Prot warr - Stamina or mastery?

[Deleted]

@Recke
You should really read the link Pariah posted. There is no sweat spot where stamina loses in value.

Yea that's a nice circular reference he has setup there.
Define Spike Damage as percentage health then proceed to jump through several hoops to "prove" that increased HP reduces spikes.
I thought that was basic fractions?

[Recke]

@Recke
You should really read the link Pariah posted. There is no sweat spot where stamina loses in value.

Paladins have the bonus that they can gem for haste to increase their dps. Warriors cannot do sth similar. Increasing mastery has an indirect benefit on the enrage uptime but that probably won't get your far.

You should get hit/exp caps anytime. That is the first thing to do.

Maybe warrior tanks should gem crit if they got "enough" stamina.

I'd ask you to re-read that link and my post.

1) I don't ever define or give concept to a Stam "sweat spot" or "sweet spot" or anything like that. I state that for magic damage, or no attack speed/physical damage buff, I would stack stam. However, I do go on to state that mastery is a better stat, in my opinion for the situations.

2) Sacredduty.net's article in question is one for a Paladin Tank, and although many articles can be considered good reads for tanks, a paladin and a warrior have different mastery and stamina gains. I don't agree with the 4k haste = 6k stam since gems are 320 haste = 240 stam (4 to 3 ratio), but that's probably taking into account trinkets with a weird ratio.

3) Warrior mastery is http://www.wowhead.com/spell=76857
A 17.6% base, granting 4% block chance and 18% critical block chance. Every 273 rating = 1% Mastery and increase these stats based on such.

Paladin mastery is http://www.wowhead.com/spell=76671
An 8% base, granting 8% additional damage reduction and 8% increased chance to block melee attacks. Every 600 rating = 1% Mastery and increases these stats as such.

With this set out, you can see that when gemming, you'd gain 320 Mastery vs 240 Stamina. So, a very rough estimate would say that every 1 mastery gem (or 240 stam) would grant you 1% additional critical block chance. If the incoming damage is capable of being shield blocked, and would normally require it (say a multi hitting attack, or a short burst of speed from the boss, or a timed interval of damaging attacks), we'll assume near 100% Shield Block uptime for this period of time. So, that 1% increase would be .3% damage reduction.
Theck refers to the gem values in his replies others at the bottom of the page. I'm not including swapping trinkets because those are harder to get/replace than gems.

4) Paladin's have http://www.wowhead.com/spell=53592
25% increase to Stamina.

Warrior's have http://www.wowhead.com/spell=29144
15% increase to Stamina.

Both have Plate Specialization which is an additional 5% total Stamina.
Paladins gain a 1.3125 modifier to any Stam gains.
Warriors gain a 1.2075 modifier to any Stam gains.
Warriors Stam gain is only 92% as effective as a Paladins.
Theck makes a note of it at the saying

It may be a little stronger or weaker depending on their exact stamina multiplier (paladins get +25% from Guarded by the Light, but not all classes do).

with the "not all classes do" linking to the warrior's Unwavering Sentinel.

5) Using Sacredduty.net's assumption, we'll use a 4000 stat bubble to move (pretending it's gems, since you can't reforge into stam). We'll assume it's 4000 mastery vs (4000/320)*(240*1.2075)Stamina=3622.5 Stamina gained.
Using a 28k Stam base, we get about 33810 Stam.
So, 37433 Stam.
We also have to add the 1.2075 modifier gained from Flask, so 1207.5 bonus Stam from flask.
So, 38640.5 Stamina before PW: F. 10% bonus.
So, about 42504.6 Stamina total.
((149,441 HP as Orc (sorry, I'm normally dps) from a 217 base stam (increase by 2778) naked) (609,383 HP in my prot gear for 33070 stam (increase by 462720) 12.8/14 ratio for stam/health. 14 ratio seems to be the universal one.)
So, 149441+38519*14= 688707. (no stam gem)
So, 149441+42504.6*14=744505. (stam gem)
(If I did any math wrong, please correct me and I'll try to fix it, or you can for me).

Where as, you are losing 4000 mastery/273, so 14.65% Critical Block Chance. (ignoring the block chance since Shield Block provides 100% block chance)
(assuming Shield block up)
Set: Mast | Stam
Sta: 28k | 34K
Mastery: 4000 | 0000
32.65% vs 18% to critically block.

We'll say 350k is going to be the big hit.
So, (350k*(.6*.3265+.3*((1-.3265))))*3 vs (350k*(.6*.18+.3*((1-.18))))*3
So, Mastery = 143062.5 Blocked. Stam = 123900 Blocked. (19725 less damage taken on average per hit)
688707 Health vs 744505 Health (55798 health difference)
It would take 2.83 hits before the amount of damage you would mitigate from (average) critical blocking that extra percent of time to overcome the amount of extra health gained.
Mastery Build:
0.0: 688707-206937.5= 481769.5
1.5: 481769.5-206937.5= 274832
3.0: 274832-206937.5= 67894.5
4.5: 67894.5-206937.5= -139043

Stam Build:
0.0: 744505-226100= 518405
1.5: 518405-226100= 292305
3.0: 292305-226100= 66205
4.5: 66205-226100= -159895

You can see how at the third hit, you are more likely (and this is using average, so subject to variation over short intervals, but should be accurate over many iterations) to live/have a better margin of survivability by having Mastery.
If you give a heavy hitting boss a mechanic that increases his attack speed, or has two attacks overlapping, or does larger damage than 350k in a similar attack speed pattern, Mastery will beat out Stam.

