(sorry, 10/8/07.. editting my example to something more realistic)
Well, I think every Druid knows pretty much the magic numbers for being uncritable. Basically, boss mobs should have about a 5.6% chance to crit you. So you need stats + talents to reduce that, since crits are usually GG for a tank.
Druids have -3% crit from a talent called Survival of the Fittest, which should be a staple for any druid with any intention on PvE'ing. Then you only have to make up the last 2.6% chance to crit. This can actually be achieved by either just getting your Defense Rating up to 415, or doing some hybrid setup using Resilience gear to achieve the same result.
After that... you should probably focus on tanking stats. By and large, for 25man instances especially, the limiting factor is really not how much avoidance you have, but really, how much can you survive before a heal can get to you. With the healing power these days, there should almost never be a question of how many HPS can a healer put out. I mean, if necessary 2 paladins spamming max rank HL can pretty much heal any fight in this entire game (although probably not sustainable, but still). The further you get in progression, the more evident it becomes. So then, what is the #1 cause of death to a tank? It's not the size or HPS of the heals, its the delay or reaction time until you start getting them.
Realistically speaking, can you survive maybe about 10 seconds without heals in a bad luck situation? By taking this aspect of it, for a true tank set, you really want to stress your survivability in the face of bad RNG streaks.
I mean, lets compare Player A with 15000 HP / 50% dodge / 65% armor mitigation, that's great.. versus Player B with 15000 HP / 25% dodge / 75% armor mitigation, versus Player C with 20000 HP / 25% dodge / 65% migitation.
Assuming boss will hit for 20000 unmitigated. Player A will get hit for 7000per hit, but dodge 50% of them, so overtime, you will see the player taking ~3500dmg per hit. Player B will get hit for 5000 per hit, but with the dodge, is looking at on avg about 3750dmg per hit. On paper, you're like, wow... Player A has the better stats. 50% dodge is huge... over time, that tank will be taking less dmg, so that much be the better setup.
You're wrong however. The funny thing about these fights, and about dodge in general, is that it is completely based on the RNG. Meaning for every time you dodge 5 hits in a row, you'll get hit by 5 straight hits. In which case, for that short period of time, your dodge means jack for Player A. And the healers need to work much harder for that time period than the healer on player B. If you were to theoretically plot a chart for highest % chance of death, you would see the highest point on the chart would be when you miss a string of dodges.
How do tanks die? When those bad streaks burst you, and the healers are slow to cope with the increased damage taken. In the case when you have a bad hit streak, you're looking @ 5x 7000 = 35000 dmg, vs 5x 5000 = 25000 dmg. It's much easier and more predictable for a healer to heal that 25000 dmg during the bad streak than it is for them to cope with the 35000 dmg from a high avoidance, lower mitigation tank. If you throw Player C into the mix, is it easier to keep a 20000 HP tank healed through 35000 dmg? Or is it easier to keep a 15000 HP tank healed through 35000 damage. While I'm sure over over time, its nicer to heal a target who overtime takes less damage, the fact is, overtime tanks do ok.. it's the unexpected bursts which will kill a tank. With a string of 5 hits, assuming you dodged them all, you would probably be getting a ton of overheal anyways due to failed pre-casts, so mana is going to be spent anyways (not precasting would be death when the mobs are hitting so hard).
I mean, its pretty shocking, b/c you would assume with that much avoidance, and with people completely stressing how godly dodge is for druids, that the 50% O_O dodge tank would be better, but in reality, would be a worse option. So sites like Hugehoss's tank list who over emphasize the value of dodge for tanking either assume the bear druid also has max armor and 20k hp already, or just simply aren't good metrics for true bear tanking and survival.
Should you use Emmerald's list? Honestly Emmerald's list isn't so bad. But the honest reality of tanking things is that most players don't really have many options. You generally take the best possible tank gear available when it comes up. The most flexibility you really have is how you gem it.... and I think its honestly not that bad an idea just to throw a bunch of 12-15stam gems in there ;)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Heyho, I somehow didn't get the point with the dodging ... perhaps it's because I'm not a native speaker.
When you have 50% dodge, you will dodge 50% of the attacks, reducing the overall dmg by 50% BEFORE the other calculations come into play.
When you only have 25% dodge, you will take 75% damage.
Dodge is calculated each time a boss hits you, so statistically speaking, 50% dodge means 50% dodge, and 25% dodge means 25% dodge.
Now I relly don't understand the part with dodging 10 times in a row and then getting crit 10 times in a row.
With 50% dodge, this is highly unlikely 0.5^10, which is quite a small number. And as your calculations seem to base upon this line of argumentation (which I don't understand), please explain it again to me :)
Thanks. Great BLOG, keep it up.
I'm really happy to see someone ask a question.
Dodge does not reduce the damage you take. It only increases the % chance you have to avoid it. Yes, a long period of time, your dodge rate will directly influence how much damage you will take over a long period of time, but generally speaking, you do not have the hit points to take 1000 hits in a row. They happen in streaks. Perhaps using 10 hits in a row is a poor example (however, my point was that dodging 10 straight will happen the same amt of times as getting hit by 10 straight). But a more realistic scenario is 4 hits in a row. with a 6.25% chance, with the typical boss mob hitting you approximately 100-200 times a fight, this is a very likely scenario. This is also what gets you killed.
Remember, healing is easy when its predictable. 2 healers can keep a tank up through almost any type of damage if they can predict the dmg. It's the unpredictable damage which causes deaths b/c of healer delay in reacting to the sudden burst in damage.
This is why mitigation is more valuable than avoidance... b/c even though over time you will avoid more attacks, it is ultimately based on the random # generator, and not avoiding a string of hits will not add to your survivability at all.
Another variable I did not add into these calculations is the way the hit table works. Because WoW uses a 1-check system for determining hits/misses, increasing your dodge rate will not actually decrease your CRUSHING BLOW rate. This is why when you look at WWS logs of high-dodge druids, the crushing blows rate will seems extraordinarily high.
This is because the bosses will have a 15% base chance to crush you, assuming 0% avoidance. Out of 100 hits, you will take 15 crushing blows. Let us bump that number to 50% avoidance. What the hit table will break down to is 50 misses, 35 hits, and 15 crushing blows. So as you can see, your crushing blow damage is not reduced at all, meaning that stacking dodge is not a linear reduction in damage over time.
Theoretically speaking, if you had an 85% avoidance rate, out of 100 hits, 85 would be misses, and 15 of them would be crushing blows... meaning you would never get hit normally.
But either way, the point of the post was to emphasize the fact that avoidance doesn't save lives, it just reduces the overall workload of a healer. Mitigation saves your life however. There are many boss mobs that straight up hit for 25000 dmg. With 65% mitigation, you are still looking at hits of 8750. Getting hit 3-4x in a row by that makes it very difficult to keep you healed up, especialyl when the swing speed can be a low as a .5 to 1 seconds. With 75% mitigation, 6250 hits x 4 is a much easier time for healers to heal through.
Btw, mitigation reduces crushing blow dmg, avoidance will not.
Got the point, thanks for the long and clear explanation :p
in the real (wow)world unlucky chains of hits and lucky chains of dodges does happen, but comparing 15k HP 25% dodge to 20K HP 50% dodge, though is easier to heal and avoid death, WILL consume more of your healers mana over a course of fight, the middle of the two is always the best.
Post a Comment