Advice on avoidance VS Stam for heroic raids.

[Aggra]

Hello.

My guild (25 man focus) will soon (hopfully) step into heroic raiding content. At the moment I´m stacking avoidance a lot, I got ower 90% unhitteble with raid buffs. I am gemming pure mastery in yellow, doge/parry in red and stam in blue sockets also my enchats are in fawor of mastery. Im using the alchimy trinket and the Tol barad trinket for nearly all fights, I do have the 2 stamina trinkets from magmaw and valiona as well. As it is at the moment we verry seldom wipe becous I die.

So my questions are: For heroic raids suld I regem into avoidance/stam, Mastery/stam insted of the pure mastery or Doge/parry?
Is it bether in most fights to use a stamina trink insted of the Tolbard one on heroic?
Suld I get the p4 bunus (sacrifasing some avoidance for some extra aggro that I do not need)?

Please only respond if you actualy have done some heroic raiding.

Regards
Aggra

ps please dissregard eany typos

Edit: link to armory http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...aggra/advanced

[MellvarTank]

I like how you discredit anyone who hasn't done heroic raiding when you yourself haven't done any. Heroic theorycraft is the same as regular theorycraft, there is no difference.

I'd recommend you also stop gemming dodge/parry and gem mastery/parry. Then I'd recommend you swap trinket on a fight/fight basis as required. There is no 'one set' of gear for all encounters on heroic. You will need to adjust your gear set on a fight by fight basis.

[Theotherone]

We're not worthy, we're not worthy.

[Dedic]

I need help but if you're not leet as me then stfu lol

[Kazeyonoma]

While I agree that the premise of the OP is a bit absurd. We don't need more than one person pointing it out. If you want to help this individual do so in the manner that tankspot has come to be known for, and not bandwagoning like this was the wow forums.

As far as I can tell mastery is still the best way for paladins and warriors to smooth out damage even in heroic modes. Please note that block is not avoidance and using incorrect terminology here will only lead to confused repliers.

[Kazeyonoma]

While I agree that the premise of the OP is a bit absurd. We don't need more than one person pointing it out. If you want to help this individual do so in the manner that tankspot has come to be known for, and not bandwagoning like this was the wow forums.

As far as I can tell mastery is still the best way for paladins and warriors to smooth out damage even in heroic modes. Please note that block is not avoidance and using incorrect terminology here will only lead to confused repliers.

[Dedic]

You are right, I apologize.

@OP: though I am not as far along in my progression as you, I would recommend that the current consensus on Mastery being king should apply to any level of encounter. That being said, what works in general may not be the best way in a specific encounter.

I saw a post recently that said if you are dying after only a few hits then you should up your stam, while if you see your health zipping down quickly in smaller chunks you should go with Mastery. At least I think I am paraphrasing that properly.

Beyond that I say experiment, ask your healers if they are noticing anything such as situations where healing you is difficult, and use your best judgement. If you got as far as you have then you must have a good sense of how to manage your stats.

And sorry for the lol comment. I can understand why you would want to get input from those who have experienced what you are about to do.

Good luck!

[Aggra]

I´m sorry It was not my intention to discredit anyone. However I do believe that if you have experienced something first hand it is esyer to give good advice.

@ Dalric Im swapping trinkets around a bit depending on the fight. And the reson I gem as I do atm is just to make it a bit easyer on the healers, since I verry verry seldom die befour the wipe is called.

@ Kazeyonoma Yes you are right, my bad on sloppy use of avoidance.

My orignal plan was to try on heroic as I am gemming atm, but I do not want to cause some unessicery wipes due to having too little stamia. This is the reson I asked for ppl who had done some heroic content since they have experienced how hard the bosses hit them.

[Kanzer]

Our pally tank goes for pretty much pure mastery, even going so far as to use the DPS helm/shoulder enchants to achieve as much as possible. Hes at around 67% block I believe. Hes just a hair from being unhittable. This is much easier to achieve for paladins at the current gear level than warriors, so I myself have a bit more stam to make up for it, meaning I use the actual tanking enchants. Plus I actually am unhittable every so often with shield block.

We did heroic 10m halfus recently and we activated all but one drake, so thats alot of damage intake between the two of us, but we managed just fine. So thats a heroic perspective I can give you about a pally who is purely focused on reaching unhittable at the cost of stam.

[Katzazi]

I saw a post recently that said if you are dying after only a few hits then you should up your stam, while if you see your health zipping down quickly in smaller chunks you should go with Mastery. At least I think I am paraphrasing that properly.

Uhh, I recently wrote stuff like that. Cool that you remember it.

@OP: Well I've not entered heroics, too, but I want to write something OT, so you have to live with another answer. *G*

I think, it's more or less the same as it was for progression, all the time. Look at the encounter beforehand. Think about what is the biggest danger for you. Try to either avoid it or gear against it. You should know the normal encounters well by now. So you should know what the "normal" part of the dmg will look like. Try to imagine the additional dmg and problems from the heroic stuff. If you know that you will mostly take melee dmg, mastery stays what it was all the time. If there are big magic casts, think about using CDs (yours and the one of the healers) first, before changing anything. Tol Barad trinket may be much more helfull than a stam trinket in this case, too, because of it's on use effect. In most cases the unavoidable magic dmg should not be the biggest part of dmg done to you, but stamina may be a little bit better, in those fights.

Try it out. Think about what killed you. In most cases it would just be your raid having problems to counter some new abilities or act accordingly. So in this cases you may be fine. But maybe you can help somewhat with changing stuff around. However healers have to run around alot. And they will have to focus on the raid a little bit more in many cases. So it probably will them help more if you avoid much dmg instead fo soaking it up. If they tell you that they would have no problem to heal you up if they would have just some seconds more time to do it, stamina could be the answer. Only problem is, that you probably will not get enough stamina to take another full hit.

[Selene]

From my understanding, the top progression tanks, are reforging/enchanting/gemming between fights, and even have several possible different pieces for each fight if available.

[klausi]

The difference is not that big that going either route might change the game drastically. It really comes to proper cooldown management to survive certain heroic bosses. But having 20k more hitpoints gives you and your healer room for some error while learning new encounbter.

Gemming is about 9k hitpoints buffed versus 3% block/critblock on my warrior. And swapping trinkets adds another ~ 8k hitpoints for 2.75% block (Mirror vs Vial). I went on the stamina route lately due to some very nasty high damage periods while learning the first heroic bosses:
- chimaeron, tanking feud with one break stack.
- halfus, surviving the roar with a drake hitting on you
- maloriak, dark phase

With the gear you should be wearing while engaging them at least i'm still unhittable with shieldblock up.