[Feral-Bear] Cataclysm Release - Page 3

MessiQ · 12/14/10, 8:44 AM

Originally Posted by HashBrownJM

Pardon my ignorance, but does the gem stacking for Pre-Tier 11 raid essentially look like a stam stack, like in Wrath? I ask because the "bear guide" on MMO definitely suggests stacking expertise gems prior to stamina.

Many players are advocating stacking stamina while healers are struggling to heal, simply because this offers more cushion for things to go wrong. However, at a reasonable health pool from gear, it is much more important for tanks in general to ensure they are at (or at least as close as they can get) to the hit and expertise caps in order to maximise their TPS as well as make sure taunts never miss. If you miss a taunt on a mob attacking a healer then it doesn't matter how much stamina you have

Also, the discussion is raging on back there about dodge vs. agility. Are the added bonuses of agility worth the slight dodge loss?

I've been looking at the benefit of agility vs dodge as well as the benefit of agility vs stamina.

Essentially, dodge gives mitigation only and doesn't benefit from kings/motw. On gear alone the dodge% from the dodge rating will never be as high as what you gain from agility, which means reforging and gemming is the only way to benefit from increasing this which I feel is giving away too much because of the extra benefit of agility and losing the stat you reforge with, but there should be some hard numbers to back this up somewhere to give a definate answer.

As for stamina vs agility I think many overlook the benefit of agility. While stamina is great at the start as I said, it lacks the bonuses of agility. Extra health will grant AP from Vengeance, BUT, agility will net you greater AP and more importantly have constant uptime compared to vengeance needing to stack (and dropping off through mitigation). This results in agility giving more consistent mitigation from Savage Defence than stamina will. Agility will also net more AP for threat as well as increasing your dodge for mitigation (see previous post about agility vs dodge though) as well as increasing your crit chance which effectively increases SD uptime and mitigation from this.

All in all I think it looks more beneficial overall for agility stacking rather than anything else since agility effects multiple stats. Save for specific fights where extra health pool may be a better option, agility seems like it is more important than ever before for bears.

beleg_strongbow · 12/14/10, 8:50 AM

Originally Posted by skeldi

more stam = larger possible vengeance = larger absorb from mastery = greater possible mitigation?

I'm sorry but I've read it a lot of times but I cannot comprehend it.

Why is more stamina equal to larger absorbs from mastery?

The tooltip says: Increases the damage absorbed by your Savage Defense ability by 32%. Each point of Mastery increases the absorb by an additional 4%.

So where's the stamina part?

Originally Posted by MessiQ

as well as make sure taunts never miss. If you miss a taunt on a mob attacking a healer then it doesn't matter how much stamina you have

Taunt's do not miss anymore - they've changed that.

Treee · 12/14/10, 8:50 AM

I went Bastion of Twilight 10 man as MT last night. The healer never healed me to full life cause of mana problems.
I was sittig at 20-50% at the whole fight. I am stamina gemmed atm.

For hardmodes i agree that stamina could be the best cause to survice the hard hitting bosses.

Is it just 25 man where stamina beats all other stats? In 10 man the bosses don't hit as hard as 25 man bosses so maybe for 10 man mitigation beats stamina.

Anyone tested stamina vs agi/dodge in 10 man?

(sorry for bad english)

Pyrates · 12/14/10, 8:55 AM

So where's the stamina part?

Check out vengeance: Vengeance - Spell - World of Warcraft

MatsT · 12/14/10, 9:36 AM

Originally Posted by Treee

I went Bastion of Twilight 10 man as MT last night. The healer never healed me to full life cause of mana problems.
I was sittig at 20-50% at the whole fight. I am stamina gemmed atm.

For hardmodes i agree that stamina could be the best cause to survice the hard hitting bosses.

Is it just 25 man where stamina beats all other stats? In 10 man the bosses don't hit as hard as 25 man bosses so maybe for 10 man mitigation beats stamina.

Anyone tested stamina vs agi/dodge in 10 man?

