◊ Fellwraith

I always look at avoidance after armor impacts. I.E. if I would not have avoided that hit, my armor would have soaked it. When you look at it from that perspective, it tends to make the comparisons a lot closer. In your example, the tank has a 2.53% variance in dodge. However, if you discount both dodge rates for the effective mitigation on each tank (assume both are able to hit 60% mitigation from armor), you're only talking about a 1% variance in overall mitigation through a cycle. It's still 13% better avoidance than the other tank, but I don't think it's all that significant when you consider that stamina soaks magic damage.

The main value of avoidance to me is that it saves shieldblock charges (which increases the likelihood of avoided crushing blows) and it reduces the need for sustained healing (which reduces healer's mana strain). In a fight like patchwerk avoidance only helped buy your healers time to get all the HS tanks topped off. You still got instagibbed if your armor rating wasn't adequate. Avoidance is also useless when you're stunned, feared, or otherwise incapacitated.

Personally, mitigation comes first, but only because I can buff the hell out of stamina. Mitigation/avoidance are much harder to buff. I also have a hard time placing a lot of value in defense rating once I'm past 490 skill. You can get base block, dodge or parry rates much cheaper, particularly when you look at sockets.

 

Dots

Posted this in another thread already, but this is just not true. 8 defense rating is almost as good as 8 dodge rating and far better than 8 parry rating.

As for HP vs avoidance, I try to find a good balance. Especially after getting a certain base amount of HP, I like getting avoidance up for the same reason as above poster (Shield Block charges). This of course always depends on the encounter as well.

 

◊ Anias

Something I didn't go into in my post -

I'm assuming we're looking at day 1, no attempts previous, first engage new boss stuff here.

In that situation, I value effective life (and thus ac/hp) over everything else. Each extra second you live is another incremental chance to find out something new about the encounter and is one step closer to a dead boss. Finding out about ground slam in one attempt instead of two, or about maexanna's stun, etc, etc, etc...Every time you get "unlucky and one rounded" before a mechanic shows up just adds x minutes onto your learning time.

As you progress further into the encounter and the ratio of "known" to "unknown" information changes in your favor, you can start to back away from "I am a mountain of hit points and armor" if it's appropriate. That's when I view avoidance itemization (items that are not the best effective life pieces, but do contribute signifigant amounts of applicable avoidance be it resistances or parry etc) to be interesting - because it will help cut down on the "cost" of learning how to execute correctly.

I view a new encounter in 4 stages:

Stage 1 - Gathering information
Stage 2 - Deciding on a strategy
Stage 3 - Refining the strategy or Axing it and going back to 2
Stage 4 - Repetition until it works and the encounter is defeated (zelda music)

It's really only in stage 4 (after you decide on and see progress in a successful strategy) that avoidance gear should show up. Before that point, you're still trying to learn what the boss does, and you're more focused on "live as long as possible to learn as much as possible" not "kill this guy before something horrid happens". Incidentally, this is the same reason I use to explain why dps should have a stamina/survival kit. Getting mages to bank a second set of "stamina heavy" gear was like pulling teeth sometimes. "But it doesn't have xx +dmg!1!11!!!" "That's nice - It has xx +Raid Member Living and Finding Stuff Out"

 

zork

well the proc still does 280 damage thus its like a sunder for free. the other debuffs where a nice bonus but are not required for single target threat really.

+ wearing tf still is a big plus cause you dont need to bother of imp TC against single targets/bosses.

we made it into karazhan yesterday and imp TC becomes very handy!

RothUI Download - Tank Guide - Avoidance Calc - Threat Calc - Rothar - darkmasters.de

 

Turpin

I too have suspicions about this whole 25% block needed to block all crushings with SB up thing. As many of the posts here and in the referred to thread have show there is less than conclusive evidence. I think the whole combat log lag thing makes a more stingent testing mechanism needed. Just the other day a warrior in my guild got "1" shotted after using intervene on an arcane protector but taking 2 hits instead of one. Maybe this is not the thread for it and it should be moved to a more visible location?

Also does anyone know where the concept of each point of defense increasing your incoming mis rate by .04 originated? It seems this came after the rest of the defense breakdown (dodge/parry/block/minus crit), and im wondering if there are any caps or non-standard behavior in increasing a mob's chance to miss you. I also wonder if it applies equally to specials and white hits.

 

Brissa

I think it originates from the misconception(?) that def is the inverse of + weapon skill.

 

• alcaras

How accurate do folks think the TankPoints calculation is in terms of helping to select tank gear? Is TankPoints mostly on-target, or is it prioritizing the wrong things (e.g. for Karazhan)?

As I understand the TankPoints calculation, it tries to convert everything to HP-equivalence.

E.g. My TankPoints listing from a while back:
["BlockRating"] = 1.2,
["BlockValue"] = 0.6,
["DodgeRating"] = 15.9,
["ParryRating"] = 9.6,
["Agility"] = 10.4,
["Stamina"] = 26.5,
["DefenseRating"] = 20.6,
["Armor"] = 1.05,
["Resilience"] = 8.8

Now, an interesting thing to calculate is the 'efficiency' of these stats (roughly), by dividing these tankpoints by the stats' item budget values (their 'statmod'). For most of these stats, the StatMod is 1. The exceptions to this are Stamina (0.67) and BlockValue (0.65). As for the StatMod for armor, I was unable to find that data -- anyone know what it is (presumably for bonus armor)?

This means that stamina is far and away the most efficient stat, mostly because of the TBC stamina change.

