Max. EH approach for 4.3 possible?

[gom]

So yesterday I was watching a heroic dragonsoul PTR stream from the first Boss morchok and there was some pretty nasty burst tank damage going on which was resulting in tank deaths so the tank switched on his other tank which had ~20k hp more and he seemed more stable on this one. So it looks like at least the first heroic boss would favor a max eh approach. Has somebody heroic ptr experience and could give us his opinion on that?

There was also heavy raid damage looks like you have to rotate cooldowns on the stomps. As a warrior tank this worries me because I see myself left with no major personal cooldowns in 4.3.

[Kazeyonoma]

mastery is still good EH, it's part of the best EH, but yes, if there is large unsurvivable bursts of damage that can be made survivable by having more HP after reaching CTC, then it'll be smart to go for a stamina heavy set at that point, from your description this may be the case.

As for rotating cooldowns, if the choice is between saving a CD for the raid, or saving yourself, you use it to save yourself if that's what the encounter calls for, having a raid utility built into shield wall and last stand/rallying cry, doesn't mean you can't use it to save your own skin, you're death = wipe on the raid, so why not just use it.

[gom]

As for rotating cooldowns, if the choice is between saving a CD for the raid, or saving yourself, you use it to save yourself if that's what the encounter calls for, having a raid utility built into shield wall and last stand/rallying cry, doesn't mean you can't use it to save your own skin, you're death = wipe on the raid, so why not just use it.

thats of course true but lets say you intend to use SW as a raid CD because the strategy requires it. But then shortly before its your turn things go bad and you're about to die so you hit that shield wall and can save yourself but after that you don't have the Raid CD and because of that the raid wipes.

Then it feels like saving yourself with shield wall was a mistake although it isn't because thats what this ability is for: saving your ass not the raids

[Leucifer]

Also depends on the class. Burst damage for a DK is different than for a warrior/pally. DK has to survive it, period, and then has an easier time recovering. Pally/warrior can at least attempt to reduce it. Now mind you, I'm oversimplifying to a degree here, but how each tank type functions will play into this.

As a DK, if I wanted to deal with burst damage in the form of exceptionally large single hits, I would want more stam. If it's burst damage in the sense of lot of rapid smaller hits? Mastery might be better. Really depends on how that damage is delivered.

Oh.... and if it's magic damage.... we're all screwed to some degree. I'd think for that scenario... you want stam.

Edit: And looking at what Kaz had to say regarding cooldowns....
Most classes have some sort of damage mit. Rogue has combat readiness and cloak. Hunter has deterrence. Mage has ice block. Priest can use AoE bubble. Unholy DK has AMZ and DK in general has AMS and IBF. Druid barkskin.... the list goes on. If their is a raid-wide omgwe'regonnaallgetcrushed mechanic that is known.. then uh... shouldn't the raid as a whole take steps to deal with it? The tank's raid-wide should be an oh-crap raid-saver used on judgment call by the tank to help the group push through, not an excuse for other classes to not consider their own survival.

[Fetzie]

thats of course true but lets say you intend to use SW as a raid CD because the strategy requires it. But then shortly before its your turn things go bad and you're about to die so you hit that shield wall and can save yourself but after that you don't have the Raid CD and because of that the raid wipes.

Then it feels like saving yourself with shield wall was a mistake although it isn't because thats what this ability is for: saving your ass not the raids

Generally speaking the raid won't die because you didn't use a cooldown, especially in normal mode content. I cannot think of a mechanic off-hand that deals overkill damage from full because you didn't use raid-wall. This is regardless of the fact that using Shield Wall when you are at 10% life is too late anyway - a 60k swing reduced to 30k by shieldwall would still kill you (last stand would perhaps be a more prudent choice in this example).

I might be in a less awkward position as my Divine Guardian is on a separate timer to my personal cooldowns, but if it was tied to one of them, I would use it to save myself every time.

Also to nitpick: when at full CTC you can pretty much add the damage reduction through blocking to your EH.

[Bigbad]

How much hp did the tanks have going into the fight Gom? I'm already favoring stamina a bit with 212k hp raidbuffed and 100,1% CTC, that's using 1 stam trinket and flask but with mastery gems.
From what I've seen from the dragonsoul loot i should be easily get the last 2% of CTC from a few upgrades boots/cloaks come to mind, epic gems will also give about 160-200 rating extra. Should be possible to push more stamina through gems after that as well.

