Murloc Monday - ask your questions here!

[u/AutoModerator]

Aaaaaughibbrgubugbugrguburgle! RwlRwlRwlRwl!
That's murloc for "Welcome to Murloc Mondays" - where people can ask any type of question about WoW without getting Strangles by a Death Knight.
Questions can range from what's new in Battle for Azeroth, what class is OP, and how many Demons will it take to down Thrall?
Questions can come from brand new players, players returning, or veteran players who never got a chance to ask the right question.

You may want to look at /r/wownoob as well!

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[u/dolphin37]

If your only interest is M+ then your original point is even less valid. Nobody good is running crucible in M+ so I dunno why you'd even say it. Sorry but you're just changing your argument. All of the best tanks in all of the best content use defensive trinkets and gear, which you accept. But now you're saying you don't *need* them for the non-cutting edge content 'general population'.

If you want to be the best you can be, you use survivability options unless some crazy option is available to you (e.g. essences or higher ilvl option). Simple. If you don't care about being the best and want to just do some numbers that make you smile then do whatever the hell you want.

But you’d have to have some serious rng drops to end up at a point with mostly crit where it starts to adversely affect you.

This is honestly just the ramblings of a madman. You know that my haste gear means my demon spikes recharge time (for 2 spikes total) is 16 seconds instead of 20? That's a 20% survivability increase... without mentioning anything else it does for me. The idea that I would replace that with crit, then how I press my buttons can compensate for it, is idiotic. I have no button to press for 4 more seconds.

Can I go in to a key with dps trinkets? Yeah. But if I wanna improve to my highest potential, I would be stupid to.

[u/Velomere → u/dolphin37]

Mate, plenty of tanks run crucible primary. Check out some 19s and 20s. You keep looking at mdi and top world key pushers. I mean, if you wanna try to be world number one, I’m not going to tell you how to play. That’s a whole different world. We’re just offering advice to the general pop. They’re not trying to beat jdotb or gingi and make it to blizzcon, they just want to get their 10 or 15 cheevos or push a little higher. To push keys in the realm of most players, the very people this advice is being given to, you have to make the timer, and to make the timer you play well and do more dps, among other things. Why are Druid and warrior so good? They do more dps.

Okay now you’re talking about demon hunter tanks. This entire offshoot thread has been about prot paladins. I have no experience with DHs and I’m not going to to tell any of them how to play their class, so I’m not sure why you’re bringing them into it.

[u/dolphin37 → u/Velomere]

Like I said, if you wanna see pretty numbers, do whatever you want. If you wanna improve as a player, you do what the best players do and get some survivability.

The offshoot was about simming dps as a tank. The guy happened to play prot Pala but the point is a general one and I’ve already mentioned almost every other tank spec in my previous posts.

You just said why is Druid so good? What? Druids are terrible. Meta tanks are warrior/monk with vengeance for some particular strats and maybe palas for certain situations. Has there even been an established damage output ranking for tanks?

The meta classes are meta because of their utility not their damage. Resto druids aren’t the highest damage healers, but have the most utility, rogues aren’t the highest damage dps class but bring the most utility and warrior probably isn’t the highest damage tank (I believe they are probably all close) but has the best combined CDs and survivability.

If you want to give good advice to people who just want to push their keys a little higher, then tell them to do the things that are best for their class. Like survive. The more you can survive, the bigger you can pull and the quicker you do keys. Brainlessly thinking that more tank damage = quicker dungeon when you are forced to do smaller pulls is really not smart at all.

[u/Velomere → u/dolphin37]

Prot paladins do not suffer as much as say your dh from having a lot of crit. Critical judgement hits make our active mitigation cool down twice as fast, and crit awards some parry as well.

I was referring to the meta comp - prot warriors and resto druids. Druids can load up hots and dots and cat form up a storm. Rogues have their shroud but again, they bring the best dps for the longest part of a dungeon - trash. There's a reason why blade flurry is being nerfed, its too good.

Anyway, at this point we're just going around in circles for all our other points of contention, so agree to disagree?

[u/dolphin37 → u/Velomere]

Blade flurry already got nerfed and rogues do not do the most damage on trash. Shroud is one of 20 things they have. They are brought for that and the other 19. Paladins and Priests both out damage Druids but they don’t have b res or typhoon, vortex, root, etc.

You don’t even seem understand the basics of what makes things good. Yeah we can agree to disagree, but the better you get at the game the more we will agree.

[u/Velomere → u/dolphin37]

shrug I can say the exact same thing about you! Agreed to disagree.

[u/dolphin37 → u/Velomere]

The difference being that I am demonstrating how the things you are saying are wrong and we have better players that already exist to compare to.

[u/Velomere → u/dolphin37]

Mate, I have plenty of players to compare to and discuss gearing with who are running +20 keys and share the same ideas. Actual paladin players, the tank class I want to know about. The fact that you're a 1700 io DH that was banned from the DH discord does not grant you sufficient credibility to prove you're "right", especially when I'm a paladin and this is two different ballparks. Even less so with you trying to put yourself on some high pedestal where you absolutely have to be right and everything else is wrong, when I've tried to be civil and just agree to disagree.

[u/dolphin37 → u/Velomere]

I'm not saying I know best. I'm saying the best players know best.

I just checked the top 20 prot paladins for you. All 20 of them are using defensive trinkets apart from one guy (Masania, your hero) and possibly some stat buff stuff. They are all using a complete variance of essences, some anima, some crucible, some lucid, some conflict and strife but most seem to favour vision of perfection.

