The Myth of Frost Resist Gear

[Ossix]

Edit: One of my assumptions regarding resistances and item budget seems to be incorrect; please take section 1 with a grain of salt. The math in sections 2 and 3 remains accurate.

(This is something that's been on my mind for a while, and I've finally decided to do the math and write something up on it. The post concerns raids as a whole rather than tanks specifically. Please point out any flaws in my reasoning you can find.)

1. The ice cream cake is a lie!

There are a number of ilvl 213 items craftable by several professions that are known as Frost Resistance gear. These items, listed below, are identifyable by their high levels of Stamina and Frost Resistance (hence the name), and their numerous gem sockets.

Chest: Icebane Chestguard / Icy Scale Chestguard / Polar Vest / Glacial Robe
Waist: Icebane Girdle / Icy Scale Belt / Polar Cord / Glacial Waistband
Feet: Icebane Treads / Icy Scale Boots / Polar Boots / Glacial Slippers
Ring: Titanium Frostguard Ring

The term Frost Resistance gear, however, is misleading in that it implies these items were itemized for Frost Resistance. But they're not. When Blizzard was assigning stats to these items in accordance with the item level formulas they use when creating items, they did not count the Frost Resistance against the items' budgets. They just threw it on on top of the other stats they gave the items.

In other words, these items aren't Frost Resistance gear. They're Stamina gear. The Frost Resistance is just icing on the cake.

2. Moar Stamina!

Let's take any one of the above sets of four items and gem/enchant them for Stamina. This means Solid Sky Sapphire in blue and prismatic sockets, hybrid Stamina gems in red and yellow sockets, Enchant Chest - Super Health on the chest and Enchant Boots - Greater Fortitude on the boots.

Each set of four items together will give a character a whopping 711 Stamina. Convert that to raw health and add the +275 HP enchant, and these four items will increase your health pool by 7,445.

7,445 is quite a lot. To put it in perspective, my heroic-geared mage has 13,600 HP in her normal gear. Putting on these four items increases my health pool by over 50 percent.

3. But is it effective?

While effective health (EH) is normally thought of in the context of tanking raid bosses, it does have some use when theorycrafting AoE damage to the entire raid. At the same time, much of the damage a raid will take is magic damage; effective health is irrelevant to this type of damage because it is not effected by armor.

Assuming a character is wearing rare-quality ilvl 200 items save for these four ilvl 213 items, their armor values will be as follows:

Cloth Wearer: 1,709 Armor
Leather Wearer: 3,210 Armor
Mail Wearer: 7,118 Armor
Plate Wearer: 12,753 Armor

Using these armor values for calculations, the real effective health increase from equipping these items is much more than 7,445:

Cloth Wearer: 8,210 Effective Health
Leather Wearer: 8,882 Effective Health
Mail Wearer: 10,631 Effective Health
Plate Wearer: 13,153 Effective Health

4. Conclusions

By wearing "Frost Resist" gear gemmed and enchanted for Stamina, each healer and DPS in your raid can increase their health pool by 7.5k and their effective health by 8-13k. This isn't something you'd always want to do, of course, because raid DPS would go down accordingly. But having the option can significantly decrease pressure on healers.

If your healers are having trouble keeping up the raid in encounters with heavy AoE damage, increasing the health pool of your clothies by 50% would make things a lot easier for them. As the healers become more able to heal the raid, your raiders could swap back into their regular gear. Having the gear provides your raids

Perhaps your healers are gods, and you'll never need the additional stamina. You can take down every boss in the game without it, just like you can take down every boss in the game without flasks, well-fed buffs or an ideal raid composition. But in a progression raiding guild where members are required to bring consumables, dual PvE specs and their A-game, is there any reason not to require your raiders to prepare a set of Stamina gear that will help them on progression encounters in Naxxramas/Ulduar, and will most likely be required to clear a hard-resist encounter in Icecrown Citadel?

[Kataztrophe]

The term Frost Resistance gear, however, is misleading in that it implies these items were itemized for Frost Resistance. But they're not. When Blizzard was assigning stats to these items in accordance with the item level formulas they use when creating items, they did not count the Frost Resistance against the items' budgets. They just threw it on on top of the other stats they gave the items.

This is totally untrue. The frost resist gear IS true to the item level formula. I have a feeling you are thinking that 1 stamina = 1 str/agi/crit/hit/spirit which it is not.

If your healers are having trouble keeping up the raid in encounters with heavy AoE damage, increasing the health pool of your clothies by 50% would make things a lot easier for them. As the healers become more able to heal the raid, your raiders could swap back into their regular gear. Having the gear provides your raids

Perhaps your healers are gods, and you'll never need the additional stamina. You can take down every boss in the game without it, just like you can take down every boss in the game without flasks, well-fed buffs or an ideal raid composition. But in a progression raiding guild where members are required to bring consumables, dual PvE specs and their A-game, is there any reason not to require your raiders to prepare a set of Stamina gear that will help them on progression encounters in Naxxramas/Ulduar, and will most likely be required to clear a hard-resist encounter in Icecrown Citadel?

