[Cataclysm] Protection Warrior - Page 6

MADMark · 12/21/10, 3:23 PM

Originally Posted by Casstor

EH is going to reduce the number of tank deaths faster than avoidance assuming reasonable values for both. Wotlk should have taught us that.
...
Your last statement implies that in raiding gear, converting x mastery rating to x avoidance rating will create a substantial enough difference to affect healers' decision making. How large is the x in this statement and do you have any concrete support for this idea?

My experience with tanking has been that when I just barely avoid dying through avoidance I say "Man, glad I had that avoidance" even though I don't know for a fact I would have avoided the blow naked, and when I just barely die I say "Man, why couldn't I have avoided that? Better get some more avoidance" when I don't know for a fact that any level of attainable avoidance would have been enough to avoid the blow. I guess what I'm saying is that basing your decisions solely on perception, especially pertaining to randomly occurring events, is a poor choice.

I agree with most of what you said, and the overall point you're trying to make, but I disagree with how you've made your point. You call him out for lack of evidence and immediately go into your experience (anecdote). The EH argument has been around for years, and while it is still relevant, Cata is not WotLK. Speaking from a healer perspective, while I don't recommend stacking avoidance at the cost of everything else, its definitely noticeable when you have a tank who's sacrificed all the avoidance they can for stam; can you say mana sponge? Taking less damage (avoiding 100% of hit) allows healers to use cheaper heals, or more likely, heal somebody else. Again, I agree Avoidance is not king, but I also don't think it's useless at saving lives, by saving healer mana and time specifically.

Casstor · 12/21/10, 4:41 PM

Originally Posted by MADMark

I agree with most of what you said, and the overall point you're trying to make, but I disagree with how you've made your point. You call him out for lack of evidence and immediately go into your experience (anecdote). The EH argument has been around for years, and while it is still relevant, Cata is not WotLK. Speaking from a healer perspective, while I don't recommend stacking avoidance at the cost of everything else, its definitely noticeable when you have a tank who's sacrificed all the avoidance they can for stam; can you say mana sponge? Taking less damage (avoiding 100% of hit) allows healers to use cheaper heals, or more likely, heal somebody else. Again, I agree Avoidance is not king, but I also don't think it's useless at saving lives, by saving healer mana and time specifically.

You left out my evidence from your quote, which was the article siting studies for why my experience makes sense. In a general sense, results of studies have limited use if the implication of those studies seems illogical. For example, if the result of the study was that people could predict dice rolls before they happen, I would hope that no one would just take the study at face value. It is only because the result of the study meshes with experience/empirical data that it is meaningful. I'm digressing a bit, but my experience was intended to put a better face on my argument than "your brain is bad at random numbers (link to study), don't try to think about them and just do what I'm claiming is right".

Secondly, the idea behind the EH argument has never involved healer mana before, not because healer mana was such a non-issue before, but because healer mana is irrelevant if you don't have a tank. If your tank has a real chance of dropping (given proper CD usage) in EH gear during periods of burst damage, the only reason I can think of to swap to avoidance gear is if the fight is such that healers go oom late in the fight, even provided that everyone else avoids avoidable damage and healers don't overheal (or do so at a very low %). Either of these other things are an easier change instructionally (e.g. "quit standing in fire") and will most likely have less of an impact on the chance to successfully perform the fight. But because so much of burst damage on tanks is flavored as a gear check (as you can't really perform in a way that will make you take fewer boss melee swings), that is what dictates what gear you should be wearing - not the gear that makes others' performance easier. Again, this is provided that with EH gear you still have a real chance of dropping between incoming heals. If there isn't a real chance of you dying, there is no downside to switching to a gear set that saves your healers mana.

Moophisto · 12/22/10, 12:00 PM

Sorry to derail from the eh/avoidance convo, but does anyone have any logs where a tank has had windwalk enchanted on his weapon? I'm interested in looking at the proc rate/up time

Booi · 12/24/10, 1:05 PM

Originally Posted by Moophisto

Sorry to derail from the eh/avoidance convo, but does anyone have any logs where a tank has had windwalk enchanted on his weapon? I'm interested in looking at the proc rate/up time

Cuties Only

Pretty consistent with beta: 33/34% uptime.

