This site makes extensive use of JavaScript.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser.
Live
PTR
10.2.7
PTR
10.2.6
Beta
How are bears gemming?
Post Reply
Return to board index
Post by
Achloryn
More specifically, how are bears gemming when the socket bonus is irrelevant, and the meta requirements are met elsewhere?
Here
is my bear, and i'm curious if I should swap a couple of my pure-stam gems out for agi/stam or dodge/stam or just pure agi or pure dodge. Yes, I know I have a couple reforges to fix, and the armor meta gem is probably better for me overall, I was merely playing around with the spell damage meta as a whim, but i'm sure i'll change it back.
Thoughts?
Post by
224056
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
320682
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
224056
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
320682
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
710036
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
335958
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
pelf
LOL @ a warrior in my guild with almost 180k health due to his ridiculous Jewelcrafting profession.
Post by
Achloryn
Cataclysm has pushed more classes towards a healthy mixture of multiple stats, away from the lich king philosophy of ignoring all stats for one superior one.
And thank goodness for that. It certainly makes things more interesting.
Avoidance/Absorb seems to play a larger role now, with the greater burden on healers. Certainly, high EH is good for a tank, but if your healer is oom, it doesn't matter what your HP pool is. Most of the good tanks I run with nowadays have a healthy mix of stam and avoidance, which seems to work well for them.
I agree with this. But at the same time, with my current gemming/reforging i'm running something like 31% dodge unbuffed in bear form. At this gear level that to me seems like a "healthy amount" of avoidance. I really AM wanting to get
THIS
effing trinket as a backup so I can swap it out with my alchemist's stone on occasion. That trinket is sooooooooo sweet.
I'd drop the red gem in your chest for pure stam though (the leg socket bonus is better).
Yeah.... y'know honestly I don't know WHY i put that gem in my chest.. it's a mystery. I'll probably drop it for another dodge/stam gem to activate the armor meta.
that's actually gonna bother me now.. why the hell did put that gem in my chestpiece? /boggle.
Post by
Thror
After reading a few theorycrafting threads a few weeks ago, it was pretty clear to me that gemming Pure stamina is not the best way currently. At least not for normal raids. Stats that actively reduce damage taken are far superior to raw stam, because once you have enough HP to not get insta-gibbed when a boss is hitting you, every point of dodge pays extra dividends in saved healer mana.
On the other hand, my guild healers are not all completely used to the new healing model. Some of them are still using their mana extremele inefficiently. Yet, i have to work with what i get. Hence why completely neglecting stamina is not very desirable in my case, since it does happen that i drop below 10k hp and i actually have to wait for a heal to land on me, either because of distracted healers or whatever else. In those cases, the extra stamina i have on my gear is actively saving my hairy ass and not making the raid wipe, so it does have some value.
I would advice to gem full Agility if you have exceptionally skilled healers, and Agility / Stamina to anyone else. I personally gem Agility / Stamina in Red
and
Blue sockets, and Dodge / Stamina in two yellows to activate the armor meta.
Personally, i do not think we will need to gem Stamina for heroic modes of raids. The tanks from Paragon did all gem stamina into the oblivion, but that was because they rushed heroic modes in mostly blue gear, and they were far below the needed health pools. The stamina difference between a 346 blue and 359 epic is
huge
, and in my opinion, most upper tier guilds will generally wait to get a good set of epics before really stepping into heroic modes of raids, which means we are gonna step into heroics with much larger HP from merely Stam that is present on our items than the Paragon tanks ever dreamed of, therefore we will still be able to prefer Mitigation for gemming.
Post by
Timmeh
I'm still aiming primarily for stamina, but grabbing a lot more socket bonuses than before (the worthwhile ones - skipping haste and even crit, unless it's a huge amount, or easily obtained). While some individuals extoll the virtues of pure dodge, and while I do see them to an extent, I'm also of the opinion that a significantly lower health pool forces healers to use their fast/big heal more often than they would otherwise need to, with a long-term detriment to mana efficiency that outweighs the overall slight increase in damage from less dodge. And regardless of what was done to stop health pools being binary, on occasion a boss can end up hitting so hard that you end up back in the old "why stamina is better than avoidance" debate. Admittedly, this is usually when fail has already occurred - a number of times while learning Cho'gall a few idiot DPSers went for a run and ended up stacking worship to 6 before anyone could reach them, and it was the gargantuan health pool that saved me. Would dodge have saved me equally? Maybe, but stamina definitely saved me.
