Axxl wrote:Now it appears that you advice reforging to Mastery alot, which I understand but then I wonder, does it not matter at all that you aren't hitcapped or expertise capped?
Here's my perspective in a long, winding post.
I tanked my first heroic a bit undergeared -
at about 128k health buffed
about 68% avoidance+block
about 2.5% hit
around 15 expertise
with one DPS person I know and two other DPS members of his guild, all hard-core 10 man raiders running their Nth heroic, plus a healer from his guild new to heroics.
What problems might I have seen?
1. Losing threat?
No, I had no threat problem problems at all. Indeed, seconds into each pull I had a 50k threat lead on the top DPS player. On AOE pulls (where more than one mob reached me without CC) a single Hammer would attach the extras onto me.
Yeah I think a few times one of the CC mobs would run after a hunter, but each time I noticed and taunted them off before they arrived. And that's not threat generation at all. That's situation awareness, which is a completely different tanking ability (and one more related to the player than the character).
My DPS isn't great. It's not supposed to be. I really don't worry about my own damage output if I'm holding threat and alive.
2. Dying?
Well, we wiped once, when the healer died a few seconds into the pull. But we didn't wipe for a few minutes after that, while I kept myself alive. (One of the DPS shaman might have been healing me a little, but most of what I saw was my own WoGs.) We did get the boss down to like 30%.
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So that's the experience of someone going out of their way to avoid threat stats (by preferring mastery/avoidance gear over any other type). And given that situation, if there's anything I could change, it would be to extend my life further by taking away more threat stats. I would love to replace some of the strength on my gear with agility. I'd love to reforge more than 40% of a threat stat into mastery.
Sure, at some point I could give up so much threat that I can't hold aggro. That's too far. But 2.5% hit and 15 expertise is more than enough, but 128k and 68% is too little.
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I note that your gear is a stage and a half better than mine. (Mine is stage two / average iLvl 333 / ready for heroics, while yours is stage three+ / mix if iLvl 346 and iLvl 359 / normal raider.) And yet, my avoidance + block is now higher than yours. (I'm now at about 70% unbuffed, you are at about 68%.)
I take less damage than you do. Sure, your better gear means you have more stamina to absorb blows, so spikes are a smaller percentage of your health and it
looks like you take less. That might make your healers feel a little less nervous, so they keep using more mana efficient healers for longer. But I'll get that stamina pretty much for free too when my gear is that good, and my avoidance+block will only go up.
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So, overall:
1. Extra threat is unnecessary. My job is to tank not DPS.
2. Survivability matters. More is better until you just can't die. At that point who cares? But we aren't at that point by definition with progression content.
3. Gearing for mastery over threat reduces your damage taken by a gear stage or more, while only costing extra threat.
