On that theme though, Sunwell may be well designed and challenging for progression guilds but it's pretty unfriendly to everyone else in some respects. We did most of TBC until now with 2 Ferals, 2 Restos on every boss and it didn't really affect our chances of beating an encounter.
Tuning in Sunwell is so much tighter that anything less than optimal composition can severely affect your chances. It's the first time we've been forced to kick people out of boss fights in favour of an equally good, but more optimal class, especially healing and (hello Shaman!).
On that theme though, Sunwell may be well designed and challenging for progression guilds but it's pretty unfriendly to everyone else in some respects. We did most of TBC until now with 2 Ferals, 2 Restos on every boss and it didn't really affect our chances of beating an encounter.
Tuning in Sunwell is so much tighter that anything less than optimal composition can severely affect your chances. It's the first time we've been forced to kick people out of boss fights in favour of an equally good, but more optimal class, especially healing and (hello Shaman!).
This is common initially in all end-game high level content, but with gear and experience requirements slowly go down.
I'm sure Fathom lord initially seemed impossible to do with only 3 people in the raid capable of tanking, but with BT level gear tanking the hunter+pet+shaman really isn't out of the ordinary. Same goes for council (despite the fight being moderately easy), I'm willing to bet an extra healer or two was brought to the first kill compared to what any guild brings on a regular basis.
I am already starting to see a larger margin of error in Kalecgos/Brutallus
re: Wolfshead Helm, something along these lines could be spammed for mana-dump nuking?
means you don't get any benefit from 2T4 so you could stop using it.
So I guess I'm gonna ask for an opinion: is this a good idea? Do any of you other bears do this sort of thing, and find it tolerable? Or do you find it too expensive to maintain? Or is there some other reason it's a bad idea?
I maintain a couple of gear swaps for ironskinned tanking and non-ironskinned tanking. [Cloak of Blade Turning], [Timelapse Shard], or a piece of PVP gear will all suffice.
I recommend planning your maxed-out gearset around the ironskin, and then figure out a separate trash set (if you have no other options, just keep using your PVP chest). If you can afford not to get consumable'd up, you can also probably afford to make a gear swap or two.
As a third voice on the ironskins, a couple stacks of terocone (by far the most expensive herb on my server at least) is well worth the .75% crittability factor, IMO. This leaves me open to being able to sub in pieces with more threat gen stats, rather than worrying about being crit.
Edit: Also, if you are cheap, you can also remove the need for ironskins on farm content by using a piece of pvp gear instead of the ironskin. Hopefully a couple hundred armor or hp wont matter on farm material.
To be honest I was thinking of just being crittable during trash, so I can repurpose the pvp chest for cat DPS (it's one of my shared pieces right now). The only threatening mobs in T6 trash with regards to crits (that I can think of anyway) are Hyjal Abominations, and that even assumes their knockdown can crit.
Though now that I think on it, even if I reenchant the PvP chest to not have +15 resilience I'll only be one resilience under the crit cap, so maybe I'll just wear that for trash instead.
But I'm criminally lazy Does anyone else think being crittable on most T6 trash is all that significant a threat? (keep in mind that we're done with Hyjal but still working on RoS, so if there's any rough trash after that I don't know about it)
I am a huge fan of using Ironskin potions for raid tanking. This is from the perspective of a 8/8 so that does change when you looking at T5 gear that has an abundance of crit reduction.
I also think you should have a very different gear setup for trash tanking than for MTing. On trash I do not need 35k armor and 23k HP, I need to make sure I am going to have high consistant threat output. People are much more likely to die on trash if you miss the first maul + mangle and someone pulls agro than a mob actually killing a tank.
While I'm here, since we were talking about this earlier I just want to confirm a basic question so I'm absolutely sure. The damage from the Flames of Azzinoth is completely unmitigated by armor, correct? So it's safe to replace the Badge of Tenacity with that resilience trinket from KoT?
