85 - Health

[Deleted]

I have 98 in ICC25 buffed right now..

[Deleted]

Actually... we do know! Tanks will gem pure stamina! Even Blizz said that - as long as dragons will breath, stamina will be the most valuable stat for a tank. And tanks in top guilds doing progression allways go full stamina to reduce as much rng as possible!

Ok, so we won't need Expertise anymore, according to you. That certainly makes it a lot easier to gem. As someone mentioned those talents are gone, and the only way to compensate is through gems, enchants and reforging. As I said, as long as we haven't seen raid content we can't be certain what we will gem for, any comments saying "WE WILL GEM FOR STAMINA!" is just stupid atm...

[Deleted]

Nope.
No other stat scales as good with buffs as stamina and if you're doing progression, the content is new and your raid is not that well geared, gemming stamina is a must since there's a high risk of getting gibbed very fast or even onehitted, relying on avoidance would be stupid, of course avoiding damage is better than receiving it then again if you have to rely on luck... that's not a serious progression! The goal is to make the incoming damage as predictable as possible and more health = more time for healers to react

Spike damage is pretty much the only thing that can kill a tank if healers aren't afk or just terrible...

Avoiding damage isn't killing you either. I don't said only avoidance is the key to success, but today with infinite mana, manasponges become more popular
But we will see how things are going in the new endgame scenario.

[Torne]

If this will scale like in wotlk then by the end of cataclysm in bis items bears will have like 300k hp :P

scaling won´t be like in WotLK.
Problem with Wrath was the implementation of heroic raids, so the LK items were like 1,5 Tiers above what they originaly planed them to be. In cata, 10s and 25s share loot so there will only be 2 itemlvls each tier (normal and heroic), plus they said they have already designed items from the last tier (i.e. deathwing loot) so they won´t come to a situation where stats explode again.

[jtstormrage]

well, taking a feral tank as an example, you get ...25% Stamina from Bear form

I read they are nerfing this. Can anyone confirm please?

[Deleted]

Ok, so we won't need Expertise anymore, according to you. That certainly makes it a lot easier to gem. As someone mentioned those talents are gone, and the only way to compensate is through gems, enchants and reforging. As I said, as long as we haven't seen raid content we can't be certain what we will gem for, any comments saying "WE WILL GEM FOR STAMINA!" is just stupid atm...

It depends on the content, for icc you don't really need expertise since ICC bosses don't have parry haste, threat never was an issue. Of course we don't know how will that work in Cata but the main goal for a tank is to survive the fight therefore nothing will change, tanks will gem pure stamina for progression! Period.

---------- Post added 2010-09-21 at 03:14 PM ----------

Avoiding damage isn't killing you either. I don't said only avoidance is the key to success, but today with infinite mana, manasponges become more popular
But we will see how things are going in the new endgame scenario.

Of course, but if there's a high risk of getting oneshoted, stacking stamina is the only option!

And as a friend of mine, great healer once told me: ''if I have 0 mana when the fight is done and no one died, I did my job perfectly'' (from a mathematical point of view)

[Beace]

My recently dinged 85 blood dk has 92k hp unbuffed in blood presence. With some instance buffs I hit a bit over 100k. Gear is crap though, just started tanking some of the new instances and haven't gotten upgrades yet.

[Pope]

Ok, so we won't need Expertise anymore, according to you. That certainly makes it a lot easier to gem. As someone mentioned those talents are gone, and the only way to compensate is through gems, enchants and reforging. As I said, as long as we haven't seen raid content we can't be certain what we will gem for, any comments saying "WE WILL GEM FOR STAMINA!" is just stupid atm...

But remember, Defense rating is gone, so there will be a lot more items with avoidance/hit or avoidance/expertise itemisation.
(At least that's my impression from beta, every tank item I get has hit or expertise, very few have parry + dodge)

[Deleted]

Also, besides talents and cooldowns, stacking stamina is the only way how to survive magical damage

[Deleted]

It depends on the content, for icc you don't really need expertise since ICC bosses don't have parry haste, threat never was an issue. Of course we don't know how will that work in Cata but the main goal for a tank is to survive the fight therefore nothing will change, tanks will gem pure stamina for progression! Period.

I haven't been talking about ICC or WotLK at any point, but about Cataclysm. And we don't know if bosses will actually have parry haste, and threat will have a bigger influence (MD/TotT changes and threat decay), so hit and expertise caps will be of bigger importance. If you've been running around in the dungeons on the beta, you will have noticed this.

[A Playful Dog]

I read they are nerfing this. Can anyone confirm please?

It should be safe to assume that they will keep it higher than Warriors and Paladins.

Druids and Death Knights will need more Hp due to missing a block mechanic. If anything goes bad and this gets nerfed, at least it wont be all the way down to 15%...

[ChildeRoland]

If this will scale like in wotlk then by the end of cataclysm in bis items bears will have like 300k hp :P

It won't. Blizz have allready made the stats for the gear that drops from Deathwing (yes I said it).

[Deleted]

But remember, Defense rating is gone, so there will be a lot more items with avoidance/hit or avoidance/expertise itemisation.
(At least that's my impression from beta, every tank item I get has hit or expertise, very few have parry + dodge)

but with the acutal gear in the beginning it will be terrible to tank raids maybe vangence will fix it on ptr the character info says 0.25% chance to be doged and 8.25% chance to be parried AND my armor went down from 34k to 28k ( i dont know why coudnt find a thread why it happens )so the overall mitigation is also reduced => stam is needed to absorb dmg, as far as i read the dmg ov all creatures from 65 to 85 has been increased ? does this include raidbosses at all ?

