How you guys playing after CTC-cap?

Hiya, I am a bit interested in how other paladin tanks are playing around after full CTC cap.

Me personally will continue to use mastery elixir and armor/magic res elixir depending on fight and balance my CTC around that.

After that the goal will be to use one of the better stamina trinkets from firelands while still maintaining block cap.

Lastly, I figured to get my dodge and parry closer to 15-17% dodge and parry. After that I really think that the DR is catching up to much, so for me after getting CTC coverage using armor/magic res + mastery elix, 1 stamina trinket and having 15-17% dodge, I will probably try to build a bigger HP cushion, since it still gives vengeance and I really feel like a cushion + some threat is better then hit and expertise.

I am very interested in how you other tanks are playing around.

I think a stamina trinket and a gemming strategy that better favors stamina are the first step post-cap, as stamina is the best non-capped stat to stack after mastery.

Once you reach the point where your healers are comfortable with your health pool, then consider changes to reforging and/or gear selection to focus more on dodge and parry.

I've been migrating towards more stam (swapping jc gems from fractured to solids), but also changing some reforging to maximize avoidance vs mastery. But I'm really looking more toward being able to swap out a mastery trinket at some point.

fuzzygeek wrote:I've been migrating towards more stam (swapping jc gems from fractured to solids), but also changing some reforging to maximize avoidance vs mastery. But I'm really looking more toward being able to swap out a mastery trinket at some point.

This is what i would do aswell, changing mastery to stamina, but i have NEVER died cause my health wasn't enough, so id rather just save some healer mana, and i got 159k hp unbuffed so thats kinda low.

My strategy is to make my gear as flexible as possible so I balance around the items that can be juggled around easiest and bring the biggest bang for their bucks: my trinkets

I have my block-set with 2 mastery trinkets and now am regemming towards STA while maintaining blockcapped (with feast & cauldron)

My threat-set swaps hit/exp trinkets in and a few spare items to get me to 8% hit/ 26 exp

In case I should need max HP I go with 2 STA-Trinkets

It's also quite nice to have multiple rep-girdles gemmed & reforged to go along with each set

I decided against balancing around elixir because the trade-off is worse than regemming:
200 mastey -> 300 STA (regemming) vs. 225 mastery -> 300STA (elixir 225 MAS + scroll 150 STA -> flask 450 STA)

Are people using two mastery trinkets to get CTC-capped? I'm very focussed on that cap and it would be attainable with two mastery trinkets, but now that I see it, I just can't make the switch. I'd be giving up 10k self buffed health (from scales of life) for 4% the block you get from a TB mastery trinket. [1]. I'd make the switch if I had a better second mastery trinket - a strength on use effect is not very appealing (the mirror is my first mastery trinket).

[1]I have not raided in the Firelands yet, so my gear is a mix of residual 359 pieces and whatever "failsafe" upgrades you can acquire without actually killing Firelands bosses. I understand better geared people can reach CTC cap with smaller sacrifices.

econ21 wrote:Are people using two mastery trinkets to get CTC-capped? I'm very focussed on that cap and it would be attainable with two mastery trinkets, but now that I see it, I just can't make the switch. I'd be giving up 10k self buffed health (from scales of life) for 4% the block you get from a TB mastery trinket. [1]. I'd make the switch if I had a better second mastery trinket - a strength on use effect is not very appealing (the mirror is my first mastery trinket).

[1]I have not raided in the Firelands yet, so my gear is a mix of residual 359 pieces and whatever "failsafe" upgrades you can acquire without actually killing Firelands bosses. I understand better geared people can reach CTC cap with smaller sacrifices.

Yes, i was kinda debating it aswell but i never died cause of lack of health, so might aswell save the healer some mana..

econ21 wrote:Are people using two mastery trinkets to get CTC-capped? I'm very focussed on that cap and it would be attainable with two mastery trinkets, but now that I see it, I just can't make the switch. I'd be giving up 10k self buffed health (from scales of life) for 4% the block you get from a TB mastery trinket. [1]. I'd make the switch if I had a better second mastery trinket - a strength on use effect is not very appealing (the mirror is my first mastery trinket).

