Tanks should never stack stam in Cataclysm. (Actually, it's a question.)

[Kanzer]

You won't need much stamina stacking early in the raids but it becomes significantly more important as you approach the end of normal modes and begin to venture into the hard modes. At that point it's back to the old EH route where the tank is getting creamed and needs to be buy their healers some time.

I wouldn't say that.

It's been said plenty already, but the debates will always rage on (which is healthy sometimes). There is alot more to tanking and staying alive than simply "avoid as much damage as possible" and its generally people with that mindset that end up being those spiky hard to heal tanks. Right now, being able to predict the damage taken, and control that damage taken, far outweighs avoiding as much as possible. In this light, for warriors and paladins anyway, mastery is by far simply the stat to go for.

Dodge and parry are important, sure, they always have been, but its never been wise to stack it, and still isn't. Why? Because its not predictable. Yes it'll occasionally be that thing that saves you from dieing when you avoid that hit at low health, but just as much if not more, its the thing that fails and you end up dieing anyway.

Stamina..its not as important as it was in Wrath, no, but its still important. But not important enough to gem for outside of say...20mastery/30 stam gems, and the helm/shoulder/chest enchant. All of those things will most likely provide you with all the stam you need, given you are wearing 346/359/372 gear.

Someone said above the exact pattern I'm following right now as far as gemming as a prot warrior.

Yellow: Mastery
Red: Parry/Mastery
Blue: Mastery/stam

[Colganough]

Gearing for mastery this way also means that you can obtain 75% combined block, dodge and parry chance and when you use Shield Block (increases block chance by 25% for 10s) you are guaranteed to never take a full hit. This in effect is a 30% shield wall to physical hits. In later raid tiers it may be possible to gear for 100% combined block and avoidance, and could even be absolutely necessary in the way that warriors would keep up Shield Block the whole time in TBC, to make sure a portion of any hit taken was blocked (avoid crushing blows).

You do make some good points in what you are saying but combining the percentages from different stats does not mean a 100% chance you will not be hit. Say for instance (and simplicity) your block, parry, and dodge are all 25% and you do pop your shield block to increase your block chance by another 25% which would bring your block chance to 50% and all the numbers would add up to 100%. That does sound like 100% chance to not be hit but that's not how it works. With these same numbers, for each hit incoming, you have a 25% chance to parry OR dodge and then another 50% chance to block, however, you cannot block, parry, and dodge the same hit at the same time so you still have the 75% that you will not parry or dodge and 50% that you will not block. You cannot add these percentages together and say that you will never get hit, the only way that could possible happen is if you reach 100% chance to block OR parry OR dodge.

[Kazeyonoma]

colganough, you might want to read up on how the combat single roll system works.

you DO add the percentages together to get your unhittability.

http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...e-Combat-Table

[Bovinity]

however, you cannot block, parry, and dodge the same hit at the same time so you still have the 75% that you will not parry or dodge and 50% that you will not block.

What you're describing (Simultaneously being able to block, dodge, and parry the same attack) is exactly what would happen if the combat rolls worked the way you're presenting...simply because you'd have separate rolls to dodge, block and parry and you could successfully make all those rolls.

But the system works on a one-roll system where, in fact, you can reach 100% to not be hit because you do indeed add all three percentages up to come up with the different ranges in which that "roll" will result in different outcomes.

[feralminded]

Yeah it's a one roll system. However I see a lot of tanks who get the math wrong still. First of all you have to defeat 102.4% chance to hit which works against most people's 100% math, second of all the boss has an implcit 5% miss chance, which helps. In the end the goal to be "unhittable" with shieldblock up is a combined 72.4% Parry+Dodge+Block, however I seem to see every value BUT that thrown around.

Still honestly I don't see the big deal in pushing to that value. So your shield block is a mini-shield wall, it's pretty much still a mini-shield wall if you have a combined 70% parry/dodge/block. In the end I still think we need to gear for minimal damage taken over time since very VERY few bosses are any real burst threat on normal modes. It amuses me to no end how hung up tanks seem to get on concepts like "unhittable". In the post-wrath world the #1 concept you should worry about is called "your healer's mana". Assuming your stats aren't completely out of whack (which really isn't possible given DR and current item stats), as long as your healers don't make some kind of mistake you will live until they go oom and then you will die. Whatever makes their mana pool last longest is the "right" way to gear.

