[Guardian] Tough trinket choice

[Itomeshi 0]

While I can't seem to get a stam trinket to save my life (ba-dum-pish!), I've been very fortunate to get non-stam trinkets. A bit too fortunate - now I have to figure out which to use. Right now, I have:

 

700 Tablet of Turnbuckle Teamwork

http://www.wowhead.com/item=113905/tablet-of-turnbuckle-teamwork&bonus=567

 

685 Blast Furnace Door

http://www.wowhead.com/item=113893/blast-furnace-door&bonus=566

 

691 (H WF) Evergaze Arcane Eidolon

http://www.wowhead.com/item=113861/evergaze-arcane-eidolon&bonus=562:567

 

For context: We're just starting out with Mythic progression, and our good attempts on Darmac are in the 7% range.

 

I feel like the Tablet is pretty much guaranteed; that is a ton of Mastery and a nice CD. On fights where I'm not specifically taking Bristling Fur for another rotational CD (Oregorger, Gruul, Hanz and Franz), I'm using GoE - so having another CD via trinket is nice. The question is, do I go for a bunch of static bonus armor, or do I aim for a slightly-weaker version of Tablet in the second slot?

 

Honestly, at this point, one deciding factor might be the static 'attack power' from bonus armor. Going from BFD to EAE, I lose just under 400 AP - mitigated a bit my the mastery percentage scaling, but not much.

[asakawa 0]

Yeah Tablet is fantastic, that's a given. 

Stam trinkets aren't good. We have MS for Stam.

 

Personally I'd use the Evergaze. Those Armor procs (as opposed to Bonus Armor) scale so well for bears, it's like popping a CD. 

 

On a side note, I also use BF for Oregorger and Gruul but I don't see any good use for it at all on H+F. A Glyphed SI is all that's needed. Aside from those Pulverise really should be your go-to talent before GoE. GoE is okay for Maidens (multidotting is easier if you don't have to consume Lacerate stacks) and Furnace (AoE tanking) but Pulverise's 15% reduction shouldn't be overlooked. 

[Itomeshi 0]

Yeah Tablet is fantastic, that's a given. 

Stam trinkets aren't good. We have MS for Stam.

 

Personally I'd use the Evergaze. Those Armor procs (as opposed to Bonus Armor) scale so well for bears, it's like popping a CD. 

 

Thanks for the input. I had overlooked the whole Armor vs. Bonus Armor argument; however I'm not sure that's how it works, as Wowhead comments on Evergaze say it is, in fact, Bonus Armor. (Tablet has similar supporting arguments, but also argues that there's a UI bug as well.) I checked on a training dummy - with an Evergaze proc, my armor goes up 2439 instead of 8536 (with the 3.5x modifier base armor gets from bear form)? And with a Tablet activation, same story - 2033 vs. 7115. Further proof is that my AP does go up with the trinket - regular armor doesn't affect AP, only Bonus Armor. Again, there may be some paper doll bugs I don't know about, but barring that, I think it's Bonus Armor (and therefore defensively less powerful but offensively more powerful).

 

On a side note, I also use BF for Oregorger and Gruul but I don't see any good use for it at all on H+F. A Glyphed SI is all that's needed. Aside from those Pulverise really should be your go-to talent before GoE. GoE is okay for Maidens (multidotting is easier if you don't have to consume Lacerate stacks) and Furnace (AoE tanking) but Pulverise's 15% reduction shouldn't be overlooked. 

 

As for BF vs. GoE vs. Pulverize: 

Pulverize: I started WoD loving the return of a version of Pulverize, but as time rolled on I found it just kinda clunky to use. Single target, it was great. Hell, Twin Ogron, I could keep a full Lacerate on both and manage Pulverize. But it felt like a 'see the tree, ignore the forest' thing - it requires a certain level of management I didn't like. I dislike it on fights with adds (Furnace, Thogar, Beastlord) and I don't find myself loving it enough on other fights to worry about it.

 

Guardian of Elune: I went with GoE next, and while I like it, I don't feel like it's powerful. I'm using it now on Mythic Beastlord just to buy a bit of breathing room, but I don't like it yet. I'm really excited about the 6.2 enhancements. I know there's a lot of theorycraft that it's not good, but I like the idea of 'the button having some value on unblockable attacks'. I do love it for Kromog, though - the ability to dodge two attacks and prevent the hit on the co-tank is nice.

 

Bristling Fur: I hated this talent originally - 3 seconds every one minute was just so bad. Now, I generally really like it, because it changes the mitigation CD game. I know the SI glyph does something similar - a 80 sec recharge instead of 120 sec - but that's still so much time on CD. Instead, I can use BF for planned attack mitigation and SI for 'things have gone really sour, and I need to buy my healers breathing room'. 

Then again, I'm getting some healer comments about high damage taken so I may need to really reevaluate my playstyle overall.

Edited May 30, 2015 by Itomeshi

[asakawa 0]

You know, I've gotta admit that I repeated what I'd heard about the Armor procs without ever having tested myself or read further. Thanks for the correction. 

 

I understand what you mean about Pulverise but in such an otherwise very simple rotation it's no great hardship to track something else and on single target it's very easy anyway. Thogar and Darmac, it's still very easy to maintain as the adds are so short-lived. I would encourage you to use SI for planned/known big hits (Suplex, Torrent, Breath, Slice etc.) and use Barkskin (I do BS + trinket) for anything extra or unexpected. 

 

For times when you need cooldowns in rapid succession (Oregorrger Torrents, Ka'graz wolf Breath, Gruul Slices etc.) consider an external rather than BF (Ret Sacrifice is OP and Warrior Vigilance is good too, it's not just healer CDs). I tank with a Warrior who needs all our externals so I find myself taking BF in those situations but if I were tanking with any other class I'd take 15% constant reduction and call for an external instead of taking BF.