Guardians... A definitive answer

[Grevus]

Greetings,
Wondering if you guys can give me some direction. Currently my guild is struggling with stone puppies in MV. Our healers are going oom very quickly and my healer says I'm getting hit like a truck. Currently I'm stacking dodge and keeping 100% uptime on SD and barkskin.

Done quite a bit of reading and seeing some of you say hit/exp and some saying dodge. Look at my armory and give advice, critism where needed. I know I need a new helm but it's just not dropping for me.


So that being said... Hit/exp or dodge or is based on play style?

Thanks

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...gcheese/simple

[Magania]

Its very hard to keep SD on 100% uptime, actually impossible on that boss, the best will be 66.6%. Anyway, dont use SD on that fight ever, all the damage you take is unavoidable because it is a bleed, so use FR as much as possible, you will have a lot of vengeance, so it will heal for a lot.

For gemming you should go hit/exp and then go for as much crit as possible, you will have a lot more rage to use on selfhealing then.

Also, if healers are going oom, you need to spread more tiles, they will have better mana regen then.

Edit: is it normal or heroic?

[Grevus]

Its normal, when I say 100% uptime on SD I mean I try to keep it on cool down.

As to your response, I should be gemming for rage regen as opposed to active avoidance? I guess im wrong in believing that increasing my avoidance should come primary? Not just in that fight but in general.

As for the FR, is it a good idea to glyph it? As I understand it the glyph increases the rage cost to 60, gives one good heal but increases the healing received by 40%. Is that better than a heal based on rage that currently have with no CD?
Thanks

[kaiadam]

Rage generation (and not to be ignored - dps) is the best way to gear your druid at the moment. Max out softcap expertise & hit, then go for crit.

You should also notice that ~20% of your incoming damage is avoidable on stone guards and almost 75% is the bleed alone. All rage should go to frenzy regen heals. And no, don't glyph it. At decent vengeance, FR heals for half your hp.

[rated]

SD is not a good thing to be using on stone guards. You want to use frenzied regen (unglyphed) and heal yourself through out the fight, the harder you get fit the more this will heal you for. The current way your geming and reforging isn't exactly bad and will probably still serve well on MSV normal. For stone guard specifically hit/exp caps + crit really shine though. Personally I prefer hit/exp caps and geming crit as it gives you more dps and better control/up time with your SD and FR.

Also stop using barkskin glyph, it's for PvP not PvE.

[Trubo]

Dodge is the weakest tank stat for all tanks. Reforging and gemming purely for it, in general, is less effective than mastery and stamina stacking, as mastery doesn't suffer from diminishing returns and helps mitigate ALL physical damage.

I would unreforge every piece you've reforged to dodge, which looks to be every item. On any item without mastery, reforge to mastery. As for hit/exp, stack them up to 7.5% until you're happy with your rage generation. If you can't reforge to mastery and you're happy with hit+exp, reforge to crit.

For reforging purposes:

Mastery > Hit+exp soft caps > crit >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> haste

[Kioga]

As others have mentioned, drop the Barkskin glyph and I would replace the Ursoc Glyph with SI. You could keep the Ursoc glyph but I would work SI in there somewhere. I really see no benefit/need in normal mode to glyph ursoc. Also consider dropping HotW for NV. Combining NV + Inc makes for a nice DPS/smart healing combo every 3 mins.

[Kujako]

Also consider dropping HotW for NV. Combining NV + Inc makes for a nice DPS/smart healing combo every 3 mins.

While I agree that's nice, I dont see it making up for losing the 6% bonus to stats from HotW. And dont forget, HotW lets you cast rejuvenation in bear form for 45 seconds.

[Kioga]

While I agree that's nice, I dont see it making up for losing the 6% bonus to stats from HotW. And dont forget, HotW lets you cast rejuvenation in bear form for 45 seconds.

Once you hit an adequate amount via gear, extra stam is just that-EXTRA and doesn't do anything to aid you or reduce the strain on your healers. The passive agi is nice but how much are you really gaining in terms of benefit? On this fight, its already a given that most of the damage cannot be avoided and simply needs to be healed through. So the dodge coming from that agi isn't a large gain. Lastly, your 45 secs of rejuv is nice but comes with a 6min CD. Are you really going to be spamming it for those 45 secs in lieu of your proper tank rotation?

NV is on a 3min CD which means you should be able to use it at least twice. That is 1min of 20% increased damaged + 1min of passive smart healing vs 45 secs of targeted hot healing.

I like using NV+Inc when I'm tanking 2 dogs as it floods me with enough healing and rage that I can work in maul and help dps the dogs down quicker. Tank DPS is a valid concern in 10mans but not so much in 25.

[captaincoffeecup]

Having been stuck for a while here with my guys I sympathise. It is really frustrating. Your healers going oom is going to be down to one of two things:

1: Massively under-geared healers.

2: People standing in the poo.

I would bet heavily on number 2.

Regarding your survivability, Frenzied Regeneration is the button you should be pushing. Savage Defence is very close to useless on this fight as 90% of the pain you feel is bleeds and magic damage, neither of which can you dodge. Take your survivability and put it in your own hands is my suggestion. Drop the FR glyph and enjoy the huge self heals you can do even at 40 Rage. And for this fight, just take SD off your bars

I'm gemming with ago/mastery gems rather than pure gems, with the stam meta-gem. Reforging for 7.5% hit/exp, reforging away from haste for the most part (so I don't have to reforge/regem when I go DPS). I'm also way undergeared compared to you. Here's my armory if your interested.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Matoha/simple

[Grevus]

thanks for the responses they have been quite helpful, I guess I was thinking that Guard droods are avoidance tanks so I stacked avoidance. I will do as recommended and report back my findings.

as far as why we are struggling.. I think it comes down to DPS and raid awareness. My partner tank is a Blood DK and were usually neck and neck on dmg taken and healing recieved. the main reason for this post was to see if i was doing it right or if i needed to change my way of doing things. I just couldn't find a definitive answer.

