BC: The Making of a Rogue Tank... - Page 3

Avair · 08/29/06, 3:02 PM

+90 def, 50.6% dodge buffed, then hps.

You don't need 50% dodge I don't think. I have 40% dodge (buffed) and 10% parry now. With evasion up, that should be 100% mitigation (unless I'm missing something). Gurg's point about 20% to die instantly is valid, which is why we need defense (more -% to be crit itemization) and lots and lots of stamina.

Gort · 08/29/06, 3:05 PM

Well, I find the idea attractive mostly because after hour 300 of staring at a dragon ankle, abomination ass, elemental uh... well, whatever they have, and many other mostly featureless, boring body parts, all the while counting to 3, counting to 5, then counting to 5 again, the idea of something new and useful to do that might interact in some way with one of the 39 (or now 24) other people with me is a bit of a breath of fresh air, even if it is incredibly silly. (And it is.)

Celandro · 08/29/06, 3:09 PM

Originally Posted by Gort

Well, I find the idea attractive mostly because after hour 300 of staring at a dragon ankle, abomination ass, elemental uh... well, whatever they have, and many other mostly featureless, boring body parts, all the while counting to 3, counting to 5, then counting to 5 again, the idea of something new and useful to do that might interact in some way with one of the 39 (or now 24) other people with me is a bit of a breath of fresh air, even if it is incredibly silly. (And it is.)

Evasion tanking rotations is no more silly than complete heal rotations. I bet if raz didn't have his pets with him people still would have figured out how to kill him.

Decker · 08/29/06, 3:14 PM

This is good theorycraft. Wait until the tier 9 hunter talent (wearing a shield) is released. We'll have some crazy avoidance as well.

Hunter tanking has always been best for ping-ponging mobs who like to clear hate, or maybe even AOE hate clears! RAWR! :P We can work up our hate while out of range of cleaves, whirlwinds, etc :)

probiscus · 08/29/06, 3:20 PM

Originally Posted by Celandro

Evasion tanking rotations is no more silly than complete heal rotations. I bet if raz didn't have his pets with him people still would have figured out how to kill him.

You're just saying that b/c you want more DPS talents 8(

Celandro · 08/29/06, 3:27 PM

Originally Posted by probiscus

Originally Posted by Celandro

Evasion tanking rotations is no more silly than complete heal rotations. I bet if raz didn't have his pets with him people still would have figured out how to kill him.

You're just saying that b/c you want more DPS talents 8(

I actually want a raid wide buff in the deep warrior fury tree. Maybe a talent that required booming voice + imp battle shout and made your battle shout and the new hp buff raid wide instead of group wide. Then you'd really want 1 warrior of each spec on your raids and other classes would have more opportunity to tank (not that fury or arms tanks are bad with the right gear).

So sure, give the hunters a way to tank, the paladins, the rogues, hell even the shadow priests and warlocks. I'm perfectly ok with sharing offtanking duty and even occasional gimick MT duty with other classes.

Don't get me wrong, I love to tank but being able to switch stance, spec and gear to perform other roles well is one of the main reasons warriors are so popular. I want other classes to have at least some of the same flexibility.

Kalman · 08/29/06, 3:29 PM

Originally Posted by Celandro

Originally Posted by Kalman

A properly specced rogue in *existing* gear can hit very high mitigation rates. In the extreme case, look at the profile labeled "Retarded Dodgetank" in my ctprofile - with that build, you're looking at 55.6% *unbuffed* dodge and 10.1% unbuffed parry. And probably there are better choices to be made, since that profile was specifically targeted at maxing out dodge, not min/maxing mitigation.

That gives you 73% *full* mitigation, base. 55% dodge, 9.6% parry, 8.4% miss rate, after adjusting for a level 63 mob, slightly better for 60-62 mobs which a rogue would more likely offtank. With GS up, that's an unbuffed full mitigation rate of 88%.

Unbuffed.

With consumables/buffs, you're looking at around an extra 6.87% dodge for alliance (MotW, Mongoose or Greater Agi, and Kings) or 7.83% as horde (GoA3+talent, MotW, Mongoose/Agi).

