Regarding lost rage on avoided swings instead of blocked ones, I for one can say, that threat wise, this does absolutely not matter in any way for a single target boss. After about 20 secs into the fight, there is no chance to loose aggro ever again if all goes well...and even then, one should focus more on direct aggro stats than on mastery for extra rage. (Expertise comes to mind as imho the best stat for aggro until softcap)

I would also agree that there must be some kind of threshold, where pure avoid stat ratings are getting weaker than mastery, simply because afaik mastery does not have any diminishing returns in comparison to the avoid stats dodge and parry.

So for the total avoidance number should I be taking my percentage of the following (Dodge * 176.71)+(Parry * 176.71)+(Mastery * 179.3) to get my total avoidance number? When I got near 6400 score I only took mastery my armory showed that was over the base you start with and got roughly 4747, but not sure if that is correct so I am asking to double check my math on the matter.

I have a few quick questions about Tanking Stats.

What would be our Soft Cap and Hard Caps for Tanking Heroic's and the first set of T11 Dungeons?
Maybe another way to put it what should we be looking to shoot for anyways.

Hit Soft Cap:
Hit Hard Cap:

Expertise Soft Cap:
Expertise Hard Cap:

Block %:

Crit Block %:

For the two Blocks I understand here you pretty much just want the highest number possible though I was courious to see what everyone was looking to shoot for during Heroics and T11 Content (To start out with).

Thank for the replies/help in advance!

I have 25 expertise and according to the pane it says that against a raid boss I have a .25% chance to be dodged so I believe it's still 26 for the soft cap which would mean that I'm already capped for heroics I believe. As of this time I have almost 43% block however I still have a couple of items below 333(that aren't reforged or enchanted for mastery) so I'm imagining someone with 346 might have 46-47% or even more if you reforge for mastery mostly. For hit, I'd assume it'd be around 6-8%. My warrior has only 1.88% and it says I have a 4.12% chance to miss on 87 mobs so I guess around that. Hope that helps you.

In regard to the Mastery/Parry/Dodge discussion. I think we can all agree that Dodge is the clear loser, since it doesn't really benefit from talents like Parry does. That being said, if we focus solely on maxing avoidance/mitigation, there will be a clear (but unknown as far as I know) balance between parry and dodge where the DR of a higher stacked parry stat will negate the crit block bonus from Hold The Line.

Comparing Mastery directly with Parry is a bit more interesting. I haven't been able to test this yet because of a lack of higher parry gear, but I think that all things being equal, an ideal stat distribution might involve softcapping Parry to get a high uptime of Hold the Line, and then reforging the surplus parry into mastery. It seems to me that the synergy of a near permanent 10% crit/crit-block with high mastery rating might be incredibly significant both for our TPS and mitigation.

I'll try to look into what kind of stats would require this uptime, or if parry chance + hold the line is just point for point not as good as mastery. If it is its clearly a moot point, but I think it will be an interesting dynamic for us as the gear gets better to have these 2 stats both contributing to critical block %.

I personally have reforged to mastery and expertise for the smoothing of burst and threat. That's one thing that I really like about mastery, not sure if it's been mentioned. Unlike dodge and parry, it will still build vengeance for you. It's very nice to be mitigating a large chunk of damage while still building your tps and dps.

I've been playing with Impending Victory a bit. The concession is that threat talents are lackluster with the current implementation of vengeance, and that the last 20% of a boss can often be the roughest.

On a slow hitting boss like Atramedes, Blood Craze ends up being pretty useless... we know that.
But look at VR spam sub 20%:


Self heals are not game-breaking, i only did 9.8% of the healing on myself over the course of the fight.
But VR was 51.2% of that healing.

Assuming that the last 20% of the boss lasted 20% of the fight. (Sounds redundant - it's not)
~5% of all incoming heals sub 20% are from non VR self-heals.

Now VR covering 51.2% of my heals is 5% of my total incoming heals over the course of the fight.
But, VR is 25.01% of all healing to me sub 20%

Which means when a boss is under 20% potentially 30% of all incoming heals are self heals.
Has anyone else been mucking around with this? When the other options are threat talents, can we justify not taking IV?

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Very interesting stats regarding VR. I've found on numerous fights w/ adds that due to BnT and increase TC dmg I've had VR pop and I've used it to successfully keep myself alive.

Last night actually, on the first boss (rock worm) in Hero Stonecore, our healer went down while the boss was about 20%, so I used SW then LS/ER to heal myself once I was low to survive till next burrow phase. Once the burrow phase began I was actually able to self heal up to 75% via the trogs which spawn by using VR. Once the boss came back up I continued to heal from the additional adds and the extra time allowed for the DPS to finish him off.

The impressive thing about VR is that I did this and I'm not even specc'd for it. I can only imagine how awesome it is to use during that last 20% and/or this same type of situation. Considering that healers are learning to heal all over again while we're all gearing up I have to say it's very tempting to at least try out.

My concern is that the argument you are giving is for threat, which is not an issue - I don't think anyone is contesting that point.

I have serious doubts that we will be sitting at full health on HM progression - even with all the healers alive. These bosses hit hard. Keep in mind that the impending victory buff lasts 20 seconds (maybe 25 with minor glyph?) So you devastate twice, and sit on the buff until you can get an effective heal out of it. Even in a fight where you don't cast the spell because you are not at risk - you would have gained ~3% damage output with those talents in a threat slot. With three points in War Academy - my average victory rush is hitting harder than my average revenge. I'm not convinced the threat trade off is as large as it is being presented, and if you are forced into a devastate/VR spam fest because of needed heals, who cares if you have a threat drop off?

I know the leading post in this thread says a 5% heal. But glyphed and spec'd these are hitting for 9.54%. These are not little heals. (included a couple SM's for a sense of relation)



I just don't think from an end-game progression perspective that you can ignore this for the sake of marginal threat gains.

snip

Well, to be honest, did you already raid? Because right now there are some/many fights where especially at the 20% mark group damage goes up and healers tend to burn their mana quickly, so you should try to help them out a little bit.

Regarding Thundercall, I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist and Wowhead has wrong data. The "best" pre-raid tanking weapon would then be this one: Abatement Cannon. However, even if not tinkered specifically for us, Volatile Thunderstick might be a better option, as it has more stamina, mastery and you can just reforge away the critical strike rating.