[Andenthal]

Still honestly I don't see the big deal in pushing to that value. So your shield block is a mini-shield wall, it's pretty much still a mini-shield wall if you have a combined 70% parry/dodge/block. In the end I still think we need to gear for minimal damage taken over time since very VERY few bosses are any real burst threat on normal modes. It amuses me to no end how hung up tanks seem to get on concepts like "unhittable". In the post-wrath world the #1 concept you should worry about is called "your healer's mana". Assuming your stats aren't completely out of whack (which really isn't possible given DR and current item stats), as long as your healers don't make some kind of mistake you will live until they go oom and then you will die. Whatever makes their mana pool last longest is the "right" way to gear.

Here's the thing....

First, tanks don't die "over time". Tanks die from either mistakes, or burst damage - both of which happen very quickly. Secondly, taking predictable damage has the potential to save more healer mana than potentially taking less damage over a long stretch of time. Spiky damage intake is very stressful on healer mana, even if you're taking less damage in the long run. Allowing healers to use their most efficient spells by becoming very predictable to heal will save the most mana over the course of a fight. For at least shield tanks, this equates to filling up the combat table, or more simply, stacking Mastery.

[Katzazi]

Only for completion: miss, parry, dodge, block (and for non tanks crit hits and theoretical crushing blows) are on a one roll system. However since we are speaking about block and probably crit block this crit block is on a two roll system. So the first roll determinse (for prot warriors) if it is a miss, a parry, a dodge, a block or a hit. If it is a block then a second roll is used to see if it is a normal or a crit block.

About healer mana: Healers use different spells for different dmg patterns. They can heal hpm efficient or hps efficient. They cannot do both. If they see the tank dropping low they will use hps efficient spells. Especially if a big hit is incomming. Those heals are mana expensive. They restore the same health with a much higher mana cost. So saving healer mana is not only about not getting hit, but to let the healers be able to heal with less expensive heals. If you have a pattern of 10s no dmg and than 3 30k hits in 5s, healers will probably change to the fastest and most expensive heals they have to heal this up. On the ohter hand, if you take 5 20k hits over the same 15s you actually take more dmg, but healers will heal you with cheaper heals and actually have more mana left after those 15s.

With relatively high amounts of mastery shield tanks make the hits smaller at least most of the time. Healers don't see us blocking or parrying or whatever. They see if it's a more or less constant dmg of a medicore value or if it jumps between none and big hits. If it is the first, one spike does not scare them much. Because they probably have a medicore heal in the queue and know that they will most likly be able to heal the bigger hit because the next hit will probably be medicore again, so they should be able to heal it up before the tank dies without burning realy hard into their mana. The second pattern is much harder to heal. Healers may stop-cast some heals. But if all hits they see are quite dangerous, especially if there are more than one in a row, they have to use more expensive heals. Because they know that there will be no medicore hit but only hard or none. They have to heal against the worst case. So they have to use the fast expensive heals. That's espicially true around special abilities of the boss.

On a side note: Most healer masteries are about additional shields or hots after the heals. If you take constant dmg those effects will be used. They are calculated into the costs of the spells. So if they are not needed, because either they go into overheal or they just roll off becaus the tank does not get a hit they are wasted. Nobody calculates it like this, but stuff like this can also conserve some healer mana.

[Ruek]

Stamina is and always has been a great stat for a few reasons:

1) It gives a "cushion" as you mentioned to healers. The tank should have dedicated heals the entire fight, but there are a lot of encounters where the raid takes a lot of damage. Having a higher pool gives time for healers to catch up. Most of our cooldowns are 2-3minute cooldowns and we can use them like candy.

2) Secondly... magic dmg is not mitigated by anything except resists or cooldowns. Stamina being the best stat for magic (aside for resists, but as far as useful physical stats are concerned).

3) Thirdly, in the event that you are stunned, you will not avoid whatsoever. Stamina being superior in those cases.

I am not in any way saying you should purely stack stamina. I do find it to be incredibly useful, and as much as I'd like to stack avoidance as I used to in Burning Crusade... it's more viable to balance between avoidance and stamina. In my case as warrior, i reforge peices without mastery so that they do, and i gem mostly stamina, and mastery in those oddball sockets where the socket bonus is worth it.