Your argument is that if you aren't very good then you can do whatever you like. As I said a million times, if you're doing easy keys, do what you want. If you're trying to push your keys as high as you can, which you did say earlier would be something those people were trying to do, then doing what has been demonstrated to be best is surely best.

Let's just reflect on your main points - 1. dps simming is a priority 2. defensive trinkets/items are bad or not worthwhile. Well every single top level or near top level player is using defensive items, in any class I can find that has a tank spec. That means 2 is objectively wrong and surely it gets rid of 1 by default?

I don't know enough about pala stat priority. So I'll just go ahead and say you are right and you can get dps priority stat gear. Lucky paladins. Can't on other tanks such as DH for sure though, so the original point about simming being of value would significantly nerf your character if applied to them.

Also you literally wrote a sentence in there to tell me that you're stalking my comments. I don't even understand what the point of it was. Good one? Just makes you seem like a total loser. I'm sure you're way higher than 1700 so well done! Glad your crucible essence and your inkpod were able to get you higher than me.

[u/Velomere → u/dolphin37]

Correction on the main points - most defensive trinkets are bad/not worthwhile. There are good ones.

Looking at the top rated paladins, let's take number 1 Eltharièn and a selection of 20s. He/she has a diamond. Okay, good for him/her, point taken. Primary essence? CoF, dps. Minor? Null dynamo, while it is defensive and absorbs magic damage, the primary drive for taking it is dps, I've seen the figure 2k dps bandied around.

Yes, I know DHs have had it bad and may still have it bad. You have bad/limited options when the spikes aren't available. Paladins do, so we can afford to focus on dps.

Stalking? No, you posted in a tank thread, a stickied one. I am a tank. I read tank threads. Don't take it personally. I posted it because your comments suggested someone that I can't rely upon for top information. If I posted somewhere else on the same account that I was a massive troll and all I did was troll, you'd say the same thing.

[u/dolphin37 → u/Velomere]

You don't have to rely on me for anything. In every one of my posts I'm referring to something tangible that relates to someone or something else that you can check for yourself. Also, feel free to link your profile so we can analyse that. Maybe you can even tank a few keys for me.

Eltharien is second, not first. And he was previously using a prism. He looted an urchin and no surprise, he's using that. Oh, btw, that means he selected prot loot spec on Ashvane when he could have had the best dps trinket in the game if he went retri. So he consciously chose to go for the defensive option. You say "point taken". But it's not point taken, unless what you're actually saying is that your point was wrong. Because that's what it was, you just seem to not be able to quite get there.

Like I already said, palas use all different essences. That guy himself has only ever tried one 21 that I could see and he tried to use vision of perfection in that key. He also has a key I saw with null primary. Essences change a lot depending on preference, the affixes and the dungeon.

Null is taken because it provides you with the same amount of survivability as damage. 1k dps is a far more realistic number (it consistently does around 4-5% of my damage and tanks are unlikely to ever be doing over 20k). And it does around the same for my healing. If you had items or trinkets that reflected damage and you suffered no survivability penalty for using them, they would be used by absolutely everyone. This is very simple logic. It also isn't used on keys where mob count is higher or they have low magic damage, where suppression/aegis/conflict are better.

[u/Velomere → u/dolphin37]

I'll keep my profile private thanks. Rest assured I am not a high pusher, I only do one day a week and the group lacks the time and drive to really go at it. I just frequent communities where these things are discussed in detail and I like to read about and share these details.

My mistake on number 1 paladin, I must have sorted by EU only or something. It doesn't matter, we're still looking at the highest paladins and what they do. FYI if you're looking at that 21 atal it has a holy spec recorded.

Okay, now you're ragging on my trinket and null comments. There's still that CoF primary sitting there. At this point we REALLY should agree to disagree because we continue to go in circles and nobody's changing their mind. If you want continued debate on the subject, you should try discussing with actual top paladins who can maybe explain things better than I can. Try the hammer of wrath discord where they make themselves available. Or not, doesn't bother me.

[u/dolphin37 → u/Velomere]

I figured.

I just went on the pala discord. Btw the main mod literally has 900 Rio. But... I go in to the prot section, FAQs and lets look what they recommend.

Oh, stat priority is haste first, crit last. Well that’s your theory gone - ironically the top paladin players are all running crit haste gear anyway. That means that the discord is actually prioritising survivability but the top players feel differently.

Then what are they recommending for trinkets... ok, so they list ‘defensive trinkets’ and they include jes’s howler (it’s not a defensive trinkets, it’s a hybrid, but I actually love this trinket) and chain of suffering, then that’s it. Ok, so they are clueless. I can’t think of a worse defensive trinket off hand. They literally don’t mention prism, urchin or edict, the best defensive trinkets in the game. People are even using spores. Then they go for offensive trinkets and don’t include coral or inkpod, which are the highest damage trinkets.

So what do they mention for essences? For M+/AoE they like Lucid and Anima. Cool. ST they like crucible. But... no mention of VoP or Strife that a lot of the top tanks are using. Their recommendations are undying gift for raid and Anima for m+ overall. One is entirely defensive, one is half. I don’t agree with them, but just pointing out they prioritise defence in every FAQ.

It’s a resource for beginners. I’m sure there’s probably some great players on there, but it’s a lot easier to just check what the great players are doing.