(yes, I know I'm a few bosses short of really even caring about the Flames. But I want to be ready)
(edit) Well, replace [Timelapse Shard] with [Medallion of the Horde], but my question still stands. Actually, same question for Anetheron's infernals, too; I've never really bothered to watch the damage distribution on that (I tank it in FR)
(edit 2) For reference, here's what I've worked out for capped FR and anticrit:
Which leaves me with selfbuffed stats of 20k armor (irrelevant?), 23.87% dodge, and 15.3k HP, anticrit-capped and 301 FR. And that's not including the aforementioned missing enchants.
I am a huge fan of using Ironskin potions for raid tanking. This is from the perspective of a 8/8 so that does change when you looking at T5 gear that has an abundance of crit reduction.
I also think you should have a very different gear setup for trash tanking than for MTing. On trash I do not need 35k armor and 23k HP, I need to make sure I am going to have high consistant threat output. People are much more likely to die on trash if you miss the first maul + mangle and someone pulls agro than a mob actually killing a tank.
All amazing in terms of threat + you will get hit more often/slightly harder than full Boss-tanking gear.
Ledneh: I'm not sure if you are still un-aware but trash mobs require a significant amount less +def/resilience to become uncritable (as they are typically only 1-2 levels above you instead of "3" which jacks the requirements up), not to mention if a trash mob does crit you.. big deal.
As far as Flame Tank/Infernal Tank ... Build a set around Uncritable+Max Fr (295 Unbuffed), I suppose its ok to fall a little short of cap. I prefer wearing a stam trinket (Now Commendation) along with a +def trinket to reach cap (Shadowmoon Insignia now, JC crab before).
As long as were talking about Ironskin Potions I'm just going to comment on how awesome they are, and honestly aren't a big deal to supply yourself with. After you kill brutallus once you will maybe use 1-3 on him each following week? Something like ET that potentially requires wiping for ages would probably entail using a fort flask instead, at least until its on farm.
Ledneh: I'm not sure if you are still un-aware but trash mobs require a significant amount less +def/resilience to become uncritable (as they are typically only 1-2 levels above you instead of "3" which jacks the requirements up), not to mention if a trash mob does crit you.. big deal.
Ha, I knew about that but I had forgotten about it while thinking about my new gear. Thanks for the reminder. Hurdurdurf
I also think you should have a very different gear setup for trash tanking than for MTing. On trash I do not need 35k armor and 23k HP, I need to make sure I am going to have high consistant threat output. People are much more likely to die on trash if you miss the first maul + mangle and someone pulls agro than a mob actually killing a tank.
I was enjoying the 4 piece swipe bonus last night in Hyjal for the first time but every piece was gemmed pure Stam(since we venturing in SP). Now I am looking forward to the difference tonight with these "DPS" threat tweaked set pieces.
I was enjoying the 4 piece swipe bonus last night in Hyjal for the first time but every piece was gemmed pure Stam(since we venturing in SP). Now I am looking forward to the difference tonight with these "DPS" threat tweaked set pieces.
What gave you the idea that gemming pure stam is advantageous for Sunwell? I suppose Brutallus is the only encounter that it helps to stack avoidance --- I'd consider it if Sunwell Radiance was ever removed but... as it is now having gemed pure 10 agi with 15/15/18 stam gems to meet meta requirement I still end up taking on average 100k more damage than our equally geared warrior (I suppose slightly more geared now with felmyst gloves/shield brut legs) who also gemmed for avoidance for Brutallus. I rarely come in danger of dying on Brut, and more avoidance definitely helps --- where as with a slightly larger hp pool you gain a slight buffer from overheal... and that's it, you are going to take even more damage over the course of an entire fight which is already higher than a warrior.