What you really want as a rogue tank is +90 def, 50.6% dodge buffed, then hps. This will prevent all crits and will put you at 100% dodge with evasion up.

That was an example of existing itemization, though. I'm pretty sure the 90 def mark isn't really doable for a rogue in existing gear, and again, that profile was specifically for maxing out dodge when I first did it. I've redone it now, though, and came up with the following stats:

78 defense (yes, it uses Styleen's, yes that is very silly - you can max out at 84 defense, but it probably isn't worth the hit you'll take to raw mitigation)
4883 unbuffed health
42.75% dodge
15.12% parry
~32% mitigation of physical damage from armor

Buffed, the dodge value would go to +8.94% dodge for horde and +5.98% dodge for alliance (I screwed something up when I calculated this originally, I think...) - in the xpac, with both GoA and BoK available, that's a 12.7% boost to dodge from buffs.

So, here we're talking about (we'll use horde) 51.1% dodge, 14.6% parry, and 8.4% miss rate buffed, for a total full mitigation (base) of 74.1% with a crit rate of 0.48% against.

Downside, of course, is that of the 25% of strikes that get through, 60% of them will be crushing blows because of the single table system. However, if you can live through a single crush, Evasion will save you (or if you can boost your mitigation 10% higher, you could conceivably hit the point where Ghostly Strike is enough to complete the table to 100% mitigation and could thus be used reactively to prevent death while your healers get you back up - that mitigation boost is difficult, though).

tenshi:

"Given that what warriors do best is tank, I don't see the win to the raid of giving them an option to DPS".
"Given that what druids do best is heal, I don't see the win to the raid of giving them an option to tank".
"Given that what priests do best is heal, I don't see the win to the raid of giving them an option to DPS".

etc.

The win is that Blizzard can make more complex encounters without *requiring* stacking of raids. 6 little mobs and one big mob to tank in a 25 man raid? Throw your prot warrior on the big one, the 2 hybrid/DPS warriors, your dodgetank rogue, 2 of your 3 druids with some feral gear and skills, and 1 of your 3 paladins on the little ones. Or use another druid or paladin instead of the rogue, but you have *choices* in this regard.

Kalman · 08/29/06, 3:31 PM

Originally Posted by Celandro

Don't get me wrong, I love to tank but being able to switch stance, spec and gear to perform other roles well is one of the main reasons warriors are so popular. I want other classes to have at least some of the same flexibility.

That would be the point I have, much more verbosely, tried to get at.

Options are good.

Lord BEEF · 08/29/06, 3:42 PM

Unless they give druids a talent or skill that allows them to parry I wouldn't expect to see much +defense leather. If they do give druids parry then it becomes a good mod that both classes could take advantage of and hence would itemize for.

I really don't see them taking rogue tanking seriously so this discussion is a bit bizarre.

Celandro · 08/29/06, 3:46 PM

Originally Posted by Lord BEEF

Unless they give druids a talent or skill that allows them to parry I wouldn't expect to see much +defense leather. If they do give druids parry then it becomes a good mod that both classes could take advantage of and hence would itemize for.

I really don't see them taking rogue tanking seriously so this discussion is a bit bizarre.

If blizzard wasnt intending to give rogues light tank capabilities, please explain the talents at the bottom of the subtlery tree.

Kalman: you missed your cloak and shoulders enchants.

Kalman · 08/29/06, 3:47 PM

Originally Posted by Lord BEEF

Unless they give druids a talent or skill that allows them to parry I wouldn't expect to see much +defense leather. If they do give druids parry then it becomes a good mod that both classes could take advantage of and hence would itemize for.

I really don't see them taking rogue tanking seriously so this discussion is a bit bizarre.

Druids have less of a need for +defense, though, since crits aren't as big a killer when you have 75% reduction and 15k HP. It could simply work out that +def/agi/parry leather is mainly for roguetanking, while gear with AC/sta gear tends towards druids, with the classes fighting over agi/dodge gear.

It is a strange discussion, I admit, but it's better than working.

