Avoidance vs. EH.

[Nehama]

Hello,

I know the basic answer used to be stacking mastery for warriors up to the point of unhittable with SB. I also know that for HCs, for some reason, some high end guilds started gemming and gearing [trinket wise] for stamina.

What I'm wondering, is why do they start doing that at a certain point? And what point is that, if anyone knows? Or maybe that's just druid tanks that started doing that?

Lots of questions on my mind, but I'd love some help if anyone knows.

[Katzazi]

I don't know enough about druids. But for warriors and paladins it's not Avoidance vs. EH. Because block is NOT avoidance. It's mitigation. And if all than mitigation is part of EH not avoidance. So stacking mastery is not the same as going for avoidance and ignoring EH.

There are people advocating to stack parry and dodge over mastery, because it prevents more dmg. That's what you do to max your avoidance and follow the avoidance rules.

The question between stamina and mastery is something else.

When you start raiding, you have comparable high amounts of HP but only medicore coverage of the dmg table with block (and avoidance stats to fill them up). At the same time healers struggle with their mana. So block will do both: prevent dmg and increase your chance to mitigate a lot of the incoming dmg. Stacking stamina also increases EH, but does not help your healers (and even if you try it will not make such a big difference anyway, since boss hits are quite small compared to your life as is the HP you can add via stacking. You already have such a hugh pool of health on your gear).

When you start HCs, boss hits will be bigger. So you cannot take as much as you could before. Your HP has not increases as much at the same time, but healers have a much bigger mana-pool. They can afforde those big heals more often. You will have better gear. So you will have a much better coverage of the dmg tabel with your mastery. So chances to block (or even crit block) are high (enough). You will not be able to max the chance to 100% coverage, anyway. Adding more mastery will not prevent much more dmg. You will already block 30% (or more) dmg most of the time. However if you do not bock you have to eat a high amount of dmg. Also magic dmg is increased for some encounters. So it may be a good idea to up your health instead of increasing the chance to block a little bit more. You already will have a high chance anyway via reforging.

When that occurs and if that's the right thing to do, depends on the encouners. There are some encounters that favore mastery all the time. At magic intensive encoutners more health is just better. So as before, you have to gear for what you face if you are doing hc progressions.

[Nehama]

Aight, thanks, it's just as I thought.

The thing is, I can't really think of one fight where stamina would benefit me more then higher chance for blocks and crit blocks. I have seen the normal versions of all the raid bosses, but I haven't started with hc ones just yet. The way I see it, the higher the damage incoming, the more you want to block 30% of it. [60% the more mastery you have...]

What really got me thinking that maybe hc's change the whole thing totally is a druid from one of those 12/12 hc guilds that was purly gemmed and trinketing for stamina. But maybe it's different for druids...

[praetoria]

considering the point of the xpac and the general gear situation, I think its about time this topic changes its focus to unhitable sets and how we should handle stats once passing the point of unhittable.

at the moment, im sitting at :

50.16 block
16.63 parry
8.53 dodge

leaving a total of 75.32% chance "unhittable" without shield block being up. it appears to me that the 102.4 benchmark isnt very far off(at least with SB up) and if that is a real goal for tanks today, then the question needs to become "which is the most efficient unhittable configuration?". At first glance, i would assume that parry would be the stat of choice for HTL proc. But ive done nothing to prove this yet.

[Illidra]

druids mastery works off attack power - more stam = more ap from vengeance = bigger savage defense absorbs.

[Reev]

considering the point of the xpac and the general gear situation, I think its about time this topic changes its focus to unhitable sets and how we should handle stats once passing the point of unhittable.

at the moment, im sitting at :

50.16 block
16.63 parry
8.53 dodge

leaving a total of 75.32% chance "unhittable" without shield block being up. it appears to me that the 102.4 benchmark isnt very far off(at least with SB up) and if that is a real goal for tanks today, then the question needs to become "which is the most efficient unhittable configuration?". At first glance, i would assume that parry would be the stat of choice for HTL proc. But ive done nothing to prove this yet.

OK, unbuffed right now, with only 5/12 normal mode progression, unbuffed I have:

10.44% Dodge
14% Parry
55.84% block
5% Miss

That's 85.28% unhittability unbuffed. In full raid buffs, I push past 90% unhittability, in 5/12 normal mode progression without Shield Block or Impetuous Query active.

In normal modes, the bosses don't hit hard enough to make the giant health pools necessary, and the damage reduction from dodge/parry/block/miss/armor is far more important than some more stamina. As Kat said so well above, this changes going into heroic modes, because the minimum needed HP totals are significantly higher in heroic modes, so more stamina will be necessary.

[praetoria]

i feel like "necessary" is a very grey area in that statment. is that implying we need to give up block/dodge/parry for stamina ? id assume the heroic gear offers enough stamina to satisfy the hp pool requirments. with the above stats, having shield block is what? close to 50% damage reduction by block? taht combined with pure avoidance stats... with a 33% uptime? i cant see stacking stam to the point equal to damage reductions and damage avoidences occuring under those circumstances.. it just sounds silly.

