Commendation of Kael'thas....tanking you say??

[Alent]

Sleep deprivation being what it is, re-reading this thread to see Vene's response... I'm going to throw out the question - Slobash, Why don't you try solo tanking halazzi 10 times with the pocket watch equipped, and 10 times with the commendation equipped and post the wws results?

I don't think this is unreasonable as I've solo tanked him twice - using commendation no less. (Neither time by plan - just pugs where my offtank ended up being a flake.)

[Slobash]

Ah some real debate

No need to get angsty bud, it's all good discussion

Generally I have found that most tanks wearing a commendation have stam gems in almost every slot in their gear. Hence my comment about commendation and stam whores. This may be different on other servers but on mine it seems to be the case.

I never once said stamina was useless for warriors, I just don't think that sacrificing every socket bonus and wearing every +stam item is the best option for endgame tanking.

Human error affects every other aspect of every fight for every class, if you're going to use an inferior item (opinion) just because you're not skilled enough to click a superior one when the appropriate time arises then there's something wrong.

You make a lot of reference to lazy healers. I haven't made reference to lazy healers. If your healers are lazy then you're talking a whole different kettle of fish. I'm talking about unavoidable interruptions to their healing which occurs in many fights in BT and Hyjal.

Gaining 16% avoidance during a period where your healers are interrupted is not going to have any effect on your healers, they're still going to be frantically trying to keep you alive when they get out of the interruption. They aren't interested in your buffs only in your health and the rate at which it declines.

Scarab is also a "use when healers are interrupted" ability in my opinion (when in a fight that requires it).

This argument applies to SSC as well, fights like Morogrim where the raid is earthquaked or Lurker where everyones underwater when the boss comes back and your healers may need a moment to get back into position.

The threat loss argument is just adding fuel to the fire really, i'm not saying it's a big issue at all but you can't tell me it has no effect on threat. Not a huge effect no but still an effect and depending on the efficieny of your dps every bit counts.

Just to reiterate, I said that I consider 10K health to be "low" not to be "dangerous". I don't consider low health to be dangerous unless my healers are unable to heal me for some reason. I'm fine spiking down to 50HP as long as I know i'm about to get 22K of incoming heals. If i'm unsure of where those heals will come from then i'd like to be able to do my part to ensure I don't die.

Finally, I wasn't a jackass to the admin. His/her response (the one 'dissing' me) was one of the first responses to my first post, I hadn't actually made any comments in his/her direction at all. Please point out where I was a jackass to them?

[Kazeyonoma]

You better tone down your attitude Slobash. I enjoy the healthy disagreement here or there when it leads to something better but we're giving you reasons why the stam trinket is good. We've drawn scenarios for you as to why it's as good if not better, AND now veneretio has present a concise list of points throughout this thread. You can tone down your shit or I can tone it down for you, now get your shit together and stop trying this place like the WoW forums because it ain't.

Your pre-bc raiding experience is great, but that doesn't give you a right to belittle or downtalk to anyone here especially if they've gone above and beyond you in tanking. There are plenty of situations in raid bosses where you could use more HP as a buffer, and having an extra avoidance when it matters most (brink of death) makes it double as an EH AND an avoidance trinket. Not many can claim that. Brutallus is a perfect example of having more EH and avoidance saves the day, especially when he stomps. There are entire strategies of tanking him that revolve around having the trinket up to help during crucial stomps. I have reason to believe blizzard whole heartedly intended for this trinket to be used in such scenarios.

My question to you is the same as veneretio's, what other combination of trinkets do you find better and why? I find that by using 1 slot to give me 57 extra stamina, I can use another slightly lower stamina gearslot that might provide much better threat or avoidance. Trinkets imo are there to be used to help round out your gear not as a means to define it.

Edit: your last post was better in terms of tone, duly appreciated.

[Alent]

He referenced lazy healers because you mentioned them repeatedly as a strawman arguement in response to every vaild point raised in this discussion.

The admin he said you were rude to was Kazeyonoma, not Satrina. Go back and read what Kazey said and then look at your characterization of his reply.

