Attention all Tanks...! Please...

[Dubzil]

Nope, although it was different, not in that sense.

threat really wasn't an issue in WotLK. stam > avoidance > threat, with rare exception. Really tanks should focus on having the right gear/spec for the fights they are going to do that night, there is no 1 answer to every fight.

It definitely was different in that sense. Some tanks did stack stm, but not me.. if you can already survive, then additional survivability does NOTHING for you. Threat was not an issue either (unless you were doing Malygos with 3 sparks up, I did go 53 expertise for that fight) but additional DPS is always good, and if you're already surviving, you should do what you can to help.

[SurrealNight]

DK's should not be gemming or reforging hit/expertise in any way shape or form. For non-DK's our runes are not lost if a Death Strike misses, so all we miss out on is a GCD. Since we can only DS 6-8 times a minute, there is no need to worry about strings of misses rune blocking us.

For all you DK's telling people to get hit/expertise. Try visiting the DK forums sometime... http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-and-expertise

As for Pally tanks I'm not very well versed on those but I never heard about hit/expertise being important. Especially more so than mastery/avoidance...

[Deleted]

A protection paladin reforging mastery to anything is utter fail.

I know why they're doing that, EJ have had an erroneous post up for ages.

Edit: I'm not allowed to link it, 4.0.3a Tanking/Protection Field Manual :: Fordring's Groupies (Updated: Dec 2, 2010) - Reforging tips section is just plain wrong.

[davesurfer]

A protection paladin reforging mastery to anything is utter fail.

I know why they're doing that, EJ have had an erroneous post up for ages.

Edit: I'm not allowed to link it, 4.0.3a Tanking/Protection Field Manual :: Fordring's Groupies (Updated: Dec 2, 2010) - Reforging tips section is just plain wrong.

It may be outdated because you are looking at the wrong thread? Here is the right link http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t110338-..._2011_4_0_6_a/

But updated Feb 09 2011 4.0.6a

Reforging Tips
There are two reforging strategies: The Survivalist Strategy (The New Way) or The Threat Strategy (The Old Way). You are welcome to choose whichever way you want to go, however the current community concensus is that maximizing survival stats, in particular mastery then dodge and parry, even at the expense of hit and expertise is the way to go. This does contradict the previously established dogma of cap hit/exp as quickly as possible before progressing in other stats. This is because [Vengeance] is proving to be very powerful and makes it possible for tanks to afford several misses during the course of a fight.

The Survival Strategy (The New Way)

If you are not at the block cap/full combat table coverage reforge—in this order—haste, crit, expertise, hit, dodge/parry into mastery. IMPORTANT: When reforging from dodge/parry make sure to reforge from the stat that has the most rating since it will be the stat suffering from the most diminishing returns.
If you reach 102.4% coverage and have excess block reforge mastery into dodge/parry for additional avoidance instead of mitigation (as usual be aware of diminishing returns) or into hit/expertise for additional threat.
You should never be reforging into the following stats... haste, crit.

[Dylis]

bench them

[Sy]

Keep in mind all DKs get +9% 'free' hit now, so our special melee attacks won't miss.

uhm, that's incorrect^^

dks (regardless if tank or not) don't get ANY free hit as far as white hits and melee abilities are concerned.
the passive ability you're talking about (runic focus) increases dks SPELL-hit by 9%, meaning things like icy touch, howling blast or the like.

without any hit on gear, your special melee attacks, including death strike, will miss 8% of the time in addition to every dodged/parried strike, just like it's the case with any other 'normal' ability or class.

I don't play a DK so I haven't tanked end-game on one, but my understanding is that hit and expertise are not just threat stats for a DK and so it's not just a matter of specials landing (which I realise is not an issue). I thought some of your survivability talents depended on it, making them a lot more desirable for DKs than for other tanking classes where they are simply threat stats.

you're pretty much spot on, actually.

in case you're interested:
dks survivability depends a lot on the ability death strike, which misses and is dodged/parried just like any other melee ability.
when death strike hits, the dk tank gets healed for a decent amount (depending on how much damage he/she took during the last 5 seconds) AND a blood shield - the blood dk mastery - that absorbs further physical damage (depending on how much mastery the dk has and how big the preceding death strike heal was).
as a quick comparison, the healing and absorb combined will usually equal ROUGHLY double of what paladin's/warrior's block mitigates (one part making up for the lack of block-mastery and the other for higher damage taken overall, because of talents, armor, ect).

so when a death strike doesn't land for any reason, the dk may miss out on a significant amount of healing and physical absorb. usually death strike could be recast just a gcd later, but since the healing/absorb depends heavily on the preceding damage, right timing can (and probably will) make quite some difference.

i don't mean to say dk tanks need to cap hit and/or expertice for survivability, reforging those stats to mastery (or avoidance) will usually still give a bigger benefit on survivability overall (at least in theory, since player-dependent timing differences are hard to be calculated).
but it's true that those two "threat stats" also add decent survivabilty for dk tanks, unless it's the case for paladins and warriors (druids are somewhere in between).