Doable stacking stam? Definitely
Optimal? I disagree
What gave you the idea that gemming pure stam is advantageous for Sunwell? I suppose Brutallus is the only encounter that it helps to stack avoidance --- I'd consider it if Sunwell Radiance was ever removed but... as it is now having gemed pure 10 agi with 15/15/18 stam gems to meet meta requirement I still end up taking on average 100k more damage than our equally geared warrior (I suppose slightly more geared now with felmyst gloves/shield brut legs) who also gemmed for avoidance for Brutallus. I rarely come in danger of dying on Brut, and more avoidance definitely helps --- where as with a slightly larger hp pool you gain a slight buffer from overheal... and that's it, you are going to take even more damage over the course of an entire fight which is already higher than a warrior.
Doable stacking stam? Definitely
Optimal? I disagree
I think for the short term as we we get acclimated it "might" be the better alternative to run with Stam until we get more comfortable then swap in then Agi pieces I now have.
Since it wasn't really answered, I dicked around with some WWS parses to see for myself. Am I correct in saying that, for Anetheron's Towering Infernals, that the basic melee is mitigated by armor and NOT FR, but for the Flames of Azzinoth, their basic melee is mitigated by FR and NOT armor?
Yes, that is correct Ledneh. The abyssals have a physical melee attack (mitigated by armour) and a fire damage aura (mitigated by FR), while the Flames have an elemental melee attack (plus a breath weapon and blaze of course, all mitigated by FR and completely unaffected by armour). Both mobs can be dodged (and parried; and not relevant to druids but the abyssals can be blocked while the Flames cannot).
Good thing then that the Towering Infernal melee is weaker than some Karazhan mob's strikes
Well that's great then, now I'm all set up to be anticrit and FR capped for both Anetheron (I wasn't crit capped before, for how little it matters there) and the Flames for when we get to Illidan in a couple months. Pretty good dodge and HP too, for what I have to work with.
What gave you the idea that gemming pure stam is advantageous for Sunwell? I suppose Brutallus is the only encounter that it helps to stack avoidance --- I'd consider it if Sunwell Radiance was ever removed but... as it is now having gemed pure 10 agi with 15/15/18 stam gems to meet meta requirement I still end up taking on average 100k more damage than our equally geared warrior (I suppose slightly more geared now with felmyst gloves/shield brut legs) who also gemmed for avoidance for Brutallus. I rarely come in danger of dying on Brut, and more avoidance definitely helps --- where as with a slightly larger hp pool you gain a slight buffer from overheal... and that's it, you are going to take even more damage over the course of an entire fight which is already higher than a warrior.
Doable stacking stam? Definitely
Optimal? I disagree
Right as SP hit test realms, a bunch of druids talked about how Brutallus hit hard enough that more stam was the way to go. During that period, I acquired all my T6 gear, so some of it is stacked with stam. I end up actually fairly balanced between stam and dodge.
I call BS on you using total damage taken as an accurate metric for Brutallus. The true metric is chance of dying. If you take 100k over 100 seconds, it's worse than taking 0 in the first 98 seconds and 50k in the last 2.
If I can survive 4 hits while the warrior can only survive 3, he needs to get enough avoidance that he can guarantee that he only gets hit less than 3 times in a given period where I'm taking 4.
Also, the deadliest point in the fight is the stomp. What kicks in during a stomp? Armor over the armor cap, which you don't get any mitigation from when stomp isn't up, but do when stomp IS up. Do you ever get inspiration procs? I bet if you looked at only damage during stomp, or did some math on the damage you'd take if armor weren't capped, you and the warrior would end up pretty similar in overall damage taken.
In thinking about it some more, powershifting every cycle would indeed make Wolfshead Helm worthwhile, although in all practicality, powershifting every cycle is not completely realistic.
