Gearing for EHP or Avoidance

[Theotherone]

I swear, I'm just gonna start telling tanks to gem spirit. (not).

Hey, don't knock spirit on warriors, my lvl 22 Warrior tanked her first instance last night, Razorfen Kraul, and picked up the shield off the last boss; it's got some nice spirit on it and I get wait to equip it when I hit lvl 27 http://www.wowhead.com/item=6694. Spirit rocks.

[praetoria]

No. The only thing that is good for is for soloing old raids (which you still dont need but meh). +18 stam or +22 defrating will all serve you better.

Glyph choice is a more personal question. If your survivability is fine, more importantly, if your healing team is fine, you can probably do without the survival glyphs. Shield Wall & Last Stand glyphs get those cooldowns down to 2 mins. With the averge fight in icc being around 5 mins, it means you have 4 major cooldowns per fight at your disposal.

Question is, do you need that much? When i was starting out in ICC and we had no buffs, i was making liberal use of those cooldowns and the glyphs made a huge difference. Now, with the 30% buff, i use once or twice, if ever, any cooldown. I took a much more undergeared toon into icc (running with 3 tank toons, yay!) and never had to worry about survival or have the feeling i didnt have enough cooldowns. As such, in today's 30% raiding of normal modes, i would go after other glyphs, like devastate or blocking or cleave for more threat. Best is to go in with stacks of each and change accordingly inside the raid instance to find what glyph best suits your needs. I regularly carry 5 different glyphs with me to customize for the fight.

this depends how u use ur shield block.. by my calculations, its an addition 616 armor. so far better then the others IF you use bs as more of a rotation then a cd. but i cant immagine as a warrior using bs as a cd and not having it up at almost all times

[MellvarTank]

by my calculations, its an addition 616 armor.

Could you post your calculations?

[Loganisis]

this depends how u use ur shield block.. by my calculations, its an addition 616 armor. so far better then the others IF you use bs as more of a rotation then a cd. but i cant immagine as a warrior using bs as a cd and not having it up at almost all times

Minor point, you don't have it up at almost all times either. You have it up a maximum of 25% of the time with talent points reducing the cool down.

It's almost always on CD for you, but that's not the same as almost always being up.

[Fledern]

Shield block has a meaning for paladins because with the current gear available, it's quite easy for them to become unhittable, at which point extra shieldblock value translates directly into effective health vs melee. It's also one reason paladins have lower base health than a similarly geared warrior.

Warriors can almost never get to unhittable (Anub add tanking gimmick gear excluded), thus, shieldblock value becomes a very minor improvement whereas stamina & defense enchants provide constant benefits.

[Aggathon]

but i cant immagine as a warrior using bs as a cd and not having it up at almost all times

Uhh... wut?

[MellvarTank]

He meant SB Agg, Shield Block.

[praetoria]

Minor point, you don't have it up at almost all times either. You have it up a maximum of 25% of the time with talent points reducing the cool down.

It's almost always on CD for you, but that's not the same as almost always being up.

it really depends on the fight and how well you make use of it.. fights like surfang , rot, its probily up 40% of the time im taking damage.. and i always have another cd on had when it drops.. is its more or less a part of my rotation.. not a panic button

[praetoria]

Shield block has a meaning for paladins because with the current gear available, it's quite easy for them to become unhittable, at which point extra shieldblock value translates directly into effective health vs melee. It's also one reason paladins have lower base health than a similarly geared warrior.

Warriors can almost never get to unhittable (Anub add tanking gimmick gear excluded), thus, shieldblock value becomes a very minor improvement whereas stamina & defense enchants provide constant benefits.

Im not trying to be unhitable.. sb gives an armor increase.. mine personally based on my stats is 616. combined with otehr cds and trinkets, its more or less incorportated in my rotation

[praetoria]

He meant SB Agg, Shield Block.

win

[MellvarTank]

You can have shield block up for a total of 1 minute in a 5 minute fight... ie: 20% of the time... unless I buggered the math.

[praetoria]

You can have shield block up for a total of 1 minute in a 5 minute fight... ie: 20% of the time... unless I buggered the math.

thats correct. im jsut saying that your not being attacked 100% of the time in all fights.

[Petninja]

You're assigning a value to the Plating that you shouldn't be applying, at least without first making some assumptions (which should be passed on to the community). The damage reduction from Titanium Plating will only equal 600 armor at a certain sized hit from a boss swing. Titanium Plating has a better value vs Blood Princes than it does vs H LK. Armor doesn't have the same variable in it's value. I'm not going to argue against using the Plating, as I prefer it myself. That's partly because I pvp a lot and like the built in weapon chain, and I don't have two of the same shield to enchant differently. I'm just suggesting that you don't compare it to armor, since the only similarity they have is that they are both in the damage mitigation category.

