Loading ...From 5 to 10/25: The Raiding Transition
I recently did an article on Clustering focused on the transition from being relatively new to tanking to doing your first 5 mans. This post you could say is the next step in the chain. We’re going to look at how the rules change when we move from doing 5 mans to doing 10 and 25 mans and why it’s important you are aware of the transition you’ll be going through sooner than later.
Vene’s Raiding Rule of Thumb
The only thing that matters is Bosses. Everything else is pointless.
This should indicate to you immediately a massive difference between 5 mans and 10/25 mans. Whereas 5 mans are about being able to generate a ton of threat and moving throughout the instance in a quick yet, controlled way… the emphasis for raiding is NOT that at all. It becomes that eventually once the bosses are just as trivial as they are on 5-mans, but it does not start that way at all. Bosses are the road blocks in raids. It’s not about how fast you get to them, but instead of how few attempts you can kill them in. It doesn’t do you any good killing the trash before the boss faster if you end up wiping on the boss multiple times.
Raiding is about maximizing your chance of killing a boss.
How do we Maximize ourselves?
Do not Gem and Enchant your “best” tanking pieces for threat.
Why?
Gems and Enchants are permanent. You can always “gear down”, but you can never “gear up”. In other words, you can always swap out an item for something more dps-oriented in order to get more threat/dps, but you can never swap your best tanking piece for something with higher survivability.
But, my gear is Good enough
It can never be. There’s a lot of encounters where you’re simply not going to have the luxury of completely focused healing and even more to the point, the less healers that are necessary to be dedicated to you… the better. This is a major difference between 5 mans and Raids. In 5 mans for the most part unless DPS is really stupid, they usually won’t be taking a whole lot of damage, but Raid encounters are designed around everyone taking damage. The less healers have to worry about you, the more they can worry about someone else. Or even better, the more they can worry about themselves. A dead healer doesn’t heal. That one is pretty universal with 5 mans too though. 
The Solution: Multiple Sets of Gear
Tanking is not like DPSing. We don’t get 540 Defense then get 30,000 Health then get 8% Hit and 14.5% Expertise and call it a day. It’s not about reaching minimums or hitting caps. It’s about maximizing your gear to fit an encounter. That’s why it’s so important to use multiple sets of gear. Which is to say, have a threat cloak, neck, ring, trinket and have a survival cloak, neck, ring, trinket at the very least. (It’s also why a mod like ItemRack is one of the few mods that every good tank has)
The Evolution of your Sets
Depending on the type of person you are, you’ll start with a Threat or a Survival style set. Eventually you’ll make the opposite set of the one you started with, (Threat if you had Survival, Survival if you had Threat) but where do you go from there?
The Boss Threat set
This set is still a survival oriented set, but focuses on building up your Expertise primarily. If it makes sense, you can also improve your Hit Rating. Block Value is NOT something you go out of your way to get for this set.
The Trash Threat set
This set focuses first on hitting the Trash Expertise and Hit caps and then tries to get as much Strength and Block Value as possible without neglecting your Health too much. You’ll need at least 535 Defense, but it’s good practice to stay at 540 just in case you accidentally pull a boss in this set
The Boss Stamina set
This set is made to maximize your Stamina in order to handle as much magic damage as possible. This is not the same as your Effective Health set. This is also not a set you’ll find yourself using too often as most fights have both a Magical and Physical element. (read: Dragons) I use this kind of set to soak the damage at the back of the 4 Horseman fight.
The Boss Effective Health set
This set focuses on Armor and Stamina in order to take the least amount of damage from heavy Physical attacks as well as having a nice Health buffer against both Magical and Physical damage. This is your Dragon tanking set you could say.
The Boss Avoidance set
This set focuses on both Defense and Dodge in order to Avoid as much physical damage as possible. It’s ideal for handling steady, heavy physical damage that your healers may not be able to keep up with (soaking bolts on Patchwerk) or for offtanking adds when your healers may not always be able to give you their dedicated attention. (adds on Kel’Thuzad)
The Block set
This set focuses on getting as much Block Rating as possible in order to improve your chance of Blocking as much as possible. As most pieces naturally have both Block Rating and Block Value, you’ll end up with a healthy amount of Block Value too, but that isn’t this set’s focus. This set is ideal for tanking a lot of little adds and taking as little damage as possible in the process. (adds on Sartharion)
What about the Block VALUE set!?
A set that focuses on maximizing your Block Value. It really isn’t worth making. It creates big Shield Slams and allows you to block huge hits, but it’s priorities are simply misplaced. A situation where you’re using this set, you should probably be using your Trash Threat set or your Block set instead.
Specs and Glyphs
This is where I find the biggest divide between 5 man and Raid tanks happens. Specing for Improved Cleave or Glyphing for Glyph of Cleave are two big tells that a tank in a raid just doesn’t get “it”. Your spec and your glyph selection should be catered to whatever boss you’re going after. It’s for this reason that talents such as Anger Management, Puncture, Improved Bloodrage and Improved Disciplines just aren’t worth it. Rage isn’t an issue and you won’t be using Shield Wall twice during a boss fight even if it’s at 4 minutes.
What about Shield Specialization and Deep Wounds!?
This is where I’ll get called a Hypocrite. How can I justify specing into 3/3 Deep Wounds instead of maximizing my survival by getting 5/5 Shield Specialization? It’s because 3% extra chance to Block simply doesn’t have the same impact on a boss as 3/3 Deep Wounds does. Yes, I understand that this is Threat vs Survival and that by my own rules, I should be maximizing my Survival first, but there comes a point when you gain so much Threat and give up so little Survival from a choice that you have to do it. This is just one of those situations.
