Loading ...Avoidance vs Effective Health: Healers not Focusing
Yesterday, we left off with a few points to discuss. There was a number of questions with one hot topic in particular being, does Avoidance actually save mana? Which frankly means, that I didn’t approach the first Myth in a very effective way. Let’s take a step back and re-focus what we’re talking about:
- We are talking about tanking Bosses
- We are talking about how easy a set is to heal
I made a pretty bold assumption saying that it’s the exact same number of heals either way. The reality is that no guild or raid or run is going to have the same healer(s) and even the exact same healers can approach how they heal a fight differently given how things play out or even just based on their mood that day. We really can’t say that we’ll use the same amount of mana healing an Avoidance tank, but that’s part of the point because we also can’t really say we’ll save mana healing an Avoidance tank either. Regardless, this all distracts from the Myth at hand which is, “Avoidance tanks are easier to heal.”
Healer Focus: Avoidance
Healers have a lot of trouble focusing on a tank that’s at full health. It’s no secret that throwing an overheal feels very useless and as a result, Avoidance geared tanks end up simply unfocusing Healers at times. Basically, if you’re rage starved from a long string of Avoided attacks. Your healers are probably excitement starved. A bored healer often heals other people even if their job is to heal just a single tank.
Healer Focus: Effective Health
It’s very easy for Healers to focus on an Effective Health tank. They take a steady stream of damage, but also lose a lower percentage of their health from each hit. It allows healers to really get into a rhythm with the incoming damage on their tank. It’s true that there’ll be more situations where you “need” a heal, but your healer isn’t going to get unfocused with you and start risking your life by healing other people.
Ease vs Preferred Healing
Healers are people (I know shocking revelation) and as a result come in many different flavours, some prefer focused (tank) healing and some prefer unfocused (party) healing. However on top of that, some healers like to control their experience more than others as well. It’s for this very reason that some healers prefer to heal an Effective Health tank and some prefer to heal an Avoidance tank.
A healer that is assigned to just heal the tank that prefers party healing, but is okay with being “controlled” will actually prefer to heal an Effective Health as the Effective Health tank will keep them on task. On the flip side, the same style of healer than doesn’t like being “controlled” will prefer an Avoidance tank as it gives them more room to party heal despite being assigned a focused healing task.
If we look at healers that prefer focused healing assignments, you’ll find that both prefer Effective Health tanks. The difference is the okay with being “controlled” healer is fine with an Avoidance tank too as they’re fine with throwing the occasional non-tank heal to pass the time. The focused healer that wants to be in control doesn’t like an Avoidance tank as it leads to a lot of situations where they’re just casting meaningless heals over and over. (or queuing them and stopping them just before they will land) The focused healers have no desire to skip out on their assignment and as a result, an inconsistent level of engagement required will bore them to tears.
The Healing Preference Table
Effective Health Tank = EH
Avoidance Tank = AV
| Likes being in Control | Doesn’t care if they’re in Control | |
| Likes to Focus | EH | EH or AV |
| Likes to Unfocus | AV | EH |
How easy healing is, is often associated not as much with just how much work it is and is more about the personality of the healer and if the frequency of incoming damage matches how the healer wants their healing experience to be. Basically, I’ve found when a healer says you’re “easier to heal this way”, they’re actually saying you’re “more enjoyable to heal this way”.
Also, the idea of needs to be in “control” or doesn’t need to really just represents a healer’s flexibility in doing assignments outside of what they enjoy. So you shouldn’t necessarily interpret the above table as EH has 3 and AV has 2 so EH wins. It really just represents that EH is a little bit better at keeping healers focused on a focused healing assignment.
Here’s the kicker though… all of this means nothing. Healer preferences has nothing to do with how a tank should gear. Picking the right set for the job isn’t about what makes your healers happier, but instead what gives you the best chance of surviving the frequency and size of the incoming damage.
So ignore my healers?
No, don’t ignore them, but take their feelings with a very large grain of salt. If a healer says they can’t keep up, you probably need a bit more Avoidance to break up the incoming damage. (read: soaking on Patchwerk) If a healer says they can’t respond fast enough to burst damage, you probably need a bit more Effective Health to give your healer more time to respond. (read: Malygos breath attacks) However, if a healer tells you with one setup that they don’t do as good on the healing meters or that they’re bored… well frankly, you should just nod, smile and ignore it.
The next scheduled stop in the series will look at Under-gearing content and how we handle this situation. Once again feel free to leave any questions you’d like discussed in this on going series exploring Avoidance and Effective Health.
