Maximum stamina
by Adam Holisky 
Mar 22nd 2008 at 7:00PM
If you want to live through any boss fight as a tank, the one thing that you need above all else is health. Stamina, which gives ten health for every one point of stamina, is by far the most important stat that a tank needs in order to do their job well. No matter if you have reached the armor and defense cap, or if you're producing more threat than your DPS can keep up with, you won't live for a lick if you don't have enough health.Defining minimum health is an important concept in end game raiding and groups. For most instances, a minimum of 10,000 to 11,000 unbuffed is needed. This will at least let you take a few blows from a boss before dying, hopefully enough blows that the healer will be able to get off a few heals on you. For more entry level raiding environments, it's necessary to have unbuffed health between 11,000 and 12,000. If you've got 11,500 hit points going into Kara, you'll probably be able to reach 13,000 health fully raid buffed. This will let you survive a good portion of Kara, which means you can get more gear, which begets more health in the long run.
When heading past Kara, the more stamina the better. A main tank will need around 12,500 to 13,500 unbuffed to get by in the first half of the tier 5 instances. By the time a tank is hitting Vashj and Kael'Thas, you're going to need about 14,500 to 15,000 unbuffed health. In tier six the stamina requirements go up even further to about 16,000 to 17,500 unbuffed for a main tank.
It's at that point where the question becomes how much stamina is enough? When you stop having to maximize stamina, you can begin to focus on other stats, like dodge, parry, strength, AP, haste, etc... Small amounts of these other statistics in tanking situations can vastly improve the performance of the tank and increase the success of the raid.
At about 17,500 stamina unbuffed, which is what most main tanks go to Illidan with (although I'm sure there will be those that disagree with me here), you can hit a raid buffed health of around 22,000 to 23,000, depending on group composition, talents, and consumable usage. This is surely enough for most tanks, isn't it? And it is definitely a far cry from the eleven thousand unbuffed that most tanks start off with when turning seventy.
In my opinion, once you hit about 17,500 health you can start gemming and enchanting for different aspects of your tanking class. At this point, if healers can't keep you up with 23,000 raid health, they probably can't keep you up with more. What do you think? Is there a maximum amount of stamina you can have?
Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Chris Anthony Mar 22nd 2008 7:15PM
Apropos of very little here, a feature I'd like to see is one concentrating on *non*-raiding dungeons. I know we've all decided that WOW is only about the endgame (unless it's about PVP), but I think it'd be interesting to talk about stats, armor, etc. for old-world dungeons, going back even as far as Deadmines and RFC.
Granted, I think I'm the only WOW Insider reader who thinks that would be interesting, and any such articles would almost certainly draw the "lol noob" comment crowd, but...
Heilig Mar 22nd 2008 7:20PM
Generally speaking, if you are in the appropriate level range for any of the old world non-raid dungeons, you will be able to survive.
Heilig Mar 22nd 2008 7:19PM
Class has a lot to do with this as well. A druid will generally need to be higher (and is able to be higher, not coincidentally) due to the spiky incoming crushing blows they get nailed with. A Prot pally will generally want a little less pure avoidance than a warrior due to their spiritual attunement mechanism, thus will be taking a bit more average damage, so they will want a little higher than a warrior at T6 level. Overall, though, at this level of content, it's threat generation that is really the key, as the difference between 21,500 raid buffed and 24,000 raid-buffed is less than one hit. MT's will have 2-5 dedicated healers just for them. The game breaker will be how much dps the raid can crank out against your threat generation. The berserk timers on all the bosses now makes threat generation more important for tanks once they hit a baseline survivability level.
cbettles Mar 22nd 2008 7:58PM
I'm a warrior who just hit 70. What should I get to tank well in non-heroic dungeons?