I can not agree with your conclusion. Frost resist should only be used in fights where the frost resist is needed, and not for the stam values. If you had all your dps wearing 2-3 frost resist sets gemmed out with stam in fights where their is no frost damage, you are losing a HUGE amount of raid dps. Less dps = the fight lasting longer = more chance of error + enrage timers. There is no Str, Agi, Intel, Spell power, etc on any of those pieces which makes them sub-par for a non-frost magic fight.

I'll give you an example. If our main warlock switched out his current gear and wore the frost resist chest, boots, and waist. he would lose exactly:

479 Spell Power
196 Intel
127 Hit
95 Haste
62 Crit
77 Spirit

That isn't counting enchants. Now if he gave all that up, he would gain about 5,900 hp with the frost resist and lose what is posted above. A pretty big trade off for about 600 stamina, and would cause him to be severely under the hit cap. Meaning he would have to regem every other piece of his gear with pure hit gems. He probably wouldn't even get to the amount of hit he lost, since the chest and waist usually have 2-3 sockets (3 with a belt buckle). If you are bringing the recommended healers for an encounter and are having trouble with it, having more stam, aside from a tank, should not be an answer to the problem. Most likely the dps is low (which wearing the frost resist would make worse), raid members are dying to enviromental hazards, or it is player/strat issue.

[Dreg]

EH has nothing to do with it, armor has nothing to do with it. There is little physical raid damage in the game if any. there are 2 fights in the game where FR might be useful (for the raid) Saphh and Hodir. Saphh is a joke to heal through and hodir is easily manageable as well, however FR may be useful at first.

People said we would need a NR set for Ulduar, playing a guessing game of what you will need in content we can not see is pretty pointless and really doesn't help much.

Oh and your heroic geared mage probably won't see raids that require it with that kind of gear. Currently the lowest HP of all classes (on average) is shaman, and they still have ~21-22k buffed.

[Ossix]

I agree completely that just because there's AoE damage in a fight doesn't automatically mean everyone should throw on their Stam gear. It's a situational decision that depends on the nature of the AoE damage, the ability of you healers, the duration of any enrage timer, and many other factors. In many, perhaps even most fights with AoE DPS, you'll want to use your normal gear.

Even if they're only valuable in one specific AoE encounter, or if they're only needed when Paladins and Disc Preists are the only healers that show up to the raid, a Stamina set will be situationally useful. For the same reason that tanks in progression raiding guilds carry multiple tanking sets (EH, Avoidance, Threat), IMO DPS players should carry a Stamina set. It's about keeping your options open and being able to adapt.

Keep in mind that, because the Frost Resistance isn't included in the item budget of the gear, you're not giving up Strength/Agility/Intellect/Spellpower/Etc for Frost Resistance. You're giving up Strength/Agility/Intellect/Spellpower/Etc for Stamina.

That's in part why I wrote this post--to counter the idea that these items are Frost Resist items. They have Frost Resistance, but that's just a bonus. They're itemized for Stamina.

Edit: Dreg, any chance you could link your source for average HP of each class? I'm curious to see what passive Stamina is on standard DPS sets for different classes.

[Dreg]

I think a better solution is to make sure your raiders save their old gear (7.5 or 8.0) and regem it for stam. Blizz does not design things with the idea that mages have 30k buffed hp, but they do design encounters with mages doing X amount of dps. really you're probably hurting your self more by wearing the gear for stam.

Tanks have 1 stat that must remain at a certain point, defence, and ALL of our gear has it so it is not hard to manage. However if my shaman takes off his chest he is WAY below hit cap, and also looses haste required to maintain his rotation. Same with my belt and my boots have haste on them as well.

If your raid is dieing to unavoidable raid damage, its a healing issue. If they are dying to avoidable raid damage its a skill problem not a gear problem. Priests can raid heal just fine, if they cant do it as disc have them respec holy? if you have a raid of all pally healers its a composition issue not a gear issue.

[Ossix]

Your point about the hit cap is a valid concern. Perhaps players could gem the Stamina gear for approximately as much hit as they would lose by equipping it?

If your raid is dieing to unavoidable raid damage, its a healing issue. If they are dying to avoidable raid damage its a skill problem not a gear problem. Priests can raid heal just fine, if they cant do it as disc have them respec holy? if you have a raid of all pally healers its a composition issue not a gear issue.

