Does avoidance give spiky damage or not?

[Eravian]

Hmm... sounds like it scales up in damage pretty quick then in the second wing. That's good to know. Maybe taking the time to go pick up that Black Heart I never got will be worth it after all...

[Dreador]

Eravian, you're going to want to keep stacking EHP. The first 4 bosses hit like little kittens compared to festergut and rotface, imo. I didn't have huge problems with it since I used cooldowns wisely and have stacked tons of stam/armor and so has our pally tank, but I was getting hit for ~28k and our pally tank (who has more HPs but less armor than me) took at hit for ~35k at one point. We didn't have tank deaths, but I simply attribute that to us pre-emptively stacking EHP. If we hadn't, I think we would have had a much harder time in the instance.

This. Festergut was hitting like a damn truck and I really had to let the healers know to have their externals ready. SW/LS and trinket CDs weren't enough to keep BOTH tanks alive. We got him on like the 5th or 6th attempt though, and I got a tell from our pally thanking me for riding him hard on the issue, I guess he impressed himself

[Dots]

I tanked Algalon before all the fancy 245 gear, trust me,...

Really? Come on...

Anyway, Algalon did massive damage, but he did that with a lot of hits, attacking twice a second. In fact, tanking him was quite similar to Brutallus, who used the same pattern of very fast but relatively small (compared to his total damage output) hits. There is a certain balance between surviving those hit strings and preventing them in the first place.

Obviously Festergut is a massive EH fight, though as Kojiyama said, you should always have a cooldown running when he is at 3 stacks, anything else is a lottery. That's why you should pick your gear for the encounter at hand though, not all of them are like that.
I really don't know why you generally just disregard avoidance. If you think it doesn't play a major role in tanking and you just survive because of your EHP, try turning your back to the boss and ask the healers what they think. Marrowgar will do just fine since you don't need to do anything to get hit.

[Aggathon]

The big hits were at 2 stacks.

For brutallus the healers didn't have to move and healer mana was completely different back then. You really can't accurate compare the two fights imo.

[Proletaria]

I've stacked EHP and have about 35k armor and 56k HPs on the festergut fight. My avoidance is just what is innate on gear, I hit 2 +9stam bonuess with +10agi/15stam. When I tanked this fight I (and our pally tank) got hit for 51k in just barely over 1 second and in that same area of time I took 100k damage in 5 seconds.

I was easily healed through it without having to use a cooldown because I stack EHP. It went from "hope ya dodge!" to "it doesn't matter if you dodge because you can take it to the face."

You're rolling the dice 100+ times a fight, and even with high avoidance eventually the dice are going to show up as getting hit 4 or 5 times in a row, and you've gotta be able to eat that. It's my contention that because of the RNG odds stack up and eventually the damage is unavoidable, even if it's just regular melee.

I actually tried the "balanced" approach in ulduar, and fights like steelbreaker and algalon freakin' rocked my world, I even got sat on general. I completely re-geared re-gemed for max EHP and have been able to easily tank every boss since then. I'll throw on avoidance trinkets for gunship captain if we're not doing achievements, but otherwise... MEH. Stacking EHP has worked really well for our healers and my guild. Obviously anub'arak requires a different approach which is why the general montra is "gear for the fight" however most fights require EHP, plain and simple. Algalon and Marrowgar ARE examples of where EHP is good. I tanked Algalon before all the fancy 245 gear, trust me, you NEEDED to stack EHP for that, the min requirement is ridiculously high.

Sounds like what happened to me in TOGC. I wanted to believe that the age of the DK meant balancing avoidance and EH (coming off our massive EH nerf, it seemed like a good avenue at the time), but time and encounters proved that raw EH was what worked better.

My healers could care less how much my red bar spikes up and down, or how often (within reason, but as Satorri pointed out, in the real world, EH stacking isn't some hyperbolic 0% avoidance scenario). They're built to fully-heal me in a few globals, and i've only got to survive until that happens.

[Vlad]

There's another aspect to healing an EH tank thats often overlooked, as a healer you generally have more than the tank to worry about in terms of healing.
Personally I much prefer to heal a tank that takes very consisent damage (I don't care if it's big or small hits) because I can time my other tasks, for example pom is pretty much getting spammed off the tank and coh or a renew is easy to throw in.. but I want to know I have time to flash or even poh, with an avoidance tank who has lower health it's always a gamble that makes me hover over my GS key.
I envy pallies and warriors block :/

[Synapse]

So you are saying you like healing tanks with more health more than healing tanks with less health. the avoidance/eh variance ratio isn't half as big as people make it be.

[Satorri]

Well, the possible range of Health vs Avoidance is actually quite huge. The choice from one piece of gear here or there is tiny.