(sorry for bad english)

Let's look at some very basic math. I looked through a recent Halfus Wyrmbreaker kill for an anonymous guild. In total, the healing done for the encounter was around 9 million. Halfus attacked the main tank roughly 100 times and each hit was for an average of 28k damage. Let's say the tank manages to increase his dodge amazingly with 10%. This would cause roughly 10 less hits or 280k less damage. Looking at 9 million total damage, this means around 3% less healing required in total. This is not a lot of saved mana for the healers, barely noticeable. Still, this was when the tank inreased his dodge chance by 10% which is a lot, especially considering diminishing returns. 1760 dodge rating before diminishing returns, probably 2300-2500 with? For that same item budget your tank could get 3500 stamina or 40k+ hp. I can promise you this would increase your chances of beating the encounter a lot more.

Obviously agility is a lot better than straight up dodge rating, but in order to make a fair comparison you need to have an insight into the quite marginal benefits provided by dodge. If your healers are having mana troubles, it's typically not because your tank isn't dodging enough but rather because your raid isn't avoiding enough aoe damage. It's impossible to strain healers mana just by damage to the tank without too much tank gibs. In all of wows history mana spent effectively healing the main tank has never been an issue and I don't see that changing even with increased hp pools.

Pudgeball · 12/14/10, 9:39 AM

EDIT - Early morning = switching Vengeance to be for each point of stam instead of health ;o I'll rewrite a more clear sta vs agi post later.

beleg_strongbow · 12/14/10, 9:41 AM

Ok now you have me:
Savage Defence 35% of AP * 32% Reduce due to Savage Defender + 4% per point of Mastery

So with 10.000 AP and 5 Mastery you have 10.000 AP * 0,35*(1,32+0,2) = 5320 points of damage absobed.

The higher AP (eg due to Vengance) and/or the higher Mastery the more damage is absorbed.

Right?

Pudgeball · 12/14/10, 9:48 AM

Originally Posted by beleg_strongbow

The higher AP (eg due to Vengance) and/or the higher Mastery the more damage is absorbed.

Right?

Yes, Attack Power and Mastery both increase the amount of damage you'll absorb from Savage Defense.

kalbear · 12/14/10, 10:39 AM

However, at a reasonable health pool from gear, it is much more important for tanks in general to ensure they are at (or at least as close as they can get) to the hit and expertise caps in order to maximise their TPS as well as make sure taunts never miss.

While taunts might be important for some raiding encounters threat is almost completely unimportant at this time. Right now tanks have an absurd threat lead, especially when vengeance kicks in. It's really a non-issue for raiding at this point.

coredumperror · 12/14/10, 10:52 AM

Originally Posted by MatsT

Let's look at some very basic math. I looked through a recent Halfus Wyrmbreaker kill for an anonymous guild. In total, the healing done for the encounter was around 9 million. Halfus attacked the main tank roughly 100 times and each hit was for an average of 28k damage. Let's say the tank manages to increase his dodge amazingly with 10%. This would cause roughly 10 less hits or 280k less damage. Looking at 9 million total damage, this means around 3% less healing required in total. This is not a lot of saved mana for the healers, barely noticeable. Still, this was when the tank inreased his dodge chance by 10% which is a lot, especially considering diminishing returns. 1760 dodge rating before diminishing returns, probably 2300-2500 with? For that same item budget your tank could get 3500 stamina or 40k+ hp. I can promise you this would increase your chances of beating the encounter a lot more.

Sure, that might be 3% less healing across the whole raid, but do all the healers heal the raid equally? If you're saving the tank healer 280k HP worth of mana, that is potentially much more significant than 3%. Especially when you consider that +10% dodge is far better than -10% damage taken, since you've already got a decent amount of avoidance to begin with (20% dodge =~ 80% dmg taken, adding 10% means reducing dmg by 10/80 = .125, or 12.5% less damage). I think.

Also, I'm mostly ignorant on this, but it DR really that bad at this gear level? I'd love to know what the math is on that.

