Prot haste build and askmrrobot.com

[Kaeth]

Dodge and parry are poop.

True, Shiny Pile of Refuse dodges and parries your attempts at getting Oondasta to drop loot.

[Deleted]

Since you're rocking double stam trinkets (or considering it) I can only assume/hope you're a 25m tank. 25m tank is really the only one that ever goes for our 4pc, as it is just too much wasted itemization. 2pc is really all you need, with helm/shoulders, and even that is a bit "wasteful" in 10man most times. Ret tier chest is our BIS (though I'm stuck with HC Jinrohk chest), as well as Primo hands and Durumu legs (stuck with normals on both, ugh).

SOI proc's cannot crit. All crit provides is an increase in throughtput.

Nobody is saying that crit is better for survival than mastery, but the problem lies in that most of the haste pieces this tier are haste/crit (meh) or haste/accuracy (yay), not haste/mastery.

Max haste is best on paper and in practice for 10man HC, 25HC needs a bit more stam buffer. If you look up almost any 10/13+ prot, you'll see damn near full haste stacking. I'm sitting just under 17k atm and have zero problems surviving even with reforging OUT OF mastery.

And no, dodge and/or parry is never a better idea.

10 man hc. I'm not, and I won't rock double stam trinkets. I'm using Soul Barrier + Ji-Kuns tank trink at the moment, since I'm having difficulties reforging out of exess accuracy stats and so far Horridon is keeping the haste trinks stashed away. I have also the dps trink from Ji-Kun, but 7.66% hit says I'm not allowed to equip it. The comment about the rep trink was for OP / any other pally looking for a decent stam trink to run.

I know I'm nitpicking, and I won't keep repeating myself past this one time, but I just want to clarify my last post. I'm not saying that 10 man HC would need double stam trinkets, or anything the likes. I'm saying that if there is any survivability issues, going for extra stam should be done with trinkets due the best ratio of lost haste for stamina. As I said: I do believe that - even from that 10+/13 protadins group - there are bound to be ones that would actually perform better using a stam trink, or at least if they stayed away from the crit gear. That extra 10k DPS won't mean squat if the tank hp keeps jumping between 100% and 5% having healers constanly getting heart attacks responding to the spikes, and thus burning mana that could be used more efficiently if the tank had a bit better hp buffer. But as I said in the start, this all is just nitpicking, since those guilds are still at 10+/13 and the tanks are performing well enough for them to kill the bosses. I just believe there would be room for improvement, and that going for max haste and taking up even the crit pieces is not an optimal way to go considering the raid performance as whole.

[Deleted]

there are bound to be ones that would actually perform better using a stam trink, or at least if they stayed away from the crit gear. That extra 10k DPS won't mean squat if the tank hp keeps jumping between 100% and 5% having healers constanly getting heart attacks responding to the spikes,

Not like the difference between having those extra 10k dps is that big for surviability. It is not the difference between going from 100% to 5% or 50%. More like 5% or 5.5%

[Deleted]

That one stam trink is around 5% more hp (ballpark, didn't really bother to check exact number), not 0.5%. Each of those crit + haste gear means 500 - 1000 missed defensive stats, and that adds up. Especially mastery, since it also increases the benefit from ShoR. If you rock, it doesn't really change things THAT much either way, since due more haste you have better ShoR uptime (altough it's still way under 5% more uptime compared to more conservative haste gearing). But even with little less haste you'll have ShoR available for the big nukes you need it to be up for. So in terms of surviving in front of the boss, I still say taking crit gear is a bad idea.

[Deleted]

Still, if you are having problem surviving in 10M, you have other issues than how you gear.

[Thirtyrock]

Still, if you are having problem surviving in 10M, you have other issues than how you gear.

See, while there is *some* truth to this, as in most people could improve their survivability most by playing better, gear matters, and how you gear can help your survival, even in 10 normal.

