Kayne

I'm trying to develop a metric for comparing tanking items. The big hurdle at the moment is creating a formula that translates avoidance and health into a single "currency".

2 questions:

1. On the margin, for what value of "X" are you indifferent between taking 1% avoidance and taking "X" amount of stam? Assume that you're already at 490 def, and keep in mind that in gems, 1% avoidance = ~30 stam.

2. In a tanking spreadsheet, would you like to be able choose your own exchange rate, or would a streamline default value be preferred?

 

FunBall

You might want to try the mod called "Tank Points", which does exactly what you are looking for. It uses your current health, armor, and avoidance to determine how much unmitigated equivalent damage you could stand up to. It also has a calculator so you can play around with adding X stamina or Y dodge (or whatever).

One issue with creating an equivalency between stats is that it changes based on your current gear and setup, which means the spreadsheet you're building needs to be dynamic, or it has to assume a base set of gear. The further you get from that base set of gear, the worse the model becomes.

 

◊ Asmik

For me, avoidance only becomes priority when I have enough stam to survive any spike damage that the specific situation can generate.

I've only reached that point recently for lesser encounters (karazhan), and I'm feeling that i probably wont for a few encounters past that given current itemization.

I'd probably put that equilibrium point at somewhere around 1000 stam (unbuffed), at which point i would start looking for avoidance. I don't think that there is a "average" stam to avoidance ratio at all.

 

• frmorrison

Tankpoints is great and it is an Ace2 mod.

The new upgraded Engineering tank helm should help to see what a smart designer thinks of what you need between the different stats:

1296 armor
75 sta
Meta socket
Red socket
Defense rating 44
Dodge rating 26
Hit Rating 10
Gains 15 stam, 11 defense, 8 dodge, 2 hit over the old Engineering Helm.

 

Kayne

Hey Funball. Good to see fellow Gul'Daners on here. Yeah I've played around with Tank Points, and I don't particularly like the way that it handles the conversions between the different stats: that's part of why I'm trying to put a spreadsheet together in the first place. Essentially, I don't like the way that Satrina calculates the conversion between armor and stam and I'd like to make a tool that I can manipulate to my own conversions.

I'm assuming a base set of gear to calculate the mitigation including armor. I should note that the central function of the spreadsheet is not this gear calculation. I am just trying to create an index of gear options that is able to rank items in order of preference for a "balanced" tanking set. In other words i want to convert avoidance, stam, and mitigation into a single unit with which to measure gear choices.

I'm talking on the margin here. So given your current gear, how much stam would you be willing to trade for 1% mitigation?

 

◊ Asmik

Easy answer: none.

Hard answer: For encounters where there is no threat of burst damage killing me, I would trade stamina off at a ratio of probably 20 stamina to 1% avoidance. Blizzard itemization (as already stated) is somewhere much closer to 30 stamina to 1% avoidance, maybe thats why I hate to sacrifice stam to avoidance?

 

Vohbo

I would put it even lower. I will take stamina where I can get it usually and don't bother too much about avoidance at all.
Stamina just does so many nice things at the moment that it's really advantageous to max it out. It also scales incredibly well with talents and buffs. Armor and stamina first, and after that maybe you can think of some dodge or whatever. Avoidance can help, but you can never be sure of how much it will help in advance. Stacking armor and stamina first (the difference will never be enormous because gear needed to create any kind of large disparity simply doesn't exist) will ensure that you can take a higher amount of unavoided hits. Even if you may take slightly more damage over time, it will not be more than 1 or 2 %, whereas the higher amount of stamina makes healing spells less likely to overheal you and give you some cushion where you do not need to be topped off between every second swing of a boss.
Even on bosses with an incredible damage output where the fight has a considerable duration, your healers are unlikely to fall without mana anyway.
Even while focussing totally on stamina, mobs land attacks on me only 55 % of the time, the tank gear available adds up plenty of defense, agility, etcetera to make sure that your avoidance ratings are never gimpy.

 

Kenco

I rate 1% effective life increase from dodge = 0.7% effective life increase from stamina. It comes out to 1 stamina = 1.08 dodge rating, but that's based on 18k health prot spec.