---------- Post added 2013-04-11 at 11:48 AM ----------

Note, I should also go out on a limb and state that I'm not an expert in tanks, and I don't know all the situations you'd use Shield Block over Shield Barrier (as I've been informed several times on things I can do better, especially when it involves 10 man tanking where it was common for Shield Barrier to provide more damage reduction per rage than Shield Barrier in many of the more extreme situations I would of thought otherwise).

[Deleted]

The main problem is that mastery becomes almost useless the moment you need to spend rage on shield barrier, which is a lot of times (thanks, unblockable physical damage!). The thing is:

1) Shield Barrier instead of Sblock, and avoidance is better at reducing average damage than mastery.
2) Stamina is better at reliance, and is useless to reduce damage taken.

And then, the middle child is mastery. Neither as reliable, nor the better one for damage taken. Useless when forced to use barrier. Being coherent, people like it because they don't care that much about total damage taken (too much overhealing for that), so reforging mastery + and either gemming/trinketing stamina puts you on the most reliable point possible. When people go with stam it's because they prefer getting less bang for their gemming, but having the bang always, if you get my meaning. 70% crit block can be the same as 0% crit block in a 3 hit interval. Having 70k health is always having 70k more.

Honestly, I didn't feel comfortable >at all< below 700k this tier, if we are going to talk about sweet spots. Had to gem stam, even if I always have feel better with mastery gemming. Will try to regem again back to mastery when lei shen stam trinket drops.

[Recke]

@Recke
You should really read the link Pariah posted. There is no sweat spot where stamina loses in value.

Paladins have the bonus that they can gem for haste to increase their dps. Warriors cannot do sth similar. Increasing mastery has an indirect benefit on the enrage uptime but that probably won't get your far.

You should get hit/exp caps anytime. That is the first thing to do.

Maybe warrior tanks should gem crit if they got "enough" stamina.

Paladins can gem Haste to increase their dps, however the reason they do it isn't strictly because a "sacrifice survivability for damage." Haste allows more Holy Power generation which allows higher uptime of a weaker (compared to mastery build) version of Shield of the Righteous. Overall, it should be similar mitigation in those aspects, leaning in favor of haste since it's less value per percent. Stam is, via that article, a clear winner in terms of survivability, however I think the original concept of Haste on a Prot Paladin was that it out weighed mastery, so you'd reforge into it, or gear into it, (which you can't with Stamina, except in the case of trinkets) and I already had questioned both my guild's main tank (who is a prot paladin this tier) and my old guild's prot paladin last tier about haste vs Stam. The explanation I had received was that Haste will mitigate physical damage more than Stam, which is true, but has nothing to do with overall survivability/smoothing damage (it can probably be even be spikier, since you can't guarantee a block)

I agree with the idea of getting hit/exp caps, however at a 509 ilvl (my tank set) I more or less recently reached expertise hard cap efficiently without sacrificing my gemming cap.

As for the warriors gemming crit, that's a complete sacrifice of survivability for dps. Warriors just don't gain anything like atm, as far as I know.

---------- Post added 2013-04-11 at 12:04 PM ----------

The main problem is that mastery becomes almost useless the moment you need to spend rage on shield barrier, which is a lot of times (thanks, unblockable physical damage!). The thing is:

1) Shield Barrier instead of Sblock, and avoidance is better at reducing average damage than mastery.
2) Stamina is better at reliance, and is useless to reduce damage taken.

And then, the middle child is mastery. Neither as reliable, nor the better one for damage taken. Useless when forced to use barrier. Being coherent, people like it because they don't care that much about total damage taken (too much overhealing for that), so reforging mastery + and either gemming/trinketing stamina puts you on the most reliable point possible. When people go with stam it's because they prefer getting less bang for their gemming, but having the bang always, if you get my meaning. 70% crit block can be the same as 0% crit block in a 3 hit interval. Having 70k health is always having 70k more.

Honestly, I didn't feel comfortable >at all< below 700k this tier, if we are going to talk about sweet spots. Had to gem stam, even if I always have feel better with mastery gemming. Will try to regem again back to mastery when lei shen stam trinket drops.

I haven't been following tanking too much atm, but is the Shield Barrier > Shield Block still as true as it was in 5.0 as it is now with the 10% scaling nerf? I felt that that would put Block ahead (or at least felt it was Blizzard's intentions) on mitigation of very hard hits/fasts hits/etc, as long as it was blockable.
I do mention in my long winded post that I assume you have critical block up for some reason (aka, expect it to be the key rage dump).

[Deleted]

Shield Block is go to default button, indeed. But even with the 10%, if you look only at reducing damage, shield barrier wins (as long as your vengeance is up to date). That doesn't stop shield block for being the go to default button because is more reliable and increses your dps. If a burst attack is blockable, you are probably better with it too, because before the attack your vengeance will be too low to compete with Sblock (and if you save the rage and Sbar it after the attack to get a bigger shield, you have eaten the burst unprotected already).

[Senen]

The main problem is that mastery becomes almost useless the moment you need to spend rage on shield barrier

Mastery provides rage and reduces incoming damages as long as you're being hit by melee auto-attacks.

As far as I understand the situation, Stamina is supposed to be better than Mastery/Avoidance/Hit/Exp if you're looking at EH, but Mastery/Avoidance/Hit/Exp make your incoming damages smoother. The real question being, ca your healers handle spikier damages or not.

[Deleted]

Mastery provides rage and reduces incoming damages as long as you're being hit by melee auto-attacks.

As far as I understand the situation, Stamina is supposed to be better than Mastery/Avoidance/Hit/Exp if you're looking at EH, but Mastery/Avoidance/Hit/Exp make your incoming damages smoother. The real question being, ca your healers handle spikier damages or not.

What I meant is that the value of it is very, very drastically reduced. I certainly wouldn't stack it if were to not use Sblock.

