The more I get stuck healing lately, the more I'm looking at our warrior tank's stats, and I'm seeing a weird phenomenon here.

I'm going to direct you to the armory profile or our warrior who tanked on our first prince kill: Braincracker

His combined Dodge, Block, and Parry total 63.51%. From what I understand, Boss level mobs have a 4.4% chance to miss a level 70 tank, and from his 506 Defense, he'll up that to 10.64. Overall, his avoidance rate is 73.51% with 28.04% of that being block.

Now we look at a typical raid level mob's hit table on him when he does not have Shield Block up (i.e. Prince phase 2, hit really fast!!)

Miss: 10.64
Dodge: 16.73
Parry: 18.74
Block: 28.04
Crushing: 15.00
Hit: 10.85

Now when his Shield Block is down, 15% of the time he's going to get crushed, while only 11% of the time he'll take a regular hit. In effect, because he's gotten his DPB that high, the majority of the time when he does not avoid a hit it in some way it will crush. As a result, his overall damage taken is incredibly spiky and is victim to the die rolls.

Now when you think about the tanks that take Stamina over Avoidance in any way they can and just barely reaching the Uncrittable cap for defense, they're at a somewhat lower amount of avoidance. Thus, while they have the same chance of being crushes, the damage coming in is at a much more predictable rate.

So is there a hidden area in the hit table where too much avoidance causes you to take an insane amount of burst damage that is difficult to heal through?

I think there is a fallacy in your reasoning here. The Crushing blows are a higher percentage of the non-mitigated hits but they are not happening more often for a period of time. I suppose if your healing was entirely reactive and happened regardless of the timeline then this might be an issue but really, wouldn't crushing or hit (X blocked) be a perfectly acceptible result? It's not like those blocked hits are substantively different than a straight hit from a healer's perspective is it?

Crits are a different matter as they are indeed additional damage and spiky as well.

Correct me if I'm wrong of course, I tend to live on the damage side of things.

Well from a tanking side I've never had the opportunity to block an attack, and from a healing side I'm rather new (Just barely got my druid to 60 before TBC, levelled him up to 70 due to lack of tanks). While predictive healing is nice and all, but hard to always do (We had a frikkin prayer of mending stick on our MT for about 15 seconds on Attumen tonight).

Also, remember that if you're at risk of crushes, then the mob has to hit you 3 times within a 5 second period, which means an attack speed of 1.66, which is a 2.0 speed before Imp TC. I'm not sure how much Brain blocks for, at least 200, so considering that Prince is a dual-wielding mob, that's a fair bit of damage taken off a large amount of smaller hits and adds up noticeably.

You are going to get better answers from the tanks around here so I'll duck out before the waters get too cloudy. It occurs to me that the Thrash of the Prince is possibly the source of your perceived additional spikiness though.

Yeah, he instagibbed our tank Monday night with some REALLY bad crushes right after a Shadow Nova and I've been running it on paper since.

Oh hey, he's mean no question. I snapped open a log of one of our earlier kills (bear tank this time) and just scanned for some crushes:

20:24:32.125 Prince Malchezaar hits XXX for 4500. (crushing)
20:24:34.031 Prince Malchezaar gains 2 extra attacks through Thrash.
20:24:34.046 Prince Malchezaar attacks. XXX dodges.
20:24:34.046 Prince Malchezaar attacks. XXX dodges.
20:24:35.375 Prince Malchezaar hits XXX for 4753. (crushing)
20:24:36.609 Prince Malchezaar hits XXX for 5744. (crushing)
20:24:37.703 Prince Malchezaar hits XXX for 2327. (crushing)

I left the Trash and dodges in there for fun, there were other hits and such of course =)

drop the block down a little and up the dodge some more you only need a 25% block.

I don't see how your solutions help with the lull that is "dodge, dodge, parry, dodge, block" followed by the omgwtfjusthappened "CRUSH CRUSH hit CRUSH". If you took the time to look at our tank's armory profile, you'll see he has his imp shield block. However, there are mobs that just attack too fast to guarantee it to constantly be up. Dual-wielding mobs are the best example of that. Anything with an attack speed higher than 1.4 base can get a third hit in before shield block is back up.

But adding more full-avoidance (miss, dodge, parry) reduces the rate at which you have to expend block charges. Northerner's combat log shows that Malchezaar can attack five times in the space of one use of Shield Block. So, consider the following possibilities:

Scenario 1: block, avoid, block, crush, crush

Scenario 2: avoid, avoid, block, block, crush

Adding defense/agility/dodge/parry reduces the likelihood of #1 and increases the likelihood of #2.

Adding static block really doesn't change anything, aside from adding some small amount of mitigation to a few hits here and there that wouldn't have crushed anyway.

Oh hey, he can do better than that. Here's it is without the deleted bits. It's a randomish sample too, I'm sure he's done much worse. After all, the bear lived.

