Effective health V. Avoidance

[Henryhimself]

So I did some reading on tankspot, and read about the importance of effective health, and how in most cases it is more important than avoidance. However, the post that i read was referring specifically to warriors, and so i was wondering which is more important overall for a death knight, effective health or avoidance?

[Deleted]

Imo, avoidance
too tired to explain, meaby tomorrow will try, or then someone before me will

[Talamare]

So I did some reading on tankspot, and read about the importance of effective health, and how in most cases it is more important than avoidance. However, the post that i read was referring specifically to warriors, and so i was wondering which is more important overall for a death knight, effective health or avoidance?

If this topic does become popular you will get 10 people arguing that stamina stacking is best and 10 people arguing that avoidance stacking is best

[archform]

how about
*complete guess ive yet to tank in any raid nor do i know what gear as*
get 50% avoidance and then stack health?

[Albert the fish]

typical death knight stacking methodology is to stack heal til burst dmg becomes survivable, especially when transiting to a higher raid bracket, ie from Naxx to Ulduar. after that go avoidance til you drop

[Omen321]

get about 40k Raid Buffed and go more for Mitigation / Exp / Hit

also it depends on your spec

Blood Tank - Stacks ALOT more mitigation then Frost

Frost Tank - Stacks ALOT more Health then Blood

This mainly is because Blood Tanks get Veteran of the Third War / Vamperic Blood / Rune Tap but Frost tanks get Frigid Dreadplate / Unbreakable Armor / Imp Frost Pres

[Xenryusho]

Stack stam. Brb posting on the druid pally and warrior forums as well as putting up adds on Craigs list to get people to flame about this, for a 100 page thread.

If this topic does become popular you will get 10 people arguing that stamina stacking is best and 10 people arguing that avoidance stacking is best

[Trollpatrol]

I personally prefer stamina, as it's got a 100% chance to work. Both schools of gearing are very viable. I'd personally say play around with stacking both if you can.

[neonanaski]

get about 40k Raid Buffed and go more for Mitigation / Exp / Hit

This part is good advice to follow. Don't agree with the other bits though, especially when you mention rune tap. Rune tap is worthless for a tank.

[Omen321]

This part is good advice to follow. Don't agree with the other bits though, especially when you mention rune tap. Rune tap is worthless for a tank.

honestly ive never specd blood ever .. i really just prefer frost over all other specs so honestly didn't know if runetap was a CD or not you guys specd into

[Manbearpig]

The attacks that kill me are magical and/or unavoidable.
You figure out the rest.

Blood Tank - Stacks ALOT more mitigation then Frost
Frost Tank - Stacks ALOT more Health then Blood

This does not make sense to me at all. If I want health I'll gear AND spec for it. Not one or the other.
How exactly do you stack mitigation? Armor trinkets?

[archform]

The attacks that kill me are magical and/or unavoidable.
You figure out the rest.
This does not make sense to me at all. If I want health I'll gear AND spec for it. Not one or the other.
How exactly do you stack mitigation? Armor trinkets?

there are armor patchs
like to gloves

[Talamare]

You know the original was health vs avoidance

not health vs mitigation

[Zenzimer]

Yeah, stack about 40k hp buffed, then start your expertise/dodge. Hitting expertise cap will make you the burst damage you take go down a ton. Parry gibs hurt a lot. Then start stacking def/dodge.

[Bisley]

you have to have enough health to survive back to back hits with no heals in between imo. Even with 90% avoidance, theres a ~1% chance to take back to back hits (when you consider you take 1000s of hits a night, its going to happen). Depending on what you healers are doing and how fast the boss swings, you'll take back to back hits. how hard does the boss hit? These numbers are always raid buffed. so id say 40-45K health is feasible. Then going for pure avoidance (while not losing any health) is nice.
You always can use more health for times when your healers are moving and cant cast a heal(say, got a death rune on them and are running out of it), but you should never take 4-5 hits in a row without getting at least one heal. Figure out the biggest burst you'll take and gear health for it, then reduce the likeliness of taking that much burst.

also, if you have a talent that increases stamina then 1 point of stamina gives you more than it would in other specs. The item value for stamina is worth more. thus you'd want to gear for it MORE, not say "psh, i have enough stam due to talents"

[Omen321]

You know the original was health vs avoidance

not health vs mitigation

w/e Mitigation Avoidance .. i used a different word .. if you wrnt smart enough to figure that one out there is no help

[archform]

w/e Mitigation Avoidance .. i used a different word .. if you wrnt smart enough to figure that one out there is no help

are you hurt?

anyway find the middle ground thru experience and trying out dif armors
*gives ya something to do when your not raiding*

[frankster]

w/e Mitigation Avoidance .. i used a different word .. if you wrnt smart enough to figure that one out there is no help

if you're not smart enough to know the difference you shouldn't be making snarky comments. mitigation and avoidance are very different concepts and you should study the meaning of each.

[Daeren]

This was an easy question.
Stack health. Avoidance comes naturally on gear.
I stack just stamina, yet I have 55% avoidance, and 35k unbuffed HP in blood spec.
If there were no diminishing returns, an I could choose between 10% dodge (=roughly 400 dodge rating without diminishing returns, far more if you account for DR) and 600 stamina (which is the same item costs in gemming) = 7700 health in frost presence and blood spec.
Now, which will save you more, going from 37,3k raid buffed with 65% avoidance or 45k raid buffed with 55% avoidance (real numbers are even bigger because of DR on avoidance)
The latter option is clearly superior on progression fights.

[Omen321]

BTW if you want to get technical .. you can stack 16 agi gems for armor since you wanna be a smart ass about it.

and it all goes back to the question what spec are you .. you will need less Stam as a Blood DK .. but More Avoidance .. and as frost you will need more stam than avoidance .. so .. really it all depends on your spec for what you stack more of