April 9th, 2009 at 9:29 am
I’ll have to disagree a bit on this. A good, focused healer, will cancel heals that are not needed, and thus will throw less heals when the tank avoids more. At least they did bck in BC. After wrath launched, it seemed that every healer had an unlimited mana bar, so maybe it’s no longer a common practice.
However, with the nerfs to mana regen and Blizzard saying they want healing to be less spam and more decision making, i can imagine healers will have to start minimizing overhealing again, which means that after the tank has enough EH to survive the biggest possible burst, avoidance will help healers with their mana conservation.
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Veneretio reply on April 9, 2009 9:52 am:
Agreed, they will cancel heals. My larger point though is that healers don’t enjoy constantly casting heals on tanks at full health. Eventually be they canceling heals or overhealing, they can’t help but feel like they’re wasting their time. Which is where you’ll get comments from healers like, “You’re boring to heal.”
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Djiss reply on April 10, 2009 7:17 am:
I get that “you’re boring to heal” often in heroic. In that case, I just pull the entire room if I think the dps is good and I can hold everything.
Last Nexus run, my healer was bored so when we reached the hallway with all the frozen horde and the WW boss in the middle, I’re just ran straight to the middle, pulled the boss and everything in the hallway.
The DPS’er pooped in their pant. The healer and me were amused.
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Valkris - Bronze Dragonflight EU reply on April 15, 2009 2:43 am:
LOL, I totally agree, I also encounter the ‘Your Boring to Heal’ but also often get the ‘Your Easy to Heal’ IMO it more often than not depends on the Healer and their state of mind during the instance/raid.
As to the Hallway in Nexus my friend and i often enjoy pulling the mobs upto the WW Boss and laughing at the panicing Noobps especially in PUG groups.
A good test of an Avoidance v’s Effective Health tankis the 1st boss in HoL, try your spec/talent build/gear on him when he is Lightening charged…FUN FUN FUN
April 9th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Never thought of it like this, interesting. I know when I was healing I was solidly in the ‘likes being in control’ and ‘prefers unfocussed healing’ section, so my preference for healing avoidance tanks (it made a dull assignment more interesting) carries on to my gear choices now.
One thing though is that some healers now do have tools to change the nature of damage taken. Earthshield and Prayer of Mending in particular will soften the blows taken by an avoidance tank, and give a healer a bit more leeway. They’re not so useful (imo) for EH tanks.
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April 9th, 2009 at 9:46 am
One thing that seems pertinent to this discussion is the EH/AV ‘balancing’ point. This point is when the tank becomes ‘easiest’ to heal—enough health to not *need* a heal after every hit, and enough avoidance to reduce incoming damage as much as possible.
There may be some fights where you absolutely need to max out your EH to survive big hits and there may be times where the boss hits so lightly that you can max out avoidance without fear of being insta-gibbed, but most fights are somewhere in between where a mixture of EH / AV / threat gear is optimal.
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April 9th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Couple of questions:
Are high amounts of magic damage being thrown at tanks in the Ulduar encounters?
With the change to 5sr regen is gearing for avoidance going to be a necessity for non-BIS healers to make it through the encounters?
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April 9th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Excellent thinking. Though as a healer I feel a bit pushed in the corner of divas that complain a lot and stick to whatever they think is fun. In reality many healers in fact take healing just as seriously as if healingtips.com would exist:
Healing sets for every task
Knowledge of our arsenal of heals to fit exactly the situation (single target/group heal/burst dmg)
Knowledge of up to date theorycrafting
A raidleader and a tank should be expecting good single target healing ability from every healer in his/her raid and never let a healer hide behind his preference of healing or his class (e.g. degrading shamans to group heal machines).
AV and EH lead to different patterns of loosing health and according sets of gear should be chosen with the mechanics of the boss encounter in mind, as pointed out many times and most healer will rather adapt to your healths behavior than complain. Even at the end of the day I agree most healer prefer tanks with huge health pools.
In regards of size and frequency of incoming heals, tanks should know that most of the time that is dictated by theorycrafting and the actual talent tree.
Most healers have a slow and fast heal, the two healing techniques could be described as bombing or flashing. The choice between those to heals is dictated by the spells HPS/HPM most of the time. If a paladin can spam holy light for 10 minutes he will do so while in BC flash light was the better choice. Shamans would heal with lesser healing wave when the earth shield glyph was good, with 3.1 most will have switched to healing wave.
Flashing is a lot easier, because it is mainly spamming a button for 5-10 minutes.
