Thanks for the link to this thread, Maratai.

> All that follows assumes:
> Level 70 vs Level 73 mob
> Base Bear form hp of 12000
> Tauren Druid
> 3/3 Thick Hide
> 5/5 Heart of the Wild
> 3/3 Survival of the Fittest

I used lvl 70 vs lvl 70. I haven't added the 5% health from Tauren
racial. I assumed 0/3 Survival of the Fittest.

The last can be modified easily in the current Excel. The two first
can't (requires some "technical" know-how to do it).

Additionally, the Armor table doesn't go as high as my base value goes.

Other than that, the models and the conclusions drawn from them seem
equivalent. I'll see at some point if I can make a calculation using
the same initial stats. It would indeed be interesting to verify my
model using their results.

There is cumulative gains on all attributes. However, it's important to consider the relative increase in value for each additional unit.

IIRC, it goes something like this:
Armor - linear increase, i.e. each point of Armor is as good as the previous one, regardless of initial attributes
Health, Stamina - decreasing value, i.e. the more Health you have, the less Stamina and Health is worth
Dodge, Defense, Agility - increasing value, i.e. the higher your avoidance, the greater the value of these attributes

The increasing value of Dodge (and Defense equally) was already shown in another post.

However, there has been some discussion on the real-life validity with the lifetime-expection model. It doesn't take healing into account, and that's a very important factor in actual game play (no one expects to tank a boss without healing, regardless of mitigation, right?). In order to give your healers some breathing room, you need to have some respectable amount of health (like 12k), but after that it's of much less value compared to the effect of Armor, which reduces the strain on healer's mana pool. Avoidance has a similar problem in the sense that while it allows you to totally avoid damage, high avoidance (especially if combined with reduced Armor) makes incoming damage very spiky and more difficult to heal.

As a result of that discussion, I'm considering updating my model to include healing in some form, or at least provide some definable preference multipliers for attribute values. This will certainly move the values more in favor of Armor. What would be your opinion of such a change?

I like the idea, but I am not sure how you could implement that.

I am still pondering what gear to pick. After all, it comes down to "Highest average effective life" (shown by Tankpoints, 1% Dodge is one 1% more mitigation on average) or "Highest guaranteed effective life" (downrank Avoidance here for guaranteed mitigation such as AC and Sta). I think I'll go for the latter because I just have no intention to play Dodge roulette with my raid and because mitigation from AC and HP is always there. If that doesn't work out, I can still change but that is what I intend to do for now anyway.

A high HP/AC bear allows healers to use most efficient spells as opposed to one with 45% dodge and much less AC/HP


What will kill a bear is something akin: Crushing Crit Crushing Ability.

It is always easy for healers to compensate by using more consumables / mana pots.


What would be interesting is a model taking into account AC and STA and to a very small degree defense.

I'm however afraid warriors win in that deparment because of defensive stance and block -> crit crushing mechanics.

Now, if they chose to itemize epics by only putting points in AC/STA and enough def to become uncrittable, we'd be talking.

I have yet to mess with it, but I got http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.ht...US;source=live last night from Karazhan.

Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch
Binds when picked up
Unique
Trinket Miscellaneous
Requires Level 70
Use: Increases dodge rating by 270 for 10 seconds.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 34.

It seems like a great trinket giving us a bit of an "oh shit incoming damage" option. I assume the cooldown is on 90 seconds like all the other use trinkets. I'll give a trip report once I get to use it all proper like.

HP is also nice for soaking magic damage which looks like a bit of a weakness for druid tanks.

Dodge is active mitigation. If you are stunned or incapacitated, it's useless. There's a fair amount of stuns so far from what I've seen in TBC instances. Also, I think dodge requires you be facing your opponent. I know that's the case in PVP, not sure about PVE (want to kill a rogue with evasion up? Stun him or get behind him). I don't know for sure since I'm usually also trying to block and parry, which I know for a fact require you face the right way. That's a problem if you get feared or attacked from behind.

