Warrior Tank Gemming!? WoTLK

[Kahmal]

Well in Burning Crusade for the most part everything was mapped out as....12 stamina everything, so I'm just wonder with the mechanics change how are we supposed to Gem now?

Do we follow the color if the bonus is good? Ignore bonuses? Use personal preference. Not sure.

[Satorri]

Blasphemy I'm sure, but I never subscribed to the stamina in every socket as a universal maxim.

The smartest way to gem, now more than ever, is identify if the socket bonus is worth matching socket colors or not. If you got +2 stam from a blue gem and a red gem and you were allergic to Strength or Agility, you'd get more stam by just putting in two Stam gems. That being said, I'd rather trade the little bit of stam for more agility/strength.

The way things are, avoidance is every bit as valuable as mitigation, and at lower values you can see larger percentage changes.

Personally I'd socket Str/Stam or Agi/Stam in red sockets (Agi for more dodge/armor, Str for more SBV/AP depending on whether you want more survival or threat), yellow sockets I'd put in Def/Stam (Def is always tastey, though you might find DR making it less noticeable at higher avoidance values), and pure stam in blues, of course.

That's my leaning. With tanking stats, bringing up whatever your weakness is will usually be more valuable than trying to stack on your strongest value (yes, I realize there are no DR on Stam, but big health without enough avoidance just means your healers have to work harder more consistantly).

[sorednbored]

For Levelling? MOAR STRENGTH!

But at 80, I'm inclined to go along with Lore's prediction of a balanced set of gems on the whole of your gear - giving EH, Threat/damage and Avoidance stats.

Of course as you start to accumulate gear, just gem to the strengths of that gear. If it's packed with Armor, go for stam and make it an EH piece. High Dodge? Keep going with Dodge. And if its full of Threat stats? you guessed it. MOAR STRENGTH.

[Mark]

For red sockets, should you gem for expertise over strength?

1 expertise > 1 strength?

I would think this would be the case.

[sorednbored]

You can gem for Expertise???

Man I should pay attention to WoWHead more.

Doesn't make the statement less true. If is a threat piece, yeah chuck Expertise on it.

[Xav]

Get crit immune first.

Then gem for strong socket bonuses, otherwise stamina. Avoidance diminishes rather quick, stamina doesn't, so you'll be reaching the point of "soft caps" with gear progression alone.

Expertise is great to fulfill red socket bonuses/slots because it provides a large threat gain and mitigates damage (reduction of parryhastes).

Keep in mind this is a general basis. There are still plenty of opportunities for specialized gearing/gemming, even including avoidance. I for one am actually going to try out a full coverage (the old term "uncrushable", that is) of Block with high block value and see how I like it. That'll end up involving a whole lot of defense gems and enchants everywhere to get as close as I can to that point.

[Satorri]

Diminishing returns doesn't mean that it actually has less survival value, it just means the % increase is smaller. To that end armor, dodge, parry, stam, and the rest all have a linear impact on your lifespan.

Also, if I remember right, isn't Expertise a yellow gem stat? (meaning it wouldn't be expertise vs strength in a red socket, it'd be expertise vs stam)

[jere]

Diminishing returns doesn't mean that it actually has less survival value, it just means the % increase is smaller. To that end armor, dodge, parry, stam, and the rest all have a linear impact on your lifespan.

Also, if I remember right, isn't Expertise a yellow gem stat? (meaning it wouldn't be expertise vs strength in a red socket, it'd be expertise vs stam)

Stam is blue, not yellow

Expertise is red: Precise Scarlet Ruby - Item - World of Warcraft

[Xav]

Diminishing returns doesn't mean that it actually has less survival value, it just means the % increase is smaller. To that end armor, dodge, parry, stam, and the rest all have a linear impact on your lifespan.

