3.2 Frequently Argued Questions. AKA: Advanced tanking FAQ.

I see alot of posts about 102.4%, maybe add something about it, ie, what it does for you as a tank, how to calculate your avoidance, how to tell if other stuff is more important, etc.

It might go in basic though, I dunno.

Edit: Didn't see you already had the macro posted. Still, a short guide might be nice.

You might want to mention 22agi on back (better than 16def for a lot of people) and +40BV on shield for threat.

Knaughty wrote:Step 2: Fill to 53 points in Prot

We need to put 3 points in Tiers 1-5 somewhere. What are our options?

Good Choices

• Divine Sacrifice Nerfed in absorption terms quite badly from infinite to 150% of health. But buffed in that the CD was unlinked from bubble, so you can pop it more flexibly (so long as you can live...)

I was a fan of the 3.0 version, and used it pretty much every Sapphiron & Malygos kill, even when I was tanking those bosses. I'll probably take the 3.1 version as well. Worst case, you can steal some damage from the otehr tanks during trash to regen some mana, best case it's a handy raid-wide CD during an AE phase, or an external CD for Sarth3D Mark2.

Typo

Knaughty wrote:Second: Rank TPS Options: Crusade > Conviction ~= SotP

Any build with Crusade is the highest possible damage build (thanks Theck). SotP and Conviction are basically equal. SotP starts out better, but Conviction scales a little better as its a % multiplier (just a bad one). Cross-over point is pretty much "Full 25-man tanking epics". So if you farmed Naxx-25, Conviction is already even with SotP, and will pull ahead once you start wearing Ulduar-25 gear. Additionally, you have the points to reach Crusade now, without gimping survivability.

Should read 25 man naxx gear or Uldar 10 man.

Other thoughts:
"Block capped AKA uncrushable" How about "Block capped Formerly know as uncrushable"

Enchants
Weapon enchants In rank of TPS:
Accuracy
+20 str (some mitigation)
+28 hit chain.
Mention of +26 agility for aovidance set or reaching the block cap
Mention blade warding and the need for details of future testing.

Other:
+22 agility is more avoidance than +16 defense. Use if you are pretty far past the block cap.
+20 agility to gloves for an avoidance set.
Inclusion of +15 str for a BV set -Questionable
Belt buckle gem choice should be left unmentioned. You should gem your belt according to it's strengths.

Profession thoughts:
Flask of stone blood changed to +750 hp on ptr. Alchemy gives 375 hp with it's use now.
Mention not using skinning (weak dps profession) and tailoring
JC- trinket is will be second best stamina trinket in the game come 3.1. Use is still very strong. trinket's value is diminished somewhat by the abundance of stamina socket bonuses in T8.
LW- remove mention of "in 3.0.8"

Glyph:
Glyph of exorcism is another to include in the situational. It is useful for weaving and doesn't cause a ultility loss like AS. Also makes it a stronger pulling tool.

Glyph of SoR should go under bad, if for nothing else but the fact there was a lot of buzz about it when it was at 30% and how it caused SoR to beat SoV.

Talents:
Divinity and Reckoning should go under a third catergory called Meh, ranking above bad. Reckoning is a dps/tps boost even if it's a poor one. Viable in a max DPS/TPS build or a selfish build.

Divinity has not been entirely laid to rest and I've gotten a few plausible but untested benefits from arguing about it on EJ.

Macro's
Include a mouse over cleanse glyph? Useful for 5 mans and occasionally 10 mans.
Include a combined HoR/RD modifier macro.

Consumables?
Link to the basic training's consumable guide?

Until I get around to updating the TOC of my matlab thread, here are some things I noticed and links to the information you want:

• Glyphs - new post today addressing our glyph choices for a 5 Conviction + 2 Crusade (5V+2C) spec, along with a graph for SoB Judgement substitution rotations
• 969 - You refer to HotR as our "worst" move, but this is no longer the case. About halfway through this beast of a post from yesterday is the breakdown of our ability damage and DPS for the 5V+2C spec:
  

  Code: Select all

      Ability  Damage   DPS (in 969)
    'ShoR'    [4989]     [831]
    'Cons'    [3511]     [390]
    'HotR'    [3172]     [529]
    'Exor'    [2672]
    'AS'      [2628]
    'HoW'     [2590]
    'JoV'     [2526]     [281]
    'JoB'     [1744]     [194]
    'VDot'    [1015]     [338]
    'SoB'     [ 670]     [528]

  
  As you can see, HotR is our 2nd-highest DPS ability in 969, ahead of Consecration and Judgement. Since this is all holy damage, this is true for TPS as well. Consecration is more damage per cast, but we cast HotR more often.
• 969 - you may also want to mention that if you try and use a First-Come-First-Serve type rotation, prioritizing abilities according to "highest damage", after a half-second hiccup somewhere along the line that splits up the 6-second cooldowns you end up organically falling into 969. I made a post about it somewhere in basic training (I think), but I can't find where Hello Kitty hides the advanced search function. I can try and look it up later.
• weaving abilities into 969 - This beast of a post again for starters. I've only looked at Exorcism and Avenger's Shield substitutions there, but it stands to reason that if you don't care about HS uptime then subbing anything for HS is worth it.
  For SoV, substituting Exorcism for Judgement is a minor TPS upgrade, for SoB it's a noticeable TPS upgrade and a reduction in your recoil DTPS.
• Gear - New post today looking at Ulduar tanking weapons, and whether they're worth getting

As I find more things, I'll post them.