[Demoneyes82]

I think the old concept of "stacking" is the problem here. Balancing is the key now. The Dr's on parry and dodge means you have to balance the two stats while raising all of your stats. Stam comes naturally on our gear as we need it, the best way to get a boost in stam is pick up the stam trinkets and use them when "stacking" is req'd for a fight. What stat you grab next is more dependant on what stats you already have and what you're planning on doing. That's the wonderful thing about reforging, if you're getting too many dr's from one stat or have too much of something and point for point another stat will help you there, you can tweak it. Stamina will always be needed for the un-avoidable damage but what's the point in having 200k health if your healer doesn't have the mana to fill that health pool and you could have had 150k health and avoided more than 50k damage to compensate.

[feralminded]

Here's the thing....

First, tanks don't die "over time". Tanks die from either mistakes, or burst damage - both of which happen very quickly. Secondly, taking predictable damage has the potential to save more healer mana than potentially taking less damage over a long stretch of time. Spiky damage intake is very stressful on healer mana, even if you're taking less damage in the long run. Allowing healers to use their most efficient spells by becoming very predictable to heal will save the most mana over the course of a fight. For at least shield tanks, this equates to filling up the combat table, or more simply, stacking Mastery.

Oh I agree with you in principle, but since my main is a healer now I can safely say no boss besides chogal with a ton of stacks hits so hard that I have to even think about my flash heal so that argument is purely academic. If a tank dies in my care its because I've ignored them for 5-10 seconds, not because they took some spike. That's just not the damage profile of *most* of these raid bosses so far. I say that having not yet seen Nefarian. In the end I CAN and in fact DO reactively heal when healing tanks these days ... which I know is a dramatic shift from the wrath days when you basically glued down the healing button during things like p3 festergut or whatnot. Those days, at least so far, are mostly gone. Now all that matters is how much average DPS is the tank taking and can I maintain that much HPS indefinitely and if not, for how long?

That said the times healing is HARDEST is when I have to move (which is basically every fight) and then I do find myself using things like flash heal to catch up ... but that's just fight mechanics and wont change much regardless of tank gear (although an avoidance streak is nice in those cases, but so is a block streak)

Regardless I do think this entire arguement, at least at current item stat levels, is purely academic. I've "stacked" my ilvl350 tank for avoidance and I think I have like ~28% Dodge + Parry while I have ~44% block. Had I gemmed/reforged the opposite I might be looking at ~24% and ~49%. In terms of damage profile of a fight those two are very VERY similar and likely imperceptibly different to either the healer or tank. Perhaps in the future when there's more stats available to twiddle perhaps we can make a dramatic enough shift to actually create a perceptible and then debatable difference but until then I still believe people are currently arguing over very little.

[Swordguard]

With the changes to the way block works, stacking stam it pretty dumb imo. I am not saying to ignore it but where in the past block used to be a flat value that no gem could increase, it is now percentage based and blocks significantly more (especially in boss fights and big hitters) damage than any amount of stam stacking could give you the hp to have a similar eh. Yes you should have a decent pool of hp but a lot of issues are due to heal scaling not being equal to a massive hp pool. I prefer to gem mastery in yellow, parry mast in red, or hit mast, and str stam in blues. Str adds damage for threat as well as contributing in part to parry.

[feralminded]

With the changes to the way block works, stacking stam it pretty dumb imo. I am not saying to ignore it but where in the past block used to be a flat value that no gem could increase, it is now percentage based and blocks significantly more (especially in boss fights and big hitters) damage than any amount of stam stacking could give you the hp to have a similar eh. Yes you should have a decent pool of hp but a lot of issues are due to heal scaling not being equal to a massive hp pool. I prefer to gem mastery in yellow, parry mast in red, or hit mast, and str stam in blues. Str adds damage for threat as well as contributing in part to parry.

This gemming strategy is going to net you pretty serious DR penalties on Parry when you could be gemming/reforging some dodge and getting significantly more overall avoidance. I see way too many tanks with a parry of 16-18% and a dodge of 8%. That displays a poor understanding of DR in general. Hold the line is *nice*, but a drop in the bucket. Parry should be very close to dodge if at all possible regardless of what your mastery is.

