[Guardian] Need some input on stat priorities

[Wrestler10307]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ht/Muto/simple

There is my armory link, I've been pretty much prioritizing mastery and dodge over others. '

I run LFR weekly and heroic scenarios/instances mostly, though I might start doing normal raids soon. Anyone have any input on what might make me stay alive longer in terms of gear/enchants/reforging?

I've read the thread on guardian but Mr.Robot and some other forums have different input on enchants and reforging.

Thanks

[Deleted]

Dodge is the Cata way, you are one expansion back mate.
Crit / mastery / haste are the new trends nowadays.
If you actually want to know more then give this awesome guide a read.

http://theincbear.com/forums/viewtop...925f018f76b03f

[Tarazet]

Use Mr. Robot's Rage build. The enchants that you are doing are suboptimal even for pure survival. If you just want to be a big fat mana sponge, you can stack Stam and Mastery and you'll take a greater amount of damage in an easily healable way, but most bears run with the stat priority below for very good reasons.

Stamina (if needed) > Hit (7.5%) > Critical Strike > Expertise (15%) > Haste

You will rarely, if ever, want to have a large amount of Mastery or Dodge on your gear. Yes, they reduce your damage intake, but nowhere near as much as producing better Rage generation. However, starting out in a new tier, you'll want to have all Stamina/Dodge enchants, while reforging your gear to favor Crit and Hit/Expertise.

The reason why you want to stack Critical Strike is that if you crit with melee strikes or Mangle, you produce an extra 15 Rage. That translates directly into survival. Keep up Savage Defense whenever you are tanking an enemy that does physical damage - basically anything other than Lei Shi. Throw in a FR heal if you are recharging, or an empowered Maul if you are capped on health. It sounds simple, but as your gear gets better and your Rage generation gets faster and faster, spending your rage becomes almost a twitch mechanic. With your RoR, you will, for short periods of time, crit 100% of the time with every ability, which makes things very interesting indeed..

[Wrestler10307]

I was using the mitigation spec thing on mr robot, I switched everything over to crit and gained a ton of crit, seems to help out. Thanks guys.

[Trubo]

Several things to start with:

1. Hit 7.5% = Expertise 7.5% >= Expertise 15% = Crit >= Haste > Mastery > Dodge
2. Get the SPA Agility DPS trinket, replace RoR.
3. Never gem pure Stamina. Heck, unless you severely undergear content never gem Stamina. Use Piercing Wild Jades in Blue sockets. If you need Stamina swap in a trinket. Go with the Sta+Crit only if you're significantly over 7.5% Hit.
4. Use Dancing Steel, River's Song is bleh.

[Tarazet]

I was using the mitigation spec thing on mr robot, I switched everything over to crit and gained a ton of crit, seems to help out. Thanks guys.

Good luck. Keep in mind, your #1 goal in any encounter - single target, AE, doesn't matter - is to maximize your use of Mangle. It is your highest damage ability, and your only substantial, controllable source of rage. (It's important to use Enrage too, but not if the GCD could be spent on a Mangle or Lacerate.) #2 goal is to spend that rage effectively, which almost always means Savage Defense whenever it's available. Then beyond that, you learn the encounters and find at what points you take the most damage so you can chain your cooldowns during this period. You don't have a lot of them, and other than Might of Ursoc, they won't help you if you already messed up, so you have to plan their use accordingly..

[teddabear]

What you are tanking matters quite a lot. I would recommend your first build if you are tanking ToT normal with 500 ilvl. I would recommend the crit build that you switched to if you stick with LFR and heroics. I tanked heroic ToT the last 2 weeks with 530 ilvl. The first week I went pure crit build, the second week I went about about half stam and half crit (still capping hit and expertise). I still had enough rage but I lost some DPS. I did feel a lot more sturdy and I imagine it was a much more relaxing week for the healers.

