Avoidance and You! Death of the Avoidance Set?

[Zyffyr]

and two:..............armor.
A lot of people I see aren't so much EH stacker but stamina stacker, they forget the other half of the equation. If you go from 63% physical damage reduction to 65% you will actually get over 5% less damage from physical hits.)

That is excessively easy to explain... with very few exceptions Armor is increased *only* by going with a higher iLevel item. As such it isn't really something you deliberately seek out - most of the items you get in a given level of content are the same iLevel and will therefore have the same Armor.

Armor is almost always only something to think about as a part of "Do I go with this new iLevel X item or keep my old iLevel X-5?" type comparisons. Even then it is likely to be overshadowed by differences in how the stats are allocated on the item.

[Harbringerau]

I agree with alot that is said but then i have my avoidence set on most times and i have been praised for this due to survivability. Not only do i not get hit often which means less heals required but it allows for the ot or mt to recover and be healed.

I have tanked with stam stacking tanks and i watch them get hit for twice the amount i would be hit for and the healers hate it because of the fear of OOMing.

i see all the points but as a tank i still feel avoidance plays a big part in the tanking world. EH is also a big part don't get me wrong. I will actually have to figure my EH out any good addons that can do this.

I feel for druid tanks that go for the high hp like 40-50k hp and just drop, i laugh on the inside and think ok what is your avoidance, because you get hit by magic yes but there is normally malee swings after and they always get missed in dicussions.

ppl laugh and worry about my hp and then they run with me i am normally the one that will be getting compliments. the dps that laugh at me and the other tanks don't laugh when i am left to tank bosses with two dp and maybe two healers and we kill the boss.

so from harbringerau avoidence should be brought to the thoughts of all tanks. Not just the HP Numbers doesn't count if your dead.

[Dragaan]

I'm still wiping on heroic 10 men anub. I've got a feeling that this could be a fight tailormade for an avoidance tank, have to test it.

Anub is definitely NOT an avoidance fight (at least for the anub tank). The scariest thing about tanking him is getting frozen and melee'd. You cannot avoid any of his attacks while frozen, and he hits pretty damn hard even on 10man. I can still die pretty quickly on p3 10man with over 51k hp.

Here's what I think about avoidance sets:

If you are still progressing through current content (meaning you haven't cleared every single fight on heroic/hardmode), your focus should be maximum EH. There are no fights in the game currently that require an avoidance set. The only one I can think of where avoidance is nice is algalon. The thing is, due to how bursty his damage can be with bad rng, you also need really high EH. So again, if you were still wiping to him, EH is the way to go (unless your healers absolutely cannot keep you alive no matter how hard they try....then go avoidance and pray before every attempt ).

[Mert]

Armor is almost always only something to think about as a part of "Do I go with this new iLevel X item or keep my old iLevel X-5?" type comparisons. Even then it is likely to be overshadowed by differences in how the stats are allocated on the item.

Broadly speaking, I agree, but there are a number of people who will forego things like Signet of Winter, the Mighty Armor enchant and so on in favour of having "higher EH" (they mean HP).

I've even seen an Engineer who went for a Heavy Borean Armor Kit rather than the +Armor enchant. 800 or so Armor vs 18 Stam and he went for Stam because it made his green bar longer.

In short, you're right - in the main, Armor is a consideration of only when to upgrade to a higher iLevel. But there are other opportunities to increase EH through armor (on jewellary, trinkets, enchants) that people simply don't take, presumably due to a combination of misinformation and misunderstanding. It's very rare to find a tank on my server who even knows what an Indestructible Potion is, let alone one who carries several stacks with him at all times.

[Dragaan]

Well, it does seem a little better these days to take stam over armor when they are in equivalent amounts. This is because of how much non-physical damage, direct and splash, that is being thrown around now. Using 18stam over 885 armor and never using armor pots? That's just plain dumb tho, lol.

[orcstar]

Well, it does seem a little better these days to take stam over armor when they are in equivalent amounts...

Surprisingly enough that's not the choice they let you make. I wear 2 rings with extra armor a neck cloak, and saronite plated legguard. The armor on these items does not go at the expense of stamina but more of the expense of either threat or avoidance. But with these items you can get an easy extra 2500 armor over tanks who choose not to go for it, that's like a small permanent indestructible potion.