The other thing to consider is what dodge does to overall incoming crit/crush damage. I don't think we ever conclusively determined what the "order" of the combat table was, but if dodge doesn't do anything to reduce the incidence of a crit/crush, then it isn't as valuable as pure AC mitigation is. AC will apply to all of those hits whereas dodge will only apply to "hits". I know when I first started raiding, if I didn't push dodge/parry/miss over 100% with evasion, when I did get hit, it was a guaranteed crit/crush. It made for a very spikey damage curve. I'd get hit 15% of the time, and every single one was for 150-200% damage.

I was under the impression, that Dodge works also from behind. Your trick against the Rogues works probably because you stunned him...

I think I've read it that avoidance trumps crushing blows, like you pretty much stated from your own experience. Which would make the Dodge trinket a very valuable addition since it would indeed reduce the chance of crushing blow, given high enough avoidance to start with.

dodge not working from behind with evasion is/was a bug. dodge works from behind, parry/block does not. "miss" also works from behind.

If incapacitated and unable to dodge, parry, or block, high AC trumps every trick in a warrior's bag. Both will be hit and crushed, one will take 12% less damage on those hits.

I wasn't making a point about warrior vs druids, I was just saying AC is the bees knees for mitigation. Don't get fooled into thinking 1% avoidance = 1% AC mitigation. The mechanics generally favor AC.

I can hit over 27k armor with 21% dodge (close to 30% while raid buffed), right now. I'm going to drop some armor in favor of agility (and defense where agility isn't available). At 27k, inspriration procs seem almost wasted. I think I'm going to try to hover around 25-26k armor and up my dodge as high as possible. I can reach 16k with raid buffs, right now. That seems like enough, for the time being (progressing in Karazhan). These numbers are without a paladin in the raid. Our highest level paladin is 65.

It seems to me that as long as you have enough armor and health to survive a few hits, you should bump dodge as high as you possibly can.

Sorry if I interpreted it that way. I just spent a long time on vent listening to some warriors talk about loot and they were far, far to focused on +defense and stamina and not mentioning agility and AC enough. AC is huge and people often don't realize it because they don't realize that going from 55% to 56% in the character sheet isn't 1% less damage, its 2.2% less. Druids are more attuned to this concept and often overlook dodge%.

In an environment where you expect a constant stream of healing, AC becomes even more important -- for all tanks.

Firstly, thanks a lot for all the data. This is an amazing collection of very useful info!

I haven't seen much discussion about the weapon slot though. I'm having a hard time deciding between something with +armor (say [Braxxis' Staff of Slumber]] or eventually [Earthwarden]]) vs something with AP for threat, a bunch of Stamina and maybe some agi for dodge (say [Staff of Beasts]).

I've discussed this a couple times with a few tanks (Bears and Warriors alike) and the argumen goes both ways. Some argue that the extra mitigation from the armor will allow you to take far less total damage, straining the healers less and allowing their mana to last longer and therefore keep you alive longer. Others (me included) tend to say that your chances of dying from spike damage is much higher than dying from healers running out of mana, so the extra stamina is more beneficial.

I know stamian vs. armor has been talked a lot before, but with the case of the weapon slot it seems to be very specific values (~500 armor vs 50 stamina). Hopefully this isn't too repetitive of a discussion.

700+ health is not going to make or break you (not when you have over 15,000 health, total), but 3000+ armor just might. If you're tanking a boss with primarily physical damage, you have to go with the armor. If the boss isn't, then I could see an argument for the 500 health.

I agree with the sentiment of "your chances of dying from spike damage is much higher than dying from healers running out of mana" but your conclusion is wrong. If you argue like that, you do not compare AC against Stamina - because they effectively are one thing due to synergy. The more HP you have, the more your AC counts. And the more AC you have, the more your HP is worth. Usually when people argue about dying to spikes vs dying from healers going OOM they compare an AC/Sta heavy set vs an Avoidance set. Yes, the more Avoidance you have, the more worth your HP and to a slightly lesser extent AC (the more Avoidance you have, the less AC is worth since you get less often which means you get to use your AC less often), however compared to AC/Sta your Avoidance is not something to rely on. Like it was said before, if you get stunned your avoidance is set to 0% (except misses against you) and if you are unlucky it doesn't do shit. Avoidance is just something you can stack up on after getting your minimum set of HP and Armor for a specific boss to easen up the load of damage taken but usually the healers will precast the heals anyway so the benefit is less than you think.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if raids would prefer a tank with 0 avoidance and the ability to live through spikes over a tank with 80% avoidance and the chance to die to spikes at 1-2%. I have seen a tank drop dead in 3 seconds on bosses because of, how to say it, unlucky strings of special moves on him although he did take less overall damage than a comparable Bear that stacked AC/Sta. To be fair, said tank would have died due to lack of heals some times as well but he got lucky and avoided some attacks until heals resumed landing on him - but playing Dodge Roulette is not something I'd want.

