Mastery vs. Stamina

[thesmall001]

Okay so I'm in mostly 346 gear (Heroic) and currently I'm stacking mastery to the high heavens (I'm at 50% block chance unbuffed and I still haven't swapped out trinkets; I actually have some level 83 green that gives me 1000+ mastery for 15 seconds on a 1.5m cooldown) but all of my fellow raiders are panicking because I have considerably less health than our other tanks. I tried explaining to them that 1 point of mastery is more valuable than 1 point of stamina. So I want opinions; which should I be stacking and WHY?

[Deleted]

I gem parry/mastery/stamina hybrids, wear avoidance trinkets and enchant stamina on most slots. My reasoning is the following:

I want enough stamina to survive at least 2 cumulative melee swings from the avarage boss, or 1 swing + a boss mechanic (Like, 160k buffed). After this, more stamina doesn't feel as attractive.

Parry and Dodge actually reduce more damage taken than Mastery per point of rating atm, Mastery will reduce more when we reach higher DR values of the avoidance stats. I do, however, still somewhat prioritize Mastery over avoidance, because while Mastery doesn't reduce as much damage, it reduces damage more often. Spiky damage is something we want to avoid, we also like reducing tank damage taken while raid damage taken is high. Mastery also works better together with HoTs, Beacons, healing circles etc.

In other words, I "stack" mastery, but I also make sure my avoidance ratings and stamina increase steadily as we progress. Therefore I gem hybrids and save stamina trinkets.

edit: You could compromise with your guild and stack mastery up to a total of 77.4% avoidance. The benefit here is that you're unhittable while Shield Block is active, making it a very reliable defensive CD.

[Torture]

You need a 3rd option;

'Balance Stats sensibly'

Right now you shouldn't be 'stacking' anything at the expense of everything else. Stam has it's place, Mastery has it's place, Parry has it's place, Dodge has it's place (right at the bottom below the others!).

There are a stack of threads explaining prot stat priorities littered a ross the first 3 pages of the forum, just go and have a read of the discussion and it will make a whole lot more sense, but encouraging people to blindly stack a single stat is just going to lead to an imbalance.

[franto]

Actually i got similar problem in wotlk, first i started stacking into avoidance, but when you came into a raid, everybody was like ... "you got so low HP, we rather take another tank" so i switched to stamina.

I'm afraid that something similar will happen again ...

BTW, i'm stacking mixed stamina / mastery / dodge now. Blue gem is pure stamina.

[Vespian]

Okay so I'm in mostly 346 gear (Heroic) and currently I'm stacking mastery to the high heavens (I'm at 50% block chance unbuffed and I still haven't swapped out trinkets; I actually have some level 83 green that gives me 1000+ mastery for 15 seconds on a 1.5m cooldown) but all of my fellow raiders are panicking because I have considerably less health than our other tanks. I tried explaining to them that 1 point of mastery is more valuable than 1 point of stamina. So I want opinions; which should I be stacking and WHY?

It's a thought process that needs to change. I think most are correct when they say "balance is key".

I too have some parts that I might or might not swap around to or from stamina, because I couldn't make up my mind about things afew days ago. I'll adapt as I go along. However, I'm already very much feeling the effect of more Mastery and in the end it's going to be a blessing for your healer, because he'll spend less mana.

Stamina is there to reduce the "Oh shit must heal very much in very little time" effect. In other words, you should have enough to absorb 3 direct hits in a small timeframe.

I'll probably be stacking stamina on all enchants, except for the gloves, I'll be gemming blues with stamina, but all other gear is going for Mastery or Parry gems and the reforge is either Master or Parry if mastery is present.

[Dregarian]

Balance is certainly key right now with a focus on Stam, Parry and Mastery all being the top priorities but not in any which order. Also depends on the healer thats assigned to the tank which I feel is sometimes over looked.

[grimkiller]

Mastery is awesome, but don't go completely balls out on it.
Stam still has value, and should be mixed in with gemming and enchants.
Stacking stam, on the other hand, is bad.
If your raid wants you to stack stam, laugh at them.

[Deleted]

It never spells anything good when others start to dictate how your character should gear. If it's someone who really knows what they are doing, it's fine to give advice but most of these cases people are giving advice on hearsay, rumor, and tidbits that they've read or seen other tanks do without understanding the contexts in which the decisions were made. I say, go your own way and tell your guildies to leave you alone. Iyona outlined a very nice pattern to gem your sockets. If you want extra stamina, put pure stamina gems to your blue sockets and keep yellow and red sockets as mastery/stamina and avoidance/stamina respectively.

[xebtria]

Actually i got similar problem in wotlk, first i started stacking into avoidance, but when you came into a raid, everybody was like ... "you got so low HP, we rather take another tank" so i switched to stamina.

I'm afraid that something similar will happen again ...

If this happens, you have 2 choices:
a) stop random raids and get a guild
b) get a better guild

nuff said.

mastery (aka block) saves 30% (at least) of a melee attack.
imagine one situation:

you have 200k life and 101,4% block+dodge+parry+miss.

you know, the next boss will make some nasty special attacks which hit - after armor - for 240k life. (or it is 3 hits á 80k... whatever you like)
what would save your ass?

