What's with the stamina craze?

[Sarcasm]

I decided to pick up my prot paladin again (I quit it not long after Uld was released) and looking around paladins in Dalaran I notice that the only gem anyone seems to be using is +30 stam. Is there a reason for this or do people just want high health so they look good to pug leaders? I always tended towards a mix of stam and avoidance.

[Kairu]

I decided to pick up my prot paladin again (I quit it not long after Uld was released) and looking around paladins in Dalaran I notice that the only gem anyone seems to be using is +30 stam. Is there a reason for this or do people just want high health so they look good to pug leaders? I always tended towards a mix of stam and avoidance.

Lots of unavoidable tank damage in ToC, also, with the debuff ICC will bring, a 20% nerf to avoidance, the stam will be looking nice as well.

[Sarcasm]

Thanks for the reply Chron, I had a feeling it would be due to a lot of unavoidable damage in ToC.

[Adamson]

Good sum-up Chron.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I wish i had logged out in my new tank gears

44k unbuffed.

PS: We're hiring a tank!@!!!! I miss ret

[Ultima]

I tank alongside 2 Warrior tanks, a druid tank and a DK tank. The only reason i am able to survive so much damage is purely and simply down to the fact i have more health than them. One of our Warrior tanks is at 45K buffed i believe, and our druid is at 49k or so. Our DK is at... hmm, 43k i think, but he's less geared than the rest of us.

I'm on an RPPvP server with only about 4 raid guilds and we have Warriors walking around with 42k unbuffed health, what the hell are your Warriors gemming for? Unless you are checking them in armory with their block sets for Anub ToGC. My Tankadin alt is in full welfare gear and sits at 39k unbuffed health. One of our Boomkins has about 50-51k raid buffed in his tank gear as well.

[DaGhostDS]

PS: We're hiring a tank!@!!!! I miss ret

what happened with the one in trial? :P

[Frumpy Frumpy Frak]

With us Paladins, we can reach incredibly high sustained health (55.4k buffed for me personally but this can rise to 60k with trinkets and such)

How the hell are you getting your HP so high? I've never even seen the best geared druids break 50k.

Of course, I am on somewhat of a backwater realm. "Khaz'goroth US: don't come to us, we'll come to you."

[Tholl]

How the hell are you getting your HP so high? I've never even seen the best geared druids break 50k.

Of course, I am on somewhat of a backwater realm. "Khaz'goroth US: don't come to us, we'll come to you."

Stam scaling for pallies is a bit better than any other tank after you hit about 30k HP.

[Frumpy Frumpy Frak]

Stam scaling for pallies is a bit better than any other tank after you hit about 30k HP.

Hopefully one day I will rise above my pitiful 37.5k unbuffed hp and be more like Chronalis.

[Raiss]

How the hell are you getting your HP so high? I've never even seen the best geared druids break 50k.

Of course, I am on somewhat of a backwater realm. "Khaz'goroth US: don't come to us, we'll come to you."

My druids has 60k, i think.


Northrend Beasts is a stamina fight. Impales, enraged worms, headbuts, they all hit so hard that there is no way to survive but high stam + overhealing. Jaraxxus and Twins are not tank fights at all (if people can kick and dispell), and champions are just something diferent. Anub you will need a special gear without stam.

[Sharaki]

Lots of unavoidable tank damage in ToC, also, with the debuff ICC will bring, a 20% nerf to avoidance, the stam will be looking nice as well.

Actually I'd gem more avoidance for ICC to keep that 102% :P

[Haxxored]

It wont help gemming to make up for the lost dodge since DR factors in BEFORE the -20%. So you may be able to gem up enough to break even but will have to gem ~35% dodge (a metric ass load) to get back up to where you were before the nerf (assuming you are now at 25-30%).

The main problem is all the DR on avoidance. Once you hit higher gear levels stam is the only thing that still scales linearly while other stats fall of (rather dramatically as you get higher).

[Adamson]

what happened with the one in trial? :P

He got his account stolen :'(

[Superawful]

As many have said, the stacking of stamina isn't necessarily a mindless following of what people want. In fact, other players want the high stamina tank because quality tanks did this before, just your hunter raid leader might not truly understand the reasoning behind why EH is generally better than avoidance.

