Armor vs Stam: Effective Health

[Satorri]

In the first post?

It's just a matter of old effective health math.

If you have X% reduction from armor, you will take a known amount of damage to compare to your set amount of health. If you increase that reduction% (by increasing armor), you'll take less damage to compare to the same health. If you increase your health then you compare the same damage to more health.

That's the jist of it, so in regards to physical damage you can relate armor directly in value to health, it just isn't a universal relationship it depends on what armor/health you start with.

[Edgewalker]

The biggest problem too is that people are jumping the gun on the "ICC does less damage" adage. It's normal modes and the starting bosses. We one shot every boss without ever seeing them before, with the exception of gunship, which was two shot. I hardly call completely trivial content a good benchmark for adding more avoidance.
Everything that was said in ToGC is still true as well. You end up sacrificing a lot for nothing, and avoidance is still chance based while armor and stamina are always effective for physical damage, and stamina is always effective for magical damage.

[Edgewalker]

On that topic, I'm wondering how all the un-flinching pure health junkies are doing in ICC?

Healer mana is still not an issue, but it's no longer as crucial to have MASSIVE health pools to survive successive hits, suddenly there's more value in just taking less damage.

Those two things don't go together. Healer mana still isn't an issue, and bosses are hitting for less, so stamina is still just as valuable.
You COULD lessen the amount of damage intake slightly, but healers would heal in the exact same manner, and you would just raise the chance of a bad string and a death.
Stamina is still king, armor and resistance are still queen, and avoidance is the jester... fun to have around, but not really needed.

[Suicyco]

For the latter, mitigation and avoidance *are* what determine how much damage we take. Period. That healers spam heals, and with good gear can put out heavy amounts of HPS when needed, simply makes it reasonable to stack heavy health pools. If you were completely negligible in avoidance and/or mitigation (which we can't be because gear comes so well-rounded), your healers would not like you next to the tank who just plain takes less damage, even if you had piles of health. At least not my healers. I don't know how yours think or feel.

We cleared ICC10 and IMO it's a prime example of this, our resident manameatbag drooid marched in with 61K and 16% dodge after chill. He also went tree later cause of healers having mana issues and him occasionally yelling for b-rez's. Understanding the mechanics of the fights a lot better now we're going to stay with 2 shield tanks and he's staying tree. Difference- Raid buffed in ICC- 561 Def rating, 11.41 dodge, 22% parry, 44% (HS&SS up 100%) block with 3K BV. Add the ~9% miss in there I'm still working with 42% raw avoidance and yes RNG will screw you at times, but those 42% of the hits that never hit me really showed when looking at the meters. The drooid was #1 in damage received, #1 in healing taken and #1 in deaths, I was number 2 a lot further back in the numbers. I was also MT from Marrowgar out. I'm not claiming class superiority here, but the avoidance and mitigation really really shows in ICC vs low avoid/mitigation and all stam tanks.

[Suicyco]

Stamina is still king, armor and resistance are still queen, and avoidance is the jester... fun to have around, but not really needed.

Have a pali beacon a stam tank and an avoid tank and go into the first trash pulls in ICC. Clear the front 2 mobs and then the roamers. Get a rogue to sneak in and trip both the traps to awaken 2 of the guardians. Have tank 1 (Stam) pull the guardian, caster and 5 skelli's on the right and tank 2 (Avoid) pull the second guardian, caster and 5 skelli's on the left. Laugh uproariously at all the misses, dodges, parries and blocks Avoid is getting while staying alive and realize the joke was on Stam who got insta gibbed. Then look at the heal chart and since with beacon both tanks were getting identical heals you really get to see who is king.

[krc]

But that is a very isolated unlikely situation for the majority of major tank deaths, such as Gormok, you will see the avoidance tank getting gimped through the melee, Impale, Bleed combo.

[Suicyco]

But that is a very isolated unlikely situation for the majority of major tank deaths, such as Gormok, you will see the avoidance tank getting gimped through the melee, Impale, Bleed combo.

I havent done alot of ToC or ToGC or even Ulduar for that matter but I've done Gormok on normal and heroic and on wipes the stam tank died first. The impale and bleed are unavoidable, but I get hit 50-60% less by melee than the stam tank and outlive them everytime. It's an endless arguement with each side having valid points but the fact of the matter there has to be balance. Yes you need enough life to survive the hits, but if that's all you have sooner or later your more likely to cause a wipe than the guy slightly smaller getting hit 50% less of the time.