[Mammoth]

I haven't been following tanking too much atm, but is the Shield Barrier > Shield Block still as true as it was in 5.0 as it is now with the 10% scaling nerf? I felt that that would put Block ahead (or at least felt it was Blizzard's intentions) on mitigation of very hard hits/fasts hits/etc, as long as it was blockable.
I do mention in my long winded post that I assume you have critical block up for some reason (aka, expect it to be the key rage dump).

I assume that on a simple fight block beats barrier, otherwise the blizz adjustment failed. However, mechanics still frequently favour barrier. If you're taking a large spike of damage, barrier is superior. Personally I try to use block as much as possible, you can get a good 100% uptime on block and the glyph improves your dps, but I will have barrier ready for when it is the better option.


As for the arguments about mastery making damage smoother than stamina, I could quite easily see that stamina has the same effect by increasing your health pool and is 100% present unlike mastery which is a % chance at an extra reduction.

I'm disappointed by the mastery supporters not mentioning mana - thats what makes mastery better than stamina. You're out there to make the healers task easier, and the less they have to heal you the more they can heal others. Stamina gives them more time to react, but mastery means they don't have to heal you as much.

[Deleted]

Mastery provides rage and reduces incoming damages as long as you're being hit by melee auto-attacks.
The real question being, ca your healers handle spikier damages or not.

No that is not the question. The linked post shows that stamina stacking was the least spiky of all of them in all scenarios. Do you take more damage over the course of the fight? Yes you do but on the same side it is less spiky aswell.

I'm not saying mastery is bad. Not at all. I'm just saying that there is no point at which stamina loses in value. There is none. If it comes to reducing spikes you want stamina all the way to the end. Nothing is more beneficial.

Of course you want to cap hit/exp since tank damage matters and hitting stuff can be converted into active mitigation.

What the linked post refers to at the end is that once you do not need more spike reduction you can convert some survability into dps. Warriors don't profit from haste and mastery falls behind every time you use SBar.

[Deleted]

What I meant is that the value of it is very, very drastically reduced. I certainly wouldn't stack it if were to not use Sblock.

Even in a high magic raid tier its hard to justify using barrier over block on most of the bosses in there, at least you would only use it exceptionally situationaly. You will always use block when you need it, which is when mastery comes into effect.

[Recke]

No that is not the question. The linked post shows that stamina stacking was the least spiky of all of them in all scenarios. Do you take more damage over the course of the fight? Yes you do but on the same side it is less spiky aswell.

I'm not saying mastery is bad. Not at all. I'm just saying that there is no point at which stamina loses in value. There is none. If it comes to reducing spikes you want stamina all the way to the end. Nothing is more beneficial.

Of course you want to cap hit/exp since tank damage matters and hitting stuff can be converted into active mitigation.

What the linked post refers to at the end is that once you do not need more spike reduction you can convert some survability into dps. Warriors don't profit from haste and mastery falls behind every time you use SBar.

I agree that with SBar, mastery falls behind, but did you also take into account the 10% less stam you get from gear because you are a warrior? And also the fact that the post says that 4k mastery = 6k Stam, which only works if you are coverting just under 3 nonstam trinkets to stam. You actually lose overall values when you do normal things like re-gem mastery to stamina. Also, the post is on a paladin who gains less from mastery vice a warrior.

[jason1975]

I agree that with SBar, mastery falls behind, but did you also take into account the 10% less stam you get from gear because you are a warrior? And also the fact that the post says that 4k mastery = 6k Stam, which only works if you are coverting just under 3 nonstam trinkets to stam. You actually lose overall values when you do normal things like re-gem mastery to stamina. Also, the post is on a paladin who gains less from mastery vice a warrior.

Theck Noted that stamina was an order of magnitude better than any other stat. While 10% less stamina for a warrior isn't as good, it's still going to be significantly better than any other stat even for a warrior.

[Teekays]

One thing I really don't understand is raw calculations, without live performance testing. At this point we're about 1 raid night away from 11/13 heroic 10man, and there isn't a single fight where mastery is better. (Live testing, not theoretical) The moment a fight gets a burst damage aspect, that happens while you are the current tank - stam wins, unless the boss itself melees for absolutely nothing aside from the burst - but if that's the case you'll be using barrier anyways. For mastery to truly be better, it needs to be a fight where the damage is sustained and never bursty, a boss that hits like a noodle outside of his burst, or many adds that just melee and also don't burst.

The other thing which makes stam better is bosses that melee for a high amount of damage, but also have a burst ability (See: Horridon) - it's common for warriors to barrier a triple puncture, absorbing it all. That's fine and dandy, but if you account for the lack of rage for the next 3 or so melee hits afterwards that you are taking without Sblock up, you'll end up taking more damage and be even more bursty than if you just ate the triple puncture entirely. Stamina lets you have enough HP to fully eat the triple puncture, while block/critblocking all the auto attacks before and after which hit quite hard on their own. Just letting TP's through is better for your healers if you have the stam for it.

Now there's always exceptions to the paragraph above in horridon, but it's more of an advance in the moment thing rather than something to judge based off of. That is if you know you can gain the rage needed to put up a block right after using a barrier. If Shield Slam, Revenge, and Shout are all coming off CD, it becomes favorable to barrier the TP, then use those and put up a block right away too. You can also pop an earlier barrier when he cleaves, and use the free time to gain rage as well for the times he bursts you after a cleave is done.

In general, justifying mastery stacking with the "barrier can be used on burst damage" just doesn't work.. because most bosses have strong auto-attacks as well which will end up hurting you just as bad as that burst since you dumped your rage into the barrier and can't put up a sblock afterwards that you have all that mastery for.

