Why bother with Hit/Expertise capping as Blood?

[zox2]

Before 5.0 the intent was that DS won't heal unless it hits. Even after 5.0 GC said something on the lines of "tanks should need hit/exp for their survivability tools, not for their dps tools" meaning that it's ok for a tank to miss with a dps ability, but shouldn't be ok to miss with a survivability tool.
We could argue that hit/exp doesn't do enough for us. It's also down somewhat to personal preference. Fight mechanics (mainly damage patterns) make a huge difference about just how important/useless hit/exp capping is.

[Inambour]

Yeah, let's not maximize ours dps, let's not maximize our character. Somewhat amazed by some answers here (especially coming from people that killed hc sha).
How about the boss u're doing has a nasty phase/ability cooldown you want to avoid doing more than X times because it's hard ? Maximizing will make sure you don't need to get over this part maybe one less time than any other kill. Maximizing also concerns tanks as well as any dps/healer.
I'll say it one last time, it's free. If you considered having 3 more % dodge and u thought that u wiped because u didn't doge that boss attack i'll gladly laugh at you.

[zox2]

copied from the other hit/exp thread that's going on in the dk forums on battle.net since i'm too lazy to type it all out again:
TL;DR
hit is a good personal DPS increase, but 6% more dps for YOU isn't even close to 6% for the RAID. Tank dps doesn't beat engrage timers. Maximizing your dps through proper playstyle is important, but sacrificing survivability for it doesn't make sense unless you either REALLY need the dps or you REALLY don't need the survivability.

You didn't count say 5% more dps from capping expertise. I don't know how low can you go on hit/exp, but going over 1% more damage done (in terms of boss hp) is starting to get a bit more meaningful. I'm not saying that getting that extra 7-8k raid dps from just playing better as a whole isn't much easier, but especially during progress it is a significant enough factor.

[Reniat]

I didn't count expertise because you generally can't get both hit and exp to 7.5% without losing some mastery, which automatically rules it out for me. However just for arguments sake let's forget that and factor it in anyway. And just so we have some diversity, lets look at a different fight. We already did gara'jal, so lets look at Spirit Kings.

The average (out of the top 100) blood dk did about 59k for 25H spirit kings. hit/exp capping would give you about 6.49k. 6.49k*600s enrage = 3.89m damage. The Spirit kings each have 196m for a total of 784m hp. 3.89m/784m = 0.5% extra boss hp. Again, that is compared to 0% hit/exp.

If you'd like we can take a look at gara'jal with exp.

Average (out of top 100) did 69k. gaining 11% from hit/exp capping gives you an extra 7.69k dps. 7.69k turns to 2.77m dmg. the boss has 543m hp, so you gained 2.77/543 = 0.5% boss HP.

So on both you gain about a whopping 0.5% extra boss hp in dmg by capping BOTH hit/exp. on most fights that's about the equivalent of one raid-wide GCD.



It sounds like I am just trashing on hit/exp, and I am kind of. Let me say that hit/exp capping is still viable, and if you are looking to rank then you'd be stupid not to. However when you are trying to down any 25m progression fight with remotely meaningful tank dmg, the ~5% avoidance is generally worth much more than the 0.5% extra boss hp. That is what i'm trying to get across.

Now i'm sure someone will bring up Wind Lord. Increasing your DPS on wind lord would be significant, however that's not a 1% wipe fight. That's a mechanic fight, and if no one steps on a wind bomb and the raid is handling killing the adds correctly (and not just aoeing) then the fight's yours. Plus on 25H that boss hits hard enough (assuming you're solo tanking) that you would want the avoidance anyway.

[Inambour]

I don't know how you reforge but using my off gear (502 off tank gear, i'm usually dps) i only loose some "shitty" dodge and maybe some parry rating which is anyway super crap compared to str. No mastery at all, still the same.

I'm in front of the reforge guy and with the reforge lite addon reforging avoidance i'll gain a 2% parry and 3% dodge at the cost of 6% hit chance and 4.2% expertise. Why would i do that ?
I don't die because of boss dmg, especially if you know how to use CDs (u can call for someone else CDs too, you are not playing alone) & DS properly and time it with boss swings or wait for some dmg income. I do die because we are learning an encounter and our raid didn't do something properly tactics wise.

Tbh, i recall someone saying mastery gonna be nerfed next tier ; it has to be. I'm nearly at 195% raid buffed with like 640+k hp and some decent avoidance (while being hit capped). whats is it gonna be next tier ? 250% ? more ?

