Loading ...Will the Crushing Blow Myths Finally End?
One of the most popular myths surrounding Warrior gearing is that you require a 25% chance to block in order to not be susceptible to crushing blows with Shield Block up. For those who’ve been following me a long, long time… Yes, I talked about that back in June 2007. Yet, I still see threads asking if 25% block is required. I still see comments declaring you need 25% chance to block. (fyi, you don’t)
490 Defense = Immune to Crushing Blows?
Another popular one is mistaking the requirement to get 490 Defense with making you immune to Crushing Blows instead of with being immune to Critical Hits. This myth isn’t fought against quite so strongly for the simply fact that it’s good advice to get 490 Defense even if the person is striving for it for the wrong reason.
Resilience is like Defense, so…
An extension of the above derives from the True statement that combining Resilience and Defense can make you uncrittable. It is then asked whether or not Resilience can make you immune to Crushing Blows just like Defense can. You may shake your head a little, but you’d be surprised at how much misinformation is out there for a new tank.
Who’s Misinforming me?
The sad reality is that it’s rarely the written word that misinforms you, but often instead the spoken one. It’s your Guild Master. It’s your guild’s Main Tank. It’s your friend that just got you into the game. So many myths are weaved into the fabric of WoW that it’s basically impossible to ever uproot them.
Or is it…
Patch 3.0 is coming and when it hits The Burning Crusade it’s going to spell the end of Crushing Blows. Crushing Blows are no longer going to exist when it comes to raiding. Yes, if you’re level 26 and you fight a level 32… you’ll see Crushing Blows. We’re talking about level 70 here though folks and soon we’re talking about level 80 and in neither situation when you are the maximum level will you have to worry about Crushing Blows any longer.
Crushing Blows are gone.
And perhaps that will be the new myth once the old ones die down. The new myth will be that Crushing Blows exist. The new excuse every time an uneducated tank dies will be that he or she got crushed.
So, what’s the Point?
It’s time we fought back against misinformation. It’s time we shared the myths we’ve heard. The reality is that the above mentions only a few of the myths surrounding Warrior tanking, but there’s more… so many, many more and I know you’ve heard them. I know you’ve believed them and I know others still do believe them too.
So, what’s your Myth?
September 24th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
My favorite Myth is: One day, we’ll be able to tank bosses with a two hand- Oh wait..
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Tamuros reply on September 24, 2008 10:27 pm:
lol hell yea
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Talldar reply on September 29, 2008 1:27 am:
I guess we’ll see those in Wotlk - Fury-OTs wielding their 2h and a shield. 5 mans should be doable and I hell as sure am going to try it, and if just for fun
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September 24th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
The Myth fed to me: 490 DEF.. quote: “Pushes Crushing Blows off the Table.” This was something told to me by the MT in the guild I was merely a DPS in. When I started my Warrior, this Pally tank had me convinced that I had to have 490 for that reason as well as not being crit. I quickly noticed in higher end content by going over Combat Logs… that Crushes still occur.
Early on I saw a lot of Tanks gem for Socket Bonuses and Dodge, Parry, etc. I think that’s another thing put on Tanks by certain people. Its not as common, but I still see Tanks socket gems of all different colors, not for a Meta requirement even, just for Socket Bonus. I think they look at some tanks in Hyjal/BT/SWP Content and the gems they use, and think they should do the same. A lot of the Tanks I see in that content still have 17k+ unbuffed HP, with some Dodge or AGI Gems in there. You can afford to do so with the greater Stamina available on T6/equiv. gear, but I think new tanks should always socket for Stamina.
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Kilrak reply on September 25, 2008 7:57 am:
Yea I’m pushing a it over 17khp and the reason you socket for agi and other mitigation stats in gear such as mine is because the higher end instances have bosses that hit so hard and fast if u didnt gem for mitigation u would die realreal quick.
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Sanelora reply on September 26, 2008 6:11 pm:
Never socket for agi. Ever.
also, you can currently do everything in this game by stacking stam. it just doesnt make sense to keep going stacking stam if you have reached the EH requirements of the fight.
when socketing for avoidance, you socket
Red -> dodge
Yellow ->defense
blue -> stam
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September 24th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
My favorite myth is that stacking stamina is the only way to play a tank.
Sigh.
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admin reply on September 24, 2008 9:52 pm:
At your gear level, stacking stamina is considerably better. It’s always best to acquire the effective health minimums first and then pursue threat and avoidance.
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Psy reply on September 24, 2008 10:49 pm:
Yes, this is what everyone still believes, and it’s still an unfounded and pointless myth.
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Dethtank reply on September 25, 2008 2:59 am:
Having played both a tank and a healer, it doesn’t seem to be a myth to me. I’ve seen too many understammed tanks take a quick string of blows, even with high avoidance, and end up lying face down while the boss goes frees.
Veneretio reply on September 25, 2008 6:58 am:
Well when we discussing tanking, we’re assuming you’re main tanking content that’s relatively of your gear level. If you’re simply offtanking adds on farm content then you can pretty much gear however you like and you’ll be fine.
Hao reply on September 25, 2008 9:39 am:
This is still not a myth, tho from reading, psy and rochelle might be in the same camp. =D I get a string of blows after a parry and i’m still alive. The tank that has less EH and more avoidance and no hit rating or expertise will experience relative calm for a sec and then an “OH SH**” phase when he’s suddenly dead. Had that happen on mags the other week.
Gear for the encounter and not in general…
Cleaved reply on September 25, 2008 11:13 am:
Not to mention most tanks that socket for bonuses and dodge, forget they need good Threat gear, seeing as how they plan to NOT get hit, and gimp their rage a little bit. In Stamina Gear (given Badge Loot now available) I still run into Rage issues, depending on the encounter… and I’m not stacking avoidance.