Bombing is like Kuroyume said very much based on precasting/stopcasting, a behavior a raidleader unfortunately can’t see or control. So in fights like patchwerk it might make sense to remind every healer that he should precast his big heal.
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Veneretio reply on April 9, 2009 3:27 pm:
Yup, I agree that healing can be just as complex and that skillful healers need to put just as much thought into all of this.
This article comes off as somewhat negative towards healers b/c what we’re really wanting to do is identify useless feedback and ignore it. In particular, how a healers “feels” is usually useless feedback for determining how to gear. (In the same way that how a tank “feels” is usually useless feedback for determining what stats or setups generate the most threat) You really want to be looking at numbers.
And yes, I’ll fully agree that this site is guilty not just in this post, but as a whole of promoting almost a diva style attitude for tanks, but then that’s because it’s suppose to be making tanks believe in their abilities and be confident. It’s true that an ego-maniac can be a pain in the ass of a tank, but a tank that hesitates and doesn’t believe in themselves gets everyone killed. It’s a fine line to walk as tanks and I simply prefer to error on the side of pushing tanks down the dick path more so than the dead path.
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Billy Wallace reply on April 10, 2009 10:49 am:
Um, Vene….you called me a diva and tried to push me down the “dick path.” I don’t know if I can keep coming here!
ROFLMAO!
PS: We’re allowed the “diva attitude” because we are the TANKS!
Can we have a pep rally with a huge bonfire and smash somebody’s car with a sledge-hammer?
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Valkris - Bronze Dragonflight EU reply on April 15, 2009 3:35 am:
LOL, i am not a Diva, now get me a bowl of Smarties, and i want em all Blue with smiley faces painted on.
Seriously though, if your are the MT of a raid or even simply running a dungeon sometimes it is required to flame your party members.
‘LAST STAND USED…..HEAL ME NOW!!!’.
‘MORE DPS ON THE SKULL…Forget the Frakkin None Elites’
‘HUNTARDS TURN GROWL OFF AND MD ME’
‘NOODPS, FOLLOW THE GODDAMN MARKS, SKULL, X, MOON FFS’
Etc Etc Etc.
Its not about being offensive, its about being in charge.
If u want to tank, u have to lead. Your the first one into battle and the last one to leave it, 90% of wipes ARE your fault as a tank, because its your job to keep the Mobs from the Squishies.
(Yes Yes, Hunards pets are buggers for pulling Mobs, Berserkers in UP will fear you into other groups sometimes, RET Pallys and DK’s ARE a law unto themselves at times. etc etc etc).
Yes these can easily be avoided, pull further back etc, but sometimes it happens, and when it does, If your Tank and Healer are competant 85-95% of the time you can scrape through. Its not about blame, its how you act as a tank when the proverbial ‘Shit hits the fan’.
And when ‘TSHTF’ all this becomes irrelevant, i want my Healer to heal me, ill be pulling every single goddamn mob i can see, Challenging Shout…..taunt…run…Revenge….Heroic Strike…Shield Slam…taunt, Heroic Strike, Cleave and so on and so forth, do i want my healer to worry about Overhealing???? Do I want them watching their threat, trying not to Aggro, NOPE, with a capital N.O.P.E, ill keep the mobs from him he needs to keep me alive.
Lets all make a solemn vow. ‘As a tank i will be your protector, your guardian and your companion. Through thick and thin i will watch your back and protect your Squishy lil self. But if u let me die ill throw your corpse to the Worgs and hound your crappy Healing butt till you quit.
This is my vow, I protect you, you heal me.
And yes i know way off topic but it just came out :P.
Minuette - Daggerspine (US) reply on May 8, 2009 1:30 pm:
The relationship between healers and tanks really is a complex thing in truth. Both sides can be very quick to blame the other side for a wipe and both sides can be affected by an overly active ego. While my main is a healer, I do have a warrior tank that I’m leveling up and pugging with. One of the things I’m finding as a tank that I’m very assertive and in charge (I’m probably the same way when healing but am more inclined to sit back and let the tank do his thing if he’s good).
I think my main point is this…tanks aren’t divas, tanks are leaders. Tanks HAVE to be confident in their abilities and in their healer in order to do their job. Tanks HAVE to be able to whip a dps into shape when they’re being retarded. Tanks also have to be able to admit when they make a mistake, just like healers and dps do. It’s a give and take relationship, I can list many tanks I have loved healing and many that i have hated, and most of it for me comes from their attitude.
Veneretio reply on May 8, 2009 2:14 pm:
“I can list many tanks I have loved healing and many that i have hated, and most of it for me comes from their attitude.”
