What/How to gem? FERALTANK

[enigmaran]

As long as you admit it's currently overkill, then I guess there's not really much more to address on the subject.

[Auroro]

stam is you friend , agil is nice but don't gem all agil then call everyone sponges, cause you'll get 2 shot and your healers cant heal that..

Then it is the problem with the healer because i was able to tank that fight at 54k health and nothing went wrong. It was the DPS not burning the boss down fast enough. We got him down to 50% by the time that there is one minute left.

Festergut is Time to Survive type of fight. Not a EH fight. Even I one shot Festergut in ICC 10.

The reason why we called you a sponges, is because Our dodge and Health is at a good amount that more stamina is a waste until Hard mode. TOGC is different from ICC where the bosses are only hitting you faster and not harder. TOGC's bosses are hitting you slower but harder.

I think i need to post our dear old friends that ended the fight between AGI vs Stam.

[Auroro]

I think you're missing the point with the whole 2 shot 3 shot thing you keep bringing up.

Ok, say you are tanking a boss and get 2 shot by the boss. This is a problem - you should be able to survive 2 swings from the boss without heals and live. That is a good benchmark for having enough stam to tank a boss.

With CURRENTLY available bosses - an agility stacking bear in appropriate gear, has enough stam to still be alive after 2 swings.

You throw the 30k out there, but the bosses simply aren't hitting that hard on their average swing. The only one that possibly could is saurfang when he is at 90+ bp - (which you should be using barkskin or other cooldowns/trinkets for) or festergut with his 90% buff (which you should be using your cooldowns for)

If a tank is trying to get enough stam to survive those phases without cooldowns, then they completely misunderstand the point of the cooldowns.

Cooldowns are not just an oh shit button. They are there to aid in mitigating tough areas of fights. If you have appropriate gear and are dying during non stressful parts of fights such as the above examples, then honestly - it's on your healers most of the time for not doing their job. You use the example of the puke on festergut, but honestly - there's no way that all the healers get it unless they're terrible and fail at playing this game.

That being said, I expect that upcoming bosses will hit harder, and push that preventing being 2 shot threshold up a bit, but until that content is out we really won;'t know where our minimum HP threshold is.

As I've been saying throughout the thread, I think the solution will be a healthy balance between stam and agi with shifting gems moving towards being a bear's best friend once again.

Personally I am currently sitting around 58k raid buffed and our other bear (beermug who has been posting on here) is sitting around 62-63k. Both of us can tank everything fine. Right now, it's no debate - both work. We'll be able to see where to go for hard modes when they are released.

(my gems are not pure agi though. I have a mix of stam, agi stam and since my hit had dropped so low I have hit stam in a couple yellows, so still primarily stam gems since I use only one stam trinket.)

For someone that's an EH nut, surprised ya don't have Blood-draining over Mongoose.

The problem is that you haven't proven anything or correctly explained anything yet. Reducing the amount of healers, including tank healers, doesn't mean you have to increase your EH at all. Healers with near-full mana bars at the end of the fight most likely were not even healing to their full potential. Dropping a healer allows them to operate at their full potential, unless they're just lazy. Besides, even by your own admission from your examples of EH vs agi, the point of EH is survival by just relying on yourself, not external factors. Removing or adding a healer doesn't change your EH values at all.

I was trying to avoid extreme examples, but at this point I believe it's necessary to help educate you (lengthy post incoming):

Effective health is calculated based off of armor/resist mitigation and health values to give you a grand total to what your HP really is without any mitigation factors (does not factor in avoidance). Basically, it's a calculation of how much damage you can take before dying w/o heals (aka, burst damage). EH does not have much value for damage over longer periods of time, because either you're getting heals or your dead from burst.

Example time: Let's say we're on ToGC25 Anub, and we have one tank taking care of all the adds. We could go one of two ways.... EH or avoidance. If we go EH, we can stack as much armor/HP/Nature Rez as gear allows (a bear tank could pull this off, most likely). If we go avoidance, we can get to the point of having an "unhittable" tank (like with a warr or pally), so you're basically blocking or avoiding all damage except Leeching Swarm in P3. Which tank do you think is preferred if there's an option? The "unhittable" tank most likely has a very low EH (since it does not calculate avoidance!), but that tank is much easier to heal and more likely to survive without a heal. The "unhittable" tank could potentially increase their EH at the cost of avoidance, but that actually increases their chances of dying!

