Death Knight Tanking: Stats

[Urrick]

For those looking to start off tanking at 80, Mal'ganis in CoT:Strat drops a perfect sword (~70 Str, 100 Stam, if I remember right).

Yeah thats what I'm thinking, that and the Argent Crusade 2 Hand Mace will be great beginning 80 weapons.

[Urrick]

Acclimation (t9) = When you are hit by magic damage you have a 10/20/30% chance to get an 18 sec boost to your resistance of that magic type. Stacks up to 3 times. (This is a very useful buff if the tanking environment will involve some consistant sort of spell damage. It may be a bit more situational though, so it may not be a full-time staple talent.)

From GC
Acclimation buffs Rune Strike (in addition to its normal effects).

If I go frost I'm taking Acclimation either way, but by buffing Rune Strike it makes it an automatic skill to take imo.

[Satorri]

So, I'm trying to settle on the best way to compare and valuate stats for DK tanking. The big X factor I've been trying to account for is Diminishing Returns on avoidance and I think I have wrapped my head around it sufficiently, but I want to put it up to the sharp minds here for discussion. At this point I'm largely of a mind that threat is not an issue so it is merely a matter of balancing your DPS contribution with your ability to survive, and the latter will always take precedence and it will probably only become a balance in instances which you over-gear.

Here's my initial statement of value:
Net Avoidance and Net Mitigation are of equal value to survival if you match functional %'s. They merely change the sort of healing required (constant and steady, versus spikey but spaced).


So, the key to understanding the Diminishing Returns on avoidance is the same that has been the case with armor all along. The idea is simply that the system works on %'s. The % change from 25% to 50% is a smaller change in damage taken than the change from 50% to 75%. As such the game translates the ratings into % at a diminishing formula such that every increment has an equal value to survival that the last one had (rather than accelerating in value).

So to draw equivalence between stats we need to identify the translation rate between %'s.

Defense Rating = Miss % + Parry % + Dodge %
Dodge Rating = Dodge %
Agility = Dodge % + % Physical Damage Reduction (a la armor)
Parry Rating = Parry %
Armor = % Physical Damage Reduction
Spell Resistance = % Spell Damage Reduction (unless this system is changed though, it's a little tough to pin down, and usually situationally dependent for value).


**Here's the part where I'm still having trouble decyphering the formulas for the sake of spot comparisons. Perhaps someone could post formulae that could be adapted to this purpose more clearly.

The uncertainty I have is how the relative contributions are diminished together. Armor is easy, since everything only contributes to a single value that then diminishes returns as it goes. But how are defense rating and parry rating each diminished in their cumulative value? The same needs to be factored for defense rating, dodge rating, and agility for total dodge %. Miss chance from defense rating should be easy like armor, but that will be one portion of the contribution of defense rating. Also, is diminishing returns applied to each individual avoidance value, or is it the cumulative (capping total dodge + parry + miss at 75% final functional?).

If anyone has some solid data on this I'd appreciate it, though I suspect no one has actually established the formula yet, since this potentially has a LOT of variables and is not transparent for easy testing.

[Doxai]

Thank you for this!