[gom]

How much hp did the tanks have going into the fight Gom? I'm already favoring stamina a bit with 212k hp raidbuffed and 100,1% CTC, that's using 1 stam trinket and flask but with mastery gems.
From what I've seen from the dragonsoul loot i should be easily get the last 2% of CTC from a few upgrades boots/cloaks come to mind, epic gems will also give about 160-200 rating extra. Should be possible to push more stamina through gems after that as well.

He had ~225k raid buffed: Here is a sample from the stream:

http://de.twitch.tv/ohdamntv/b/298992380

If you go to Minute 46 and following you get a good impression of the burst damage this boss is capable. He was at ~250k hp and he almost gets insta gibbed within 2sec with healing in between.

@leucifer well if you can survive something with your own cd like deterrence and such then yay but there are definitely encounter abilities which are designed so that you have to use a raid cooldown. especially this fight (heroic morchok) there is so much raid damsge going on with the stomps and the shards you want to have as many raid cds as possible on top of that the two closest targets take double the stomp damage. so two ppl besides the two tanks need some sort of mitigation for that. so there is cooldown management all over the place in this fight. I can totally see the top guilds equipping their tanks with 4PC asap.

what Im trying to say is that I fear that blizzard has designed the encounters around the 4PC and I don't like this direction at all but well thats offtopic

[Bigbad]

Doesn't look that bad tbh. First off its a dk the most spiky tank there is even with the armor buff they received. Secondly most burst damage is melee+stomp and the stomp got a castbar. Fairly certain i can tank this on my warrior with 215-220k hp but its a heroic mode they aren't supposed to be easy.

Looks like the 4piece tank bonuses are great for this fight but I agree that needing a lot of cooldown management is more hassle then fun.

The shammy 10% hp buff on ancestral healing looks interesting maybe mandatory for some fights.

[Exiledknight]

A few things to remember

1. Tank gearing usually matters to get to heroics, i.e. once you are geared as a tank for the easiest you can tank any heroic encounter as blizz has kinda turned to a whole, lets make the hardest part of the easiest heroic tank burst dmg(see halfus and Shannox burst was capable of pretty much insta gibbing a tank your first few kills).
2. CD's and raid CD's should be planned for, i.e. you need to use your shield wall or rallying cry for the raid, then you should know what externals are available for yourself as well.
3. Most likely we have 6 weeks(I cant see blizzard not dropping the patch the week before SWOTR, it would be a bad business move to not) so unless it was a tank in full BiS heroic gear there are a few weeks of farming up to then(not sure if there will be the week of normals as I know at some point I read HMs will be available out the gate).

DKs, Paladins, and Warriors(sorry druids not 100% certain on your mastery) mastery is all part of EH when you get to the ctc coverage as a shield tank, and as a DK your healing is reliable as well in terms of the active mitigation module, its there when you want it, while a shield tanks is always there. If you are worried about heroic modes right off the bat there is no reason to be worried about ctc at this point you should have full coverage. I am at the point of forging mastery into avoidance on I think two items, and this is with refusing to take firestones(other than the one for the scales)or tier tokens until the dps have them, so I still have iirc 4 or 5 378's that will no doubt be replaced by 4.3

[klausi]

If you go to Minute 46 and following you get a good impression of the burst damage this boss is capable. He was at ~250k hp and he almost gets insta gibbed within 2sec with healing in between.

85k melee hits on a DK (with their armor buffed on ptr) equal to ~ 63k hits maximum for paladin/warrior (~ 45k during holy shield and considerable less then 40k if it's a critical block). And you should also note that he didn't have any cooldown (neither personal nor external) for the deadliest stomp up after minute 46.

I'm not worried about my lack of personal cooldowns, i can still pop shieldblock 9s before a deadly physiscal attack to smooth the damage out as much as possible and 5s before a magical burst, alternating with mirror if necessary. This still leaves me with two great raidcooldowns if i'm not the only person in danger.

Ps: you can farm 4 piece in LFR if that bonus is really necessary, so you can give the more important upgrades to those who really needs it (t11: healers, t12: dps, t13: ???).

[Leucifer]

@leucifer well if you can survive something with your own cd like deterrence and such then yay but there are definitely encounter abilities which are designed so that you have to use a raid cooldown. especially this fight (heroic morchok) there is so much raid damsge going on with the stomps and the shards you want to have as many raid cds as possible on top of that the two closest targets take double the stomp damage. so two ppl besides the two tanks need some sort of mitigation for that. so there is cooldown management all over the place in this fight. I can totally see the top guilds equipping their tanks with 4PC asap.

what Im trying to say is that I fear that blizzard has designed the encounters around the 4PC and I don't like this direction at all but well thats offtopic

See, to me, that's poor planning. That's almost like going back to TBC where you had to have a certain number of shaman in your group for the one Sunwell boss for the dps phase.

