485 Defense and Parry in 5-mans and Heroics

[dedzy]

I'm still working out the basics on tanking 5-mans and haven't tried any heroics yet. But I have a couple gear based questions that have been bothering me a little:

1) 485 Defense against level 72 bosses. According to all the formulas I've seen, 490 is the magic number to guard against getting critted when you're fighting level 73 bosses. But nobody seems to back into the 485 Def number for level 72 bosses. Am I missing something?

2) I see Parry compared unfavorably when compared to Dodge in these forums. But, I am constantly struggling for enough rage in 95% of an instance, and I just heard an interesting thing about Parry: you get rage from the damage you would have received from hits that were parried, but not dodged. Is this true? Further, people ignore the added threat value of a parry.

Thanks for your input! If some of my assumptions are incorrect please let me know.

[AlmtyBob]

1) A mob has a base 5% chance to crit you + .2% for every level they are above you. Defense removes .04% of that chance for every point above 350. 5.4 / .04 = 135. 135 + your base 350 = 485 defense for a 72 boss. That said, you shouldn't avoid defense by any stretch, it's an awesome stat right up there (and sometimes better than) dodge.

2) Parry is nice and all but Parry Rating costs a large amount of Item Level points. That means it costs much more to get 1% parry than 1% dodge, making dodge preferable.

[Moshzilla]

Parry adds rage. I like your thinking. Thanks for that.

I've kinda worried a bit about always turning the mob that I am tanking's back to the dps, so I avoid their parries, and had a hell time in Heroic Black Morass last night, positioning the Rift Keepers, but thanks for opening my mind a little bit to that. I don't think I will worry about it as much in future, outside of a raid and being undergeared etc.

[AlmtyBob]

You're misunderstanding the Parry/Rage thing. The deal is that you don't lose rage when a special is parried BY THE BOSS. Your own parries have nothing to do with rage generation except the swing timer reduction, which is minor. ALWAYS have your dps attack from the back. Most of the time it's not the tank's responsibility to position for melee's sake. They should take the 0.2 second to strafe behind. DPS being parried = less dps and faster swings from the mob.

[AlmtyBob]

P.S. I was looking at your gear and you seem to be enchanting/gemming prot gear for DPS. If you're going to build a dps set you need to get a second set. There's a lot of easy to get pieces over at Max DPS. It'd be greatly beneficial to replace your ALL of your gems with +9 stam (+12 preferred). You don't have any socket bonuses worth aiming for. Enchant your gear:

Head: [item]Glyph of the Defender[/item] (Keepers of Time revered)
Back: +12 dodge
Chest: +150 health
Hands: +10 stam

Lastly, check out http://www.theoryspot.com/forums/gea...wow-2-4-a.html for a good list of easily obtainable gear.

[dedzy]

Thanks for the correction on Parry.
Still, I think I'll valuate it the same as Dodge in most situations, due to its extra DPS valuation.

As for looking at my armory and looking at the gems, thanks for the input. I don't know how you found my tank's profile from it, but I posted one there now. I will try to make each piece of gear either full DPS or EH/Avoidance so as to be able to better exchange the sets.

[AlmtyBob]

Got your profile by clicking your name on the post and "View Public Profile". It has your character name and server you registered with. As for the parry, don't get me wrong, it's an awesome stat. If someone told me I could have 1% of dodge or 1% of parry I'd jump on the parry. However, it costs a lot more rating for one point of parry than one point of dodge. For example a +8 parry gem gives +0.34% parry versus a +8 dodge gem that gives 0.42% dodge. Moot point at the early gear levels though since you shouldn't even be gemming for either in a normal tanking set.

[Arrivan]

To address the reason why noone ever says anything about level 72 bosses, there is really no reason to stop at 485 unless you will only ever do heroics and never set foot inside any raid instance ever. Even if you are a heroic-exclusive tank, you will likely do some kind of Kara pug at some point, where you do need 490 def. To put it simply, distinguishing between 485 and 490 would just lead to bad habits forming. Also, tanking heroics is usually considered to be the stepping stone to bigger things like Kara and other raids. Besides, it's not like 490 is hard to reach if you can get to 485.

[Moshzilla]

Yeh, I generally won't position for melee, I will position strictly for ranged/magicians. Can ranged/magic attacks be parried ? Maybe I should find that out first as I've been assuming they can be.

My thinking was (in a 5 person circumstance - tank, healer, 3 ranged/magic dps - I don't like rolling with rogues !!), that if 3 group members with ranged/magic attacks are susceptible to being parried, the mob I am tanking speeds up the swing timer on me when their ranged/magic attacks are parried.

[AlmtyBob]

No, casters and ranged can't be parried. You should however position them out of melee range so you don't get screwed by the 110%/130% rule (melee pulls agg at 110% your threat, ranged at 130%).

[Moshzilla]

Aaah, lol :P You just saved me a bunch of worrying about positioning AlmtyBob. Thanks for that :-) And added yet another reason why I prefer to roll with ranged/magicians in the 5 persons.

I've just been going back to the guides, Fortifications, Of Steel, Satrina's Combat Tables etc, but I couldn't find anywhere that specifically stated that ranged/magic attacks couldn't be parried. I probably wasn't reading them correctly.

[AlmtyBob]

Attack table - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Wowwiki is nice for a lot of deeper, arcane game mechanics. Granted it's a wiki and not official so take everything with a grain of salt.

[Fumble]

Fwiw any rogue worth his leather ought to be behind the target anyway Once they learn that they're no more liability than a ranged?

[Moshzilla]

I guess it is because I PUG, but in my experience alot of rogues stunlock and there goes my rage and threat - while said rogue continues to dps and build threat, sap is dangerous and I have only just come to the realisation that sap is an incapacitate effect and not crowd control, distract can be dangerous too (the distracted mob(s) can pull a close group with them) and pvp/arena geared rogues that outgear me can pull aggro at 110%.

I think it is a PUG issue really.

[mictavis]

To address the reason why noone ever says anything about level 72 bosses, there is really no reason to stop at 485 unless you will only ever do heroics and never set foot inside any raid instance ever. Even if you are a heroic-exclusive tank, you will likely do some kind of Kara pug at some point, where you do need 490 def. To put it simply, distinguishing between 485 and 490 would just lead to bad habits forming. Also, tanking heroics is usually considered to be the stepping stone to bigger things like Kara and other raids. Besides, it's not like 490 is hard to reach if you can get to 485.

If you are over geared and having threat gen problems in heroics it is good to know that crit immune is reached at 485 def for lvl 72 mobs. . . it gives you a little extra leeway when selecting DPS/threat gear to swap in. Also the hit cap drops dramatically from 142 to 96 (9% to 6%) for lvl 72 mobs which makes a big difference in my gear selection for heroics and raid trash vs raid bosses.