OK, so prior to tonights rather lackluster run I was gemming for stamina, but matching socket bonus to favour mastery where possible. This means I'm around 202k raid buffed with x2 stam trinkets and about 19 mastery. (I normally run with a mastery trink, so normally around 198k)
Now I'm mastery gemmed, packing a whopping 23 mastery, but only 173k raid buffed with one +stam and one +mastery trinket.
My question is this - would that extra 30k health have kept me up tanking 3 drakes at once? Or is it a healing issue and just co-incidence I re-gemmed? As I died few times before I got to taunt the big dude.
Bottom line is yes imo. I've looked at several good DK tanks that I know and none of them gem to mastery to that extent. I'll try to post some research to support the subjectiveness of that opinion. A higher base HP also increases your self-heal abilities, so there is a knock on effect for progress tanking where a higher HP pool can lead to you surviving the larger hit (even if you avoid less overall). At the end of the day though, balance is what most threads seem to recommend - gearing totally into one stat or another seems to be frowned upon. So it may be that in re-gemming and dropping your HP by that degree, you tipped it below the level at which healers are comfortable.
EJ is particularly sparse on this topic, but there is a nice thread on stat value here:
http://pwnwear.com/forum/cata-stam-health-formula-t765.html
Ok it's a little old, but it was created when all the new stat system was intriduced in 4.0, so it is based on the 'new world' not the old no-mastery world and therefore still worth a read imo.
An interesting comment on Mastery & DK tanking: It relies on DS being used a lot, which from logs I see you do about half as many of as HS. Are you maxxing the use of DS to proc the shields that you are stacking mastery for? Those DK tanks heading down the mastery-stacking route are emphasising the need max the use of DS and get closer to 8% hit and 26 expertise caps as missing a DS means you don't get a Blood Shield, which means you're about to be in a world of hurt.
Logs from last night show you were missing a lot of DS:
10.4% on Maloriak
12.1% on Chimaeron
That's an awful lot of missed blood shields when you stack mastery towards it and then miss and get no shield out of it. In essence, the mastery stat becomes 10+% less valuable due to the miss rate and causes damage spikes to be very much larger (and potentially more terminal). This does tally with healer comments last night talking about the spike damage levels on you having seemed to have gone up.
Low hit/exp also causes other issues. In total across the night you missed 15.5% HS, 15% white melee, 10% DS, 8% Rune Strike - all these misses will have an impact on and lower your threat too. I know it is not realistic to get hit/exp capped, but that's part of the balance you strike when assessing stat priorities.
AOB:
Whilst looking around I also found a lot of general comment that a *lot* of additional threat comes from Glyph of Rune Strike, which is one you do not currently use. Consider dropping your DnD glyph and swapping in the Rune Strike glyph instead.
Glyph of Rune Tap is also mentioned as being particularly useful on heroic raid encounters instead of Glyph of Vampiric Blood. Also worth considering.
Also:
QuoteRuneforge: swordshattering rather than gargoyle. In hard-mode progression raiding, Gargoyle could be better, but in levels of effort below that use swordshattering.
I haven't looked into DK tank stats in Cata but for Pally tanks we should be stacking mastery as our main stat to the hard cap which we can't currently reach. Saying that I do have some stam gems to get the socket bonus and i'm sitting at 187k health fully buffed.
Hmm, just re-read the question which was:
Quote from: Twisted;327587My question is this - would that extra 30k health have kept me up tanking 3 drakes at once? Or is it a healing issue and just co-incidence I re-gemmed? As I died few times before I got to taunt the big dude.
Difficult to answer that one, but healers noted on several occassions that a big heal was about to land when you died. 30k extra might have been the difference.
Out of interest though, you missed 24.2% of all DS on Halfus but only used DS 25% of the number of times you used HS - is there a reason for that as it seems low compared to normal use levels when blood shield depends on it?
Hope all the above stuff helps! :)
Quote from: TeaLeaf;327610Out of interest though, you missed 24.2% of all DS on Halfus but only used DS 25% of the number of times you used HS - is there a reason for that as it seems low compared to normal use levels when blood shield depends on it?
HS uses 1 Blood rune
DS uses 1 Unholy and1 Frost rune.
Application of diseases when outbreak is on CD uses more U/F runes.
I try and save a DS so I can land one or more after big boss hits to maximise my shields, which somestimes means death runes (can by any rune) get spent on HS instead of pooling them for DS.
So it's just resources really.
Ok, but it is less than you have on other fights, so is it maximum you can use? As importantly, if 24% of them fail to work in any case, is there a better way?
The great thing is that we are discussing this and other factors, it helps us all progress faster which is what we all want! :thumbsup: :dmw:
Well, I suppose my current talent spec tries to take into account too many situations.
When I first joined the guild I was mainly given the add tanking role and so I talented for it. This is how my spec presently is.
However, I'm being used more and more on the boss and less and less on adds. So, my current thinking is to move towards the lichborne spec, just so I get "free" interrupts (ie, no runic power needed). This will allow me to RS and pop DRW more, so more RE procs which means more DS and in total a lot more single target threat. IE, HC Maloriak becomes easier to handle. The downside is that my AoE threat and damage would severely gimped from what it is now - I don't know how that would affect my role on HC Halfus. In theory it should be OK as everyone is single target on Storm.
I think I'll go down this route before re-gemming as it should give me the ability to DS more.
Quote from: TeaLeaf;327616Ok, but it is less than you have on other fights, so is it maximum you can use?
Most of my key abilities use runes. DnD and pestilence use runes I would normally use on DS so yes, on Halfus I do DS a lot less so I can maintain AoE threat. Which also adds to the argument of re-gemming stamina
if that is the case we are gonna have some problems on halfus .. me and a few others are already pulling agro the aoe pack :)
Quote from: hubbah;327620if that is the case we are gonna have some problems on halfus .. me and a few others are already pulling agro the aoe pack :)
I can re-glyph for the fight, but the talent changes for AoE just affect Blood Plague and Frost Fever, which mainly serve to buff HS and BB.
Here's a log of a kill with me tanking with my current spec
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/iyjl1fb1collzh33/details/9/?s=8556&e=8875
The talents I'm removing basically drop 30% of the damage from my diseases - each disease accounted for 9% & 8% of my damage. So with the spec I'm considering it will drop to about 7% and 6%
DK tanks. Get the addon BLoodShieldTracker. THis addon gives you a bar, when bar is full you'll get the most health from a DS strike.
As for stam. There are stam soft caps that us tanks aim for.
for Firelands it's somewhere between 175k-200k health cap. After this point you should be able to survive any burst damage attack. Over and you;re just wasting ehaler mana.
General rule. Stam to health softcap then stack mitigation/avoidance.
Treach, are you sure about these numbers in the hp soft cap? I thought 200k was the soft cap in the old content, as we were able to confirm on hc chimaeron with whitey and twisted. Anyway i think that a bigger passive mitigation (which i believe is given to tanks by mastery) allows you to indirectly effect the soft cap you're aiming for.
Please take my words with the thickest gloves, since i've only spent a little time tanking.
I doubt that Firelands Normal mode requires the HC HP soft cap in BWD & friends as (correct me if I'm wrong) it scales t11 normal -> t12 normal -> t11 hc -> t12 hc