where is magical damage taken into account?

[Bullah]

Hello,

I've been tanking for a while, since Molten Core days to be honest, and event though I used to be MT I'm not nearly as active these days.

Anyway it was brought to my attention that the crave for stamina was gone and everybody was going for mastery gems nowadays. I was interested and started digging about the new formulas and (dont know if I got them all right) come to a conclusion that pretty much like armor; block; dodge or parry, only physical damage was taken into consideration with mastery.

According to my formulas (again, may have not gotten them right...) only stamina still increases a tank life expectancy against magical damage. for fights that are purely magical (use your imagination, not saying there is a fight like this) no dodge, parry, block, armor or mastery would help you at all.

So I did a mod, in order to understand how much magical damage I was subjected to during an instance. Hour of the twilight was the chosen instance since it is the high-end of 5 man instances.

See screenshot below for the damage I got:
- magical damage: 1.351.000 HP
- Physical damage: 2.517.000 HP

meaning that 35% of all the damage I was subject to, was purely magical. This is 35% because I constantly interrupt and reflect magical spells. For a not-so-careful tank this could easily be boosted to 40% of the total damage taken.

So my only question is, when ppl do the simulations in order to understand which gems are best for general tanking, do they take this into consideration?

Thank you for your time

[Leucifer]

So my only question is, when ppl do the simulations in order to understand which gems are best for general tanking, do they take this into consideration?

Thank you for your time

I cut out the bulk of the quote, hope you don't mind.

Part of the problem is what is the bang for the buck on stamina gems? Figure, even if you slap in +67 (I don't remember the exact amount for the rare stam gem) stam gems in every single spot on a fair set of gear, you're looking at somewhere between 600 and 800 stam, depending on the gear. That only balances out to 8k health, at best (more if you're a druid). ONE stam trinket can make up the difference on that. Plus, when you get to the nitty gritty, on a tank with t13 gear.... that 8k health (maybe 10k buffed) is MAYBE 5% of their health total.

Next, consider the stat growth on gear. What's the stam increase on a single set of t13 gear versus a t12 piece? Last I checked, on major set pieces, it was around 100 stam each. Gem all you want, but you'll never make up the difference that you'll gain simply on upgrading the basic gear.

Lastly, what tools has WoW given us as players to really do much about magic damage? Pally buff.... priest buff.... druid buff.... all 3 can give an increase to resistance that's hard to beat. I FREQUENTLY would nag on our pallies in t12 and tell them to turn off their stupid ret aura in Firelands as.... the paltry 121 damage it did back to enemies was NOTHING compared ot the blanket 24.5% fire damage reducetion resist aura granted EVERYONE. But beyond that.... there's really little else a tank can do. Sure... we have some cooldowns that we can use to reduce momentary damage, but there are really no other mechanisms beyond stamina. Magic damage.... you almost have to accept that your healer is going to have to heal through it.

That's why you see in general, "gem for CTC/mastery until cap.... then gem for stam". Because with mastery/dodge/parry, we can influence at least one variable we have to account for. Going by your own numbers above..... what is the greater portion of your damage? Sure... magic is a solid 35%, but that means gearing properly, you can heavily influence the 65% or more that you take from physical. THAT.... is still the larger portion. I mean, you have to consider this as part of a tank/heals team. Which one will your healer be able to keep you up through?

A) Taking at least 30% less physical damage guaranteed (CTC capped) and taking full magic damage

OR

B) Taking some full shots from physical damage and taking full magic damage. Always.

Which one will your healer more likely be able to keep you up through?

This has been at the heart of tanking for all of Cata. The tank is going to take a heavy beating..... how can we best smooth out the damage spikes so that healers can keep up? Large, repeated damage spikes overwhelmed healers early on in Cata. That improved later, but the issue really comes back to one basic idea.....build the most stable/steady tank you can. Avoid successive, large damage spikes.

For pally/warrior.... this is done through CTC largely. For DK.... this is done by wisely using death strike. Druids.... savage defense (though, their armor nearly makes up the difference, plus large health pool).

That a bit of an explanation for the reason behind why we do that. Make sense?

[Fetzie]

Something else: there are no magical resist gems. There is a meta gem that reduces spell damage taken by 2%. Basically, there is no way to reduce magical damage beyond the 195 Resist Aura. So it turns into damage that you just have to soak with your health bar because other than short-duration buffs you can't change the damage anyway.

[Aggathon]

Magical damage taken over time is pretty irrelevant when it comes to stam. Honestly it is. When you talk about magic damage (as you point out) it becomes all about magicalEHP. That is effective hit points against magic. You can theoretically get resist gear, but really the only resist piece is trinket from BH.

Anyways, the point isn't how much magical damage you take, it's how much you take in quick succession. If you're taking small ticks of magical damage all the time, then... whatever, it's largely irrelevant. It will add up to be a lot, but it's nothing your healers are going to worry about. Also you make take a f*** ton of magical damage (see: hour of twilight), but you always are using cooldowns for it and your healers always have a bit of time to heal you back up so... again, sort of irrelevant.

