Does your spreadsheet work if you take the agi gems out and replace them with +12 sta gems? I have yet to see a point where I can't really use the extra hp? The only peice, I've considered socketing with agi gems are my 2.1 heavy clefthoof boots

Verdant gloves beat Wastewalker?
so +200 (1100 in bear form)armor is better than +34 agility always? I only have 19k armor, and adding 1100 gives me .90% mitigation, while 34 agility is about 2.3% avoidance.

Am I missing something here?

OK, let's start with a trivial example. Imagine we have 14000 armor and want to compare a trinket with 2% dodge versus a trinket with 120 armor. All comparisons are done versus a level 73, by the way. The trinket is worth 660 armor in bear.

Damage reduction w/armor: 55.07%
Damage reduction w/dodge: 53.93%

Let's imagine a boss that hits for 1000 damage against zero armor.

Damage taken w/armor: 449.29
Damage taken w/dodge: 460.71

After 100 hits:

Damage taken w/armor: 44929
Damage taken w/dodge: 46071

We see that about 1142 more damage is taken. Now we calculate how many hits the dodge trinket would need to avoid in order to reduce damage taken by 1142, by dividing 1142 by 460.71 (the amount of damage taken per hit w/the dodge trinket.) The answer comes out to around 2.8, which is the same thing as saying 2.8% dodge (since we're talking about a sample of 100 hits.)

Therefore, we can say that at 14000 armor, the armor trinket gives superior mitigation to the dodge trinket. Now the interesting part. By plugging this all into the spreadsheet we can have it tell us how much armor we need for the two to be equivalent in terms of mitigation. For this example, it turns out to be right around 20k armor. So you can say that after 20k armor, the dodge trinket is superior.

Now, if that calculation results in a number greater than the armor cap (or more precisely, the armor cap minus the item's bonus armor), the high-armor item is categorically better for mitigation than the dodge item. Conversely if the result is a negative number, the dodge item is categorically better for mitigation. (Realistically no such item exists because at zero armor, even a tiny amount of armor is worth a ton of dodge.)

All the equations above can be drastically simplified, I just wanted to outline an intuitive example.

To answer some questions:
- The spreadsheet just works on the differential in armor and dodge between two items. I assumed +8 agi gems in the comparison I did because I was only interested in damage mitigation and agi is the only gem that accomplishes that (well, def does too, but insignificantly.)
- Verdant beats wastewalker because even very close to the armor cap, the extra armor ends up mitigating more damage than you dodge with wastewalker. So yes, it is categorically better for mitigation. Damage reduction from armor can't be directly compared to dodge in terms of numbers; it takes calculations like I outlined above.

It looks like you're using base 0% dodge though, dodge gets better the more you have.

Yeah, you have to have a base dodge %, AND factor in miss % and the fact that the 'last' 15% of 'hit' hurts 1.5x as much.

This is true and the result will be a table instead of a number which will make it more complicated. At 50% dodge it would take 200 swings to equal 100 hits which means it would half the 'avoidance equivalency'.

When I get some time I'll add it to the spreadsheet and get the armor points for dodge ranging from 30-50 in increments of 5. (Only concerned about realistic situations, do people run 50+ dodge buffed with enough HP/defense to seriously MT?) Since the point of this is to determine as pragmatically as possible which is a better choice given your other stats it should be valid and it will be interesting to see what changes.

My guess is Skulkers and Nimble-foot will be much more usable in raid situations where you get +10% dodge from buffs. I think MoT will still be better and Wastewalker may edge out Verdant at very high armor levels or in high-dodge sets.

TheOnly > It's an interesting point about crushing blows. My intuition is to model this as a flat 7.5% increase to overall damage taken which does tilt things slightly in favor of armor.

@ Boevis: Songflower Serenade from Felwood = 15 all stats (and 70 crit rating)

Dunno if it does/does not stack with everything else you've listed.

A 7.5% increase in damage is the best way to model it that I can see. That only breaks down IF you can reach dodge + miss > 85%. Realistically, this only will happen with dual wielding mobs and very high avoidance sets.

Two tables, one for normal and one for dual wielding bosses might be useful, since 24% base miss makes avoidance that much better.

