I've got a dumb question, but its prot related, and its just possible that its not so dumb, so I'll ask it here.
Usually I go with a pair of stam trinkets (the one from Black Knight and the one from Ignis), but I've also got the 10-man Eitrigg trinket and the General's heart off regular Vezax which both have a bunch of dodge on them while they collect dust. That got me thinking about when I would ever want to use the dodge trinkets over the stam ones.
Blizzard talks fairly often about how tanks don't switch their gear around as often as perhaps they should to reflect what's needed for each fight. Now I totally get that conceptually and agree entirely. Back in BC, sure, that totally happened and I remember carrying like 6 trinkets around with me for various situations, but for WotLK I simply can't find a situation where I would want to stack avoidance over EH. When it comes to block gear for heroics or AoE tanking or whatever, then fine. But when it comes down to EH vs Avoidance, I'm not seeing it.
IMO, in WotLK, avoidance is valuable for two reasons: first, assuming the healers still have cancel-cast macros, having lots of incoming attacks be avoided saves the healers a bunch of mana. Second, if the fight has a lot going on and heavy tank damage, a good avoidance string can obviously save the tank's bacon by buying the healers a couple extra seconds to get things fixed.
But in WotLK, neither of these seem like valuable strengths. Unless you're in an extreme case of someone reaching uncrittable via resilience and lots of PvP gear (which I remember people trying to do, with horrible results, back in BC), healer mana simply isn't going to be the limiting factor. Their regen and mana pools are deep enough that shifting from, say, 58% avoidance to 53% avoidance is extremely unlikely to have a serious or even noticeable (without crunching the numbers from WoL) affect on the fight's dynamics (barring something like hard mode Vezax). On the second point, while avoidance may give the healers a breather, you cannot use avoidance as a way of reducing your healing load and reduce healers, etc unless you're severely overgearing the content. Why? Because the WotLK bosses hit so hard that the healing margin for error tends to be extremely narrow, and while a 60% avoidance tank is going to have fewer 4 straight unavoided swing streaks than a 50% avoidance tank, it'll still happen and likely kill them if you try to reduce your healer staff by one. Its almost like virtually every blow counts as burst damage and needs to be healed (and overhealed) as such. Looking back on discussions, I feel like some folks are aware of this, but I haven't really seen it spelled out as such.
Sure, you want some avoidance, the basic amount that comes on tanking gear, but for gemming, enchants, etc you want EH all the way. The battle is over (for now) and avoidance lost to EH?
[Snapper Extreme] and [Pyrite Infuser] will cover any situation that desperately needs hit rating, other than that, you have 2 taunts anyway, and the expertise makes HotR a really nice snap aggro tool (Well, it was already, but now it lands more often), plus it stacks the SoV dot.
for WotLK I simply can't find a situation where I would want to stack avoidance over EH
This is pretty much it -- this expac has killed avoidance. Diminishing returns, cooldown stacking, healer mana, and big-boss-big-club-big-hit archetypes have removed any real desirability for the stat(s) at all. ToC hardmodes might shift that paradigm somewhat, but for now at least EH is the name of the game.
A latent appliance fetishist is someone who refuses to admit to his or herself that sexual gratification can only be achieved through the use of machines.
- L. Ron Hoover
I think that there isn't too many fights where avoidance is good. but, that doesn't mean there are none. I like using the trinkets you mentioned on fights like vezax where I cant handle 2-3 hits even with full stam gear.
Each avoided hit is extra 2-2.4 seconds to hit LoH/DP/Trinkets, catch up on healing, or surviving after triggering AD "death" part. It's random but powerful.
As long as you can survive between AD cooldowns on average, avoidance can be better due to lower frequency of spikes... as you usually die when 3-4-hit spike goes together with healers being unable to heal you (raid healing, stuns, interrupts, silences, void zones etc); the less often it happens the less often you actually die. Since with AD you have to trigger such situation twice in two minutes, it actually might make avoidance more powerful.
And difference between 53% avoidance 3-hit-streak and 58% avoidance 3-hit-streak is difference between 10.38% and 7.4% probability, or ~30% death chance reduction... if i remember probability right
As long as you don't actually dip into 2-shot territory instead of 3-shot while pursuing avoidance.
As long as you can survive between AD cooldowns on average, avoidance can be better due to lower frequency of spikes... as you usually die when 3-4-hit spike goes together with healers being unable to heal you (raid healing, stuns, interrupts, silences, void zones etc); the less often it happens the less often you actually die. Since with AD you have to trigger such situation twice in two minutes, it actually might make avoidance more powerful.