That’s one the smartest comments I’ve read on this site in nearly 2 years.
April 9th, 2009 at 10:39 am
For mobile fights what is the best Tank/Healer set up? EH using hots/instants.
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April 9th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Can you provide scale to define the avoidance set and the effective health set?
Assuming we have the minimum Defense rating we’ve got 16.8% avoidance, throw in average amounts of dodge and parry rating and your avoidance (dodge, parry, and miss) should be easily be above 50% and I would not call this an avoidance set.
When creating an effective health set, how much avoidance would you give up for 24 stamina? Are you really giving up avoidance for effective health or are you giving up threat? (replacing guardian’s twilight opals for solid sky sapphires)
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April 9th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Ok - I get the point that some types of tanks are “less exciting” to heal. I don’t heal because its exciting, and I think most tank healers would agree - having done both jobs, the raid healing job is usually the exciting one.
It doesn’t matter whether your tank is experiencing a steady stream of damage or you have to cast cancel and then bail them out when the avoidance doesn’t catch something. THat’s how tank healing goes - and good tank healers KNOW that, and are ok with it.
It’s not wasting my time, any more than a steady stream of little heals to top off an EH tank is wasting my time - and in fact, I’d say that an EH tank is more boring to heal. Because it’s constant and the same, unlike an Avoidance tank that requires me to pay attention CONSTANTLY. Any healer that gets lazy about ANY tank is going to have a dead tank on their hands.
Saying someone is “boring to heal”, from me, is a HUGE complement - it means, as a tank, that you are doing your job, soaking hits and gearing properly. It has nothing to do with control, ease, or anything else. Healers are just like everyone else, we have a job to do, and we try to do it well. Healing an avoidance tank doesn’t make us less likely to do that job well.
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Veneretio reply on April 9, 2009 3:07 pm:
To me it sounds like you identify with my “likes to party heal” + “wants to be in control” type and you’re bothered by the fact that I’ve stated that this personality likes to party heal even when they’re suppose to be tank healing (something you consider bad and I would agree) and as such prefers an avoidance tank. It really seems like I’ve pretty accurately layed out your style even down to the not liking Effective Health tanks as much.
Where I of course missed your personality is that you like an Avoidance tank not to skip out on your job, but instead because of the spiky nature of damage and that you don’t like an EH tank because of the boring consistency of it not b/c it forces you to do your job.
But keep in the mind, the bigger picture here is not to create a master formula that defines every possible type of healer, it’s simply talking about some stereotypes of healers that tanks might encounter and giving them some insight into why a particular healer might give you a certain type of feedback. I’m not trying to say that if you prefer an avoidance tank, you are somehow a terrible healer nor that if you prefer an effective health tank, you are a great healer.
Basically, some tanks hold their healer’s opinion of how easy they are to heal in high regard, (because we do realize that being called boring to heal is a compliment and some tanks really want to get compliments) what I’m trying to do is get tanks to be skeptical and base their gearing decisions more on the math and less on how to get a pat of the back.
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Anna reply on April 9, 2009 4:13 pm:
Likes to be in control, yes - but likes to party heal? Not really - I’ve done both, and I actually vastly prefer tank healing (and am rather better at it than raid healing). I do both though, on different characters (tank heal with a holy paladin, raid heal with a resto shaman) I’d also argue that you’d be hard pressed to find a healer that doesn’t have an element of control to what they’re doing - we control who lives and dies (just like tanks!).
I think, basically, that you could’ve said the last bit (trying to get tanks to be skeptical and base their gearing on the math and not on people giving them praise) without categorizing healers or assigning some kind of personality or mental state to it. Obviously you know your stuff on tanking (you write a blog called Tanking Tips - Duh!), but I think you overgeneralize healers frequently - not in the sense that you generalize roles, but that you want to assign personalities and attitudes towards those roles.
Just like not all tanks want things to be easy and predictable, neither do all healers want that - nor do they all want things to be spiky and insane all the time. Most of us (tanks, healers, DPS) like a mix of all of the above, and depending on our CLASS (even more than our actual healing role) will see more or less of it. Sometimes the “easiest” healing is technically the most “work” - I can remember some raids where all I did for 4 hours was push one freaking button frantically every 2.3 seconds and pray to the RNG gods that it crit. Lots of work? yeah. Hard? No way. Healing can be kind of backwards that way sometimes!