Psy reply on September 25, 2008 8:20 pm:
The trick is, the EHP “requirement” forms a stairstep, for example say one hit is 8k HP, that means that to survive 2 hits, you need 16k, to survive 3, you need 24k.
If your buffed HP puts you at 23.5k HP, you’re basically just wasting 7500 HP of item points on stamina that could have been put on a stat that will keep you alive.
Regarding gearing per encounter, all I can say is DUH. If you know a boss’s standard hit value and you have max avoidance and max stamina/threat sets, you can match a boss perfectly by moving to the edge of a stairstep and going avoidance from there.
The “string of blows” is the bit you’re preventing with avoidance. Ex, say 4 straight hits will kill you. On a tank with 50% avoidance, a string of 4 hits has a 6.25% chance of killing you. On a tank with 75% avoidance, a string of 4 hits has a 1.6% chance of killing you, and a string of 3 hits has a 6.25% chance of killing you.
That’s an extremely (EXTREMELY) simplified version of the Burst Time / Reaction Time system. The also-extremely-simplified conclusion regarding avoidance is that avoidance becomes more powerful as you stack avoidance, and it becomes more powerful as you stack stamina. In other words, beyond a certain point, no matter how you’re gearing, avoidance will serve you better than stamina.
Meatgazer reply on September 26, 2008 7:03 am:
There is some stairstep to it, but it’s not as black and white as you’re saying.
Let’s say you are particularly unlucky on a fast hitting boss, and get parried in between two attacks, eat 3 hits in about 3 seconds. Yeah, each hit is going to deal 8k, for a total of 24k. However, since you’ve got a resto druid, lifebloom is ticking on you, and with a holy pally, you get a flash of light. If you had 23.5k health, guess what, you’re still alive to receive the two greater heals and the swiftmend heal. If you went in with 18k, yeah, you probably aren’t going to live through it. It’ll happen less often, but it will happen.
On the string business, remember that there’s more time for healing in a string of 4 blows then a string of 3 blows.
Avoidance and EH can both get you where you need to be, but EH will improve 100% of fights, until you get to the point where either:
a) Your healers run OOM
b) Your healers can’t heal damage back fast enough
That’s what sunwell does, since you can’t heal through brut without avoidance. Avoidance slows both the running out of mana and the DPS taken over the entire fight, but doesn’t protect you for spike occurances. The benefit of Avoidance comes with how good the healers are.
Our MT is an avoidance tank (not my choice, I’m EH) and we had some issues on Nightbane when we lost 4 DPS and a healer by the end of the second ground phase. As OT, I was applying debuffs (like a good OT), but not doing a ton of damage. That left us with 1 real DPS, me, the tank, and 2 healers. Long story short, Nightbane doesn’t have an enrage timer, so we did beat him without the healers going OOM. That would have never happened if I tanked, because healers would have been OOM long before then.
Here’s the moral of the story. Yes there is an effective cap on how high you can go in EH and have it be effective. But it’s very high, and actually decreases as you get to tougher content (because DPS taken goes up) and how effective your healers are. So if your healers are struggling to keep you alive under normal circumstances (or if they die/OOM on a regular basis), avoidance is the answer. Otherwise, you’re still seeing benefit from EH, and since itemization on gems gives us 15 stam v 10 dodge, and we have feats that improve stamina (16.5 stam v 10 dodge), EH wins.
At least, that’s how I see it.
Hao reply on September 26, 2008 10:37 am:
I think meatgazer has a real good point. My healers are usually pugged since our MH had to leave for personal reasons and we don’t have too many healers that are on for raids to begin with. I know their +heals most of the time, but I don’t know how well they heal in a raid. For the string of blows after a parry, they sometimes can’t pick it up. When your healers say “I wasn’t doing much healing and suddenly his HP just went to 0″, then that means a.) they weren’t paying attention or b.) they just couldn’t react to the splash damage that happened and the tank didn’t have enough health to pick up the spike. I’ve even had healers with +2k heals be beaten in heals by ones that had +1400. That is the reason I still stack EH.
Psy reply on September 24, 2008 10:50 pm:
Hopefully EHP will start to die off with the release of WotLK, since one of the two major concerns (Threat) will be at least somewhat addressed.
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Aylii reply on September 24, 2008 11:20 pm:
Currently, it looks like stacking a balance between STR + Stam + Def is the way to go, with extra emphasis on the stam (30k health on tanks entering Naxx!). It changes every patch though.
Hao reply on September 25, 2008 9:41 am:
From what I’ve been hearing about our defense not letting us being uncrittable in beta testing, it might be better to stack EH like druids….
Cleaved reply on September 24, 2008 11:29 pm:
It depends on your gear level, and I believe I stated that in my comment. You can gem your gear while progressing for Dodge and other stats, but you’ll end up giving your healers headaches when you DON’T dodge/parry/block or whatever crap you are gemmed for. Set bonuses aren’t really worth going for, thats the main myth I was addressing. If you want to stack all Dodge Gems, or all DEF Gems, go ahead… but don’t socket for Set Bonuses… unless its extremely worthwhile. (which they usually aren’t)
If you are in BT/SWP content, hopefully your healers are geared enough, and you are geared enough, that you can start to make creative decisions with your gear. You can tweak your defensive stats here and there because of the type of gear you have. If you are just starting (also in my comment) you don’t need to be gemming for set bonuses in gear you will 1.) Replace soon 2.) Have to waste badges/gold on Gemming and 3.) Have a hard time with new encounters.