Unless my calculations are horribly off, diminishing returns mean that stamina is actually a better stat to use even if reducing the number of risky bursts is your goal.
Hmm, perhaps i'm missing something? Obviously in 3-shot scenario stamina matters only when overkill is lower then stamina gained - otherwise avoidance wins all the time, because it reduces chances of killing blow happening. This simplification works as long as most dangerous parts of damage for tank are avoidable hits, either melee or specials, and damage is predictable enough to know if you die in 2 or 3 hits
Napkin math:
Relative burst chance reduction for 3-shot scenario per 1% of avoidance gained is around 6-7% at 50%-60% avoidance. 1% avoidance gain is around 60-80 dodge rating, which is equivalent to about 90-120 stamina (~115-150 stamina with modifiers) or 3-4% of stamina pool raidbuffed. I don't see how stamina works better here.
The whole 2-3 shot scenarios are really never happening in reality. They all use the same basic principle: you can receive x*FixedDamage with no healing, or healing that is equal to y*FixedDamage in between.
This assumption has the following components:
a) FixedDamage
b) no healing or y*FixedDamage
Each of these factors is wrong/never going to happen in real combat:
a) Bosses don't just do fixed damage, there are offhand hits (dw bosses) and extra raid damage incoming (fires, explosions, RTST, etc), bleeds, stuns (bye bye dodge), unavoidable specials, etc
b) You always have tons of HoTs ticking, shields proccing, reactive healing going on. Also, not all your healers have equal reaction speed or healing opportunity. All in all, this boils down to you having a pretty big chance to not be at 100% (or 66% or 33%, if you gear for 3 hits) before the next arrives.
In general, while on some fights it's an amusing mechanic to play with, don't fool yourselves in thinking that you should gear for x*FixedDamage, it just never ever plays out like this.
And of course, this is ignoring the huge effect AD has on all this.
edit: I missed this line in your post:
This simplification works as long as most dangerous parts of damage for tank are avoidable hits, either melee or specials, and damage is predictable enough to know if you die in 2 or 3 hits
This is pretty much never the case. If incoming tank damage were this predictable, tanks would never ever die, regardless of gemming.
You've hit the nail on the head in terms of the theoretical power / benefit of avoidance, it's simply that the practical reality is such that that benefit is never really relevant enough compared to say, stam.
A latent appliance fetishist is someone who refuses to admit to his or herself that sexual gratification can only be achieved through the use of machines.
- L. Ron Hoover
The whole 2-3 shot scenarios are really never happening in reality. They all use the same basic principle: you can receive x*FixedDamage with no healing, or healing that is equal to y*FixedDamage in between.
This assumption has the following components:
a) FixedDamage
b) no healing or y*FixedDamage
Each of these factors is wrong/never going to happen in real combat:
a) Bosses don't just do fixed damage, there are offhand hits (dw bosses) and extra raid damage incoming (fires, explosions, RTST, etc), bleeds, stuns (bye bye dodge), unavoidable specials, etc
Avoidance 3-shot scenario is pretty broad, since it works for any 3 avoidable hits in a row that kill you.
For example, for me it it would happen with 15-24k hits for 100%-to-0-no-healing-no-other-damage, well within most boss damage ranges. And avoidance gets better when you dip to 4-shot and higher territory, which is true for most bosses where non-melee damage is actually dangerous.
Hmm... actually, does anything other then surged no-cd Vezax can reliably two-shot you?
b) You always have tons of HoTs ticking, shields proccing, reactive healing going on. Also, not all your healers have equal reaction speed or healing opportunity. All in all, this boils down to you having a pretty big chance to not be at 100% (or 66% or 33%, if you gear for 3 hits) before the next arrives.
Exactly! And with avoidance your CHANCE of getting killing blow WHILE your healers have no opportunity to heal is reduced. When healers HAVE opportunity to heal you're not supposed to die at all.
In general, while on some fights it's an amusing mechanic to play with, don't fool yourselves in thinking that you should gear for x*FixedDamage, it just never ever plays out like this.
Hmm... actually, does anything other then surged no-cd Vezax can reliably two-shot you?
Yogg 0 while Immortals have high HP, although it's probably closer to 2.25ish shot. If you wear anything but effective health gear on that encounter, I pity your raid.
Iwould like to add that one of the reasons EH > avoidance is because healers generally don't struggle with mana these days. If they started to go oom because we're getting hit all the time, then that would factor in for why you should get avoidance, but yeah, it currently isn't a problem. Probably won't be until 4.0.
Using avoidance gear/gems to help you reach the 102.4 block cap is very useful since Block value got buffed.
