WoW: A Brewfest Debacle

Yesterday was the beginning of the 2010 edition of Brewfest.  World of Warcraft’s little ode to the dwarf and their penchance for the over consumption of alcohol.  Now I could get all high and mighty and discuss the implications of aggrandizing drunkeness, but I won’t.  I will however point out Blizzard’s seeming ineptitude when it comes to this particular event.

Now, this is one event that was tidied up last year.  It was given a minor overhaul.  They took away some minigames and added a few new ones.  They managed to up the level of difficulty of the boss, Coren Direbrew to make him not a joke to those players who decided to partake in the farm-fest that was trying to obtain one of the rare event only drops.  The two mounts being the biggest rarities.

Woot Kodo!

The managed to fix this part of the event as well.  With the addition of the Dungeon Group Finder, we are now only subject to fighting Coren once a day per character to try to obtain these rarities.

“So what’s the debacle?” you are asking.  Well quite simply this:

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

I’m sorry to say that, at present, there is no new Brewfest Stein for this year, nor is there planned to be.

Sincere apologies for any annoyance this may cause you, but hopefully some will be pleased by the ability to catch up on something missed out year.

This is the problem.  Many people want their “souvenir” or their Feat of Strength for obtaining the things that can not be obtained ever again.  I have a friend that is still pissed off at himself that he missed obtaining the 2007 Brewfest Stein.  Now to slap him and others like him in the face, you can obtain the 2009 stein in 2010?  What is Blizzard thinking?

Seriously, this is beyond lazy.  If you do not want to add anything to the event that’s fine.  If you do not want to take the time to recolor an existing piece of artwork and work it into the event as the 2010 Stein, that’s fine.  At least take the previous year’s stein out of the game all together.

This to me is a sign that Brewfest will not be around in its current form in Cataclysm.  Which is not something that couldn’t be foreseen.  The world is different come the escape of Deathwing.  The events we have seen for the past several years could be changing drastically with them as well.  You would think that Brewfest itself is a generally innocuous event that is held in an area that isn’t seeing much change.  Yet others will definitely be effected.  With Alterac and Tanaris being greatly changed could Metzen be getting a new “home” away from home as well come Christmas?

—

At least I got a Kodo on my warrior.  Five more days of trying on the others.  With this the warrior has all 3 Brewfest mounts.

Beta Cataclysm: New Darkshore

A Whole New Can Of Paint -

New Look Grove of the Ancients (Complete with Flightpath)

Like most zones in Cataclysm, Darkshore has gone through a major redesign.  While most other areas in the game have changed dramatically, there are some areas where old quest lines remain.   These areas have one thing in common, most of them have felt the Cataclysm and its aftermath.  The war that followed has changed many other zones.  People have died in other places, but no other zone has seen such devastation to its former quest giving NPC inhabitants.  In part because of this,  there is not a single quest left from before the world was rocked and town of Auberdine so completely devastated.

Auberdine’s Death brings a new beginning -

Your experience in the new Darkshore begins in Lor’danel, the new Night Elven homebase in the zone.  This is not much of a town in comparison to what Auberdine was.  There is only an inn, a few tents and a conspicuously empty Night Elven guard tower.  There is no dock to be found in all of Darkshore now.  If you want to go to Darnassus or Exodar, all you have to do is jump on a flight path.  (Yes, I said that correctly.  Exodar is now accessible via flight paths from anywhere in Kalimdor.)  If Stormwind is you desired destination, then its a short hop to the remains of Ru’theran Village and hop on the old boat that now docks there.

Lor’danel is a much more lush and green “town” than its predecessor, but I would hardly call it a town.  It is more akin to a forward base.  It has a great deal of amenities, but lacks at least one major one… A meat vendor.  Questing through this area as a Worgen Hunter with my default Dog pet was tedious to say the least.  Finding meat for him to eat (and he only eats meat) was impossible without going to Darnassus.  Even the fauna that has survived the Cataclysm does not seem to drop raw meat nearly as commonly as they did before the changes.  It was only because I had kept a good deal of spider bits from the Gilneas experience.

