No stamina gems at all?

[maven79]

I just finished gearing my Paladin to pre-raid level and just finished a warrior before that. For both of these, with minor differences, I followed the concept of mastery>parry=dodge (parry being slightly better for warrior for hold the line). I trained myself away from the stamina concept of old and tried to only use those gems when the slot bonus was worth it.

So my question is, whenever I plug my character into any optimizer (rawr, etc.) I seem to get a lot of suggestions to put in gems like stamina+mastery stamina+parry or even straight stamina gems where the slot bonus is not worth it. Are these suggestions more based on raiding and not Zandalari/Heroics, where huge spikes with my 150kish unbuffed health would be considered very low? I hate giving up 3-5% avoidance for a measly 5k health.

Paladin http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/hyjal/Shori/simple
Warrior http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...l/Jaist/simple

Thanks a lot for any suggestion or clarification.

[Bigbad]

In general, yellow: 40 mastery red 20 mastery/20 parry blue: 20 mastery/30stam.

I guess that you don't have raidbuffs in the optimizer thus skewing the result or maybe you're just a tad undergeared in which case a little extra stamina can't hurt. 150k hp unbuffed seems plenty.

[Tengenstein]

If i recall correctly the eter al meta gem requires 3 blue gems. That means either hybrid stam, hit or spirit gems. Stam actually has some defensive value unlike your other options

[Fetzie]

You need three of the following to activate the meta gem:

Solid Ocean Sapphire (60 stam, blue)
Puissant Dream Emerald (20 mastery/30 stam, green)
Defender's Demonseye (20 parry/30 stam, purple)

My personal preference before heroic firelands gear (which means easily block capped) is
Blue + Yellow = Puissant Dream Emerald
Red = Fine Ember Topaz (20 mastery/20 parry)
Meta = Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond (1% BV + 82 Stam)

Gives a nice balance between mastery and stamina.

[Theotherone]

Have some mercy on your healers, gem like Fetzie says; not all damage is physical and as a little healer a little extra stam over what's given by gear is welcome.

[Exiledknight]

Your #1 goal should be to get full CTC, so with that in mind you should be doing the following

yellow- Fractured Amberjewel
Red- Defender's Demoneye
Blue- Puissant Dream Emerald

Once you reach 90% CTC them switch from the Auster Shadowspirit diamond to the BV meta(name is escaping me atm)

[Tengenstein]

if your one goal is CTC coverage why Defender's Demon's Eyes over Fine Ember Topazes?

Also switching to the Eternal Metagem at 90% CTC is wa too late: http://www.bacondev.com/tankmeta/

[Exiledknight]

if your one goal is CTC coverage why Defender's Demon's Eyes over Fine Ember Topazes?

Also switching to the Eternal Metagem at 90% CTC is wa too late: http://www.bacondev.com/tankmeta/

You do need a level of health for what you are doing, defenders provides both and covers you for generaliztions.

What is bacondev? Never heard of it, and looking at the scales and such it seems like 40% uptime on HTL is rather high as is the shield block uptime as its rare you will be using it on CD. However even then at 90% ctc the eternal barely comes out ahead, I dont play a warrior so I cant say the HTL uptime, However I think 25% is more realistic on SB which at 25% uptime the Austere is better at 89%. On the Paladin side 100% HS uptime is impossible.

[Tengenstein]

On Shannox 10HC I have a 49.7% uptime on HtL whilst spending a significant amount of time out of melee range. 40% is a good average. and why on earth would you not want to pop Shield block pratically on CD while tanking? The few fights where magic damage is dangerous you take MoBI and use that. IF CTC is your number 1 goal why is it a bad idea to have full CTC guaranteed 33.3% (66.6% with the 4pc) of the time.

And more importantly you see those slide bars, you can slide them to the appropriate percentage to reflect your tanking style. But even with only 1% htl uptime and 1% SB uptime you still only need 76% CTC for the eternal to out do the Austere. That's a far cry from the 90% you postulate.

As to having enough stamina, yeah sure if you were doing 25mans pre-nerf in 359s, if you really needed that extra stam, but since the nerf you don't need the demonseyes, you can just swap in stam trinkets for the fights where you need more stam or mastery/avoidance trinks where you don't, but for most fights you get enough stam off gear and from blue sockets that you don't need to gem stam.

[Exiledknight]

And more importantly you see those slide bars, you can slide them to the appropriate percentage to reflect your tanking style. But even with only 1% htl uptime and 1% SB uptime you still only need 76% CTC for the eternal to out do the Austere. That's a far cry from the 90% you postulate.

Where are you coming up with that? Using the 40% and 100% at 76% the numbers are as follows: 15% dodge 15% parry 41%block plus the 5% miss gives you 76% and these numbers.

