Diminishing Returns on Avoidance? Not really.

[Kazeyonoma]

I think the core situation here then is... the OP is preaching to the choir.

The people who are most engaged in this thread, already understand that the DR on avoidance wasn't to make avoidance useless, but to make it scale more linearly as you got more of it (like armor does, although not exactly on the same curve). The people you're trying to clarify this for, will hopefully see this and understand the discussion at hand, and not just look at it at face value and say "Well, Kerg said I should stack avoidance because avoidance isn't terrible after all!"

Everything that is done for our specific classes always has to be UNDERSTOOD before doing it. Even EH stacking. It's just easier for the common player to say "SO DO I STACK STAM OR DODGE?" and get a 1 line answer. That's where the underlying problem is, not the OP, the discussion goers, or probably the majority of the tankspot community.

[Transfel]

>.> skim doesn't equal read apparently.

At 60% avoidance (which is not terribly hard to reach), your chance of being hit 3 times in a row is only 6%.

I think that's the point here, effective health always has its stalwart proponents, though some of them think it's because avoidance is a poor investment.

Not to be rude, but I would like to see a warrior tank with 60% avoidance.

Also, assuming you can reach 60% avoidance, 6% chance to get hit 3 times in a row means that on a boss fight it is very likely to happen. Let's just use an imaginary boss that hits for an average speed of 2.00 after calculating in parry haste and thunderclap. Let's say he takes about 3 minutes to DPS down. That's a total of 90 swings, and we'll separate that into 3 swing segments. That means 30 3-swing segments, and a 6% chance for one of those to be a 3-HIT segment. That means at least twice, almost guaranteed by the percentages, you will get hit with a 3-hit streak.

Now, if you have geared for avoidance so that you manage to somehow reach 60%, you're very likely going to have very low EH which means that this inevitable 3-hit streak will kill you, or bring you dangerously low.

Moral of the story is that a healthy balance is necessary. It's tough to focus purely on EH because your hitpoints (as a warrior) will never be high enough to rely on exclusively, and it's tough to focus purely on avoidance because that will never be enough to rely on either.

Going back to the original post, what he said is all true about the 1% at 50% is more like 2%, but it doesn't really mean much because of the fact that you really aren't going to reach much higher than say 55%.

I am speaking from a prot warrior standpoint of course. I won't get into how druids can pull off way more EH/avoidance...

[Tarigar]

Not to be rude, but I would like to see a warrior tank with 60% avoidance.

If you include the bosses chances to have you dodge/parry/miss his attacks then yes it is done. I am running close to 70% avoidance with those numbers.

[Porcell]

If you include the bosses chances to have you dodge/parry/miss his attacks then yes it is done. I am running close to 70% avoidance with those numbers.

Not sure if you aren't in the right gear on your armory or not, but I don't see how 9.x miss, 26.x dodge, and 18.x parry adds up to 70%. Looks more like 55%ish avoidance.

Unbuffed I'm at a little over 57% avoidance in my standard boss tank threat gear, which might nudge a bit closer to 60% with buffs.

[Molohk]

I have 59% unbuffed and I'm wearing mostly 213 and 219 items without gearing specifically for avoidance (it helps that I'm currently specced frost), so I'm sure you can go well beyond 60% if you gear for avoidance and you have gear from Ulduar 25.

[Nadir_]

Not to be rude, but I would like to see a warrior tank with 60% avoidance.

60% raid buffed sounds about right for a well geared Ulduar 25 plate tank.

If a tank has 70% avoidance, they're either misunderstanding block (it's not avoidance) or they have a dodge gem in every slot. I'm tempted to try such a setup because it can yield the lowest possible DPS taken in simulators like Rawr, but then I shy away from it once I realize that it'd cost me 10k or more HP.

[Kerg]

Not to be rude, but I would like to see a warrior tank with 60% avoidance.

Also, assuming you can reach 60% avoidance, 6% chance to get hit 3 times in a row means that on a boss fight it is very likely to happen. Let's just use an imaginary boss that hits for an average speed of 2.00 after calculating in parry haste and thunderclap. Let's say he takes about 3 minutes to DPS down. That's a total of 90 swings, and we'll separate that into 3 swing segments. That means 30 3-swing segments, and a 6% chance for one of those to be a 3-HIT segment. That means at least twice, almost guaranteed by the percentages, you will get hit with a 3-hit streak.

