Muggins

Thanks for the reply, I see your point regarding the naga. We set it up very simply so that myself as the MT would be on add-pickup duty in a full on stam set for Vashj herself while the offtank was in a more avoidance-oriented set and got stuck with the boring job of sitting in the middle with the naga pack.

This setup makes it very easy for entering phase 3 because there is no arsing around with one tank taunting off of another in the transition chaos.

As for the shock, we also use grounding totems but when moving her around in phase 3 you can very easily go out of range of the totem or it can be on cooldown when the blast hits you.

 

Riot

Frankly, I don't understand the purpose of using Avoidance gear of Vashj either. She doesn't hit very hard. I've never had to hit Last Stand on her, ever. Compare that to Archimonde and Azgalor, where I hit Last Stand *always* to either guarantee a kill through final silence/fears, or I'll have to use it reactively.

Using a threat set on Vashj so that DPS can go all out and finish her before sporebats start clogging up your screen and slowing down DPS further seems like the best way to do it, IMO.

In fact, I'd wager that most of us here use our threat set 75% of the time anyways.

SSC - Threat set everywhere except Hydross (resist gear), Morogrim and FLK.
TK - Threat on VR, Avoidance on Al'ar, Threat on Solarian, Stamina just for Kael.
Hyjal - Threat for Rage, anything for Aneth, threat for Kaz, Avoidance for Azgalor/Archimonde.
BT - Threat for Naj'entus, Avoidance for Supremus, anything for Shade, threat for Teron, Avoidance for Gurtogg, and the rest I can't speak of from personal experience.

Anyway. My point is that anytime that a fight is clearly a fight which gets tremendously easier with more output DPS, the more useful a set that matches a good balanced amount of expertise, hit, and block value. And Vashj is clearly one of those fights.

Overslept, / So tired. / If late, / Get fired. / Why bother? / Why the pain? / Just go home / Do it again. - The Commuter's Lament
Norman B. Colp

 

Olon97

Avoidance on Vashj allows you to stack the raid with extra dps and only 6 healers, yet allowing several of those healers to still have GCDs free to heal the raid. That allows you to have never more than 1 naga up as well as killing tainted elementals faster resulting in far less raid-wide poison damage. It's a fight where in the hard part (p2) trading healing for DPS measurably decreases your required healing. The best way to be comfortable with less incoming HPS in phases 1 and 3, for the majority of pulls, is to use an avoidance set.

The ground patches should simply be moved out of before they deal much damage, and the stuns should never land on the MT due to shaman totems absorbing them (2 shaman in the MT group during those phases). In the eventual case that a big burst does occur, you use nightmare seeds and healtstones/BEM stones (stoneshield potion chugging assumed). Or you take your occasional unlucky p1/p3 lotto roll and go again knowing that you have a much smoother phase 2 than if you had taken extra healers and less dps.

 

galzohar

This isn't diagreeing with the benefits of avoidance, but rather putting the correct mathematical analysis to it:

DPS is linear to your avoidance. Each % of avoidance you gain reduces DPS taken by a fixed amount, all the way to 0. Therefore healing required is also reduced linearly with avoidance (only healing on you, not on the whole raid).

What changes hyperbolicly (NOT exponentially) is the relative dps reduction. That is (new dps)/(old dps) when you increase avoidance goes lower and lower the more avoidance you have. This actually doesn't have much meaning, though, as if you're trying to save healer mana you're trying to reduce DPS taken, not relative DPS taken.

Naturally, though, what you usually "feel" is the relative increases. If you took 1k dps one time then the other time you took 500 dps, you'll notice that it dropped to 1/2 rather than dropped by 500. Sometimes the relative increases are a better way to look at things, and sometimes not.

At the end while I'm not compeltely sure, I think the easier way to look at avoidance is the actual dps reduced rather than the relative dps reduced, as what you're trying to see is how many healers you can cut out for the sake of more DPS, and since healers are defined (for you at least) by how much HPS they do, relative HPS doesn't really mean anything. Taking 1000 less dps could mean 1 less healer. Taking 1/2 the dps doesn't really tell you much as you need to know the actual #dps reduction in order to tell if that actually allows 1 less healer. If you were originally taking 4000 dps going down to 2000 would be big, but if you were only taking 1000 going down to 500 doesn't really help all that much in comparison. Looking at the actual dps reduced (2000 vs 500 in this example) with added avoidance *seems* to be an easier and more useful way to look at things - and this value will scale linearly with avoidance.