Btw, this whole Wolfshead Helm discussion was also discussed on page 35.. so we are rehashing an old debate here. But to bring a contemporary DPS benchmark fight back in, if you were to use say, Brutallus, where most guilds are probably averaging 5:50-6min kills right now, you are looking at potentially 30 powershifts to JUSTIFY the use of wolfshead helm (b/c the mathematical benefit shows it pretty much non-existent when you powershift every 2nd cycle)
Realistically speaking, from someone who tends to powershift a decent amt (i think I end up powershifting every 2nd or 3rd cycle), powershifting every cycle would seem rather overkillish to me, for such a small benefit. Not to mention instead of using "/cancelform /use Haste Potion /cast Cat Form", it would turn into "/cancelform /use Super Mana Potion /cast Cat Form", which on its own is probably a DPS loss right there.
It also can't be quantified really, how often I end up powershifting, only to see that my 2pc T4 procs right when I did it, effectively losing me another 20 energy
Just an experiment before you take the Wolfshead Helm theorycraft too far for a 2nd or 3rd time, just attempt a few fights where you powershift before every rip. You'll end up wasting a lot more energy than you think.
To be honest I was thinking of just being crittable during trash, so I can repurpose the pvp chest for cat DPS (it's one of my shared pieces right now). The only threatening mobs in T6 trash with regards to crits (that I can think of anyway) are Hyjal Abominations, and that even assumes their knockdown can crit.
Far as I know, that's a fixed 4k damage. More dangerous bit about it is that you can't dodge anything during the stun and having a couple of 'em on your can easily ramp up the damage with a few consecutive stuns. But, being crit immune won't affect that anyway.
Right as SP hit test realms, a bunch of druids talked about how Brutallus hit hard enough that more stam was the way to go. During that period, I acquired all my T6 gear, so some of it is stacked with stam. I end up actually fairly balanced between stam and dodge.
I call BS on you using total damage taken as an accurate metric for Brutallus. The true metric is chance of dying. If you take 100k over 100 seconds, it's worse than taking 0 in the first 98 seconds and 50k in the last 2.
If I can survive 4 hits while the warrior can only survive 3, he needs to get enough avoidance that he can guarantee that he only gets hit less than 3 times in a given period where I'm taking 4.
Also, the deadliest point in the fight is the stomp. What kicks in during a stomp? Armor over the armor cap, which you don't get any mitigation from when stomp isn't up, but do when stomp IS up. Do you ever get inspiration procs? I bet if you looked at only damage during stomp, or did some math on the damage you'd take if armor weren't capped, you and the warrior would end up pretty similar in overall damage taken.
I didn't mention it was an accurate metric --- It was merely a reference to the fact that you will take even more overall damage than perhaps a sub 100k gap between a warrior also gemed for avoidance.
Do I spike alot less than the warrior? Yes by far, but surely you aren't stupid enough to attribute that to stacking stamina. Between Armor cap(+Ironshield) and Inspiration during stomps I take by far more consistent and lower damage from stomps simply because my armor is significantly higher, but the warrior's total avoidance is still lower and therefore takes lower total damage over the entire fight. If a wipe ever occurs it is never because I died.
Even without Inspiration up a Stomp+Double Melee hit with zero avoidance will never kill you --- however will possibly trigger the Commendation of Kael'thas, which despite mockery from our MT I think is a decent option for that encounter, for me at least. Is stacking those stam gems going to allow you to survive a Stomp +MH/OH +MH/OH with zero heals and zero avoidance.... probably not, which is exactly why stacking stam on Brut is pretty useless, hell you shouldn't even have an imp or fort flask or elixir (agi+ironskin), it just makes it all that more pointless.
Inspiration uptime is pretty consistant across the board on both tanks and I do pop Ironshields every CD / pre-barkskin on taunts ... and in the past 6ish kills he has consistently ended the fight with 50-100k less damage taken while gemed for avoidance, which is expected considering higher total avoidance.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think Brutallus is the one fight where every extra point of avoidance is more beneficial than anything past the 3 required stam gems for the meta.
Taking 100k more damage than a Warrior is completely irrelevant in the context of Brutallus. I've never seen a MT healer go oom on this fight and you're getting spam-healed virtually.