However, the block cap number that you would need to reach depends on the raid (if Moonkin have Inspect swarm glyphed or not, and what agility buffs are present).
That said, EH is king, and 4.0 doesn't look different.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
On a somewhat unrelated note, with TankPoints and Rawr both being out-of-date as relating to 3.2 protection mechanics, I'm wondering if anyone else has found a decent theorycrafting tool for comparing gear.
Someone's been submitting a few patches for ProtPally, but they haven't been folded into the main codebase yet. I'll take a stab at doing that for 2.2.14.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
Anecdotal evidence of my experience thus far with the EH vs. Avoidance argument suggests that AD really is that powerful. I have ended up as progression tank for my 25 man for the first two fights in the coliseum simply because the assigned tanks simply die, I pick up the boss and finish the fight. At only 95% total avoidance with holy shield, and looking at the logs, I am led to the conclusion (perhaps erroneously, again, this is anecdotal evidence) that EH with AD is superior (not that I think anyone is really arguing that EH hasn't been and still isn't better for progression tanking?). I'm not even surviving using the 2min ICD portion of AD, just not getting that low that often. I am pretty much a stam stacker, though I'll take as much avoidance as I can along the way, and I don't shun Block and BV.
The thing about EH-vs-avoidance is that there's even a pretty good case to be made that increasing your EH is a better way to help your healers conserve mana than adding avoidance. If each hit from a boss is taking a large chunk of your hp away, your healers are going to have to heal a lot more aggressively to feel that they're keeping you "safe" from being burst to death. If you increase your EH, each blow you take knocks away a smaller chunk of your health bar, and your healers will be able to relax a bit more knowing that they have a bigger hp cushion to rely on. Obviously this depends on your healers, and I'm sure there are healers out there that love to play the cast-and-cancel twitch game with a tank that takes bursty damage, so if that's what they want go ahead and give it to them. But I think most healers will tell you that the bigger your health pool, the less mana they have to spend keeping you alive.
Also, another awesome thing about the new AD is that it works really well not just as a passive oh-shit button, but as an oh-shit detector as well. If you're using your surivival cooldowns on a "fire at will" basis (i.e., no planned rotation for boss specials or whatever) then the column of light from the AD heal is big signal that your ass is in danger.
Compared to Last Stand, the AD heal is superior in almost every way. It triggers at need, so you never waste it and you never die because you couldn't hit it fast enough. It's more EH (since it keeps you in AD range it's ~43% of your hp compared to 40%) and it gives you a signal when it triggers. Really the only advantage of Last Stand is that it's an EH buff for its entire duration, whereas AD only buffs your EH until you have to dip into the extra part.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
Avoidance 3-shot scenario is pretty broad, since it works for any 3 avoidable hits in a row that kill you.
For example, for me it it would happen with 15-24k hits for 100%-to-0-no-healing-no-other-damage, well within most boss damage ranges. And avoidance gets better when you dip to 4-shot and higher territory, which is true for most bosses where non-melee damage is actually dangerous.
What you're saying is true. However, with the diminishing returns on avoidance, the actual avoidance gain you get from gemming avoidance is very small.
The burst scenario you describe can be pretty well summed up as the burst time concept Hypatia discusses in this thread on tankspot. Hypatia also discusses to great length why your health total matters even when you're discussing the "3-shot scenario".
The thing you'll notice is that if you enter the numbers from the current patch into those formulas, then you'll find that even with the advantages you describe, you will STILL get a better reduction in your risk of a lethal string of blows by gemming for stamina. The difference is simply that large. Hypatia's post is a defense of avoidance, and ends up concluding that avoidance is a very powerful tool. But it was written in TBC, and avoidance is not nearly as attractive now that you have to pay through the nose for every single percent.
Whether you want to match socket bonuses with half-stamina/half-avoidance gems is still a matter of taste, situation or need. I personally almost always match sockets since I like avoidance.
What you're saying is true. However, with the diminishing returns on avoidance, the actual avoidance gain you get from gemming avoidance is very small.
The burst scenario you describe can be pretty well summed up as the burst time concept Hypatia discusses in this thread on tankspot. Hypatia also discusses to great length why your health total matters even when you're discussing the "3-shot scenario".
The thing you'll notice is that if you enter the numbers from the current patch into those formulas, then you'll find that even with the advantages you describe, you will STILL get a better reduction in your risk of a lethal string of blows by gemming for stamina. The difference is simply that large. Hypatia's post is a defense of avoidance, and ends up concluding that avoidance is a very powerful tool. But it was written in TBC, and avoidance is not nearly as attractive now that you have to pay through the nose for every single percent.