Now, if you have geared for avoidance so that you manage to somehow reach 60%, you're very likely going to have very low EH which means that this inevitable 3-hit streak will kill you, or bring you dangerously low.

Moral of the story is that a healthy balance is necessary. It's tough to focus purely on EH because your hitpoints (as a warrior) will never be high enough to rely on exclusively, and it's tough to focus purely on avoidance because that will never be enough to rely on either.

Going back to the original post, what he said is all true about the 1% at 50% is more like 2%, but it doesn't really mean much because of the fact that you really aren't going to reach much higher than say 55%.

I am speaking from a prot warrior standpoint of course. I won't get into how druids can pull off way more EH/avoidance...

I think the best way to gear is for high EH, but adding avoidance wherever you can get it without sacificing too much EH for it, i.e. a few 8dodge/12stam & 8def/12stam gems here and there to pick up socket bonuses, especially stamina socket bonuses. And then from high EH pieces that also have high avoidance on them, like the crafted belt and boots from Ulduar. I run with about 56% unbuffed, with 35K hp.

But using your example of 6% chance to avoid 3 hits in a row if you have 60% avoidance... I think you also have to look at it from your healing perspective, too. As long as your healers can stand still and spam heal you without running out of mana, you're likely going to survive those 3 hits in a row anyway, provided you have good EH.

But say Vezax, for example. Healers randomly get hit with Shadow Crash and Mark of the Faceless and have to stop and run. Say you have 3 healers, and 5% of the time, you will get unlucky and 2 of your 3 healers are moving out of bad shit at once and not healing you for 3-5 sec. That's when a 3 hit in a row streak can kill you, because the single healer left can't keep you up fast enough.

But if you avoid one of those three, you live. So 5% of the time, you have a healing lapse, but 94% of those times you will avoid a 3-hit string and live through it. Due to your healthy avoidance, there is only a 5%*6% = 0.3% that both bad events will coincide, a 3-hit string during a time when healing has lapsed.

Compare that to the guy with only 50% avoidance, and his 12% chance to get a 3-hit string. In that same scenario, he has a 5%*12% = .6% chance to get 3-shotted when a lapse in healing occurs. Twice as much.

[GravityDK]

The point is, gemming for avoidance is usually not a good return compared to stamina. Itemisation for avoidance is nice though. That what I tried to say here, a posts back.

[Satorri]

Gravity, no no no! Bad Gravity. =P

Did you not read the post that started all this? Avoidance is not an inferior value for survival value, nor does it become worse, it actually gets better.

I think what people are forgetting is that neither gearing for EH nor avoidance is THE way to do it. The *needed* balance between the two is dictated by a simple consideration:

Ideally, you need to have enough health to take the number of hits you will take in the time required for heals to land.

Very general I know, but I'll try some specifics. If XT hits you for 20k every 2 seconds, having 50k health and 40% avoidance means you can take 2 hits in a row without avoiding or dying. The third hit will kill you if it lands. The chances of taking a 3rd hit with 40% avoidance is about 13%, meaning without heals more than 1/10th of the time you will die. Alternately if you have 35k health and 70% avoidance, the second hit will kill you if it lands, but you only have a 9% chance to get hit twice in a row. So the latter tank actually has a slightly better chance to survive a string of hits. But then you look at what that means for healers. The tank with high health and low avoidance has a 6 second window (3 swings) to get healed back up, while the high avoidance low health tank only has a 4 second window. Note: the slowest big heals have a 2.5 sec cast time, if the healer was purely reactive healing, the tank would take the first hit, and the healer(s) could queue the big heal, and the tank would get hit again before the heal landed, so the avoidance tank would be in trouble if he fell in that 9%. Then again, if the healers are used to healing you, they likely are used to patching you up quickly or pre-cast/canceling.

