Tanks should never stack stam in Cataclysm. (Actually, it's a question.)

Seeing as this isn't an exclusive prot warrior or even a Sword'n'Boarder thread...

While the staunch EH advocators will say stack EH, most people I talk to/read stack mastery as shield bearers, to get that unhittability going. I'm gonna skip all that

My questions is for the OTHER half of tanks, basically the CareBears and the BloodyDeathKnights

With DKs, Mastery makes our bloodshield bigger. I've read somewhere in another thread here that that in 4.0.6 they might be allowing us to stack our shields additively rather than replacing, which is good, but until then, should we still stack mastery to leverage a big honking bloodshield?

With Bears, we have Savage Defense, again another big shield, which grows as we stack mastery. Same reasoning as DKs, stack mastery or soemthing else?

Yes, I realize both are completely unaffected by magic damage. I get it, and I don't care. There's plenty of physical damage to go around 90% of the time, and for the other 10%, that's what Cooldowns are for.

It's also important to note that a lot of tank gear has an awful lot of mastery even if you aren't actively gemming for it. Maybe there's enough for bears/DKs on the gear without getting more? I don't know.

I can't wait till I hit level 90 as a bear and get the all powerful CAREBEARSTARE ability!

Are the JCs out there opting for the Solid Chimera's Eye (101 stam) or the Fracture Chimera's Eye (67 mastery) for their profession perk?

If it's a shield-blocker, It's a no-brainer, 67 Mastery. Until we get more mastery from higher Tier gear in future loot, there isn't quite enough mastery on the gear right now to start chasing other stats.

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Originally Posted by Insahnity

With Bears, we have Savage Defense, again another big shield, which grows as we stack mastery. Same reasoning as DKs, stack mastery or soemthing else?

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I'm not a bear, just what I hear around the street. But IIRC, Druids want to get their crit to a certain point to have high SD uptime. I have no clue what the magic number is - but I thought higher uptime was better than having a bigger bubble.

Andenthal - that confuses me. A DK bubble isn't as big as a bear's SD proc, but it affects every incoming attack that doesn't miss or isn't dodged/parried.

Wouldn't this be preferable compared to a high uptime on SD, because doesn't the bubble affect all incoming damage, not just physical? I don't have a DK tank so I'm a little unsure about their build, but it seems DK's mastery might be the most desirable from the standpoint of smoothing out incoming damage?

Bears inherently have a lot of agi, since they share gear with rogues, and then they have LoP thrown in the mix. There is talk of changing this, but essentially all bears chase crit/mastery gear, but bliz wants to make haste somewhat useful to tanks, bears foremost. But that's not really the question, a bear would never gem crit. Bears gem the following way (mostly)

Blue - Agi/Stam
Yellow - Agi/Dodge
Red - Agi

The question I was wondering was to stack towards mastery instead of Agi. As it stands, I think they have a penalty towards agi->dodge and Agi->Crit so that it doesn't get out of hand, much as rogues could tank back in vanilla/early TBC through agi stacking.

I guess it again boils down to how much agi bears get in their gear in current content, in T12ish there might be enough agi that they could safely choose other stats.

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Originally Posted by Loganisis

Wouldn't this be preferable compared to a high uptime on SD, because doesn't the bubble affect all incoming damage, not just physical?

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No sir, all tank Masteries affect physical damage only.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=62600
"reducing the damage taken from the next physical attack "

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Originally Posted by Andenthal

No sir, all tank Masteries affect physical damage only.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=62600
"reducing the damage taken from the next physical attack "

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This. Bloodshield is physical only.

HOWEVER.

Bloodshields come from Deathstrikes, which is part heals, part bubble. That's why the bubble is smaller, because there is a heal component which makes it comparable. And for magic fights, with a 45 second AMS and incoming self-heals, DKs come out doing quite alright.

I knew SD was physical only. It was the bubble component of http://www.wowhead.com/spell=77513 that made me think DK Mastery was more than just physical.

Is it just Bloodshield that is physical only or are all bubbles physical only?

A priest or Holy pally bubble will soak magic. A SD Proc or Blood Shield is physical only.

I guess for me it sums up pretty simply... if you are not in danger of being 3 hit to death, stam stacking isn't your friend.
When it comes to Avoidance vs. Mastery, we are making a huge deal out of what works out to be a few % points (which in hindsight is not that unusual for these debates).
No matter what situation you are speaking to, there are always exceptions to every rule.

Now my question: are there any definitive logs comparing to tanks with roughly equivalent gear, one say stacking mastery and one say stacking parry? Is there any real math to determine in this situation which tank tanks less damage over the course of a series of repeated fights? Is the difference significant?

From the healing argument... when it comes to tank healing, we aren't talking about the difference between using Flash Heal and Greater Heal, we are talking about whether we are using Heal or Greater Heal. While Heal is certainly more efficient, it isn't dramatically so and frankly, even in an optimal situation the HPM of Heal won't be sufficient to do the bulk of your tank healing on a raid boss. The argument that "smoothing out the damage" is important absent a 3 hit kill scenario is not one I subscribe to. You choose Flash Heal or Heal on DPS, not on tanks.

