The Queue: Elf-on-bear action
by Michael Sacco 
Jun 11th 2011 at 12:00PM
I guess I lied about the action part, but this image is DEFINITELY of an elf on a bear. So what if I stole it from Phat Loot Phriday? Do you know hard it is to come up with Queue headers?
Rezai asked:
Why does everyone think that the next WoW expansion is going to be announced at Blizz Con?
I only ask since if I remember correctly (not saying I am) on of the things that everyone said was weird was that very little of ICC (the next raid to be released) was actually talked about (since everyone was so excited about cata). Since we are no where near the last raid of the expansion, should we expect the next expansion announced a lot sooner? Am I misremebering things? Is misremember a word?
Basically, we're expecting an announcement of the next expansion at BlizzCon because by then it'll have been two years since the last expansion announcement. Blizzard announced BC at BlizzCon '05, Wrath at BlizzCon '07, and Cataclysm at BlizzCon '09, so it only makes sense that the upcoming expansion would be announced at this year's.
BlizzCon is pretty much the only major gaming event Blizzard participates in nowadays anyway; if we didn't hear about an expansion at this BlizzCon, then we probably wouldn't hear about it until next BlizzCon, which is an awfully long way away.
Ferani asked:
Has Blizzard ever considered the option to "upgrade" old armor tiers to the new tier's ilvl. I would love to be rockin the priest t5 in current raids.
Probably not, given that armor is meant to be a prestige symbol, an indicator of your current progress in the game. If you could just wear whatever tier armor you wanted all the time, regardless of the relevancy of the tier in question, that indicator would be lost. Like it or not, it's how the game works, and it's what keeps the artists, er, arting.
Bryn asked:
If you are capped for the week on Conquest Points, can you still add more by converting Valor Points for Conquest Points? Or does this Valor to Conquest conversion count toward the weekly cap? Thanks!
Converted points still count towards the cap, and you won't get points over the cap with a sneaky conversion, either.
asbj0rnbendtsen asked:
I have heard from many tanks that expertise is good for tanking because everytime the boss parries one of your attacks, he will make an extra attack on you. So my question is: Does that rule still apply? or has it been removed in a distant patch?
Parry-haste, or the fast melee swing that certain bosses would perform after being parried, was removed from the game, or at the very least is not present at all in this tier of content.
Expertise (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, commenters) isn't really worth capping as a tank due to other mechanics like Vengeance doing a pretty good job of maintaining your threat as you progress through an encounter. It does help for establishing initial threat, but that boost isn't really worth gemming or reforging for, since it would be at the expense of other stats that help you much more in the long term, such as dodge or mastery.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Ilmyrn Jun 11th 2011 12:11PM
Worth pointing out that capping Expertise and Hit is MUCH more important for five man tanking, though that has a much lower cap anyway. Vengeance is not enough to carry a tank in five mans, even heroics.
Also, Blizzard has said they're not happy with tanks being able to completely ignore threat stats. It's doubtful they'll do much about it any time soon, but at some point it's something we'll probably see addressed.
Henri Poincaré Jun 11th 2011 12:23PM
If Cataclysm follows the trajectory of WotLK, the dps and threat-generation of dps classes scale up much more quickly than those of tanks as gear levels go up. A lot of things got fixed in Cata, and so perhaps this, too; but if Blizz actively noted they _want_ threat to be an issue again for tanks, then perhaps they would actually be pleased with aggro becoming once more an issue. I haven't been raiding this expansion, alas, so I'm not sure where things stand now. I'm sure other commenters will correct me if wrong.
EidlonImp Jun 11th 2011 1:41PM
Also worth noting, as a tank you'll be facing a bosses front more often than not, meaning upping expertise is generally a priority over hit on the rare occasions you find yourself making a choice between the two.
Morgatho Jun 11th 2011 2:31PM
As Henri Poincaré pointed out "the dps and threat-generation of dps classes scale up much more quickly than those of tanks as gear levels go up" is already happening. While working on my pally tank alt I qued for a random and got into a group with an enhance sham in heroic raiding gear, he was constantly pulling threat off of me, I don't know if shams have a threat dump or not (besides not attacking) but they need one, IMO.
Snuzzle Jun 11th 2011 3:02PM
That's what Vengeance is supposed to be for--- the fact that DPS threat stats are scaling at a greater rate than tanks', due to tanks focusing on survivability stats. Vengeance was supposed to fix that by making survivability stats scale threat stats in a roundabout way (more stamina = more Vengeance AP).
Whether it's working or not is up in the air, though.
Draev Jun 11th 2011 4:01PM
Yea I have tons of trouble in 5 mans, with only 1 expertise and less than 1% hit but raids I do fine.
Heres my armory:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/tichondrius/kelthar/advanced
Artificial Jun 11th 2011 4:23PM
@Morgantho: Shammies do... it's called Wind Shear. It sounds like your particular shammy was just incompetent.
Ashwan Jun 11th 2011 4:29PM
@Draev If you're going to reforge for threat, pick expertise. It's twice as valuable as hit when you have less than 26 since it reduces chance to dodge and parry.
