4.2 Tank Stages and Cataclysm Gear Guide

People are reporting on Wowhead that the hit on Pauldrons of Roaring Flame is an in game tooltip error because they can't reforge the hit to mastery in game.

No worries. I think it's inevitable that as expansions progress people become less and less patient with new tanks. Unless they take stamina off of melee DPS gear and don't let healers scale in power, then eventually DPS players (or hunter pets) will be able to tank sufficiently in heroics. At that point impatience will win out and people won't be tolerant of a newbie who needs CC or pauses to build threat.

If stage two is reachable in only two weeks per yappo's model, I'll adjust mine as well. I've always deferred to your planning on that.

Sohryu wrote:

Kamenev wrote:I believe that [Dreadfire Drape] with 2x [Fractured Amberjewel] is also a candidate for BiS cloak.

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Dreadfire Drape: 745 armor | 384 stamina | 193 mastery | 63  avoidance (hit reforged)
S10 PvP Cloak:   718 armor | 360 stamina | 160 mastery | 68  avoidance (parry from strength)
Al'akir Cloak:   673 armor | 321 stamina | 143 mastery | 203 avoidance (rating + parry from strength)


Thanks for the guide!

that sounds interesting!
Other opinions on that Back?

Yes indeed. I have the normal version of that cloak just behind (effectively tied with) the heroic Permafrost capes. The heroic version is best in slot by a pretty wide margin.

Blizzard, alas, doesn't fully grasp the effects of itemization on desirability. They want us to avoid agility gear, but then they give us gear like this that drips with mastery, without making an equivalent strength version.

Can someone explain the discrepancies between this list and the askmrrobot.com list in terms of gear upgrades?

I don't use Ask Mr. Robot. Can you give some specific examples?

How do you have Mr. Robot configured? Are you trying to build a mastery-heavy set or something that favors reducing damage taken? How do you weigh stamina versus mastery?

As default Ask Mr Robot uses -

Dodge 1.23
Parry 1.23
Mastery 1
Stamina 0.6
Strength 0.349
Armor 0.155
Expertise 0.1
Physical Hit 0.05

It does take into account DR on avoidance, which is why dodge/parry is rated higher than Mastery. For gems it does suggest Mastery over Dodge for yellow due to the DRs.

Ask Mr Robot also obviously gives weight to threat stats.

My impressions on the lists are -

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        Digren    Ask Mr Robot
Threat            +
MDR         ++    +++++
CTC      +++++    +++
Sta        +++    ++

This means any items with a crap tonne of avoidance (str converted to avoidance) and a threat stat can feature quite high on Ask Mr Robot but won't here.

Yes, lythac, that sounds about right.

theck said Mr Robot takes a MDR focussed approach.

Digren takes a CTC focussed one.

I suspect it only really matters when comparing items with 2x avoidance with items with mastery+threat.

Example -

Ironstar Amulet is rated higher than Amulet of Protection on Ask Mr Robot.

It would be good to report your stat weightings in your gear guide, Digren. I do have a hard time understanding Mr Robot on those two amulets. I guess the higher stamina on the 359 one is playing a role.

I don't bother fiddling with the weightings because the one time I did, it messed everything up.

For a direct example... I have the heroic Maloriak helm. Which is rated VERY highly in your list. Askmrrobot.com lists ALL the T12 helms, offset or not, as better than the heroic helm I already have.

Again, that's going to be caused by Mr. Robot's MDR-based stat weights. I fooled around with it some last week, and found that a "quick-and-dirty" solution was to drop the dodge/parry weights from 1.23 to 0.4 or so. Dodge/parry are roughly equal to mastery for MDR purposes (after DR), but they're only about 1/3 as good for CTC, so dividing their stat weights by 3 gives you something closer to a CTC-based strategy. It's probably still not perfect, but it was enough to get Mr. Robot to start suggesting avoidance->mastery reforges on some avoidance/threat items (e.g. my ring).

Further fiddling options to fine tune results may include:
set hit/exp lower (0.01 or 0)
reduce STR weighting (divide by 2 or 3)
Alternatively, just bump mastery to 3 and leave everything else alone? May have to bump stamina's weighting then as well.

Why is still agility on the list (on page 1)?

