[Feral-Bear] Cataclysm Release - Page 8

Oddakos · 12/28/10, 3:50 PM

Ah-ha, thanks. I was napkin mathing under the erroneous concept that the amount of Vengeance per hit scaled based on the size of the hit and total health of the bear instead of just the former.

HashBrownJM · 12/28/10, 7:22 PM

Originally Posted by Astrylian

Stamina: There is relatively tons of stamina on gear. Way more than is needed to achieve a reasonable survival soft cap for most fights. Gemming stamina at this point is almost surely a mistake, as well as most stamina enchants. The only exception to this seems to be in heroic raids, where it's frequently worth it, but for anything short of that, agility is much more valuable than stamina. It's important to note that Stamina is only of threat/mitigation value if you're hitting the cap on vengeance. If you're hitting the cap on vengeance pre-heroic-raids for anything more than very brief, occasional spikes, you're doing something wrong. Even still, its threat/mitigation value is minimal. Note that that's one bug in Rawr right now: It almost always assumes you're always vengeance capped. The raid-dropped stamina trinkets are great for using in fights where you need a higher survival softcap, as they're about 9k hp each.

Agility: Agility is awesome, and what we should almost all be gemming right now. Use Rawr to find out for sure. That includes things where there's a comparable agi-based enchant instead of stamina enchant as well, like shoulder enchants, profession perks, and flasks (especially flasks, since the sta flask is underpowered). Another minor bug in Rawr is relevant here: Agility from special effects (ie trinket procs) is still granting Armor, slightly increasing its value.

So for shoulders, use Shattered Crystal, for helm use Arcanum of Ramkahen, LW use the +130 agility embossment? Any other thing I'm missing?

And is this post-Cata raiding? I saw some discussions earlier about effective health needing to be ~160k hp for the Halfus drakes and such, so I guess I'm just trying to clarify if I've been gemming pseudo-correctly but enchanting completely wrong.

Warstehgnome · 12/28/10, 7:24 PM

@Hash, That is what he intended from that section.

Use the agi shoulder and head chant.

The previous discussion was on heroic halfus drakes, not normal. They melee for ~80k on heroic a piece. So your health needs to be pretty high for them.

HashBrownJM · 12/28/10, 7:32 PM

Originally Posted by Warstehgnome

@Hash, That is what he intended from that section.

Use the agi shoulder and head chant.

The previous discussion was on heroic halfus drakes, not normal. They melee for ~80k on heroic a piece. So your health needs to be pretty high for them.

So stam or agi on the bracers, as a LW?

EDIT: All of this being said, why does Rawr still say the best enchants are all stam-based?

Astrylian · 12/28/10, 7:41 PM

Originally Posted by HashBrownJM

So stam or agi on the bracers, as a LW?

EDIT: All of this being said, why does Rawr still say the best enchants are all stam-based?

Use Rawr, correctly.

It doesn't favor stamina, if you configure it correctly, as I specifically said in my post. Currently, the stamina-based helm enchant is slightly beating the agility-based one, just due to the secondary stats that come with it, in Rawr, but I expect that when I fix vengeance being over-valued that will change as well. Same with the chest enchant. In all other cases, the Agi-based enchants (including Bracers which you asked about), are better, at least for me.

Nayfal · 12/29/10, 12:09 AM

After checking about 10 top guild bear tanks it looks like stamina stacking is definitely worth when doing heroic raids. So probably you should set a very high survival cap in rawr if you are targeting for heroic T11.

Talanik · 12/29/10, 1:38 AM

Originally Posted by Nayfal

After checking about 10 top guild bear tanks it looks like stamina stacking is definitely worth when doing heroic raids. So probably you should set a very high survival cap in rawr if you are targeting for heroic T11.

Keep in mind the majority of the top guilds doing heroic modes charged into it in the first week or two, and as such were incredibly undergeared when they entered it, more than likely below the HP they should have had.