[Dragaan]

Depending on the gear you have, you can sometimes find a way to swap stats around in equiv. amounts. There are also some items out there that flat out give the choice stam or armor, such as the triumph badge trinket vs. satrina's or heart of iron. On some fights it will even be worthwhile to use lower ilv gear just for added stam. I use boreal guard with full stam gems/enchants over the shield off beasts25 normal for twin val'kyr heroic and jaraxxus just because of how much non-physical damage goes out.

[Grymauch]

Just to respond to the OP, I'm in a hard-core 10man guild (yes, we're a rare beast) and I've always preferred avoidance for Algalon. This could be because the rest of my gear was up to snuff to survive the Big Bangs comfortably but, coupled with a survivability spec, I never had a problem.

[Dragaan]

Yea, if you have the EH to survive a string of 3 hits or so on algalon, avoidance is really nice (or even block for 10man). It's easy to reach a comfortable hp pool for algalon10, but 25man can do some scary burst with bad rng. I'd say 36k unbuffed for 10man and 38-39k for 25man, then push avoidance (assuming ~26k armor).

[Genova]

Last thing that avoidance does is affect rage generation for the warrior and Druid tanks. More avoidance equals less rage. As each hit they take generates rage.

Im not too sure about Warriors, but druids arent killed too much when having dodge in Bear form due to:

Natural Reaction- 3 Rage for every dodge.

Primal Fury- 5 Rage for every crit, with avoidance stacking on a druid you are stacking agility, which equals crit.


Rage is much more of a complex thing than "each hit you take generates rage".

[Vegelus]

Warriors aren't anymore too:

Shield Spec was changed to give rage after dodge/parry/block too in last patch.

[Satorri]

How you know you write too much? When rather than typing a long response you can just link to previous posts.

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/5...-survival.html
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/5...evolution.html
*dated*http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/5...s-satorri.html
*dated*http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/5...parry-win.html

[Satorri]

And to re-emphasize what was said on the previous page:

We aren't talking about a swing between 80% avoidance (block is not avoidance, I don't know anyone who thinks it is) and 25k health or 20% avoidance and 60k health, gear comes with a good baseline balance of everything, so your personal flare of trinket, gem, and chant choices will represent a range something like this:
50k health and 52% avoidance
44k health and 60% avoidance

Depending on class/spec, and varying a lot with gear level. And single piece choices will be 200 health vs 0.3% avoidance, if that.

We're not in a health vs avoidance world, and it's not a one or the other choice.

[Dhalphir]

If you are going to be so curt about using realistic numbers I would go back and take a look at your Sig, last time i check zero people on this forum consider block avoidance

yeah because I personally designed that particular sig generating website and thus I am at fault for its mistake in calculating avoidance

:eyeroll:

[Pukemaster]

@ Anub'arak Heroic 25 man, it's really needed to have an avoidence capped tank, tanking the adds because of their stacking debuff.

[krc]

Kind of necroing this thread but we have already begin to see some bosses in ICC where it could be favoraful to use an avoidance set as opossed to the regular old EH set.

[uglie]

I was wondering why no just gem for *avoidance+stam* rather than just pure avoidance or stam gems? that way you get a healthy mix of both. Another interesting point if encountered is people asking and i quote " where is your shield?" Isually at this point im thinking "oh S***! this guy either just bought his toon or he's in a "racist" against dk guild and has yet to see a dk tank. granted im not in a raiding guild, i've just started to pug tank ToC10. On that note does the information contained here apply to all tanks of any lvl or just high end progressive raiding tanks?

i'd like to thank you for not being too harsh on me as this is my first post.

[Satorri]

The short answer, uglie?

People want *the* answer. They want something to be the best. If stacking health is better than avoidance per increment why can't I just stack all stamina and nothing else, ever.

If avoidance is better then I'll just stack avoidance all day.

I think a major part of the issue is that they're not equivalent values, they don't do the same thing so there's no easy way to say X > Y. It comes down to a "doing X is better than doing Y," which is generally a personal values thing and what people like to see.

You can and will do just fine from filling your gear with both avoidance and stamina, many people do. It is hard to epeen over two average values though instead of, "lawl I have 60k health!!!" Which also seems to come into play sometimes.

[uglie]

comparing apples and oranges. i do believe i'll stick with my balanced approached and staying true to my motto of balance and moderation in EVERYTHING. thanks for your reply.

[Kazeyonoma]

thread necro? closed.