Shield Enchant: The Battle Continues

[Squirrelnut]

If you are in ToGc i would go for 20 defense because it adds to miss/dodge/parry/Block, Stam if you are in a lower end raiding guild only raiding they 18 stam for epeen is fine

epeen is irrelevant everywhere except a pug and has nothing to do with whether you should stack stam.

As a 25m ToGC tank I prefer 18 stam because of fights like Gormok where the amount of health you have can mean life or death whereas a little more defense to improve avoidance isn't a guarantee that you won't be hit.

Gear/enchants are all situational, multiple sets for different fights = ideal

[Kojiyama]

Actually 18 stam is better, for ToGC you need to stack stam.

That isn't particularly accurate. 20 Defense on shield is almost always a superior choice. Usually when comparing budgets (e.g. gems), it's 15 Stamina vs. 10 Defense...yet they still come out fairly close together in value. When comparing 18 Stamina to 20 Defense, Defense typically pulls ahead.

It's quite easy to get enough Stamina to survive everything in TotGC without gemming/enchanting Stamina at all opportunities and forsaking avoidance. At the very least, the Defense enchant is worth more in terms of item budget (by almost 50%), which makes it a win when compared to normal gemming tradeoffs.

[robbon]

even when you have 560 def rating from gear alone ?

[Kazeyonoma]

I have 575 defense skill from gear alone and I still use the defense enchant. It's just a superior enchant in general.

[Adanel]

If you find red/yellow sockets with 6stam bonus attractive go with def, if you only match a 9stam bonus go with stam, if you never match(only for meta) then never gem for def since it makes no sense not trading 6 stam for 10 def them trading 18 stam for 20def.

[Aggathon]

I have 575 defense skill from gear alone and I still use the defense enchant. It's just a superior enchant in general.

How? Defense provides zero assistance to the attacks that can kill you (passed 540).

If 30 stam gems didn't exist, there were only 18 stam gems and 20 defense gems, people would still gem stam.

Even though we clear ToGC with relative ease (missed mad skill due to the internet gods hating us this week, argghhh 44 attempts /wrists) I still stack stam, mostly because it makes things EVEN easier and when Icecrown comes out we're gonna need it.

[Kojiyama]

How? Defense provides zero assistance to the attacks that can kill you (passed 540).

If 30 stam gems didn't exist, there were only 18 stam gems and 20 defense gems, people would still gem stam.

I'm not sure what the logic behind that is. All attacks can kill you.

If tanks had no avoidance they would be unhealable and/or die often. If avoidance had only a minor impact, they would be reducing health instead of it for ICC to rebalance bosses.

Defense is a extremely efficient avoidance tool given its ability to diminish the impact of DR curves by splitting into multiple avoidance stats simultaniously.

Additionally, I highly doubt most tanks would be socketing 18 stam solids over other, higher budget gems--especially once they reach the health threshold where everything is perfectly safe burst-wise anyhow. (Which is easily attainable without specifically socketing or enchanting for Stamina.) Although I can see the logic in prioritizing Stamina in similarly-budgeted scenarios, I'm not sure why one would choose to purposefully reduce the amount of mod point allocation on their gear simply due to one stat.

[Aggathon]

The only time "any hit can kill you" will kill you is if you aren't getting heals. In another thread Tuffmuffin just had an excellent post about the value of stam over avoidance. There is a level at which you must get for EHP, and widening the gap between your EHP and the "minimum" ehp for a fight gives your healers extra leeway and makes the fights more managable, that's what outgearing it does.

The extreme that people take "well if a tank had NO avoidance" is hyperbole imo. Well ya, no duh, however I would also argue there is an "avoidance threshold" too, where having more avoidance doesn't matter, and at this current time tanks have plenty of avoidance from raw gear that it doesn't really matter. That, and the attacks that tanks most frequently die to are UNAVOIDABLE SPECIAL ATTACKS. I could go through the list more but... friggin' dead horse is dead. If an attack is unavoidable, and you need to be able to survive it, then adding avoidance, doesn't help you AT ALL, where as the massive EHP gain from even 18 stam (I think martie calculated 12 stam to be roughly 500 EHP) makes it definitely worth it.

Until this changes, stam is king, period, end of statement.

Will a tank auto die if they have defense over 18 stam, hell no, but I also don't see the point in choosing a stat that always adds value over a stat that only sometimes adds value.

Furthermore, tanks (and especially warriors), HAVE to gem stam... hell I lost over 10kehp gemming defense for my unhittable set. There is NO WAY IN HELL I could tank HToGC beasts in that set, are you seriously saying that defense is gonna be better?

