Tank Stat Weights - Napkin Math 101

[Revulva]

Here is our rough math on how to weight stats for tanks, until we find another source that gives us some convincing values.

Protection Warrior

Dodge = Parry, but parry gets a bonus for warriors because they get +10% critical block chance proc on parries.

Mastery:
1 point mastery = 1.5% block and 1.5% crit block. So,
1 point mastery = 1.5% block + (1.5% of [current block] extra blocks) Or,
1 point mastery = ~2% extra block, since warriors have a base of 27% block
A block is 30% less damage on an attack which is the same as saying:
Block is avoiding 30% of an attack
Dodge is avoiding 100% of an attack
Parry is avoiding 100% of an attack
If your parry is high enough, prot warriors have a talent that gives +10% crit bock buff for 10 seconds. The up time would be high on this in a raid scenario. So, if we figure that in:
Each mastery point is 1.5% more blocks, but a flat extra 10% of those are going to be crits. So add 0.0015 per point of mastery. (Keep in mind this is rough.) So,
1 point mastery = 2.15% block.
Multiply by 30% to compare to dodge:
Mastery is 64.5% as useful as dodge for overall damage avoidance.

Strength:
25% of strength is converted to parry rating. We can take the strength on gear and multiply by 1.05 for raid buffs. Call it 26.25% of parry.

Armor:
We can roughly equate this to avoidance. Avoiding 2% attacks is like taking 2% less damage. But, armor is not a linear calculation. There aren't many items with extra armor. Just a couple trinkets. We are OK with a rough estimate here:
1500ish Armor to get 1% damage reduction in the 55% range. So, 1500 armor is roughly equal to 177 dodge rating. This then has to take into account armor multipliers like toughness or the various bear form multipliers to come up with a decent ratio between armor and dodge rating.

Expertise and Hit:
These are apples to oranges. They can be weighted independent of mitigation stats depending on how important you feel they are. Expertise should always be double hit rating before the dodge cap.  Unless I am mistaken, parry haste is no longer an issue, thus neither stat provides any damage reduction.

Protection Paladin

Parry is identical to dodge for a paladin
All other rules are the same: strength, expertise, etc.

Mastery:
1 point of mastery = 2.25%
Paladins block 40% of dmg per block
1 point of mastery = about 90% of a dodge.
Mastery should be 90% the value of dodge

Death Knight

There is a debate on the relative value of avoidance, mastery, and stamina. For our stat weights, we've chosen to value avoidance > mastery > stamina for the stat weight purposes. Why?
1.) Healer mana IS an issue right now in the game. Avoiding and/or mitigating damage is going to be extremely valuable in difficult raid encounters. Having a huge health pool is great, but right now we aren't seeing tanks dying from getting one-shot, we're seeing tanks dying because healers fall behind.

2.) At current gear levels, the diminishing returns on dodge/parry aren't that pronounced. At the next level of content, we will probably want to specify some sort of "soft cap" for dodge/parry after which we value those stats less.

3.) As far as whether to consider mastery or stamina better... this really comes down to gem selection. All gear at a particular item level has the same amount of stamina on it, with the exception of trinkets. Swapping mastery and stamina stat weights will not affect your total gear that significantly. Lets look at the relevant gems (only survival-based gems):
red: +40 Parry
yellow: +40 Dodge, +40 Mastery
blue: +60 Stamina
orange: +20 Parry and +20 Mastery (I don't think the new Parry/Dodge "stalwart" gems exist in the game right now)
green: +20 Dodge and +30 Stamina, +20 Mastery and +30 Stamina
purple: +20 Parry, +30 Stamina

So, how do we want to gem? Red sockets will be Parry. Yellow sockets will be Dodge. Blue sockets are the only ones to worry about, and we're only going to have a few of those. With the stat weights that we have chosen, you will end up with Dodge/Stamina or Parry/Stamina gems.

