Serious Discussion on DW tanking

[Nyanmaru]

Again this error, ds was NEVER based on damage. Original ds healed you for 5% our you health for each disease the target had. So uh dk got 15% healing and other dks 10%. To the debate, 9k instead of 6-7k is a huge difference no matter what you guys can say. Chosing dw is just a selfish decision to slow down your raid and we're already the dead weight tank with the worst dps and mitigation. Gimping ourselves further is just a really bad idea.

If you start typing in caps, please be sure to get your facts straight beforehand.

The % change to DS was added in Ulduar. Before DS healed for 50% of damage done per disease. So Unholy got 150% of damage done as heal and blood and frost got 100% of damage done as heal. During that time, a DW frost DS was the weakest possible heal and unholy had the highest heal due to the number of diseases and possible DS by Blood Rune to Death Rune conversion. When DS damage skyrocketed for Blood DpS they changed it to be 5% of maximum HP per Disease. With 4.0.1 DS was changed again to the current model. where DS heals for 7% of max HP or 20% of incoming damage over the last 5s whichever is higher. And for blood DKs the 20% part can be increased by 45% if specced into imp. DS.

So much for a little DK retrospective.


But let's get back to the current tanking model and discuss that. Well, if there's even any need for.


Keep in mind, these are the current facts:
- There is little to no gain in avoidance.
- You severely lose out on DpS gimping your raid (more severe in 10m than in 25m).
- You need twice the dropluck to get geared.

Conclusion: It is not advisable to use DW blood as tanking spec.

[Avatar Killer]

1) There's no reason to go for more dodge than parry.... besides it's nearly impossible to get dodge higher than parry anyway (thanks to several pieces having parry only and gaining parry from str)
2) Uhm I may be wrong - but why would DS only heal for half as much with a 1H?

1) you wont gain more to begin with it would be a loss. Part two of that no it is no where near impossible to get dodge higher than parry RATING. the % would be hard to top but in general that's 4% (provided you use swordshattering enchants) that does not hit the DR table for parry. Lastly, currently (since the change to avoidance) you as a DK ALWAYS want to balance the dodge and parry RATINGS because you get the best possible result out of them rather than stacking ANY of the two. they diminish at the exact same rate and provide the exact same benefit. stacking one only lessens the effectiveness of the higher one more than the lower one. IGNORE the % value entirely and ONLY look at the ratings. if one rating is 2000 and the other one is 2200 then take an item that provides the stat that is 2200 and reforge it off (try to get one that forges off 100 of that stat) and forge it into the one that is providing 2000 and then you will have a 2100/2100 balance resulting in the best possible outcome against DR.

2) Was only the case a very long time ago. this is no longer the case. you could death strike with a grey level 1 one handed sword and get the same heal as if you used a legendary 2h axe. the only thing that matters is the damage you have sustained in the last 5 seconds before using Death Strike (currently in cata)

[Geso]

wondering if DW with the swords off deathwing will put dw blood at least a little closer to 2h, it would honestly depend on the proc rate and what the proc for the 2h sword is for blood dks

[Foibles]

You lose a lot of damage, and gain little to no survivability.

Why would you DW tank?

[Zao]

It's too early to really say much about it.
http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=77193

That's the sword he's talking about. It all depends on the procchance and the final value of the proc.
But yes, it might be possible

[SSHA778]

Avoidance on the other hand will either work, or not work. If it works, you take 0 dmg, if it doesn't, you take full dmg. I strongly feel avoidance builds are spikier by definition.

Yes, avoidance is binary. It either happens or it doesn't. But the difference here is that with an avoidance setup, the chance of "yes" happens more often than when you have ~38% avoidance. While both builds can spike, avoidance's spikes tend to be much more severe, since they cannot do much about them, but you're assuming that avoidance-RNG fails more often than it really does. Mastery generally will (perceived by healers) spike more often, but they generally have a DS waiting when that happens. The net effect of that is that you may think mastery doesn't spike as often just because it has something to deal with the spike when it does occur. This would be true if you are comparing remaining HP+absorb post-spike for both setups and assuming equal skill with DS use.

