Paladin Tanks and Mastery gear

[Hodur]

So, from looking at the loot table in fire lands I wasn't impressed. Maybe I just don't understand how I'm supposed to be gearing up but I was under the impression that paladins want Mastery, and everything in Fire Lands is avoidance/avoidance. Nothing has avoid/master, aside from 2-3 pieces. Is this normal? Should I be gearing up more avoidance or just passing up on this gear?

Last week when we killed Rhyolith, He dropped the boots and I passed due to no mastery and because it was avoidance/expertise. Was I wrong in passing on these? I guess I'm just ultimately wondering if Fire Lands just kinda overlooks paladins as far as gear.

If I need to link my paladin I will.

[Fetzie]

Don't forget that you can also use Tier 12 gear in some slots (hands, legs, chest, shoulders, helmet). Also don'T dismiss an item out of hand simply because it has no mastery - most non-mastery pieces reforged correctly provide higher block and avoidance chances than a lower level mastery piece. You can also get the Mirrored Boots crafted (mastery & parry)

http://www.wowhead.com/items?filter=...5723;crv=0:0:0

this is a search for all items that can drop in firelands than have strength and mastery.

[Auxona]

you wanna take whatever upgrade you get. If it has mastery you take that over anything along as its an upgrade. if it doesn't have mastery but it just has avoidance/avoidance you can always reforge one of those stats into mastery giving you block,parry and dodge so thats almost the best way to go in my opinion.

[sifuedition]

I use the addon ratings buster. You can configure it to show the gains or losses for dodge/parry/block on the tooltip. If the piece is avoid/avoid, you do have to do a little mental math to estimate the change after reforge. Most are good to pick up.

Don't forget, mastery+threat or avoid+threat is potential 5 man or gimmick (alysrazor) gear. You don't have to have just one set.

Having said all that, I am hoping to gear:

Head: baelroc
Shoulders: rag or alys
Chest: Beth
Belt: shannox
Legs: tier
Hands: tier
Shield: alys
Weapon: Beth
Bracers: baelroc
Trinket: Beth
Trinket: varies
Boots: crafted
Back: ry

So far, bracers, shield, weapon are all that has dropped in all our clears. The three lowest itemized pieces. The boots there are only two people in our entire faction with the pattern so you can imagine how backed up they are on orbs. We still have agi users who need the back.

Looks like I'll be going into 4.3 with a lot of 359 gear despite full clearing FL for some time now.

[Theotherone]

Yes, Pallies want mastery, but it's not "stack mastery" like the old "stack stam"; there's a method to the mastery madness and Fetzie's guide which you can find on TankSpot explains it very well.

If you're already familiar with what I'm about to say, feel free to ignore it.

As you probably know, you want to get to full Combat Table Coverage (ctc), which is dodge + parry (avoidance) + block (mitigation) + 5% (boss miss chance) = 102.4%. So you want just enough mastery plus just enough avoidance to equal 97.4% (other 5% is the miss chance). Don't discount Lavascale Minstrone and Elixir of the Master to put you over the top - you don't have to get everything off of gear, gems and enchants. Mastery is nice, but you need avoidance also and you want to balance your avoidance.

So, gear to hit the ctc goal, just because a piece does not have mastery, don't toss it aside. There are pieces that have just dodge and parry on them, reforge them.

Also, ctc is not some panacea that makes all damage go away; it only applies to physical damage and mastery only goes to block i.e. Pally's still take 70% of the damage (not taking into account armor).

[Fetzie]

Head: baelroc
Shoulders: rag or alys
Chest: Beth
Belt: shannox
Legs: tier
Hands: tier
Shield: alys
Weapon: Beth
Bracers: baelroc
Trinket: Beth
Trinket: varies
Boots: crafted
Back: ry

So far, bracers, shield, weapon are all that has dropped in all our clears. The three lowest itemized pieces. The boots there are only two people in our entire faction with the pattern so you can imagine how backed up they are on orbs. We still have agi users who need the back.

Looks like I'll be going into 4.3 with a lot of 359 gear despite full clearing FL for some time now.