I was looking at the HoTW vs NV before I made this post and as liked the idea of a good instant heal with rejev for 45 sec but seeing the big picture tends to make me believe that NV is a better choice.

[kaiadam]

thanks for the responses they have been quite helpful, I guess I was thinking that Guard droods are avoidance tanks so I stacked avoidance. I will do as recommended and report back my findings.

as far as why we are struggling.. I think it comes down to DPS and raid awareness. My partner tank is a Blood DK and were usually neck and neck on dmg taken and healing recieved. the main reason for this post was to see if i was doing it right or if i needed to change my way of doing things. I just couldn't find a definitive answer.

I was looking at the HoTW vs NV before I made this post and as liked the idea of a good instant heal with rejev for 45 sec but seeing the big picture tends to make me believe that NV is a better choice.

Death knights are designed to take (massively) more damage than other tanks, but also have huge self-heals. If you are the same damage taken as a DK, chances are that healers are struggling much more to heal you than the dk since over half of "healing taken" on a DK is his own healing.

[Grevus]

Death knights are designed to take (massively) more damage than other tanks, but also have huge self-heals. If you are the same damage taken as a DK, chances are that healers are struggling much more to heal you than the dk since over half of "healing taken" on a DK is his own healing.

that makes sense...did everything that was suggested.. we'll see how it goes tonight

[Slonah]

Our best survivability stats are exp, hit and crit. Gemming and reforging for dodge will never net you as much dodge as being able to use SD whenever off CD, which is why you want soft/hard cap on exp/hit and tons of crit. As other people have said though, this fight is not a SD fight. If your healers are running oom either they don't have enough combat regen, people are standing in stuff or your raids DPS isn't high enough causing the fight to last too long.

[Dole4011]

A couple of other thoughts:
1) If you're having trouble getting certain drops or whatever, a good way to outfit those lower ilvl slots is to run enough arenas to cap each week (t's recently been raised to 1800). You don't have to be very good. Just get a partner to do 2s with you. At first, you'll probably lose some matches, but once you get to an MMR appropriate for your skill level, you should be able to win about half your matches because your playing people on your level. The 483 conquest gear is not too shabby at all.

2) If you're having issues with the dogs, a simpler approach is to just stack all 3 dogs. At the beginning, OT pulls 2 and MT pulls 1. At 25-30 energy, MT pulls one off OT (preferably the one who is petrifying). As overload is getting ready to go off, MT taunts 3rd dog. Ideally, the dogs will be evenly spread out on their energy (so you'll be getting an overload every ~20 seconds). You'll have to take some unprotected overloads (varies with RNG, but never two in a row); you can rotate cds for these because you'll see them coming. There will be a lot less tank damage because the bleeds don't stack. When you have two tanks holding dogs, the bleed damage is twice as bad as one tank holding all 3, and as has been stated, the bleed is the bulk of the damage the tank(s) takes.

[Grevus]

updated with new armory tell me what you think am I pointed in the right direction?

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...gcheese/simple

[dennisdkramer]

you're way over the expertise soft cap - not a huge deal but go for 7.5 hit 7.5 exp and then crit

Are you guys getting extra overloads? Tank healing isnt really THAT hard on stone guards.. I assume you're 2 healing it? Have you tried with 3? there isnt really a dps check on that fight.

If you log it (with world of logs) it would be easy for us to pick apart who is or is not doing the fight correctly.

[Williee]

Ya i times where I chunk very quickly, even with SD up. Apparently 70% dodge isn't the same as 100% dodge which means I can still get hit twice in a row bringing me down to 30% or near death at times.
Umm looking at your new armory, I am not sure if gemming for stam is the right way to go. A simple stam flask + stam trinket swap should be more then enough.
From my personal experience and testing between mastery gemming and reforges vs crit build, I prefer crit build as the excessive rage can be dumped into SD and frenzy regen. Even with no stam gems, flask or trinkets, I have about ~410k hp in humanoid form. I survive most situations with that hp pool and for fights where bosses hit ~150k + such as Will of Emperor, I swap to a stam trinket. I never even considered reforging for dodge as the DR is not worth it, imo.

I highly suggest regemming to crit gems and trying that out.
Not much else can be said without logs to help you out, but hope this helps.

[Grevus]

you're way over the expertise soft cap - not a huge deal but go for 7.5 hit 7.5 exp and then crit

Are you guys getting extra overloads? Tank healing isnt really THAT hard on stone guards.. I assume you're 2 healing it? Have you tried with 3? there isnt really a dps check on that fight.

If you log it (with world of logs) it would be easy for us to pick apart who is or is not doing the fight correctly.

we're 3 healing it..

healing mana issues are coming from raid dmg we had a learning curve with raid awareness.

our RL logs it and fraps it so we know whos doing what and we're fixing our issues

I'll play around with reforging and get the hit up.. what you see there is what mrrobot said to do

[Motoma]

Hit cap > Expertise Soft cap > Crit > Further Expertise > Mastery > Dodge > Haste. This means gemming crit and expertise.