Survival by the Numbers

[Petninja]

This IS a comparison of the classes. Use identical gear where possible please or this won't be accurate.

This is only a class comparison if you force it to be. It's not even finished yet, but what I'm seeing is detailed information on exactly what an ability does for your survival for all tanks in one -well organized- post. The fact that he uses different iLevels helps it not be a class comparison, because you can't accurately find disparities between tanks with information provided. They aren't on the same playing field.

[Stengel]

What sense does it make to put tanks side by side and compare their properties when they are not on an even playing field to begin with? For me this is a comparison of classes that pretends not to be one.

[lyd]

he's not trying to compare the classes. he's demonstrating a proof of concept. His simulation can tell you what the net survival benefit is of all your character's gear/spec/stats. He picked a tank from each class so that everyone in the tanking community could observe an example from his simulation that was relevant to their personal experience. he's offering a tool, one that *could* be used to compare classes, but doesn't have to be. the differing average ilevels, in fact, prevent people from doing exactly that.

[theeph]

I know this is a newb question, but try to remember i am new to tanking before flaming to hard.

I am trying to make my DK tank more of a mitigation tank and less of a pure sta tank, are there any threads with guides on how to accomplish this?
I have my def capped. I have Rawr . I know sta is important, but i kinda want my tank to be missed more than simply take the damage.

Is this more of a high-end deal? are there steps to it? Any help or guidance would be appreciated.

Tankspot has been a God-send, by the way.

[Edgewalker]

I know this is a newb question, but try to remember i am new to tanking before flaming to hard.

I am trying to make my DK tank more of a mitigation tank and less of a pure sta tank, are there any threads with guides on how to accomplish this?
I have my def capped. I have Rawr . I know sta is important, but i kinda want my tank to be missed more than simply take the damage.

Is this more of a high-end deal? are there steps to it? Any help or guidance would be appreciated.

Tankspot has been a God-send, by the way.

Avoidance simply is not as good as stamina.
Tanks rarely, if ever, die from healers running out of mana, they die from spike damage, which occurs solely from lack or armor or stamina.

[Satorri]

Stengel: this is not intended to be a comparison of the classes. It won't be phrased that way, and it won't be a focus. If you want to compare these numbers do so at your own risk. The primary problem with trying to compare this way, to compare real values not ideal class mechanics, should actually be highlighted by this exercise: no 2 tanks are the same, player-side, or character side. Each tank makes different choices on gear and talents to suit their needs, and that's how it should be. You should never *need* to compare classes in general either, the only need is to compare the relative strengths and applications of each tank you have available to you, to match to the challenge at hand.

Theeph: what exactly are you looking for in terms of beefing up your mitigation? There are really only 2 passive aspects that give us mitigation as DK's: armor and damage reduction %'s. The latter is essentially fixed. Every DK should have Blade Barrier for tanking, and the only way you change the Frost Pres buff is if you're Frost. Beyond that, it's purely a matter of armor on gear.

You can get bonus armor on items, but the thing about that is it really just serves to make your health go further with physical damage. The spell dmg reduction tools are available in each tree as well, but that's generally even a smaller portion of your mitigation needs.

Avoidance is not mitigation, of course, though it is responsible for a formidable amount of your overall damage reduction. In fact, after going through these exercises, I'm inclined to say the value of avoidance is generally under-appreciated, and the attribution to it causing "spike damage" is actually a bit erroneous. Seeing as how there are no more crushing blows, and tanks are crit immune, avoidance does not create spikes, it just spaces out the incoming damage without increasing its magnitude. What will kill tanks is gaps in healing, often caused by healers having to deal with some encounter aspect, or having a healer die. To that end, one of the vital tests of a tank can be surviving in that void while the (other) healers adapt. That still takes the form of having a high enough compound value of health and avoidance to make it through that span (and the wherewithal to pop CD's, use your potions/stones/self-heals, etc).

