Tanking (Lazeil): Mastery v.s. Stamina

[Cronopally]

I was just wondering what your thoughts were on the Mastery v.s. Stamina debate now that you guys are deep into heroic content.

The general consensus (from what I have been reading) is that you no longer need to gem and enchant for stamina now that we have enough base EH to survive so many multiple full strength attacks. This seems to make sense now that healer mana is much more precious, and how great of a stat mastery is for smoothing over damage.

However, after checking Lazil's armory, I have seen that he is slanting all of his gems towards stamina still, instead of going for pure mastery. Is there any reason for this? Are the bosses in heroic modes hitting hard enough to still 3 shot any geared tank? Or is the magic damage taken significant enough to warrant gemming stamina instead of pure mastery.

Thanks for reading and any response is appreciated. =)

[Shoopuf]

Hits anywhere from 50-70k are the norm in heroic modes

[Beta]

Firstly what ever he is doing, it seems to work out for Paragon.

Secondly I would love to see video from Lazeil point of view.

I personally value stamina and mastery evenly high, due the reason that stamina also increases vengeanse attack power buff. What comes to Lazeil talents, it's is really healing heavy with word of glory so how he handles that would be interesting to see. For paladin you have to keep holy shield to gain extra 10% block up all the time, so waiting when to heal with 3 holy power is hardly an option. Stamina also helps when he is missing second point of reckoning, that I consider one of key aggro talents together with sacred duty (+good usage of sacred duty proc), but it seems keeping aggro hardly is a problem at the moment.

One interesting point is also completely lack of hit and expertise, but that is another story.

What comes to current gemming, he uses armor meta that isn't considered better option with current low gear level of 359 & 372, this most likely will change for later raids. 1% increase on block value, 41% when holy shield is up (like it should be all the time) gives average better results.

So swapping meta to block one and then all 60 sta to 20mastery + 30 sta, and 20 parry + 30 sta to 20 parry + 20 mastery would result 160 more mastery and 240 stamina less. How much it would increase block chance, someone else do the math.

Anyway, stamina isn't bad stat, sometimes it definately is the best stat, but gemming for each boss might be out of question even Paragon people :)

Good luck for raiding

Betaman

[Cronopally]

50k? That should be enough to kill a fully buffed tank in about 4 swings.

I suppose with bosses in heroic modes hitting that hard having a "high enough" EH number is much harder to achieve. Anyone want to give an estimate of how much stamina you think is necessary before you can start gemming for mastery heavily?

[Shoopuf]

I'd feel comfortable around 225k raid buffed which will allow you to survive 3 unblocked swings without heals on say Maloriak

[Cronopally]

3 unblocked swings. Interesting and definitely a good benchmark.

However think about this..is is really necessary to gear for 3 unblocked swings with over 90% chance dodge/block/parry? I understand that as tanks we always gear for the worst case scenario, but if we traded the stamina to survive say...2.5 unblocked hits but gained another ~5% block chance..would that really be a bad thing?

There should be no time during a fight where you get 3 unblocked hits...ZERO healing...and ZERO cooldowns available for usage...all while having a grand total of over 90% chance to block dodge parry or get missed.

It is far more reasonable to assume that having more mitigation in place of that unneeded hp would be less of a burden in the long run.

And if the bosses are hitting around 50k 225k is a little over 4.5 hits. (side note...we are on the same server I am just horde =D)

[Appealing]

One interesting point is also completely lack of hit and expertise, but that is another story.

"For now though Paladins picking up end game gear do not really need to worry about hitting the hit and expertise caps. They should instead focus on maximizing survivability as laid out in the reforging tips." ~EJ Forums.

At that point into content, being "Heroic", if you are honestly having threat issues then you should be reconsidering your position as a tank. Its all about the survival that you can maintain with the current changes to healing. At the very least you can try to get as close as possible to knocking off dodge (Expertise 26) from the said boss table.

-Marinated

[Shoopuf]

Burden only factors in if healer mana is an issue, which it frankly hasn't been on any encounter yet. There are certain EH minimums you want to meet for each fight after that EH becomes fairly redundant and mitigation becomes king. Also, 80-90k hits aren't outside the realm of possibility in heroic modes, though that's generally without debuffs up.

