3.3 Gem and Enchant Guide

Barathorn wrote:

Ard wrote:Nominate for sticky. This guide rocks.

/points at maintankadin consolidated gearing guide sticky at top of page.

This guide. It's in it.

/slaps ard with a wet fish.

Please continue your excellant work Digren.

Barathorn

Hmm fish!

I have been running with the idea of stam and strength being the best options for us, and have been running str/stam if its a red socket and def/stam if it is a yellow socket, and only then socket bonus would put me at a maximum of 5 stam loss when compared to gemming strait stam.

I have been avoiding gemming for parry or dodge simply because the gains on it seem to be minimum compared to the threat and EH gain (via block) of gemming for strength. What is the logic of avoiding strength gems?

I'm not trying to argue, just trying to understand ^_^.

Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... n=Chastena

The effective health gain of block at all is minimal at best, and the relative benefit from strength (i.e. 50% of the strength as block value) is smaller still. Meanwhile, avoidance, while not as good as effective health from a guaranteed survivability standpoint, does help give period breather / catch-up opportunities for your healers.

And the threat from strength is completely wasted unless you threat cap your raid, which you shouldn't be able to do if you're following the proper threat rotation.

When the diminishing returns on avoidance have rendered it marginal, and our threat has been nerfed in 3.3, the viability of strength gems will be revisited.

It seems to me likely, in the near future, that I will be swiching from Enduring gems in my yellow "necessary" sockets to Vivid Eye of Zul (+10 Hit Rating and +15 Stamina) gems as Defense/expertise in gear goes up and hit goes down. Each raid lockout, it seems I am dropping 20-30 hit. It seems a good way of maintaining respectable hit numbers, at least a 20-30 bump at relatively little cost.

Yeah, let me expand my strength comment to say that, in general, we'll need to revisit the viability of threat gems in 3.3. As our gear scales up this expansion, our need for supplemental defense and avoidance diminishes, but our need for supplemental threat increases. Until a month ago almost no one talked positively about gemming for threat, but now I see it more and more.

Obviously some tanks who falling into the only you, the experienced tankadin, knows what's best for you given your gear and raid role category will start swapping now, but I'll wait until the majority see it as a good choice before I start recommending it to those who aren't as skilled at making their own decisions.

We might also want to wait until after the patch where our threat does get nerfed. I've already replaced the 20 agi on my gloves to 20 hit to make up for the 50+ hit I lost the other night in lieu of more expertise.

I would also recommend using the 40 hit 40 stam food instead of fish feasts for those who are getting low on hit.

I think, even with threat nerfs, we will (for the most part) be fine doing things the way we have been. The biggest change, however, is going to come not in our gems and enchants but in our gear selection. I am already beginning to weigh gear with hit, more strength, or block value as more valuable for threat vs. avoidance as it sits now. I doubt that I will change my gemming/enchanting away from avoidance to threat any more than it already is (I use 2% threat/10parry on gloves and accuracy on weapon), but will simply look for more threat stats on gear than I used to, whereas I wouldn't even worry about it beyond working toward hit cap.

When you get a Libram of Defiance, you need to take into account the near constant +200 dodge rating buff. You can still use the 1.88 rule of thumb, if you just make sure to use the values for dodge and parry *with* the buff up.

Marrus wrote:When you get a Libram of Defiance, you need to take into account the near constant +200 dodge rating buff. You can still use the 1.88 rule of thumb, if you just make sure to use the values for dodge and parry *with* the buff up.

Thanks! Good catch. I added a note to the section to remind people to be raid buffed when performing this check.

Just to explain my post above. I am not in any way gemming hit to address threat issues on the next patch. I am talking about gemming hit because it is more optimal to me for tanking purposes than defense at my gear level and with my tasks. The fact of the matter is, I want to be able to single taunt. I want my debuffs up. I was referring to the almost total absence of hit on 245+ gear, and the excess of defense on gear for this patch (right now.) I honestly think once people see how little hit they have that people will be struggling to find it somewhere, and doing lousy things to get it. I believe it is worth a mention for tanking purposes now, so I was suggesting it be mentioned as a viable alternative. I was not referring to it as some type of threat fix.

