HC Gara'jal the Spiritbinder

[Ikrekot]

I think you have a bit to much dodge than parry. If you want more avoidance reforge to parry and use that macro.

/run d=GetDodgeChance() n=3.22 b=5.01 if UnitRace("player")=="Gnome" then n=n-.01 end if UnitRace("player")=="Night Elf" then b=b+2 end p=235.5*d/90.6425-((235.5/90.6425)*b-n)+4 DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Ideal parry: "..string.format("%.2f",p))

/run d=GetDodgeChance() n=3.22 b=5.01 if UnitRace("player")=="Gnome" then n=n-.01 end if UnitRace("player")=="Night Elf" then b=b+2 end p=235.5*d/90.6425-((235.5/90.6425)*b-n) DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Ideal parry: "..string.format("%.2f",p))

First is when you use Swordshattering and second without. If you have 10% dodge you should have 25-30% parry with Rune of SS. You dodge rating is 4570 and parry 2517. When you want avoidance tanking you should have higher parry rating than dodge.

Parry Rating > Dodge Rating

---------- Post added 2013-02-16 at 07:52 PM ----------

If you manage to do it - for IBF I also recommend popping it the moment you get aggro or otherwise it won't be back up for the second time you tank.
Well you forgot to call for raid and or tank cds once you see your Blood Shield running out - Aura Mastery , Power Word: Barrier, Spirit Link totem ; Hand of Sacrifice , Pain Supression or whatever is available at that time.

Another thing I forgot to mention: Spec Unholy blight for the Shadow Realm - if you time it right you can debuff 2 of the big adds and lots of the small adds with it.

I like use IBF for last phase - enrage.

I use Glyph of Pestilence, some ppl don't like it, but I can get full runic power before enter spirit realm and use it on all big adds.

[Deleted]

Using the code with swordshattering, with 10.11% dodge it tells me that I need 20.47% parry.

[Ikrekot]

So it was my mistake. Sorry for confusing you.

[Nillo]

mine says ideal parry 8.63% !:

[rated]

I don't like disci priest on that fight because we was dying and our disci priest always change to holy.

That's funny cause Disc priests are a very strong class to bring to this fight.

[draconisaerius]

3) Looks like you have a Holy Priest - ask for a shield on cd this will also protect some Boneshield charges well and you should probably ask the priest to go disc anyway since damage prevention on the tank is really important here and disc priest just have the better tools for that.
4) You should also ask for outside cds once your Blood Shield falls off - Hand of Sacrifice (if the paladin doesn't have vodoo doll) , Pain Supression, Power Word: Barrier , Aura Mastery ,... all help a lot here.

Sigh....

As I said at the begining of the thread, Shadowy Attacks ignore absorbs. I should have mentioned that this applies to ALL absorbs, not just our blood shield. If the Shadowy Attacks are what are dealing the most damage to you then you need to address that specifically. Which means gem stam and time your death strikes better.

[Maelstrom51]

Unless you're to the point where you take almost no melee damage, I wouldn't recommend sacrificing mastery.

---------- Post added 2013-02-17 at 12:43 AM ----------

Sigh....

As I said at the begining of the thread, Shadowy Attacks ignore absorbs. I should have mentioned that this applies to ALL absorbs, not just our blood shield. If the Shadowy Attacks are what are dealing the most damage to you then you need to address that specifically. Which means gem stam and time your death strikes better.

The point of the outside absorbs is not to absorb shadowy attacks, but to protect blood shield charges.

[Nillo]

Sigh....

1) As I said at the begining of the thread, Shadowy Attacks ignore absorbs. I should have mentioned that this applies to ALL absorbs, not just our blood shield.
2) If the Shadowy Attacks are what are dealing the most damage to you then you need to address that specifically.
3) Which means gem stam and time your death strikes better.

Love how you added that sigh :P
1) Of course it ignores blood shield since blood shield only absorbs physical damage ... duh. The point of absorbs (AMS/Priest Shields) is to reduce all other damage and to increase the duration of Bone Shield (absorbed attacks = no Bone Shield stacks lost)
2) Except that shadowy attacks alone will never kill anyone it's the combination of shadow bolts, auto hits and the shadowy attacks which are dangerous and completely negating one of them (melee) plus absorbing some of the other (shadow bolts) makes this pretty managable.
3) Mastery gems are just about 3 times as effective as stamina gems even with min shields... so what's your reason to gem stamina again?