For trinkets, our stat weights will favor a trinket with Mastery over a trinket with Stamina, but, in reality these are the trinkets you are considering at the 359+ item level:
http://www.wowhead.com/item=65048
http://www.wowhead.com/item=65109
http://www.wowhead.com/item=58182
http://www.wowhead.com/item=62048

So, you're really always going to end up with the symbiotic worm and vial of stolen memories at 372 item level. The choice is going to be less clear at item level 359. Bedrock Talisman could be a better item than the symbiotic worm. We aren't considering the darkmoon card as superior because of my first point.

So, in the end, the stat weights we are using will not massively change your total value of stamina vs. mastery. You could swap the two if you prefer, but the overall effect on your gear is going to be minimal.

[Tarragon]

On Death Knights;
You didn't explain why you picked avoidance over mastery.
Mastery is a slightly more nebulous stat because it requires player skill to use to the fullest, whereas avoidance is basically passive. That could be an advantage for avoidance, but maybe better players who can time death strikes should go with mastery.

Disclaimer: I'm no theorycrafter, and I'm basically pulling all this out of my butt with no evidence to support it, but maybe it's an angle you guys hadn't considered.

[Devloc]

Also, it's more or less agreed at the moment that Avoidance ~= Mastery.

Perhaps it would be best add toggle between the two weights?  Personally, I'm a Mastery/Stam stacker myself.  Like you said, Healer mana is an issue.  The more Mastery/Stamina I have, the better I heal and bubble myself (especially with well timed DS's).  Not to mention, I believe I picked up on EJ that Blood Shield will stack rather than refresh itself come 4.0.6, which I believe would place Mastery firmly ahead of Avoidance, assuming no other changes.

[Revulva]

Keep in mind that these are just defaults. The stat weights will be clearly displayed and editable at any time to your own personal preferences.

You don't think avoidance would still edge out mastery for tanking? What if you were tanking multiple adds on a fight? It seems that avoidance would pull ahead in that scenario for sure?

We'll have to watch and see how DK tanking plays out in end game content. We will of course adjust the default stat weights according to the general consensus of the community.


We're beta-testing the site right now. We hope to have it up in a couple of days.

[Devloc]

Keep in mind that these are just defaults. The stat weights will be clearly displayed and editable at any time to your own personal preferences.

Ah, yes, I noticed.  Yea that's perfectly fine then.

You don't think avoidance would still edge out mastery for tanking? What if you were tanking multiple adds on a fight? It seems that avoidance would pull ahead in that scenario for sure?
We'll have to watch and see how DK tanking plays out in end game content. We will of course adjust the default stat weights according to the general consensus of the community.

It's hard to say.  I mean, people who are tanking end game content right now have yet to decide.  The thing about Mastery is the more damage you take the more damage you avoid (shield).  So, if you were to end up taking more damage if you had lower avoidance, you'd then prevent a larger chunk of it for the next wave.  On the other hand, you might take a much bigger chunk every once in a while due to RNG because you failed to avoid a string of hits from a few mobs.  I mean, both scenarios could be really spiky, but I (personally) think the Mastery route, with the massive Cata health pools, stabilizes itself a bit better.

I really don't yet have much raiding experience.  I did some Magmaw attempts a couple weeks ago as Avoidance heavy, and just the trash was brutal. Tanked Baradin Hold a bit after that after switching to Mastery, and it felt laughable in comparison.  Our first official raid of the year is tonight, though, so from now on I'll be able to provide much better... experiences?... as I switch back and forth to see how things work.

However I'm real excited for the upcoming stacking Blood Shield changes next patch.  That could really skew in favor for Mastery, yet still clearly give Avoidance it's place in aiding in creating massive shields, making "mix of both" the ideal path.

[Revulva]

Blood shield heals you for 50% (+mastery rating) of 25% (increased 45% by talent) of the damage you took for 5 seconds before you used death strike.

So... we should be able to figure this out with some more math... I'll get back to you on that one.

[Devloc]

Death Strike heals you for 25% (15% next patch?) of the damage you took in the previous 5 seconds, 7% of your maximum health minimum.  Talent increases heal by 45%.

