[Prot] TDR vs Smoother Damage

[themasterninja]

So it's generally been the consensus that smoother Damage (vs less total dmg) intake is a better model for tanks.
I know technically that stacking avoidance would give us better total damage reduction but potential bad rng make it a bad idea.

However a fellow warrior tank put it out that on a fight like Stone Guards it was better to use Sblock rather than Sbarrage as healers are comfortable with the predictable Bleed dmg - but not happy with dmg spikes that can occur due to the melee dmg (especially when tanking 2 dogs).

I found that to be an interesting thought, the biggest source of dmg in that fight is Bleed dmg, so I was naturally casting Sbarrier as much as possible. Personally I haven't had any problems using that strat. But I can see his point of view that sudden bad rng and lack of Sblock uptime could result in more spikey dmg intake.

What do you guys think?

[Liania]

On a recent heroic kill, rend flesh accounted for 75% of the total dmg received, ill personally stay with barrier

[Gum]

i personally would go for barrier spam on that fight, i dont think youll see enough damage reduction from shieldblock for it to be viable. Specially considering how much AP you get from veng. Your barrier will do so much for your EHP - Im only tanking one dog, having our paladin on the two dogs, but i easily pull 17k hps, only with barrier that fight. I think thats worth to consider no matter what your healers say or do.

[themasterninja]

Yeah true, logically I would've thought reducing the biggest dmg contributor would be ideal. Healers could go oom otherwise.

[Fiercon]

38.4 % - that's the raidwide damage, that rend flesh contributed on our kill.

Considering the fact, that it (ideally) only affects 2 people in your raid that means, that 2 people are bothered with more than one third of total damage taken.
For those two this is something around 65-80% of their damage taken. While swings from bosses might make the tank bite the dust it's only their additional contribution to the overall damage coming from rend flesh.

Everything that saves mana on that fight is the better choice. Avoidance can be kept to a minimum as long as that helps you keeping up damage mitigating abilities like Sbarrier.

But that's just my 2 cents