Stam is a warm and fuzzy blanket… that you can eventually let go, if you want to. I believe the argument has been made that Avoidance tanking and Effective HP Tanking are both correct… Its your STYLE of play that dictates which you do, and is entirely preference. We have 3 Tanks in guild at my Gear level. The healers prefer healing the 2 Effective HP Tanks, over the guy with AGI/Dodge/DEF Gems… for what that’s worth.
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Hydrix reply on September 25, 2008 3:38 am:
I used to think just like you psy. But until you get into T6 content, stamina is the way to go. The bosses don’t hit hard enough to warrant stacking avoidance and you need to give that buffer to your healers should a silence hit or some form of raid damage.
However, once you do move into T6, and the bosses start hitting you for almost third of your life per wack (non-crushing), then stacking avoidance becomes more worth while. The hardest hitting boss I’ve tanked so far is supremus, and he hits for well over 6k. Given the type of damage, incoming, I don’t wear stamina gear there, I wear avoidance oriented gear.
Take brutallus (as I’ve read): you can’t possibly expect to soak the damage he does. You NEED to have massive avoidance to have any chance of staying alive. Stamina tanks step into that fight (again what I’ve read) and get gibbed royally.
As was said before, it depends on your level of content. Until you hit T6, you’re always better off with stamina, it worked for me!
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Kilrak reply on September 25, 2008 8:01 am:
Yar most MTs in Sunwell are stacking about 40% dodge among other things. Remember that parry and block have they’re place but dodge is where its at if u want to totally avoid hits.
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Rochelle reply on September 25, 2008 12:26 pm:
Vene said in his first reply: “It’s always best to acquire the effective health minimums first and then pursue threat and avoidance.” And that is exactly right. There is absolutely a myth that stamina is the only way to gear a tank. But, the myth isn’t wholly without merit. Until you get a baseline of stamina, EH really is the only way to gear yourself.
I suppose that leads to another myth regarding where that baseline is. I think most newish tanks think they need a lot more EH than they actually do.
Cleaved reply on September 26, 2008 9:52 am:
Well said, Rochelle, I think you managed to describe the point in fewer words that many of us were trying to make in relation to Psy’s comment. Stack EH, to a certain point… then gear/socket for avoidance when the content dictates. Anything from non-Heroics to TK and Hyjal can be dealt with using EH, with changes in gear/sockets for certain encounters. After that, I admit, I haven’t been there… so I don’t know, hence me stating what I’ve SEEN tanks in content above my experience… gem for.
My “myth” was the one a lot of tanks THINK they need to socket for bonuses and go for Avoidance off the bat. EH will serve them much better… but I think Psy is arguing while agreeing with most of us saying we need avoidance later on, but he also seems to gem his own tank at lower levels for it, which is… imo, not as good as EH gems.
Zariqx reply on September 25, 2008 5:31 pm:
I’m huge on EH. I’m the MT. My guild in general is very strong on healers and tanks. I tank with the vengeful gladiator chest, socketed and enchanted for more EH. It’s got at least 10% more EH than the 100 badge chest which is really my only other choice in that slot. My healers love healing me, it’s easy and predictable. I can survive a nice string of big hits, giving my healers a lot of time to react. I have about 45% pure avoidance and I’m past the expertise soft cap. I also am able to dish out huge threat all the time.
This is in T5. If we get much into T6 I may aim for more avoidance depending on how things look on the boss fights. So far my EH has served us very well. My proof is in my pudding.
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September 24th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Mine is: If you stack enough dodge you won’t need a healer :S
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September 25th, 2008 at 12:13 am
Haha, the other day I met a tank progressing into T5 by the look of his gear who wanted the SBR enchant despite me trying to explain several times why it wasn’t needed (he was definitely crush immune with Shield Block up). He was adamant that it was necessary, and yes, the guild master told him.
It’s true though that unless you read an article on the combat table very carefully, and probably have some understanding of how software tends to work, these types of mistake are easy. I believed for a while, despite intellectually knowing otherwise, that a little extra SBR would still give you a chance of avoiding a crushing blow if you miss Shield Block (for normal gear levels it doesn’t).
The converse mistake that I expect with 3.0 is people valuing SBR the same as they do now, that is almost worthless. In 3.0 your Shield Block ability is up 25% of the time with talents, and usually less because you’re not expected to mash the button any more. The other 30 seconds out of every 40 you rely on your avoidance and SBR. Your shield blocks a respectable several hundred damage, so tanks should re-evaluate the benefits of SBR in the very list.
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Dethtank reply on September 25, 2008 3:05 am:
However, in 3.0, with boss fights anyway, you aren’t relying on avoidance and Shield Block to be crushproof, since all tanks are crushproof in raids now, so SBR is still not worth much.
Do you get a percent more to block, or another 8 stam? The stam still looks like the better deal.
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Hydrix reply on September 25, 2008 7:51 am:
You are forgetting that blizzard is putting a massive effort into making shield block value even more prevalent. Hell, I’ve heard reports of hitting 1500 block value easily in 80 blues. If you had (hypothetically), 50% block value, that can be assumed on average to be knocking 750 damage of each and every hit. Being more conservative and saying 33% block that’s still 500 damage off per hit.
If a raid boss is hitting you for 5000, how much armor do you think you’d have to stack to reduce all of his damage (again, on average) by 10%? You value the 10% damage reduction from defensive stance, right? How about another 10% damage reduction on top of that (overall).
As it stands now, yeah block rating is pointless because unless you are specifically going for max block value (through a specific set), then block value isn’t really prevalent on our standard gear sets. But in the expansion, where I’ve seen the average tanking piece have massive strength numbers, hitting numbers of 1500 block suddenly is not out of the question and blocking an attack actually becomes a strong form of mitigation.
