From this (http://thedruidsgrove.org/wow/forums/showpost.php?p=147448&postcount=8) excellent post by Abies:

What you gain from 100 armor is always the same, no matter how much you already have. Yes, the reduction shown in the tooltip is increasing less with higher values, but that is misleading.

This may not be easy to see, but a small calculation shows that.

[snip]

the increase of 370 in armor increases the needed amount of damage to kill me by 700 here as well.

I am interested in this from a potion perspective.

[Elixir of Major Fortitude] (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32062)
Requires Level 50
Use: Increases maximum health by 250 and
restores 10 health every 5 seconds for 1 hour.
Guardian Elixir.

Vs.

Elixir of Major Defense (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=22834)
Requires Level 55
Use: Increases armor by 550 for 1 hour.
Guardian Elixir.


Abies, frankly your equations baffle me, but even I can see that Fortitude increases the damage required to kill me by 250.

y question; how much better is Major Defense? How much extra damage would it take to kill me with a Major Defense elixir up? Will it continue at this level of effectiveness right up to the armor cap?


This is interesting to me as Major Defense is a LOT more expensive in terms of mats and I've found it difficult to justify making them up until now..


-Annikk

In reality, Armor and Dodge will always keep you alive longer than Stamina. Why? They actually limit damage constantly, whereas Stamina lasts that initial hit. Sure, it gets healed back and gives you the health pool for burst and high damage, but that Armor and Dodge will forever be mitigating your damage. If Stamina were the only stat needed, then a Warlock could tank all melee bosses. This is not to mention Dodge and Armor's worth increase exponentially for each mob you are tanking.

In any event, though. I'd offer to do math, but I just woke up and am thusly tired. I will say, however, the only reason I was not using that elixir was because I was using Ironskin.

When it comes down to it, though, Ironskin, Fortitude, and Major Defense are reflections upon your gear set. If you need more armor, use Major Defense. If you're not critable, use Ironskin. If you're low on Stamina, use Fortitude.

But I think you knew that.

So yeah, this banter is basically just saying Armor is great until the Armor Cap, at which point anything else is wasted--so Dodge and Stamina become king. If you wanted math? Maybe later. ><

Well, I am a bit of a theorycrafter (I think it is fun ^^).

Theorycrafting being as it is... the values it gives you are correct, but sometimes not that useful on their own. You have to put them into a real world context (or a virtual world context in this case :) )

The calculation in my post above show that there are no diminishing returns on AC (which is true). But they do not allow you to directly compare a certain amount of armor to a certain amount of health easily.
First, they assume only physical (non-bleed) damage, which is simply not the case in most (if not all) encounters.
Second, they assume you receive no healing, which is (hopefully) not true either.
Third, it does not take other stats into account, like dodge and defense.


So in order to compare 250 health (and 10hp5) to 500 AC, we have to do a little math again.

Let's assume some average stats and do the calculations from my original post with them:

Health: 16k
AC: 25k

Unmitigated physical damage needed to kill the tank:
No elixir -> 53888
EoMFortitude -> 54729
EoMDefense -> 54646

In this case it looks like EoMFortitude is the better choice (especially because it also has the 10hp5 on it).
But that varies with the base values we assume.


Health: 20k
AC: 20k

Unmitigated physical damage needed to kill the tank:
No elixir -> 57888
Fortitude -> 58611
Defense -> 58835

Now there is a case where it looks like EoMDefense is the slightly better choice.


Now a third set of stats with my values, when fully buffed, which is much closer to a real world feral tank:

Health: 22,5k
AC: 29k

Unmitigated physical damage needed to kill the tank:
No elixir -> 84304
Fortitude -> 85241
Defense -> 85370

Again, EoMDefense yields better results.

As you can see, the values vary with different combinations of health and AC, in ways that are not really intuitive.

But all that math aside, in a situation where you will get bleed damage and/or magical damage, additional AC is useless.
Also in this calculation I cannot take the 10hp5 into acount, and it ignores dodge and defense completely.

Also you have to think about healing. More AC reduces the overall healing you will need, reducing the mana usage of your healers. More health on the other hand gives your healers more time to react and reduces overheal. Especially with enemies that do a lot of magical or bleed damage, health is by far the better stat.


y personal opinion is, EoMFortitude is the better choice for a Druid in all cases. Getting to the AC cap is not too difficult (without even having a single piece from SSC/TK, I am close).
Also the 10hp5 (assuming it works in combat) are a factor.
For a Warrior or Pally though, with less armor, EoMDefense is interesting.

:twak:
Sometimes, an emoticon is worth a thousand words.

