The basic question here is when does dodge become a better stat than armor/stamina/defense for a bear tank? Some stats to start with:

Unbuffed:
stam/def/armor gear: 13,084 hp, 447 def, 28547 armor, 30.02% dodge.
dodge gear: 12,402 hp, 415 def, 26212 armor, 40.08% dodge

Raid Buffed:
stam/def/armor gear = 18084 hp, 447 def, 29420 ac, 32% dodge
max avoidance = 17322 hp, 415 def, 27186 ac, 43% dodge

As I understand it Druids most important tanking stats are in this order:

#1) become uncrittable, with our talents this is a stat sheet of 415 def or + 65 or 156 rating.
#2) have enough stamina that raid buffed you can take burst damage without instagib. For practical purposes in say gruuls lair this is a min of a raid buff of 17k
#3) have armor to mitigate (bear specialty) incoming damage a bare minimum once again for gruuls lair is 70% which is about 26,000
#4) dodge, since we cant parry or block being able to long term take less damage to conserve healers mana is very good

In a raid a tank is consistently taking a lot of damage and constantly receiving heals. Both gear sets are at the def cap and have enough stam to survive up to 16 grows on gruul. The difference in mitigation is roughly ~1000 armor =1% less raw damage taken. Now, bears in this form can't be crit but we always have a 15% chance for crushing blows. Even if you add dodge and miss from def/skill, the left over chance to be hit still has 15% crush. So if you have 5% dodge and 5% miss you get crushed 15% of the time, if you have 40% dodge and 8% miss you get crushed 15% of the time. A bear cannot avoid this.

So which way is going to be better for a bear raid tank? According to http://mjollnir.com/attach/Qina/druid_calculator.html the buffed s/d/a has a total mitigation of 82.74% while the buffed avoidance has a mitigation of 84.72%.

The thing is though, I'm not sure it comes down to a straight numbers question. There is a question of what makes for more consistent healing and what helps healers last longer. While the dodge set makes for more mitigation, that mitigation could just mean overheal for the healers in which case is there any gain from it? So I'm looking for some opinions here. Which gear set is better for raid tanking as a bear? What are the pluses and minuses for each set? Is there a point where a bear can say that he has enough armor/stamine/defense and start choosing dodge instead of adding more of those and if so then where is that point?

P.S. Full disclosure: This is actually about a friend's character that he came to me asking for advice on. Much of this information is copied from a conversation we had.

The thing to look for on a raid tank in my opinion, specifically to learning runs, is effective health. Effective health is the amount of damage a tank can take before he dies with no heals. The two things that determine that value are your total health pool and the amount of mitigation you have (whether by armor/block value for physical or resistance for magical).

On a fight such as Gruul, you are correct in inferring that overheal is likely to occur at some point (dodge, dodge, dodge) as at a certain point of Growths & health of the MT, if he doesn't receive a heal within two seconds of receiving damage, the tank is going to die. Thus the healers have to rain heals on the MT (and OT for that matter) whether or not the damage is received. A canceled heal with .6s left on casting might just result in a wipe, thus it is going to land irregardless of current tank health. I would have him in as much health & armor as possible while keeping the critcap as he can. That's the advice I follow and practice for myself and recommend to anyone tanking these level of encounters.

As a segue, it appears at some point avoidance becomes more important than effective health, judging by the gearing of Mt. Hyjal tanks. I haven't had the opportunity to ask one when & why, or done any research on the encounters, so I couldn't say what changes but at least for Gruul's Lair up through SSC/TK there seems to have been an effective health tank gearing that has lead to success.

Regards,
~Frag

I'm going to venture a guess there's a max likely hit or safe hp value out there, if you want to call it that. Once you know that number, you know where avoidance > stam.

To clarify: A stam number where a tank is safe from being killed before a heal can land, with the currently known mobs.

