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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-27-2009 @ 4:36PM
Karilyn said...
I still say this article is a message in search of a point.
"Effective health needs to die"
"Boss abilities like Flame Breath and Impale reward the ability to stack raw health"
I mean what's the point of these articles? Are you just trying to argue that Armor is the less important half of the Effective Health formula? I think we all know that. Stamina is far more important to survivability than any other tanking stat.
It's like you are complaining that people are still describing Stamina as Effective Health, even though Armor isn't too incredibly important anymore (relatively speaking).
Reply
11-27-2009 @ 5:03PM
The Giant said...
Swing..! and a miss
11-27-2009 @ 5:10PM
Allison Robert said...
Frankly, I'm not happy with how this particular installment of the EH series came out and will be revisiting the point at some point next week or in the near future, but the underlying problem is that players on the Tanking forum chirp endlessly on about a stat that they refuse to place in context. EH by itself doesn't mean anything, more particularly the series of static numbers that get pulled out on the forums to show that bears need to be nerfed and warriors need to be buffed.
This may well be (and I think there's some truth to the claim that warrior health needs to scale better), but left unsaid is that how cooldowns are deployed during the encounter -- and how intelligently the raid plays -- winds up impacting tank survivability more than anything else. Saying "I died because I didn't have enough EH" or "I can't tank that encounter but this other person can because of EH" is foolish. Assuming the required level of gear, all tanks have tanked ToGC just fine (with the exception of the Death Knight on Anub'arak, they're kinda screwed there when it comes to doing either the MT or OT job) and the burden of proof is on the player insisting that it can't be done because they're playing the "wrong" class.
I don't like stupidity, but I hate mulish stupidity even more. I don't think I made the observational transition in this outing very well, but I'd much rather that people on the forums asked better questions about how people die on these encounters. If you're, say, a tank who's consistently dying on ToGC Gormok-25 and howling on the forums that your class needs a buff, and your raid reports show that there's no improved AP reduction on the boss, your hunters aren't using Scorpid Sting, your priests/shammys are letting the 10% physical damage reduction buff drop off you regularly, you're not consistently Earth Shielded, etc. etc. -- then all available evidence points to the fact that your raid isn't working to keep you alive.
These articles are ideally about how an otherwise good concept (EH) is getting twisted into a catch-all excuse for tank failure. I hope the cooldown article makes the argument a bit better.
11-27-2009 @ 5:34PM
Karilyn said...
They chip about it constantly because it's the right thing to do for Warriors, Druids, and Death Knights.
I understand you are a Druid, and Agility is an amazing stat for you.
But for the other three tanks, there is literally no stat that compares. You survivability goes up if you get more stamina, and nothing else even comes close. Only in the most extreme situations would you chose avoidance over more stamina; generally in the orders of a piece of gear. To be equal, it often requires as much as 3-4 times as much equivalent avoidance as the stamina you stand to lose by using the lower stamina piece.
9 times out of 10, if a Warrior, Paladin, or Death Knight is dying on a boss fight (assuming they aren't "standing in fire"), and they switch all their gems and enchants over to stamina, they will miraculously stop dying, it makes THAT much of a difference.
I know you mean well, and I normally like your posts Allison, but the only thing this blog post has seems to have done, is caused several newbie tanks to post "Oh I knew all this EH stuff was a phony, I'm going to socket and enchant and gear pure avoidance now"
You've mislead many newbie tanks, who are now on the wrong foot, and will be gearing incorrectly and having a harder time tanking as a result. That's a bad thing.
11-27-2009 @ 5:37PM
Bikhai said...
The fact remains that Stamina isn't the same thing as EH. Stamina will always be important as EH. The problem right now is that even though some bosses do hit like a truck, requiring a lot of stamina and a lot of armor to mitigate it, there is more to the tanking equation than just those stats.
What Allison is saying is that we need to get away from EH as the sole determination of a tank's value and start looking more at the other factors that contribute to survivability. And yes, developers are moving away from EH with ICC. Smaller, more consistent hits against tanks means that you don't have to stack Stam/AC out the wazoo to survive like you do in current content.