Solving the Old Darkshore’s problems -

Catpath in action

The biggest complaint about the original Darkshore was the sheer area of the zone.  Questers had to traverse the length of the zone many many times during their 8-10 levels they spent there.  The long narrow zone forced players to run North and then back to Auberine, then farther North and then back to town.  After that, they had to run south and back, farther south and back.  The tedium of this fact made many players turn to Bloodmyst as the main questing area after it was released in TBC.  Bloodmyst was a well designed, far more compact zone that had far better quest rewards, storylines and a much more diverse set of enemies.  Unfortunately, the developers thought it was better to mimic the design concepts that worked so well in the Death Knight starting experience.  This means heavy usage of the big staples that became used and overused in Wrath of the Lich King.

The zone is designed for players too low to have access to mounts.  Instead of just giving mounts to players at level 10, they have given both of the overly large 10-20 zones their own system of “easy” travel.  Thusly, like Azshara and its Goblin Rocketway, Darkshore also was given a system of “catpaths”.  Situated at several key points in the Northern Darkshore there are cat calvary guards that allow you to access these “catpaths” to most of the miniquest hubs that you are directed to.  This system solves one of the two major issues with the old zone.  The changes to the flow of the zone itself solve the other issues.

The Quests -

Phased In Malfurion & Friends

Lor’danel gives us a whole new look on the way Blizzard wants us to play the game.  This microcosm is both surprising and disturbing.  We are given a beautiful new zone, with a wonderful quest flow.  However, like so many other new Cataclysm zones (Hyjal, Vash’jir, Deepholm) if one quest is bugged, you can not continue in the zone.  During testing this has happened many times, and the nature of the bugs it will be extremely difficult for Blizzard to continually prevent this.  As evade bugged mobs have been a problem since the first day of Vanilla.  (It actually took 2 patches and a very inventive level 83 Fire Mage to un-bug a certain NPC in the zone allowing players to continue past level 15.)

The zone has many “phasing” aspects starting with the major ones in and around Lor’denal itself.  Most of the phasing has to do with rescuing and not rescuing the survivors of Auberdine.  It is completely unclear how much time has passed since the destruction.  Long enough for other areas of the world to have been wrought with war and for Auberdine to have been overtaken by Twilight Cultists and Air Elementals.  Yet, you are still asked to rescue former questgivers, flightmasters, innkeepers, etc from the aftermath.

As you rescue these npc’s you are continually phased and receive follow-up quests.  This is nothing new.  We have seen similar questing systems throughout Northrend.  To put it simply, the system is not as large as anything in Ice Crown or the Death Knight experience.  The phasing, with one large exception, is very subtle.  Mostly we will see the results of your efforts being visible in the world.  Quest givers and NPCs will appear, disappear and move as you progress through the zone.

Choose your own adventure? -

Questing in the Burning Strand

This fact makes the zone incredibly linear.  Which in my opinion is an incredibly bad thing.  Don’t get me wrong, the zone is wonderful and fun, but there is very little choice in how you progress.  This is a predominant theme so far in my explorations of Cataclysm in its entirety.  What was so wonderful about the game thus far has been stripped away by phasing and its resulting prerequisites.  Cool quests are fun no matter how you have to come upon them.  Yet there is something to be said about being able to choose to do 1 quest and not another.  To choose to go “here” before you go “there”.  There is basically one non linear quest hub in the area, but even it has a breadcrumb that only appears after you have completed several other tasks.  You can complete the hub without ever receiving the breadcrumb, but it’s obviously designed that you do it in an extremely linear manner.

Whats so wrong with getting our hands held through to level 20?  Well nothing really.  Yet it does get extremely old after a while.  The Worgen starting experience has improved leaps and bounds since I first played in months ago.  This time through it was much more informative and interesting from a story point of view, but I had my hand held by some unseen Blizzard developer the entire time.  This feeling continues on until you finish the zone completely.

Conclusion -

Yet Another Bombing Run

The new Darkshore is fun.  Well, fun may not be the exact word for it, but it works for this discussion.  The zone is interestingly redesigned, we get to see the little story points of the old zone leak in here and there.  The often difficult to get to Troll Village is now dance free and trying to expand into the Northern zone with the help of the Horde.  The Master’s Glaive is being excavated, and somehow the dwarf archeologist that stands 10 feet away from the Twilight’s Hammer is left untouched?  Some things just don’t make a lick of sense.  Which is what really hurts the zone.