[Nillo]

There is literally no point of capping hit/expertise as a Blood DK anymore.
Tank damage barely matters to a point where the DPS you lose from not being capped is insignificant.

edit: Gear has enough hit/expertise on it, sitting around 3-5% is fine.

There's also no point in going for dodge/parry since damage taken by the tank rarely matters.
Gosh you 25m players are so short sighted -.-

[Reniat]

"not dying" is a poor metric to use as a tank. Yes that's the black and white goal, but you can "not die" and still be harder/easier to heal. What I was doing in the post above was saying the dps you gain isn't even close to game breaking. Unless you are RIGHT on the edge of the beserk timer the dps you contributed is just as "wasted" as the avoidance you forfeited because you weren't dying. Also, dodge is "crappy" because it takes a lot of rating to get a decent chunk of %, but we are already looking at % lost, not rating. 5% lost is 5% lost, whether it comes from dodge or parry or strength (through parry). Double also, 1 str = .97 parry, and with vengeance str is almost negligible in terms of dps gain, so i'm not sure where you're getting "parry is super crap compared to str".

---------- Post added 2013-01-08 at 06:49 AM ----------

There's also no point in going for dodge/parry since damage taken by the tank rarely matters.
Gosh you 25m players are so short sighted -.-

There is equally no point in doing more dps if the dps isn't needed. You may do a larger % of the raids dps as a 10m tank, but either way if you don't need the extra dps it is just as "wasted" as the extra dodge/parry that you "don't need"

[Grubjuice]

What's so fun about gearing for dodge/parry compared to dealing some extra damage? °_°

I just like the structure of defensive stats for defensive specs and offensive stats for offensive specs. also i hate that i have to reforge every goddamn last iota of secondary stats into expertise just to run a brewmaster, that is not fun at all.

[Dossou]

Yeah, let's not maximize ours dps, let's not maximize our character. Somewhat amazed by some answers here (especially coming from people that killed hc sha).
How about the boss u're doing has a nasty phase/ability cooldown you want to avoid doing more than X times because it's hard ? Maximizing will make sure you don't need to get over this part maybe one less time than any other kill. Maximizing also concerns tanks as well as any dps/healer.
I'll say it one last time, it's free. If you considered having 3 more % dodge and u thought that u wiped because u didn't doge that boss attack i'll gladly laugh at you.

The goal of a tank is not to maximize their damage, the goal of a tank is to minimize their damage taken.

Gearing for DPS stats as a tank over defensive starts is ridiculous.
The most common death in a 25 man is a tank death.

[Mionelol]

Not only is assuming you do 50k or 60k DPS while actively tanking complete bullshit, but assuming that +1% hit is as simple of a DPS increase as just making 1% more abilities connect is incredibly wrong. SoB, hello? Resource loop, hello?

The general rule of thumb is simple - anything that is a mastery loss is not good, anything that is a dodge or parry loss doesn't matter in the slightest.
And who the fuck loses tanks in raids nowadays? The only encounters that can kill tanks are:
1) Lei Shi. Avoidance is sure useful there.
2) Sha of Fear. Avoidance isn't necessary in the slightest and at best might just compensate for bad plays if you get lucky.

That's it.

[Asheriah]

The goal of a tank is not to maximize their damage, the goal of a tank is to minimize their damage taken.

Gearing for DPS stats as a tank over defensive starts is ridiculous.
The most common death in a 25 man is a tank death.

Well, not "that" common. But I agree, some bosses hit really hard in 25-man, Sha of fear is a bitch.

[Inambour]

The goal of a tank is not to maximize their damage, the goal of a tank is to minimize their damage taken.

Gearing for DPS stats as a tank over defensive starts is ridiculous.
The most common death in a 25 man is a tank death.

What Mione said... I also raid 25m, only 2 days a week for 3 hours, yet we manage to be at 10/16hc with so little play and i guarantee i wouldn't be bitching about being hit capped or anything not useful for my raid unless it had an advantage with the little we consecrate to this game.
I don't know where you keep loosing tanks, i'm only off tanking when we need 3 tanks (aka Lei Shi, Sha, Elegon or when any of the tanks want to roll coin on deeeps gear).
Our MT is a warrior. You know how easy it is to heal a warrior when he's super geared, the amount of dmg mitigated on each attacks is beyond ridiculous compared to a blood shield (not even counting absorbs when full rage).
Also where did i say i was gearing/reforging for dps ? I'm just reforging to maximize my output when i'm off tanking.
Idc if it's 0.5% or less of boss totals health, yet if all the dps have the same goal (which they do), it's adds up.