Also, heroic raid palas are currently sitting at full CTC, not 80%. Every single hit they take is dodged, parried, or blocked. Warriors are not quite there yet (at least i think so, maybe there's one or two nutty extreme BiS ones out there that have managed to get it), but they are sitting at 95%+, and will reach full ctc in 4.3.

I'm aware that both classes are block-capping with ease. Warriors can block cap 66% of the time without losing much at all in normal FL gear.

What I'm saying though is that the reason why CTC works so well for warriors/paladins is the fact that they can not only near 102.4% coverage, but actually reach that. The nearer they reach it, the more reliably they can count on it. Once they hit 102.4%, then they can factor it in as a part of their EH, which is a massive boost. As a DK, currently, the closest you will get to that is about ~53% avoidance (BiS, Night Elf). That's nowhere close.

There is another factor regarding DK CTC that hasn't really been analyzed with depth. If you were truly going to compare our CTC to traditional CTC, you would need to look at the number of times your absorb amount is greater than 30% of the hit you took pre-absorb, which is functionally a block. I won't have anything to quantify that value for another ~20m or so, depending on CPU loading, and the result of that would also be rather circumstantial.

However, I agree that a big part in determining which is better for you is how your healer perceives your health. That goes back to one of the first points I said in my first post.

---------- Post added 2011-11-04 at 06:23 PM ----------

Here's what I'm seeing when I consider 30%+ absorbs to be more CTC.

Or, basically, instead of dodge+parry+miss = CTC, I'm using dodge+parry+miss+>30% absorb = CTC, where >30% absorb is essentially a block. The results might surprise you.

Quick baseline stats before the graph:
-Both are using SS
-Mastery-heavy has 1900 dodge/parry
-Avoidance-heavy has 1300 mastery
-Both using 8DS/min
-Boss hits for 1/3 your HP.
-No magical or tank swaps

The rest you should be able to read yourself.



You probably noticed the sharp turn in the mastery setup. I showed why this occurs here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post13569981

The avoidance graph also probably increases at a lower rate than you would think. This is due to two reasons:
1) because as you increase avoidance, you decrease the >30% absorbs, thus, fighting against your total CTC gain
2) our loving friend, the DR.

[Firebert]

Re: SSHA778:
Could you show both graphs in full please, not just a selection in the X axis?
Because the crosslinked post shows far more information for the Mastery graph, and there may be some who say the Dodge/Parry graph is misleading (x-axis values).

Thank you. <3

[SSHA778]

Re: SSHA778:
Could you show both graphs in full please, not just a selection in the X axis?

Well, if you're wanting it to span from, say, 0 mastery to 6000 (similar to the other graph), I could do that, but it's fairly inaccurate to assume that if you have 0 mastery, you somehow have 1900 dodge/parry (in the case of mastery). So in that regard, the actual CTC result isn't going to be useful other than to see the trend. That would be the reason why I centered the values where I did, because those values are attainable and reasonable in my opinion.

Varying both at the same time is going to change the shape of the graph.

Because the crosslinked post shows far more information for the Mastery graph, and there may be some who say the Dodge/Parry graph is misleading (x-axis values).

Yes, I know the x-values might be misleading, but there's not really a better way to put it. If you add up the total rating (mastery+dodge+parry), both of the data sets have the exact same amount at any given point.

I suppose I could rewrite that to say "total rating" though, but then people might confuse that as well.

If you wanted it to be reasonably accurate spanning the entire 0-6000 range or so, you'd need to determine what "reasonable" mastery : dodge/parry ratios are. As in, for the mastery setup, every 4 mastery, you gain 1 dodge and 1 parry. These need to be whole numbers, though, and, preferably, the same total amount of rating. For example using the first "ratio" I listed, that's 6 total points. Whatever the avoidance one is also needs to be 6 total points, or else you're unfairly biasing one of the setups.

