What's with the stamina craze?

[Deaths]

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.

Yeah warriors can get that high, I dont know about dks.. Ensidia has a DK named Zkygge who was at one point there OT, (not sure if he is now or what). His gear is good, not up to kungens but still very good. Hes got 42.2 K unbuffed and its in older gear, (Ulduar 25 and basic 25 ToTC crap)

[Jpkto]

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.

Our MT is pretty much there :P
Jugnaut
He still needs some upgrades tho :/. He could get a little bit more HP but he's been working on getting some hit lately. With all that expertise in ToC tank gear...

[Geary]

Not to knock stamina, but stamina isn't always the way to go. When tanking progression encounters, effective health (EH) should be your first concern. But once you are confident that you are comfortably over the effective health threshold for said encounter, you can, and often should branch out to other attributes depending on what's needed for that fight.

For example, the Glyph of Indomitability (1792 armor trinket) is superior to the same-iLevel Juggernaught's Vitality (192 stamina trinket) for hard-hitting physical bosses like Northrend Beasts. And if you are an add tank on Anub'arak, increasing your block value at the cost of a moderate amount of stamina is entirely appropriate, as long as you stay over the minimum EH threshold. There are other examples, but I'm sure you get the idea.

So as far as gemming goes, I favor min-maxing with the item itself. For example, there are going to be a bunch of EH-heavy items coming in 3.3 (both crafted and from emblems), and I'll gem them all with stamina. But I may mix in avoidance with other pieces.

[Gotnobubble]

Personally I believe that there is no better way to increase your time to live then to increase the amount of hits you can take. Since blizzard seems hell bent on giving us three way avoidance splits on our gear (Def, Dodge, Parry) we'll always have a good amount of avoidance on our gear for most situations.

So bonus armor and stam (since stam is valued less per itemization point then any other base stat) are just too good to pass up (in my opinion)

I just wish that block was a more viable stat for general tanking situations.

[shetan]

Tbqh, this is the first time I've ever thought of gemming anything other than stam. Albeit I just drop an agi/stam gem into periodic red sockets, but yea.

[gamerguy19876]

personally i like to get socket bonuses cause i like to meet the socket bonus, plus i dont think the 1k health tops more youd get from stam stacking would make much of a difference with the other bonuses you get from mixing it with aviodance/stam gems

[Adamson]

personally i like to get socket bonuses cause i like to meet the socket bonus, plus i dont think the 1k health tops more youd get from stam stacking would make much of a difference with the other bonuses you get from mixing it with aviodance/stam gems

Someone would argue the opposite where 2,000hp would make the difference at living or dying when a .5% chance to MAYBE avoid the attack is too RNG.

[Harmacy]

Someone would argue the opposite where 2,000hp would make the difference at living or dying when a .5% chance to MAYBE avoid the attack is too RNG.

And that 'someone' would have a very legitimate point.

[Gotnobubble]

personally i like to get socket bonuses cause i like to meet the socket bonus, plus i dont think the 1k health tops more youd get from stam stacking would make much of a difference with the other bonuses you get from mixing it with aviodance/stam gems

ummmm.... lets do the math shall we....

I have 9 +30 stam gems, one dodge/+12 stam gem and a +32 stam meta....

that is 314 stamina.

from talents paladins gain additional 14% stam.

that makes 357.96 (round up to 358) stam

add 10% for kings kings / sanc and we're up to 393.8 (round up to 394)

now convert it to health 3940....

even if we gained 0 bonus to stamina from talents it would be 3450 health with blessing of kings (which you should have as a minimum in raids)

so ya.... almost 4k health for me or (lets be generous here) an extra 3% total avoidance...... i know what i would pick.

[Cardolan]

ummmm.... lets do the math shall we....