[Reev]

i feel like "necessary" is a very grey area in that statment. is that implying we need to give up block/dodge/parry for stamina ? id assume the heroic gear offers enough stamina to satisfy the hp pool requirments. with the above stats, having shield block is what? close to 50% damage reduction by block? taht combined with pure avoidance stats... with a 33% uptime? i cant see stacking stam to the point equal to damage reductions and damage avoidences occuring under those circumstances.. it just sounds silly.

I'm basing my comments about Stamina being needed in heroics solely on the comments made by other tanks who are doing the heroics. It's possible they're wrong, of course, but if there are magic damage attacks that hit the tank for 130k, for example, all that block won't do a damn thing, and it comes down to the amount of buffer you've got built up. I haven't encountered anything like that yet, but I'm told that on heroic modes, you really need it.

And yeah, with Shield Block up, I'm over 50% critical block chance in raid (50% of blocked attacks, not all attacks of course), and unhittable. Against melee swings, Shield Block is now better for me than Shield Wall. Well, except for the fact that Shield Wall works on top of blocking mechanics, so I guess that's not really true at all.

[Katzazi]

I've not done the hc modes as well. And there are enough warrior tanks who do hc and still focus on mastery. Don't look at bears when you are speaking about warriors. They have no parry to cover the combat table and their mastery is more complicated and less reliable as far as I can see it.

So back to warriors and the difference between the completely mastery focused strategy and focusing more on stamina. The difference is not as big as most think it is. You should reforge in the same manner. You probably want to get the same gem bonus. The meta gem decision is probably the same at least if you face heroic raid encounters. Most enchants are the same. The gearing differences are mostly about gems. You either focus them more on mastery or more on stamina (or go full out on mastery or stamina).

Additionally it's a different choice of trinkets. However trinkets should be chosen encounter based. So it's less of a fixed gearing strategy. Changing two trinkets form mastery/avoidance to two stamina trinkets will do a much bigger change to your HP than most other gearing decisions. And every tank (who has got the trinkets) can do this change for said encounter. If gemmed for stamina or for mastery.

The other difference can be the decision between flasks and elexiers. But it may be a good idea to make this decision encounter based, again. At least I'm drinking different stuff for different encounters even on normal modes. Elexiers give you so much options (even magic resistance).


So the real questions are:
- Do you need to switch over your gems form mastery to stamina to be able to survive the heroic raid encounters?
- Do you want to switch your trinkets (and flasks/elexiers) for specific encounters?

The second question should be answered by: yes, you probably want to do this. Independently of your overall gearing decisions and gering focus.

So the only remaining difference is the decision between different gems.

[klausi]

The difference is not as big as most think it is.

That's an important point. Gemming mastery over stamina adds ~ 2.5% block, picking up tol barad trinket over valiona's is another ~ 3% block - in the end you gain 5-6% block for roughly 20.000 hitpoints. Add a flask over two elixir and that's 25.000. Unless your healer are complaining about healing issues i did really recommend going with a bigger hp-pool. It leaves so much more room for errors while learning new encounter. Best example actually is Chimaeron, there are times where being "close" to unhittable will wipe you. Halfus before 4.0.6 was another good example, even with shield wall running i barely managed surviving those roars with 170k raidbuffed. And for other bosses? I find myself quite often on very low hp during Maloriak on add duty.. and the list goes on.

And i can't see a reason while going either route not to take socket bonus.. well maybe unless you're using dps pieces.

[Nehama]

That's not too occurate.

I remember some math, back at Woltk or maybe even TBC where the discussion about melee avoidance/migtation vs. magical res. was compared. Even on fights that have magical elements [Ch'ogal? Council? I can't think of other fights that are pure magical in this expantsion tbh], your overall melee damage would be more significant, and if you manage to bring that down, the massive damage from a breath or a magical attack won't really effect you that much.

The question I'm trying to answer to myself is more trinket-based. Would I prefer using avoidance trinkets?
I have the following trinkets:
[Throngus's Finger], [Impetuous Query], [Vial of Stolen Memories], [Mirror of Broken Images]. It's only a matter of time till I get Magmaw's one aswell.

The thing is that I've noticed I take MUCH less damage if I use the 1st two ones, even tho they're of lower quality and drop in heroic 5 mas. I don't think Magmaw's trinket is better at damage migtation then those 2, either. The uptime of both are about 10 seconds per minute, combined with shield wall it gives a huge benefit when used on massive damage pulls [Double attacks on Chim, Whelps + dragon tanking on halfus, blind dragon tanking after a massive aoe on the whole raid to give the healers a boost, adds on maloriak and actually, almost anywhere where I want to take lil' damage and give the healers some breathing space...]. Atm, I really can't think of a fight where magic res. or stamina would benefit me more then melee damage migtation, maybe only the crackles on nefarian. [Which I am testing atm, seems that if I manage to use the trinket exactly on a breath and have it last for a crackle, it's well worth it, otherwise both come quite even].

So basicly, I keep hearing that stamina trinkets are 'based on fight', and my question is... What fight do you use stamina trinkets?
I might even go farther and say that with higher gear, you automaticly get much more stamina, and those 5 man hc trinkets come with even BIGGER value then hc raids stamina trinkets...