Digren wrote:When your gear gets good enough to not require defense enhancement through all yellow gem slots, head enchant, shoulder enchant, back enchant, chest enchant, and shield enchant, where do you start cutting defense to boost other important stats?

If the socket bonus on the gear is poor, swapping def/sta gems to pure sta is a huge effective health boost and is one of the first places to enact change. The other place is on the back enchant, where Agi or the engie flexweave offer more pure avoidance, or the armor enchant is again a good effective health boost. Then you can look at your chest enchant, where +health is an ok EH boost given the loss of defense.

Some people would look at the shoulder enchant next, since 30 sta at the loss of 20 dodge and 15 def is a fair tradeoff for some. Only then would most people consider the block value enhancement via swapping out their shield enchant. (Perhaps, with the doubling of block value in 3.2, people would swap shield before shoulder. That remains to be seen.)

It's very unlikely anyone would swap out their head enchant for the engie alternative, since losing 20 def rating for 8 stamina is a poor deal under any circumstances.

I know you were referencing the block value shield enchant in this post, but I'm quoting it anyway because it's the most relevant comment to what I'm about to bring up.

Meloree and I (and several others) were having an in-depth discussion about matching gem slots in this thread. One of the conclusions we came to is that some of the enchants, including one that's not on the list (18 stam to shield), are actually some of the best ways to trade avoidance for stamina:

Theck wrote:Just so we have all the numbers here to work with, I wanted to double check the enchant ratios:
Shoulder: 30 stam for 20 dodge/15 def, for an effective weight value of 35/30 = 1.1667 for stamina
Chest: 22 Def or 275 Health; 275 health is equivalent to 275/(1.1*1.08*1.6*10)=21.8 stam, for a 1.0092 weight value on stam
Wrist enchant not even worth considering
Gloves: 20 Agi vs. 18 Stam, weight value = 1.1857
Shield: 20 Defense Rating vs. 18 Stam, weight value = 1.1111

Compared to:
Matching a 6-stamina socket bonus: 1.111 (1.186 if an Agi gem)
Matching a 9-stamina socket bonus: 1.667 (2.075 if an Agi gem)
Matching a 12-stamina socket bonus: 3.333 (8.300 if an Agi gem)
Matching a 6-avoidance socket bonus: 1.0667 (1.100 if an Agi gem)

Note that the higher this number, the more you value stamina. Higher ratios mean that by switching from the stamina option to the avoidance option, you're giving up less stamina per point of avoidance rating. So if you're picking up avoidance at the cost of EH, you want to do it in order of highest weight to lowest weight (e.g. picking up the T9 helm set bonus with an Agi/Stam gem will cost you far less than using the glove enchant or picking up a 6-avoidance socket bonus).

Meloree noted that if you're going the other way, you want to go from lowest to highest to get the most stamina per each point of avoidance you give up. So in other words,

Meloree wrote:Alternatively, if you're "partially" stacking stam, then the "correct order" would be:
Enchant health to chest
Skip avoidance socket bonuses picked up with a yellow gem
Skip avoidance bonuses picked up with a red gem
Skip 6 stam socket bonuses picked up a yellow gem, enchant 18 stam to shield
PVP Shoulder enchant
18 stam to glvoes over agility, Skip 6 stam socket bonuses picked up with a red gem
Skip 9 stam bonuses picked up with a yellow gem
Skip 9 stam bonuses picked up with a red gem.

That's interesting, because I have a feeling the order there goes somewhat against most people's gut instinct on where the cheapest stamina comes from. I did half of the calculations on the first page and still didn't really think that chest was going to turn out to be the bar none best place to pick up health. I knew my personal value for stamina was north of the 1.667 we already quoted, but I find myself wondering if it reaches all the way to 2.37. Thanks, Theck. I have to go think about this a bit.

The net point of all of this is that the health enchant to chest is the first thing you should trade in. If you're already skipping 6-stamina socket bonuses (with Agi/Stam gems, anyway) to go straight blue gems, then you really ought to have the PvP shoulder enchant and the 18 Stamina shield enchant, since both of those are more efficient trades.