Keep in mind all our abilities that scale off health too. Barrier, Last Stand, Rallying, Enraged Regen/IV/Second Wind, and most importantly - our 2piece this tier. Victory Rush procs we earn all are based off our health.

We're just in a world now where theoretical less damage taken overall is no good. What's easier on the healer > How small your damage taken# is. In this current tier, a general answer for every single boss is to get as much stamina as possible from gems and trinkets, while mastery stacking on stats. If you feel you don't need stam trinkets for a boss - just use dps ones. If you don't need the stam ones, you won't need the mastery ones either.

Edit to add:
Jinrokh - mastery is better, though I'm definitely not going to swap all my stuff around just for him So for me there's no boss worth stacking mastery.. for someone else who really needs to kill him and may be having troubles, getting some extra mastery may help a bit.

[Recke]

Theck Noted that stamina was an order of magnitude better than any other stat. While 10% less stamina for a warrior isn't as good, it's still going to be significantly better than any other stat even for a warrior.

Well, Theck made a recent post stating gems should be the last place you go for stamina.
http://www.sacredduty.net/2013/04/12...ocket-stuffer/

Gems should be your last place to give up haste (or conversely, the first place to start shedding stamina

When going from haste to stamina, swap trinkets before enchants before gems;

So, not only do I disagree with the "significantly better than any other stat" but I'll go on to say that we gain twice as much value from mastery than a prot paladin that if we were doing fights with high sources of damage, then mastery would be the go to over stam. We also gain 10% less benefit from stam.
Note, never have I said for low hits would I drop stam. I strictly stated if the hits were 350k+ that I'd gem mastery instead of stamina for a Protection Warrior.

---------- Post added 2013-04-12 at 11:30 PM ----------

One thing I really don't understand is raw calculations, without live performance testing. At this point we're about 1 raid night away from 11/13 heroic 10man, and there isn't a single fight where mastery is better. (Live testing, not theoretical) The moment a fight gets a burst damage aspect, that happens while you are the current tank - stam wins, unless the boss itself melees for absolutely nothing aside from the burst - but if that's the case you'll be using barrier anyways. For mastery to truly be better, it needs to be a fight where the damage is sustained and never bursty, a boss that hits like a noodle outside of his burst, or many adds that just melee and also don't burst.

The other thing which makes stam better is bosses that melee for a high amount of damage, but also have a burst ability (See: Horridon) - it's common for warriors to barrier a triple puncture, absorbing it all. That's fine and dandy, but if you account for the lack of rage for the next 3 or so melee hits afterwards that you are taking without Sblock up, you'll end up taking more damage and be even more bursty than if you just ate the triple puncture entirely. Stamina lets you have enough HP to fully eat the triple puncture, while block/critblocking all the auto attacks before and after which hit quite hard on their own. Just letting TP's through is better for your healers if you have the stam for it.

Now there's always exceptions to the paragraph above in horridon, but it's more of an advance in the moment thing rather than something to judge based off of. That is if you know you can gain the rage needed to put up a block right after using a barrier. If Shield Slam, Revenge, and Shout are all coming off CD, it becomes favorable to barrier the TP, then use those and put up a block right away too. You can also pop an earlier barrier when he cleaves, and use the free time to gain rage as well for the times he bursts you after a cleave is done.

In general, justifying mastery stacking with the "barrier can be used on burst damage" just doesn't work.. because most bosses have strong auto-attacks as well which will end up hurting you just as bad as that burst since you dumped your rage into the barrier and can't put up a sblock afterwards that you have all that mastery for.

Keep in mind all our abilities that scale off health too. Barrier, Last Stand, Rallying, Enraged Regen/IV/Second Wind, and most importantly - our 2piece this tier. Victory Rush procs we earn all are based off our health.

We're just in a world now where theoretical less damage taken overall is no good. What's easier on the healer > How small your damage taken# is. In this current tier, a general answer for every single boss is to get as much stamina as possible from gems and trinkets, while mastery stacking on stats. If you feel you don't need stam trinkets for a boss - just use dps ones. If you don't need the stam ones, you won't need the mastery ones either.

Not disregarding your info, however I was more specifically talking of 25 man where the damage is higher to compensate the increased number of healers. I don't know if I mentioned that.

The amount of absorption gained via Shield Barrier due to a slight increase in stamina I don't think is really relative. Rallying and Last Stand are decent deals. Our healing talents aren't really that great, since 10% of a 20k health gain via stam is an additional 2k health gained back, which you shouldn't be relying on. As for Victory Rush/etc from our 2 piece tier, I'm sorry, but I think rage building abilities take such a priority that I wouldn't use it unless dire situations, and if that is the case that you are relying on a 10% chance to proc to keep you alive, I'm sorry.

For high burst damage, such as Horridon, I highly doubt stam is the means of surviving the best. You can say that the bonus stam will keep you alive, however the situation in question is one where you'd take >100% or roughly that in <3 seconds, aka a melee, a triple puncture at high stacks, and then another melee (~1.5 seconds, assuming the average big heal is 2 second cast time), it depends on how much damage you are taking from the attacks. I've done examples for ~350k every 1.5 seconds, so if the damage exceeds that average, and it can be blocked, then it'd be ideal. If Horridon is only hitting you for 200k, I'm not claiming mastery to be better.
EDIT:As an addition, I'm also saying that the first 4/5ths of the fight aren't a threat to a tanks health and can be done regardless of gear. It is when Horridon gains the Rampage buff that a tank is truly in danger of dying.

[Senen]

No that is not the question. The linked post shows that stamina stacking was the least spiky of all of them in all scenarios. Do you take more damage over the course of the fight? Yes you do but on the same side it is less spiky aswell.