Just for the sake of being able to see the trend, I'll run mastery from 0-6000 mastery and avoidance from 1250-4250 dodge and 1250-4250 parry (combined being the same at the end). But, again, they're not going to be generalizable until you can figure out some suitable ratios.

Given the sheer number of evaluations, it won't be done for 3 hours assuming I run it correctly the first time.

---------- Post added 2011-11-05 at 03:55 PM ----------

Or apparently the change I just made halved the execution time, so not 3 hours.

Before the graph, here's some important data:
-The y-axis starts at 0.4 and ends at 0.75.

-The x-axis shows the TOTAL rating. To find the mastery/avoidance ratings, you'll need to do some dreaded math.
------For mastery rating, take the x-value and subtract 3800 (1900+1900 = 3800 non-mastery rating).
--If you do that, the x-axis should become: 200, 1200, 2200, 3200, 4200, 5200 mastery rating
------For avoidance (dodge+parry), take the x-value and subtract 1300 (1300 = 1300 non-avoidance rating). The result is DODGE+PARRY.
--If you do that, the x-axis should become: 2700, 3700, 4700, 5700, 6700, 7700 dodge+parry rating

--All inputs are the same as the previous graph

Do not use these for exact CTC measures. As you increase your mastery, you would also normally increase your avoidance, and vice versa. This will change the values on the graph.

As a reminder: CTC IS NOT DAMAGE REDUCTION. DO NOT MAKE THIS ERROR.



[edit: these CTC values are nowhere close to realistically accurate due to not changing all 3 stats. See this post: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...#post14101611]

I hope that's as "unbiased" as possible, although I could start the y-axis from 0 and go to 1.

The mastery curve looks different from the one in the cross-referenced post. This is because the referenced curve is showing ANY spillover, whereas this is showing only the spill that is greater than 30% of the hit. If you use the previous method to find the values (solve for =.3, =1, =1.3 at 1/2/3 swings [edit: technically you should do .7, 1, 1.7, 2, 2.4, 2.7, 3 swings, but the probability of some of those is mostly negligible]), you should see mastery jump at
~50 (3850 displayed axis),
~1500 (5300 displayed axis),
~1850 (5650 displayed axis),
~2850 (6650 displayed axis,
~3500 (7300 displayed axis),
~5000 (8800 displayed axis)

You'll see that at all of those values calculated above, there is a jump. At the ~7300 displayed axis, this jump is not very prominent because a full absorb is already classified as a >30% absorb (100% > 30%). Consequently, it doesn't jump significantly there like at the other points.

The largest relative difference in CTC is about 10%, at the 7000 displayed axis.

[SSHA778]

how can u say that?Blood shield depending on damage taken

I said the results would be "circumstantial." In this particular case, the boss is swinging for 1/3rd of your HP every 1.8s. This negates any effect from armor, HP, and boss swing damage for any gear set.

If the boss hits for less, then the graph will change. If he hits for more, it shouldn't really change much because the minimum shield is not a factor.

edit: If you add in magical damage, then both graphs should shift upward and to then left at every point. If you add in healer absorbs, then both graphs (unless you're counting their absorbs as your CTC) should shift downward and to the right at every point. I don't think the shifts would be of the same magnitude for both graphs, but that's just something to note.

[Firebert]

So every tank should go mastery if their combined Mastery+Dodge+Parry rating is about 5500+ (white space appears)?
I know that Avoidance pokes above Mastery inbetween 4k and 5k, but the difference is minimal.

Thank you for posting the graph with a bit more info on it. <3

EDIT: I'm at 42.07% avoidance and 11.62 mastery as it stands (no Firelands gear), and a summed rating of just under 6700. So, I'm losing between 2.1% and 5.7% effective CTC for choosing Avoidance over Mastery, which is (if all converted to dodge rating) anywhere between 372 and 1008 dodge rating, probably more with diminishing returns.

Time to go back to Mastery?



