Vial of Stolen Memories or Mirror of Broken Images?

I am about to hit exalted with Hellscream's Reach and I am having trouble deciding whether or not to replace my Vial of Stolen Memories with the Mirror. I already have the Symbiotic Worm trinket and I kind of feel like two stamina trinkets might be overkill and I would get about 5-6% more block chance with the Mirror. If I replaced Vial with Mirror I would plan on re-gemming my (40+ Mastery) gems into the (20+ Mastery, 30+ Stamina) gems and I'd replace my Jewelcrafting (67+ Mastery) gems with the (100+ Stamnia) gems. Does this sound like a viable idea to anyone else or should I stick with the trinkets I have. Thanks!

Here is a link to my armory profile:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/g ... his/simple

I'm of the school that believes double-stam trinkets are almost never the answer, so of course I'd recommend going for a mastery trinket (or two, which is what I usually wear for almost everything at this point, but once you get into HMs that'll change, depending).

This is in regard to 25 hardmodes...

The only fight I wear two stamina trinkets on right now is Maloriak (and even then, only when tanking Maloriak himself). It's very useful during Dark Phase.

Otherwise on every single fight I keep the mirror equipped.

Okay, removing the second trinket would drop be to about 154k unbuffed health. Is that viable for 25 man hard modes because my guild is getting ready to do those.

Seraphis wrote:Okay, removing the second trinket would drop be to about 154k unbuffed health. Is that viable for 25 man hard modes because my guild is getting ready to do those.

Honestly, it's probably a judgement to be made per fight and as your gear gets better. I see you did Halfus. That probably means you're going to try something like Magmaw, Chimaeron, Maloriak, or Conclave next. Based on your gear today, here's what I'd do for each of them:

Magmaw: Stam if tanking Magmaw, Mirror if tanking Skeletons. Lava Spew + Mangle right before getting picked up hurts! Extra stam helps there as well as while mangled.

Chimaeron: Mirror, but you need to make sure you double up cooldowns during both Double Attacks that happen while tanking Feud.

Maloriak: Double Stam, in fact I'd probably even regem my gear for Stam (until I hit ~190k) if tanking Maloriak. Otherwise Mirror for add duty. 190k isn't necessary, but it gives you a lot of room for standing in a puddle too long during dark phase.

CoW: Definetely the Mirror. No matter which of the two you end up tanking, Mirror rocks on Frost platform and Nature hits so hard during ultimates that stam won't matter anyway (you need strong cooldowns).

I think the next heroics our GM said we are going to be doing are Atramedes and Chimeron. I think that I'll grab the mirror when I hit exalted today but keep the Vial of Stolen Memories on hand for fights like Maloriak and Magmaw. Thanks for your help! Well, one last question. When I switch out the Vial with the Mirror would you recommend I replace my 67+ mastery gems with the 100+ stamina gems to compensate for some of the hit point loss?

Seraphis wrote:I think the next heroics our GM said we are going to be doing are Atramedes and Chimeron. I think that I'll grab the mirror when I hit exalted today but keep the Vial of Stolen Memories on hand for fights like Maloriak and Magmaw. Thanks for your help! Well, one last question. When I switch out the Vial with the Mirror would you recommend I replace my 67+ mastery gems with the 100+ stamina gems to compensate for some of the hit point loss?

It doesn't really matter how you gem as you're only talking 2 to 3k either way. The biggest influence is in the trinkets (~5k each).

BTW, mirror is *awesome* for Atramedes. I use it (and Divine Protection) for every Searing Flame. This lets' me use my big cooldowns on the scarier parts, which is usually when she lands after an air phase and people are still settling.

If you're ever unsure what to do on hardmodes, I would just lean towards the stamina side of things.

For reference, I do almost all hard modes with 188k health fully buffed and flasked.

Far be it from me to disagree with the more experienced Paperplate (<3 u dawg), but I prefer Vial on Chimaeron just because the extra health ceiling and on-click dodge is a nice cooldown while tanking feud phases.

The click from Mirror doesn't impact any damage I ever tank (I stand outside of the slime while tanking feuds).

I tend to favor Mirror for most fights, though. Extremely useful on Conclave heroic when taking a Cone from Nezir.

Fights where there's little magic damage, or I'm not as concerned about blocking, I go with Vial.

Just my 2c.

The extra mastery from the mirror on Chimeron is huge, as stam is pretty irrelevant the entire fight as hard as he hits you cant stack enough stam to live longer. However a string of blocks in the burn phase can keep you up quite a bit longer

It really depends on the fight. There are some fights where the 400 resistance is not useful.

Both Symbiotic Worm (900 Mastery when below 35% health) and Vial of Stolen Memories (+1605 Dodge, 20 sec, on use) have great mitigation and avoidance. So there is a lot to be said for keeping those equipped full time.

Then use Mirror of Broken Images when a raid boss demands it.

Edit: I have actually changed my standard trinkets recently, making my prior comment invalid. My default is now Vial and Mirror. I like having the full time 321 Mastery from the Mirror. I consider that more effective than having 963 Mastery for 10 seconds when below 35% from the Worm.

I prefer to use the Vial over the Worm because of the on use Dodge.
20 seconds of that amount of dodge will give you 6% to 7% more avoidance. That is FAR more valuable as an on use effect than Symbiotic Worm.

I cannot think of a single boss on normal mode that I will be removing the Mirror on. I value the full time Mastery far more than the 10 seconds of Mastery on Symbiotic Worm.

I have the Mirror trinket and have been using the on-use resistance quite a bit. On Magmaw & Omnitron I can see the difference between using it and not using it. I've even started using it during my heroic randoms lately, 2nd boss in Shadowfang Keep & during the throngus & Erudax fights in grim batol come to mind.

I just started playing this past November, and prior to the Mirror, I'd never activate any of my trinkets. Decided to bind keys for my two trinkets and use a power aura to let me know when they're available and I've gotten comfortable in using them when needed. The mastery in the mirror is awesome, btw. Makes it my favorite trinket.

A guild-mate made me the Darkmoon trinket, but I don't find it as useful as the mirror. With 4 kills and no trinket, I'm still waiting for Magmaw to finally drop the worm, hopefully soon.