Damage Reduction Per Hit (27.17% of landed incoming hits):	64.848%	65.298%	64.848%	64.848%	(26.31% of landed incoming hits)
Damage Reduction Per Block (55.06% of landed incoming hits):	75.393%	75.709%	75.745%	75.393%	(54.86% of landed incoming hits)
Damage Reduction Per Critical Block (17.77% of landed incoming hits):	85.939%	86.119%	86.642%	85.939%	(18.83% of landed incoming hits)
Average Mitigation:	74.402%	74.73%	74.721%	74.605%
Average Swing:	25,598	25,270	25,279	25,395

You dont want to pop SB on cooldown because there are dmg spikes, and movement times, during these times is when its optimal to use it because it lowers the burst dmg that you take. Total dmg taken is completely irrelevant where as burst dmg is not.

Again where is the theorycrafting of this bacondev? Where does this program and model come from? You cant just randomly plug numbers in and say its correct.

As far as hold the line, as I stated I dont play a warrior so couldn't really comment although Heroic Shannox is a terrible example and in addition it is not somethign you can rely on unless you can get 100% uptime, until then it is useless in determining which meta is better. Yes it will reduce overall dmg taken but you need to worry about guarantee's as a tank not procs.

In addition the critical block is not anything guaranteed so it further complicates things as again you are dealing with a proc, which will lead you away from gearing for a worst case scenario(which in a full ctc warrior is a string of non crit blocks)

[Bigbad]

Exiled you don't make much sense. If you're #1 goal is capping CTC you should use fine embers. If you insist on using defenders opals which i don't agree with your goal is a balance between stamina and ctc. I like to balance my stamina with trinkets/flask/elixers but its a bit of a personal choice. Its also quite different between paladins and warriors since paladins cap much easier.

You almost always pop SB on cd unless you're not tanking anything. Predicatable damage spikes are countered by shieldwall, trinkets or other cds in general. Seeing as you don't play a warrior don't spread misinformation.
HtL uptime is close to 50% can even spike higher in the time during/after the 4piece, 40% is a conservative estimate that probably belongs in the last Tier.
As far as the metagem goes I switched fairly late when i got the 4piece T12 since i didn't think the loss of EH was worth it for the small extra bit of average damage reduction. But if you only look at average damage reduction the block meta wins out pretty fast. Then again the armor meta isn't a big EH gain so the chance of saving your ass during a worst case scenario is small. Should probably always get the block meta with the current itemlevel of gear.

[Tengenstein]

What i did was take 12% parry and 12% dodge and 52% block and then set the sliders for htl and SB to 1%. How do you work out having a 100% uptime on shield block, i can't imagine that would happen very often.

As to the Theorycrafting of Bacondev, its fairly simple;

Damage reduction per hit takes the armour value you enter against the damage per seing you enter and generates a damage reduction based on your values for each meta. Damage per swing multiplied by damage reduction from armour

Damage reduction per block takes the numbers you put in (armour value, block chance, damage per swing) and multiples them to give you an average damage redcution per block

Damage reduction per critical block takes the numbers you put in (armour value, critical block chance, damage per swing) and multiples them to give you an average damage redcution per block.

It then calculates the average for total damage reduction for each meta based on chances of each out come and the damage reduction of each outcome. it's simple maths and if you have a calculator and some time you can follow it easily.

YOU do want to use SB on CD, becuase Spikes by their nature aren't predictable, and popping a CD after you've been run over by the truck is worth a hell of alot less than using it prememptively. If you could predict damage spikes then yeah you pop a CD, however most Damage spikes from Hits strings are unpredictable so you want to minimise the chance of that happening, Popping SB on CD while you have aggro means this can't happen 33% of the time.

However in terms of burst damage redcution neither meta gem is going to save your ass, with 0 avoidance and 20% block, 0htl and SB uptime its we're talking about an average difference in damage reduction of 0.36% difference in damage reduction.

[Exiledknight]

Exiled you don't make much sense. If you're #1 goal is capping CTC you should use fine embers. If you insist on using defenders opals which i don't agree with your goal is a balance between stamina and ctc.

There is a health threshold you need to have for any encounter, in the OP's gear level they need the additional stam

You almost always pop SB on cd unless you're not tanking anything. Predicatable damage spikes are countered by shieldwall, trinkets or other cds in general. Seeing as you don't play a warrior don't spread misinformation.
HtL uptime is close to 50% can even spike higher in the time during/after the 4piece, 40% is a conservative estimate that probably belongs in the last Tier.