EDIT II: Woops. You did say not to use this for accurate CTC measures, sorry.

[SSHA778]

So every tank should go mastery if their combined Mastery+Dodge+Parry rating is about 5500+ (white space appears)?
I know that Avoidance pokes above Mastery inbetween 4k and 5k, but the difference is minimal.

Every tank should go to mastery because of what? You didn't provide a reason. Based on the graph I posted, I am to assume that you mean purely for CTC reasons. If that's what your goal is, then yes.

If your goal was overall damage reduction, then you missed one of my disclaimers.

As a reminder: CTC IS NOT DAMAGE REDUCTION. DO NOT MAKE THIS ERROR.

I put them in there for a reason.
Think about it. If 2 paladins have 80% CTC, which has greater damage reduction? There's absolutely no way of knowing without knowing their dodge/block/parry%'s. Their total damage reduction could vary from 80/102.4*.3 = .23 (all block), to 80% (all dodge/parry).

To prove my point, here's the graph of the total mitigation excluding healing done, because I would have to make an assumption about overhealing that very well may be unreasonable.

All the previous disclaimers still apply. Please refer back to my previous posts in this thread to find them.



At any given point on this graph, mastery is within +/- 3% of avoidance. Consequently, no conclusion can be drawn on superiority on the overall scale because even moderate RNG swings it either way. Magical damage would raise mastery slightly relative to avoidance, and healer absorbs would drop it down.

If you would like to argue that slightly better CTC makes one better, well, good luck. [edit: This same argument is still debated between block classes. About probably the only semi-defensible argument you could come up with is that the mastery setup takes more damage on average in between each DS (in the following example, about ~7% more, but that's a grey area because they'll correspondingly heal more, too).]

---------------------------------------------------------------
Now, on another note, I did do a progressive analysis increasing both mastery and avoidance for both gear sets.

I have the total amount of stats increasing by 8 per iteration. Here's the allocation breakdown (decimals do work but I don't like allocating "decimal" additions):
For mastery: 4 points to mastery (50% allocation); 2 points to dodge (25%); 2 points to parry (25%)
For avoidance: 1.38 points to mastery (17.25%); 3.31 points to dodge (41.38%); 3.31 points to parry (41.38%)

To find the corresponding mastery/dodge/parry values at any point on the graph, you would need to multiply the displayed x-value by the corresponding percentages.

If this allocation (in terms of %'s) seems off-base, please correct me and I will redo the results.

Here's that same CTC graph using this method:

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE Y-AXIS HAS CHANGED.



In general, at every single point, your CTC is lower than in the first graph I showed, because the three stats, in a real setting, change dynamically and affect each other. That's why I made sure to include the warning on the previous CTC graph. The first graph also has baseline stats (so a base CTC), and builds from there. The base avoidance and mastery for both respectively are equal to about the maximum values that would be attained in the progressive run. I won't post a comparison of those two sets together, but the drop in CTC is rather large (25% relative difference) when plotted together. This is because the point distributions don't match up at every interval.

Regarding overall damage reduction, once again, +/- 3%.

It's interesting to note the switch on the avoidance graph at about ~6800 combined rating, where avoidance's CTC starts to rise (barely noticeable). I'm not entirely sure why, but it's obviously due to mastery increasing, not avoidance. Looking at a separate graph of just the >30% absorbs as a % of total hits, avoidance's has a local minimum at 7000 rating, which supports this assertion. Again, this has no real bearing on overall damage reduction.

edit: As another note, in T12, we're somewhere in between the 7k-8k total rating region.

2nd edit: Messed up my axes in the 2nd graph. Fixed and reposted. Might as well just reread the entire conclusion after that 2nd graph as the wording on that has been changed significantly.

[Firebert]

I did mean pure CTC reasons. Our damage reduction (armor) is getting buffed soon anyway, and we have tools for dealing with magical damage (AMS, et al).

Regarding the argument between CTC and damage reduction, surely if both builds give the same damage reduction with the same amount of stats, but one gives greater CTC coverage over the other, then the former is a better choice than the latter?

