CTC caped warrior, now what?

[carface]

Ok im CTC capped now and im hearing and seeing alot of different things (mostly from guildies saying that stam is bad.) So im wondering what is the best way to go once you're CTC capped. Keep going for mastery or go for stam?

thanks in advance.

[Takethecake]

Stam is never a bad thing... it gives you more cushion for your healers, more healing from souldrinker, and move vengeance to do more damage.

Ignore your guildies and either regem out of mastery focus and start shifting to stam focus, or try to fit a stam trinket into your set. Preferably not the stam trinket that procs 3 billion mastery.

[Dreador]

^
Stam all the way. The only current fight I use total CTC cap for is Blackhorn and for that I switch a trinket.

[Martie]

Don't forget about avoidance either!

[klausi]

^
Stam all the way. The only current fight I use total CTC cap for is Blackhorn and for that I switch a trinket.

So you're a blocktank and running without full combat table coverage on the other bosses? Our paladin picked up a stamina trinket last night and wanted to try it out badly, he died to a 230k melee swing on Ultraxion heroic (100% more damage for 5s after hitting your i-win button + no 50% physical damage reduction from perma-up holy shield)

I can't see why anyone would give a permanent 31% melee damage reduction away for a couple of hitpoints. It's easier for your healers to predict the incoming damage ("less spikey") and the only thing left to worry about is magical damage.

Don't forget about avoidance either!

Good point, in the end you can either run around with full ctc, 260k hitpoints and 40% avoidance of full ctc, 235k hitpoints and 50% avoidance (or 235k + 70%ish block). Do you really need that extra buffer for your healer or do you want to reduce their burden?

[Dreador]

I didn't realize we were talking about heroic, OP is not specific. Not much in DS normal is going to kill you if you're moving and taunting properly.

[aresius]

It depends on the content you are running. I dont beleive its ever worth dropping CTC (you have to be able to prevent worse-case multiple hit burst damage income), but once you have full block you can go many different ways. You could
a) Get more stam.
b) Further reduce incoming damage (more avoidance/mastery for warriors and DKs).
c) Get threat stats.

More stam is important on fights that threaten your life with strong bursts (specially magic), and is common sight on any tank progressing through heroic.
Further incoming damage reduction is, imho, more if your healers are bad, or to try to be foolproof if you run alot of pugs that dont know what they are doing. In my view, once you are healable without making healers go OOM, you dont need more avoidance.
Although threat stats are unnecissary for threat itself, you can go for hit/expertise caps just to increase your own dps. Again in some heroic mode progression fights tank dps is fundamental to making enrage timers (specially on early progression), and can justify this choice. It is also a alternative for casual tanks in dungeons and older content just because its damage will hardly ever threat to kill you, so you can work on plowing through the place faster.
Im personaly going for stamina increases (although ive been increasing my avoidances as well), but i do swap some trinkets and reforging to threat stats for H ultrax.

[Dreador]

once you are healable without making healers go OOM

For argument's sake, avoidance doesn't save mana; the heals are coming anyway. Mana is saved by DPS ending the encounter and cooldowns being used properly by the classes that can boost mana.

[Leucifer]

I'm responding to your question with a question in kind........

What is the value of each to you?

Just follow me here for a sec. If you swapped out gems for example, without altering CTC, let's say..... you were able to replace 4 gems with +60 stam gems.... what are you really gaining?

Last I checked, the value of those gems would equate to a +240 stam boost. Heck, even if you were able to put in 3 JC +101 gems and a +60.... you're gaining only +363 stam. I don't think CTC tanks have any stam modifiers like blood DK's or bears, so.... you're only gaining anywhere from 2400 to 3630 health.

That's.... not much. Sure, it gets compounded some with buffs, but I don't see you gaining much more than 5k health out of the bargain. Total. And health totals for a raid buffed tank are such nowadays that a 5k difference isn't really earthshaking. Between a 200k and 205k tank..... give me the one that will take LESS DAMAGE.

Consider applying some of that to avoidance. If you can reduce the amount of damage coming in, you'll come out ahead.
Or, maybe even consider gemming for strength. Better threat, small bump in damage output.... and actually a slight improvement to parry on top of that.

I just wouldn't go mad gemming for stamina with the return on that investment being so marginal.

