4.2 Tank Stages and Cataclysm Gear Guide

HotR Nova does not scale with spellpower at all. Many of our other abilities do (Judgement, Censure, AS, HoW, Cons, Holy Wrath, and of course WoG), but their spellpower coefficient is generally worse than their AP coefficient. As a result, Int/SP are really terrible threat stats, even for AoE.

Digren, I think I've identified a major difference in how we look at tank-ranks.

My belief is that from 4.2, and most likely throughout this expansion, we have six tanking ranks and not five. This is due to Blizzard explicitly implementing staggered tiers. I see this:

1: New 85, collecting gear to run dungeons. (A few days)
2: Running 5-man normals, collecting gear to run lowest tier heroics. (Less than 2 weeks)
3: Running lowest tier 5-man heroics, collecting JP. (Around 2 weeks)
4: Running yesterdays raids and/or current 5-man heroics, collecting VP. (End game for some, no time-limit)
5: Normal raider. (End game for most)
6: Hardmode raider. (End game)

My 'evidence' is the atrocious performance I see in the trolls from some people. I also tend to forget that this atrocious performance is usually perfectly enough for tier 1 five-man heroics. I'm aware that my 'evidence' is up-side down, because anything in 346+ gear should be able to perform at better than atrocious levels. However, I've tested (because I'm a masochist) a 346 troll run. While doable, let's just say we exploded a lot of times. It's perfectly comparable with the 329 runs a week after Cata was released.

I haven't been inside the three 'old' raids since 4.2, but I suspect they're actually easier than the trolls now. Anyone to confirm or dispute this?

Just curious if last nights hotfix to the Pauldrons of Roaring Flame from Ragnaros will affect their ranking in the list of shoulders, and if it is worth the 4 set with this change.

Normal and Heroic versions of Pauldrons of Roaring Flame now have mastery rating instead of hit rating.

[Pauldrons of Roaring Flame]
[Pauldrons of Roaring Flame]

Sorry if this is being discussed elsewhere as I could not find it.

theckhd wrote:HotR Nova does not scale with spellpower at all. Many of our other abilities do (Judgement, Censure, AS, HoW, Cons, Holy Wrath, and of course WoG), but their spellpower coefficient is generally worse than their AP coefficient. As a result, Int/SP are really terrible threat stats, even for AoE.

Dang! I don't know where I heard that it did but I'm going to make sure to never make that error again. Thanks for the clarification.

yappo wrote:Digren, I think I've identified a major difference in how we look at tank-ranks.

My belief is that from 4.2, and most likely throughout this expansion, we have six tanking ranks and not five. This is due to Blizzard explicitly implementing staggered tiers. I see this:

1: New 85, collecting gear to run dungeons. (A few days)
2: Running 5-man normals, collecting gear to run lowest tier heroics. (Less than 2 weeks)
3: Running lowest tier 5-man heroics, collecting JP. (Around 2 weeks)
4: Running yesterdays raids and/or current 5-man heroics, collecting VP. (End game for some, no time-limit)
5: Normal raider. (End game for most)
6: Hardmode raider. (End game)

My 'evidence' is the atrocious performance I see in the trolls from some people. I also tend to forget that this atrocious performance is usually perfectly enough for tier 1 five-man heroics. I'm aware that my 'evidence' is up-side down, because anything in 346+ gear should be able to perform at better than atrocious levels. However, I've tested (because I'm a masochist) a 346 troll run. While doable, let's just say we exploded a lot of times. It's perfectly comparable with the 329 runs a week after Cata was released.

I haven't been inside the three 'old' raids since 4.2, but I suspect they're actually easier than the trolls now. Anyone to confirm or dispute this?

Your new stage four is more of a branch though, not a progression 'stage', as it tends to cover only those who won't raid. It's something I've thought about, but I wasn't comfortable veering off there to create a separate category.

Instead I think in the short future that stage 2 will disappear. As soon as new 85s can get enough cheap gear to go right into heroics, then we won't need that stage. At the same time, maybe around then the differences between normal raiders and end-game nonraiders will be big enough and I'll split the stages, pushing heroics to stage two, end-game nonraiders to stage three, and normal raiders staying at four? It's just a thought.