[SSHA778]

I did mean pure CTC reasons. Our damage reduction (armor) is getting buffed soon anyway, and we have tools for dealing with magical damage (AMS, et al).

Then, yes. Although there will be a point (that we won't reach this expansion) where avoidance overtakes mastery, but that's not until much further. As a side note, the armor change doesn't affect the output since I made the assumption that the boss is hitting for a % of the DK's HP. I haven't played on the PTR yet, but they're probably going to make bosses in Dragon Soul hit correspondingly harder, at least in heroics, which somewhat negates the armor change.

Regarding the argument between CTC and damage reduction, surely if both builds give the same damage reduction with the same amount of stats, but one gives greater CTC coverage over the other, then the former is a better choice than the latter?

I'd be inclined to agree, but that would be most readily decided by your healers. The relative difference in coverage that you'd be looking at currently in boss fights is about 8-12 extra hits out of ~170-230. That's not really game-changing. If you raid in 25's, then healer absorbs will definitely be more of a factor and will probably make the two pretty equivalent in terms of self-CTC.

[Firebert]

I'd be inclined to agree, but that would be most readily decided by your healers. The relative difference in coverage that you'd be looking at currently in boss fights is about 8-12 extra hits out of ~170-230. That's not really game-changing. If you raid in 25's, then healer absorbs will definitely be more of a factor and will probably make the two pretty equivalent in terms of self-CTC.

I'm pretty sure the biggest whine DK tanks had from healers was the boss in Firelands that hit faster than everyone else (Dual Wield?), such that we couldn't recover fast enough with Death Strikes (or, more succinctly, Avoidance trumped Mastery).

Is it fair to say that it's still worth having two sets of gear in case this anomaly appears again, but still work on Mastery-heavy builds? I mean, I've not played on the PTR (or done any bosses from Firelands), so I don't know if that situation is going to occur again.

[SSHA778]

I'm pretty sure the biggest whine DK tanks had from healers was the boss in Firelands that hit faster than everyone else (Dual Wield?), such that we couldn't recover fast enough with Death Strikes (or, more succinctly, Avoidance trumped Mastery).

This is a special case.

From mastery, you would still see .29*#swings*swing damage*mastery

So, it's not like it somehow becomes less effective when you're getting hit more often, because it scales with the number of hits. Having more swings in the window actually makes avoidance penalize mastery less severely in small windows. Just consider these two scenarios: total damage of 100k, but varying the swings. One of them has 2 swings for 50k. If you avoid one, your DS heal is now based out of 50k. If one of them has 10 swings, and you avoid 3 of them, your DS heal is now based on 70k. 70k > 50k. Overall, it might average out to be around the same, but the largest difference is in small windows, which is most important.

The reason why Baleroc is a special case is because the boss hits fast and hard. I'm assuming you're talking about MT-ing him, because avoidance being superior for Decimation Blade soaking should be rather obvious. A DK's low effective health really shows itself in the MT-ing scenario on that fight. When you're capable of dying before your next DS, with a reasonable DS window now, mastery has a chance to just completely break down because you only get mastery's mitigation if you are alive. This is one of the situations where the extra 7% +/-3% damage taken in between DS's or so can be significant. The extreme vulnerability showed itself when reapplying diseases, which is why it was generally advised as a DK tank to have someone else do it for you on that fight in 25's. The only way around this EH problem is proper cooldown usage, increasing your DS/min (assuming you weren't at the cap already), and with competent healers.

edit: It's really actually quite ironic that a number of DKs have taken the turn to avoidance to combat the "EH" problem, as avoidance isn't technically part of EH until you hit 101.8%. That's just a side note I find comical. I know the reason why--the distribution of that mitigation, but still.

Whether or not you'll want to have two sets will depend on how the finalized encounters in Dragon Soul look. Currently, I don't think one fight particularly favors avoidance, although one of them will show EH issues. I don't know if Blackhorn's Devastate is avoidable, but if it is, then that will probably be an edge. On the other hand, it is on a fairly reliable timer, which means you can time a DS around it, so it could end up either way.

