Random Question Thread

[Melchoir]

Money is tight this month so I can't buy the Cata expansion. If I start a new character when will I need the expansion to do something? Just the new cata areas, making a gob/worgen, and leveling past 80?

[Correction]

Money is tight this month so I can't buy the Cata expansion. If I start a new character when will I need the expansion to do something? Just the new cata areas, making a gob/worgen, and leveling past 80?

Some of the new profession items also require BoP items from heroic bosses, so you won't get much out of a high-level profession, either.

[Kaylia]

How does stam help with non-lethal magic damage?

Are you telling us that tanks will never be in any danger, because I have hard time believing this. In the optimal situation, no one will ever dies, but in reality, we don't live in such perfect world, and having more hp will usually pay off.

Secondly, is mana really an issue in raid? Regemming your tank completely will probably give you a 10% unreliable mitigation increase (against most attack, but not the biggest one) versus a 15%HP drop for stam gem.

If mana or hps is not an issue, stamina win. If it is, then yeah, mitigation might be winning. If none matter, then you should gears yourself for a different fight.

Money is tight this month so I can't buy the Cata expansion. If I start a new character when will I need the expansion to do something? Just the new cata areas, making a gob/worgen, and leveling past 80?

Pretty much. I cant think of anything else.

[Kaylia]

best bet imo is to forget omen and get recount with recountthreat. recountthreat adds a tab to recount that shows threat whenever you are in combat, then switches back to the tab you were last at (dps, or damage done, etc. etc.) when you are no longer in combat.

Basically renders omen useless (saves space on your screen), unless you are obsessed with seeing both your dps and threat at the same time without having to tab.

I suppose that work.

Personally, my recount is always off, and if i need to check something /recount toggle takes care of it. No need to keep that window up all the time.

Some of the new profession items also require BoP items from heroic bosses, so you won't get much out of a high-level profession, either.

But it's not like he will have a serious endgame at 80 anyway. Not saying these bonus arent good, but he wont need them.

[Kurp]

Has anyone had problems logging on to specific servers? I could log on to the majority of them, but there are a few that I could simply not log on at all. My main characters are on Kil'jaeden and I have a bunch on Malorne and I couldn't log on to either of those servers. I could log on to other realms in those data centers though.

I have a ton of school work to do yet, so I'm fully reinstalling the game to see if that remedies the situation. It just seems really odd to me that I can't log on to these servers when I can log on to others in the same data center.

[Dantrag]

It's Tuesday.

[aurik]

stuff

Actually, on second thought, you can stop replying because I've decided that your opinion is worthless.

Anyone else want to weigh in? The topic is Cata Tanking: Is Stamina Still The King Of All Stats.

[Slott]

It may heavily depend on the encounter, Aurik, especially in 25 man vs 10. Our bear tank mainly reforges everything into dodge, and gems the rest stamina. This is so that incase healers get targeted with some debuff, the tank has a sufficient pool of health to live through it. Other bosses have serious damage abilities (conclave of the wind is a rather easy fight, since the raid is split up so heavily, they can't make them hit *that* hard, since you probably only have one healer there. Fights where you're all together (halfus windbreaker, magmaw) hit the tanks rather hard. Maloriak can shoot fire at a tank for 60k. Infact most of the other encounters do have some sort of breath attack that hits extremely hard.

Stamina is the king of all stats because with a higher hp pool, you can withstand a streak of bad luck and eat 10 hits in a row instead of 8. This gives healers more play room to let the tank dip a little bit lower percentage wise and top them off again after some movement mechanic. If you havent noticed yet, most fights are rather movement intensive requiring a lot of raid stacking position wise and then spreading out shortly after (Many 300-600k damage abilities split to everyone in range)

The argument can always be turned in different directions - would a leatherworking 90 resist cold enchantment and 90 resistance flask be better on conclave fight? of course, since it would mitigate a majority of the damage from the cold guy in back. Would it be effective at all against the nature one? Nope, no magic damage there. Would it be effective against maloriak? Yep tons of magic damage. Against magmaw? Probably not, a lot of physical.

[Katlan]

I feel like a noob asking this because it's only an issue during the initial gear up and prolly won't be much of a concern once in 259 gear. But for feral cat, why is it that ppl are saying to forget hit and expertise and not care about it? Shit still dodges when we atk from behind, and a miss only uses up 20% of total energy... But I've always liked to be w/in 1% of hit cap and about 1-2% of expertise cap. Ive been reforging some gear into hit, but just wondering if I'm doing it wrong and should be reforging into mastery/crit instead

[Kaylia]

Actually, on second thought, you can stop replying because I've decided that your opinion is worthless.

Anyone else want to weigh in? The topic is Cata Tanking: Is Stamina Still The King Of All Stats.

Like I care...

Why everyone is going to gem stam...again (reforging is a question of threat <--> mitigation, not stam <-->mitigation)

Pro
-Avoidance does not works in every fights. Stamina always works. That's fucking important when you don't have the luxury of carying 2 sets (aka: all the time)
-Parry/dodge both have diminishing return, stamina is multiplied by 1.15 (if you go by the cost)
-Stamina is reliable, mitigation is not
-Overhealing is more likely to happen when your hp pool is small (easier to control your healing one someone who dies slower).
-Tanks living longer give everyone more freedom to screw up (essential when you're learning)

Cons
-Tank's healers save ~10% mana in the optimal situation (unlikely you will get much more avoidance from gem if you keep up with hit/expertise)



Do what you want with your tank's gems, but unless you're talking about a specific encounter, common sense should tell you that stam>avoidance as long the raid you're doing is not trivial (and right now, none are). Having too much hp to never be at risk wont happen on new raids.