[Kazeyonoma]

I didn't diss you in any way, i replied to you, giving you a reason why I believe the trinket was good, and part of what made it special (best stam trinket in the game)

And you blanketed me as a "stack ze stam" tank. I fully understand the power of avoidance, I was always an advocate of Wanderlei, but likewise I understand Satrina and Ciderhelm's point of view, and have thoroughly studied the work of Hypatia. If you feel that putting stam gems into your gear to help you obtain higher EH when the gear itself provides copious amounts of avoidance to levels that are already safe is considered being a stam whore, then so be it. I cant convince you out of your own personal opinions, but there are reasons to what everyone does. If you disagree, that's fine you have every right, but just like I wouldn't inspect you and find dodge/defense/hybrid gems gemmed and immediately make a post about how you're a rubbish tank, I'd expect the same respect from you not to blatantly call any tank, REGARDLESS of their tier of progression, rubbish or make generic statements about 'stack ze stam' tanks. Do you know their raid makeup? Have you talked to their dps about their abilities to put out threat? Does their raid get held back in progression due to tank deaths? Do the healers complain about said tank being hard to heal? Unless you have answers to all of these, I think you have no right to ridicule or make any stereotypes about anyone. If you feel you have a right to do this, then many of those who have debated you in return in this thread have the same right to stereotype you as a bad tank. Afterall, it's all opinion.

[Slobash]

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick and I apologise for that. What i'm doing is throwing boulders at the tanks ahead of my own guild in progression on my server. I'm by no means attempting to belittle or demean anyone responding in this thread (unless you happen to be one of the tanks on my own realm that i'm flaming). I have spoken to most of them about this and generally they can't give me any sort of intelligent response as to why they are doing it aside from "I read somewhere it's a good idea, look at all my hit points". Hence I came here for some intelligent debate....

My sole reason for posting this here at all is to see some intelligent discussion about the trinket and for the most part there has been which is great and I thank you for that

To be honest I still don't see any theoretical discreditation of any of the scenarios i've suggested but i'll admit that answering your question is difficult too. Personally I have always found that consistency and timing have been keys to success and fluctuations in the raid cause problems. Hence my approach to tanking has always been to keep things as consistent as possible. Solid avoidance, mitigation and stamina with options for taking pressure off when need be. While I don't think the use ability on shadowmoon insignia is a gamesaver i'd take it or scarab of displacement (the use ability is another button for use when the healers get distracted by fears etc)

I didn't think you'd dissed me at all kazey hence I assumed the comment about me being a jackass to an admin was about the early post. Crossed wires IMO

Alent: I don't have 2 months of killing Halazzi every reset to spare sorry bud

[Alent]

I don't think you'd ever kill him wearing the pocketwatch, Slobash. That's the point of the suggestion. you'd go splat about 32 seconds after using the pocketwatch, which is the point at which the commendation shines. The fight was tailor made for that trinket, as are others.

Funny thing about the scarab of displacement, it's the only avoidance trinket in the game that provides benefit during stuns/fears. Outside of battles where that is a concern, why would you wear it when you could wear a trinket like [item]styleen's impeding scarab[/item]?

I'm doubting most people here will debate theoretical examples with you. that's just begging for "but when..." exceptions to be tossed in, or "I don't believe that's the case because my healers are better" or any number of other arguments.

[klor]

Wow...I am not even going to read this whole thread. Its the age old argument of "Stam versus Avoidance".

This is very easy to answer for. On some fights you'll want more avoidance. On other fights you'll want more stamina. Personally, on Azgalor, Mother Shaz, and Archimonde (the three hardest fights I have encountered as a tank I use my [item]shard of contempt[/item] and my pocket watch. On everything else I use autoblocker and the commendation. Saying a trinket is over used and not that great is false and you should stop while you are ahead. With tanking experience you quickly learn that some things work in some situations while others do not.

[Satrina]

As with every piece of equipment, the commendation has its places and times where it is useful. I'd tend to use it in place of a darkmoon card in an EH set. Is the commendation the best trinket evar? No. It's another tool in your toolbox, to be used when it makes sense to use it. Your basic problem really seems to be frustration that the majority of tanks use one set of gear to fit all encounters.