What about X from Patch 3.1
3.1 isn’t here, yet. When it is many of the rules will change because the game changes. We could be specing into Improved Disciplines. We could be avoiding Deep Wounds. We could be doing a lot of things, but the sets you need to make will be the same. The fact that you don’t want to gem and enchant your best survival pieces for Threat will remain the same too. And above all else, the mindset that Boss Encounters are all that matters when it comes to Raiding will definitely not change either.
March 17th, 2009 at 8:10 am
I’m thoroughly enjoying your entry level tanking articles Vene. I think it helps a lot more tanks than any high end guide or discussion.
Even though Pre 3.1 I sometimes disagree with you on our third major glyph. All of our options are very situational. (Blocking and Revenge glyphs being our first two of course)
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Veneretio reply on March 17, 2009 8:53 am:
Glad you’re enjoying them. I won’t say that I’ll never talk about end game discussion again, but I’m trying to pay more attention to writing posts that everyone will get something out of rather than a select few.
My hope is that this post will have tanks of all progression levels that gem for hit, use only 1 set of gear, or gear for Block Value a moment’s pause to ask themselves, “Why am I doing this?” (Which isn’t to say that if you don’t fall into any of these categories that you shouldn’t be asking yourself the same question!)
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Kinron reply on March 17, 2009 1:27 pm:
They are great articles. Sometimes it’s overwhelming how technicaly and analytical the raiding elite get. Having basic info for up and comers is critical too.
On that note, I have to say that rushing through any raid or heroic for that matter is so frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it if that’s the groups goal. But so many times there is a DPS always trying to rush the group and inevitably this cheats learning players of the experience. Not to mention inevitably leading to wipes…
Regardless of how fast you clear something, if you clear it right the first time, it doesn’t really matter… slow and steady wins the race. (Unless it’s H CoT)
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Aloja reply on March 17, 2009 2:14 pm:
I only have one set of gear because I never get duplicates, or equivalents or anything like that to drop, and if they do, I NEVER win the roll. Ever.
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March 17th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Trash clear speed does affect your boss attempts. The faster you clear trash, the more attempts you can get in before it repops.
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Veneretio reply on March 17, 2009 9:00 am:
Agreed, but the point of the post was that your individual gem, enchant, glyph and spec choices do not have a meaningful impact on trash clear speeds. You can effectively clear trash the exact same speed customizing yourself for bosses as you can customizing yourself for trash.
It’s not worth making a boss encounter more challenging on yourself to speed up trash even the least bit when a single wipe on a boss effectively negates any speed advantage you had.
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tPaste reply on March 17, 2009 10:55 am:
That sentence was the biggest issue I had with this post, it really bothered me so I’m glad it got covered here…and I definitely agree with gearing you about gearing with the boss in mind not the trash, this is why I don’t have a block set at all (yet anyway, just been focused on Survivability first - a huge mistake I made at the outset of Wrath one I would not repeat if I could do it again - and more recently moving very hard toward threat), but not because I don’t want one more because I’ve spent my DKP on other sets firsts.
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March 17th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Personally, I chose to gear up my “threat set” first because of the individual priorities of my raid. [a href=http://stupidtank.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/avoidance-vs-threat-gearing-for-your-group/]As I wrote a bit back[/a], I had to consider the expectations of others, and part of that was an aggressive approach to DPS and Healing that needs High Threat. I’ve built up my other sets since then, but I still find that I favor threat stats out of necessity.
Note that this doesn’t contradict the stated rule of thumb, but it does take 25/10 (or 20/8) to kill a boss. Unless you’re calling the shots, that is going to mean identifying which gear is going best match your raid’s style and making that a priority. IMO, it will make a bigger difference for your raid especially if you’re just making that initial jump into an established group.
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Veneretio reply on March 17, 2009 9:31 am:
And there’s nothing wrong with wearing something like a Boss Threat set if you need to for an encounter. That being said, it still doesn’t change that you shouldn’t be enchanting or gemming your best survival pieces for threat. If you need more threat, you can swap a more dps oriented piece on be it a neck, cloak, ring, trinket or something else.
Same story when it comes to specing. Your own spec is a classic example of a tank that’s using a 5 man spec to raid. You’ve got a lot of rage efficiency talents that simply aren’t necessary in raids (the part where I say Puncture and Improved Bloodrage aren’t worth it is for tanks just like you) and you’re avoiding (that’s a pun…) amazing survival talents like Anticipation (get it?) because of this decision. (Side note: Anticipation is not affected by Diminishing Returns which is part of the reason it’s so amazing)
What really surprises me though, is that you say you focus on Threat yet you avoid Improved Revenge and Deep Wounds which are among the best talents you could pick up for Threat.
Frankly, I think you’re using this idea of your raid’s style as a way to justify the weak enchanting and spec decisions you’re making. You can cater yourself to your raid’s style easily by simply changing gear around.
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Tarsus reply on March 18, 2009 5:00 am:
I will certainly admit actively avoiding Deep Wounds spec. I have a visceral reaction to the ability that goes back to wiping on Executus in Molten Core because of that ability (dotting CCed adds is bad). You are certainly right about Improved revenge given how often I use the ability - I’m on duty for Naxx this week so I’ll use the opportunity to test them both. It would make a good blog post in any case.
The survival pieces that are modded (is that a good term?) for threat at the moment are simply the pieces that I have. I haven’t finished either set sadly. I figured that it would be better to go for threat than avoidance at this point. It’s something I definitely intend to change in the near future anyway.
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March 17th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Ooh, did “Raiding is about maximizing your chance of killing a boss.” get changed from something else? I saw it earlier, decided I wanted to write about what (I think) it was.