[Fetzie]

what I am still unsure of is:

should dodge percentage be similar to parry percentage, or dodge rating be similar to parry rating?

[Bigbad]

Naked I have 4,04% dodge and 5% parry any additional ratings are effected by diminishing returns. Not that much use keeping the percentages similar since they start 1% apart.

If you take into account hold the line and the windwalk enchant you want parry around 400-500 ratings above dodge for maximum average damage reduction. Personally i have 10,55% dodge and 14,35% parry unbuffed 680 ratings higher but i dont really mind that much, extra hold the line uptime is nice and you loose very little through diminshing returns at this point.
As feralminded said having 18% parry and 8% dodge is just silly you still got to keep them a little balanced.

[MellvarTank]

There is some speculation that parry being about double dodge is going to net you better results with hold the line, but I haven't seen anything really concrete yet. I've been keeping parry/dodge relatively even, though parry is (and should be) a little higher. I can't justify gemming/reforging everything to parry when you are not seeing the return on it from DRs as dodge is avoidance as well. Yes hold the line is good, but so is avoiding the damage entirely, and sacrificing 2% pure avoidance for .5% more chance to critically block/critical strike for 10 secs.... well that is just silly.

(No, I am not advocating avoidance tanking... I'm just saying that trying to increase critical block by a tiny amount at the cost of a larger gain is silly.)

[Swordguard]

This gemming strategy is going to net you pretty serious DR penalties on Parry when you could be gemming/reforging some dodge and getting significantly more overall avoidance. I see way too many tanks with a parry of 16-18% and a dodge of 8%. That displays a poor understanding of DR in general. Hold the line is *nice*, but a drop in the bucket. Parry should be very close to dodge if at all possible regardless of what your mastery is.

I suppose I should have mentioned that my dodge/parry are fairly close and the fact that I am over the 72.whatever% I have reforged some items out of parry to exp or hit. I do not have 16-18% parry and 8% dodge, DR is a factor which is why mastery is more of a focus but the argument here isn't which avoidance stat is better/priority/focused on but whether you should forget about avoidance in favor of stam stacking.

Edit: I almost forgot about stam mast for blue sockets somehow as I have them in just about every blue socket. I suppose it was the hour and a half long discussion with a friend of mine who is a fury war about gear amd such.

[feralminded]

I suppose I should have mentioned that my dodge/parry are fairly close and the fact that I am over the 72.whatever% I have reforged some items out of parry to exp or hit. I do not have 16-18% parry and 8% dodge, DR is a factor which is why mastery is more of a focus but the argument here isn't which avoidance stat is better/priority/focused on but whether you should forget about avoidance in favor of stam stacking.

Edit: I almost forgot about stam mast for blue sockets somehow as I have them in just about every blue socket. I suppose it was the hour and a half long discussion with a friend of mine who is a fury war about gear amd such.

Sorry I didn't mean to come across as attacking you I was merely making a point about how most warrior tanks I see tend to have very imbalanced dodge/parry which is sub-optimal. So many go straight mastery/stam, or parry/stam in every socket and they end up with serious imbalances in the end. You may be able to get away with that gemming strategy being optimal if you reforge absolutely all of the parry on your gear to dodge but it doesn't always work out like that. Dodge is still a great stat for us, as a player with a main healer I can say that with a straight face.

[Swordguard]

Sorry I didn't mean to come across as attacking you I was merely making a point about how most warrior tanks I see tend to have very imbalanced dodge/parry which is sub-optimal. So many go straight mastery/stam, or parry/stam in every socket and they end up with serious imbalances in the end. You may be able to get away with that gemming strategy being optimal if you reforge absolutely all of the parry on your gear to dodge but it doesn't always work out like that. Dodge is still a great stat for us, as a player with a main healer I can say that with a straight face.