On another note: no one ever stacked block rating in order to become uncrushable (something achievable naked with a shield equipped and shield block up). Block rating and crushing blows have nothing to do with each other for a warrior tank.
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Psy reply on September 25, 2008 8:24 pm:
Shield Block Value is already absurd. I can personally sit at 1450 SBV (with trinkets popped), and I have a screenshot from the PTR of full-blocking a 3k attack with Shield Block up. Come 3.0, with crit blocks, I wouldn’t be surprised to see people full-blocking 6-7k attacks.
Machus reply on September 26, 2008 2:44 am:
The point of this is that Shield Block Rating will go from a confusing and largely useless stat (since it is masked by keeping Shield Block up) to at least an intuitive and cheap mitigation stat. More SBR will mean more chance to block some decent amount of damage in the 30/40 sec that Shield Block is unavailable. You might not care about this in all situations, but it will often be valuable.
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September 25th, 2008 at 1:58 am
I have a bit of a query here which I guess I could put anywhere, but Ill phrase it to fit the current discussion:
IIUC: Warriors rely on shield block to be crush immune. With talents, its effects 2 blocks within 6 seconds.
Does that mean that any boss that swings (even temporarily) more often than twice in 6 seconds has a chance to crush?
I’m finding boss swing timer data tricky to come accross, so, help me out on this one if I’m way off…
(plus there’s the whole parry-crush debate)
IE: if thats correct, is the phrase ‘Crush Immune’ a myth of its own?
Maybe I’m just being pedantic…
(great blog btw)
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Hydrix reply on September 25, 2008 7:56 am:
Keeping TC is important to ensuring that they don’t eat through your shield block charges, but what you are saying is about right.
Take prince (best example) during phase 2. You WILL get crushed. The chance of you getting through that fight without taking a single crushing blow is almost nil. If you get hit a third time before the next shield block cooldown, then yes, there’s the standard 15% chance you’re going to get crushed.
Crush immune (right now) is a myth UNLESS you do a passive 102.4% avoidance set. Vene posted an article about that (I forget when) that achieves the feat, but it really is just a gimmic as you have to gimp so many other important stants in order to achieve it.
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Tara reply on September 25, 2008 11:16 am:
More specifically…the 15% for Crushing is the space Crushing Blows occupy on the attack table. The more avoidance you have, the more often, effectively, you will get Crushing Blowed when you don’t block, dodge, parry or get missed on an attack…because Normal Attacks are compressed off the table first. That’s why when you look in your combat log after you got your face smashed on Tidewalker, you’re almost guaranteed to see that the attacks you didn’t block Crushed you.
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Tara reply on September 25, 2008 11:17 am:
That made me think of another myth…
Block is avoidance. X_X
Rochelle reply on September 25, 2008 12:30 pm:
and dodge, parry and miss are mitigation >.
Smaken reply on September 26, 2008 6:42 am:
Prince during phase 2 has 25% chance to miss from dual wielding.
Putting together a 75% deflection (miss, parry, dodge & block) is actually not that hard. I’ve tanked prince (as fury) with 10k health & 12k ac because I had the 75% deflection to carry me through phase 2. Our MT with 15k health would eventually get gibbed because he only had about ~40% avoidance.
With the changes to block (both the str change and the shield block CD change) its going to play a much bigger part in our “avoidance” than it ever has before.
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Hydrix reply on September 26, 2008 11:10 am:
Your math is wrong. You cannot factor the bosses miss rate into the attack table against you. His attack table is far dfiferent from YOUR attack table.
Let’s say that prince somehow stacked hit rating. he’d now be replacing misses with hits. The fact is, however, that his 15% chance to crush is not pushed off the table by his own misses. His attack table is something like:
5.6% crit
15% crush
19% miss
the rest are hits.
If he eliminated his miss rate it’d be:
5.6% crit
15% crush
the rest are hits.
Either scenario, he still has 15% chance to crush. The only reason you survived over him is because his 40% avoidance (fi you’re including miss) is extremely low. You had so much avoidance that you weren’t getting hit enough to actually get gibbed. However, the fact remains that if you have exactly 87.4% combined block/miss/dodge/parry, every attack that gets through is going to be a crush if you aren’t using shield block (correct me if I’m wrong on that Vene).
Kilrak reply on September 25, 2008 8:06 am:
Another of the myths that is out there and this is a biggy is that u can become crush immune at all. As it stands currently there is literally no way to become crush immune as it is never actually pushed off of the table. After a certain point the damage taken from crushes is mitigated not the chance of being crushed.
Again all this will change in 3.0 but for now it is impossible to become actually crush immune even with shield block up
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admin reply on September 25, 2008 9:06 am:
Actually I kinda did push it off the table with the gear set illustrated in this article: http://www.tankingtips.com/2008/02/02/the-road-to-passive-uncrushable/
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marklar reply on September 25, 2008 10:45 am:
“After a certain point the damage taken from crushes is mitigated not the chance of being crushed.”
wait, what?
can someone confirm this is a false statement, as i have never heard of such a mechanism…
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admin reply on September 25, 2008 11:02 am:
I can. Crushes definitely can be pushed off the table and this “certain point” they’re mitigated at doesn’t exist.
Hydrix reply on September 25, 2008 11:18 am:
“Again all this will change in 3.0 but for now it is impossible to become actually crush immune even with shield block up”
I smell a troll. Don’t recognize this guy’s name either.