All this, of course, depends on whether or not the TankPoint calculations are correct, but you can perform the same efficiency analysis with whatever your personal tank-stat weighting is.

 

zang1983

I use Tankpoints a lot to compare items. On close calls, I look specifically on stamina and armor values, and start to value defense a lot less.

Basically I find it to be a good starting point to evaluate the items, but in the end it's about what stats you need most.

 

Louviel

I rely heavily on TankPoints.
I find it gives me solid empirical comparisons between items.
It helps me make informed decisions regarding how much survivability I trade for aggro generation.
IE Timewarden VS Leggings of the Bold.

 

◊ Fellwraith

That's a fair point, I shouldn't have mentioned parry.

Back of the envelop math I get:
- 0.050% avoidance per point of defense rating (0.04% per 1 skill, 3 avoidance stats, 2.4 rating per skill) and a very small amount of block
- 0.053% avoidance per point of dodge rating
- 0.032% avoidance per point of parry rating
- 0.127% block rate per rating point (mitigation value is dependent on block value)

Is it just me, or is parry garbage with the rating conversion assigned to it at 70? I know it resets your swing timer, but I'm not seeing a lot of value for it outside of PVP.

 

Louviel

Because the conversion of parry rating to parry% is much worse that that of Dodge, yes parry is a poor stat to stack for mitigation purposes.

 

◊ Fellwraith

At this point, what other purpose is there to stack parry? It's not like we're able to riposte like a rogue.

 

Liar

I can't tell you where it originated from (I read about it in a blue post here) but if you mouse over your Defense in your Character window it will tell you what Defense does - increasing the chance to be missed is one of those things.

 

zang1983

It's strange indeed that the miss% somehow dissappeared in every discussion. I'm not sure if there's a cap to this somewhere, but looking through my TankPoints it says mobs have 11% chance to miss me atm...

And - Hi Ayu! :> (I used to be a handsome gnome named Bitterman)

 

Turpin

funny when i mouse over on my screen it doesnt say anything about miss just the other 4 things

 

Turpin

it seems you are missing Miss in your numbers (NPI).

 

Cathela

When it says it decreases your chance to be hit, that's the same as increasing your chance to be missed.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

◊ Fellwraith

Shouldn't be. Block isn't avoidance, it's mitigation. I'm counting miss, dodge, and parry. The amount of block gained from +def rating isn't particularly significant.

 

◊ Anias

A parry event gains you a swing sooner than you would normally expect it (I'm at work so I don't have my notes for exact values, someone else can post them).

This in turn means more rage, and more heroic strikes in x period.

For my off-tank-then-dps kit I actually like parry a fair bit as avoidance, as at least if I parry a random cleave I get more damage out of it.

That said, it's a bad choice for pure survival, although at some point the fact that it's a different stat instead of "more dodge" makes the gains in rating per itempoint on a particular item worthwhile.

 

Deadmerlin

How much is it please if you know? I try to create a database of information for my own referencing from stuff I read through these forums and it would be nice to have on my tanking one

 

Louviel

0.0167% block per Def rating (0.04% per skill, 2.4 rating per skill)

 

Grymm

In general, tanking stats are a package deal. You need to be able to compare 2 pieces of gear, different sets of gems, and different enchants. I wear the Shermanar and Violet Exalted tanking rings. They have armor on them. Did I crunch numbers to see how much mitigation they added? No. They were pretty much hands down upgrades.

Avoidance is not dependable. Armor and stamina are. For the most part, I wear tanking gear with good overall stats and then tack on stamina. I wind up with as much armor as I get. Armor, depending on how you look at it, has and doesn't have diminishing returns. It linearly increases your life expectancy against X physical dps. It removes less and less damage from each hit (where as block value removes a linearly increasing amount). You want to achieve a happy value of armor and then use consumables when you need significantly more. High quality gear generally carries good armor and very few plate pieces have itemization points spent on armor (except felsteel).

Stamina carries the boon of working against both physical and magic damage. Many bosses pair high physical dps with legitimate magic damage.

As far as gems go, the first thing I look at is the socket bonus. If the socket bonus is parry rating or a non-mitigation stat like +3 str, I consider it fair game to be ignored. My favorite gem is +12 stam for tanking. On red or yellow sockets where I want the bonus, I would use hybrid gems that offer 6 stam + 4 agil/str or 6 stam + 4 defense.

I value dodge higher than parry because it works in a 360 degree arc. This is important on multi-mob tanking, moving bosses where you might take a shot in the bum if you turn wrong, or after a nightbane fear that moves you 3 feet before the zerker rage breaks it. It also does not require a weapon to be equipped if you get disarmed. Aggro generation is so far beyond tank DPS, the attack speed response to parry is negligible.

Having typed all that because I am bored at work, I don't MT for my guild any longer. I have given into the dark side of determining the viability of warrior DPS at 70. So far, so good.

Whats necessary, then, is to know the fight you plan on tanking, determine how much HP/armor you need as a baseline, and then exceed that. Additional itemization above and beyond that can focus on some avoidance. In my guild, you would currently gear solely around tanking Gruul as he is the hardest hitting mob we currently fight. For his fight, you need maximum HP and armor. The OT will actually want to take most of the hurtfuls for rage generation but needs to be able to survive as many stacks as possible. Once you achieve the 1 shot OT amount of stacks, your attempt is near over so you want to push that back as long as possible. Depending on dodging/parrying 3 in a row while lowering your aggro ceiling is not an option.

 

Tankz