped you avoid more of the DoT's and thus it stacked up much more slowly, so you wanted as much as you could stack. Threat was also not an issue, because you didn't WANT too much threat... you wanted to lose it to another tank after while.
Those are the three main sets, IMO. A pure Block Value set used to be valuable for certain situations with the old Shield Block mechanic (Reliquary in BT: Phase 1), and for soloing elites for fun. :) But now I consider Block Value to be mainly a pure threat/damage stat. My threat set has high Block Value.
For most boss encounters as MT, I use a hybrid of the three above, with a focus on EH first, avoidance and threat/damage second.
Developing alternate sets will become easier once Ulduar comes out, because you will start replacing epic gear in your main set, and can re-gem/chant your old pieces and mix and match stuff. You will have a lot more quality items to choose from.
Great, thank you. That was very informative.
Also, if for whatever reason, if you don't have completely different sets for different encounters, an easy way to tailor your gear a little to the encounter is by just swapping trinkets. Wear two stamina trinkets for EH encounters. Swap on Block Value or Expertise trinkets if you want more threat. Swap on two Dodge or Defense trinkets if you want more avoidance. Etc.