I agree more with the current wording, in any case. My next post is just going to be a little more confused : D
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Veneretio reply on March 17, 2009 9:35 am:
You may be referring to this post: http://www.tankingtips.com/2008/12/30/the-golden-rule-of-specing/
I don’t know though. A lot of these fundamental points I end up repeating and rewording in a effort to better explain my point. (…and as I’m sure you know, they’re topics so important that they’re worth revisiting from time to time)
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March 17th, 2009 at 9:34 am
That’s funny, I JUST got done explaining this very thing to some DPSers I know. They just don’t understand the concept of having multiple gear sets. Of course, I didn’t go as in depth as you did.
Also, that’s an interesting take on Block Value. I’ll have to look into that a bit more.
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Veneretio reply on March 17, 2009 9:46 am:
Ya, the concept of multiple sets is universal when it comes to tanking. It’s definitely something that DPSers have a hard time wrapping their head around and why it’ll be a while before many Death Knights really “get” tanking.
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Psy reply on March 17, 2009 1:31 pm:
Sadly, due to Blizzard’s design decisions, it doesn’t matter whether we got tanking or not, as DK tanking mechanics are wildly imbalanced, and will remain so until 3.1
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Shadamehr reply on March 17, 2009 9:59 am:
Block Value is still very nice to have. But you need to back it with sufficient Block Rating to make it work (Damage Shield), or it’s fairly gimped. Block Rating is desirable for warriors these days, especially as it isn’t affected by diminishing returns; it’s no longer the exclusive panzerdin stat it was in TBC.
I use a high block value/rating set versus trash and in heroics and it’s great for threat and survivability.
I also use Glyph of Cleaving for AoE pulls, which is everything in game presently. It also makes my life easier in EoE (Lords) and Sarth (adds, because as a warrior I’m always on add duty while our bear/DK MTs). So I’d disagree that it’s a poor choice. I have two major glyphs dedicated to Boss tanking, so having one glyph dedicated to AoE threat and damage is fine in my book, given that I’m not tanking bosses 24/7.
Although apparently this means I don’t “get it” :p
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Veneretio reply on March 17, 2009 10:15 am:
I’ve always tanked the Lords too and most of the time this is with a 2/2 split between 2 tanks, but even when I’ve gotta tank 3… that means the extra 1 is being focused on first which means I’ll have plenty of time to generate sufficient threat via Thunder Clap and Shockwave as well as just tabbing between mobs Shield Slamming, Revenging and Devastating.
The adds on Sartharion is a similar situation… sustained threat really doesn’t matter. It’s all about snap aggro and Thunder Clap and Shockwave are what accomplish that for you.
I think you’re far better off from a catering to a boss standpoint to choose a glyph like Devastate or Sunder Armor if you’re looking to optimize your performance as an offtank. (especially the Devastate one when it sounds like you’ll be the one stacking up the Sunder Armor debuff most of the time)
Why not give the Devastate glyph a try over the Cleave one and see if you notice a difference?
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Kavtor reply on March 17, 2009 12:31 pm:
I’ve recently switched from HS to Devastate, and the difference it makes to your rotation by snapping up those sunders early is so nice.
(Not to mention, those extra seconds of debuffs help DPS out!)
Veneretio reply on March 17, 2009 3:59 pm:
Ya, it’s pretty surprising. I’m kinda glad they changed the HS glyph from 10 rage gain to 5% crit back to 10 rage again… cause at 5% crit, I’d have probably had to ditch my Devastate glyph for it.
BTW, where the heck have you been!? Losing interest without Ulduar around or something? Or, just doin’ that crazy outdoor thing people tell me about?
March 17th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Great post for players new to min/maxing, especially when preparing for more challenging content.
I do disagree somewhat with your rule of thumb and Glpyh of Cleave and it’s role in clearing Naxx. It provides such a dramatic dps/tps increase in multitanking situations, that it’s going to provide your guild with more dps uptime and more potential for quicker clears (and more time on bosses). It’s a game changer.
How much time do you spend on bosses vs. how much time do you spend on trash?
Example: In our last naxx clear, my Glyph of Cleave accounted for 450,000 damage (Cleave was 1.3 milion total). You can’t get this performance from any other warrior glyph. Add raid dps due to higher tps thresholds and your talking about minutes and minutes of trash shaved off from a single glyph. (Note: It also rocks for add tanking in Sarth.)
Recommended Glpyhs: Blocking, Devastate, Cleave
I don’t understand why people think Glpyh of Revenge is a solid choice. Rage starvation is not the issue it used to be in TBC. In unlimited rage situations, Glpyh of Revenge is a ZERO dps/tps increase. As an alternative, Glpyh of Devastate provides more TPS and more raid dps then Glpyh of Revenge in nearly all situations.
As Naxx bosses are somewhat trivial, min/maxing for clearing speed is an entirely acceptable school of logic. In farm content, tanks should be maximizing speed and dps (while not dying). Now, the situation in Uldar may prove different, but we aren’t talking about 3.1, right?
Since Naxx is largely an exercise of repetition and not a challenge of min/max raiding, specing/gearing/glpyhing for speed and tps/dps is worthwhile for guilds/tanks that have already cleared Naxx (as many have). To write this off as people who don’t ‘get it’ shows you follow strict ideology instead developing a flexibility to use whats most effective for the situation.