Make of it what you will.

EDIT: Me sxx0r of spellzing

I'm not really sure I would say it's a "weakness" for a Druid tank, as much as it's a bit different. Predatory Instincts (15% chance to avoid AoE attacks) is an obscenely powerful talent for tanking most bosses and situations from what our Druid tanks are reporting. As I'm not a Druid tank (Warrior) I'm not sure what it all applies to, but they are saying it seems to apply to any AoE effect, including cleaves and spells. Provided that is correct, Bears get a huge boon towards basically having another 15% avoidance on Cleave, Shadowflame-esque abilities, and pulsing AE+RoF type attacks.

Avoidance does not trump crushing blows per se...this is a common misconception. Most people think that Block% is good on a Warrior simply because it "cancels crits and crushing blows", when that is simply not the case at all. Crushing is its own slot in the combat table, meaning the combat table from bottom to top looks something like this:

Miss/Parry/Dodge/Block/Crit/Crush/Hit

As it is a table, things on the bottom push things on the top off... however you would need tons and tons of avoidance to ever push crits/crushing blows off the table. Even presuming you are uncrittable, you still have a 15% chance to be crushed at all times, unless you push crushing blows off the table. This would require 85% total avoidance, though, which is usually impossible to get. (Note: As the original quoter said, that may not be the "exact" order of the combat table, but evidence seems to point to it being at least similar to that.)

(This is, incidentally, why people get the wrong impression that block itself is what is good for Warriors...when, in reality, it is simply the fact that the Shield Block skill adds so much to the combat table that crushes get pushed off. It is the Shield Block skill, not blocking itself that prevents crushes.)

PI is a great talent, no doubt, and it's definitely a must have for serious Bear tanks (same goes for Primal Tenacity with the same reasoning). But it is in no way comparable to (Improved) Defensive Stance. It's the same argument about AC/Sta vs Avoidance once again; one guarantees mitigation while the other can potentially negate 100% to 0% of damage taken. While it's true that on average both imp. D stance and PI mitigate roughly the same amount of damage on AoE based magical damage fights a Druid just can't gear around having PI while a Warrior can gear around having D stance. If you know how much magical burst a boss can throw your way you can substract 16% of it and have your minimum HP right there. Fill up the rest with resist gear and you are golden.
A Druid can't just substract 15% and get this required HP like that, he has to go with the worst case of PI never proccing just like the Warrior goes with the worst case of "only" having Imp. D stance.

Grace of air totem probably. After the improved talent, blessing of kings, and survival of the fittest it gives ~100 agility, which is 6.8% dodge. A major agility potion is another 2.7 dodge if you didn't factor that in already

Glad to see this is still alive

The proxy at work started blocking this site

For those interested i've uploaded the spreadsheet to http://www.freefilehosting.org/pupload/view/25520

It allows you to compare outfits - so that the scaling effects of whole gear sets can be taken into account

It contains no macros as uploaded - obviously treat with the normal caution for any untrusted office doc

It is still a work in progress, currently looking at a cat dps gear sheet - although i'm not 100% convinced that the model i'm using holds up as well as the bear one

Unfortunately, the results are a little contradictory.

Your model has [Gilded Thorium Cloak] > [Thoriumweave Cloak]. If I substitute the values in for it with the above model, the order is reversed.

Similarly, your model shows [Wind Trader's Band] as significantly better than both [Heavy Dark Iron Ring] and [Item not found!] while this model has Wind Trader's about equal to Heavy Dark Iron and worse than the Signet Ring.

Not sure if this is attributable to the starting values assumed or what it is.