---------- Post added 2013-02-17 at 01:55 AM ----------

Unless you're to the point where you take almost no melee damage, I wouldn't recommend sacrificing mastery.[COLOR="red"]

Once you're at that point it really shouldn't matter what you do anyway.

[Kraeth]

Pure mastery is just fine for 10hc. If your partner is a non-dk he/she should start tanking so you can build a full blood shield before switch. After that it's all about managing that shield. AMS helps with Bone Shield stacks, DRW helps with pretty much everything. People with 700k full buffed? Unless you're gemming full sta with sta trinkets nope.

I tanked our first kill and some more. Sometimes with bad rng I just took too much damage but those times were rare. There's absolutely no reason to stack stamina outside some 25man hc fights.

[Deleted]

Sigh....

As I said at the begining of the thread, Shadowy Attacks ignore absorbs. I should have mentioned that this applies to ALL absorbs, not just our blood shield. If the Shadowy Attacks are what are dealing the most damage to you then you need to address that specifically. Which means gem stam and time your death strikes better.

Hilarious post. There's no chance in hell that you'll die pre 20% as a dk (and if you die post 20% there's another tank to take your place, and even here the dolls are in more danger), but your dolls very well might if you decide to stack stamina which does basically nothing to reduce the damage they take. /sigh:P.

Do I still need to use the strength food and flasks for more parry or the stamina flasks and food?

It's superior to stamina on this fight, if you want to truly minimax it's correct (like Nillo said) that you should be using mastery+armor/dodge elixirs and the 300 str food.


Regarding mastery vs dodge/parry, dodge and parry will be overall less damage to the dolls than mastery for this fight but mastery is obviously more reliable (the #1 concern for this fight is to keep blood shield up as long as possible, which in turn prevents bone shield charges from dropping=always reducing the shadowy attacks by 20%, and obviously prevents any additional damage). Personally I would value pure avoidance stats (parry & dodge) slightly above mastery for this fight but you won't go wrong putting mastery above them either, make damn sure to not stack stamina and hit/exp for this fight though (my ilvl was ~5 lower on this fight than normally, purely because I used avoidance/mastery pieces and put no almost no value in sta). The post by Ikrekot is about the fact that you'll get slightly more avoidance from balancing parry and dodge (by that formula) than purely stacking one of the stats, this is quite minor but should be considered when you decide if you want to reforge into parry or dodge for pure minimaxing.

Regarding execution Nillo is basically correct, I'd try to use cds before blood shield falls off though (IF this allows you to keep it up for the entire duration you're tanking, otherwise make sure to save some for spikes). Basically use your own cds (use IBF early so it's bk up for the enrage) to keep up blood shield as long as possible. E.g.: fully stacked blood shield+runes+RP+blood tap once you start tanking, pop IBF after a few hits, hold on a bit and call out for a sac once your blood shield starts dropping and your blood shield should stay up for close to the entire duration (and once blood shield drops you still have some time until bone shield disappears). Next rotation, same thing but replace IBF with DRW, and so on.

Things to note: If you for some reason can't manage to keep up blood/bone shield for the entire duration you're tanking (poor gear/rng) make sure to save 1-2 cds (yours or outside)+a DS for if one of your dolls drop low, getting caught without blood+bone shield and no cds up can make very short work of one of your dolls. You also need to make sure that the majority of all cds are up for the sub 20% mark, even if this means letting your dolls take a bit of extra damage before that point.

[Maelstrom51]

Regarding mastery vs dodge/parry, dodge and parry will be overall less damage to the dolls

No, it won't. Unless you are to the point where you're taking no melee damage, mastery will reduce damage to the dolls more than dodge/parry. The dolls will take less damage from Shadowy Attacks maybe, but the extra melee damage taken, as well as shorter Bone Shields pretty much kill any benefit of avoidance stacking.

[Deleted]

No, it won't. Unless you are to the point where you're taking no melee damage, mastery will reduce damage to the dolls more than dodge/parry. The dolls will take less damage from Shadowy Attacks maybe, but the extra melee damage taken, as well as shorter Bone Shields pretty much kill any benefit of avoidance stacking.