Ok, we didn't use the same definition of "spiky".
When I said "spiky" I didn't mean that you're not taking any damage and suddenly you're almost dead. Because, yes, this is related to stamina.
When I said "spiky" I meant that your healer has nothing to hea and suddenly he has a great amount of damage to heal. This is not related to stamina.

No matter how much hp you have, most healers would rather heal a tank which takes 150k every 2 seconds that a tank which takes 75k every two seconds and randomly takes 450k once in a while.
Obviously, the more stamina you have, the less this spike will threaten your life, and in that sense Stam>Mastery. But the healer will still have to heal this spike quickly, and the bigger the spike is the more mana your healer will have to spend in a short amount of time, in that sense Mastery>Stam.

Anyway, I'm not saying that Stamina is bad, I actually gem for stamina.
Actually, my point is rather the same than Mammoth. Your healers may have to spend more mana on you.
I'm just saying that it is not only explained by TDR, because "more incoming damage" does not mean "more mana required to heal you", it also comes from the fact that your damage spikes will be higher.

[Teekays]

Not disregarding your info, however I was more specifically talking of 25 man where the damage is higher to compensate the increased number of healers. I don't know if I mentioned that.

The amount of absorption gained via Shield Barrier due to a slight increase in stamina I don't think is really relative. Rallying and Last Stand are decent deals. Our healing talents aren't really that great, since 10% of a 20k health gain via stam is an additional 2k health gained back, which you shouldn't be relying on. As for Victory Rush/etc from our 2 piece tier, I'm sorry, but I think rage building abilities take such a priority that I wouldn't use it unless dire situations, and if that is the case that you are relying on a 10% chance to proc to keep you alive, I'm sorry.

For high burst damage, such as Horridon, I highly doubt stam is the means of surviving the best. You can say that the bonus stam will keep you alive, however the situation in question is one where you'd take >100% or roughly that in <3 seconds, aka a melee, a triple puncture at high stacks, and then another melee (~1.5 seconds, assuming the average big heal is 2 second cast time), it depends on how much damage you are taking from the attacks. I've done examples for ~350k every 1.5 seconds, so if the damage exceeds that average, and it can be blocked, then it'd be ideal. If Horridon is only hitting you for 200k, I'm not claiming mastery to be better.
EDIT:As an addition, I'm also saying that the first 4/5ths of the fight aren't a threat to a tanks health and can be done regardless of gear. It is when Horridon gains the Rampage buff that a tank is truly in danger of dying.

The same will always apply, even in higher damage scenarios that have burst (that is also higher). Sure, if you are lucky enough to critical block both of those melee attacks - your mastery would have been better. In that 1 scenario, in the last 4/5ths of that fight. Yet, you also could pool rage during the 6 seconds of a shieldblock, so that the shield block buff runs out just before or during a swipe - that time window, along with the window of the swipe allows for enough rage to pop a block and a really beefy(last phase vengence out of the roof) shield barrier at the same time. Follow that up with all of your own CD's since you are rage starved and let the cd's do the work on the following melee's and the next TP, while pooling rage again for the 3rd when CD's run out. You'll never, ever notice a 20%(Random#) mastery difference doing it that way. "Sorry guys my mastery didn't proc" is generally not a good reason to die to a fight.

Our mastery is a "chance" and it's entirely possible that even with 20% more than me, you'll only block instead of crit-blocking thus rendering your mastery useless. In our specific discussion, 2 very strong melee attacks + a burst physical attack is by no means worth it - that's better dealt with with proper use of cds and rage. Mastery weighs better when there is consistent, relatively high blockable attacks that are continuous throughout the entirety of the fight where your health, even if not crit-blocking, is never in danger.

You said it yourself though, even if mastery was guaranteed 100% better for the last 1/5th of the fight - what about the first 4/5ths. This can apply to any fight by the way. If you stack mastery for a very small portion of a fight, that portion can generally be dealt with with cd's alone. What about the rest of the fight though, the other 4/5ths? If stamina weighs better there, you are effectively slowly giving the healers a lower mana pool for the end of the fight versus someone who stacked a stat better for the 4/5ths. Or you may just be making progressing through that 4/5ths of the fight more difficult. I can't say whether or not you have cleared heroic twins, but if you have, that is a perfect example. Mastery destroys stamina when it's night, but if you stacked full mastery you can be certain you're going to get obliterated during day.

It has to do with priorites, really. If you get 125k closer to dying than me after a burst attack, the rush to heal you will be quicker, as you have less effective health for the melee attack that is soon to follow. Healers can't guess whether or not you crit-block the melee attack following a big burst, they have to assume you won't and that you'll die - making them rush to save you - where as my health could be high enough where just a normal block will still guarantee my safety, allowing them not to worry so much - especially when there is other raid damage that is quite intense going on. If we reach the point this patch where we can cap out on crit-block without getting 1shot by any unblockable ability + a crit-blocked melee attack that follows - then I'll definitely agree that mastery is the way to go.

On an entirely different topic, Victory Rush is beyond amazing. Relying on it to live is a big no-no, however saving it for when damage is about to come is the best thing ever. 250k+ practically free heal, I'd rather use that after some burst and save my 60 rage I would of used before-hand. Now I healed most of the burst, and can block afterwards. (or block before, heal the burst up after - either way works)It procs often enough to be used this way. That's one use, the even better use that I have found to be the most helpful and convenient thing ever is Victory Rushes ability to help us successfully pool rage. Instead of block/barrier at 60 rage, it's nice to be able to sit on rage, and use VR when rage-gainers are on CD to heal up an unblocked attack..taking up time so that you can use another rage gainer and have pooled rage ready for some big burst. Plus the fact that we can keep our shields at 100% pretty much all on our own on heroic tortos with 2 piece is the best.

