whats up with stam stackers

[Purinna]

#1 See OP. The one I answered.

#2 If you're in ToGC, odds are you have enough avoidance on your gear to completely stack stamina. So please, don't listen to this advice.

#1 The one were you made the bold statement about avoidance being worthless? If you think thats true then your mistaken.

#2 enough avoidance? is there a hard cap I am unaware of?

I think the OP already stated he wasnt interested in stacking stam in every socket:

"Nutters
but i dont agree with just strait stam in every socket imo u still need parry exp and doge."

I pitty the healers who must keep the fool alive that focuses all his gear on maximizing stamina and nothing else

[luv2tank]

only time i trade a stam gem for a mixed(10 def/agi/dodge +15 stam) is when the set bonus is an avoidance one. If it is a + stam bonus, you may as well match-gain avoidance and only lose 60-90 health. I really hope ppl arent just throwing stamina gems in every single slot possible.

[Risky]

#1 The one were you made the bold statement about avoidance being worthless? If you think thats true then your mistaken.

#2 enough avoidance? is there a hard cap I am unaware of?

I think the OP already stated he wasnt interested in stacking stam in every socket:

"Nutters
but i dont agree with just strait stam in every socket imo u still need parry exp and doge."

I pitty the healers who must keep the fool alive that focuses all his gear on maximizing stamina and nothing else

I pity the people who don't take advice from guilds that clear the content in question.

[Ion]

It's not like it's possible to have no avoidance. If you are in the gear you're tanking Gormok, Icehowl or Anub (the boss, not the adds), then it makes zero sense to NOT put stam on all places you can. For some of the rest of the fights it doesn't really matter...avoidance or threat stats...fine, doesn't matter because the fight isn't apt to kill the tank unless something else isn't being done properly (healing incinerate flesh, for example).

What people are talking about is the tank killing fights that aren't Anub's adds, stam is the highest value thing you can socket or enchant for (with the possible exception of armor, but there's not precisely a lot of armor enchants and there are no armor gems...you can use the armor trinket on the appropriate fights, as well).

If you're not talking about "hard" content...then sure...do whatever you want, because it's not hard and you probably won't die unless your healer fell asleep.

[Risky]

What people are talking about is the tank killing fights that aren't Anub's adds, stam is the highest value thing you can socket or enchant for (with the possible exception of armor, but there's not precisely a lot of armor enchants and there are no armor gems...you can use the armor trinket on the appropriate fights, as well).

Well said.
Can the people who critique my spot-on, brief and brilliant advice as "another stupid stamina stacker's post" please learn about ToGC incoming damage?

[Omok]

Coming from the perspective of a warrior, stamina is the only stat you should be shooting for. I think this issue has been beaten to death in so many threads, that it needs to be retired. The fundamental theory boils down to this, focusing on avoidance is basically like hoping to win the lottery (avoid) in the event you lose your job (getting gibbed). Focusing on effective health is like putting away money for a rainy day (stacking stamina), in the event you lose your job (getting gibbed). Both choices may help you when you lose your job, but the second choice is a hell of a lot more likely than winning the lottery.

Blizzard has already said that avoidance is a worse solution than effective health is, they are designing content for effective health now, penalizing avoidance stacking, and I think people should just accept it. I have 44k health unbuffed as a warrior, which I admit may be a bit much, but it has served me very well doing TotGC25. My guild has done Insanity, if you want to call that end game raiding.

[Purinna]

I pity the people who don't take advice from guilds that clear the content in question.

So based on your logic I should leave the casual guild that I have been a member of for almost 4 years and join some "Hardcore raid guild of the month" just so my statements can mean something on this site? You just won the mental midget award for the month Risky, congrats


Ion,

I didn't say to not put stamina in all places that you can, what I said was to balance your def/avoid stats to optimise your damage reduction and have enough hp to stay alive in a worst case scenario. How is this such a hard concept to understand... Let me give you some generic examples:

Gormok melee hits 3 times in a 6 second period for 11,000 damage each hit. Gormok puts an impale on you that ticks for 2300 damage every 2 seconds and the debuff stacks one additional stack every 12 seconds.

That means that in a 6 second period you have the potential to take in:
Melee damage received in 6 sceonds: 3 x 11,000 = 33,000
1 Impale damage received in 6 seconds: 3 x 2300 = 6,900
Total damage received for 6 seconds = 39,900

So if our healers fall asleep at the wheel and for some unlucky reason we manage to not block, dodge, parry, or miss on of those melee hits (whic is almost impossible in and of itself) we would take in 39,900 damage. Your stamina needs to be above this number (39,000). Once your stamina is above that number then you need to be paying attention to your avoidance and mitigation stats.

While none of that is exact math or factual data I used it to illustrate the point on what I'm talkin about. That point is, is that not all of us have the same gear and have the exact same stats and to post up in a quick one liner that stamina is the way to go and avoidance is worthless, is not the end all be all solution. Without looking at some parsed combat logs and thoroughly reviewing someones gear you doing nothing more than generalising and could be hurting someone more than helping them.


