resolve of undying

I picked this up last night and I'm... conflicted. I figure I could use it with the valor on use dodge proc, run ~3-4% under CTC (depending on what the value of the 8 stacks turns out to be) and just pop my dodge trinket for the start to cover the CTC gap until the stacks build. It would replace my 575 stamina with random dodge proc - so the question it leaves me asking is if ~880 dodge is worth 575 stamina + random proc.

It feels like an obvious yes... but it's just random avoidance. I guess the true question is - how much mastery can I convert to Stamina with this trinket? Envelope math tells me 880 dodge = ~400 mastery worth of CTC, which is ~600 stamina. So assuming perfect use, and using the on-use proc to cover for the downtime, I'd roughly break even on stamina, convert 5% block to dodge, and lose the random proc. I'm not sure the 1149 dodge for 20 seconds on a 1 or 2 minute ICD (I don't know which) is worth all that much to me.

So it seems it is worth replacing a Veil of Lies with a 403 Resolve of Undying, assuming my envelope math is at all correct.

Edit: Math was incorrect. Test Dummy shows that full stacks are ~4% CTC, which translates to ~478 stamina. Way Way behind any mastery or stamina trinket, plus those all have some sort of proc. Completely useless.

I put this in my avoidance set for those fights where the boss applies an avoidable stacking debuff. But for normal tanking I NEVER trade mastery for more avoidance, as long as I can maintain CTC with block I always go stam or hit/exp. However, to avoid those avoidable stacking debuffs, I even put avoidance gems in anything that is used only in my avoidance set.

There are a few fights where CTC isn't that critical and some combo of stam/resist is better, unfortunately I am limited in my T13 stam trinkets atm, and only have Mirror for resists (never got Sindy's Fang).

The only fight I can think of this being useful for in DS is perhaps Phase 2 of Blackhorn. Maybe solo tanking normal Morchok, but it's pretty silly to gear for that fight. Void Bolt isn't avoidable, Tetanus isn't avoidable, and I can't think of anything else stacking on the tank.

If theres any fight you choose a mastery trinket for its passive ctc, resolve of undying would likely result in more CTC, and especially more dmg reduction since its 100% avoiding damage instead of just a block.

More damage reduction, I'd agree. But, for example, fire of the deeps is 458 mastery + on use dodge proc. At my current (low) Dodge level, Resolve is 4% CTC = ~315 mastery, so it's only 2/3rds the CTC (and than you still have the dodge proc).

Treck wrote:If theres any fight you choose a mastery trinket for its passive ctc, resolve of undying would likely result in more CTC, and especially more dmg reduction since its 100% avoiding damage instead of just a block.

That's actually fairly unlikely. Dodge gives about 1/3 of the CTC that mastery does, so 880 dodge is only about 293 mastery worth of CTC. Even the starter trinkets (mirror, for example) have more than that, and Mirror in particular has a fairly useful proc for several fights.

Plus, as you and several others have noted, most of the dangerous damage isn't avoidable. If people are already trying to reach CTC by using as much mastery as possible so they can convert more of the unnecessary dodge/parry to stamina, it wouldn't make much sense to use this trinket, even though the static dodge is over-itemized.

Im not saying resolve is good.
Ive also always had 990 dodge in my head when i think of it as its the "best" one, but its still not a good trinket or something you wanna use in that many fights.
Mirror is obviously not bad either, but theres really only 2-3 fights its that usefull on, id take resolve over mirror on all the others.
I also made it clear that if the only reason you pick a mastery trinket is for its passive ctc, resolve is not a bad choise to compare with.
Its a bit over 3% dodge vs about 5% block.

Also, is there ever any possible way to convert unnnecessary dodge/parry to stamina?
Only real way is gemming really, and there dodge/parry isnt of a concern anyway, since you either choose mastery, or just stamina, gemming for dodge/parry nomatter how far away from ctc cap you are is just not going to be worth it (thats not to say dual colored gems with dodge/parry are pure wrong, but i wouldnt say its much worth it)

Gemming and enchants are the only ways. But the point is that most of us are still using many mastery or mast/stam gems (and in red sockets, parry/mast or parry/stam provided the bonus is decent). Using a trinket that gives 3% dodge instead of 5% block means that you're sacrificing a potential 2% CTC, which in most cases can be converted to stamina via gems.

i.e. switch from resolve to a 5% block trinket, switch 2% worth of mastery (~150ish rating) on gems to stamina (225 stamina, or a little over 3k health).

It's not an amazingly large trade or anything, but most of us would probably still take it.

I know in my case, I've got 15 pure mastery gems compared to 4 pure stamina gems. I'm reforging almost entirely out of Parry, and would love to be able to start switching those pure mastery gems over. For the time being (and probably forever) I'm going to keep that 403 Resolve of the Undying benched in favor of the 378 Veil of Lies, simply because (Even assuming it was a steady 880 dodge) of the reasons you've stated.

Long time reader, first time poster, lol

I really can't see why there's so much hate for this trinket, it ramps up to full stacks within 5~ seconds and I can't think of a single situation in DS where I wouldn't be hitting something for anywhere near 10 seconds.

