Tankadin gemming/enchanting

[Tyoko]

A quick question: in part of his TPS calculations, Theck uses 2070 str as a default ub amount. How is that reachable? I'm not poorly geared, yet I only have 1322 str. :X

[Irons]

Gem priority: Stam. Always stack stam. If you need to meet a meta, use whatever/stam.
Enchant priority: Stam.

Like others have said, you should be getting all the avoidance you need from your gear. I appreciate that you "have a feeling" that you need avoidance rather than stam in ICC. You don't. A lot of things are unavoidable. You can't parry spells.

I single tanked Lord Marrowgar in ICC a few days ago, in a pug raid, where the healers were considered undergeared for the instance. I didn't need to gem for parry to do it.

Sorry if I come off as sounding like a prick, but it's starting to get to me, reading all these people who are new to tanking/dps/healing/whatever here, on other forums, and in the game, saying that they won't go with what's been proven to be better just because they have a feeling.

[Synapse]

Often enough they aren't shown WHY their "feeling" is "wrong" either.

[Taio]

I'm in the process of gearing up my second tank and I can tell you, having tried three different gemming styles, that stam stacking is indeed the way to go.
Gemming avoidance:
You don't gain much compared to the stam you could be getting. Especially at higher gear levels, you're already hitting DRs on dodge and parry so the value of gemmed avoidance goes down even more. Stamina has no diminishing returns.
Gemming for threat (hitcap/str/expcap/etc)
A lot of people outline the current situation of threat as "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you." You only need to do threat equal to your highest TPS-producing DPS class plus one. Proper glyphs, talents, and use of abilities will do this, gemming is wasteful overkill.
Gemming stamina:
No diminishing returns. Always active. Always relevant. Always increases your survivability.
Does this help?

[Synapse]

I'm in the process of gearing up my second tank and I can tell you, having tried three different gemming styles, that stam stacking is indeed the way to go.
Gemming avoidance:
You don't gain much compared to the stam you could be getting. Especially at higher gear levels, you're already hitting DRs on dodge and parry so the value of gemmed avoidance goes down even more. Stamina has no diminishing returns.
Gemming for threat (hitcap/str/expcap/etc)
A lot of people outline the current situation of threat as "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you." You only need to do threat equal to your highest TPS-producing DPS class plus one. Proper glyphs, talents, and use of abilities will do this, gemming is wasteful overkill.
Gemming stamina:
No diminishing returns. Always active. Always relevant. Always increases your survivability.
Does this help?

No. Stamina reaches a limit, an usefulness cap.

[Tyoko]

Gem priority: Stam. Always stack stam. If you need to meet a meta, use whatever/stam.
Enchant priority: Stam.

Sorry if I come off as sounding like a prick, but it's starting to get to me, reading all these people who are new to tanking/dps/healing/whatever here, on other forums, and in the game, saying that they won't go with what's been proven to be better just because they have a feeling.

I'm not new to tanking by the way, been doing it for almost a year. May not be much compared to some of the people here, but I'm not a noob. :P However, I am new to the mechanics of tankadins, and the maths behind what we do.

About a month and a half ago I went a bit extreme and gemmed for full avoidance, getting quite a lot of parry (it was the lesser of the two stats, subject to less DRs), and a fair bit of agility. Then I started replacing the red gems with purples, and noticed my avoidance wasn't going down a lot, yet my stam was increasing quite a bit.

The reason I don't have anything to back up my "feeling" on this, is I haven't seen anything that puts it straight into numbers, proving me right or wrong. This may be merely because I have yet to look where the answers are, but, as I said, I'm still trying to catch up on 5 years of theorycrafting, lol. If anyone knows where I can get a good effective health calculator, that would be awesome, as I think that would help me solve the issue once and for all, showing how much EH I got per point of agility/parry/stam, taking DRs from current rating into account.

[Akeber]

If anyone knows where I can get a good effective health calculator, that would be awesome, as I think that would help me solve the issue once and for all, showing how much EH I got per point of agility/parry/stam, taking DRs from current rating into account.

Agility gives a very small contrinution to EH throught the bonus armor it gives, but not anywhere near enough to compensate for the EH that stam in place of it would give. Parry/dodge are avoidance, and do not contribute to EH.

