New Tank here!

[Fatel]

Good Afternoon everyone!

I have primarily DPS my entire career as a DK, first UH and then Frost. In my 10 man, one of our tanks is leaving due to the fact his wife is dropping a new bebe and I got 'elected' to tank.

I am not going to post my armory yet as it isnt complete but suffice to say I was able to put together a decent set (sans Helm and Shoulders as of yet) rather quickly. I have been doing a LOT of reading about Blood tanking and most of it makes good sense. My first WoW toon was a warrior tank so I am familiar with all the basic concepts. One question did keep popping up though around runeforgeing our weapons. Why Swordshattering instead of SSG? I understand the basic avoidance bonus but the second part of that rune is useless, while SSG seems to give 2 reasonable bonuses.

Thanks in advance for the advice

/salute

[fangless]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post15385716

[hyperionx]

It doesn't matter if the 2nd part is useless, the 4% parry is better than the weak armor and weak stam boost from SSG.

Just read SSHA778's post:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post15385716

Have fun with the cooldowns. I don't have a warrior, but hear they don't have very many. Blood has a shitton of situational CD's but most fights can be planned around them.

[Fatel]

Thanks folks - makes sense.

[Grennish]

Once you get to a certain gear threshold I would make the jump to Stoneskin Gargoyle because in a Heroic Mode situation that extra armor and stamina can really make the difference, especially when your Parry starts DR. Yes parrying an attack completely is better than taking less damage but with the extra stamina helping your blood shield and the free armor actually being noticeable with the recent blood armor buffs. Stoneskin ends up being a better choice in a Heroic setting.

[Nillo]

Once you get to a certain gear threshold I would make the jump to Stoneskin Gargoyle because in a Heroic Mode situation that extra armor and stamina can really make the difference, especially when your Parry starts DR. Yes parrying an attack completely is better than taking less damage but with the extra stamina helping your blood shield and the free armor actually being noticeable with the recent blood armor buffs. Stoneskin ends up being a better choice in a Heroic setting.

The enchant doesn't have DR and the avoidance increase is a lot higher than the tradeoff you'd get from gemming avoidance over stamina.
Unless you really really need that small amount of extra EH - you'll be better off with the 4% parry.

[SSHA778]

Once you get to a certain gear threshold I would make the jump to Stoneskin Gargoyle because in a Heroic Mode situation that extra armor and stamina can really make the difference, especially when your Parry starts DR. Yes parrying an attack completely is better than taking less damage but with the extra stamina helping your blood shield and the free armor actually being noticeable with the recent blood armor buffs. Stoneskin ends up being a better choice in a Heroic setting.

No.

This conclusion is inaccurate, as well as its foundation.

SSG yields increasing returns with gear (because it is a multiplier, not a flat addition). Parry DR does not make each point of parry less effective. Extra armor shifts your mitigation out of your Blood Shield and into your armor. While you do gain a slight bit of overall mitigation from increasing armor, the vast majority of it goes toward never having taken damage in the first place, which means it never goes into your Death Strike.

For those that hate reading my posts, there is a TL;DR for your convenience. If you so choose, please skip.

Let's use this for reference:
http://chardev.org/?profile=341957

Since I'm leery of character profilers and stats, I'll do all of the necessary steps to get the final results I want to show. Trinkets are intentionally omitted.

The base armor (without the enchant/meta) is 23637. Applying all the modifiers, you would have

(23637)*1.02*1.55*1.1+250+4075 = 45432 armor raid buffed (58.24%).
With SSG, 45432*1.04 = 47249 (59.19%)

Relatively, SSG provides 2.27% damage reduction per hit via armor.

Now, let's quantify the stamina gain.

(8968+584)*1.08*1.09*1.05*1.05 = 12397 stamina raid buffed
With SSG, 12397*1.02 = 12645, or +248 stamina.

1 stamina is 14 HP, so +248 stamina is +248*14 = 3471 HP.
With double stamina trinkets, (relative to non-SSG with 2x stamina), you gain +4034 HP.

With raid buffs, the gear set would have 19.07% parry and 15.18% dodge. Your total avoidance would be 39.25%, but bosses have "expertise," so it's actually 39.25%-1.8% = 37.45%.

Ignoring the interaction with mastery, you could expect a relative damage reduction of 1 - (1 - .4145) / (1 - .3745) = 6.39%. This won't be entirely accurate in reality, though.

To get a more accurate picture, I ran the SS values into my sim, which is quite accurate for the assumptions it makes. You will just have to take my word for it, or you can disregard this and just use the value above.

For reference, these are the relevant parameters used:
HP: 213883
Mastery: 4206 rating
Hit: 112 rating
Expertise: 233 rating
Dodge: 15.18% (2036 rating) [sim reduces automatically]
Parry: 19.07% (3027 rating) [" "]
Armor: 45432
Swing Damage: 1/3rd of HP post-modifiers every 1.8s, +/- 10%; 219349 mean pre-mit

The fight duration is so long that variance is more or less a non-factor (14h = lol). 50 trials were run, and the average was taken.

From the sim, SS provided a 7.41% relative damage reduction.

While I'm at it, I might as well run SSG, so I did. The difference in damage taken (NOT damage per hit), as in, damage that decreases your HP, (NOT overall mitigation) was 2.83%. Pretty close to 2.27%, considering that was only factoring armor and ignoring mastery / minimum shields, which would boost it. The difference in means of overall mitigation was .0037, with a std of .0021, meaning that it is not statistically significant.

Since this is a wall of text like most of my posts, I'll make this simpler with a summary.


TL;DR:
At max gear, SSG provides:
-Somewhere between 3400 to 4000 extra HP (ignoring Ancestral Healing)
-~2.27% relative damage reduction per hit via armor (not to be confused with a ~2.27% relative overall mitigation gain; this is false)
-No significant relative overall mitigation gain

SS provides:
-7.41% relative damage reduction
-4.81% relative overall mitigation increase

[edit: I don't really know how to stress just how large of a relative damage reduction that is. It's huge. It's almost the same as the 30%->55% armor buff (when looking at the effect of that armor on damage that decreases HP). It's almost the same as +5 mastery#. It's huge. You can't just hand-wave it off as being completely random and unreliable.]

Directly comparing the two is comparing apples to oranges. SS affects overall mitigation and the total damage that decreases your HP very dramatically. SSG only affects the individual hits you take by a small amount, but not your overall mitigation.

You pick the one that best addresses the issues that you are facing. That's that. Content is irrelevant.

[2nd edit: made terms consistent]

[3rd edit: Since it will probably pop up, here is how the terms are defined:
Damage reduction: damage taken that decreases your HP (aka not absorbed or avoided)
Overall mitigation: (damage_that_decreases_HP) / (damage_that_decreases_HP + absorbs + average_pre_absorb_hit * number_avoided_hits)]

[hyperionx]

I really hope you just copypasted that instead of retypping all that.

[SSHA778]

Why would I copy and paste content which was not read the first time?

Expecting it to be read a second time would be insanity.

[Fatel]

Why would I copy and paste content which was not read the first time?

Expecting it to be read a second time would be insanity.

I read it!! It made my head hurt a bit, but I read it.

FYI - tanked 10-man DS last night as my maiden journey. Still getting used to the CD's but man it was fun.