/rant off

I'm being trolled... aren't I? That was far too long of a rant for 18 stam to shield.

[Kojiyama]

No, you're not getting trolled. I'm pretty sure if you looked at most high-end Warriors you would see that the majority of them do not use Stamina on shield--at least based on my experience.

I'm not certain what mathematical logic is being applied to determine there is a 'minimum' or 'maximum' value of avoidance being effective. In raw terms (if not affected by DR, which makes it more linear) avoidance only has increasing returns, not decreasing ones.

Stating large EH numbers isn't all that impressive when you compare it to the base damage it is applying to. The Stamina granted by the shield enchant only represents roughly 1% of the base damage of the hard-hitting bosses in TotGC. On the other hand, with my gear, Defense enchant will reduce my average melee damage taken by around 1%. That's pretty much a no-brainer for me, especially considering that I don't need the Stamina anyway and haven't gotten insta-gibbed in ages.

The unavoidable attack arguement is kinda a red herring as well, since Impale can (and should) always be cooldowned anyhow, thus doesn't particularly matter. Additionally, you are typically killed by Impale + melee not the Impale alone, and as the melee portion can be evaded the death can be easily prevented (or spike reduced) by avoidance.

The Block set argument is also irrelevant as it obviously prioritizes strange stats and also uses significantly lower ilevel gear in order to meet the requirements. That has very little reflection on Stamina vs. Defense and more of a reflection of wearing ilevel 200 blue trinkets and Naxx gear is generally not good for your survival stats!

If you provided some mathematical (or even empirical for that matter!) basis for saying what you're saying, it would lend a lot more credence to your statement. But at the moment all you seem to be saying is, "EH is better than everything because everyone knows EH is better than everything." I believe many people have come around to the line of thinking that this is not always the case.

[Dresk]

Guess I am re-echanting my shield when I get home. Twenty defense it shall be.

[Aggathon]

Avoidance INCREASE spike damage, not diminishes it, that's the whole point of Icewell Radiance.

And wtf is this shenanigans about 20 defense rating = 8% reduced incoming damage? That makes zero sense and I want to see the numbers.

I am one of those "high end tanks" and I use 18 stam, I see a lot of people use it and I also see it suggested often, especially if people are dying in raids and just need more EHP.

There's more than just impale that can kill you, and even shield walled if I was in my unhittable set Gormok would probably kill me, and even then I can only shield wall rotation, you would need absurd cooldowns to keep me up and even then I doubt healers could keep me up.

How is it a red herring that you should survive the hits that are going to kill you? You can be healed through normal damage.

The arguement of an "avoidance cap" was that there is a certain minimum amount of avoidance where you are going to dodge/parry/miss enough that it doesn't really matter if you have more or not, it is the same arguement people apply to and effective health cap.

The current content out right now in WotLK depends EHP, straight up it does. Unless Icecrown changes that, I'm sticking to me guns. There are some exceptions yes(H-Anub25 adds), but for the most part it's about EHP for fights that can kill warriors.

Edit: And I'm saying EH is better than everything because I went the "balanced stats" train and I died... a lot, I switched to reckless EHP and I lived... a lot...

[Kojiyama]

No, the whole point of Chill of the Throne is to lower our damage reduction out of the ridiculous 96-97% Mitigation range so they can not be forced to lay out 120k base damage hits just in order to have any chance whatsoever to kill us.

That doesn't mean avoidance is bad on the side of tanks, it means avoidance is bad on the side of devs trying to balance the encounters. However, our gearing has no impact on how encounters are balanced, so the two things really have no relationship to eachother at all.

Again, (as mentioned) the "unhittable" set is terrible because Block is terrible on most fights and using ilevel 200-226 gear to maximize it instead of a full ilevel 258 set is obviously suicidal on any encounter other than Anub. I don't see how that has anything to do with this enchant discussion at all.

To the opposite end, it's like using a lower ilevel piece of gear just because it has a bit more Stamina on it. Very few people do that, and the fact that 20 Def on shield is almost 50% more mod points makes it a pretty simple "win" for most.

As for the math in regard to 20 Defense, simple typo. Was .8% not 8% and I've edited my post to correct that, although after re-running the numbers it puts it much closer to 1%. Given the choice between 1% damage reduction and 1% of the base hit (and only a 0.4% increase overall) in EH , I'd generally prefer to go with damage reduction provided I have no issues surviving the base hit to begin with. I don't feel like I'm at all at any danger considering I have over 50k raid buffed HP even with Glyph of Indomitability.

Honestly, the stuff about a minimum amount of avoidance and all that simply makes no mathematical sense whatsoever. Avoidance does not cap out or reduce in value. It just doesn't.

