Windwalk or 130 Agi to wep?

[ez100]

agi ALWAYS
stats go
agi>dodge>stam>mastery>crit>hit to 8%> exp to 26> haste

[Supm8]

In my opinion go for 130 agility. That's what I use atleast and I like it better than Windwalk.

[Siri]

agi ALWAYS
stats go
agi>dodge>stam>mastery>crit>hit to 8%> exp to 26> haste

mastery is better than stamina unless you're getting gibbed (pretty much everything is)
expertise is better than hit until 26 where hit becomes VERY slightly better.
expertise is on par with crit until 26

weights also change quite a bit depending on what it is that is hitting you.

[Extropian]

The situational speed boost from windwalk can be nice.

[exochaft]

30% uptime on Windwalk is a low estimate.

On Majordomo, Lord Rhyolith, and Beth'tilac, my Prot Warrior had 35%-40% uptime on Windwalk. On Shannox (dog tank kiter), Baleroc, and Alysrazor (tons of movement) it was around 25%-30%.

You can't generically quote a 30% uptime for windwalk - it's RNG and heavily dependent on the fight and the rest of the raid environment.

Personally I've gone with 130 agi. If and when I get to hard mode fights where I suspect windwalk may be better, I'd get another weapon and put windwalk on it, for those fights, and use the 130 agi weapon for the rest (majority) of the fights.

The Windwalk enchant is very dependent on the fights, as stated in the quotes I nabbed above. The more facetime you have with a baddie beating on you, the higher the proc rate of Windwalk. I've seen Windwalk proc uptimes at/around 50% if it's nonstop tanking action, but I've seen it sub-30% when the action is just hit and miss. Depending on the fight and which tanking role you play, 130 agi or Windwalk may be better from an avoidance, DPS, and movement perspective. I tend to have two weapons, one with each of the enchants, and I switch them out depending upon fights. This enchant debate is very similar to tanking trinket discussions and "which trinket is better for X and Y?", because the answers are highly situational. The solution is the same: be a weapon whore and keep each enchant at your disposal!

[Elunedra]

i would go for 130 agility personaly becase of the others things it gives you along whit the dodge, pure dodge on a proc aint bad but it wont make your more predicable to heal and in the end that 2% dodge is only gonig to make the healer last about 1 minunte longer on his mana pool nothing else

[Fojos]

Windwalk is more mitigation overall.

[Deleted]

Like most are saying the Agi enchant is better but then again you already have the windwalekr enchant when you got the weapon from AH. My personal suggestion is to stick to the Windwalker enchant unless you have huge amounts of gold laying around. The Agi enchant is simply better most of the time.
Edit: if you are going for raiding the Agi enchant can help when you dont need to tank. Go catform and your damage done is higher with the Agi enchant.

[razisgosu]

30% uptime on Windwalk is a low estimate.

On Majordomo, Lord Rhyolith, and Beth'tilac, my Prot Warrior had 35%-40% uptime on Windwalk. On Shannox (dog tank kiter), Baleroc, and Alysrazor (tons of movement) it was around 25%-30%.

I picked 30% to be a low estimate for the Windwalk doubters. Windwalk is a better enchant straight up for most bears. For extremely geared Bears, 130 agility MIGHT pull ahead based on stat weights. I could do math on it, but I'm not THAT bored right now.


Edit: In case somebody is that bored, grab the Bear stat weights for a good fight from Rawr and use http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t29453-c..._85_cataclysm/ to calculate Diminishing Returns on Dodge for a well-geared player to see if 130 Agility is better than Windwalk in most fights.

According to the stat weights for heroic firelands, 1 point of dodge is worth .4520 and 1 point of agility worth 1 point.

This makes the 130 agility enchant valued at 130(before multipliers) and the 600 dodge proc on windwalk(we'll say 50% uptime for good measure) 135.6

With multipliers 5% bonus agi from kings you get the 130 enchant at 136.5 and the dodge enchant at 135.6(with a 50% uptime) both these numbers are calculated with no diminishing returns.

130 agility is better, based on theorycrafting and math. EDIT: UPDATED STAT WEIGHTS. Math above done prior to updated weights.