Something you may consider: if you've been loading all your sockets with straight stam, try making your socket bonuses. I've been enjoying Agi/Stam in my red slots which gives several smaller buffs than a pure gem or dodge/stam gem, specifically armor, dodge, and crit. You may find that increases your mitigation and overall avoidance some. In yellow sockets, Def/Stam is probably the best survival value you will get out of them. Picking up the socket bonuses may net you more total survival than before as well. It won't be a huge change, but a marked increase, I'd wager.

[ExistentialSoundandFury]

One little detail, Frost Presence has been increased to 8% less damage taken, meaning that the Frost Tank would be taking 9% or 10% less damage, not 6-7%.

[theeph]

I actually meant avoidance, not mitigation, sorry. i just feel i might enjoy tanking more if i knew i was more than a simple meat shield. that i was ducking and dodging, you know? It's silly, i suppose.

At any rate, thanks a lot.

[Satorri]

I'm aware Existential, and the details are included.

And Theeph, I can totally appreciate that. I like the system, but most tanks would rather take more damage and feel like it's consistent than take less damage if it will be less steady. Avoidance is not an unworthy place to spend your optional investments (chants/gems), but in general people will tell you stamina is more valuable/important to stack. My goal is only to provide as meaningful un-editorialized data as I can manage so you can decide for yourself.

[lyd]

the most prominent choice in my mind when you're talking mitigation vs. stamina is blood vs. frost (higher hp vs. improved frost presence and avoidance), and the trinket shuffle. right now, if you got both brewfest trinkets and the 1792 armor trinket, you could exchange 170 stamina for 1792 armor (the stamina is buffed by frost presence, the armor is not). depending on your gear level, I would estimate that 1792 armor will give you ~1.5% additional mitigation to physical attacks at the cost of 1800 hp (180 stam contribution after frost presence).

is this worth it? in real terms, this means that you would have to take a 120,000 physical damage unmitigated for 1.5% to equal 1800 damage reduction from that hit.

let's see what this works out to, we'll assume 64% DR after the trinket:

120,000 base

64% + 5% (blade barrier) + 10% (talented frost presence) + 3% (renewed hope) = 82% reduced damage

120,000*.82 = 98400

120,000 - 98400 = 21600

without renewed hope, the number would jump up to @ 25k.

bosses in the current end-game are capable of hitting considerably harder than that on plate. So that means it is entirely reasonable to assume that there are bosses in the end-game hitting tanks for 120,000 unmitigated, meaning that past a certain level of progression, you could certainly justify changing out stamina for armor, as long as you still have enough to survive the big hits before getting a heal.


I personally think gearing for avoidance is a bad idea. It comes with high level tanking epics naturally anyway, and the DR is just too powerful to gem for it. you should be gemming stamina when possible, and perhaps some defense if a gear upgrade somehow forces you below cap. if you're DW frost, 1-2 expertise gems won't hurt you, but any more than that is too much stamina to sacrifice to get the soft cap imo.

[ExistentialSoundandFury]

*Imp Frost Presence (Frost): Increases the passive damage reduction of Frost Presence by 1/2% (to a total of 6/7%).

Sorry, I think this line was just an oversight, didn't read further up where it was corrected.

[Satorri]

170 stamina for 1792 armor (the stamina is buffed by frost presence, the armor is not) is this worth it?

I should update my previous post on the subject with a higher level stamina trinket. I did it against the Black Heart on request, heh.

64% + 5% (blade barrier) + 10% (talented frost presence) + 3% (renewed hope) = 82% reduced damage

That's not quite the way it works, it's not directly additive. Above I posted the formula:

Total Rdx = 1- [(1-0.64)*(1-0.05)*(1-0.10)*(1-0.03)] = 70.14%

I should get back to writing up my CD section, because as a teaser, if you add 40% rdx from IBF to that, it becomes:

Total Rdx = 1- [(1-0.64)*(1-0.05)*(1-0.10)*(1-0.03)*(1-0.40)] = 82.09%

Meaning IBF only *actually* reduces the total original hit by ~12% in the final breakdown, but it's 40% reduced from the number you would have seen. The functional average decreases as well, when you avoid incoming hits while IBF is up.

