Need Blood DK gear compare/advice

[SquishyTank]

Answered, thank you very much, especially Troxism.

[Troxism]

Not even close in both cases (well, the bracer is a LITTLE close, but still it's a decent gap), the higher ilvl piece. Esp the socket makes it a total no brainer. Base armour and Strength have very high value.

Edit: To quantify the answer a little better: As said, armour/STR/STA on gear is very powerful; a 20 ilvl or more upgrade is just always going to be better (esp with a socket, since at that point even the stat issues almost completely fly out of the window), because none of the 5 stats are THAT bad for Blood DK; none are anywhere near 'worthless', some are just better then others, and they have different strengths.

[Milocow]

Hijackin this thread :
660 PvP Haste Mastery gloves
vs
670 Crit Vers gloves from Butcher?

[SquishyTank]

Not even close in both cases (well, the bracer is a LITTLE close, but still it's a decent gap), the higher ilvl piece. Esp the socket makes it a total no brainer. Base armour and Strength have very high value.

Edit: To quantify the answer a little better: As said, armour/STR/STA on gear is very powerful; a 20 ilvl or more upgrade is just always going to be better (esp with a socket, since at that point even the stat issues almost completely fly out of the window), because none of the 5 stats are THAT bad for Blood DK; none are anywhere near 'worthless', some are just better then others, and they have different strengths.

Thank you for the reply Troxism, at least I know that it is indeed a problem now.

[Raiju]

Just say you've been looking up stuff about tanks and noticed that weightings for dk are really close and the armor/sta/str gain is huge and that str actually helps defensively as well.

[Xanderpanda]

Thank you for the reply Troxism, at least I know that it is indeed a problem now.

So now I know that I need to explain this to our DK main tank, but being unfamiliar with the class, does anyone have advice for how to do so? I don't want to come across as being a jerk, but in the beginning I already took the approach of "Dude, I don't think tanks would be so poorly itemized that you are passing on ilvl 655 gear from stuff you had in heroics. If you look at other DK's, they aren't keeping the lower ilvl and are tanking into heroic HM just fine while we are struggling to get there". To this he replied that the other tanks were largely just ignoring itemization and were actually losing mitigation and just gaining dps, which is against the nature of tanking.

I really want to get this resolved, but am unsure how to actually do so. Our raid is made up largely of friends of this guy, and he is a really cool guy. But we are wanting to progress further and he is one of or most undergeared players, due to passing on items such as I listed above every week. It isn't just the two items I posted for examples, there have been 5-6 of them now where he would just disenchant after getting it.

Thanks for any input from the community.

Simply just confront the tank. Just tell inform him of the raw facts. Avoid mentioning 'hindering progression'.

[Troxism]

Tell him Str is basically Bonus Armour (not exactly true, but it's closer then you think). Also I have no idea why he values Mastery so highly. Mastery is good, it's like 5 times better for MS then mitigation (but that is because MS basically gives none, so meh), and about 2-1.5 times better then the other stats but honestly it doesn't even matter, you can easily stay alive with almost no mastery if you play well. And STR is worth considerably (1.5x ish) more then Mastery even for pure survival.

Honestly though, you know why I don't give stat weights for mitigation? Because they barely matter. I don't want to lead people down the wrong way of thinking by thinking that mitigation is the end all be all; I already make a lot of concessions in my guide for people who always complain that mitigation is the only thing that matters whenever you bring up DPS, just because I don't want to be mired in pages of stupid arguments about it. Of course the thread still ended up mired in stupid arguments about Soul Reaper buff (really doesn't matter who is right, the difference is so tiny it's not worth worrying about), so yeah...

Focusing 100% on mitigation is a mistake of beginner tanks, it's basically hurting yourself and your raid to think like that. You can stay alive with basically any combination of stats if you play right, esp in the content you are doing now. Perfect stats matter way less then people think, ILVL really is king in most cases.

To this he replied that the other tanks were largely just ignoring itemization and were actually losing mitigation and just gaining dps, which is against the nature of tanking.

