Some help with tanking

[a little Kappa]

When I do dragon soul normal with my guild tanking on pally I usually dont take damage at all on bosses, but when I do get hit I go down to 20% or so in 1 critical hit. This is extremely annoying since I'm not a experienced tank and not exactly sure how to balance my stats. Can some pro prot pally check me out and give some tips?

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...reheart/simple

[Tutorial]

It's your stamina tbh.

You are CTC capped now, so it's just a matter of gear to increase your health.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...dcake/advanced

Thats what you want to end up like.

[a little Kappa]

Whats "CTC capped"?

[Alta87]

Avoidance capped means nothing if you dont have the stamina to back it up. Which is your case.

Also, change out your DPS talents with survival talents. You want 2/2 in eternal glory and guarded by the light, and remove anything you want from PoJustice, reckoning, hallowed ground or eye for an eye.

Tanking is about surviving not doing damage.

[Deleted]

I just checked your armory, your Combat Table Coverage is 99.72%. The cap is 102.4% but you're not wearing any gloves, so it's quite likely that you are indeed capped, so that is probably not the issues.

The obvious answer would be "They just hit hard.." It's probably not what you want to hear, I know! What I like to do is just chain cooldowns (but save them for hard hitting abilities that you know are coming - Bigwigs/DBM is your best friend!). If you're having trouble with fights where there is a lot of spelldamage, try glyphing divine protection and getting the trinket from Tol'Barad. 2 extra cooldowns for magic damage right there. Lastly, use your cooldowns before you take damage, not when you're at 20% health. It sounds easy but a lot of people will have the reflex to really use them as panic buttons, they go "OH SNAP I JUST GOT HIT FOR 150K) then hit all their cd's at once - not the best thing to do.

While I haven't said anything you won't find in the tankspot/elitist jerks compendium I hope this will have helped at least a bit.. Just hope your healers are decent and remember to face the boss

[a little Kappa]

Ye I took off gloves yesterday to update my alts into arena junkies

edit: I dont quite get what you mean by combat table average. Does this have something to do with mastery?

[Deleted]

Ye I took off gloves yesterday to update my alts into arena junkies

edit: I dont quite get what you mean by combat table average. Does this have something to do with mastery?

Long story short: There is a 102.4% chance the boss will actually HIT you, so you will take full damage. Now every character has a 5% built in chance for mobs to miss them, so it's already down to 97.4%. Now add to this your block chance, your parry chance and your dodge chance, and subtract that number from 97.4 . This is the chance the boss will ACTUALLY hit you (now mind you, if you check recount you will see that it doesn't happen very often at all!). Of course this only goes for melee attacks/abilities, when it comes to spells you can only count on your resistances and cooldowns .

If you use this macro it will print your CTC in your chat window: /run DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combat table coverage. Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance() +5))

Hope this explanation made sense!

[Alta87]

Ye I took off gloves yesterday to update my alts into arena junkies

edit: I dont quite get what you mean by combat table average. Does this have something to do with mastery?

CtC stands for Combat table coverage which is another word for avoidance capped.

Avoidance stats are = Block, parry and dodge.

The avoidance cap for paladins is when their total avoidance stats are at 102.4%.

Make any sense now?=/

[a little Kappa]

Yeah I got it now. So when I got 100% avoidance I go for stamina correct?

[Tutorial]

Yeah I got it now. So when I got 100% avoidance I go for stamina correct?

Correct.

I just checked your armory, your Combat Table Coverage is 99.72%. The cap is 102.4% but you're not wearing any gloves, so it's quite likely that you are indeed capped, so that is probably not the issues.

The obvious answer would be "They just hit hard.." It's probably not what you want to hear, I know! What I like to do is just chain cooldowns (but save them for hard hitting abilities that you know are coming - Bigwigs/DBM is your best friend!). If you're having trouble with fights where there is a lot of spelldamage, try glyphing divine protection and getting the trinket from Tol'Barad. 2 extra cooldowns for magic damage right there. Lastly, use your cooldowns before you take damage, not when you're at 20% health. It sounds easy but a lot of people will have the reflex to really use them as panic buttons, they go "OH SNAP I JUST GOT HIT FOR 150K) then hit all their cd's at once - not the best thing to do.

While I haven't said anything you won't find in the tankspot/elitist jerks compendium I hope this will have helped at least a bit.. Just hope your healers are decent and remember to face the boss

Don't listen to this guy as far as CTC goes. Anything above 99 is utterly useless as raidbuffs and/or trinkets, windwalk and the likes should easily ctc cap you.

[a little Kappa]

Cool, so once I get home from school I'm gonna regem some stuff on my pally, thanks!

Also I should go for dodge or parry the most?

[Deleted]

Yeah I got it now. So when I got 100% avoidance I go for stamina correct?

102.4% As to whether you should go stamina.. You can either go stamina or start swapping over some mastery into parry and dodge (Which isn't that easy, since mastery gives a lot more avoidance per point than dodge and parry).

I can see an angry mob coming when I say this, and by no means should you take my advice over anyone else's but.. The way I see it gemming stamina will never net you THAT much extra hp. I got bashed on all the time for having low hp even though my gear was by no means garbage, but people seem to think that for example an extra 15K HP is magically gonna make you from a mana sponge into a healer's wet dream. Truth is, their CTC might be lower than yours, and with a look at the dungeon journal you can probably figure out that for a tank, 15K is not really that significant - especially since some amount of healers are (hopefully) already focussed on you anyway.

Just my 2 cents.

Edit: If you're on a boss that almost exclusively casts spells, by all means use the TB trinket + another with a lot of stamina (Scales of Life for example). You can't dodge spells anyway (Although it would be awesome if we could!)

