Corpse Tongue Coin

[Thaurissan]

I've read the mountains of posts about this trinket. It's a bad trinket, players who use it are bad and/or only concerned about gear score, and anyone who uses it should be laughed at.

I admit to not being a math wizard, although I read theorycrafting and understand it reasonably well. My question is pretty simple and stupid, and hopefully somebody can enlighten me.

It seems to be universally agreed that the Glyph of Indomitability is a better choice than the Corpse Tongue Coin. When I equip the Glyph I gain 1.06% physical damage reduction from armor, going from 69.51% to 70.57%. When I equip the Coin I gain 2.26% dodge, going from 26.22% to 28.48% (with Chill of the Throne that's 6.22-8.48%, but the percentage gain is the same).

If I get hit 10 times for 1000 per hit reduced by 1.06%, the total damage is reduced by 106. If I take the same swings with an extra 2.26% dodge, I take 226 less damage (on average, over time).

That's without taking the proc/on use properties of the trinkets into account. So why is the Glyph better?

[Kazeyonoma]

because you can't count on that dodge happening 2.26% of the time, but you can count on the 1.06% reduction all of the time (barring spells but dodge doesn't help there either). Basically it comes down to healing. Your healers are going to spam heals on you constantly during a fight, they don't care if you dodged an attack because they are going to land said heal anyways. if you consistently take 1.06% damage the whole fight, it makes their heals more effective while adding an extra dodge or two during the fight will simply result in overheal.

[Carisma]

i hate this trinket and totally agree.... and then RS 25 comes out and the tank trinket in there is not much better.. and they do not even put a trinket in 10 man... way to drop the ball there.

[Khilbron]

i hate this trinket and totally agree.... and then RS 25 comes out and the tank trinket in there is not much better.. and they do not even put a trinket in 10 man... way to drop the ball there.

Just because a new raid comes out, doesn't mean they automatically need to make all prior gear completely obsolete. They also are not required to place an item for every item slot in both 10 and 25man. I agree the RS tanking trinket is not ideal, but it is also a nice trinket to have if you have nothing better. Personally I believe they did not drop the ball on RS at all, the encounter was very well designed and is fun, while challenging at the same time.

[Shieldie]

i hate this trinket and totally agree.... and then RS 25 comes out and the tank trinket in there is not much better.. and they do not even put a trinket in 10 man... way to drop the ball there.

its maybe just me... but as soon as the whole stam thing is over with, that trinket is very good. Im going to be using it as soon as I get it from now on (with the exception of fights like sindragosa just to be safe.

too many people undervalue this trinket. im looking forward to raiding again to get my hands on one.

I just really hope the whole dodge aura mechanic fades away in cataclysm, it would make corpsetongue coin and PTS alot more attractive if eh wasnt king... i really doubt they will be able to balance things good enough to fix that but i can atleast hope.

I really wanna be looked at for other things, not just my healthpool

[Hypathia]

Hello, I admit my further reasoning is partially flawed but :
I'm making a tanking simulator which is still not able to determine the ratio between EHC and avoidance precisely, but my assumption is that it's not the value commonly accepted (I mean to gem exclusively stamina). Note that the value itself depends on the fight (healers/tanking class/damage input).
The following is very very approximate.
From what I remember, 1 stamina = 8-12 Armor value in a physical fight. Let's say glyph of Indomitability provide roughly 150 stamina (plus its proc). The reasoning is quite simple. Stamina >> dodge etc...


I don't really agree, from what I'm seeing stamina is roughly equivalent to dodge, it's the gemming cost of stamina (30 points) over dodge (20 points) and the ICC buff which make it more interesting.


On a further note, I strongly believe that there are experienced statistician working for blizzard, and although they commit errors on characteristics values, it's far less important from what we think when they have time to develop them. (Ok I know DK was once really overpowered then underpowered for example before the new will of the necropolis, but I believe there is some “politic” (I mean making DK interesting was important too) in their choices at some levels too.).


In conclusion, I wouldn't take the risk of saying which one is the better. I'm only saying that there are many things to take in consideration.

[amity]

There is nothing to take into consideration, CTC is bad and you should feel bad for saying it's not.
ICC tanking module: Stam and armor.
Even if I had 99.99% avoidance, if I couldn't survive 2 swings from sindy coupled with her pulse damage then I'm dead. You're accounting for damage over time, tanking doesn't work that way and won't till cataclysm. There is no big gap where tanks have to survive 30 seconds without the use of a healer taking minimal rapid damage.

[uglie]

only way corpse tongue would be good is if the fight was pure melee damage, i.e. no magic damage of any kind ( like a duel against a warrior) and it would have to be in a 100% avoidance set, meaning dodge parry and missed chance = 100% ( sorry shield users block doesn't count as avoidance). Which to the best of my memory i have yet to see such a fight.