[krc]

Yeah you are right in the sense that once you reach a certain EH point on Gormok avoidance starts to become more valuable to reduce the chances that the spike damage occurs.

[Edgewalker]

I havent done alot of ToC or ToGC or even Ulduar for that matter but I've done Gormok on normal and heroic and on wipes the stam tank died first. The impale and bleed are unavoidable, but I get hit 50-60% less by melee than the stam tank and outlive them everytime. It's an endless arguement with each side having valid points but the fact of the matter there has to be balance. Yes you need enough life to survive the hits, but if that's all you have sooner or later your more likely to cause a wipe than the guy slightly smaller getting hit 50% less of the time.

So you are using a ridiculous trash mob example instead?
There are extremely isolated times when avoidance wins. I hardly like to use those as examples when for 99% of boss fights this isn't the case.

[Chamenas]

Those two things don't go together. Healer mana still isn't an issue, and bosses are hitting for less, so stamina is still just as valuable.
You COULD lessen the amount of damage intake slightly, but healers would heal in the exact same manner, and you would just raise the chance of a bad string and a death.
Stamina is still king, armor and resistance are still queen, and avoidance is the jester... fun to have around, but not really needed.

Stamina has a point at which it is no longer as effective. If the hits are so small compared to your stamina pool that you could take a string of hits and not die, THERE'S NO REASON TO PUT IN MORE STAMINA. Sure, it doesn't hurt to have it, but why ignore other stats for stamina, you're not getting as much value from it as you did before. It still has value, but not as much. Any of the math in this thread or other similar threads can show you that much.

Armor is only as valuable as it allows your healthpool to do its job. Once the hits are made small enough, via armor, it too loses its value. It's still got value, but not nearly as much.

That is where avoidance comes in. Avoidance becomes nice to have when the others are satisfied, because you begin to increase your chance to not take any damage at all. Not too shabby. When you're not constantly taking damage, your healers are free to take a breath, maybe throw an extra raid heal on someone so they don't die, etc... the avoidance allows you to live when a healer gets messed up for whatever reason (it happens) and you do get low, even in your awesome stamina pool, because you can last those few extra seconds that might make all the difference.

Then there's the fights in Icecrown where the boss specifically buffs upon hitting you. In those cases, avoidance is most certainly king because the more attacks you avoid the better control you have over the fight.

Neither one is truly king over the other. Admittedly, HP and EHP will always be a priority in their value, because the amount you can take in before the value starts to drop off is reasonably high, but it's not out of reach. If you reach it, it's silly to continue to try and stack stamina when you could be far more efficient by balancing yourself out.

[Kojiyama]

You COULD lessen the amount of damage intake slightly, but healers would heal in the exact same manner, and you would just raise the chance of a bad string and a death.

This part of the argument I don't buy, and it's commonly repeated to the point where people think it's true but really isn't.

I find it amusing that when a Stamina tank takes full damage every swing it's stated as being 'normal, easy to heal' damage, yet when a tank with an avoidance focus takes exactly the same damage (but less often!) it's presented as an 'omg spike damage bad string die die insta gib' scenario.

Sorry, the damage is the same. If both tanks can survive it because they have enough health, there is no difference in the impact of a connected swing. There is no so-called "spike" damage on the avoidance tank. They are simply taking the same damage the other tank takes, just less often.

The whole term "spike damage" and terms such as "bad strings" imply that the avoidance tank is more likely to die from normal melee swings, which is simply not the case in the slightest bit.

HP-stacking tanks counter-act this with their own suppositions. If both these statements are true:
a) Avoidance tank has enough health to survive the worst-case burst
b) HP tanks are viable because healers just spam heals non-stop and the damage is easy to heal up before the next swing

...then there is no danger in taking the so-called "spike" since, as was stated, the damage is easy to heal anyway and healers will spam heals.

The only difference between the two tanks, then, is that the avoidance tank has the capability to survive more worst-case scenarios through avoidance. If he has enough health to survive the health-based worst-case scenarios there is nothing to lose by trying to increase your ability to survive stuff that you normally would not be able to survive through pure stacking of Stamina.