These are really extreme examples. Most tanks will fall totally in the middle. Full Ulduar gear without gems or enchants one way or another will get most tanks about 50-60% avoidance and 36-40k health in raid buffs. Your gems, enchants, and trinket choices after that will constitute usually somewhere up to 5-8k health or 4-10% avoidance, at the extremes. Generally, I don't think you can really go wrong.

In the current state of things healers don't particularly care if you take steadier streams of damage and have high health, or if you take less steady damage and have slightly smaller health, they just adapt to what you bring to the table. It is more often class-skills not related to your gearing that make the difference of what class is better matched to which fight.

And as a DK, the smartest thing to gear for has everything to do with your tree. Each tree has specific synergies that scale better than the others. Blood scales best with heavy health stacking, Frost with extra armor, and Unholy with added avoidance. Will a Frost tank who stacks health over everything fail to tank well? Of course not. Will a Blood tank who stacks avoidance? Of course not. It's all tiny margins, and statistics and idealities will usually appear much bigger than the difference in practical application.


The point of this thread is simply to highlight that, contrary to the (oddly prevelant) belief, Avoidance is not a horrible, deficient value, not worth stacking. And as Kaze pointed out, most of the people discussing it here, know that. Hopefully, people who don't come along and read this to get edumacated.

[Chamenas]

The point is, gemming for avoidance is usually not a good return compared to stamina. Itemisation for avoidance is nice though. That what I tried to say here, a posts back.

So, Satorri's point, to your point is: Gemming for avoidance is just as good of a return if not a better return than gemming for stamina. However, due to game mechanics, stacking either without a healthy balance of the other increases your susceptibility to bad luck and dying.


At least, that's what I'm getting from all of this.

[GravityDK]

Gravity, no no no! Bad Gravity. =P

Did you not read the post that started all this? Avoidance is not an inferior value for survival value, nor does it become worse, it actually gets better.

Heh Satorri you're cool

So yep I read the whole thread (checked maths on a few pages too).
But here's where I diverge a little from your summary:

I did a simulation in google spreadsheet (be sure you're using one by Hammerjudge or revert using version history in case it was fiddled). My summary was:

For me, a 24 stam gem gains me 0.79% health (using 3.2 DK mechanics).
A 16 dodge gem provides a relative gain of 1.07% dodge (ie. I go from 26.17 to 26.45, which is a 1.07% gain).

BUT how much benefit does that give me to avoiding three hits in a row, if I swapped 3 stam gems for 3 dodge gems?
Only 0.55% less likely to have three hits (I'd get 9.94% chance with dodge gems, compared to 10.49%).

What it showed me is this:

• at the 50 to 55% avoidance level, gemming for avoidance gains you a moderate effective increase in avoidance of three-hits, and thus I'd go for stamina still
• at higher avoidance, gains from avoidance gemming become awesome, I think that's around 60%+

So I'm agreeing with the theme of the thread if you're over about 60% avoidance already.

[Satorri]

Heh, ok, but on the other side of your dodge vs health comparison, the health you lost from those gems was (3 pure health to pure dodge?) trading 72 stam (792 health) for 1% dodge.

1% more dodge is a 0.55% smaller chance of getting 3 hits in a row, for your avoidance

*but*

800 health is also far far less than a single hit in the scenario where the 3rd hit would kill you.

So neither will save your life, only give you a slightly improved chance of living, just through different means. =)

It's all a very close trade-off, and generally, I'd play to mechanics of your tree to judge which side is more valuable to you. I champion avoidance to the people who seem to think it's weak, but I stack health harder than the day is long because I'm a Blood tank and that's where I derive the most value. Conversely, Unholy would get a lot more mileage out of heavy avoidance. Frost is a middle of the road type deal. Armor is where you get most buffing but you rarely get the chance to give up much else to take more armor, so you can buff stam or avoidance as you see fit and probably make good use (interestingly avoidance diminishes the value derived from Unbreakable Armor, though it also replaces it with an equal or higher survival chunk).


I'm feeling the inspiration for another big side by side inspection, I need to take some time to rev up the napkin (o' math) holder, and get my thoughts in order. I've long just left it that health and avoidance are oranges and carrots, but I think I may be able to make some sort of a comparison, if only for my own value system.