I, for instance, just started raiding again about 3-4 weeks ago, my gear is sub par, as is most of my guilds. We are progressing through 10m normal as if the tier just began, since all of us took a break from raiding since January or so. How I gear matters, both for dps checks and for survivability. Balancing the two concerns is important for my guild.

I've raided some heroic progression, so I have a medium-high skill level, having been able to cut it skill wise in a 25HC server first guild. But I'm in a guild that is doing normals these days, so I also have to consider the skill cap of my healers and dps, which means, again, how I gear matters to provide a buffer.

All that said, and you really didn't deserve a reply to your last post, since it was completely unhelpful:

Hit+Expertise to Hard cap, Haste>mastery>parry>dodge for survival. Haste>mastery>crit for dps. Stam is THE BEST for survival, topping all of those.
The 4 piece is good, according to Theck, especially when combined with Unbreakable Spirit.

Stam is a mixed bag, though. It lowers your dps to use stam trinkets and gems. It significantly raises your survivability to use them. It's really a subjective stat, though. Do you feel like you have enough stamina? Are you surviving well? Then go haste. Are you getting crushed all the time? Go Stam.


People have said all this in this thread already; Just reiterating in as succinct way as I can.

[celinamuna]

See, while there is *some* truth to this, as in most people could improve their survivability most by playing better, gear matters, and how you gear can help your survival, even in 10 normal.

Hit+Expertise to Hard cap, Haste>mastery>parry>dodge for survival. Haste>mastery>crit for dps. Stam is THE BEST for survival, topping all of those.
The 4 piece is good, according to Theck, especially when combined with Unbreakable Spirit.

Stam is a mixed bag, though. It lowers your dps to use stam trinkets and gems. It significantly raises your survivability to use them. It's really a subjective stat, though. Do you feel like you have enough stamina? Are you surviving well? Then go haste. Are you getting crushed all the time? Go Stam.


People have said all this in this thread already; Just reiterating in as succinct way as I can.

From 10 man raiding perspective i've barely if ever noticed stamina to help with survivability (unless you're really messing up mechanics).

While it might actually help i can probably count the number of times when that extra 50k would've saved my life on my fingers.
Seeing how most mechanics if you do fuck them up leave a fairly large overkill amount.

Even though 25M esp heroic is different (there is a lot more dmg incoming on relatively same health pool +- extra health from extra TF gear) in 10 man, i would consider extra haste OR mastery (depending on your flavor of choice) to be better for survivability (Because even if i switch out all of my gems into stam i'd get about 3600 stam, which is nice.... but... that's about 10% of my current stam, when my 4.8k haste/mastery from gems would make up about 30% off total haste/mastery.

Plus personally i would find that going from say 50% dmg reduction with sotr to 58% dmg reducton would be more helpful.

And regarding 4 piece comment : It is good... when compared to nothing. How good is it in reality ? I doubt anyone can calculate since you would need to account for : stats lost from not the best itemization + possibly swapping in 2 pieces (or 4 ) instead of 4 TF offsets, which would also lead to different dps (because as much it is important to survive, between a surviving tank with 40k and surviving tank with 90k dps, dps matters), different dmg intake on a non static fight.

[Todyn]

From 10 man raiding perspective i've barely if ever noticed stamina to help with survivability (unless you're really messing up mechanics).

While it might actually help i can probably count the number of times when that extra 50k would've saved my life on my fingers.
Seeing how most mechanics if you do fuck them up leave a fairly large overkill amount.

Even though 25M esp heroic is different (there is a lot more dmg incoming on relatively same health pool +- extra health from extra TF gear) in 10 man, i would consider extra haste OR mastery (depending on your flavor of choice) to be better for survivability (Because even if i switch out all of my gems into stam i'd get about 3600 stam, which is nice.... but... that's about 10% of my current stam, when my 4.8k haste/mastery from gems would make up about 30% off total haste/mastery.

Plus personally i would find that going from say 50% dmg reduction with sotr to 58% dmg reducton would be more helpful.

