Blood | DK endgame tanking [4.x] - Page 19

Otou · 09/26/11, 9:02 AM

Originally Posted by godstp

The issue might be stacking stamina over avoidance...

Death to a pre-nerf shannox combo in your case is: a) due to being a mana sponge and lacking proper avoidance...

d)gemming like a druid when the blood dk is designed atm to be taking some spike damage then healing & shielding himself which requires mastery to boost the shield...

stamina stacking was proven to be inferior in numerous posts.

I do want to dispel those illusions you have, about stamina and death knights, in Firelands.

Gemming stamina in Firelands should have nothing do with being a "mana sponge" reguardless of stamina or mastery, you as a death knight tank are responsible for the majority of your healing. If your "sponging heals" because of stamina gems, your playing incorrectly.

Pre-Nerf Shannox
Even before Shannox was nerfed, as a death knight I'm responsible for the majority of the healing done in the fight. This should be the norm for any fight, were the death knight is constantly tanking.

The deal with taking spike damage as death knights, is that if you can't live through the intial hits, you can't use death strike. Which then means you can't use mastery. No amount of mastery wil save you if you die before the opportunity to death strikie shows itself.

Riggins did say that he was using mastery in Firelands, and that it was still probably the best choice. However, every other death knight that was tanking in heroic Firelands (pre-nerf) expressed concerns about dieing before being able to react to the damage. If your EH is actually being challenged, stamina is the answer. In the end you needed to find the combination that works best for you and your healers. I will say that having less then 3 times the bosses' "average" auto attack (75k x 3=225k) was a recipie for disaster.

Originally Posted by Pintofbrew

Unless you were referring to the issue of having DS connect for every spec, which I'll agree is a lot more meaningful in PvP rammifications, even if current DS isn't what it used to be in 4.1. But it's no problem rolling the DS change to Blood spec alone.

Personally I made the assumption that the change would be tied to improved death strike. I can't really see it being made universal for those very pvp reasons.

godstp · 09/26/11, 10:33 AM

Originally Posted by Otou

I do want to dispel those illusions you have, about stamina and death knights, in Firelands.

Gemming stamina in Firelands should have nothing do with being a "mana sponge" reguardless of stamina or mastery, you as a death knight tank are responsible for the majority of your healing. If your "sponging heals" because of stamina gems, your playing incorrectly.

I assure you i live under no illusion . Stamina stacking and Firelands simply does not go hand in hand .period.
Aside from not understanding your current gemming nor your specc completely (especially skipping the points in improved blood tap ) this is a topic discussing end-game tanking as dk , optimal choices , optimal speccs .
Any missleading info , after being proven wrong should be disregarded. It`s a place to draw information for an "optimal"/universally-accepted specc/talent trees/glyph choice , not a place to give people wrong directions.
Ofc speccing/gemming/glyphing especially for a certain progression fight is a different story but stacking stamina is..no, just no. Could you give me an example of ONE boss in current tier on which it is more benefficial to stack stamina on , or as you said it "If your EH is actually being challenged, stamina is the answer" . it does not add up . i might be incorrect although i highly doubt it. please, explain your stamina choice .i cant undertsand how loosing a TON of avoidance over stamina is prefferable.

You need some avoidance to be able to mittigate SOME of the hits . you can`t just chug stamina and expect results or blame healers for your death cause you took 6 subsequent hits in the face and didn`t dodge any .

There have been people testing end-game combos with stamina/mastery/avoidance satcking (as dk ofc ) . Those people posted their feedback on this or other forums and from that feedback of people who DID clear end-game content , a lot of usefull data was provided and after it all cooled down , after all the data was ready was analyzed , an "optimal" priority of stats was pretty mcuh established : Mastery > Dodge > Parry > Exp > Hit > Haste > Crit .

look at WoW Gearscore Rankings :: WoWProgress - World of Warcraft Rankings and History , consider the gemmming/speccing/reforging and stat priorities of high-end dk tanks like Wakez, Riggnaros, Januzz, Alurez and re-consider your choices or share with the community an explanation of your choices. maybe they /we all all wrong and live ,as you so freely stated under "illusions" .