Shan · 12/26/10, 5:32 AM

Consumables

Flask of Steelskin is the tanking flask. It is currently under-budgeted as it should be giving 450 stamina.

Elixir of the Master with Prismatic Elixir is an alternative to the flask.
Elixir of the Master increases block and critical block chance by 1,88%.
Prismatic Elixir is a 9% reduction in magical damage taken on a player that already has 195 resistance and is being hit by a lvl 88 attacker. At lower resistances, the relative benefit of the elixir increases.

Personally I favor the elixir combo.

Elixir of Deep Earth also exists, but should not be used over Prismatic Elixir unless the fight has very little to no magical damage.

Earthen Potion provides extra damage reduction for difficult phases. When used at 40000 armor, it's a 6% reduction in damage taken against a lvl 88 attacker.

Stonestrike · 12/26/10, 11:48 PM

I do have to agree with Shan, as it stands now with the under budgeted stamina flask, the elixir combo is the way to go right now. If the flask is fixed, then it might be an option. As it stands right now, there is very little need for an excessive amount of stamina, what is given to us on gear and trinkets should suffice, for this tier's encounters anyway. But more stamina is never a bad thing.

Originally Posted by Kernd

has anyone gotten down to writing up a BiS-list yet?

I'm not quiet sure there has been a prot warrior BiS list posted yet other than the wowhead links in the first post. However this is my personal BiS list, pre - raiding, including only ilvl346 gear, as the rep, craftable or boe pieces are obviously an improvement.

Head: [Helm of the Proud]
Neck: [Carrier Wave Pendant]
Shoulders: [Earthshape Pauldrons]
Cloak: [Billowing Cape]
Chest: [Beauty's Plate]
Bracers: [Alpha Bracers] OR [Armguards of Unearthly Light]
Gloves: [Fingers of Light]
Waist: [Girdle of the Mountains]
Pants: [Triton Legplates]
Boots: [Baron Silverlaine's Greaves]
Ring 1: [Phosphorescent Ring] OR [Felsen's Ring of Resolve]
Ring 2: [Umbriss Band] OR [Ring of Three Lights]
Trinket 1: [Leaden Despair]
Trinket 2: [Porcelain Crab] OR [Throngus's Finger]
Weapon: [Cookie's Tenderizer] OR [Elementium Fang]
Shield: [Shield of the Four Grey Towers]
Ranged: [Sky Piercer] OR [Volatile Thunderstick]

Rep, BoE and Craft-able List.

Shoulders: [Pauldrons of Edward the Odd]
Cloak: [Wrap of the Great Turtle]
Chest: [Icebone Hauberk] OR [Hardened Elementium Hauberk]
Bracers: [Sandguard Bracers]
Waist: [Hardened Elementium Girdle]
Boots: [Boots of Sullen Rock]
Ranged: [Crossfire Carbine]
Trinket: [Mirror of Broken Images]
Trinket: [Darkmoon Card: Earthquake] lol...

This is just a rough list I made up for myself, It made not be the very best list, but from my knowledge it is. I may have also mad some mistakes. There are however options in this list due to stuff like how much hit/expertise you personally need in order to keep threat, this isn't ICC. This is the first tier of raiding in this expansion, so the hit/expertise that is needed will be lower than what was needed in ICC.

After some time of tanking and getting use to the stats, you probably won't need a "BiS list", created by someone else at least, because the tanking stats will become for familiar to you. Remeber, Mastery>Parry>Dodge. I won't even bother bringing up the argument of stamina, as it is a primary stat and you will seldom chose between a Primary and Secondary when you aren't gemming/enchanting.

In case some people are past the previous list and are looking for a BiS raid list, here's a rough one.

