New Theory of Gemming - Stamina vs. Mastery

[Flex]

1. Many raid abilities are based on your total stamina. Things like lock candy for instance.

Lock candy is based on base health, so no matter how much stamina you have it wont heal for more.

[Cragwell]

Really? That's interesting. Guess I should pay more attention to the tooltip. Doesn't change the fact that any effect based on your health total is buffed the higher it is. That's just a very bad example Thanks for the clarification.

[heuvarius]

6. Your raid leaders most likely don't care what your avoidance is. You look more attractive to them when your stamina pool is 180k+. Before you ask, yes, I am over 180k in raid buffs atm.

Do you really need that much HP? I can't for the life of me see any value with stacking that much stam. Damage spikes heavy enough to require that much HP also gives you enough warning/reaction time to plan and use CDs already.

[inthedrops]

6. Your raid leaders most likely don't care what your avoidance is. You look more attractive to them when your stamina pool is 180k+. Before you ask, yes, I am over 180k in raid buffs atm.

Do you really need that much HP? I can't for the life of me see any value with stacking that much stam. Damage spikes heavy enough to require that much HP also gives you enough warning/reaction time to plan and use CDs already.

There is no *required* reason for that much stamina.

Just use your best judgment folks. 160K unbuffed health is wasteful and overkill for the content I'm personally tanking.

My stats, depending on trinkets, vary anywhere in between the following (unbuffed)
Health: 161k --> 143k
Block%: 51.5% --> 60%

That's the breaks for me. I can give up 18k health for 8.5% more block by swapping two mastery trinkets vs. two stam trinkets. All my gear is heavily focused on gemming for mastery. Not sure how much more block I'd lose if I regemmed stamina. Guess I'd hit 170k probably. But really what's the point?

Personally speaking, I think 140k health is a really good target for 25 man raiding.

[sculder]

Personally speaking, I think 140k health is a really good target for 25 man raiding.

I've had similar experiences in my raids. I'm currently at 156k unbuffed, with 2 stam trinkets, but have found mastery trinkets to be quite effective. At the start my focus was enough HP (150k was my target), but as my healers get more geared I am more and more comfortable with sacrificing HP for mastery in almost every gem slot and trinkets.

[Cragwell]

On tanking value 8.5% block is equal to 40% damage reduction for that 8.5%. I think a general misconception here is that you are viewing blocking as avoidance. Blocking is not equal to dodge or parry. Blocking is not pure avoidance, its partial avoidance.

So your 8.5% blocking is 3.4% damage avoidance. If you want to trade 12.6% more health for 3.4% more damage avoidance, that's your call. Its just not one I would make in a raid where my healers can maintain my health pool for the whole fight. I should also note that the healers are indicating that I am easier to heal than my counterpart who is taking the path recommended by the above posters. Now, there could be a variety of reasons for that. Paladins have a lot more options when the going gets hairy and that could have something to do with it.

For now though, I am stacking stam and building my overall avoidance as best I can.

[inthedrops]

On tanking value 8.5% block is equal to 40% damage reduction for that 8.5%. I think a general misconception here is that you are viewing blocking as avoidance. Blocking is not equal to dodge or parry. Blocking is not pure avoidance, its partial avoidance.

So your 8.5% blocking is 3.4% damage avoidance. If you want to trade 12.6% more health for 3.4% more damage avoidance, that's your call. Its just not one I would make in a raid where my healers can maintain my health pool for the whole fight. I should also note that the healers are indicating that I am easier to heal than my counterpart who is taking the path recommended by the above posters. Now, there could be a variety of reasons for that. Paladins have a lot more options when the going gets hairy and that could have something to do with it.

For now though, I am stacking stam and building my overall avoidance as best I can.

I don't think too many people are confusing mitigation with avoidance. I see it here and there but it's not widespread on these forums. It's the exception case. I simply don't see the need for stamina beyond what I mentioned and will happily take more mitigation or avoidance instead (I chose the mitigation route)

Hardmodes might change my mind. But for now I'm 9/12 in 25's and it's working well.

One side note is that I prefer to think of the increased block as a reduction of spike damage rather than overall average damage. I don't care as much about reduced damage over the duration of a fight as I care about damage in say, a 10 second window.

[Brauun]

I have recently regemmed almost all of my gear. I initially gemmed for Stamina › Mastery › Avoidance, and I have now gemmed for Mastery › Stamina/Avoidance. I absolutely love the overall damage reduction I am experiencing. I do not feel like I need the extra health right now, as I have yet to see a situation where I might get 2-3 shotted. Overall, it feels more like I could get 6-7 shotted at best. The only reason I'd see myself die very quickly was if I failed at a mechanic, like standing in the fire or something equally dumb.

Also, my health is less frequently full compared to WotLK and even TBC where it would go from anywhere between 25%-50% to 100% in a continuous yo-yo motion. Most of the time I'll just sit somewhere between 50-75% health, with it going slightly up or down, but I never feel like I'm in danger.

Unless theorycrafting proves me wrong in the future, I will stick with gemming pure Mastery gems in yellow sockets, Parry/Mastery in red sockets and Mastery/Stamina in blue sockets. Although I am tempted to fill blue sockets with pure Stamina gems. Mmmhhmmm...