Looking at your gemmign choice i would say you choose stam > expertize > hit > mastery . am i correct ?

Tyvi · 09/26/11, 10:37 AM

Originally Posted by Yörgle

I strongly disagree on the "vastly more powerful". It is, in pure healing done / absorb, at best the double of the warrior and paladin. But it is another mechanich tied to spike exposition where the two others have another way of smoothing incoming damage.

I'd rather have an absorb proc'ing on HS that is slight than another "when you take serious amount of damage...".

It doesn't matter which set bonus ultimately absorbs more damage. Healer mana is 100% irrelevant. All the Warrior/Paladin bonus would do is save healer mana if it would matter - but it doesn't. Our set bonus does not save healer mana but will save your life instead (if it gets changed to a free Death Strike anyway) so I don't get why you'd want the useless 10k absorb shields every 10 seconds or something instead.

Yörgle · 09/26/11, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by Liar

Our set bonus does not save healer mana but will save your life instead .

The "will" is really really optimistic.
Our bonus might save our life given that we have either a FU rune available, or Blood Tap up (but a bonus that implies using a CD to be effecient... Really ?). Also, it might be wasted if for any reason it procs when a Blood rune finished to recharge, screwing our Blade Barrière uptime in the process, forcing us to chose between an emergency DS or refreshing BB asap.

Seriously, this bonus is crap in the philosophy (not smoothing taken damage) and in the design...

Otou · 09/26/11, 11:09 AM

Originally Posted by godstp

I assure you i live under no illusion...

Re-read this thread starting from around page 2. The reasoning behind stamina gearing in heroics (pre-nerf), wether or not hit/exp is worth it, and how we should handle gearing in a world of intense spike damage was discussed. I'm speaking from the perspective of doing 6/7 heroic 25 bosses before they were nerfed. Shannox, Beth'tilac, last phase Ryolith, Baleroc, and Domo could all provide EH challenges to death knights.

Copy and pasting another death knights talents and gearing is usually not a good idea. There are specific reasons behind everything, and your not tanking with the same raid group as they are. Also re-working your talents for farm content (especially nerfed) is common sense. The most important thing with a farm boss is killing it faster so you can move on.

Asphyxialol · 09/26/11, 11:10 AM

Originally Posted by godstp

It is my personal belief you are misleading and lack a bit of DK tank knowledge . that combo you mentioned for shannox is technically impossible to kill you if you utilize dk abilities properly .Do you have any proof of this ?
How can that combo kill you if you utilize your class`s mechanics properly and healers are not sleeping for more then 5 seconds ? And how is this 2-set bonus of T13 not perfectly in line with current dk-tank design ?reactive abilitis is what dk is all about . as riggs said it "Death Knight is almost a completely 'manual-ized' class as far as tanking goes."

The thing is swift , i was grouped with your dk a couple of times and it might be a case of missunderstanding the current dk tank design / mechanics .
Swiftstone @ Silvermoon - Game - World of Warcraft

The issue might be stacking stamina over avoidance and the fact that along with your 8 stamina gems + 2 dodge&stamina gems you also reforged 272 mastery into parry.
Death to a pre-nerf shannox combo in your case is : a) due to being a mana sponge and lacking proper avoidance ; b) due to dots on you not being reset on you c) not using /asking for cd-s when stacks don`t reset for a long period d)gemming like a druid when the blood dk is designed atm to be taking some spike damage then healing & shielding himself which requires mastery to boost the shield . stamina stacking was proven to be inferior in numerous posts.

