DK Tank - Need Help With Gems/General Avoidance

[Bael]

However the 40-stamina enchant for bracers remains the largest stamina/gem enchant in the game and you are only giving up .46% reduction to parry/dodge.

That's a pretty big reduction to give up.

The only way expertise would be on par with the 40-stamina would be if it was a 30-expertise enchant.

I can't say I value health that much more than being able to strike my target and not offer them parry haste to remove said health. Unfortunately I'm in 4pc t7.5, and as you mention I am expertise starved. Thus I'm using +16 expertise gems with 2 stamina/expertise gems to activate my metagem. If I hadn't been outrolled on 3 Inevitable Defeats thus far, I'm sure I'd sing a slightly different tune (the all regal gem tune).

[Blightrose]

Just checking your armory and first thing that comes to mind is get rid of the weapon rune, get sword shattering instead for the +4% parry. and if youre already defense capped get another Sigil as well. Other than that I think you look good considering the gear you wear.

[punjabmc101]

Hmm expertise comes as your gear comes along. Right now I'm in half naxx25/Ulda25 gear and I have 37 expertise in my tank gear. My dodge is at about 27% unbuffed, and my parry is at about 19%. For gemming I put I put 24 stam gems in blue sockets, 8 expertise/12 stam gems for red sockets. Yellow sockets depend if I need the hit rating or not. As for glove enchants, I think precision (20 hit rating) to gloves is WAY more valuable for a DK tank as opposed to Armsman(2% more threat/10 parry rating) if your not hit capped.

[Albert the fish]

Just checking your armory and first thing that comes to mind is get rid of the weapon rune, get sword shattering instead for the +4% parry. and if youre already defense capped get another Sigil as well. Other than that I think you look good considering the gear you wear.

a) if he got rid of the enchant he wouldn't be defense capped would he? keep in mind that the defense from Garg gives you 3% avoidance and the health buff. you loose 1% avoidance overall and get easy defense and a nice health buff that scales with your gear
b) that sigil is great even if you are over defense cap. remember that defense over the cap still adds extra avoidance and it makes your IBF even stronger, so unless you are having threat issues. keep the Unfaltering Knight Sigil, it's pretty damned nice much like Xalick said.

having Unbreakable Armor glyphed is a gut check honestly. at the armor levels we deal with typically it'll add an extra 250-350(rough numbers) ignored from every hit taken while UA is up. the bonus is, you always know how much it ignores since it's not a roll, it's flat mitigation. if your UA ignored 1420 or so with your armor, you'll ignore about 300 dmg each hit but the number will be the same every time. making you ignore a total of 1700 or so every hit. if you feel that's worth the glyph, then yes it's worth it. if you don't. then dont.

it seems to be more helpful against trash then against a boss since with UA up if none of the trash can hit higher then 1700 a hit, you are effectively ignoring all dmg incoming during the duration of UA even tho 10 mobs might be hitting you



edit: one last thing. as far as me being snide goes. i manipulate people. it's what i do, being snide is sometimes part of that. i lead with logic, that failed, i turned to being a jackass to focus his attention on me. i turned back to reasonable logic once he's paying attention instead of flat ignoring me. my points get proven and someone is a better tank and better dk for it, or at least you have something to think heavily about even tho you are still deceiving yourself. don't tell me it JUST makes me sound like a condescending jerk, because it 'makes' me sound like a condescending jerk. meanwhile my objective is still accomplished. "just" is underestimating me

[Simpson]

Here's another question then. If avoidance means so much more than stacking stamina, is the Essence of Gossamer simply a bad tanking trinket for a DK? Should it be replaced by something which would give avoidance stats instead of pure stamina?

As I said before, my plan is to replace the Seal of the Pantheon with it. Should I just swap the Essence of Gossamer?

[plagueshard]

Here's another question then. If avoidance means so much more than stacking stamina, is the Essence of Gossamer simply a bad tanking trinket for a DK? Should it be replaced by something which would give avoidance stats instead of pure stamina?

As I said before, my plan is to replace the Seal of the Pantheon with it. Should I just swap the Essence of Gossamer?

Essence of Gossamer is decent for situations where you *need* the extra HP (ie Sarth3D breaths), but I would drop it for an avoidance trinket and keep it in your bags.

Keep in mind, there is no one set of gear that is best for everything. You should be carrying avoidance gear, HP gear, and threat gear and be swapping them out situationally. A high magic damage boss (typically) will be best for high HP, whereas a boss that melee swings for most of its damage is best for avoidance.

[Blightrose]

Stoneskin gargoyle does indeed give +3% avoidance overall and does increase the IBF but the avoidance is lower than sword shattering and since 1% of the stoneskin gargoyle is from missing it doesnt benefit Runestrike and Scent of Blood as much as the sword shattering.
Ofcourse, if dropping that meant not being uncrittable then its not even worth considering, I just figured he was covered already but I guess not.
Essence of Gossamer is a great tank trinket IMO. You have to have great hit points AND great avoidance, you cant just ignore one of them and like the previous poster said, see if you can make several "sets" of gear with different stats for different requirements.