It’s an obvious fact that Blizzard’s “timeline” for the game is completely screwed up.  Zones farther into your leveling experience in Azeroth take on a somewhat interesting view on time.  Originally it was seen as “time goes by as you level up and get ‘older’”.  With Cataclysm this is evident, as your experiences with Malfurion in Darkshore and then in Hyjal would attest to.  Time is relative as you traverse the world my friends, be wary to not get too entrenched at what came first or things will begin to unravel more than “How is the Lich King still alive when he’s dead?” quandary that most people are still harping on.

In the end, the zone was a let down.  The zone ran the gambit of quests from the “go kill 10 Twilight Cultists” to the “go fetch 10 pieces of crab meat”.  But these were fewer and farther between.  Instead we got loads and loads of gimmicks.  There are multiple vehicle related quests.  In fact off the top of my head I counted 3 and a few other vehicle related gimmicks tacked on.  These include multiple Sunwell style “on rails” bombing runs that have been so completely over-utilized that Blizzard really needs to take a huge step back and say STOP! The zone had its high points and low points.  In the end, what could have been an awesome ending with a good reward both in a piece of equipment and plotline payoff falls flat mostly because there is never any real danger.  Being lead around by a leash through 95% of the zone and distracted by gimmick quests and famous npcs does not make the zone anymore fun than it was.  Sure it is much improved.  Some of the gimmick questlines are quite interesting, but in the end the zone falls flat because of its linearity.

A few more screenshots from the zone after the break.

Beta Cataclysm: A Speedy Look At Tol Barad Peninsula

Thanks to a huge bug in the current version of the Cataclysm Beta, I thought I would highlight the bug by taking a quick jaunt around the new Tol Barad Peninsula area.  This is the Daily Quest area and it is now complete.  All enemies are now implemented.  The only thing that is currently not implemented are the actual Daily Quests themselves, some generic friendly NPCs on both sides.

Oh and there is no flight path or portal that connects the zone to the outside world.  The current thought is that this area is a glorified instanced zone.  This is more than likely the methodology that Blizzard is using to prevent any more large scale server lag issues that Wintergrasp caused for the first year of Wrath of the Lich King’s tenure.  By making this zone unflyable and only accessible through portals from Stormwind and Orgrimmar or through the Battlegrounds queue menu, they eliminate this lag.  The only problem is, that this now does not have the feel that Wintergrasp had, being a large part of the actual game world.

Is this a bad thing?  Would Northrend have been a better continent if Wintergrasp was on some island that was on a different server?

Beta Cataclysm: A Strange Disease…[Updated]

A Strange Disease has stricken the Alliance -

In interest of equal time, I bring you news of the great plague of the Alliance.  It is fast sweeping the beta realm but it seems that the youth of Azeroth are immune.  As you can see the Prince has not been infected.

Seriously, there is something going on here.  There is no actual debuff to be seen on any of the infected NPCs.  If I would hazard a guess as to whats going on here, I would have to say this will be part of the opening event for Cataclysm.

Update: Added a screenshot of a large brown orb that seems to be the source of the infection.

—

I really wanted to have a decent discussion on the state of the Paladin tanking build.  However, seeing as we are at least one Paladin talent build behind what is actively being developed and currently you can not choose Shield of the Righteous when talenting at the moment.

Not to say the current Protection Talents make the class impossible to play, but it just doesn’t feel adequate.  Its not the class that it used to be.  Without Consecration and Shield of the Righteous in the rotation and with a nerf-batted Hammer of the Righteous, its far from the same tanking class it currently is on Live.

Ghostcrawler has eluded to some big changes recently in a few posts.

The paradigm shift that Ghostcrawler is eluding to is quite nice.  Shifting from their proposed Holy Power = Mitigation into a Holy Power =  Threat First, Mitigation Second is a huge step in the right direction.  Moving towards a system where we can use our Holy Power for multiple applications based on the situation is where the new resource system needs to move towards.