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Veneretio reply on March 17, 2009 10:47 am:
If you can’t starve yourself even WITH Glyph of Revenge then you’re not Heroic Striking enough. MTing Patchwerk is the best example of an infinite rage situation and I know for sure that I’d be rage starved without Glyph of Revenge b/c I can starve myself with it if I’m not careful. (that being said, I don’t have Blessing of Sanctuary which if I did, it may change my opinion)
Regardless…
I don’t disagree with your points. You’re absolutely right and I eluded to your very points at the start of the post with this:
“Whereas 5 mans are about being able to generate a ton of threat and moving throughout the instance in a quick yet, controlled way… the emphasis for raiding is NOT that at all. It becomes that eventually once the bosses are just as trivial as they are on 5-mans, but it does not start that way at all.”
So ultimately, you’re addressing the topic completely out of context. (which you even admit yourself with saying it’s great for players preparing for content)
The article is intended for people making the transition from 5 to 10/25 mans. I myself don’t follow a strict ideology, but my posts often will. In my experience, people like to justify weaker decisions in this game a lot by grasping at pieces of information out of context. So adding in information that’s not about the topic at hand can easily steer a new tank ready to raid along the wrong path.
All that said, I definitely like that you’ve brought this point up. It’s a topic I will try to address in the future as farming is an art form just the same as progression is. That being said, I think we’re in a fairly unique time. Most of the time, you’ll be farming content AND you’ll be doing progression so it still stands that you want to cater yourself to bosses. (unless you’re up for respecing for farm nights and if so, all the power to you!)
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Brey reply on March 17, 2009 1:10 pm:
I completely agree with Myzery’s post. I use the same glyphs. I am still early in progression, so I can’t really speak from experience. I will say though, Veneretio, that you seem to contradict yourself about the rage scenario (unless I’m misunderstanding). Your reply states that “If you can’t starve yourself even WITH Glyph of Revenge then you’re not Heroic Striking enough,” yet your article says “Rage isn’t an issue and you won’t be using Shield Wall twice during a boss fight even if it’s at 4 minutes.” I could just be misinterpereting the message, though.
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Veneretio reply on March 17, 2009 2:13 pm:
The difference is in the details
Improved Bloodrage, Puncture and Anger Management are talents. Our talents are precious. We can be spending them on things to improve our DPS, Survivability and Utility. We don’t need to be using them in such a way to make us more rage efficient.
What makes the Glyph of Revenge so strong is that it address a situation when we need that rage efficiency and that’s when we’re going all out on a single-target. The more Heroic Strikes we can fit in… the better. The Cleave glyph does nothing towards improving our dps on a boss. So, think of it as, we use it b/c of lack of options more so than anything else. (and b/c it’s pretty stellar in the few situation where rage is, in fact, an issue)
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March 17th, 2009 at 10:37 am
While I agree with most of your analysis, I have to disagree on the part of always enchanting for survival. I think enchanting along with gems is the best way to tweak what gear you’ve gotten to balance the stats you need, including threat stats.
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Veneretio reply on March 17, 2009 10:50 am:
You shouldn’t need to balance stats if you have multiple pieces of gear for a given slot. The school of thought you’re coming from sounds like you only use 1 set of gear. I will fully admit that if you don’t “buy into” the concept of multiple sets of gear then balancing stats makes sense, but then I think you’re limiting your ability to customize yourself greatly.
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Rashul reply on March 17, 2009 11:06 am:
I agree with keeping multiple sets and do, but even with your best in slot item for a boss set you might be severely lacking in another stat where 1 enchant or gem might make up the difference. I think it’s better to evaluate each item and enchant before choosing solely based on survival. Similiar to how Deep Wounds > 5/5 Shield Specialization, or Accuracy > Mongoose.
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Gallin reply on March 17, 2009 11:16 am:
Heh…I tend to balance my stats as well. This isn’t because I don’t agree with having multiple sets…it’s cuz the probability of me seeing a tanking piece drop AND winning it with DKP is very slim, with all the other tanks in the guild building their DKP and sets too. I gear for avoidance/threat, spec for threat/survivability and gem and enchant for stam/threat (as a 440 JC, those Solid Dragon’s Eyes are a god-send). I think that as long as your style and rotations allow you to stay ahead of your best DPS (even if they’re making you work for it), then it’s all good.
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Ebs2002 reply on March 17, 2009 11:24 am:
It sounds like he’s saying your current best Chest piece may be loaded to the hilt with avoidance, but when you’re wearing your avoidance set your expertise takes a hit (and that set includes your chest). Rather than gemming it straight-sta, you could gem it for expertise and kill two birds with one stone.
Just an example, I’m sure there are better ones I could have made but I’m just a lowly fury warrior (ex-tank) who wants to keep abreast of tanking once dual specs come out, or if one of our current tanks takes a break.
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Meatgazer reply on March 17, 2009 2:02 pm:
That’s not the idea. You gem/enchant to the gear’s strength, so that you can handle more situations without regemming gear.
Say you need max threat. Then you wear your Threat gear enchanted for threat.
Say you need max survivability. Then you wear your Survivability gear enchanted for survivability.
Say you need a balance. Then you wear half of your threat set and half of your survivability set.
In each case, you can get exactly what you’re looking for. For balance, you used different gear, because it doesn’t matter if you get the extra expertise from the socket in the survival piece instead of the threat piece. If you have your survivability enchanted with threat and your threat enchanted with survivability, you will never be able to max out on either survivability or threat without changing enchants.
March 17th, 2009 at 11:17 am
It would be interesting to work out a gear list for each of the sets itemized with gems and best enchants and post it here. Sometimes its difficult to find the perfect item for each one.
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March 17th, 2009 at 11:56 am
It’s ironic you addressed the Shield Specialization and Deep Wounds question as I was studying your armory spec this very morning and getting ready to send you an inquiry email about that.
The concept of multiple gear sets is one that I am familiar with, but I’ve not seen the sets broken down so clearly with such clear description of when to each each before.