[Tarazet]

What you are tanking matters quite a lot. I would recommend your first build if you are tanking ToT normal with 500 ilvl. I would recommend the crit build that you switched to if you stick with LFR and heroics. I tanked heroic ToT the last 2 weeks with 530 ilvl. The first week I went pure crit build, the second week I went about about half stam and half crit (still capping hit and expertise). I still had enough rage but I lost some DPS. I did feel a lot more sturdy and I imagine it was a much more relaxing week for the healers.

At 530 ilvl, you should usually be the last one alive when everyone else has gotten wiped.

[Kioga]

Several things to start with:

1. Hit 7.5% = Expertise 7.5% >= Expertise 15% = Crit >= Haste > Mastery > Dodge

This is mostly true EXCEPT that haste does not = crit and 7.5 exp isn't equal to 15% exp. Bears generally shoot for 15% exp as it smooths out rage gain.

Hit cap = Exp hard cap > Crit > Haste > Mastery > Dodge ....in a 10m raid environment in a 25m since things hit slightly harder lots of bears swap haste for more mastery

2. Get the SPA Agility DPS trinket, replace RoR.

Just no.... even an LFR RoR is a better RPS/DPS trink then anything else he can get this tier. The only thing he should be concerned about is making sure his crit rating is higher than all other secondary stats after he reforges for Hit/Exp caps

[Tarazet]

It looks a bit better already, but trade off some of your Mastery for Expertise instead. The extra armor won't make nearly as much of a difference as the extra Rage generation. Go all the way to 15% if at all possible.

Get a Greater Ox Horn or Tiger Claw Inscription for the shoulder, and Greater Agility on the bracers. If that's too expensive Mastery or Dodge will do.

[Wrestler10307]

I'll work on getting more expertise. Swapping my reforge and gems definitely added a noticeable amount of rps through crit, I'm pretty much able to chain savage defense nonstop now. I'm not too worried about the enchants on anything under ilvl 502 right now just because I have been replacing pieces somewhat often and prices of enchants are high on my server.

Is there a point where crit suffers from diminishing returns so much that haste is better?

I'll probably change the enchant on my weapon once I get into a real raid... I'm not too concerned with it right now though, but I'll start working on mats for it.

[Tarazet]

I'll work on getting more expertise. Swapping my reforge and gems definitely added a noticeable amount of rps through crit, I'm pretty much able to chain savage defense nonstop now. I'm not too worried about the enchants on anything under ilvl 502 right now just because I have been replacing pieces somewhat often and prices of enchants are high on my server.

Is there a point where crit suffers from diminishing returns so much that haste is better?

I'll probably change the enchant on my weapon once I get into a real raid... I'm not too concerned with it right now though, but I'll start working on mats for it.

No, there is no point where you really want to stop getting more Crit. Every white melee crit gives you another 15 Rage (but not if it's a miss/dodged/parried). Enchant Bracer: Mastery is really cheap to make - theunderminejournal says it's 16g in mats on your server - so try asking for an enchanter in trade, providing the mats and offering a 50g tip if the AH barons keep trying to gouge for it. If not, then you could throw another Sha Armor Kit on it. And the regular green Ox Horn Inscription looks like it's not that bad..

[Arielle]

No, there is no point where you really want to stop getting more Crit.

Not exactly true.

Once you reach the softcap (79% on your character sheet) Haste becomes about 3-4x better for RPS since you can no longer improve the crit rate for Autos (which generate most of our Rage) after that point. However Crit is still substantially better for RPS since the overwhelming majority of our DPS comes from specials. After 79% you get to choose between more DPS and a tiny bit of RPS, or more RPS, and a tiny bit of DPS and mitigation.

[Viromand]

Not exactly true.

Once you reach the softcap (79% on your character sheet) Haste becomes about 3-4x better for RPS since you can no longer improve the crit rate for Autos (which generate most of our Rage) after that point. However Crit is still substantially better for RPS since the overwhelming majority of our DPS comes from specials. After 79% you get to choose between more DPS and a tiny bit of RPS, or more RPS, and a tiny bit of DPS and mitigation.