Heilig Mar 23rd 2008 12:15AM
For non-heroics, the bosses will be level 71-72, and will not hit very hard. Generally blue drops with stam and defense on them and green "of the champion" gear to fill in the gaps will get you where you need to be. Being uncrittable and uncrushable is not as important in normal 70 instances simply because most bosses in those instances don't hit hard enough to strain your healers. A Greater Heal is still going to heal 4000+, even if you're taking crushes and crits. Since your health pool will easily break 9K at this point, the healer can heal half your health every 3 seconds. There are very few normal bosses that even crit for that much.
dusknight Mar 22nd 2008 8:01PM
It's sweeping statements like "Stamina ... is by far the most important stat that a tank needs" that confuses new players trying to tank. It is painful to see tanks with huge health pools disregarding the uncrittable/uncrushable marks, because common knowledge is that a huge health number somehow means a good tank. The article mentions adding dodge, parry, strength, AP, haste AFTER reaching a good stamina mark, but does not mention that you need a minimum value of these before you can stack the stamina.
Adam Holisky Mar 22nd 2008 8:23PM
The target audience of this article is not new tanks - it is tanks who have enough stamina, 17,500 as I indicate as a potential mark.
I make this quite clear, especially towards the end of the article. If I have to state the obvious (you need 490 def, you need enough dodge/parry/block to get above 103.4%, etc...) this article would turn from a one page specific piece of writing to a five page diatribe on the statistical interplay of main tanks.
And I in fact, do agree with your base principal - there are tanks out there that disregard many other stats necessary for good tanking. My question is however, when can a tank start stacking them instead of stamina - when/what is maximum stamina?
C.A. Mar 22nd 2008 9:03PM
Sorry Adam, it's not that obvious you are targeting 17.5k +sta tanks here. I think a good indicator is "especially towards the end of the article". Not saying it's not a good article, I can just understand dusknight's point of view.
Alex Mar 22nd 2008 9:30PM
@Adam: You have to get 102.4% to be uncrushable, not 103.4%
George Mar 22nd 2008 10:54PM
Dusk, you're 100% right. The main tanks in my guild have always worked on building defense and avoidance before focusing on stam. That's not to say they neglected stam, but having a huge health pool just does nothing for you when a string of unlucky crits take you down.
It's all about balance and the question is silly just by its very nature. It depends on so many factors. Uber geared tanks aren't good for lower level instances. They have so much avoidance that they can't generate the threat or mana they need to maintain threat. If you think about that, more stam is never a hindrance.
AlmtyBob Mar 23rd 2008 8:10AM
For a warrior's MT set avoidance comes naturally. You keep your def at 490 then you stack stam, period.
There is no minimum dodge/parry/block value, at least for prot warriors. If you don't believe me take off all your gear and pop shield block. For a warrior 5/5 in Deflection and Anticipation dodge+parry+block= 26.35%. Add in a 5% miss rate and that's 31.35%. If you could somehow have a shield with 0 stats in order to pop shield block, you'd be 101.35%. So your "minimum" you need at 70 to get uncrush with SB is a whopping 1.05% total spread across all gear slots.
I also don't know where a new warrior would have a lot of options in gear selection. When moving from greens to blues most upgrades are pretty obvious. The only real decision process comes in around the middle of T5 progression. It all comes down to enchants and gems. Enchants are mostly stam oriented with some warriors needing a wrist defense enchant. The +12 dodge to cloak is nice too. With item level points set how they are with avoidance stats versus stam, stam is ALWAYS the best choice unless the socket bonus has a stam boost worth of obtaining it. If 2.4 rolled around and suddenly I could get a +20 parry gem I'd definitely throw some of those in.
I always have to laugh at the "unlucky string of hits" theory avoidance tanks throw around. Unlucky strings of hits is exactly why you're stacking stam to begin with. It gives you survivability and breathing room. If an avoidance tank takes an unavoided string of six 3,000 hits, they're dead. Same situation, I'm alive. The hilarious thing is when you look at a so called "avoidance tank" their avoidance/mitigation isn't really all that much higher than mine. I'm sitting at 16,500 unbuffed with 22.6/17.09/24.0 in my full stam set. If I were to replace my 18 stam gem slots with +8 dodge (just to simplify) I'd get 7% more avoidance but at the cost of close to 3k health. With the above six 3k hit string, there's a 65% chance (0.93^6) that 7% more avoidance won't save you. I'm alive, you're dead.