Well, the argument of avoidance vs. mitigation will probably go on and on for eternity when it comes to tanking, unless they let people get mitigation that is so high that one won't really need avoidance. (e.g. not gonna happen ;))

Some strong arguments can be made for both sides, really... Mitigation assures predictability, but it won't save you if something goes wrong. Also, in cases of hard-hitting magic attacks rather than consistant magic attacks, there is really a smaller window where mitigation provides a tangible advantage to evasion.

To illustrate my point, consider something like a 6k Shadow Flame, every 20 seconds or so. If one has a 16% mitigation, that 6k Shadow Flame will do 5040 damage. Say a tank has 10k HP. That means, if you are between 5040 and 6000 HP, mitigation assures you will survive. On the other hand, 15% avoidance means that if you are hit by it below 6000 HP, you have a 15% chance of survival no matter how far below 6000 you may be. 16% mitigation will not save you if you have 5040 HP, in this case. You will still die no matter what. Mitigation ensures your survival over a 9.6% window of your HP pool in this case, whereas avoidance gives you a chance of avoiding an ensured death over a window of over 50% of your HP pool.

Predictability can be a good thing, but sometimes it sucks that you will be predictably dead. ;)

As with anything, a balance is really the most important thing... avoidance will save you from wipes on more than a few occasions, mitigation will help your longevity and your healers significantly. Nothing can replace the need for avoidance giving your healers windows to react to things they might not be able to otherwise, or buy the raid time--after all, how many raids have been saved due to avoidance tanking of Razivious, or some lucky dodges/parries on Hateful Strikes when the healers hadn't quite caught up?

Anyhow, the built-in defenses of Warriors when it comes to magical damage is slightly better now with the 6% talent, but it is still no substitue for resistance gear and resists in general...so, both Druids and Warriors alike will have to stack on resist gear in the case of a magic-heavy boss. I wouldn't be too concerned about the Druid's ability to soak damage, even if they take slightly more damage in the end.

(Paladins have it a bit more balanced atm, since they can get 10% reduction to spells passive, with "oh shit" mitigation of an additional 50% should they be below 20% HP. So, I guess they are somewhere in-between Warriors and Druids on this issue.)

But, I do agree that HP adds a buffer for soaking magic damage--which has always been looked at as the solution to magic damage when you can't get resistances for Warrior tanks in the past--so that's probably a good thing to stack up on for a Druid. Then again, you can tweak your gear for fights of course...and in the case of non-magical fights, you probably wouldn't need to stack up on HP as aggressively as in magic-oriented fights.

What are you using for your optimal gear Zyla? Using not overly many pieces that are dodge friendly, I'm sitting on about 28% unbuffed. Still using my Guise which helps, but chest and legs are heavy clefthoof for the defense/stam (with defense/stam gems, no agi) Umberhowl, Assasination Shoulders, Verdant, Bogstrok Scale (no agi enchant yet, waiting for thoriumweave to drop), Manimal's Cinch and Earthwarden with 35 agi enchant.

Getting the exalted shoulder enchant, higher level gems so I have more space to spend on agi (still using vendor gems) and a +6 stats on chest/+4 bracers/+12 agi cloak will give another ~3% without switching the gear itself. Cobrascale hood or Stylin' Purple Hat will enhance things on top of that.

I think most of my problem was that I got carried away with stam whoring... I found a pair of 230 armor 90 sta pants that I've been using along with a 75 sta feral staff, harness experiment, Cowl of the guiltless w/cot chant , Manimals, supple leather boots, gloves of hidden temple, the Black morass cloak, execution bracers, MoT/Rocket Launcher, Sun Gilded Shoulderpads, level 70 pvp epic feral belt.

Ive since gone over emmerichs list up there and have noticed I had some upgrades just sitting in my bags that I didn't even realize I had.

Its somewhat strange to me how devalued armor is now. I geared out dodge whoring to see the difference, and I noticed that I lost ~6k life, gained 10% dodge, and lost about 4k armor. I honestly can't decide which is more advantageous. I can push 20k life/21k armor/25% dodge, or be at 12k life/16k armor/40% dodge. Its the old debate, and its somewhat jarring to see it possible in bear both ways. I'm crit immune in both circumstances.

I just have been getting very confused as to the relative valuation to determine the best choice.