So, while I fully agree that EH is super-duper great and all that, the assertions that having avoidance is somehow a negative thing is just a major fallacy repeated far too often.

[woodyman]

i always thought this. as long as you have enough health to sustain the biggest hit then much more stam after that although a cushion does not serve any great purpose.

however avoiding damage always serves a purpose.
i would have thought finding a healthy balance between the two would have been best?

[Kojiyama]

Well, that's why threads such as this:
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/...y-results.html
...were created almost two years ago.

Interestingly enough, the math behind such principles really hasn't changed at all and, in fact, I'd go so far as to say the suppositions in the linked OP are more true now than they were before. (Primarily the supposition that tanks are able to be healed up to full in the window of an avoided attack, which is far more the case now than it was in the past, considering we live in an era where healers always use their max rank heals, which was not the case back in the T6 era.)

The traditional understanding of avoidance was based on an environment where gear choices forced avoidance gearing, and left tanks to make up the difference through enchantment and socketing. The conventional wisdom was that it was better to add more Effective Health, because if you had enough EH, you would live through the inevitable bursts of damage that occur in boss fights. After all, no matter how much avoidance you have, you will never completely remove the chance of getting hit by burst damage.

But since more and more gear with high EH values began to be available, and since Sunwell Radiance reduced the overall avoidance level of tanks on the Sunwell Plateau, that conventional wisdom was beginning to fall short.

Interesting how history repeats! As Satrina said, this whole debate is nothing new or too exciting... :P

[Satorri]

This is a very old argument and we're not advancing it, just rehashing it.

If you're a diehard "X or Y is better" believer, there's really no need to keep fighting for your side.

We can fill pages of back and forth with everyone just shouting at each other.


Let's try to keep it to solid information and leave the opinion wars out.

[Edgewalker]

This part of the argument I don't buy, and it's commonly repeated to the point where people think it's true but really isn't.

I find it amusing that when a Stamina tank takes full damage every swing it's stated as being 'normal, easy to heal' damage, yet when a tank with an avoidance focus takes exactly the same damage (but less often!) it's presented as an 'omg spike damage bad string die die insta gib' scenario.

Sorry, the damage is the same. If both tanks can survive it because they have enough health, there is no difference in the impact of a connected swing. There is no so-called "spike" damage on the avoidance tank. They are simply taking the same damage the other tank takes, just less often.

The whole term "spike damage" and terms such as "bad strings" imply that the avoidance tank is more likely to die from normal melee swings, which is simply not the case in the slightest bit.

Simply not true in most of the Ulduar/ToGC beggining hard modes, and I suspect in the upcoming ICC hard modes. There are a lot of encounters with ramping damage, large unavoidable hits, or high magic damage bursts. I'm not talking about a boss hitting for 25K every 2 seconds... I'm talking about the natural bursts that have occured since Vanilla wow. People use math way too much when these discussions come up when generally the math simply isn't practical in wow terms.

[Edgewalker]

There is also apparently some misconception that stacking stamina leaves you with 0 avoidance and you become a mana sucking meatbag. The actual difference between gemming for socket bonuses and gemming raw Stamina is actually pretty slim... you lose a potentially significant amount of stamina (they tune encounters based on stamina stacking, sorry avoidance junkies) for a few avoidance points.
Is 2-3000 hit points a big deal? Right now no, because everything is easy mode or on farm. It probably will be in ICC hard modes, just like it was in Ulduar hard modes, just like it was at the start of ToGC where everyone was bitching about paladin and druid health scalars.

[Kazeyonoma]

Stamina has a point at which it is no longer as effective. If the hits are so small compared to your stamina pool that you could take a string of hits and not die, THERE'S NO REASON TO PUT IN MORE STAMINA. Sure, it doesn't hurt to have it, but why ignore other stats for stamina, you're not getting as much value from it as you did before. It still has value, but not as much. Any of the math in this thread or other similar threads can show you that much.

Armor is only as valuable as it allows your healthpool to do its job. Once the hits are made small enough, via armor, it too loses its value. It's still got value, but not nearly as much.

That is where avoidance comes in. Avoidance becomes nice to have when the others are satisfied, because you begin to increase your chance to not take any damage at all. Not too shabby. When you're not constantly taking damage, your healers are free to take a breath, maybe throw an extra raid heal on someone so they don't die, etc... the avoidance allows you to live when a healer gets messed up for whatever reason (it happens) and you do get low, even in your awesome stamina pool, because you can last those few extra seconds that might make all the difference.