We can only hope that when they hit, there is still not the “You can not learn this talent” bug is fixed so we can actually do some testing.

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An interesting link for all you Achievement Whores out there.  (You know who you are.)  A Hunter Blogger by the name of Lyraat has created a decent little “Guide to 9000 Achievement Points“.  Its not super indepth but it does give you a good idea on how and where you should be looking to gain those achievements the easiest way possible.

Popquiz: The Green Me!

This week has been an adventure.  I have taken myself all over Azeroth and found myself fighting so many enemies that I became increasingly angry.  Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and the anger within manifested itself and I became a hulking manifestation of death.

Pop Quiz:  Where am I in this screenshot?

Glyphing to Become Viable?

Today marks the advent of the 3.1 major content patch going live on the Public Test Realms for the first time.  With this patch we see massive changes to most classes and specs to improve or nerf their viability as tanks, healers and dps.  While there are bigger changes to many other classes, the big changes for Warriors have thus far only been given to us by new glyphs.

Glyph of Heroic Strike – Increases the critical strike chance of Heroic Strike by 5%.
The soul change to our glyph repetoire.  This glyph used to be a bread and butter for the 10 rage it gave when Heroic Strike critically hit.  We now have something that will not only help Fury and Arms warriors, but it represents a signficant increase in threat production.

Glyph of Barbaric Insults  — Your Mocking Blow ability generates 100% additional threat.
This used to change Mocking Blow into another taunt ability.  Why they are changing a less than stellar glyph from a semi useful glyph into one that makes it so much less useful I do not rightly know.

Glyph of Shockwave — Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 sec.
The impact of this new treat is yet to really been number crunched.  Yet, I would not be going out on a short limb if I said this is really just not worth it.  Changing Shockwave from 20 seconds to 17 second cooldown should not signficantly impact a tps rotation that is dominated by two six second cooldowns.

Glyph of Vigilance — Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target’s threat to you.
This is a complete waste of a glyph.  Well correction, with current threat parameters we really have little use for changing Vigiliance from a 10% to a 15% reduction in a single person’s threat.  This glyph may find a use if the threat ceiling falls signifcantly with Ulduar’s opening.

Glyph of Enraged Regeneration — Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration.
A purely PvP orientated glyph if I ever saw one.  There is really no real use for this glyph in a tank’s glyph set.  There are much better choices of glyphs out there.

Glyph of Spell Reflection  — Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 sec.
This glyph is just plain too much of a drop in the ocean to be worth anything.  Reducing a lot of cooldowns by 1 second may be worth more.  However, reducing this with a glyph slot is far from worth the cost of any other glyph.

Glyph of Shield Wall — Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.
The be all end all of the new glyphs.  Combined with Improved Disciplines we now have a signficantly less powerful damage reduction tool on a cooldown equal to that of a Death Knight’s Icebound Fortitude. 

—————

The Impact:

With the addition of Glyph of Shield Wall we now have the option to have an extremely short cooldown ability with strong mitigation benefits.  Why should we be concerned over this?

Simply put, we all got together and whined and complained about Warriors getting the rear end of the stick when it came to Effective Health and overall burst mitigation.  What we got was a forced clone of a Death Knight ability.  It may look really nice, and it may actually prove to be a boon to Protection Warriors, but we need to think about what this really means to us.  This glyph becomes as mandatory to protection warriors as Meditation is to priests of any spec.

This is a glyph that we will be balanced around.  Do we really want to be balanced around having a specific glyph?  Are other classes being balanced around them?  To some extent, but it is still an option for an Elemental Shaman to pick up Lightning Bolt or Flametongue Weapon.

This fundamentally changes our skill toolbox.  While the new version of Shield Wall will be of great use, we are sacrificing our “Oh #$#!” button for something that will be a basic part of our survivalbility.  Ask yourself, how much do you think the average Death Knight tank uses Icebound Fortitude?  That’s right, the answer is pretty much every cooldown.  Can they survive without it? Yes, but they also have multiple other cooldowns to work with.  If we become balanced around using this every cooldown, where will Warriors be?

Glory of the Hero

 

It is finally done…

The recent changes to some of the achievements required to accomplish for this Meta achievement both helped and hurt our eventual obtaining of the Drake.

