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In this thread on the official forums (don't worry, it's not that bad) one of the tanks (Adamas) posted that for their Hard-mode kill, they used one druid - and that the druid in question solo-tanked Thorim on hard mode to 14 stacks and had 56k HP.
The druid in question is Sudhir, who you can check out here. They probably don't have their max stam setup on right this instant, so don't worry about it.
The 56k health is nice, but the big problem with Thorim isn't the high health requirement, it's dealing with Unbalancing strike. Being crittable is no fun, especially when the attacks are coming every .5 seconds and are hitting for 14k+ a hit on normally armored bears. How is he solving this?
Well, for starters, I suspect he's crittable. That's not as horrible as you might think; if the healers know that you're the only tank that's going to take big damage, spam healing someone through 25k hits is not the worst thing in the world. But my gut feeling is that while he's crittable, he's using PvP gear to deal with some of this.
But what if we use enough PvP gear to completely remove crits from the equation, even with unbalancing strike? We may still get crushed, but the crits will be gone - and they're the real danger.
First off, what you need: with 6% crit removal from Survival of the Fittest, Thorim's ability puts you 7.6% in the hole. That means you need a total of 623 resilience or similar defense to deal with this. The easy way to figure this out is with Rawr; you need a total of -8% crit reduction in Rawr in order to be safe from Thorim.
How does this gear look? Well, I decided to not go after any Furious gear. Why? Because deadly gear requires no rating requirement in any slot, and it can be bought via conquest badges if you are so inclined. Plus you get two chances to get it - from Emalon 10-man and Archavon 25-man. I am using JC and Leatherworking; JC really helps, but it's not a requirement. And (this is the important bit) I'm not using a single Ulduar-level item. If you have them, this will only be easier.
Head Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm
Neck Boundless Ambition
Shoulders Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders
Chest Polar Vest
Waist Titan-forged Belt of Triumph
Legs Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards
Feet Polar Boots
Wrist Deadly Gladiator's Armwraps of Triumph
Hands Deadly Gladiator's Dragonhide Gloves
Finger1 Hateful Gladiator's Band of Triumph
Finger2 Deadly Gladiator's Band of Ascendancy
Trinket1 Figurine - Monarch Crab
Trinket2 Essence of Gossamer
Back Deadly Gladiator's Cloak of Triumph
MainHand Origin of Nightmares
Ranged Idol of Terror
Health: 50801
Agility: 1180.112
Armor: 30899.22
Stamina: 4057
Resilience: 598
Dodge: 39.380%
Miss: 7.762%
Mitigation: 70.128%
Avoidance PreDR: 52.064%
Avoidance PostDR: 47.142%
Total Mitigation: 84.931%
Damage Taken: 15.069%
Savage Defense: 77.388% ~ 1586
Chance to be Crit: -8.055%
So just under 51k health, can't be crit, just a bit less than 50% dodge. Not too shabby. And again - this is pretty much bottom of the barrel. If you have access to Furious gear, it becomes a bit easier (and you get a lot more stamina).
Would I do this? No. It's not that hard of a hard mode anyway, and if you don't already have the deadly gear it's probably not worth grinding for it. (If you have the furious gear or want to get it, that's another story). The amount of resilience gems used makes a lot of this stuff pretty unusable anywhere else; I tried to make the gemming such that only the PvP gear is using the resilience gems, but it's still annoying.
But if you're bored or interested in trying something new, I'd recommend it. I'd also recommend throwing on resilience gear for this fight if you have it anyway (and it's comparable in the slot you're replacing). Having less of a chance to take crits even when you're swapping can really make a difference.