[Tengenstein]

*cough*

Now remember that baseline 1 stam gives 14hp, so you're knapkin math is 40% low; your 5k is actually 8k. Next consider that a fully CTC capped Tank is unlikely to die to melee Hits, and is probably quite far into diminishing returns on Parry and Dodge rating (at around 2400 rating they really dig in deep to the benefit) assuming you went for 3 JC gems you're barely going to increase you avoidance by 1% Pre diminishing returns. Now consider that you have about 33% avoidance, going to 34% avoidance is only a 1.5% damage reduction. if you didn't block ever, if you're always blocking if not avoiding thats reduced by a third to 1% total damage reduction. Pre DRs. compared to that 8k extra health, which is about a 4% rise in HP and an even greater rise in EH.

Finally consider that Dodge, Block, and Parry do absolutely nothing against most tank killing mechanics (impale, Psychic drain, High stacks of voidbolt, Focused Assault)

[Dreador]

I'm responding to your question with a question in kind........

What is the value of each to you?

Just follow me here for a sec. If you swapped out gems for example, without altering CTC, let's say..... you were able to replace 4 gems with +60 stam gems.... what are you really gaining?

Last I checked, the value of those gems would equate to a +240 stam boost. Heck, even if you were able to put in 3 JC +101 gems and a +60.... you're gaining only +363 stam. I don't think CTC tanks have any stam modifiers like blood DK's or bears, so.... you're only gaining anywhere from 2400 to 3630 health.

That's.... not much. Sure, it gets compounded some with buffs, but I don't see you gaining much more than 5k health out of the bargain. Total. And health totals for a raid buffed tank are such nowadays that a 5k difference isn't really earthshaking. Between a 200k and 205k tank..... give me the one that will take LESS DAMAGE.

Consider applying some of that to avoidance. If you can reduce the amount of damage coming in, you'll come out ahead.
Or, maybe even consider gemming for strength. Better threat, small bump in damage output.... and actually a slight improvement to parry on top of that.

I just wouldn't go mad gemming for stamina with the return on that investment being so marginal.

VS diminishing returns. No thanks.

[Fetzie]

I don't think CTC tanks have any stam modifiers like blood DK's or bears, so.... you're only gaining anywhere from 2400 to 3630 health.

Paladins get 15% stamina for speccing Protection, as do warriors. Then add the 5% plate spec bonus.

100 stam =

100 x 1.15 x 1.05 = 120.75 stamina unbuffed, which is

120.75 x 14 = 1691 hp (rounded to nearest full number) before Blessing of Kings. Factoring Kings in, we get 1775 hp per 100 Gear stamina. If we are talking about 363 stamina:

(1775/100)x363 = 6443 hp. Roughly double your estimate.

Stamina is powerful. Stamina has no diminishing return. Stamina is not a roll of the die. So long as I remain block capped, I would take 300 stamina over 200 dodge or parry rating (its equivalent by gear stat points) any day. In fact, what I do most of the time I am logged in is see how I can optimize my CTC to get another avoidance or mastery gem converted into a 75 stamina gem. This means a lot of guesswork, calculator work and swearing when I end up 0.01% under, but so far I have got my unbuffed health up 14000 hp since I started. It also means I am almost constantly asking warriors, shamans and hunters if I could "borrow" their strength buff.

[Tengenstein]

I do the same Fetzie, Cept i'm asking pallies and druids for kings/mark. Occaisionally i get lucky and one of the MF dailiy quest gaurdians will give me mark. I believe you can fly over the river in twilight hilands and the Dragonmaw orcs will give you battle shout.

[Gregasaurous]

Don't forget about avoidance either!

Basically what's been happening with me is my avoidance is just naturally going up even as I'm almost fully gemming stamina. To a point where I'm not even following the golden reforge rule of "make sure it has mastery" It hasn't gotten to a point of me reforging out of mastery yet, It could happen for Heroic content. When i get Souldrinker and the good** stamina trinket i expect my reforging will go back to a pre CTC method. But basically, get as much stamina in there as you can while maintaining CTC, and don't worry about your avoidance levels specifically. Stamina is NEVER worthless, anybody who says otherwise has never tanked Heroic Morchok and shouldn't be listened to. Granted, in some situations, other things do take precedent over it.

** There are two stamina trinkets in DS, one has a mastery proc on it, which is a little on the useless side for Pally's and Wars, but still viable for DK's and Druids, though as I understand it the uptime on the proc is on the undesirable side of things. The good trinket is on the shared boss loot table, so it can drop off any encounter but Spine and Madness. It gives you a absorb shield when you pass below 50% health. Personally I think it could have been designed better, but then Ghost Crawler DID stick hit and exp on our tier again, so I think I'll just be happy with what I got.