That's my guess as well, there's a point where more effective health (EH) simply doesn't advance your learning, however I'm still anti-dodge due to the complete lack of benefit I receive when I dodge. Miss is very valuable due to it working while stunned and parry for it's +40% swing timer haste, but on a dodge, you lose the rage, your healers might overheal (specifically on hard hitters) and gain nothing in return.

There might be a boss out there where EH doesn't matter, where avoidance does (there's currently a post on the official & EJ forums about a 100% avoidance/block set of gear for a warrior (it's 50/50)) but I haven't seen anything in that regards.

YMMV,
~Frag

Of couse the parry bit doesn't effect this particular case since druids can't parry. My gut agrees with you though that its better to keep pumping stamin/def/armor than to invest in dodge. I just don't have any way to express this other than as a gut feeling. : )

I think that this safe value is what he is looking for. I think he is trying to crunch the numbers to find a point where he has enough stamina/armor/defence to be past the safe point and so past that the dodge will be better. The question is, where would such a point be? It strikes me that this is especially tough to figure because its dependent on what is being done. Kara would have a different safe hit than Gruul who would have a different safe hit from SSC and etc etc. Even more than that, it would vary by bosses in each of those. Assuming Gruul though...any thoughts on where it would be?

Gruul, you're dealing with crush on a druid, so, it'd be damned high.

Dodge never becomes "better" than armor except when you hit the armor cap.

Dodge does nothing for crushing blows. You cannot get dodge values high enough that they change anything with regards to crushing blows except when using trinkets such as Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch and Badge of Tenacity (and both of them at once). Still, that's only 10 seconds of pushing crushing blows off the table, which is almost useless. You don't know when a crushing blow will hit, so you can't use heavy cooldowns like that to survive them.

Armor, on the other hand, mitigates crushing blows down to a manageable level, and armor does not have diminishing returns on life expectancy until you hit the armor cap.

The smart druid stacks armor till around 28k, then begins stacking dodge. At around 28k, you'll hit the armor cap with buffs such as Inspiration.

With regards to stamina, stamina is only useful up to a certain point (and that 'certain point' depends on the boss). By 'certain point', I mean enough health that he can survive the worst possible spike damage the boss can dish out over a certain timeframe (basically he needs to be able to survive the time it takes for the healers to cast a heal on him). Health above that becomes a cushion for healer mana, nothing more.

For example, if you have 20,000 health, and a boss' worst possible spike damage is 19,000 damage in the time it takes for heals to heal you to full, additional health is nothing but a cushion for healers (which healers should not need except in extraordinary circumstances; if healers need this regularly, they are slacking off). This doesn't mean that you shouldn't keep on stacking stamina, but it DOES mean that the item-points spent on stamina would be better spent going towards avoidance and/or mitigation.

EDIT: Bah, I need to learn to read the thread. I basically completely agree with what Mavfin said.

Stamina first. Armour second. Dodge is a nice extra but don't stack it too high. Basically, there is no "safe" point; there are bosses in SSC that can spike over 23k damage in about 1.3 seconds.

The long-run effect of avoidance is just to save healer mana. It doesn't even really apply that much in TBC raiding since for really hard hitting bosses, there just isn't the time to cancel-heal anyway - you just spam. And providing that your healers are sucking mana pots (which they should be) and have a shadow priest (which, on any fight where tank durability is an issue, they should have), mana isn't an issue. Not dying to a gargantuan spike is.

A lot of this depends on if your druid friend is going to be the (now) conventional druid off-tank or if he is going to try the tougher (for a druid) road of main tanking.

Thanks for a number, Skan. As far as I can tell, according to (people like) Kungen's gearing he did hit a "safe spot" as he switched from Stam sockets/gearing to dodge (and is up around 6% dodge from the last time I armoried him). I'd love to know why and specifically when. As the guild leader and MT for the #1 progressing guild in WoW, I'm going to give him a little bit of credit for being "on the up and up" in regards to tanking know-how. Now he could have had that gear on for a specific fight, but I'm not remotely rich enough to consider swapping gems in tier pieces on a fight by fight basis.

