4.2 Tank Stages and Cataclysm Gear Guide

Pinupgirl_Madoran wrote:Don't get me wrong, I believe people when they say "Stamina for hardmodes" but I've yet to have a healer go "I would be totally OK with you sponging more mana, go put on some stam" and I've yet to die to damage that was too high to heal quick enough.

Currently/Previously when players are saying "Stamina for hard modes" was at the the expense of block cap? Given current gear levels, the differences between more Avoidance or more Sta at block cap are likely to be very low.

Also more stamina does not mean more mana, it can allow for healers to move from inefficient to efficient heals and other benefits.

Pinupgirl_Madoran wrote:

lythac wrote:

Pinupgirl_Madoran wrote:WRT the guide as a whole it values mastery above everything else, but one you're able to block cap, you're more concerned with essentially having the most mitigation possible on all pieces, reforging to 102.4%, and putting all excess mitigation into dodge/parry.

Does that sum things up accurately or am I missing something?

I do not think so.

Once you reach block cap, you start swapping out Mastery gems for Sta gems and Eventually making your way from Mastery trinkets (on use/procs aside) to Sta trinkets.

We are not yet at the point where you can fully gem sta, dual sta trinket and still be at 102.4%

Is it unreasonable for me to say that I wont be putting on stamina until I actually die to damage that I couldn't be healed quick enough from?


Don't get me wrong, I believe people when they say "Stamina for hardmodes" but I've yet to have a healer go "I would be totally OK with you sponging more mana, go put on some stam" and I've yet to die to damage that was too high to heal quick enough. When I run into these situations I have lots of different trinkets and flasks and such in my bag, I can adjust accordingly right then and there, and then play around with gems and such later.

Being "healed quickly enough" means your healers are using less-efficient fast heals. They do that when your percent of remaining health drops very quickly. You can reduce the chance of this happening through A) more avoidance, or B) more stamina. With more avoidance, sometimes your current health won't drop, but sometimes it will drop just as badly as it does now. With stamina, your current health will always drop less (as a percent of total health) than it does now.

Which is better? This question is easy to answer. Go find any gear strategy post written during BC or WotLK and read about Effective Health. Mastery to reach the block cap has distracted us from EH, but once you're block capped all the old EH justifications still apply.

Just a quick note: In your "tank stages" section, you alternate between using "combined block + avoidance" and "combat table coverage". This is a little bit confusing to me because, as far as I know, avoidance doesn't include miss chance, while CTC does. I may be wrong in this, but either way, it'd be less confusing if you used one term consistently. So, just to be clear, when you say a stage 2 tank needs 70%, or a stage 3 tank needs 78%, do you include the 5% miss chance in those numbers?

Otherwise, great guide.

Whilst I suppose you don't actually "avoid" the swing as the boss misses you, avoidance is Miss + Parry + Dodge. Your chance to avoid all damage.

In shields, why is Elementium Earthguard listed above Shield of the Blood God? Is it purely for the gem socket and socket bonus?

Wonton wrote:In shields, why is Elementium Earthguard listed above Shield of the Blood God? Is it purely for the gem socket and socket bonus?

yep with a mastery gem or a mastery + stam gem and the socket bonus it pulls ahead the difference isnt to great so if you have the shield of the blood god just use it unless you have alot of cash to burn

Jaitee wrote:

Wonton wrote:In shields, why is Elementium Earthguard listed above Shield of the Blood God? Is it purely for the gem socket and socket bonus?

yep with a mastery gem or a mastery + stam gem and the socket bonus it pulls ahead the difference isnt to great so if you have the shield of the blood god just use it unless you have alot of cash to burn

Actually, I saw on this guide that the Elementium shield was best in slot until raiding, and immediately went to the AH and burned around 2800g on it...

The ZG shield dropped for me about 3 days later.

Well, no harm done; it is the best shield prior to raiding content.

I suspect the Ragnaros shoulders are ranked based on the pre-hotfix dodge/hit stats, while they are now dodge/mastery.

Wonton wrote:Just a quick note: In your "tank stages" section, you alternate between using "combined block + avoidance" and "combat table coverage". This is a little bit confusing to me because, as far as I know, avoidance doesn't include miss chance, while CTC does. I may be wrong in this, but either way, it'd be less confusing if you used one term consistently. So, just to be clear, when you say a stage 2 tank needs 70%, or a stage 3 tank needs 78%, do you include the 5% miss chance in those numbers?

Otherwise, great guide.

Avoidance certainly should include miss chance, I would think.

Is there any particular reason why the shoulders from Rag are rated lower than the tier ones? I could understand if the ones from Rag didn't have the dodge, but is the mastery from the tier that much better in your spreadsheet?

Where would the pvp helm [http://www.wowhead.com/item=70251] place on the list is it worth purchasing?

thunderz wrote:Where would the pvp helm [http://www.wowhead.com/item=70251] place on the list is it worth purchasing?

It would probably rank around the normal Daybreaker Helm. If you value mastery more, it would place it just above the Daybreaker Helm due to the armor, stamina, and slight mastery gains.

