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

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.

I'm going to voice a concern. I think lists like this are doing us a great disservice because the ignore the fact that we need to combine all the pieces into a set of tanking gear. Each piece might be the most valuable in a slot all by its lonesome, but once we pass the 156 DR limit (with Resilience worth approx. 1.5 DR per RR) those points are all useless. Then we need to build up our armor and stam to the max. (I think it's clear that our advantages lie in the mitigation arena, as opposed to trying to max avoidance at the expense of large armor and hp values.) The challenge with gear at the moment, for me, is trying to increase armor values while maintaining crit immunity and still increasing hp. It's proving to be a difficult dance.

I modified Jubei's AEP addon to show "Cat Points" and "Tank Points" in the item tooltip based on Emmerald's model.

If you want to use different values for the stats just go into the lua code and modify the coefficients, it is pretty easy.

Here is a link to the wow druid forum post I made:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...11003&sid=1#12

and for the impatient a direct link to the addon:
http://plundercats.antiochforever.co...ruidPoints.zip

I think the original author may eventually integrate this into the original mod so I'm not going to post it on the mod sites for now.

Panthro, if I went ahead and changed:

["agility"]
 

Contents

1{weight 2{weight 3{weight 4{weight 5{weight 6{weight 7{weight

[top]{weight

4.27}, = 0
["stamina"]

[top]{weight

3.13},
["armor"]

[top]{weight

0.52},
["health"]

[top]{weight

0.26},
["dodge rating"]

[top]{weight

3.13}, =0
["defense rating"]

[top]{weight

2.96}, =0
["resilience rating"]

[top]{weight

1.73}, = 0
Would it represent a viable pure mitigation / survival of rows of crushing in boss-tanking raiding perspective?

And would it not be more reasonable to recalculate the values of an item based upon the stats you have in a raid: Ie

Assume fort/kings/devo/bloodpact/motw,
Poll other gear's AC/Sta,
???
Profit!

I lack the imagination to fill in ???, but I am certain it was completed for some arbitrary stats, and could it not hence be dynamically generated in a mod?

Are you using a EU client? I didn't change the localizations.

The mod does seems to have trouble with some "Equip:" bonuses - I'll take a look tonight and see what I can do.

It might make sense to have 2 armor sets. Personally I have one set for max armor and dodge for 5 man instances and one set for hp, def rating and sta for boss and raid encounters.

I trade out my ash covered leggings with full defense slot clefthoof leggings for raiding. Even with the lowered defense required, I still have problem reaching crit cap in my gear without the clefthoof stuff.

Not writing this as a whine post, but whats up with the feral sets both from the arenas and the malorne/nordrassil sets? The feral T4 set has no defense, less armor than quest greens, less stamina than it has strength (what a great tanking stat, strength), and does have int and spirit. It's not that great for dps either. Nor can you use it to heal or cast. What are these items good for? I was in karazhan last night and realized the T4 gloves I could have rolled on were a downgrade for the job I'm doing.

Are these items going to be fixed? The T5 aren't any better, the T5 gloves for example have over 130 armor less than a blue quest reward with the same stamina value. But they have int/spi !

Whats going on with bear items?

T4 and T5 sets look more like Feral/Healer Hybrid sets. More accurately like Cat/Healer sets because you can shift out in the DPS role and usually not while tanking so you get to use all the non-Feral stats, too.

But yeah, those sets suck for tanking but I doubt we will ever see high ILVL epic feral items without "wasted" stats because it is just not possible to not waste stats unless they want to overpower Bear tanks. The Bear form mods are great so below-optimal itemization is the price we have to pay for it I guess. Then again, with smart itemization WITH "wasted" stats we could still be competitive tanks and OKish casters if they cover the bases on tanking stats (roughly equalling how much a Warrior is getting from his specialized item) then pumping the leftover item budget into Int and +Heal.

We'll see how this works out later because T4 and T5 definitely don't impress me, either. But like I said before, the idea behind the itemization is not a bad one.