Please reffer to the class mechanics in the OP's post as well as to the tips and mechanics greatly explained by Riggnaros (user riggins ) for further dk tank mechanics explanations / clarifications .

regards

If you don't have a CD up Shannox could easily hit upwards of a 120k Arcing, 80-100k Melee, and a 20k dot within .1s of each other. There have been multiple logs supporting this. The *only* way for a DK to survive Shannox when he has his spear is to have an actual damage reduction CD up (whether it be IBF, BnS or an external - doesn't matter if it's a 20% or 50%). It's this very fight that stirred up all the talk about DK survivability. The other classes it's literally impossible to die to this combo without any CDs (druids receive enough raw mitigation with their health to survive the burst, and block tanks = lol). Can you call out for constant CDs to mitigate the damage? Sure. However it is well known the DK is personally responsible for a minimum of 1/3 and frequently towards 1/2 of their personal healing (check any high end DKs logs - they will have been doing at least 33% of their healing, and often times upwards of 50%).

There is a *HUGE* difference in dying within 2 melee hits (2-3.6s ish) and 3 (3 to 5.4s), which is what stamina gemming gives you - as per what Otou said.

Speaking from from experience of multiple DK tanks (who have been tanks since the class was invented and frequently tanked before swapping to DKs) - Stamina to survive foreseeable burst > mastery > hit/exp *OR* parry/dodge, depending on your preference > dps stats.

Some DKs are comfortable running with a heavy mastery setup, but this largely depends on your healers. It is literally impossible for you to time a BS between every melee swing from a boss, and frequently up to 2-3 swings, which does mean there will be multiple periods of taking 2-3 mitigated hits, which is disastrous for us. Wakez (on your own server), and Riggnaros (in BL on Illidan US) are basically the only main DK tanks in high end 7/7 pre-nerf guilds. They run a mastery oriented setup and succeed just fine, but they are also backed by some of the best healers around. Riggnaros takes a more MT approach and Wakez typically takes the secondary/less painful option over his tank partner(s) - more of an OT.

You mention heavier damage in take - but when reviewing logs Riggnaros frequently takes more damage than I do and only slightly effectively outheals me (my burst healing is higher for the reasons Liar stated below).

As a tank you don't only have to worry about your own actions, but the actions of your healers and the interaction between the two so looking at the DK case as simply being a matter that only the DK can fix (via mastery or stamina) is flat out wrong.

DKs have to rely on proper healing far more than any other tanks because of the fact we are subjected to bursts at random times far more frequently than warriors or paladins. Good healers with fast reaction times are amazing for DK tanks, poor healers who frequently swap off the tanks to pop some heals on the raid while it appears the tank isn't taking any damage end up getting the DK killed (and we frequently can go without taking damage after taunting for a long period of time - H Rag is a great example). You have to know what kind of healers you're working with and adjust accordingly. In T11 I played with poor, poor healers but there wasn't any fight where the damage was so overpowering I would die in 2-3 hits so mastery was an obvious choice. In T12 every fight has a mechanic where the DK can die in even 1-2 hits/gcds and while mastery is certainly possible my healers have said they prefer the extra buffer my stamina gemming comes with and frankly if my healers are happy then I'm happy.

Tyvi · 09/26/11, 11:13 AM

Originally Posted by godstp

I assure you i live under no illusion . Stamina stacking and Firelands simply does not go hand in hand .period.

What a marvelous arguing strategy. Your major point about how stamina stacking is The Devil™ was that it mitigated less and made you a mana sponge. But Otou gave you a link to disprove that. Not only is mana consumption irrelevant, stamina stacking will actually provide better mitigation in most cases if you are fighting a hard hitting boss and know how to time your Death Strikes.

A boss that hits for roughly 75k would require 225k health to survive without any healing which is doable while stamina stacking. A mastery stacking DK should have less health which means he requires more healing, earlier. But this is all before Blood Shield, now let's look at this:

If you got more than the 225k health it needs to kill you, you can time your DS to land after 3 consecutive swings instead of DSing after 2 because you would require more total healing between swing and 2 and 3 than a the stamina stacker (while mana is not an issue, HP/s can be). This generally leads to scenarios where mastery stacker will prefer to DS after 2 swings instead of 3 which lowers his overall Blood Shield even with higher mastery. Some example numbers:

3 x 75k x 0.29 x 1.44 (~23 mastery for the stam stacker) = 93 960 Blood Shield
2 x 75k x 0.29 x 1.69 (~27 mastery for the mastery stacker) = 73 6515 Blood Shield

This is just a scenario for a boss that swings hard so this is a rather common scenario.

