My statement actually was assuming 3/3 Shield Specialization, but I do see your point. I'll test out a few variations on the theme over the next several days and see what I find.

Spot on and informative.
Thank you.

Also the combust dot, I'm assuming the dot gets clipped if SS is used while the dot still has more than 2 seconds left on it.
I think the only way that could happen is if 2 SnB procs happen in a row and are taken advantage of immediately (I.E. SS rev SS dev SS)

According to checks I did recently in almost BiS gear, CB does overtake Dev on the 3rd GCD but:

1) only at very high vengeance, ie 90-95+;
2) only when you have another truck available immediately after to cover for the 4th GCD;
3) the damage increase is next to nothing, we are talking 50-100 difference.

So its better not to do that, just save CB for when your out of trucks.

SW on 3 stacks does look good though, I think it can be comfortably used on 3rd GCD, provided you are at high vengeance.

I'm not even sure about that since Combust ticks every 2 seconds and the shortest CD you can get on SS is 3 seconds so if you had any lag (and we all do) your gonna find you need 3 back to back shield slam procs to actually lose a tick. there's a what 3% chance of that SnB string occuring? IF all our attacks connect....which isn't all that likely with out standing in front of bosses and not stacking hit or expertise

On the EH/DPS argument, it's interesting the only tanking weapon this tier [Souldrinker] will provide DPS with the increase of stamina, which is arguably the best way to increase your EH past the CTC, due to diminishing returns on pure avoidance ratings.

The H version deals damage equal to 1.7% of your max hp and, going with the wowhead info on the weapon (15% proc chance with no ICD), if you have, say 250k hp and perform 1.5 attacks per sec, we're looking at ~950 dps from the weapon alone (250k*15%*1.5*1.7%). That alone should be more than enough reason to move from H Mandible, even with the loss of stats.

I'm interested, however, at something you left out of your stats order, which is the value of Mastery post CTC.

That was an oversight, actually. I remember earlier in this thread that people discussed survival in terms of EH vs. parry/dodge vs. mastery post-CTC. What I took away was that mastery provides significantly less value because it's "wasted" outside of shield block due to not getting both block % and crit block %.

Outside of shield block, mastery reaches a "soft cap" at (102.4-miss-parry-dodge). This number will vary based on individual gear.

Because of that behavior, I think the survival priority would be:

Full CTC>EH>more parry/dodge>mastery post-CTC>>>>>>exp>hit>>>>str>crit

And the dps priority would be completely up for debate. I haven't personally done the math yet.



Note: There are many soft caps for mastery, so I try not to use that term. Examples include 25% below CTC; Exactly at CTC ("unhittable"); and 25% below the crit block cap (counting excess block, but not counting shield block's bonus).

Along this same vein, we can start to evaluate the value of survival talents vs. dps talents. Our spec allows us to pick up some pretty bad survival talents: Second Wind; Blood Craze; and Impending Victory. On the other hand, if tank dps/threat doesn't matter we have some pretty bad dps talents (in the sense of shortening fight length): Incite, Gag order, Deep Wounds, and Cruelty seem popular; 2/2 Thunderstruck, Battle Trance, and 3/3 Shield Spec are less popular.

All in all, we get to choose between those optional talent points in order to make the flavor for our spec. I don't think I saw a dps-maximizing discussion of the talents, but that's likely because we don't often think of ourselves as dps. As far as talents, I doubt we would be shaving off more than 5-10 seconds over the course of a 5-minute fight.

Once survival is asured, any DPS gain is a benefit.

Given that only one boss stuns this tier, i'm not sure you can really consider second wind a viable PVE choice
so assuming I had to pull 5 points from somewhere for B and Imp.victory I don't think Deep wounds i s a good place to pull them from, but i'd have to, Deep wounds makes up between ~5% of my DPS. when i ran some sims at the start of FL i came up with this Graph as a comparison, back then the sims showed that if you're in a the position to press HS more than once ever 4.5 seconds Deep wounds is better for us than Sword and board, so i'm not thrilled to be losing it. as for pulling 2 points from somewhere else to pick up IV, The first place those should be coming from should be Imp.rev (assuming you don't run into rage issues, nor have the 2pc) if you do have rage issues i would suspect that dropping BnT would be better.Yes the sims are quite out of date, and we've scaled off something wicked since July, but meh.

I really don't rate Bloodcraze as a survival talent, its a random proc, heals for a very small amount and can't be guaranteed to be there when we need it, it may save some healer mana over the course of the fight, but mana's becoming less and less of a concern as you say. Second Wind suffers as it lacks a lot of bosses that can trigger it, and IV is only available for the last fifth of the fight, and again if you're gonna use it to save you life you need to sit on the proc until you need it. aybe i'm wrong, but i really don't see them as catching my ass from the fire, or significantly decreasing the healing i need, Deep wounds, Cruelty, etc may only shave off 3 seconds of a 5 minute fight, but i can't imagine the 3 talents buying me 3 seconds EVERY fight.

I agree with everything you say. My big concern as we enter T13 heroics is whether tanks will be threatened once they get geared. Essentially, I would like to know when to go all out for dps, rather than if I should.

I don't think Second Wind, Blood Craze, or Impending Victory should count as survival talents, because their benefit is so small, but I'd rather include them and say don't take them, than ignore them.

Back at the beginning of cataclysm, I tried a "full survival" build so I could see which talents were healing for how much. IV seemed to save me the most often, and BC seemed to save the most healer mana over the course of long fights. With current mechanics I'd rather make fights shorter than add to my already high survivability.

To make math easier, let's assume a tank with 250k HP. This is very attainable if you have a HP buff from, for example, a shaman. Let's also assume best-case situations of full effect with no overhealing. When triggered, Second Wind would heal for 15,900 over 5 seconds (250,000x0.05x1.06x1.20), Blood Craze would heal for 9,540 over 5 seconds (250,000x0.03x1.06x1.20 not sure on uptime), and each Impending Victory would heal for 23,850 glyohed (250,000x0.05x1.06x1.20x1.50) or 15,900 unglyphed.

Even under best-case scenarios these talents are underwhelming compared to a boss swing of, say, 25k after mitigation, unless you REALLY need survival. Assuming you're any good, you should be popping a cooldown whenever these talents would have saved your life.

Compare that with the dps gains one gets with Deep Wounds (5% of personal dps by many accounts), Cruelty (10% crit chance on our nuke), etc. and shaving time off a fight seems much better.

Conclusion: DON'T TAKE THOSE TALENTS!

4.0.3 according to the maths done at tankspot back at the beginning of the expac. our suruval talents just don't count for toffee aslong as we have somone healing us. It's only when we don't have a healer working with us, (soloing, PVP, Questing) that they really are worthwhile


I'm also not entirely sure that the Glyph affects IV procced VRs, I beleive its capped at 5% of your total health.

Unless you're doing previous tier content, I wouldn't ever say survival is "assured." After CTC, I think that the survivability issue goes back to the same old EH arguments we had in ICC. Basically, there's no such thing as "enough" EH, or some magical threshold where you no longer gain survivability (or start gaining less) from additional EH.