No matter how much hp you have, most healers would rather heal a tank which takes 150k every 2 seconds that a tank which takes 75k every two seconds and randomly takes 450k once in a while.

That is 100% true, and if that was the case for warriors it would always be all mastery....but we are warriors .. It is just mathematically impossible for tank A to get spiked for 450k stacking stamina, while tank B never does stacking mastery. Rather, Tank B will take randomly(%based on mastery) 30% weaker hits than tank A, never more or less. The fact is that 30% of any blockable attack is >almost< never a "spike" it's rarely something that will even get noticed over a 60% critblock reduction with all the other things healers have going on. Healers would rather heal tank A who is randomly getting hit for a tiny bit harder, but who does not fall in danger when an unblockable nuke comes.

[Recke]

The same will always apply, even in higher damage scenarios that have burst (that is also higher). Sure, if you are lucky enough to critical block both of those melee attacks - your mastery would have been better. In that 1 scenario, in the last 4/5ths of that fight. Yet, you also could pool rage during the 6 seconds of a shieldblock, so that the shield block buff runs out just before or during a swipe - that time window, along with the window of the swipe allows for enough rage to pop a block and a really beefy(last phase vengence out of the roof) shield barrier at the same time. Follow that up with all of your own CD's since you are rage starved and let the cd's do the work on the following melee's and the next TP, while pooling rage again for the 3rd when CD's run out. You'll never, ever notice a 20%(Random#) mastery difference doing it that way. "Sorry guys my mastery didn't proc" is generally not a good reason to die to a fight.

I don't think you went over my post including a 4 swing set up. Having the x amount of gem weight in mastery vs stamina on a boss hitting 350k every 1.5 seconds, both tanks will die at the 4.5 second mark, with the exception of the mastery tank having the possibility of actually living if they get luckier. However, that's part of the thing, both will die by the damage output regardless if you gem stam or mastery. However, in a quantified time gap, for this we'll say 5 seconds where your hpal is divine plea-ing, the only heals you'll get are from smart heals which (for the most part) aren't going to recover you enough to take another hit, the average amount of damage taken, or negative value of health you'd have, mastery, point per point, will have you closer to zero, meaning you are more likely to live. And if the "random" 20% increased chance to take 30% less isn't going to make the difference, then I'll ask why not get dps gear so you can do more damage to make the boss die faster so you don't have rely on the chance. (And before you say something about Haste/Protadins, Haste still gives them some mitigation (increased HPo gen so more uptime of a weaker SoTR) where as haste/crit doesn't give us anything except damage).

Our mastery is a "chance" and it's entirely possible that even with 20% more than me, you'll only block instead of crit-blocking thus rendering your mastery useless. In our specific discussion, 2 very strong melee attacks + a burst physical attack is by no means worth it - that's better dealt with with proper use of cds and rage. Mastery weighs better when there is consistent, relatively high blockable attacks that are continuous throughout the entirety of the fight where your health, even if not crit-blocking, is never in danger.

Agreed that it can be dealt with cds, but an entire fight could be dealt with cds and thus you could not have any tank gear on at all. I completely disagree with the "where you health, even if not crit-blocking, is never in danger." Then idea of Blocking, being a huge chunk of the base damage being removed, is to stop attacks that WOULD kill you from doing so. If you only bother Shield Blocking when you won't die, I'd recommend doing that with Shield Barrier as, if I recall, it provides smoother damage from attacks that won't kill you, since you can use it at 20 rage.

You said it yourself though, even if mastery was guaranteed 100% better for the last 1/5th of the fight - what about the first 4/5ths. This can apply to any fight by the way. If you stack mastery for a very small portion of a fight, that portion can generally be dealt with with cd's alone. What about the rest of the fight though, the other 4/5ths? If stamina weighs better there, you are effectively slowly giving the healers a lower mana pool for the end of the fight versus someone who stacked a stat better for the 4/5ths. Or you may just be making progressing through that 4/5ths of the fight more difficult. I can't say whether or not you have cleared heroic twins, but if you have, that is a perfect example. Mastery destroys stamina when it's night, but if you stacked full mastery you can be certain you're going to get obliterated during day.

I'm sorry if this comes off as rude, but if you are having troubles surviving as a tank during the time period that the boss is doing the lowest damage, I doubt you'll ever see the end of the fight when he does more damage at the end. The rest of the fight, the other 4/5ths, you are standing there taking slightly increasing damage that you could say Stam would be better, but even if you put that stat weight into anything else, you'd survive. I understand that this is a "mathematically, Stam is better 80% of the time, Mastery only for the 20%(which is debatable)" however, I could say that the damage that would kill a tank occurs, say, 75% of the time during this phase, so Mastery being important becomes much more important at this point. I also would like you to reconsider the misconception that the healers would have a lower mana pool by the 4/5ths. Theck clearly covers this as well. Healers won't go oom healing you during this phase, regardless of Stam stacking or Mastery stacking, because the incoming damage on the tank is low. The only situation that would change this is if your healers decided to use inefficient panic heals on you every time, which shouldn't be happening (unless you are completely undergeared for the content). They go oom because they have other things to heal, aka the raid. And, if you wanted to take that out of the equation, Stamina is not a damage reduction source. Mastery will provide more damage reduction, thus less healing required overall (unless you go back to the undergeared and healers get scared every time you drop less than half).