This statement isn't really true. While a less skilled tank will focus 100% on survival, as you get better at tanking, you start to focus more and more on DPS to the point where you basically almost don't care about survival, because you will be able to handle any survival issues through how you and your raid play. So it's not really 'against the nature of tanking' to care about DPS. But honestly, that isn't really the issue. Haste/Vers aren't exactly amazing DPS stats either (Haste is pretty much the worst DPS stat, although it can vary a little based on exact gear). Only the bracers are kind of a DPS item, because MS has almost no mitigative value and high DPS value. And even then, they are still better.

Honestly this statement and the logic behind it always annoys me. I see tanks at my progression level who do 2/3 my damage and think that it's okay and it doesn't matter, and they hurt the guilds they are in by thinking they are perfect players and have nothing to improve on. DPS and survival aren't mutually exclusive, you can easily do both if you know how to play, without sacrificing one completely for the other.

[zigglr6]

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[Jugaal]

@Troxism: "Tell him Str is basically Bonus Armor (not exactly true, but it's closer then you think).", can you please explain this, I can't anything anywhere on my tooltips stating str = armor or anything defensive related for that matter, unless its a hidden passive? And I'm not being sarcastic I am genuinely interested.

[Troxism]

@Troxism: "Tell him Str is basically Bonus Armor (not exactly true, but it's closer then you think).", can you please explain this, I can't anything anywhere on my tooltips stating str = armor or anything defensive related for that matter, unless its a hidden passive? And I'm not being sarcastic I am genuinely interested.

STR and BA both give 1 AP per point, which is a big part of the defensive benefit (AP is hugely important for larger healing, also for the record, since I see this myth everywhere: MS/Crit DO NOT INCREASE DS HEALING AT ALL). Strength is also multiplied by Fallen Crusader, Kings and the Legendary Ring proc, so you actually get considerably more AP from the same amount of STR compared to BA.

BA obviously also gives actual armour, which is worth a decent amount too, but Strength also gives parry (this is a hidden conversion that I don't think is mentioned anywhere in the game). While it doesn't give that much, it does help a lot. Basically the way it pans out is STR is better for DPS (because of the multipliers to it) by about 20% ish, and BA is somewhat better for mitigation (depends on what kind of damage you are taking/how much armour you already have), but they are both in the same 'bracket' in terms of effect. What I mean by that is they are similar in value; they are both worth noticeably more for DPS or mitigation then the secondary stats like Mastery, Multistrike ect.

[Milocow]

EDIT : brainfarted nvm

[Jellospally]

No Str still gives parry but it doesn't give rating. It just buffs the %. Go take off a piece of gear that doesn't have Crit. You will lose parry.

[Jugaal]

Awesome thanks for the reply!... So would I be crazy to try and ditch my 640/655 bonus armor trinks for 655/661 str trinks? Currently sitting on 3390 armor, I'm not sure just how much parry all the str would give me, though it would increase dps a bit since one of them is a versatility proc and the other has static secondaries (I think it's str/vers/crit)

[Troxism]

Awesome thanks for the reply!... So would I be crazy to try and ditch my 640/655 bonus armor trinks for 655/661 str trinks? Currently sitting on 3390 armor, I'm not sure just how much parry all the str would give me, though it would increase dps a bit since one of them is a versatility proc and the other has static secondaries (I think it's str/vers/crit)

Depends on the trinket, I have no idea what 'bonus armour vs strength trinkets' you are talking about. You don't pick trinkets purely based on stats, the way the proc and actives are matters a ton.

[Jugaal]

Current tank trinks: 175 BA + 1396 CS for 20 sec proc 115sec internal CD // 201 BA + 1337 Mastery for 20 sec on use 2min CD I think??....
DPS-ish trinks: 201 str + 134 crit + 134 Vers // 175 str + 1570 vers for 10 sec .92 ppm

dont have my wow available to see my bags, and armory is kind of screwed atm so these numbers may be a little off.

[Troxism]

Use the Knight's Badge/Pols.