Mechanically, with the 4.3 DK changes, nothing is really biasing mastery nor avoidance, so there shouldn't be a large difference there.

[Firebert]

Thank you for sticking with me SSHA778. I've not done Firelands, only seen the Forum QQ (on both official and here) about Baleroc, so maybe I'm posing some very n00b questions.

Also, I thought the CTC cap was 102.4%? I'm a Night Elf, so I get 7% on miss instead of 5%, unless you're not talking about the CTC cap and I missed the point.

I've gone to Avoidance because I don't want to be stacking Mastery like Holy Paladins of old (boring boring stat stacking, but until we get a Mastery revamp it'll stay like that), but it looks like I can add small amounts to my Effective CTC with a Mastery build so I'm tempted to go back. Also seeing as there's not really many (or any) Mastery "plateaus" where effective CTC or effective HP (or anything else) is improved by taking SOME avoidance instead of mastery, makes balancing what stats we have very boring indeed.

[SSHA778]

Also, I thought the CTC cap was 102.4%? I'm a Night Elf, so I get 7% on miss instead of 5%, unless you're not talking about the CTC cap and I missed the point.

The cap is 102.4%, but only if you block. Enemy NPCs will negate 0.2% of your miss/dodge/block/parry%'s per level they are above you, but since you can't block, that term is zero. Bosses are treated as +3, so that's 100% + 0.6%*3 = 101.8%.

Also seeing as there's not really many (or any) Mastery "plateaus" where effective CTC or effective HP (or anything else) is improved by taking SOME avoidance instead of mastery, makes balancing what stats we have very boring indeed.

Forget stats (okay well not entirely).

Increasing the number of Death Strikes you use per minute is massive in terms of overall damage reduction. Just using 1 more per minute from 8, which is simple enough with exploiting BT, has the same effect as adding (estimated) ~500-800 total rating in the current region we're in. I would need to run more iterations to isolate that further, but I think the point gets across. Doing 1 more than that (so 10/min) isn't another ~500-800 all the time (decreases as you increase #DS), but it's a pretty significant deal. It's less for avoidance since mastery isn't as large of a factor. The effect on CTC is larger for both sets. Again, that's not the same as overall damage reduction. This is also another reason why you should, if at all possible, let your offtank put up tank debuffs for you.

If anything, the bleeding optimization is by far the most important in your rotation. Anything else pales in comparison.

On an semi-related tangent, timing your DS's is good (although questionably effective in high-damage scenarios), but it's really hard to match the gain from just increasing DS use. The reward, or rather lack thereof, of highly emphasizing timing DS generally doesn't make up for the amount of DS's you're losing.

edit: graph will come sometime tomorrow.

[Firebert]

The cap is 102.4%, but only if you block. Enemy NPCs will negate 0.2% of your miss/dodge/block/parry%'s per level they are above you, but since you can't block, that term is zero. Bosses are treated as +3, so that's 100% + 0.6%*3 = 101.8%.

OK, thanks. At least that's 0.6% of CTC I don't need to get. >_>

Increasing the number of Death Strikes you use per minute is massive in terms of overall damage reduction. Just using 1 more per minute from 8, which is simple enough with exploiting BT, has the same effect as adding (estimated) ~500-800 total rating in the current region we're in. I would need to run more iterations to isolate that further, but I think the point gets across. Doing 1 more than that (so 10/min) isn't another ~500-800 all the time (decreases as you increase #DS), but it's a pretty significant deal. It's less for avoidance since mastery isn't as large of a factor. The effect on CTC is larger for both sets. Again, that's not the same as overall damage reduction. This is also another reason why you should, if at all possible, let your offtank put up tank debuffs for you.

If anything, the bleeding optimization is by far the most important in your rotation. Anything else pales in comparison.