Whether you want to match socket bonuses with half-stamina/half-avoidance gems is still a matter of taste, situation or need. I personally almost always match sockets since I like avoidance.
The cool thing here is that we now have really the best of both worlds. Armor, block, SS and AD are all very strong for mitigation, while we can still have competative stamina and avoidance. Compared to other tanks we're in a very favorable position to go almost all out stamina with gems and enchants (meta and defense requirements notwithstanding). I believe we are going to have sufficient avoidance without working hard to specifically gem/gear for it. The new libram (although this is pretty much full-time rather than on-demand) and on-use stam trinkets that pump avoidance are great because you have on-demand avoidance without having sacrificed stamina.
On an unrelated note, is anyone else using the Ret libram for AoE and 5man content? It's less straight block value than the older badge one obviously, but seems to me to be a boost in overall agro (and of course, eventually it's more usable BV after the cap and fun to use with DMC:G). I bought it first rather than the dodge one because it's BiS for ret obviously and I felt I could make good use of it for different tanking scenerios too.
I'm not sure on how people faced this changes, but I've lost TPS. I guess I was a bad paladin, but I've placed some decent crit, going over 30% crit raid buffed and had SoB/SoM doing a very good job. Despite of the dmg return, it wasn't a factor to ignore the good performand of that Seal in quick grabs, for instance doing Thorim's Arena... In practice, pretty much on blow from hammer with a seal proc would be enough for that mob not to molest any of my catchers, making it possible to deliever quick initial threat to mobs... SoV fails big on this... it's a good threat generating seal after being up full stacked, and if you choose to ignore the block value of the libram's you can even dare to use the new badge of triumph libram for some cheap 200 strength proc which some say has a 96% uptime. SoV also has the big advantage of granting 10 Expertise through Glyph, which allows you to have sometimes some other stats improved.
SoR doesnt crit and if people are hit capped, its really not up to the old SoB/SoM or even vengeance stacked...
So I guess now despite of all the good changes, we lost a lot of terrain in the single target tanking and on crowded situations we rely on SoR which demands a different itemization on the Paladin. The changes to Hand of Reckoning made it a bit more powerfull if the mob isn't facing you, no big deal... in fact it cant even compensate the lack of exorcism in our rotations which provided a good puller or supporter to runners and taunted mobs...
Generally I think they made our life a bit harder, but this change in skills and mechanics should only be judged with new itemzitation from Crusader/s and up gear.
Sadly, now we have to swap between single target tanking seal and aoe/adds tanking seal, SoV/SoR which in sometimes conflicts in build and when it comes to glyphs... having a SoV glyph is great, but a neglecting a SoR for the times you need to do adds.
I never used Martyr to tank. I haven't used SoR since TBC to tank. I'm not sure why you'd be having trouble with SoV. In Thorim's arena, the only tough part is simply laying some kind of damage onto the target since there are so many. I have no issues at all with a mob coming off me once it has been caught by something.
I agree Exorcism was nice, but overall I'm not seeing your point. My TPS this patch has been stupid. I've been generating over 6k TPS with only SoV, HoTR and SoR, no consecrate, as a secondary tank (so not being attacked, no holy shield either or AS). I've had bear tanks taunt and get a little lead and see if I could pull the mob back without taunting, and yes, I can. Our ability to generate agro is improved, if it has changed.
Exorcism is the only thing I can think of that I don't feel is as good or better than 3.1.
Sadly, now we have to swap between single target tanking seal and aoe/adds tanking seal, SoV/SoR which in sometimes conflicts in build and when it comes to glyphs... having a SoV glyph is great, but a neglecting a SoR for the times you need to do adds.
With the current game, there is no reason to use SoR as a tank. SoV does more damage (except for the first few seconds, but then threat doesn't matter). You will need to learn how to use Hand of Reckoning/Righteous Defense and the normal tanking tools better, because in November Prot will loose 6-8% threat.
Ret does have times where SoR can be more useful, Prot doesn't.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
People have probably seen this by now, but it's worth mentioning. 3.2.2 patch notes state:
Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now grants 10% strength in addition to its current effects. Also, the strength and stamina bonuses from this blessing will no longer be lost when Blessing of Kings is removed.
A minor buff but that basically ensures that 5/10 man protadins have no need to worry about what blessing to use in small groups when there's not another paladin around to provide kings. Should also make it easier on the reagents when the second paladin is a Ret as I'm sure a Ret wont mind Sanc instead of Kings nowadays.
Though this amount of fiddling.... i'm not sure why they dont just make BOS an "improved BOK" as it's only missing the int/spirit/agi component now.
08/23/09, 4:55 PM
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