Armorstacking vs Staminastacking as tank

[JustintimeSS]

Agility enchants and gems.

20 agility, times 7 gem slots for the T8 (not figuring in slots for weapon or shield or rings or whatever) and you get 140 agility which is I think 280 armor, 1% dodge and 2% crit.

Or in layman's terms, completely not worth it at all.

Hey though, at least you're getting that armor that's so important right? ... right?

You know, I knew agility gave 2 for 1 for armor but never in my right mind did I think he was insinuating that is what he was talking about. Well, now I just feel silly.



Still, like you said, it is not worth it at all.

[Myrdin]

The only real way you can stack armor over stamina is with two trinkets, anything else that has armor on it an is a viable item, will have a good amount of stamina too.

There is no point in using armor gems, and the armor pot is already the best way to go for most fights.

On demand armor gains are nice, the damage reduction from it is much more reliable than avoidance, hence I prefer to reduce the hits with armor than rely on a chance avoidance. Most recently I think I need about 10 armor per stamina for it to give the same EH, but armor does nothing for your EH on magical damage.

The armor needed for equivalent EH gains is quite high, you won't find many items with armor where there isn't also a large amount of stam, the HP flask is better than the armor elixir, armor doesn't help with magical damage.

Stamina wins, but that doesn't make armor bad

[Barlos]

It really saddens me that people don't understand how Armor and Stamina work together. It's called effective health. The theory of this is that the mitigation from armor is equal to a set amount of stamina. The more stamina you have, the more valuable armor becomes. The more armor you have, the more valuable stamina becomes. It's a positive correlation that is much more complex than that, and you can read guides by Satrina on the subject if you google "Evil empire satrina" or something like that. She has come up with a lot of formulas and general theorycrafting that is very valuable for any serious tank.

However, saying Armor is better than Stamina, or vice versa, is complete ignorance. There is a lot of that in this thread.

Stamina comes out to be more valuable in a lot of situations because you simply have damage that can not be mitigated by armor (impale from beasts, swarm post-30% anub'arak, etc.), so the formula I'm about to show you is not perfect whatsoever.

A=Current Armor
K=(467.5L - 22167.5 where L = level of opponent...this is 16635 against level 83 targets)
H=Current Health

10(K+A)
1 Stamina: ------------- points of armor
H

Using this formula, a week or so ago is the most recent time I used these numbers...1 stamina is equal to 10.94 armor to me. That means I need about 11 times as much armor per point of stamina for armor to be worthwhile, and even yet, as I said before...stamina is still better in many cases because of damage that cannot be mitigated by armor.

I really hope this clears up a lot of confusion...

75% of encounters in wow are not magical

This is false, and is extremely misleading. The original poster is pretty ignorant in terms of knowing how to gear himself, so please don't be swayed into thinking stacking armor over all else is the end-all be-all. You want a balance. However, some of the spike damage that is going to kill a tank is going to be unmitigated by armor (a 4 stack impale on a 2 tank rotation on Heroic Northrend Beasts, for example - armor won't save you there!). You want a good balance, but the relation of Armor to Stamina goes much further than "stamina for magic, armor for physical".

[JustintimeSS]

^^ Awesome Post.

[ra3l]

additionally....

when there is a fight with 75% magical dmg and 25% melee dmg you only mitigate like 8% melee dmg..........

or in numbers:

20k melee hit = 5k absorb + 15k facesmash.......

i even dont see warriors setting their priority in armor....it is the druid, becaus he can only dodge.
warriors have parry and block so i would recommend to focus on your 3 "avoidance givers", whereas dodge and
parry are superior in my opinion because if you parry or dodge a 20k hit......your healers wont die of
heartfailure.
so armor is ofc part of your avoidance, but the least interesting and the least to worry about AS A WARRIOR.

[Barlos]

additionally....

when there is a fight with 75% magical dmg and 25% melee dmg you only mitigate like 8% melee dmg..........

or in numbers:

20k melee hit = 5k absorb + 15k facesmash.......

i even dont see warriors setting their priority in armor....it is the druid, becaus he can only dodge.
warriors have parry and block so i would recommend to focus on your 3 "avoidance givers", whereas dodge and
parry are superior in my opinion because if you parry or dodge a 20k hit......your healers wont die of
heartfailure.
so armor is ofc part of your avoidance, but the least interesting and the least to worry about AS A WARRIOR.

Ugh. No! Wrong!

[Shelly]

However, saying Armor is better than Stamina, or vice versa, is complete ignorance. There is a lot of that in this thread.

I don't think many people are saying just how much better armor is compared to stamina or vise versa (well except for the OP on the vice versa).

It's that armor isn't really a stat you think about for one thing, it's pretty much a given that tanks will hit the armor cap (75% physical damage reduction: http://www.wowwiki.com/Armor when we start getting the raid gear from IC. Druids will probably cap naturally - or come closest to it, then it will most likely be DKs followed by Warriors and Paladins when under the effects of any armor buffs.

In the meantime it's just hard to see the armor value of a weapon like the http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47810/http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47899 being comparable to the avoidance gained by using something like the http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45110 which doesn't even take into consideration the threat gains of the Titanguard.

My point is that while armor is a great stat to have it's not one you think about. You'll naturally gain it on your gear over time and with the addition of trinkets like http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47216 have made it less sketchy it's still too often trumped by avoidance.

[Neba]

It's that armor isn't really a stat you think about for one thing, it's pretty much a given that tanks will hit the armor cap (75% physical damage reduction: http://www.wowwiki.com/Armor when we start getting the raid gear from IC. Druids will probably cap naturally - or come closest to it, then it will most likely be DKs followed by Warriors and Paladins when under the effects of any armor buffs.

