Shield Enchants: 18 BV vs 18 Stamina!?

[veneretio]

I didn't want to derail the cloak thread so here goes. I'm interested in when 18 Block Value is in fact better than 18 Stamina. In terms of pure threat, of course it is, but can that be justified at the loss of 18 Stamina?

What situations would you use 18 BV over 18 Stamina?

[Ciderhelm]

I need to get some sleep at the moment. My very, very quick response which I'll probably respond to when I roll out of bed is, the point at which I'm making decisions between these two enchants, I probably ought to just pick up a second shield and enchant them different ways.


18 Block Value is essentially better when your Effective Health is way beyond the fight. If you can go 5+ seconds without a heal and live, even if just barely, 18 Block Value probably wins. If your in a 5-man or Heroic 5-man, it definitely wins.

ok, sleep, but yeah, Stamina is what is best in most situations, but Block Value has it's time and place.

[veneretio]

Just to throw a third player into this game, I'd say a Shield Spike could out-threat 18 Block Value in 5-mans though.

And I can see where you are coming from for when you outgear the instance, but my dilemna is that I have an Arena Shield which I won't be getting a 2nd copy of and a junky Heroic Badge shield. I can definitely see myself Block Valuing up Gruul's shield or Nightbane's.

[Kazeyonoma]

it was basically the same as my post in the US WoW forums, where I did the comparison of 2000 damage versus 200 damage.

In the case of a 2000 damage hit, 18 stam and 18 block value is fairly equal in terms of how many more hits you need to take before dying. But in the 200 damage scenario the SBV allows you to survive many many more hits than 18 stam would. I think any kind of comparison in which you can take multiple hits (more than 1) because of SBV, than SBV is the winner since Stam is a static increase, it almost always automatically gives you 1 extra hit before death because you have just more hp than they would normally kill you with, but if you can take multiple more hits, then pick that stat.

I think I rambled towards the end. :T

[veneretio]

Mitigation wise this is what I'm seeing.

18 Stamina = 180 health
18 Block Value = 23.4 Block Value after Shield Mastery = 180 health when you block 8 times. (180 / 23.4 = 7.69230769)

So you have to be able to block 8 times before the healers can heal you to full in order for Block Value to be better.

[Kazeyonoma]

Basically, lol, so in progression, you probably won't be seeing SBV > Stamina since you're always gonna get healed, but in regular instances and solo'ing SBV will show a much higher yield on a much more often basis.

[veneretio]

When Soloing, the Block Value enchant definitely would be superior.

[Ciderhelm]

Ven,

Yes, Shield Spike out-threats Shield Block Value in virtually all content.

[thugthedum]

which one?

I have patterns for the old crappy steel and Mithril shield spikes...

[Atlantian]

the new one. exhalted with HH. Felsteel Shield Spike. Expensive but a big jump from those.

[Horacio]

A friend of mine was asking me about these and I automatically said Stamina for heavy raid tanking.

Hrm...I like the idea of the shield spike in a way....I remember leveling up from60-70 and snagging the Sporeggar shield....the proc on it stacked up to 5 times and was doing 60 damage a tick...Add a spike to that.....unfortunately, it doesn't have near enough mitigation being low level but in situations where you drop gear to gain more rage generation, throwing that combo together might be worth it.

Definitely some food for thought. I am currently working on the arena shield and it has huge BV...adding more to it would turn it into a varitable battering ram...that might be something worth looking into.

as an aside, I loved the Crest of Retribution....that shield was awesome back in the day.

[Alchamire]

Just out of curiousity, how does adding a shield spike effect Shield Slam damage? I've always wondered but never really thought to look into it to be honest.

[veneretio]

Just out of curiousity, how does adding a shield spike effect Shield Slam damage? I've always wondered but never really thought to look into it to be honest.

A Shield Spike does not add any damage to your Shield Slam.

[Snacks]

He's talking about Enchant Shield - Tough Shield, which is +18 Block Value.

[thugthedum]

the new one. exhalted with HH. Felsteel Shield Spike. Expensive but a big jump from those.

It's funny how this changes my thinking so radically.

I used to think of 18 stam as the "soak more dmg" thing to do to a shield, and 18 BV as the "do more threat" thing to do to a shield.

Now ... it's more like "stamina, mitigation, or threat" when you add [item]Felsteel Shield Spike[/item] in to the mix.