@OP, while i agree that tanks (especially paladins and warriors) shouldn't stack any hit or expertice at all, as long as threat (and interrupt duty) isn't a problem, i actually don't think that's the only reason why they apparently are so much worse. even those both stats combined will only make up for some percent of damage taken - an important difference for any decent player without doubt, certainly noticeable, but by no means game breaking to a point were you just can't kill bosses that would otherwise not be a big problem (if you aren't one of the world's most cutting edge progression guilds at least).

if the tanks are really such a huge problem as you describe them to be, there's probably more to it than just wrong gemming/reforging or the like.

that said, whoever tells a guildy (or any person actually) to "shut the f'k up" just because of - even reasonable - critique, would not be someone i'd even consider playing with anyway ;]

[Dashield28]

I have two tanking sets. Since my group runs 10 mans mostly and we only have one melee at all times it falls to me (and rarely to our other tank (pally)) to interrupt.

I have a Hit set that I put on for those interrupt fights.

Normally, my tanking set puts me at 2.8% hit, 10 expertise.
My interrupt set (for Omitron and Maloriak) puts me at 7.91 hit (with hit food) and 15 expertise - just the nature of the gear) I do sacrafice about 4-5% mitigation for this.

Granted for a warrior, we need a second to get going (a couple good hits) to get our vengeance up. After that, if they are having threat problems, it is their fault, to put it simply, they need to look at their rotation.

Though, any good tank knows when they are falling short and work to improve it. Any good tank should have read guides, done reserach and theorycrafting.

To be hit capped and expertise capped at this raid content is not necessary unless you are needed as an interrupt.

[baelon]

Information on the mathematics behind the game is freely available here and on other sites, in an easily readable format. It's up to you to decide if you want to deal with the 95% of WoW players who ignore it or not. If you're frustrated, and it sounds like you are, it's time to a) find a new guild, or b) lower your expectations and learn to just play for a bit of relaxation & fun, not competitively to beat heroic content.

If he specifically told you to shut the F up, I'd probably recommend the former.

[Torne]

Threat is absolutely NO issue right now, everyone who has problems with a adequately geared group does something extremely wrong.
On my DK tank, I am not so well geared as our DDs (every week seems to drop the same useless stuff...) and have no hit and expertise. The only time when a DD is even getting close to pulling aggro is in the first 5 sec when no one uses tricks/MD.

[slinx]

Everyone posting is wrong.. tanks need spirit and intellect.

[Ignorance]

Pally tanks do not want hit/expertise. You want to try to reach the "unhittable" cap at 102.4% avoidance.

I would suggest telling him to look at this link:

http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t110338-...6_a/#Reforging


I am tanking for my guild as a prot paladin, I reforge all hit/exp into mastery/parry/dodge and have no trouble holding threat. He should be popping avenging wrath on boss pulls, and almost every class has some sort of aggro drop (and if they don't your prot paladin has salv!)

[tyggyr]

Just to clarify - even with the Hold the Line talent, warriors don't want to overly unbalance parry over dodge.

For much more discussion on the matter, see this mmo thread which references this most excellent graph, showing what your ideal ratio of parry::dodge should be; a quick estimate you can use (it won't be optimal, but close) is 1.2 parry for every dodge; this gets the best use of the HtL talent and reduces diminishing returns the most.

Example of its use: my warrior has 1761 parry and 1531 dodge, for a total of 3292 rating; find this on the bottom line (x axis) about between 3200 and 3400; now find the "line" which refers to the mastery rating of 2413 - the cyan line - and I find my optimal ratio is 1.2 parry per every 1 dodge. YMMV; add up your parry & dodge, find your mastery line, and read off your ratio on the vertical axis on the left.

Other clarifications/corrections of other posts:

• Originally (pre-live) cataclysm was going to have parry be substantially different than it turned out. Parry is identical to dodge in the result: no damage taken this hit, no effect past that.
• Expertise is purely a threat stat in Cata (so far; in the future we'll see). Previously there were bosses which could parry-haste - hit you quickly after parrying you - and so avoiding getting parried was a reduction in getting hit, thus avoiding damage.
• Expertise for DKs is less useful as a threat stat for DKs than for other tanks because Rune Strike can not be dodged or parried.
• Bears prefer dodge over mastery; reforge priority is to make everything have dodge, and then mastery, then crit.

[Deleted]

As a warrior (who doesn't raid for the note), I ignore expertise/hit (It's a nice bonus though) because if I need to put out more threat I can revise my rotation, or just do it better. I cannot do the same for survivability.

[Daly]

I have ignored hit/exp myself and found much better survivability. Initial threat can cause problems with a few misses to start but that is rare.

[Deleted]

I think one great site for reforging, gemming and whatnot is

http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear

Even if you disagree with the stat weights there you can change them. I love how it allows you do that easy, fast and without too much pain like in lets say rawr that takes ages and is unstable on my experience etc. I loved how it would calculate my reforging totally differently the way I would've never done it (like remove 50 hit from that and add 67 hit to other..sounds illogical right?) but when I did it I was dead on 17.00% hit as caster and could remove useless hit enchants etc.

Should try it out!