By role By Boss EH vs Avoidance

[Senusret]

Each boss we come to present tanks with a gear choice. Has anyone considered creating a table that breaks down the tank roles for each boss in ICC and theroycrafting which way you be better gearing for that encounter? Does gearing EH come out on top more times then not? When does Avoidance come out ahead? If this has been done forgive me, as I am new to tankspot.

[krc]

Basically EH > Avoidance for all bosses but the Gunship captain, but don't trade off tiny amounts of EH for huge amounts of avoidance. This is because of how bosses kill players, the majority of bosses kill players by bursting them down with in a few seconds with a good amount of them having either unavoidable damage or a stun.

In the damage potential bosses can put out with in a couple of seconds avoidance relys on RNG too much epecially if the combo that kills you has a good amount of unavoidable damage making your /praying to avoid the melee attack. An example is Gormok, he kills you with a Melee, Impale, Blled combo, only the Melee is avoidable so when the Melee hits you you will get insta-gimped if your EH isn't high enough.

Obviously there are a few exceptions, the boss where avoidance is quite useful is Gunship because the captain has a stacking debuff and when ever it hits you he gains a certain percentage increase in power, when it gets too high your group has to leave ship and slow down dps done. Also don't forget a boss like Algalon that can hit very hard and very quickly could kill you through a streak of parry gibs so in that situation expertise can be extremely helpful.

[Satorri]

Hasn't been done yet, per se. Though it is neither easy nor clear cut. I suspect we'll just keep rehashing the relative considerations of different survival values.

It could be a fun exercise though, maybe if you change the title and the content to a discussion of a particular encounter? Get the ball rolling?

[krc]

I guess a close to exact value of EH to avoidance could be done through some sort of simulator. I remember it was either in late 3.0 or early 3.1 there was a member who was doing a simulator where you could enter in your armory, one or more healers armory's and a boss and could factor all of those in and create a combat log of the simulated fight and how long you lived.

But the simulator was only in beta testing and eventually got abandoned with in a couple of weeks. It would take a fair bit of time and effort to complete something like that but I imagine it could be done accuratly.

[Proletaria]

ICC as far as i've experienced/gathered:

Wing1- EH, possibly avoidance encounter in airship, but that is debated
Wing2- EH, no discussion.

[mistersix]

I've seen a number of arguments here suggesting avoidance for Saurafang as well in an effort to help slow down him building blood power.

[krc]

Well for Saurfang if you are switching tanks avoidance isn't going to do anything to stop his BP generation and for Mark of the Fallen Champion through various WoL parses it has been shown that it will proc every swing not just when the swing makes contact.

[MudNova]

Well idk... Everyone is saying that these fights are EH.. but..
Back in togc EH was a NEED..

Right now there is no unavoidable damage that is going to kill you, tanks with high amounts of avoidance are just as good as tanks with lots of EH, the difference is that EH takes more overall damage, and avoidance takes bigger hits in their HP bar

[krc]

In normal modes though it is really irrelevant if you go EH or avoidance since the bosses aren't really a big threat to kill a tank. In heroic modes we will see if either EH or avoidance shines.

[Hammerfists]

you cant compare 25 ToGC to non-hardmode ICC. They are on different paths of progression and if you have half your gear at 258 you over gear normal mode only thing you need to do is figure out the encounter.

Blizzard even knows this is a problem. They want to have healers not top off tanks with every cast as well as the likely hood of going oom. You have to consider avoidence is a die roll when HP is constantly there. To help healers figure out a good cooldown/trinket rotation and get an add-on ability announcer to let them know when you are taking less damage.

[Edgewalker]

In normal modes though it is really irrelevant if you go EH or avoidance since the bosses aren't really a big threat to kill a tank. In heroic modes we will see if either EH or avoidance shines.

I'll tell you in advance - EH.

[Proletaria]

I'll tell you in advance - EH.

Truth

[Aggathon]

I'll tell you in advance - EH.

Quoted For Truth

[Proletaria]

Obligatory "but you take more damage over time," rebuttal.

(just in case someone missed my last post, this is sarcasm)

[Shenron]

It seems people are really hating on avoidance. It still seems too early to tell. I still use avoidance and it seems to work fine, for now. And I am still using hybrid gems for the little more avoidance.

I don't think much can be said yet on normal ICC.

[Satorri]

There isn't much hate in the matter, but perhaps a bit of zealotry, by which I mean blind faith righteously proclaimed. =)

Avoidance is more often attributed to insufficiency than it is actually tried and tested, but then few "serious" raid guilds/tanks will really want to test out theories when it's business time.

[Felycitas]

Obviously there are a few exceptions, the boss where avoidance is quite useful is Gunship because the captain has a stacking debuff and when ever it hits you he gains a certain percentage increase in power, when it gets too high your group has to leave ship and slow down dps done.

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f128/...tml#post346268

"The gunship captain gains a stack of the buff whenever he performs a normal melee swing (or a Rending Throw), even if the swing misses or is dodged, blocked, parried or absorbed. However the ability to stack the buff is subject to an internal cooldown, which is why not every melee swing stacks it."

I've seen a bunch of comments by Ghostcrawler on the whole EH vs Avoidance debate and how they're wanting to shy away from tanks stacking stamina.. but I've yet to see any fights that reward getting more avoidance.

[Roana]

There isn't much hate in the matter, but perhaps a bit of zealotry, by which I mean blind faith righteously proclaimed. =)

Avoidance is more often attributed to insufficiency than it is actually tried and tested, but then few "serious" raid guilds/tanks will really want to test out theories when it's business time.

I know a couple fairly avoidance-heavy tanks (they still do gem, gear, and enchant for stamina where possible without a penalty, but don't skip socket bonuses and don't go for EH over avoidance on items, especially trinkets), and who seem to be doing pretty well.

[mistersix]

I've seen a bunch of comments by Ghostcrawler on the whole EH vs Avoidance debate and how they're wanting to shy away from tanks stacking stamina.. but I've yet to see any fights that reward getting more avoidance.

Well, they don't want to favor avoidance either per se since they point to it's effects as being the reason they "have" to make boss damage so outrageously high and make healers burst into flames like their a drummer in a metal band.

GC often chides tanks for EH stacking and not investing in more threat and damage however but the encounters don't really ever favor that either since the "dps race" bosses also tend to be the ones that hit like dumptrucks anyway.

[Bovinity]

It seems people are really hating on avoidance. It still seems too early to tell. I still use avoidance and it seems to work fine, for now. And I am still using hybrid gems for the little more avoidance.

I don't think much can be said yet on normal ICC.

I don't think people hate avoidance (I like it, personally). But EH has the benefit of never being the "wrong" stat to stack. It's always going to be the safe bet. EH never fails you, it never "doesn't work", it doesn't get ignored by certain mechanics or elements of the fights, it never really hits a hard cap or stops scaling or hits diminishing returns...it's just a great bread and butter stat. Fights also have EH "requirements" that generally must be met or else.

Yeah, there's some exceptions, I'm sure. Someone will quote one. Ready, set, go.