Or you could go with (buyable is bolded)

Head: Baleroc/tier/alysrazor(dps)
Neck: Trash/VP
Shoulders: Tier
Back: Reputation AoH
Chest: Tier
Bracers: Majordomo/VP
Gloves: Tier/VP
Belt: Shannox/Reputation AoH
Legs: Tier/VP
Boots: Crafted/Rhyolith/Heroic Magmaw
Rings: VP/Trash/Exalted Rep AoH
Trinkets: Mirror/Beth/Trash/Rep (Str use)

So only 2-3 items need to actually drop, the rest of the slots you can fill either from the AH, the VP vendor or the reputation vendor. And yes the 378 non-mastery items ARE better than the 359 options. They have almost the same amount of CTC, on top of more strength and stamina. Of course, I wouldn't drop 10k per item with 3 weeks left to 4.3, I'd wait and go farm the new 5 mans instead.

Get the 4 set T12. It is awesome.

Oh, and you have a couple of bosses mixed up, Alysrazor doesn't drop a shield, baleroc doesn't drop bracers.

[sifuedition]

All of those non-drop pieces take me farther from ctc. I am currently 0.99 away from full coverage. If I get a few pieces from my list, it MIGHT take me high enough that I can use say the tier helm or shoulders and still have full ctc, but until then, those move me farther from the primary goal just ffor the sake of stam.

Edit:
4 set awesome? I can't see that. Usually when I pop a cd, the duration of the cd isn't a problem. I can't see having a dodge buff changing much in those situations. Not to say that once in a while it wouldn't make a difference, like switching sides on seeds, but I can't see it ever being better than hitting full ctc. From what I've seen so far, if I take tier chest, helm, shoulders - or even any two of the three, I will not hit full ctc without going full mastery stacking on gems or possibly getting everything else from my list that drops. I prefer using the mastery hybrids to get most bonuses.

[Theotherone]

Consuming an Elixir of the Master I hit full ctc and the only 359 pieces I have are the Dragon Bone Warhelm (which has a good chunk of Mastery) and the crafted shield. I logged out in my healing set, but basically my Prot set has all those pieces no one likes, Cracked Obsidium Stompers, Bracers of Regal Force, Durable Flamewarth Greatcloak, etc.

Toon is Jackstraw on Alexstrasza.

So, no reason to turn down nice upgrades just because of no Mastery.

I don't understand why people like the Ryhloith Agility cloak for other than a bear tank; someone in a PuG I was in last night said the Heroic version was BiS for tanks - if that's just because of Mastery, then I find that plain wrong.

[Fetzie]

Just FYI, the non-heroic tier shoulders have almost 300 mastery rating on them. That is 3.8% block, the gem+enchant will put it up to nearly 4% CTC just from that item alone.

People like the rhyolith mastery cloak because there is no other 391 cloak, and there is no cloak with 378 or 391 item level that has mastery on it.

The 4set bonus is awesome because you can pair it with holy shield. So hit Divine Protection, when it expires you have 50-55% avoidance and any hit that gets through only does 50% damage.

0:00 DivP
0:10 HS+4set
0:40 HS
1:00 DivP
1:10 HS+4set
1:40 HS
2:00 DivP
2:10 HP+4set
and so on, with only 20 seconds of "full damage" between each cooldown.

Until you have passive CTC from gear alone, don't be afraid of using elixirs. Yes it can get expensive, but you get full CTC with 2.83% less avoid+block from gear, making it a much less arduous task and being far less dependant on the next loots dropping.

[sifuedition]

I really can't afford the elixir option or I would. As to the 4 pc usage, I would call that good, but not really great, unless you actually have ctc, or really close. As it is, swapping my current helm+chest+shoulders loses me an estimated 6% ctc. I just don't see the bonus being better. It might be about equal but I get my current coverage passively where getting the same net effect from the bonus requires a near constant buff watch for max uptime. Making it more cd timer intensive just for stam doesn't seem right.

I would consider picking up tier helm/shoulders and fully gearing that way to see how I like a change up in playstyle etc except we have been gearing two priests, two paladins and two locks (we could do with some freaking consistency). We have people who still need those for bis ms and I don't feel those are my best in slot. If the pieces I listed dropped, I'd replace the tier for those. That doesn't feel fair to them. Also, I go ret for 1 tank fights and those are clear bis for my ret so I feel I'd be throwing away a token if I spent it prot first then got one of the drops I listed.

Edit:
P.S. I'm hoping you actually convince me otherwise because I like the look of pally tier and the tier pieces seem like they will be easier to get. But ouside of the fact that's it's not "un-playably wrong" it does seem that I would be downgrading my ctc.

Also, I believe looking at all three pieces it is a str loss but hit/exp increase so maybe a wash on threat. Didn't mention it earlier because it's really moot. Sifupally of jaedenar. At work so I can't link.

