Why We Do What We Do (An in depth explanation of EHP and ICC 3.3.3 tanking mechanics)

[MellvarTank]

Marrowgar 10 hard is much harder than marrowgar 25 hard, hardest encounters in 25m are the ones in which you need room for moving like it could be on blood princes putricide and blood queen. Sindragosa is easier too, and i'm not the only one who says it.

For someone who hasn't been past Saurfang (reg) in 25 man (for end-wing bosses).... you sure seem to think you know a lot about heroics.

Oh, and you should probably mention you haven't cleared Sindra on 10 hardmode yet either.

I smell troll.

[Ion]

And 2 of all those nerds that always show numbers and never troll around have answered me "That's never, ever true.". Now, i suppose, i'm still the one who's trolling?

"All those nerds [showing] numbers" are trying to mathematically prove to you (who seems, at this point, too stupid to understand) what they're saying is true. You're doing the opposite...making claims that are completely unsubstantiated.

All i can tell you is that i never wiped because of healers having to turn around or stuff, when it happens i use my cooldowns, that's what they are for. And i don't care if that's not enough for you, the game is about progresion, your opinion does not count more than facts, and it should not count more for you too. And it's not that common to have to use cooldowns, actually. Having 64kHP icc full buffed instead of 74Khp does not seem to be the key to me on emergency situations, compared to a cooldown that lets me take half damage (that is when you can use EHP) 10kHP are nothing (and don't let me demonstrate it please. It's like 260k vs 300k, there's much slacking space in those 12 seconds :P)

Everyone has those cooldowns. Sometimes they're not up. That's the point of the "worst case scenario". And "don't let me demonstrate it please" (by which I assume you're trying to say "don't MAKE me demonstrate it")...please do, that's what we'd all LOVE to see.

If you are in a condition that forces you to have 50% overhealing than probably you did not understand the game and you need to switch, or your healers are better to respec.

This is just plain disrespectful to people who have done more in this game and for this community than you have. The authors and contributors here have done a lot to help people who have trouble with the game learn how to clear the content they're interested in doing, and some guy with 8/12 25 achieves coming in and badmouthing people who have cleared 12/12 hardmodes and who daily help other people clear content is just completely absurd.

Clearly you have no desire to learn, you're just here to troll and badmouth. IMO you should either stop talking shit and start actually proving your point (assuming you do actually have one) or just leave/be banned.

[Aggathon]

Armory link -> http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...m&cn=Tubolinag

I like... I don't know where to begin. You're saccing over like 8k hit points for like 200 something block value and AP.

We post here to help people man, we've all had 1st hand experience when this stuff was breaking edge content. We don't do this to troll people, though sometimes it gets hard not to when they're too ornery =P, but seriously. We're not posting in this thread to troll you. We're seriously here to help people optimize your character, and I'm sorry but there is no way gemming for that much strength is optimal. It might be "doable" but it is FAR from optimal.

[Satrina]

I think that we can all dial it down a bit on the labelling of trolls, name-calling and such, and get back to debating tanking mechanics.

[waxmepls]

Nice post, this was a great help for me as I appreciate the quantitative analysis and have just come back to wow in wotlk while also learning to tank.

In Section 4, the central limit theorem probably shouldn't be used as it applies to large samples and it seems as though tank death should be considered on shorter intervals. Nonetheless the gaussian curve is likely a very good guess and a good tool for illustrating your point - in some sense PEH acts as a health buffer vs random damage.

My familiarity with the exact mechanics of every ICC boss is limited, but intuitively it seems as though PEH is good for spike damage fights and a good combination of mitigation and avoidance is good for endurance fights (which, I suppose, no longer exist?). This has probably been pointed out in previous parts of this thread, but being lazy and horrible, I haven't yet read the whole thread.