I agree completely. If Stam gear is ever needed, it means something else has gone wrong. Either your healers aren't doing their jobs right, DPS isn't be getting out of the fire, or you've got a poor raid composition.

As much as we'd like to think otherwise, we will find ourselves in situations where our healers aren't on the ball, or when we've got a poor composition. In those situations--perhaps only in those situations--stamina gear might be of some use.

The idea of regemming/enchanting old gear for stamina could definitely work. The only question is, would it be enough to make a difference?

Edit: Kataztrophe, my understanding was that resistances did not count against an item's budget; I've just looked it up and it seems I was wrong, they have a value of 1 according to Item Level Mechanics - Elitist Jerks. So the question becomes, does the situational stamina benefit from equipping these items outweigh the wasted item budget? My gut feeling is no, but I'm going to do the math to double-check.

[Kataztrophe]

Your point about the hit cap is a valid concern. Perhaps players could gem the Stamina gear for approximately as much hit as they would lose by equipping it?

Would not work. Using the warlock I described in my first post, if he gemmed out the frost resist gear with all +16 hit gems, he would make back what he lost, plus about 15 extra hit. But guess what? Now he's only gaining about 3900-4000 hp and still losing:

479 Spell Power
196 Intel
95 Haste
62 Crit
77 Spirit

in exchange for 3900-4000 hp.

[Pluekiller]

Interesting post. I agree that if healers are having problem with raid damage, dps should swap out maybe a peice to give the healers some breathing room.

But trying to convince players to lose a few hundred dps is the tough part.

[Nicki]

For one stamina is 0.67 of any Combat rating or stat. Frost resist takes up 1 item point like any rating.

The gear IS itemised for frost resistance.

Secondly Effective health is physical damage as already said armor means nothing at all to a dps class.

Finally having health with not enough through put will wipe any raid more than people dying to enrage or oom healers who will be oom because they will be sacrificing regen stats on their gear to wear frost res stam gear.

In other words Frost resistance gear is an entire waste and it would be as effective to put on a piece of PvP gear if you feel your health is too low for an encounter. I am not however encouraging this going into an encounter without adequate gear is never optimal.

IT is better to pull the route than to cut off the head of a weed. Which in many cases means you have to question your raid healing be it telling them to step it up or getting an extra healer. On fights like hodir and sapphiron DPS can also be to blame standing in Icicles and blizzards is NOT necessary just like wearing frost resistance is not necessary...

[Ossix]

Alright, using Glacial Robe as an example. It has:

169 Stamina
115 Frost Resistance
Red Socket
Yellow Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: 12 Stamina

Using the formulas at Item Level Mechanics - Elitist Jerks, working backwards:

Glacial Robe has an ilvl of 213, therefore:

213=97.632*ln(itemSlotValue)-287.14
ln(itemSlotValue)=5.123
itemSlotValue=167.838

Therefore, because the slotModifier for chests is 1, the itemValue for Glacial Robe is also 167.838.

Sockets take up a flat 16 points each, EJ says, so we're down to 119.838 itemValue. Therefore if the math is working out:

Stamina Frost Resistance
{([169*2/3]^1.7095)+([115*1]^1.7095)}^(1/1.7095)=119.838
{(112.666^1.7095)+(115^1.795)}^.585=119.838
{3217.658+4999.800}^.585=119.838
8217.458^.585=119.838
195.039=119.838

Clearly something's off here. Let's try taking the Frost Resist out of the item budget.

3217.658^.585=119.838
112.697=119.838

Still off, but much closer. Possibly off due to rounding? That, or I'm a noob at math. Anyone have any insights?

Edit: I was using the formula for rares, not epics, in the above calculations. Doing it properly:

213=106.29*ln(itemSlotValue)-344.36
ln(itemSlotValue)=5.244
itemSlotValue=189.426

So, itemValue=189.426. Less 48 for sockets makes 141.426. Which still doesn't make any sense, the numbers we got with and without frost resist were 195 and 112, respectively. Perhaps we include the sockets in the formula, rather than taking them off the top?

Stamina Frost Resistance Sockets
{([169*2/3]^1.7095)+([115*1]^1.7095)+([16*1]^1.7095)+([16*1]^1.7095)+([16*1]^1.7095)}^(1/1.7095)=189.426
{3217.658+4999.800+343.215}^.585=189.426
8560.673^.585=189.426
199.764=189.426

Close, possibly off due to rounding. And without having Frost Resistance in the budget:

{3217.658+343.215}^.585=189.426
3560.873^.585=189.426
119.581=189.426

Clearly not correct.

I still suspect I'm doing the sockets wrong, but I don't know how else I can treat them. It's possible, of course, that the item itself is over or under budget, which would explain why the math isn't adding up. Regardless, it seems clear that resistance is included in the item budget to some extent. I'll edit the OP to indicate this.

