Gearing for Festergut and Rotface
When analyzing the encounters, both Festergut and Rotface clearly have a lot of magic damage to dole out, but does that really matter?
A bit. Not a lot.
What you give up for Bonus Armor
I’ve been raving about Bonus Armor and the often counter argument is it does nothing against magic damage.
Which is true.
However, what does Avoidance do against magic damage? What does Expertise and Hit rating do? How about Block?
Nothing.
Which is what you give up to get Bonus Armor.
You give up Nothing to get Bonus Armor
So, don’t kid yourself. There really is no reason not to pick up all those fancy high armor pieces. Ultimately, even the magic heavy fights like Festergut and Rotface have an angry boss swinging at you with physical attacks. Utilizing Bonus Armor is stating, I’d rather take less damage than get hit less often. I’d rather increase my chances of surviving a melee swing that lands plus a magical attack combination.
Armor is always useful because you never die to just magic damage. (and if you do, something has clearly gone terribly wrong)
Okay, I’m half sold… what about trinkets?
You got me. Trinkets are a whole new ballgame. If we want Bonus Armor in the trinket slot, we’ll have to give up Stamina. This suddenly isn’t such a sexy trade-off. Which means that we’ll be using 2 Stamina trinkets for these encounters, right?
Wrong.
We absolutely will for Festergut. We won’t for Rotface. The Rotface encounter really doesn’t do the Main tank that much magic damage. It always pays to know the encounter ahead of time. That’s why I linked the research for you at the start of this post. 
Finally, I can’t emphasize enough, that even in the most magical intensive of fights, you’ll die not to a magical attack, but to the combination of a melee swing landing in conjunction with a magical attack. So, a straight Stamina trinket isn’t necessarily better than one with a really strong usage. In fact, you’ll find I always prefer the latter.
Read up. Ready up. And best of luck!
January 4th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Corroded Skeleton Key I would imagine absorbs Magical DMG aswell?
so I would belive its the 2nd best choice for a magical Fight.
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Veneretio reply on January 4, 2010 4:18 pm:
Absorb 3200 damage once or have 4000 more health for 15 seconds… I’ll take the latter every time.
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Ruphi reply on January 4, 2010 9:53 pm:
The pros of the 4k health is that you can survive 15 seconds with a larger health pool.
The pros of the absorb is that it has a 2 minute cooldown, and will be great for a very big predictable hit.
The difference is that on some fights you can use the key much more than the life trinket. The other thing is even though it is small is the extra stam you would get from the key.
I just don’t see buying the key worth it even for one fight when the other armor upgrades will be used on 80%+ of what you tank.
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Bonh reply on January 5, 2010 9:41 am:
Oh y agree - its 2nd best
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Bonh reply on January 5, 2010 12:51 pm:
just didnt agree with It was a Sraight Stamina Trinket
January 4th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
What do you think about Ick’s Rotting Thumb (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50235), Is it worth taking over a stam trinket?
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Veneretio reply on January 4, 2010 4:18 pm:
Nope.
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Blackavar reply on January 4, 2010 8:30 pm:
“Nope” only for Festergut and Rotface or “Nope” at all?
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Veneretio reply on January 4, 2010 8:36 pm:
Nope for either. The heavier the magic damage on the fight, the more it favours Stamina. Avoidance like Armor loses value the more magic damage you encounter.
A more interesting question would be “this avoidance trinket” over “this armor trinket”? To which, I’d say… it’s a matter of preference a lot of times.
Blackavar reply on January 4, 2010 8:36 pm:
Hmm… I mixed something up, I thought you were talking about Unidentifiable Organ (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50341).
Would you take that and Glyph of Indomitability (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47735) for fights with less magical damage?
Veneretio reply on January 4, 2010 8:38 pm:
Unidentifiable Organ is amazing and even though it features no strong usages like we are used to, it wins out over basically everything by raw power alone whenever a fight allows for the buff to stay active.
melville reply on January 4, 2010 10:17 pm:
And why would a trink that uses stamina, the most reliable of all stats as a RNG stat be better than a trink with similar armour values and an on use avoidance cd?