More importantly, perhaps - what would you still like from my end? The plots of damage and TPS per ability you requested are here (though it's technically a DPS plot, but it's a flat multiplier across the board to turn it into threat). If you want me to change anything about those, let me know.

You also requested an updated TPS by stat analysis (or more specifically, "DPS/TPS contribution from stats per itemization point"), which I hope to get to later this week. I imagine this would be for the Gem/Enchant section.

Is there anything else that you'd like plotted/graphed/analyzed-to-death?

Longer reply later, just a couple of notes:

"Worst" move

For substituting spells into your rotation, all that matters is damage per cast time, which since everything is instant, amounts to "raw damage".

A spell with 20k damage but 2hr CD has terrible DPS, but ridiculous DPCast, so you'd sub it in.

As for why I had HotR as "worst": My analysis was done early in 3.0, and HotR starts worse that most abilities but scales better.

Implicit assumptions

I write my FAQ from the perspective of "I am tanking a hard boss that can kill me". Thus, there's two things I discount as substitution options:

• Holy Shield: This is never dropped from your rotation - you want the mitigation provided by being block capped (or close to it).
• Judgement: I assume you have JotJ, and that you're the only person putting up the debuff. I also assume you're using LoO and want proc uptime. Thus: you judge every 9 seconds. May be worth revisiting for deep Tier-8 gear: If hit/expertise are high enough, you could perhaps risk judging every second cycle and use the flat BV libram.

If you exclude Judge/HS from your "substitution options", you're down to pick worst of ShoR/HotR/Consecrate. HotR is worst DPCast of those three.

That said: Nothing is more DPC than HotR anymore. Thus: If mitigation matters, you never substitute, unless you're willing to risk JotJ falling off, in which case sub anything for Judgement of Blood, and don't bother for JoV. Course... you're not using JoBlood for prog-tanking, are you?

My reading of your maths is:

Bosses
Seal Vengeance. Never Substitute.

Trash
• Seal Blood. Don't Judge, substitute something.

Knaughty wrote:"Worst" move

For substituting spells into your rotation, all that matters is damage per cast time, which since everything is instant, amounts to "raw damage".

A spell with 20k damage but 2hr CD has terrible DPS, but ridiculous DPCast, so you'd sub it in.

As for why I had HotR as "worst": My analysis was done early in 3.0, and HotR starts worse that most abilities but scales better.

Yep, I figured this was a relic from the 3.0 guide, when it was true. Just pointing it out so it gets fixed.

Knaughty wrote:• Holy Shield: This is never dropped from your rotation - you want the mitigation provided by being block capped (or close to it).
• Judgement: I assume you have JotJ, and that you're the only person putting up the debuff. I also assume you're using LoO and want proc uptime. Thus: you judge every 9 seconds. May be worth revisiting for deep Tier-8 gear: If hit/expertise are high enough, you could perhaps risk judging every second cycle and use the flat BV libram.

The new BV libram is better overall than LoO in a 969 anyway. I ran through the math to confirm it earlier today, though I didn't plot it or give numbers. So we shouldn't have to worry about LoO uptime once we get our hands on the new Libram. Which increases the appeal of swapping every other Judgement for Exorcism even more (with the associated risk of JotJ downtime, of course).

Knaughty wrote:If you exclude Judge/HS from your "substitution options", you're down to pick worst of ShoR/HotR/Consecrate. HotR is worst DPCast of those three.

That said: Nothing is more DPC than HotR anymore.

I haven't checked the breakdown of the calculations with Sorthalis to be sure, but at least with Last Laugh, HotR is still less DPC than Cons and ShoR (at least according to the breakdown I gave above). Sorthalis may help it pass Consecration, but I doubt it'll catch ShoR. So you were correct in saying HotR i the worst DPCast out of the three, at least during early progression.

Knaughty wrote:Thus: If mitigation matters, you never substitute, unless you're willing to risk JotJ falling off, in which case sub anything for Judgement of Blood, and don't bother for JoV. Course... you're not using JoBlood for prog-tanking, are you?

My reading of your maths is:

Bosses
Seal Vengeance. Never Substitute.

Trash
• Seal Blood. Don't Judge, substitute something.