On the other hand, if you value dodge/parry more, then the Daybreaker Helm beats it out. Either way, if you're looking for a tank helmet that's an upgrade over heroics, the 384 pvp helm is certainly an acceptable choice.

Am I right in thinking that the trinkets within each category (mastery, stamina, threat) are listed approximately best to worst? If so, are the Scales of Life really that good? The on-use ability strikes me as pretty weak, because by it's nature it tends only to be available when I don't need it. Whereas the proc from the symbiotic worm seems very strong (for people who aren't block capped); is it not strong enough to compensate for the loss of passive stamina?

Lathdari wrote:Am I right in thinking that the trinkets within each category (mastery, stamina, threat) are listed approximately best to worst? If so, are the Scales of Life really that good? The on-use ability strikes me as pretty weak, because by it's nature it tends only to be available when I don't need it. Whereas the proc from the symbiotic worm seems very strong (for people who aren't block capped); is it not strong enough to compensate for the loss of passive stamina?

trinkets are just listed in some random order since there is no best or worst trinket just pick what is best for you for the fight your on

Jaitee wrote:

Lathdari wrote:Am I right in thinking that the trinkets within each category (mastery, stamina, threat) are listed approximately best to worst? If so, are the Scales of Life really that good? The on-use ability strikes me as pretty weak, because by it's nature it tends only to be available when I don't need it. Whereas the proc from the symbiotic worm seems very strong (for people who aren't block capped); is it not strong enough to compensate for the loss of passive stamina?

trinkets are just listed in some random order since there is no best or worst trinket just pick what is best for you for the fight your on

Not entirely correct, but I understand your argument.

Within a category it's often possible to rank trinkets. For example, A mastery and K strength on-use can certainly be compared against A+b mastery and K+n strength on-use. I'm not saying that more mastery is always a better mastery-trinket compared with one with with less mastery. The on-use, or stacking effect could be fundamentally different from another. The resistance on-use from the TB trink comes to mind.

I actually kind of like Scales of Life. Symbiotic Worm is kind of useless as you approach the CTC cap, anyways, although I can see someone using something like Moonwell Phial over Scales of Life.

Still, I bound the use of Scales of Life to Word of Glory and it's a bit more healing then when I need it.

A best in slot list would be nice.
While Mirrored Boots, Dargonax Signet, Helm of Blazing Glory and the Tier Shoulders are technically listed as BiS, you wouldve overwhelming amounts of useless Mastery.
Prioritizing Stamina after reaching the Blockcap means you want to find out the best way to reach the blockcap which will grant you the biggest amount of stamina (and 4-piece tier 12)
while wearing Spidersilk Spindle and Scales of Life (cuz it saved my life plenty of times)

Vlesk wrote:A best in slot list would be nice.
While Mirrored Boots, Dargonax Signet, Helm of Blazing Glory and the Tier Shoulders are technically listed as BiS, you wouldve overwhelming amounts of useless Mastery.
Prioritizing Stamina after reaching the Blockcap means you want to find out the best way to reach the blockcap which will grant you the biggest amount of stamina (and 4-piece tier 12)
while wearing Spidersilk Spindle and Scales of Life (cuz it saved my life plenty of times)

And you just explained why we can't have an absolute best in slot list

I didnt :>

Vlesk wrote:I didnt :>

But you did

Those items are indeed best in slot until you 'break' certain conditions.

But it's an interesting question, what is the best gear set? Rather than think about best in each slot, think about the best combination of gear. You could have a best for stamina and best for avoidance.

I suspect a mastery heavy set of gear is best for stacking stamina as it allows you to gem and trinket for stamina. I am not sure about best for stacking avoidance - I wonder if reforging means it does not matter too much? Have a lot of mastery gear? Just reforge it to avoidance.

A related question is what are the best trinkets? Here, we would look at the on use or proc aspects more than the primary stat. But what the primary stat is - mastery or stamina - will have implications for how much mastery you want on the rest of your gear.

It's certainly a question, I don't honestly agree that it's very interesting. BiS lists are generally not very useful nor educational.

A tool like Ask Mr. Robot can be used for generating a best-in-slot list (at least for a given set of stat weights and within reasonable error margins) however given the nature of the problem unless you have every single piece of gear on the list the list itself is meaningless and worse, misleading as it will tend to cause people to think of it as a "check list". However the BiS list itself is not linear, having 60% of the items on it does not place you at "60% progress to BiS". The stat-weights change relative to one another for any given increase in any stat, certain break-points are passed, etc.

I suppose I just really don't see the point in finding a solution to the problem. The best trinkets question is even harder to approach and somehow (I think) even less useful: Not only would the objectively "best" trinkets vary with each set of gear like any other gear set, they depend so much on the fight and external factors. Take the Symbiotic Worm and specifically its proc as a simple example:

Symbiotic Worm procs 963 mastery for 10 seconds when reduced below 35%, at most once per 30 seconds. The value of that 963 mastery depends on your total CTC (if you are near the cap some non-trivial quantity will be wasted, effectively making it an e.g. 600 mastery proc, 400 mastery proc, etc.). However it also depends on the nature of the fight. What damage is liable to bring a tank below 35%? What damage is liable to occur in the subsequent ten second window? How much of that damage is blockable? The trinket is also devalued by the skill and gear of your healers. The less often you dip below 35% in a fight, the less valuable it is.