Plus, you wouldn't necessarily be stacking just dodge rating for that extra 10% dodge. A lot of that would more likely be AGI, which has enormous benefits above and beyond increased dodge chance.

MatsT · 12/14/10, 11:07 AM

Originally Posted by kalbear

While taunts might be important for some raiding encounters threat is almost completely unimportant at this time. Right now tanks have an absurd threat lead, especially when vengeance kicks in. It's really a non-issue for raiding at this point.

According to this thread on Tankspot, taunts can no longer miss even with 0 hit rating. Hit and expertise are certainly the best threat stats, but as you say threat is currently a non-issue.

Grend · 12/14/10, 12:11 PM

Originally Posted by MatsT

According to this thread on Tankspot, taunts can no longer miss even with 0 hit rating. Hit and expertise are certainly the best threat stats, but as you say threat is currently a non-issue.

It is still important to be hit-capped even though Taunt cannot miss anymore if you are interrupting. Personally I was in charge of half the interrupts on our Halfus attempts last night and having Skull Bash miss is not only annoying, but can cause at best mana issues and at worse a wipe.

Right now I'm at 8.03% hit (with out reforging anything TO hit), but I've reforged all gear with haste to expertise and I'm still below Dodge cap (albeit only by .5%). Am I wasting all that potential Haste -> Dodge Rating? I feel like getting close to the dodge cap for expertise is a good goal since clearly Parry cap is practically unobtainable without gimping yourself. Anyone agree/disagree? What expertise rating are you comfortable with?

Kioga · 12/14/10, 1:09 PM

I keep seeing people state "once you reach a reasonable HP" to gem avoidance (agi/dodge). I see that a LOT but do we know the magic number for heroics and normal raids? I'm around 134k right now with mostly quest blues + 2 JP items with just MARK (Fort makes it 150K). Is that a "reasonable" HP or do I need to shoot for more stam before gemming agi? What HP level are the rest of you successfully running with?

Erdluf · 12/14/10, 1:31 PM

Originally Posted by MatsT

Let's say the tank manages to increase his dodge amazingly with 10%. This would cause roughly 10 less hits or 280k less damage. Looking at 9 million total damage, this means around 3% less healing required in total. This is not a lot of saved mana for the healers, barely noticeable.

Actually, the mana cost for a healer to get a small increase in HPS is very significant.

If you download treecalcs101204.xls from the resto thread, and don't touch anything, you'll currently see on the 'Main' tab:

24145 HPS
239s till out of mana
5.3% of healing is from Nourish.

I'm going to change all of his Nourish casts to Healing Touch casts. The spreadsheet doesn't directly support that, but I'll go to the "Heals" tab and copy the HT column to the Nourish column, and that has the same effect.

Now on the main page we se

26432 HPS: a 9.5% increase in healing.
121s till out of mana: you'd better kill the boss twice as quickly.
13.5% of healing is from Nourish (aka HT), roughly a 150% increase.

To get even more healing he'd have to change his spec (to increase Regrowth crit, so that Regrowth HPS > HT HPS), and start replacing HT casts with Regrowth casts, for much, much worse healing efficiency.

Your healers have damage levels that they can support very cheaply (Druid: Rejuv+Rolling lifebloom+Swiftmend+Clearcast HT+Nourish). Increases to that level are extremely expensive (meaning not sustainable).

Edit: The numbers above included some raid healing. Single target, that particular tree can
Heal 10-12k HPS forever.
Heal 19-20K HPS for one minute before going OOM.
Cannot exceed 20k HPS for more than a few seconds.

Phallan1 · 12/14/10, 1:45 PM

As i haven't had to tank raids yet, i am only going off of what happened in a heroic SFK run last night. Running with a paladin healer i was asked why I was so much easier to heal than their druid tank. When i asked what stats their tank preferred i was told that he is stacking agility and dodge gems, where i am stacking agility and mastery, since i am using my kitty gear to tank and tanking trinkets to make up for health. Is mastery being under weighted as a stat for tanking?