[thugthedum]

A Shield Spike does not add any damage to your Shield Slam.

To fill in the blanks ... I think shield spikes do damage when you block.

So; thinking aloud .... my combat table against the Prince (in avoidance heavy gear) might be 13% to be hit, 15% to be crushed, 23% to block. I'm going to have shield block up all the time though, hopefully converting this to something like 10% to be hit, 38% to block.

So 38% of attacks against me, I harm the Prince for 26-38 damage. Prince hits around 1.5 speed in phase two ( I think ) so that's 32 average damage to add to my dps every 4 seconds? Call it 7.3 dps when you factor the defensive stance penalty, 10.7 threat per second with the 2% enchant.

Problem is, on the Prince - I'd rather have the BV for the mitigation. Threat isn't that big a problem (yet).


Really, I'd almost always want the BV right?


OK so I'm seeing it this way right now:

- If I notice my tps lacking compared to the raid's output, I'll go shield spike.
- For now, I'll use the EH calc to show me what buys me more EH - the BV or the stamina. If the answer is BV, great - threat and time to live. If the answer is stamina, great - I'll go look myself up on wowmetrics.com again.

(when is he going to fix that??)


(here's my math)

min 26
max 38
avg 32

block 0.38
atk spd 1.5
b/s 1.5/.38 = 3.947368421

dps (32 / 3.947)*.9 = 7.296
tps 7.296*1.47 = 10.72512

18 BV (for comparison):
(18 * 1.3)*.9 = 21 damage (assuming shield spec, defensive stance)
21 * 1.47 = 30.95 threat per slam (assuming 2%)
30.95 every 6 seconds is about 5 threat per second. Yep - shield spike wins, for sure on fast hitting mobs (my calcs above assumed 1.5 atk speed boss).

If a mob was really slow, wouldn't the BV have a shot though? Cause it adds a nice steady 5 tps assuming you are always shield slamming whenever possible. If a mob is only hitting you every ... say 3 seconds, and you block 38% still, then they're about even right?

[Crimsonstorm]

Shield spike is 32 dmg (on average) per block. I care most about this analysis for bosses. (Yes, shield spike is best on multimob trash, but I dont really care about that).

Say you have 45% avoidance and are fighting a boss that hits you every 2 seconds. With your avoidance youll actually get hit on average once every 3.64 seconds.

32 dmg * .9 defensive stance / 3.64 sec = 7.92 dps.

Just under 8 dps.


18 block value is 23.4 block value with shield mastery.
23.4 damage * 1.1 (1H sepc) * .9 *(defensive stance) per shield slam, comes out to 3.86 (just under 4 dps).

Shield spike generates twice as much threat as 18 block value, but doesnt give any mitigation or effective health.

18 block value => 23.6 block value gives about as much effective healt has 47.2 hp (maybe more, if you want to count more than 2 blocks in the time you die). 1 stamina gives 11.5 hp with kings + vitality (12 tauren).

So we're talking 4 stam worth of effective health.


So the choice is:

18 stam
OR
4 stam worth of effective health + 4 dps + some mitigation
OR
8 dps

[veneretio]

This is my thoughts (and sorry to those that read my site, but i'll probably be re-posting something like this there)

Gladiator Shield + 18 Stamina = Mitigation
Gruul's Shield + 18 Block Value = Threat/Mitigation Hybrid
Nightbane's Shield + Shield Spike = Pure threat/5 mans

Now I just have to wait for all my off-tanks to get Gruul's shield so I can snag it and have Nightbane put out already

[Crimsonstorm]

Veneretio, if you have Merciless Gladiator's Shield it should be used in all situations. (Until getting a shield from Hyjal/BT of course). It is hundreds of armor better than the gruul shield, and so much better than any shield before that that there is no comparison.

If you need more threat, or more rage in 5 mans, you can swap some pieces for dps pieces. You'd do much better by using Arena shield + a couple dps pieces, than by using Nightbane shield.

[veneretio]

I understand and yes I use Gladiator in all situations at the moment, but in terms of pure threat I think Gruul's is a much better choice for when I'm already outgearing content. Nightbane's Shield I think is a good choice for 5 mans since a shield spike makes multi-target aggro a bit easier.

(The pure threat label attached to Nightbane's Shield was a poor label)