Showing posts with label resilience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resilience. Show all posts
Monday, May 11, 2009
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
[Druid] Resilience part 3: tanking Illidan's flames
A second followup, because this has proven to be pretty valuable. Earlier I mentioned that the vengeful gladiator's helm is a good choice because it combined with the chest makes a great 2-piece set that takes care of your resilience needs and goes well with resistance sets. Here's one example of that. This is a set that takes care of all the fire resistance needs and makes you uncrittable, while giving close to 18k stamina unbuffed:
Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm with a steady talasite, Powerful earthstorm diamond and glyph of the gladiator (available for 1875 arena points)
Amulet of the Torn-Heart (the end of the cipher of damnation questline in shadowmoon)
The shoulders don't matter at all - any will do
Wyrmcultist's Cloak with greater fire resistance (bought from a vendor in blade's edge after you get a disguise)
Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Tunic (available for 1875 arena points) socketed with solid stars of elune and enchanted with exceptional stats
wrists can be anything
Inferno Hardened Gloves with any enchant (I'd recommend a knothide kit) (20 badges)
Blastguard Belt with two solid stars of elune (3 primal fire, 3 primal water, 6 fel hide, 4 heavy knothide leather)
Inferno Hardened Leggings (30 badges) with clefthide armor patch
Inferno Hardened Boots (20 badges) with Fortitude
Phoenix-Fire Band (from the trials of the Naaru: Magtheridon questline)
Flask of Chromatic Wonder
The trinket slots, other ring slot, weapon slot and idol slot are open as well. This provides a total of 298 fire resistance and is well over the uncrittable cap. If you wanted to you could regem a bit and get more resilience, and remove the glyph of the gladiator in favor of more avoidance or the FR glyph - but it's not necessary. I chose this because the enchants on the VG set are likely to be used elsewhere as well, so your gear is not solely FR-specific. With a paladin fire resist aura, you will be over the 365 cap.
With T5-level gear in the other slots (either badge gear or T5 drops that are fairly commonplace), you could get over 18k health buffed only with the flask, 22k armor and 29% avoidance. In addition to that, you should be fairly good on threat as well given the VG pieces which provide some hit. It's not even that costly; 70 badges total, a few primals and some enchant mats are it. The costliest thing is the arena points, but these pieces are actually pretty good for cat DPS too - and if you're stingy you can always go with the gladiator or MG set versions, which will soon be available for honor instead of arena points.
Yet another reason to go grind arena points. :)
Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm with a steady talasite, Powerful earthstorm diamond and glyph of the gladiator (available for 1875 arena points)
Amulet of the Torn-Heart (the end of the cipher of damnation questline in shadowmoon)
The shoulders don't matter at all - any will do
Wyrmcultist's Cloak with greater fire resistance (bought from a vendor in blade's edge after you get a disguise)
Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Tunic (available for 1875 arena points) socketed with solid stars of elune and enchanted with exceptional stats
wrists can be anything
Inferno Hardened Gloves with any enchant (I'd recommend a knothide kit) (20 badges)
Blastguard Belt with two solid stars of elune (3 primal fire, 3 primal water, 6 fel hide, 4 heavy knothide leather)
Inferno Hardened Leggings (30 badges) with clefthide armor patch
Inferno Hardened Boots (20 badges) with Fortitude
Phoenix-Fire Band (from the trials of the Naaru: Magtheridon questline)
Flask of Chromatic Wonder
The trinket slots, other ring slot, weapon slot and idol slot are open as well. This provides a total of 298 fire resistance and is well over the uncrittable cap. If you wanted to you could regem a bit and get more resilience, and remove the glyph of the gladiator in favor of more avoidance or the FR glyph - but it's not necessary. I chose this because the enchants on the VG set are likely to be used elsewhere as well, so your gear is not solely FR-specific. With a paladin fire resist aura, you will be over the 365 cap.
With T5-level gear in the other slots (either badge gear or T5 drops that are fairly commonplace), you could get over 18k health buffed only with the flask, 22k armor and 29% avoidance. In addition to that, you should be fairly good on threat as well given the VG pieces which provide some hit. It's not even that costly; 70 badges total, a few primals and some enchant mats are it. The costliest thing is the arena points, but these pieces are actually pretty good for cat DPS too - and if you're stingy you can always go with the gladiator or MG set versions, which will soon be available for honor instead of arena points.
Yet another reason to go grind arena points. :)
Friday, May 2, 2008
[Druid] Resilience part two
One item I forgot completely about yesterday is the Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm. It's much less easily obtained than the Vindicator's Dragonhide Bracers, but it is in a slot that is notoriously hard to upgrade, it is a big upgrade from the Stag-Helm of Malorne in terms of stamina, and it provides a ton of resilience as well. Using this will allow the same setup as yesterday save that you can now use the Band of the Swift Paw and Slikk's Cloak with only using one resilience/defense gem. I chose the helm itself for this, as it's likely you'll also be using this in your PvP gear set.
The helm, by itself, gives 470 HP over the Stag-Helm in bear form. It also provides hit rating, crit rating and armor penetration; it's very good for threat. For mitigation it is not as good as T5 or T6, but it is better than T4 overall and can provide 1/3 of the resilience needed for uncrittability by itself while being a better option than T4.
Even better, when you combine it with the chestpiece, you now have a 2-piece bonus that gives all the needed resilience for uncrittability. It also happens to perfectly work with a fire resistance set and will serve well for fights into MH and BT.
