Stam Vs. Mastery Gemming in normal raid content.

What are people's thoughts and experiences so far in determining whether you choose towards stamina or mastery in your gem choices on gear?

What are the factors that you think affect that choice and what difference does that choice make to your raid?

There are many topics about this, however they are ironically on the other boards, despite the fact that this board seems to fit it the best.

The core principle, I think, is to gear however your raid is most likely to beat the encounter. If tank death is the issue, you probably need more stamina. If healers don't have enough throughput, you should get more mitigation. If DPS is riding your threat and you're hitting enrage timers, keep leveling until you hit 85.

Granted, that's pretty vague advice. Personally I'm starting to come to the conclusion that tank gearing is at least partially dependent on healer composition and playing style, and of course individual encounter mechanics.

I'm giving advice based on a two-phase approach:
1. Establish baseline stamina for the content.
2. Minimize damage taken to extend life and healer mana.

For a stage three tank, a health baseline to start normal raid content is about 150k unbuffed. The same tank can achieve 78-80% combined avoidance+block in their survival gear set. With two stamina trinkets and one mastery trinket, the tank can then swap back and forth somewhat depending on the needs of the encounter.

As the tank progresses from stage three to four, obviously gear improves and these stats will go up. A stage four tank - ready to start heroic raids - probably has over 180k health and more than 85% combined avoidance+block.

To achieve these targets, I recommend gemming as follows:
Yellow Gem Slots
Mastery/Stamina gems

Blue Gem Slots
Mastery/Stamina gems

Red Gem Slots with good survivability socket bonuses or needed for meta
Mastery/Parry gems if baseline stamina is achieved, else Parry/Stamina gems

Colorless Gem Slots or red slots with poor socket bonuses
Mastery/Stamina gems

Obviously there are identical alternatives, such as pure mastery in yellow slots and pure stamina in an equal number of blue slots. I focus so strongly on the mastery/stamina gem because it simplifies the gearing strategy. There's only one cut to acquire or buy, and it works almost everywhere.

I'd like to add that if you're still depending on JP and/or faction rewards, then do buy double copies in order to increase the difference between a stamina set and a avoidance/mitigation set. Gemming the copies differently should do the job.

I'm currently working on Hardmodes in 25, farming regular. If I had to do it all over again I'd take the following approach depending on what my current gear looks like:

Scenario A: Two Mastery Trinkets
I'd gem stamina in blue sockets and hybrid stam gems everywhere else.

Scenario B: One Mastery Trinket, One Stamina Trinket
I'd gem hybrid stam gems everywhere except for maybe one or two blue gems in blue or prismatic sockets.

Scenario C: Two Stamina Trinkets
I'd gem hybrid stam gems everywhere except full mastery in yellow sockets.

The goal is getting to Scenario D...

Scenario D: Two Stamina Trinkets (the two that drop from 25 man raid content)
VERY heavily focused towards gemming mastery. As much mastery as possible e.g. parry/mastery and mastery gems.

Don't forget scenario E: pick up alchemy and get the stam/mastery trinket.

Best decision I've made in a long time.

Good call Sculder. The goal being to get two high quality stamina trinkets with good on use effects. After that, you can lighten up on stamina gems and invest more into mastery.

Again, if anyone ever asks me for advice on my server, or I decide to level up my other paladin this is what I intend to do.

Currently I gem mastery mainly =>
Mastery in yellows
Mastery / Parry in reds
Mastery / Stamina in blues
Mastery in prismatics

I've got 3 pieces of 359 items coming from raids, every other epic items coming from crafts or reputations.
With mastery elixir and food, with 1 mastery and 1 stamina trinket, I sit at 3250 or so mastery, reaching almost 65% block.

Combine that with miss / dodge / parry / raid buffs, I reach 95.33% avoidance / mitigation (7.07% away from the 102.4% cap).
The downside is that I am at 145K unbuff and 161K full buffed.


Now, my guild downed 8 / 12 normal mode (we have the 3 last bosses and ascendant council left) with me as the main tank on most fight, except on Maloriak where I tank the adds and Chimaeron where I tank only the double strikes.
The other tank is a druid, and before me were another druid and a warrior tank who left for various reasons.

The feeling of my main healer (pally) => "When do you start taking damage ?". Well he may have been joking but his final comment is that I take less damage now than any of the other tanks he healed, including a tank full focused on stamina he healed in a pick up raid with 165K health unbuff, on the same fight, same difficulty.

When I look at the recount data, I block something like 36-37% incoming melee damage.
On Chimaeron, I usually need the "immortality buff" once per fight for the double strikes, otherwise they never bring me down to 1 HP.
I haven't found an encounter yet where my "low health" (compared to other similarly geared tanks) is a problem. Aside from Chimaeron, I rarely get my interface warning me that I am below 35% health and I do not think it is solely due to my healers (well, Magmaw's chewing can be pretty rough if I do not have any cooldown up, but now that I rotate them properly, it isn't a problem anymore ).


So, if I were to draw conclusions out of this, I would say that mastery is one hell of a stat. Of course I did not try Nefarian or Cho'Gall yet, but I do not expect it to show much different data (maybe Nefarian since there is a lot of magical damage fro what I saw).

In a few weeks my guild will start the hard modes. The only thing I aim to change until then is to reach something like 150-155K unbuff, which should be doable with full 359 stuff. Maybe going to 2 stamina trinkets would be a good idea too

Pretty much you're just giving up about 21 to 25k health (fully raid buffed) for about 10% block. This *sounds* a lot better than it actually is imho.

Remember that those two trinkets are very powerful when using properly. Don't forget that the stam/dodge trinket is an on demand ~7% to avoidance (where else can you get that much avoidance?). And the stam/mastery one is TONS of mastery when you need it the most. 35% of 180k is about 55k health. When bosses hit for about 55k unblocked, the power of that trinket really shines, not to mention the fact that you've got 20k more health for a cushion anyway.

TLDR: Don't focus on just our static stats going into a fight. Remember to consider the on use trinkets you have and how they can make an impact.

The heroic Crab trinket from Throne of the Tides procs a 20-second duration of about 22% (a little more) block chance, and it sounds (from wowhead comments) that it should have about a 25% uptime. When it procs, this is enough to get me (I'm pretty sure) to block-cappage without raid gear, and is effectively a melee-only damage reduction cooldown. I've gemmed stam/mastery; I traded basically 2.5% total health for 2.5% block chance.

That said, even on normal mode Halfus I was taking so much damage that having a few thousand more health would have been nice. Thankfully I can go some of the way by swapping out Impetuous Query for a stamina trinket, but usually I don't seem to.