I wont even touch the debate with shield block, you are right I dont play a warrior, however it simple comes to total dmg reduction vs spike dmg reduction. I find it hard to believe that you have some type of other CD to contend with every predictable dmg spike, raid wide dmg going out, and healers moving, but in reality it is irrelevant because until you have full CTC you are increasing the chance you may block, so again it is TDR vs Spike dmg reduction. Same thing with HTL, until you attain full CTC the mitigation from that is completely unreliable, which means it is completely worthless to include in any mitigation numbers.

As far as the metagem goes I switched fairly late when i got the 4piece T12 since i didn't think the loss of EH was worth it for the small extra bit of average damage reduction. But if you only look at average damage reduction the block meta wins out pretty fast. Then again the armor meta isn't a big EH gain so the chance of saving your ass during a worst case scenario is small. Should probably always get the block meta with the current itemlevel of gear.

Average dmg reduction is completely worthless, TDR is 100% irrelevant to any encounter and always has been, you MUST gear and play to negate the worst case scenario or you are doing it wrong. The healers dont care if you are mitigating 1% more of the dmg over the entire fight....They DO care when you pop SB during a movement phase or when raid wide dmg is going out and your crit block chance skyrockets.

[Exiledknight]

What i did was take 12% parry and 12% dodge and 52% block and then set the sliders for htl and SB to 1%. How do you work out having a 100% uptime on shield block, i can't imagine that would happen very often.

That is 81% not 76%, this shows you are not versed in the Combat table in which every boss that doesn't dual wield has a 5% miss chance. 100% uptime on shield block is equivelent to 33.3% i.e. 100% of possible uptime, worded poorly by me.

As to the Theorycrafting of Bacondev, its fairly simple;

Damage reduction per hit takes the armour value you enter against the damage per seing you enter and generates a damage reduction based on your values for each meta. Damage per swing multiplied by damage reduction from armour

Damage reduction per block takes the numbers you put in (armour value, block chance, damage per swing) and multiples them to give you an average damage redcution per block

Damage reduction per critical block takes the numbers you put in (armour value, critical block chance, damage per swing) and multiples them to give you an average damage redcution per block.

It then calculates the average for total damage reduction for each meta based on chances of each out come and the damage reduction of each outcome. it's simple maths and if you have a calculator and some time you can follow it easily.

Again this math is flawed, you are counting on a proc of HTL unless you move it to 1% to give you numbers, you are counting on using shield block poorly to gain numbers at 33.3%, and you are counting on critical block chance, RNG to determine the meta. It is all wrong, you cannot factor in any of these things because none are guaranteed to happen. If you do not understand this then you need to read the EH theory and you need to read Aggs guide Why we do what we do. Basing anything off a chance as a tank is pure and complete failure and any well versed tank will agree. You simply cannot count a chance of anything into EH which critical block chance is.

YOU do want to use SB on CD, becuase Spikes by their nature aren't predictable, and popping a CD after you've been run over by the truck is worth a hell of alot less than using it prememptively. If you could predict damage spikes then yeah you pop a CD, however most Damage spikes from Hits strings are unpredictable so you want to minimise the chance of that happening, Popping SB on CD while you have aggro means this can't happen 33% of the time.

However in terms of burst damage reduction neither meta gem is going to save your ass, with 0 avoidance and 20% block, 0htl and SB uptime its we're talking about an average difference in damage reduction of 0.36% difference in damage reduction.[/QUOTE]
Spikes are 100% predictable when you acheive full CTC, you know when they are coming there is not a fight where you don't, and if you don't then you are not paying attention and do not know the encounter mechanics very well. Every single fight you should know where burst dmg happens and where your healers will be moving and you wont get anything but instant heals for a few seconds, if you don't then you are failing as a tank.

[mavfin]

Average dmg reduction is completely worthless, TDR is 100% irrelevant to any encounter and always has been, you MUST gear and play to negate the worst case scenario or you are doing it wrong. The healers dont care if you are mitigating 1% more of the dmg over the entire fight....They DO care when you pop SB during a movement phase or when raid wide dmg is going out and your crit block chance skyrockets.

Exactly. To put the above more simply, mastery-stacking will never max out your total damage reduction for the fight over an avoidance-heavy setup, but, you could call it SDR (Spike Damage Reduction). The more often you block, the less spikes you take. So, sims that try to minimize the total damage you take will get the wrong answers, because that's not what's needed.

[Exiledknight]

Exactly. To put the above more simply, mastery-stacking will never max out your total damage reduction for the fight over an avoidance-heavy setup, but, you could call it SDR (Spike Damage Reduction). The more often you block, the less spikes you take. So, sims that try to minimize the total damage you take will get the wrong answers, because that's not what's needed.

Ohhh i like SDR, trademark it Mavfin!

