Protection warrior: Stamina VS mitigation
 

Greetings,


I am the guild leader of Fallen Tears and we have recently come upon some problems on a few bosses in SSC. We have had many discussions amongst ourselves, and I have spent an hour or two looking over some of the stuff located here and can't find anything set in stone. The most I have found was that after maxing your defense, stacking stamina is the way to go.


Now my question is two fold.

1. At what point when looking at an item should you be happy with more mitigation via parry/block/dodge etc as opposed to stamina?


2. Of the two tanks listed, give me an opinion on each's gear selection. One of our tanks focused mostly on stamina, while the other tried to find balance between mitigation and stamina. The difference between them is about 500 hps and some dodge for the higher stam tank, the lower stam tank has 500 hps less, more block/parry etc.



Uez The Armory
Sunders The Armory


Any feedback would be greatly appreciated as I have people at eachothers throats over this, and EJ is our usual solution to find out what is actually better.

Okay, upon looking its 1800 MORE hp's not 500.

In general, avoidance saves mana while straight mitigation/stam prevents burst deaths. Once you have enough lifespan (incoming damage vs. armor/stam) to not die, you can stack avoidance till you're blue in the face. As item levels go up, simply getting as much of everything as you can works well. Higher level gear will simply have more.

Couple points:

Block percentage is not very valuable in my book. When tanking anything that could reasonably kill you, shield block already puts you up over 100% block. The only time that extra block helps at all is in PVP, grinding, and on trash you don't shield block for. None of these times are really life threatening. In essence, 31% block is 6% more to block 2% of the time. Some bosses prone to quick attacks this might help on a percent of the time. Additional dodge and parry are effective all the time and extend your shield block charges. I didn't stack block when I was prot for raid tanking.

I generally gem for bonuses other than block rating and block value. Block value is a nice stat for shield slam aggro, but the amount achievable through socket bonuses is little. If you go with 6 stam/4 agil gems instead of 12 stam, the pick up of the set bonus is usually worth it. You get more stats overall - not always, but usually. In this way, your gear socket color determines your gems a lot.

Stacking stam improves your survival rate against magic like KT pyros. No amount of dodge, parry, or armor will help your there so there is some credence to stam stacking. 500 hp is something like 32 itemization points which is about 1.5% parry or under 2% dodge. In a straight up choice, I'd take the life but I wouldn't take it over 3% parry.

There are a number of threads on this but it generally does not come to a finite conclusion. If you survive the fight, your gear is sufficient. If you do not (healers oom or you get burst killed) it is not.

Uez: In general, str is an inferior tanking stat. 15 agil to gloves or +threat, 12 stam to bracers would generally be more inline. Devastate is very poorly correlated to AP and shield slam/revenge are not. HS has a pile of built in aggro. Of course, any stam you have above and beyond what you need is a waste. If he gets the job done, 50 more AP is not a bad thing.

Sunder: Ignores the socket bonus of his shield (3 stam) to put full stam in there. So, instead of having 4 Xstat + 9 stam, he has 12 stam. 10 stat points versus 8. I wouldn't buy another gem though. If you add up Sunder's avoidance, (parry + dodge) he is virtually identical to Uez. If Uez fixed his belt gems and wrist enchant, he'd pick up some ground. Sunder is Tauren so he will always have that 5% edge which is 750 hp at 15k

Tank gearing is a topic people are passionate about, and discussions can get heated. You will probably find that most people here fall onside with your stamina enamoured warrior. That said its worth keeping in mind is that having two *different* tanks in the guild/raid, be it different classes, or different approaches to gear selection, is a good thing, as it means more flexibility, less fights over drops, and - if people accept it - less drama.

Defenitly go for Sunders. Uez his gem choices are pretty dissapointing sometimes (str/sta gems while he could just as well socket 12 sta, loosing out on a big amount of hp just to get more worthless block rating) and in most cases, Sunders actually has more avoidance aswell.

Ask yourself, do you want the tank that can guaranteed survive an unlucky crush on Tidewalker/.. or do you want the tank that reduces the chance for that to happen by ~5% but with alot more chance to die when it actually does happen.

Stamina reduces the chances that a tank will die to a flurry of hits all in a row, like the shaman on Karathress is known to do.

Mitigation is armor, I think you meant to say avoidance which is dodge, parry, block.

Current warrior theorycrafting I've read says that stacking stamina and armor is the way to go. +12 stam gems in every slot, stam enchants everywhere. Dodge, parry, block comes with the gear and while it's nice to have, avoidance isn't going to be as reliable as armor and stamina at keeping the tank alive.

It's not about taking less damage, it's about being able to absorb the most damage possible without dying. Only stamina and armor do that for you. Avoidance just means it takes less mana to keep you alive since they'll be able to cancel more heals being cast on you.

To be honest, the hitpoint difference between the two tanks you linked above is not nearly as gear dependent as you may think. You're comparing an Undead warrior to a Tauren one and, quite frankly, Tauren have it much easier when it comes to hitpoints; we get a 5% bonus from a racial talent called Endurance, which I'd say accounts for at least 500 hit-points at that gear level.

