Last Night's PuG

So usually a post starting with this title would be a long rant about some terrible group that I ended up with over the weekend. However, I am pleased that is not the case today. In fact, it is exactly the opposite.

I've decided that groups are notably better in the hours when kids are not home or are not allowed to play on the computer. Groups during the middle of the day 9am-3pm are pretty good. But the exceptional groups are those that occur after 10pm.

After running a few groups with a paladin friend of mine, he decided to run on his mage for some badges. So we cued in the dungeon finder for a tank. We ended up with a paladin named Chunchi on Stormreaver. He had 36k hp unbuffed, which is pretty decent but isn't phenominal or anything. That's totally attainable for paladin tanks who try. However, throw on a few buffs and he was pushing 43k hp. The truth was that this guy just was amazing. He made me stop and wonder about all the other tanks in our battlegroup (Reckoning). All of the other tanks should be ashamed of themselves.

We ran back-to-back instances for about 4 hours. Let me remind you that this was a PuG for the most part. Chunchi was pushing 3.5k dps while tanking. I'm really not sure how that's even possible. The best part was at the beginning of H HoL, I told him, "We have a pretty geared group, let's take this quickly." And he responded, "Ok." Now, I originally thought he'd pull two groups at once, or something of that nature. Instead, he pulls entire hallways. He runs to the very end, and hangs onto every last guy. There were no runners taking out the clothies, no spell-casters trailing behind. Once he got to the end of the hallway, he beat the crap out of them while we all AOE'd. At times, our 3900-gearscore mage was pushing 11k dps, and ended up with an average somewhere around 6k dps.

You'd think with that many guys beating on our fearless paladin, that he'd be taking significant damage. But for some reason he really wasn't. Well, he had 26% dodge, 20% parry, and 15% block. Beyond that, at 27k armor, he's already mitigating 65% of the received damage. That means, that he wasn't even getting hit 61% of the time, and when he did get hit, he only took 35% damage. (0.39 * 0.35 = 13.65% overall damage taken)

Now, there's an exponential principle here. When one person in a group becomes better (better gear or skill or both), the group does not simply increase by that much. (ie: it's not mathematically 'addative') Instead, everyone becomes better. But it's not mathamatically multiplicitive either. It's not that everyone in the group increased by some delta x. Instead, there is exponential increase... let me show you why.

When the tank becomes better, he takes less damage. Thus, the healer does not need to heal as much. Which in turn means that the priest has more mana (which can be turned into DPS if the group is good). Also, an increase in a tank's gear means that he can hold aggro on more mobs because he can sink more overall damage. This means that the DPS can use more AOE and do increased damage to more mobs at once, killing them faster. Hence, dungeons are run faster, more loot is obtained, and more badges are earned. Exponential increase.

I was lucky enough to get to DPS for the last two instances of the night. I popped up shadow spec, and went at it. During H ToC, I peaked at around 7k dps, and averaged about 3.5k dps. That's not too shabby, considering that half of my gear is shared with my holy healing set.

So, when all was said and done, we averaged about one badge every 3 minutes, totally nearly 100 badges when we finished. I had amassed about 230 triumphs, and collected my entire T9 set in one night. I went by the auction house and dropped about 1,500 gold on epic gems, and re-enchanted my gear. If only I got such an awesome group every evening, I'd have another 230 emblems to drop on my shadow set in about 3 days.

Damage Mitigation and Tanking

Critical hit immunity at level 80 for a heroic dungeon is 535 Defense.
Critical hit immunity at level 80 for a raid boss occurs at 540 Defense.

According to WoWWiki, as of patch 3.0, crushing blows cannot happen to max-level tanks. They changed crushing blows from 4 levels below the boss level (83) to 3 levels below the boss level. This change was to improve the validity of the druid and death knight tanks.

Damage Mitigation:
Block - Additional chance to mitigate damage when wearing a shield.
Defense - Helps prevent physical damage by reducing the chance to be hit or critically hit. It also increases block, dodge and parry.
Dodge - Ability to avoid an entire attack.
Miss - A failed attack. (Defense Skill vs Weapon Skill)
Parry - Chance to nullify an attack.
Resilience - Reduces chance to be critically hit. Reduces the damage from melee and spell critical strikes that do hit. Reduces normal damage taken.
Resistance - Reduces, or entirely blocks a particular shcool of magic.

Warrior
Warriors are best for tanking melee bosses with a lot of attack speed and low damage per hit.
They don't do well against spell damage.
They are able to use all the damage mitigation abilities.

Paladin
Paladins are best for tanking bosses with multiple adds.
They can also use all the damage mitigation abilities, but are more reliant on reaching the block cap for shields.

Druid
Druids are best at tanking burst damage bosses because they have huge health pools.
Cannot wear shields = Cannot block.
Weapons do not deal damage when in bear form = Cannot parry.
Depend heavily on high amounts of dodge from agility.

Death Knight
Death Knights are best for tanking spell-casting bosses. They have several abilities that enable them to avoid spell damage all together.
Receives 25% of strength as parry rating!
Cannot wear shields = Cannot block.

It Takes One To Know One

It's hard to understand the intricisies of the game, especially the tank-healer relationship without having first played the other person's role. This is difficult because it requires having leveled a second character to 80.

I lucked out because my wife happens to have a druid and has been building up it's tanking gear. I occasionally play her druid to help her get those pieces that just seem never to drop. I decided that I would run her character as a feral tank instead of boomkin dps which I usually do.

I learned a few tidbits about tanking that will help me be a better healer in the future. Mainly, that the hp required to tank a regular lvl-80 instance is much lower than that required to tank a heroic instance. That seems obvious, but you don't realize exactly how much the difference is until you're the tank.

We tried to have her druid tank Heroic ToC with 25k hp. We're a pretty skilled group of players, but it was still too hard. However, her druid can tank normal dungeons without any problems, even when being healed by a lower level character.

So, how much hp does a tank really need?

"If you ask the tank forums - Any HP is fine
If you ask the healer forums - You can't step into H UK until you have 32k unbuffed
If you ask the DPS forums - It will get lost in the PvP QQ"

-Greymare on Shattered Hand

I find that quote to be right on target. Most tanks think that they need a decent amount of hp, but after that, it doesn't matter -- that the healer will make up for less hp simply by healing faster. They think that the solution to low hp is to get a better healer with more mana and more +spell power. However, this is just not the case. A healer recognizes that there is a limit to how fast one can heal, and that if the tank takes more damage than that, there is no amount of hp that will suffice.

We pulled in a paladin tank with aproximately the same amount of hp, and he managed to tank through it with only small problems. What was the difference? It wasn't the amount of hp. It was the additional avoidance mechanics of the pally tank. He wore a shield and could parry in addition to dodge. I alluded to this fact in a previous post (WoW's Not What It Used To Be) regarding death knight and druid tanks. I'll be posting again on this topic discussing each tank's avoidance mechanisms and which tanking class to select for the job... yes, there is a difference.


However, you must consider some factors while tanking other than just yourself:

Can your healer keep up with the amount of damage you take, even if you don't die instantly?

Will pulling more mobs cause additional AOE or other combined effects that will wipe the group, even though you can take the damage?

Can you see anything once you pull a group of mobs?

Can you chase after a mob if one gets loose?

How good is your group? Can the DPS pull mobs off you? Are they attacking the mob you're directly attacking, or one that you're only hitting occasionally?

Is your group going to AOE, or single target each mob?