For the rest of us, who are just now starting serious progression on heroics, our gear is slightly better than the blues Paragon/Ensidia/Method/etc. went into it with. As such, we have much higher stamina on the gear alone, giving us the HP pools needed to tank heroics while still allowing us to gem for mitigation.

tangedyn · 12/29/10, 2:50 AM

Originally Posted by Oddakos

170,000 hp * 0.10 (Vengeance cap) = 17,000 AP potential. 10% of that is 1,700 AP, which adds 600 to the absorb before Mastery. 25% from cap adds 1487 before Mastery. My current gear has 16 Mastery, so would multiply that value by (.32+.16*4 = 1.96), so effective absorb gains of 1176 and 2915 damage respectively. Why is that amount irrelevant?

According to Reesi at The Inconspicuous Bear | Bares mostly like the taste of fase! she tanks 2 drakes at once at heroic Halfus and still doesn't see her vengeance goes above 13k, which is way below the cap even for Agility stacking bears. So yes, stamina is irrelevant to Savage Defense.

Nayfal · 12/29/10, 5:33 AM

Originally Posted by Talanik

Keep in mind the majority of the top guilds doing heroic modes charged into it in the first week or two, and as such were incredibly undergeared when they entered it, more than likely below the HP they should have had.

For the rest of us, who are just now starting serious progression on heroics, our gear is slightly better than the blues Paragon/Ensidia/Method/etc. went into it with. As such, we have much higher stamina on the gear alone, giving us the HP pools needed to tank heroics while still allowing us to gem for mitigation.

They are not in blues. They are fully epic geared with stamina gems and enchants. So I guess it is mandatory for raid heroics to stack stamina even if you are fully epic geared. I think there are fights with damage spikes or high undodgeable magical damage.

Masticor · 12/29/10, 5:52 AM

Stupid Question on the Side:

[...] Taunts do not miss. Interrupts do not miss. Even with 0/0 Hit/Exp, [...]

Is this normal for Feral? Tanks? All classes? Everyone in a PvE Setting?

Promethius · 12/29/10, 4:02 PM

Originally Posted by Nayfal

They are not in blues. They are fully epic geared with stamina gems and enchants. So I guess it is mandatory for raid heroics to stack stamina even if you are fully epic geared. I think there are fights with damage spikes or high undodgeable magical damage.

We also need to keep in mind that at the top level of play, everyone will be moving out of "the fire" faster, more consistent with interrupts, proactively using survival cooldowns, etc. which lower the amount of healing the raid requires, translating into more mana to heal the tank. Also compound on to that the fact that DPS are more likely to push harder, meaning shorter kills (lowering total damage done to the raid overall) and that the healers in general may just be more skilled at getting the most out of their mana, and it makes sense why at the elite level, the extra safety buffer effect of stamina is chosen over agility's mitigation contributions. All the above factors contribute to increasing the healers' effective lifespan of their mana bars and their focus on the tank.

Ultimately, I don't believe the choice is so much encounter specific as it is simply tailoring to the capacity of your raid group.

Nayfal · 12/29/10, 6:48 PM

Originally Posted by Promethius

We also need to keep in mind that at the top level of play, everyone will be moving out of "the fire" faster, more consistent with interrupts, proactively using survival cooldowns, etc. which lower the amount of healing the raid requires, translating into more mana to heal the tank. Also compound on to that the fact that DPS are more likely to push harder, meaning shorter kills (lowering total damage done to the raid overall) and that the healers in general may just be more skilled at getting the most out of their mana, and it makes sense why at the elite level, the extra safety buffer effect of stamina is chosen over agility's mitigation contributions. All the above factors contribute to increasing the healers' effective lifespan of their mana bars and their focus on the tank.

Ultimately, I don't believe the choice is so much encounter specific as it is simply tailoring to the capacity of your raid group.

And how do you model that in spreadsheets?

I've tested full agi and full stamina stacked for a while and got feedback from our raid healers. They prefer stamina stacking. So I will follow that. I agree that it also depends on your group.

MacrosTheNaked · 12/30/10, 9:10 AM

Originally Posted by Nayfal

And how do you model that in spreadsheets?

I've tested full agi and full stamina stacked for a while and got feedback from our raid healers. They prefer stamina stacking. So I will follow that. I agree that it also depends on your group.