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Kilrak reply on September 25, 2008 1:57 pm:
Nope is actually something that I have heard from a severely well geared tank. Please do correct me if I’m wrong though as he is also the only one I have heard it from. He stated that crushing blows never get pushed off of the table they just get mitigated after a certain amount of avoidance.
admin reply on September 25, 2008 2:20 pm:
I’m afraid you’ve been completely misinformed. Crushing blow absolutely can be pushed off the table. It’s where the idea of the Passive Uncrushable set spawn from where you stack a lot of Block Rating in order to get that last 15% off. (Because Crushing Blows are the last thing removed from the Combat Table)
As far as them getting mitigated by a certain amount of avoidance. I can assure you that there’s no relationship between mitigation (aka armor) and avoidance (aka dodge, parry, miss rate).
Hao reply on September 25, 2008 3:13 pm:
you can push it off the table, but it is unrealistic without the setup vene shows you.
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Arold reply on September 25, 2008 5:56 pm:
The thing is, bosses that constantly attack that quickly don’t do nearly as much damage per hit. Prince crushes you a lot, but it’s not necessarily going to kill you. Keep the shield block up anyway though!
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September 25th, 2008 at 3:27 am
The problem is that blizzard made a game, with no information to new people regarding hit, spell hit, crushing blows, critical immune (who would know that 5.6% is the skulls crit rate?), etc. How is a new person supposed to know that 102.4% avoidance is needed to push crushing blows off the table? Or that you need 142 hit rating to ensure your yellow’s don’t miss? This type of information is not readily available, so people are likely to believe the first person who gives them direction, despite how wrong it might be.
The point is that these type of myths will never go away because either a) they’ve never read the appropriate information or b) they are too stubborn to accept that they’ve been wrong the entire time.
HOWEVER, I think it’s absolutely ridiculous to have someone in a position of authority (such as a guild master) who has no idea what the **** they’re talking about. That just pisses me off.
If someone tells you that you’re wrong about something, even if you’re the GM (such as 490 defense does NOT make you crush immune) you should investigate that claim, even if you think you’re 100% correct. It’s stupid to go through life without exploring the possibility that you’re wrong about something.
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J.R. reply on September 26, 2008 6:46 am:
I wonder if Blizzard purposely did not put the information out there. If they had, then sites like this and TankSpot surely wouldn’t exist. There would be no need for sites explaining the mechanics of the game, and building communities around people who enjoy discussing the mechanics.
The more I think about it, the more I think it was a brilliant move on Blizzard’s part.
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September 25th, 2008 at 7:38 am
So here is what I do (I’m a main tank in BT content stuck on illidari council) when I come across a lesser geared tank running around who asks for advice…. go to tankingtips.com and tankspot and verify everything I said… study these two websites and make up your own mind… generally, a few days later, I get a thankyou in a tell or by game mail for that advice… lol… the truth is out there….
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Dunkealme reply on September 25, 2008 9:29 am:
I had my tank rep restored after I mentioned tankingtips.com and tankspot.com LOL
I am now friendly with this faction… trying to get to honored as quick as possible since the perks are pretty special ;P
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September 25th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Myth: Warriors can’t tank multiple mobs.
Snap!
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Hao reply on September 25, 2008 3:25 pm:
we can’t.. At least I can’t do anything over 4 mobs in a heroic instance effectively without a healer pulling aggro. TC hits four so as long as dps focuses on my target, we are ususally fine.. But for the dps who loves multishots…… Sucks to be you.
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Psy reply on September 25, 2008 8:29 pm:
Get a full threat set.
No seriously, a full threat set.
In mine, I’m hit capped, expertise capped, sitting at 30% block with 700 SBV, and make absolutely sure to have a Felsteel Shield Spike on that baby.
Then, remember how healing aggro works; The less healing that has to be done, the less chance of aggro- So instead of stacking stamina (EHP, HOOOOO) get some avoidance.
There’s no limit to the number of mobs I can hold against a healer in a heroic instance, and against DPS I’m solid so long as DPS is attacking no more than 2 separate targets. Don’t get me started on AOE threat though… Although on the other hand that’ll be simple in a few weeks.
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Hydrix reply on September 26, 2008 3:32 am:
You make it sound like it’s all about gear when it comes to warrior multi mob tanking, and it’s not.
Kilrak reply on September 26, 2008 8:55 am:
Just curious if any of u out there watch ur Threat Per Second. Mine usually sits at about 1300-1400 and was wondering how it stacked up to other peeps. Also Hydrix while its not all about gear and skill is definitely a very large factor, gear makes the impossible possible.
Cleaved reply on September 26, 2008 9:59 am:
I keep my Sporregar rep Shield and Block Gear/Trinkets for Multi-mob “AOE” Tanking. Ask your group to give you about 10 seconds, and you’ll have 5 stacks of poison on each mob from blocking, and you can heal yourself with every Block using Figurine. Its not hard to multi-mob tank, it takes patient DPS and a healer with Faith that you can survive a few blows before he lays into you with heals. Anything over 4 is difficult, but doable. Usually you don’t run into situations with more than 4 unless you have absolutely ZERO CC… or they are non-elites, in which case, the Petrified Lichen Guard and Block gear is really nice to use.
Hydrix reply on September 26, 2008 11:14 am:
Kilrak I know that, but the poster above me made it seem like it’s all about your gear, which it isn’t. It’s about finding that perfect balance between reducing your incoming damage (and healing aggro) and taking enough damage such that you have enough rage to out threat your dps. Hence by block value is so wonderful because it reduces the damage while still allowing you to take some damage for rage gen
Kilrak reply on September 26, 2008 11:38 am:
yar
Hao reply on September 26, 2008 3:43 pm:
Psy, sorry, but at the level of progression our guild is at (ie kara, mags/gruuls, first half of ZA, lurker in ssc) I might be able to arrange my gear and regem so that I can be hit capped but not expertise capped. Even with the shard of contempt that I can get from HMGT. Bottom line, I’m stuck with teh gear I have at our progression level and I pass on gear a lot so that other tanks can get geared up. I just have to make teh best of the gear I have. Also see my post about the healers I usually get after our MH left and tell me again how important avoidance is in kara.