I have 9 +30 stam gems, one dodge/+12 stam gem and a +32 stam meta....

that is 314 stamina.

from talents paladins gain additional 14% stam.

that makes 357.96 (round up to 358) stam

add 10% for kings kings / sanc and we're up to 393.8 (round up to 394)

now convert it to health 3940....

even if we gained 0 bonus to stamina from talents it would be 3450 health with blessing of kings (which you should have as a minimum in raids)

so ya.... almost 4k health for me or (lets be generous here) an extra 3% total avoidance...... i know what i would pick.

Your post doesn't take into account the stamina from the avoidance/stamina gems, or the stamina bonuses you're missing out on.

Converting all of my defense/stamina and agility/stamina (except one, to keep my meta) to pure stamina gems gets me an extra 27 stamina, which is 338 health after talents and Sanctuary/Kings. Hardly makes a difference either way, really.

[Bluerelic]

Your post doesn't take into account the stamina from the avoidance/stamina gems, or the stamina bonuses you're missing out on.

Converting all of my defense/stamina and agility/stamina (except one, to keep my meta) to pure stamina gems gets me an extra 27 stamina, which is 338 health after talents and Sanctuary/Kings. Hardly makes a difference either way, really.

First of all, you dont get a number that ends in an 8 when you add hp gained from stam, but i imagine you just multiplied by 24%, least i hope...

Secondly, your gear lacks gems, you're using craptastic blue gems, or you have a lot of gear that favors blue sockets in them, which let me tell you, are usually not your BiS

Now, the good gear that favors blue gems, like the belt in ToGC10 (forgot who drops it), good pallies will trade 6 stam for a socket bonus if it gains them 10agi/dodge, but matching socket bonuses on legs or chest when they have 1 of each color, or some variation that isn't at least 50% blue will cost you far more than the socket bonus is worth....

TL;DR = here and there a single gem is worth sacrificing to pick up avoidance, but EH is a better stat for most current encounters, so therefore not worth sacrificing in large amounts...

[Offhand]

TL;DR = here and there a single gem is worth sacrificing to pick up avoidance, but EH is a better stat for most current encounters, so therefore not worth sacrificing in large amounts...

If you're talking about t9, "most encounters" translates to one.

EDIT: If you my gear and gem everything pure stamina, I gain 33 stamina (409 health). My current gear is has all but 3 socket bonuses met, I'm leaving out red sockets with a 6 stamina or less socket bonus. If we were to include the sockets I didn't meet, forgoing all socket bonuses nets you 51 stam (632 health raidbuffed).

Even on a well geared prot paladin, you lose less then 1k health by meeting all socket bonuses. It's not really worth ~700 health for the amount of EH/avoidance/threat you lose elsewhere. EH is not the only metric by which a tank's worth is measured.

Second EDIT: I realized meta gems are good. We're required to meet 1 red socket for our meta. So I changed the gem in the tier helm resulting in a net loss of 3 stamina. Above stuff edited to reflect that.

[Cardolan]

First of all, you dont get a number that ends in an 8 when you add hp gained from stam, but i imagine you just multiplied by 24%, least i hope...

Secondly, your gear lacks gems, you're using craptastic blue gems, or you have a lot of gear that favors blue sockets in them, which let me tell you, are usually not your BiS

Now, the good gear that favors blue gems, like the belt in ToGC10 (forgot who drops it), good pallies will trade 6 stam for a socket bonus if it gains them 10agi/dodge, but matching socket bonuses on legs or chest when they have 1 of each color, or some variation that isn't at least 50% blue will cost you far more than the socket bonus is worth....

TL;DR = here and there a single gem is worth sacrificing to pick up avoidance, but EH is a better stat for most current encounters, so therefore not worth sacrificing in large amounts...

The 338 was from multiplying by 10 before I bothered to round, and I didn't think the couple of points of health difference was worth arguing over. Apparently I was wrong.

When I made my post, my gear probably had as many pure stamina gems as defense/stamina or agility/stamina gems, all of which are epic. The difference from changing all but one to pure stamina gems was 27 stamina. Having gained three upgrades last night, and thrown pure stamina gems into all five sockets, the pure stamina to hybrid ratio has shifted quite a bit.