Predicting Firelands Stam vs. Mastery

[Ghladum]

Hi, all. I know PTR data isn't at all firm in terms of numbers and tuning, however I'm wondering if a general prediction will hold out.

Basically what I've seen is that as Cataclysm raids have progressed from easy to hard modes, more and more tanks are shifting from absolute Mastery stacking, to a Mastery+Stam balance, to a Mastery+Heavy Stam. Once healers get above some magic number of Spirit (2800? 3000?), they're really able to ABC (always be casting), and mana becomes less of a concern.

Here's a recent dev response from the Firelands Q&A:

Q: It can be anticipated that mana regeneration and maximum mana will increase from gearing up with the new Firelands equipment. Isn’t there a possibility that healers can spam big heals again (and more quick heals) just like in WotLK? If so, is there any plan to handle this without class nerfs? – Whitewnd (KR)

A: As damage increases, healers will need to use their largest, most inefficient heals more regularly to keep up. That’s fine and was all part of the design. We just didn’t want players to opt out of mana regeneration too early in the content because then Spirit (and mana-related procs) on gear wouldn’t be attractive, and because we’d have to balance difficulty by making the tanks die in a couple of GCDs if not healed continually. Most progression-oriented healers still want large amounts of Spirit, often in every single slot. As they get more comfortable with their mana, they’ll be able to replace some of that Spirit with other stats, but the Spirit will still be valuable; more Spirit on a set piece for example might mean being able to use a different enchant or reforge on another piece.

This is still a much better place to be than we were with Lich King content, where mana stopped mattering in the first raid tier. Aside from the mana changes we’ve already made to Innervate, Mana Tide Totem and paladin heals, we don’t think an overall regen nerf is necessary.

So does it not seem likely that tanks will want to start a good way towards Stam stacking in the Master + Stam spectrum, sacrificing overall damage reduction for more spike-resistance? Anyhow, this is perhaps a "no duh!" question, but walking into Firelands, how will you guys be gemming/trinketing?

[swelt]

In the past when going from tier to tier, it's been common to go for stamina in a big way at the start. The reasons are those of game design. Blizzard encounter designers balance the content around a certain expected level of gear. They work out how hard a boss should hit based on the number of hitpoints you would expect to have in that gear (or more importantly, how big the spike damage like breath or special strikes should be). Early bosses in an instance will be tuned to be challenging but possible in 'entry level gear' (i.e. gear from the previous tier), but bosses later in the instance might assume some gear from the new tier. This becomes even more true when starting heroic modes, where gear from the new tier is certainly assumed. Progression raiders could 'get ahead of the curve' a bit by pushing their stamina to the max possible (and thus reaching hitpoint entry levels for later content before they got their drops).

What I don't know is where the entry level for normal modes is. If bosses are tuned to be entirely doable in T11 normal mode gear, then they will be comfortably managed in T11 heroic gear. Chances are that if you were in T11 normal gear fully socketed/trinketed for avoidance, you might struggle?

The other thing I don't know is whether Blizzard have done what they said at Blizzcon in giving bosses something akin to expertise - i.e. making our dodge/parry (and mastery?) less effective point for point. Wonder if we'll hear about that in the Tank Q&A

[klausi]

25s: stamina, there are enough external cooldowns to cover any fancy ability and adding another 20kish while bruteforcing looks perfectly fine to me.
10s: pre nerfs of the first tier of cata raiding you couldn't survive some ability combos (even on the first heroic boss Halfus!) without a certain amount of hitpoints, right now i don't even need to bother swapping my trinkets around between the fights, mirror+worm and i'm set for any circumstance.

For normalmode on 4.2 (and unless they increase the incoming damage) i was totally fine on PTR 10s testing with my heavy mastery setup and 165k unbuffed and from the datamining it looks like they continue adding more depth/mechanics instead of tending to just increase the incoming damage (spikes) mindlessly.

[truculent]

simple answer : No

I dont see any tanks stacking stam to be honest. Maybe theres a floor, lets call it 185k for hm 25s, but If your running hm 25s, Odds are you have enough stam from gear to get you there... theres no need to stack it.


I would predict us working towards unhittable sets in the near future while moving more towards expo and hit.

[Bigbad]

I looked at the datamined items from firelands. Seems its only possible to get unhittable as warrior with full 391 gear and double mastery trinkets.

Aiming for 96,4% combattable coverage with Tier 4set and getting more stamina after that seems a realistic goal while progressing through firelands.

[truculent]

I looked at the datamined items from firelands. Seems its only possible to get unhittable as warrior with full 391 gear and double mastery trinkets.

Aiming for 96,4% combattable coverage with Tier 4set and getting more stamina after that seems a realistic goal while progressing through firelands.

I noticed two things :

1) the nature of 391 gear puts unhittable on the table and perhaps garentees it next patch. considering Blizzards attitude toward healing, That kind of takes stam off the table.

2) The volume of threat concerns has been increasingly growing lately, as dps become more geared. Where there would be room for stam stacking, even assuming unhittable is not a realistic goal for the avg semi hardcore raider progressing thru the content, I belive that is where we will be adding hit and expo for threat gains.

[klausi]

Seems its only possible to get unhittable as warrior with full 391 gear and double mastery trinkets.

Something paladin had to do this entire tier to achieve that goal. IIRC Blizzard already stated they might up the boss' expertise to counter this.

2) The volume of threat concerns has been increasingly growing lately, as dps become more geared. Where there would be room for stam stacking, even assuming unhittable is not a realistic goal for the avg semi hardcore raider progressing thru the content, I belive that is where we will be adding hit and expo for threat gains.

There are a lot of offensive stats flying around:
tier shoulder (200 hit)
tier helmet (193 exp)
boots (173 exp), looks like they are only ones right now besides Sinestra loot
waist (153 exp)

http://ptr.wowhead.com/items=4.4?fil...=0:0:0:0#0+8+1

neck (130 exp)
ranged (73 exp)
finger (130 hit)
finger (110 hit)
cloak (130 hit)

http://ptr.wowhead.com/items?filter=...:3;crv=0:0:0:0

[swelt]

We seem to be having 2 conversations here. One is about what tanks will wear when they first go into Firelands, the other how they'll be optimised after they've picked up a bunch of loot from inside the instance. The latter might be interesting, but you won't get there without first overcoming the former.

My hypothesis for the first point (what to wear on day 1) would be something like this:
- If you have been doing T11 normal modes, have access only to T11 normal gear, you might want to have the option for double stam trinkets and that you are using stamina or stamina-hybrid gems (i.e. matching socket bonuses with green + purple rather than orange gems).
- If you have full T11 heroic gear, T12 normal modes probably won't be a heavy gearcheck so you can go with what you prefer

As to the second point, I really think we need answers on the 'boss expertise' question before you can calculate things like unhittable. For example, if the bosses ignore 3% of our dodge + parry, that's going to make unhittable a good deal harder to reach through ratings on gear.

[Beefius]

I dont think the current emphasis for prot warrior avoidance/mitigation over stam is going to change in 4.2; warrior tanks will still want to take less damage per hit rather than less % of their HP per hit until healers are able to heal like they could in wrath... their survivability is less dependent on how many massive hits in a row they can survive between heals, and more about how efficient they are to be healed over the course of a fight.

The only other limiting factor besides healing to consider is threat; more HPs = higher vengeance = higher threat generation, but honestly I have no idea if warrior tank threat is ever a problem beyond the opening seconds of a fight, and therefor enough to justify stacking stam for threat reasons.