The basic concept of EH is surviving "worst case" damage scenarios, when the RNG of avoidance lets you down and you end up taking multiple hits in a row. Fights with magic damage, or other unavoidable damage (goromok's impale is a good example), are great examples of where EH shines.

The reality is that no spreadsheet or calcualtor will tell you whether you should be stacking avoidance or health, there are too many variables to the equasion, not the least of which is that every encounter is different. You're certainly not going to regem all your gear between bosses, but you may swap trinkets or a few pieces of gear. Some of your gearing choices may be affected by your healers. If they heal reactively and tend to run out of mana a lot, you may get more mileage out of gearing for avoidance.

Personally, I mostly stack for EH (stam+armor), but I don't go as for as +18 stam on my shield or +30stam+15 resil PVP chant on my shoulders. I use +20 def and the hodir tanking inscription because the def still gives +dodge+miss+parry. If I want more avoidance I'll swap trinkets or a couple items, but I won't gem for it.

[Bashal]

If anyone knows where I can get a good effective health calculator, that would be awesome

...try the "calculator" tab at the top of this website.

[Aggathon]

Sorry if I come off as sounding like a prick, but it's starting to get to me, reading all these people who are new to tanking/dps/healing/whatever here, on other forums, and in the game, saying that they won't go with what's been proven to be better just because they have a feeling.

It's one of the reasons I've stopped posting here as much as I have in the past. It's really really really REALLY frustrating to be told you're an idiot and you're doing it wrong for stacking EHP when you tank bleeding edge content. I'd like to think that my hardmode experience, achievements, etc. might lend me some credibility in the matter, but people who haven't cleared ulduar seem to disagree. I've just canceled out of so many posts because it's hard to keep fighting a seemingly useless battle.

[devZero]

Nice to see other stating the same thing I started out stating on this thread.

[Tyoko]

Well, after a reading all these posts, and carefully checking into Theck's theorycrafting, I've changed my spec a bit, and have changed my gems. Still going to tweak a few things, but I'm waiting until I get the 264 belt to finish.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Any comments?

[devZero]

My name's Gitt, and I approve this configuration...

[Tyoko]

I'm not sure if you're taking the piss or not mate, lol. :S

Edit: Ah, I see your ingame name on one character is actually Gitt, lol. Git to means a grumpy, angry, cantankerous son of a gun, lol. I'm assuming you meant to best by it. ^_^ I've been thinking of changing the points from Pursuit of Justice to Convition though, to help a little with threat, as when tanking HoR hc and chain pulling half of Nexus hc, I noticed I was losing aggro a couple times. This may be to me being steaming at tis point, but not sure. General consensus at to talent changeover?

[Irat]

Hey Tyoko,

These are things that i would change if i were you.

Drop the 20agility gem from the head and replace with Stam. (Hit isnt worth chasing.) Use your chest or your pants to get your meta activated with a agil/stam gem. +9stam is a socket bonus worth chasing imo.

Change cloak enchant away from agility. Armor is my choice. And enchant your weapon, Blood Draining for EH, Accuracy for Threat.

Thats it really, everything else is looking pretty good.

[Irat]

I forgot the most improtant bit. Get your trade skills maxed ASAP. They are worth about 1.5k health once maxed.

[Taio]

No. Stamina reaches a limit, an usefulness cap.

Well I backed up my argument, can you back up yours? Where/when/why is there a usefulness cap?
MINI-EDIT: Also, for tankadins, more max HP = larger AD range = more overall mitigation.

Also, Aggathon, it's after reading your posts and seeing your achievements that I've been converted to the EHP school myself. It's been paying off, I really do see a difference in my survivability and our ability to clear content. We 2-shot Festergut the day after he came out. Tank deaths are not our causes for wipes. To you naysayers: EHP works.

[Aggathon]

"The number one cause of tank deaths is that they run out of hit points."
-John Madden

My solution? Get more hit points. =P

Seriously though, armor/stam = win.