[Albert the fish]

essense of gossomer is an excellent starter tank trinket. replace it when able. it'd be even better if the proc wasn't nearly useless. but it's a very nice stam buff

stacking stamina is pointless, but it's still an important tank stat so don't ignore it. 30-35k raidbuffed is a good goal to shoot for in naxx level tanking.

as for stoneskin, it's simply better then swordshattering sadly. because i loved the hell out of swordshattering when it was all we had.

3% avoidance vs 4% by itself would have swordshattering win. but that 3% avoidance is coming from defense meaning you can drop trinkets like Seal of the Pantheon or defense gems or defense enchants for a better overall tanking setup simply by using gargoygle due to it's extremely high defense value since it increases defense not defense rating it's a massive buff opening up other avenues.

also keep in mind that the health buff isn't static. it's a percentile increase meaning the higher your health goes, the higher that 2% gets and the more you get out of the buff overall.


stoneskin gargoygle is exactly what you spoke of in your previous post, it's a extremely viable combination of avoidance and health buff mixed together with the added benefit of releasing stat point allocation across the rest of your gearset.

yes the loss of a full 1% avoidance is large, but in return you are freeing up more then 1% avoidance over the full spectrum of gear and you are getting a scaling health buff that comes along for the ride.

[Krypt]

This looks like an informative thread so ill hop in.

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...d&n=Synthetìc

rate my dk! (ps i know bracers etc)

Stats:

545 defense
24.80% dodge
18.50% parry

124 // 3.78% hit
6.58% crit
25 exp

29.3k sitting in Dalaran.

[Arochanox]

I'm raiding ulduar atm and having no problem surviving any boss as long as our healers don't completely ignore me.
running blood specc just casue it's more enjoyable than anything else I've tried.
after I started binding my rune strike into al abilities I've been having 6-8k tps at all times, 1 shot hodir last night and 3 shot auruyayaya last night with 8k steady tps on hodir and around 7-9k on cat lady.

546 defence
29% dodge
19% parry
301 hit rating ~ 9%
18 expertise
14.50% crit
31k hp

gemming almost purely for avoidance, got an expertise gem in there aswell as one 41 stam JC gem just cause I felt like it.

wearing pvp shizzle at armory atm.
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...dt&n=Arochanox

[campyourbody]

Sorry but for just a boost of 1.83 expertise (less than half a percent of dodge/parry reduction) compared to 400 HP before figuring in talent modifiers is a no brainer.

Always go with the stamina.

To be a more worthwhile enchant it would need to be at least 30-expertise. I have tried it, although as caveat with my warrior, and the extra stamina is always worth it. Especially to a DK with all their stamina bonuses. I know that DKs are avoidance tanks but really that doesn't make them any less of a HP sponge.

Also until you reach a certain HP level it's just not that worthwhile to gem or gear for threat or avoidance. For my warrior that level was around 30k unbuffed. For a DK I'd put it around 35k unbuffed.

[campyourbody]

above post is retarded dks are NOT meant to soak damage like warriors we are meant to avoid damage dodge/stam gems are awsome i LOL at dks who stack the shit out of stam gems. once you hit around 30k stam (is not a problem with any spec in 25 man nax gear) you are golden. as a human i dont need to worry about stacking expertise, for now anyways with ED and all the BIS gear is stacked with exp.

[bujaberry]

I'd say it depends on your spec.

Unholy or frost: avoidance/sta balance.
Blood: stamina.

Myself, i'm blood, and honestly my tanking is similar to a druid with better CDs. High hp, high armor, average avoidance.

Keep in mind with the HUGE nerf to our avoidance last patch, i dont call ourselves avoidance tanks anymore. Especially with INSANELY hard hitting bosses in Ulduar, definately stack stamina, making it easier for your healers, with proper use of Vamp.Blood, IBF & trinkets, you should have no probs at all. As blood, again, stamina has nice scaling, so if you stack anything but it, drops in value where u could have earned more.

After patch i'm pretty much staying with blood, staying away from frost & unholy, as while MT'ing Hodir or Vezax, the CDs in those 2 specs just dont seem to be enough. (not saying its not doable, but as blood its just THAT much easier).


edit: usually have 2 stamina trinkets & SSG rune. Sitting at 36900 HP unbuffed. (wtb 100more hp :P)

[campyourbody]

I'd say it depends on your spec.

Unholy or frost: avoidance/sta balance.
Blood: stamina.

Myself, i'm blood, and honestly my tanking is similar to a druid with better CDs. High hp, high armor, average avoidance.