[Passive]

Shield block can effectively count as avoidance if your shield block value is higher than each incoming swing, so you block the whole hit. Else it is mitigation ^^

Back to the trinket: The trinket will only be good when healers can afford to stop casting heals, and heal reactively rather than proactively/preemptively. I've tried doing it on my priest, it doesn't work. Its even worse for pallies with longer holy light cast times. Until Cataclysm, where we can hopefully cast more heals with relation to how many hits the tank avoids, and where mana matters, this trinket won't be good.

Honestly, healers heal as though a tank has 0% avoidance, I fail to see why people still continue to make posts argueing that it is better, when (in current endgame) it so clearly isn't.

[Thaurissan]

only way corpse tongue would be good is if the fight was pure melee damage, i.e. no magic damage of any kind ( like a duel against a warrior) and it would have to be in a 100% avoidance set, meaning dodge parry and missed chance = 100% ( sorry shield users block doesn't count as avoidance). Which to the best of my memory i have yet to see such a fight.

Armor doesn't do anything against magical damage either. I can understand the argument for STAM being better than avoidance, but not armor. Armor and dodge do precisely the same thing. They reduce incoming physical damage. It seems pretty clear to me that when comparing armor and dodge, whichever piece of gear gives you a larger amount of damage reduction is better by definition.

The argument in favor of armor would be if there is a very short fight with a boss that swings slowly and hits for a large amount of damage, where taking two or three hits in a row would mean death. That was the case in ToC (Gormok being a prime example). Blizzard's stated purpose with Chill of the Throne was to make tanks get hit more often for less damage, making the damage more predictable and less spiky. In that case, avoidance should be more valuable, not less.

Not to mention that with this trinket, if you do happen to take a few big hits, you have the proc that comes into play. It seems pretty well designed to me. I must still be missing something.

[Thaurissan]

Shield block can effectively count as avoidance if your shield block value is higher than each incoming swing, so you block the whole hit. Else it is mitigation ^^

Back to the trinket: The trinket will only be good when healers can afford to stop casting heals, and heal reactively rather than proactively/preemptively. I've tried doing it on my priest, it doesn't work. Its even worse for pallies with longer holy light cast times. Until Cataclysm, where we can hopefully cast more heals with relation to how many hits the tank avoids, and where mana matters, this trinket won't be good.

Honestly, healers heal as though a tank has 0% avoidance, I fail to see why people still continue to make posts argueing that it is better, when (in current endgame) it so clearly isn't.

I don't see the logic in this. If mana is not an issue (and I've almost never seen it be an issue in ICC) why is overhealing a concern?

[Passive]

The point of armor is that it reduces the damage when you DO get hit. When you get hit, your dodge rating does NOTHING. Armor allows you to survive in the worst case scenario longer than dodge does, which is why we rely on armor and we don't rely on dodge. If you want to argue against this theres probably tons of other threads to post in, thats if you can find one that hasn't already been locked...

Your arguement about "less incoming damage, over a given time" only stands if the tank has 1 massive health pool to survive the fight, and no healer. Noone is saying that avoidance won't make you take less damage over the course of a fight. What we're all saying is that avoidance will NEVER save you in the worst case scenario, when armor and stamina (effective health) WILL. You don't wipe on Lich King heroic because you took 1,100,000 damage in the fight instead of 1,000,000 damage; you wipe because you didn't manage to survive the worst case scenario, which happened in a very short amount of time.

I'm not sure I can even be bothered dicussing this any more because it just comes up time and time again and has been proven that EH > avoidance in ICC, time and time again. Thread lock incoming.

Edit: in response to where you quoted me. I never said mana was an issue, and I never said overhealing was a concern. I was talking about furute healing in Cataclysm when I mentioned a change in healing style. But I thought that was really, really obvious?

[blbbax]

Dodge is unreliable. Stam and armor aren't. Not all hits are melee and proc the trinket. That's all there is to it really.

[Thaurissan]

The point of armor is that it reduces the damage when you DO get hit. When you get hit, your dodge rating does NOTHING. Armor allows you to survive in the worst case scenario longer than dodge does, which is why we rely on armor and we don't rely on dodge. If you want to argue against this theres probably tons of other threads to post in, thats if you can find one that hasn't already been locked...

Your arguement about "less incoming damage, over a given time" only stands if the tank has 1 massive health pool to survive the fight, and no healer. Noone is saying that avoidance won't make you take less damage over the course of a fight. What we're all saying is that avoidance will NEVER save you in the worst case scenario, when armor and stamina (effective health) WILL. You don't wipe on Lich King heroic because you took 1,100,000 damage in the fight instead of 1,000,000 damage; you wipe because you didn't manage to survive the worst case scenario, which happened in a very short amount of time.

I'm not sure I can even be bothered dicussing this any more because it just comes up time and time again and has been proven that EH > avoidance in ICC, time and time again. Thread lock incoming.