Talldar reply on September 29, 2008 2:58 am:
As for multi-tanking (which isn’t the same as AoE-tanking, what we can’t do, for the sake of completeness) my strong belief is that it really comes down to your skill and practice in those situations. For a Pally it’s just tanking, for a warrior it’s controlling chaos and making use of everything we got, including concussion blow, planned taunts, cleave and the little gear-thing everyone can do.
My turn on multimob-threat-gear involves high armor & sbv, high strength and everything that AoE damages. Felsteel-Spike, PvP-Shield & Helmet (just as to stay at 490 def), Darkmoon-Card, the lightning-thingy-bufffood, the free-to-take brewfest-trinket for sbv.
But after all it’s about what you make of it. Pull target 2, thunderclap, concussion blow target 3, ss target 4, now taunt back to you running-off target 1, … - get it all out, and make it work. Like I said, it takes practice to control chaos, but those skills will serve you well on accidental pulls, bad pulls, or whenever unexpected things happen.
If it comes to elite-mobs on you I admit the number managable is highly dependent on your gear level. You’ll not even get a chance to tank more than 2 heroic trahsmobs without some avoidance and EH, but as already said here: If you’re not geared well make sure you got some CC and avoid situations with more than 2 mobs on you in the first place.
Vene had a great article here opening my eyes for a very interesting fact: Sometimes you’re tanking best when not trying to tank everything.
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September 25th, 2008 at 9:36 am
OK Vene,
so who’s job is it to remove the myths and bring truth to the wow community? I think you are somewhat responsible for it (hehehe payback for the article) as much as we are.
So why not create a tanking quiz test (lol) that if they pass then their name get’s added to the knowledgable list of tankingtips.com, which then they can use as a reference?? lol
tank: I am telling you, 490 in def does not make you uncrushable..
noob: yes, I heard a MT of big raiding guild say that.
tank: ok, go check if his name shows up on tankingtips.com. If it doesn’t, then he is a phoney.
noob: what is tankingtips.com?
tank: …. yeah… you might want to read some content there as well…. …. /gquit
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Hao reply on September 25, 2008 9:45 am:
ya.. MT of a big raiding guild eh? Prolly doesn’t know what the “^” stands for in ^7500^ either…
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Rochelle reply on September 25, 2008 12:41 pm:
It stands for “about to yelled at by the raid leader because you did something stupid and went splat”
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J.R. reply on September 26, 2008 6:49 am:
Is that a crush? I honesty don’t know that notation.
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September 25th, 2008 at 9:50 am
That fast weapons are better than slow weapons for tanking. This appears be a myth for the post-WotLK era assuming that Naxx loot like Broken Promise with speeds of 2.50 are an indication of things to come:
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2008/september/8982/nax25_weap_brokenpromise.jpg
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admin reply on September 25, 2008 11:42 am:
As long as Heroic Strike exists, Fast weapons will remain superior to Slow weapons in High rage situations when threat is your goal. Now if threat becomes a secondary concern then such a weapon would be excellent since Devastate spamming it would result in higher overall dps.
I think you can expect a mixture of fast, medium and slow weapons in the game though.
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Psy reply on September 25, 2008 8:31 pm:
Vene, do you know if Tankspot has math for Fast vs Slow, concerning the difference in number of HS vs higher Devastates?
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September 25th, 2008 at 10:05 am
My favorite myth is:
“I’m wearing plate armor so I’m the tank.”
This myth could be eliminated if the tanking community cleared up the definition of “tanking” Far too often do I see people totally unprepared for the job jump in and get everyone in the party killed (mostly at levels below 70). The tank is not just someone in plate armor, there’s a lot more to it. Here’s my starting definition which I think everyone here will agree on the following:
Tank n: a character that stays at the top of the mobs threat list and recieves the majority of that mobs attacks
Tanking v: The act of establishing threat on all hostile mobs in order to receive the majority of the mobs attacks.
*I use the word majority here because there are bosses with special attacks that ignore threat lists. Example: The Clacker’s Water Spit attack (Slave Pens).
And notice that plate armor is not in this definition.
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September 25th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Alright, seems this post exploded wildly in a ball of shield throwing.
1. Devs want tanks to have to gem for defense early on. It was too easy to get uncrittable in BC. Didn’t even have to set foot in a heroic instance / Kara.
2. Right now our gear in Wrath @ 80, is loaded with strength, stamina, and defense. To a lesser extent, hit, dodge, and block value. Not so much different than it was at 70, but enough to let people know exactly what mold Blizzard is going to make us fill.
3. With the attempt at homogenization of classes, it no longer really matters how much EH we have versus a druid, or if the paladin can still easycrate. As I have always advocated, it is about balance. Stacking massive amounts of EH is not going to get you anywhere if you don’t have decent stamina itself, and vice versa. There are abilities that cannot miss, remember.
4. Stack Block Value. With us getting so much of it now, coupled with certain abilities (Damage Shield and Critical Block), it would be crazy to not stack that.
Now you have a choice. If you want my personal opinion though, get a healthy balance str, sta, def, hit. Why? Because with mobs not crushing, they don’t hit that hard anymore. There is not as much spikes now either with all the hots / abilities that healers are getting, any spikes will be taken care of before you notice it most of the time.