Baharroth wrote:Just curious if last nights hotfix to the Pauldrons of Roaring Flame from Ragnaros will affect their ranking in the list of shoulders, and if it is worth the 4 set with this change.

Normal and Heroic versions of Pauldrons of Roaring Flame now have mastery rating instead of hit rating.

[Pauldrons of Roaring Flame]
[Pauldrons of Roaring Flame]

Sorry if this is being discussed elsewhere as I could not find it.

I believe this was a tooltip error; the actually already had mastery but the tooltip showed hit. I already had them ranked as if they had mastery/dodge.

Digren wrote:

Baharroth wrote:Just curious if last nights hotfix to the Pauldrons of Roaring Flame from Ragnaros will affect their ranking in the list of shoulders, and if it is worth the 4 set with this change.

Normal and Heroic versions of Pauldrons of Roaring Flame now have mastery rating instead of hit rating.

[Pauldrons of Roaring Flame]
[Pauldrons of Roaring Flame]

Sorry if this is being discussed elsewhere as I could not find it.

I believe this was a tooltip error; the actually already had mastery but the tooltip showed hit. I already had them ranked as if they had mastery/dodge.

My mistake if that's the case the way that the patch notes read it seemed as if it was being changed rather than being correct.

That being said do you have an opinion to offer on the four set bonus considering avoidance levels in this tier? I have seen some conjecture where people just go two piece and offset other pieces but I can't find anything concrete around the 4. Seems pointless when you can get full CTC coverage in 378 gear.

Baharroth wrote:That being said do you have an opinion to offer on the four set bonus considering avoidance levels in this tier? I have seen some conjecture where people just go two piece and offset other pieces but I can't find anything concrete around the 4. Seems pointless when you can get full CTC coverage in 378 gear.

I would not say no to 12% parry. Even if it replaces 12% block, isn't that reducing your melee damage intake by 8.4%? It's not massive damage reduction, but still nice - rather similar in size to what we get by pressing Holy Shield. It's somehwat less valuable than HS as we cannot control the timing, but still the automation is fairly smart.

I'm less impressed by the 2 piece bonus, as I am still not persuaded that threat is a major issue for us. Even then, it is a nice amount of bonus threat.

econ21 wrote:I would not say no to 12% parry. Even if it replaces 12% block, isn't that reducing your melee damage intake by 8.4%? It's not massive damage reduction, but still nice - rather similar in size to what we get by pressing Holy Shield. It's somehwat less valuable than HS as we cannot control the timing, but still the automation is fairly smart.

Long time lurker here I cant seem to find it but isn't the 4 piece = to about 2% avoidance with a 10 second up time which off set pieces can more then make up for? Replacing 12% block with 12% parry (for 10 seconds) seems like a bad trade off

candyapples wrote:Long time lurker here I cant seem to find it but isn't the 4 piece = to about 2% avoidance with a 10 second up time which off set pieces can more then make up for? Replacing 12% block with 12% parry (for 10 seconds) seems like a bad trade off

Sure, if you're using it on cooldown and you're looking at overall avoidance. We generally don't care about that though. It's not 2% avoidance, it's 12% avoidance when you need it against melee burst, which is nothing to scoff at.

Plus, it allows the functionality of glyphing for a magic/melee cooldown in one. That's an incredible tool in any tank's arsenal.

Digren wrote:
Your new stage four is more of a branch though, not a progression 'stage', as it tends to cover only those who won't raid. It's something I've thought about, but I wasn't comfortable veering off there to create a separate category.

Instead I think in the short future that stage 2 will disappear. As soon as new 85s can get enough cheap gear to go right into heroics, then we won't need that stage. At the same time, maybe around then the differences between normal raiders and end-game nonraiders will be big enough and I'll split the stages, pushing heroics to stage two, end-game nonraiders to stage three, and normal raiders staying at four? It's just a thought.