[Aggathon]

The arguement regarding my unhittable set is the point that it's gemmed with all 20 defense. Even before it was finished and I was looking at the possibility of having to gem some of my regular gear, I was loosing crap tons of HPs from gemming, not just gear downgrades.

The devs typically apply stam linearly, there aren't any pieces I know of that are lesser ivalue with more stam. The only thing I can think of is essence of gossamer being better than pretty much every avoidance trinket out there with better ivalue until royal seal of king llane/heart of iron, because those had more stam.

"Mod points" don't mean crap for enchants. Proof: Mongoose being better than Blade Ward for paladins. I know our holy pally still uses the old int flasks because they're better than the SP ones for pallies. This argument is a fallacy imo.

The further arguement that you choose def over stam if you can survive the hit is the only one that really makes any sense to me, however it doesn't negate my argument that the natural avoidance on gear makes it so tanks are easily healable and they don't need any more avoidance to be kept up, and the problem a lot of warriors have (and one I had) is that (and partially because our natural EHP pools are so much lower than every other class's) with high avoidance we'll go dodge dodge parry healer /yawns, hit for 75% of our health, healer freaks out and complains we're hard to heal.

I also choose 1% help against every hit versus 1% help over the course of the fight. If there wasn't any overhealing or healer mana problems I might agree, but I guarentee your healers overheal you for more than 1% over the course of a fight, and furthermore if you're going to die it's not going to be slowly over the course of the fight. It is going to be across a small parcel of time where you can't necessarily rely on the RNG of avoidance, you have to simply be able to take the damage in the face and be healed. That's where EHP comes in. The more you have the bigger of a margin you give your healers to mess up. If you stack avoidance, no matter how much you have unless you are completely uhittable [no block](which isn't possible with icewell radiance or not) you can still take an RNG hit that will kill or close to kill you, EHP allows you to survive.

Like I said, I've lived the "balance EHP and avoidance route" and as a senior officer and MT I got sat for our pally/dk/druid OTs because they were recklessly stacking stam and could be healed, whereas I would take too much spike damage and die.

[Aggathon]

Honestly, the stuff about a minimum amount of avoidance and all that simply makes no mathematical sense whatsoever. Avoidance does not cap out or reduce in value. It just doesn't.

From a raw damage input taken perspective no, from a "how tank healing works" perspective, yes.

[Kazeyonoma]

I wasn't advocating that avoidance > stam, but as always, the key with any level of gearing, is making the most intelligent choice when deciding between upgrades. I know stam is awesome, and I know it's the key to progression tanking, I'm a HUGE advocate of EH. The simple fact is that item budget here plays a role too. You wouldn't sacrifice an amazing trinket with avoidance, for a half way effective stamina trinket. Just like when you reached level 80, you put on new trinkets, even defense ones, despite having the old +57 stam trinket from heroic Magister's Terrace. Why? Because it wasn't as effective anymore. Having high stam minimums to reach EH survivability is key, having more provides a buffer for healing. This is fact. But comparing 20 defense to 18 stam just seems wonky to me.

Do you use the 8 stam kits instead of any of the other multitude of glove enchants? Of course not, and if you're fortunate enough to be an Engi with the Armor enchant, more power to ya, but the honest case is most of the time, you take the enchant that will provide the highest stat gain.

[Aggathon]

Well there's also 18 stam to gloves and 240 armor to gloves, then 22 stam and 15stam/runspeed to boots, 40 stam to bracers, 55stam/22agi to legs... idk where else you can put 8 stam, but better enchants are already covered. Frankly if the enchant was "20 dodge rating" versus "8 stam" I'd still take 8 stam.

I just don't buy the "item budgeting" issue, especially after using essence of gossamer for so long and "The Black Heart" at ilevel 200 being so amazing compared to any avoidance trinket in the game.

[Durandro]

The key is balance. You need a bit of both to be effective.

The problem is that 18 Stamina is a relatively small amount compared to other slot enchants (and compared to the equivilent Defense enchants on them as well). Much of the time damage is avoidable, and hense extra avoidance is superior to a little extra health.

There are situations where avoidance is next to worthless, of course. In which case Stamina is the preferable choice. Personally I'd try to carry around two shields for each occation.

Makes me wonder, how many people enchant their gloves with Armour Kits instead of Armsman/Expertise?

[Aggathon]

The key is balance. You need a bit of both to be effective.

The only balance you need comes from gear, at this point in time you DO NOT need to gear/gem/enchant for avoidance.

