Mitigation vs Stamnia

So as of late, I've been doing a lot of research on ICC tanking gear setup. The consensus I've seen so far is obviously stam, but I'm curious as to why stamina over mitigation? I haven't been able to research enough to find a good reason to gem for stamina over more absorb. I know that gemming stam over avoidance is preferable for good reason. Also more specific questions: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...dhoof&cn=Panem Here's my WoW armory. Changes I'm making already are agil+ stam over dodge+stam. Should I upgrade my black heart to Glyph of indomniability, or even ick's rotting thumb? I followed the STAM STAM STAM mantra religiously until now, and am currently searching for answers. Thank you

I seem to recall something to do with an environmental debuff that drops some avoidance by 20%...

It really comes down to constants. Stam is constant, mitigation works off a dice roll. Not only is it random it only works against physical attacks. Trinkets are more dictated by boss mechanics in which i would suggest stam to win more often. As a tank we are kinda control freaks since we pretty much control the boss. As such most of us dont want to put our lives on the line due to chance, the term "mana sponge" lost most of its meaning in Lich King so dont worry about that either.

I do not include DODGE in mitigation. I'm talking about absorbing damage. Also, I forgot to ask, is the paladin T10 4set worth it?

absorb? i dont see how you can gem/enchant/gear for absorb. Absorb as in priest shieldesque absorb? Also dodge is avoidance so is parry. Armor and shield block are mitigation. But fact still stands shield block works off a dice roll so have 60% shield block does not mean that you block 60 out of 100 attacks.

As for 4 set bonus for pallies i wouldnt go for it. I opted for a bonus armor set, EH is the way to go.

Hmm thanks, so based on this, I should continue using the black heart over ick's rotting thumb and the glyph of indominability? Also I'm asking a noob question, but what does EH stand for.

Effective health. and Ick's thumb is fail for most situations.

Glyph and BlackHeart are great trinkets for "most" fights. If you don't have any thing else. Avoid Ick's, it's mostly bad.

Only gem Agil+Stam if the socket bonus is either +9 or +12 Stamina. All other bonuses should probably be ignored and socketed straight stamina.

And just to clarify :) :

Stamina: Awesome because it's always there. Always.

Armor: Mitigates the damage from every non-magic attack, excepts bleeds, Almost as awesome as Stamina.

Block: "Armor-lite" randomly applied and in an insufficient amount of damage reduction to make it worth it. Just take whatever happens to show up on your Character sheet. Decidedly less awesome than Stamina and Armor.

Dodge and Parry: Avoidance, pretty powerful on the right bosses, but Chill of the Throne reduces Dodge by 20% and Parry is on a steep Diminishing return. Good, but not awesome. Simply not as dependable as Armor or Stamina and does nothing for Magical attacks, bleeds, or unavoidable hits; which are the things that kill you. Don't gem for either, you'll get plenty on your gear.

That's pretty much the general consensus on your questions.

Cheers,

//kak

Related Reading:
AC-and-Stamina
Mitigation

To Quote Satrina:

What is Mitigation?
Mitigation is the amount of damage that is reduced by your armour. You can find out what your mitigation against physical damage is against something the same level as you by mousing over your armour total on the character sheet in game. If you have 54% mitigation, then you would take 46% of the damage from the attack when it lands. Using those numbers, if the attack would hit for 10,000 damage with no armour, you would take 4600 damage from it. There's a hard cap of 75% mitigation on armour, easily testable in game, Blizzard has outright told us in past, and as you see in the code below from the basic WOW interface it gets set to 75% if the calculation were to come out higher than that.

Note that a lot of people call dodge and parry mitigation. We've been encouraging people to distinguish avoidance and mitigation by their definitions for a long while:

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Main Entry: mit·i·gate
1 : to cause to become less harsh or hostile
2 a : to make less severe or painful

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Main Entry: avoid
(...irrelevant definitions...)
3 a : to keep away from b : to prevent the occurrence or effectiveness of c : to refrain from

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While a dodge or parry (or being missed) technically means you mitigated 100% of the damage, it also leads to confusion when trying to talk about the various gear strategies. Dodge, parry and miss are properly called avoidance.

