4.2 Tank Stages and Cataclysm Gear Guide

[Digren]

Likely. I will redo the weapon section when I get to it to no longer have those distinctions. Working on boots now.

[Halnoth]

I noticed you don't have the other baradin hold trinket on the list. http://www.wowhead.com/item=62468

I use both of the baradin warden mastery trinkets. The one you listed with the magical resistance and the one above with an agi cd. The agi cd provides ~4.5% dodge for me which isn't too shabby. The downfall is you can't pop both trinkets at once but really that is minor compared to the sheer amount of mastery you gain by equiping both.

A side benefit is that you can acquire both from TB dailies so you don't actually have to spend valor points or raid to get them.

[Velo]

Neck

1. [Ironstar Amulet] : Blackwing Descent (Heroic) Atramedes
2. [Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace] : BoE Dungeon Drop
3. [Necklace of Strife] : The Bastion of Twilight () Valiona
4. [Rage of Ages] : Blackwing Descent (Heroic) Nefarian

Digren says, "Unlike the normal version, the heroic Ironstar Amulet is best in class. That said, the Don supplied a close second choice for the rich and unlucky."

Fingers

1. [Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab] : Throne of the Four Winds(Heroic) Nezir
1. [Permafrost Signet of the Bedrock] : Throne of the Four Winds(Heroic) Nezir
2. [Dargonax's Signet] : The Bastion of Twilight (Heroic) Sinestra
3. [Permafrost Signet of the Bouldercrag] : Throne of the Four Winds(Heroic) Nezir
4. [Bile-O-Tron Nut] : Blackwing Descent (Heroic) Chimaeron

Digren says, "With so many options, I've limited this list to the top five. All other iLvl 272 choices (Ring of Rivalry, Cloudburst Ring of the Faultline) fall below the best iLvl 359 options are so aren't worth including here."

First off I want to thank you for an extremely helpful guide and I appreciate that you included agility items too! Me being a survivability/CTC whore I want to make sure I make the correct gear choices. That being said I have a couple questions about your neck and ring rankings.

I'm curious why you don't have [Necklace of Strife] on the list. For your Stage 4 section you have the normal Strife over the normal Ironstar. Unless I calculated it wrong, wouldn't it be better and rank higher than [Ironstar Amulet]?

The same question applies to the rings. IIRC we can't wear 2 Permafrost rings and like you said there's several choices for the 2nd ring. What's your input on where the [Mistral Circle] of the Windstorm/Zephyr would stand? Since just like the neck in Stage 4 you have those rings above the Bile-O-Tron Nut. To me, [Bile-O-Tron Nut] isn't very impressive... its barely an upgrade over the Battle Anthem and normal Permafrosts and I'm considering just passing it.

[Digren]

Neck

1. [Ironstar Amulet] : Blackwing Descent (Heroic) Atramedes
2. [Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace] : BoE Dungeon Drop
3. [Necklace of Strife] : The Bastion of Twilight () Valiona
4. [Rage of Ages] : Blackwing Descent (Heroic) Nefarian

Digren says, "Unlike the normal version, the heroic Ironstar Amulet is best in class. That said, the Don supplied a close second choice for the rich and unlucky."

Fingers

1. [Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab] : Throne of the Four Winds(Heroic) Nezir
1. [Permafrost Signet of the Bedrock] : Throne of the Four Winds(Heroic) Nezir
2. [Dargonax's Signet] : The Bastion of Twilight (Heroic) Sinestra
3. [Permafrost Signet of the Bouldercrag] : Throne of the Four Winds(Heroic) Nezir
4. [Bile-O-Tron Nut] : Blackwing Descent (Heroic) Chimaeron

Digren says, "With so many options, I've limited this list to the top five. All other iLvl 272 choices (Ring of Rivalry, Cloudburst Ring of the Faultline) fall below the best iLvl 359 options are so aren't worth including here."

First off I want to thank you for an extremely helpful guide and I appreciate that you included agility items too! Me being a survivability/CTC whore I want to make sure I make the correct gear choices. That being said I have a couple questions about your neck and ring rankings.