Thanks to your help I've revised the spreadsheet to take into account your base dodge % as well as the impact of crushing blows. Here are the results for some of the more interesting comparisons:

(Left column is your base avoidance [dodge + miss] rate, right column is the armor point at which the avoidance item becomes better than the armor item)

SKULKERS VERSUS HEAVY CLEFTHOOF (2.1 w/3x AGI) - 225 ARMOR VERSUS 2.24 AVOIDANCE
30% 27999.1453
35% 25249.84523
40% 22472.36225
45% 20000.40241
50% 17800.35814

SKULKERS (3x AGI) VERSUS MALORNE (2.1) - 280 ARMOR VERSUS 2.9 AVOIDANCE
30% 25601.13246
35% 23064.0833
40% 20479.04649
45% 18226.35138
50% 14919.21335

NIMBLE-TREAD BOOTS VERSUS HEAVY CLEFTHOOF (2.1) - 193 ARMOR VERSUS 1.52 AVOIDANCE
30% (above cap)
35% (above cap)
40% 31167.74343
45% 28079.04814
50% 25340.42909

WASTEWALKER GLOVES VERSUS VERDANT GLOVES - 210 ARMOR VERUS 2.3 AVOIDANCE
30% 24172.01607
35% 21851.90652
40% 19448.1968
45% 17308.89515
50% 13692.35091

MARK OF TYRANNY VERSUS MOROES POCKET WATCH - 180 ARMOR VERSUS 0.9 AVOIDANCE
30% (above cap)
50% (above cap)


Interesting. Let me modify what I said earlier about verdant versus wastewalker, come next patch I will be socketing my wastewalkers with +agi and using them. Skulkers are really good too and Nimble-tread boots worth getting if you can handle the HP/def loss and still have lots of armor from the rest of your gear. MoT is still irreplacable. Any other comparisons I should run?

Regarding dual wielding mobs of course when you start getting to 75%+ avoidance it really starts to skew heavily in favor of the dodge items since they get exponentially better with more avoidance. Of course in all situations a reasonable amount of HP and crit immunity must be maintained.

Maratai: I agree that is clearer but in this sense I'm talking about overall damage taken over the course of a fight, so both armor reduction and avoidance mitigate part of that damage. When speaking about an individual hit there's a stronger difference between 'avoidance' and 'mitigation'. At least that's how I recognize the terms.

Well you have to keep in mind that those numbers are only about average damage taken.
It is my experience that flat migation is worth more than similar avoidance, since migation impacts your worst case scenario, and avoidance doesn't.
And for some reason my healers always stop winding up heals on me if I dodge 10+ times in a row. Which is another thing to consider.

The other thing that becomes a factor as you socket all your gear with +8 AGI gems is your HP is going to plummet. Right now my HP is passable but not good (~13300 unbuffed in DB). As I look for ways to improve my overall viability I have to consider not only damage taken (DR and avoidance) but the health buffer I provide the healers.

Now we move on to yet another topic - what are you tanking?

For Raid Bosses, I will make two observations: 1) if you can't survive an unlucky string of hits (healers have to be on the move and can't heal you for a second or two) then your dodge is worthless at any level (<100%). 2) When you have multiple healers on you and you're taking big hits you will be overhealed ALOT. The more you dodge the more they overheal. For that reason I find that in raid situations you might as well take less damage per hit and let the healers do what they're there for then make them sweat bullets while you dodge 6 attacks and then eat 3 CBs in a row.

For your average 5 man, dodge is almost your enemy. I NEVER have enough rage when tanking 5 mans. If you guys have ever been in the group where the POM Pyroblast is flying over your shoulder before the mob even gets to you then you know every point of rage must be used effectively to keep agro. If I pull a mob or two and dodge the first 3 attacks then I'm not going to have sufficient rage to keep the mobs off agro happy DPSers. If the mob hits you instead then you're sitting pretty with half a rage bar and all of your tools are at your disposal.

I have been a AGI/dodge whore since they changed our agility:dodge ratio back in 2.0. Lately I have been finding that the damage I take when I stack dodge can overwhelm even the best of healers but less damage more frequently is much easier to heal.

In summary: avoidance is great and in theory stacking dodge through the roof may make you take less damage, but in practice there are a number of reasons when you might want to be taking that damage instead of avoiding it.