And regarding 4 piece comment : It is good... when compared to nothing. How good is it in reality ? I doubt anyone can calculate since you would need to account for : stats lost from not the best itemization + possibly swapping in 2 pieces (or 4 ) instead of 4 TF offsets, which would also lead to different dps (because as much it is important to survive, between a surviving tank with 40k and surviving tank with 90k dps, dps matters), different dmg intake on a non static fight.

You may consider whatever you like, but people like Theck over at Sacred Duty have done the mathematics and have run all the math, PROVING that Stamina is indeed better than Haste or mastery for survival, YOUR experieces may differ slightly, but cannot argue with math here.

[Deleted]

You may consider whatever you like, but people like Theck over at Sacred Duty have done the mathematics and have run all the math, PROVING that Stamina is indeed better than Haste or mastery for survival, YOUR experieces may differ slightly, but cannot argue with math here.

You can argue with math when the math presumes patchwerk fights and not real boss fights.

Also, if you consider the fact that you can have SotR uptime for 100% of the actually 'dangerous' parts like trippe punctures and such. Mastery actually gives more effective health than stamina.

[celinamuna]

You can argue with math when the math presumes patchwerk fights and not real boss fights.

Also, if you consider the fact that you can have SotR uptime for 100% of the actually 'dangerous' parts like trippe punctures and such. Mastery actually gives more effective health than stamina.

Basically this, it was discussed time and time again exactly how correct theck's math is.
This is not to say that his work isn't actually "wtf amazing" and helps all of the tanks a lot (by looking at things and being able to compare some of the simpler stats ie dodge/parry) but i know for a fact that say on horridon, if i miss / fuck up my shield for melee+tripple puncture+dire call+melee there's no amount of health that i can get atm (even if i swap out all of my gems for stamina, and get double stam trinkets) that would allow me to survive it.

Yes, stamina is needed up to some degree (tanking normal horridon in ~480 ilvl gear was terrible, but even that i was able to fix with just better cooldown management)

Plus, mastery scales a lot better in terms of EH the of it that you have.

[Nairobi]

10 man hc. I'm not, and I won't rock double stam trinkets. I'm using Soul Barrier + Ji-Kuns tank trink at the moment, since I'm having difficulties reforging out of exess accuracy stats and so far Horridon is keeping the haste trinks stashed away. I have also the dps trink from Ji-Kun, but 7.66% hit says I'm not allowed to equip it. The comment about the rep trink was for OP / any other pally looking for a decent stam trink to run.

OMG burn that shitty Rising Winds trinket immediately. If you need an Exp trinket, you're better off running the SPA rep one. It really is just. that. bad. I see you have the Feather; is there no way to move your reforges/gems around to use THAT instaed? It is a beast trinket, considered BIS (with spark) by many 10m HC raiders.

I know I'm nitpicking, and I won't keep repeating myself past this one time, but I just want to clarify my last post. I'm not saying that 10 man HC would need double stam trinkets, or anything the likes. I'm saying that if there is any survivability issues, going for extra stam should be done with trinkets due the best ratio of lost haste for stamina. As I said: I do believe that - even from that 10+/13 protadins group - there are bound to be ones that would actually perform better using a stam trink, or at least if they stayed away from the crit gear. That extra 10k DPS won't mean squat if the tank hp keeps jumping between 100% and 5% having healers constanly getting heart attacks responding to the spikes, and thus burning mana that could be used more efficiently if the tank had a bit better hp buffer. But as I said in the start, this all is just nitpicking, since those guilds are still at 10+/13 and the tanks are performing well enough for them to kill the bosses. I just believe there would be room for improvement, and that going for max haste and taking up even the crit pieces is not an optimal way to go considering the raid performance as whole.

Sure you can always find outliers if you look. You'll find one subpar/clicker/carried tank in a 13/13 guild and can say "hey that guy uses stam and/or avoidance gear and is 13/13!" or whatever. Well, yes; it works for him because his rotation/timing is off. Does it work as a whole package better than haste/mastery (even if that means crit gear)? Unequivocally no.