Also, as far as synapses comment. He's essentially making 1 arguments with that statement. 1) that there's a minimum EHP limit for each fight. or 2) that 30stam is a smaller percent of someone's hit points that has 50k HP as compared to someone with 30K HP. I personally find the argument to be a fallacy and think that its really just a statisticians way of justifying other things when the value of EHP doesn't drop. It's still 300 more hit points (+modifiers) regardless of how many HPs you have, there's no diminishing returns and frankly that argument makes me nerd rage really really hard especially when boss damage scales along the same lines and even if it's a smaller percent it doesn't justify gemming for avoidance instead when..

you know what, I'm just getting worked up again.

EHP > RNG

[Tyoko]

Irat: I will be changing it soon, I'm waiting for another 8 EoF to get the belt with red socket, then I'll be a proper stam-stacker, apart from the belt socket. :P I'm still a bit iffy on getting rid of the full agility, as I want to get a build has a lot of potential for TPS as well as going for EHP. Maybe I'm just not seeing the full picture, but I really don't think I'm generatiing enough threat.

During a Nexus run, a healer from Magtheridon asked me to chain pull as much as possible. I found it quite difficult to keep aggro on all mobs when doing so(using a combination of SoComm/SoC where respectively relevant), and was spamming Righteous Defense and Hand of Reckoning whenever possible on appropriate targets. Reading the Maintankadin TPS calculation, I can't see anything wrong with my talents, except maybe changing Pursuit of Justice for two points in Conviction, but realistically, would 2% crit make THAT much of a difference? I suppose this could destroy my idea of having the crit gem/enchant, but every bit helps. At least, that's how I see it; any instructive criticism is welcome.

And, yea, I know about my proffessions, but the one thing I hate about WoW, or any other MMORPG I've played, is gathering skills. I don't quite have the income to boost JC to 450 through the AH, so I'm held back on two accounts by my utter hatred of non-combat grinding. I find combat grinding (dailies etc) hard enough as it is. A sad fact, but one I can't force myself to overcome, at least not yet.

And something I've found quite vexing: previous to gemming/enchanting for avoidance, I was clearing 40k hp when Sanctuary was active, rather easily. Now, I need a food buff as well as Sanctuary to gain the 40k mark. I'm not sure why this is. Any thoughts?

[Synapse]

Well I backed up my argument, can you back up yours? Where/when/why is there a usefulness cap?
MINI-EDIT: Also, for tankadins, more max HP = larger AD range = more overall mitigation.

Also, Aggathon, it's after reading your posts and seeing your achievements that I've been converted to the EHP school myself. It's been paying off, I really do see a difference in my survivability and our ability to clear content. We 2-shot Festergut the day after he came out. Tank deaths are not our causes for wipes. To you naysayers: EHP works.

Per fight, check how much more you can improve your survivability thorugh EH. If, say, rotface hits you for 30k, you go and reach 60k+1. Does it make sense to add any more? The third hit will invariably kill you much, much before you'll ever be able to reach that eh. At that point, EH simply falls into the same amount of power people like to give avoidance:"eh, it may help..but not much, I guess, not when things go bad".
Every fight will have it's threshold, and you'll be surprised by how low it can be.

[Taio]

Per fight, check how much more you can improve your survivability thorugh EH. If, say, rotface hits you for 30k, you go and reach 60k+1. Does it make sense to add any more? The third hit will invariably kill you much, much before you'll ever be able to reach that eh. At that point, EH simply falls into the same amount of power people like to give avoidance:"eh, it may help..but not much, I guess, not when things go bad".
Every fight will have it's threshold, and you'll be surprised by how low it can be.

Challenge accepted.
I'm a prot warrior with 61k HP in my avoidance gear, 65k in my EHP gear. 2.5k BV in both sets. Rotface hits for 30k.

Rotface hits me for 30k. I panic and hit Shield Wall. (unglyphed)
Rotface hits for 12k.
Another 12k. Panicking more, I pop Shield Block.
I take a hit for 7k. Avoidance set dies. EHP set lives.

If you think I'm stretching the situation, when's the last time a boss hit you for EXACTLY the same amount EVERY swing for the ENTIRE fight? It's impossible to theorycraft EXACT EHP cap numbers, so why not aim for as much as you can get? You already helped the EHP case by showing that it DOES help you take the extra hits. It's the only non-random way to do so.