Head: [Daybreaker Helm]
Neck: [Ironstar Amulet]
Shoulder: [Earthen Shoulderguards]
Cloak: [Wrap of the Great Turtle]
Chest: [Earthen Chestguard]
Wrist: [Bracers of Impossible Strength]
Gloves: [Earthen Handguards]
Waist: [Thunder Wall Belt] (Depending on enchant)
Pants: [Earthen Legguards]
Boots: [Boots of Sullen Rock]
Ring 1: [Permafrost Signet] (Depending on enchant)
Ring 2: [Ring of the Battle Anthem] OR [Bile-O-Tron Nut]
Trinket 1: [Symbiotic Worm]
Trinket 2: [Vial of Stolen Memories] OR [Mirror of Broken Images]
Weapon: [Mace of Acrid Death]
Shield: [Blockade's Lost Shield] OR [Akmin-Kurai, Dominion's Shield]
Ranged:[Crossfire Carbine]

Again, this may not be perfect, but I think this is these are the best possible items you can get in the first tier of raiding in reg modes.

Ziggurat · 12/27/10, 12:30 AM

I'd probably ditch the 4pc bonus and go with:

neck -> Rage of Ages - Item - World of Warcraft
shoulders -> Pauldrons of Edward the Odd - Item - World of Warcraft
and possibly the random enchant legs, if they are the straight str/sta/mastery ones.

Shan · 12/27/10, 2:57 AM

Let's not forget [Mirror of Broken Images]. It's our missing magic damage reduction cooldown.

Stonestrike · 12/27/10, 4:17 AM

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

I'd probably ditch the 4pc bonus and go with:

neck -> Rage of Ages - Item - World of Warcraft
shoulders -> Pauldrons of Edward the Odd - Item - World of Warcraft
and possibly the random enchant legs, if they are the straight str/sta/mastery ones.

Our 4pc bonus is very good, I don't see having the minor stat upgrades been beneficial when losing a 6sec addition to a 40% damage reduction.

For the neck, there was a reason why I chose [Ironstar Amulet] over [Rage of Ages].
Without going into the math, Rage of Ages used a lot of its "stat budget" on threat stats, and isn't worth the the lose in overall mitigation to try and seek every piece with mastery on it. But going into the math, this is what you'll find!

The overall trade between these two pieces is.
[Rage of Ages]
45 Str
127 Mastery
31 Hit
[Ironstar Amulet]
190 Dodge

Like I said before, a lot of threat stats that are basically going to extra tank damage because threat shouldn't be remotely a problem after the first 10 seconds. However if we reforge both pieces, it should look like this.

[Rage of Ages]

50 Parry Rating + ~10 Parry Rating from the 45 Str
127 Mastery
60 Parry
[Ironstar Amulet]
190 Dodge
38 Mastery
58 Hit

With a difference of (I am going to represent Dodge and Parry as the same stat for ease of processing this information. However Parry is slightly better due to [Hold the Line].)

[Rage of Ages]
45 Str (Parry Rating counted)
89 Mastery
[Ironstar Amulet]
19 Hit
130 Dodge Rating

I'd be willing to cross out the Str and Hit as I estimate they would roughly give the same amount of threat. So you are really trading 89 Mastery for 130 Dodge, is that really a good trade? Yes Mastery is our best stat due to the fact that it helps to even out our physical damage intake (which is good!) but dodge is a better stat overall for lowering damage taken in a fight, and that can't just be overlooked and say Mastery is the king, so every piece of gear with Mastery on it wins.

Now for the argument about [Pauldrons of Edward the Odd] and [Thunder Wall Greaves] Versus our Tier pieces and our 4pc bonus.

Edit: The stats on [Thunder Wall Greaves] would be 208 Mastery and 208 Parry Versus our tier legs 188 Parry and 188 Dodge, or 188 Parry,113 Dodge and 75 Mastery if reforged. The [Thunder Wall Greaves] legs also give us a yellow socket instead of a blue one, which favors Mastery gemming even more so than our Tier legs do, [Earthen Legguards].

I crunched the numbers on notepad so you wouldn't have to waste your time reading them like you did for the neck. I however did not include the different color sockets/gems which you would put in them, into the equation as people still have a different opinion on how to gem, ie Stam+get socket bonus's, or Mastery/avoidance+get socket bonus's. I also did assimilate dodge and parry in this as well, however if you are wondering, the non-tier choices have lots more Parry. P.S. This includes reforging.

