Druid tank: Stamina or agi?

[Deleted]

I used to be a full stamina bear, but after giving agility a fair chance now I must say I am impressed. I still use my heroic Vial of Stolen Memories because it has such a beautiful use effect for us bears, I basically become immune to physical hits when I use it due to dodge.

So I say dump stamina, it ain't worth it. As cool as you'd look with all that HP the extra dodge helps alot (Heroic Zon'ozz says 'hi'.)

[Auroro]

I agree, we need to lock this down.

[tangedyn]

You know it'll just be a couple of days before a new thread reappears right? Perhaps we should just sticky this instead lol.

[Artaius]

I personally have been stacking stam up until about 3 days ago, when I realized how OP catbear is, and how much it sucks with full stam gems. So from now on, I'll just gem agi and put in stam trinkets if I need the health for stupid execute mechanics like Impale and such.

[Cutedruid]

There is simply no fight in HC dragon soul that requires a HP pool bigger than what you get with full agi gemming.

lol .

[Deleted]

Agi if you want the best for your main.
Agi/stam if you want to be cheap with your alts.

[rated]

The evolution of this thread is hilarious.

First it was just a newbie bear wanting information on how to gear his toon before he hit 85, then it turned into a stam stacking bear arguing with everyone that his opinion was correct over everyone else and now it's just a posting ground for random people to come in and give their 2 cents for how they gem for their raids.

[pallydan]

Agility is better for tanking multiple adds - because the average aggregate damage more closely correlates to avoidance equating to pure mitigation.

To make an analogy, if you were to flip a coin, the odds of getting either heads or tails would be 50% in the long run, despite the possibility of a streak of heads or tails. The more you flip, the closer to the actual odds of 50% you will be getting towards.

With add tanking, the damage is smaller but more frequent - so the avoidance % will more closely reflect as mitigation (% damage reduction).

Now, when tanking a boss that hits for large chunks, I'd prefer stamina - but this is up to debate, depending on the healer. If rolling HoTs to continually top off the tank, then agility might be better. But if the healer is doing casted heals, with a lot of overhealing, then perhaps stamina might be better - as it gives the healer a better estimate of the timing of the casts/heals because avoidance is based on chance and not a guaranteed hit/miss. The incoming damage on a low avoidance/high stamina tank is more predictable than one that relies on avoidance only.

Not to mention larger health pools increase the health return on Leader of the Pack.

[Deleted]

Yeah, uhmm.. this thread has certainly evolved.. Reading through all the answers, I guess Agi gemming is better, though stamina gemming just semms so tempting.. (I mean, who wouldn't want high healthpool as a tank?).

[tangedyn]

Agility is better for tanking multiple adds - because the average aggregate damage more closely correlates to avoidance equating to pure mitigation.

That's true, but it will really be more due to higher SD uptime using Thrash and Swipe.
It's fun fully absorbing Malevolent Strike at H Halfus with almost 100% SD uptime now... at least until the whelps die :/

[Hrakk]

From my experiences with dragon soul. The way this raid is deisgned a vast majority of the fights are 1 tankable. This to me suggests 2 types of tanks are needed based on the fight. I have found that after re-gemming all my agility into stamina I lost 3% dodge and about 3k attack power but I gained 41k life.. The fact is with more gear come higher base stats and there comes a point where your just wasting gem slots. yes i was able to tank well in my gear but there have been several closer calls gemmed agi then stam.

++Plus most top world guild tanks would not be doing it if it was a bad idea.++