[Fetzie]

You are never "throwing away a token" if you need it for your main specc. Because it is your main specc.

It would be awesome if you could post your armory link by the way.

[sifuedition]

By "throwing away" I mean I would feel like I wasted it if I roll ms for the shoulders then on rag the shoulders drop. At that point I would be equiping the rag shoulders and the token that could have gone to my ret bis is sitting in my bags as an unused prot shoulder.

Additionally, someone just lost a roll for a bis piece to someone who is not using it for bis, but just a temp upgrade.

Edit: I'll link when I get home

[sifuedition]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...fupally/simple

Here is the raw (pre-reforge) comparison in %:

Chest:
- 2.97 block (237 rating)
+ 0.87 dodge (202)
+ 0.50 parry (114)

Helm
- 1.41 block (112)
+ 1.64 parry (385)
- 0.75 dodge (169)

Shoulders
+1.29 block (103)
- 0.19 dodge (44)
- 0.37 parry (83)

These are from the tooltips with Ratings Buster and seem to be accounting for strength as well because I only have 68 parry rating on my current shoulders but it shows a loss of 83. So the shoulders are technically an upgrade but it is very mastery heavy as I am going from avoid/avoid to mast/threat. It's not that I am against small upgrades like that, it's just that to me, the Alysrazor or Rag shoulders are a much better upgrade and therefore this is not BiS. Since the others who roll for it, it is BiS, and even my off-spec, it would be BiS, there is the potential to render this wasted if my BiS drops.

By all means...IF the rest of the raid gets their MS helm/shoulders and I get my ret (which I should be rolling OS for) and I still have a chance to pick these up for prot....and during that time my BiS hasn't dropped, THEN I fully intend to pick these up.

I just feel that 4.3 will be out before any of that happens, much less all of it.

Edit:

Do you know of any good resource for testing reforges before paying for them? Preferably one I don't have to go through and enter all my stats or gear manually.

[sifuedition]

So, doing some quick math, changing all three would only lose me 1.39% coverage taking from a 0.99% chance of an unmitigated hit to a 2.38% chance. That's overall a small chance...imean really, 2%? However, I CAN be fully covered with the gear I am aiming for.

In the end, isn't that what we are really doing? Going for the best options even if it's a marginal difference?

[Fetzie]

Well, 1.39% CTC is about 110 Mastery Rating. If you include the T12 chest reforge (~90 rating), the T12 Shoulder reforge (~60 rating), then even with taking the loss of 90 dodge/parry rating into account (you gain 60 dodge/parry on the shoulders), that should put you right on 102.4%.

So the shoulders are technically an upgrade but it is very mastery heavy as I am going from avoid/avoid to mast/threat. It's not that I am against small upgrades like that, it's just that to me, the Alysrazor or Rag shoulders are a much better upgrade and therefore this is not BiS.

Like you said, this is all about being really finicky and anal about finding the most optimal gemming and reforging for your current gear set. Optimising your CTC to the nearest tenth or hundredth of a percent (it needs to be higher than 102.39) often means a marginal upgrade, even if it is just a 0.2% upgrade in CTC can be the key to an otherwise impossible looking puzzle. The three items I got last night landed me at 102.49% without a mastery elixir and with a single mastery trinket, I think I was missing about 80 mastery rating in total before last night's raid to do so, which is why I was using the elixirs and scaling back the mastery reforges accordingly.

Something I forgot was that this seemingly innocuous upgrade of two T12.378-T12.391 and the sidegrade alysrazor heroic shoulders to tier heroic shoulders gained me about 10k life by saving me from needing the elixirs. Before this I was at about 204k life raidbuffed and at full ctc, now I am at 216k life and full ctc. How often do you gain 10000 hp by changing three items (that are not stamina trinkets)

When reforging what I do is remember how much Mastery rating I need for 0.1% CTC (~8) and how much avoidance rating I need for 0.1% CTC (~18). I work out how much mastery I need first, because that scales linearly instead of exponentially (is easier for my brain to work with), any fine tuning (<~0.2% CTC) is done with juggling parry and dodge reforges.

[sifuedition]

Finally got the Alysrazor shoulders last night and even after reforge I lose ctc =(

We put off rag until tonight because two raiders needed to go...maybe the rag shoulders will drop.

The Shannox belt, Bale head or Beth chest (or heaven forbid two or all three) would come in very handy right now.