@Tinkwisker: If a string of "crits" takes any tank down, they're doing something horribly, horribly wrong.
Then there's the healing argument. Gear choices are mainly important in boss fights. In most boss fights all the most clairvoyant healers are spamming heals anyways since the large mana pools and regen allow them to. Even though I'm an EH tank (effective health, look it up) I never have issues with my healers running out of mana mid battle.
token Mar 22nd 2008 9:11PM
There is no defense cap, and I am so tired of hearing the word cap applied to defense.
490 defense for paladins and warriors and 415 for bears is a goal number. A point at which the tank becomes uncrittable by a level 73 mob.
While it's not advisable to stack defense after this point is reached, the stat is still benefiting the tank in giving dodge/block/parry. A cap implies it is completely worthless after that point. It isn't.
Tinwhisker Mar 22nd 2008 10:01PM
This is correct; there is no "defense cap." There is only such things as "hit caps."
No Warrior or Paladin tank is even entering Kara with only 490 defense. And by the T5 or T6 range, tanks are running with 15-17K unbuffed health AND ~550 defense or so (fight depending).
"In my opinion, once you hit about 17,500 health you can start gemming and enchanting for different aspects of your tanking class." - Adam
Wrong.
Getting the stamina first and only then adding to stats like dodge/parry/block is just silly. My own experience taking a Paladin tank alt freshly (wearing blues, green gems in the sockets) into Kara had me at 11.5K unbuffed health and 526 defense. Also remember that some Paladin tanks may have to gem heavily for spell damage early on as many of the tank drops have no spell damage components. This is especially true as the AoE tank role requires massive spell damage to out-threat the AoE damage classes.
Argent Mar 22nd 2008 9:45PM
"At about 17,500 stamina unbuffed..."
at about 175,000 hp, you're not a tank, you're a walking raidboss.
quiksilvrm Mar 23rd 2008 2:34PM
wtb: 17,500 stamina
Zero_ripper Mar 22nd 2008 11:03PM
Yeah, but at that much stam, you wouldn't need to focus on defense, avoidance, or mitigation. Hell, you wouldn't even need to respec to do pvp.
Jacki Mar 24th 2008 6:17PM
Thanks for this post this is one of those things I had been wondering about. I have checked out other places and they all seem to have different numbers for the amount of stam you should have. Though I am still left with the question of how much avoidance is too much?
Kees Mar 23rd 2008 6:38AM
On T4/T5 level I socketed my gear to fit the gem description and get the bonus, just to get a bit more avoidance. That avoidance is quite standard on T6+ gear though, so I just stack those with +15 sta gems.
And more then 490 def is useless, defense has a huge budget cost on some items, so you get way more stamina or avoidance if you leave the defense behind (praetorian's legguards for example, or pepe's shroud)
AlmtyBob Mar 23rd 2008 8:12AM
Per item level point defense is the second best avoidance/mitigation stat next to dodge. Parry is the one with the crazy cost (for good reason).
Danarca Mar 23rd 2008 7:03AM
As a protection paladin, I got troubles getting near those numbers.
I'm at 11,000 - 12,000~ HP, and even then, I found myself being crushable the other day after switching a piece a of warrior gear out for T4!
Really makes me frustrated when I need to reach T5 (We're about to enter this) and T6 before I can get paladin-focused tanking-gear. I got problems with my health pool being 2 - 3k lower than our druid and warrior tanks, who runs around at 15k unbuffed.
I can't see how a paladin can reach those numbers, and still have any spelldmg or int on his/her gear.
But then again, I couldn't see how I'd ever reach 10k HP or 490 defense back when I was about to enter Kara :)