Is the 10 stacks of the stam buff falling off really what you want? How many times have you died to being 1shotted after dropping to low hp from last stand when healers misjudged their next heal? Alot of the time I will canel last stand when I am at full health and feel safe to do so so it doesn’t drop off when I am at half hp leaving me at lower hp still.
Unidentifiable Organ looks amazing but in practise it also seems it can cause alot of troubles even with good uptime allowing the buff to stay active no?
Just seems a tad volatile for the nature of the trinket.
Veneretio reply on January 4, 2010 11:58 pm:
Well keep in mind when it falls off, your actual health will not go down, only your total health will. So, it’s not going to randomly kill you if you’re at 2000 health and the buff fades away.
I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised just how long the buff stays on in the majority of fights. Not using it is likely going to be the exception not the rule.
melville reply on January 5, 2010 5:04 pm:
Your total health and what percentage of that is available is what will change, this is what healers look at so from their point of view something like this can cause problems. I am more likely to be second in line for said trinket, so I can let someone else test it for me first.
I hope you are right about uptime.
January 4th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
I would imagine the Skeleton Key would be fantastic for a fight like this. Bonus Armor is sorely over valued. Even a fight with 20% magical damage, Armor becomes devalued by 20%.
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Veneretio reply on January 4, 2010 4:16 pm:
Which fight are you referring to?
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January 4th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Specifically for Festergut, you might want to consider a Threat trinket like DMC:Greatness. The fight has a strict enrage timer and every bit of DPS you can get out of your tank (especially with the stacking damage buff the tank gets) will help your raid put down the Boss.
Additionally, if Gastric Bloat can be avoided, an Avoidance trinket like Furnace Stone may be advisable.
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Veneretio reply on January 4, 2010 4:30 pm:
It’s always advisable to gear to survive first and only gear towards additional threat and dps if it is deemed warranted are actual attempts. When you are learning an encounter would you rather do extra dps for 1 minute or live for 2?
Not to mention, Warrior threat and damage is impacted very little by item selection and more so by spec and glyph choice. So, if one is struggling then it’s better to respec/reglyph than sacrifice survivability. Furthermore, Mark of Supremacy is a superior threat/damage choice to that of the Greatness deck with the added benefit of not costing you an arm and a leg.
As to trinket selection, I would suggest one with a high avoidance usage over one with an avoidance passive. This way one would have a higher probability of staying at the high damage end of the debuff longer.
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urkagan reply on January 24, 2010 6:08 am:
what do u mean by AVOIDING gastric bloat? have u really fought the guy?
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January 4th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
I’ve enjoyed your recent posts on trinkets. The Trinket Series you could call them. Particularly as I’m nearing decision-time for spending the next set of emblems, and as a re-gearing tank, need to decide which two will be my first trinkets.
I had the fortune to pick up Eitrigg, so for balance I’m thinking of buying the Corroded Skeleton to be my 2nd trinket.
Then I can look for on-proc/use BOP trinkets to fill out my trinket stable. It’s tricky!
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Furiat/Vege reply on January 4, 2010 3:22 pm:
Sadly, ToC10 tanking trinkets aren’t that good. Well, yes, passive bonus is nice for avoidance set, but use is quite bad for most of boss fights. Don’t remember boss swing timer, but let it be 2.0 sec. Then you’ll get full bonus after at least 8 seconds (if timed right and no hits were avoided). It was said, as far as I remember, that simple 219ilvl Furnace Stone from Ulduar10 was at least as good as this one, if not better.
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Darock reply on January 4, 2010 9:30 pm:
That might’ve been true last patch, but the few times I used Eitrigg’s (before I upgraded) in ICC 10, I noticed it was performing much better than usual because of the drop in dodge. I’m not sure how it stacks up relative to other trinkets with Chill of the Throne, but it’s probably a fair amount better than it used to be.