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Veneretio reply on April 9, 2009 5:31 pm:
I think I’d have to talk about healers a whole lot more to frequently generalize their personalities, but that’s beside the point. I won’t deny that I do it. I’m ultimately more concern with writing something that tanks can identify with and less concerned with giving healers a fair shake so to speak.
Basically, tanks don’t care about how to deal with good healers so I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about healers that do their job right. Or more to the point, it’s more useful to help tanks identify when healers are being bad or unreasonable than when healers are being good and reliable.
April 9th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
I’ve certainly found that as a 5-man tank. Unreliable healers focused better when I wore effective health, and good healers seemed to be able to tune their output better. Only undergeared healers had difficulty with the total amount of healing needed.
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April 9th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
The only major exception I can think of is if you have a druid or Disc priest healing. Especially from a disc priest perspective. Since a disc priests sheild gives the tank more effective health, a tank with higher avoidance can take better advantage of it. When the hits do come you have a barrier to absorb and a longer period of time inbetween those hits that another sheild may be applied. Also since Penance is the best spell in term of reacting to spike damage disc priests have less issues with large spikes as long as they don’t come way too quickly.
Druid healing because of the shear number of Hot’s functions very similarly providing a barrier requiring less stop casting.
For healers that are reactant healing as opposed to preventative damage well stop casting is the only way to save a high avoidance tank sometimes.
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April 9th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
I have found that on my priest (low level) that healing people with spikey damage is not my cup of tea. Inevitably ill get distracted and let them die. Maybe that makes me a bad healer, but i only tend to have that problem with dks. When warriors tank im always alot happier and more successful.
I just want to say that I appreciate your style on this blog, I got into tanking recently and have been leveling up a warrior. I always enjoy the straight forwardness of your posts, and the clarity and lack of flashy terms I wont know.
I find this discussion very interesting, and am a little jealous of the decisions you get to make. When tanking with my tenacity pets, the only choices i have are effective health vs threat. Maxing out the avoidance stats in the few places they are available is a must. For me the decision is easy, stick to as much health as I can, threat will just have to take a backseat. I think thats how you would approach it too
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April 9th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
I posted yesterday as a tank (forgot to mention that I’m a paladin), but I switch to heal on almost a daily basis. I usually heal raids that don’t do assignments, so most of the time I just end up spot healing the raid instead of touching the tank (as a paladin, go figure). During 10-man raids and 5-mans however, I feel like rather than placing myself in a category of healers or healing styles, I try to adapt to whatever the situation requires. Especially when it comes to proactive vs reactive healing, I know the two types of gearsets in question would favor one type of healing more than the other.
According to the chart up there, it looks like i’d be bunched up with the unfocused/no control group. But I don’t have a preference for healing a certain type of tank. I feel like it’s a part of my job as a healer to understand what’s coming up in the fight, to know what the tank is wearing, to see what abilities happen or get used, instead of just staring at a group of unit frames.
I guess it’s good to know both sides of the coin.
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April 10th, 2009 at 7:26 am
Unless it is a gimmick fight (Patch). I prefer healing a solid mix of EH and Avoidance gear. In general, I think 35% raw avoidance (defined as dodge/parry) is about the minimum I ever want to see on a warrior/pally in a raid situation. That is pretty easily attainable with a healthy dose of stamina and some threat stats.
Note: I do see this question from both sides of the coin. When I’m tanking, my wife (holy priest) likes burst damage, because it is fun!
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Chet reply on April 10, 2009 9:08 am:
by defining avoidance as dodge and parry you’re going to find an inconsistency between tanks with a lot of defense, and tanks just enough defense, as defense decreases your chance to be hit.
It’s not completely unreliable, but it’s also not the whole picture.
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April 10th, 2009 at 8:20 am
There are several reasons why raids wipe:
1. Tank error
The tank does something stupid and ends up getting splattered, situationally either gearset might save your hide here but the problem wasn’t the gear.
2. Healer error
Your healers don’t keep up with healing or they all decide to heal the raid at the same moment. An effective health setup will generally buy you more time before you die from this and as such it is a better gearset. The better your healers the more benefit you glean from this as buying more time becomes increasingly valuable as the quality and quantity of your healers increases.
3. RNG (Burst)
The effective health gear again will tend to serve you better here since you will tend to be more burst resistant. Again this scales with the quality of your healers.
4. Encounter mechanic
Usually in the form of an aoe stun or aoe silence or aoe damage. In all of these the effective health gear is superior since it buys your healers more time to get back to healing the tank.
5. Other Player Error
Someone overaggros, or blows up in the raid or some other mistake. This usually leads to either an immediate wipe or an encounter mechanic situation, again effective health wins out.