I'm curious why you don't have [Necklace of Strife] on the list. For your Stage 4 section you have the normal Strife over the normal Ironstar. Unless I calculated it wrong, wouldn't it be better and rank higher than [Ironstar Amulet]?

The same question applies to the rings. IIRC we can't wear 2 Permafrost rings and like you said there's several choices for the 2nd ring. What's your input on where the [Mistral Circle] of the Windstorm/Zephyr would stand? Since just like the neck in Stage 4 you have those rings above the Bile-O-Tron Nut. To me, [Bile-O-Tron Nut] isn't very impressive... its barely an upgrade over the Battle Anthem and normal Permafrosts and I'm considering just passing it.

I passed on including the heroic Necklace of Strife because there's no indication on Wowhead that it drops. I previously had some data mined items on the list that don't exist in game, and I wanted to stay away from that. Does it exist, then?

It looks like I just missed the heroic Mistral Circles. I have the regular ones on my spreadsheet and on the stage four list, and they ranked pretty high. Not sure why I missed them other than that I was doing that bit at work at lunch and someone might have interrupted me.

Edit: Yeah the heroic Mistrals with mastery are pretty much tied with Dargonax's Signet for second place, so they'd make a good choice if your loot system would let you take them.

[theckhd]

Just a sanity check here. From wowhead, I collected all of the >355 rings with Mastery on them. I added Bile-O-Tron and the "ideal" Conclave drops (Permafrost mast/dodge and Mistral mast/whatever). Here are the stats relative to Ring of the Battle Anthem (valor point tanking ring), <edit> corrected:

Code: Select all

     Dargonax(H)  RoRivalry(H) Mistral(H) Permafrost(H) Bile-O-Tron(H) Elder Council Permafrost(N) 
     +Fractured

STA    + 59         + 36         + 35         + 35          + 36            ---         -  1       
STR    + 49         + 25         -190         + 24          - 37           -190          ---
AGI     ---          ---         +214          ---           ---           +190          ---
Mast   + 66         + 16         + 16         + 16          - 77(ref)       ---         -  1
Dodge  -127         -127         - 70(ref)    + 16          + 88           - 77(ref)    -  1
Parry  + 45(ref)    + 57(ref)     ---          ---           ---            ---          ---
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Net
Dodge  -127         -127         + 60         + 16          + 88           + 39         -  1
Parry  + 58         + 63         - 52         +  6          - 10           - 52         -  1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Net
D+P    - 69         - 64         +  8         + 22          + 78           - 13         -  2
Mast   + 66         + 16         + 16         + 16          - 77            ---          ---
STA    + 59         + 36         + 35         + 35          + 36            ---         -  1

Provided I haven't made any math errors here, these are the conclusions I draw:
Signet of the Elder Council - inferior to any of the other options, including normal permafrost. Once you get RoBA and a Permafrost with mastery, you can safely retire SoEC.
Bile-O-Tron(H) is at best a sidegrade to the Valor ring. I would probably still use RoBA instead, simply because once you're wearing 359+ gear the extra stam isn't necessary and Block Cap is very attractive.
Permafrost(H) is obviously a direct upgrade.
Mistral(H) is surprisingly good after reforging.
Ring of Rivalry(H) is a downgrade.
Dargonax(H) is an upgrade, but not as large as it would seem. The loss of Dodge/Parry does a lot to offset the mastery gain. It's the same argument as RoBA>BoT(H); I'd rather have the 66 mastery than the 70 DP, but this time the STA gain is more substantial. However, it seems to me that both Mistral(H) and Permafrost(H) are better choices. I'd call Mistral(H) hands-down better than Dargonax, and Permafrost(H) on par with Dargonax. Given that no other role wants Permafrost(H), while Dargonax is likely to be contested by several DPS classes, it seems silly to go after Dargonax until it's at the point of off-spec loot.

If I had to rank them in order, it would be something like this:

1. Permafrost(H)
1. Dargonax(H)
2. Mistral(H)
3. Ring of the Battle Anthem (Valor)
3. Permafrost(N)
3. Bile-O-Tron(H)
4. Signet of the Elder Council (Rep)
5. Ring of Rivalry(H)

The reason I bring this up is that you've left off the normal-mode items from your heroic list, despite the fact that two of them (RoBA+Permafrost) are strong enough to warrant passing on Bile-O-Tron(H).