"not dying" is a poor metric to use as a tank. Yes that's the black and white goal, but you can "not die" and still be harder/easier to heal. What I was doing in the post above was saying the dps you gain isn't even close to game breaking. Unless you are RIGHT on the edge of the beserk timer the dps you contributed is just as "wasted" as the avoidance you forfeited because you weren't dying. Also, dodge is "crappy" because it takes a lot of rating to get a decent chunk of %, but we are already looking at % lost, not rating. 5% lost is 5% lost, whether it comes from dodge or parry or strength (through parry). Double also, 1 str = .97 parry, and with vengeance str is almost negligible in terms of dps gain, so i'm not sure where you're getting "parry is super crap compared to str".

I meant parry rating, sorry for the confusion :/.
But as a DK how can u be hard to heal, have you seen all the def CDs you have ? Combine every one with trinket procs and call for raid CDs from others (yet you are not raiding alone...) and you can pretty much be under some "kind" of CD for the whole duration of the fight whether it's yours or someone else' s.

There is equally no point in doing more dps if the dps isn't needed. You may do a larger % of the raids dps as a 10m tank, but either way if you don't need the extra dps it is just as "wasted" as the extra dodge/parry that you "don't need"

DPS is always needed, i don't enjoy spending 30 more sec on a boss and face a crappy ability because everyone in the raid has the same mentality as you describe in your posts.
The day i'll loose mastery i'll change my mind, but it's not even close to happening.

[Reniat]

DPS is always needed, i don't enjoy spending 30 more sec on a boss and face a crappy ability because everyone in the raid has the same mentality as you describe in your posts.

You hit/exp capping will save you <2s depending on the fight, not 30. And DPS shouldn't be taking this philosophy because dps it's their JOB. All they have to do is do damage and not stand in the freaking sunbeam when we're letting the dark of night hit it. If you have DPS who aren't maximizing dps then you need to find new dps. Tank DPS is important, and you should be maximizing your dps in your playstyle (getting every scrap out dmg out of DRW by maximizing double diseases uptime and SR use, using DnD with CS procs as often as you can, stuff like that). We're not arguing that tank dps is irrelevant, but rather that it's not worth sacrificing survivability over for progression. Farmed content who cares, but we're talking for progression.

Not only is assuming you do 50k or 60k DPS while actively tanking complete bullshit, but assuming that +1% hit is as simple of a DPS increase as just making 1% more abilities connect is incredibly wrong. SoB, hello? Resource loop, hello?

The general rule of thumb is simple - anything that is a mastery loss is not good, anything that is a dodge or parry loss doesn't matter in the slightest.
And who the fuck loses tanks in raids nowadays? The only encounters that can kill tanks are:
1) Lei Shi. Avoidance is sure useful there.
2) Sha of Fear. Avoidance isn't necessary in the slightest and at best might just compensate for bad plays if you get lucky.

That's it.

I wasn't assuming anything for those numbers. On the fights I was looking at the average out of the top 100 blood parses was 69k and 59k. Also I was going on sims for the dps increase data. 7.5% hit versus 0% hit is a 6% dps gain on average. I'm not making numbers up.

SoB and resources:
Hit/exp capping for SoB is a gain of 2% mitigation. More often than not you are going to not gain any stacks by hit/exp capping since even with 0% hit/exp you have an 85% chance per swing to not lose a stack. (i'm not including the 7.5% lost by parry since I don't think anyone would advocate hard capping exp as blood). Now, i'm sure you're going to say that 1 stack is 20% of a shield, and you'd be right. That sounds like a lot. however avoidance also works with our shield. If you've got a shield active and you dodge a 300k attack, then that's 300k worth of shield that you saved via avoidance. Depending on the damage taken and size of the current shield, that could be anywhere from 70%-200% of your shield, compared to 20% from a single SoB stack. Even in some of the highest tank dmg situations this tier (early ph2 shek'zeer, for example) an average shield is going to be around 300-350k, so a 300k avoided attack would be worth around 100%-87% of a shield.

I'm sure someone's going to point out that a single SoB stack may only be worth 20% of a shield, but you have a greater chance at losing them. 15% chance versus the 5% avoidance lost. you have a 15% chance to lose 20% mitigation. that's about 3% extra mitigation (this is in a vacuum, which is why it doesn't line up with the simmed 2%.) with avoidance you have a 5% chance to lose 100% (that's on the low side and only really possible in situations with lots of smaller hitting adds, a la shek'zeer) of your shield which is 5%. Neither is game breaking, but in terms of raw survivability SoB doesn't stack up (lol get it? "stack") to the avoidance you lose.