Dakous · 08/29/06, 3:48 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

This is the strangest theorycraft thread I have ever seen in my life. Are people really devoting this many words to this subject?

Rogues are getting survivability talents to make them less fragile in PvP, against casters especially, and a bit sturdier in raid settings. That's not an invitation to put yourself in harm's way.

It was the leather pants (truckers are after my leather pants - World of Roguecraft 2) and poking dragons in the eyes and giants in the feet. We're already in harm's way. But no, I'm just fooling around.

(Long ramble that doesn't contribute anything dissenting, just an on topic ancedote)

Ever play City of Heroes? I haven't played in two major content patches (Issues, they call them, which has some lovely irony given every MMO ever's patch day woes), but take the Scrapper class. They're very much the Rogue of WoW, without innate stealth. And much like the Rogue of WoW, they have had several bruised feelings with the Warrior (aka, Tanker) class along exactly the same dynamic - damage versus mitigation.

I understand it has been subsequently rebalanced, but walk with me a moment here. There was.. a year? or more of the game being released, and in the state I will describe. All classes (er, archetypes) pick two specializations, so for example, you could have a Martial Arts/Super Reflexes Scrapper, and I might have a Fire/Invulnerability Scrapper - in the Scrapper's case, school of attack, school of defense. In theory, each defense school had various protections against all but one kind of damage (your kryptonite, if you like).

Problematically, the weaknesses of two (Invul and Regen) could be minimized with what are an analogue to talents - so you really had valid Rogue tanks in that game. Because, you see, there was dodge, it had a hard cap, and the talents available to everyone could max dodge. Where's this become really problematic?

Super Reflexes was based entirely on dodge. You got 0 mitigation. They also had an evasion like skill, except after the timer was up, you were basically a sitting target (if you haven't played, imagine that all your gear falls off if you don't maintain 1 energy minimum, the effect was similar to forcing you to sit at 0 energy for a few seconds).

Anyway

All that is by long way of saying it's fun to theorycraft, and while I have tanked many of the lesser raid bosses (BWL) as an emergency clutch, I'm with you on this. Pure percentage praying sucks - warriors are already too flaky as is.

Barring gimmicks like Razuvious or Patchwerk-at-3%-oh-god-burn-him, consistent mitigation is superior to avoidance. It doesn't matter if you have an 80% chance of taking 0 damage from something -- if you have a 20% chance of dying instantly, you can't tank it.

Before Naxx, and without Naxx gear, it wasn't unreasonable, though, to have a 20% chance of going critical. If Blizzard really wants hybrid roles for us all, giving rogues some option to actually be healable (priest champion in a 5 man instance?) so while it is a far cry from optimal, it isn't the assured failure it would be today would be nice.

Dakous · 08/29/06, 3:51 PM

Originally Posted by Celandro

If blizzard wasnt intending to give rogues light tank capabilities, please explain the talents at the bottom of the subtlery tree.

Any form of group PVP?

Kalman · 08/29/06, 3:53 PM

Originally Posted by Celandro

Originally Posted by Lord BEEF

Unless they give druids a talent or skill that allows them to parry I wouldn't expect to see much +defense leather. If they do give druids parry then it becomes a good mod that both classes could take advantage of and hence would itemize for.

I really don't see them taking rogue tanking seriously so this discussion is a bit bizarre.

If blizzard wasnt intending to give rogues light tank capabilities, please explain the talents at the bottom of the subtlery tree.

Kalman: you missed your cloak and shoulders enchants.

Really? They were on the original profile, guess it lost em when I swapped things around. But indeed it did.

New unbuffed stats (using a Sapphiron shoulder enchant):

5043 health
78 def
~33% damage reduction
43.75% dodge
15.1% parry

I still hate using Styleen's, though. So many wasted mods.

Avair · 08/29/06, 3:54 PM

It is a strange discussion, I admit, but it's better than working.

Here, here... It's also better than talking about new 41 point talents that make our DPS worse.

Rogues tanking gear would be +agility/stamina and defense, with parry/dodge sprinkle on. Unless we got a -crushing blow mechanism, we would need high stamina to survive the first one.

I think you also missing +15 agi to your OH as well.