20:24:32.125 Prince Malchezaar hits XXX for 4500. (crushing)
20:24:32.343 Prince Malchezaar hits XXX for 1974.
20:24:33.375 Prince Malchezaar misses XXX.
20:24:34.031 Prince Malchezaar misses XXX.
20:24:34.046 Prince Malchezaar attacks. XXX dodges.
20:24:34.046 Prince Malchezaar attacks. XXX dodges.
20:24:35.171 Prince Malchezaar hits XXX for 1641.
20:24:35.375 Prince Malchezaar hits XXX for 4753. (crushing)
20:24:36.375 Prince Malchezaar misses XXX.
20:24:36.609 Prince Malchezaar hits XXX for 5744. (crushing)
20:24:37.703 Prince Malchezaar hits XXX for 2327. (crushing)

He didn't Parry anything in there or do anything odd either, it's just his streaky thrash and high attack speed stuff. Be heartened though, the mobs get much worse than him soon enough!

Only 11 attacks in a 5 second period? I mean... glad I heal on that fight!

You of course use a druid tank, so he can't Parry. As far as "Streaky", I'm getting information from both sides that Malchezaar has a higher miss rate when he's dual-wielding. If he does, it's not as much as a normal DW penalty, 'cause that puts crushes at less than 10 when we have our tank raid buffed, and he has taken normal hits.

I'm really interested in what happened at 20:24:34.046 though...

Two dodges at the exact same time. I'm wondering if that's a case of coincidence or the dodge mechanic acting like a frontal physical immunity when you dodge, and thus evading all other attacks at the exact same instant. Heh, demo roar 50,000 critters up before taking on a world boss and dodge every attack because you're dodging at least one critter.

Sorry, I grepped it a little zealously. That's the Thrash mechanic again as I had above. It's not too common and not too rare, just kinda more noticeable for a target like Prince.

20:24:34.031 Prince Malchezaar gains 2 extra attacks through Thrash.

All other things being equal (that is, equal hp and ac) more avoidance is always better. The odds of "Crush Crush Hit Crush" on a tank with less avoidance is higher than on a tank with more avoidance (because with higher avoidance the hit is less likely.) Certainly avoidance doesn't reduce worst-case burst damage, but it also doesn't make it any worse. More avoidance means less sustained damage over time. Even more important, more avoidance means less charges of shield block burned per second (and thus on average longer periods of crushing-immunity.)

The thing is your theory of "more avoidance = more crushes" is simply false. A higher percentage of the hits that land might crush, but of the total number of swings, the same number will crush. If your tank isn't using shield block, 15% of the time swings will crush, then 15% of the time swings will crush, and a tank with 0% avoidance is just as vulnerable to that (the odds of the crush streak are the same.) However if both tanks are using shield block, the 0% avoidance tank (let's assume the 0% avoidance tank still has 25% block chance) will be at much greater risk of the crushing streak. Why is that? Well the first two hits in a 5 second period will use up his shield block *every* time. Only 12.25% of the time will the tank not avoid at least one of the first two attacks, Meaning 87.75% of the time the 65% avoidance tank has his shield block charges last longer, meaning the period of time where your huge streak of burst damage in the fight can occur is reduced (and therefore the fight is much safer.)

So as a former healer, I feel I should point out that your complaint largely strikes me as a symptom of reactive healers. You should not be waiting for your tank to take damage to start healing. You should have a heal in the pipeline being cast pretty much 100% of the time even when your tank is at full health. If your tank hasn't taken damage, cancel that heal. If your tank is hurting, let the heal finish. A tank with more avoidance will not need more healing per second in burst situations than a tank with less avoidance (assuming equal HP and AC.) Ever since they changed the 5 second rule back in the molten core days, any time you aren't casting a heal you are probably making a mistake (because if you can reduce the average delay between your tank taking dmg and your heal landing by starting a heal before your tank takes damage, you ought to do it.)

While more avoidance leads to less spikes, at a certain point the ONLY damage source is spikes. You're getting a decent amount of dodged and parried attacks, then a fair amount of blocks that are slightly smaller than normal hits (Varies by the mobs attack speed). Then rest is huge crushes. I'm not arguing that damage taken will get lower, but all the damage that does come is in large thrusts. While constantly charging and cancelling heals is nice, hitting Escape at 0.5 seconds left only to find that your tank just then takes a crush and you're 3 seconds away from a healing touch hurts.

I also believe it's a symptom of smaller raid sizes. In a larger raid, you would have more people rolling a big full heal onto your MT, but in Kara, you only have 2 to 3 people on your MT tops.

Nevertheless, this spike damage during p2 Prince is a real pissoff ><

I'm not sure if my point was clear or not, based on your question and response, so let me elaborate one more time.

The odds of getting crushed when shield block isn't up is 15%, for any tank (unless we're talking about a mythical situation where the tank has >85% avoidance.) Therefore the odds of getting crushed while shield block is down is the same for all tanks. The odds of getting crushed twice in a row is also the same for all tanks when they take 2 hits in a row without shield block up. However, a tank with higher avoidance spends less time with shield block out of charges. Therefore the totaly number of swings without shield block that a higher avoidance tank will take successively is on average lower.