As for my perspective, I'm squarely in the camp that I'd rather take more hits and survive them (translation: stack Armor and Stamina) than base my survival and rage generation on the random number generator. Stack avoidance and you'll inevitably run into streaks where you don't take any damage. That leads to rage starvation (less threat output) and if your healers are reactive rather than proactive with canceling heals, you'll likely die when your luck runs out. In my book, stamina wins out on avoidance unless you're shooting for crushing immunity.

I'd start by reading all of http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t15894-a...ack_one_other/

Both of them need both sets of gear, depending on the fight (and a high block-value set as well). But the stamina gear gets used much more often, from my experience. 1800hp is a lot -- I have 400 more hp than Uez and he's a few trips through SSC/Eye ahead of me.

Some happy medium could be achieved simply by swapping out some of the hybrid gems on Uez's gear -- the 4str/6sta pair on the belt, the 4hit/4agi on the T4 helm, the 4agi/6sta on T5 shoulders, etc. That's 300 health right there, and another 120 from the bracer enchant (+12str for a tank is very, very marginal) and 180 from the shield enchant.

Does help to have a wide variety of gear to choose from, but you still have to be able to take the hits. When bosses start hitting for 6-8k you really need to have the stamina to survive 2-3 hits in a row. High avoidance just leads to rage starvation and is only really good for OT'ing mobs.

I can hit 30+% dodge, with 20% parry and 18% block with fury spec, and I basically use the gear I use just to tank something off to the side till the rest are dead and the raid can get to me, so have plenty of time to generate threat.

My suggested stats are 20-25% dodge/parry/block, 490 defense, then stam. Armor you can't do too much about since only a few pieces really offer a large enough difference to be considerable. Really no point in stacking mass mitigation/avoidance unless ou are aiming for uncrushable.

Till there is a Patchwerk 2.0, where you simply can't heal incoming damage without a shitload of avoidance, just go for armor and stamina. If you absolutely want some socket bonus, try to not gem for parry or defense rating (unless you're still critable of course), the conversion to avoidance is way too low.

Mother Shahraz is similar, but as for her or patch, high avoidance is still a bad thing since a string of dodge/parry drops you from their set list of targets. In patchwerk's case, he can HS the MT, while in Shahraz's case she can port the Saber lash tanks. So even in these cases you have to keep avoidance low. While dodging one of these timed "big hits" is amazing for healers, as blizzard programmed them, too much avoidance leads to wipes.

Only real use for massive avoidance is multimob tanking, such as an aoe taunt. Or doomguard tanking during Azgalor. Although thats not a great example due to chain stun. But any situation where a tank is given the duty of tanking a mob away from the raid, with no danger of losing aggro, is a great place for mass avoidance.

Too much avoidance leads to long periods of time where the tank takes no damage, this is when healers take it easy, they stop healing pre-emptively (aka spamming) and often fall asleep. What can happen then is the tank gets an unlucky string of hits in a row and dies due to his low total hp and the fact that healers weren't casting any heals.

You also have to deal with less rage due to not being hit much, which means you may generate lower TPS in general.

It's common to see this with a druid tank who's stacked dodge too high
eg: miss miss miss miss miss <healer starts watching tv>, hit, hit, hit, heal, hit DEAD.

As a healer I prefer a massive hp pool and a steady stream of damage by far.

Sunders gear looks fine, change the shield gem for 12stm, 5 parry rating is crap.

When I checked just now Uez logged in dps gear, so I can't comment on his choices.

Miss, Dodge, Parry and Block are avoidance, it's armor and block value that's considered mitigation.

My viewpoint on tank gearing is to meet the minimum avoidance requirements to become uncrushable, then move on to stacking STA and mitigation as high as you can.

Since Warriors are uncrushable right out of the box thanks to Shield Block's +75% block, you should really focus on maximizing on your HP, armor and block value. It's those three values that will keep you alive when the Brad Pitt hits the fan.

Miss, Dodge and Parry does not save on healer mana. That's a myth. A raiding healer is going to be spamming heals on you no matter what. The harder you're getting hit, the bigger his heals are going to be.

It's mitigation that saves on healer mana. If your block value and armor reduction is high enough, the healer can afford to spam rank 1 Greater Heal/Flash of Light on you, instead of max rank Greater Heals/Holy Lights.

As for sunders choices I'd consider 4def / 6sta for the bracers and the gun, the rest looks nice (and familiar *G*) to me.
But he hopefully didn't exchange the curators leggings with t4. They are the better choice and the T4 Set Bonus isn't something to really go for.

And for the STA vs Dodge myth.. I wrote a simulation tool for Gruul/Magtheridon fight and will post it in a new thread as soon as I got my ten posts :D (and yes.. Stamina wins)

You can just turn back, I don't think "too high avoidance" is really an issue. At least for Patchwerk, I never set a foot in BT.