The biggest three changes of course have to be with Gotta Go!, Watch Him Die, and Ruby Void.

Gotta Go! -

The change from 2 minutes to 4 minutes was a huge one. Most people couldnt get much under 3 minutes before the change (myself included). This has gone from the single most difficult achievement to obtain to one a lot of groups just happen to get while completing the dungeon.

Watch Him Die -

This is now the second most difficult of the Heroic Achievements. Where it was once possible to use pathing to gain an advantage by having your healer stand on the ledge. Blizzard has seen fit to place an invisible wall preventing use of the ledge and other areas in the battlefield to your advantage.

So now you are left with 3 distinct strategies. The “Kite Strategy”, the “Kill Adds Strategy” and the “Pure Zerg Strategy”.

The “Kite Strategy” is where we found our success. By having myself pull the watchers and adds, intervene and run to the zoneline while using cooldowns, and a speed potion we were able to heroism and down the boss with 1 person alive. Not the prettiest of kills, but it got the job done.

Ruby Void -

Once one of the easiest achievements in Oculus, now is probably one of the single most difficult achievements in the meta. Where you were once able to use 5 greens and dot and kite, you are no longer able to do this.

The 5 Amber strategy is the only feasible strategy to use on this encounter now. You can not rely on “overgearing” the instance like you can for others. You can only rely on the compentancy and coordination of your group. (As well as their willingness to work on it til you got it done.) This task took our group hours to get down correctly. We had multiple close calls, but in the end it was only with a little luck of the RNG on when he spawned adds did we get the win.

Take a look at this video.  Done by a fellow tank, the video guide is invaluable in making the 5 tank system work. We however inverted the channel cycle to make our kill happen.

Now That I Am Back… Stay Tuned For A More In Depth Guide To Each Heroic Achievement.

Recustomization and You?

When Blizzard recently announced their new paid character recustomization, I honestly did not think twice about it.  Then… I realized something.  Human men are ugly.  Just plain ugly.  If you aren’t a “beardo”, you look like you were slapped in the back when you had bitter bear face.

I have always played female characters.  In Final Fantasy XI my main character was a Mithra.  Yeah in that game you are forced into a female role.  Well, my theory has always been, you play how you want to play.  Personally, I believe being able to look at your avatar and not cringe at its ugliness, or being willing to wear such ugly helmets such as the Battleworn Tuskguard because the alternative looks worse, are both signs that things need to change.

So yes, I “recustomized”.  My warrior is now a girl.  Human females got the shaft in the new hairstyles added in the barber shop.  Yet, I like my new cut.  As our only “real” female warrior called it, “Its the Soccer Milf Mom look, its so cute!”

Bear Run… Part Deux

For the Alliance!

Our guild’s raid week has been continually condensing itself down into fewer days.  The last 2 weeks we have had 3 day weeks instead of four.  Last night we came to a crossroads as to condense ourselves into a mere 2 days for all 25 man raid content, or do something fun.

We chose the fun.

Racing against a Trade Channel PuG, we circumnavigated Azeroth leaving death in our wake.  We laid siege to each of the 4 Horde leaders like they were nothing.

Lor’themar Theron -

Defacto leader of the blood elves now that Kael’thas has shown his true colors.  Lor’themar is the weakest of the 4 Horde leadership.  While he is the only leader to have more than 1 guardian, both Halduron Brightwing and Grand Magistar Rommath are rather weak.  Rommath is a lame Magistar and hardly (if ever) casts anything.

Lor’themar and his guardians are the easiest of the four.  His court and city guards are actually 5 levels lower than those of the other cities, being only 75.  Ride right up to the door, training any and all guards you get, and AOE the cityguards down.  They have ~12-15k health total and are easily dispatched.

Lady Sylvanas -

The newly reminted and sexy as hell Sylvanas is still a pushover.  Her room however is full of a few more guardians and Battleground NPCs so they make her a little more difficult as the Battleground Master NPC’s are a heck of lot more hearty than the level 80 city guards that will arrive to protect her.  Unlike Lor’themar and Thrall, she has no secondary boss near her to deal with.