[Digren]

Just a sanity check here.
If I had to rank them in order, it would be something like this:

1. Mistral(H)
2. Permafrost(H)
2. Dargonax(H)
3. Ring of the Battle Anthem (Valor)
3. Permafrost(N)
3. Bile-O-Tron(H)
4. Signet of the Elder Council (Rep)
5. Ring of Rivalry(H)

The reason I bring this up is that you've left off the normal-mode items from your heroic list, despite the fact that two of them (RoBA+Permafrost) are strong enough to warrant passing on Bile-O-Tron(H).

I'm a bit confused about your conclusions. Maybe one of us has a typo somewhere in a spreadsheet or some calculations. Let me compare just two items from your list at a time.

You rank heroic Mistral over heroic Permafrost. Rather than compare these relative to some third ring, let me list the actual stats for both items.

Code: Select all

                                            Str    Agi    Sta    Dodge   Mas   Haste   
Mistral Circle of the Zephyr (Heroic)              214    321            143   143
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Heroic)  214           321    143     143       

The Mistral Circle of the Windstorm (Heroic) is the same as the Zephyr (Crit for Haste) and the Permafrost Signet of the Bedrock is the same as the Rockslab (Parry for Dodge). I'm just using the ones above arbitrarily.

Stamina and mastery are the same, leaving all of the differences between these pieces related to avoidance and threat:

Code: Select all

                                            Str    Agi    Dodge   Haste   
Mistral Circle of the Zephyr (Heroic)              214            143
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Heroic)  214           143         

Reforging allows 57 of that haste to become something useful. Note that I place no value on haste (or indeed, any threat stats) for my survivability rankings, so the portion of haste that cannot be reforged can be discarded. Because we cannot reforge for mastery, I'll reforge for dodge rating.

Code: Select all

                                            Str    Agi    Dodge   
Mistral Circle of the Zephyr (Heroic)              214    57     
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Heroic)  214           143 

And, subtracting common quantities:

Code: Select all

                                            Str    Agi    Dodge   
Mistral Circle of the Zephyr (Heroic)              214         
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Heroic)  214           86   

From the derivation thread, agility is 60.9% as good as dodge rating for avoidance. Agility's contribution to threat via crit is ignored, so the Mistral's agility is the same as 130.3 dodge rating.

Code: Select all

                                            Str    Dodge   
Mistral Circle of the Zephyr (Heroic)              130.3         
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Heroic)  214    86   

And subtracting out the common numbers again:

Code: Select all

                                            Str    Dodge   
Mistral Circle of the Zephyr (Heroic)              44.3         
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Heroic)  214         

To manage the strength, again from the derivation thread,

Warriors, Paladins, and Death Knights now all get 25% Strength as Parry Rating as a base skill, with all decimals floored.

The amount lost to flooring (after adding up all your strength) are difficult to predict, so I use exactly 25% as the best way to compare gear. (If this flooring is done per piece, then I should adjust my formula, but that's not what I expect.) The contribution of strength to attack power is again ignored. Thus, the strength can be reduced to an amount of parry rating.

Code: Select all

                                            Parry    Dodge   
Mistral Circle of the Zephyr (Heroic)                44.3         
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Heroic)  53.5         

I treat parry and dodge ratings as identical. Ideally a tank tries to keep dodge and parry percentages in the appropriate 1% offset, so that both have equivalent, minimized loss from diminishing returns. In this situation, 50 added of either rating should have the exact same effect on overall avoidance. In other words, parry rating = dodge rating = avoidance rating for the purpose of gear comparison. Thus:

Code: Select all

                                            Avoidance
Mistral Circle of the Zephyr (Heroic)       44.3         
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Heroic)  53.5         

With all other survivability factors exactly identical, the Permafrost has more avoidance than the Mistral. Why then would you rank the Mistral higher?

[Digren]

The other comparison I wanted to check was Bile-O-Tron (Heroic) versus Permafrost (Normal). I ranked the Bile-O-Tron higher, but you ranked it lower.