With the updated stat weights you would need to bring Windwalk down to 30% uptime for the two to be equal, any amount above that and Windwalk beats 130 agility.

http://theincbear.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=67
Stat Weights

Stamina: 0.15733
Armor: 0.67611
Bonus Armor: 0.16927
Strength: 0.14278
Agility: 1.00000
Attack Power: 0.13598
Haste Rating: 0.05123
Crit Rating: 0.22953
Mastery Rating: 0.45588
Hit Rating: 0.13390
Expertise Rating: 0.26734
Dodge Rating: 0.76320

[Mystile]

agi>dodge>stam>mastery>crit>hit to 8%> exp to 26> haste

This is pretty... Wow, bad. Agility and stamina are definitely a druid's best stats. Then you want dodge, then mastery. Crit and expertise are equal, up to 26. Crit is better than expertise after 26 expertise. Hit is worse than expertise. Haste is a bear's worst stat.

Agility > Stamina > Dodge > Mastery > Crit = 26 Expertise > Expertise over 26 > Hit > Haste.

Also, our stat needs change based on our gear. In lower gear levels gear outweighs expertise soft cap (26.) Thus meaning in higher gear levels, expertise soft cap will pull ahead of crit. With the amount of agility gains we get per item upgrade you can definitely expect to see dodge going below mastery, as well. When you have enough dodge purely via agility, reforging to it would be silly over reforging to mastery / expertise / crit.

OT: I prefer 130 agility enchant. Wind walk is fun and all for the run speed and the fun dodge, but I really do not like procs, as they seem to happen at bad times often (taunt swaps, going into cat [adds to agi benefit], proccing at the end of a phase, then wasting 90% of the buff... so on.)

[razisgosu]

This is pretty... Wow, bad. Agility and stamina are definitely a druid's best stats. Then you want dodge, then mastery. Crit and expertise are equal, up to 26. Crit is better than expertise after 26 expertise. Hit is worse than expertise. Haste is a bear's worst stat.

Agility > Stamina > Dodge > Mastery > Crit = 26 Expertise > Expertise over 26 > Hit > Haste.

Also, our stat needs change based on our gear. In lower gear levels gear outweighs expertise soft cap (26.) Thus meaning in higher gear levels, expertise soft cap will pull ahead of crit. With the amount of agility gains we get per item upgrade you can definitely expect to see dodge going below mastery, as well. When you have enough dodge purely via agility, reforging to it would be silly over reforging to mastery / expertise / crit.

OT: I prefer 130 agility enchant. Wind walk is fun and all for the run speed and the fun dodge, but I really do not like procs, as they seem to happen at bad times often (taunt swaps, going into cat [adds to agi benefit], proccing at the end of a phase, then wasting 90% of the buff... so on.)

Stamina is actually one of our worst stats for heroic firelands raiding... take a look at my stat weights in my above post.

[Reesify]

Stamina is actually one of our worst stats for heroic firelands raiding... take a look at my stat weights in my above post.

Not really true. For mitigation value, yes, Stamina is on the low end. For time to live, stamina trumps everything. All tanks need to make sure they have enough health to survive the content they're tanking. This threshold can, and does, change on a case-by-case basis which is wholly dependent on the skill of said tank AND his/her healers. There's a reason that all content has been cleared by many different gearing strategies.

[Marthisdil]

Not really true. For mitigation value, yes, Stamina is on the low end. For time to live, stamina trumps everything. All tanks need to make sure they have enough health to survive the content they're tanking. This threshold can, and does, change on a case-by-case basis which is wholly dependent on the skill of said tank AND his/her healers. There's a reason that all content has been cleared by many different gearing strategies.

No...you need enough health to absorb the max damage possibility of the thing hitting you for that moment long enough to survive to be healed up to then take the next hit. A ton of stam past that, and you're actually either mitigating your raid's crappy healers, or you're silly. Mitigation once you have enough stam to suck up the damage coming in is more wasted than not being hit at all.

[Reesify]

No...you need enough health to absorb the max damage possibility of the thing hitting you for that moment long enough to survive to be healed up to then take the next hit. A ton of stam past that, and you're actually either mitigating your raid's crappy healers, or you're silly. Mitigation once you have enough stam to suck up the damage coming in is more wasted than not being hit at all.