Your site is a gold mine of information. I always come away from your posts and podcasts with food for thought and inspiration to better myself. You do the tanking community a great service. Thank you!
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March 17th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I just have 2 switch outs, one for trash and bosses that dont hit hard with 29% block and another with extra dodge and more health. Overall I dont have threat issues. The only case I can see threat as an issue is if your doing the 6 minute malygos kill. Tank has to be tearing it up and building threat fast as folks blow up Maly.
Ulduar may change a lot. We will see. I am sorta wishing my tank was my main, I enjoy it so. I dont have all the best in slot but I can tank anything in the game currently. As soon as the new content comes out I am sure I will have less play time on my warrior. /sad
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March 17th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I always enjoy reading your posts, and learn a lot from them and from many of the comments from other experienced tanks. I’m glad you write about stuff below endgame content, like this one. I’m just stepping up to tanking 10 mans (and the occasional 25 VoA but that’s not really like 25-mans I guess). And it seems I’ve read your blog long enough as I’ve already set up my gear in 4 out of your sugested 6 sets.
One question though. When would you need a Boss threat set, and how does it differ from a Boss EH set? My standard boss set sits at 549 def, and 26 expertise. Is there any encounter that need more threat?
*$
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Meatgazer reply on March 17, 2009 2:06 pm:
Threat really is a relative thing. If everyone in your raid is equally geared, then threat shouldn’t be a big issue. However, if you’re just getting into raiding and the rest of the group has superior gear, you might want to get as much threat as possible (while staying alive).
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Kavtor reply on March 17, 2009 3:19 pm:
There are times where you want to increase your threat for threat’s sake (Malygos) but for the most part, once you and your healers are comfortable that you’re not being threatened with dieing, you can trade survivability for threat and damage.
Survivability is mostly a pass / fail test. But you can always do more damage to help clear content faster. The quicker things die, the less time people have to make mistakes!
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March 17th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
My main is a healer and as I’m focusing solely on my tank in order to be the best I can be it seems I’m severly handicapped in the acronym and math dept. Is there an earlier post or website that us noobs can refer to when we get confused on terms that are used in these articles? I research diligently on this site, tankspot, wowwiki, elitistjerks, etc but a compendium of basic tank acronyms/definitions would be great for a “cheat sheet”. It is easy to get confused when a lot of what is discussed assumes the reader already knows the basic terms and ideas and new readers have a hard time benefiting when they don’t know how to apply the knowledge.
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Foxtrot reply on March 19, 2009 9:38 am:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Acronyms
You said you had looked at wowwiki so I’m guess that page isn’t complete in your mind. Could you let me know some of the ones you are having trouble with? Perhaps then the community could start to make a comprehensive list.
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March 17th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
If you are wondering how to build sets, think about the gear you have stashed. As tanks we should not get new gear, decide it’s better, and sell the last piece. That new item may not always be better. Keep old gear. It’s good to have options when building differents sets.
Also, don’t just assume one set of gear will be right for every boss.
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Arvernien reply on March 30, 2009 4:59 pm:
Well, I got the core of my block rating set built over the weekend
Picked up Fleshless Girdle, Burdened Shoulderplates and Greaves of Turbulence.
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March 17th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Another good post
I do have some questions to ask about the concept of multiple gear sets, however. As I’ve progressed through what content there is to see, I’ve geared in three ways. First, in my heroic tanking days, and early in Naxx, I geared for avoidance, like I did in BC. Later on, I reveled in the joy of hitting 30k hp, and so became a tank with both stamina and avoidance. By the time we were really, completely done with Naxx, I had a fair set of threat based pieces too. With a little re-gemming and some selective gearing, I’ve combined all of these pieces of gear to get one “general” set. Now, I’m sure you’re cringing at reading about a “general purpose” set, but let me explain. Please note that I’m not trying to brag, these are just stat numbers and the RNG at work. Wearing this gear, I feel that I have everything I need, including:
30.5k health
56% avoidance
31 expertise
7.7% hit
24k armor
This set-up also preserves the important set bonus of our current tier. Looking at this set-up, I don’t see a reason to change my balanced over-all stats to have, say, slightly higher threat or stamina. The block rating set I can understand, and I do have some pieces stowed away for that purpose.
So, basically, does the concept of multiple gear sets still apply after one is close to fully geared? Or is this advice more for tanks who are still in the process?
Thanks
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Veneretio reply on March 17, 2009 7:36 pm:
Yup, it certainly does. If anything, the concept applies more so when you are fully geared because it means you’ll have access to all of the gear to make up different unique sets.
After all just looking at your set, you could easily sacrifice both Expertise and Hit Rating in favour of more Health, Armor and Avoidance were you to choose different pieces or gem/enchant the ones you have differently.
The neck, cloak, trinket and ring slots especially allow for great flexibility.
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March 17th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
As much as I like the post the point is kind of moot for us unlucky alt tanks. I’m still half in blues and every new piece I get is mostly an upgrade for survivability, avoidance AND threat
I’m hoarding old items like there’s no tomorrow, but if you’re only getting to tank an alt Naxx10 every odd week there’s not much space to build even a second set.
Then again, also on my main (Rogue) I’m not getting so many upgrades that I’d be swimming in pieces. Mostly it was 100% questing/normal gear -> 50% heroic/Naxx10 gear -> 100% Naxx25 gear, if you know what I mean.
