Trading avoidance for EH
Just wanted to point out this awesome post over at Maintankadin for any aspiring tanks or, hell, any folks trying to determine when to sacrifice avoidance for more effective health.
Go to this post and scroll down a little to the descriptions of the tank levels, find yourself and your recommended number. Then, scroll down a little bit more to where it says “How to stack stamina” and gem or enchant down the line as your tank level would recommend.
Awesome guide based on some rock-solid math from Theck and Meloree. I was pleasantly surprised to find I’m doing all but the last three, and strongly considering the third from the bottom: replacing the Argent Crusade head enchant with the Engineering one.
If you’re debating the value of one gem/enchant over another through the lens of EH, this is a great tool to help you along the right path.
Armory Feed
That is indeed a great post there, but you should really check out Wrathy’s latest post about gearing in ICC. Because of the raid buff there will be some circumstances where the theory will change due to reaching some caps and/or being far away from other thresholds.
http://avengingwrathy.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/post-icc-buff-gearing-philosophies/
@Anafielle
25 March 2010 at 6:00 pm #
The post linked above is wonderful, of course. But, copied from his disclaimer at the top:
“This is a discussion regarding tanks who are in full swing in ICC25 man Hard Modes, where the normal buffed health pool is sitting in the 60k plus range while buffed armor is in the 44k plus range. These tanks make up less than 0.5% of the population. However as the Buff in ICC grows, so does the population where this philosophy is applicable.”
… Hmm. I don’t know, when is this likely to apply to tanks like us? (i.e., currently working on end-wing normal mode 25m bosses) My fear is that too many people will read that and adjust their gem philosophies when it doesn’t apply to them yet.
I don’t know, though. I know my MT broke 60k raid buffed HP because I was complimenting him on it jealously last night. I will take a close look at my stats and his tonight. I wonder how far away we really are.
I’m pretty sure I am still at least 2 increases of that ICC buff away from applying the kind of gearing philosophy change Wrathy is talking about.
Anafielle’s last blog ..Lich King Blues
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@Anafielle – Indeed that disclaimers is vitally important. Personally I don’t like the ‘content tag’ that was put on it. As the raid buff increases, and as people are running more and more ICC the collective gear will get there. Personally I just felt it important to point out that there ARE in fact thresholds where stacking stam is no longer as beneficial as sprinkling in some avoidance. Its important to know those thresholds exist, and where they are, so that you can be watching for them and have a plan laid out for what to do then.
I wouldn’t be too hard on him about the disclaimer. It’s somewhat universally applicable advice, but I doubt Wrathy has a serious grasp on the tanking breakpoints for normal-mode tanks. I know I certainly don’t. However, unlike past WotLK instances, up until Lich King, ICC is not particularily an EH-reward instance. Even with the 5% buff, but certainly at 10%, I would guess that hybrid gemming would be the path of choice for any appropriately geared (primarily 245/264s) tank in normal modes, and probably the path of choice for any hardmode tank not currently working on LK25HM.