<edit> and yes, my Armory shows that I don't follow my own advice - it's on my to-do list as soon as I log on this evening though. I plan on picking up the chest, shield, and shoulder enchants and probably even swapping a few Agi/Stam sockets to pure Stam before this evening's raid. Also need to respec, as I'm stil "lolvezax" spec and won't be seeing him again for a long while.

theckhd wrote:

Meloree wrote:Alternatively, if you're "partially" stacking stam, then the "correct order" would be:
Enchant health to chest
Skip avoidance socket bonuses picked up with a yellow gem
Skip avoidance bonuses picked up with a red gem
Skip 6 stam socket bonuses picked up a yellow gem, enchant 18 stam to shield
PVP Shoulder enchant
18 stam to glvoes over agility, Skip 6 stam socket bonuses picked up with a red gem
Skip 9 stam bonuses picked up with a yellow gem
Skip 9 stam bonuses picked up with a red gem.

That's interesting, because I have a feeling the order there goes somewhat against most people's gut instinct on where the cheapest stamina comes from. I did half of the calculations on the first page and still didn't really think that chest was going to turn out to be the bar none best place to pick up health. I knew my personal value for stamina was north of the 1.667 we already quoted, but I find myself wondering if it reaches all the way to 2.37. Thanks, Theck. I have to go think about this a bit.

The net point of all of this is that the health enchant to chest is the first thing you should trade in. If you're already skipping 6-stamina socket bonuses (with Agi/Stam gems, anyway) to go straight blue gems, then you really ought to have the PvP shoulder enchant and the 18 Stamina shield enchant, since both of those are more efficient trades.

Thank your for the detailed analysis that clarifies (and corrects) the gut-feel advice I provided. However, I do take issue with the above list, because you are considering defense and agility as interchangeable avoidance, where defense has the additional role of crit immunity.

By the time someone has replaced their chest enchant with health, skipped their avoidance bonuses with yellow gem sockets, skipped their 6 sta bonuses with yellow gem sockets, and replaced 20 def on shield with 18 sta, they are very likely under 540 defense unless they're wearing pre-Naxx crafted blues or top-end ToC epics. Very few people can afford to lose that defense from their item enhancement.

Keeping that in mind, the value of avoidance from defense should be, for many people, rated above the value of avoidance from agility. For example, I would replace my glove enchant with sta before my shield enchant with sta, despite the "optimal" order, because I could do so while remaining uncrittable. The PVP shoulder enchant should also rate higher, because, while using it gives up defense, using it also provides resilience which (to an extent) lowers the defense min burden.

Digren wrote:When your gear gets good enough to not require defense enhancement through all yellow gem slots, head enchant, shoulder enchant, back enchant, chest enchant, and shield enchant, where do you start cutting defense to boost other important stats?

If the socket bonus on the gear is poor, swapping def/sta gems to pure sta is a huge effective health boost and is one of the first places to enact change. The other place is on the back enchant, where Agi or the engie flexweave offer more pure avoidance, or the armor enchant is again a good effective health boost. Then you can look at your chest enchant, where +health is an ok EH boost given the loss of defense.

Some people would look at the shoulder enchant next, since 30 sta at the loss of 20 dodge and 15 def is a fair tradeoff for some. Only then would most people consider the block value enhancement via swapping out their shield enchant. (Perhaps, with the doubling of block value in 3.2, people would swap shield before shoulder. That remains to be seen.)

It's very unlikely anyone would swap out their head enchant for the engie alternative, since losing 20 def rating for 8 stamina is a poor deal under any circumstances.

Thus, speaking in terms of where to replace defense with effective health, my previous suggestion was:
1. Skip socket bonuses with yellow sockets where the bonus is "poor".
2. Replace def to back with armor.
3. Replace def to chest with health.
4. Replace shoulder with PVP enchant.
5. Replace def to shield with block value (or, as you point out, stamina).