- getting one % more of block or dodge or parry (therefore the 30% blocked attack (which would be the maximum hit you will get) will be less than 200k dmg)
- getting ~45k additional health

basically, both will save you. but what is easier to obtain? I bet it is the % of mastery/dodge/parry. you may drop to 190k life for that (just pulling numbers out of my ass, nothing exact here), but you get that additional percent of whatever which pushes the "hit" off the attack table, making you survive the hit(s) with ease.

[Devlin1991]

Until you can hit 102.4 passive unhittible dont bother.

Eternal meta.
Stam in blues
parry/stam in red
mastery/stam in yellow.

Double stamina trinkets. That is what I am doing and if you look at every single tank who is doing heroic raids they are all doing the same, some bosses hit stupidly hard add to that long cast heals from healers and you need to have a huge stam buffer so that you dont die inside that 2s cast.

[DMTyrisis]

OP, IMO don't stack anything. Large health pools are harmful to the party in Cata. If you have a huge health pool, your healer is going to spend a lot of mana trying to fill you up for no reason, while the DPS suffer. On the other hand, if you are spreading your gems across mitigation and stam, then you will have sufficient health, get hit less and lighter, and your healer will be able to triage heal the whole party, not spam large heals.

My guild has three tanks - 2 warriors and a druid. All of the healers tell me I am the easiest to keep up. The druid stacked stam, and the other warrior went with too much mitigation IMO. Stick with the primary color gems, and match sockets, and you will be a well rounded tank.

[Deleted]

You should go for maximum item-level possible as long as they are tanking items. There's no need to run around in greens when farming heroics.

Only once you have overall good gear should you place a preference on Mastery over Stamina, but even then not to a huge extent.

[Bigslick]

You should go for maximum item-level possible as long as they are tanking items.

This is as bad advice for tanks as for anyone else. Item level does not dictate performance value, and value varies dependent on specific itemization needs for overall balance or, for tanking purposes, type needed (i.e. is the fight primarily physical, magic, lots of adds, etc). For example, Petrified Twilight Scale, a 271 epic trinket from 25-man RS is still better than most cata trinkets for physical mitigation -- and actually is better than its 'replacement,' Bedrock Talisman, the 359 epic valor badge trinket.

[rabbimojo]

It really depends on what you're willing/able to invest in the character.

If your goal is max performance, then you need multiple sets. Mastery/avoidance are significantly weaker on high-magic-damage fights, so in many cases you'll want to shift to more stamina. Some fights you'll want to focus on smoother damage (so mastery is more valuable), some you'll want to just minimize damage (so you'll want to match the expected damage minimization function for mastery+avoidance). Some you'll want to maximize EH to give your healers the most breathing room they can get, maybe due to mechanics or due to heavy incoming damage.

If you're sticking to a single set, balance is key. Generally this means, as mentioned above, using stam and hybrid stam gems to match gem slots.

---------- Post added 2010-12-29 at 12:47 PM ----------

This is as bad advice for tanks as for anyone else. Item level does not dictate performance value, and value varies dependent on specific itemization needs for overall balance or, for tanking purposes, type needed (i.e. is the fight primarily physical, magic, lots of adds, etc). For example, Petrified Twilight Scale, a 271 epic trinket from 25-man RS is still better than most cata trinkets for physical mitigation -- and actually is better than its 'replacement,' Bedrock Talisman, the 359 epic valor badge trinket.

Well, I guess it's OK advice if you make one big assumption: The player isn't taking encounter mechanics into account when selecting gear.
In that case, selecting max ilevel will tend towards a reasonable stat spread, which is the right idea if you're ignoring mechanics in gearing.

Just emphasizes how important it is to maintain multiple sets (or to use certain parts of your gear, like trinks, to develop sub-sets).

[bigjenk]

Like always it is going to be prudent to have gearsets which emphasize different stats and know when to switch between them. You will always want a threat set for some gimmick fights, a mastery set to smooth damage(more so when you can get unhittable), an avoidance set for minimizing damage, and a stam set for heavy magic damage. Never want to get caught without the proper gearset, especially if you remember the curveball h anub was.

As far as highest ilvl goes, it will generally be best, moreso in the case of armor, shield or weapon unless the stats are far worse for what you need, due to the armor or weapon dps gain, but for trinkets that can often not be a bad decision. The bis trinket for tanks was a blue stam trinket til you were well into ulduar, and lavanthors was useful into an.

[Deleted]

Well, I guess it's OK advice if you make one big assumption: The player isn't taking encounter mechanics into account when selecting gear. In that case, selecting max ilevel will tend towards a reasonable stat spread, which is the right idea if you're ignoring mechanics in gearing.