WTB Satrina to show me what I'm doing wrong.

[Pluekiller]

Stamina Frost Resistance
{([169*2/3]^1.7095)+([115*1]^1.7095)}^(1/1.7095)=119.838
{(112.666^1.7095)+(115^1.795)}^.585=119.838
{3217.658+4999.800}^.585=119.838

I found a maths error, in red. The proper itemvalue before socket bonuses should be 170.757
I haven't been able to get an ilvl of 213 either though...

[Pluekiller]

A post in Item Level Mechanics - Elitist Jerksstates that glacial robes should be itemlvl 216, and reading the following line from the thread,

It appears that to create a socket, Blizzard sacrifices 16 points from any stat they feel like choosing and then using that to create a socket of any color.

I came up with this,

StaminaFrost ResistSockets
{((169+48)*2/3)^n + (115)^n }^(1/n) = 195.6512
ilvl = 106.29*ln(195.6512) - 344.36 = 216.46

where n = 1.7095

But this is guesstimation. Can someone experienced confirm?

[Ossix]

I came up with this,

StaminaFrost ResistSockets
{((169+48)*2/3)^n + (115)^n }^(1/n) = 195.6512
ilvl = 106.29*ln(195.6512) - 344.36 = 216.46

where n = 1.7095

But this is guesstimation. Can someone experienced confirm?

That sounds like it. It adds up, and it fits with what EJ says.

[dyls]

4. Conclusions

By wearing "Frost Resist" gear gemmed and enchanted for Stamina, each healer and DPS in your raid can increase their health pool by 7.5k and their effective health by 8-13k. This isn't something you'd always want to do, of course, because raid DPS would go down accordingly. But having the option can significantly decrease pressure on healers.

I'm sorry, but as a healer, I strongly disagree. All you would be doing in this situation is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Or to put it another way, the best MP/5 is good DPS.

To put it yet another way, you are taking the pressure off each healer's haste and SP stats, and putting it on their mana regeneration stats instead

As with everything in WoW, you need a balanced approach - stacking absolutely everything on one side (i.e. all stamina) can yield terrible results.

[bludwork]

it's better to take another healer or 2 rather than have everyone wear crappy gear to improve their EH. If EH was so great we would all raid with 10 tanks and 7 healers

[Nighthorror]

the only thing im going to use my Frost gear for is the ilvl to replace 200ilvl gear on the FL fight.

[Unger]

I completely disagree with the critique of this post. I believe that those who disagree with this theory are really missing the point.

As a raid leader, you want.... rather you NEED options. You should NEVER remove one of your own options if you don't have to. The point of the post was to demonstrate that there are ways to significantly increase the survivability of the raid through additional stamina and effective health. While some fights are a DPS race, some are not. In fact, my opinion of a lot of Ulduar is that the fights are way more about survivability than they are about maxing out damage meters. Granted, we are not running a lot of hard mode events, but still. Much of what you need to do is just keep everyone alive until the next phase.

You don't have to use this theory. You may never use it. But the reality is that we need people like this to take shots at these types of ideas to see what works. Maybe this isn't a standard raid strategy for all fights, but is it all that hard to imagine a situation in which you need one (or more) raid members to have even 1k more health? Maly's vortex comes to mind..... and High Warlord Najentus come to mind.

You might not necessarily see a very practical use of someone's idea.... but this is clearly very well thought out and researched. I am not sure we should use these posts to prove our superior intellect at the expense of our fellow tanks.

There is a place for this idea.... and I know that I will keep this strategy in mind for the right time.

[akira5284]

... but this is clearly very well thought out and researched. I am not sure we should use these posts to prove our superior intellect at the expense of our fellow tanks.

There is a place for this idea.... and I know that I will keep this strategy in mind for the right time.

It does not matter how much research goes into something if it is bad research. The original poster claimed that frost resist was not taking up item points in the gear and it has been shown that that is not true. Frost resist is taking up points and as a result the stam is not enough to replace the value of other stats in other gear.

There are a couple of bosses where this frost gear is useful because it reduces damage and it increases the chance of resisting certain spells. For example, Hodir's frost nova I think is resistable. However, outside of frost fights where the raid is taking AOE damage, this gear provides little benefit as all you will be accomplishing is making the fight last longer and taxing your healers more. If healers are having a hard time keeping up people when everyone should have 19k+ health, then the simplest solution is to bring an extra healer or bring a different mix of healers. If there is a lot of AOE damage there is no reason to have only pally healers for example.

As for a place for this idea, the best place to use this gear is 1) To improve iLvl for Flame leviathan if anyone has 200 or less on those slots

2) Hodir to reduce the raid damage taken during Frozen Blows if you lack good AoE healing. (Normally we find that two priests for this fight make it a cake walk)