([Pauldrons of Edward the Odd] and [Thunder Wall Greaves])
261 Mastery (2.18% Block/Crit Block)
20 Str (Parry Rating Added)
----------
([Earthen Shoulderguards] and [Earthen Legguards])
169 Parry (~1.05%)
77 Hit
6 Sec addition to [Shield Wall]

Now clearly, the non-tier choice is better for stats. But our tier does give us a bit more threat, and a 6 second addition to a 40% damage reduction cooldown that works for Physical AND Magic, something the extra Mastery of our non-tier choices doesn't provide.

So in reality it is basically your personal choice as to which is better, because I'm not going to crunch the numbers for every fight, and in the end, math on the table won't always appropriately relate to every scenario in every encounter during a raid. Unforeseen events will happen, and if you want to bring it up....Mastery rating aka block won't always be there to save you if you are low and you aren't getting any heals, but [Shield Wall] will, and it's extra 6 seconds will defiantly help.

The stats used for [Thunder Wall Greaves] are based off of other EJ members personal experience and not of my own.

Edit: Fixed numbers based on new information.

Vistana · 12/27/10, 6:09 AM

Regarding 4-pc: I agree that off-piece helm and 4-pc Tier (Shoulders/Chest/Hands/Legs) would be the best way to go. Just compare Tier 10 itemisation (before we could reforge all the non-survival stats away) to the current Tier 11:
In Tier 10, the Head/Shoulders/Chest had pure avoidance stats, while Hands had Hit and Legs had expertise. Because Pillars of Might were disgustingly overpowered due to the extra armor, we wore those and used the Tier Hands (not forgetting that the hands gave more armor than the vendor gloves @ 277, and the ICC off piece was comparably horrible). While in Tier 11, the Chest/Hands/Legs have the pure avoidance stats, and both the Head/Shoulders have Hit and an avoidance stat. The off-piece helm (Daybreaker Helm) has pure avoidance stats (Parry + Mastery + yellow socket + mastery socket bonus = win). Comparing the usage of Daybreaker Helm with the usage of off-piece shoulders (Pauldrons of Edward the Odd) doesn't give the same rich Mastery bonus as the Daybreaker Helm does.

Again, this is just for people like me who are aiming to use 4-pc, as I'm seeing the extra 6 seconds on Shield Wall will benefit late Tier-10 heroic modes and early Tier-11. The loss of parry/mastery on the BoE shoulders is outweighed in my opinion by the thought of surviving a very large hit of un-avoidable damage, like a breath, and also the upgrade-ability (?) of the Tier Shoulders over the BoE's.

EDIT: Apologies for the lack of links, I've just quick responded in between dungeon pulls.

Tharamis · 12/27/10, 2:58 PM

The following is potentially a cavalcade of fail.

My goal was to put some numbers in front of me so I could best gauge my incoming damage from a raid boss's physical attacks. Two side projects quickly emerged: 1) A calculator allowing me to see if I reforged parry or dodge, how much post-diminishing returns avoidance would I potentially gain. 2) A comparison of the Eternal and Austere Meta Gems.

Here is the link:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?...CLPP7OsD#gid=0

Warnings and Apologies:
- I've tried to find verification on the calculations I've used and think I am pretty accurate on most, but if I took a swing and missed here, please be gentle with your criticism.
- I've never used Google Docs before, so any tips with that would be lovely.
- Sorry that some of the inputs are clunky (the Dodge calculation is especially so as the dodge you get from base agility doesn't contribute to the DR of dodge, but the dodge you receive from all other agility does).

One conclusion I've come to if this math is correct:
The Eternal Meta starts resulting in less average incoming damage over the Austere at basically the "Heroic-Ready" gear levels if they reforge and focus on Mastery, even without using shield block.

Questions:
A) How much does Hold the Line justify suffering additional Parry DRs versus equalizing Parry and Dodge to avoid DR?
B) What are the up times of Hold the Line in relation to Parry chance? With that I would think we could formulate incoming damage overall as opposed to having four categories.
C) Is this useful at all, or did I waste a ton of time?
D) If useful, are their any additional trinket cool downs that should be added?

EDIT: The default values are set to Xav's as I did the fishing quest this morning and didn't equip my shield before heading to work.
EDIT 2: New link with some cosmetic changes and one formula update (defensive stance modifier is now included).
EDIT 3: Some changes made to the meta comparisons because I assumed the Austere meta and Toughness talent where multiplicative, when they are apparently additive.