What you really care about is burst damage, the amount of damage you're going to take in say... 5 seconds... that is magical + physical. So for example Zon'ozz with 7 stacks of the buff hitting you for 100k melee + 70 or 80k breath attack right in a row. That's gonna hurt, you might not be able to hit a CD fast enough, and your healers might not catch up... this becomes an even bigger issue if you take a full hit though, so instead of taking 100k melee you're taking 130k melee.

Really... what it comes down to is being full CTC is way too good (I assume you're a shield talk by the way you talk). I honestly don't know jack about druid or DK mechanics, I imagine DK mastery is still good, but basically as a warrior or paladin, it is really important that you reach full CTC. Once you hit that, make sure you maintain it, but ignore mastery/dodge/parry otherwise and just stack stam, because you're right, there are some really strong magical attacks and you will take some big physical and magical attacks in succession and it's REALLY nice to have lots of EHP for those.

So ya... like the theory and math breakdown is kind of irrelevant from the academic standpoint because you need to be adjusting for what the instance requires. Once you have ~391 or so, you can really start focusing on lots of stam b/c you have enough raw ilevel to reach full CTC without many gems.

Also, the exact conversion isn't 1x10 any more, I have no idea what it is, but when I take off my 510 stam trinket fully buffed I lose about 10k hps.

[Tengenstein]

It's also worth considering that most of the raid fights only have a smaller fraction of the the damage taken being magic, tradionally the only high magic damage fights are the "dragons" and even they only get it to around 50:50 ratio, DS has got a couple of curve balls, as Madness is very magic heavy, and has significantly large periods of the fight where there is nothing doing melee damage to the tanks, and yorsahj who is mainly magic. Tank masteries generally only work against Melee attacks in PvE. even high damage physical attacks such as Impale, Stomp, or Focused Assault completely ignore it, but even then Most of the tank damage will be melee.

The HoT dungeons are an awful place to base raid theory crafting off. They are so ridiculously easy, I've healed them on my paladin in prot gear with Ret glyphs and peaking at 3k HPS. It was the first time i actually healed anything. Those dungeons are so faceroll i wouldn't base anything off them.

EDIT: IIRC 1 stam is 14 health before class bonuses and gear specializations

[Bullah]

Thanks guys

As stated before I wanted to understand if the magical damage was taken into consideration.

The conclusion I got from the thread is that there isn't much one can do about it other than stack stamina gems and that is not a solution for the down-side it implies in physical damage mitigation.

I totally aggree that magical damage mitigation lies more with the paladin buffs than with gearing effort from the tank. Hope pallies understand that in certain fights, we do need them to change the auras..


Cheers!

[Theotherone]

Prismatic Elixir, lots of it.

[Fetzie]

I totally aggree that magical damage mitigation lies more with the paladin buffs than with gearing effort from the tank. Hope pallies understand that in certain fights, we do need them to change the auras..

We raid with 3 paladins, so we have devotion, resist and concentration up all the time

[Leucifer]

This.......

We raid with 3 paladins, so we have devotion, resist and concentration up all the time

.... is pretty hard to beat.

[Fetzie]

I no rite?

[Theotherone]

What about Shammy totem or glyphed healing stream totem? Doesn't that do what Resist Aura does? They don't stack do they?

[Ion]

Piffle...we have (had, I suppose is more technically correct since we're done for the expansion) one paladin and one shaman and we have all of those buffs up at all times too.

(Hint: Stoneskin Totem and Totem of Tranquil Mind are the same thing and you can have them both w/just one shaman.)

Edit: heh

What about Shammy totem or glyphed healing stream totem? Doesn't that do what Resist Aura does? They don't stack do they?

Glyphed healing stream totem doesn't do shadow (but does do nature). It does clash with tranquil mind and means that you can't use Aura Mastery as a raid CD, though.

[Tengenstein]

that pretty naff, you'd think the buff provifing the greate resistance would over right the lesser

[Ion]

that pretty naff, you'd think the buff provifing the greate resistance would over right the lesser

I was unclear: I was assuming that if you were using glyphed healing stream as your resistance buff that you wouldn't be using the paladin aura. I suppose technically if you were taking aoe physical damage you could still use AM w/Devo, though.

[Tengenstein]

not many of those AoE physical damage fights though. Surely you'd just say screw the tanks and have the pally swap aura's for AM and then go back to devo.

[Fetzie]

I guess you could use AM+DevAura for Shrapnel impact

[Tengenstein]

Stomp's the only physicall aoe i could think of.

[Fetzie]

Stomp's the only physicall aoe i could think of.

Blackhorn's Disrupting Shout?

[Tielyn]

When you have the time, farm the Mirror of Broken Images out of Tol Barad dailies. Still the best magic damage absorb trinket -- it works wonders on Zon'ozz when he hits you with a Psychic Drain. I've resisted the whole thing at points, and even partial absorbs means he heals for less off of you.

MoP is changing this, though. Bears have 25% passive magic resist (until they nerf us) and MotW no longer adds any spell resist. Pallies have a 1 minute cooldown 40% magic resist spell, or 20 physical/20 magic if you glyph for it. (Source: beta).

-Tielyn

[Fetzie]

Pallies have a 1 minute cooldown 40% magic resist spell, or 20 physical/20 magic if you glyph for it.

i.e. exactly the same as it is today, except right now it is the other way around.