It seems theres a gem feud going on lately.

Stacking +12 sta .VS Avoidance/hit/str/ect.

Discuss.

What's there to discuss?

Solid Stars of Elune are the best gem, period, unless you need more +def to get to 490, in which case you should look for other gear that will get you to 490 and allow you to use more Solid Stars of Elune.

Why didn't you put this little gem(pun intended) in here:

[Warrior] MT itemization theory

Discuss.

Edit: to the post just below me, perhaps a better term for Armour/Stamina would be 'Soak' to match to the other two catagories.

Someone is actually putting strength in their tanking gear?

Let's talk about three categories a warrior could maximize:
Armor/Stamina (blue stamina gem) vs Avoidance (yellow defense, red dodge) vs Threat (yellow hit)

I've omitted parry in avoidance and agility in armor/stamina because they aren't so great.

Right now I'm going pure stamina, but that's just me.

Oh, my apologies I didn't see it. If someone wants to move it over there you have my blessing.

I emphasize STA but I make sure to get socket bonuses even if they suck. Its a sickness but I cant help it.

I also love +hit.

I dont think its as simple as just throwing 12 stam in every slot. If you have 6 slots available, and you slot them with 3 x Enduring Talasite and 3 x Solid Star of Elune vs 6 Stamina Gems, you're **that** much of a better tank?

Tank b has 180 more hitpoints, or 18 more stamina. x kings x prot spec = 20.79 ( assuming 21 with your other native stamina rounding issues ).

Tank A has 5 more Defense. .2% more dodge, parry, block and -.2% chance to be hit.

Full raid buffs B has 18,500 life, and tank A has 18,700. Values that will generally only be increasing while the same 6 slots will remain open for gems.

Having things enter the argument like "stack armor" is probably the dumbest aspect of the "how to build a warrior tank" to bring up since on the whole, we have a very very very fixed amount of gear to choose from so the variance from tank to tank is small enough its not even worth bringing up ever again.

I find it tough to justify just always stacking stamina, the one attribute that is either constantly buffed ( raid buffs ) or replenished ( healing ). Not to mention that it is my personal belief that blizzard has screwed around the with the crit cap stuff with bosses.

It depends on what you're tanking, I'd say. My gear for regular 5-mans does have a fair amount of strength/attack power on it, because that makes a measurable difference for your threat generation in an environment where rage is limited and DPS engages quickly.

I still put +stamina gems in sockets, though, and haven't even been tempted to go for different types of gems.

This sounds very much like the Druid argument of Armour vs Avoidance(/Stamina). I think ultimately it's down to personal preference once you're crit immune, however when I see a tank (Druid, Warrior, or otherwise) that is stacking stamina all I see is a mana sponge. I think it's important to consider raising your avoidance stats at the same time because a dodge/parry/miss is wonderful in my opinion.

But the thing is that WHEN the boss hits 2x for 6500 insider half a second timeframe. (Magtheridon's normal attack + cleave for instance) and you are not completely topped, that 180hp is actually one hell of a lot of HP. And it's about WHEN it happens. Unless your dodge+parry is ~99 and fractions percents it will happen twice in a row often enough to cause wipes if not once a day, atleast sometimes. The thing with dodge is that even if you have 5% more change to dodge, you only gain 5% more change to survive any given hit that would otherwise kill you, but because bosses tend to hit for very quantized amounts of damage, a small change in HP can push you from "I can't take 2 hits in a row and live" tank to "I can take 2 hits in a row and live" tank. Latter is lightyears ahead of the former in almost every current encounter in wow. (Gruul with enough stacks + reverbs, new Magtheridon, Maulgar...)

Only 3 gems I've put into my tanking gear, +12 stamina, +6 Stamina/+4 def, +8 dodge.

Although I'm beginning to rethink this and just considering stamina stacking is the way to go. =/ Sad day for a former avoidance Warrior, I miss my 30%+ dodge rate. QQ

I think the beauty of stamina is the 'one drug cures all' effect, where as avoidance is meaningless versus magic attacks, and there's quite a few bosses that aren't limited to melee. Also, a huge HP pool with lower avoidance might work out heavier on healer mana, but has a larger predictability and margin for error then one stacked the other way.

As healer I always prefered the big green bar-types.

Pretty much it. Stamina is lord of all things for most stuff. The socket bonuses for tank gear don't justify a loss in stamina from NOT using 12 stam gems.

Curious as to how you achieved that hp AND that dodge.