The only place I see avoidance gear winning out is where your healers can translate the lower incoming damage on the tank into extra healing either through saving mana or taking a moment to raid heal (saving time). This means situations where tank healing is not the main difficulty factor of the fight and reactive healing on the tank is sufficient. This basically reduces avoidance gear usage to farming runs where you are trying with fewer healers and possibly some hard mode fights where the chance of dying to RNG has to be taken because the encounter forces you to go with less healers or forces them to be incredibly mana efficient.
You are making a mistake when you say that you shouldn’t be overly concerned with healer issues. The problem with a lot of the theorycrafting is that if you just look at it from a tank-centric point of view both avoidance and effective health can appear to be pretty equal most of the time but it is the fact that the effective health setup amplifies the strength of your healers that swings the argument in favour of effective health.
Healers don’t prefer high health tanks because they are uninformed players who just look at a single number, they prefer high health tanks for two reasons. Firstly, healers will tend to get blamed for both healer error and RNG wipes, if they are going to get blamed anyway they will prefer a tank that gears in such a way that RNG becomes less of a factor and the margin of healer error required to wipe is higher. High health buys a margin of error for your healers. Secondly, because of that factor healers see a tank with high health as being a tank who has faith in the healers. As a tank you are basically telling them “hey guys, I am a giant walking health buffer now go do your job and we will be fine”.
So don’t be an idiot as far as stacking health, if you can gain a lot of avoidance for a little health then take it and vice versa, but in general you should tend towards higher effective health, the skilled healers will love you for it because you show faith in them and the moron healers will love you for it too because they just look at that one number
Anyone who is in doubt should spend some time healing. You will certainly prefer healing tanks who tend towards stamina instead of avoidance gear. Before I played healer I often debated how I should gear my tank, after you play as a healer there is no contest. I guess this is the final overall clincher to the argument in my mind, if the benefit from stacking avoidance is at best debatable and situational doesn’t it make sense to gear in the way which will enable your healers to enjoy the game more?
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Veneretio reply on April 10, 2009 10:04 am:
You forgot one:
6) Overwhelmingly high consist damage.
Soaking on Patchwerk being the perfect example of this. Avoidance is far better as it breaks up the incoming damage more often allowing healers to catch up so to speak. Archimonde was another fight that was very good for Avoidance. These types of fights even if the healer does their job the damage coming in is so huge that you see this type of effect:
20,000 -> 10,000
Heal
18,000 -> 8,000
Heal
16,000 -> 6,000
Heal
14,000 -> 4,000
Heal
12,000 -> 2,000
Heal
10,000 -> Dead
Now keep in mind that that is an example only. Clearly, I’m talking about a situation where this staircase effect happens much faster and with correct damage to heal size ratios. What saves tanks during the staircase effect is avoidance and critical heals. When neither of the 2 happen, the tank dies. Every tank has experienced this sinking feeling where each heal that lands just isn’t enough to get them to full health. This is a situation where avoidance is far better.
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Eamonn reply on April 10, 2009 1:04 pm:
That is probably part of RNG if you are saying no crit heals in a long time but anyway the staircase example works ok, but with an effective health setup in that example your worst case will have one more step than your worst case in the avoidance example (in general, fight by fight could vary of course). If you are looking at needing a critical heal or dodge to survive then you are probably better off betting on the critical heal. The odds of getting an extra dodge are much lower than the odds that the extra heal that will land in the extra time you have in your worst case scenario will crit.
In your example for instance if the first heal doesn’t land you die on the second hit going 20,000 -> 10,000 -> 0 but if you move up to 21,000 health you will survive until a third hit, 21,000 -> 11,000 -> 1,000 -> 0. In that example the extra health effectively doubles the amount of time your healers have to react to the hit in your worst case.
So to take it further, say your example represents a really bad avoidance streak. Give the tank 50% avoidance and all the avoidance rolls were over 50+. Now you can give the tank 2% more avoidance or 1000 extra health. With the same rolls that 2% avoidance would be a 4% chance to avoid any individual attack (since we are only dealing with the upper 50%), so cumulatively in a 6 attack sequence that is about a 22% chance the tank avoids one attack.
We could generalise it and say that a 6 hit streak would be 22% less likely for a tank who had that extra 2% avoidance.
But the tank with the extra health will get another heal to land, which has a 30-50% (lets say 40%) crit chance most likely (depending on the healer class), so the health tank will get into that situation 22% more often but when he does get into it he will survive 40% more often, overall that is a higher survival rate.