Digren wrote:If stage two is reachable in only two weeks per yappo's model, I'll adjust mine as well. I've always deferred to your planning on that.

I've made a reality check on my four failsafe tanks. The rank 1 tank is indeed able to tank normals, and should in reality be BiS-zero-drops geared after two days of frantic questing. (Get reputation).

Getting BiS-zero-drops as a rank 2 tank should take far less than two weeks, but you're likely to throw up if someone even mentions the word WoW. Observe that my BiS-zero-drops tank doesn't have a single JP item. Running the first 12 (assuming that we subtract those first two frantic days as rank 1 from the two weeks) daily randoms shouldn pop you 940 JP, which is enough to get a superior relic. My rank 2 tank is indeed ready to tank the first tier of five man heroics, but four other people in the party will give him/her a black stare.

Given that JP starts raining over you as soon as you start running heroics you should get most of the gear defining a rank 3 tank in two weeks. Observe that there's no way in hell you'll get both TB trinks in that time, so you won't be BiS in 28 days from dinging 85. You will, however, be so brutally overgeared for tier two five man heroics and tier 1 raiding that it isn't even funny. A brave raidleader would bring you to tank the easiest content in Firelands in the failsafe gear available at this rank.

Now, add that your ranked tanks are actually supposed to get more than zero drops during their first month as level 85, and two plus two weeks seems more than just doable.

I used an MDR weighting in 4.0. I didn't get the impression that anyone liked it, or that anyone was using it. All the advice requests and responses were all about combat table coverage, so I gave up and switched.

My weightings aren't that complicated:
Mastery Rating 1.00 (always the baseline)
Dodge or Parry Rating 0.36 (CTC value)
Stamina 0.66 (just a hare less than 2/3rds of mastery rating)
Armor 0.143 (1/7th mastery rating)
All Threat 0.00

That's it. Socket gems, reforge, and add up the totals for each piece, sort by slot, and you get my list.

Like I've said, if I could find a way to easily provide both MDR and CTC values for all gear, I would. But I won't maintain all of those in bbcode by hand. I'd need a way to export from spreadsheet.

lythac wrote:Example -

Ironstar Amulet is rated higher than Amulet of Protection on Ask Mr Robot.

Yeah, just to reiterate if you look here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=29732&start=150#p646591

You can see that, on Feb 20, I had the Ironstar Amulet as best in slot. That was when I used an MDR approach. It fell when I switched to CTC because it's combat table coverage is crap.

Regarding threat, expertise is clearly best. But what would you (the generic you, not lythac specifically) give up to gain expertise? Would you give up dodge or parry rating to gain expertise? How much? What about mastery rating (assuming you're below the cap)? I would be very surprised if most people would give up anything in their best survivability set. If I'm wrong then I should add some weight to some threat stats. I do have them all in my spreadsheet; it's not that hard to give them value.

djlar wrote:Why is still agility on the list (on page 1)?

Doh. Gear strategy fixed. thanks.

Nikachelle wrote:I don't bother fiddling with the weightings because the one time I did, it messed everything up.

For a direct example... I have the heroic Maloriak helm. Which is rated VERY highly in your list. Askmrrobot.com lists ALL the T12 helms, offset or not, as better than the heroic helm I already have.

When I adjusted which stat to reforge on the gear I, too, see T12 as slightly better. The Malriak helm is still very highly rated though:

For a specific example on this helm:
Dragon Bone Warhelm (heroic)
2891 armor
293 strength
578 stamina
135 expertise rating
325 mastery rating
1 meta socket
1 red socket
45 stamina socket bonus

Gems and socket bonus
90 stamina
20 parry rating
20 mastery rating
(I don't value the block value or armor from the meta gem for simplicity; just including the stamina is enough to put all helms with a meta slot ahead of all helms without one)

Reforging
-54 expertise rating
+54 dodge rating (or parry rating; totally doesn't matter)

Totals:
Stamina: 668
Mastery Rating Equivalent (Mastery + Armor/7): 758
Avoidance Rating Equivalent (Dodge + Parry): 157
Weighted Total 1255 points

Immolation Faceguard (heroic)
3057 armor
289 strength
689 stamina
440 parry rating
193 expertise rating
1 meta socket
1 blue socket
45 stamina socket bonus

Gems and socket bonus
120 stamina
20 mastery rating

Reforging
-176 parry rating
+176 mastery rating

Totals:
Stamina: 809
Mastery Rating Equivalent (Mastery + Armor/7): 633
Avoidance Rating Equivalent (Dodge + Parry): 346
Weighted Total 1291 points

Digren wrote:Like I've said, if I could find a way to easily provide both MDR and CTC values for all gear, I would. But I won't maintain all of those in bbcode by hand. I'd need a way to export from spreadsheet.