You're right that armor isn't really a stat that you can increase with many gear choices but I don't think tanks will be reaching the cap without some pretty extreme buffs and trinket procs. My druid has around 30-31k with Mark of the Wild at the moment and as far as I know most T8.5/9 tanks are not far from this level without going for armor trinkets. The cap is 49905 against a level 83 boss so especially since Inspiration-type procs no longer increase armor, I don't see the 75% armor cap being reached aside from trinket procs for short durations in this expansion.

[ithanium2]

srsly...cant you see hes a troll?
he's armor increase potion is just about to expire...

[Melonberry]

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47735 vs a stam trinket is really the only option you have to stack armor.

And I'd prolly take one of each.

[ÿaeger]

Phews quite a few replies there, my point wasn't really to show a viable way to sustain a 75% dmg reduc cap, just to see if anyone had some ideas about stacking armor in togc, and its doable to stack armor more than the trinketslots, theres 2x rings ~1k armor there, glove enchant 885, necklace another 500, anubwep 500ish, cloak ~500 + 225 enchant and not to forget the legs from kologarn25..

and using 2x indust pots = 4min of the fight with 3500 extra armor is awesome (pop once prior to pull and one 2min later), along with prot elixir 800 armor, theres quite a few ways to get a nice armorpool up (wihtout using the dualtrinkets I had on that screenshot by using 1792&850a trinkets)

Anyways it's nice to see some discussion about armor, it's something that most ppl ignore or set aside, but going from 25 to 35 unbuffed = neat.

[Xenryusho]

It's put aside because armor to the point of the curve where the amount needed to get 1 more % comes from gearing naturally. A warrior tank stands at 61% probably just getting random pieces of pre-ulduar gear. If you increased it by 14% (Just if by any chance you manage to get to 75%) then with a 40k unmitigated hit you're reducing

40,000*.75= 30,000 reduced. Pretty good
However
40,000*.61= 24,400 was what it was before you stacked so much armor..
So you spent a good possible 8k ish stam for this... And it dosn't even effect magic damage.

Now if it were like a 100k unmitigated hit, yes it's going to be alot more of a difference but still not quite as practical.

Imo I'll keep gearing how I do. Hope this goes well for you.

[Deleted]

I was expecting to post the EH formula and why this discussion is stupid, but I was beaten to it.

The armor needed to make stamina worthwhile is coming naturally from general 'EH' gearing. Stacking armor beyond that point is not a wise thing to do, assuming you're the maintank, simply becuse of all things that cannot be mitigated. Pieces such as Saronite plated legguards were the best EH piece around, due to the added armor, even tho Legplates of the Endless Void had higher stamina potential.

The above being said: Carrying armor gear isn't a bad thing, and you may find uses for it depending on your group and how you do shit.

[Shinshiva]

That is probaly the worst tank UI I have ever encountered.

On topic: Meh, armor + stam is the way to go. Effective health FTW

[RoKPaNda]

Everyone is stacking stamina, wich is quite sad since stamina is too darn boring imo.

I tried to stack as much armor as possible with my gear, ended up with 48,088 armor on the Lord Jaraxxus encounter - wich is quite juicy

(http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/111...1209164923.jpg)

So now I'm trying to stack unbuffed armor and aiming for 34k ub, but not sure on how much health and avoidance I dare to sacrifice to achieve it, any thoughts anyone?

Your unholy weapon enchant is pro.

[Nillo]

It's put aside because armor to the point of the curve where the amount needed to get 1 more % comes from gearing naturally. A warrior tank stands at 61% probably just getting random pieces of pre-ulduar gear. If you increased it by 14% (Just if by any chance you manage to get to 75%) then with a 40k unmitigated hit you're reducing

40,000*.75= 30,000 reduced. Pretty good
However
40,000*.61= 24,400 was what it was before you stacked so much armor..
So you spent a good possible 8k ish stam for this... And it dosn't even effect magic damage.

Now if it were like a 100k unmitigated hit, yes it's going to be alot more of a difference but still not quite as practical.

Imo I'll keep gearing how I do. Hope this goes well for you.

Are you trying to say that going from 15600 damage taken to 10000 dmg taken is worse than having + 8000 hp?

[Rurikar]

Stack HP and bring Paladin Healers.

When you take a hit guess what? The paladin heals you because he is spamming heals because he can.
When you avoid a hit guess what? The paladin still casts a heal which is over healed because he can and will to prevent you from dieing.

Hence total effective health is more important then anything else. Going from 30% avoidance to 50% avoidance does not really make a difference in the long run.



Stack stam or remain less effective.

[Nillo]

pointless stuff

The thread is called "Armorstacking vs Staminastacking as tank" not "Avoidancestacking vs Staminastacking"

Stamina comes out to be more valuable in a lot of situations because you simply have damage that can not be mitigated by armor (impale from beasts, swarm post-30% anub'arak, etc.), so the formula I'm about to show you is not perfect whatsoever.

The Anub Swarm doesn't affect the value of armor (it even favors High Armor, Low HP setups):
For example: in 1 case you have 42000 hp and 50% dmg reduce (->2*HP=EH) in the 2nd cast you have 40000 hp and (100%-50%/105%) dmg reduce (->2,1*HP=EH) so the EH is 84000 in both cases.
Now the tanks take 1 tick of 20% HP (heroic) : Tank 1 takes 8400 damage and is at 33600 hp , Tank 2 takes 8000 damage and is at 32000 hp -> they're both at 67200 EH.
Now if both tanks have a paladin shield with 3000 absorb on them: Tank 1 is at 36600 hp (-> 73200 EH) and Tank 2 is at 35000 hp (-> 73500 EH) => Tank 2 will always have more EH as soon as he absorbs or blocks a small amount of damage.