Rage starvation, though, is polynomial to your avoidance.
Doing it roughly: assuming N is the number of hits you need to avoid in a row in order to be starved, and X is your avoidance:
Therat would be proprotinal to: 1 - (1-X)^N
The threat lost per (small amount of) added avoidance will be proportional to: N*(1-X)^(n-1)
I'm still waiting for someone to actually make a TPS simulator though that will take everything into account.

 

Xav

Really? Higher avoidance will let you run with less healers?! I swear I've read that before...


Anyway, this will be happy to hear for some of you: Lady Sacrolash, of The Eredar Twins, crushes. And she dual wields, and attacks quickly. So, she's going to eat through shield block fast, and then crush you - her main hand crushes are in the 10k range, offhand 4500. (typical hits are ~7k MH / ~3k OH). So, a high avoidance set that is uncrushable if possible will really pay off. Unfortunately, the current version of them has her using an ability that is a deaggro (it disorients you, doesn't break on damage, then she runs away). Due to the timing, however, often she'll use that ability, do one more auto attack cycle (MH+OH), then run away, all at basically the same time. And since you're disoriented, you have a decent chance to get crushed.

If her damage output stays the same and she remains with the ability to crush into live, having such a set of gear would prove extra beneficial for once.

 

Dralmoo

I find Shaz is the encounter where I regularly still get gibbed or almost gibbed. This was right off the pull, nobody got parried. 5/5 Improved Demo Shout was up right after the first melee hit (which ironically was almost 1000 LESS than the one right after..)

I'm wearing neck/bracers/cloak SR, rest mostly best in slot "avoidance" gear (minus Illidan helm), although it's all gemmed for stamina. This happens about once per week, I don't think we've ever one shot her (I believe we have 5 kills, to give you an idea of our progression level), and even on kills there's always a scary moment or two. I realize this fight is nerfed to oblivion from its original form, so I feel like I must be gearing or doing something wrong.

 

Xav

Start the pull with Ancestral Fortitude/Inspiration proc up, and Ironshield before she reaches you? With those buffs up you'd be getting hit for close to the 5k range, making you live even if all 3 hit you.

 

galzohar

My point wasn't how many healers you can or cannot bring to a raid, this was more relating to what other people were saying. My point was that avoidance benefits actually scale linearly in terms how how much DPS you take. The relative decrease in DPS is not linear, but what matters is the decrease in average DPS taken and not the relative reduction in DPS taken, and that's the only thing avoidance is good for - reducing dps. Due to the "being able to heal through the worst case scenario" I actually agree that more avoidance will not reduce the amount of healers you need on the tank - again this was relating to other people saying avoidance has exponential/hyperbolic returns and thus should be stacked on farming (which could be good) to allow bringning less healers to the raid, but pretty much no matter how you look at it the benefits are totally independant of how much avoidance you have already.
The point is the gains from avoidance are linear, not hyperbolic nor exponential, unless the reason you're wearing avoidance is trying to avoid as many hits in a row as possible which would have extremely low usefullness to none at all.

The only case I can see this post not holding water is when you need the avoidance to keep shield block charges, but even then it can fail on you and then your lack of stamina will kill you. It would be interesting to see a "chance to die" on something like teron modeling everything that would happen when you take any kind of possible burst and the chance you have to live through it, and how that chance would be affected by additional HP VS additional avoidance. Only in this kind of calculation will the value of avoidance increase as you have more avoidance. (but it doesn't mean it will/won't do a better job at keeping you alive compared to stamina)

 

◊ Quigon

This stuff happens all the time - with main tanks also. Some people take ideas to the extreme, and you can get the over-avoidance tank:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...den&n=Tredvolt

13k unbuffed hp, but over 40% dodge...

 

Skyeh

There's also 2 seconds between the first hit and the kill hit. I'd personally consider that to be a healer miss. On bosses like Shahraz or Illidan where gibs happen, healers should have heals queued up before the fight starts.