Also, if I remember right, isn't Expertise a yellow gem stat? (meaning it wouldn't be expertise vs strength in a red socket, it'd be expertise vs stam)

Avoidance diminishes meaning putting in a gem, which is a choice you can make, is choosing to put in a stat with less itemization value. In gear that will have double or triple sockets, it would be like adding say 15 points to the Ilvl of the item, or adding only 10. That's the choice.

You're going to hit the point of avoidance where you start seeing real diminishes in value just by the base gear stats once you're in mostly 25 man loot, and this is only the first tier of content.

And expertise is red, dodge is red, parry is red
Hit, defense, crit, are yellow
stamina is blue

[Horacio]

Going for all out block/avoidance is intriguing, eg, all incoming attacks modified somehow, because of the higher block values and the addition of critical block.

If I understand it correctly, more blocks = more chances for critical blocks => more bonus damage to shield slams? You're obviously giveing yourself a great chance to have revenge available but I don't think that's a concern at this stage, it seems to be up all the time.

Thoughts on +hit in yellow slots?

On hit, if my math is correct (ya, right) the hit cap is going to be something like 295 hit rating. (32.78 rating per 1% -- 9% cap) Yikes.

[Satorri]

I see what you mean on the itemization value, Xav.

And Jere, I meant trading the Str/Stam purple for a Str/Exp orange, good to know expertise is red though, I'd missed that when I glanced at beta gems.

I know for my DK tank, expertise is going to be a bit lower value, mostly spells for threat, one of the two melee moves can't be parried or dodged, and the other will be less frequent in rotation, plus I prefer a bit fat 2-hander while tanking, so my auto attacks are pretty well spaced out.

For my warrior, I'll have to put some thought into the value of Expertise vs Strength on those red slots. Strength has great threat value and small mitigation value, but then so does expertise. Expertise might win out until you hit the dodge removal, but after that, it's a big might for me.

[ststephen]

This is a big source of confusion for me as well. For leveling and the 5 mans in WotLK it looks like str will be be a big stat for prot warriors increasing both SBV and AP. Once raiding really starts I think we will be looking at having to be more balanced in general with stats. EH will never go away but it won't be the be all/end all anymore. My strategy as raids start is #1 get uncritable, #2 gem to EH on your first raid stuff so you can tank progression bosses, #3 regem to an item's strength once you have adequate EH on your "base set" so you can use it as part of a set (ie EH set, avoidance set, threat set). I haven't really raided the lvl 80 content so take this for what's it worth. We should have a better idea once we can see the WWS for some lvl 80 raids.

[Satorri]

Right now that'd be a yikes, Horacio, but with level 80 gear it'll be about as easy. =)

Hit rating is probably one of my lowest priorities though, it's one I'm happy to pick up, but I wouldn't normally take that in a socket. Unless we're not talking about on a tank...

[Sparan]

Avoidance diminishes meaning putting in a gem, which is a choice you can make, is choosing to put in a stat with less itemization value. In gear that will have double or triple sockets, it would be like adding say 15 points to the Ilvl of the item, or adding only 10. That's the choice.

You're going to hit the point of avoidance where you start seeing real diminishes in value just by the base gear stats once you're in mostly 25 man loot, and this is only the first tier of content.

I don't think this is correct, for two reasons. First, as has been stated in a lot of places, the way in which avoidance "diminishes" is analogous to the way in which armor "diminishes", which is to say that it scales your relative reduction in damage taken linearly. That being the case each successive point of dodge or parry is exactly as good as every previous point of dodge or parry in its capacity to increase survival time. So, making a choice to put avoidance in a gem slot when you already have decent avoidance levels WOULD be a poor choice, but the reason for this is more complex than what you've laid out. In reality, the reason stam is going to fare well will be just the same reason stam has always fared well, which is to say that its value appreciates with higher mitigation and avoidance, and blizzard probably isn't going to change their standard of over-itemizing avoidance onto our gear, so stamina will be the obvious choice except in cases where we don't lose much stamina in picking up a socket bonus.

