Originally Posted by Bilbobubblin
Is there a general consensus as to when, or even if, Blood DKs should start prioritizing stam stacking? For the past month, I have been bringing my DK to my main's raid to tank H Yor, so I had been prioritizing stam given all the magic damage on the fight. I am making the swap to bring my DK full-time and am wondering if maintaining my stam prioritization is viable for Heroic DS in general.
To look at it another way, I have seen a stam stacking DK with 2.5k mastery and a mastery stacking DK with almost 4.5k mastery. That's a pretty huge difference. Both are on my server (Stormrage-US) and have heroic DS kills, so I'm not suggesting that either is wrong, but I do wonder which is best for which fight.
TLDR: Is stam stacking, at around 394 ilvl and rising with ~3400 mastery, viable / better / crap / yadda yadda? Thoughts, opinions?
Armory Link
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I cannot give you a definitive, mathematically correct answer (because I am unsure if the relevant theorycrafting has been done), but I can at least give you my thoughts and anecdotal experiences.
I believe that the answer to your question depends on a couple key factors:
1) Whether you raid 10-man or 25-man, and
2) The composition and skill of your raid, as Padruthor noted above.
I see more value in focusing on stamina in 25-man raids. The point at which you will probably see tanks try stacking stamina is when they get to Heroic Warmaster Blackhorn, where getting one-shot even with a large chunk of health remaining is a real possibility.
I tank for a 10-man raid with a Holy Paladin and Disc Priest as my healers, plus a Resto Shaman for 3-healer fights. I currently match all socket bonuses: mastery/parry in red slots, mastery in yellow slots, and mastery/stamina in blue slots, and I reforge with a focus on mastery. I also use a Lichborne spec rather than a higher-DPS spec because my raid's DPS is quite good.
I can say that this setup has been
adequate for every fight up through 6/8 Heroics cleared. In addition, during our Spine attempts so far, my survival has not been the issue. Whether or not it is
optimal, I cannot tell you for certain.