[1]I have not raided in the Firelands yet, so my gear is a mix of residual 359 pieces and whatever "failsafe" upgrades you can acquire without actually killing Firelands bosses. I understand better geared people can reach CTC cap with smaller sacrifices.

I maintain 170k hp unbuffed with 2 non stam trinekts.(only lost about 4k health after adjustments)

I hit the cap while having 1 stam 1 mastery trinket, actually was 1-2% above the cap when raid buffed(without elixirs) so I dropped the trinket(heroic worm) grabbed the rep trinket and regemmed my jc gems to stam and currently migrating to less mastery focused gems, I currently sit at 102.46%(raid buffed with feast and no elixirs)

I gotta say being block capped again feels great lol just dreading the day blizz decides to nerf us again

With some firelands gear its really really easy reaching block cap with dual mastery trinkets.
IF your going dual mastery trinkets, you should definately be gemming stamina.
If your gemming mastery, you should get capped with one and can go with a stamina trinket on the 2nd one.
Mastery "should" be the prefered way to go with gemming i guess, since it allows you to get close to block cap on Baleroc (who has more hit) with a 2nd mastery trinket, but it also allows you to change the trinkets around to whatever you want/need.
For me, Spidersilk is pretty much always equipped, and alongside that its pretty much always eather TB trinket or the Mastery str trinket from rep, and im like 2% over cap now so i have to start thinking of actually throwing some mastery away.

Arveinruz wrote:I decided against balancing around elixir because the trade-off is worse than regemming:
200 mastey -> 300 STA (regemming) vs. 225 mastery -> 300STA (elixir 225 MAS + scroll 150 STA -> flask 450 STA)

Sorry - I shouldn't post when I'm half asleep

It's the other way round: if you would use mastery elixir / stamina scroll and reforge mastery to stamina you would gain 37,5 stamina:

Elixir + scroll + 225 MAS regemmed to STA = 225 MAS +150 STA + 337,5 STA = 225 MAS + 487,5 STA
Flask without regemming = 225 MAS + 450 STA

That being put right I still won't go through the hassle of ignoring the free cauldron and feast just to increase my stamina by less than half a profession perk

To be honest, I've been debating this while accumulating heroic pieces and I've decided that I want pure avoidance over block while staying capped if the option presents itself. Worst case scenario (since I haven't full cleared on heroic yet) I'll use scale and vial but still sitting at around 95%.

I contemplated whether or not to stack stam due to so much magic damage included with most fights, but I'm really feeling that pure avoidance will shine a lot more. Thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Correct me if I am wrong here but it would seem to me that once block cap is reached we should be leaning more in favor of strength, dodge and parry.

It seem that stamina over all does not do that well in a fight other than give a big meat shield where at dodge/parry eliminates hits entirely. I think what we need is heavier damage output, more avoidance and less getting hit. That is damage not taken, no need to use mana pools to restore it and easier going in the fight.

I.e. block cap on Baleroc does next to nothing on the blades, dodge/parry is where that is at, so far I can dodge/parry a good 34% of his blade attacks. Any boss that has enrages like Shannox it's more useful to miss their nasty attacks rather than soak it. The only real need to soak is damage we can not avoid, i.e. magic.

The down side to heavier avoidance is loss of vengeance. I have a vengeance bar on my hud and many times it will go from 100% to 40% because something like windwalk procs.

Block cap seems to do little good on trash, world of logs is reporting unmitigated hits from trash because of being hit from the side/back, yet the raid boss does not land a single hit.

The reason I said strength is it yields parry and attack power, even at the reduced rate it seems more useful than stamina.


Personally I would like for my stats to have more dodge/parry and to be hit capped and expertise capped. I am sick of my shield and other stuff missing and going off into space and other abilities missing the target then having some dps with insane burst getting heavy crits pulling at the start. world of logs shows crusader strike, melee,shield of the righteous,etc missing a good 20-25% of the time. I want that gone from my stats. that's 20% more damage I could be doing and less the dps has to worry about pulling off tanks.

BlackNet wrote:It seem that stamina over all does not do that well in a fight other than give a big meat shield where at dodge/parry eliminates hits entirely. I think what we need is heavier damage output, more avoidance and less getting hit. That is damage not taken, no need to use mana pools to restore it and easier going in the fight.

