Engineering Glove tinker for tank

[Tengenstein]

As i pottered around orgrimmar I pondered my choice of glove enchants, when cata first hit it was pretty clear that Quickflip Deflection Plates where the only Tanking choice, but since then Synapse Springs have been buffed to give Str rather than Int to warriors. For a tank would synapse springs be better? so i tinkered around and got this

Synapse springs
+0.5% parry, +480strength 10% uptime 16.6% uptime

Deflection Plates
+1% physical damage reduction 21.6%

would it be worth ditching the plates the springs given the HtL benefits of parry?

[Quinafoi]

Keep in mind, Parry is a binary result. You either Parry, or you don't.

Lets say during this 10 second duration you take 5 boss swings (seems likely since 2 second swing timer is quite common). You need to take 200 swings before that 0.5% parry gained actually gives you 1 additional parry. This means you had to use it 40 times (40 minutes) to get the benefit of one additional parry. That's just a statistical average. On a 10 minute boss fight you would expect to gain one quarter of a parry, or zero parries.

Deflection Plates is 12 seconds so you get 6 attacks worth based on the same 2 second swing timer model. Of those 6 swings, most of them will not be dodged, parried, or missed (most will be hit or block). Lets use a very generous avoidance and say you avoid 50%, so you get hit 3 times each time this buff is used. On a 10 minute boss fight this ends up being 30 hits that were mitigated slightly higher because of the higher mitigation. Those 30 hits partially reduced means you took off 30% of a single hit's damage (if that was 1% armor). In practice since your avoidance isn't as insane as 50%, this will actually be much higher.

Now, because of Hold the Line, this 30% reduction of a single attack's damage versus the 25% chance of fully avoiding one and gaining the benefit of Hold the Line these two may come out to statistically be very close in value. However, you have to always keep in mind, until you actually get that additional attack parried, you gained nothing from Synapse Springs. You need a 20 minute fight before you expect (with rounding) for one additional parry to occur. Since we don't have 20 minute fights, this actually is worse even if statistics may say otherwise (because many statistics are run over infinite time, fights don't actually last forever though). On the other side you are guarenteed to gain something from Deflection Plates.

I hope this sheds some light on it for you.

[Tengenstein]

Thanks. The joys of using other peoples brains

[MadMax]

I use the spinal healing injector over the armor plates on my bear tank, seems to me (not good with the math, i'm sure if i'm wrong here someone will help out the numbers end) that you would have to take a crazy amount of dmg during the deflection plate's uptime for it to equal the amount of health you gain from the spinal injector. At least this is how my (if sometimes fuzzy) brain works.

[Sebadoh]

I use the spinal healing injector over the armor plates on my bear tank, seems to me (not good with the math, i'm sure if i'm wrong here someone will help out the numbers end) that you would have to take a crazy amount of dmg during the deflection plate's uptime for it to equal the amount of health you gain from the spinal injector. At least this is how my (if sometimes fuzzy) brain works.

I think for a Druid you could make a reasonable argument for the Synapse Springs, since you get a ton (a TON) more from Agility than plate tanks get from Strength. I don't know if the armor or agility would be better (too lazy to do math, and I don't know a ton about Druid tanks in the first place), but I doubt that the healing injectors are very good especially when you consider you can use them once per fight, and it denies you use of an armor or agility pot mid-fight.

[MadMax]

I did put the armor plates on gloves at first, and when I pop it, it gives just over 1% reduction (I think). Forgot to mention that I am also an alchemist wearing either the agi or stam/mastery alch trinket, so the spinal healing gives me just over 30k health. So with my previous theory, I would have to take 300k dmg during the armor plate uptime to equal it. What I failed to take into account was, like you mentioned, the once per fight aspect of it. Armor plates on a 1min cd and up for 10sec = 100sec uptime in a 10min fight, and it's way feasible to take 300k dmg in 100sec, especially if you pick the right times to pop the cd (which is like... 3/4 of the tank's job imo). But now that you mention it... I haven't even considered the Synapse Springs since they changed them, in fact I didn't put 2 and 2 together to figure that I'd get agi, so I'll probably end up going that route now and let y'all know how it works out.

[Darksend]

does that use your shared potion cooldown? if so consider using an armor pot + different glove enchant

[MadMax]

does that use your shared potion cooldown? if so consider using an armor pot + different glove enchant

yes, both the spinal healing injector and the mana gulper will put your pot on cooldown. the agi synapse springs is feeling like a better option the more I think about it. Not sure if I'll wind up using armor pot or health pot... but definitely gonna get rid of that spinal healing.