In fact, the gearing of tanks has changed significantly even in WotLK. In Naxx, the variety of stats on gear was varied very well, resulting in tanks using tier, 25 man, and 10 man content gear together. I know I had a block set, an avoidance set, and an EH set. The reason behind this was that Naxx had old raiding mechanics on its bosses still so that tanking gear was still situational. Loatheb was a great example of where a block set significantly reduced the amount of damage you took. Now, the mechanic is generally to make tanks sustain a giant hit or two in succession, and make healers spam them to ensure they get a heal off before a 2nd or 3rd hit kills the tank. In addition, gear is much more linear in improvements, such that you gain x amount of armor, stamina, dodge, defense and parry by upgrading to a higher ilvl of gear, as opposed to deciding whether the increased armor and stamina and block were worth the loss of defense and dodge. The compensations in ICC should help return things to a more balanced state where reasonable avoidance, decent mitigation, and sufficient health pools should be much more common than pure stamina stacking for all situations.

There is definitely much more to this discussion, such as EH is almost always best for a progression fight, but if you really want to better understand how to heal a tank, try tanking as an OS or on an alt. Also, tankspot.com is a much better place to educate yourself than these forums.

That is a post I made on a similar thread (only it was asked by a healer) about why tanks are stam stacking. It really is as simple as the current game design necessitates it. Hopefully in ICC, and then on to Cataclysm (after reading the new blue posts), the focus will shift significantly from purely having high health pools, to having different sets of gear be useful, to even having a single set be more balanced than it being an EH set.

However, as you're looking to gear up a bit and get back into things though, you will still have to stam stack until you get into ICC as the old raids will still be under the old design.

[rathok]

TLDR;

1 simple reason: stamina=consistency

Boss X swings twice for 20k then if your avoidance and have 35k hp then you'll die if you dont happen to dodge/parry/miss one of those without receiving any heals. If you are a stam tank and have 45k hp then even if you eat both without getting any heals you'll still be good.

If bosses hit for 2000 every .2 seconds then avoidance would be perfectly viable but they dont, they hit for 20,000 every 2 seconds so its not viable.

[Deleted]

in full BiS STAM stacking gear, using Rawr, i get 47,109 HP. this is using JC and leatherworking (since LW gives 62 STAM over other professions' 60 STAM).

with buffs, i get 57,271 HP, with Satrina, i get 62,067 HP.

just to show you how much we can get.

[Faladrath]

Stam seems to be the more obvious stat for ICC then before yea, tho some offspec gear for the heavy melee fights to include some of those emblem of frost offset gear with high armor on them will probably be done after the almost perfectly t10 is acquired. Possibly block gear for those 2 encounters thats has a fair amount of ads on heroic mode but we'll see how things pan out.

Looking forward to ICC

[Offhand]

45-46k unbuffed is about as high as tanks can get unbuffed right now.

Beasts is the best fight for EH for reason mentioned above but MT Anub has some intense tank damage as well. Stamina stacking doesn't really pay off as much in other fights.

[Raiss]

A tank decreases handles incoming damage in several ways. Effective health, physical damage mitigation (Armor, block, talents), physical damage avoidance (Miss, dodge, parry), and spell damage mitigation (resistance, talents).
If a boss' main source of damage is avoidable physical damage (like Algalon) then effective health, physical damage mitgation and avoidance are all greatly useful.
If a boss' main source of damage is unavoidable physical damage (like Gormok's impale) then effective health and physical damage mitigation are useful.
If a boss' main source of damage is unavoidable spell damage then you want effective health and spell damage mitigation.

Effective health is ALWAYS useful whatever the boss may be. So Stamina is obviously the best stat for tanks because it is useful against all types of bosses. If a boss is an extreme case then other things may be considered and a tank will built a secondary set. Tanks created burrower sets for Anub because of that, and have been creating resistance sets since forever for bosses whose damage is mainly spell damage. In ICC, I think it is pretty likely that tanks will keep two sets (or at least blizzard seems to be pushing this with their itemization). A high armor set against bosses who do little spell damage to the tank and a generic stamina set that maximizes stamina in place of anything else.

I'm looking foward for the next Lich boss using Frostbolt. My Sacred Cleasing will make him look stupid.

[Ultima]

For Warriors, the highest i've seen unbuffed was around 41k. I have 0 knowledge of Warrior tanking, so i don't know how good they are as a player, but i imagine they'd survive the hits in TotGC 25. I see 1 DK tank in a progressed guild, and he's at 35K HP. I also only know of 2 Druid tanks on the realm, with the one in the most progressed guild sporting 32K according to armory (this is of course, without being in dire bear form).

My DK friend has 37k health, he has full T8.5 and Heart of Iron/Brewfest trinket, he went DPS when ToC came out. So either T9 sucks for DK Tanks or that tank isn't using stam trinkets/gems funikly. Also, I dislike quoting exact names to make points but I'll do it again, Kungen is sitting at 45k unbuffed in his non-block gear set, so someone had a pretty good estimate early when they said 45-46k for Warriors.