[Guardian] - Patch 5.4 Survival Guide

[Arielle]

I'm not gonna reforge and re-gem for the two fights we 3-tank, which are the ones I'm tanking. That would be wasting 24 other peoples' time both before dark shamans and after Nazgrim HC, two really simple tank fights.

Shrug. Our DK reforges just for Shamans and back again. Doesn't take any downtime at all with the amount of trash before each of those two bosses specifically when you only need 2 people to do it (one with a mount, and the person reforging).

"serious ferals reforge for tanking, otherwise they must be running old content"

That's not even close to what I said. The implication was that the only content where this would possibly be a problem is Heroic, and difficult Heroics at that where you really should be min/maxing gear. Heroic Shamans farm doesn't count.

I don't like to judge people but it's kinda stupid when you yourself haven't even killed Nazgrim HC with all that high ilvl gear and perfect gemming/enchanting/reforging.

Raiding in December is a pain in the ass when you have 0 subs.

Now if you could stop with these clueless statements like "no need for a tanking cloak before Malkorok HC"

Shrug, that's just based on experience. I did actually use the tanking cloak for our first Garrosh kill, but after I realized I was never even remotely in danger of any kind, I stopped using it. And since that thread was specifically about 10m (and not 25m where tank damage is a significant percentage higher in the same gear) my experience for that statement is more valid than yours - since by your insinuation of wasting 25 other people's time you're a 25m raider and not 10m.

[Deleted]

More fun with vengeance!

So remember that time that I said armor was still capping at 75%? Yeah, I was wrong about that, or at least that's wrong now. It's definitely going higher, and I wouldn't be surprised if 85% was the new cap as the character sheet says (I never checked, so feel free to have at it).

Yet, stuff is still giving me the same results if I use the vengeance I'm getting to figure out unmitigated damage. It still tells me I have 75% armor. That method works perfectly fine below 75% armor, but just seems to stop compensating for armor at 75%. Put another way, armor over 75% is reducing damage... but is doing so at the cost of vengeance.

Couple of examples: The mountain goats in veiled stair. Lvl 88, I had 147988 armor at the time (79.49% DR against lvl 88), DPS meta on to avoid Fortitude mucking stuff up, and never put on weakened blows.

For one, armor is obviously going above 75%. Beast loring them gives a minimum swing damage of 7030. With just armor and thick hide, I saw a hit of 1363. With 75% armor, that'd be 6196 unmitigated damage (1363/.25/.88), well below their minimum swing damage. With 79.49% armor, it's on the lowish side, but is possible.

Vengeance is definitely lower with higher armor. If you just dodge a hit with 0 vengeance, your minimum vengeance is 656. That's supposed to represent an average swing from that goat. Yet, with this much armor, a typical hit would bring me to somewhere around 550, with stuff as low as 500 and even in the 400s not being too uncommon and numbers above 656 being virtually nonexistant. Dropping my armor down below 75% against lvl 88, it seemed more normal, with 600s being the most common, 500s and 700s not too rare, and even the odd 800. Letting it hit me for a long time, it capped about 1000 with high armor and my back turned, 1100 with high armor and facing it (understandable since avoids give MORE vengeance in this scenario), and about 1200-1250 with low armor. Checking against a swarm of mantid in dread wastes, 12 of them were good for about 5k vengeance normally, 4k with 3 stacks of delicate vial (lvl 90 mobs, I believe I was slightly over 75% against them with 0 stacks). Lame examples, I know, but I have no access to raids atm due to holidays and quest mobs haven't steered me wrong yet (unless, you know, I mess up ).

Overall, it doesn't really matter. We don't run delicate vial often, if at all, and it's the only way we're going to get significantly above 75% atm. I was just messing around with it since I have little better to do with my pre-holiday insomnia, and noticed this oddity. Curious if anyone else can confirm, since it might be nice to fix if 75-85% armor is supposed to be a thing.