I wanted to see what would happen, so I went on the PTR with my DK (who conveniently is a JC, well stocked) and I regemmed everything and made a new gear setup. I wanted to see the extremes.

At the time I was meeting socket bonuses. Mostly blue sockets with pure stam, but the 2-3 red sockets I had were Agi/Stam gems, and I was using 2 stam trinkets. My weapon was runed with SSG.

I flipped things around. I traded every blue socket to Dodge/Stam, every red socket to pure dodge (also traded my JC Stam gems to Dodge), I switched my trinkets to the best avoidance trinkets I had at the time (which sadly included my Valor Medal), and switched my weapon rune to SS.

Here's what happened, unbuffed:
Before: 39.7k health, 54% avoidance
After: 29.9k health, 67% avoidance

Change EVERYTHING and it is a huge swing, change one piece here or there and it's a small step.

I was actually contemplating how best to make use of the setup and I was thinking a dual wield frost build with 3/3 in SoB could be devilish threat and comically sporadic to heal. But then I don't particularly want to do that with my live gear, very expensive to explore. Maybe I can make use of the easy triumph emblems to build a second set.

(Also, in case you were wondering, with nearly 70% avoidance RS procs will run you straight out of RP constantly).

[Vlad]

So you are saying you like healing tanks with more health more than healing tanks with less health. the avoidance/eh variance ratio isn't half as big as people make it be.

Well in reality it's not so much about health but time to die, alot of people here have posted the differences of TTD for example (and it's probably a simplistic one but you get the gist of it):
Boss swings for 20k every 3 secs
Tank1 39k health TTD= 6 secs
Tank 2 41k health TTD = 9 secs

Now the reason I prefer tank 2 is I have a whole 3 secs (or 2 GCDs) longer to do something about it, now if a tank can lower the 20k hits by stacking block or armour then groovy.. but I probably don't actually care if he dodges or parries because in fact it just screws up my healing timing.

If you want to get an understanding of what you should be doing as a tank ask your healers, healing camps all know you they want to be healing in a given situation.




For me right now I would rather heal these classes in the following order:

1. Paladin - this is just too easy to heal, very low consistant damage and if I screw up he'll save himself without having to do anything
2. Warrior - once again block just makes it easy
3. Druid - Big health pools but slightly harder to heal, possibly due to their lack of magic mitigation
4. DK - Basically a PITA to heal unless they have alot of health and armour, a good one will make like easier by good CD use. Oh and be blood specced, don't think frost or unholy are useful.. they're not except in very specific situations.

On my DK I'd trade all my avoidance for more health and armour if I could.
100k health, 45k armour and zero avoidance? no problems.

[orcstar]

Well in reality it's not so much about health but time to die, alot of people here have posted the differences of TTD for example (and it's probably a simplistic one but you get the gist of it):
Boss swings for 20k every 3 secs
Tank1 39k health TTD= 6 secs
Tank 2 41k health TTD = 9 secs

Now the reason I prefer tank 2 is I have a whole 3 secs (or 2 GCDs) longer to do something about it, now if a tank can lower the 20k hits by stacking block or armour then groovy.. but I probably don't actually care if he dodges or parries because in fact it just screws up my healing timing.

But erhh change the situation a bit and have Tank 1 have 41k and tank 2 have 43 k. Now they both have the same TTD and unless manages 60k hp avoidance is stronger yes?

[Satorri]

For me right now I would rather heal these classes in the following order:

1. Paladin - this is just too easy to heal, very low consistant damage and if I screw up he'll save himself without having to do anything
2. Warrior - once again block just makes it easy
3. Druid - Big health pools but slightly harder to heal, possibly due to their lack of magic mitigation
4. DK - Basically a PITA to heal unless they have alot of health and armour, a good one will make like easier by good CD use. Oh and be blood specced, don't think frost or unholy are useful.. they're not except in very specific situations.

Sounds rather personally biased with the players you've been healing. My healers have said they rather enjoy healing me, and I've blind-tested them on Frost and Unholy. Blood *feels* slightly better when they don't know what's going on, but neither Frost or Unholy garnered any particular negative feedback.

[Jackey]

EH and avoidance i am assuming by avoidance you mean gemming every slot with stam gems vs. avoidance gems?

Personally after seeing all current content and tanking it all. I use alot of hybrid gems for def+stam, dodge + stam. Healers don't seem to have a problem healing me at all. But, don't forget those slots with those gems are also utilizing socket stam bonuses. I sit at like 45k hp buffed or close to that and raid buffed i sit a little over 55k health.

Festergut at 3 stacks can simply put kill u wether no matter what you do or gem. I have to blow shield wall and get priest cool downs.

