Am I wrong to ask the tank to get 490 def b4 anything else?

[Levantine]

If anyone says 'you're missing the point' again on this board, I'm going to lock myself in the Asylum and usurp positions of power.

But you're missing the point!

That's it, Lore, I'm coming for you!

/usurp

[holysdrjr]

simply put the priorities in 5 mans should be

1. 485 defense (mobs in 5mans will crit you if you dont have it)
2. Maximize HP
3. Avoidance (while bosses in 5mans can not crush you they will hit you more if you have low avoidance).

Do not feel bad about requiring 485 defense from your tank if you are doing one the harder instances

Can we have blizzard put this in the game? "Ok, so you want to respec, you know that's going to cost you right?" "50g please" "Ktxsbye"

"Oh, wait, you just put a point into Holy Shield, you know what that means?"

<vomits information>

"Have a good day"

[Exodius]

simply put the priorities in 5 mans should be

1. 485 defense (mobs in 5mans will crit you if you dont have it)
2. Maximize HP
3. Avoidance (while bosses in 5mans can not crush you they will hit you more if you have low avoidance).

Do not feel bad about requiring 485 defense from your tank if you are doing one the harder instances

Personally I believe you have points 2 and 3 around the wrong way. Defence will cap in terms of direct usefulness. Certainly, above 490 defence will increase your avoidance overall, but item wise it's cheaper to get pure avoidance.

Avoidance caps as well. Once you are at 102.4%, a raid boss cannot be avoided any further and extra block rating is ignored. Certainly, you can stack higher for times when holy shield is down from lag, silences, or the sheer number of hits, but otherwise there is an upper limit of how much avoidance you can stack.

Stamina can go as high as you want. There is no cap on stamina, it's just the more you have the more reserves you have in case there is a problem with healing or damage spikes.

I personally believe that avoidance should be stacked before stamina in terms of gearing up a paladin tank. I mentioned to aim for 10k initially, and then get the avoidance cap, then go back to stamina. Stamina will come with time, but if you start off purely stamina stacking it's just harder to get to the avoidance caps you need.

It's easier, in my opinion, to get avoidance gems and enchants and then swap them for stamina when you have a comfortable level later on. It worked extremely well for me, and I encourage eveyone else I meet to do the same.

Take some possible figures. Paladin A has 490 defence, 12k health and 60% avoidance with holy shield up. They put everything they have to get their stamina as high as possible.

Paladin B has 490 defence, 10k health and 103% avoidance with holy shield up. They put everything into avoidance.

Barring mobs that hit you so hard you can't feel your keyboard, I would prefer to be/work with Paladin B. They would live longer and be easier to heal as there is a whole lot more breathing spaces between hits as they get avoided or shield mitigated.

If you keep the examples of paladin A and B continuing as they get more gear, paladin A might be alright with super hit fights (Gruul, Lynx boss) but unless they really pick up their avoidance game they will make pretty poor multi mob / fast mob tanks. They take most of the hits, and that can be a bad thing.

Paladin B however already has all the avoidance they need. They can start to really stack stamina now that they have the 2 caps comfortably reached, and there really is not much they cannot do. They may struggle with the super hitters, but that can be left to the warriors and druids.

Yes, it's extreme logic, but put it this way. When do you stop stacking stamina and work on avoidance? My answer to that question is work on avoidance first, and then you can go as stamina happy as you want.

And while it is true the post I quoted was referring to 5 mans, I don't think the logic is broken. There are no uber hitters in 5 mans or heroics that 10k of health cannot handle. And for those mobs that do hit for 3 or 4k in heroics, well, I would say that's an even better time to just avoid those blows.

[koldawne]

This ^ is my problem. I have spent so long stacking stamina that now I'm having a problem getting uncushable and every time I 'upgrade' to gear with better avoidance I lose stamina. I really think I'm going to just bite the bullet and drop all my stam gems for avoidance till I have my avoidance and deal with it from there.

As a tank I definately have seen the difference with getting closer to being uncrushable in how much damage I take. I'm not comfortable with heroics yet but I'm having to start tanking topless to take enough damage in normals so that I don't run oom. It's a nice feeling.

[kalbear]

Honestly, one of the easiest ways to deal with this is by changing your enchants, not your gems. Getting defense to bracers, defense to chest (especially chest given how crappy the enchants are there), and most importantly shield block rating to the shield can make a huge difference - much more than gems. And it's a lot cheaper most of the time.