Well I tried it. Stacked some mastery and reached 80% armor, still after 75% there is no more reduce in Dmg. It stayed exactly the same.

[Vilendor]

Hi!

Just a quick question:
I'm finally above the 78% crit cap. Now what? More crit for white attacks, or regem to agi, maybe haste?

[aggixx]

Crit for DPS, Haste for DPS/Mitigation. Mastery or Stamina are also options but you probably don't want those unless you were already stacking those (to some extent) in the first place.

Typically people go for stacking haste.

[Dreyen]

haste is better rage generation beyond that point than crit, although i believe hasteis always better rage gen, just a lot less dps than crit.

So yea, go haste, agi is really not very good.

[Arielle]

although i believe hasteis always better rage gen

Crit is always better unless you have tons of it and 0 Haste, which is not an actual situation that happens.

[Jurman]

I changed maybe 3 weeks ago to pure crit geming instead or RPS (79% crit then haste) and i got +-9% crit (88,88% actualy). But there is problem with aggro, other tanks just can't hold so many TPS at start of fight. After few minutes it is ok because of big numbers of threath.

[Elunedra]

i always suffer of bad itemization items
i currently have itemlevel 567, and still not at the crit 79% crit

[exochaft]

i always suffer of bad itemization items

Welcome to the club! Been killing heroic Garrosh for weeks and only got a heroic weapon this week since none have been dropping (on 25man even!)... and I end up with the haste/mastery one off Malkorok. Meanwhile, the heroic strength 2Hers are now going to xmog since mainspecs and offspecs are overloaded.

[aggixx]

i always suffer of bad itemization items
i currently have itemlevel 567, and still not at the crit 79% crit

I think your expectations are just way too high. When I'm in guardian mode using my feral gear with 573 item level I can't hit crit cap, I can only get to like 78.88% (with crit elixir as an alchemist).

My gear might be poorly itemized for guardian but even if it is it seems perfectly reasonable to not reach it in 567.

[Rioo]

>Braindwen

How is that in any way rage? Stop acting like you're 12. I don't really know if you've even checked in Cactus or whatever before you wrote your post. In my current gear, with Rune switched out to Renataki which was what I was running before, I'm at 77.7% with gear alone (ilvl 575) in a non-Roro gem setup. Add 3k mastery from your friendly paladin buddy and me using gear with mastery in every slot and you'll get at least 79%.

Now yeah, saying it "matters a lot" is an overstatement from my side, but I do find it very interesting and wanted to compliment you for spending time on the subject. Fuck me, right?

>Arielle

I don't know where to begin. 10 seconds of inspecting your armory tells me it's not a December issue. And with that said, maybe there's no wonder your DK needs to reforge for one boss where you take 3 tanks as a way to make sure they can't die. Also, when I killed Garrosh, as long as every other normal mode boss and up to Galakras HC I was in a 10-man guild. So yeah, you need to stop with the assumptions...

[Braindwen]

In my current gear, with Rune switched out to Renataki which was what I was running before, I'm at 77.7% with gear alone (ilvl 575) in a non-Roro gem setup.

So you have about 204000 armor? Because that's how much 77.7% armor is against a raid boss. That's impressive, to say the very least. 79% is a whole 220k. Note that character sheet values are against stuff your level. In raids, almost nothing is your level, and bosses are definitely not.

In that post, I just gave myself 580 leather gear in every armor slot and a 608 cloak, and figured out how much armor that would give me. From there I looked at how much mastery I'd need to get over 75% for raid bosses (175110). The second part was just my current gear (574s in most armor slots, a few 561s, 1 580). They're far from impossible rating values, but you have to really try to go for them, and even when you do the effects of the bug would be minor at worst just because it's hard to actually go far above armor cap without mastery procs.

As for the rest, yes, I regard venting your frustrations with someone as "rage" when its in a guide thread. Switch whatever words you want in there, its what your post was, and what the second half of this post is.

