Icecrown Radiance

[Wrathy]

I dont think that flat out forsaking any dodge rating has any merit because of the fact that you would be swapping towards parry with a much steeper relative diminishing return. As much as I agree that there is no merit in stacking dodge any more as a survival stat, it doesn't mean that the 10-15% dodge that will inherently be left on you stat sheet after Chill of the Throne isn't valuable, its just not the best itemization when it comes to gemming and enchanting.

The dodge that you will get from your talents and your gear is still something that should not be taken for granted, it will be just excluded from your gemming and enchanting.

[Iselian]

The problem I keep coming back to is that avoidance, except in extreme cases (90+%), is still RNG. If I've got 70% avoidance (almost, in my 245 gear) I still have a chance to take a 2hit or 3hit string. 2hits aren't entirely uncommon, 3's certainly happen. Cutting it back to 50% only increases that more, of course.

From that standpoint (we're going to take more hits anyway) Meloree's fervent stam-stacking philosophy seems like the surefire way to go. We'll need to survive 3hit strings, maybe given AD or DP and even then we can't count on those all the time. If bosses are hitting for 20-25k, we're eyeing pushing to the 60 to 65k raid buffed region (and here I am at only 50k ._.) before feeling at a comfortable EH level. That screams stamina.

After that, however, stacking more stamina would lead to surviving a 4hit string; nearly 100k raid buffed. That's... a little beyond our reach, I think. So we turn to avoidance, and hopefully Icecrown will not mimic Tot(G)C's unavoidable damage fetish. If boss mechanics don't discourage avoidance like a dentist on Halloween, then I can see us going back to a previous gearing philosophy: Stam-Stack for the EH you need, then go avoidance to reduce damage intake.


I've followed the math on relative and absolute, I understand where that's all coming from, but it seems like we ought to simply treat this as we have other raids in the past. Ignore block, go EH, hit avoidance after we're comfy. I think it's safe to say though, that unless there are threat problems we'll be using our dodge libram over the 200 strength.

A lot of it will depend on the encounters of the boss fights. Here's to hoping!

[Fridmarr]

The problem I keep coming back to is that avoidance, except in extreme cases (90+%), is still RNG. If I've got 70% avoidance (almost, in my 245 gear) I still have a chance to take a 2hit or 3hit string. 2hits aren't entirely uncommon, 3's certainly happen. Cutting it back to 50% only increases that more, of course.

From that standpoint (we're going to take more hits anyway) Meloree's fervent stam-stacking philosophy seems like the surefire way to go. We'll need to survive 3hit strings, maybe given AD or DP and even then we can't count on those all the time. If bosses are hitting for 20-25k, we're eyeing pushing to the 60 to 65k raid buffed region (and here I am at only 50k ._.) before feeling at a comfortable EH level. That screams stamina.

After that, however, stacking more stamina would lead to surviving a 4hit string; nearly 100k raid buffed. That's... a little beyond our reach, I think. So we turn to avoidance, and hopefully Icecrown will not mimic Tot(G)C's unavoidable damage fetish. If boss mechanics don't discourage avoidance like a dentist on Halloween, then I can see us going back to a previous gearing philosophy: Stam-Stack for the EH you need, then go avoidance to reduce damage intake.


I've followed the math on relative and absolute, I understand where that's all coming from, but it seems like we ought to simply treat this as we have other raids in the past. Ignore block, go EH, hit avoidance after we're comfy. I think it's safe to say though, that unless there are threat problems we'll be using our dodge libram over the 200 strength.

A lot of it will depend on the encounters of the boss fights. Here's to hoping!

It really depends. Right now GC is saying some IC bosses will 2 hit tanks early on. To me that implies hit sizes of at 25k, so I doubt we ever get to where we live through 3 hits. Now, it might be some big special coupled with a regular hit, which could give us a chance to push things a bit.

[Iselian]

I think GC is also counting that we'll be going in to ICC with mostly 245 gear, something I can attest to personally (still haven't seen heroic 25Beasts drop). I'm looking a little bit past that; when a raid would be progressing on the latter half of the bosses.

Certainly for the beginning we'll be getting beaten quite a bit. It's a new raid, it's supposed to be hard. (I'm looking at you, TotC25-N!)

[Meloree]

I think GC is also counting that we'll be going in to ICC with mostly 245 gear, something I can attest to personally (still haven't seen heroic 25Beasts drop). I'm looking a little bit past that; when a raid would be progressing on the latter half of the bosses.

Certainly for the beginning we'll be getting beaten quite a bit. It's a new raid, it's supposed to be hard. (I'm looking at you, TotC25-N!)

I'll admit, I'm actually pretty curious about the final tuning level of Icecrown normal mode. Given that my raid will be in primarily 258 ilvl gear, I'm assuming we'll overgear the hell out of it on launch. The last I heard, you need to clear normal in order to unlock hardmodes, so I'll be pretty surprised if hardmode guilds aren't steamrolling normal on day one. In fact, if they aren't, it's probably a tuning mistake, because normal mode guilds, being a tier of gear behind, would get crushed.