[Mustache]

All math aside, coming from a healers non-simmed experiences, I would say a little extra stam will never hurt. Its entirely likely it won't save you, but it may mean the difference between living long enough for your healer to react to damage. But like everything there is clearly a balance to it.

[Tengenstein]

I have read Aggs guide: it was very good when EH was the be all and end all back in wrath., things have moved on a little since then, and I'm not going to react to your baiting, so i forgot to count the 5% miss (its actually 4.6% from a level 88).


150k unbuffed health is more than enough for firelands, especially after the nerf. He doesn't need the extra stam.

The math is not flawed it's showing average damage reduction and it's quite correct, the problem is you're saying that since it's not relevant in your burst time mind set its wrong. it's really not, the arithmetic is quite irrefutable, so stop with that straw man argument. I'm not saying Burst time is irrelevant, I'm saying that getting full CTC is more important than gemming stam. Gemming the eternal you sacrafice almost nothing in Burst time but make significant gains in average damage reduction. when we're being bursted Mr. Austere survives about as well as Mr, Eternal, but Mr.Eternal requires significantly less healing when not being bursted, meaning his healers can be a hell of alot more carefree about their mana.

I stand by my original point; if maximising CTC is your number 1 goal, then you gem Fine ember topazs NOT defender's demon's eyes, until you reach that goal and that for warriors the Eternal is better for over all damage reduction, and sacrafices almost nothing in burst time. 2% amour's worth what? a third of a percent damage reduction

If you care to show some maths counter, please do so.

[Bigbad]

There is a health threshold you need to have for any encounter, in the OP's gear level they need the additional stam

That is completely something else then what you posted before. Having some sort of minimal amount of hp is reasonable but I doubt that with the recent nerfs the OP would need more then 150k hp unbuffed to start in firelands. Besides its easier to switch a stam trinket in, but as I said before stamina is a bit of a personal preference.

I wont even touch the debate with shield block, you are right I dont play a warrior, however it simple comes to total dmg reduction vs spike dmg reduction. I find it hard to believe that you have some type of other CD to contend with every predictable dmg spike, raid wide dmg going out, and healers moving, but in reality it is irrelevant because until you have full CTC you are increasing the chance you may block, so again it is TDR vs Spike dmg reduction. Same thing with HTL, until you attain full CTC the mitigation from that is completely unreliable, which means it is completely worthless to include in any mitigation numbers.

All the predictable spikes can be handled with trinkets and cds in firelands, name me one where you would want to save SB for. Not using shieldblock on cd will cause you to take additional damage significant enough to be noticable by your healers only reason to delay it is if you're not tanking something, on tankswap fights or like on shannox when riplimb is running with the spear. As warrior things are pretty reliable when you're unhittable 2/3 of the time with the 4piece and can fill the additional 1/3 of the time with a dodge on use trinket. Its far from worthless....

Average dmg reduction is completely worthless, TDR is 100% irrelevant to any encounter and always has been, you MUST gear and play to negate the worst case scenario or you are doing it wrong. The healers dont care if you are mitigating 1% more of the dmg over the entire fight....They DO care when you pop SB during a movement phase or when raid wide dmg is going out and your crit block chance skyrockets.

I think you account too much value to spike damage its a bit of a wotlk mindset. If spikedamage would be as important as you make it out to be we would be stacking stamina but that's far from optimal you would be a manasponge. I don't have problems surviving some bad rng got enough stamina. Popping shieldwall or mirror trinket is so much more effective then saving your shieldblock for something its just wrong.

[Exiledknight]

No you are 100% incorrect Mastery on a shield tank is part of EH, there was no baiting at all you displayed numbers that were incorrect by ignoring part of the combat table. 150k health, maybe it is enough after the nerf, I know prior to a tank would have been wrecked with that, so I may be out of touch there but in my opinion he needs to supplement, there is no golden number there at all, so its all opinions and mine is 150k is pushing it, again post nerf it may not be I have no idea.

The math can be correct it could be done by Einstein himself, but it is completely irrelevant, your healers are spam healing you, so reducing TDR is completely irrelevant you are getting healed either way, you are not saving any healers mana at all. You are showing you do not understand the way healing is, this isnt healers in 346ilvl gear, they are spamming the tank so that 1% tdr just becomes overhealing.

You say that getting full CTC is more important than gemming stam, but then go into the meta choices, so which is it? Neither affect the CTC or stam what so ever. There is no math to be shown, none whatsoever....mastery is part of EH in cata which means EH is still king, there is no math needed it's knowledge of how it works. Again read the million threads on EH and block capping all over the place and they will all tell you the same thing, you cannot rely on RNG, relying on CB to show the Eternal is better is relying on RNG, which is 100% wrong.