Like Winnie the Pooh, I'm a bear with very little brains, and I can't figure these things out well for myself, so I have to ask Christopher Robin for some help. How does Elixir of Major Agility factor into all this? It's my favorite pot (like the really good stuff from Columbia), and intuitively I like to think it's better since it increases dodge, armor and crit, but I don't know how this stacks up against the math. Any thoughts/comments/suggestions?

EoMAgility is a Battle Elixir and therefore stacks with above Elixirs, which are Guardian.
I personally use EoMAgility and EoMFortitude OR EoMastery and EoMFortitude, depending on the enemy. If I need more Dodge, EoMAgility, if I need more stamina, EoMastery.

Thanks Abies for that very comprehensive post :> Those are some impressive stats you are pulling..
I am still a little confused though. In your previous post you said 370 armor increases the damage it takes to kill you by 700. Therefore shouldn't 500 armor increase the damage it takes to kill you by 946?

y values raidbuffed are roughly 16k health and 21k armor. Which would be best for me? :P


I use fortitude at the moment mostly, because it's so much cheaper to make than the 500 armor elixir. I use agility if i'm doing an instance for the extra damage, aggro, mangle crits etc, also lots of dodge and a little armor as well. Mastery if I'm tanking a raid boss, the extra stamina is imho better for that.


-Annikk

I used to use defense up to the point where I had 30k Raid buffed armour.After 30k Raid buffed armour defense pots just don't hit it anymore.EoMFortitude is way better in this case due to the fact that I am close to the armour cap. This has no basis other than my own experience but seems to work fine.Before I hit 30k armour though it was my bread and butter elixer combined with agility and a spicey crawdad.

Just for the record, as I'm getting the general impression of it from this thread:

31673 Armor = Armor cap on level 70 mobs.
35880 Armor = Armor cap for Raid Bosses (level 73).

Keep stacking that armor.

I am still a little confused though. In your previous post you said 370 armor increases the damage it takes to kill you by 700. Therefore shouldn't 500 armor increase the damage it takes to kill you by 946?
As I said, the math behind that is a bit difficult to comprehend, as the results are a bit counter-intuitive. The "damage to kill me" value is not only dependent on armor, but also on health.
Besides the fact that it doesn't say much about the real-world surviability of a tank.


y values raidbuffed are roughly 16k health and 21k armor. Which would be best for me? :P
Without any calculations I'd say go ahead and use EoMFortitude. More armor does not help a bit against magical and bleed damage. As above calculations have shown, the difference between the two is not very big and adding other factors into the equation will skew it even more in EoMFortitude's favor.
If you fight an encounter that does physical damage only (Gruul would be an example), then EoMDefense is worth a look, but only then.

Just for the record, as I'm getting the general impression of it from this thread:

31673 Armor = Armor cap on level 70 mobs.
35880 Armor = Armor cap for Raid Bosses (level 73).

Keep stacking that armor.

Just for the Record.

between 73% armour reduction and 75% armour reduction on raid bosses Id choose more HP.

I'm not saying anything against personal choices; that's your own thing to choose, and I know I personally chose armor over stamina because it's what I prefer and find more comfortable (I always was one to maximize damage reduction). Do whatever you feel is best--do whatever you find comfortable and take to.

I'm just pointing out that 32k~ armor isn't the armor cap; 35880 armor is the armor cap. Sorry if it sounded like I was trying to impose my opinion. I think I worded what I meant wrongly and it came off differently than I intended.

Lets also remember that if we're talking raid buffed, that there are certain other things to take into account.

For example, shaman and priest healers potentially have a talent that allows them to endow the target with +25% armor (5/5 ancestral fortitude/inspiration) when they crit a heal on the target. During normal encounters, I wouldn't count on this, but if the druid is a MT on a raid boss in SSC/the eye/beyond, I would have to argue that you could expect to have that buff up regularly. So if you aim to just be at the armor cap of 35880, you might only really need 28704 armor! Problem with that statement is if your healers have a string of bad luck and don't crit you, you've lost a lot of mitigation.

But, this does bring me to my point: When I have more than 30k armor self buffed, I stack stamina/health. Enough stamina will soak up spikes and I haven't wasted stat points on armor that doesn't pay any dividends when the chips are down.

Oh, and remember that armor does not mitigate spells. There are an awful lot of bosses that do spell damage or spell-like effects, where the armor mitigation means nothing and where the health elixir wins by default. I don't know about everyone, but on a regular basis, druids in my raid get picked for tanking spellcaster mobs because we generally have larger pools of health and we generate rage (and thus agro) more quickly/efficiently than a warrior in the same situation.