Block Capping – Mastery vs. Stamina

If you haven’t read Meloree’s excellent post over on Sacred Duty, go do so now. I’ll wait.

The importance of being block capped cannot be underestimated, especially in this tier. If your goal is to make yourself as easy as possible to heal, then you should be block capping on pretty much every fight.  This post is about the Mastery vs. Stamina tradeoff you make when block capping, and how to minimize the Stamina loss you incur while pushing to the block cap.

Gemming

Let’s start by looking at gemming tradeoffs. If you’re going for maximum Stamina while still matching socket bonuses, then your preferred gems will be +20 Mastery / +30 Stamina in yellow slots, +60 Stamina in blue slots and +20 Parry / +30 Stamina in red slots. To bias instead towards Mastery, your preferred gems will be +40 Mastery in yellow slots, +20 Mastery / +30 Stamina in blue slots and +20 Parry / +20 Mastery in red slots.

In all three cases, the tradeoff is the same. Each point of Mastery costs you 1.5 Stamina.

Flask vs. Elixirs

Your two options here are +450 Stamina vs. +225 Mastery / +900 Armor. In Theck’s simple model, 900 armor is worth about 128 Mastery. Therefore the two Elixirs together are worth the equivalent of 353 Mastery, and so it’s actually a really excellent tradeoff. The problem, though, is that the armor doesn’t help you block cap, so looking at this tradeoff purely from a block capping perspective, you give up 2 Stamina for each point of Mastery gained.

Trinkets

Assuming equivalent item levels, the Mastery trinkets and Stamina trinkets have the same tradeoff as gemming. For example at the 378 item level, you can get 383 Mastery vs. 575 Stamina. Each point of Mastery costs you 1.5 Stamina.

Block Capping for Heroics:

I am assuming you start off with full Stamina gemming. Don’t swap any gems to Mastery yet.

Step One: Equip Two Mastery Trinkets

What’s fantastic about the trinket slot is you have flexibility. If you ever do need more Stamina, you can just swap out trinkets without having to regem all your gear. Therefore this is the first place you should start when going for the block cap: equip two Mastery trinkets. I recommend the Essence of Eternal Flame and the Spidersilk Spindle. For some fights, e.g., Heroic Baleroc, you may find yourself equipping the Mirror of Broken Images, so this is a viable alternative also.

Step Two: Swap out Gear

Swapping in lower ilvl gear is a better alternative to regemming all your stuff if the conversion is actually more favorable than 1 Mastery vs. 1.5 Stamina. I’ll go over some examples so you can see which slots are ripe for gear swapping (and which aren’t). Again the flexibility of gear swapping allows you to retain higher ilvl pieces gemmed for Stamina instead of Mastery, so that you have them available on any fights where it is necessary (or just for threat e-peen flexing if you’re into that sort of thing, ahem).

I highly recommend using Digren’s gear list over on Maintankadin, since his rankings are absolutely correct from a block capping perspective. I’m going to specifically point out the places in his list where a lower ilvl item jumps over a higher one.

Necks

The neck slot is a case where you can make a good tradeoff in terms of Stamina vs. Mastery by swapping your Sinestra neck for the Firebound Gorget. Even if you didn’t gem maximum Mastery in the Sinestra neck, you’re losing 48 Stamina to gain the equivalent of ~45 Mastery. This is an excellent tradeoff and one you should make before doing any other regemming.

Cloaks

Your best (realistic) option for a cloak is actually the 384 PvP cloak. It has the most Stamina and Mastery. If you can’t PvP though, then your choice of cloaks is likely going to come down to the 378 Rep cloak vs. the 372 Al’Akir Cloak or the 365 Thrall quest cloak. This is a case where the tradeoff is very clear: equip the 372 or 365 cloak instead of the rep cloak. If you compare the 378 cloak vs. the 365 you lose only 40 Stamina to gain ~50 Mastery.

Belt

The Shannox belt is wonderful, but if you don’t have it yet, your choices are probably between the 378 reputation belt, Girdle of Indomitable Flame, and the 372 Jumbotron Power belt. This is another slot where the conversion is favorable for the Jumbotron, and so you should downgrade your belt to the Jumbotron if you’ve got it.

Chest

If you have the Carapace of Imbibed Flame off Beth’tilac, it’s the clear winner, but if you don’t and bought the T12 chest, then this is another slot where it’s favorable to downgrade to the 372 T11 Heroic chest instead.

Feet

The feet are an interesting spot. The Rhyolith heroic boots, although they sport slightly less combat table coverage, have such a huge Stamina advantage over the Mirrored Boots. At 89 Stamina difference, you need to gain > 60 Mastery in order for the offset to be better than just regemming your gear. You can see that even with reforging on the 391 heroic boots, the Mirrored Boots maintain a more favorable tradeoff when compared with just regemming, although it’s *extremely* close. The Mirrored Boots have 70 more Mastery once you reforge the Rhyolith boots, but the Rhyolith boots have ~100 more armor, which is worth another 14 Mastery or so.

In terms of combat table coverage, the Mirrored Boots have the slight edge, but once you factor in Mastery + Armor, you’re better off with the Heroic Rhyolith boots assuming you can block cap without changing this slot.

A more interesting comparison is with the War-Torn Crushers. Here it’s not much of a contest. The Mirrored Boots cost you 79 Stamina, but you make that up in spades. Again, this is somewhat disappointing, but the easily obtainable 378 piece is better than the Sinestra loot. This is one of the first slots you should swap out, as it is one of the most favorable conversions you can make.

Final Swap Order Notes:

My suggestion for gear swapping if you were a maxed out 13/13 HM tank with Stamina gemming is to do it in this order as long as you’re still below the block cap:

(1) Craft the Mirrored Boots and swap them in for your War-Torn Crushers.

(2) Pick up the Firebound Gorget and replace your Caelestrasz’s Will.

(3) Downgrade your 378 items to 372 (or even 365 in the case of the cloak) in the cloak and belt slots.

(4) Downgrade your T12 chest if you picked it up to the T11 Heroic chest instead.

Step Three: Regem

Once you have the ideal piece of gear in every slot, you want to gem for Mastery. You should start with the items that you swapped in. Again, that way you retain the maximum flexibility as far as building a max Stamina set as well as a block cap set. So go to the Mirrored Boots, the T12H chest, and the Jumbotron Belt first and regem all of them for maximum Mastery.

After that if you’re still not at the block cap, it’s time to regem other pieces of gear. It really doesn’t matter how you do this, since the tradeoff as far as Stamina vs. Mastery is identical no matter what slot you modify. Just keep swapping out gems until you get to around 100.5% using the following macro:

/run dr=function(x)return 1/(1/16+0.9560/x)end;DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 - Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5))

Final Thoughts

I try to stay above 175k health or so unbuffed. Especially if you’ve picked up a few 378 drops and a couple of tier pieces, you should be able to block cap while retaining a decent health pool. The trick is knowing which gear swaps are the most favorable, and to avoid aggressive regemming until you’ve exhausted all other options.

As Mel says, we’re overpowered. Now go out there and show your fellow raid members just how insane block capping and the new Holy Shield are!