I think right now it is to hard to tell which would be best. And personally if I had to choose I will continue to gem stam except in those spots where I can go with a hybrid gem to meet stam socket bonuses. This gives me a little more mitigation, avoidance, while still keeping me gaining stam to a degree. In my opinion its the closest balance one can get.

[Vlad]

EH and avoidance i am assuming by avoidance you mean gemming every slot with stam gems vs. avoidance gems?

Personally after seeing all current content and tanking it all. I use alot of hybrid gems for def+stam, dodge + stam. Healers don't seem to have a problem healing me at all. But, don't forget those slots with those gems are also utilizing socket stam bonuses. I sit at like 45k hp buffed or close to that and raid buffed i sit a little over 55k health.

Festergut at 3 stacks can simply put kill u wether no matter what you do or gem. I have to blow shield wall and get priest cool downs.

I think right now it is to hard to tell which would be best. And personally if I had to choose I will continue to gem stam except in those spots where I can go with a hybrid gem to meet stam socket bonuses. This gives me a little more mitigation, avoidance, while still keeping me gaining stam to a degree. In my opinion its the closest balance one can get.

Yes this is pretty much the approach I take to gemming, I'll use a 15 stam/avoidance gem if the bonus is 9-12 stam but if it's 6 dodge or something along thos lines it's stam all the way.

Satorri: yes it probably is a biased view but I do get to heal quite a few different tanks due to the size of the guild, and that we're pretty casual so different days often mean different tanks. Blood does feel better to me too, largely because VB roflstomps the frost and UH equivalents.

Ordstar: yes I was using some pretty basic numbers, and the TTD threshold is nowhere near the 40k mark, its probably closer to 48-50k now.. gut feel of course.

[orcstar]

Festergut at 3 stacks can simply put kill u wether no matter what you do or gem. I have to blow shield wall and get priest cool downs.

It's at 2 stack, where you need to hold off on using cooldowns that festergut is dangerous. He still hits like a truck and pretty fast, but the healers have to heal through it. At first when the healers weren't used to the fight, my cotank and pala had his Ardent Defender proc every try.

[Proletaria]

[/LIST]Sounds rather personally biased

His list basically mirriors the sentiments of every healer in my guild. *shrug*

[Kojiyama]

Something that confuses me a bit about those comments is: how can one say that tanks should stack Armor+Stamina and a DK would ideally trade all their avoidance for Armor+Stamina--but Warriors are easier to heal than Druids, who have much higher Armor and Health than Warriors?

Seems a bit inconsistant.

[Vlad]

Yeah it does seem odd, but block is a seriously overpowered ability in the hands of a good warrior.. and pallies basically have it up all the time.
I'm sure someone smart could do the math on how much armour you'd need to replace an end game warrior/pallies block, I have no idea myself but i'd say it'd be a hell of a lot.

[Synapse]

This all traces back to when, once, I suggested being block capped added a cushion, in the form of "eh through dr", and endless people bashed the idea because block was not reliable...
ToC is over.

[Tengenstein]

Yeah it does seem odd, but block is a seriously overpowered ability in the hands of a good warrior.. and pallies basically have it up all the time.
I'm sure someone smart could do the math on how much armour you'd need to replace an end game warrior/pallies block, I have no idea myself but i'd say it'd be a hell of a lot.

I wear my heroic/pvp block set to Twins these days. i can drop my Twins DPS below 500 when she gains power of the twins, if i save shield block for it.

A good warrior knows when to pop shield block, its crap on alot of fights, but its quite potent when used cleverly, after your first stack of impale on gormok you can pretty much negate the increased iDPS of the bleed, by shaving the damage off his melee swings. On marrowgar, its not much but when he comes out of bone storm it can be dangerous while your co-tanks and healers repositon. with sabre lashes hitting you three times if you have no stacked frienda for 16K a 4k block on each one is 25% damage reduction minimum assuming you dont get a crit block. or 50% assuming you crit block all of it

to make block better than armour you'd need to push hit off the table, and have a large enough block value that your blocks would absorb ~65% of the bosses base physical damage. its really not going to happen becuase warriors can't easily push hit off the table 100% of the time, and if bosses hit clothies for 45k then i need to blocking for about 30K minimum.

the biggest i can push my block to is 12k, and thats a critical Block(60% chance to block for double) shield block(+100% base BV +100% block chance 10 secs on40sec CD), lavanthor's talisman (+440 block value) and the autoblocker ( +200 BV) all up at once. poping one trinket starts a mini CD on the other, so i can only maintain this high block for about 10 seconds every 2 minutes. and as critical block is no way guaranteed... its not going to happen with current itemization

[Synapse]

Now, tengen, you can't assume blocking with 0 armor. Armor will always be there, and in relatively large amounts. The armor you have to evaluate is the GAP between warrior armor with blocking against nonblockers' armor(alongside with any %dr both will have)