I get your opinion on spikes, but you have to consider how they work. It is never, EVER a 100% to 5% hit. I was sit-tanking on HC Lei Shen last night, and even without SHotR or any CDs up, he CRIT me for a max of 550k. When I had ShotR up, most CRITS were ~125k. Now, I run ZERO stam trinkets, and maybe 2 hybrid haste/stam gems, and rock ~725k HP. That 550k CRIT wasn't even 75% of my HP. The damage in 10m HC simply isn't there for a 100% to 5% moment unless you egregiously fuck something up. At which point, your gear is NOT the concern. Much like if your healers are burning mana on you, their gear is not your concern (their play is). Healers heal the raid; tanks heal the tanks

That one stam trink is around 5% more hp (ballpark, didn't really bother to check exact number), not 0.5%. Each of those crit + haste gear means 500 - 1000 missed defensive stats, and that adds up. Especially mastery, since it also increases the benefit from ShoR. If you rock, it doesn't really change things THAT much either way, since due more haste you have better ShoR uptime (altough it's still way under 5% more uptime compared to more conservative haste gearing). But even with little less haste you'll have ShoR available for the big nukes you need it to be up for. So in terms of surviving in front of the boss, I still say taking crit gear is a bad idea.

So let's say you have 2 pieces of gear, both same ilvl:
Chest 1 has Haste (500) /Crit (500)
Chest 2 has Dodge (500) /Parry (500)

Chest 1 gets you 500 Haste, plus 300 Crit after reforgin and 200 X (mastery/hit/whatever).
Chest 2 gets you 500 of 1 avoidance, and 300 of the other, plus 200 X.

Let's assume hit/expertise cap here. If Haste is worth 1, Mastery worth 0.6, Crit worth 0.1 and Dodge/Parry worth 0.1 (and that's being GENEROUS), we have:
Chest 1 = 500 + 300*0.1 + 200*0.6 = 650 "points"
Chest 2 = 500*0.1 + 300*0.1 + 200*1 (if haste) = 280 "points"

Chest 1 has more than 2x the value to us, as paladin tanks, in secondary stats alone. This is to say that those "missed defensive stats" are not ever missed, nor do they add up (unless you're talking in terms of not being able to get rid of them).

Personally, I'm even going as far as to forge out of mastery to reach my hit/exp caps to allow for more haste, since I find we have "enough" mastery innately from spec and BoMight to survive anything, presumed ShotR is used correctly. YMMV.

Still, if you are having problem surviving in 10M, you have other issues than how you gear.

Wasn't on yesterday, but appreciate you carrying the mantle. Also, avoid R&D forums or risk a ban. Trolls over there drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.

You can argue with math when the math presumes patchwerk fights and not real boss fights.

Well said. His math is sound, when applied in a vacuum, and it has some good THEORY, but it's hard to take anyone who points at Theck/H2P/other blogs and says "GOSPEL!!" seriously. His findings are meant to be used as a tool, or a guideline, not a bible. The math is right, but math can only answer what you're able to question. We cannot, realistically, mimic real fight encounters. There are just too many variables. However, we can draw trends and useful corollaries from the various findings. Incidentally, these all point to haste being king as our "stack this" stat, especially for 10m.

[Deleted]

We cannot, realistically, mimic real fight encounters. There are just too many variables.

Though it is possible to do a few tests to test it better.

1. Test shorter periods of time (20-60 seconds) starting with 5 HoPo to simulate tank switches and things like tortos bats.
2. Test 100% uptime on SotR to presume periods of time where you can 100% cover the dangerous damage.
3. Include some heavy hitting boss abilities that you automatically use SotR for.
4. Include magic damage
5. Include physical/magical damage DoT etc.
etc

[Nairobi]

Agreed.

But.