In general, I think you should go for this as your first piece of arena gear - especially if it is unlikely that you will be able to get the helm off of Vashj any time soon. The Vindicator's Bracers are excellent for the time when you don't have that helm or you want to replace it with T5/T6 (which you should). Given most guild's reluctance to farm Vashj, chances are that you'll have this for quite some time.
The helm, by itself, gives 470 HP over the Stag-Helm in bear form. It also provides hit rating, crit rating and armor penetration; it's very good for threat. For mitigation it is not as good as T5 or T6, but it is better than T4 overall and can provide 1/3 of the resilience needed for uncrittability by itself while being a better option than T4.
Even better, when you combine it with the chestpiece, you now have a 2-piece bonus that gives all the needed resilience for uncrittability. It also happens to perfectly work with a fire resistance set and will serve well for fights into MH and BT.
In general, I think you should go for this as your first piece of arena gear - especially if it is unlikely that you will be able to get the helm off of Vashj any time soon. The Vindicator's Bracers are excellent for the time when you don't have that helm or you want to replace it with T5/T6 (which you should). Given most guild's reluctance to farm Vashj, chances are that you'll have this for quite some time.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
[Druid] The value of Resilience for tanking
Summary: using resilience gear in the form of enchants and one or two pvp items will allow you to gain approximately 60 stamina at the cost of perhaps 1% avoidance and 200 armor and allow you to have more flexibility in other slots of gear.
Feral druids have some of the most aggravating itemization in the game. Almost all feral-specific gear has some randomly useless stat like intellect. The badge loot has haste, which is pointless for tanking.
But mostly, there is literally not a single piece of PvE epic leather gear with defense on it. Not one. There is one weapon that has it (Earthwarden, which remains the best itemized feral druid tanking item in the game), and then...nothing. Sure, the violet signet is good for druids especially. As are a few other rings and amulets. In general, a druid must get their 156 defense rating needed for uncrittability from the rings, trinkets, cloaks and amulets.
Which unbalances things in favor of the warrior, as they can throw in a couple stam trinkets, put in an expertise amulet (again with more stamina than a defense one) and some avoidance rings, and suddenly have a ton more stamina than a similarly geared druid. What to do?
The answer is resilience.
While you need 156 defense rating to reach uncrittable, you only need 103 resilience for the same mark. Resilience and defense cost the same in terms of itemization points, but the things with resilience seem to have more of them. For example, take the tanking glyph enchants. Glyph of the defender adds 16 defense rating; glyph of the gladiator adds 20 resilience. That one enchant is the difference in covering 1/5th of your uncrittability needs vs. covering 1/10th. Similarly for the chest defense enchant vs. the chest resilience enchant; both provide 15 value, but that resilience is 14% of your uncrittability, compared to 9.5% for defense.
What this means in general is that you'll have 53 points of ilvl to play with. What that could be, in general:
530 armor (before bear form)
80 stam
53 agility
106 attack power
53 expertise/hit rating
In practice this doesn't happen quite as much since you don't get to choose, but it gets close.
Now, what you lose with that 156 defense is avoidance. With 156 defense rating, you have 66 defense skill, which translates to 2.64% miss and 2.64% dodge. 5.2% avoidance is pretty substantial, and could not be gained back if the ilvl translation went entirely to agility or dodge rating. Unfortunately that's dealing with the notion that we'd have perfectly itemized gear, which isn't the case. What we have is compromise. And the best compromises are found in pvp gear.
An example: the best bracers for tanking druids are the Band of the Swift Paw, which with an enduring talasite provide 317 armor, 23 str, 22 agi, 37 stam, 10 int and 4 defense. Compare this to the vindicator dragonhide bracers with a shifting nightseye: 236 armor, 22 str, 22 agi, 35 stam, 19 resilience, 21 crit rating.
The big loss is the armor - you lose 81 armor. You also lose 10 int. But you trade 4 defense (2.56% of your uncrittability) for 19 resilience (18.4%)and 21 crit rating, which means that this item is 7 times better for reaching your uncrittability cap while adding more threat. The loss of armor does hurt, admittedly - but the uncrittability for this is huge, by comparison.