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Veneretio reply on January 4, 2010 9:43 pm:
ICC’s debuff doesn’t increase the value of Avoidance since it takes effect after not before diminishing returns happen. How effective and how one values gear really shouldn’t change because of ICC’s debuff.
No matter what your stance on Eitrigg’s Oath’s passive, (aka how much you like avoidance) the usage is really, really bad.
Gravity reply on January 8, 2010 1:58 am:
Yeah, you’re right. I hadn’t analysed it properly before. Damn. I’ll consider it a placeholder.
January 4th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
like you, i’m a big fan of bonus armor. the only changes i make from fight to fight are really trinkets and weapon.
i’ve been using the heart of iron for everything, since it has a good combo of stam and armor. that probably will be replaced with the gunship10 trinket, which also combines armor and stam.
my 2nd slot changes from the badge armor trinket to the heart of iron, depending on the fight.
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marklar reply on January 5, 2010 2:54 am:
eh, typed too fast - i meant i use “black heart for everything…” and change the 2nd trinket accordingly
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Dreador reply on January 6, 2010 9:55 am:
Your atlasloot and mine were wrong, that trinket drops from Putricide, not Gunship
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January 5th, 2010 at 5:57 am
I find the 3k absorb on the skeleton key to be really lackluster.
If you need that 3k “extra”, the 4k hp on satrina’s basically provides the same effect but in the form of more hp, which can be healed up multiple times during the 15 second effect.
I would place the key in the same category as the brewfest trinkets: hence my name for it: “brewfest 3.3 trinket”.
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January 5th, 2010 at 8:31 am
I like the key, I guess I am in the minority. I have 44k hp unbuffed with over 30% dodge and 22% parry. I just don’t die. I can’t remmeber the last time I got Gibbed on a boss (not named Gormok). The only time our guild wipes lately is due to other folks dying or not doing their jobs correctly it is rarely to tank death. Makes me get Misty eyed for Illidari Council and Brutallus..
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tPaste reply on January 6, 2010 11:56 pm:
Would you link your armory? I’d like to take a look at your gear combination.
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Seph reply on January 7, 2010 4:27 pm:
Here you go. Keep in mind it is about raid time so I may have some different gear on. This is my reg set though.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Eitrigg&n=S%C3%AAph
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Gathorc reply on January 15, 2010 8:55 am:
Eitrigg represent!
January 5th, 2010 at 8:39 am
A question about the organ, will it really be that good? You will loose the buff every time Marrogar bone storms, between every add phase and whenever you have to tank swap on deathwhisper, whenever you have to jump ship on gunship, every 20ish seconds on saurfang, it has a 60% proc chance assuming a 2.0 boss swing timer, it would take 14 hits to stack up to full, and 28 seconds which would mean on most of those fights, you wouldn’t get full use out of it for very long, if at all. Taking ToC as well, it would fall off on Gormok on the tank switch, the wurms on the burrow, and on the massive crash’s, Jaraxxus has a VERY slow swing timer, with his casts in between, so it might even fall off randomly there, faction champs its useless, it would fall off every time your valk used a special ability, and it would fall off every time anub burrowed, not to mention it might fall off because he has such a slow swing timer. It just seems with such a sketchy uptime on essentally every boss in current content, I havn’t read the strats on the plagueworks yet, that its hardly worth it, what am I missing here?
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Onyxhorn reply on January 5, 2010 9:02 am:
The armor. If you’re currently using Glyph of Indomitability in your EH set, then Organ is an armor upgrade. Sure the Glyph’s on-use Dodge boost is great when you need it (although.. honestly, how often is that? Once a fight maybe if your healer gets RNG-Impaled? If that? I swear I rarely have to hit my panic button or my trinket macros on bosses anymore, though I readily admit that could be because we haven’t started IC25 yet and have only cleared the lower spire on 10-man.) But it seems to me that if you’re looking at a fight where the majority of the tank damage is physical, being able to throw on both Glyph and Organ would be pretty awesome. And keep in mind the benefit for threat/tight enrage timer fights too considering the extra AP gained from that 3k+ armor increase (assuming 3/3 AotT).