Keep in mind that this is pure opinion, I've not maths'd it beyond the basics of how much dodge I'd gain at the cost of how much stamina (it's not even realistically possible to account for all the variables and all the situations to get an objective "best"), I think you can pretty much go either way with it - maybe talk to your healers and work out what they'd prefer, that's what I did.
Post by
PreyingDantis
Aside from a select few pieces I am using my cat gear for tanking which is gemmed for agility, agi/mastery or agi/hit depending on socket options. It works for me, but then again I'm not in a top-tier raiding guild.
Post by
710036
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Achloryn
I'm still aiming primarily for stamina, but grabbing a lot more socket bonuses than before (the worthwhile ones - skipping haste and even crit, unless it's a huge amount, or easily obtained). While some individuals extoll the virtues of pure dodge ...
I think more people are advocating agility over dodge. Remember agility not only gives us a lot of avoidance via dodge, but also is the most effective way to stack all savage defense stats simultaneously, when you consider mastery and attack power do the same thing.
At this early stage in the game though I wouldn't fault anyone for gemming mostly stamina as long as they're picking up good socket bonuses. Theorycrafting is one thing, trial and error with your guilds healers in a raid situation is completely another.
That's kind of how I feel about it right now. I have some very strong healers in my guild that are still in the process of adjusting to the new healing model at times. We're not going to be raiding for a couple more weeks, but I may swap out a few more straight stam gems for agi/stam or dodge/stam depending on the socket bonus.
Also, the meta gem for armor seems really underwhelming. In bear form i only gained about 650 armor. =\ Does this seem a bit small to anyone else?
Post by
666983
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Timmeh
I think more people are advocating agility over dodge. Remember agility not only gives us a lot of avoidance via dodge, but also is the most effective way to stack all savage defense stats simultaneously, when you consider mastery and attack power do the same thing.
At this early stage in the game though I wouldn't fault anyone for gemming mostly stamina as long as they're picking up good socket bonuses. Theorycrafting is one thing, trial and error with your guilds healers in a raid situation is completely another.
Yeah, I did mean dodge through agility, hopefully nobody is all out gemming dodge, except *maybe* to active the yellow-demanding meta, although point for point I believe mastery'll work out better there. I didn't mention SD partly because it's extremely difficult to calculate how worthwhile it is in comparison to other stats, being horribly encounter-specific... and of course, interestingly it also somewhat scales with vengeance (the vengeance AP cap is increased by stamina - your maximum health goes up, your maximum AP through vengeance goes up, your SD shields get bigger - admittedly nowhere near as well as through agility, but it's yet another consideration).
I think it hugely depends on the content you're doing, heroics and early raid bosses... hell, if all content were like them I'd stack mastery and dodge eternally... but during the later bosses I'm still more scared of getting gibbed during certain fights than taking that bit of extra damage resulting in healer oom... indeed, as I mentioned I think at this stage, getting your health up does genuinely help your healers get out their more efficient heals more regularly, and mine are more happy to cast more efficient heal x more regularly all fight than cast efficient heal x less often but get semi-regular panic moments and have to resort to less efficient heal y. I'm sure that as gear increases this will change, and avoidance will become more desirable... but that's what I've experienced for now.
Post by
Shadax
The benefits of agility are very clear, certainly, and I am by no means encouraging gemming purely for stamina, but I would definitely encourage you to keep mind that no matter what any simulator or gear weighting says, dodge is reliant on the RNG, whereas stamina (and therefore health) is not. For a tank, you will NEVER see me put a single gem in any slot on my tank gear that does NOT have stamina on it to some degree, nor will you see me elect an equal quality non-stam enchant over a stam one. YMMV, of course.
Post by
365115
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
710036
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
335958
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post Reply
You are not logged in. Please
log in
to post a reply or
register
if you don't already have an account.