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Andenthal reply on September 25, 2008 11:46 am:
Aylii - “Because with mobs not crushing, they don’t hit that hard anymore”
Crushing blows should never have been in the calculations for Warrior tanks. If you were counting on Crushing blows to give you adequate rage, you were doing something wrong.
The mobs will hit just as hard as they always have. We just dont have to spam Shield Block every 5 secs anymore.
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Aylii reply on September 25, 2008 2:05 pm:
Never have I stated such, only a fool would be concerned with taking a crush for rage.
Also, from my experience in Tanking Naxx, the mobs don’t hit as hard as they would of had they crushed, and many hit fast. Only when beta is over and we have solid data can we actually determine the validity of how hard mobs hit.
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admin reply on September 25, 2008 2:23 pm:
Ya, I’d imagine it’ll be about the same although we’ll certainly see more Fast hitting bosses than we did before.
An interesting little aside though… the fastest Teron Gorefiend kills with the highest threat did involve Warriors using half tanking, half dps gear and intentionally taking crushing blows to maintain massive rage levels. (Yes, we should pity their healers)
Hydrix reply on September 26, 2008 11:19 am:
Actually on some fights I intentionally don’t use shield block because taking a crush is worth while in terms of threat. Best example I can think of? Void Reaver. However, his crushes don’t hit that hard so it’s definitely manageable.
It’s interesting you bring up Gorefiend Vene becuase my guild attempted him last night and our dps was catching up to the off tank (he’s about equal gear to me, but I have better fury gear so I respecced). I was sad because I saw him sitting at 100 rage almost the entire time. I called out on vent for him to start heroic striking but he didn’t listen. It made me go QQ sad face.
We got him to 34% because a few people hadn’t even attempted to try the Teron Gorefiend simulator and obviously let constructs get to the raid. Which made me QQ more because tonight I have to heal and I know the gaunlets of enforcement are going to drop
Ioseb reply on September 27, 2008 2:05 pm:
“…our dps was catching up to the off tank” -Hydrix
Wait what? Off… tank…?
Rochelle reply on September 28, 2008 12:26 am:
I was kinda wondering that too. Why do you have an offtank for gorefiend?
Spaz reply on September 28, 2008 6:08 am:
“(he’s about equal gear to me, but I have better fury gear so I respecced).”
I think he’s saying that the Guild’s off-tank became MT for the fight because he(Hydrix) re-spec’d.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Actually, its been suggested (and I believe), if anything the lack of crushing blows in raids means that the average attacks of a boss will hit harder overall. Trading the random, luck-based effect with something that is consistent, but very tough, and largely replacing the insta-gib loss with a slower, more progressive, but more entertaining/satisfying (my opinion), encounter as the healers are bled dry, through higher overall tank damage and more raid damage effects.
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Hydrix reply on September 26, 2008 3:34 am:
Best example I can think of in my experience is supremus. He doesn’t crush, but holy god he might as well considering how much damage he does. I imagine that more bosses will be hitting like he does.
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September 25th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Best I’ve heard from a tank is
“It doesn’t matter what gear I have as long as the healers are geared i can tank anything”
everyone in trade loled so hard when they saw that.
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September 25th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
By far, my favorite myth is that raid members should all complement the healers, and talk about how good the dps is, but always forget the tank. At least I’m not bitter or jaded.
My old favorite myth is that tanks should ignore dodge rating.
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admin reply on September 26, 2008 8:10 am:
My favourite myth is Dodge rating = Avoidance when in reality Avoidance is a combination of Dodge, Parry and Miss rate.
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Sumendis reply on September 26, 2008 1:31 pm:
Still what I see the most often is that people equate avoidance = dodge + parry + block…
Have to admit though, blizzard was a bit mischievous writing them down in that way and “hiding” miss-chance under defense mouse-over
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September 27th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
“Block value is the best and only threat stat”
From a past guild’s offtank, and yes, this was looooong after the introduction of expertise, in fact it was when I picked up my 2.4 badge belt, the one loaded with Hit and Expertise, he reckoned it was a terrible threat piece.
“Any tank with more than 5 white hits in a boss fight is sh**. You need to make sure HS is permanently queued and use SS and Revenge on c/d, Devastate only when you have the rage.”
^ This guy’s now tanking KJ. *sigh*
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September 27th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
My favorite myth about warrior tanking is that we HAVE to have CC for certain heroics, Bot for example. Not only is that not the case, but it can be effectively tanked without any deaths in well under an hour having no CC. Why does everyone always think warrior tanks = lots of CC or everyone dies?
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Kazuma reply on September 29, 2008 2:18 am:
This fits well with the myth of paladins don’t need any CC. When I went a heroic with my priest I had this protection paladin who probably thought “I’m the king of AOE, I tank every mob!”.
Well … his gear wasnt up to it ^^
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Talldar reply on September 29, 2008 3:09 am:
See my comment above - it depends on your gear level. If you’re full T4/5+ and your group as well and you farm for badges, you’ll not need CC in Bota.
But if you’re just gearing up and have maybe 2 badge-items and some blues at hands, you’ll get screwed quite quickly in many a heroic.
Which leads me to another kind-of-myth about (esp. new) tanks:
“Every tank should be overequipped for the content he’s tanking”
(add: “so we can easily replace our far-too-low greens with tah purple epixx”)
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Desmurick reply on September 29, 2008 3:29 am:
I agree with this, but that’s really what I mean when I say it’s a myth. Yes, when you’re starting out you have to have CC or the mobs hitting you will do too much damage to not hold agro over the healer. But it seems as if most people don’t realize that eventually you no longer have that issue, i.e. you don’t need CC if the heroic is done correctly. What’s sad is that most tanks I know still believe this myth. They refuse to even try certain heroics without CC because it’s gone from a necessity to a crutch for them. In my mind this applies greatly to Vene’s post on gearing up for Kara… you do it for the experience. I encourage every tank to try things differently from time to time, run those heroics without that CC, and see how it turns out. If nothing else you’re bound to get experience, if not in how to handle 5 mobs, then at least in how to tell when you’re not geared enough to be hit by 5 mobs.