I can't really agree to this stance, it's like saying you're picking a slower race car because your mechanics like working on it better. I fully believe that the best possible, *practical* attribute/stat spread should be chosen and played. I say practical and emphasize it because I firmly believe there is little point to pure theorycrafting without practical use, however, in this case, I believe the evidence supporting the multitude of advantages agi has over stam make gemming for agi a no brainer!

That said, I think the minimum or optimal amount of HP is very up to debate and encounter specific, I might keep a few specific stamina items in my inventory so I can ramp up on stamina if it's required.

MatsT · 12/30/10, 11:17 AM

Originally Posted by MacrosTheNaked

I can't really agree to this stance, it's like saying you're picking a slower race car because your mechanics like working on it better. I fully believe that the best possible, *practical* attribute/stat spread should be chosen and played. I say practical and emphasize it because I firmly believe there is little point to pure theorycrafting without practical use, however, in this case, I believe the evidence supporting the multitude of advantages agi has over stam make gemming for agi a no brainer!

That said, I think the minimum or optimal amount of HP is very up to debate and encounter specific, I might keep a few specific stamina items in my inventory so I can ramp up on stamina if it's required.

There is no evidence whatsoever proving agility is better than stamina. The arguments presented in favor of agility (and other avoidance stats) is basically the same ones that have been used time after time in the past. With the Cataclysm changes they probably have more weight than before, but whether it's enough to actually make another stat surpass stamina is very hard to tell.

The facts:
Agility will reduce incoming damage more than stamina.
Stamina will increase your EH and your TTL more.

This is basically the only things we know, and getting exact results is hard since healing is very hard/impossible to model or simulate. One common opinion often presented as fact is that agility will save more mana for healers than stamina. At a first glance this appears to be true, since the tank is taking less damage. However, we must remember that in the past the healer mana spent healing actual damage on the tank has never been an issue. At 85, this might have changed somewhat, but you will still find that 90% of the times a tank die, none of the healers will be out of mana. What is also important here is firstly that avoidance will lead to overhealing. HoTs will keep ticking and Beacon heals keep coming in even if the tank is at full HP, along with some Nourishes and similiar. This means that some of the mana saved by dodging isn't actually saved. Secondly, a higher EH/TTL allows healers to be more greedy with their spell choices. For example, look at a tank that has taken two hits and lost a total of 80k. If this is a stamina tank with 180k hp he will now be at 100k hp. If HoTs are rolling it's probably still fine to use a Nourish. If this is an avoidance tank with 160k hp, he is now at 80k. You might feel that a Healing Touch or Regrowth is safer in case the tank gets a few more heavy attacks. In this situation, stamina might have helped healer mana more than agility. I'm not claiming to have proof that stamina saves more healer mana, I'm just saying there is no proof that agility does either, and there probably never will be.

Concerning TTL: The spreadsheet only shows the "Average TTL". While this is interesting, in that simple form it's not always relevant. Because of the nature of avoidance stats, TTL is more correctly described as a probability distribution. In this form, it's easy to see that stamina will move the entire distribution to the right, while avoidance stats will only stretch the curve. The leftmost part of this probability distribution is probably the biggest contributor to deaths when healing gets involved. Stamina improves this part much more than the avoidance stats and is even better TTL-wise than what the spreadsheet currently shows.

Grend · 12/30/10, 11:47 AM

Originally Posted by Flexie

Also I have seem to have made the mistake of taking agi above crit in value, from the charts i saw on the first few pages it seems that crit and mastery trumps the rest in secondary stats.

Agility does take precedence above Crit; however, Agility is not a secondary stat and shouldn't be treated like one. Crit Rating and Mastery don't trump secondary stats if you consider Dodge rating (and hit/expertise if you are concerned with your threat generation).

I think it's agreed upon (generally, of course you could just use Rawr):

Dodge Rating > Mastery (or Crit, check Rawr) > Crit (or Mastery, check Rawr) > Hit = Expertise (if you have threat issues, hint: you shouldn't, hit/expertise probably outweigh mastery and crit) > > > > Haste