Well, I believe Blizz deliberately designed content so that you'll have to collect JP for a while before you can collect VP at a decent rate. The implementation of 490 versus 980 weekly VP depending on if you're blocked at first tier five-man heroics or can down the trolls (or current raids) points in this direction.

Merging stage 1 and 2 is an option though. Basically we say that: if you ding 85 then you're ready to run all normal mode five-mans, and this is how you gear for the easier heroics.

Anyway, 'my' stage 4 is either end-game or very much a progression stage for normal mode raiders. I count myself into the latter category. I was wiping on Nef and Alakir when 4.2 hit. Due to our general suckiness (when compared to hard mode raiders) we need to slightly overgear content to kill it. Thus we collect VP to gear up with the same ilevel as the expected drops.

I am aware, though, that my stage 4 and 5 raider will blend into each other. Exploding on the first boss but occasionally downing it (after eight wipes), but never getting it on farm until boss number two is semi-reliably killed. Is that a normal mode raider, or a normal mode raider wannabe?

I'll stick with the five stages for the failsafe for the future, but I'll also stick with how I read your definitions, so 'no heroics required' excludes a reliable influx of JP for me I just wanted to air this topic.

candyapples wrote:Replacing 12% block with 12% parry (for 10 seconds) seems like a bad trade off

I may be missing something, but replacing a 12% chance to take 70% damage with 12% chance to take 0% damage involves no trade off at all, let alone a bad one.

I have not looked at the offset pieces, but I fear the subject of 4 piece bonuses is rather academic for me. I've never won a tier set token in my time playing wow, even after farming Saurfang for weeks on end.

econ21 wrote:

candyapples wrote:Replacing 12% block with 12% parry (for 10 seconds) seems like a bad trade off

I may be missing something, but replacing a 12% chance to take 70% damage with 12% chance to take 0% damage involves no trade off at all, let alone a bad one.

This may be the wrong thread for this but the point I was trying to make and failed hard at is if we are already at the 102.4% mark isn't the 12% parry bonus from the 4 piece usless? Correct me if I am wrong but aren't avoidance stats above the ctc cap wasted? And wouldn't off set pieces (Which are itemized better) provide us with a more flexibility in our Gemming/reforging?

No, block is at the top and avoidance comes lower down. You'd be pushing 12% block off the combat table and gaining 12% parry.

So I was really tired when I posted that and the question I was more trying to ask was, in a CTC set is it possible to gain enough dodge/parry on OS pieces that would outweigh the 4 set bonus while still getting over 102.4% or is it better to just take the 4 set and start changing mastery gems for hybrids at the 102.4% cap.

If it's possible to get this information from a profiler could someone link a reliable one as Wowhead is kinda dodgy with ratings >.<

Baharroth wrote:So I was really tired when I posted that and the question I was more trying to ask was, in a CTC set is it possible to gain enough dodge/parry on OS pieces that would outweigh the 4 set bonus while still getting over 102.4% or is it better to just take the 4 set and start changing mastery gems for hybrids at the 102.4% cap.

If it's possible to get this information from a profiler could someone link a reliable one as Wowhead is kinda dodgy with ratings >.<

With heroic gear, I'm sure it's possible. I'm not certain about normal gear.

http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/pala ... 01300s2600

This set puts you at 99.27% CTC raid buffed. That is just the default T12 best in slot set that Mr. Robot comes up with. I bet with a few changes (back, rings, etc) you could reasonably hit 102.4% CTC raid buffed with 4 piece T12.

Is MrRobots conversion from rating to chance accurate? As an example Rawr shows complete wrong numbers at dodge/parry chances while the pure rating numbers are correct.

It is fairly accurate. Here is my armory page logged out in my CTC set:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/m ... mir/simple

Which shows my CTC as 90.31%

and MrRobot, which shows my CTC as 90.32%.

http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/usa/ ... olsimir#v1

Mr. Robot is pretty good. It's developer is somewhat active on Maintankadin and uses the maths derived here.

There's a thread in this forum all about it if you want to talk about it more.