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Onyxhorn reply on January 5, 2010 9:08 am:
Sorry, AttT of course… although Arms on the Teeth would be a pretty interesting talent. Lovecraftian to say the least.
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Pachi reply on January 5, 2010 9:27 am:
I generally don’t use my dodge trinket as a panic button, I use it on like say on valks when the other valk gets twins pact, the one beating on you does a lot more damage, thats when I push it. I am just saying, that the idea of EH is “worst case senerio” and since the up time on the trinket is a bit sketchy, is it really worth using.
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Vilereaver reply on January 5, 2010 11:20 pm:
Blizzard’s new design philosophy of “make bosses hit less hard but more often” makes the Organ look tailor-made for tanking consistency.
January 5th, 2010 at 9:31 am
Also I don’t precisely agree with you on the extra armor isn’t giving up extra health. It is true for the most part, but say like the saronite plated legs, they are what uld 25 which is like 3ish tiers behind 25 man ICC gear, even though it has the most armor, except the crafted ones, but has a lot less stam then say the 25 man marrogar ones. My point is, same item level, yes you give up 0 stam for extra armor but for high magic damage fights is it really worth using gear from tiers ago?
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January 6th, 2010 at 8:15 am
We had a chance to play with Festergut last night on 10 man. We didn’t pass the dps check, but got him to 4% on one attempt. It was a great learning experience.
Looking at the logs, 83% of the damage our MT took was melee (physical) damage. For this fight, at least, I’m going to have to say that Armor +Stam reigns supreme and on-use trinkets after the third inhale are wonderful. When a boss hits as hard as this one I do not want to rely on a lucky avoidance streak.
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January 6th, 2010 at 8:30 am
Well, new bosses are cool however bugged…… We only did 10 man last night since our 25’s nights are Thursday and Sunday but we managed to blow Festergut up in 4 attempts but Rotface appeared to be bugged or the fight was not working as the current strat lists. When he did his slime spray there was no channeling or targeting, he would just blast the whole raid. Still managed to get him to about 30%. Going back in tonight to clean up, I only hope Putricide is not as bugged as everyone is saying he is…..
PS… Geist traps are funny for healers to hit….
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Aethor reply on January 7, 2010 3:40 am:
We killed Rotface on 25m yesterday, and indeed he doesn’t target anyone in particular when he does Slime Spray, but u can easily see where is he facing and move behind accordingly, only leaving MT infront to not have him spin around when cast is finished.
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Seph reply on January 7, 2010 8:57 am:
Gotcha. Just making sure because the strats I read (which were pre release strats) said there was a target. Hopefully we get him tonight (which will be our first attempt at 25 man this week) Thanks for the info!
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Zellviren reply on January 11, 2010 2:43 am:
To clarify:
There is both a cast time AND a channel for this. While he picks his random target, he will follow that target for the duration of the cast time. When the cast time is complete, he will then channel and NOT change direction. This, therefore, is when you want to sneak behind him.
In any event, armour is king for these fights. While there is, indeed, some magical damage being doled out, the vast majority is physical - therefore, armour is best (particularly for warriors and death knights, who get more DPS out of more armour).
You want high DPS/TPS, because the damage requirements are both high. Festergut is the only one with a conventional enrage, but Rotface has a soft enrage due to the sheer number of people getting infected as the fight wears on.
Seph reply on January 11, 2010 8:31 am:
How many big exploding slimes are you getting during the encounter? We were consistently getting him to about 9 mil then people were freaking out and dying. At this point he had only exploded his 3rd slime.