Keep in mind with the HUGE nerf to our avoidance last patch, i dont call ourselves avoidance tanks anymore. Especially with INSANELY hard hitting bosses in Ulduar, definately stack stamina, making it easier for your healers, with proper use of Vamp.Blood, IBF & trinkets, you should have no probs at all. As blood, again, stamina has nice scaling, so if you stack anything but it, drops in value where u could have earned more.

After patch i'm pretty much staying with blood, staying away from frost & unholy, as while MT'ing Hodir or Vezax, the CDs in those 2 specs just dont seem to be enough. (not saying its not doable, but as blood its just THAT much easier).


edit: usually have 2 stamina trinkets & SSG rune.

seconded

[Emcee]

35.6k unbuffed, all pre ulduar gear. Yes i stacked stam over avoidance. People don't understand that avoidance ratings have diminishing returns now, or don't understand how steep they are. People also don't understand the reasoning of the Effective health argument. How many hits can you survive without heals until you die. If you can gain an extra hit, than your effective health is higher. If a tank can take 2 hits instead of only one that means healers have 50% more time to get a heal off before he dies. If a tank can take 3 hits instead of 2 hits, they can survive 33% longer without heals. Of course, to get that much effective health, you are losing some avoidance. Avoidance doesn't increase your survivability as much as effective health. Avoidance does decrease the amount of dmg you'll take over an entire fight. However, you are much more likely to die from dmg. Basically, if a healer has mana at the end of the fight, effective health is always better because it ensures your survivability. If healers are having mana problems, than add some avoidance. Thus far, healers are still fine with my dmg intake, so i'm going to keep stacking stam.

Doing Ulduar there are some bosses that can nearly 2 shot me already. if i was running around with 30k unbuffed hp a 2shot would be very possible. Don't start spouting gibberish like "He'll never hit me 2 times in a row because my avoidance is so high!" Now that blade barrier has been nerfed, you can't even get above 70% avoidance total. At those avoidance rates you'd still have a 9% chance at getting hit 2 times in a row. Yes that is a decently low %. But considering that the event of a 2 back to back hits would kill you unless a healer had a heal coming in advance, than 9% chance is way too high.

Someone made the point to adjust according to content. Naxx is easy so they don't hit as hard. In the end, effective health is better even in this environment because healers probably aren't having mana issues.

Bottomline, stamina stack unless healers are having mana issues.

[Arochanox]

you gotta take into concideration that alot of bosses in ulduar hit quite hard, if you're gonna soak EVERY SINGLE of those htis, your healers will be having to spam heal you constantly using up all their mana, also not giving them time to move or look at their suroundings etc.
The very best thing you can do as a tank is mix it all in, if your avoidance is insane, but your health is equal to a potato, you wont do good.
If your health is equal to a steroid fulet armored battle dragon, but you take every single hit head on, you might survive for a long time, but your healer will deffinetly hate you for it and eventually go oom and die.

[Talamare]

Lets see the difference of "Stacking" XXX usually leads a difference of about 10% avoidance vs 5k hp right?

Just pick one,
If you know the boss is completely reliant on physical that can be avoided - Avoidance wins
If you know the boss is completely reliant on magical that cant be avoided - Stamina wins

[Albert the fish]

seconded

thirded, blood tanks are unusual since their method of tanking is mostly absorbing as much dmg as possible and healing it back themselves

completly ignore Emcee, any good tank will be at least 10-20% as survivable as tanks like him. TBC was the end of the stamina era, the way bosses tend to work now makes avoidance much much better.

if you are the MT and the bosses are 3 shotting you. then you arn't using your cooldowns properly or you just arn't geared to do it.

again 30k"ish" life is the sweet spot for naxx25 with all raid buffs up. over that is fine as well, but after you get that amount of life you can start dropping avoidance/stam gems for raw avoidance gems and similar courses of action. Ulduar will obviously be different and you might have to press hard onto stamina for the first few runs until you get better gear. im imagining a 35k baseline instead of 30k for Ulduar 25man.

[Nyanmaru]

Over a bazillion of hits, avoidance wins over stamina, no doubt about that.

But nevertheless, avoidance is RNG, so basically you are a godlike tank all the time a dps/healer fucks it up, but at the time when all of the other are doing it great, is the time when your avoidance RNG fails you and you drop dead because you haven't had the necessary HP to soak it. With avoidance the "fail because of RNG" is bigger than with stamina and nothing suxx more than having failed because of "divine intervention" (not talking about the paladin skill).

Finally, it's just a matter of personal preference, 5% avoidance vs. 5% HP ain't that much of an issue...

[campyourbody]

i gem dodge/stam gems to get a happy medium, frost spec in raids i sit around 39k hp with warr shouts and raid buffs flasks/food. and thats useing parry/dodge trinkets