As far as rune strike and resource gain goes, by hit capping you are removing a 7.5% chance to miss an ability that has a 40% chance to proc for 30% of a death strike. That's an overall increase of <1% in DS througput.

[Mionelol]

Also I was going on sims for the dps increase data. 7.5% hit versus 0% hit is a 6% dps gain on average.

Link, or not believing that in the slightest. And I'm very well aware of the rest of your post, but I'm referring to SoB and the resource loop for DPS purposes and nothing else

Also, taking the top 100 parses for tanks is completely irrelevant. You literally double (or close enough, 60k-ish vs 110k-ish) the damage output from top 5 to top 100 on a boss like Gara'jal. How can anyone deal 60k dps on gara'jal?

[Reniat]

Looks like i was a bit off, but not by much.

using 50k iterations with both 0% hit and 7.5%.
It looks like it's about a 7% dps increase as opposed to 6%. So hit does slightly more than I had originally though, but the gains in terms of raid dps are still extremely small. (sorry should have resized the images)

7.5% hit:


0% hit:

[Mionelol]

Where is such a profile available?

Also, even if the gain was as small as 0.28% of the raid damage (or whatever the number you said earlier was), I'd still say to go for it. 0.28% per person is huge.

I don't know why would anyone say the tank's job isn't to maximize its damage. You don't rely on avoidance to do anything. Why would you gear up for a better chance of something meaningless (avoidance) to happen?

[Reniat]

Where is such a profile available?

Also, even if the gain was as small as 0.28% of the raid damage (or whatever the number you said earlier was), I'd still say to go for it. 0.28% per person is huge.

I don't know why would anyone say the tank's job isn't to maximize its damage. You don't rely on avoidance to do anything. Why would you gear up for a better chance of something meaningless (avoidance) to happen?

1) it's not .28% per person, it's .28% (slightly more after the new data) for 1 person. All the dps should already be doing everything they can to maximize dmg since that's what they're there to do. If you hit capping gave everyone else an extra .28% then hot dog sign me up, since that's huge across 25 players, but that's simply not the case.

2) I already told you why avoidance is valuble for survivability, and some tanks prefer to maximize their stats for survivability. Making yourself easier to heal even when you are already not dying can still help progression. Putting less pressure on the healers can allow for more raid heals, which can prevent deaths. And if you are wiping to an enrage, deaths during the fight will make much more of a negative impact than the positive impact of you bringing an extra .5% of the bosses health in dmg. I'm not saying it's ever the tanks fault if a DPS dies to lack of healing, but doing whatever you can do to alleviate pressure on the healers isn't worth nothing like you seem to think.

[Mionelol]

It is 0.28% on one person. If anyone else could gain 0.28% at whim, they would. That's the point. Why make an exception for a tank?
How is your avoidance helping your survivability? That's actually a serious question. You don't rely on your avoidance. You will have healers on you, pre-casting on you, putting hots on you, whatever healers do, regardless of whether you dodge 40 attacks in a row or don't dodge anything for 5 minutes straight. There is not a single encounter in this tier where tank input damage actually matters outside from Lei Shi, where avoidance is completely useless (and healers have absolutely nothing to heal outside of tanks anyway), and Sha of Fear, where avoidance can actually be counterproductive just as much as it can save you after a bad play. Maybe Empress actually matters, I recall having her hitting hard but I've never tanked her so idk.
You're not getting healers to stop giving you attention just because you have an extra 2% chance to dodge an attack. Just no.

Also, where would you find such a profile?

[Reniat]

I found 25H shek'zeer much harder than 25H lei shi. I didn't find lei shi hard at all. CDs make that fight trivial for DKs. I already told you how avoidance works with shields to help you when I thought you were making a point for SoB being great for survivability. Go read that again and that's how avoidance helps. We don't rely on it, but it's great when it happens.

[Darkfriend]

The issue is that, if DPS doesn't make or break a kill, than DPS is not important for the tank as far as the raid goes. Rankings, personal pride, ability to maximize DPS are factors but if they don't make a kill they don't matter on that kill. It's like being able to type 120 WPM in a job where you only have to type 2 sentences a shift. You'll be able to do it a lot faster, but its such a small part of your 8 hour shift that it doesn't matter.

If I could ensure I'd stay alive and still hit cap, I would on my blood DK. Why? Because I enjoy doing more DPS. That being said, since my DK is an alt, and I raid with people who aren't as good as some of ya'lls healers, survivability matters a lot more.