 

Heisenberg

Wouldn't the disorient also remove the advantage of using avoidance gear over armour and stamina?

 

Zaroua

Can't Dodge/Parry/Block while not in control of your character (except mind control type abilities). Plus when she disorients the MT, the MT turns around in the typical scatter shot type disorient effect, meaning attacks from behind would be possible (though unlikely).

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

Xav

Thanks, but I'm completely aware of that, maybe you should read the part about her dual wielding and being able to crush, so a crush-immune set would still be beneficial. No set of tank gear will get rid of being crushed while disoriented. High stamina+armor is a given for that, hence permanent ironshield and stamina buffs, and getting as much HP as you can while retaining crush immune if possible. Also I feel it would be useful to mention I've tanked her (succesfully) and I would advocate using a crush immune set utilizing the best gear possible. (Typical "max avoidance" set, but getting crush immune in the process if you can). I'm not speculating.

 

Zaroua

Your other post was ambiguous, at best. While an uncrushable set certainly has advantage VS. dual wielding mobs like the Lady, it doesn't help after she hits you for 8-9k dmg with the disorient. I was simply adding a commenting on how an uncrushable set won't help with those attacks she gets after the disorient. It'll help not dying from the extra burst damage, but it will hinder after the disorient, compared to a higher mitigation/defense/HP set that is.

And I've also tanked her; I'd advocate using a Paladin or a Druid to tank her.

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

Touf

Does she not have the DW miss penalty? Or does block rating tank somewhere down the line?

 

Xav

I can't really tell if she suffers from the DW miss penalty, but I was running ~95% total avoidance (counting block), and would still get crushed, so I'm guessing she doesn't.

Zaroua: The sacrifices I'm making are very minor, ~500 hp and maybe 2% real avoidance at most for a trade of like 7 or so block. I would never suggest wearing or using someone with low HP/armor to tank her just because they wont be crushed, because of all the damage potential. (Stun, DD's dots, crushes while disoriented...), but if you could achieve the uncrush level with very little sacrifice it would pay off huge here.

 

Good

I know the majority of you are past all of this, but I was wondering whether or not someone might be able to elaborate on these a little if it's not too much trouble. My guild is just moving into SSC and TK and I've always been a little sceptical as to whether or not I was gearing myself properly.

I'm fairly confident that my threat is sufficient for my level of progression, I can generally push 1-1.1k sustained, however I have no idea what the norm is in Gruul/TK/SSC. I don't have an entire set devoted to threat gen yet, either, and I've been focusing on stam on most of my gear. Should I be balancing stam/threat and avoidance/threat for certain fights or a balance between the two and threat gear on the fights listed as "threat"?

Basically I'm a little bit iffy about my gear choices and whatnot as the other two prot warriors in my guild swear by avoidance tanking for everything, and they've been tanking a lot longer than I have. It seems to be working so far at our stage of progression despite stam/armor in a lot of situations being the recommendation from most fronts and I'm looking to flesh out my different sets a little more now that we're getting into more serious content. Also, for the record, I'm hoping to pick up Warbringer shoulders and possibly chest on Friday. No Panzar'thar love.

 

Muggins

Restricting yourself to a single set of gear is simply ignorant, how useful is that set going to be on a highly magical fight such as kael'thas? As has been mentioned before in the (admittedly very long)thread, the best bet is to pick up lots of different pieces and tailor them to the individual fights. If you haven't already grab yourself item rack and set up 5-10 general sets and then throw in the odd item individually here or there for specific fights. If you adapt yourself to each individual fight you're going to be much better prepared than having a generic 'tank-it-all' ensemble.

As for when to gear for threat or not the answer is fairly simple: talk to your dps members. If they're having to overly rein in their damage on a fight where you're not in high risk of dying off then chuck on as much threat gear as you feel comfortable with. If they're pretty happy with being able to go all out then you're probably all right. The fight itself will also depend on whether you wear your threat set or not, for example on the previously mentioned vashj fight you have a good half minute or so to build a threat lead on her while everyone else finishes off the striders/nagas at the beginning of phase 3, for this reason a full threat set isn't really needed unless you really want to burn through phase 1.