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March 18th, 2009 at 1:35 am
Its true that having all those sets makes the best tank… but its impossible for casual raiders like me (naxx 10 every week or two and some random stuff) to aquire all those pieces and enchant/gem them. So what i can recommend to the casual raider that has every piece of gear only once, if even that, is the Thedrawrf-approach along with putting on some dps-gear if overgeard. For now i have pure blocking pants, belt, shield & talisman, but i dont feel its good enough yet. A decent block set would have like 40%+ blockrating along with 2k value.. thats something i could imagine making up for the loss of dodge/parry in anything up to boss fights.. but for now im heavily underperforming at any duty going for block instead of “traditional” tanking stats. I hope there will be more powerfull block pieces (or i will find more of them >.
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Steele reply on March 18, 2009 1:37 am:
hmm i wrote more then that
is there some limit to the amount of text in a comment?
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Meatgazer reply on March 18, 2009 6:32 am:
I think the use of the “less than” sign made it think you were starting an HTML tag, and made the rest of your comment invisible.
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Veneretio reply on March 18, 2009 6:57 am:
Yup, you’re correct. The comments naturally will cut comments off if they start looking too much like html. This is just a built-in security feature.
Steele reply on March 18, 2009 7:07 am:
ah thx, guess ill have to stop using emoticons (lol just wanted to type in the sad face behind that). i was writing about what SS a blockset with such stats would produce and that it therefor is unlikely that theres ever going to be such a thing as pure-blocking-tanks as competition to avoidance tanks. also i tried out several specs for off-tanks and theres not many things you can do that work out. going for piercing howl is fine, but everything beyond that cuts too much on being a tank and therefor i decided that for me the 2 tanking specs arent going to happen, but ill start collecting a pure furor-off-set for doing dps and do all other jobs, be it add tanking or bosstanking with my regular “everything”-set.
Steele reply on March 18, 2009 7:18 am:
btw i dont agree with glyphing up for bosses, that might be true for ulduar or os+3, but right now doing 10-man-naxx for example without glyph of cleaving is nothing but giving up nice dps and agro on trash (with clapping and cleaving nonstop alone you can ride 1.8k+ dps). bosses in there dont make me put a single-target glyph when were doing trash half of the time or even more. i agree though that improved cleaving isnt for tanks, been there, done that. but id never give up my glyph of cleaving, theres no other way to build up agro on trash like cleaving along your rotation.
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Foxtrot reply on March 19, 2009 9:43 am:
FYI I think you are expecting too much from a block set. It would take gear at the maximum level to get to 40% BR and 2K BV currently. Thats not going to happen in 10-man content.
I am raiding 10-mans currently, I’ve done OS-25 once and got lucky to get the T7.5 gloves. That said I have all the sets mentioned above. Just because you aren’t raiding 25-mans or even all the way through Naxx doesn’t mean you can’t have these sets. I haven’t even cleared Plague Wing and yet I have all the sets and they do make a big difference in my stats.
My stamina can swing 4K from my Stamina set to my avoidance set. My Block Rating jumps from 13% to over 20% when I go into my Block Gear.
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March 18th, 2009 at 7:18 am
Every piece of gear I get is a new possibility to customize my sets.
The only limit soon will be the bag space!
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Arvernien reply on March 18, 2009 12:06 pm:
Soon??? The bags have been my limit for ages
I’m such a pack rat.
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Veneretio reply on March 18, 2009 1:12 pm:
Best investment I made is getting 4 22-slot bags at level 70. Suffice to say, I’ve been happily surprised to find out that they’re still the best thing out there that money can buy in the bag department.
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March 18th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Sheesh, and I thought I was doing well to be working on 2 sets lol. So much still to learn. I can see your point on each of those sets though. Without having access to 25 man content, it will be interesting to try to fill out all my sets. Maybe by T9 I’ll have my T7 sets done lol.
I appreciate your posts, and I always come away with something to work on, which is nice, ’cause if I stop trying to get better, I won’t.
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Chet reply on March 18, 2009 11:00 pm:
well I hope you’re happy. Now I’ve stayed up 1/2 the night putting together new gearsets. It’s a good thing I never trashed my old pieces when making “upgrades” or I might not have been able to make some of these sets. It’ll give me some new toys in Naxx this week though, to try out. Now I just have to redo some of my gems/enchants, but that’s for another night I think lol.
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March 18th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Awesome post vene. I’ve been reAding your site since I started raiding back in bc and I don’t know what I’d have done without it!
Thanks
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March 18th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Vene, I’ve got to ask an honest question. What percentage of Tanks out there are really going to have this many distinct sets of gear? It’s an interesting theory proposing all of these sets, but are we really talking about things that are practical for the average tank or even the above-average tank? I consider myself a fairly upper-side-of-casual player. I put a lot of time into this game, and have gathered a lot of gear in WotLK, but if you asked me to put together SIX distinct gear configurations? I would need months more farming for drops (assuming no other tanks in my guild want ANYTHING) before I could reasonably begin to do this.
For the most part, my set varies by swapping in and out various Trinkets to balance Health (Gossamer) with Avoidance (Valor, Repelling) and Threat (Mirror of Truth, Lavanthor’s Talisman).
Other than that, my main set include 4/5 Valorous gear, Helm of Vital Protection, Platinum Mesh Cloak, etc. and I don’t have “substitutes” for any of these items and don’t foresee myself getting any any time soon.
I mean, just the idea of a tank gathering enough gear to have this many sets without screwing over other tanks in their guilds is fairly impractical in my opinion. Unless you’re literally the only Plate-wearing tank your guild brings to raids.
Seems like a potential source of unecessary loot whoring as well. “I’m rolling on this for my Boss Effective Health w/ a touch of avoidance set, sorry.” kind of stuff?
It seems to me that practically speaking, most tanks should worry about:
Hard Boss Set: EH and Avoidance.
