Help me understand why I shouldn't stack stamina

[Barawr]

Here's an idea. Start comparing logs from fights with a tank such as Sejta (stam stacker) to a tank who uses more agility (read: NOT stacking). I know the theorycrafting math already puts mixing in agility instead of all out stam ahead, but there is nothing like seeing it in practice. Dig through some WOLs and pick apart the Damage Taken section for identical fights.

[littlepiggy]

There are a few obvious cases where a tank will systematically gem stamina over avoidance/mitigation:

1. He is at a point where DRs ruin the effectiveness of avoidance stats aka heroic raid gear.

That will never happen.

[underdogba]

Your a druid and i dont play one and my guild tanks are warrior and paladin.

Just gonna use this class so get a picture of the healing.

both paladins and warrios want to have lots and lots of block.

why is this? because if they go for dodge/parry over mastery (block) they have less avoidance.

No, the real reason is that once you get over a fairly low threshhold, due to diminishing returns, for both classes Mastery very quickly starts to offer more average damage reduction per stat point of either rating.

[zealous]

Here's an idea. Start comparing logs from fights with a tank such as Sejta (stam stacker) to a tank who uses more agility (read: NOT stacking). I know the theorycrafting math already puts mixing in agility instead of all out stam ahead, but there is nothing like seeing it in practice. Dig through some WOLs and pick apart the Damage Taken section for identical fights.

It's mostly guesswork, but I think both Sejta and his healers are at a gear level where he can afford to gem stamina just to let the healers have more time to react to things.

It's stupid to take things out of context like this (not saying you are, just commenting on the trend of the discussion). Do we know if he is MTing or OTing? Do we know on what fights he is sitting out and what fights he is tanking? For example he still hasn't done heroic Al'Akir.

Second thing I see is - his healers are probably at a point where they aren't afraid of running oom, and they probably have considerably amounts of haste, which even though isn't nearly as effective as it was in LK, still changes things in a lot in 372 level gear.

Consider how effective his mastery is gonna be in that gear. He is running a 25% crit chance, that is a 12.5% chance to proc Savage Defense on each attack. Which with the 20 mastery rating that he has + ap from insane amounts of agi + vengeance equals very serious shield procs from SD.

That's another moment where he can afford to stack more stamina btw - vengeance. It caps at 10% health, so increasing health also increases possible vengeance (which translates into stronger shields through ap).

This is mostly conjecture on my part, I'm trying to emphasize we shouldn't take gearing choices out of context ( a context which we really don't know).

Top progression raiders are known to be unorthodox with gearing choices because they have to make unorthodox choices in general due to rushing content and being undergeared in it at first.

And later they have the best possible gear, which considerably changes how class mechanics work, at least numbers-wise.

How many of us here can/should apply their strategies to our raiding? Not many.

If he's gemming stamina for fulfilling the role that he's been assigned to in raids, does that mean that in his particular gear, for his particular role that is the best solution? Possibly. Not guaranteed but possible, even top raiders make mistakes.

Does that mean his choices should be applied to every tank of his class, no matter if he's sporting the same kind of gear or different, if he's doing heroic raid content or is doing normal modes? If he's stuck at heroic Maloriak or about to down heroic Nefarian? I don't think so.



---------- Post added 2011-02-21 at 10:29 PM ----------

That will never happen.

Are you speaking from a druid or a general tanking perspective?

Because as a protadin, after reaching CTC (block+dodge+parry+miss = 102.4%), you're better off gemming stamina, because after that DRs severely ruin the effectiveness of avoidance/mitigation stats.

[littlepiggy]

Druid's will never hit an avoidance DR that causes us to stop going for it.

[Arielle]

Druid's will never hit an avoidance DR that causes us to stop going for it.

There is a point where Mastery will be better than Dodge. However you will never stop going for Agility.

[tyggyr]

lawl your being bursted by chogall? idk bout that i

This is a bit OT, but as I've been reading this whole thread, which has generally been a good presentation of facts and theories, I ran across this and couldn't help but think: "Can someone actually expect that their viewpoint is going to be considered seriously worded like this?"

[Elunedra]

i am still gonig for a bit mixture gear myzelf, stamina trinkets to have a nice health pool, just tobe on par whit the stamnia stacking other tanks and i put the rest in avoidence

but why?
i dont know realy iv what iv read here

[gombudja]

Updated the OP with numbers from the mitigation spreadsheet

New differences:

HP: 154.369 vs 173.339 = 18.969 more in stam set
Dodge: 38,51% vs 36,04% = 2,47% less in stam set
SD mitigation: 33,61% vs 31,57% = 2,04% less in stam set
Total mitigation: 86,82% vs 85,82% = 1% less in stam set

[axxey]

After you reach a high enough gear level it has little impact and you just adjust trinkets per fight and the expected damage incoming.

Missed raid this week so ran a 10man 11/12 with some alts while tanking in full offspec cat gear with no dodge reforges, full agility. Swapped mirror or worm trinkets in for a few fights mechanics but that's all. No danger of dying at all.

[MatsT]

In all of WoW's history, mana spent on effective heals on the tank has NEVER been an issue and this still holds true. It's impossible to stress healer mana just on the tanks since tank gibs would be too frequent if damage was that high.

Arguments like "If your healers are bad or laggy, your right. Stack sta. It might save you if a heal is late." just fails even at a first glance. Obviously if everyone plays perfect, the bosses are going to die on the first attempt no matter if you gem stam or agi. That doesnt mean more stats and better gear is worthless. On average, if you have better gear you will need fewer attempts to down the boss. Every once in a while you will avoid a death because of your gear choices and eventually those deaths will add up and save you a lot of time.