11-27-2009 @ 5:51PM
tim said...
@Karilyn
"9 times out of 10, if a Warrior, Paladin, or Death Knight is dying on a boss fight (assuming they aren't "standing in fire"), and they switch all their gems and enchants over to stamina, they will miraculously stop dying, it makes THAT much of a difference."
9 times out of 10, if someone says something like "9 times out of 10" without a citation or a model to back up the claim, they're just making up numbers.
Think a little bit about what you're saying. You're saying that, if a Warrior, Paladin, or a DK tank is dying and their gems/enchants aren't all stamina, in 90% of cases they can get through the encounter merely by switching all the gems/enchants to stamina.
WOW! That's a pretty strong claim! My guild's DK tank will be relieved when I tell him that he's not dying because the OT is screwing up, or DPS isn't burning fast enough, or healers are dropping the ball, or--god forbid!--he just got an unlucky string of hits on him... no, it's because he foolishly gemmed stamina/dodge rather than pure stamina on a few gem slots.
/shrug
11-27-2009 @ 6:06PM
Karilyn said...
Yes, I'm seriously Tim. I have seen more tanks than I can remember, who were gemming and enchanting for standard "maximum stats," which basically means, all socket bonuses, and the "highest rank" enchant they could use.
These tanks, died on Heroic Gormak over and over and over; simply dropping dead spontaneously, when nobody in the raid was doing anything notably wrong.
Those tanks replace all their gems and enchants with pure stamina, gain an extra 3k health, drop around 1% avoidance, and they stop dying.
Also. One of those tanks? Do you know the name of one of those tanks I'm talking about?
I'll give you a hint. It starts with a "Kari" and ends with a "lyn"
I'm not just talking out my butt. The difference is mind blowing. It is the difference between night and day. Don't believe me? Try tanking with "balanced stats" one week, then pure stamina the next, and watch your survivability skyrocket.
11-27-2009 @ 7:34PM
Allison Robert said...
@ Karilyn
I doubt that anyone's going to run out and gem nothing but +parry (The horror! The horror!) because of this piece, but I also think it's important to note that most of the discussion here's centering on our buddy Gormok. We're talking about one particular encounter where stacking the bejesus out of stamina pays enormous dividends for all tanks, with the reason being that the Impale mechanic is a huge damage tick that doesn't care about anything but how much health you've got left or how much you can mitigate by blowing a CD.
Geared and experienced tanks with a competent heal team aren't in especial danger of dying on most other ToGC-25 bosses (I mean, the whole point of the +block set on Anub'arak is how little damage a warrior can take from the adds while wearing it), so telling everybody to run out and gem stam on everything because you'll get stomped otherwise jumps the gun a bit. It's useful and it gives healers a margin for error. It's fantastic on progression content when healing errors are common while the team's learning the fight and you don't have the buffer provided by more advanced gear (which I think was really Ciderhelm's original point concerning EH -- stacking EH on progression content mimics the health bonus granted by better gear).
It's not necessarily required or even desirable on fights where the greatest threat to tank survivability isn't the brute force of a boss ability -- or a boss ability that, at present or theoretical levels of EH, will still one-shot you without the use of a cooldown -- and EH as the new catch-all answer to everything that goes wrong for a tank is a something that I very much want to die.
It's not the concept, it's how it's used, and how it's become an excuse for everything. Tanks need to be more honest with themselves about what's more likely to kill them than "I don't have enough EH, QQ."
11-27-2009 @ 11:47PM
Heilig said...
"These tanks, died on Heroic Gormak over and over and over; simply dropping dead spontaneously, when nobody in the raid was doing anything notably wrong.
Those tanks replace all their gems and enchants with pure stamina, gain an extra 3k health, drop around 1% avoidance, and they stop dying."
Let me make sure I have this straight. You think because on a boss that delivers large amounts of UNAVOIDABLE damage gemming for stamina will keep you alive better than AVOIDANCE proves your point that stamina should always be the first thing tanks look for?