[Elunedra]

I think your expectations are just way too high. When I'm in guardian mode using my feral gear with 573 item level I can't hit crit cap, I can only get to like 78.88% (with crit elixir as an alchemist).

My gear might be poorly itemized for guardian but even if it is it seems perfectly reasonable to not reach it in 567.

well i thoguh ppl where already hitting the crit cap in HC ToT gear, my item level is quite a bit higher now

[exochaft]

well i thoguh ppl where already hitting the crit cap in HC ToT gear, my item level is quite a bit higher now

If you get stuck with more haste/mastery items than you want, it's possible to have trouble reaching 79% crit while maintaining hit/exp caps with your item level. The situation worsens if you need to gear for more EH to tailor your Guardian for your individual needs. Not getting a crit rating item in a slot is easily putting you back 1-2% crit per item (pre-reforging, but it still limits gear flexibility), especially on higher itemized pieces like weapons. I got lucky with all my normal mode gear in terms of getting the correct items... not so much with heroic items, but the increased item level off-sets things a little.

[Kitmajere]

For dps reasons, would it be worth wearing a H WF Malkorok weapon over a H Immerseus one? I realize this was answered by a flat "no" from Arielle earlier in the thread, but I wanted to double check. Let's pretend the weapon swap has no impact on the rest of your gear (i.e. compare the two weapons in a vacuum with the mastery reforged to crit on the Halberd):

Lose:
1072 crit

Gain:
200 agility
531 damage per second

It seems that mangle and maul scale directly from weapon dps, and everything else is from AP?

At this point I'm not sure how they measure up (are there any fully functional sims for bears?). A 5% weapon dps increase seems sizable at first, but then crit scales with vengeance, so things start getting complicated. With respect to vengeance, I tank 10H, and am specifically curious for the last few bosses where I should actually have reasonable (albeit not 25 man) levels of vengeance.

Any thoughts guys? Does the crit just win hands down?

[Really wish I'd coined a goddamn trinket or ring instead of this silly weapon but /sigh, oh well]

[Mandibleclaw]

for all of those who have bad itemization and reforging problem ,there's a perfect addon for guardian reforging named catus. use it and it will give u what to do, and i repeat PERFECTLY.

[exochaft]

Any thoughts guys? Does the crit just win hands down?

It really depends on what you personally need. While I moan and groan over having the H WF Malkorok weapon, I'm already sitting at 83% crit static in my survival-oriented setup... aka, the lowest crit setup I have. Also, I'm reforging out of expertise and still maintaining caps, so a haste/mastery weapon versus a crit/expertise weapon isn't really a bad thing from a survival/RPS point of view when you're at the gear situation of being well over crit cap and excessive expertise.

[Arielle]

Any thoughts guys? Does the crit just win hands down?

Empirically the Crit is just better.

400 Agi = 33 Weapon DPS after buffs.
(531+33)*2.5*2.8=3948 damage difference on each Mangle.
600 * 0.21875 = 131 Mangles over a 10 minute fight (some assumptions but decent baseline)
131 * 3948 * 1.76 = 911988 Damage for the HWF weapon.

1072/400 = 2.68% Crit
131 * 1.76 = 230
131 * 1.7868 = 234

The extra Crits from Mangle by itself almost make up the difference, nevermind Thrash, Lacerate, or FFF. This is of course assuming that you're not keeping the same Crit level no matter what weapon you use. If your Crit % is the same with both weapons, then obviously the HWF Malk weapon is better.

[aggixx]

(are there any fully functional sims for bears?)

SimulationCraft supports guardians.

[siccora]

hi there guys. is it good to trade 2 WF items from ordos (chest and shoulders) for the 4 piece normal mode?

and i also wanted to know if there is an option to take

http://www.wowhead.com/item=102293
Purified Bindings of Immerseus

over
http://www.wowhead.com/item=94512
Renataki's Soul Charm


my other trinket is
http://www.wowhead.com/item=102306
Vial of Living Corruption