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MadTanker reply on October 1, 2008 12:12 pm:
I dont like cc in most cases, the more i get hit the more threat i make. (obviously- more rage more threat) and it kinda trains you deal with more mobs at once, and hold threat on them all. if you do ever have a multi cc situation, and more than 1 breaks, or adds, you have greater chance of surviving of your tank is accustomed to tankin multiple mobs at once, and holding the aggro against the heals.
TC, SS dev mob1, revenge M2, dev M3, ss M1 again, dev M4, dev M5, SS M1, TC. with 5 mobs attacking you, you got plenty o rage for all this. i find it entertaining, tankin 1 mob, is boring unless your an ultra badass tank, and are trying to out dps the dps…..
September 29th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
No CCC are you kakakiding me? Really though, CC is not needed if you have a group of players that know how to play well. My biggest myth is that every non-CC’s mob must be tanked. In a pull with 4+ mobs and no CC I am going to get initial aggro but when mob 1 (skull) is at about 60% i am going to play much less attention to him and start building a threat pool on mob 2 (X). While maintaining my rotation on 3 4 5. The caveat is that if my healer pulls agro an intervene is incoming.
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October 1st, 2008 at 12:04 pm
“end game tanks have to gem for dodge as much as possible”
MT pug.
I see alot of people over shoot the avoidance issue leaving much to be desired on stam. and dodge isnt the only way to go. i’m one the ones who prefer the parry build, it frees up talents normally used towards rage production talents. You do generate rage when you parry an incoming blow, unlike dodge. however for that rage generation you lose overall avoidance a bit. I definatly accept dodge is a better “avoidance stat” it has a higher value per point of avoidance, but i dont think it’s always the best way. Now im not quoteing, cant remeber the exact numbers of the top of my head. but 1 point dodge is say 1.67 avoid, and 1 point parry is 1.34 or something to that effect. however with the lesser avoidance stat you get higher rage generation, and even able to drop any rage gen talents if you’d like for better prot talents you could afford to get before. I think the build is a bit overlooked anyway. But I hate to see people say gem for all dodge is the only end game way. Granted most of them probly ether havent been there, or really sucked at when they did…..
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Kavtor reply on October 1, 2008 12:29 pm:
The threat returns on parry aren’t that great. You’re better off gemming dodge in reds, and hit in a few yellows. You’ll get a better return on threat and avoidance.
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MadTanker reply on October 1, 2008 12:47 pm:
of course it isnt a high value, but it is a decent avoidance stat, and does generate rage. slightly lower avoidance, with slitghtly higher threat. and it would be nice to save the points from rage generating talents. to be honset, my tank is only 55, but i had 9 level 70 toons, and having leveld that many, i learned alot about tanking before leveling a tank. esspecially when i made my healer. But i had read every post on this forum, before I even came up with my tanks name and class. At level 55 to test it out, ive spent stupid amounts of gold and respecing in and out of rage generating tanlnts, and 2 gear sets. one wiht a ton of dodge, and one with a ton of parry, incliding 12 epic world drops, so reguardlss of spec and build my tank is crazy good for 54. My TPS in dodge set is about 135, and i top dps/dmg done chart in all instances. My TPS in parry set is 185. and thats using the same sheild and wepon. Flurry axe and wall of dead. still have the same dps output in both sets. I am generating more threat as a parry build so far. But I am well aware this is subject to chance in % over for level 70. My plan is tanking trash is a parry set, and boss’s in dodge sets. Boss’s tend to give your mroe than ebough rage to get the job done. Trash can leave you bit wanting at times. but being if I can drop rage generating talents in parry build, for something I wanted in prot with this build, then it did what i wanted it too. OR i could just be totally wrong lol, not saying that isnt an option, but I think it will work for my style. basically No cc, almost ever.
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Meatgazer reply on October 1, 2008 2:02 pm:
In high level tanking, almost all rage comes from taking damage. To get an idea on the rate of return on parries, let’s use a theoretical example.
Parry can speed up your next attack up to 40%, but on average it ends up being around 18.5%. Assuming the average white hit gives 20 rage (pretty high estimate), each parry will give you an average of about 4 rage (rounding up) per parry.
Now, lets compare parry and dodge when gemmed into gear. Rating wise, 1% parry is equivalent to about 1.25% dodge. In this theoretical example, you have the ability to choose between 10% parry and 12.5% dodge.
This parry % will give on average 0.4 rage per boss swing. With a boss swing speed of 2.0, this translates to about 12 rage per minute, which is equivalent to taking about 1300 damage. If 1300 damage a minute is the difference between having enough rage or not, something has gone terribly wrong. Even on trash, if you assume that you’re attacked every 0.5 seconds, 10% parry only yields 48 extra rage per minute (5300 damage).
On the other hand, 2.5% increased avoidance can be very useful, especially in boss fights.
I always wanted to screw around for a parry set, but if your goal is raid tanking, dodge will make your life (and everyone else’s life) easier.
Meatgazer reply on October 1, 2008 2:36 pm:
Funny, I thought those numbers looked wrong.
I forgot the /2 on the rage generation for white swings. Instead of 20 rage per hit, try 10. Therefore, you have 6 rage per minute for bosses and 24 rage per minute on trash, which are even worse numbers.