There ought to be a (theoretical) threshold in which healers can safely react to where PEH is no longer viable. As an absurd example, if you can take 20 swings from a boss due to your PEH, taking one more swing will likely not help - especially if those 20 swings occur over 10-15 seconds. The example is ridiculous, but the point I'm trying to make is if you could realistically plot PEH vs. likelihood of surviving through spike damage (yeah, I'm not strictly defining spike damage here) you should sharp increase until the curve tapers off at some point. Of course the details really matter here, and it's not even clear if attaining enough PEH so that the curve tapers is practical.

I'm not sure if someone bothered to do this, but I tried a crack at writing a simple PEH macro after googling around a bit and not finding one.

/run ChatFrame1:AddMessage(format("PEH: %.2f", UnitHealthMax("player")/(1-(UnitArmor("player")/(UnitArmor("player")+15232.5)))))

Obviously this is quite simplified (doesn't account for raid buffs) and assumes that for say, a druid (like me) you should pop into bear before using it. Hopefully this is useful for deciding between two pieces of gear in a single slot (I was examining an armor trinket vs. stam trinket at the time). Feed back is welcome. Cheers-

wax

[Aggathon]

My familiarity with the exact mechanics of every ICC boss is limited, but intuitively it seems as though PEH is good for spike damage fights and a good combination of mitigation and avoidance is good for endurance fights (which, I suppose, no longer exist?). This has probably been pointed out in previous parts of this thread, but being lazy and horrible, I haven't yet read the whole thread.

Correct.

As far as a threshold, it's hard to nail down a specific number (obviously 100k HP is overkill for Karazhan for example) but like... when is enough enough? In fights like Sindragosa and TLK, you can easy take 100k worth of damage in a very short time span. When I first did festergut NORMAL when the boss had 2 stacks I took a really unlucky string and took 100K HP worth of damage in 5 seconds, but was able to be healed through it, mainly because of how much armor and EHP in general I had stacked. Imo for progression in ICC, we still haven't seen the line of "okay, that's enough hit points" yet. For H-TLK25 (which would be the high end of the high end) you simply can't get enough EHP.

Imo the real "threshold" of how much EHP for X boss you need is, "do we consistantly kill the boss without me dying? Okay, I have enough HP for this boss" =P. That's not to say you have enough for the second boss though.

[Satorri]

Imo the real "threshold" of how much EHP for X boss you need is, "do we consistantly kill the boss without me dying? Okay, I have enough HP for this boss" =P. That's not to say you have enough for the second boss though.

And it really is all you can hang your hat on, so to speak.

That said, there is a funny sort of irony. One of the major reasons that EH is such a happy comfortable thing to rely on is *certainty*. You know you will always have health and armor on every incidence of damage, with 100% confidence. But then, you never can really tell when enough is enough thanks to all the other random or seemingly random (technically the human element isn't random, just complex enough that you can't predict it every time, reliably) elements in the system.

[Passive]

We all complain about randomness, but its one of the reasons we all still play!

[Aggathon]

We all complain about randomness, but its one of the reasons we all still play!

Speak for yourself, I quit.

[Bovinity]

Imo the real "threshold" of how much EHP for X boss you need is, "do we consistantly kill the boss without me dying? Okay, I have enough HP for this boss" =P. That's not to say you have enough for the second boss though.

There's only been one time where I said to myself, "Jeez, Bov, that's enough EHP probably." and that was in early WotLK before Bear mechanics were changed/fixed.

I was over the armor cap with Inspiration up (back when it was an armor increase) and I had some disgusting amount of HP for Naxx-era content, despite the fact that I had blues on. Patchwerk tickled. This is why Bears had to be nerfed/fixed, heh. I started stacking agility and still had disgusting amounts of EHP.

