Gear Guide Question

[kreelor]

Alliance
Gear Guide suggestion for a Death Knight (DK).

Why is this item suggested? I see that Mastery is higher than Stamina, but isn't Stamina the main choice for a DK? (What will higher Mastery gain me over lower Stamina)?

mastery-not-stamina.jpg

[cabby]

Actually Mastery is the only stat that has a higher priority over Stamina (for Blood spec). This is because when you use the Death Strike skill (used very often) your mastery grants (about) half of that damage as a damage shield to block incoming damage. The higher your Mastery score is the more damage the shield will absorb.

[kreelor]

And you're telling me now that "Mastery is the only stat that has a higher priority over Stamina..." right after you told me that Stamina was the primary stat for Blood spec. Now it sounds that Stamina is secondary to Mastery? I'm sure both are important each in their own way, but I took your first statement literally. I've been ignoring Mastery and have been disenchanting or selling many items that had tons of Mastery but with somewhat lower numbers for Stamina. Oh, well. Too late now, but it's good to know.

[cabby]

When I said stamina is a primary stat for tanks it was because I was not (at the time) looking at the stat priority for blood but because I know stamina is important to every single tank. When you asked about this then I looked at our stat priorities to double check on the mastery and that's when I saw it was higher priority than stamina. At that point I checked to see what the blood mastery is and when I saw it was a damage shield created with using death strike then I knew that mastery being higher than stamina for blood was probably correct.

As I said before, we take most of our priority order from Noxxic (www.noxxic.com) so you could easily look at the stat priorities there to have some knowledge of what to expect from the gear suggestions without having to dig thru our code to try to figure it out.

[kreelor]

Cabby, thanks for explaining.
Just to be sure that I understand, take a look at these two images. The guide is suggesting the item which has higher Stamina, but it has lower values for both Mastery and Hit points (both of which are important for a Blood DK).

However, since Stamina is so much higher than the Mastery and Hit points being lost, it would still be the best choice in this case. Correct?

stamina-master-1.jpg stamina-master-2.jpg

[cabby]

Very close. It's the Stamina and Expertise that are out-weighing the Mastery and Hit stats. I don't think (haven't run the numbers) that the Stamina alone would have been enough to out-weigh the Mastery and Hit but because there is a good chunk of Expertise that pushes it over to the Cagebreaker's being the better one.

But yes, you seem to have the correct idea on what's going on with that item suggestion.

[Faethor]

As you are questing stats do not play as big a part of the game as it does when you get to level 90. As a rough guide your hit and expertise should be about 7.5% (if you have a 2 handed weapon). Also expertise isn't as important as hit because death strikes cannot be parried.

[cabby]

And let's not forget that this will all change with WoD when Blizzard removes some stats and adds different ones.