With this being said, your swing damage numbers seem a bit high. Bosses don't hit for 264k unmitigated. Something like 150-160k is more realistic and this would skew the balance towards agility a bit.

[Lyren]

2.47% dodge less seems off unless it's ignoring trinkets as well? Easily over 400 agi possible from gems/enchants, and I already net ~1% from tia's. Ignoring trinkets is fine, since they're easily swapped, I just wanted to be sure.

[Arielle]

With this being said, your swing damage numbers seem a bit high. Bosses don't hit for 264k unmitigated. Something like 150-160k is more realistic and this would skew the balance towards agility a bit.

264k unmit is pretty accurate for heroic raiding.

[Deathfairy]

2.47% dodge less seems off unless it's ignoring trinkets as well? Easily over 400 agi possible from gems/enchants, and I already net ~1% from tia's. Ignoring trinkets is fine, since they're easily swapped, I just wanted to be sure.

Say hello to diminishing returns. As well as trinkets are the bigest contribution of agility. Think about you have 10 gems total? if that, 40 agi pop that is 400 from gems comparable to just 1 trinket swap.

---------- Post added 2011-02-22 at 06:07 PM ----------

Here is my 2c.

First of lets define settings that we are looking at:

If we talk about normal fight then it is pointless because they are tuned to be done with good chunk of mistakes. In such situation person not standing in fire vs person standing for extra 5 seconds makes more difference then agi vs sta set ups. So if you fail on normal fights it is due to mechanics not 2% dodge. In fact it questionable weather or not that hp will do better job of covering someones mistake then 2% dodge ( i would be on sta )

So now we talking about HM set ups.
1) we know 100% that all fights are doable with sta stacking (parangon's MT)
2) we do not see all fights done with agi sta, not yet anyway, i might be wrong tho.

But that is just side note to point out that sta is AT THE VERY LEAST VIABLE.

Now to the actual point:
You need to have about 180k hp in HP to be safe from inta gib (it might be in 175 range but 180 seems to be standard min from what i have seen on HM tanks)
My tank set has 1 blue and 1 pvp peice that has extra 30ish sta. So over all myset is very close to full 359 gear in terms of sta. I use both sta trinkets and have sta in all gems slots outside relic ( also in cat set). My jc and enchting bonuses are in sta as well. After all that i have 183k hp before flask.

Now for flask agi>>sta because in this case you trade sta for agi in 1:1 ratio rather 3:2 ratio like gems enchants or trinkets.

If switch out trinkets to agi i drop down to 173ish k hp. Which is fairly low for HM. So frankly i cant afford to drop anymore sta gems for agi.
if you look at reesi. She has all agi gems and sta trinkets which is slightly better then all sta gems + agi trinkets because sta trinkets have tank procs/uses, while agi ones do not, outside Tiar's grace (mastery).

Bottom line in the end of the day for HM encounters you DO NOT have alot of room to work with, you just cant go all agi because you wont get min HP required. So within the room you do have you are looking at 1%dodge vs 8-10khp at the most. And call me crazy but i have serious doubts that will make or break the fight for you. Moving out of aoe 1 second sooner will have more drastic effect on fight then 1% dodge vs 10k hp.

Moral of story: IT DOESNT MATTER, with flask (bad choice but w/e) + trinket swaps you can get the avoidance/HP balance you need 99% of the time. So you gem agi, you will end up using sta trinkets most of the time, if you stack sta you ll hjave options to use agi trinkets etc.

[Lyren]

In spite of your condescending tone, I will respond; many people are insistent on going *full* stam, which is to include trinkets, flask, enchants and gems.

Also, it's possible to get ~1k agi outside of trinkets easily, which could account for the ~2.5%. It never hurts to know exactly under what circumstances the calculations were performed.

[Deathfairy]

In spite of your condescending tone, I will respond; many people are insistent on going *full* stam, which is to include trinkets, flask, enchants and gems.

Also, it's possible to get ~1k agi outside of trinkets easily, which could account for the ~2.5%. It never hurts to know exactly under what circumstances the calculations were performed.

It is 820 not ~1k and you still missing diminishing returns point. If you think numbers are wrong show what they should be, don't just come and say i think they are wrong.

[Arielle]

It is 820 not ~1k and you still missing diminishing returns point. If you think numbers are wrong show what they should be, don't just come and say i think they are wrong.

340 + 380 + 300 + 20 + 90 + 80 + 50 + 40 + 75 + 40 + 40 + 20 = 1475. For me anyway.

[Lyren]

I was using:
300 flask
60 helm enchant
54 meta
50 shoulder enchant
22 cloak enchant
15(20) chest enchant
50 wrist enchant
35 boots enchant
80 profession
300-380 gems
= 1014 - 1098 after mark 5%
Doesn't include potential socket bonuses or 20 agi to gloves. Ignored legs/weapon as those are obviously going to have agi on them.

Not saying agi enchants are better than their stam counterparts for example on helm/shoulder, but again, the original question was where did the 2.47% come from, to what extent did the agi stacking go.

Btw, 40 agi gives .18% dodge at ~6%, and it gives ~.13% at almost 23% unbuffed. Also, surprisingly, with both trinkets stacked (+720) I gain 2.26% dodge at 22.9%, which is approximately .125~% dodge per 40. That's some real serious DR!

[Tharkkun]

It is 820 not ~1k and you still missing diminishing returns point. If you think numbers are wrong show what they should be, don't just come and say i think they are wrong.

No one has enough avoidance where DR really comes into play yet. Maybe Tier12, 13.

[Arielle]

No one has enough avoidance where DR really comes into play yet. Maybe Tier12, 13.

You start getting diminishing returns from your first point of Agility. You just won't start really noticing it until T12.