Yeria · 12/27/10, 4:05 PM

Originally Posted by Tharamis

A) How much does Hold the Line justify suffering additional Parry DRs versus equalizing Parry and Dodge to avoid DR?

I did some calculations on that just one or two weeks ago, however only for my specific avoidance percentages at the time. My calculations are pretty much an "ideal world" scenario, since I just wanted to get an idea about the magnitude of the changes in avoidance/damage taken.

I assumed to get hit by a Boss with a swingtimer of 2.2, while having 2 different gearsets:
A: 14,56% Parry, 8,01% Dodge (= 22,57% Avoidance)
B: 13,24% Parry, 9,53% Dodge (= 22,77% Avoidance)
everything else (Block, CritBlock, to be Missed etc) remaining the same.

The "ideal world" uptime for Hold the Line is 65% for Set A and 60,2% for Set B. This does not include overlapping procs, casts the boss may do or any phase or situation where the tank is not getting hit every 2.2 seconds.

With these values I came to the conclusion, that with Set A I have a 0.27% higher chance to do a Critical Block instead of a normal Block, meaning a 0,27% chance to reduce the damage I take by 60% instead of 30%.
With Set B I have a 0.20% higher chance to reduce the damage I take by 100%

Then also factoring in that the uptime for Hold the Line will usually be a lot lower than it is in my calculations, I decided that balancing Parry and Dodge appears to be superior to having Parry a lot higher than Dodge for Hold the Line.

I may have miscalculated, and I can't really lay out my calculations right now (I didn't really write everything down properly, I'd have to go through everything again so that I actually understood what I wrote on this piece of paper again), but at least the magnitudes seem to be within the realm of possibility.
If there's any mistake in what I did please let me know, else maybe this will prove useful to others as well.

Edit:

Originally Posted by Stonestrike

Just a reminder, the stats I used in the calculation for [Thunder Wall Greaves] were what I thought the stats would be, and can very likely be wrong.

The [Thunder Wall Greaves] have 208 of each Rating (I have them in the dodge/mastery version, but I highly assume the amount of stats on them is equal for any random enchant)

Tharamis · 12/27/10, 4:41 PM

Originally Posted by Yeria

I did some calculations on that just one or two weeks ago, however only for my specific avoidance percentages at the time. My calculations are pretty much an "ideal world" scenario, since I just wanted to get an idea about the magnitude of the changes in avoidance/damage taken.

I assumed to get hit by a Boss with a swingtimer of 2.2, while having 2 different gearsets:
A: 14,56% Parry, 8,01% Dodge (= 22,57% Avoidance)
B: 13,24% Parry, 9,53% Dodge (= 22,77% Avoidance)
everything else (Block, CritBlock, to be Missed etc) remaining the same.

Well, if my spreadsheet is correct it is looking like it confirms your math:
Gear Set A has 1891 Parry Rating and 650 Dodge Rating.
Gear Set B reforged 299 Parry rating into Dodge Rating making it 1592 Parry and 949 Dodge.
I get both of the avoidance numbers you do above.

To get that high of parry, did you have that much +parry gear, or were you reforging dodge into parry?

From what I am seeing, it seems the sweet spot seems to be keeping the Parry to Dodge ratio someplace between 2 to 1 and 1.5 to 1.

Yeria · 12/27/10, 5:07 PM

Originally Posted by Tharamis

To get that high of parry, did you have that much +parry gear, or were you reforging dodge into parry?

Nah I just had a lot of parry on my gear there. The higher parry was without reforging, the lower with reforging parry into dodge whereever possible (but not on items where I could reforge dodge/hit/... into Mastery).

Çeen · 12/29/10, 12:09 AM

Originally Posted by Stonestrike

Ring 2: [Ring of the Battle Anthem] OR [Bile-O-Tron Nut]

[Ring of the Battle Anthem] should be way over [Bile-O-Tron Nut]. Expertise is not necessary at the moment. Even if you reforge the 111 expertise into ~45 parry, I would prefer [Ring of the Battle Anthem].