[Worldie]

The final tuning is pretty obvious, ICC 10 normal will be tuned for 232 gear, ICC 25 normal for 245 gear. The tuning of hard modes will probably be full 258 for 10 and even higher for 25.

[Iselian]

Was TotC25-N tuned for 226? My raid was fairly geared with 226, but by no means full of (and no 239's, some 232) and we still oneshot nearly everything as it came out. I do think a lot will have to do with when we get in there. I don't think we can accurately say how much stamina we'll be stacking (all or most being the choices) until after we've gone in.

I certainly don't think Theck was planning on giving up socket bonuses (and some enchants) to go full-stam when they were testing parts of TotC

[Worldie]

Mah depends, depends.

I'll get an idea of how hard bosses hit and what kind of special abilities they use before choosing how to socket new gear or resocket current gear.

Sadly atm the informations on this regard are slim + they are just beta versions of the fights. I'll find out by myself when ICC is launched.

[Ragingsoul]

I wish the crit percentage would also be on DR..
what I don't get is why avoidance get's nerf as we advance, but crit isn't.
it's already quite stupid to see everyone with more than 50% crit unbuffed (the agility classes).
WTB another aura to reduce the crit on bosses lol.

Their saying if a boss in Naxx was hitting us 60% of the time, they should hit harder now because we only take 30% of the hits. Why wouldn't they apply the same thinking to dps? if you're able to crit a boss 30% of the time in naxx, why suddenly 70% now or even more.

Can anyone tell me how much avoidance we would have without DR, if we count around 65% avoidance with them? I'm just curious

[Iselian]

Mah depends, depends.

I'll get an idea of how hard bosses hit and what kind of special abilities they use before choosing how to socket new gear or resocket current gear.

Sadly atm the informations on this regard are slim + they are just beta versions of the fights. I'll find out by myself when ICC is launched.

We'll all find out when we go in ourselves what works best for us. Doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss it though, and the possibilities. That's what forums are for, neh?

So far, there doesn't seem to be a vast amount of unavoidable damage, at least not strictly tank speaking (ie, impale+dot or Anub's freeze). Most of whatever is unavoidable seems to be raid damage, like Festergut's Gaseous Blight. This bodes well for those who like to balance stats or favor avoidance, since they won't be SOL like they were when facing Heroic Gormok.

[Worldie]

I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss the gearing method, but without data we can't really say much =)

[Meloree]

I wish the crit percentage would also be on DR..
what I don't get is why avoidance get's nerf as we advance, but crit isn't.
it's already quite stupid to see everyone with more than 50% crit unbuffed (the agility classes).
WTB another aura to reduce the crit on bosses lol.

More boss health covers DPS scaling just fine, though. More crit, more arp, more ap, more haste, all just translates to more DPS, and more health adjusts the length of the fight around that, it covers all of the variables.

Tanking is a little trickier, and they're learning (again) that they can't cover off all of the various ways tanks scale with just "hit harder".

[Ragingsoul]

I wish the crit percentage would also be on DR..
what I don't get is why avoidance get's nerf as we advance, but crit isn't.
it's already quite stupid to see everyone with more than 50% crit unbuffed (the agility classes).
WTB another aura to reduce the crit on bosses lol.

More boss health covers DPS scaling just fine, though. More crit, more arp, more ap, more haste, all just translates to more DPS, and more health adjusts the length of the fight around that, it covers all of the variables.

Tanking is a little trickier, and they're learning (again) that they can't cover off all of the various ways tanks scale with just "hit harder".

but you can't honestly tell me that crit is suppose to be like this. when you have 80% chance to crit on abilities raid buffed, you don't talk about your crit chance anymore, you talk about how many attacks are not gonna crit, which can be the same about avoidance.
My point was more : what's the point of crit if you're gonna crit almost every time? they might as well increase all dmg from abilities by 100%/50%, would be the same.
They will not do something about it, since it vary too much depending on classes from lock to feral druid for example, whereas tanks are about all the same. but I still think the crit chances on gear now is totally stupid. I was already saying this in Naxx lvl, where people had the same crit than when doing BT in T6, which was the last Tier, the same way avoidance was a lot more than what we should normally have for a first Tier content.

Further more, heroics are gonna completely retarded, since they already are, I have problems to imagine it even worst.
I already don't need a healer for them, what's gonna happen when tanks are gonna do 6k dps on aoe trash, taking no dmg, due to too much avoidance (at that point, your MT gear with more strength will do more dps than a block set).
It was maybe the case in the late TBC, but due to mechanics, we had to down gear, or drink after each pull.. but at least we took SOME dmg, judgment of light can keep me up these days, since it scales with hp.

a good thing I see with this chance, is that you're gonna see a real change now between a tank with a good set of armor and avoidance, compare to a lower geared tank.

[Daeren]

But crit is already on a diminishing return. Going from 0 to 1% crit gives you roughly 1% increased white damage, going from 99% to 100% gives you 0,5% increased damage, unlike avoidance where each point gets better the more you have.

[Snake-Aes]

That's not a diminishing return, that's just how it's relative damage increase works. Your crit chance per rating doesn't change.