Then there's the fights in Icecrown where the boss specifically buffs upon hitting you. In those cases, avoidance is most certainly king because the more attacks you avoid the better control you have over the fight.

Neither one is truly king over the other. Admittedly, HP and EHP will always be a priority in their value, because the amount you can take in before the value starts to drop off is reasonably high, but it's not out of reach. If you reach it, it's silly to continue to try and stack stamina when you could be far more efficient by balancing yourself out.

The problem with this argument is your assumption. If you have enough armor or health to take as you state "a string of hits and not die" or "once the hits are made small enough", you have ALREADY TRIVIALIZED THE CONTENT. These discussions about EH, Avoidance, Armor, Stam, Resistance, is when tank incoming damage is so great, that small gains make a big difference. When fights are trivial, you can tank it in avoidance gear, in block gear, in HP gear, in Armor Gear, hell, when fights are trivial, you tank it in DPS gear (ask Xav).

[Chamenas]

There is also apparently some misconception that stacking stamina leaves you with 0 avoidance and you become a mana sucking meatbag. The actual difference between gemming for socket bonuses and gemming raw Stamina is actually pretty slim... you lose a potentially significant amount of stamina (they tune encounters based on stamina stacking, sorry avoidance junkies) for a few avoidance points.
Is 2-3000 hit points a big deal? Right now no, because everything is easy mode or on farm. It probably will be in ICC hard modes, just like it was in Ulduar hard modes, just like it was at the start of ToGC where everyone was bitching about paladin and druid health scalars.

The difference in gemming for socket bonuses or stamina will not be 2-3k hp.

[Martie]

The difference in gemming for socket bonuses or stamina will not be 2-3k hp.

I've got 14 gems in my gear.

I'd say 3k hp is quite attainable from just gems. Add enchants, and the difference between an avoidance stacker versus a stam stacker could easily top 5k health.

[Kojiyama]

There is also apparently some misconception that stacking stamina leaves you with 0 avoidance and you become a mana sucking meatbag. The actual difference between gemming for socket bonuses and gemming raw Stamina is actually pretty slim... you lose a potentially significant amount of stamina (they tune encounters based on stamina stacking, sorry avoidance junkies) for a few avoidance points.
Is 2-3000 hit points a big deal? Right now no, because everything is easy mode or on farm. It probably will be in ICC hard modes, just like it was in Ulduar hard modes, just like it was at the start of ToGC where everyone was bitching about paladin and druid health scalars.

I don't see how this is any different than the opposite misconception that when you gem or gear toward avoidance that you will be running around with 25k buffed HP and not be able to survive the most light of breezes without dying instantaniously.

Both are hyperbole, and neither make for very compelling arguments.

As for the "people use math too much" argument, well.. that's pretty weak, IMO. Blizzard balances based on math. The game's foundation and what determines what happens in our virtual world of raiding is based on math. Math determines every function of how the game operates and while common sense and experience play a major part in making a great tank, ignoring math for a tank doesn't make any more sense than ignoring math as a DPS class.

Yes, we could argue what 'feels' better, but that doesn't always offer compelling results. Many DPSers who ignore math will gravitate towards builds, gemmings, or gear that give them "big numbers", for instance, and probably feel like they do massive damage when, in reality, they have created a non-optimal scenario for themselves.

I think the simple fact that blizzard nerfed avoidance in order to lower the incoming hit sizes should be ample practical proof as to what the value of avoidance is.

I've got 14 gems in my gear.

I'd say 3k hp is quite attainable from just gems. Add enchants, and the difference between an avoidance stacker versus a stam stacker could easily top 5k health.

People who match socket bonuses to gain more avoidance at a minor tradeoff of health lose nowhere near that. First, a number of the sockets will be blue anyhow, which will always get Stamina gems. Second, people matching bonuses almost always use 15 Stamina gems. Third, almost 80% of tanking socket bonuses nowadays are Stamina. Generally, you're talking about "losing" 6-9 Stamina for 10 Dodge or Defense Rating in 2/3rd of your sockets. That is generally going to be less than 1k health, even counting chest/shield enchants.