To be honest I still don't see any theoretical discreditation of any of the scenarios i've suggested but i'll admit that answering your question is difficult too

Nor will you. Looking for a theoretical analysis of a single piece of gear is silly. Trinket X is just one piece of the whole that dictates how well you chose. In choosing the gear you are going to wear for a fight, you need to consider:

- Your tanking abilities (helping yourself stay alive, wearing the right gear for the fight, generating optimal threat with variable amounts of threat stats)
- Your healers' abilities (helping you stay alive through the mentioned silence/fear, not sucking when you streak avoidance); and
- Your DPSers' abilities (dictating how much threat stats you need to juggle in to not threat cap them)

Before you can evaluate how effective that gear set was, the fight needs to end. At that point, an after-combat analysis involving your DPS (were you threat capped? Any low points to note?) and healers (how hard was I to heal? any scary points to watch for?) commences. Now you can iterate to make the gear set better for the next attempt or kill. What works for me may not be good for someone else because they have a different raid with different people of differenct capability. (As we progress, I find myself dropping specific gear sets for older fights in favour of my normalised "balanced" set that evolves as my gear gets better. A lot of tanks try to skip to this point the moment they see a boss for the first time, yes.)

If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times: Your most important skill as a tank in T6 is being able to correctly choose what to wear for a given fight. That goes right back to the first sentence I wrote here.

[Tatt]

Can I throw out there Slobash that it seems like EVERY tank and poster here replying to you is disagreeing with you? I understand popularity and lemming theory but if not one person here agrees with you, doesn't it lend to the theory that you might be incorrect? There are plenty of tanks here well into sunwell, and they still use it, so maybe, just maybe, they are right? 50/50 is one thing, 75/25 another, but I doubt the 1/99 theory is really that credible.

[Rak]

I will admit I skimmed this thread over the last couple days of updates to it because it seems like the same old same old. But it seems like one of the major drawbacks of Commendation you cite is that, with the proc only happening at <35% health, you will often be killed before it procs because of a bosses high damage.

I think that's actually a pretty rare case. The only bosses where that has a good chance of happening, imo, are bosses like Archimonde, Gorefiend, Brutallus (read below), Felmyst during Corrosion, Kalecgos during enrage. Other bosses don't really have such high damage in a single hit as far as I remember.

Brutallus, while logically seeming like he would one-shot you in such cases, is actually quite the opposite due to his OH and large MH damage range. In fact, every single tank rotation on Brutallus, my Commendation procs. That's pretty damn useful on such a fight.

On fights like Illidari Council, stamina is really important. If I'm tanking the priest, what are the only things I care about? Hit rating, expertise, stamina. Interrupt Wrath, and survive spell damage. Nothing else matters.

A lot of times on trash I also like to wear lots of threat gear and drop my health really low, and compensate with Commendation. The proc should never happen, which is a good thing in this situation.

It's a tool that no one should go without. Anyone that wears it for EVERY SINGLE FIGHT in the game, just doesn't know what they're doing. Simple as that. Same old stam vs avoidance debate.

[Rev13]

Let's look at Azgalor as an example as he has a fairly short cooldown silence, generally he uses it every 20-30 seconds or so.
Assuming you've started the encounter fine and everyones getting into a rhythm.

Tank with commendation, rain of fire lands in melee range and he hits you hard twice. Your health drops below 35% and your trinket procs. Heals land almost immediately and you're back on full health but with 8% more dodge. This means less rage and slower dps. 20 seconds later the raid is silenced and you have 5 seconds to survive with hots only.

or 30 seconds later he silences, and the trinket procs again. You seemingly fail to see or mention that, I wonder why......

Tank with pocket watch, rain of fire lands in melee range and he hits you hard twice. Your health drops below 35% and nothing happens. Heals land almost immediately and you're back on full health and continuing your threat generation. 20 seconds later the raid is silenced so you pop your pocket watch increasing your dodge by 16% while your healers wait out the silence.

I'm not saying that you need a pocket watch or a trinket that increases your avoidance to survive and be successful in these encounters. I'm just pointing out that commendation did absolutely nothing to help you besides providing 57 stam. 62 if you factor in kings. You weren't about to die as your healers had heals incoming so what was the point of increased avoidance?

You seemingly ignored the above bolded part of your own post in setting up your own straw man.

Mathematically, kael could proc on all silence intervals, given some favorable timing on azgalors part, your trinket could not.