The other point is to do with the healers casting. It is all too common as a healer to see the tank die just as your cast bar reaches full, literally a split second before the heal would land. Adding just a split second to the tanks minimum 100%->0 time drastically increases the chance of that heal landing. That extra time you buy with a bigger health buffer just needs to be the extra split second that your most alert, fastest to react to the burst healer needs for his big heal to land.
If you look at combat logs from wipes it is not rare to see that the tank recieves no heals in the last 1.5-2 seconds before he dies. That means that probably several of your healers were a very short time away from having a heal land. If you can stretch it so that that time becomes 1.6-2.1 seconds then you add a lot of survivability because it means some healers are likely coming towards the end of their casting time. You are buying an extra fraction for whichever healer is the most alert at that exact moment and with 2-3 (or 7-8) good healers that is a much safer bet than a slight reduction in the amount of times you will get into that situation.
The avoidance doesn’t prevent those 1.5 second 100-0 bursts, it just makes them a little less likely so your healers need to be good enough to heal you through them anyway. Assuming your healers are already good enough to do that then stretching that worst case time out to 1.6 seconds will be a very large increase in your odds of surviving the burst, much moreso than the benefit from avoiding the burst a fraction of the times.
A tank stacking health turns some of the RNG deaths into Healer Error deaths, you are less vulnerable to RNG but more vulnerable to Healer Error, with good healers that puts you less vulnerable overall. If you stack avoidance you become less vulnerable to Healer Error but more vulnerable to RNG, you are less likely to get in the situation where healer error can kill you but more likely to die in a situation where the healers can’t do anything to save you.
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Machus reply on April 12, 2009 10:56 am:
I agree with your first post and with Vene’s point.
Heres another one. In most of my raiding experience as hardcore (DPS) or casual (tank) the most common cause of wipes was what you call “other player error”, of DPS screwing up. The tanks were usually good or great and the healers varied from OK to great. The DPS often noobed up. We didn’t have enough DPS, we didn’t target the right things, we stood at the wrong place, or otherwise messed up the encounter.
I’m not sure what, if anything, the tank can do to prepare for the likelihood that it’s the DPS who will screw up, but it bears some thought. Once upon a time, that was threat. I don’t know now whether “noob DPS” steers you to avoidance or EH.
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April 10th, 2009 at 8:41 am
I used to be a hard core advocate of avoidance over straight stamina but am starting to change my thinking. When I tank I like to see my heath bar stay pretty close to full at all times and get a little nervous when it dips to low. But I recently started healing on my resto shaman and from a healing perspective it makes it a bit easier when I see and can plan on consistent damage in versus streaky damage with a high avoidance tank.
I would say, that if any tanks are rolling an alt I would consider a healing class as the perspective on the game is so different. Having been a prot & fury warrior my entire wow life; going resto on my shaman was a eye opener.
That does beg the question though (pardon if there is an archive thread) what classes do other tanks roll for alts?
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Sephirawth reply on April 10, 2009 9:01 am:
I have tried every class in WOW and the only one I was able to lvl past the 20’s (other than my warrior) is my enhancement shammy.
As a matter of fact I like him so much I amlost shelved my warrior when Wrath came out. (ALMOST)
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Chet reply on April 10, 2009 9:11 am:
my main in BC was a mage, and I only leveled my warrior twoard the end because my guild had stopped progressing, so instead of leaving, I decided to roll a tank to help with the shortage we had. Now when I play my mage (still level 76), I tend to play him more like a warrior, which really isn’t good lol. I’m working on a priest for the very reason you mentioned though. Of course he’ll be a disc. priest, so it might just make me like avoidance tanks better. I guess we’ll see.
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Arvernien reply on April 10, 2009 11:49 am:
A holy priest. And now I know why so many people complain about tanks. There are a lot of bad ones out there. After every run with a tank that didn’t leave me with a good feeling I referred them to Tankingtips.com
I even made one tank a full cobalt set so he could do his job right.
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Machus reply on April 10, 2009 5:33 pm:
I played for more than two years as mage and eventually leveled my warrior half way through BC because life commitments made me unable to follow my guild’s progression as mage. I tanked heroics and 10-mans and greatly enjoyed it. Now I’m embarrassed to say Blizzard has made the mages so much fun that my mage immediately became Champion of the Frozen wastes and my warrior isn’t 80 yet :-/
I also took pride in being able to do things that were perceived hard for a warrior in BC, but since patch 3.0 I found tanking no more challenging than playing the mage. I’m sure it gets different in hard modes, but I’m not there yet.
