Does avoidance give spiky damage or not?

[Jock]

The armory is my EH set for 1. Secondly, it's 20 def + 20 dodge vs 27 stamina, which I think is more than a fair tradeoff. Though thanks for reminding me that I have a 10 def for 9 stam tradeoff since I didn't have another gem on me at the time. Never got around to changing that gem OR enchanting my cloak. Sigh.

Also, I'm doing ICC25s w/o having done any ToGC stuff. This leaves me "undergeared" (in my opinion low in EH) for plague and blood wings of ICC25. I'm still working on getting "enough" EH to be able to move to the avoidance.

You guys have not been listening completely. I did not say to abandon stamina or armor or EH. I just said that it isn't everything once you have "enough" of it.

[Doc309]

"does avoidance give spiky damage?"

IMHO- no.

"not avoiding" gives spiky damage. when you take 2-5 hits in a row that's when damage is "spiky", and avoiding/not avoiding = RNG. from a healers PoV, i get used to the fights. i get used to the tank. i try to predict when i can throw a bubble or FH on a DPS even when on "tank" heals, and then "get back to the tank".
if you only take two hits as an "avoidance tank" you and I, will most likely be ok. if you take 5, we will probably wipe.
if the tank has "enough" EH, i have a bit more time to "get back to the tank", but what is "enough"?

Doc

btw i have a tank with blues that has done everything my healer (ICC10 geared, according to wow heroes) has done.

[Synapse]

if the tank has "enough" EH, i have a bit more time to "get back to the tank", but what is "enough"?

Doc

btw i have a tank with blues that has done everything my healer (ICC10 geared, according to wow heroes) has done.

"Enough" varies a lot. The larger the gap between each "one more hit" survivals, the more beneficial it is to add avoidance.

[Dreador]

You guys have not been listening completely. I did not say to abandon stamina or armor or EH. I just said that it isn't everything once you have "enough" of it.

You mentioned earlier you're not going to state that point. Where is that point? How much is "enough"?

"not avoiding" gives spiky damage. when you take 2-5 hits in a row that's when damage is "spiky", and avoiding/not avoiding = RNG. from a healers PoV, i get used to the fights. i get used to the tank. i try to predict when i can throw a bubble or FH on a DPS even when on "tank" heals, and then "get back to the tank".
if you only take two hits as an "avoidance tank" you and I, will most likely be ok. if you take 5, we will probably wipe.
if the tank has "enough" EH, i have a bit more time to "get back to the tank", but what is "enough"?

Not avoiding is not spiky, you know the damage is going to come in, therefore it's predictable. Avoidance, regardless of how much, is always, ALWAYS subject to the RNG, which means when you do take a hit, you'll never be prepared for it, the healthpool drops lower because an avoidance tank has less hp to begin with. WH is just a benchmarker to tell you when a well-played character is ready for a certain instance, it doesn't take into account how good/bad he/she is.

[Bashal]

"does avoidance give spiky damage?"

IMHO- no.

Not avoiding is not spiky

If you mean "spikier" to mean "taking damage more often", then yes, as a tank's avoidance decreases, their damage is spikier.

But I've always taken it to mean, in this context, that the magnitude of the damage, as measured against the tank's health pool as a percentage, is higher, and thus, "spikier". Bigger, but less frequent, spikes.

In that sense, depending on how you choose to define the word, both interpretations are correct.

[Dreador]

If you mean "spikier" to mean "taking damage more often", then yes, as a tank's avoidance decreases, their damage is spikier.

But I've always taken it to mean, in this context, that the magnitude of the damage, as measured against the tank's health pool as a percentage, is higher, and thus, "spikier". Bigger, but less frequent, spikes.

In that sense, depending on how you choose to define the word, both interpretations are correct.

Not in the sense of the argument. What is meant when an informed tank states "avoidance usually gives a tank spikier damage" is that when a tank has lower avoidance but higher effective health, they generally take steady, predictable damage. With avoidance which is subject to RNG, they take less damage overall (hinting that they are gemming def and dodge and use avoidance trinkets), however when they do get hit, it's at random, and with their lowered health pool it puts their health % lower. Also you have to account for the time to heal back up from lower health. They can still take more than 2 or 3 hits without avoiding any. Again, refer to Satrina's guides if you need further clarification.

