Theck's MATLAB thread - MoP/5.x

[Schroom]

The large packs that really stick in my mind are at the start of HoF

Also note that your threat will actually go down in all likelihood, because the 12.5k TPS per mob you gain is offset by the beastly healing threat of Battle Healer and SoI.

THIS!

and you don't mean by any chance the trashpacks that ignore the aggro table at the start of HoF and after a couple of seconds fixate on random players? ^^

[econ21]

you don't mean by any chance the trashpacks that ignore the aggro table at the start of HoF and after a couple of seconds fixate on random players? ^^

I guess those would be prime candidates for switching to SoR as aggro does not matter (after 2 secs)?

I was thinking more about the other packs that stun and do nasty ground effect things. They seem lethal to tanks in LFR: it's a rare LFR where a tank does NOT die before the 1st HoF boss is pulled. But when I first encountered them in 10N last week, they were far less intimidating. I guess it's a matter of cc and healing rather than seal choice.

[Sagara]

You mean the skullbashers I guess. They're nasty in the sense their big attack is very powerful, and in the chaos of LFR you tend to not notice it until you ate one.
I usually got out of my way to grab those and focus on their "ready" posture to get the hell out of dodge. Reminds me a bit of GW2, actually.

[Fetzie]

you don't mean by any chance the trashpacks that ignore the aggro table at the start of HoF and after a couple of seconds fixate on random players? ^^

I guess those would be prime candidates for switching to SoR as aggro does not matter (after 2 secs)?

I was thinking more about the other packs that stun and do nasty ground effect things. They seem lethal to tanks in LFR: it's a rare LFR where a tank does NOT die before the 1st HoF boss is pulled. But when I first encountered them in 10N last week, they were far less intimidating. I guess it's a matter of cc and healing rather than seal choice.

Likely more to do with the fact that when raiding in an organised group the healers are actually healing, and not AFK.

[econ21]

Theck, I should post this on your blog but haven't figure out how to do so: about gear sets, I think what some comments were asking for is a "haste stacked" gear set that reflects gemming haste rather than stamina and having at most one stamina trinket (you could use the ghost iron dragonling as the other; it's low ilevel but a good way of getting effectively another 1800 haste if that's what is being stacked). You could look at Fetzie's gear if you want a real world illustration of the kind of haste stacked gear set I'm referring to.

From reading MMO-Champion, Tankspot and Ask Mr Robot forums, it seems that many people who have read your work on haste have really taken it to heart and are not persuaded by the attractions of stamina. (Instead, with the double cost of stamina in gems and the value of secondary stats for active mitigation, gemming stamina seems unpopular amongst many tanks of all classes). I know you don't agree with them, but I think that's what some of the comments were asking.

I don't think many people are that interested in a gear set that sacrifices expertise for haste - your results about hitting caps are widely accepted.

[Personally, I've been curious about the haste vs stamina trade off for a while. At my gear level (489), I think I could trade off about 50k health buffed for about 13% haste through gems and a trinket. I think it would give me about 5k more dps but am not sure about the survivability effects - how many more shotrs would I get? 13%? As a 10N raider, it might not matter much either way for me but I die often enough that I've been sticking with stamina.]

[Fetzie]

Don't forget that guilds progressing through the heroic content right now have at least ten items levels more of gear on every raider than guilds that finished the progressing weeks ago. I don't think anybody in our raid is under 490, and most are probably around 495 equipped. Upgrading a 489 item to 502 is the equivalent of a mixed stamina gem instead of a pure secondary gem, or a pure stamina gem instead of a mixed gem. So while a tank in 480 gear would need stamina gems to get to the EH health of a 490 geared tank to live through the fight comfortably, the 490 tank already has that EH on the gear and can look at stats like haste instead.

So far I have yet to find a fight that required more stamina than I have right now. And if I do, I can just swap the 480 haste gems for stamina (~23k life raid buffed) or mastery, and swap to a stamina trinket in the second trinket slot (~30k life raid buffed).

[theckhd]

You're both missing the point, in general. Point for point, stamina is hands-down better for survivability than haste is. There's no question about that. When you say "I have enough stamina/EH," what you're really saying is "I have enough survivability. If you're stacking haste instead of Stamina, you're not doing it because you want more survivability. You're doing it because you want more DPS. The added survivability is just a bonus at that point.

Unless you really do think that you're stacking haste for survivability, in which case you're completely misguided. Haste is a pretty terrible survivability stat - stamina, hit, and expertise all outclass it by a mile. The only reason we choose it is that mastery and dodge/parry are just as terrible or worse at the moment, and it gives the added DPS as a nice fringe benefit.

Now, tell me again why it makes sense to run survivability simulations for a case where you're stacking haste for DPS? If you're already in "gear for DPS mode," how is a survivability simulation going to change your gearing strategy?

[Sagara]

Trying to rephrase here. What's basically hapenning is, we set a *cap* to how much Stamina we find acceptable, and then switch to the next best thing. Considering Hit and Expertise get capped as well, we move on to Haste. Right?

[Fetzie]

Trying to rephrase here. What's basically hapenning is, we set a *cap* to how much Stamina we find acceptable, and then switch to the next best thing. Considering Hit and Expertise get capped as well, we move on to Haste. Right?

^ that

If I was in 480 gear instead of 498, I'd be using stamina gems. But I have enough stamina. I'm not dying unless I make a mistake (forget to hit GoAK for Tayak Assault2) or we are killing ourselves (idiot activates a Wind Bomb). Enrages, whether the hard sort or the soft sort, are what is stopping us killing things right now.

[Kihra]

What's interesting about this tier is that I felt I had enough survivability very early on, even in 25H content. Maybe that was a product of being able to VP-upgrade gear. Anyway, I cut away from Stamina gems very early in progression, i.e., at around 8/16H.

[theckhd]

I don't share that opinion, actually, but I think that that your target stamina depends a lot on your healers. The healing in a guild like Temerity is going to be very different from a 2-night-a-week guild. I still find myself wanting more stamina for Garalon, Lei Shi, etc.

That said, we're at 10/16 now, so maybe we're at about the point where that shift can start happening, and I just haven't seen it yet.

[Fetzie]

Lei Shi is a boss I'll be swapping my JC gems and my 2nd trinket for. Given that the bit of the fight that matters doesn't let you generate Holy Power anyway.

[Kihra]

Yeah, I'll concede that Lei Shi is horrific, and it's easy to feel like you never have enough Stamina for him. I switch to double Stamina trinkets for him, but I don't swap out my gems or anything. That's a fight that is very different on 25-man than 10-man though. I think it's much easier on 25-man, since tanks can ignore the Animated Protectors because you have so much CC. You also have many more external CDs available to help you survive.

[Fetzie]

And you're probably running three tanks anyway on 25 man, so the stacks are a total non-issue even on the larger 60% and 20% waves.

[theckhd]

We run 4 tanks, but only two are ever on Lei Shi. The other two manage Scary Fog.