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Zellviren reply on January 12, 2010 1:48 am:
For the 10 man, we had four “angry poo-poo’s” in our kill. I read on MMO that he’s injecting people at the same pace as he does in the 25 man encounter (as in, too fast) around the 30% health mark and the speed of injection seems to be time based as opposed to health based. Therefore, early Bloodlust is your friend to get more DPS up time from your damage dealers.
I would suggest that any more than four of the exploding oozes is pushing it though, technically, it’s still possible.
Seph reply on January 12, 2010 9:10 am:
Ok sounds like we were right on Track then, just need to clean it up. Thanks! We only got one 25 man night last week due to several people being out. We are going back in tonight on 10 man so we can get our strat ironed out.
Seph reply on January 13, 2010 10:45 am:
Rotace went down like a chump last night in 10 man with only 3 exploding oozes with both 10 mans we ran last night killing him. Thanks for all of the tips folks. Hope to replicate on 25 man this week.
January 6th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
update - forget about any non-physical damage on festergut. he’s hitting for 17-20k on 10-man with 3 inhales.
got him down last night, but i was certainly wearing my armor trinket - both for the passive armor and the use effect.
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Tobin reply on January 7, 2010 11:42 am:
I agree completely with this. For Festergut in 10-man, magical damage is a non-issue.
Without any cooldowns (not even indestructible potion), he was hitting me for 20k every swing, with a swing timer of exactly one second. That’s with talented demo shout and thunderclap up.
Got him down last night wearing double brewfest (Oh yeah!), but I’ll be bringing an armor trinket next time.
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Seph reply on January 7, 2010 12:22 pm:
Imagine how hard he would be hitting if they did not implement Chill of the throne. Yikes
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January 7th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
I think armor is under rated and is probably one of the better stats to have in my opinion. Last night in our 10 man I switch from the Heart of Iron and Juggernaunt’s Vitality to Eitrigg’s Oath http://www.wowhead.com/?item=48021 and Corpse Tongue Coin http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50352#comments. I thought I would never say this but dropping my stam trinkets and picking up dodge help my survivability. Also, the armor procs from the trinkets was noticeable. We cleared Festergut and Rotface with no real problems and got Professor Putricide down to 4% /cry.
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Gravity reply on January 8, 2010 2:14 am:
That’s interesting that you found Eitrigg’s (heroic version) good; I guess you just had to reduce your incoming damage?
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småsh reply on January 8, 2010 1:38 pm:
Yeah, I was getting hit hard consistently. So, I switch from the stam trinkets to the one’s I listed above. I found that the incoming spike damage was slowed down. Also, I started swapping in the Glyph of Indomitability. Which I think is better than Eitrigg’s Oath. But I think the proc from the Corpse Tongue Coin http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=71634 is what saving me. The extra armor comes in when you need it the most.
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January 8th, 2010 at 2:31 am
I was analyzing combatlogs from our yesterday fights and it looks like 80-90% dmg on tanks are melee swings from those 2 bosses. So going with armor / stamina trinkets combination is a good idea. Taking 2x stamina trinkets is pointless as those bosses deal marginal amount of magical dmg on tanks. And yes, they hit hard, even with our 32-33k armor before pot.
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January 8th, 2010 at 10:24 am
How would you go about choosing between Heart of Iron and Glyph, would the Glyph win out in all situations? I’m talking trading 1600 HP for 1700 armor and slightly more dodge on the same CD.
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Onyxhorn reply on January 8, 2010 10:41 am:
I believe I remember reading somewhere (this site perhaps? I unfortunately cannot provide a source for this) that the EH gained from Heart of Iron and Glyph of Indomitability were roughly equal. With the Glyph having slightly more of a dodge bonus on use, I’d lean toward Glyph on heavy physical fights. Magic fights would obviously favor the Heart over Glyph, though Heart is in no way your BEST option available for fights with a lot of magic damage (looks like the Blood Council will fit this bill based on the achievement) where the Key, Satrina’s/Juggernaut or even Brewfest appear to greatly outshine the Heart.
