Tanking : les meilleures gemmes !

Quelle gemmes utiliser pour votre stuff tank : entre les statistiques d'endurance et celles d'avoidance le débat affronte souvent les spécialistes eux-mêmes. PwnWear.com nous apporte quelques conseils :

► Gem recommendations

• If it’s a blue socket, 30 stamina, obviously.

• If it’s red : agility/stam might be* better than dodge/stam. Theck worked out agility’s benefits.

• Each point of Agility is 84% as effective as a point of dodge rating for avoidance. (i.e. 10 AGI ~ 8.4 Dodge rating ~ 0.114% Dodge)
• Each point of Agility is 98% as effective at reducing average incoming damage as a point of dodge rating (you get armour from agility)
• Each point of Agility also gives you almost 1 point of critical strike rating (bonus threat).

* Note: after writing this I realised the coefficient for agility to dodge is worse for DKs to Paladins. I PM’d Theck to ask if he could advise what the impact is. I think it makes us 59% as efficient on the first point, not 84%. Don’t regem until we’ve got the final analysis from him.

• If it’s yellow, defence/stamina. Recall IBF scales with Defence at +0.15% per skill.

Miss cap: it’s possible for a Nelf Frost tank to go over the miss cap of 16%, so be watchful. A hunter [Scorpid Sting] or druid’s unglyphed [Insect Swarm] can also push you there; if this happens then defence loses its value as a stat.

► Socket bonus decision

But at what point, +6 or +9 stamina, do you go with a hybrid gem instead of putting +30 stam in there anyhow?

If I was regemming, now I’m a Blood tank, I would go with an agi or def hybrid at +9 bonus, and 30 stam at +6 or below. Stamina is the only socket bonus worth considering (ie. strength is useless).

(My gear at the moment has used the +6 cutoff and dodge/stam, so I’m not all that happy with it but can’t justify the expense to change them all, yet.)

In Icecrown, remember you still get value from avoidance. At its lowered levels, avoidance reduces the chance of spike damage.

► Meta gem

Don’t lose your meta gem activation, of course. Safest solution: put your red gem in a socket with like +12 or +9 though, not a +6. TRM mentioned [Nightmare Tear], which is a great gem to satisfy meta requirements and a great gem in its own right.

► Expertise

While here, note that Theck also finalised his analysis on avoidance value of expertise, and found each expertise rating is worth on average 46% of dodge for Death Knights in ICC. It varies with the swing-speed of the boss, and is more valuable for Blood tanks than others since more of our damage can be parried. I don’t know the exact range yet, and Theck’s finishing some analysis for dual-wield. Just use 46% as a rule-of-thumb for now. (I checked the logic of his workings and it looks right to me. I couldn’t check the maths; it was too complicated.)

This is less efficient than the other tanks, because we have a good number of unparryable attacks. Paladins gets loads of value.

With that basis: I would not go for expertise/stam (instead of agility/stam) unless you are dual-wielding, in which case the expertise might be a good choice on a +9 bonus slot.

► Stamina: shoulders and runeforge

I just changed my shoulder enchant to +stamina too. The exalted Hodir was about 0.5% avoidance after-DR, the PvP is 330 HP. Vene suggests it too.

For runeforge, I only use the Gargoyle or Nerubian for 2% stamina also. (The alternative give you 1% more avoidance.)

So far, Icecrown encounters are not showing mechanics that favour avoidance, so stacking stamina is still a sensible philosophy. Saurfang requires fast taunts, not avoidance.

We don’t know if hard-mode will change other encounters towards avoidance, but I doubt it very much. My gut feel is that it’s more likely a fight or two will favour block-value like Anub’arak.

► Personal view: EH or avoidance

Often, EH versus avoidance comes to a personal perspective. Frost tanks gain more from avoidance, particularly a Night Elf. That said, some tanks just like the idea of avoidance.

If you don’t have a view, go with stamina.

If you do have a contrary view, be pleased to hear your comments.

► Threat gems ?

The above advice presumes you do not have threat problems, and that you are focusing on survival, and you are over 540 defence. See the comments below for some discussion on threat, if that’s your real issue.

Gemming for expertise, if you’re below 6.5%, is a good boost to threat, but so is eating expertise food or even using a DPS-oriented trinket or ring. I have 18 stam enchants on my gloves; if I wanted threat the Armsman is a very strong alternative since +2% more threat is not that easy to get, as you’ll see.

In order to put some metrics behind this, I did a few quick calculations.

If you gem expertise/stamina in red slots, for my gear (i232 average) in a Blood tank spec, 200ms latency, in Icecrown aura, with me below both the expertise and hit cap:

• each gem of 10 expertise is worth +0.35% threat. So I could swap all four of my dodge/stam gems and gain ~1.4% threat; note this value drops away once I’m over 6.5%.
• Strength/stamina has similar threat gain of 0.26% per epic gem (10 str), but doesn’t have a cap. (Note 10 strength provides meaninglessly small amount of parry.)
• I could swap the def/stam for hit/stam for a strong gain of 0.45% per epic gem.

These results are because the EP value of expertise and hit are so high for me as a Blood tank, with RS glyph.

If you want to work this kind of thing out for yourself, you’d need to use Kahorie’s sim with your gear values, but in absence of that you could use the above as an indicative figures. There is a degree of interaction between your gear levels, talents, latency and stats.