So really, the question is, (once again absent a 3 hit kill scenario) does stacking Mastery or Avoidance end up with less damage on the table by the end of the fight? The followup being, is that number statistically significant?

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Originally Posted by Insahnity

A priest or Holy pally bubble will soak magic. A SD Proc or Blood Shield is physical only.

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SD had next physical attack in the tooltip, bloodshield didn't, that's why I was confused. Thanks

For shield bearers, avoidance > Mastery for physical attacks up until you hit DR of parry and dodge. Then it reverse mastery >> avoidance, as mastery suffers no DR (yet).

I can't say what's the deal with bears/DKs.

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Originally Posted by Loganisis

SD had next physical attack in the tooltip, bloodshield didn't, that's why I was confused. Thanks

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yeah, I had to find a blue post from Zarhym where he mentions this. it's not stated otherwise.

@Caric

First, to answer your question, it will likely be hard to find a progression tank stacking any sort of Avoidance. They may be out there, but they are very few and far between.

Second, as above, it's more the difference between a healer needing to use Flash Heal instead of Heal. That's about what the difference in gearing strategies would equate to. It may be a few percetage points one way or the other for total damage taken for the entire fight. But there's a huge difference in healer mana spent if one tank needs constant Flash Heals, while the other can be healed with only the slower heals, plus HoTs (or whatever you guys are using now-a-days).

I would simply reaffirm my position that it is very much NOT a question of Flash Heal vs. Heal. Absent a 3 hit death scenario, there is almost no circumstance in which you would be making that choice. Trying to frame an argument on that basis I think would lead to false conclusions.

When a tank has 180k hp, and is taking less than 60k hits, or hell even if he is, you are going to unload Greater Heal into him as fast as you can, you certainly aren't going to try and heal him with Flash Heal. The only time you are going to reach for Flash Heal is if you somehow let him get down to a point where you need 15 to 20k in the next SECOND or he dies. If you find yourself in that position you have much larger problems than a 5% difference in Avoidance vs. Mastery. Flash Heal vs. Heal is for DPS healing, not for tank healing.

So if no progression tanks are trading the 5% Mastery for the equivalent gains in Avoidance, how do we accurately know which is actually better? We have a lot of the best minds in tanking making arguments one way or the other with regards to this and not ONE has made a compelling case one way or the other. The primary argument is the "smoothing damage" argument which, for me at least, is a false choice. It argues based on a scenario that I don't believe exists.

Now I have no experience with hard modes, and possibly they are exactly that, 3 hit kill scenarios but once again, I point to my earlier qualification, everything I am saying is valid only absent a 3 hit kill.

As a tank, it's not my goal to take as little damage as possible over the length of the fight. Tank damage over the course of an entire fight is not directly related chances of beating the encounter, nor directly tied to healer mana spent.

It's my job as a tank to be as easy to heal as possible. That is - to make damage intake as predictable as possible so that healers can plan their next heal (proactive) instead of reactively healing me. This saves mana in real scenarios.

Progression tanks aren't trading Mastery for Avoidance because it doesn't work as well. It was tried on beta servers, and proven inferior. If you're looking for your compelling case, dig through the beta forums where the testing was first done. It's pointless to redo the testing and math. The result is; much more healer mana is spent in shorter time frames keeping tanks alive.

When healer mana matters, smoothing out damage intake is the best way to do this. I'm sorry you don't believe in the scenario. With some normal mode fights having bursts in the 6 digit range (125k+), it will happen - even before you hit hard modes. If you're asking/looking for theory behind taking less damage, that's another discussion, as the two are not the same thing.

Certainly wasn't asking for a redo of the testing, merely if the testing had been done. If it has then that is the answer in and of itself.

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Originally Posted by Andenthal

With some normal mode fights having bursts in the 6 digit range (125k+), it will happen - even before you hit hard modes.

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When do those numbers occur for you? It's either on Magmaw due to single tank him instead of bringing two tanks, Chimaeron due to how the fight mechanic works or Nefarian and his electrocutes, which are easily predictable and should be reduced with a cooldown every single time.

I haven't encountered a "regular" three hit scenario yet even on hardmodes, maybe Cho'gall will do me this favor?

I may have jumped into this conv a lil late. Just my 2 cents. I'm a warrior and my off tank is usually a paly. The off tank has an average ilvl of 353 to my 349 I've gemmed for dodge/stam dodge/mastery parry/stam to average a dodge/parry of 31% and 39% block and unbuffed hp of 139k. My off take gemmed for straight stam and sits at around 159khp unsure of his avoidance.. healers say its 100% easier to keep me up cause the dmg I take is smooth and the paly gets hit for huge chunks.