Alright, let's throw those tanks into another scenario, and for ease of example, let's say ULD 25man "Steelbreaker, I Choose You!". We can throw that high EH at Steelbreaker once the other two adds are dead... Fusion Punch, BAM! Fusion punch dispelled, you survived that huge hit w/o a heal. Now we can throw that unhittable tank into this situation... Fusion Punch, BAM!... tank was one-shot.

So what's the point of these examples?

Effective Health is excellent to stack if you need to survive burst damage or a really big hit. As seen in the examples, EH can either save you or hinder you, it's very situational.

Most people confuse EH with TTL (Time-to-Live) calculations. TTL is simply a calculation of how long you can live without a heal over time (this includes avoidance). The reason more people don't gear around TTL is because it changes on a per-fight basis, since it uses factors such as avoidance, boss swing timer, boss damage, and anything you can do to extend your life not included in EH calculations. If you gear for fights that don't have large burst you cannot avoid, TTL calculations are much better than EH calculations.

Here's the punchline: The best way to gear for fights is to make sure you can take the big hits while minimizing damage you do take over the course of the fight. Some people will jump up and say "So that means I should maximize my EH and TTL!" Well, there's the problem: the two examples I've made were Maximum EH vs Maximum TTL. As we've seen, going to the extreme is bad for both depending on the situation, so we can conclude maximizing just EH or TTL is not the end-all answer for tanking.

So what is the answer? A mix of both, obviously! Sounds complicated, but it really isn't. First, let's get our EH to the point where it's still useful. Bring in Festergut once more... 30k hits, I can gear over 60k health and take two hits... I can't get 90k health yet w/o cooldowns... alright, let's gear my stam/armor values around being able to take two hits w/o a heal. Next, let's get our TTL maximized around this EH we have selected for ourselves. How do we do this? Keep yourself at your pre-selected HP (in this case, we chose 60k) while increasing your avoidance where you can. Does this mean I just gem exclusively avoidance? Surprisingly no, you can still put on some more HP if you choose (I don't fancy being at 1 HP after two hits anyways), but favoring avoidance gives you a much better chance of living w/o a heal.

Let's go back to your statement about needing to increase your EH if you drop a healer or a healer dies. If you can still take the burst (as in you've tailored your EH to do so) before the heals come in, will increasing your EH keep you from dying? Well the burst is gone, so you're more concerned about living longer beyond the burst, so increasing your TTL at the cost of EH is the best way to go. Yes, there is a balance: don't increase your TTL so much that your EH cannot survive the burst (with our Festergut example, don't drop so much stam in favor of agi so that you can only take 1 hit instead of 2).

Phew, that was rather lengthy, but if it helps educate the bear community, it was worth the time! This is basically what enigmaran was saying (took me so long to write this he responded before me), just more in depth.

[arel00]

Thanks for reposting it Auroro.

Guys... what you have to realize is that we "agility fans" actually STOPPED gemming straight agility when we grew past Ulduar.

But not going straight agility doesn't make going full stamina suddenly good.
Gearing requires balance, tanking requires health management, through cooldown and what not.

There are Bears around there that, WITH EXPERIENCE, and with THEIR RAID NEEDS in mind, decided to pursue a full stamina gearset. It's not wrong per-se.

What it's wrong is saying "you have to gem all stamina". That's bullshit. As much bullshit as someone who tells you "you have to gem only agility". Because none of them knows what your raid and your gear is like.

The problem is.. there are much more people going after straight stamina now, if nothing else because the random PuG leader, which by definition is a complete retard, is able to measure tanks only by their HP pool, ignoring avoidance, threat, competence and everything else. It's sad, but that's how it is on most servers with the average group.
And that is the reason why you see "don't go full stamina" appear more often than "don't go full agility".

TD;DR: it's called "wisdom lies in the middle".

[jtstormrage]

Stack stamina. For TOGC and in ICC (normal and hard modes) stamina is king.

Maybe you could stack 200 agility and get a few percent more avoidance but it is really not worth it in ICC. You are probably gonna get hit and so make sure you can take more than one unavoided hit.

Most healers massively overheal anyway (esp. Pallies) and so it should not affect your healers mana.