Second (and this one is admittedly a lot more trivial), the ilvl analogy might actually backfire in a lot of instances. Remember that ilvl is calculated so that each successive point of a given stat actually consumes more of the item budget, so on a high-dodge item with lowish stam socket for dodge would actually be kind of like exceeding the intended stat budget than undershooting it. Or, to take this to the "whole set of gear" level, if I'm wearing high dodge gear I'm actually kind of boosting the ilvl by socketing for more dodge.

[Xav]

Disagree, adding in more dodge by choice via sockets when you're already seeing moderate diminishing is just gimping your gear, unless there's a specific reason for it. If you're trying to maximize your gear's worth, adding the most to its budget makes the most sense.

A particular stat being added on to an item after a point (the "point" being the item being finalized and lootable in game, the customization given to players in the form of enchants or gems) will increase the item's value by the same amount at that point, it doesn't matter if it's the same stat or not. The problem is you may be adding in a 16 dodge rating gem that will only end up acting like it's a 9 dodge rating gem, whereas the 24 stamina gem will act exactly like a 24 stamina gem.

You can probably end up swapping gear with the avoidance stats on it by default (ie, not socketed in), and then socket in your stamina on top of it, and up with more gear "value". Reaching the point of avoidance stacking being so strong because the next 1% is always far better than the last 1% is much harder, and I don't think it will be remotely obtainable for a long time, if ever. Lots of things are weighing against avoidance right now.

I also think stam fares well is moreso because it favors progression in unfamiliar territory where you don't know what to expect, and the worst case scenarios can be absorbed by a large stamina pool.

[Satorri]

Yeah.

All tanking stats now have a linear effect on lifespan increase, if Blizz did there math well, which I'm inclined to believe since they've read all of your theory as well and actually designed the formulae underneath, then any given gem should offer equivalent stat value. That being said, so long as the socket bonus is something you can benefit from, I'd wager it's in your interest to get that bonus, since it is a bonus on top of the cumulative gem totals.

[Xav]

I'll be honest and say I didn't know they made the way avoidance 'diminishes' be equivalant to the way armor does.

I can't post more right now cause I'm busy at work currently but yeah, I'll add a bit more later!

[Hypatia]

Avoidance does not in fact diminish the same as armor does. These easy way to see this is to realize that different avoidance types don't diminish together. If you took all of parry + dodge + miss, and did diminishing returns based on the combined value, then scaled the original p:d:m proportions to the scaled value, you *could* do that.

But that's not how it works. Instead, each form of avoidance is diminished separately. Let's say for a moment that you have 10% dodge and 10% parry. Imagine that adding "100 item points" bumps parry up to 15%, or dodge up to 15%. Adding a further "100 item points" to either will take it to 19%: so there are diminishing returns here.

Now here's the thing: if you add 200 points to one or the other, your result is 29% avoidance. If you add 100 points to one and 100 points to the other, your result is 30% avoidance.

That's good for the game, because it means that you're better off eventually balancing out your different avoidance stats instead of just stacking the cheapest—makes things more interesting. But, it also shows that there cannot be truly linear returns from putting itemization value into avoidance. Because avoidance is not just one stat.


Apologies for not doing math with the real formulas. Probably won't get around to it too soon, either (I'm at work now, and expect to be playing a lot of WoW in the near future—I'll leave the analysis for later, after I've had a bunch of experience from leveling up to feed my intuition.)

[Kahmal]

I'm also concerned about GMs and Raid Leaders that wont get up with the times and think the beefest tank with the most stamina is the best.

[Xav]

Well shit then if avoidance is indeed on its on honkydory formula, I think I know enough just from playing the beta and seeing how it diminishes. I can't get the same big avoidance numbers as I can before, and stamina is always very valuable for progression, so I'll probably be staying with that!

(The exception is like I said, a possible 'uncrushable' block set which would utilize a lot of defense and possible other avoidance gems)