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L2Tank – Two Paths To Domination

Gear comes to every tanks mind once they start to raid, but some people don’t always know which road to take. This guide will help you understand what stats, mitigation, and blocking all comes down to.

Values and what they mean:

Mitigation – this is the combined percent of your miss, dodge, parry, and block chances.
Block Chance – this is the percent that you have to block attacks with a shield.
Block Value – the amount of damage reduced when blocking an attack.
Evasion – not a technical term for WoW, but is considered the amount of dodge, parry, and miss combined (your total percentage to totally evade an attack).

Tanks usually don’t care about stats or values when looking at gear, just rolling with the highest set is safe and standard. But there are effective ways to equip your tank right to get the max outcome from their abilities.

Mitigation (Evasion) Tanking

Players tell me all the time, “You are so much easier to heal.” That’s because my warrior is a mitigation tank. He has around 56% total evasion unbuffed, meaning each attack from a boss has a 56% chance to not hit and cause damage. Every socket is either a parry, dodge or the both plus stamina. By having an insane amount of mitigation, you will be able to take less damage from bosses and tank more mobs or groups of mobs at a time.

Pros

  • When compared to block, evasion is an act where no damage is taken
  • Gaining evasion stats is easier than trying to obtain block and block value, easier to gem
  • You’ll be taking less damage on specific fights like pathwerk, and healers will note how much easier it is to keep you alive.
  • With a little skill, and enough evasion, you can pull a mass amount of mobs for speed runs ect

It’s obvious to assume that specing in a stat that will completely evade a damaging blow is better then something that will just reduce its damage when blocked. However, talents come into play, and there is a catch 22 on being a complete evasion tank

Cons

Theres only real con, and that is spell damage or other non-pysical damaging attacks. When trying to reach maximum evasion, stamina is a value reserved for only if need be, otherwise reaching 55%+ evasion (not mitigation, but evasion) wouldn’t be possible.  So evasion tanks will have less health, due to being able to miss a great amount of attacks. But when a boss comes into play that does a harsh amount of magic damage (ie Malygos), the evasion tank can only parry and dodge what is physical.

Another attack we are seeing in ulduar, is bombs and or beams from mechanical units. This is a deep blow to mitigation tanks as health is being an issue with surviving a lot of these attacks.

Of course, this is easy to fix. Simply substitute enough evasion with health. You won’t be reaching levels of 55-60% of evasion though, but the health is worth it.

Shield Tanking

  • A lot of warrior tanks were pissed off when shield block was changed for LK. However, on the up side, block gear and block value is now attainable en large and gearing up as a shield tank is much more feasible.
  • Using talents reduces shield block for 40 second cool down and a 100% block chance for an amount of time is better than a chance per hit, we can now plan specifically during harder parts of an encounter when to supplement our damage reduction
  • Gemming is directed towards stamina, giving healers more leeway. This makes it easier to heal in some cases like Malygos

High mitigation tanks will be seeing 55% and higher evasion which is a great deal. Shield tanks will see around 35% evasion but have a higher mitigation if speced correctly in block chance and byusing abilities. A lot of people mock tanks that enter an instance with only 30k health. But smart healers will soon realize how much easier it is to keep mitigation tanks up, and that health is inferior against totally evading an attack.

Special Note: Night Elves have a 2% chance to be missed (racial passive), increasing evasion by that much more. In my opinion, the best tanking class.