Omok,

Coming from the perspective of a warrior (3years) and a paladin (1 year) stamina is not the only stat you should be stacking. What you should be doing is looking at your damage intake and maximising all your stats. Stacking stamina and nothing else will turn you into a mana sponge. The only stamina stacking you should be doing is the minimum needed to survive an unlucky hit string and a couple ticks from a debuff or aoe going on. After that if your able to add a bit more to give the healers some breathing room, without negativly impacting your other stats too much then that is grand.

[Niian]

So if our healers fall asleep at the wheel and for some unlucky reason we manage to not block, dodge, parry, or miss on of those melee hits (whic is almost impossible in and of itself) we would take in 39,900 damage. Your stamina needs to be above this number (39,000). Once your stamina is above that number then you need to be paying attention to your avoidance and mitigation stats.

If your healers "fall asleep at the wheel" during a raid then they shouldn't be there. Plain and simple.

If we go by your example there and get just above 39k hp then start stacking other stats I'd guess you'd be at about 40-42k hp. So the next hit/tick combo will most likely kill you, however I could survive another few hits/ticks, not to mention the AD proc that will give me even more hits/ticks to survive.

No stacking stamina doesn't turn you into a mana sponge. Raid buffed I have about 52k hp, 48kish on something like Anub (I swap out trinkets). While I have 52k hp I have just under 30% dodge, 25% parry and 11% base block. That's from gear stats and 5 half avoidance half stam gems (only to get socket bonus).

You get enough base avoidance stats from gear alone recently, hence why they have made it beneficial to have a lot of stam in most fights.
Having tanked pretty much everything so far (upto Twins on totgc 25) I'd take stam over dodge/parry any day, unless the fight called for me to stack avoidance over stam (anub)

[Omok]

Omok,

Coming from the perspective of a warrior (3years) and a paladin (1 year) stamina is not the only stat you should be stacking. What you should be doing is looking at your damage intake and maximising all your stats. Stacking stamina and nothing else will turn you into a mana sponge. The only stamina stacking you should be doing is the minimum needed to survive an unlucky hit string and a couple ticks from a debuff or aoe going on. After that if your able to add a bit more to give the healers some breathing room, without negativly impacting your other stats too much then that is grand.

Hate to break it to you, but every tank is a mana sponge. Healers already assume that you have 0% avoidance, once you have the chance to to do Heroic 25 TotGC Insanity you will see that. If healers are relying on you to avoid an attack instead of heal you, then you will not progress very far. Avoidance basically equates to overhealing at the moment. Blizzard is changing the mechanics of the game to avoid the need for overhealing.

The use of the whole, survive a certain amount of hits and then forget stamina logic is flawed. That logic assumes that you only get healed every six seconds, and that's it. That is not true, you get heals multiple times during that six seconds. Whether you are at 100%, or 10%, you are still going to get a crap ton of heals. Potentially you could be at the 3 second mark, with 20,000 HP remaining and a melee hit/leeching swarm about to hit you. In that case, 45k health makes the difference compared to 40k health.

I am not saying that avoidance is 100% useless, but based on the design of current bosses, it's pretty close in my opinion

[geros]

One thing to note is that "because I've done the content and you haven't" has never been and never will be a valid argument in TS. People can very easily theorycraft without clearing the content. I'd generally advise getting into pissing matches and name calling over that.

Purinna:

The damage you posted for Gormok occurs in roughly half that time in the heroic version. I think it can total up to ~43-44k on a ToC geared tank. So there is a valid reason to stack stamina/EH on that fight. Furthermore, almost every single set of burst damage capable of killing the tank has either been magical or been unavoidable melee damage in WotLK. Avoidance does little to help in that scenario.

Avoidance certainly does help to reduce the overall tanking damage in a fight and few will argue it. I'm just not sure that the conotation of being a "mana sponge" is necessarily a bad thing in WotLK. It might just be my personal experience but my healers have just never had mana issues. The burst damage capable of harder ulduar and h:ToC bosses require them to spam heals regardless of avoidance streaks. So stacking stamina in that case reduces overhealing and provides a stronger buffer. Your mileage and your healers mileage may vary though.

[Fledern]

I'm guessing what Purinna is saying is you should still care somewhat about your avoidance.

I do that by making sure i maintain a minimum of 22% dodge, 18% parry and 16-18% block. I prefer if those numbers creep up to 25%/20%/20%. But the way the current content and gear is designed, you end up with those numbers anyway and making them more is pretty much useless.

Thinking back, i can think of exactly two bosses where avoidance actually helped us get the first kill more than stamina: Prince in Karazhan and General Vezax in Ulduar. And that was just for the first few kills. Once we got comfortable with the encounter, i switched back to my EH gear. If i come across an avoidance gear, i put it in the bank. If i see a juicy socket bonus, i might grab it with the hybrid gems. That's about as far as i'll go for avoidance though, after that it's all stam (pvp shoulder inscription instead of the hodir one for example).