SR Jun 11th 2011 8:45PM
Morgado, you're comparing a tank in greens and blues losing threat to a shaman in full raid gear. That's almost as big of a difference as an 80 tank losing threat to an 84 DPS.
The current situation in raids is not bad at all, and considering gear scaling has gone down by quite a bit (We have so much of primary stats now, and tiers only add so much compared to Wrath (nearly 150% stat disparity between Naxx 25 and ICC 10)), and since most tanks can get a complete combat table coverage through mastery (Excluding Death Knight/Bear tanks), they will have even less problems.
As for the exclusions (Bear/DK), bears got their damage buffed significantly (while dropping threat coefficients) so that their threat actually scales with gear; not to mention, crit is still a somewhat desirable (and oftentimes unavoidable due to leather itemization) to mitigation, so we shouldn't see them fall behind by much, either.
Death Knights? Well... Apparently the devs are completely happy with avoidance eating into mastery (and vice versa) and pulling the lowest DPS out of all the tanks. They also seem pretty content with allowing this to happen all throughout Firelands. But this isn't about Death Knight QQs.
Overall, personally, I doubt we'd have threat problems on the raiding part as long as the tank is smart enough to pull the proper threat rotation.
Natsumi Jun 12th 2011 10:34AM
I have to agree with Morgatho here. Pally tanks suck.
Luminaris Jun 13th 2011 2:11PM
@SR
Well, I'd just like to point out that, as you'll see from this link, the gear scaling has been the same since BC as far as new tiers go.
http://www.wowhead.com/compare?items=50276;40416;31056;29076
That's a link to a comparison between tiers 4,6,7 and 10 (specifically the onse you pointed out, 25 man tier 7 and 10 man tier 10) mage helm.
You will find that the stats scale roughly 150% in both cases (ie the int stat)
Also, here is a link to both the first two tier helms from the past three expansions (ptr wowhead is awesome)
There is a 24% increase in the int stat from tier 11 to 12, 21% from 7 to 8, and a whopping 34% from 4 to 5.
Pointing all that out, I think it's safe to say that raid tiers scale about the same judging by this small sample size. This expansion is no different.
(granted, we went from tier 7.5 to tier 10 in the first link when we could have easily gone from tier 7 to 10.5 heroic tier, 25 man gear and heroic tier did expand the item level gap towards the end of wrath, but that is a whole different argument)
Luminaris Jun 13th 2011 2:12PM
here is the missing link supposed to be ther, oops
http://ptr.wowhead.com/compare?items=71287;60243;46129;40416
DeathPaladin Jun 11th 2011 12:13PM
Expertise is slightly less bad for Death Knight tanks, since a major part of both their healing and their damage reduction is contingent on Death Strike connecting with their target.
Mugutu Jun 11th 2011 12:20PM
This. Hit and expertise actually become somewhat of a survivability stat for DKs because of how important Death Strike is.
Cambro Jun 11th 2011 12:23PM
Along those lines, as a warrior tank, I find that I still want a certain amount of hit and expertise (although I'm only around 6% hit and 20-23 exp). While a "non-damaging" interrupt/stun can no longer miss, one that does damage can miss, which I have found to happen at inopportune moments, say using Heroic Throw or Concussion Blow. Also, if Victory Rush is available and I need a little extra healing, it sucks if the boss manages to dodge or parry it. And purely from an aesthetics viewpoint, I'm used to previous iterations of the game when a boss seldom parried me, so now when he does, it gets my RL rage going to see it happen so often.
Harvoc Jun 11th 2011 12:26PM
It's also pretty good for Druid's along with Hit and Crit for Savage Defense, albeit not as good as it is for a Death Knight.
Amanda A. Jun 11th 2011 12:33PM
However, playing Sargeras' advocate, a miss does not expend runes, so you lose nothing but time when you miss from lack of hit/expertise. A DK tank who misses a death strike can try again on the next GCD. Missing is still bad in some situations, but if you don't need that heal and shield in the next 1.5 seconds missing is not going to wipe the group.
Meta Jun 11th 2011 12:43PM
I may be wrong here, but regarding bear tanks, due to the way the combat table works, hit and expertise does not affect Savage Defense. Only crit does. When an attack is rolled on the attack table, hits, dodges, parries, crits, and misses are all included in a single roll. So crit is the only thing which can be rolled that affects SD. So hit/expertise should be of no "extra" value to bears.
Verse Jun 11th 2011 12:54PM
Here is the source info:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1869253719?page=1
All tanks should read this^^.
Morcego Jun 11th 2011 1:05PM
I'm sorry Havoc but ... hum ?
Savage defense is not really that good for high end (heroic end bosses) tanking. Sure, there isn't much that we can use. Haste is a bad joke. Crit is bleh. We pretty much only want Agility, Dodge and Stamina (in that order). So maybe we could make a point that hit/expertise is "less worthless" than haste, or even crit. But it would be extremely marginal. I probably won't even bother upgrading the item.
Now, for 5man, I agree that hit and expertise are both very important, and I even carry some trinkets and the TB staff around for that.