The reason why some DKs still prefered (note the past tense; with the nerf it doesn't exactly matter how you gear anymore) mastery and there are pretty much only 2 reasons: They play in 10 man so they can DS after 3 swings even with lower health or they play in 25 man while having very good healers that can heal them up quickly and they know how to use CDs very well which also enables them to survive 3 hits in a row easily.
Note however that the latter players are generally the exception and require good teamwork with their raid and healers to pull this off so I don't think you can just generalize from there and tell everyone to stack mastery regardless of their situation.

PS: There is zero avoidance difference between a stamina and a mastery stacker. The differences would occur only if one geared for hit/exp and the other didn't. However, your claim that this 3-5% avoidance somehow made it impossible get hit 6 times in a row is unbelievable laughable (you go from a 7% chance to a 4% chance for this to occur - whoop-de-doo).

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Yörgle

The "will" is really really optimistic.
Our bonus might save our life given that we have either a FU rune available, or Blood Tap up (but a bonus that implies using a CD to be effecient... Really ?).

Why did you keep ignoring the bit where I said that changing the set bonus to give a free DS is a necessity for it to work? Also, Blood Barrier is unfortunately being removed in 4.3 so it's a moot point.

Yörgle · 09/26/11, 11:52 AM

Originally Posted by Liar

Why did you keep ignoring the bit where I said that changing the set bonus to give a free DS is a necessity for it to work? Also, Blood Barrier is unfortunately being removed in 4.3 so it's a moot point.

Yep sorry I didn't realize that you were talking in the (unlikely

) event of Blizz' changing the bonus set to that.
Would be great, but I don't remember Blizz' changing anything but the numbers in the previous bonuses, on the PTR. (Or am I just forgetting ?).

About BB, the topic where they announced it was the same where they talked about active mitigation for other tanks for the 4.3... So until further notice, I'll expect no major change for the DK in the 4.3. I really hope I'm wrong, though.

Otou · 09/26/11, 12:25 PM

Originally Posted by Yörgle

About BB, the topic where they announced it was the same where they talked about active mitigation for other tanks for the 4.3... So until further notice, I'll expect no major change for the DK in the 4.3. I really hope I'm wrong, though.

Dev Watercooler -- Bloody Mitigation

The post where GC mentionted DK changes, is the one where he said active mitigation wouldn't be in 4.3. The reason we're getting the changes is because the other tanks aren't using any real form of active mitigation. From this post its certain that outbreak and blade barrier will change, and that death strike will be changed to deal with accuracy requirements.

swift_ · 09/26/11, 1:18 PM

Originally Posted by godstp

It is my personal belief you are misleading and lack a bit of DK tank knowledge . that combo you mentioned for shannox is technically impossible to kill you if you utilize dk abilities properly .Do you have any proof of this ?

I believe the others have already pointed out the current theorycraft of gemming stamina in favour of mastery or avoidance. I could go on about all the simulations and theory I've personally done to find the optimum for myself and the group I'm running with, but no matter what you stack, you always find situations where you lose survivability (ie. avoidance being RNG, mastery providing 0 benefit inbetween DS or when you get parried, Stam providing nothing if you take 40k overkill damage, and expertise not providing any direct benefit and being impossible to cap).