With no Juggernaut to my name and my EoF’s spoken for through 2013, I’ll probably be rocking the Heart/Glyph combo for our first Rotface10 attempts. That’s a huge amt of dodge-on-demand for that 3rd inhale.
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Dreador reply on January 8, 2010 12:18 pm:
I don’t have Satrina’s ATM, I missed TOC (canceled account). The new guild I started will farm it once a week though, and I shall have it soon. Picked up key, already had heart, and I’d been spending all my badges on gems to make tons of gold off, but today I’ll have the glyph too.
And I think you meant festergut, not rotface. Hell of a fun fight btw! I used key/Heart for it, would have liked key/glyph looking back on it.
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Dreador reply on January 8, 2010 12:47 pm:
Also if you’re going to use both Heart and Glyph, I’d suggest chaining them, you’d get more benefit because with all that dodge you’ll get hit like a truck with diminished returns, I think. I’ll have to test out how much they give together tonight and report back.
Onyxhorn reply on January 8, 2010 2:02 pm:
Whichever one it is that gets the 30% damage boost when he inhales all the blighty stuff, yeah. Darn Blizzard making visually identical mobs with similarly icky names. I’ll do some experimenting with chaining versus full salvo and see which one works better, thanks for the tip!
January 9th, 2010 at 8:39 am
On our Festergut 25 kill this week I allowed the OT to pick him up first so that I’d have him for the third inhale. Now, there’s roughly no magic damage being thrown around and at 90% increased attack speed and power absorbing 3200 damage isn’t going to make any noticeable difference. He was hitting me for about ~36k+. My trinkets of choice were Corpse Tongue Coin and Juggernaut’s Vitality. Corpse wouldn’t always be my trinket of choice, but because he could bring me past 35% in a second or so the 10 seconds of 5700+ armor for the 30 seconds of the enrage (1/3) helped incredibly for this fight. I went back to using Glyph for MTing Rotface. On Rotface I had the mages buff me with Amplify Magic, as I do in most encounters (save for Deathwhisper for when rogues forget where their kick button is.) Just thought I’d throw in my 2cents since I didn’t even see this trinket getting brought up. Btw, I’ve been a fan for awhile now and check the site often. Keep up the good work!
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January 11th, 2010 at 3:39 am
Gearing appropriately is a Good Idea and matching your gear to a given fight is also a Good Idea. However, comprehending fight mechanics is infinitely more important. You really don’t need very much survivability to get through any of the current boss fights; You just need to understand when to use your abilities.
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January 11th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Rotface doesn’t hit very hard. Festergut, you’ll want Shield Wall or any other external CD to help you through the third stack. I’d still go for Max. HP, because the Avoidance use on those trinkets aren’t going to do anything if a Hit lands. So the extra 700HP are there no matter what. But again, if CDs are used properly by you and your OT, you should not die on Festergut.
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Zellviren reply on January 12, 2010 7:02 am:
Avoidance may not help when a hit lands, but armour does; making the Glyph of Indomitability inherently superior to any blind stamina trinket, because you’re getting both the effective health (armour) AND the on use effect.
In short, it’s technically better.
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January 11th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Psy and Elune, what you’re both saying is common knowledge and understood, but I think you’re missing the point. Yes I had a CD rotation set up for Festergut, but every little bit helps and that’s what’s being discussed here. It’s your job to survive and pop CDs accordingly, yes, but it’s also best to know as much as you can from people experiencing the same encounters so that next week you can do it even better— which should be the goal of any player.
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January 12th, 2010 at 11:22 am
All I’m saying is that for Rotface/Festergut, I kinda disagree with choosing an armor trinket. They hit quite slow meaning I don’t see how an extra 2% (not even sure it would be 2%) mitigation from armor (2% on a 25K hit is 500) will compete against 2000 additional HP. It would take 4 hits before getting topped off again to see any advantage from the armor trinket.