[Beta]

One interesting point is also completely lack of hit and expertise, but that is another story.

"For now though Paladins picking up end game gear do not really need to worry about hitting the hit and expertise caps. They should instead focus on maximizing survivability as laid out in the reforging tips." ~EJ Forums.

At that point into content, being "Heroic", if you are honestly having threat issues then you should be reconsidering your position as a tank. Its all about the survival that you can maintain with the current changes to healing. At the very least you can try to get as close as possible to knocking off dodge (Expertise 26) from the said boss table.

-Marinated

I do know that, but I'm casual so it is funny to see that hit / exp are important when aoe tanking heroic dungeons, but not needed while raiding. I haven't done any raiding at the moment, but watching normal raid videos from youtube makes me yawn (paragon's videos are exceptional nice tho). So to having that random factor balancing between aggro would make tanking / dps a bit more interesting and wouldn't necessary need hard tune encounter that much on the limit what each class can do. So to me its design aspect, which I personally see has gone worse since taunt change after vanilla. Vael anyone?? or some other legendary fight with aggro swap, oh yes please.

[Alphy]

hit is not and was never needed for heroic dungeons. whilst having a soft cap of exp and a cap of hit serves a function in heroics and makes them smoother for a freshly geared and dinged tank, even a soft cap of exp and 4% hit rating will make things easier from a dps and rotation standpoint, you will find your incoming damage spiky and you'll be a bit of a pain for healers with regard to your healing curve and there mana conservation. i started out this way, and whilst not being on laziel's lvl im a competent tank in both heroic instances and normal raids, and with some real focus i can handle heroics in a good group ( raids i mean)... that being said, i found my damage in blue gear when gearing for exp and hit was high, and along with that came not necessarily heavy, but certainly spiky tank damage, and healers could not predict the damage, and as such i was at times a pain to heal and required good cd usage. when i switched to gearing for av and mitigation, and dropped the hit /exp my healing curve shot up, my damage was much much lower and healers loved healing me. i still maintain anywhere for 15-25 k aoe dps and about 6-11k single target without using avenging wrath, and rarely need a cd for damage. i can generally ride out any major ability in any heroic instance encounter.

all this being said, there is something that gripes me about the hit rating issue. blizz are quite fond of this statement which ive seen them make a lot on forums and blue posts... " we will give the players the tools they need to get the job done". i think that this hit gearing issue is a big over sight on blizz's part. i can understand the exp side of things, and i also understand the av side of thing, blizz simply felt that hitting the critability cap i in avoidance was far to easy in wrath, and perhaps there's some truth in this line of thinking, however, i feel they should have given tanks a passive talent , or perhaps added a hit talent mechanic to a talent already pre-exsisting in the prot tree, something they knew all tanks would have to take.

as i mentioned before im far below laziels lvl of play and skill. however im competent, but in most pugs, and most guilds ive joined who had a high lvl of play from my standards, they had no real clue about this current tank/hit issue, and didn't really plan around it. maintaining aggro is only really an issue with really well geared and dps horny ppl. but snap aggro is sometimes a real pain. ive seen shield of the righteous miss 3-4-5 times in a row. there is nothing worse then popping wrath and dp on a pull judging as you charge in right after avengers shield, seeing sacred duty proc and then having to spam righteous only to see it miss several times in a row and almost miss the proc on sacred duty.

this does not feel like i have " the tools to get the job done" but more like wearing lead shoes in a world made of mud.

ofc, i understand in a well oiled group such as paragons core, md's and tots as an when needed are a given, as we all know and have seen by now, this is not the case always in a random pug. and a tank talent for hit would in my opinion smooth a lot of pulls in pugs up, and also smooth out the functionality of tank rotations, allowing more focus on raid awareness, and helping out in the raid. i still can manage to do this to a certain extent, but sometimes i have to put more focus on the boss coz of the damn spells missing, and get exasperated at pressing buttons pointlessly over and over again, while a mage is getting procs leading to massive crits catching up on aggro.

id be really interested to hear laziels's thoughts on this , especially if thinking about it from the average pug perspective and not just the top tier guilds perspectives, coz obviously, he would not have so many issues as i see in pugs.