[klausi]

We're talking only about heroic modes, bosses hits way harder there (eg Atramedes 75k pre block). For normal mode there's absolutley no reason to stack stamina, ever. If you think you need to then you didn't understand the mechanics of this certain fight or your healers doing something very wrong.

I can't understand that you don't love the Mirror (especially for a warrior without 45-60s magical reduction cooldown), there are mechanics on every bossfight where it has it's uses (Magmaw: Spit, Omnotron: Magmatron's AoE, Maloriak: red phase, Chimaeron, caustic slime during Feud, Atramedes: Searing Flame, Nefarian: Crackle, Halfus: Fire Barrage and Fire Missiles during Roar, Valiona: Blackout, Council: Glaciate/Flamethrower/P3, Cho'Gall fire burst and p3, Conclave: Ice Guy cone and Ultimate, Al'Akir Electrocute).

[praetoria]

ok, a simpler question..... which is better (in your oppinion).... unhittable or a larger hp pool?

[klausi]

Of course unhittable, but that's not really possible in T11 gear so why bother? 90.2% or 99.2% all won't save you in the worst case scenario.

Warrior full 372 gear + Sinestra loot is close to 90% combined avoidance and block. Add raidbuffs, the right racial and fitting elixir/food and it's still not enough.

Protadin full 372 gear + Sinestra loot is even closer (~95%) but still can't fill the gap.

[Booi]

Of course unhittable, but that's not really possible in T11 gear so why bother? 90.2% or 99.2% all won't save you in the worst case scenario.

The difference is the probability of you taking two unblocked hits in a row goes from ~1% to 0.0064%

It helps prevent your worst case scenario.

[Reev]

The difference is the probability of you taking two unblocked hits in a row goes from ~1% to 0.0064%

It helps prevent your worst case scenario.

Yeah, I'm thinking that if the worst case scenario happens one in a hundred fights and causes a wipe, it's worth it to make the other 99 fights easier, with less damage taken. The only reason to stack stam instead are if you simply are unable to take the hits without it.

[Katzazi]

I'm not at heroic content, too. But if you just cannot close the gap completely the difference between a worst case happening every 1% and a worst case happening every 0.004% of the time is not as big a difference as say 40k HP that maybe can give you a chance to survive this worst case better. In both cases you need a CD to cover this worst case if you want to beat it. In both cases you will probably only get one - maybe two during the same encounter. In both cases chances are more or less equally high that you can cover it with a CD. (Either there are no free CDs for oh-shit moments at all, or at least one of them is free most of the time.)

So if you are quite close to the cap but cannot reach it, it can sometimes be better, to take the bigger HP pool than to move a little bit closer to the not-reachable cap.

Btw: I've done this even for a normal encounter, when I was tanking the fire elemental from council. My HP bar really droped during this breathes and stayed quite low for some time. I switched over to a stamina trinket (Mirror is so good that I did not want to switch it) and experimented between resi elexier and stamina flask. Well a later saw that I had streaks of 8s-13s(!) with no direct heal. I got some PoH and stuff, but my assigned healer was quite lazy or did run to the fire and did not announce it and other healers did not realize it, as well. In one case I had to take 2 breathes without healing (and died due to it). My mastery helped me to survive as long, but the only thing that did the difference at this evening was when I switched over completely to stamina. Yes it was the fault of my healer. But this is a case where possible incoming dmg is much higher than reliable incoming healing. So at this point stamina won.

It's the same with heroic modes: The difference between your base HP (those from gear, buffs and food) for normal and heroic modes is not as big as the difference between boss hits on normal and heroic mode. You just don't get as much HP form gear while going from 346 to 359 as the hits increase. So possible dmg for heroic modes is relatively bigger than in normal modes even with better gear. However, the chance to get a block is already high (enough) for gear you wear on the normal modes when stacked for mastery. You don't need a much higher chance to block on heroic modes, because the chance was already so high. Since you cannot reach the cap anyway, it may be ok to face the boss with more or less the same chance to block on heroic mode as you do on normal mode.

[praetoria]

Warrior full 372 gear + Sinestra loot is close to 90% combined avoidance and block. Add raidbuffs, the right racial and fitting elixir/food and it's still not enough.

Protadin full 372 gear + Sinestra loot is even closer (~95%) but still can't fill the gap.

is that with or without shield block up? certianly thats a big difference.

[praetoria]

well, imo.... . a 004% chance of taking 2 full hits is highly unlikly. its far more likly that you will block then avoid those 2 hits.

[Katzazi]

is that with or without shield block up? certianly thats a big difference.

What's the difference? SB will get you unhittable anyway. You will not be able to get it without SB. The only thing is that it moves the average CTC a little bit nearer to unhittable. But that does not change anything for the current discussion.

well, imo.... . a 004% chance of taking 2 full hits is highly unlikly. its far more likly that you will block then avoid those 2 hits.

Yes 0.004% unlikely. But not impossible. So you should react somehow if you know that you took a full hit and will not be able to survive another one. (Or if you know that you can just survive another one but healers cannot take you up fast enough alone to survive anything after that, which should more be the case when you get regular healing.)