Edit: in response to where you quoted me. I never said mana was an issue, and I never said overhealing was a concern. I was talking about furute healing in Cataclysm when I mentioned a change in healing style. But I thought that was really, really obvious?

It's a little more complicated than you're making it. The question is not merely whether armor or dodge is better with all else being equal. The question is: at what point does a larger amount of dodge become better than a smaller amount of armor?

If I had a (hypothetical) level 60 trinket with +50 armor, would that be better than the CTC too?

[Davih]

Dodge becomes better when you are armor capped which is about 49000 (i dont know it specifically, maybe 47000 cant say of the top of my head) in current content
Armor is reliable (will effect every melee hit) while avoidance isnt reliable (will only affect some melee hits)
Armor is unreliable against casters (armor doesn't reduce damage done by casts, only physical) and dodge and parry are unreliable against casters, while miss isnt. (you cant dodge or parry a spell, but the spell can miss)
You cant gem for miss, you get miss through defense and that is the only way to increase the chance of spells missing.
Therefore Stamina is better on caster fights to make you able to eat more spells. Armor is better on physical fights because it decreases the damage taken from.
Look up agathonns post about "why we do what we do" (i think it was his)
It explains why we go for armor and stamina. theres no point trying to say its not the best. Lots of people have done tests to prove its the best for icc which is current content.

[Martie]

It's a little more complicated than you're making it. The question is not merely whether armor or dodge is better with all else being equal. The question is: at what point does a larger amount of dodge become better than a smaller amount of armor?

If I had a (hypothetical) level 60 trinket with +50 armor, would that be better than the CTC too?

If you only look at current content gear, armor and stamina are just about always better.

I'd say that the coin is almost as good as essence of gossamer when looking only at the raw stat - the proc makes the coin slightly better, but not a lot.

[Thaurissan]

Dodge becomes better when you are armor capped which is about 49000 (i dont know it specifically, maybe 47000 cant say of the top of my head) in current content
Armor is reliable (will effect every melee hit) while avoidance isnt reliable (will only affect some melee hits)
Armor is unreliable against casters (armor doesn't reduce damage done by casts, only physical) and dodge and parry are unreliable against casters, while miss isnt. (you cant dodge or parry a spell, but the spell can miss)
You cant gem for miss, you get miss through defense and that is the only way to increase the chance of spells missing.
Therefore Stamina is better on caster fights to make you able to eat more spells. Armor is better on physical fights because it decreases the damage taken from.
Look up agathonns post about "why we do what we do" (i think it was his)
It explains why we go for armor and stamina. theres no point trying to say its not the best. Lots of people have done tests to prove its the best for icc which is current content.

I read through his entire post, and I'm not convinced. The reasoning is that the randomness of avoidance is unreliable in a scenario where there is a short window of high damage. The thing is, I have a variety of means of dealing with that situation. For one thing, I'm a Paladin, which means I have Ardent Defender. I also have Divine Protection and the on-use function of the Corroded Skeleton Key for CDs. The proc from the Coin occurs at 35%, the same point as Ardent Defender's damage reduction. If I can't survive high burst with all of those tools, I'm just way too undergeared for the fight, or I have really bad healers.

If the fight is magic based, neither armor nor dodge does anything for you. I'm not arguing against the value of stamina. I would argue that the competition between dodge and armor is much closer than that thread would suggest. Close enough that I think it probably makes sense to go with the piece that has a higher stat value.

[Thaurissan]

If you only look at current content gear, armor and stamina are just about always better.

I'd say that the coin is almost as good as essence of gossamer when looking only at the raw stat - the proc makes the coin slightly better, but not a lot.

It's this kind of absurd comment that makes me want to not follow the "conventional wisdom".

[Mend]

The CTC trinket is not bad if you value avoidance, but it doesn't have a spot in your EHP tanking set. Here is the armor reduction calculation of the proc:

Our example tank has 32k armor which seems average for an ICC geared tank, now when the CTC Procs:

32000 jumps to 37712

65.7% Damage reduction before the proc.

69.3% Damage reduction during the proc.

That's roughly 4% damage reduction when you are at 35%- health. And since armor does have diminishing returns, the more armor you have the less the damage reduction will be.

I really don't think the damage reduction is going to make a big difference to your survival, compared to the chance of say satrina's scarab to save your life with the passive stamina and on-use effect, your chances of surviving because of the CTC proc are extremely minimal.

[Mend]

If you only look at current content gear, armor and stamina are just about always better.

I'd say that the coin is almost as good as essence of gossamer when looking only at the raw stat - the proc makes the coin slightly better, but not a lot.

I don't understand how are you comparing them ?

The essence has 157 stamina while fully raidbuffed with kings, ICC 25% buff and 9% stamina modifier in your talents(bigger for druids).
While the CTC has a static 3.3% dodge that is affected by diminishing returns.