[Cheezee]

Oh I know they won't two shot us, more like three.. and technically they will hit harder, but obviously not relative to our gear because we'll have so much more hp(just from gear). they're still going to drop tanks like flys when people assume they won't because of the radiance. yes you have to use cd's, but festergut hits for 25-30K a hit, just wait till hardmode (you aren't going to have cd's up 100% of the 2 and 3 debuffs)

You're assuming that Blizz will model the ICC hard modes after Gormok for every fight. How do you know they won't toss in things such as Jaraxxus' portals which you have to kill. Hell for Fester all they would need to to to make it a hard mode would be to cut down the time on the spores or make them only affect so many people at once (ie everybody only gets 2 stacks max). For Rotface they could make the original person who gets the slime the kiter for the big slime. Not every fight is about the tank getting 2 shot.

stam is you friend , agil is nice but don't gem all agil then call everyone sponges, cause you'll get 2 shot and your healers cant heal that..

Did you bother to read the post I quoted? The guy says every gem but one should be a stamina gem. If that doesn't scream sponge then I don't know what else does.

[arel00]

Not every fight is about the tank getting 2 shot.

Precisely.

Alone in the Darkness says Hi.

[BeerMug]

Oh god... I thought this was put to bed for now..... /cry /Jump
Thanks Enigmaran for reposting for those who don't research.

[Auroro]

Oh god... I thought this was put to bed for now..... /cry /Jump
Thanks Enigmaran for reposting for those who don't research.

I think you mean me for reposting the best post ever.

Stack stamina. For TOGC and in ICC (normal and hard modes) stamina is king.

Maybe you could stack 200 agility and get a few percent more avoidance but it is really not worth it in ICC. You are probably gonna get hit and so make sure you can take more than one unavoided hit.

Most healers massively overheal anyway (esp. Pallies) and so it should not affect your healers mana.

..........

Just why you do not research or read before posting.

[Lori]

Blue Socket: STAM
Red Socket: STAM
Yellow Socket: STAM

[Auroro]

Blue Socket: STAM
Red Socket: STAM
Yellow Socket: STAM

"Sally, we got another one over here, get me my shotgun."

Blue Socket: Stamina (Duh)
Red Socket: Shifting Dreadstone (help with threat and avoidance)
Yellow Socket: Nightmare (if the socket bonus is good enough), Vivid Eye of Zul (if the socket bonus is good enough, and the Nightmare been use), Stamina (If the socket bonus is not good enough)

[axxey]

Oh I know they won't two shot us, more like three.. and technically they will hit harder, but obviously not relative to our gear because we'll have so much more hp(just from gear). they're still going to drop tanks like flys when people assume they won't because of the radiance. yes you have to use cd's, but festergut hits for 25-30K a hit, just wait till hardmode (you aren't going to have cd's up 100% of the 2 and 3 debuffs)

Or you should be smart and be dpsing with +90% damage buff at that point and your paladin with his retarded free life should be tanking.

[klondikebear]

Or you should be smart and be dpsing with +90% damage buff at that point and your paladin with his retarded free life should be tanking.

what does dps have to do with tanking? also i've seen two different WoL parses with a bear and druid tank, the druid tank takes less damage overall.. sure we don't have a free life, but I have more cd's (some are medicre, and it depends on gear)

the druid > pally tank part was because it seems like you think paladins take less damage and should tank p3 (even tho in 25 you'll have two ph3's for awhile)

[Cheezee]

what does dps have to do with tanking? also i've seen two different WoL parses with a bear and druid tank, the druid tank takes less damage overall.. sure we don't have a free life, but I have more cd's (some are medicre, and it depends on gear)

the druid > pally tank part was because it seems like you think paladins take less damage and should tank p3 (even tho in 25 you'll have two ph3's for awhile)

L2 Read up on fight mechanics? Being the tank means you need to know more than just "boss hit me, not you".

It doesn't matter who tanks the 3rd inhale but a good feral druid can do more dps than a prot pally simply by swapping to cat form. So who benefits more from a 90% increase in damage? A prot pally with a sword & board or a feral druid with 11k ap and (for those of us not blindly stacking stam) 50%+ crit?

[Sunshine]

It doesn't matter who tanks the 3rd inhale but a good feral druid can do more dps than a prot pally simply by swapping to cat form. So who benefits more from a 90% increase in damage? A prot pally with a sword & board or a feral druid with 11k ap and (for those of us not blindly stacking stam) 50%+ crit?

Indeed; equally geared tanks can all tank the 3rd inhale. I tank with a prot pally for both 10 and 25-mans. For 25-mans, we run about 3 full tank phases, so I tank second (right when the 3rd inhale occurs) and get to contribute some catdps twice during the fight. For 10-mans, we run only 2 tank phases, so I tank first (and don't have to worry about taking as much damage).

