Hold the Line; An Endgame Tanking Reference

By: Patrick O'Callahan / Ciderhelm

2.4 To every season: Defense vs Stamina in relation to Healing

For the following, understand that when I use the term Defense I am also referring to static modifiers such as dodge and parry.

As a leveling warrior, you may have wondered why you were forced to take 10% more damage for 3% crit; skills aside, this stance does not offer a fair give and take. Again, with Deathwish and Recklessness, you are forced to make a tradeoff that does not seem fair -- particularly on a 30 minute cooldown.

Taking the path of a stamina build warrior, you make a similar tradeoff -- one I believe Lead Tanks and Main Tanks should make. As a stamina warrior, you will give up between 5 and 10% Avoidance - that is, the chance at complete mitigation of an incoming phsyical attack. However, taken to the fullest extent, your final gear will realize itself as between 515 and 530 base Stamina (not including Naxxramas) - which is up to 10% more Stamina from items than Defense or DPS warriors are capable of achieving.

Understand that the decisions to choose stamina items are based on two things: first, a healing strategy which is more suited to this build, and second, the use of Stamina buffs to further your lifebar to a maximum amount in the 10,000+ range without the use of Last Stand or Lifegiving Gem. Not utilizing these buffs for new encounters negates the entire purpose of going to a Stamina build, because anyone wearing a full Defense suit can just pop those buffs on and be higher than you in terms of their healthbar anyway; good game.

At this point, you've probably realized this guide is about giving you tanking advice to further raiding progression; it has nothing to do with helping on fights you can already do, putting you on DPS meters, making you an uber tank. So, to illustrate how Stamina is particular to your Lead Tanks in a healing situation, I will share our own guild struggles in raiding and why we work around these theories.

From Lucifron to Razorgore, we had 3-4 regular raiding priests and 2 raiding druids. Paladins were in slightly greater supply -- but our healing force was never large. Our first Ragnaros kill sported 3 priests, 3 druids, and 4 paladins. Needless to say, tanking was a struggle.

Healing: The 2.5 Second Struggle
The root of the healing issues we had all revolved around mana effectiveness.

Imagine for a moment that you are a healer. Your regular heals are a two and a half second cast; unfortunately, on new encounters, the boss may very well kill your undergeared Main Tank in that period of time. So you set up a healing rotation: you will begin your heal, then another healer will begin a heal, then another -- maybe not so explicitly, but to the the effect that heals are landing every second or less on the Lead Tank.

As a healer, you don't have a crystal ball. You know that not healing your tank could result in a raid wipe. Perhaps halfway through that heal, you notice the tank's healthbar doesn't seem to be dropping -- he has been mitigating damage by good fortune of Defense statistics. However, you still cannot cancel that heal, because the next split second could very well see his lifebar fall drastically!

The 2.5 second heal is the root of the Stamina gearing theory. In almost every new boss encounter, before healers really get a chance to work out what's going on and the ebb and flow of a battle, they are going to be slamming you with heals... Whether you avoid the damage or not has literally no bearing on whether you receive heals or not -- you are still sapping the healers mana bars.

Defense only saves you in single-mob encounters when your life is critically low and you have to rely on the chance of dodges and parries to survive the encounter. The reality is, whether you avoid an attack has no bearing on your healthbar. Had you simply taken the damage and taken a percentage of your lifebar in damage before receiving a 3k heal is no different than parrying the same attack then taking a 3k overheal.

Defense is relying on good fortune in new encounters, where stamina is a steady, reliable base.

Defense: When it really is better
(Preface: You naturally get a very high Defense rate through normal itemization; discussion of critical strike reduction is not included in this guide as a result.)
Most Lead Tanks and Main Tanks are not so gifted as to be able to carry stamina and defense sets; however, with the introduction of Ahn'Qiraj, the DPS warriors in your guild who normally offtank will have access to high Defense (including Dodge mitigation from high agility on Conqueror's and non-set Plate). Rings give good defense bonuses which can be brought in by DPS warriors for certain fights.

As I explain my view on the following, understand you can also gear one or two of your Main Tanks effectively with this type of gear; there is plenty of flexibility and room for choice; I would strongly discourage having either your Lead Tank or first Main Tank go for a non-stamina build, per previous discussion.

The encounters where defense and high agility builds work are very common. This applies to almost every trash mob in the game; an exemplary Defense situation is Zul'Gurub or Ahn'Qiraj 20 man, where there are multiple melee-mobs being handled by multiple tanks. In these situations, Defense tanks will be considerably superior to stamina tanks! Even your DPS warriors will be able to hold weight to your Lead Tank in terms of gear choices.

The reason is specific to healing. Multi-mob encounters very rarely do dramatic damage to warriors; instead, the large total incoming DPS on your raid is not being funneled through a single tank but multiple actors who can be independently healed.

Defense builds have another effective attribute in multi-tank scenarios. They offer you a chance-not-to-die, meaning you may very well parry that one last attack. This kind of chance play is much more readily acceptable when other warriors can pick up the slack in case you do go down.

It is next to impossible to die from not receiving heals in the course of 5-10 seconds in these situations, even on trash mobs in Blackwing Lair and Ahn'Qiraj. Naturally, your priests will be healing many more tanks, but they will be able to make decisions during this process. Every time you avoid damage from a parry or dodge, your health bar simply won't go down. The healer in question doesn't even need to begin a heal on you in this case. Also, if your health slips below a certain percentage, healers can choose to use slower, more mana efficient heals.