There are fights where you’ll want the armor, I just don’t think Rotface or Festergut are one of those fights.
+6 or so % avoidance on use has its interest for fights where a boss increases its attack speed, festergut is one of them. So if you have the Heart of Iron, then it might be a good choice for Festergut.
When you’re low HP, relying on an additional 6% avoidance is just like playing dice, you’ll die, often. And if that’s the case, just like Ven said, something has gone wrong.
There are plenty of really good items with Armor (sword, neck, ring, and now an excellent chestplate, belt and cloak) that will not sacrifice the number 1 stat (stamina). Most of the time on those items, armor is there at the cost of avoidance or threat stat. Seems like a good trade off for Festergut and Rotface
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Orcstar reply on January 13, 2010 3:54 am:
Festergut does not hit slow.
The more stacks he gains the faster and harder his hits are.
At 3 stacks easiliy for 30k every second and at 2 stacks your healers already need to work very hard to keep you alive.
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January 13th, 2010 at 3:50 am
First off, while the absolute change in reduction from the trinket might be around 1-2%, the relative reduction is closer to 4%. So realistically the question is more “which is better, taking 1000 less damage per hit, or having 2000 more health?” Since most of us can only survive two hits at a time without heals anyway, it turns into six of one, half a dozen of the other from an EH standpoint.
Where the armor comes ahead, however, is that in otherwise identical gear, the tank with the stam trinket will require an additional 1000 healing per hit to keep up. On a fight where healing requirements are already pretty intense, that can make a difference.
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January 13th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Kind of off-topic, but I have to wonder sometimes.
I’m loving this big armour thing! I feel it’s making the whole job a lot easier (although somehow my companion pally tank is still out lasting me a lot of the time). But, assuming you’re getting plenty of healing (which some will argue isn’t a fair assumption, but unless healers are dying or having to spread their heals out unduly, I think it’s a fair call 90% of the time) then it technically doesn’t matter between EH from stam or EH from armour.
But how many of us consider the equation from the healers’ side?
Using EH from stam as the benchmark, is it fair to say EH from armour would general “extend” their mana pool? (we have a wonderful disc priest who’s overheals are remarkably low, often under 15% of total healing output!)
Now see, I’m no numbers guru. So maybe I’m wrong… But that’s how I see it… So this is part of my argument for taking armour over stam (I used to be the other way around).
As my example, 10 man festergut, I was taking 18-19k hits at three stacks (demo and TC applied, no CDs used). Let’s just say that stam stacked I would be taking 19-20k. For every four to six hits I take I would be needing one more flash heal (or eqv). That’s an extra gcd used by the healer, and some mana. Now we’re assuming the healer is keeping me well topped up (95-99%) with absolutely minimal overhealing, and no chance of dying due to lack of heals. If I was stam stacked the healer would need to work in extra heals, and would oom sooner.
Is my thinking correct?
The other part that interests me…
Is how do we determine if avoidance is really worth it?
What method do people use to determine if it’s worth the extra 1 or 2% avoidance over some stam or armour? How much stam or armour is it okay to give up/gain?
This was a big question between myself and another guild tank.
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Coe reply on January 14, 2010 5:19 am:
How we determine if avoidance is worth it? I follow basic rule of thumb: if boss hits not too hard, but stacks dangerous debuff or buffs himself (think of Saurfang), avoidance is always preferred. When boss hits like truck with physical dmg, armor is always preferred. When boss does most dmg with magical abilities, stamina is preferred.
Festergut does 80-90% dmg as fast and hard physical hits:
[20:59:05.703] Festergut hits Coehoorn 17243
[20:59:06.468] Festergut hits Coehoorn 23765 (O: 2967)
[20:59:06.968] Coehoorn dies
[20:59:07.453] Festergut hits Avallach 23009
[20:59:08.500] Festergut hits Avallach 15202 (B: 3204)
I’d never stack stamina before armor for this fight, cause our healers were chain casting heals all the time (2 healers were standing with melee group, cause when they had to move, tank died). So if we would stack stamina, we would require even more heals (probably more than output of our healers).