The item stats are:

Code: Select all

                                            Str   Sta   Dodge   Mas   Exper
Bile-O-Tron Nut (Heroic)                    153   322   215           126
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Normal)  190   285   126     126       

Subtracting out the common values leaves:

Code: Select all

                                            Str   Sta   Dodge   Mas   Exper
Bile-O-Tron Nut (Heroic)                          37    89            126
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Normal)  37                  126       

Reforging allows my to convert 50 of the expertise rating on the Bile-O-Tron to mastery rating. The rest is discarded as worthless for survivability gear.

Code: Select all

                                            Str   Sta   Dodge   Mas
Bile-O-Tron Nut (Heroic)                          37    89      50
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Normal)  37                  126

And again subtracting common values:

Code: Select all

                                            Str   Sta   Dodge   Mas
Bile-O-Tron Nut (Heroic)                          37    89       
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Normal)  37                  76

The 37 additional strength from the Permafrost can be converted into 9.25 parry rating, which is equivalent to 9.25 dodge rating. Thus subtracting this common value:

Code: Select all

                                            Sta   Dodge   Mas
Bile-O-Tron Nut (Heroic)                    37    79.75       
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Normal)                76

At this point, it really comes down to how much you value combat table coverage, maximizing damage reduction, and health. From the math I work out here for a normal raider, it would take 68.75 mastery rating to equal the damage reduction potential of 79.75 dodge rating. For heroic raiders it would take less mastery rating, but without working through all the math again let's assume say 60 mastery rating? If you have real math instead of an assumption, I can substitute it in here. Thus, for MDR equivalence:

Code: Select all

                                            Sta   Mas
Bile-O-Tron Nut (Heroic)                    37    60 ish     
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Normal)        76

And subtracting common values:

Code: Select all

                                            Sta   Mas
Bile-O-Tron Nut (Heroic)                    37     
Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Normal)        16 ish

So now this comes down to how much you value stamina or mastery. I see that there's a long thread in the advanced forum on this topic; I admit I haven't read it yet. But unless it's conclusion is that mastery rating is more than twice as good as stamina, then the Bile-O-Tron Nut (Heroic) should be considered better than the Permafrost Signet of the Rockslab (Normal) for anyone who uses an avoidance/mastery equivalence based on MDR.

I will extend the stage 5 ring rankings further, adding some of the non-heroic items to the heroic list, but based on my stated goals and assumptions, I think the ranking is sound. Pending us learning something new, of course.

[theckhd]

You're right, I made a mistake; for Mistral, I never subtracted off the 47.5 parry you lose from Strength in the relative comparison. That ends up matching your results, with Mistral being slightly lower avoidance. I'll go back and update my post accordingly. Note also that we both neglected to include Blessing of Kings on the Strength component, which should bring it up to 0.2756 parry rating per point of STR.

That basically swaps Permafrost(H)/Dargonax and Mistral(H) in my calculations. I think my new ordering would be a two-way tie for #1, with Mistral at a close second.

And yes, I would still use normal Permafrost over heroic Bile-O-Tron. You're adhering too rigidly to this "mastery = x stamina" relationship concept; the value of x changes too significantly with your current stamina and mastery levels to make that very useful.

If you take a look at my armory, I've gone very heavily for mastery to test it out, and the lost stamina really hasn't made any difference. I'm not sure I'm quite at the point where I'd swap to the STR/MAS helm enchant (16.5 parry and 35 mastery vs. 90 stam and 35 dodge, that works out to a net difference of 90 stam + 18.5 dodge vs. 35 mastery), but I'm choosing mastery over stamina in almost every other slot that I can.

[yappo]

Correct me if I'm wrong:

I've understood that AP increases the amount we self-heal (mainly WoG). This ought to give a very low, but measurable survivability from strength and stamina. In the case of strength I asssume that N strength results in better overall selfheals compared with N agility (AP versus crit).

[theckhd]

Correct me if I'm wrong:

I've understood that AP increases the amount we self-heal (mainly WoG). This ought to give a very low, but measurable survivability from strength and stamina. In the case of strength I asssume that N strength results in better overall selfheals compared with N agility (AP versus crit).