Blood Shield Shields you for 6.25% x Mastery of what Death Strike's unmodified heal (no Mortal Strike, for instance - however I believe effects that increase healing received do increase your shield)

[Revulva]

blood shield only shields you for 6.25% x Mastery of 50% of what Death Strike's unmodified heal was.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=77513

[Devloc]

It's a misleading tooltip.  50% is the minimum you can have with 0 Mastery (8 base Mastery * 6.25% = 50%)

[Revulva]

Right, so, base - if you get healed for 5000 with a death strike, you get a 2500 shield. Each point of mastery increases that shield by 6.25%.

[Devloc]

Um, right, I think.  Your phrasing before made me think you'd always be chopping the shield in half because of the phrasing on the tooltip.  So having one point makes it 56.25%, and that 5000 death strike gives a 2812.5 shield.

[ShadeWyrm]

Has anyone come up with some DK Mastery Tank Stat weights?

I'm not sure what to do for it, as you want to be as close to possible hit/expertise capped to ensure those vital Death Strikes are never missed.

I'm not sure what the best weighting would be I figure something like :
(Like usual)
Strength : 26.25
Armor : 11
(Changed)
Mastery : 110
Stamina : 80
Hit : 65
Expertise : 55
Dodge : 50
Parry : 22

(Reason for Parry is that nothing should ever be enchanted / gemmed for parry as a DK... your strength to parry conversion is brutally high, setting them to equal ended up putting on some parry gems / enchants.)

The BiS seems to come out correctly with the items that ~look~ BiS to me. (T11, Akirus Wurmbreaker, Symbiotic Wurm, etc..)

Anyone have thoughts on a better stat weight?

Also any chance of being able to have a button to switch between "Mastery Blood DK" and "Avoidance Blood DK" the two are mutually exclusive, and don't play well together.

[yellowfive]

The optimizer code will automatically handle trying to balance parry and dodge to reduce the effects of diminishing returns.  The code also factors in the strength to parry conversion automatically, and takes care of that when inspecting diminishing returns.

If you look at the "more stats" section on the website next to the score at the top of the page, you'll see two stats: Dodge (from gear) and Parry (from gear)  -- these are the values that you want to be close to each other as a DK.  Your total parry and total dodge are irrelevant from a gear optimization standpoint, as extra bonuses are not subject to diminishing returns (your "base" dodge/parry, parry from rune of swordshattering).

Thus, you will get the best results if you set parry and dodge to be equal.  Also, I would make sure to set strength to some value that is in a proper relation to parry.  Your baseline should be 25% of your weight for parry.  Then increase it due to strength buff multipliers, and then add whatever you think is appropriate for the attack power gain (the defaults consider attack power aka threat to be irrelevant).

[ShadeWyrm]

Thoughts on this :

Str : 13.25
Sta : 70
Mastery : 104
Expertise : 55
Hit : 60 (I consider hit more valuable up to 6%, (can't wait for the editable soft caps) as that's when my interrupts no longer miss.)
Dodge : 50
Parry : 50
Armor : 22 (Doubled Armor to prevent Mr Robot from picking Sword shattering every single time.)

It produces BiS that makes sense.

Enchant Problems :
- Chooses 35 Mastery + Minor Runspeed instead of 50 Mastery (Odd choice when you can glyph for +speed on Boneshield...pretty sure they don't stack.)
- It's filling Red Sockets with Blue Gems, I can't find a value of stamina that fits "just enough" to not fill red with blue and instead use hybrid reds without royally messing up all the other gems. I'd optimally like to see Orange or Purple gems filled there. I'll keep tweaking see if I can get Mr Robot to not pick just Blue.

[Skillful Ember Topaz], [Sovereign Demonseye] seem the most viable.

[Revulva]

Your best orange gem would be:
20 expertise, 20 mastery (EP of 3180)

Your best purple would be:
20 expertise, 30 stamina (EP of 3200)

Blue gem is:
60 stamina (EP of 4200)

If you don't want stamina gems, you are going to need to cut your stamina weight to:
52