23k in >1.5s, yeah, I'll keep stamming.

Cheers,
~Frag

So Alliera meantions an armor cap around 28k. The buffed numbers from the first post were as follows:

stam/def/armor gear = 18084 hp, 447 def, 29420 ac, 32% dodge
max avoidance = 17322 hp, 415 def, 27186 ac, 43% dodge

So if a druid needs to maintain 415 def and there is an armor cap around 28k, it would seem that he could do with less armor and def in the stam/def/armor gear set, but probably would want more armor than in the max avoidance set. So we are looking at somewhere in the middle aiming for 415 def, 28k armor (is there an exact number for this meantioned cap?). So maintaining those two numbers the question becomes stam or dodge. Overall stam seems better because its more cushion and dodge actually causes over-heal and makes you lose rage (since you aren't getting hit). At this point it seems like the thing to do would be to hold those armor/def numbers and go in on learning fights with as much stamina as possible. Then as you get a feel for how much stamina you actually need for a boss you can start cutting back on that and add dodge until you reach a point where you have 28k armor, 415 def, enough stamina to absorb what you need to absorb, and then whatever you can fit into dodge. According to all of this there are safe numbers for armor and def of 28k and 415 repectively though. So the only non-safe numbers are stamina and dodge. Thats where the juggling actually takes place.

I suspect he's doing it because he's close to the tanking Holy Grail; uncrushability. In high-end raid tank epics, it's very possible to come close to 100% or more dodge + miss + parry + block. Once you pass that barrier, not even raid bosses can crush or crit, which has obvious implications for spike damage. Dodge is the cheapest gemmable way to add to that number (shield block rating is the best, but there is no gem for it).

Eh, no.

It's not.

With the best possible gear, you might scrape together ~80% or so. 100% flat is impossible.

Alliera... please.

You're probably right, Skan and after contributing to the thread linked above, it's fairly silly I didn't consider that. You are slightly off in that the easiest way to gem is dodge though, the epic +10 defense ones apparently give more since they affect block rating.

Point is, in bleeding edge gear (4 pieces of T6) you can become naturally crush immune without all your gear slots used, or even enchanted. Viability is still being considered, it's definitely exciting (and likely subject to "rebalance").

Cheers,
~Frag

As far as Druid tanking goes, being uncrittable is clearly the most important thing, so get your 3% reduction from talents and then hit 415 defense (or less if you have resilience). That is priority number one.


As far as life/mitigation and avoidance, both stats can help to reduce problems with burst damage, in its own way. I like to think of those two sets of stats as follows:

Life and Damage Mitigation combines to help mitigate the effect of burst damage. That means that when you take a bunch of hits in a short period of time, you're going to last long enough for the healers to help you out. This helps to make things more consistent because if you have enough life and damage mitigation, a single burst of damage should not be enough to knock you out, giving the healers time to respond. Damage Mitigation is nice because it also helps reduce the amount of damage that you take, meaning the healers will have to use less mana to keep you up.

Damage Avoidance helps to reduce the probability of burst damage. If you happen to dodge or parry one of the hits in a big burst from a boss mob, that essentially removes much of the threat from that burst of damage. However, it is not going to happen all of the time so you will still have big bursts of damage, they will just be less frequent. Like Damage Mitigation, Avoidance also helps to reduce the total damage taken so healers have to use less mana, which is a nice bonus.


So what's the answer? Personally, I like to go for the best Life and Damage Mitigation as I can without making any major sacrifices to Avoidance. However, I have found that you only have so much leeway with regard to being able to make changes to gear. Afterall, you only have the gear available that is in the game. Also, the game itemization plan makes it more attractive to take balanced equipment since gear with a moderate amount of 5 different stats will have more total stats than equipment that just focuses on one or two things.