[Bashal]

I was only attempting to clear up what I perceived to be a miscommunication between folks who were saying "no it isn't" and those saying "yes it is". Each side seems to be taking the word "spiky" to mean something a little different.

[Doc309]

<snip>
Not avoiding is not spiky, you know the damage is going to come in, therefore it's predictable.
<snip>

dread,
i think you missed my point.
an "avoidance tank" is MORE subject to the RNG.
if i know the tank doesn't "avoid" well, well....I'm on the tank, and i'll help/let the dps die a good death.
it's not so much that "not avoiding" is spiky, than it is "relying on avoidance" is spiky.

Doc

[Dreador]

dread,
i think you missed my point.
an "avoidance tank" is MORE subject to the RNG.
if i know the tank doesn't "avoid" well, well....I'm on the tank, and i'll help/let the dps die a good death.
it's not so much that "not avoiding" is spiky, than it is "relying on avoidance" is spiky.

Doc

I must have read what you said backwards or something, it seemed like you were arguing the opposite point, my apologies.

I was only attempting to clear up what I perceived to be a miscommunication between folks who were saying "no it isn't" and those saying "yes it is". Each side seems to be taking the word "spiky" to mean something a little different.

I agree with you there, just stating that the "other side" in this case is wrong. =)

[Jock]

How much is "enough"?

Now you're getting into social mathematics or trying to mathematically prove something that results from the interaction of two or more human beings. Until you can clarify and classify the two (or more) individuals, you will not be able to determine what "enough" is exactly.

I can't give you a number for you're situation. The best I can do is say once you and your healer are comfortable, start looking for some tradeoffs to avoidance.



As a side note.... if stamina/EH were everything, why wouldn't a druid be the only tank in the game?

[Proletaria]

I can't give you a number for you're situation. The best I can do is say once you and your healer are comfortable, start looking for some tradeoffs to avoidance.



As a side note.... if stamina/EH were everything, why wouldn't a druid be the only tank in the game?

Comfortable varies by encounter. The suggestion you could just say "oh hey healer, how much health do I need tonight?" and then dump the remainder of your free gem sockets and trinket slots into avoidance is silly. Supposing we can quantify a cut-off point where EH is no longer useful, or that we shouldn't try to quantify it for some kind of chicken-leg voodoo avoidance mysticism is reasoning that I cannot grasp.

Bottom line: stam is factored into EH (so stam/eh is like saying parry/avoidance), druids are very strong tanks and the reason that there are not more of them at present has little to do with how powerful avoidance is or isn't.

If avoidance was worth anything, why are there so few deathknight tanks around? Is it all perception keeping people from seeing the amazing glory of a frost dk stacking avoidance? Not likely.

[Doc309]

Now you're getting into social mathematics or trying to mathematically prove something that results from the interaction of two or more human beings. Until you can clarify and classify the two (or more) individuals, you will not be able to determine what "enough" is exactly.

I can't give you a number for you're situation. The best I can do is say once you and your healer are comfortable, start looking for some tradeoffs to avoidance.



As a side note.... if stamina/EH were everything, why wouldn't a druid be the only tank in the game?

i once had an economics professor state "the problem with pollution is not externalized costs, but that people don't PAY for clean air."

how is your argument different?

Doc.

[Dots]

You guys have not been listening completely. I did not say to abandon stamina or armor or EH. I just said that it isn't everything once you have "enough" of it.

I agree with pretty much everything you have said so far. There was another thread about this already a few days ago, but sadly it drifted off and had to be locked.

It should be noted that EH has some RNG to it as well. For any realistic raid situation, there are a lot of random factors and it's up to chance if you will survive a certain situation, EH and avoidance both increase this chance. Maybe you survived that 5 attack string because you took X damage, healers healed Y amount and you had those 10 extra hitpoints to survive. Or maybe that same attack string overkilled you by 10k damage because you didn't avoid one of those swings. A lot of your EH would have been wasted right there, but maybe avoidance would have saved you. Some scenarios will be more common than others and most of them don't matter because you survive them easily anyway. There is definitely more to it than just that the 'worst case' though.

That's what the probability of taking X hit strings is about and I think that's why you should always aim for a certain balance instead of going all out EH. Of course it depends on a lot of factors; encounter at hand, amount of EH you already have, etc. I prefer going for EH too, it makes sense, but not at all costs.