As a Blood DK that Dual Wields and exploits Scent of Blood (and Butchery) to exploit Runic Empowerment, I am very rarely using a Blood Rune on Blood Boil or Heart Strike (except to keep Blade Barrier up), and instead using Rune Strike and Death Strike almost alternately (with a good run on RE). I need a good way of testing my DS/m, but I feel it's far far greater than 8 (maybe 14, or 1/3 of my time, is spent on Death Strikes)?

On an semi-related tangent, timing your DS's is good (although questionably effective in high-damage scenarios), but it's really hard to match the gain from just increasing DS use. The reward, or rather lack thereof, of highly emphasizing timing DS generally doesn't make up for the amount of DS's you're losing.

edit: graph will come sometime tomorrow.

I also know that there'll be times when the healers are keeping you topped up permanently with shielding, and as such wasting time waiting for Death Strikes by either wasting RP (as you are at cap, or Rune Striking with all your runes up) or Runes (Heart Striking after Blade Barrier is up) would be better filled with a Death Strike, adding shielding to yourself, and then Rune Striking for Rune recovery.

Maybe I'm still talking rubbish. ._.

[SSHA778]

Sorry about the delay. I was writing a code segment to challenge this claim in terms of realistic application (regarding DW vs 2H and SoB):

As a Blood DK that Dual Wields and exploits Scent of Blood (and Butchery) to exploit Runic Empowerment, I am very rarely using a Blood Rune on Blood Boil or Heart Strike (except to keep Blade Barrier up), and instead using Rune Strike and Death Strike almost alternately (with a good run on RE). I need a good way of testing my DS/m, but I feel it's far far greater than 8 (maybe 14, or 1/3 of my time, is spent on Death Strikes)?

But the results of that will go into another thread, as it's not relevant here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

As promised, here are the graphs. I went from 8-11 DS/min in increments of 1, and since that makes the graphs very difficult to read when both avoidance and mastery are placed onto the same one, I'll present them separately.

I've also limited the window strictly to 6500-10000 total rating, because the rest really isn't useful for raiding, and the difference is much harder to see.

Here are the two graphs for the mastery setup. Make sure you pay attention to the axes, as the ranges have changed. The axes for all 4 graphs are the same, so if you were going to compare, you would just overlay them.

This is the one for total mitigation, without DS's healing:
Keep in mind that all assumptions/disclaimers noted throughout the thread still apply.


Here is the one for "CTC" for mastery-heavy (CTC IS NOT DAMAGE REDUCTION!):


And now for the avoidance setup.

Total Mitigation:


"CTC:"


In most cases, the difference between 9-10 is pretty minimal. Their ranges overlap, which makes a definitive conclusion difficult. The damage taken in between DS's for those two is fairly minimal as well. 11 is a definite jump in every aspect.

The total mitigation without healing for both the avoidance setup and mastery setup, with the exception of 11DS/min, is pretty much equivalent. They're too close to tell. At 11DS/min, mastery is somewhere between 1-3% better, which, for all intents and purposes, is negligible.

Anyway, I hope that shows just how large of a gain rating-wise increasing your DS/min is.

[Firebert]

So, once again with mitigation being equal for both Avoidance and Mastery, but Mastery benefitting (far) more from effective CTC with greater DS/min, means that assuming that the conditions of the graphs are met, and keeping Blade Barrier and Tanking debuffs on the target, getting more and more Death Strikes per minute (regardless of whether you've taken damage or not) improves your effective CTC by between fractions of 1% and about 2%?

This makes me feel far more justified in Dual Wielding to exploit my own Runic Power abilities for 11+ Death Strikes per minute, and to return back to Mastery-heavy builds (adding 1 DS/min for avoidance-heavy builds decreases the amount of Effective CTC you get each time, as opposed to adding 1 DS/min for Mastery-heavy builds adds roughly the same amount of Effective CTC you get each time, plus you gain a negligible amount of mitigation just for choosing a Mastery-heavy setup as opposed to an Avoidance-heavy set-up at any DS/min rate above 8).