It has to do with priorites, really. If you get 125k closer to dying than me after a burst attack, the rush to heal you will be quicker, as you have less effective health for the melee attack that is soon to follow. Healers can't guess whether or not you crit-block the melee attack following a big burst, they have to assume you won't and that you'll die - making them rush to save you - where as my health could be high enough where just a normal block will still guarantee my safety, allowing them not to worry so much - especially when there is other raid damage that is quite intense going on. If we reach the point this patch where we can cap out on crit-block without getting 1shot by any unblockable ability + a crit-blocked melee attack that follows - then I'll definitely agree that mastery is the way to go.

The only point I'd throw in to contest this is the fact that we don't gain that much health per stamina gain as a warrior compared to some of the other tanks, where as our mastery is pretty strong. Not DK strength.

On an entirely different topic, Victory Rush is beyond amazing. Relying on it to live is a big no-no, however saving it for when damage is about to come is the best thing ever. 250k+ practically free heal, I'd rather use that after some burst and save my 60 rage I would of used before-hand. Now I healed most of the burst, and can block afterwards. (or block before, heal the burst up after - either way works)It procs often enough to be used this way. That's one use, the even better use that I have found to be the most helpful and convenient thing ever is Victory Rushes ability to help us successfully pool rage. Instead of block/barrier at 60 rage, it's nice to be able to sit on rage, and use VR when rage-gainers are on CD to heal up an unblocked attack..taking up time so that you can use another rage gainer and have pooled rage ready for some big burst. Plus the fact that we can keep our shields at 100% pretty much all on our own on heroic tortos with 2 piece is the best.

Over a 330 second fight, tanks are getting about 45 Shield Slams and 25 Revenges, so 80 chances at 10% Victory Rush. So, 8 Victory Rushes. I guess as far as it goes, it could be useful. I just don't think it's as useful as other tank tier bonuses (free heal every 20 seconds, which would be about 15-16 over a 330 second fight, so twice as good as ours, or the paladin set which is pretty hard to compare, but seems much stronger).

That is 100% true, and if that was the case for warriors it would always be all mastery....but we are warriors .. It is just mathematically impossible for tank A to get spiked for 450k stacking stamina, while tank B never does stacking mastery. Rather, Tank B will take randomly(%based on mastery) 30% weaker hits than tank A, never more or less. The fact is that 30% of any blockable attack is >almost< never a "spike" it's rarely something that will even get noticed over a 60% critblock reduction with all the other things healers have going on. Healers would rather heal tank A who is randomly getting hit for a tiny bit harder, but who does not fall in danger when an unblockable nuke comes.

I agree it's not possible for Tank B to not get, however, you can say that 65% of the time, Tank B does better due to stacking mastery, he would be picked more for the spike damage part. Also, with health pools atm, 15k bonus on a 750k hp tank (with 15k being about the amount lost if you threw out 4000 Secondary stats from gemming to Stamina) is only a 2% increase in health. The amount of inflation and deflation vs damage incoming will be nigh disregard-able from a healer point of view (except maybe a Resto Shaman) as they heal for x amount regardless if it's only modified by 2%.

[Teekays]

<removed for convenience>

Well for one thing, I know exactly how Prot paladins, and every other tank for that matter works.. I'd never question that. Especially when I need one for our alt/main split runs at the beginning of the new tier.

I'm extremely extremely curious where your # of health gained via lost stats comes from. That is far, far off than what the actual numbers are in game in practice. I just swapped a 320 mastery gem for a 240 stam gem, and lost 3.1k health. Assuming that value stayed exact, I would need to lose 1,600 secondary (mastery) stats to gain 15.5k health... which is less than half of what you stated. The numbers to be exact were 712.8k unbuffed to 708.7k unbuffed with the swap of 1 gem. It's also minimal, but stamina buff has to be taken into account as well, 10% of a slightly larger number just makes it even more slightly larger.

Then there's also the Tank B doing better 65% of the time, I just don't understand that at all. 65% is a very very heavy mastery stacked build right now...which is attainable, but 65% >more< than tank A? Gotta remember that in all cases, a stamina stacked tank also has his own mastery numbers. If you had 65% >more< mastery than myself (I stack stam) then you would be well over mastery hard-cap. That number just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It feels like you're theorizing based on 1 tank that is full on mastery and another tank that has 0 mastery at all.
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I don't mean that to come off as rude either, I actually enjoy discussing these things.. so I will continue despite my suspicions of everything else after the above previous 2 things I questioned.

Talking horridon (or anything that does 350k every 1.5seconds for that matter) I assume you mean 350k after a 30% block reduction, as 350k every 1.5 without block will not kill me after 4.5 seconds if I apply a 30% block to all 3 attacks. So assuming you mean after block, that'd be a total of 1,050,000 damage if none were crit-blocked - or ~235k more than my HP bar in the raid setting (Without a shaman healer buff, with one it's even less an issue). Smart/AOE heals easily cover that, but even if they didn't.. I still can't see justifying stacking mastery for this burst window, when you are relying on a "chance" at living. "My mastery didn't proc, sorry guys let's pull again till it does" comment still applies. You're relying solely on luck to live, that is not a thing to do as a tank.

While still on Horridon(heroic) the damage during the first 4/5th's is by no means disregard-able. There is still burst in the form of TP + Melee + Call all in the same second. This can still drain a tank without decent stamina by quite a chunk. Health doesn't reduce damage, but it does allow you to take more, thus healers able to leave you be for longer.. allowing them to focus more on the raid. If it turns into a "heal the tank who is low, away from us, or the raid that is also getting low" things can get sketchy real fast. I can go back to simply using CD's on the 1/5th and saying stack the better stat for the 4/5ths. If I can live with a 0% chance to critblock thanks to CD's and correct play alone during that entire 1/5th... why stack a stat for it when that stat overall is less effective? You say a whole fight can be dealt with by CD's....except...it can't? They are CD's and only usable every so often for a reason. Calculating a relatively short, gigantic burst window without CD's is just not valuable in my opinion.