I wrote the book on mitigation gearing. Literally.

I'm also not naive enough to think that your survivability solely depends on how you gear. There's a huge amount of flexibility that Cataclysm raiding is offering that so many are failing to recognize because we've all been taught it's Agi or GTFO. All content is being cleared by all forms of gearing. How a Bear chooses to gear, whether mitigationally suboptimal, or full mitigation, or geared for hybridization, or max DPS... it's all solely on the player and their healers.

[razisgosu]

You're right, I should have said it differently. Past a certain amount of health you really do not need anymore stamina. Sure stamina is great but once you have enough to survive 2 unmitigated hits on what you're tanking, in my opinion, avoidance and mitigation are far superior to stack. I've found I sit between 172k and 200k for heroic firelands and that is enough for the 3 heroics I have down (rhy, shannox, beth) I usually go with Magmaw's trinket and Avenger's mastery trinket when I need more hp(1 stam 1agi/mastery instead of 2 agi/mastery). Otherwise I go Nef's trinket and Avenger's mastery trinket (until I get a rag trinket) Popping barkskin and getting the 20% damage reduction, then gaining the 10% dodge and popping a trinket puts me around 60% avoidance which is very nice for that short period.

[exochaft]

I wrote the book on mitigation gearing. Literally.

I'm also not naive enough to think that your survivability solely depends on how you gear. There's a huge amount of flexibility that Cataclysm raiding is offering that so many are failing to recognize because we've all been taught it's Agi or GTFO. All content is being cleared by all forms of gearing. How a Bear chooses to gear, whether mitigationally suboptimal, or full mitigation, or geared for hybridization, or max DPS... it's all solely on the player and their healers.

Shhh, you might scare people into thinking it might be their own playstyle or the other raid members playstyle that matters the most!... well, it's actually true, and was one of broad goals of Cataclysm stated by Blizz.

I've mentioned in several different threads that one of the big changes to gearing in Cataclysm was the normalization of stats on all gear. For the layman, this means that as long as you are wearing items appropriate to your class/spec (in the case of this bear discussion, items with agility as their primary stat, with the exception of trinkets as long as they have some useful stat to your role), you are perfectly capable of dealing with content. How one gems or enchants or reforges is intended not to be game-breaking, but appropriately gemming/enchanting/reforging towards your group's needs does alleviate some RNG or stress to some extent. In the end, it comes down to how you (the player) plays rather than "zomg, should I use a stam or agi gem?!?"

More in line with the weapon enchant discussion, your ability to progress through content is very independent of which weapon enchant you use. However, as I've stated before, there are certain fights where one enchant will trump another, because every fight can have bear tanks performing different roles and dealing with different mechanics. While minute adjustments to our gear puts RNG slightly more in our favor, there will always be RNG. This is why Blizz wants encounters to be more about the player than needing an exact formula of gems/enchants/reforging to down content.

[Siri]

AEDIT: UPDATED STAT WEIGHTS.

...

Stat Weights
###

You really shouldn't quote weights based on 25m heroic ragnaros when handing out numbers here unless you specifically mention that people shouldn't use them for other bosses.

[Deleted]

130Agi for me without question, i've played through T11 content (pre-4.2) and found not only my avoidance/mitigation but also (obviously) my threat gen was far better with Agi.

You have to remember that while Windwalk might offer a higher dodge % on proc, it is just that, a proc time. theres no guarantee you can rely on it.

[Siri]

You have to remember that while Windwalk might offer a higher dodge % on proc, it is just that, a proc time. theres no guarantee you can rely on it.

You can't rely on the extra mitigation or avoidance from 130agi either. Because the mastery only has a chance to proc and dodge only has a chance to be effective both enchants will always be unreliable from a survival PoV.

[razisgosu]

You really shouldn't quote weights based on 25m heroic ragnaros when handing out numbers here unless you specifically mention that people shouldn't use them for other bosses.

I made it quite clear in my post that those weights were for heroic firelands. The link I provided also has stat weights for normal mode firelands as well.

Those stat weights were not designed for heroic ragnaros, it's firelands heroic as a whole.