You then run into an issue where instead of a "general rule" you have a lot of "if, then" scenarios. Granted, that's more similar to how the real world works, as well as the best way to model pretty much anything with a variable, but we have to consider that the majority of the audience in this game does not care about or care to learn about min/max. Of those that DO care, many just want a "general idea" of what is good, not a "what is best for X, and how is that different from Y, given Z?" list of stats/parameters/situations.

This is the catch-22 that sites like Icy-veins/noxxic have. They attempt to appeal to the masses, by offering data that tries to do too much with itself, and in turn, ends up serving no one well. Those who know better (like most on here) will then proceed to tear apart the site's reasoning and/or suggestions. Incidentally, most of those folks aren't the intended audience, and already know the answers to the questions in the first place.

Theck's modeling is the best we have on the market, by far, bar none. Nobody is disputing that. Further, it can be used to provide insight (lol no pun intended) on recent movings in the community thinktank, BUT it assumes a modicum of common sense in knowing that the data tables cannot and should not be taken at face value or as stone cold fact, ever.

We can and do use Theck's wonderful productions of love and labor, as well as other insight from the community, to try and solve the problems we have. As you suggest, we can use common sense (backed by math/numbarz) to model the value of mastery vs stam vs haste on standstill fights. Using some extrapolation, we can expound on that to movement heavy fights, tank swaps, intermissions, etc.

But my point was that we lack the tool(s) to be a 1-stop shop for simulating what is "best" as that general rule. Even things like talent choice/preference can and do play a huge role in stat value, without even changing anything about the fight. We can look at them all piecemeal, as you suggested, but we cannot simply plug in all those variables to an equation.

Yet, anyway.

[Deja Thoris]

You may consider whatever you like, but people like Theck over at Sacred Duty have done the mathematics and have run all the math, PROVING that Stamina is indeed better than Haste or mastery for survival, YOUR experieces may differ slightly, but cannot argue with math here.

I've yet to come across a place for a stam gem in my gearing. Haste or mastery FAR outweighs stam in the real world.

Like Nairobi said, noone is disputing that Theck is amazing and adds an awful lot to the community but some things you can't model for.

The horridon HC scenario was spoken about, no amount of stam will save you but haste will give you a better chance of having the holy power you need to mitigate damage. Same with Ji'kun HC. Trying gemming full stam and eating a second talon rake with no active mitigation. It won't happen.

I argue the math, in fact show me any top performing pally tank that went the stam route? It's fine to read up theorycrafting but slavishly following it isn't clever.

[Nairobi]

There ARE some situations where Stam is king, but I think that in this tier, that is relegated only to Ra-Den (specifically when it was still being contended). I know that Method and Paragon tanks both went high stam there to counter Fatal Strike back before being full 535/541 and the advent up upgrades, but it is a bit more lenient now due to item level.

Sadly, I didn't get to test this yet. We had a handful of sub 5% wipes on HC LS last night and I leave in a few hours for a buddy's bachelor party, so I won't be able to raid the weekend Hope to kill LS on Sunday and report on Monday about Ra-Den Stam vs Haste, but I think we may just let our Monk tank that anyway.

[Todyn]

I've yet to come across a place for a stam gem in my gearing. Haste or mastery FAR outweighs stam in the real world.

Like Nairobi said, noone is disputing that Theck is amazing and adds an awful lot to the community but some things you can't model for.

The horridon HC scenario was spoken about, no amount of stam will save you but haste will give you a better chance of having the holy power you need to mitigate damage. Same with Ji'kun HC. Trying gemming full stam and eating a second talon rake with no active mitigation. It won't happen.

I argue the math, in fact show me any top performing pally tank that went the stam route? It's fine to read up theorycrafting but slavishly following it isn't clever.

If you look at what the TOP protection paladins were gemming for progression kills, aka Method/Exodus/Blood Legion, ALL of their paladin tanks were gemming stam, and even had double stam trinkets (this applies not only to Ra-den)

The only exception to that may be Slootbag from Midwinter, who I believe at the time of their progression kill was still going full haste.