[Callapez]

Well, after some reading on the posts i believe that you guys are turning the discussion the wrong way. I've done a post like this myself, not as complete tho. Pretty much just intro pratical and conclusions. I think the title of this topic shouldnt be EHP and ICC, should be mitigation and ICC. Tanks dont gem and trinket stamina because we like to have 50ks hp and rule in dala streets. The so called all time discussion is mitigation over avoidance. EH is just one of the mitigation paramethers. While discussing the subject you cant assume that a tank with a lot of hp has that only. A mitigation tank needs a high amount of armor aswell to back up for the lack of avoidance. We will take more hits. The point is that we take less damage from the hits that land because of armor, and also have the health pool to sustain several hits. Block ( even tho death knights tanking mechs messed up stats distribution on values like block rating/ value ) is also an important parameter for mitigation. Shield block on warriors and that other thing on paladins is extremely usefull for a mitigation tank because you know that while that is active you will take hits, and that amount you block togheter with the amount reduced by armor while compensate our lack of avoidance.

Point is: an unlucky avoidance tank will cause way more wipes than a mitigation tank with some good healers backing him up. We need to stack stamina in gems because there is really nothing else to stack while following the mitigation line of gearing. You cant gem armor ( i would if it was possible )

( Sorry for bad english, falling asleep. )

Cheers

[MellvarTank]

I would disagree with calling EH mitigation. It simply is not. I am not a mitigation or avoidance gearing tank, I currently gear for EH. This means in a magic heavy fight I will gear up maximum Stamina at the expense of armor, and in a physical fight I will gear up equally for the two.

EH is gearing for the worst case scenario, not the best case (or even the median case), which is the point of this thread. Aggathon is showing the math behind this reasoning. The worst case scenario assumes that you get hit fully, not that you blocked it.

[Aggathon]

And honestly one of the first reasons I posted this was because people were saying gem for dodge and parry in ICC (some said because of chill of the throne and assumed that 20% needed to be made up). I agree that armor and resistance has a very important place in ICC, and that is encompassed in EH. I don't really play my warrior nor do I have time to do an armor vs. stamina extrapolation as well like I kind of wanted to. School sucks! lol. I wanna go back to working D=

[Callapez]

Well i think EH is in fact mitigation if you look at the damage not as numbers but as a % of your hp. For exemple, you get hit by 20ks, and your hp is 80ks in ICC. It can be considered mitigation if you turn it into %. The way it is the incoming damage representes 20% of your hp. If you had 60ks it would be 33%. So yes it is mitigation.

I agree with you saying that EH is gearing for the worst but in progress we should always be prepared for the worst. I would rather have an avoidance set for ToC f.e. to ease up healers job.

[Satorri]

EH is not mitigation, technically speaking, it is a form of accounting that expresses our health pool with mitigation built in. So, you could say that EH includes mitigation, but we also don't apply EH to any numbers you actually see in game...

It is a semantic distinction, not meaningful to the discussion, though.

[Callapez]

im discussing if hp can be considered a mitigation paramether or not

[Kazeyonoma]

hp is not mitigation by any definition. mitigation means reduction of damage. hp is the pool by which if you run out you are dead...

[Bodasafa]

You could refer to HP as a sponge if your looking for an analogy. It soaks damage but can only do so to a point. That point is when you die.

[MellvarTank]

You could refer to HP as a sponge if your looking for an analogy. It soaks damage but can only do so to a point. That point is when you die.

This is why tanks that used to gear for EH were called mana sponges. They would just soak damage and heals. It used to be bad, but in ICC it is the way to go.

Discussing ToC in a thread dedicated to 3.3.3 (ICC) is silly. When you outgear content, gear however you want including gemming spirit... because it doesn't matter. In content that you do not outgear severely, you gear for that content (ICC=EH). What do I mean outgear? We 11 manned Ony 25 for fun. There are people that I'm sure could go in with less. I remember wiping on that fight just last tier.

[Satorri]

This is why tanks that used to gear for EH were called mana sponges. They would just soak damage and heals. It used to be bad, but in ICC it is the way to go.

I'm being picky, but back in BC when tanks geared for EH, they were gearing for health. Correct me if I am wrong but I think there was all of one way to boost your armor, and rarely any gear variation, particularly with bonus armor options.

But they were absolutely mana sponges. I liked me a good tank with some avoidance, in what small measure they could add before t6! >.>