I can understand armsman because it has utility, it's the same reason I sack 7 stam for runspeed to boots, tanks can kill raids in other ways not just the tank dying. Sometimes utility enchants can go a long way to saving raids.

Threat for me isn't a problem at all, if I wasn't an engineer I'd go for 240 armor to gloves, but since I am I get the OP 885 armor to gloves enchant =D

[Kojiyama]

Like I said, I've lived the "balance EHP and avoidance route" and as a senior officer and MT I got sat for our pally/dk/druid OTs because they were recklessly stacking stam and could be healed, whereas I would take too much spike damage and die.

Comparing classes like that as rationale doesn't make a lot of sense to me. There are probably many other reasons why a Paladin or Druid was preferable (especially in early TotGC progression) regardless of how things worked--the fact that they have significantly larger Stamina multipliers makes their situation quite different than Warriors, so it isn't exactly apples to apples.

I've never really bought the 'spike damage' argument when it comes to avoidance. If you just stack health you take the same spikes constantly.

I was a healer for all of TBC (MT in Classic and WotLK) and I never had a problem with avoidance. Ever. I would much, much rather have a tank take 40k damage every 6-7 seconds and occassionally 2-3 hits in a row rather than always taking 40k damage every hit, every time, for the entire fight. The 'spike' argument really only applies to healers with short attention spans that have no clue how tanking works, who wander off to the other side of the room because they think the 'tank is fine' because he's not taking any damage.

Unless avoidance somehow increased the size of the spikes, there is no issue. Stacking health instead of avoidance just means you're taking massive damage all the time instead of some of the time.

Your aforementioned tradeoff of 8 stam for 20 dodge rating just doesn't seems pretty non-optimal. You're free to gear however you like, and if it seems to work then more power to you--but from a gearing perspective, I can't see much logic in doing so unless you were really struggling to meet some specific HP threshold that you weren't at yet.

[Aggathon]

Comparing classes like that as rationale doesn't make a lot of sense to me. There are probably many other reasons why a Paladin or Druid was preferable (especially in early TotGC progression) regardless of how things worked--the fact that they have significantly larger Stamina multipliers makes their situation quite different than Warriors, so it isn't exactly apples to apples.

But that's part of the point, specifically for warriors we have to make up for the lack of EHP we have compared to other classes, we NEED to stack stam where pallies can get away with hitting stam bonuses with half avoidance gems very easily. I'd argue the same for shield enchants.

I've never really bought the 'spike damage' argument when it comes to avoidance. If you just stack health you take the same spikes constantly.

I was a healer for all of TBC (MT in Classic and WotLK) and I never had a problem with avoidance. Ever. I would much, much rather have a tank take 40k damage every 6-7 seconds and occassionally 2-3 hits in a row rather than always taking 40k damage every hit, every time, for the entire fight. The 'spike' argument really only applies to healers with short attention spans that have no clue how tanking works, who wander off to the other side of the room because they think the 'tank is fine' because he's not taking any damage.

Unless avoidance somehow increased the size of the spikes, there is no issue. Stacking health instead of avoidance just means you're taking massive damage all the time instead of some of the time.

Healing has changed a lot in WotLK because healers really do just spam, at least tank healers do. In TBC a there was a lot of cancel casting etc. to save mana, and on Brutallus a 6 minute fight of constant damage could make healers OOM, so tanks found the EHP minimum threshold and then geared/gemmed avoidance, the problem is that NOW, normal incoming damage is easy to heal and healers won't oom over it. However, healers DO and CAN heal the large spike damage that tanks simply need to be able to take the face. Also: the general avoidance on gear is PLENTY. Maybe icewell radiance will change this depending on fights, and if that becomes true I'll change my gearing/gemming/enchanting choices, but until them I'm putting 18 stam on my shield.

The arguement of avoidance spike damage isn't that more avoidance is bad, it's that more avoidance and LESS hit points is bad, because how instead of when you have to take 40k to the face and you only have 36k hps, that avoidance really kinda left you out to dry in an RNG moment. This is true for a lot of fights, blah blah blah I'm repeating myself again.

Your aforementioned tradeoff of 8 stam for 20 dodge rating just doesn't seems pretty non-optimal. You're free to gear however you like, and if it seems to work then more power to you--but from a gearing perspective, I can't see much logic in doing so unless you were really struggling to meet some specific HP threshold that you weren't at yet.

You seem to be completely missing the point of what I've been saying. The situations currently most likely to kill a tank are unavoidable, tanks are supposed to survive, therefore I pick the stat that helps me survive, which is EHP right now. Dodge does nothing to help me survive an impale, or freezing slash, or ferocious butt, or enraged bile spray, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. /broken record.