Farm Boss/Trash Set: Threat and DPS.
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Veneretio reply on March 18, 2009 6:46 pm:
I think you’re thinking of it too much as 20 different pieces for each set. The amount of gear differences between each set can be and often is 4 or 5 pieces.
Your boss threat set is similar to your trash threat set. The difference is your boss threat set is going to sacrifice a lot of the hit from the trash set in favour of more expertise as well as more survival. (Keep in mind that since Bosses and Trash have different caps these sets should never be the same as you listed)
Your boss stamina and boss effective health (EH) sets will be similar too with the former sacrificing a lot of the armor that the latter is going to utilize for additional Stamina. The Avoidance set will be similar to the EH set, but it’ll sacrifice armor in favour of defense and dodge. It’ll even forgo heavy stamina trinkets for a 2nd avoidance trinket.
The block set is pretty self-explanatory and probably the only one that varies greatly from the rest, but even it is going to steal a lot of pieces from your Avoidance set since it’ll want a lot of Defense as well.
The point of getting multiple sets isn’t to take upgrades away from your fellow tanks… far from it. However, that doesn’t mean you should let pieces you’ll use get DEed and more to the point, that doesn’t mean you save your Emblems for something else b/c what you have is “good enough” when in fact it fulfills a very different purpose than what you’re using. Crafted and Emblem gear that’s not “best-in-slot” so to speak is going to make up a lot of your different sets.
Multiple sets really is the same as enchanting your gear. It’s overwhelming when you haven’t done it at all, but once the process is started it is very easy to maintain.
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Foxtrot reply on March 19, 2009 9:49 am:
As an example, I’m fairly casual in my raiding (1 night a week, 2.5 hours) but I take my gear/prep seriously. I have 5 sets of gear. All that gear+ some other stuff fits into 2x 22 Slot bags plus what I have equipped. I wear/carry about 50-55 pieces of gear. Only 35 of those end up in my bag at any one time. Sure it sucks to lose those bag slots, but to be the best tank I can be that’s what I do.
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March 19th, 2009 at 3:41 am
One of the things to keep in mind, a tps/dps set can often be the best progression set there is.
Take for instance Heigan with his safety dance: rather then going for survivability, if you manage to help your dps by not capping them threatwise and adding in a nice share of damage, if your manage to prevent an extra phase 2, your chances of beating the encounter increase by magnitudes. More then any effective health or avoidance set will ever do. (Keeping in mind ofcourse that you have the survivability minimums to tank him.)
This is different on each boss ofcourse but just don’t mindlesly assume that the the set with most hp or avoidance is best for every progression fight.
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March 19th, 2009 at 4:10 am
And possibly the most important gear set; The ‘AFK’ set. This set maximizes your cool factor whilst standing outside a major city bank.
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Chet reply on March 19, 2009 7:50 am:
there’s no possibly about this. If I were a paladin I’d probably have to farm the T2 gear set for this. As a warrior, I’m not entirely sure what my “walkin’ around clothes” should be
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Onlyhuman reply on March 19, 2009 8:52 am:
T3
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Vilhelmriker (Lothar Server) reply on March 19, 2009 10:38 am:
great… could you pick something people actually get their hands on??
Veneretio reply on March 19, 2009 11:19 am:
I think part of the point of the cool factor sets are how difficult they are to acquire
That being said, I’m a big fan of T6 with Bulwark of Azzinoth and Thunderfury.
Chet reply on March 19, 2009 12:37 pm:
yeah, T6 warrior is very nice. I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on that. Unfortunately it’s hard for me to get that many people together in my guild at one time.
Furiat/Vege reply on March 19, 2009 4:23 pm:
You can always farm those wannabet2 items from tbc, and look like this orc:
http://klubitus.org/liitteet/10938446ab7e1.jpg
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Sephirawth reply on March 20, 2009 7:36 am:
I still sit around Org in my Full t6 set sometimes. Ahhhh the good ol days…..
March 19th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I like the t3 shoulders, Bulwark of Azzinoth, with Thunderfury. You can always add the Paladin T2 helm to piss them off
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March 19th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I’ve been meaning to post about this on tankspot, but it seems to me that we may be under-valuing Block in 10 mans.
I’ve been lazy and am still running Naxx-10 in a balanced tank set. IIRC I have “block items” in 4 or 5 slots. According to last few WWS, my “all bosses” report indicates that around 5% of boss swings are Full Blocks (I assume are critical blocks with shield block up), and non-full blocks seem to be mitigating dang near 25% of incoming physical damage.
It’s always said that blocks are near inconsequential in the face of boss damage, but I think this really only applies to 25 mans. An additional 25% mitigation is huge, even if it can be somewhat unpredictable.
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March 19th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
I managed to get the t7.5 gloves last night and I was thinking that with the 2 item set bonus (10% more shield slam damage) these would be more of threat set item. I was thinking that Armsman would be the ideal enchant. I would then put 22 stamina on my Fireproven Gauntlets to make it part of the survival set. Do I have the right idea?
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Foxtrot reply on March 19, 2009 1:26 pm:
Yes, the increased Dodge and Defense on the Fireproven lend them more to a pure avoidance set. Enchanted with agility or expertise (to reduce incoming parry’s)
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March 20th, 2009 at 2:25 am
Do you use the tanking equipment spreadsheet from elitistjerks forums? If it is reliable (I don’t think why it wouldn’t be), it makes it reasonably easy to see what kind of gear works good against which type of bosses, and what you should wear for thrash or even heroics. You can give weights to threat, mitigation etc.
