Avoidance vs. EH.

[praetoria]

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.

"Warrior full 372 gear + Sinestra loot is close to 90% combined avoidance and block"

i asked is that 90% with or without SB up...

[Katzazi]

With SB up you are clearly over 102.4%. As you are with correctly treated 346 gear and probably lower gear.

[Aggathon]

I wrote out a long post, then gave up. My vote is stack mastery/avoidance as a warrior. If you are working on a fight, specifically HM, that requires more hit points, switch trinkets. If trinkets aren't enough, then start regemming for stamina. Prismatic Elixirs go a long way too.


Also, your shenanigans about taking 2 hits, you're not going to die from two melee hits. More like 5 or 6 full hits. And if you look at:

[img]http://www.tankspot.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1528&d=1272931652[img]

At 92% dodge+parry+block, the odds of that are literally zero when running the simulator 10,000 times.

[Papapaint]

I wrote out a long post, then gave up. My vote is stack mastery/avoidance as a warrior.

You need to change the little thingie under your name.

[Aggathon]

I can still be the Czar of Stam if I'm still telling people when and how to use it =P.

If you have a better title then I'm listening, lol. Statistically Sadistic maybe?

[Papapaint]

I can still be the Czar of Stam if I'm still telling people when and how to use it =P.

If you have a better title then I'm listening, lol. Statistically Sadistic maybe?

"It Depends"

[Aggathon]

Maybe I should just put this as my title: http://www.xkcd.com/552/

[Airowird]

Wouldn't that become "Stadistic Czar" then? :P

and yeah, XKCD is awesome

[jere]

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.

Just something to consider, I haven't run into a magic attack like that in heroics which isn't tied to a fight mechanic such as an interrupt or safe zone (unless I am forgetting one).

[Fetzie]

Just something to consider, I haven't run into a magic attack like that in heroics which isn't tied to a fight mechanic such as an interrupt or safe zone (unless I am forgetting one).

raid heroic mode != 5man heroic Apparently there is a LOT of magical damage flying around that hits hard.

[praetoria]

agg is right, and i havent seen anyone post here who has a better reputation the him. Im in 359 gear and im buffing out to 186k.. to my knowladge, there is no magic ability that casts every 2 seconds and lands for 100k or more. ( if its not interuptale, dispelable, exct)

until max amount of hits before death without heals is a mechanic on the table again, mastery/avoidance wins.

[klausi]

there is noability that casts every 2 seconds and lands for 100k or more.

What's about Maloriak's breath or Flamethrower on Twilight Council? A massive hitpool leaves way more room for errors while learning new encounter from both you and your healers unless you can almost guarantee no back to back hits. And just think about mt-healers mana.. anyone out there having problem keeping a stam tank up with epic decked out gear? They will toss in the same huge heals and keep hots rolling anyway, they just play WotLK style again and keep queing the biggest heals into me and don't heal reactivley like it was Blizzards intention for this addon.

[praetoria]

but those are isolated. thats when its time to use a cd. its not pike PP or surfang where the holy paladin absolutly needs to spam holy light on the tank the entire duration of the fight, because if he dosnt the tank will die in4 seconds. when you say massive, what are you compairing to? im not suggesting to walk into a heroic fight with 130k hp.. but that wouldnt be the case anyway. Id be more concerned with how the healers are handling the rest of the fight.

[Loganisis]

I can still be the Czar of Stam if I'm still telling people when and how to use it =P.

Wouldn't that be the Stam Nazi "No Soup, I mean Stam for you!" ;-)

[Papapaint]

but those are isolated. thats when its time to use a cd. its not pike PP or surfang where the holy paladin absolutly needs to spam holy light on the tank the entire duration of the fight, because if he dosnt the tank will die in4 seconds. when you say massive, what are you compairing to? im not suggesting to walk into a heroic fight with 130k hp.. but that wouldnt be the case anyway. Id be more concerned with how the healers are handling the rest of the fight.

Honestly though, I think it boils down to progression gearing. Insofar as I've found, mana management hasn't been so much of a problem as losing a tank or dps due to an unexpected burst of damage.

For a hard example, I'll offer Nezir from Conclave. When learning the fight, there were several times where, due to changes in our healer setup (to try different healers doing different jobs) or timing or positioning or what have you, the tank who went from Rohash's platform to Nezir's platform would drop severely. Without a large health pool, he would have died; however, because he chose to gear in such a way that he could handle large bursts of damage without dying, we were able to top him off and continue the attempt.

Healer mana is not nearly as large of a concern as people in this thread are making it out to be. A properly performing healing team with specific assignments is unlikely to run out of mana except while first learning progression encounters. With this in mind, I don't see the point per se of trying to "save healer mana."

There's certainly something to be said for straight damage reduction, particularly on fights that you know will turn out to be melee-heavy.
However, I do honestly think that any tank's first gearing strategy walking into a brand new fight should revolve around as much EH as possible. Even if that EH turns out to only be good for the tank living an extra three seconds after the healers go down, it still provides your raid with more information from a progression fight.

Ultimately, and this has always been the case, the single best method is to have multiple gearsets and swap them on a case by case basis.

[praetoria]

Honestly though, I think it boils down to progression gearing. Insofar as I've found, mana management hasn't been so much of a problem as losing a tank or dps due to an unexpected burst of damage.

Ultimately, and this has always been the case, the single best method is to have multiple gearsets and swap them on a case by case basis.

Hit it right on the head. there is a small grey area when having these discussions. this is it for the most part. Im even looking at how resistances play into things now simply because you can never be over prepared for a specific encounter.

[Aggathon]

Can you link me your tank's armories that are "stacking stam"? Because so far the only people "stacking stam" that people have showed me are people that use really good stam trinkets (which I've stated before is more than acceptable for changing between fights, in fact in this expansion I think that trinket switching is going to be the most important thing between fights) and maybe have 1 or 2 straight stam gems, but the rest are avoidance/mastery gems and matching socket bonuses.

The only tanks I've seen that people just can't keep up (specifically this was halfus) were tanks that just stacked stam. Like I was saying before, if you do need more raw HP for a specific fight, switch trinkets and if it's stopping your progress, then stack stam, but so far from what I've seen (granted papapaint has a much much better view of this than I do) the HP requirements are not really THAT high. They're high for some fights, but it doesn't seem like stacking stam out da butt is necessary, at least not for warriors.

Edit: I armory stalked your guild. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...jubie/advanced <- I have no idea if that is one of your main tanks, but this person is gemmed exactly how I would gem that same gear. That epic stam trinket is amazing, and the other one is okay, there are better and it should be switched out depending on the fight and other trinkets available.

Edit2: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...kaeps/advanced <- same with that guy, that's how you gem and reforge a warrior.

[Reev]

Edit2: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...kaeps/advanced <- same with that guy, that's how you gem and reforge a warrior.

You'd recommend reforging +372 hit rating? I don't think I'd do that unless I were on interrupt duty or some such, and I never am (though I do support the interrupters when possible).

[Aggathon]

Yes, the guy is clearly on interrupt duty for a fight.

[Meloree]

They tank our alt runs.