[Norellicus]

I feel like a noob asking this because it's only an issue during the initial gear up and prolly won't be much of a concern once in 259 gear. But for feral cat, why is it that ppl are saying to forget hit and expertise and not care about it? Shit still dodges when we atk from behind, and a miss only uses up 20% of total energy... But I've always liked to be w/in 1% of hit cap and about 1-2% of expertise cap. Ive been reforging some gear into hit, but just wondering if I'm doing it wrong and should be reforging into mastery/crit instead

Because you are resource capped, and your damage is frontloaded on the button push; either it processes or it doesn't, you've only lost one GCD for it and next to no resources.

A mage spends 2.5 seconds casting a Fireball, and if that misses that's 2.5 seconds of dps gone plus the full resource cost is wasted. Since most of your damage comes from the bleed effects, you can easily just slap a button again on a miss. High hit/exp makes for a smoother rotation thanks to being able to more reliably predict and keep up with your ability timers, but it's not strictly necessary in the concept of "buying dps" with your stats.

[aurik]

It may heavily depend on the encounter, Aurik, especially in 25 man vs 10. Our bear tank mainly reforges everything into dodge, and gems the rest stamina. This is so that incase healers get targeted with some debuff, the tank has a sufficient pool of health to live through it. Other bosses have serious damage abilities (conclave of the wind is a rather easy fight, since the raid is split up so heavily, they can't make them hit *that* hard, since you probably only have one healer there. Fights where you're all together (halfus windbreaker, magmaw) hit the tanks rather hard. Maloriak can shoot fire at a tank for 60k. Infact most of the other encounters do have some sort of breath attack that hits extremely hard.

Stamina is the king of all stats because with a higher hp pool, you can withstand a streak of bad luck and eat 10 hits in a row instead of 8. This gives healers more play room to let the tank dip a little bit lower percentage wise and top them off again after some movement mechanic. If you havent noticed yet, most fights are rather movement intensive requiring a lot of raid stacking position wise and then spreading out shortly after (Many 300-600k damage abilities split to everyone in range)

The argument can always be turned in different directions - would a leatherworking 90 resist cold enchantment and 90 resistance flask be better on conclave fight? of course, since it would mitigate a majority of the damage from the cold guy in back. Would it be effective at all against the nature one? Nope, no magic damage there. Would it be effective against maloriak? Yep tons of magic damage. Against magmaw? Probably not, a lot of physical.

"Can hit tank for 60k" just isn't a convincing argument for stam anymore. We're not talking about "the boss is hitting for 60k every swing", we're talking about "occasionally the boss hits for 60k", which just means we need to keep the tank HP above 100k...which given somewhere around 160k raid tank health without pushing stam hard, is already a pretty big buffer.

The argument of "bad luck streak" made sense when you only had to eat 2 hits to fall over. Then, stacking stam would push you out of "2 normal hit = dead" to "3 normal hit = dead". Now, the difference is perhaps between 10 and 12 hits which, in addition to making random events more reliable (Central Limit Theorem), gives everyone plenty of time to react and push a cooldown.

Lots of spontaneous conversation on EJ about stamina not being the king of all tank stats anymore. We'll see in the coming weeks.

[aurik]

Kaylia, just stop responding. You're polluting the discussion with moronic nonsense and already-refuted points.

[Kaylia]

Kaylia, just stop responding. You're polluting the discussion with moronic nonsense and already-refuted points.

Are raid tank still dying? Yes or no?


Everything I posted still hold true, and the advantage of damage soaking havent changed much with cataclysm.

[aurik]

Are raid tank still dying? Yes, no?

No, raid is dying to aoe because healers are out of mana. Raid tank is actually outliving most of the raid even without heals.

[Kaylia]

No, raid is dying to aoe because healers are out of mana. Raid tank is actually outliving most of the raid even without heals.

What fraction of healer's mana is spent on the tank as opposed to aoe heal?



I seriously doubt that in this scenario, tank mitigating a few more % would make a non trivial difference.

[Katlan]

Because you are resource capped, and your damage is frontloaded on the button push; either it processes or it doesn't, you've only lost one GCD for it and next to no resources.

A mage spends 2.5 seconds casting a Fireball, and if that misses that's 2.5 seconds of dps gone plus the full resource cost is wasted. Since most of your damage comes from the bleed effects, you can easily just slap a button again on a miss. High hit/exp makes for a smoother rotation thanks to being able to more reliably predict and keep up with your ability timers, but it's not strictly necessary in the concept of "buying dps" with your stats.

Makes sense. I guess Ive just gotten so used to having gear w/ so much hit, that its been a non-issue for me for so long that I neglected to realize how it's not a necessary for cat. Thanks

[aurik]

Each hit avoided is more mana that can be spent on AoE heals, which are far and away more HPM. Make more retarded arguments please.

[Kaylia]

Each hit avoided is more mana that can be spent on AoE heals, which are far and away more HPM. Make more retarded arguments please.

You're talking about 1 specific unnamed encounter, you're omiting a crapload of conditional, you're not even telling us how much damage was mitigated by the tank gem.

If you're looking at a 1% mana difference, chance is, that's not the issue here, and stamina, while not being the best stats, isn't going to change a shit. There was similar situation in WoTLK as well (saurfang, anub's last phase, etc), but it was never the main cause of wipe, even if it could have made a difference. When you gem your tank, you gem it for every encounter at the same time, and if your point can't be generalized, it's not valid.

[aurik]

Regardless of encounter, each hit avoided rather than soaked is at least 5% of one healer's mana pool. So derp @ you.