As far as evidence goes, I can only provide anecdotal evidence in the form of your own raid logs:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
[21:24:13.515] Shannox hits Unmakér 97896 (A: 3681)
[21:24:14.250] Unknown Jagged Tear Unmakér 37359
[21:24:15.125] Shannox Arcing Slash Unmakér 122455 (O: 4175, A: 1475)

Please take special note, that of the 3 times you died on Shannox in the entire log, all 3 times you died from less than 10k overkill.

godstp · 09/26/11, 2:53 PM

Originally Posted by swift_

As far as evidence goes, I can only provide anecdotal evidence in the form of your own raid logs:
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
[21:24:13.515] Shannox hits Unmakér 97896 (A: 3681)
[21:24:14.250] Unknown Jagged Tear Unmakér 37359
[21:24:15.125] Shannox Arcing Slash Unmakér 122455 (O: 4175, A: 1475)

Please take special note, that of the 3 times you died on Shannox in the entire log, all 3 times you died from less than 10k overkill.

we are talking about a 2 seconds window frame . and only reason i died was due to poor reactions . not stats priority.
stamina or no stamina i could have survived that easily . feel free to brows logs and you will realize it`s the only boss i tanked since well, around june/july when i switched ms from blood to frost.
i had at my disposal IBF / Bone Shield / Rune Tap / Lichborne /Pet Sac and used none. and most importantly a DS shield which would have sufficed more then enough to use and thus survive in 2 seconds time-frame .not having used ibf while seing jagged tear stacking high and was my own fault there.
there was also a problem with resetting the jagged tear , as you probably realize 38 000 jagged tear hit could have been less. warming up after 2-3 months of no tanking and tanking with a dps mentality for 2-3 tries is a different story then class knowlege.

Stamina doesn`t save you when your reactions are slow. i`m not tanking daily. 1 tanking log is poor evidence of stamina being superior.
poor class knowledge and poor reactions once every couple of months is total different story.

so u understand the power of a well timed blood shield :
[21:24:02.359] Unmakér gains Blood Shield from Unmakér (Remaining: 65610)
[21:24:10.515] Unmakér gains Blood Shield from Unmakér (Remaining: 76402)

where as your own in try number 1 World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
[14:26:01.900] Swiftstone gains Blood Shield from Swiftstone (Remaining: 18317)
[14:26:11.618] Swiftstone gains Blood Shield from Swiftstone (Remaining: 20181)

i had no major issues since i started tanking way back in naxx, nor in other more difficult accomplishemnts such as Undying and tribute to mad skill pre-nerf which i tanked.wish i had early tank logs but i don`t .

this started as refference to keeping the feedback clear , on topic and relevant.
i fear we are shifting away. so let`s get back on track.

bottom line : mastery > dodge > parry is in my oppinion (and not only if you read posts in here ) a superior choice to stamina > expertize > hit . this is an old discussion no point rebumping it.

also, it started as a refference to the 2 set bonus in t13 which is no way poor. could be betetr but as it stands now it is good and in line with the dk tank mechainics .

regards

Tyvi · 09/26/11, 3:02 PM

You literally died within 1 GCD in that log. If you were waiting for your GCD to cool down, possibly because you refreshed diseases or whatever, you would have died. The only way you could have survived is by predicting when the next Slash was incoming (something I believe he does whenever he gets the spear returned) and would have had to run a CD pre-emptively because I doubt you can IBF reliably within a span of 0.5 secs (including lag).

Or you could gear for stamina and save your CDs for when you truly need them.

Also, what's up with randomly picked Blood Shield values? Is that somehow going to prove your point or something?

Asphyxialol · 09/26/11, 3:21 PM

Hey look I can pull random things out of a log with no context too!

[21:33:56.257] Onslaughtx gains Blood Shield from Onslaughtx (Remaining: 99978)
[21:33:56.257] Onslaughtx Death Strike Onslaughtx +71477
[21:33:57.776] Onslaughtx's Blood Shield is refreshed by Onslaughtx (Remaining: 199957)
[21:33:57.776] Onslaughtx Death Strike Onslaughtx +39020 (O: 32458)

Yes, that is 342,912 healing/absorbs in 1 GCD, and not even my biggest one in the log, simply the first one on 1 night of Rag attempts.

See, that's what stamina lets you do. If you were mastery spec'd you would have died taking the kind of burst damage required for death strikes/shields of that size.

That doesn't even show the 24k rune tap or 27k scales before it.