The real issue is answering the question of whether you can guarantee to survive the worst-case scenario of Stomp or Burn plus unavoided hits plus Meteor Slash before enough heals land and the next round of attacks. In this respect the average well-geared MT Warrior entering Suwell cannot, therefore it makes sense for him to stack avoidance to lessen the chance of that situation occurring.
In the case of the Druid with equivalent gear, the answer is most definitely yes, provided you stack stamina and armor. Gemming agility before you reach that point is very risky as Druid does not have the emergency buttons of a Warrior and you're not saving your healers anything - the heals are going to land anyway.
There are so many variables on the fight and ways of stacking groups (do you use Aff Lock or Pali in MT group etc) that stating that agi is better than stamina is just as foolhardy as stating the opposite. You need to decide in the context of your raid composition and the abilities of your MT healers.
I didn't mention it was an accurate metric --- It was merely a reference to the fact that you will take even more overall damage than perhaps a sub 100k gap between a warrior also gemed for avoidance.
Do I spike alot less than the warrior? Yes by far, but surely you aren't stupid enough to attribute that to stacking stamina. Between Armor cap(+Ironshield) and Inspiration during stomps I take by far more consistent and lower damage from stomps simply because my armor is significantly higher, but the warrior's total avoidance is still lower and therefore takes lower total damage over the entire fight. If a wipe ever occurs it is never because I died.
Even without Inspiration up a Stomp+Double Melee hit with zero avoidance will never kill you --- however will possibly trigger the Commendation of Kael'thas, which despite mockery from our MT I think is a decent option for that encounter, for me at least. Is stacking those stam gems going to allow you to survive a Stomp +MH/OH +MH/OH with zero heals and zero avoidance.... probably not, which is exactly why stacking stam on Brut is pretty useless, hell you shouldn't even have an imp or fort flask or elixir (agi+ironskin), it just makes it all that more pointless.
Inspiration uptime is pretty consistant across the board on both tanks and I do pop Ironshields every CD / pre-barkskin on taunts ... and in the past 6ish kills he has consistently ended the fight with 50-100k less damage taken while gemed for avoidance, which is expected considering higher total avoidance.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think Brutallus is the one fight where every extra point of avoidance is more beneficial than anything past the 3 required stam gems for the meta.
Avoidance vs stamina on Brutallus has already been discussed a few pages back. Both ways work for druids, and if you need more argument from the stam pov, just read the thread.
Stamina isn't only useful for surviving Stomp + MH/OH, it also adds in to your survivability for the next MH/OH, A person with 2k more hp is going to require 2k less healing to surviv the second MH/OH, nobody says you're going to get zero heals, its a matter of how much healing you get during that time. If your healers aren't going OOM, then there's no argument against stacking Stam, since you're getting overhealed 50% of the time anyways.
Originally Posted by Regen
What gave you the idea that gemming pure stam is advantageous for Sunwell? I suppose Brutallus is the only encounter that it helps to stack avoidance --- I'd consider it if Sunwell Radiance was ever removed but... as it is now having gemed pure 10 agi with 15/15/18 stam gems to meet meta requirement I still end up taking on average 100k more damage than our equally geared warrior (I suppose slightly more geared now with felmyst gloves/shield brut legs) who also gemmed for avoidance for Brutallus. I rarely come in danger of dying on Brut, and more avoidance definitely helps --- where as with a slightly larger hp pool you gain a slight buffer from overheal... and that's it, you are going to take even more damage over the course of an entire fight which is already higher than a warrior.
Doable stacking stam? Definitely
Optimal? I disagree
Do you not know how avoidance works? Avoidance scales with itself, the more you have of it the better it is, the less you have of it the worse it is.