What spreadsheet do you use?

I use excel and it makes the bbcode for me now, how many columns of data do you have?

Gah...

Digren, seems we'll have to reevaluate the honor PvP gear with mastery. If I understand blue-posts correctly you're shopping 371 honor gear, not 365, from the start of Season 10 (that's today or tomorrow depending on US/EU realm). While six ilevels isn't a huge change it's still a change.

I'll check the cloak and helmet tomorrow. Wouldn't be surprised if we have a new BiS helmet for the non-raiding tank.

is tier 10 cape way superior than mantle of patience? or the last could also be considered close to bis pre heroic raid?

Feitan wrote:is tier 10 cape way superior than mantle of patience? or the last could also be considered close to bis pre heroic raid?

You mean the season 10 cape? Yes it's on the list as better than the mantle.

I've added the PvP helmets to the failsafe.

My napkin math places the 371 Season 10 Honor helmet right in the middle of what you can get in Cata tier 1 raids normal mode. The 384 looks like a somewhat poor drop from Firelands normal mode.

Given that 1.5 JP = 1 Honor and 1 VP = 1 CP it'a actually pretty easy to assign an availability rating for them. Given your ranks both helmets are BiS for their rank by a very, very, very wide margin. (rank 2 and 3 respectively)

Conincidentally the PvP cloak you have listed would be rank 3 in your list due to the 1:1 VP/CP conversion ratio.

Digren wrote:

Sohryu wrote:

Kamenev wrote:I believe that [Dreadfire Drape] with 2x [Fractured Amberjewel] is also a candidate for BiS cloak.

Code: Select all

Dreadfire Drape: 745 armor | 384 stamina | 193 mastery | 63  avoidance (hit reforged)
S10 PvP Cloak:   718 armor | 360 stamina | 160 mastery | 68  avoidance (parry from strength)
Al'akir Cloak:   673 armor | 321 stamina | 143 mastery | 203 avoidance (rating + parry from strength)


Thanks for the guide!

that sounds interesting!
Other opinions on that Back?

Yes indeed. I have the normal version of that cloak just behind (effectively tied with) the heroic Permafrost capes. The heroic version is best in slot by a pretty wide margin.

Blizzard, alas, doesn't fully grasp the effects of itemization on desirability. They want us to avoid agility gear, but then they give us gear like this that drips with mastery, without making an equivalent strength version.

Would you rank heroic Wings of Flame just below that? Not quite as much mastery, but the intellect is more useful than agility.

Argh! Why does Blizzard let us use intellect gear as prot? I don't want to put it on the list!

You are probably correct, it would probably go that high. That said, per Theck's analysis, agility is actually much more useful than intellect for threat. Does WoG scale with intellect at all? If not, it wouldn't be more valuable than agility.

Digren wrote:Argh! Why does Blizzard let us use intellect gear as prot? I don't want to put it on the list!

You are probably correct, it would probably go that high. That said, per Theck's analysis, agility is actually much more useful than intellect for threat. Does WoG scale with intellect at all? If not, it wouldn't be more valuable than agility.

Don't we get 2 SP per point of intellect? Were that the case, threat-wise that would be marginally useful in terms of the HotR nova , HW and Cons. I'm not sure if Theck tests HotR in his 939 rotation for that table, but if those numbers were from only using CS, then intellect would probably go up slightly. Personally, I'm not even thinking about threat at all, and I don't think that's even a topic for discussion regarding these agility and intellect cloaks. I think the additional mana would be worthwhile, kind of like why some people take Hallowed Ground. It would give a slight quality of life increase by giving more maximum mana and more mana returns from judgement and divine plea.

*edit*

Looking at wowpedia I see that it's 1SP per point of intellect, and 15 mana. So that would be (with kings/mark) 268.8 SP and 3763.2 mana, which would be ~15% mana increase.