Most of all, experiment and find what you're most happy with.

 

Good

Thanks a lot. I'm definitely building a bunch of different sets already, I'll talk to the other tanks about it or get them to read this thread or something. I'm mainly trying to find out the extent to which I should use different sets of gear on different fights, but I should probably experiment some more. Sorry if my questions were answered earlier in the thread - I think I've answered them for myself - read it all but the details are blurring together by now.

 

Reliknom

Just to give you another idea on different sets:

- I use a generic threat set with the following priorites: expertise -> hit cap -> block value. This will be changed for RoS in favor of block value.
- My mitigation set is expertise -> armor -> avoidance/stamina.
- Avoidance set is of course all out avoidance, although I do not have a secondary T6 set gemmed for avoidance, I make do with my normal pieces and all sockets filled with 15 sta gems.
- I also have an effective health set focusing on both armor and stamina.
- And lastly there is the max HP set for e.g. Kael, that has my max HP items in every slot. This also gets me acceptable levels of expertise, hit and avoidance.

At your progression and possible gear level, stamina is still king of course, but I definitely advise you to pick up the expertise items from badges and use those on pretty much every fight. Change your gear in other slots though. Trinkets and rings (also amulets and cloaks, basically every accessory style gear) are especially good for quick but meaningful customization.

"Morituri Nolumus Mori!"

 

Abbi

Speaking as someone in the same place (we just killed Kael for the first time last week):

I have a threat suit which I use for trash, VR, Solarian, some Kael duties, and Lurker. I'm not a Leo MT, but I'd use FR or a threat suit there. I have a more or less balanced avoidance/stamina set which I use for other stuff. I have a health suit which I use for MTing Kael. I should split avoidance and stamina into two suits, and I imagine I will eventually, but right now the balance suit is mostly gemmed for stamina with a couple of exceptions.

I use the balanced suit on Al'ar because threat isn't an issue -- warlocks run without Salv in phase 1, warriors taunt at each platform, warlocks soulshatter, and we have a mile long threat lead going into phase 2.

1K to 1.1K sustained is good; I'm assuming your hunters are Misdirecting actively and your shamans and priests are using Earth Shield and PoM wisely with those numbers.

 

• Jamor

Isn't he targeting you when you taunt though?

I think the only way that could work correct is if you let a warlock build threat the entire first phase, and taunt after he rebirths and is going after said warlock. Then the lock could shatter half the threat away.

 

Riot

Just taunt Al'ar right before he dies and hit him a couple of times. You should have aggro at the start of p2, easily.

Overslept, / So tired. / If late, / Get fired. / Why bother? / Why the pain? / Just go home / Do it again. - The Commuter's Lament
Norman B. Colp

 

Muggins

If you taunt him as he's flying towards the platform he counts as though targetting the highest threat level warlock and you'll see yourself fly up to the top of omen. Its only when he actually stops at your platform that he will target you.

 

Tylerlee

I wanna switch topics, to (probably already covered, but looking for it to be more personal) TPS, i must first admit 99.9% of the time i either use normal tanking gear, or avoidance gear, ive only used my SBV set on Teron twice. Weve been clearing BT for over 2 month now and with the release of Sunwell and Brutalus, we really need to push the guild and thus myself, to the peak of what we can achieve.

My current SB set is pretty much like the set on the first page tho no T5 Helm, so wear gloves instead of Enforcement and no Deflection trinket, using Vengence. Mallet to increase my Expertise. Stam gems in all slots to keep health to a decent level (16.5k unbuffed) 25.32% Dodge, 17.04% Parry, 31.24% Block, with 778 sbv listed.

Spec for reference, standard 8/6/47 Aggressive. (Armorys messing up at so no link)

Heres a link to a Teron fight where i used said setup, WWS Loading... Only 980 tps :S (hense the point of this post)

Then theres Vis Maiors Teron fight WWS, Kold - WWS 1331 TPS.

Major differences that i can see are hes doing around 10% more dmg on all his abilities which i can only put down to a different weapon?? but the TPS difference is huge, over 300 tps, my "theory" is im lacking hit, only 61, but where can i find the hit i need while not sacrificing Stamina or other stats that i "need"?