Tank Points Guide 31

8/6/2019 Tank Points Guide 31

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Guide to using TankPoints

Written by Gravity. Read more on tanking and leadership blog pwnwear.com.

TankPoints written by Whitetooth.

How to access TankPoints:

Once installed, TankPoints adds two

new panels to your character screen,

which you access here via the popup

menu.

Once there, you can mouse-over

each statistic for a detailed pop-up

window. Shown is the TankPoints

detail, which lists the values used to

calculate a TankPoints score which

is not very useful; this addon has

more important uses.

This is the Melee DR pop-up window. Very helpful

detail here.

It is the combat table from the bosses' perspective,

showing how hard you are to hit.

So a boss will miss me 9.2% of the time, I will dodge

24.47% of his attacks, parry 17.76% of them whilst he'll

hit me 48.64% of the time. I cannot be crushed or crit

(because I'm over 540 defence and the mob is L83).

Also are the values from +16 of each stat (most rare

gems come with these totals), so you can compare their

net benefit to you afterdiminishing returns. 16 dodge

rating gives me 0.3% extra avoidance, which is the best

avoidance per stat value. Look how crap strength is for

a Death Knight.

Document version 3, October 2009.

Melee damage reduction
http://pwnwear.com/archives/http://pwnwear.com/archives/


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Diminishing returns on character panel.

This is often misunderstood because the GUI tooltip is

misleading.

The character panel, whether you have TankPoints or not,

displays your avoidance afterdiminishing returns. So it is

correct.

However, the figures shown in yellowin the mouse-over

window do notinclude diminishing returns (eg. the 9.58%), yet

the white title bar in the mouse-over window does include it.

So, I actually have 25.07% dodge.

My gear gives me 9.58% dodge (which is undiminished) and

you'd get from adding up all my armour items dodge rating.

Misleading.

Correct.

It calculates that my EH against

melee is 91K, which

automatically considers the

Presence (or Stance) I am in,

and any relevant damage-

reducing buffs you have up,

including trinkets.

It shows how armour (and

armour from Agility) and

stamina relate to your EH.

My base health here in Frost

Presence is 33414.

You have options to see your

EH against spell types too.

If I could not dodge/miss/etc for

example, my guaranteed

damage reduction from armour

and Presence is 63.45%.

Effective Health is TankPoints' second panel.

TankPoints guide, written by Gravity. Read more about tanking at pwnwear.com

What are diminishing returns?

See the last page of this guide.


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Effective Health whilst buffed

Here I have put up Blade Barrier (5%

damage reduction) and Vampiric Blood

(+15% health).

You can see my talent/buff/stance

reduction is now 10% in total, and my EHvs melee is higher from both talents too.

Spell damage reduction and effective health

You can find your TankPoints score when wearing your

resistance gear. I've put on my FrR and have 355 resistance.

Not very useful really.

However, you can see your damage reduction in total against

Frost (or other) spell types.

These panels come from a mouse-over.



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Using TankPoints to help choose between equipment

Here I am comparing my equipped Furnace Stone (bottom slot)

and Figurine (top slot) with the Defender's Code in my

inventory.

The only time I f ind TankPoints score useful is in this scenario;

for an at-a-glance comparison of items.

Notice the Defender's Code has less TankPoints score than

both my top and bottom equipped trinket. That's useful to

know. It does have 0.34% more damage reduction because of

its 850 armour than my Figurine but overall it is not better.

Then you make a value judgement about the overall benefits

and situational usefulness. (I keep it for Flame Leviathan to

buff my iLevel but never use it otherwise).

You can configure what TankPoints shows in the tooltips via

its options window. Get it by typing /tp optionswin

The Stat Summary comes from the Ratings

Buster addon. You can configure what's

displayed by Ratings Buster via its slash

command.

It shows the absolute value of a stat (eg. the

1779 health from my Figurine) plus its relative

value to the top and bottom trinkets (in brackets

with a | between them).



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Using TankPoints Calculator to help with difficult gear trade-offs and decisions

Click here to open the TankPoints calculator.

Action: To simulate a 22 agility cloak enchant, type 22 here.

Observation 2: the specific changes to the attack table from the

boss' perspective are shown here. You dodge more.

Observation 1: the changes are shown here to your effective health

(from the armour from agility), your total reduction (which combines

guaranteed reduction with your avoidance), and your guaranteed

reduction (again from armour). Your TankPoints score changes too,

which can be useful to write down if you are going to compare various

enchantment options.

Observation 3: your armour has increased from agility, so this

figures becomes green indicating its changed.

What if I put on a 22 agility cloak enchant?


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Action: (1) Click [Defence Rating] to swap to [Defence], then since

we're removing Stoneskin Gargoyle we lose -25 defence skill. Type

that here. (2) Click [Parry] to change it to [Parry %] and enter 4.

Tankpoints understands these are flat ratings and not subject to

diminishing returns. In contrast, if we entered 50 parry rating, it

would be diminished in the calculations. (3) Not I did not enter the

loss of 2% health from Gargoyle in this example, just to keep it

simple.

Observation 1: since I did not add in the health loss, the changes

here are just the avoidance from the swap.

What if I swap tanking runeforges?

Observation 2: how your boss' attack table changes is the loss of

miss and dodge from defence (not they are exactly 1% because

TankPoints knows no DimRet applies), and the net gain of 3% parry.

Because we have not compensated for the loss of Defence skill (we

are at 519 now, you can see below), we now have a 0.83% chance to

be crit by the boss.



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Notes

What are Diminishing Returns?

Simply that every gain of avoidance (dodge/ parry/ miss / block rating) is going

to be less of a gain the more you stack it. It means you cannot get to 100%

avoidance, because each new item of avoidance has a diminished gain.

This is possible because items come with, for example, a Dodge Rating. The

ratings don't change or get diminished, however what percentage (%) dodge

that translates into gets reduced.

The actual benefit you gain from an item therefore varies from one tank to

another, because your diminished returns are relative to how much of that stat

you already have.

Patch 3.2 onward

The screenshots in this guide were taken before 3.2, when parry had a lower

scaling per item point than it does now. In 3.2 onwards, parry and dodge gain

the same pre-diminished % avoidance as one another. However, parry

diminishes in value more quickly so dodge remains the superior stat on that

basis. You might find, depending on your level of gearing, that defence offers

equal or better avoidance than dodge, so remember to consider it for your red

gem slots.

The TankPoints score

The TankPoints score is derived from the

relationship between health and damage

reduction. It doesn't account for situations like

AOE, where dodge is more valuable, or how

the DK IBF buff scales with defence, and

other idiosyncrasies of tanking.

You should not use it exclusively for gear

decisions; however you can use the score to

help you choose between gear if you're

unsure about mechanics and theory.

For trinkets, collect them all for their

situational uses, and judge them

independently of TankPoints score because

they are the most commonly swapped in/out

item.

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Documents

Tank Points Guide 31