For both BiS comparisons and trinket comparisons I honestly feel it is far more effective and useful in the long run to provide people with the tools and knowledge they require to make informed choices for themselves when presented with a given situation, rather than taking the route of decreeing the "best" gear set, which is a concept that collapses under very little weight.

Torias, I take your point about a BiS gear set and not having every single item in the game, but I think to some extent Digren deals with that objection with the concept of tank stages that define available gearsets. He links chardev models of gearsets for tanks of each stage that are close to BiS gear sets for each stage. It's just that now, they may need updating (e.g. the ready for raiding tank should have three bits of T12 and the 365 gear, not T11 and 359). Maybe heroic raiders are spoilt for choice (with heroic T11 and T12) but for lower stage tanks, there's a fairly small set of desirable gear that most tanks have or aspire to have.

The interesting part of the BiS gear set question to me is what happens to a gear guide premised on stacking mastery when you get to the point where mastery has no value? My tentative answer is that the gear guide may still be fine: mastery heavy items may still BiS even after CTC cap if you were wanting to stack stamina and as good as double avoidance if you want to stack avoidance. This is because mastery is not useless after CTC cap - it allows you to gem/trinket for stamina and/or reforge to avoidance (most of us are not at the point where we have so much mastery we can't reforge it). This argument is counter-intuitive but seems logical; I would be interested in other people's thoughts on it.

On the trinkets, I would love to see a boss-by-boss analysis of what to wear. I'll have a search for discussions of this and maybe start a thread if not much turns up.

econ21 wrote:The interesting part of the BiS gear set question to me is what happens to a gear guide premised on stacking mastery when you get to the point where mastery has no value? My tentative answer is that the gear guide may still be fine: mastery heavy items may still BiS even after CTC cap if you were wanting to stack stamina and as good as double avoidance if you want to stack avoidance. This is because mastery is not useless after CTC cap - it allows you to gem/trinket for stamina and/or reforge to avoidance (most of us are not at the point where we have so much mastery we can't reforge it). This argument is counter-intuitive but seems logical; I would be interested in other people's thoughts on it.

Once you've enough mastery on your gear that you're able to reach CTC cap, it becomes a question of what you want next, but generally max ilevel you can get while still maintaining CTC cap is a safe bet. Obviously wearing 391 parry/hit in all slots won't let you hit CTC cap, but that gear doesn't exist, and there's enough 391 mastery slots that as long as you have those you have enough itemisation to hit CTC cap with ease. After that point you can opt to reforge for a couple % more avoidance or at least soft exp cap and a few % hit. Given that tank survival is a lot more CD oriented than raw gear on most encounters in Firelands, I'd personally go with a soft exp setup for most fights, and honestly the extra couple of % avoidance you squeeze out by not picking up a few threat stats is fairly inconsequential in most fights this tier.

TL;DR, once you pass a certain ilvl, I'd say around 380 with access to revered mastery trink or spindersilk spindle, gearing becomes pretty simplistic - higher ilvl's generally better. There's a couple of interesting choices around that ilevel - going for 4 piece whilst maintaining ctc cap isn't trivial unless you've got some other nice mastery pieces (hi shannox belt, looking at you!) for example, but generally the choice boils down to roughly, 15% dodge, 17.5% parry with negligible threat stats or 12% dodge, 15% parry with at least 26 exp and ~6% hit, or somewhere in the middle, and you just tweak your max ilevel gear setup towards either direction through the joys of reforging.

I'd also want to add that it all depends on RNG, which (on average) depends on how well you farm. Yes, farm, not progress.

Take the normal mode raider (because I'll never even see a hard-mode this expansion, so I stick to what I know at least a little about). From a gearing point. Do you prefer to be 6/7 with four Belth kills as the most killed boss, or do you want to be 4/7 with seven Baleroc kills as your least killed boss?

The numbers game can be brutal.

So, what does this have to do with anything? Well, with bags full of different decently recent drops, then you can afford specialized sets. If you're more of a 'what you see is what you get' type of tank, then you're more likely to be stuck with one set only and a few slots where you can swap gear. Most likely trinkets.

Unless you're made of money and your guild is very patient and understanding, you're not going to pop over to Stormwind/Orgrimmar to reforge, regem and reenchant that set between pulls. Ain't happening. Possibly before the pull of that boss you still are trying to down, but not for farm.

So, take a dig into your bags and see what 'sets' you can create. Mostly one CTC and one stamina set, and that only as a result of swapping trinkets. Maybe you have another item or four, but it won't be a 'set'.

Building sets from what you hope drops sometime in the future is just counter productive. Trust me, you can't tank in gear you don't have. Why should you configure your existing gear for it?