Personally, I've taken the 880dodge with 99% uptime and used it to reforge every bit of dodge on my gear to exp and hit so now I'am sitting on 26exp and 6%hit, this puts me significantly higher on the charts at the cost of 20k~ health or there abouts.

One could argue that I could just go with 2 mastery trinkets and achieve the same thing more efficiently, but my healers all wanted more avoidance rather than mastery.

On the topic of tank dps, I've heard a few people suggest stam stacking was better dps due to Vengence ramping up? Is there any truth to this?

Cheers,

DeanWhipper wrote:Personally, I've taken the 880dodge with 99% uptime and used it to reforge every bit of dodge on my gear to exp and hit so now I'am sitting on 26exp and 6%hit, this puts me significantly higher on the charts at the cost of 20k~ health or there abouts.

One could argue that I could just go with 2 mastery trinkets and achieve the same thing more efficiently, but my healers all wanted more avoidance rather than mastery.

The thing, however, mate, is that in this patch, the large amount of damage is unavoidable. I would much prefer the 20k health over being higher on the charts. In FL, I was close to 18.5% dodge/parry and there was a point in early DS that I was nearly 20%. However, when we started to push into heroics, I dropped to 17% dodge/parry in favor of more stam due to the high damage that cannot be avoided.

DeanWhipper wrote:On the topic of tank dps, I've heard a few people suggest stam stacking was better dps due to Vengence ramping up? Is there any truth to this?

Nope. Exp/hit are miles ahead of stam in terms of DPS. Even strength beats it out.

Only argument I could see is you're also gaining the benefits of having more stam (larger buffer before death) but as theck said, dps-wise, it trails.

DeanWhipper wrote:Personally, I've taken the 880dodge with 99% uptime and used it to reforge every bit of dodge on my gear to exp and hit so now I'am sitting on 26exp and 6%hit, this puts me significantly higher on the charts at the cost of 20k~ health or there abouts.

One could argue that I could just go with 2 mastery trinkets and achieve the same thing more efficiently, but my healers all wanted more avoidance rather than mastery.

I would be surprised if your healers could tell the difference with the ~5% swing between avoidance and mastery I think is likely between the two setups; it would be interesting to do a blind test and see if they could tell.

I'm at a similar hit/xpt level, but with two stam trinkets -- one with a clicky heal and one with a rather nice shield proc. I far prefer either of these over the stacking dodge trinket, but understand why some people might like it.

It seems the topic of hit/exp or extra stam rages on lol.

Honestly I think at the end of the day it's a fairly inconsequential choice, just depends what your healers are comfortable with, considering Ultraxion and Deathwing can't parry and those are the only fights where dps gets mega tight.

Thanks for the heads up on stam vengence damage, seemed like one of those garbage rumors that gets spat out in trade.


And, to answer your question Fuzzy, yeah I have no doubt 99% of healers would have any idea, but these are the kinda people that check up armory regularly lol

DeanWhipper wrote:Thanks for the heads up on stam vengence damage, seemed like one of those garbage rumors that gets spat out in trade.

Well, there was a time when Stam was simming out as better than Strength, but never ahead of hit/exp. So it was probably just a garbage rumor. For the record, you can always find up-to-date DPS stat weights in the Stat Comparison section of my MATLAB thread (linked in sig).

DeanWhipper wrote:And, to answer your question Fuzzy, yeah I have no doubt 99% of healers would have any idea, but these are the kinda people that check up armory regularly lol

Even among healers that check the armory regularly, I doubt they'd be able to truly tell the difference between 5% parry and 5% block. 50% and 50%, sure. But such small numbers really get lost in the RNG. If you performed a proper double-blind test with a large enough sample size, I'm sure they wouldn't be able to tell.

Now that resolve of undying dropped for me (and as I was Solo Tanking Spine that evening no other wanted it) I came to think about this trinket again, while I was not too excited when it dropped.

As Theck pointed out, we look at a possible trade of ~3k HP (out of roughly 250k, so close to ~1%) against 3.5% dogde. Now, as this will reduce the avoidable damage we take from taking ~60 out of 100 hits to taking less than 57, or roughly 6% less damage taken. I recall times when there was a lot of discussion about tank viability compared to warriors when numbers were in the 3% range. So how can 6% not be relevant ?

I would believe that this would only not be attractive if more than 50% of the incoming damage is non-avoidable (then it would still be 1% less HP for 3% less damage taken). Or, when deadly damage is incoming that could not be reliably survived with 1% more HP, which sounds like a quite hypothetical situation. I would guess in his case you would be better off anyway by just ignoring the CTC (assuming blockable damage is trivial) and just stacking stamina for that.

I would be happy if somebody could point me to the flaws in my reasoning. As we will be starting heroics next week my plan is to use fire/resolve as setup with many STA gems in my armour and switch to scales/veil for "these fights" (and to mirror for the 1 or 2).

Greetings,

Extermi

I cannot think of a fight in DS where more then 50% of the damage is avoidable.