When you block, on the other hand, that is mitigation since you are only preventing some amount of damage, and the rest gets through. Blocking can give up to an extra 10% mitigation, depending on what you're fighting and what your block value is.

But when I dodge I take no damage, so that really is mitigation!
As noted, that is technically true. The difference between mitigation and avoidance is a pedantic difference, but the big thing is that you can account for mitigation from armour in calculations since it is a constant. The damage you don't take because you dodged, parried or were missed, or because your block value was bigger than the hit, are all based on probability. You can't determine when that reduction is going to happen (and in the case of block you can't always know that your block value will be enough to block a whole hit). Because of that nature, you can't use it in calculations. That's why we separate them in definition because otherwise it gets terribly confusing when trying to show theorycraft, when trying to explain it all to new people - basically everywhere that matters.

Block is funny since it can act as mitigation when your block value is too low to absorb an entire hit, and it can be avoidance when it is. It's always based on probability, so it is not properly counted with your mitigation. These days it is very rarely a complete avoidance of damage, so it is not properly counted with your avoidance. Generally it is a third term when used in theorycrafting.

We generally add a third term to be the all-encompassing one: Mitigation for armour, Avoidance for dodge/parry/miss, and damage reduction when referring to the combination of them, including block.

There's a reason people come here for this kind of information, and not to whatever other place. We have consistent definitions like these because it helps us to describe stuff that can be fairly complex to people in as simple a way as possible.

EH=Effective Health
RNG=Random Number Generator

You will see RNG thrown around a lot when people discuss dodge, parry, and block. All that they are saying is dice roll.

EH is a calcualtion of your constant survival stats. Usually Stamina + Armor + Damage modifiers (usually found in your spec but can come from glyphs such as divine plea). Armor of cource wont factor in your magic EH and some modifiers are against magic and some are just against physical. What this allows you to see is without dodge, parry, and block how many shots can you take without dieing.

EH will be stressed a lot in posts as you read more about tanking. But dont get me wrong avoidance has its place as well. The concern with it is that its random and its only against physical attacks. The way the game stands now is that we get enough avoidance from gear not to mention with the ICC Radiance we have to start from a Diminishing Return of 20% dodge. Also with mana regeneration mechanics in place healers should not be going oom do to the size of your health pool.

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Originally Posted by funkmu

Hmm thanks, so based on this, I should continue using the black heart over ick's rotting thumb and the glyph of indominability? Also I'm asking a noob question, but what does EH stand for.

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Effective Health is the combination of your mitigation and health - like if you converted all your armor into health then added it to your health pool. You can do a search on this site for more information on how to calculate it and for a more exact definition. It's worth looking into.


Black Heart is a pretty nice trinket. Stam is love. Glyph is a great trinket too - on predominantly physical fights the armor on it is equivalent to about 162 stam (see, this is an example of effective health considerations).

Ick's Rotting Thumb is alright for heroics (still not as good as armor) because it is wasting itemization on dodge. The general rule is that your trinkets should be useful - dodge...well, we get enough of that from our gear.

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Originally Posted by Bodasafa

Time to clear a few things up.

Mitigation is Armor a flat number of damage taken off physical attacks you take, based on your armor count.

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Mitigation from Armor is a flat percentage. Mitigation from Block is a flat number.

Important distinction to make. Great post, puts mine to shame.

Edit: LoL at 3 or 4 of us all typing out the same response at the same time.

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Originally Posted by Arikak

Edit: LoL at 3 or 4 of us all typing out the same response at the same time.

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Yes, with a thread title like this one people around here jump at it.

I simplified my reply by just quoting Satrina and calling it a day lol.

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Originally Posted by Bodasafa

Yes, with a thread title like this one people around here jump at it.

I simplified my reply by just quoting Satrina and calling it a day lol.

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Good stuff. This is one straightened out poster.

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Originally Posted by funkmu

I do not include DODGE in mitigation. I'm talking about absorbing damage.

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Then you're talking armor & magic resists. Both are awesome. Unfortunately there are very few places where you can enchant for those but when you get the chance you should.
Good example = armor enchant on cloak.