Admittedly there was a long time since I did some math on this but afaik mastery and dodge/parry were quite close to each other when it came to overall damage reduction (just that mastery is way more reliable). In this case a large portion (~25%) comes from damage that goes through blood shield but not avoidance which results in avoidance stats mitigating more damage. Your blood shield obviously doesn't increase as much but also takes less damage with avoidance, so there's no reason why it, on average, should result in significantly shorter blood/bone shields while you still have a bigger chance of stopping shadowy attacks on the dolls. You could obviously get a very unlucky string without avoiding a single attack, but this chance is insignificant.

[Maelstrom51]

In this case a large portion (~25%) comes from damage that goes through blood shield but not avoidance

This actually doesn't matter at all. As long as your Blood Shield is eventually being eaten up by melee hits, Blood Shield will always be worth the same amount compared to avoidance.

Now, on to shitty napkin math on avoidance vs mastery for damage reduction. It takes ~880 stats to gain 1% dodge or parry (this is a rough estimate, obviously affected by diminishing returns).
Looking at logs, it looks like I average about 1 Death Strike per 6 seconds. Since the DS window is 5 seconds, and DS is worth 20% of the damage you take within the window, it takes about 6% mastery to be worth 1% damage reduction. At 96 mastery rating per percent of mastery, you only need a total of 576 mastery to meet the 1% damage reduction.

Even at this point it shows mastery being definitively better than avoidance in terms of damage reduction compared to avoidance. Add into it that you can store up your Death Strikes for high damage times (shadowy attacks, for example), mastery becomes even better.

Add into it that mastery actually has increasing returns (for proof: compare % damage reduction going from say, 0 to 50% mastery, to 550 to 600%. Both require the same mastery points, but the second results in you reaching invincibility), while avoidance has mostly linear returns, and mastery becomes that much better.

tl;dr: mastery is definitively better than avoidance as long as Blood Shields are being utilized.

Edit: also don't forget that during low damage times, the minimum heal + blood shield is worth a lot more than avoidance.
edit2: Also DS/BS will scale with damage that is unavoidable, such as Shadow Bolt.

[Deleted]

This actually doesn't matter at all. As long as your Blood Shield is eventually being eaten up by melee hits, Blood Shield will always be worth the same amount compared to avoidance.

Now, on to shitty napkin math on avoidance vs mastery for damage reduction. It takes ~880 stats to gain 1% dodge or parry (this is a rough estimate, obviously affected by diminishing returns).
Looking at logs, it looks like I average about 1 Death Strike per 6 seconds. Since the DS window is 5 seconds, and DS is worth 20% of the damage you take within the window, it takes about 6% mastery to be worth 1% damage reduction. At 96 mastery rating per percent of mastery, you only need a total of 576 mastery to meet the 1% damage reduction.

1.) Doesn't work that way, since your blood shield always is up you never actually sustain the damage, meaning that your blood shield just gets increased by the minimum amount every time while avoidance prevents the full amount from affecting your blood shield. Shadow bolts+shadowy attacks (the only damage you actually sustain) will rarely deal enough damage to put you significantly above the minimum heal.

2.) It's true that the shadowy attacks won't consume the blood shield any faster, but it does mean that you and the dolls take less damage from shadowy attacks (even when blood shield is up) with avoidance.

Add into it that mastery actually has increasing returns (for proof: compare % damage reduction going from say, 0 to 50% mastery, to 550 to 600%. Both require the same mastery points, but the second results in you reaching invincibility), while avoidance has mostly linear returns, and mastery becomes that much better.

Umm, clarify? As far as I know mastery has diminishing (not increasing) returns since you end up capping it. How are you invincible with 600% mastery but not 550%? Excluding the fact that 100% avoidance is the closest you can get to invincibility.

[Nillo]

Umm, clarify? As far as I know mastery has diminishing (not increasing) returns since you end up capping it. How are you invincible with 600% mastery but not 550%? Excluding the fact that 100% avoidance is the closest you can get to invincibility.

Well I've done the math once at 1 DS every 5 sec - in this case every DS is affected by the absorb of the previous DS and you end up getting DR that end up making mastery a linear increase in survivability. (I think you end up getting something like (1+0.2*Mastery) this way)
There are 2 cases when this doesn't hold true:
1) Your DS are significantly more than 5 sec apart - in this case they no longer affect each other and you gain increasing returns because mastery is now a linear increase in damage reduction (rather than a linear increase in 'survivability').
2) You hit the DS floor - again increasing returns because the Blood Shields no longer affect each other. (at the point where (7% * maxHp * (1+mastery) / time per ds) becomes higher than the damage taken per second you're pretty much invincible)