The new suggestion is:
1. Replace def to back with armor (which has a ratio of 0.7333 if I use 11 armor = 1 sta)
2. Replace def to chest with health (ratio 1.0092)
3. Skip socket bonuses (first avoidance bonuses, then 6 sta bonuses)
4. Replace def to shield with stamina (ratio 1.1111)
5. Replace shoulder with PVP enchant (ratio 1.1667)

Red gem slots and the glove enchant don't factor in to the list, because the ability to replace pure avoidance with EH isn't necessarily tied to the ability to replace defense with EH.

I think it's worth pointing out that the value of the T9 helm actually increases a little when you consider that it has a meta and a red socket with a 12 stamina bonus - if you're going/shooting for all blue gems except for one to activate your meta, you'll only lose 3 stamina if you use the helm red socket as the only purple gem on your gear (15+12=27, 3 less than a blue 30).

I also personally prefer the Hodir enchant just because I hate wasted itemization (lolresil) but if it comes down to me needing more health, I guess I'll make the swap.

How does 81 BV compare to 18 Stam to shield?

And where does 22 Agi to cloak fall on that list? I like it because it gives avoidance and EH, unlike the armor which is just EH or the defense which is just avoidance (all assuming you're well over 540).

Petrus wrote:I also personally prefer the Hodir enchant just because I hate wasted itemization (lolresil) but if it comes down to me needing more health, I guess I'll make the swap.

I really don't think I'll ever make that leap. I'm just not that interested in a uni-stat mentatily to believe that I, a paladin, a class that already exceeds in effective health, has to stack stamina to the detriment of my other abilities. To be fair, I'm also not in a cutting-edge raid group that needs to a way to make it through unbalanced pre-nerf hard-mode encounters.

How does 81 BV compare to 18 Stam to shield?

I think there's been quite a bit of comparison work between block value and armor for effective health, and armor can be relatively easily related to stamina for a given gear set. In general, I'd think that the block value enchant would be chosen for trash or threat sets where it would exceed the benefits of the stamina enchant, while I don't think the stamina enchant would ever be used except by those deep enough on the avoidance-to-stamina swap list as to reach it.

And where does 22 Agi to cloak fall on that list? I like it because it gives avoidance and EH, unlike the armor which is just EH or the defense which is just avoidance (all assuming you're well over 540).

22 agi is about the same as 22ish dodge and 44 armor, which is about the same as 22ish dodge and 4 stamina using the 11:1 ratio for effective health. (I'm ignoring the crit.) It's clearly better than the defense enchant in every way except crit immunity.

Assuming one was going from 22 agi to 225 armor, then one is giving up 22ish dodge to gain 181 armor (or 16.5ish sta). That's a 1.3333 ratio of avoidance to stamina, making it the last enchant slot to switch from avoidance to effective health. So rather than recommend people go from the under-valued defense enchant directly to armor as their first swap, they should go to the intermediate agility enchant and use it until they'd already replaced their shoulder, chest, gloves, and shield enchants with sta.

Hmm how about 240 armour to gloves vs 18stam?

Hard to get mats for now, but could be better. Especially given that the more you stack stam, the better armour is.

The BV from Shield tinker sadly won't help vs Gorkok's impale or Icehow's stun, and so is sadly going to be worse than the 18stam I think.

Candiru wrote:Hmm how about 240 armour to gloves vs 18stam?

Again, the last direct comparison of armor to stamina that I saw was based on characters with full Naxx gear. At that level, 1 stamina was approximately as good as 11 armor when taking physical damage. (Armor is even better when you consider the effect on healing, but it is tempered by its uselessness against magic damage.)

With that in mind, I'd been thinking that I should change my top-enchant recommendations to include the armor enchant, rather than leave it as an after-thought.

However, unless armor and stamina scale together perfectly, the relative value of each could change as gear changes. Armor, for example, becomes more valuable the more stamina you have, so if between Naxx and ToC our stamina has scaled faster than our armor, then the sta:armor ratio could have changed to 1:10 or 1:9. I'm really not able to run such numbers.