Comparing the other honor cost leather items is not as good. For the belt, we'll compare the Belt of Natural Power to the Vindicator's Dragonhide Belt, and the cost of that 26 resilience is 123 armor and 12 stamina (assuming shifting nightseyes for gems). That's a bit more expensive in terms of the resilience gained. For the boots, we'll compare the Footwraps of wild encroachment to Vindicator's Dragonhide boots. Here we get the same 26 resilience, but it costs us only 61 armor and 10 stamina. If you're wanting something different, you can also try the vindicator's leather boots, which makes the tradeoff 3 stam and 103 armor for 4 agility, 30 resilience, 19 crit and 40 attack power. That's a bit better in terms of what you're losing, though unlike the bracers and the belt, the boots do have potential upgrades.
If you go with the vindicator bracers and the glyph of the gladiator, you can take care of 37.9% of your total uncrittability requirement. This means you need a total of 95.3 defense rating - round up to 96 - to get uncrittable. If you enchant your chest, cloak and bracers with defense enchants, you get 39 more defense rating - leaving only 57 defense rating needed. The Violet Signet of the Great Protector is 19 defense. Slikk's Cloak of Placation is 16. The Greater Inscription is 10 defense if you're Aldor, 15 if you're scryer. At the very worst, this will give you 45 more defense, requiring only 12 more defense to reach uncrittable. This can be reached by a neck item or 3 enduring talasites, which isn't so hard. If you used the band of the swift paw instead, you'd have to get another 25 defense rating from somewhere. That's 6 more enduring talasites instead of 6 solid stars (a cost of 36 stamina), or not using the ring of the stalwart protector in favor of some other ring (for A'dal's signet of defense, that would be losing 30 armor and 12 stamina and about .5% avoidance). If you use the glyph of defense and the band of the swift paw, you'll end up needing another 40 defense somewhere (10 enduring talasites, or 60 stamina), will lose 18 stamina from the enchant, and will most likely be forced to use a neck and another ring or trinket slot on defense.
Is that worth it? For me, the answer was no. That one piece of resilience gear allows me to be able to swap out weapons without worrying, swap out necklaces for more threat or avoidance, swap out trinkets without worrying, use the two best rings in the game, use the best cloak in the game, and in general focus on gemming for stamina. I personally use the gilded thorium cloak instead of Slikk's, but I will likely upgrade in the future. Slikk's is a great example of the itemization that you can gain with; you lose 8 defense in exchange for 25 more dodge and 7 more stamina.
The big thing is that once you get this gear, you don't need to modify it all that much in the future. The bracers + the defense enchant can stay for the lifetime of TBC content. The cloak + defense enchant can also stay forever. The helm enchant is a glyph and can easily be replaced. The chestpiece won't be replaced often, but the enchant is easily redone. Enduring talasites are cheap and don't require a lot of changing anyway most of the time. And all your other gear doesn't have defense associated with it to begin with, so at best you may have to regem a bit here and there. This becomes especially true when you start gemming with epic gems; with epic gems every time you have to use an enduring gem you're sacrificing 8 stamina for 5 defense instead of 6 for 4. That's a worse ratio, so if you can avoid this you should do so.
Note that if you choose to use flasks of fortification all the time, you can gain another 10 defense rating. I don't like this; it means that I am crittable whenever I'm not flasking, which is quite often. But it's a personal choice.
Feral druids have some of the most aggravating itemization in the game. Almost all feral-specific gear has some randomly useless stat like intellect. The badge loot has haste, which is pointless for tanking.
But mostly, there is literally not a single piece of PvE epic leather gear with defense on it. Not one. There is one weapon that has it (Earthwarden, which remains the best itemized feral druid tanking item in the game), and then...nothing. Sure, the violet signet is good for druids especially. As are a few other rings and amulets. In general, a druid must get their 156 defense rating needed for uncrittability from the rings, trinkets, cloaks and amulets.
Which unbalances things in favor of the warrior, as they can throw in a couple stam trinkets, put in an expertise amulet (again with more stamina than a defense one) and some avoidance rings, and suddenly have a ton more stamina than a similarly geared druid. What to do?
The answer is resilience.
While you need 156 defense rating to reach uncrittable, you only need 103 resilience for the same mark. Resilience and defense cost the same in terms of itemization points, but the things with resilience seem to have more of them. For example, take the tanking glyph enchants. Glyph of the defender adds 16 defense rating; glyph of the gladiator adds 20 resilience. That one enchant is the difference in covering 1/5th of your uncrittability needs vs. covering 1/10th. Similarly for the chest defense enchant vs. the chest resilience enchant; both provide 15 value, but that resilience is 14% of your uncrittability, compared to 9.5% for defense.
What this means in general is that you'll have 53 points of ilvl to play with. What that could be, in general:
530 armor (before bear form)
80 stam
53 agility
106 attack power
53 expertise/hit rating
In practice this doesn't happen quite as much since you don't get to choose, but it gets close.