[Aggathon]

I knew he meant SB, and if a warrior is just popping SB every time it's up, they're doing it wrong.

SB is a VERY powerful cooldown, that, while it should be used very frequently, should be saved for the times you need it, especially since it is both an offensive and defensive cooldown. Against a mob that hits for ~20k, SB is about a 33% reduction in damage for my toon. That's GOOD. It's also the best threat cooldown, imo. The proper use of shield block (see: not spamming it every time it's up) makes the difference between a good warrior and a great warrior.

Also please explain how 71 SBV = 600+ armor, that makes zero sense to me. Or are you saying using SB is equal to gaining 600 armor? that also makes zero sense to me because you're going to be mitigating a LOT more than 600 armor would with it up, unless the boss is hitting for like 100k+ or something, in which case you have bigger problems.

This thread is confusing to me and doesn't make a lot of sense. I demand math and numbers!

[praetoria]

You're assigning a value to the Plating that you shouldn't be applying, at least without first making some assumptions (which should be passed on to the community). The damage reduction from Titanium Plating will only equal 600 armor at a certain sized hit from a boss swing. Titanium Plating has a better value vs Blood Princes than it does vs H LK. Armor doesn't have the same variable in it's value. I'm not going to argue against using the Plating, as I prefer it myself. That's partly because I pvp a lot and like the built in weapon chain, and I don't have two of the same shield to enchant differently. I'm just suggesting that you don't compare it to armor, since the only similarity they have is that they are both in the damage mitigation category.

yea.. i went wayyyy off topic

[praetoria]

I knew he meant SB, and if a warrior is just popping SB every time it's up, they're doing it wrong.

SB is a VERY powerful cooldown, that, while it should be used very frequently, should be saved for the times you need it, especially since it is both an offensive and defensive cooldown. Against a mob that hits for ~20k, SB is about a 33% reduction in damage for my toon. That's GOOD. It's also the best threat cooldown, imo. The proper use of shield block (see: not spamming it every time it's up) makes the difference between a good warrior and a great warrior.

I think we have unknowingly agreed on the use of shield block. Im not saying i spam it at any oppertunity, I am saying that i keep it up as much as possible granted im not wasting the ability. I cant say I use this as a cooldown because Ive always considered cooldown as a panic or epic save button. shield wall is an ability i use as a cooldown. when surfang goes into frenzy, have my fingure on shield wall.. but on the taunt, when im building threat, i make sure shield block is but up right before my shield slam.

for sbv math.. please see thread titled " tanking calculations"

[Aggathon]

shield block is an amazing cooldown, it is one of my first "oh shit" buttons.

[Satrina]

Santoro, you do realise that 71 shield block value is equivalent to 616 armour for exactly one amount of damage you get hit for at a given amount of armour, right?

For example, say you have 40000 armour. Against a level 83 boss, that's 67.7835% mitigation. You then want to take 40616 armour, or 70.9442% mitigation, and then solve for the amount of damage coming in that would give a difference of 71 damage taken at both of those amounts of armour. For 40000 armour, that is 22505 damage, or a hit of about 6610 after armour mitigation (not exactly a fear-inducing hit these days). If you block that hit, your damage taken is reduced to 6539, which equates the the previous mitigation of 70.9442% or 40616 armour.

For a hit of 22505 unmitigated damage, your 71 shield block value is equivalent to 616 armour. This happens at no other point as long as you have 40000 armour. If you instead have 35000 armour, the unmitigated damage value is instead 18705. If you are at the armour cap (49905), then the damage value is 31000. And so on, with exactly one {damage, armour} pair across all possible armour values (0-49905) giving that differential.

The important thing to take away here is that is it nonsensical to say "71 shield block value is equivalent to 616 armour". That is only true at exactly one point in the damage continuum. For any given amount of damage you take, the armour equivalence your shield block value varies, and the harder it hits, the worse it gets.

[praetoria]

[QUOTE=Warriors can almost never get to unhittable (Anub add tanking gimmick gear excluded), thus, shieldblock value becomes a very minor improvement whereas stamina & defense enchants provide constant benefits. .[/QUOTE]

the following is a quote from the warrior guide on this site:

To start with, you’ll use Shield Slam whenever it’s up. As soon as SaB procs, you use SS. You’ll also want to note that Shield Block, instead of a panic button, is much more important as a way of increasing your SS hits.

this is why i use sb as part of my rotation. its not strictly a defencive ability. furthermore, this is why plating is far better then defence or stam (in my oppinion).

going back to my orrigional suggestion, using sb as part of your rotation for threat gen is win, and plating provides a far larger bennifit then the stam or defence.

[Aggathon]

How many times do you need threat gen after the first 10 seconds? I'm also pretty sure that's not from my guide, that's from the outdated one.