[Deleted]

I haven't been talking about ICC or WotLK at any point, but about Cataclysm. And we don't know if bosses will actually have parry haste, and threat will have a bigger influence (MD/TotT changes and threat decay), so hit and expertise caps will be of bigger importance. If you've been running around in the dungeons on the beta, you will have noticed this.

I have been refering to something that actually exsists since we have no info about cata raids. And stacking stamina has been mandatory for progression since TBC. And as I said, besides talents and cooldowns stamina is really the only stat needed for fights with magical damage. Since Blizz don't really make encounters with only one source of damage anymore and pretty much each fight having some kind of a magical dmg, stamina wins again!

Regarding expertise... please tell me when was that an issue? Because that was never a problem for me, the same for hit rating. Because of Vengeance I don't see how threat could become a huge problem. Yes we will have to work a bit harder to maintain agro but even from a mathematical point of view you won't need need hit/expertise caps to be able to keep agro. What Blizz wants to achieve is that tanks actually have to keep agro unlike now with missdirects and tricks of the trade being so overpowered

[Aro]

Because of Vengeance I don't see how threat could become a huge problem.

The new threat decay, for one. AoE tanking being more difficult. DPS having nearly unlimited resources (especially mana-users). Healers having a limited mana pool, meaning they CANNOT just spam-heal you to full health like in LK (they have already said that blocks/parry/dodges save healers mana). And without Misdirect or Tricks, hit/expertise becomes even more important, because you can't afford to miss and you can't afford a parry.

Really though, have you ever tanked before? Hit and expertise are important even in the live game.

[CrenVerdis]

(...)
Regarding expertise... please tell me when was that an issue? Because that was never a problem for me, the same for hit rating. Because of Vengeance I don't see how threat could become a huge problem. Yes we will have to work a bit harder to maintain agro but even from a mathematical point of view you won't need need hit/expertise caps to be able to keep agro. What Blizz wants to achieve is that tanks actually have to keep agro unlike now with missdirects and tricks of the trade being so overpowered

Hmm... And I thought this thread was about highest health pools...
But OFFtopic:
You would like to see RNG working for you in terms of aggro, but not in terms of survival... I'm not a fan of gemming avoidance (as a DK Tank) since the current raid situation does not favor this gemming (or item priority) but i think it's always healthy to look at socket boni wich may be good enough for a hybrid gem... like the trade losing 3 or 6 stam but gaining dodge/exp/hit what so ever...
tough I'm not in beta, but there was a statement that healpower was reduced everyones health got up because of the fact that damage isn't that much spiky anymore. There was a example by blue who mentioned that healers announce their big heals probably again... (This is aiming at the person who mentioned "since tbc"; because guess what... last time i could announce my big heal was in vanilla)

haters gonna hate and Thread/Avoidance will be undervalued as ever

P.s. I only think this might be doable in case of gemming... I would (except for special encounters) prefer enchants/items et cetera with high stam. And even in case of gemming; in my point of view hybrid gems are the way to go (always with stam... so no more hit come cata xD )

[Deleted]

AoE tanking being more difficult.

But Blizzard said that the goal is to bring back more crowd control instead of mindless aoe fights, there will be far less pure aoe trash fights then now so aoe tanking just won't really be important. And anyway - it's just trash...

DPS having nearly unlimited resources (especially mana-users).

Last time I checked, resources like mana will be an issue for everyone.

Healers having a limited mana pool, meaning they CANNOT just spam-heal you to full health like in LK (they have already said that blocks/parry/dodges save healers mana).

There's a difference between ''not enough'' and ''limited'' if healers haven't got enough mana then no stat will save you. As I said quoting my friend: ''if the healer has 0 mana at the end of a fight and no one died, he did a great job'' he used his resources effectively because everything was spent so no mana was unused.
And still, looking from a mathematical point of view, going for avoidance if it's progression is a very bad idea since you're relying on rng

And without Misdirect or Tricks, hit/expertise becomes even more important, because you can't afford to miss and you can't afford a parry.

it's not that these abilities like this won't be in the game anymore, they just won't be overpowered like now and even then, I don't see why would I ever pick up expertise/hit over stamina and avoidance

Really though, have you ever tanked before? Hit and expertise are important even in the live game.

Yes I was tanking ICC 25 heroic with less than 100 hit and expertise only from talents (as a prot warrior) and I had zero problems. And so did nearly all tanks in top guilds when changing ToC 25hc gear to ICC gear, picking up threat over survivability is just stupid.

[Stings]

I have 98 in ICC25 buffed right now..

You also got 30% more health in there, seeing as if you have 80k regular which will result in just about 24k extra. And if you also got other buffs, then he is still 10k over you with 30% more. He had kings and fortitude, but it's still a large difference seeing as his -30% less and wearing blues.

[Deleted]

one more thing about threat - you need only as much threat to do more than the dps that does the highest threat. So if you're in a guild, you should be aware of who will do x amounts of threat and how much is needed so you're not falling back/having threat issues. And even then this can be fixed with other tools, vigiliance, salvation etc etc