Also, mitigation will help a warrior who does not have the skill, talents, or enchants to solidly hold aggro. This is due to a dynamic in the healing process: overhealing does not cause aggro. If you do receive a large heal or multiple heals at the same time and it crosses above the 100% line of your healthbar, the amount of overhealing will have no affect on the healer's aggro.

In conclusion:
One thing I never suggest about being a stamina build warrior is that you will take less damage than a Defense warrior; I readily accept the reality I am not the most efficient object in terms of avoidance -- but I believe, for raid progression, simply having more health is more helpful when coming to new encounters. Remember to buff up to maximum hitpoints if you are going to take this path!

2.5 Resistance: Magic Defense

I've illustrated stamina to be sort of the magical armor rating of your character. Like your normal armor rating, it only acts as a reduction of damage taken; it cannot outright mitigate it the way defense statistics can.

Consider resistance to be your defense modifier in magical terms. This will make or break some encounters; if you do not have 165 Fire Resistance, you will often die in Molten Core on Baron Geddon; the Lava Packs will be a nightmare.

The primary issues regarding resistance is how it is calculated and how much you need for mixed damage (physical and magical) encounters. As far as calculation goes, there are two schools of thought; first, that there are tiers of resistance rates at intervals along the tree, the first being at 75 resistance, the second at 150, and so on. The other school of thought is that there is a linear progression of resistance, and being just short of the next 'tier' means you'll resist only slightly less than you would at that next tier.

What should you choose? The more stringent of the two. Whether or not it's based on tiers or on a mathematically scaling amount is not clear, and neither posters or Blizzard's own description of resistance seems to confirm either way. Yet it is not your right as a Main Tank to gamble with your raid; choose the stricter path to be sure. If you 255 Nature Resist but the next supposed tier is at 265, it's time you took a trip to Maraudon.

How do you calculate the resistance you need for a mob? The maximum resistance you can have is simply multiplying the mobs level by 5. For a 63 elite (most bosses are considered to be 63 elite), to maximize your resistance you will need 315 of that particular resistance.

Yet, after Molten Core the endgame resistance fights disappear (with the notable exceptions of Firemaw, Flamegor and Huhuran). Instead, they are replaced by mixed encounters where you will have to strike a balance between certain resistances. In Blackwing Lair and Ahn'Qiraj, for the most part, Blizzard has placed a bit more emphasis on the use of your class sets and they will do fine for your armor slots.

I will outline this in more detail in the encounters guide, but the general rule of thumb for me has been that for FR fights I wear Dark Iron Helm and Legs and for Green Dragon fights I wear only epic level NR in armor slots.

2.6 Heavy Armor

When I first began writing this guide I held a certain order of priority for each type of mitigation. Stamina, as you might guess, I considered most important; then I placed defense in close pursuit. Armor in many ways was an afterthought, a trait I believed came naturally enough on it's own.

My views have changed. Armor does not supercede stamina, but it does take a near-equal footing with it in terms of importance.

There is no secret to armor; it simply reduces the physical damage you take from attacks by a set percentage. Yet for the simplicity it offers, it can dramatically alter the course of fights such as Patchwerk.

One thing I have heard often but did not pay serious attention to until recently is that armor is not subject to diminishing returns. Technically, that line is false, but correct phrasing would be:
"As armor increases, the effect of increasing the amount of time required to go from full HP to dead is not subject to diminishing returns. Each increase in quantity of armor will increase a tank's lifespan equally (i.e. if going from 4000 to 6000 AC increases your lifespan by 1 minute, then going from 12000 to 14000 AC will also increase your lifespan by 1 minute)." - Satrina, http://evilempireguild.org/guides/diminishmath.php

I mentioned Patchwerk. Here is why. When fighting Patchwerk, we paid particular attention to the damage intake with various debuffs such as Demoralizing Shout and Thunderclap. We also were using Greater Stoneshield potions in bulk quantities before we got him down.

Patchwerk does a physical damage attack that does between 22,100 and 29,900 damage instantly to it's targets. Seems like a lot, huh? It is. Though we didn't use this, the Hateful Strike Calculator will help illustrate where I'm going with the emphasis on heavy armor.

First, using a base armor of 9500 with Defensive Stance (and assuming we are not using Greater Stoneshields), the damage range comes out as between 7,503 and 10,151. This is much lower than the nearly 30,000 max damage a Hateful Strike is capable of, though the damage is still very dangerous.

Now, let's add Greater Stoneshields to this. The damage range changes to between 6,633 and 8,975. This is over 1,000 less maximum damage using a consumable -- meaning more healing efficiency overall through the course of the fight (Assuming three Hateful Strike tank rotation, Patchwerk uses Hateful Strike roughly every ~3.6 seconds on a target).

When you look at your character pane and see an increase of just 2 or 3 percentage points of mitigation with armor, it may not seem very impressive. But when your armor is reaching near the 70% total mitigation range, 2 or 3 percentage points will change your actual incoming damage up to 10% on something like a Hateful Strike.

Overall I am not a math expert in any form, nor am I particularly skilled at explaining math concepts. If you don't have a clue what I just said, that's forgivable, I didn't really have a clue what other people were saying until I could see the tangible effects of armor in a raid -- I learn more through tactile and visual interaction than I do from reading.

This said, my previous stance on Conqueror's armor and other high-armor items is retracted. I do believe Conqueror's is legitimate and good tanking gear. I also recommend an emphasis on heavy armor as you progress your character.

>> Continue on the next Page
<< Return to the previous Page
Return to the Index