Yeah, that's pretty much the way I view it. The TPS boost of substituting Exorcism for JoV is small. Substituting Avenger's Shield for every 4th JoV is a pretty big boost, but even that probably isn't necessary.

Also worth noting that I'd never sub AS during trash, and I also wouldn't glyph it.

While I gear & spec for bosses... I'm not going to trade a very marginal boost to boss TPS in exchange for a major gimp to trash clearing utility.

Trash is the biggest boss. Go time how much of your raid is spent on trash? Fast & efficient clearing of trash matters. Unglyphed AS is awesome for trash - keep it (IMO). And while clearing trash, you'll often be ready to pull the next pack about when AS comes off CD (faster than that in Naxx). You should certainly be doing more than 1 pack per minute, which means you can only afford 1 AS per pack.

I do not see where an unglyphed Avenger's Shield boost your killspeed for trash. In general, trash is not our domain. Warriors and Ferals are charging into the mobgroups, using swipe and Shockwave/thunderclap wildly, while I'm still running into the pack with the rest of the melees, dropping down my consecration. The mobs are down before the 5th or 6th tick... An unglyphed AS would maybe pull out 1-3 mobs, that isn't a win. Out of range for the AE let them survive longer.

And if crowd control would be come back into raid business, an unglyphed AS wouldn't help much, except that the other tanks probably have to taunt their mobs off of us.

Rhî wrote:trash is not our domain. Warriors and Ferals are charging into the mobgroups, using swipe and Shockwave/thunderclap wildly, while I'm still running into the pack with the rest of the melees, dropping down my consecration.

I got a kick out of this statement since Warrior and Ferals claim they're the ones doing nothing on trash while we're busy tanking everything with AS, Consecration and HotR.

There are many bad warriors and bears, but especially warriors. Their aoe burst potencial is huge. Well played we have no way to beat them. They are faster (charge), they hit harder (instant full damage shockwave + instant full damage thunder clap). What are we doing? Throwing a shield up to 3 targets (what I wouldn't call ae), running 2-3 secs behind the warriors (2 gcds), dropping our consecration (which ticks per second small damage) and try to get at least 2-3 targets with our hammer.

Sure, if trashpacks would survive longer than 20-25 seconds, our ae threat is bigger. But most of the current trashpacks are down faster. Or am I wrong?

You're forgetting HoR and Exorcism for some reason.

Rhî wrote:There are many bad warriors and bears, but especially warriors. Their aoe burst potencial is huge. Well played we have no way to beat them. They are faster (charge), they hit harder (instant full damage shockwave + instant full damage thunder clap). What are we doing? Throwing a shield up to 3 targets (what I wouldn't call ae), running 2-3 secs behind the warriors (2 gcds), dropping our consecration (which ticks per second small damage) and try to get at least 2-3 targets with our hammer.

Sure, if trashpacks would survive longer than 20-25 seconds, our ae threat is bigger. But most of the current trashpacks are down faster. Or am I wrong?

I think it's a case of the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence.

Kind of how if you read the class forums, or even the tanking, healing, and DPS forums every class thinks they're underpowered, doing too little DPS, don't have enough utility, and that their raid spot is in jeopardy.

I didn't forget mentioning hammer, Majiben.

And I don say, that we are underpowered. It's just like it is: short fight vs ae trash packs favors warriors and bears. If a fight takes longer we outhreat them. Both sides are healthy green.

What we can do is to pick up one target, that we focus. But that is possible for every tank.

However, if you're the one doing the pulling, AS ensures you have primary threat on 3 mobs, and incidental aggro on the rest.

If you run up ahead of everyone and AS+consecrate, and then your warriors/bears/etc charge in, you will be tanking everything unless they taunt off of you.

That's how our naxx runs work anyway - I run in and pick up everything with consecrate, warriors/dks charge in and pick up one or two mobs each off of me to spread the load. When my stuff is nearly dead, they taunt what's left off of me so I can run ahead and chain-pull the next pack.

@ Knaughty:
I don't think we're disagreeing here at all, btw. I wouldn't give up the utility of AS for the threat boost either.
But the numbers don't lie, and I'd be remiss as an analyst if I chose to omit the fact that it is a threat boost. I'm here to provide you with the numbers, not tell you what to do with them.

I don't think it's worth covering in the FAQ either, unless you want to point it out specifically so you have a reason to bring up the points you have in this discussion.

One issue with the glyph of as is that it helps on fights where you need to pick up a couple adds during the fight. I understand that the fight is incredibly trivial atm but on grob for example as picks up slimes incredibly well. If the fight was actually hard (aka the slimes on the tank were an actual threat of him dieing) this would be a great tool.

As for the trash pickup I personally find it much easier on my warrior than my paladin. Since my warriors gear isn't close to my paladin aoe threat is harder, but from a pure picking up view warrior is much easier. This of course is just my opinion; when I do alt runs I'm usually with 2 prot pallies and it's kind of nice getting the view from the other side, so to speak.