Let me answer this simply and directly in addition to my comments above: No there is no such area. More avoidance is always better than less avoidance for tank survivability (if you aren't giving up other stats like stamina or AC to get it.)

That said, obviously if you are comparing gear and thinking about avoidance vs mitigation via AC or adding stamina, in most cases a bigger health buffer or more AC offers a significant advantage over avoidance. Avoidance is the most efficient way to reduce the mana burden on your healers, but ac and stamina are the only tools that help with a worst-case burst scenario (while avoidance does help preserve charges of shield block, making the worst case burst less likely, it doesn't eliminate the possibility entirely.)

In Phase 2 Malchezaar starts Dual Wielding. While his specials may have the normal 5% miss-chance his white hits have a 24% miss-chance (well they should cause he is dual wielding).

thats huge. with 515 defense skill the warrior should bring this up to 30% enemy miss (23.4+6.6), now there are only ~70% left on the hit table.

tell your warrior to get more avoidance and some +avoidance trinkets he can use in phase 2. you may get immune to crushings then (dabiris is just perfect and moroes too, or take styleens + block trinket vom shattered halls endboss). suberb values would be ~20+ dodge, 16+ parry, 30+ block

thats ~66+ avoidance leaving only 4% on the attack table that will be all crushings.

nevertheless. yes there can be bad luck but never forget with high avoidance there is the chance that only crushings will be left on the hit table but remember that you still will get less damage cause you block so much and a blocked attack is like a normal attack. and blocked attacks cannot crush.

p.s. have your tank pop armor potions for phase 2 that help alot cause he still hits like a truck.

It has been said 1000 times on this board and here it is for the 1001st time: you don't need 25% base block chance to be immune to crushes with Shield Block up, just 25% combined block/dodge/parry/miss. I hope at some point in time people will stop posting this.

As for the OP, I think that is most likely just your perception. If your tank avoids less hits, your healers are more 'active' and it appears to be less spikey because the heals are already coming. It is kind of a disadvantage of high avoidance that some healers play different when they really shouldn't.

The problem with Prince Malchezaar in Phase 2 is that he simply deals an incredible amount of damage that can gank even the best geared tanks quickly. I can distinctly recall being crushed for 9000 (I was Sundered) off a thrash. A thrash will eat your Blocks very, very quickly if you don't avoid at least one of them.

Just like Maulgar, this is a wakeup call that in order to be an effective maintank, you need to have as much stamina as possible in order to be able to survive long enough for your healers to pump your HP back up.

I don't mean to play down your guildmate who tanks, but I think that there are a couple of things he can modify as far as gear/spec goes:

1/2. Improved Demo Shout and Improved Thunderclap. Should be a no-brainer unless you have another tank to pick it up.

3. Stop overvaluing socket bonuses/avoidance over stamina. Socket bonuses are not always a good thing to complete. If he socketed his Wrynn Dynasty Greaves with 3 Solid Stars of Elune he'd gain 22 stamina. Rinse and repeat on his other gear pieces, and he would gain approximately 74ish stamina. That's nearly a thousand hitpoints more. If he's not at the defense cap, throw in some Enduring Talasites. I guarantee your tank can gain at least 600 more hit points while maintaining the defense cap.

While I'm at it, I'd move that ZG enchant to his Helm, get a Clefthoof Armor kit on his leggings (a gain of 20 more stamina), and a Knothide on his gloves (8 stamina more).

I'd also bank Andormu's Tear. That ring is simply awfully itemized.

If you look at the gear choices of many other main tanks they follow a similar itemization theory - get over 13k unbuffed at the very least.

You might want to scan the AH for a new bow/gun/throwing weapon also. Look for the item level 120 of the monkey or of stamina. I use a item level 114 throwing weapon which is 11 agility 17 stamina. At item level 120, you have 11 agility 18 stamina (for monkey) or 27 stamina (of stamina).

In general, I think the +block rating gear is probably not very good, unless it also has high stamina/armor.

I think there is an error in your reasoning. You say that he will get crushed 15% of the time if shield block is not up. You are combining Prince's roll table with your MT's. Prince has a 15% chance to roll a crushing blow against a level 70 player, then that crush rolls against your tanks avoidance %'s. So using your listed %'s that would mean your tank should only receive crushing blows approx. 5.47% of the time, assuming shield block isn't active. Correct me if I'm wrong though, I am simply going off of memory.

I have similar avoidance %'s, although I have a little more dodge and a little less block, and I don't take very many crushings on any fight.

I would agree with the above posters though. Forget socket bonuses, 9 times out of 10 they aren't worth it. Stack stam and sacrifice some block for some dodge.

You are wrong. His combat table is correct, except that he forgot the increased miss rate because Prince is dual wielding.

So then every time the prince happens to hit it would be crushing?