My comment about mastery being better when not in danger of dying was when shieldblock is already up. Mastery is a better stat, if for the entirety of a fight, you can live with the 30% reduction from shieldblock even if you never crit-block. Shield block would always be up, never an "only in danger" case.. that'd be silly.

The most important thing to note though is the fact that in the current tier, the majority of all things that will kill you aren't blockable. I said earlier, maybe before the discussion with you, that in general at least for the current tier stamina is the go-to stat - just because there is pretty much only 1 boss whose blockable attacks are threatening, however almost all bosses.. well actually, all bosses except Jinrokh have unblockable burst that is certainly threatening and can destroy you if you don't have the stamina for it. Actually, if you don't kill posion head on Meg heroic and you are the tank that gets the job of always being on that head, then mastery weighs better too so long as you live through the breaths. (keep in mind though, if timers line up so that you would get refreshed due to the timing of DPS and you are forced to do fire head, that mastery can easily get you killed now)

My opinion on what stats is (generally) better will always change based on the current tiers bosses, and what our maximum potential is going both routes. This is my job as a tank in progression guild where we face content with sub-par gear.

In this tier, Mastery dominates 1 fight entirely (Jinrokh), has a slightly better chance to help horridon's end-phase, though with cooldowns there which should be used anyways it's not needed, and wins on Meg if you are solely tanking poison head and timers never get messed up leaving you to tank a red randomly. Every other fight has some sort of mechanic that is unblockable and bursts for a very high amount, easily taking you out without the proper HP.

So 1 fight mastery wins
1 fight it has decently low chance to be better in a small window where CD's are up anyways rendering it not needed.
1 fight it wins in a specific situation, if everything goes perfectly.

The other 9 all heavily favor having stamina stacked because stacking mastery will likely get you 1-shot by unblockable burst.. or severely train afterwards you if you decide to barrier the burst (and timers line up perfectly so that your barrier isn't absorbed by a melee attack right before)

Thus my answer to someone asking me a question about the 2 in comparison is of course stamina.

Armory for reference if curious: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...g/Tks/advanced

[Recke]

I don't mean that to come off as rude either, I actually enjoy discussing these things.. so I will continue despite my suspicions of everything else after the above previous 2 things I questioned.

As long as we are on the same page, because I do enjoy this too, because even if my math seems wrong, I'll learn something out of it.

The health gain is simple. And I might be giving it too much credit. If you look how much stamina you have and how much health you gain from said stamina on your character sheet, you can do simple math and find out it's ~14, although seemingly lower when the stam is just the base stat and not from gear, which could be intended. Second, I looked around for the Stam to HP conversion factor and I saw a few posts, not blue so not 100% trustworthy, however they stated that it became 14 during Cata, and since 14 matched the numbers via math, I posted it. It could be entirely wrong, using some weird conversion that just happens to end up at 14 for my character and coincidence on the forums.

I said 65% of the time because 50% of the time means it didn't matter which tank. I went with 65% for the reason below. The said burst damage is still in the assumption that it does 350k every 1.5 seconds or so (or greater).

I'm a little confused how'd you live through 4 hits (0.0,1.5,3.0,4.5) of Horridon doing 350k every hit. I apologize if I made it sound like a "dps" number, I did intend it as 350k per melee swing, using 1.5 as the base swing. 350x4 is 1.4million. 245k every hit if blocked, for a total of 980,000 damage done. If you out live that without cds, I'm impressed. Any hit critblocked will be 140,000 damage. So, since I'm using a low mastery base, we'll assume one attack is crit blocked regardless and that the bonus mastery is not intended to crit block more overall but instead to crit block one attack more every period we'd be scared. So, 245kx3+140k=875k for the tank without mastery. Obviously, if said tank has 876k+ health, this isn't a factor anymore, but that requires a lot of Stamina that I'm not currently seeing on tanks and seems really difficult to attain through just gemming changes via mastery->stam. The mastery stacking tank, if he critical blocks that 1 attack more, only takes 770k damage, an entire 100k less. Mind you, this won't always happen, since again, you are improving your chance to critical block overall, and can't select which ones you'd critical block, however at 273 mastery = 1% improved odds, and you'd want 33% (17% base)(using 33% because it's likely to see 2 attacks blocked out of 4, 1 out of 3, etc), which 16% more mastery, or 4368 mastery rating. Looking at these terms, neither tank would survive all 4 hits, however the amount of healing to keep said mastery tank in the green (figure of speech) on those fights where he does survive it better (which should average out to 1/3rd the time) where as neither tank has the chance to survive otherwise. A restatement of the above would be 1/3rd the time, tank B is better. Assuming it was originally 50/50, a 33% gap would make it aproximately 65/35 (I went and rounded to 30 for ease).

I can't argue that if you aren't in danger of dying, then stamina is best, but you "aren't in danger of dying." But I only said I'd stack mastery if there were times of high burst and high damage, and I guess I should continue with it being blockable. And I'm not arguing that stamina is the best otherwise, but when people devalue a warrior's mastery and quote someone else's work without reading it fully and seeing that it isn't the same for another class, I'll bolster it. Unblockable damage? Nonbuffed melee, aka normal attack swings, I'd go stam. I never said I wouldn't. But at the same time, I'm not scared of dying through that. And if you can live through the entirety of Horridon's enrage (because my situation I stated and what had happened to me) was with your offtank down as soon as Jalak died and you have to survive the rest of the fight.

[keqe]

I like hit cap+expertise hard cap. Then stamina. the 5% more change to get critical block is not that because it doesn't even help at many deadly things bosses do.