I'm usually ~11th on our 25-man damage meters (~6 healers, 2 tanks), and ~3rd on our 10-man (2 healers, 2 tanks). At that point, my dps as a tank has become a meaningful contribution to the raid, so we take advantage of that as best as possible.

[klondikebear]

L2 Read up on fight mechanics? Being the tank means you need to know more than just "boss hit me, not you".

It doesn't matter who tanks the 3rd inhale but a good feral druid can do more dps than a prot pally simply by swapping to cat form. So who benefits more from a 90% increase in damage? A prot pally with a sword & board or a feral druid with 11k ap and (for those of us not blindly stacking stam) 50%+ crit?

I know the fight mechanics, yes my dps as a tank matters, but barely. If your going to try and insult me, i'll call you a bad for not realizing that blizzard did not take a bear who could go kitty into consideration for enrage timer + hp + dps.. they even came out in a post saying tank damage should not matter on this fight. if it did, how would a warrior (who has the least dps out of all tank class's i believe) help this fight?

I'm not blindly stacking stamina, I'm doing whats best for my raid. (i have agility gems in my tank gear kthx)

[exochaft]

I know the fight mechanics, yes my dps as a tank matters, but barely. If your going to try and insult me, i'll call you a bad for not realizing that blizzard did not take a bear who could go kitty into consideration for enrage timer + hp + dps.. they even came out in a post saying tank damage should not matter on this fight. if it did, how would a warrior (who has the least dps out of all tank class's i believe) help this fight?

Gonna have to agree with klondikebear on this one. It's one of the larger arguments I throw out against the bearkitty spec: it's insanely arrogant to think that Blizz designs fights around a tank going DPS mid-fight to win the encounter, aka Blizz designing fights around druid tanks. My kitty DPS in bear spec/gear is pretty lackluster and almost the same as my bear DPS anyways (no Shredding Attacks or Rip glyph kills keeping SR and Rip up at all times), only reason I'd do it on fights like Festergut is to drop my threat a bit so I don't steal aggro from the tank that just taunted, then go back to bear with a large enough margin. On Putricide, I opt to OT since I do produce a semi-significant DPS as a Tank, and with all the target switching that goes on, doing kitty DPS with tank spec/gear would just be pretty dismal. Stick to bear!

[Sunshine]

True; in general tank dps is low, and certainly I wouldn't advocate switching out your spec or gear to try to boost it (other than the usual argument of having enough threat and so on). There are no fights in the game where your tank dps is mandatory, and any example I've seen of people unable to make an enrage timer due to low dps would be far better off getting better geared/skilled dpsers than anything that a tank could possibly do.

The difference with Festergut is that it's the one rare fight where it's possible in full tank spec/gear to actually pull some decent damage, thanks to the debuff. Do you need to? No. Does it hurt? No. It's not about being required to pull that gear or about switching gear/gems/spec just for that fight. Instead, it's about adapting your strategy to best suit your raid. Could my raids survive that fight if I didn't go catdps after tanking? Sure. Do we get through the fight faster this way, with less margin for error if a dps dies? Yes. But again, this is a completely special case.

About Putricide, I've been stuck trying to do as much damage as possible through whatever means possible these days -- our Shadowmourne builder has been trying to figure out the abom driving, which leaves myself and our prot pally on Putricide himself... but I wish there was something reasonable for the third tank to do on that fight.

[klondikebear]

About Putricide, I've been stuck trying to do as much damage as possible through whatever means possible these days -- our Shadowmourne builder has been trying to figure out the abom driving, which leaves myself and our prot pally on Putricide himself... but I wish there was something reasonable for the third tank to do on that fight.

we got to our first p3 where we could actually do something (other p3's were with 5+ people down) and the raidleader goes, klondike your going to have to go bear and taunt at some point.. (was kitty dps'ing) i probably could have given the healers another second or two to adjust, but i got flattened and i don't think i would have gotten a chance anyways.. i assumed i was going bear for the next pull but they had a holy pally go prot. thats almost the case where tank dps matters, but again blizz said we should be fine with 3 tanks on enrage so someone's stuck feeling sort of useless

[Auroro]

I never went kitty in a fight while I am tanking Festergut and my group does oneshot the boss without a problem in Ten man, 25 man is a different story.