Well, this isn't Vanilla anymore though; how many sets does a tank need? I agree two or so, where you can switch around offpieces is fine but you don't need five anymore. In any case, I'd shun from just looking at the ilvl. Not later than in ICC some BiS items, depending on your tanking class, could easily come from 10-man, where others were 25-man. For now, the funniest thing I've found is that I got a green bow while questing in Uldum and it remained the best warrior tank, ranged weapon until the epic, crossfire carbine. I got a sort of better one now, an agility/stamina blue one that I could reforge and get better stats, but the green one was better than the blue BoE I could have bought from the AH.

[Bigslick]

Well, I guess it's OK advice if you make one big assumption: The player isn't taking encounter mechanics into account when selecting gear.
In that case, selecting max ilevel will tend towards a reasonable stat spread, which is the right idea if you're ignoring mechanics in gearing.

Just emphasizes how important it is to maintain multiple sets (or to use certain parts of your gear, like trinks, to develop sub-sets).

A player could operate strictly by that advice and do ok, certainly. Where I intended my point to lie was in that the earlier poster's comment might be best taken as a guideline rather than a rule. But then again higher item level gear oriented towards a role is usually going to be better. As you noted, different circumstances will benefit more from different itemization priorities.

Even so, there are some outright exceptions to the 'go for maximum item-level possible as long as they are tanking items' despite itemization. In the case of the two trinkets I listed earlier, the 271 is better in virtually every circumstance than the 359, with the sole exception being in a fight where the tank is expected to generally remain below the 35% mark in which case the greater uptime of the valor trinket's proc brings it back on par - and even then, no better. And sometimes gear can just be absolutely horribly itemized despite item level, as Corpse Tongue Coin was for really all but one fight in its concurrent content.

[rabbimojo]

Well, this isn't Vanilla anymore though; how many sets does a tank need? I agree two or so, where you can switch around offpieces is fine but you don't need five anymore. In any case, I'd shun from just looking at the ilvl. Not later than in ICC some BiS items, depending on your tanking class, could easily come from 10-man, where others were 25-man. For now, the funniest thing I've found is that I got a green bow while questing in Uldum and it remained the best warrior tank, ranged weapon until the epic, crossfire carbine. I got a sort of better one now, an agility/stamina blue one that I could reforge and get better stats, but the green one was better than the blue BoE I could have bought from the AH.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to suggest people need to maintain a ton of gear, but I think you can still get good mileage out of maintaining a variety of gear. The main "sets" now which are likely to be useful over the course of an expac are basically an EH set, a max survival set, and a threat set, with an amalgamation of the EH and survival set used for typical runs.

Realistically, most tanks can get away with just maintaining trinkets that support those different roles, though personally I tend to keep a few armor pieces here and there to swap into certain slots.

In any case, I was just playing devil's advocate. I think ilvl obsession is a ridiculous playstyle - I've still got that same green bow in my inventory. :P

---------- Post added 2010-12-29 at 02:16 PM ----------

A player could operate strictly by that advice and do ok, certainly. Where I intended my point to lie was in that the earlier poster's comment might be best taken as a guideline rather than a rule. But then again higher item level gear oriented towards a role is usually going to be better. As you noted, different circumstances will benefit more from different itemization priorities.

Even so, there are some outright exceptions to the 'go for maximum item-level possible as long as they are tanking items' despite itemization. In the case of the two trinkets I listed earlier, the 271 is better in virtually every circumstance than the 359, with the sole exception being in a fight where the tank is expected to generally remain below the 35% mark in which case the greater uptime of the valor trinket's proc brings it back on par - and even then, no better. And sometimes gear can just be absolutely horribly itemized despite item level, as Corpse Tongue Coin was for really all but one fight in its concurrent content.

Certainly. As in my reply to Dannyl, I was mostly being silly with my reply - I don't think item level is a great thing to focus on. If But, were I to actually give a new tank that advice, I would certainly say that it doesn't apply to trinkets. A bit safer would be to say that it only applies to items that have the now-standard strength+stam+ratings spread, and that they should generally ensure at least one survival stat is included in those ratings.

Regardless, not great advice.

(As an aside, it's odd how bonus armor is budgeted in Cata. Have they changed talents/spells in some way to make the stuff scale faster for DKs/bears or something? Just hard to really justify.)

[kamilumin]

Have you been raiding yet? If so, I'd say the best thing is to ask your own healers, check some logs. Do they feel comfortable healing you? Are they using more mana inefficient heals on you compared to other tanks? Even psychology comes into play here, because if the healers are thinking "This is the tank that might die in two hits cause of his health!" even if that weren't true, they might be using their flash heals and waste mana to heal you in order to prevent your supposed death. If the healers think "This guy takes less damage than the other guy" then you're probably in a good place (unless your hp really isn't up to snuff heh), and they can properly use their spells.

[Chimpzilla]

Fighting strictly magic dealing mobs go with HP. Fighting strictly melee mobs go with avoidance stats. A combination of both melee and spell attacks I prefer a rounded set of gear. Rarely do I stack for a one particular stat, but give a balance to whats important for the encounter / raid. There is already good advice in this thread, just think carefully about what everyone said and you should be able to figure it all out.