Also on the topic of mana sponges, I really don't think that is an issue with most raids having a shadow priest these days. Pretty sure you can have people spamming heals at an alarming rate with no or very little loss of mana.

A pretty sweeping statement.

What about a case like, say, Faceguard of the Endless Watch?
1 blue socket, 2 yellow sockets. Socket bonus: +6 stamina.
Would you still socket this helm with 3 SSoE's?
Sure, defense skill may not be _critical_ after 490 - but that doesn't mean its relative value drops off a cliff.

Well, once you reach a certain benchmark in HP where you wont die from freaky burst damage or whatnot, it's advantageous to be socketing something else besides Solid Stars of Elune.

Philosophically speaking, I prefer tanks with a higher HP pool over avoidance. I would rather see an extra 1K max HP on the tank than have 2-3% more avoidance or whatever the equivalent % would come out to. Avoidance to me is more like gambling. HP reduces the variance, it's like buying insurance.. the price is you take more overall damage but I've yet to see the fight where mana is a concern for healers.

Just look at Gruul or Magtheridon. If you could choose an MT, which would you want? (by the way I'm making these numbers up just as an example)

Warrior A has 18k HP buffed, with 40% combined dodge/parry
Warrior B has 20k HP buffed, with 30% combined dodge/parry

Obviously Warrior B will take considerably less damage during the fight, but IMHO Warrior A is more likely to live.

It's interesting to compare Gruul and Patchwerk. Healers generally had to plot out ahead of time what rank of heal they could afford to spam on Patchwerk to not run out of mana at the end. Avoidance became much more of a benefit -- if you could dodge 3 or 4 Hateful's in a row, you've taken some significant pressure off your healers. But on Gruul or Magtheridon, at least from what I've seen, there's no mana issues. But stacking HP to where you can survive a cleave + hit with a debuff or two that just happened to momentarily slip off is huge. You can't absolutely count on that dodge being there when you need it.

Now if we reach encounters where healers mana is taxed again, then the value of avoidance increases again.

As the other healers in this thread states, I do aswell prefer having a tank where you don't need to worry about instantaneous death, not forcing you to spam heals to assure the tank is at max hp so that he doesn't get those bursts of doom, instead of a tank that recieves less damage but has the chance to go dangerously low on HP if he doesn't avoid hits, where you see the HP jump up and down like a yoyo.

But in the end it all comes down to the fight at hand, and seeing as most of the current fights in TBC is about burst damage, stamina > avoidance.

As long as our healers in our raid got enough mana, with Wisdom and Mana Tide/Stream almost any healer got enough mana even for long fights, and Paladins can't even go OOM so why should I avoid more?
I need enough HP to take any damage that an enemy may throw out. Avoidance is nice but if you get hit/crushed it's nice to have a shitload of hp to take the crushing and even some AoE damage.
Another point is that on some fights where threat is essential avoidance doesn't really help cause you don't get any rage if you parry and dodge the whole time.
Also healers, at least ours, tend to loose their concentration when you got crazy dodge/parry combos. Goes like "ah look he doesn't get any damage *look out of the window* wasn't that Paris Hilton out there? MT has died."

Long story short end, stamina is way more reliable than avoidance ist and 12 stam is just uber when you have up to 3 sockets.

To not go after THAT socket bonus would be a crime.
Or would someone here seriously consider getting 6 more STA instead of 8 Def Rating? (=0.53% anticrush even after crit cap)

As for the question on hand, most of my gems are +12 STA. Exceptions are only on this helm and Panzar'thars Breastplate (because 0.5% blocking chance is another 0.5% anticrush).
To put it bluntly STA is not always king.
Whoever says so, would probably still equip LGG while Moroes Lucky Pocketwatch is a way better lifesaver (in "o shit" sitautions) than LGG.

To me it depends on the socket bonus, if it is block value/rating, parry, str and/or agi I usually give up on that socket bonus and go with SSE's. If the socket bonus is sta, def, dodge I get jewels that allow me to get the socket bonus.

Using the +4def / +6sta, +8dodgeR and +12sta you can cover all socket combinations and all 3 gems are solid tank gems.

Just out of curiosity/ignorance: Why would you give up on parry, but go for dodge? Aren't they basically equal for a tank?

You need far less dodge rating than you need parry rating for 1% extra avoidance. Generally socket bonuses for parry are only 0.1% avoidance, so not really worth bothering to socket specially for.