I'd still rather convert that excess mastery to stamina than avoidance. Eliminating a random hit here and there doesn't help me very much, because my healers aren't having trouble dealing with throughput damage. Having extra HP does help me, because often it means the difference between life and death during a burst event.

In short, you're basically comparing the very small chance that the extra avoidance will eliminate one melee attack in a spike sequence that would otherwise kill you to the tangible benefit of more hit points. Sure, you won't get a swing of 30k HP to be able to survive another swing, but it will certainly help reduce the number of those 1-2k overkill deaths.

In short, you're basically comparing the very small chance that the extra avoidance will eliminate one melee attack in a spike sequence that would otherwise kill you to the tangible benefit of more hit points. Sure, you won't get a swing of 30k HP to be able to survive another swing, but it will certainly help reduce the number of those 1-2k overkill deaths.

Well that is a very good point for stam, also the vengeance would yield higher as well. However, a little chance here and little there all adds up and I bet you will find after a certain point in total avoidance the worthiness would drastically increase.

After reading Ghostcrawlers entry today I am more inspired to reach for that block cap + expertise cap + hit cap in that order. Added stamina would surely help with that but with the current gear setup in game I am not to sure that's easily obtainable.

Even with being 'block capped' we still take unmitigated damage from trash which begs to question the heavy mastery setup.

theckhd wrote:In short, you're basically comparing the very small chance that the extra avoidance will eliminate one melee attack in a spike sequence that would otherwise kill you to the tangible benefit of more hit points. Sure, you won't get a swing of 30k HP to be able to survive another swing, but it will certainly help reduce the number of those 1-2k overkill deaths.

I believe 30k is a very optimistic example 50-80k depending on the boss sounds more like it. And just like you can say 3k more hp would prevent the 1-2k overkill deaths, 1% more avoidance could prevent them (and other deaths) too.

P.S. I am not advocating going avoidance post CTC-cap, I'll probably go stamina myself too, but just saying that people's arguments can be used with the same strength for the avoidance part too

BlackNet wrote:After reading Ghostcrawlers entry today I am more inspired to reach for that block cap + expertise cap + hit cap in that order. Added stamina would surely help with that but with the current gear setup in game I am not to sure that's easily obtainable.

Even with being 'block capped' we still take unmitigated damage from trash which begs to question the heavy mastery setup.

Hard expertise cap or dodge expertise cap? I actually have a comedy hard expertise cap set, and yes, it does require you to do some horrible things to make that happen.

I have a dodge/hit cap set that costs me 8% avoidance, which I could make up with food and elixirs, so it is not terribly difficult to hit hit/xpt/block caps.

well I am sick of seeing the block, parry, dodge, miss on raid bosses. that's 20% MORE damage that I can do. I am logged out in my expertise+block set now, I am 25 expertise and 1.5% shy from block but it's damned close.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arygos/Blacknet/advanced

BlackNet wrote:After reading Ghostcrawlers entry today I am more inspired to reach for that block cap + expertise cap + hit cap in that order. Added stamina would surely help with that but with the current gear setup in game I am not to sure that's easily obtainable.

I understand that, as you've said, it's frustrating seeing attacks miss, and (rarely) even dangerous if it happens at the start of the fight and DPS risk peeling. It's frustrating to me, too. Even so, we have to gear with the mindset of making ourselves the most successful for the fight, not for making ourselves feel better because our attacks are landing. Ghostcrawler's post has me less interested in threat stats than I've ever been, and while I mean no offense, it kind of boggles my mind to hear someone say, "ooh, now I'm DEFINITELY going for threat stats!" Does this strike anyone else as odd, or am I missing something? As far as I can tell, hit and expertise are going to be almost completely useless for the rest of the tier now.

Yes, I understand that increasing tank damage output helps meet strict enrage timers, but as a rule of thumb I think that's the DPS's job and not something that should guide our gearing strategy.

Any other opinions on the value of threat stats in the light of the threat change would be much appreciated.

Indeed so. I am also trying to think ahead, I have seen a great number of times when it was just the healer and I alive and my dps was not high enough to finish the fight, so I would like to see hit cap and expertise cap, even if they change it so that would trigger the avoidance stuff would be a sweet way to go.