Let's face it, you're wrong. Both are 100% viable, and preference based on your raid, tanks, healers, jobs and strats for individual boss fights. Avoidance is dominate as MT on any fast hitting boss like Baleroc, Mastery is 100% dominate on any fight where you aren't at risk of being killed in a burst, stamina is dominate when your EH is constantly being challenged.

godstp · 09/27/11, 2:56 AM

Originally Posted by Asphyxialol

Hey look I can pull random things out of a log with no context too!
Let's face it, you're wrong. Both are 100% viable

Im not randomly pulling nothing ,i sugges you look at the death log and click on more , you will understand. it`s not random blood shields it`s what hapepend before the deaths .look at logs, see the death logs then come back and post. keep your input clean and have an open-minded .
Also, how can i be wrong yet both prefference be 100% viable at same time ? i have not stated stamina is uber-crap, i stated it seems to be an inferior choice .

this is still end-game tanking discussion forums right ? this still is about what is optimal to choose right? not what you or your guild uses due to healer combo /strat or personal preference
allow me to quote the OP :

Originally Posted by GravityDK

Discussion here should be on DK endgame raid tanking, both 10 and 25-man, biased to progression tanking (as opposed to taking a more casual attitude to your tanking role).

Stats and gems
Parry and dodge have the same rating and diminish at the same pace. They're equal now.
Reforge for Mastery, unless you need to reforge for hit/expertise (threat).

How to gem is not yet conclusive, however there is a strong argument developing that you should bias avoidance and mastery rather than stamina.

Runeforge: swordshattering rather than gargoyle. In hard-mode progression raiding, Gargoyle could be better, but in levels of effort below than, use swordshattering.

There is no consensus yet on how to measure effective health, and most importantly, at what point EH ceases to be relevant. Mastery as a stat does not increase your classic EH, but increases your survival, as does avoidance which will be a more interesting stat choice in Cat than it was in WotLK.

The OP seems to agree about a tendency to favor mastery > dodge etc, the end-game dk tanks (as in those that actually killed Ragnaros heroic ) are doing it , there is a long post by riggins where he explains where/why/how (2nd post in this forum which he updates frequently) .i`m not saying stamina is a dumb choice . it can work but it simply is not optimal overall . there are living proffs of it , there are posts of it , your personal prefferences could be embraced by the comunity should they have solid arguments and data coming from end-game (pre-nerfs) dk tanks. but it`s not the case.

regards

Illundai · 09/27/11, 3:42 AM

I remember that grammar, spelling and intelligent discussion were once regarded pretty highly here. What happened to that?

You just keep hammering on the same point over and over again that it already is clear to me that it's pointless to argue with you. I stacked stamina/avoidance since the start of this expansion, I tanked my way through full t11 top 50 clear using it (reforging mastery into avoidance mind you) because I preferred it. Even in t12 heroics I kept using the same reforging and gemming (stamina gems, avoidance in red/yellow). Over the course of our t12 progress I experimented with everything when I started having issues tanking Ragnaros (maybe our healers were just bad) to try and find a "solution". I couldn't find one. No matter what I tried, I took more damage than the other tanks regardless and ultimately led to my decision to reroll Frost. I had times where Ragnaros gibbed me with every possible setup (mastery, avoidance, stamina) when I didn't have a strong enough cooldown available. You know what setup we had the best success with (aka p4 and onwards)? Me in Stamina gems and avoidance reforging. Mostly because I and my healers were most comfortable with it, but also because it allowed me to survive the spikes that once killed me. I don't think you realise how much damage you could take in a global on Ragnaros if you were unlucky (AMSd Trap, Hand of Ragnaros, Burning Wound tick and melee hits with back to back avoided Death Strikes in between would usually get me killed).

All that to say that in my damage intake there was barely any difference between most setups. You can make everything work, stamina just has more leeway. Which doesn't make it necessarily worse or better. Unlike Block tanks we don't have an obtainable cap to aim for, so our gemming and reforging is going to be more dynamic to our playstyle.