Its a trade of about 3k HP?
An otherwise normal sta trinket has well over +10k hp, so the trade is about 11-14k hp vs 3.5% dodge.

Treck wrote:Its a trade of about 3k HP?
An otherwise normal sta trinket has well over +10k hp, so the trade is about 11-14k hp vs 3.5% dodge.

The "trade" was to keep CTC by replacing resolve with a mastery trinket, which would yield excessive CTC that can be converted to STA. So as resolve equals ~280 mastery, and a equivalent tringet has ~450, that would allow to convert ~170 mastery which equals ~250 STA.

Cowmmunion wrote:I cannot think of a fight in DS where more then 50% of the damage is avoidable.

Browsing through a couple of WorldOfLogs reposts I tend to disagree - there is still alot of damage from Melee, around 70% on the tank on several bosses (e.g. Mochok), of course less on others, but roughly 50% melee damage overall (all boss kills).

E.G. http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/49t3 ... ?enc=kills

What information is your statement based on ?

Greetings,

Extermi

Extermi wrote:Now, as this will reduce the avoidable damage we take from taking ~60 out of 100 hits to taking less than 57, or roughly 6% less damage taken. I recall times when there was a lot of discussion about tank viability compared to warriors when numbers were in the 3% range. So how can 6% not be relevant ?

Because despite what some people seem to think, 3% damage taken has not been relevant at any point in this expansion, nor would have 6%. Remember that it's only 6% of melee throughput damage, which has rarely been a danger in Cataclysm.

Extermi wrote:

Cowmmunion wrote:I cannot think of a fight in DS where more then 50% of the damage is avoidable.

Browsing through a couple of WorldOfLogs reposts I tend to disagree - there is still alot of damage from Melee, around 70% on the tank on several bosses (e.g. Mochok), of course less on others, but roughly 50% melee damage overall (all boss kills).

E.G. http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/49t3 ... ?enc=kills

What information is your statement based on ?

Greetings,

Extermi

Morchok: The big damage is from the crystals and stomps. Also, gearing for this fight is silly. Melee damage is around 60% on tanks, but keeping the tanks upright on this fight isn't the healing challenge at all.
Yorsahj: Void bolts, then the damage from red. Tank damage from melee is a minor secondary consideration. 70% of my damage in this fight is from void bolt. Log you linked = 29% melee
Zonozz: Big damage is in the black phase, from the ball and from psychic drain. While Melee damage is high on this fight, it's never the melee damage that is the worry - it is the burst damage from ball/psychic drain. You need to survive the burst damage and you cannot count on avoidance for that.
Hagara: Focused Assault (unavoidable), other miscellaneous spells - melee damage from the boss is minor.
Ultrax: Big damage is from hour of twilight and AOE. 35% of my damage taken is Melee, most is twilight instability
Blackhorn: The only fight this tier that resolve is possibly useful for. Tanking the adds avoidance is useful, and avoiding the debuff from blackhorn who hits like a truck.
Spine: trololol
Madness: another fight where avoidance is irrelevant entirely.

Ok, so I was wrong. On blackhorn it might be useful.

Thanks for the detailed answers, it always a pleasure for me to learn from the experienced raiders here at Maintankadin. So I will chose my setup accordingly,and probably use resolve less often than I thought.

What keeps me thinking after your answers, though. If dying to melee is normally not the problem, and a few % of damage is not the issue at all, then why not ignoring the CTC ? If I would, for example, replace my fire (5% CTC) with Pride (687 STA, ~11k HP), than I would take roughly 15% more damage from avoidable melee (unblocked hit roughly +50% damage compared to blocked).

So if taking 6% more melee damage for 3K HP is "good", then 15% for 11K would be even better. Or, would the +50% damage of the unblocked hits make the individual hits too scary ?

Thanks again,

Extermi

You're focusing far too much on "melee damage taken."

What generally kills a tank is spike damage. That could be a boss's special attack, a combination of a special and one or more melee, or even an unlucky string of melee. That's why "overall damage taken" is a meaningless metric. It isn't usually the throughput damage that kills you - your healers can keep up with that - it's the brief 5-6 second periods where they get interrupted and/or you take a big spike.

If the spike involves melee attacks, then stacking some dodge decreases the frequency of its occurrence, but it won't decrease the magnitude. The worst case scenario of X melee hits can (and will!) still happen. What you'd much rather do is decrease the magnitude, because that translates into buying your healers more time. If the burst is smaller, then you might survive that one second (or one extra hit) that it takes for the healer to recover and react.

That's what CTC does. You're guaranteeing that every melee attack gets 30% shaved off of it. While it's not strictly expressible in terms of effective health, I'm sure you can see the similarity - by reducing the maximum boss hit size, you're making sure you can take more of them in a row, just like you would by stacking stamina.

<edit> I should note that in situations where burst damage doesn't involve melees - such as Impale on heroic Deathwing - some tanks are giving up CTC for more stamina, because it no longer affords any smoothing benefit there. But that's the exception, not the rule.