I rewrote the stamina section of the general guide to incorporate some of the new data.

oh FFS what do i do? i just looked at my character sheet after a few upgrades,,,


scroll over dodge its 480
scroll over parry its 498

havent gemmed for parry at all, am i doing something way wrong?

only gear that really sticks out that has parry is jaraxxis pants, beasts 10 bracers, and boreal guard


i keep reading the 1.88 ratio, but im actually looking at having more parry than dodge..



OH and one of my fellow tank warriors in the guild did the whole stam stacking method yesterday with enchants pvp shoulders/275hpchest/18stam shield/gloves,, when should i start looking at that?

as i can see its about 2.5%ish avoidance vs about 900hp right?

Digren wrote:Thank your for the detailed analysis that clarifies (and corrects) the gut-feel advice I provided. However, I do take issue with the above list, because you are considering defense and agility as interchangeable avoidance, where defense has the additional role of crit immunity.

Yeah, sorry, I should have added a disclaimer that this came from a thread discussing gemming for bleeding-edge encounters. In fact, in my personal gemming i treat defense as less valuable than agility, simply because Agility has some EH benefit as well as threat (and I'm in no danger of becoming crittable).

Nonetheless, I think having them listed from best to worst "conversion ratio" has some value. If a player still needs defense for crit immunity, they can skip over those entries in the list to make sure that they're still making efficient trades where they can. I see you've already updated the guide, and the incarnation you came up with is pretty much exactly the sort of thing I had in mind.

steadypal wrote:oh FFS what do i do? i just looked at my character sheet after a few upgrades,,,


scroll over dodge its 480
scroll over parry its 498

havent gemmed for parry at all, am i doing something way wrong?

only gear that really sticks out that has parry is jaraxxis pants, beasts 10 bracers, and boreal guard


i keep reading the 1.88 ratio, but im actually looking at having more parry than dodge..



OH and one of my fellow tank warriors in the guild did the whole stam stacking method yesterday with enchants pvp shoulders/275hpchest/18stam shield/gloves,, when should i start looking at that?

as i can see its about 2.5%ish avoidance vs about 900hp right?

Please post in the Gear Questions and Advice forum. This is for discussion of the general guide. Thanks.

my bad i figured my questions would work in this thread since it is asking about gemming and enchanting.

Hey

I was wondering about where the following two gems are rated in your opinion?

Champion's Ametrine (10 STR 10 Defence - Red & Yellow Socket)
and
Glimmering Ametrine (10 Parry 10 Defence - Red & Yellow Socker)

Should they be avoided or do they actually belong somewhere on the list of gems to use in a red socket?

Darkley wrote:Hey

I was wondering about where the following two gems are rated in your opinion?

Champion's Ametrine (10 STR 10 Defence - Red & Yellow Socket)
and
Glimmering Ametrine (10 Parry 10 Defence - Red & Yellow Socker)

Should they be avoided or do they actually belong somewhere on the list of gems to use in a red socket?

Neither should be used.

A) Combo stamina gems are the best bet in nearly all situations. If you want to sacrifice stamina for avoidance or defense or threat, carry a few extra trinkets to swap around. That takes a lot less space than carrying around a whole set of gear with just some gem swaps.

B) You very rarely want to gem for parry. But the dodge/def or agi/def gems (if they exist) suffer from the same problem as A) above.

C) Even if you're building a corner-case maximum threat set, I just don't see the value in gemming for strength. You're almost always better served by finding an alternative piece that has way more strength directly. Even if I did have a gem slot, I'd still use def/sta gems in yellow slots if necessary and put str/sta gems in red slots. Str/def gems would just end up wasteful as I floated around the defense minimum vs. trash mobs.

Digren wrote:If you tell your healers to never put HoTs on you because you don't want to risk ticking out of AD range

You may want to upgrade Mongoose to recommended. Testing indicates that our HV applications can proc it, which nearly doubles our proc rate and uptime. Uptimes in the range of 50-75% are reasonable for full raid buffs.

My Enchant Analysis shows that given that, it's our 2nd best threat enchant, just barely behind Accuracy. In addition, it gives a pretty significant avoidance and armor boost.