Notes on HP and armor
Just a few random thoughts …
New stamina scaling math
With the nerf to Sacred Duty, to calculate how much hp we get per point of stamina multiply by 10 to get the base stam -> hp number, then by 1.10 for our modifier (as opposed to the old 1.14 modifier). With that, we get 11 hitpoints from every point of stamina.
Armor is the new hotness
Coupled with the nerf to stamina, armor deserves another look as a tanking stat. While back in the days before 3.3 stacking armor was something for druids primarily, the inclusion of +armor items to the Emblem of Frost vendor has created an armor renaissance. Coupling that with the pattern of ICC boss fights rewarding physical damage mitigation (I’ll give examples in a second), you’re going to get a lot more mileage out of armor right now than you would stacking stamina.
Here are a few times where armor stacking is recommended:
- When tanking Saurfang, any damage you take is transferred to the people with Mark of the Fallen Champion. Any damage you can mitigate down or avoid completely makes the lives of the healers easier. The less damage you transfer, the longer the Marked folks will live.
- On Festergut the majority of the damage you will be taking will be physical (with the magical portion, the breaths, generally negated by inoculations). Festergut hits hard and fast and rewards not just being able to survive his hits, but minimizing the damage as well.
- If maintanking the Blood Queen, any damage you take is passed to the OT as shadow damage via the Blood Mirror. Therefore, the MT wants to have enough mitigation to minimize how much damage they pass through the Blood Mirror, while the OT (contrawise) wants to have lots of stamina to soak all the incoming shadow damage that they’ll be getting passed to them.
ICC is the first raid in a long time that rewards tanks for giving certain stats priority situationally. For Putricide you are rewarded for having enough avoidance to increase time between stacks of the P3 debuff, for Blood Queen each tank is basically assigned the mitigation role or the stamina role, and so on. We are encouraged not just to survive damage, but to prevent it. A welcome change of pace.
Right now, in my gear, I have around 29k armor and 65.83% physical damage reduction. Once I pick up the other three +armor offset pieces, I’m going to be rocking some pretty serious mitigation. I can’t wait.
@hazmacewillraid
8 February 2010 at 1:43 pm #
I just find it funny that Blizz even acknowledges that, as you said, “armor is the new hotness.” Zarhym posted on this on the Tanking forums in explaining why they boosted the armor values on T10 pieces:
‘We recognize that many plate tanks are making their gear choices based on the amount of armor they’re provided, as this is currently the most preferred stat.’
Just strange to hear Blizzard confirm something that the theorycrafting community found out.
@Rhidach
8 February 2010 at 1:58 pm #
No kidding, they’re not usually this on the ball.
I may be mistaken, or maybe the changed it, but testing over at Maintankadin had shown that missed attacks by Saurfang still do damage through Mark of the Fallen Champion.
Even if that is so for Saurfang, the more avoidance you have, the slower blood stacks he gains, correct me if I’m wrong. Taking armor for certain fights is definately the way to go, within reason. Having the two stamina trinkets still goes a lot further, the main reason people were, and still are going for the armor emblem items is because they offer a lot more armor, keeping a good amount of hp, even over some of the 264 tier items. Not to mention the other useful stats they give, like expertise.
At the mention of Saurfang, I figured I’d drop by and post my Typhoon strat video. I added it to the comments on the earlier post but I wanted to make sure it didn’t fall off the stack too early.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBnBuh014ow
Something we found out with the blood mirror on the blood queen was that our Druid ot stacked shadow resist gear til about 330 and it turned out that he actually took the least amount of damage of the raid (according to our pally healer). Also, on the princes, I took the second boss and had seal/judgement of light for around 230-240 hps. Not huge, but seeing as how you get ages to build threat (hammer of wrath is available the whole time!! Great to pull the boss with) it can really help.
Will you be stacking stamina on your new armor pieces? Will you be gemming them the same way you have gemmed in the past?
@Rhidach
9 February 2010 at 9:01 am #
Yep, gemming will remain the same. I think the only item enhancement change I will make is enchanting my cloak for armor. I’ll miss my parachute…
I think personally I would still keep my agility on my cloak. Armor is great but I still like the avoidance even in ICC.
If I get a second cape that’s decent then I will enchant the secondary one accordingly for mitigation on armor.
Anyone else need 40 slot bags?
it is hard to use mitigation gear on festergut cause there is chance in that fight to show my guildies who owns in dps :-)
so I put my dps set which I made with 4000 ap ub and I rock the meters and laugh.
still easy to heal me and when I hear over vent: “wtf?!?”, “I had lag couldnt dps”, “nerf prot palas” and such things it is just to precious not to do it.
:-)
@Rhidach
9 February 2010 at 1:03 pm #
@Soul: Haha! I use a dps weapon and make sure I’m at least soft expertise capped for that fight so I can bring some serious pain during the offtanking-with-9-stacks period. I loves it.
@Senet: Seriously, I need more bags for all the random pieces I keep for threat/armor/stam/avoidance “sets”.
@Joe Ego: I watched the video and it was awesome, thank you for sharing!
“Yep, gemming will remain the same. I think the only item enhancement change I will make is enchanting my cloak for armor. I’ll miss my parachute…”
This is what I’m doing right now as well, and, even with the nerf to Prot Paladin Stamina scaling, I still find myself over 45k unbuffed. I can’t wait to get my hands on Unidentifiable Organ and Sindragosa’s Flawless Fang. So much health…
@Anafielle
10 February 2010 at 1:57 pm #
I have not hit BQL on 25 yet. (sigh…. casual guild with severe attendance problems.) I assume that on 25 I will be in max stam gear, soaking Blood Mirror hits, since I am the OT.
However, on BQL 10 man, I just wanted to make a note. I OT-ed that in ret gear + prot spec. I guess 30k-ish buffed HP is enough to soak those Blood Mirror hits with appropriately OP healers, and even still in prot spec I managed about 4k DPS!
I guess my MT has enough armor that the Blood Mirror hits on me are small enough that I can “offtank” it in DPS gear :)