Blood Legion

Hey,

I was just wanting to ask a fellow dk tank a few questions and the ones on my server are a bit questionable. I remember Riggnaros from elitist jerks and when I saw the US first post on MMO (Congrats by the way) I figured whatever you're doing is working.

I noticed you still use stoneskin gargoyle even though I know a number of tanks have been experimenting with swordshattering (myself included) or even Fallen Crusader. Have you done tests with the other options that place stoneskin ahead?

Second, I saw that you're full mastery gems which is an idea I've been kicking around since I've been getting epics and my hp pool has been solid. As my guild is just starting 10m heroic modes this week I wanted to try out the extra mastery but I had one question. One of my professions is JC so I have the choice of specialty gems either 101 stamina or 67 mastery. Would you, if you were in my shoes, stick with the stam JC gem and switch the rest or would you even switch the 101 stam over to 67 mastery?

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer and congrats again on 13/13.

Edit: Armory link if you have any questions gear/stat wise http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/t ... r/advanced

I'm working on an entire DK tanking overview post in the DK EJ thread that will go into more detail, but since you took the time to make a post here, I"ll give you a quick summary:

Consistency > RNG

Consistent mitigation trumps the randomness of avoidance. Sure one will outweigh the other if enough if present, but you're dealing with very similar variables. That is the reason I choose mastery / armor / mitigation over avoidance for optional itemization.

Thanks

Thanks for the surprisingly fast reply.

That ej thread is a mess, I've all but given up on it. In your response you said consistent reduction is better than tbh. Would you say the 67 mastery gems are better than 101 stam then. I guess as long you you don't lose a health pool in seconds the mastery would do more for your EH?

nah dont theorycraft, just GET BIG.

good talk

gobthar wrote:Thanks for the surprisingly fast reply.

That ej thread is a mess, I've all but given up on it. In your response you said consistent reduction is better than tbh. Would you say the 67 mastery gems are better than 101 stam then. I guess as long you you don't lose a health pool in seconds the mastery would do more for your EH?

The point Rig is making is that if you gear for avoidance / mit, your health pool is not nearly as big of an issue in the current content as it was in Wrath. More avoidance / mit means (generally) you take less damage, which in turns makes your health pool rather superfluous (especially if your healers know their jobs and you're cycling Rune Tap / Blood Tap / Death Strike the way you should).

To summarise the general EJ stance on tanking:

In the current content, Warrior and Paladin tanks can become "unhittable," meaning that they never take full damage from a PvE attack. DK tanks can come close (98.4%) but cannot quite make threshold due to the fact that they cannot use shields (same with Druids, at a further reduce rate because they cannot wear plate). Gearing for avoidance / mit is superior to spamming Stamina, because a tank who (almost) never takes full damage is much easier to heal than a tank who has 250k health unbuffed and loses half of his health pool after one shot.

Basically, be nice to your healers and get your avoidance / mit totals up

And yes, I realise this post is a month too late, I just thought it deserved a response.