Good part about stamina is it helps with both physical fights and magic fights. Armor is only good for physical fights and resistance only for magic fights. Looking at icecrown, you'll see a good bit of magic & physical thrown in, in the harder fights. So you'll want a decent combo of stam & armor.

One common advice given is to sport one stam trinket and one armor trinket. For example Satrinas + Glyph of Indomitability make a good combo. If you move into icc level material, the Corroded Skeleton Key + Unidentifiable Organ make another similar good combo.

Personally, i carry 2 stam trinkets and one armor trinket. I choose 2 out of those 3 depending on the fight. These days i'm running with double stam trinkets since the Organ just refuses to drop for me. Other than that, me & my palatank buddy make courtesy passes on all tank gear to each other - until one comes along with lots of bonus armor on it - then begins the dkp wars :P

Armor is good - go after it. Seek it, Love it, Embrace it over avoidance pieces. Marry those pieces with full stam gems and you'll have a good gear combo. But if you look at the links by Satrina that are provided, there's a mathematical balance between armor & hp and you should make your choice of "stam or armor" based on the math as the answer will greatly depend on the rest of your gear at the time.

As to a direct question about your gear, while the Black Heart is an awesome trinket far better than its itemlevel would suggest, looking at your armor & stam levels, i'd say it's time to upgrade it to the glyph. You have decent stam in there while your armor feels a little behind. Dont vendor your heart though, on a fight like Festergut, depending on your raidcomp, you might end up preferring more stam even at a big armor hit on a physical fight.

Maybe EH was the clear king prior to ICC - that I don't know as I didn't start looking here until we started in ICC - however, I get the impression from the posts that even if it was preferred prior to ICC, it's become signficantly more preferred in ICC. So understand that everything below is my impression as to why Armor/Sta are considered more valuable than avoidance/RNG mitigation


The underlying cause of the valuation of constant versus RNG survivablity is the simple fact that you get hit more often in ICC than outside of it. Thus you need a way to survive it - and there is the reason why Sta/Armor became the desired elements to max out. The strong desire for constant/given surviability when choosing between constant or RNG (if RNG is available with no trade off, you will always take RNG because some RNG is far better than no bonus - RNG is still important) is a reaction to the the simple fact that EH better replaces the lost RNG than trying for gaining an equal amount of RNG to that lost.



For simplicities sake, say outside of ICC your chance of taking 3 hits in a row from a boss (so 3 hits in less than 5 seconds) with: 40% avoidence is .6 * .6 *.6 or 21.6%. (each hit has a 60% chance of landing with 40% avoidance, ignoring everything else - just looking at how often you are hit).

In ICC that 40% avoid is now 20% avoidance because of the debuff, so instead of .6^3, it's .8^3 or .8*.8*.8 = 51.2% - or on average you're going to be hit by a boss in ICC 3 straight swings over half the time.

Now this is all on average, not guaranteed, but what it means is you'll take 3 successive hits roughly 237% more often in ICC than out of it.


Why did I choose 3 straight hits? No particular reason, just arbitrarily to show how much more damage you'll be taking in ICC.


Maybe EH has always been superior to RNG - but in ICC loss of a very sizable chunk of RNG and the subsequent attempt to replace it's survivability makes armor/sta more valuable than RNG avoidance/mitigation.

I have one more question, do tanks need hit rating? Not enough to
chant or gem for it right?

Correct, really the only thing they need it for is to ensure taunts land, and even that isn't THAT important for warriors because of all the backup utilities warriors have to taunt or fixate again (taunt, mocking blow, challenging shout, and then vigilancing the OT to get a new taunt every time the OT is hit). Footnote 3 in my guide (link in sig) has a breakdown of the required hit amounts given various glyphs/raid buffs/food etc.

icks thumb isnt fail!

ive been saved by that on fester many times! the more health cooldowns the better!

on another note i went for stamina and with gear upgrades my armour has stacked nicely too. Healers have no problems healing me. Raid buffed im 57k hp. With cooldowns popped im 69k. it makes a big diff on some of the bosses.

We are currently 7/12

Stam stacking = more heals
More heals more mana from healers
healers with no mana equals no heals
no heals equals dead
and let me guess a tank get no heals blame healer
simple
you want to survive a boss fight you don't have to stack stam you get saved by heals and your dps (of course).