---------- Post added 2012-01-09 at 01:33 PM ----------

Don't listen to this guy as far as CTC goes. Anything above 99 is utterly useless as raidbuffs and/or trinkets, windwalk and the likes should easily ctc cap you.

Bit harsh :P But yeah he's right

[Deleted]

It's just about stamina and cooldowns rotation.

Your gear looks good, and you are CTC capped atm.

No problems. Just get more gear = problem solved.

[Deleted]

102.4% As to whether you should go stamina.. You can either go stamina or start swapping over some mastery into parry and dodge (Which isn't that easy, since mastery gives a lot more avoidance per point than dodge and parry).

I can see an angry mob coming when I say this, and by no means should you take my advice over anyone else's but.. The way I see it gemming stamina will never net you THAT much extra hp. I got bashed on all the time for having low hp even though my gear was by no means garbage, but people seem to think that for example an extra 15K HP is magically gonna make you from a mana sponge into a healer's wet dream. Truth is, their CTC might be lower than yours, and with a look at the dungeon journal you can probably figure out that for a tank, 15K is not really that significant - especially since some amount of healers are (hopefully) already focussed on you anyway.

Just my 2 cents.

Edit: If you're on a boss that almost exclusively casts spells, by all means use the TB trinket + another with a lot of stamina (Scales of Life for example). You can't dodge spells anyway (Although it would be awesome if we could!)

---------- Post added 2012-01-09 at 01:33 PM ----------



Bit harsh :P But yeah he's right

I compared myself to another tank that had gone the dodge/parry route the other day, mind you I had 4 higher average Ilvl, but I also had 35.000 more health than him, that's quite significant if you ask me.

he only had 5-6% more avoidance than me, what would you preffer? 6% avoidance or 35000 unbuffed health?

[Soisoisoi]

he only had 5-6% more avoidance than me, what would you preffer? 6% avoidance or 35000 unbuffed health?

6% Avoidance. You still won't live if you get hit for 60k or whatever because you didn't avoid/block it. So you might as well get capped THEN go for stamina to buffer your HP.

CTC > Avoidance for physical damage-only fights, of which there aren't any in current tier.

So CTC > Stamina is probably best. Even if it's to make sure you don't take a full hit.

[Tutorial]

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...dcake/advanced

Perfect example of a stamina paladin.
208k unbuffed health. This beats a parry/dodge tank for a few reasons. The biggest one being that Dragonsoul is all about magical damage...
Goodluckhavefun on Heroic Yor'sahj without magic ress and 160k unbuffed.


EDIT:

In other words, I, good sir, laugh at all the people saying they would rather have avoidance this TIER. Haha to you.

[Deleted]

At the same time I want to agree and disagree with you haha I can definitely see your point, but RNG can be.. annoying.. This is a very hypothetical situation but an unlucky few hits might cause you to die whereas he would live. Anyway yeah, it's definitely a nice buffer, and it's quite likely healers will even heal you better just simply cause that extra hp makes them feel more at ease.

I am compelled to agree that once you're ctc capped, sure, go stamina, but still wondering if perhaps it's not a better option to just go for more dodge/parry. Perhaps it's just something to be decided on a fight to fight basis

Feel free to call me out for being a bullshitter - perhaps I am. But RNG will always be RNG.

[Tutorial]

At the same time I want to agree and disagree with you haha I can definitely see your point, but RNG can be.. annoying.. This is a very hypothetical situation but an unlucky few hits might cause you to die whereas he would live. Anyway yeah, it's definitely a nice buffer, and it's quite likely healers will even heal you better just simply cause that extra hp makes them feel more at ease.

I am compelled to agree that once you're ctc capped, sure, go stamina, but still wondering if perhaps it's not a better option to just go for more dodge/parry. Perhaps it's just something to be decided on a fight to fight basis

Feel free to call me out for being a bullshitter - perhaps I am. But RNG will always be RNG.

RNG or not, the only fight in which it MIGHT be more usefull than stamina is Warmaster or Morchok on HC... and EVEN then it's probably not.
Why? Cause losing 15-20k HP is ALOT.

Our tank (Renamedcake) get's hit for 100k hits with magic damage reduction (Talking bout Warlord for example). How will you survive with 60k HP when there are 3 healers ALSO focusing on heavy raid damage going out.

Take Yor'sahj.. I 2 healed it with a Disc Priest. A 160k HP Tank would need CONSTANT healing when solotanking Yorsahj (There is no real other way unless all of your dps is above 40k) While I can easily throw out a divine light and or holy radiance on a fight like that when a tank hits 240k HP buffed.

[Deleted]

Well, a 200K buffed tank probably wouldn't be doing heroic DS anyway. Regardless, I think if you compare a stamina tank to an avoidance tank in the exact same gear (Let's ban trinkets for the sake of argument), just different gems, would not have 35K more avoidance. Anyway as I'm sure you're more experienced in healing DS, I'll shut my mouth. I think as I gear up I'm sure the stamina will come with it.

PS: Sorry topic starter!

[Deleted]

What you need is:
Dodge% + Parry% + Block% + Miss(=5%) = 102.4%
That will make sure that every hit a boss does on you is either dodged, parried, blocked or missed.
I did some testing, and with my current gear levels dodgefood+kings/motw+str/agi buff gives 1.15% avoidance, maybe it does a bit less for you, I don't know. But with 101.4% unbuffed you should be fine.
Try to balance dodge & parry to reduce the effect of diminishing returns.
After the above is completed get some stamina. (Though you should always have at least some amount of stamina, but I've always had enough from gear and gemming stam/mast in blue slots.)