Therefore, the big things that I like to see on tanking gear are things like bonus armor, good amounts of stamina and a fair amount of agility. In particular, I like the look of the tiered feral gear and the heroic feral gear (tree mender's belt, etc). They tend to have pretty good stamina, great armor and good agility. I don't really worry about strength, so much, since most of the feral gear seems to have that, as well. I also like that many tiered items have sockets that I can put additional stamina gems into to try and help push up my life total.

As a druid at our level of progression (partial T4 with good Karazhan gear), following those sorts of gear choices, that means that I get up over 18k life, raid buffed (no consumables) with about 29k armor and 35% dodge. I feel that is a pretty good balance of all stats that ensures I tend to not die to most burst damage (due to good life total and mitigation) and I don't take massive damage (due to mitigation and avoidance). That sounds like a win to me! I am currently lusting after some new pants (still using the ugly green quest reward pants since I have not yet gotten T4 pants nor the epic drop from the boss in heroic Mana Tombs) and T6 gear, in general, which seems to have an amazing amount of armor as well as good stat distribution.

So my 2 cents are the following:
1) Get crit immune
2) Favor a mix of tanking stats with some emphasis on high stamina and high armor pieces (sockets help here!)

Everybody agrees on the 415 being an important safe number. The 28k I'm really questionable about. I don't think its safe to be counting on inspiration or the shaman equivalent to be there. What is the total amount of armor needed to hit the 75% armor cap against raid bosses? Does anybody know this exact value?

http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Armor

Armour damage reduction = (AC / (AC - 22167.5 + 467.5 * [attacker's level]))

Same page puts 35886 at 75% reduction vs a 73.

So about 35.9k.

WTB Paw Block ability for bear tanks!

Paw Wall would be nice too.

And oh hey! It would be great if Frenzied Regeneration increased bear max health by 20% and health by 20% while in effect!

Thanks Sham. So we have an armor cap of 35886 against level 73 mobs. That means that with inspiration you would need 28709 armor to be at cap. So it seems to me that if you can't count on an inspiration type effect then you would want to keep buffing armor (and stamina of course) and not pay too great attention to dodge. Not that you would turn dodge down, but it wouldn't be your main goal. If you can count on inspiration then you simple get to the 28709 armor mark and then concentrate on stamina and dodge from there. This is all assuming that you are maintaining the 415 crit immune safe point.

So...priorities would be
1: 415 def for crit immune
2: Enough stamina to survive the hits from the boss you are tanking
3: 28709 armor for inspiration cap hitting
4: 35886 armor for non-inspiration cap hitting
5: Buffer stamina to give room for mistakes
6: Dodge when you have enough buffer stamina

Well even though I tank as a warrior here is how I tend to look at myself for gearing up:

1) Do I die from healers going OOM? Get more armor and more avoidance.
2) Do I die often from taking a sting of hits that does more damage than the healers can keep up with? Get more avoidance and armor.
3) Do I die from huge spike damage? get more armor and HP.

From my experience I die most often to 3, then some times to 2, and almost never from 1. So I prioritize HP and armor. Avoidance is nice, and pretty helpful. But IMO you can always use more HP and armor (of course I don't have to worry about the armor cap. Can druids actually get to that 35900 armor cap?)

My general advice for any tank.

And it's good advice. My experience matches.

That is impressive. Consider my comment retracted.

Ehh... except for the part where you said "best possible gear" you were essentially right. Does anybody care if Nilhinium doesn't need to use shield block on their weekly Illidain farming attempts for the next 2 months until they get bored?

Of course I don't know what warrior itemization is like in mid tier 5ish.

Well yes, but I didn't think it was possible at all.

And Nihilum aren't the only ones getting T6.

They are the only ones with T6 chests. Though I'm not going to spend all day on WoWhead seeing if its possible without that piece.

It is possible. The list is a compilation of the highest avoidance/block pieces available, not an actual gear recommendation.

Regards,
~Frag