I think you mean dps.

[Serendippity]

I tank in my DPS gear, it's all mastery based, I do just fine. Most difficult boss I have tanked is Heroic Jin'roc (I'm not spell-checking his name). I find a lot of the time I have too much rage and can't spend it fast enough. So I can throw a lot of Tooth-and-Claw Maul's out to help the other tank a bit.

[Viromand]

I tank in my DPS gear, it's all mastery based, I do just fine. Most difficult boss I have tanked is Heroic Jin'roc (I'm not spell-checking his name). I find a lot of the time I have too much rage and can't spend it fast enough. So I can throw a lot of Tooth-and-Claw Maul's out to help the other tank a bit.

when your not tanking you usually have to much rage, but actively tanking you can never have enough rage, using T&C on every time it proccs and keeping SD uptime at max and healing from FR when you need it is not achievable with any kind of gear right now.

[Jackkernaut]

You don't need mastery and more so yeah, Crit on every piece>7.5% hit>15% EXP> haste/mastery( i really couldn't see MUCH differences so pick one you like and don't forget the cap is 75% damage reduction). for 10 man use 2x agility chunk trinkets with stats you can reforge+Rune Of Reorganization(give you gigantic chunk of crit in trade of your haste and mastery).
If your socket gives 120 agility use mixed gems with crit else Smooth your sockets all the road up.

mastery vs haste overally: basically the extra rage you get from haste goes for TnC procs while mastery gives you passive 2-3%(depend on your gear) more damage reduction. IMO they both pale infront of crit due the GCD.
My personal pick is mastery but it doesn't mean its the best.

[Arielle]

I think you mean dps.

Yep. 10char

[Trubo]

This is mostly true EXCEPT that haste does not = crit and 7.5 exp isn't equal to 15% exp. Bears generally shoot for 15% exp as it smooths out rage gain.

Hit cap = Exp hard cap > Crit > Haste > Mastery > Dodge ....in a 10m raid environment in a 25m since things hit slightly harder lots of bears swap haste for more mastery

At higher gear levels Haste is better for RPS than Crit. Arielle already explained why so I'll leave it at that.

Just no.... even an LFR RoR is a better RPS/DPS trink then anything else he can get this tier. The only thing he should be concerned about is making sure his crit rating is higher than all other secondary stats after he reforges for Hit/Exp caps

Again, at higher gear levels/certain procs, Crit only functions as a DPS gain and can lead to a RPS loss; running with a Renataki's I can hit above 110% Crit with 6+ stacks of Blades and RoR. If you're worried about RPS I'd go with a different trinket (Primordius' Talisman of Bloodlust or Bad Juju) so as to not completely tank our Haste.

Plus if you're tanking something with an extremely hard hitting ability (Horridon's Triple Pincture for example) having a Reorigination proc makes you far squishier than normal.

[Arielle]

Again, at higher gear levels/certain procs, Crit only functions as a DPS gain and can lead to a RPS loss; running with a Renataki's I can hit above 110% Crit with 6+ stacks of Blades and RoR. If you're worried about RPS I'd go with a different trinket (Primordius' Talisman of Bloodlust or Bad Juju) so as to not completely tank our Haste.

Once you get to 65-70% passive crit, sure. You can't reach that outside of heroic tf double upgraded gear. So for most people RoR is still the best thing you can get.

Plus if you're tanking something with an extremely hard hitting ability (Horridon's Triple Pincture for example) having a Reorigination proc makes you far squishier than normal.

25s yes, since they prefer Mastery over Haste to begin with due to the increased auto-attack damage. That's why most 25m Guardians run Bloodlust / Renataki in later heroic content.

You virtually ignore Mastery in 10s, so that's a non-issue.