[lyd]

hmmm, this is something I feel like I should've been more aware of: so the percentages are based on concurrent applications? in other words, it's x% of the remaining value once a previous reduction percentage has been applied?

so if we wrote it out long-hand:

apply armor:

120000- (120,000*.64) = 43200

apply blade barrier:

43200 - (43200*.05) = 41040

apply imp. frost presence:

41040 - (41040*.10) = 36936

apply renewed hope:

36936 - (36936*.03) = 35828

checking this against your math:

120000 - (120000*.7014) = 35832

assuming those 4 points difference are from rounding, that seems to be the case.

So cumulative passive damage reduction effects function similarly to the way DR works on avoidance: it decreases a flat percentage of an ever-decreasing value, creating a regressive curve on your returns.

you learn something new everyday...

[Reev]

Are passive damage reductions like Defensive Stance/BofSanc, etc. calculated before or after armor? Multiplicatively with armor, or additively, etc? Sorry if this is the wrong thread to ask, but I've been wondering this for a long time now.

[Satorri]

That's exactly what was described right above, Reev.

The % reductions are applied one after another, so not exactly multiplicatively or additively. If you look at the original post you'll see it enumerated, but Lyd's example in the post right before yours is spot on. Each effect goes through individually, order doesn't matter ultimately.

And yes, Lyd, each effect reduces the overall effect of each factor on the same amount. It doesn't work quite like avoidance or armor diminishing in that there is no cap it is diminishing too, but it creates a Zeno's Paradox style approach to damage reduction. In other words, you'll never quite get to 100%, you'll always be limited by the available damage reducing effects.

[Reev]

Ah, pardon me, I should have read more of the thread before posting. Thank you for answering my question nonetheless.

[Tengenstein]

Source: Tengenstein
Stats are Raid buffed using DW build with 4/5 shield specialization
Health: 46366
Armour: 28704
Miss: 5.64%
Dodge: 26.85%
Parry: 19.00%
Block: 17.83%
Block Value : 1501

The World of Warcraft Armory

[Edgewalker]

Might as well throw out a higher gear Blood Tank -

Character - Edgewalker
HP - 56,081
Armor -31,690
Dodge - 28.57%
Parry - 21.91%
Defense - 574
Miss - 6.96%

[Satorri]

Tengenstein (Prot Warrior)

                  Factor      iDPS      % rdx
Unmitigated      60k/2.0s     30,000     0.0%
Atk Spd Rdx      60k/2.4s     25,000    16.7%
Avoidance         54.49%      11,378    45.4%
Armor Rdx         63.31%       4,174    24.0%
Misc Dmg Rdx      12.70%       3,644    1.77%
Block Rdx          941/sw      3,466    0.59%
===============================================
Total Inc      18.3k/2.4s      3,466    88.45%
Hit String     45.51%(1)   20.71%(2)   9.43%(3)
Health            46,366

Edgewalker (Blood Death Knight)

                  Factor      iDPS      % rdx
Unmitigated      60k/2.0s     30,000     0.0%
Atk Spd Rdx      60k/2.4s     25,000    16.7%
Avoidance         60.44%       9,890    50.4%
Armor Rdx         65.58%       3,404    21.6%
Misc Dmg Rdx      15.22%       2,886    1.73%
Block Rdx            0/sw      2,886    0.00%
===============================================
Total Inc      17.5k/2.4s      2,886    90.38%
Hit String     39.56%(1)   15.65%(2)   6.19%(3)
Health            56,081

[Naqaj]

Tengenstein and Edgewalker, could you include the average iLevel for those characters? Helps with putting them in perspective with the others.