[Proletaria]

What is "all costs?" Even if you gem strictly for socket bonuses you're giving or taking away a very minimal amount of threat stats, avoidance stats, or stam points.

Why do we continually make this conversation hyperbolic when we're only talking the diffirence between 10 blue gems and 1 purple gem or 5 purple gems, 2 green gems, and 4 blue gems?

[GravityDK]

This is like the neverending conversation.

[Satorri]

And it goes on and on my friends...


=) Personally I've reached the point where I don't even want to try to counter the hyperbole. The info has been set down and rehashed over and over. If you come here to grind your anti-anything axe, just give it a rest. Lots of people talking at each other, few of which are actually open to changing their mind (or actually considering what other people are bringing to the table as counter-points).

[Dreador]

Now you're getting into social mathematics or trying to mathematically prove something that results from the interaction of two or more human beings. Until you can clarify and classify the two (or more) individuals, you will not be able to determine what "enough" is exactly.

I can't give you a number for you're situation. The best I can do is say once you and your healer are comfortable, start looking for some tradeoffs to avoidance.



As a side note.... if stamina/EH were everything, why wouldn't a druid be the only tank in the game?

You're the one who brought this up, I'm asking you to back what you said, not a query I had. Go back and reread your posts.

I agree with pretty much everything you have said so far. There was another thread about this already a few days ago, but sadly it drifted off and had to be locked.

This one should go the same direction. We've drifted way off the original argument, and it's now been dumbed down to a he said/she said.

[Dragaan]

Anyone seen this thread yet? World of Warcraft (en) Forums -> Clueless players

Sorry for the random post, but I thought it was kinda funny.

[Antioch]

And it goes on and on my friends...


=) Personally I've reached the point where I don't even want to try to counter the hyperbole. The info has been set down and rehashed over and over. If you come here to grind your anti-anything axe, just give it a rest. Lots of people talking at each other, few of which are actually open to changing their mind (or actually considering what other people are bringing to the table as counter-points).

You hit it right on the money, and is sadly why I don't post a lot to clarify things as much as I ought to. The stench of the official Tank forums comes to mind.

[Quinafoi]

I really don't understand why this is such a hard topic to grasp.

The boss has a swing timer of 2 seconds...
Therefore they swing 5 times every 10 seconds...

When you wear avoidance gear, can you gaurentee that you will not be hit all 5 times? The answer is no. Whether or not you avoid any given attack is always random. So if you have 1% dodge you can dodge all 5 attacks and if you have 75% dodge you can fail to dodge all 5 attacks. This is how the random number generator works, there is no way you can gaurentee that you will avoid the damage, there is always the potential of a worst case scenario. No matter how unlikely or unprobable it may be, this is still a valid possable outcome of 5 attacks in a 10 second window.

Effective health on the other hand is always there. If you have 60% damage reduction from armor, you can gaurentee that melee attacks will do 60% less damage. If each attack hits for 15,000 damage, the tank with 50,000 health can gaurentee they can survive 3 consequtive hits without a heal. If the tank only have 45,000 health, they can only gaurentee they can survive 2 hits without a heal.

The reason why effective health is favored over avoidance is because of this logic...

If you are geared such that you can survive being hit 3 times by a boss that swings every 2 seconds, you can gaurentee you survive at least 6 seconds without heals. If you sacrifice your effective health for more avoidance, you still can't gaurentee the boss can't hit you 3 times in a row. The only thing you can gaurentee is if the boss does hit you multiple times in a row how many hits can you survive. That's based off effective health.

The Logic

Effective health is increasing the number of consequtive hits you can take without dying. You can gaurentee this survival because it is based off of you actually getting hit (if you avoid some hits, great, icing on the cake).

Avoidance is increasing your chance of not taking any damage, however no matter how high the chance gets, every single attack always has some chance of actually hitting. Avoidance you can't gaurentee you will dodge or parry an attack. Since you can't gaurentee that you will dodge or parry one attack, you can't gaurentee you can dodge or parry two consequtive attacks, or three consequtive attacks. Each attack still has a chance to connect. The number of hits you can take in a row before dying is still determined by your effective health.

Effective Health = Gaurentee, you are planning on being hit, and minimizing the effect of being hit. Plan for the worst.
Avoidance = Gamble, you are hoping to not get hit, however can't gaurentee you won't. Hope for the best.