I'm not sure this is a safe assumption, but I haven't had time to get back to that calculation. It's on the "to-do" list though, after I get the 4.0.6 code finished and posted.

[Digren]

And yes, I would still use normal Permafrost over heroic Bile-O-Tron. You're adhering too rigidly to this "mastery = x stamina" relationship concept; the value of x changes too significantly with your current stamina and mastery levels to make that very useful.

If you take a look at my armory, I've gone very heavily for mastery to test it out, and the lost stamina really hasn't made any difference. I'm not sure I'm quite at the point where I'd swap to the STR/MAS helm enchant (16.5 parry and 35 mastery vs. 90 stam and 35 dodge, that works out to a net difference of 90 stam + 18.5 dodge vs. 35 mastery), but I'm choosing mastery over stamina in almost every other slot that I can.

It sounds to me then that you have a target ratio for mastery/stamina. You just haven't quantified it. That doesn't seem very different than early in wrath with stamina and avoidance. Most people knew they wanted to make a trade-off there, but with no guidance individuals would take vastly inefficient routes (like selecting a 3.33 stamina stacking item while ignoring the lower-hanging fruit of a 2.00 option). Once we (well, you) quantified this selection process, people were able to objectively apply their decision after making what was still a somewhat subjective choice of ratio to follow.

Assuming 18.5 dodge is the MDR equivalent of about 14 mastery rating, then you've chosen to take 90 stamina over 14 mastery rating (setting a mastery stacking ratio of somewhere <= 6.4). I've clearly chosen a different number for my own gear, somewhere closer to <= 1.5. That's a quantifiable different that I can work with when providing gear advice. In this case, were you to be asking for advice, I could look through your gear, gems, enchants, and try to find places where you were inconsistent in your mastery stacking target. That's usable advice despite our personal decisions to have different targets.

I think that's the path we need to go down. It worked in Wrath and I think it will work here.

[theckhd]

I'm not suggesting there isn't a target, but rather that the target will be different for a stage 4 tank than a stage 5 tank. Lower stages should see a lower ratio (i.e. stamina more valuable) and higher stages should see a higher ratio. Writing up that post earlier today made me think that we should get Meloree involved for old time's sake and start working out ratios for the different enchanting/gemming options.

[econ21]

Lower stages should see a lower ratio (i.e. stamina more valuable) and higher stages should see a higher ratio.

Can you spell out the logic there a little? I had been under the impression from the now closed thread on stamina vs mastery in the advanced training sub-forum that the opposite would be true. Maybe people were just over-estimating the effective health requirements of heroic raids.

[theckhd]

I suppose I should have qualified my statement a little more, to say that "A stage 4 tank and a stage 5 tank attempting the same level of content will have different target values of mastery ratio."

It's the same argument as before. Stamina is more valuable if you're undergeared for the content. For example, a tank in full 346 blues attempting entry-level raids will probably still value stamina fairly highly. Once you're in full 359 epics, you already have enough stamina to survive every normal-mode boss (and at least several heroic ones), so stamina becomes less valuable compared to extra mitigation.

On the other hand, a tank in full 346 is already "at gear level" or slightly overgeared for heroics, so that tank would probably value mastery very highly for that content. This means that it's not enough to define a target ratio for each tank level, because your target ratio will also be a function of the content level you're facing. We can probably model content levels in tiers and pair them with tank levels (i.e. 333 = normal 5-mans, 346 = heroic 5-mans, 359 = raids, 372 = heroic raids). If you're attempting content that's a tank level above your own, then your target mastery ratio will go down. If we're lucky, we'll be able to quantify what amount of ratio +1 content level is "worth."

[yappo]

I suppose I should have qualified my statement a little more, to say that "A stage 4 tank and a stage 5 tank attempting the same level of content will have different target values of mastery ratio."

It's the same argument as before. Stamina is more valuable if you're undergeared for the content. For example, a tank in full 346 blues attempting entry-level raids will probably still value stamina fairly highly. Once you're in full 359 epics, you already have enough stamina to survive every normal-mode boss (and at least several heroic ones), so stamina becomes less valuable compared to extra mitigation.

Basically:

If you don't expect to die suddenly, then gear to add extra room for errors?