Tanks Gear and Stats
The more our guild progresses as a group the more we start to notice some details. Fights which push us to our limits bring some issues we need to tend to. In our case its tanks.
This week we managed to do some very tough bosses, and we had a bit of trouble with aggro, and keeping a tank alive. Our main tank. that is serious business. So I started reviewing what i know about tanks. These are the basics of tank stats and itemization:
Avoidance: This refers to anything that prevents damage.
Mitigation: anything that reduces damage taken.
Aggro: depends on several stats/mechanics. There are a couple of things that need to be kept in mind to keep aggro at an acceptable level.
Lets talk about each of them in a bit more detail.
Its all about the evasion
The stats for avoidance are dodge and parry. After the defense minimum is reached, these are the stats we need to keep an eye out for. The defense minimum (540) is the most important stat at first because it prevents tanks from being crit. A crit can bring a tank down very fast. After that we want a tank to avoid as much damage as possible, to keep it on the safe side for healers. Dodge means a tank avoids a hit entirely. Parry is better in theory, because a tank uses his weapon to riposte a hit and gets a chance at an extra hit at the enemy. Ingame mechanics dodge is better because of diminishing results. The more dodge you get the less benefit you get from it, but that also happens to parry, and it is much more marked. After 20% u need almost 4x as much parry to earn an extra 1% parry, where as with dodge, aftre 25% u need only 2x as much to get an extra 1% dodge. These are rough estimates, for more details check tankspot.com or elitistjerks.com
Expertise can also be considered an avoidance stat. Expertise reduces the chance your target parrys one of your blows. Its a straight buff to aggro generation. But its also avoidance because when you get parried the target gets a chance at an extra attack (hasted parry attacks), basically increasing their attack speed. However if a boss has a 2s attack speed and is hitting for 20k, and u parry haste his attacks you will be getting hit for a LOT more.
A tanks last line of defense
Mitigation: Armor is the best mitigation stat, but pallys and warriors also get shields.
Shield is the problem at hand and why we had to come back to theorize about tanks. The thing about this is its very good for many mobs, but its very bad against 1 big old boss. When a mechanic reduces damage by say 2500, per hit (shield does this) it can be very good if 10 mobs which hit for 3000 each are spanking the tank. He is mitigating almost 85% of the damage. The problem is a boss hits for 25k. So he is hardly reducing a significant amount of damage. The bigger issue at hand is Stat Weighing. When an item is created each of the stats included on an item are wieghed according to its itemlevel to be at par with other items of the same level. Any item which includes shield block rating/value has had its other better stats removed.
so for example these items with the same itemlevel:
First thing you should notice is they all have 147 stamina except for the Gilded, but these have 1 less socket due to stat weighing. they all have around 50-60 defense, except the death knight legs, but thats because there are no defense 2hand weapons, and they have a little bit harder time reaching the minimum. It is however also stat weighed and has less of the other stats.
The best socket for tanks is: BLUE. you can go for a straight health gem. next one would be yellow for a 10 defense 15 stamina gem, and lastly red for a 10 dodge 15 stamina. If you consider these weighings you will see that gilded is given a blue socket to compensate for the lack of a second socket. Also the pally legs have the most avoidance of all. These and the wyrmguard are the only legs without a blue socket.
The saronite plated legguards have only 2 stats at the bottom (defense, dodge) but their armor is green colored. It has been raised to provide more mitigation and is also weighed. Armor is one of the worst stats, so these legs along with wyrmguard make for the worst choices. the wyrmguard has no avoidance, and no blue socket meaning it is even worse than saronite.
Why is armor one of the worst mitigation stats? It comes naturally on the gear, specially plate as high amounts of armor, and druids have a talent, so they don’t have to worry about it much. But also because it takes very large increases of armor for the damage reduction to be significant. A recent level 80 will have 20k armor, a semi geared 80 tank may have 25k, and a very high end one will have 30k, the difference is about 2% damage reduction from physical attacks between each one. While 4% between the lowest and highest one is noticeable, the time needed to get an extra 10k armor from items would make the job almost impossible, for just a 4% damage mitigation, while 2 upgrades can give you 4-5% more avoidance just from stats, and easily obtained.
Be the most aggressive!
Aggro: Hit and expertise affect aggro. The cap for hit is 8% which is about 280 hit rating. The minimum expertise (MINIMUM) should have is 26 which is about 180 expertise rating. This is the minimum so that the boss will not dodge your attacks. the maximum is much higher, and it eliminates the boss’s chance to parry your attacks. This not only gives more threat, but also reduces parry hasting. It is however very hard to obtain, and possibly easiest for pallys (they get a glyph with 10 expertise), and not entirely necessary.
Hit however is the problematic stat. While tanks dont really need to be hit capped, they do need some hit. The common accepted amount is usualy 6%. This provides for enough to keep misses at a minimum, and to hold aggro off your party/raid. There are cases in which its less and cases in which a tank needs more. This is because just like stats are weighed on items, the higher itemlevel gear a tank gets has more strength which in turn gives more block (for paladins and warriors) and mre attack power. White damage goes up, and skills that use shield block do more damage. So much more, that even with misses they can put out a solid amount of threat. This is not the case for recent 80s, and not even for semi-geared tanks. Tanks raiding with ulduar gear, will have around 1k strength, a high end tank has 1500 strength. There is a HUGE difference and the 6% hit is for the ulduar geared. remember those 500 str mean 1000 more attack power, and a lot more shield block value (which in turn ups the shield slam, or avenger shied or shield of the righteous damage).
Tools:
Check quickarmory.com It has a hit table, so you can see how bad your misses/parrys/dodges etc are.
wow-heroes.com can check for the realms/servers best geared toons, and you can filter them, look for your class spec, and you can compare them to your character. Don’t focus too much on the gear they have, or the amoutn of sockets (tis a bit overwhelming) but check the dodge %, parry % hit %, str, stamina.
TL:DR
Tanks should aim to gear up for the defense minimum (and anything over that) which is 540 defense. The next stat to go up should be expertise up to 26, then hit to somewhere about 6%, then after that just dodge and parry.
In the end a tank should have about 26% dodge, 20% parry, 4-6% hit, and over 35,000 health points (the more the better) So gem for stamina always, specially when it doesnt affect the other stats.
blue: stamina gem
yellow: defense and stamina
red: dodge and stamina
defense > dodge > parry > shield block rating/value
expertise > hit > strength