Now, what you lose with that 156 defense is avoidance. With 156 defense rating, you have 66 defense skill, which translates to 2.64% miss and 2.64% dodge. 5.2% avoidance is pretty substantial, and could not be gained back if the ilvl translation went entirely to agility or dodge rating. Unfortunately that's dealing with the notion that we'd have perfectly itemized gear, which isn't the case. What we have is compromise. And the best compromises are found in pvp gear.
An example: the best bracers for tanking druids are the Band of the Swift Paw, which with an enduring talasite provide 317 armor, 23 str, 22 agi, 37 stam, 10 int and 4 defense. Compare this to the vindicator dragonhide bracers with a shifting nightseye: 236 armor, 22 str, 22 agi, 35 stam, 19 resilience, 21 crit rating.
The big loss is the armor - you lose 81 armor. You also lose 10 int. But you trade 4 defense (2.56% of your uncrittability) for 19 resilience (18.4%)and 21 crit rating, which means that this item is 7 times better for reaching your uncrittability cap while adding more threat. The loss of armor does hurt, admittedly - but the uncrittability for this is huge, by comparison.
Comparing the other honor cost leather items is not as good. For the belt, we'll compare the Belt of Natural Power to the Vindicator's Dragonhide Belt, and the cost of that 26 resilience is 123 armor and 12 stamina (assuming shifting nightseyes for gems). That's a bit more expensive in terms of the resilience gained. For the boots, we'll compare the Footwraps of wild encroachment to Vindicator's Dragonhide boots. Here we get the same 26 resilience, but it costs us only 61 armor and 10 stamina. If you're wanting something different, you can also try the vindicator's leather boots, which makes the tradeoff 3 stam and 103 armor for 4 agility, 30 resilience, 19 crit and 40 attack power. That's a bit better in terms of what you're losing, though unlike the bracers and the belt, the boots do have potential upgrades.
If you go with the vindicator bracers and the glyph of the gladiator, you can take care of 37.9% of your total uncrittability requirement. This means you need a total of 95.3 defense rating - round up to 96 - to get uncrittable. If you enchant your chest, cloak and bracers with defense enchants, you get 39 more defense rating - leaving only 57 defense rating needed. The Violet Signet of the Great Protector is 19 defense. Slikk's Cloak of Placation is 16. The Greater Inscription is 10 defense if you're Aldor, 15 if you're scryer. At the very worst, this will give you 45 more defense, requiring only 12 more defense to reach uncrittable. This can be reached by a neck item or 3 enduring talasites, which isn't so hard. If you used the band of the swift paw instead, you'd have to get another 25 defense rating from somewhere. That's 6 more enduring talasites instead of 6 solid stars (a cost of 36 stamina), or not using the ring of the stalwart protector in favor of some other ring (for A'dal's signet of defense, that would be losing 30 armor and 12 stamina and about .5% avoidance). If you use the glyph of defense and the band of the swift paw, you'll end up needing another 40 defense somewhere (10 enduring talasites, or 60 stamina), will lose 18 stamina from the enchant, and will most likely be forced to use a neck and another ring or trinket slot on defense.
Is that worth it? For me, the answer was no. That one piece of resilience gear allows me to be able to swap out weapons without worrying, swap out necklaces for more threat or avoidance, swap out trinkets without worrying, use the two best rings in the game, use the best cloak in the game, and in general focus on gemming for stamina. I personally use the gilded thorium cloak instead of Slikk's, but I will likely upgrade in the future. Slikk's is a great example of the itemization that you can gain with; you lose 8 defense in exchange for 25 more dodge and 7 more stamina.
The big thing is that once you get this gear, you don't need to modify it all that much in the future. The bracers + the defense enchant can stay for the lifetime of TBC content. The cloak + defense enchant can also stay forever. The helm enchant is a glyph and can easily be replaced. The chestpiece won't be replaced often, but the enchant is easily redone. Enduring talasites are cheap and don't require a lot of changing anyway most of the time. And all your other gear doesn't have defense associated with it to begin with, so at best you may have to regem a bit here and there. This becomes especially true when you start gemming with epic gems; with epic gems every time you have to use an enduring gem you're sacrificing 8 stamina for 5 defense instead of 6 for 4. That's a worse ratio, so if you can avoid this you should do so.
Note that if you choose to use flasks of fortification all the time, you can gain another 10 defense rating. I don't like this; it means that I am crittable whenever I'm not flasking, which is quite often. But it's a personal choice.
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