you also can't stoneshield while you're in bear form :-P a bear could take two hatefuls and live maybe, but a warrior can avoid one of them with parry/dodge/+miss from defense.

Not to discount people's efforts to provide some input, but I'm frankly surprised at the number of people posting "I have no background on this fight but...." on this particular forum.

Well, math is math, and I think most of the people without Patchwerk kills under their belts are more in the "asking for help" rather than the "offering unfounded advice" category.

And yes, as noted above, I considered druid tanks for HS purposes on this fight, and discarded the idea once fully understanding the mechanic. A druid can absolutely soak HS damage, and can have decent dodge rates, but warrior dodge+parry gives them a significant avoidance advantage, and avoidance makes your healers' lives easier. If the next tank in line for HS hasn't been healed to full yet and is sitting at a perilous 7000hp, a bear tank that can impressively soak at 5500hp Hateful isn't going to save your raid. One that can dodge/parry that Hateful and buy another 1.2sec for the next warrior to get another heal, on the other hand, will.

you definately can stoneshield in bear :D. Learning to pot safely is a vital skill to bear tanks.

I did up a standard full dreadnaught tank here - http://ctprofiles.net/2663222

Dodge: 19.94%
Parry: 15.64%
------------
Total Avoidance 35.58%

Add in Mongoose for 1.25, and kings for 1,

You get 37.75% TA from these.

Now of course this is an unrealistic profile to have now, So the same profile with the same enchants, just made into wrath gets you:

Dodge: 15.90%
Parry: 15.60%
---------
Total Avoidance = 31.5
+2.25 Buffs = 33.75% TA,

A mere 7% more avoidance then the comparable bear. While yes, this is a large percentage, it doesn't seem to vastly outperfrom the bear as you might think

- I do realize I haven't calculated the miss rate yet. - Running out of time here at work to run the numbers ^^. This will probably be the huge difference maker.

On patchwerk? No, not really.

I had him one shot me this week by HS instantly after my potion wore off.

Is there no way to shift out after eating one HS? You should be at 5k caster then, so the other OT will get hit (back out of melee range if you have to? Shouldn't take more than 2-3 secs anyway). In this time you can use a Stoneshield AND Barkskin for additional mitigation which saves a bit of mana I guess.

Barkskin removes another 20% for 15 secs (1 min CD) AFTER Armor mitigation, so let's take this thought further:

5.5k x 0.8 = 4400 HS

Looks good in theory atleast :)

EDIT: Why do people say Defense increase the Miss rate against you?

Wait, so Dodge/Parry does actually work here? As in, there's no particular mechanic to re-cast HS after an avoid, as people always say; it's just a illusion caused by the fact that he casts the next one at you anyway?

yes, and yes.

Those numbers are horribly incorrect.

http://ctprofiles.net/1604 <- that is my gear (add in spineshatter and onyxia blood talisman for patches), and Im sitting on 20% dodge and 19.5% parry fully raidbuffed (no pots). Add in 27% block and 13k armor (potted), and a druid tank just doesnt have anything that even compares to a warrior tank.

Go ahead and try bear tanks...

Zyla you show warrior avoidance just fine and dandy... but you're missing something (i'm too lazy to check) defense, gear, and talents maybe? I'm pretty sure mine is higher. Plus don't forget post mitigated block - for about 100-180 off an HS as well.
Anyway do you have a "comparable druids" shown somewhere? 7% as the only difference is indeed reasonably small.
There are practical issues to consider too... for one thing, healing the healer - meaning you're bringing in a druid to do a warrior's job. Its a simple numbers game, and your guild would need a druid geared as such, ready to replace a warrior, while yet another druid or healer comes in to perform that druids primary role. Essentially, 1 more warm body... for each HS tank.

To be perfectly honest... I think most guilds would straight up wipe due to lag here and there if avoidance wasn't factored in.
1 missed hit here and there can completely change an otherwise bad set. Get 2-3 missed hits in a row and the healers whole situation has eased back considerably. Often times the main HS tank (ignore my weird terminology) can eat 2 HS's in a row if avoidance is that good on the 2nd HS tank.

Sometimes it truly feels like 10 seconds will pass where no ones getting hit. Its probably more like 4-5 seconds, cause every second is a lifetime on that fight.

The global cooldown is too long to use barkskin.

Each point of defense gives a .04 decreased chance of being critically hit in melee (also parry/dodge/block), and that all adds up to effectively make the bad guys miss you more.

Pretty sure you're missing defense also.

Edit: I'm just saying I dont think it would be easier even with well geared druids to use a druid over a standard warrior. If you don't have 4 warriors with this quality of gear you probably have no business standing in front of him with anyone else. Except barring exceptional circumstances I suppose. This is a gear check afterall.

I would love to hear if anyone killed him with 3 HS bear tanks. Even if it worked out that you were taking less damage overall, I think the avoidance issue would win out in a practical sense.

I'm not, its automatically calculated in ctprofiles when you put the item into the slot. I am missing the miss portion of defense, so that could swing numbers

EDIT: Yeah. You're probably right. I started doing the math not knowing where I'd end up when i finished, I posted it just to flesh it out. I dont think I can contest the usefulness of avoidance here. The position just seems untenable as experienced warriors have been chiming in.

Druid tanks can be used, but they're not optimal in any way.
Warrior got more avoidance, cuts off around 150-200 damage from each hateful strike with block and if the warrior has more than 15k armor(stoneshield+inspiration up), he actually takes less damage per HS than a druid at 75% mitigation because of the defensive stance bonus.

You keep on ignoring DEF STANCE ;)

This is an additional 0.9 factor on the final damage the warrior eats right there.

regards

Actualy, the 0.9 factor is applied after AC, so the more AC you have the less of an impact def stance has :(

^^

As a matter of fact, does anyone know for sure if the block value is subtracted last (that is after def stance bonus and mitigation) or before?

"Last" would mean less damage.

regards

Again, please think a bit before posting. If it were subtracted before, it would be impossible to ever completely mitigate an attack. A warrior with a block value of 150+ would be blocking for 40-50 on average. Does that happen? No.

Block value comes off the final number after all reductions are applied.

FWIW we are pretty convinced in my guild that pre-emptively casting HOT's on anyone (i.e. MT) will screw up the hateful strike priming.

Thanks for the quick response.

Im not sure of your reasoning though. Even if block value was not subtracted last, blocks for full value could happen.

Ignoring AC mitigation for the sake of the argument, consider this.
Mob swings for 1K damage.
Warrior blocks for 200.
Warrior is in Def Stance.

Scenario A)
Dmg = (1000 -200)*0.9=720

Scenario B)
Dmg = 1000*0.9-200=700

In both Scenarios 200 Damage was blocked in the computational process. I do realize though that in Scenario A) *effectively* only 0.9*200 was blocked.
It really comes down to wheter the blocked value (in combat log) is the effectively blocked value or just the blocked value variable in the computational process.

But on further thinking, you are right. Did not think of the wording before. Apologies.

regards

If Blizzard wanted to prevent dodge/parry being possible on it, they'd just have borrowed Overpower's mechanics. ;)

Apologies for being poorly formulated. What I meant is that the 0.9 def stance modifier is applied together with armor mitigation. So its like you say, x*y*0.9. Some people think that its (x*y)-(x-x*0.9), making def stance a lot more powerful than it really is.