Trying to figure out what chimera's eye to learn first. I have a frost off-spec so bold is an easy choice for that. My blood main spec (which I am just now beginning to use after being a bear tank for the last 18 months) is more of a quandry. In WOTLK it would have been easy - stam. But is that still the case? I read on a few places there is a discussion between whether master or avoidance is the best choice but stam seems to be out the door. So for my chimera's eyes, what stat do I need to maximize now? Thanks for any help as I'm trying to figure out cata changes on a new class
well at the moment im using mastery ones, but im a mastery wh**e lol, im sitting on lik 2.5k which even in my opinion is overkill lol, but 10k hps when needed is just so damn yummy.
to be honest until the math is complete, it isnt going to be a HUGE difference wether you go for mastery stam or avoidance.
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from what ive read mastery is best with dodge/parry not too far behind as long as you have your health at a resonable amount.
at the end of the day i think the best way is to try and balance your stamina/dodge/mastery with the chimeras. if you seem to be lacking slightly in one place then use the chimera eye to boost that stat some more.
It turns out that evening out your avoidance with mastery actually increases the damage you take. Right now it looks like mastery is ahead of avoidance and stam is what you'd switch to if you hit hardmodes. I would go for mastery myself.
While Mastery is a nice plus for other tanks, it is essential for a DK.
Mastery basicaly replaces the block we were missing b4 cata, so alot of mastery is good.
Paragon's top DK tank has 2k mastery! (granted they are probably the best geared in the game ATM. lol)
So they definately see it as very important!
The ideal setup is 15% dodge and parry, with as much mastery as you can get (with enough stam to survive at least a couple hits to get mastery going) although it will take a long while to get to that lvl.
"It's always the Healer's fault; unless it's the Tanks fault, just ask the DPS'er in purples doing 5k!"
Unless they changed it more stam = bigger DS heal which means more bubble because the bubble is a % of your DS heal. So I would say stam or mastery depending which one needs more help. Because if you're in PvE tanking gear generally you'll have enough dodge\parry.
The short answer is bolded if you're not interested in the reasoning behind it.
Since your question really is which one to learn first.. I'm gonna assume your still gearing up, so to answer you'd have to ask yourself "what do I need?"
I'mma throw some general numbers of what you need to achieve as "minimums" (numbers on top of my head that I consider to be more or less accurate)
Heroic ready:
135k+ hp(probably less with the luck of the draw buff)
24% avoidance
70% on blood shield (cant remember the mastery point conversion into %, cuz I dont really like mastery)
hit/exp is hard to say bcuz ur pretty much stuck with what you get and you dont really have much choice, but I'd say around 4% and 15 expertise is nice, threat shoudlnt be an issue tho
Raid ready (entry level bosses of raiding):
145k hp unbuffed
28%+ avoidance
70%+ blood shields (mastery)
near the hit/exp cap (8% and 26 respectively)
Now keep in mind these numbers are more or less what I remember I had when I started heroics/raiding
I would say get the stamina gem first, cuz its a safe choice, +hit isnt a bad choice either cuz it gives you room to tinker around with reforge, then I'd focus on the rare quality gems that you might gonna need for example: exp/hit, str, dodge/hit, mastery/sta, etc.. pure mastery and avoidance JC-only gems should be left for last when your gear starts to settle down and you're not constantly replacing gear and you kinda know what you're looking for statwise.
Avoidance/mastery is an endless debate so I won't get into it, so just play the game, try out different things, do some napkin math and you'll decide on your own.
@ Smartass
Sounds good TY for the detailed answer!
I usually go for the avoidance first because it is the hardest to reach. But if you use CC and your cooldowns appropriately getting some stam 1st would be ok. (if your dps are the patient type lol)
As for the Avoidance vs. Mastery, I will "boil down" what is in Sattori's guide.
If you are the type that can keep track of your blood shields strength and duration in your head, then mastery is better.
If you prefer more of a passive damage reduction then avoidance is better.
Some fights favor one or the other but overall the real determination of which is better is your playstyle.
But my best recomendation is to read his "Guide to a Bloody Future" and decide for yourself.
"It's always the Healer's fault; unless it's the Tanks fault, just ask the DPS'er in purples doing 5k!"
The avoidance vs. mastery debate seems to be drawing to a close actually, so while avoidance increases mastery's awesomeness, for all blood DKs, mastery is better until you out-gear the content, and Stamina is a good place to go (for a bit more of, nothing crazy) once you reach heroic content.
While what Uranos7 said is true, playstyle factors into it, if you're going to be using Death Strike often (which you should be, really) then mastery is very good. For reference, Illidra is (I believe) still about a thousand mastery rating away from hitting what might be the soft cap.
Last edited by Netheras; 02-20-2011 at 10:50 PM. Reason: blocks of text bleh.
As Netheras said the debate is pretty much closing so at the moment you would be better off getting the mastery gems. I don't particularly like stacking a single stat so personally I have reforged to parry and dodge and gemmed master or mastery/stam. The only real exception is when doing hard mode raids where it is said to be better to stack stam.
First your gearing goal depends much on your expected role.
For single target tanking, I would prefer mastery over avoidance as it's more steady. And you need to reach a reasonable level of health pool. So stamina or mastery should be your choice.
For multi-target tanking or some specific bosses (e.g. H Halfus, Chimaeron), avoidance is win.
I would say in the current version DK is quite weak in AoE tanking situations, so it would be a good idea to focus on single target tanking setup and hope someone else in your raid will do AoE tanking. But if you're stuck in many AoE tanking situations, then you should choose avoidance gear. Mathematically the overall damage income is not that different, it's just the random burst damage income can be larger for the avoidance gearing strategy.
Smartass was talking about the hit cap and expertise cap. I reforged all my hit and expertise away. I'm at 20 expertise and 1.22% hit and doing raids. My threat is more than sufficient, so in my content with the current people I don't need any hit or expertise.
Further, I saw somebody mention to be hit capped if you want to be the interupt tank. I can be wrong, but for as far as I know you always hit with interupts since patch 4.0.1 or something.
I would gem for mastery, and a lot of it for entry raids.
@Couladin
I agree that being hit/expertise capped is unnecessary. Actually in the current gear level to get hit/expertise capped you will be severely gimping your survivability. For tanks the first job is to survive, second to have threat, and the third is utility. Threat only matters in the first 20~30 seconds when you can rely on misdirection/ToT. In fact I finished all the normal T11 raid content with only around 0.5% hit and 15 expertise.
On the other hand, to reliably interrupt spells cast by bosses you need 17% hit (it currently uses the spell hit table for DKs). We get free 9% passively, so you still need 8% spell hit. From the ptr patch notes we know that fater 4.1 interrupts will no longer need hit, but that's not the situation at present.
Stam
@Couladin
You're thinking of taunts. Completely different. Hit won't be needed for interrupts in 4.1 which hasn't hit yet.
And it would seem to me that your Blood Shield and DS heal would be larger from an add perspective, though I can see why avoidance might jump to a higher spot in terms of mitigation.
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