No big deal. Everyone has their own play style and what I do seems to work for me, but something else might be better for you. I am about 10.5 dodge, 12.5 Parry and 50 block with an unbuffed 136.5k hp, raid buffs and food bring that up to around 160k or so which is really more than enough for anything we've done so far. I have about 4 or 5 pieces in serious need of upgrades, but I've also been fairly lucky with drops (Bracers from Halfus, trinket from Magmaw, Soulblade from trash, Signet ring from conclave of wind with rockslab enchantment (Str/Stam/Mast/Dodge). We've had a lot of gear for tanks drop and me and the other tank(DK) are pretty much trading drops (I got Magmaw trink, he got Double drag trink, He got BoT Trash Epic shoulders, I got soulblade, I got ring and bracers, he got Lava spine.

[Andenthal]

I see way too many tanks with a parry of 16-18% and a dodge of 8%. That displays a poor understanding of DR in general. Hold the line is *nice*, but a drop in the bucket. Parry should be very close to dodge if at all possible regardless of what your mastery is.

should dodge percentage be similar to parry percentage, or dodge rating be similar to parry rating?

There is a HUGE misunderstanding amongst non-tanks (and even some tanks) of how the DRs really work, and how the different avoidances work with each other and other things, such as talents (HtL).

On my character sheet I have 1583 Dodge Rating and 1595 Parry rating, giving me 12.47% Dodge and 13.25% Parry (ingore that Agil also gives Dodge for a moment, as it's irrelevant). That's just shy of 3200 combined avoidance rating giving me 27.52% combined avoidance (also ignore Miss - irrelevant). If I shift those around by a HUGE amount, my avoidance hardly chances.

Using 3200 total avoidance rating:

600 Dodge + 2600 Parry
7.69% + 17.47% = 25.16% avoidance (.56% lower than the "balanced" setup)

Going the opposite way
2600 Dodge + 600 Parry
16.71% + 8.37% = 25.08% avoidance (.64% lower than the "balanced" setup)

As you can see, the differences in total avoidance aren't huge at all. When one rating is 4x the other, the difference in total avoidance is about .6%. If you're in a bleeding edge guild it may make the difference. Otherwise - it's unnoticable and not really worth worrying about.

But here's where it matters. If you compare Hold the Line uptimes with the different values, here's what you get.

"Balanced" setup - 1583D + 1595P = 44.7% HtL uptime
Dodge heavy setup - 2600D - 600P = 30.52% HtL uptime
Parry heavy setup - 2600P + 600D = 55.06% HtL uptime.

As you see, the differences in HtL uptime are pretty significant. By moving toward a Parry biased gear set, I can nearly double my HtL uptime over a Dodge biased gear set, and increase it ~23% over a "balanced" gear set.

I'm not advocating choosing only Parry items, nor reforging all Dodge to Parry when possible. I'm just pointing out that the talk about "don't stack too much because of DR" is shennanigans. You get nearly 1/2 of your total avoidance from non-avoidance stats on your gear + base Avoidance. Compare the difference in damage taken between .56% avoidance and 10.5% HtL uptime. I haven't done the math, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a fraction of a percentage point difference.

The poster above indicating yellow sockets for Mastery, red for Parry/Mastery is correct as the optimal gearing strategy. 20 Parry rating will never throw your avoidance out of wack. Even if it somehow did - that's what reforging is for!

TL;DR
Your goal is still to fill up the combat table. The best way to do this currently is "stacking" Mastery. Here's the only thing you need to know in regard to Dodge versus Parry - Parry is hands down better for Warriors, even in obscene amounts, due to Hold the Line. Even more so as you begin to reach unhittable. The point at which you really need to worry about having too much Parry and not enough Dodge is maybe when you're in Tier 13 gear. Although probably not then either, as we'll have reached unhittable, making the argument moot.

[Exiledknight]

One thing I have not seen mentioned is hard mode encounters, I will use the first HM, that most will go after. Halfus, he doesn't hit very hard himself but on 25 man the drakes hit in the 60k range. Throw in a few whelps whacking away for 8-9 each and this is very significant burst dmg. Assuming a 60k hit, plues 3 whelp hits and in 2 seconds you just took 87k in dmg, you add an oh shit and eat a 40k+ fireball, then you will need very significant heals before the next swings lands. This is not even considering furious roar, where the drakes are still attacking, and you eat the full hit because you are stunned, if you do not have the holy paladins to bubble it and heal through, than there is no healing going on for 5-6 seconds which without a CD will be a tank death without access to heroic gear.