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Bhig reply on January 14, 2010 2:36 pm:
How do you normally gem and enchant?
I have always taken the approach of spreading it all around. Def+ avoidance, stam, armour. With gemming, I normally approach the situation by looking at the socket bonus, and if it’s stam I will gem for the socket bonus (normally giving up between 9 and 11 stam for some def and/or parry), if it’s anything else I just go stam.
ATM I have over 580 def, which I feel is an overkill, but on the other hand it is allowing me to swap my gear around any which way I want and still maintaining the 540 requirement (particularly fights where I’m just soaking, I am starting to use some resistance chants/gear for those specific fights).
Should I be going more for stam and not worrying about blending in the avoidance? Does anyone ever go for the +10stats gem? Or pure avoidance gems (I always go stam + def or parry)?
(also, was that 10 or 25 fester? How many stacks? That was some big hits!)
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athelia reply on January 14, 2010 2:42 pm:
as far as gemming… if you are at 580 def then try to gem stamina as much as possible. If the bonus is 9 or 11 stam then yes gem for the socket. Also your enchants and item enhancements should go for stamina mostly with the ocasional armor enchant.
As a warrior with color not being a factor and if you want to get the bonus theres nothing wrong with going stam+ def.
Normally Pally tanks or Melee dps go for the 10+ stats gem so they can make their meta work.
If you are in endgame gear the gemming probably isnt going to make or break you. Its knowing when to hit the shieldwall and last stand….(and trinkets).
Bhig reply on January 14, 2010 6:42 pm:
Whoops.. I just realised how misleading my post was..
(I think the advice will be the same)
When looking at the socket bonus, if it’s stam I will normally gem to get the bonus. I find that gemming for the bonus will normally cost me between 9 and 11 stam compared to just stacking stam gems.
e.g. I bought the Cataclysmic Chestguard
3 sockets (one of each colour)
Socket bonus = +12 stam
3x stam gem = 90 stam
Gemming for socket (one stam, two stam + other) =72 stam + 10 def + 10 parry).
I went for the socket bonus (partly because of the gems I had available at the time too). In this case I probably should’ve gone for the stam, but I think it shows what I mean.
All my enchants are stam or armour, except my weapon (any suggestions here? I’m using +25 hit & crit.. which is no longer very useful to me)
With end game, it’s always hard to know if the gemming is making any rea differences. You can never tell if that extra 100hp would’ve saved your life, or if the extra .3% avoidance was your saviour.
Coe reply on January 15, 2010 6:01 am:
I enchant for sta and armor (so LW armor on gloves, armor on cloak, hp on chest, etc.) Gems: if socket bonus is stamina, I go for dodge+sta in red sockets and def+sta in yellow sockets. I have 578def now. I never gem for parry, because as DK I have plenty of parry from str. As warrior/paly you could calculate if parry is better for you (dimishing returns).
As for weapon, my friends warriors tanks use mongoose.
Gaskal (TFC) reply on January 26, 2010 10:41 pm:
Gearing for EH is basically avoiding RNG deaths as much as you can. While a wee bit more avoidance MAY have saved your tanks there, it seems to me as though you just got rather bad luck with two tank healers having to move during the 3rd Inhale - which is RNG anyway. Things like that will happen.
There should be only 1-2 Third Inhale phases, where one tank should be taking massive damage, in which case you have your own Shield Wall and EnReg/Last Stand.
If you time your cooldowns in conjunction with healer cooldowns, the 3x Inhale should be smooth sailing. Also make sure your LESSER geared tank picks it up FIRST.
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January 14th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
all this has to take in account your other gear…..nothing sux worse then missing a taunt or another valuable move when needed.
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Dreador reply on January 22, 2010 8:54 am:
Glyph of Taunt, homie.
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