[Sparan]

I have been toying with maxing EH vs. stacking mastery for a bit now and I'm pretty convinced that Mastery will be the way to go long-term. I just spent 2 consecutive nights on HM Halfus 25 this week and the first night I was using the gem pattern of stam blues, stam/mastery yellows, and parry/stam reds (only if there was a decent socket bonus, else stam blue in the red socket). The drakes on that encounter hit QUITE hard and I noticed there were a lot of freak tank deaths (I'm sure part of this was due to everyone getting their "sea legs" on the fight, but the trend continued through the end of the night, when we were thoroughly warmed up and nearing a kill).

The following evening I did a pretty comprehensive gem overhaul and adjusted some pieces of gear. I used mastery yellows, parry/mastery reds and stam/mastery blues. I also swapped my boot enchant from the armor kit to mastery. Long story short, I saw a pretty marked difference in how frequently tank gibs would come about, and I think that fact was pretty instrumental in allowing us to get a kill.

Here's a link to my armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/blackrock/sparan/simple

I think maintaining an unbuffed HP of somewhere north of 150k will be important for hardmode content, but beyond that (and barring any bosses that hit considerably harder than Halfus's drakes) I think stacking mastery to the greatest extent possible will yield some pretty good results.

(As a note, the first night tank gibs, regemming into more avoidance and corresponding reduction in gibs was true for all 4 of the tanks we were using for Halfus, and we happened to have one of each tanking class. Further, all 4 classes seemed to fare similarly in terms of net damage taken (factoring in absorbs and self-healing for bears and DKs), and we all saw a tidy net damage decrease as a result of our changes. So, it seems prima facie that there's no earth-shattering differences in the survivability of the 4 tanking specs right now, which I find surprising and interesting.)

[2Cute2BeStr8]

I really am enjoying my two trinkets now, however I was thinking of regemming to mastery and using those stam trinkets.

Definitly something I'm going to consider. I feel right now that at 147k UB I'm fine, but I'd be getting a little bit lower, for the overall stam loss.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/c ... gai/simple

Heres a link to my armory right now and people are saying that they have no problem whatsoever healing me and it is like night and day compared to other tanks.

The reason why I want to change it is to have more proactive trinket choice.

Ideally I may stick with porcelain crab, and start to use the on use-dodge epic one. Then change out porcelain crab for more magic heavy fights.

[Furburger]

Im not sure why this hasn't been focused on, but you can (sort of) have your cake and eat it, too. Reforging dodge for mastery (as has been mentioned) DOES work. Not to mention you can still stam stack your gems. With kings I am about 152k, which for me seems to be more than adequate if the healer is properly geared for roics. Reforging mastery took me from 35% block to right at 45%, and the mitigation was immediately noticeable. I did lose a few percentage points in block but it seems that as long as the big hitters are avoided and/or interrupted the lack of block makes little, if any, difference.

Im only at 347ilvl but have no issues except for movement on ozruk- and thats my fail, not the groups. I dont really think the reforging was a clutch move except to help the healers with lesser mana pools, despite the obvious difference in inc dmg I see. Three months from now I expect none of this to be relevant, but for now it is certainly food for thought and experimentation.

[theothersteve7]

you can (sort of) have your cake and eat it, too.

I'd rather have two slices of chocolate cake than a slice of chocolate cake and a slice of strawberry cake. I prefer chocolate to strawberry. Similarly, I'd rather have two gold bars than a gold and a silver. Does that make sense? I'm around 55% block and I don't have any raid loot yet. I'm going to keep going for another 15% to cap me, if that ends up possible.

That being said, though, we still need enough stamina to remove spike deaths and the occasional run-the-boss-through-the-fire emergency. Also, come T12 we may end up with some stamina gems as we hit block cap (I haven't done the math on that).

[Xenorun]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/m ... run/simple

My trinket set up right now, imo is the best possible for the current content. The Tol Barad trinket for a tank is just freakishly good right now, then the Worm, it makes for a good combo imo. This on top of gemming Stam / Mastery gems all over, with a few Parry / Stam to match bonuses seem to be working out just fine for me. I have enough HP atm to not just get insta gibbed, so I think I'm ok there for now.

Really, from what I've seen, stacking Mastery / Stam gems, with one (or two depending) Mastery trinkets seems pretty awesome. On top of that, I typically dont even use the "tank" flask of 300 Stamina, as I find the Mastery Elixir + the Resistance Elixir to outweigh a measily 300 Stamina. It is a lot more expensive though, especially on progression fights. But those are the fights where it matters most, so why not use the gold for something useful?

Also I imagine when we finally are able to "block cap", we still wont gun for pure stamina. We'll start going more for either pure Avoidance (parry / dodge) or threat stats (by that time DPS should be pushing it a lot more then they do atm, making threat stats much more valuable).

[inthedrops]

I like your setup Xeno, and think I agree with your gearing/gemming choices

[Galtea]

I have a question regarding the stam vs mastery for gemming. I am a JC, and I need to choose between the +101 stam or the +67 mastery. Right now, I'm leaning towards the mastery, but I haven't fully made up my mind. My gear is all 346 or 359 gear, and we're doing the entry-level raids in a 10m guild for which I am the MT currently. Any input would be appreciated, thanks!