Good "raid cooldown" planning - An ability that can be reduced/healed through to some degree with any number of various abilities. Like a magic attack that an unholy DK can AMZ for, or a disc priest can group bubble, or a resto druid can tranq through, or a shaman can drop a totem for and healing rain, or even the pally everyone-gets-a-damage-reduction thing they do.

Poor "raid cooldown" planning - An ability that is only truly countered through one or two abilities max. Example would be an attack that requires a heal effect like tranq or healing rain to even have a chance of survival. Even here, there's usually a creative way to work around this. Example... all hybrid classes heal through what they can as a group.

what Im trying to say is that I fear that blizzard has designed the encounters around the 4PC and I don't like this direction at all but well thats offtopic

This though..... if they're really doing this..... it's just piss poor planning. That sort of thing is NOT good design in my opinion. That's not designing content centered around skill of the players. They'd be designing around gimmicks.

[gom]

85k melee hits on a DK (with their armor buffed on ptr) equal to ~ 63k hits maximum for paladin/warrior (~ 45k during holy shield and considerable less then 40k if it's a critical block). And you should also note that he didn't have any cooldown (neither personal nor external) for the deadliest stomp up after minute 46.

I'm not talking about the 85k stomp hits just the ordinary normal hits combined with the debuff. I watched it again and wrote down the section and damage. Its from ~ 46:15 to 46:17 where he takes two hits in a row:
first one hit for 161574
second hit for 169028 (19283 Absorbed)

So thats ~350k Damage in two hits.

Bigbad mentioned the ancestral healing buff: He had about 179k Health as the second hit dropped in and if he hadn't the ancestral healing buff he would have been dead in this situation. (shaman healers fotm in 4.3 ?
)

// I wrote a long text here with some calculation but lost it due to automtic log off and auto save couldn't restore it since i was logged out.

I went through the whole scenario of that scene in the video with my warrior with different gear set ups. In my current gear no CTC (atm 99%) I would have been dead.

The best Scenario was the CTC gear set up (same stamina as in my current gear) but I could also survive it when I take 2 Stamina Trinkets and gem for Stamina.

I'm not worried about my lack of personal cooldowns, i can still pop shieldblock 9s before a deadly physiscal attack to smooth the damage out as much as possible and 5s before a magical burst, alternating with mirror if necessary. This still leaves me with two great raidcooldowns if i'm not the only person in danger.

yeah I like shieldblock but it doesnt work if you can't mitigate the damage like stomp in this case. Btw did you change your mind about the raid cds? you pretty much wrote the opposite in an other thread:

Ending: Coupling raidcooldowns on our own survival cooldowns is a bad idea, we feel punished for trying to save our asses when the raid dies seconds afterwards (eg: paladin's raidwall exclude them, they still have to hit a selfcooldown). Just give us something funny/nifty that's not gamebreaking and enhance the healer's raidcooldowns instead (don't forget about those poor holy ones!) while granting DK's and druid's something baseline to feel on par with raidwall/raidshout.

I still think its a bad idea and yes I feel punished for saving my ass in certain situations.

Ps: you can farm 4 piece in LFR if that bonus is really necessary, so you can give the more important upgrades to those who really needs it (t11: healers, t12: dps, t13: ???).

yup, I guess thats what every hardcore guild needs to do to stay competitive

[klausi]

So thats ~350k Damage in two hits.

Stomp causes you to eat 50%* more physical damage for 10 seconds (that crystal debuff symbol left of his player unit frame), block tanks eat 100k hits maximum without any cooldowns up during that period thanks to full ctc. So i really don't see why you're that worried about two hits in a row. DK's and especially druids on the other hands struggle a lot with that boss (due to savage defense won't scale with the increased damage taken, an almost similar problem to the Baleroc dilemma) on heroic. And even if it's an entry boss it's the same issue as for encountering Shannox heroic the very first time, the raidsize matters. 10m tanks are nowhere near to the danger of getting "globaled" as 25m tanks do.

Btw did you change your mind about the raid cds? you pretty much wrote the opposite in an other thread [...]

Ha, fair catch. I didn't change my mind but i changed my attidue. Always being naggy, grousy and grumbly about everything won't change Blizzards decision I still think coupling several abilities together is a bad idea but i try to see the good side: we get a raidcooldown to really compete with paladins.

* was 100% for a short period of time on PTR iirc