It does give quite high valuations for some gear with high block rating+value though, higher than I’d get the impression from reading this blog. I’m not certain what to think. For example Leggings of Inescapable Death are valued high no matter what boss, and certainly higher than T7. It does take into account the uptime of shield block which is not insignificant.
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March 20th, 2009 at 6:39 am
I’m fairly new to the theorycrafting side of tanking, and I get (I think) the idea behind multiple sets of gear for multiple situations, but where my eyes get all foggy is in some of the definitions. For instance, when we’re talking survivability, we’re talking stam\def\armor in order to stand in the firing line for a longer period of time? When we say a threatbuilding set, it’s stacking hit\exp because as a tank you’re hitting the boss harder with every swing? I guess I’m just looking for a keyword or two to keep an eye out when building sets. I’m currently operating on two sets: a general tanking set for heroics based on def-cap and shield block (is that a survivability or a block set?); and a hit set for grinding. If the difference between a boss stam set and a boss threat set can be as few as 4 pieces, can we see an example of the two and the differences?
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Meatgazer reply on March 23, 2009 6:08 am:
Vene did a post showing the difference between a survival and a threat oriented set back in TBC that showed an example.
http://www.tankingtips.com/2008/08/05/the-fundamental-gearing-principle/
As for definitions, some people will vary a little bit, usually when it comes to blcoking, but the main attributes remain the same.
Effective Health: Stamina and Armor
Avoidance: Defense, Dodge, and Parry Rating
Threat: Hit and Expertise (until capped), then Strength/Block Value/Crit
Blocking: Block and Defense Rating (Block Value will generally come with Block Rating pieces)
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March 20th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Here’s my question: when figuring EH and/or avoidance, do you include block in those figures?
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Chet reply on March 20, 2009 11:53 am:
I’m not sure, but I’d say for EH you should include block, but for avoidance, Block should not be factored in.
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Chet reply on March 20, 2009 2:40 pm:
I suppose it might be worth mentioning that with little more than 25 man Naxx gear you can put together an unhittable set, which would be just one more set to have, though my guess is it’ll be similar to your block set.
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Veneretio reply on March 20, 2009 2:42 pm:
Yup, unhittable is just a really, really good block set.
Veneretio reply on March 20, 2009 12:27 pm:
There’s a lot of different theories surround what constitutes Effective Health and what does not. I like to believe that it’s a set that guards against the worst case scenario and as such, it should only factor in Health and Armor.
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March 23rd, 2009 at 8:03 am
Question about gemming. I have sets for all but I’ve had concerns with gemming them. I could easily take my threat set and gem it full 16hit in yellows and 16 expertise in reds and reach the caps for hit/expertise(parry cap) but my HP would take a pretty severe hit. Also, for my avoidance set I could pound in 16 defense and/or 16 dodge gems and really maximize my avoidance but at the same time kill my HP pool. Is it best to use the gems with stam added on to keep my health above a certain threshold? Is there a particular threshold of health I should keep all my sets over?
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March 24th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Writing it here, as there was some discussion about HS-useage.
Yesterday, in Naxx I’ve noticed interesting thing.
Encouraged by Ven’s statement as he can ragestarv himself with HS I used my HS everytime it was up, even below 50 rage, as an experiment.
After downing KT I’ve checked my stats in Recount (as I usually do), and the results were quite surprising for me.
Usually Shield Slam is first on my damage-done list, but yesterday HS was the winner, doing about 30% of my output dmg. SS was 2nd, wielding about 22%. How it is even possible that I’ve made over 50% of output damage with only these two attacks?
Even more interesting was the fact that autoattack was 6th (making only about 5% of overall damage!), after Revenge(11%), Devastate(9%) and Deep Wounds(8.5%). I’m a bit confused about that, as usually white attacks are on 2nd-3rd position on my dmg-done list.
What do you guys notice in your stats, I’m interested if I should change something in my rotation or was it the 1st time I made everything properly, and these are the stats I should be receiving after every boss fight.
Thanks for any reply,
Krizigu
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Veneretio reply on March 24, 2009 3:53 pm:
During fights with High Rage, Heroic Strike should absolutely be your Top DPS move. It’s for that very reason that Fast weapons are far greater than slow weapons on bosses. (Red Sword even trumps Broken Promise)
This isn’t to say that Heroic Strike should be used before your standard rotation, but with how much rage we have these days, you can use it almost constantly. MTing Patchwerk is a great time to test high HS uptime.
So, the big question… did your damage increase and if so, by how much?
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Chet reply on March 24, 2009 4:16 pm:
Generally since I’ve started spamming HS in high rage situations, auto attack has dropped to about 6th place in my wws reports, so I wouldn’ be worried about it. Vene is right though, did your overall damage increase? If not, then you’re probably letting HS overtake your normal rotation, which isn’t always good for dps (if it was we’d just sit there and spam it almost exclusively in low-rage situations)
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Steele reply on March 25, 2009 6:06 am:
auto-attack is 6th because heroic strikes are 1st, every heroic strike is a non-auto-attack and thus your auto-attack output falls back. i dont know it for sure, its just my guess.
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March 28th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I’m in agreement with the people who like to use glyph of cleaving as opposed to glyph of revenge. As my guild wants to move through trash quickly (we start doing trash pulls in naxx10 as soon as bosses are down and loot is being distributed) glyph of cleave comes in very handy there for me. I can definitely see glyph of revenge coming in handy with the single bosses with great dpsers, but with trash pulls where all the dps wants to do is to aoe, cleave is the better of teh two choices for me. Last night, i brought 40stam/expertise food instead of destroying a cleave glyph and it worked very well for me. Trash pulls went off without a hitch and I felt like I was doing enough threat such that our top dpsers didn’t feel constrained during the meat of a boss encounter.
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