In fact, if az is silencing anywhere from 24-30 seconds apart, kael wins hands down, because it procs on every silence, or is close enough to let the healers catch up, if need be

Im sure its rare, but you mentioned the short cooldown silence interval and completely forgot to mention that kael can proc every 30 seconds.

[Slobash]

That's assuming you haven't got low outside of a silence and had it proc meaning it's on cooldown every time he silences. I get what you mean though.

The most i've got out of this is that everyone has their own opinion and everyone is entitled to it. The replies have opened my eyes to some new ideas and obviously the experience of the many veterans has to be taken into account. I am a little disappointed however that many of the responses sum up as "it's saved me many times how can it be bad". If you wear it then naturally it would have saved you, my implication is that perhaps there was something else that could have done a better job. But there's answers to that one too as we've seen

I'll remove my teeth from your ankles now

PS: surprised noone yet has pointed fingers at me and laughed for rolling a troll

[clavarnway]

PS: surprised noone yet has pointed fingers at me and laughed for rolling a troll

Do you mean you did "roll a troll" and you are surprised nobody has called you out on it, or you haven't, but you expected people to?

[Slobash]

I expected comments like "LOL @ you for rolling a troll, your arguments are obviously weak!"

Too used to the wow forums maybe....

[Rak]

But it makes such a cool avatar.

[Tatt]

personally I think slobash's avatar looks like someone's rear end with body paint on it, like in one of those odd parades they have in Florida, but that might just be me

[rocket808]

My 2 cents are, as a prot pally, that I once didnt see the value of even AD - until Sunwell Plateau, or quite frankly, any new place that is a progression boss.

Since there is a mod called "Tankadin", it keeps a few of the useful numbers in front of me so I can essentially "see" the effects of redoubt, RF on/off, and the point is: Ardent defender kicking in. Since the trinket % and AD are both 35%, this sets a good indicator on how often the Commendation could help ones rear end out. For example, I may get saved by AD 2-3 times in a 4 hour raid night of a near full clear of BT, or a little more when I offer to solo tank the non-casters in hyjal. But on a 4 hour night on kalecgos, the AD happens on the order of 15 times. The fact I get the pally AD reduced damage, and the trinket extra dodge is a sweet deal - and I now value this trinkets importance, at least in these certain situations...as is all trinkets as Satrina has said. BTW - for Kalec, I use both the Commendation and Moroes - as pallies have very few 'oh-shit' while tanking buttons.

[Firebug]

P.S.
[item]Ancient Aqir Artifact[/item] ~ Absolutely Useless - This is the trinket you should be bashing.

[item]Ancient Aqir Artifact[/item] Useless? Well its almost the same passive avoidance as Moroes (nevermind that parry increases your threat) So really we should be comparing the procs.

Moroes: Increases dodge rating by 300 (15.85% @ L70) for 10 seconds. (2 minute cooldown)
Aqir: Increases armor by 2500 for 20 seconds. (2 minute cooldown)

* As the cooldowns are the same we can ignore them and just look at the effect.
* Aqir's duration is 20 seconds compared to 10 seconds on Moroes, so in this regard it is twice as effective (to be noted again later)

300 dodge rating vs 2500 armor:
300 dodge rating = 15.85% reduction in damage taken overall (someone will probably argue this point, but... sue me)
2500 armor = (Well I know I am at 18k armor in mostly t5/badge so we'll start there) vs a lvl 73 attacker 18k armor is 60.08% reduction. 20.5k is 63.155%. Not much eh? well you forget how armor works. With 18k armor you are taking 39.92% damage and with 20.5k you are taking 36.845% or a difference of 8.43%.

Moroes wins! Except it lasts half as long... meaning we double the 'worth' of Aqir or a comparable 16.86% reduction vs 15.85% on Moroes.

Edit: Oh, and you still get the rage of being hit with the Aqir compared to zero rage from the Moroes.

[Leytur]

Not really as you should use something like Scarab of Displacement or Shadowmoon Insignia. Kazeys reply is the standard "I stack stam for ze big HP" response which I shall respond with my usual "if you wanted to be a stam whore you should have rolled a druid".

So if I'm reading your post right. . . you aren't a tank and you're only here to try and make your guild tanks, along with every other tank that likes 57 stamina, look stupid.

Sorry, this isn't Blizzard's forums.