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April 10th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
In regards to this coverstaion what are some avg/actual numbers when you refer to the EH set. For example if I put on my ‘max health/armor’ set I have 33120 HP and 24446 armor.
When I use my max avoidabce set I drop to 30786 HP but I gain about 8% total avoidance. I also gain the use of the valor medal which if you factor in the use you gain even more avoidance over a fight.
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April 10th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
I first started playing WoW as a holy priest and rolled a warrior tank as an alt to help out the guild. As a healer its tough to not make judgements when a tank rolls into a heroic with 23k-25k hp. Right away alarms go off in my head saying this person does not have the appropriate gear and this is going to be a heal intensive event. Its a totally different mentality when a tank comes into the heroic with 27-29k hp. My point is that EH is also a benchmark for gear level. Even the best skilled tanks can have problems with content they are undergeared or incorrectly geared for. No healer is going to look at a tank with 29k-31k hp and think this person is undergeared or doesn’t know anything. My tank didnt start running heroics until i was sitting about 25k unbuffed hp so when the healers saw my hp it automatically sent the message that I spent the time being properly prepared for the encounter and also tanked enough to accumulate decent gear. It also unconsciously gives a sense of comfort and that is essentially what tanks are supposed to do…..protect everyone. I look at EH as sort of a calling card. Its a way to roughly judge skill and experience level without looking them up on armory.
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April 12th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Healers prefer an EH tank.
It gives them a higher HPS.
Good healers will understand that if mana and cooldowns are at a premium, damage reduction has some advantages. But in Naxx, healers want a target taking a lot of damage with large buffers so healers can maximize thier internal healing efficiency, and top the meters.
If you look at numbers in T7, EH or avoidance gearing doesn’t have a large effect on % overheals.
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Cinjinta reply on April 13, 2009 11:24 am:
it seems to me like you havn’t played a healer before, and are basing them off of dps and tanking ideas
we don’t like to top metres as much as dps, as long as the dps and tank survived, we dont care where we stand; we know we did our job, we’re happy
i’m going to have to half agree with you thought, i do prefer an eh tank due to the fact (previously stated) that it keeps me interested and i can predict what will happen
(i play a tanking war, tanking dk, and a resto shammy)
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April 14th, 2009 at 6:40 am
I started as a hunter and rolled a DK as a tank for the guild. In the middle of this i wanted the other perspective and rolled a priest. I noticed that as a tank in the 60’s most players aren’t used to a single role and this makes it very toughfor the healer to heal the group as well as the tank to maintain aggro. A good example is in Sethekk Halls where a DK off tank can pull using Death Grip and the pull is much larger than intended. A tank with MH fares better in this situation and I imagine most situations where the DPS guys pull (DPS error) an avoidance tank lives a much shorter span since his staying power is based on chance and the raid not falling apart.
Linear thinking is what makes the debate of avoidance V. max health, not situations encountered in many PUG instances.
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April 15th, 2009 at 3:01 am
Speaking as restoration shaman during BT and SWP during their hard days, i have to say that healing avoidance tank was terrible experience. Especially druids. I remember M’uru per all nerfs when our druid tank dodged like 7 strikes on adds then was 3shotted within 2 seconds. Id choose effective hp based tank anytimes…seeing the hp jumping up and down makes you feel focused and keeps the rush…druid dodging for 10 seconds makes you fall asleep. Thats why i focus mainly on hp when gearing up on my warrior. Some avoidance is good ofc, but i think you shouldnt get more then 50 percent dodge + parry. It will make your healers fall asleep
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April 27th, 2009 at 1:27 am
I honestly don’t mind healing either. Although I do love healing DK tanks despite their somewhat spikey nature of taking damage. I think it is mainly due to the fact that being disc I love how I never get any crap about shielding them. But now that most tanks realize that the shields aren’t affecting their ability to put out threat that is pretty much a mute point. Also as I’ve seen a few others have said, when I tell a tank they are easy to heal it just means that they did a good job holding aggro and I wasn’t having to heal 3 or 4 other people as well (in a 5 man), in raids it just means I didn’t have a lot of “oh crap” moments.
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priestgiblet reply on April 27, 2009 1:29 am:
since I can’t edit my comment I just wanted to add, in 5 mans I prefer avoidance tanks while in raids it’s a toss up and just depends on how I’m feeling. But as a rule if I’m assigned to heal a specific target I will just focus on that one person. Granted there can be some boring times but I’m always ready for when the need arises.
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