@Nairobi - agree completely, for purely hypothetical reasons, can you provide me with a situation, where you'd think haste would be better for our survival as opposed to having more stam?

[rhandric]

For survivability, stam is king. But, while from a purely mathematical standpoint stam is always stronger for survivability than any other stat, from a "real-world" perspective, stam has effective diminishing returns, but on a per-player, per-raid group basis. If you constantly die, more stam helps. If you're at a point where, at no time in progression are you at risk to die, then you've gotten to the point where more stam effectively does nothing. Of course, if adding more stam allows you to change raid comp (ie, one less healer), and such a thing is possible, then more stam can be more effective, as long as the added dps adds more to the raid dps than you switching to stacking, i.e., haste.

And looking at what the cutting edge progression raiders do doesn't mean much - they're pushing content in lower gear than it's designed around, so stack stam to make up for the fact their gear doesn't have that additional stam by default. That's not to say additional stam above what comes on gear isn't needed, but that you have to look at the reason for why they stack stam, rather than just the fact that they do.

[Todyn]

For survivability, stam is king. But, while from a purely mathematical standpoint stam is always stronger for survivability than any other stat, from a "real-world" perspective, stam has effective diminishing returns, but on a per-player, per-raid group basis. If you constantly die, more stam helps. If you're at a point where, at no time in progression are you at risk to die, then you've gotten to the point where more stam effectively does nothing. Of course, if adding more stam allows you to change raid comp (ie, one less healer), and such a thing is possible, then more stam can be more effective, as long as the added dps adds more to the raid dps than you switching to stacking, i.e., haste.

And looking at what the cutting edge progression raiders do doesn't mean much - they're pushing content in lower gear than it's designed around, so stack stam to make up for the fact their gear doesn't have that additional stam by default. That's not to say additional stam above what comes on gear isn't needed, but that you have to look at the reason for why they stack stam, rather than just the fact that they do.

But, that's just the point Stam, is by far, the most important stat for damage mitigation and its even more important to look at the top progression raiders because survivability is an issue for them. Only when the threat of dying is no longer a major concern, do we start going the full haste route.

[rhandric]

Right, but when the threat of dying is no longer a major concern varies based on a large number of variables: what your gear is, the incoming damage (ie, how the boss/raid is tuned), how your healers heal, how skilled you are at using active mitigation and cooldowns...and I've probably missed some.

So yes, stam is great for survivability (not mitigation, since it doesn't mitigate anything, it just reduces the % max hp taken of each hit), but a tank's role is more than just surviving hits, these days more so than previous expansions -- tank dps matters. So you have to balance your survivability against your damage output, and depending on the variables, shift more one way or the other from a gearing standpoint

[Deleted]

Nairobi - agree completely, for purely hypothetical reasons, can you provide me with a situation, where you'd think haste would be better for our survival as opposed to having more stam?

When you reach a point where the spells that a boss casts outside of those mega nukes (aka slow ticking dots and melee hits) is non-threatening, stamina loses its value.

At this point mastery is the king of survivability stats if you are dieng constantly and haste takes a close back seat.[COLOR="red"]

But, that's just the point Stam, is by far, the most important stat for damage mitigation and its even more important to look at the top progression raiders because survivability is an issue for them. Only when the threat of dying is no longer a major concern, do we start going the full haste route.

Mastery reduces the damage the most for those mega hits. (in % of your HP)
Haste reduces the damage the best between the big hits and make the time outside the big hits less threatening.
Stamina is only better when the damage you take outside the big hits and when your SotR is down is actually dangerous. A.k.a. when you can die on the bosses "low damage" part. This usually happens more in 25 man because boss melees harder in 25 man, this is partially why 25's want more stamina than 10's usually, and why stamina is actually kinda bad in 10 in comparison to haste and mastery.

Not to mention the added dps from haste.



Edit: Just as an example. If you are at say 50% SotR. Which is kinda standard. As long as you have more than 450k health, mastery is better than stamina for reducing the high damage abilities per point at gem exchange rates. 1:0.75