See this is a very off post for me. Part of me is saying, get helthy into the ctc margins and move to eh. While another is saying that parry>dodge post ctc will make everything easy. I have been blasting mastery into my gear as of late sacrificing a lot of health but even in H DS (what little progress we have made) my healers yet to have issue with the changes. Now even though I am still short by 1% on my ctc I can get it through an elixr or what have for now but I am still aiming for what to do after I hit it. And again, one half says stam, other says more avoidance. So while thhe DRs from dodge are, for all intents and purposes, equal to mastery should its weight be raised to either equal to that of mastery and bump up parry for hold the line.

Formal apologies if I overlooked anything in prior posts. In a state of insomnia and posting from my Droid so... Yea

Exactly this. I am concerned however, that mastery should be at the top of the list, at least until our gear is all stamina gems/trinkets. We lose our CTC cap if we gear for stam>parry>dodge>mastery. We would do best gemming mastery until we have 2 stam trinkets and a Souldrinker, then slowly removing our mastery gems for stamina gems. Even with 2 stamina trinkets and Souldrinker, we still won't be able to remove all our mastery gems.

Well no. Remove mastery from gems until you have enough removed that you can use a stamina trinket. I wouldn't use 2 stamina trinkets anyways because the Soul Shifter Vortex's proc is very lackluster for a CTC capped warrior. I dont know what the economy is like on your server but in my server gemming for a tank is rather inexpensive and there isnt any reason why you couldn't change your gems to put you right at the CTC cap.

Yea this is Stam>All is Post-CTC, meaning, you don't go and drop CTC to follow this priority base. Sort of like when we had defense rating. You needed it to be crit free, anything over was good but stam was better. You didn't break it for more stam.

But yea that did help a lot.

Now the other benchmark I am having an issue with is actually hitting that 102.4 mark. 391 ilvl and I am about 1% off (I believe this to be about .07% buffed). I have trinket procs and things that provide mastery so, on proc I would be over CTC. Should I concern with on proc CTC or go for an unbuffed 102.4 (the latter is my goal at the moment)

I am running with the Fire of the Deep and the Mirror of Broken Images trinkets and am quite close to CTC. Our team has been unreliable on Ping Pong, and I'll swap in the Scales of Life for the Mirror next time. Psychic Drain is stressing my healer and the DBM timer seems off, so I can't seem to match the Mirror's CD with the Psychic Drain. So I'll heal after I get hit by it instead, and bring some more Stamina for the magic damage. I can't find a better trinket choice, as I don't have all of them from Firelands.

I think this shows that once you can pick your trinkets and maintain CTC, then you may have enough CTC. I have to drop my CTC for this fight to try to deal with the Psychic Drain.

While I am still unsure as to when I will have enough mastery, I think it depends on one's threshold boss. It's Ping Pong for my team. If I RNG enough critical blocks close to the shadow phase, when damage taken is highest, and my Pally healer is moving more than casting, is that going to make it work for us?

Well the CTC in that fight I feel will play a minimal role. The spike damage you are taken can be avoided by a smart cycle of CDs. Stay of Execution, Enrage Regen etc. Usually I have my healer on my focus in Vuhdo so I can watch their cast, mana and position. If I see them close to finishing a bomb heal before I take a spike I let it go, if they're not even close to what I need (just starting a cast as Drain is about to go off) I will Stay off some of that damage and hit Regen, call it out, give them a chance to use some lower heals and regen if needed.

But the mentality of Spike Damage is countered with EH is still true but with some amendments. Simply put, don't sacrifice all of you avoidance or block for a higher EH. And this is where I would need the help of the new hive-mind in these forums. Where is a sweet spot to avoid the spike damage like he is taking but maintaining enough avoidance that he isn't getting two shot by melee (I have been having this problem on Reg Madness with tentacle impales, usually first impale on the first and third tentacles)

The other thing to consider is that if you're dealing with ramping physical damage, and you know when it'll end, you can use Shield Block at that point to make sure you ARE block capped.

That being said, on heroic Zon'ozz, I wouldn't go in without being block capped. I've seen him melee our feral tank for 200k with... maybe 8 or 9 stacks?

I can see how you can make an arguement to not use mirror beacause of how hard he melees and the drains are on a timer. A good reason to use mirror on Zon'ozz would be if you are hitting enrage. If I recall correctly, the portion of drain that you resist does not cause him to heal. This is also a great fight for elixirs.


In regards to post ctc gearing, like most of you have said we should try and get the most mastery and dodge/parry we can from gear and slowly start dropping mastery gems for stam while staying at ctc. For most encounrers our best trinket combo is going to be fire of the deep and indomitable pride.

After spending an hour on chardev, I found something interesting. We can get CTC cap with 2x stam trinkets, souldrinker, and no +50 mastery yellow gems. I reached 253767 hit points, with 102.72% CTC.

Assumptions:
Blacksmith/JC
All relevant buffs
All heroic items (5 tier pieces)
Reforge to mastery>dodge>parry
Mastery food
Mastery elixir (and scroll, of course)
Epic sockets are blue: +75 stam, yellow: +25 mastery/+37 stam, red: +25 parry/+37 stam

Could you please provide a link to the set you created? I tried replicating this and could only accomplish this by using pieces that are unobtainable in game. On a side note, Im not really sure Id want to choose a stam trinket over the resolve of undying. Its such a huge amount of damage reduction.

This would be what I consider the most ideal set. You still have the same gemming strategy as the double stam trinket set but you only favor avoidance in your reforging if you are over the CTC cap. This set falls almost right in the middle of your 2 sets in stat distribution. If you can manage to get 2 full sets of tank gear then your 2 sets might by BIS based on the fight. If you are unable to, my set finds a good middle ground. Though I really dont like the Soulshifter Vortex on a block capped warrior since the proc wont be a substantial damage reduction since its all going to crit block. Not to mention it can proc when you aren't actively tanking wasting a ICD.

Edit:Fixed cloak issue.