Going from 98% avoidance to 99% avoidance means you cut your incomming damage by 50% (Averaged out over the fight)
Going from 0% avoidance to 1% avoidance means you cut your incomming damage by 1% (Averaged out over the fight)
If anything, Sunwell radiance promotes stacking stam over agi
Originally Posted by Ledneh
To be honest I was thinking of just being crittable during trash, so I can repurpose the pvp chest for cat DPS (it's one of my shared pieces right now). The only threatening mobs in T6 trash with regards to crits (that I can think of anyway) are Hyjal Abominations, and that even assumes their knockdown can crit.
Though now that I think on it, even if I reenchant the PvP chest to not have +15 resilience I'll only be one resilience under the crit cap, so maybe I'll just wear that for trash instead.
But I'm criminally lazy Does anyone else think being crittable on most T6 trash is all that significant a threat? (keep in mind that we're done with Hyjal but still working on RoS, so if there's any rough trash after that I don't know about it)
When you get past T6 level, and near the mid-end of T6 I would not tank anything while being crittable. The trash before RoS/Bloodboil + One shot the robot before council both hit hard enough to scare your healers a lot when you take a crit. And tanking sunwell trash, I would not even consider going in there while being critable, I've been hit for 8k by twins trash before.
As mentioned on this page, stam vs avoidance on Brutallus has been beaten to death. I won't directly comment on that.
My original target metric for Brutallus was 25k hp with commanding/imp/every consumable in the world (And of course, capped armor, or slightly above with raid buffs). At the point where Sunwell launched, this meant 15sta in almost every slot you could think of which didn't have a logical tanking socket bonus. Now with better gear, I'm finding ways to cut back on stam while maintaining that 25k quota. 18sta-helm/12sta bracers became KoT-helm/12def bracers (Still 0.01% over crit immune :V) this week, and I'll probably be swapping a bunch of 15's to 10agi's as well as 7sta/5agi to 60agi's in belts/boots/bracer once the gem vendor opens. I'm still waiting for Felmyst to drop my pants, though. Getting that is an effective 5-6% avoidance while maintaining my HP quota.
While that huge survival buffer is still integral to our Brutallus strategy (7 healers, go lighter when I'm tanking, especially when Barkskin is up - ironically while I'm taking more damage overall from less avoided hits) you'll definitely wanting to ramp up avoidance, threat and DPS for M'uru while in tanking gear. Oh good Lord, trust me on that.
Edit:
Originally Posted by Skysec
Do you not know how avoidance works? Avoidance scales with itself, the more you have of it the better it is, the less you have of it the worse it is.
Going from 98% avoidance to 99% avoidance means you cut your incomming damage by 50% (Averaged out over the fight)
Going from 0% avoidance to 1% avoidance means you cut your incomming damage by 1% (Averaged out over the fight)
If anything, Sunwell radiance promotes stacking stam over agi
Since I'm a fickle asshole, I'll just forget what I said about not commenting on stam vs avoidance and quote myself from something I should have posted in this thread instead of a different forum.
Originally Posted by Falk
Fact 1) Avoidance is better point for point, the more avoidance you already have. Therefore, Sunwell Radiance reduces the value of avoidance, since, for example, 25% + 1% is less total damage countered as opposed to 50% + 1%
Fact 2) The more incoming melee damage there is, the more valuable avoidance is. If a boss is going to lay down an average of (let's just say) 100k damage in 10 seconds, 5% more avoidance is going to help you a shit ton more than 1.7k more HP (Comparing ~75 agility to ~113 stam - obviously the conversion rate will be a lot worse for non-druid tanks)
Yes, of course, avoidance would have been far more valuable if Sunwell Radiance didn't exist, but just because it does, doesn't mean it still isn't better than Stamina in certain cases.
As long as you're over your safety buffer (which in itself is subjective), avoidance >>>>>>>>> stamina because of Fact 2.
05/09/08, 7:13 AM
Does anyone else think being crittable on most T6 trash is all that significant a threat? (keep in mind that we're done with Hyjal but still working on RoS, so if there's any rough trash after that I don't know about it)
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