Tip to anyone that attempts her.  She vanishes, give her a raid mark.  She dissapears and drops threat at an extreme rate at times.  Having a mark on her will allow you to find her a lot easier and get the encounter done and get back out of Undercity.

Thrall -

Logistically the most difficult task of the four.  Where in Silvermoon City and Undercity, you probably did not have many players add, Thrall almost always will have players trying to thwart your advance.  This is made worse with Winterveil being an Orgrimmar centered event.  You WILL get horde.  Use whatever methodology you see fit to stop them.  Typhoon and Blastwave spam at the door will do you well to a point, but having specific group set aside to kill people works as well.

Or you could do what we did, and had all of our mages just spam aoe and offtanks solo the healers.  (Holy Priest vs Prot Warrior = dead holy priest.)

The biggest issue with Thrall is not Thrall himself.  It is not even the PvP element of the encounter.  It is Vol’jin.  Unlike the guardians of Lor’themar, Vol’jin is a serious threat to your raid.  He will cast an AoE Hex periodically.  So if you value your raid, not only have offtanks standing by.  But have a druid tank.  Multiple tanks using PvP trinkets or Every Man also will work well here.

Thrall himself is a push over.  He does not have near the power he does inside the Mount Hyjal raid.  He will periodcally cast Chain Lightning.  This has an extremely long cast time and really is no threat to your raid regardless.

Cairne Bloodhoof -

Cairne can knock you off Thunder Bluff.

That is basically the fight.  Cairne is located near a building, tank him inside it.  Put your back to a wall.  He is the hardest hitting of the 4 bosses.  If you can deal with the bursty damage on your tank and handle the periodic threat drops, you will survive to throw some steak on the BBQ.

Again, he is also easy to isolate from incoming players because of the size of his door and the ease at which a pair of mages or moonkin can knock people back from it.

Closing Notes -

Some interesting things to note about doing these.

1) It is possible to get phased into the Siege of Undercity questline when entering the city via the sewers.  This is a real inconvenience.  However, you will get credit for killing Sylvanas even if you are phased.

2) The quickest route from Undercity to Orgrimmar is to hop on the Blimp.  However, the guards will attack.  Also note that Orgrimmar Blimp tower guards both use nets and have a ranged attack that knocks you down.  This includes knocking you off your mount.  Using vehicles here such as Grand Mammoths and Choppers is a great use here.

Doing this was about the most fun I have had in a while.  Beating out the PuG group that was trying made it a little bit more fun, I must admit.  Waving at them gathering at the sewers as we left made me smile a little deep inside.  I know am I bad or what?

Resilience and the Defense Cap

With the beginning of the Arena and PvP seasons today, I thought I would discuss a little about Resilience and the Defense Cap.

What We Know:

The defense cap for level 83 raid bosses is 540 Defense Skill or 5.6% critical hit reduction.  This is not so easily obtained these days.  With the removal of warrior and paladin talents for pure defense talents this becomes quite a bit more difficult than it was in The Burning Crusade.  There have been countless articles on TankSpot.com, TankingTips.com and various tank blogs that give you step by step instructions and gear guides on hitting the cap.  But what if you simply can not afford those epic Titansteel pieces?  What if drops just are not going your way?  Well the solution is here.

Resilience:

Arena gear is now upon us.  To be sure, it is no where ideal for PvP.  They have made great strides in making the gear to be less attractive than it was in TBC.  However, resilience can cover up some early wholes in your gear quite adequately.

Lesser Flask of Toughness:
The easiest of all the resilience methods to become crit immune.  At 80 this flask gives you .6% worth of crit immunity.  Roughly equal to 15 Defense Skill.

Enchants:
There are 3 Resilience enchants currently available.  Two of which are from TBC and are for such small amounts that using them over a defense enchant would actually be worse.  The Enchant Chest – Exceptional Resilience is the best you can do currently in Wrath and it is only for 20.  A significant amount over the 15 from the TBC enchant, but both have an extremely steep price.  Giving .24% crit reduction it is more than the .18% reduction the 22 defense rating to chest enchant gives however.  Yet at this point, its a wash and the Defense enchant is much cheaper.

Kharmaa’s Grace:
Another 20 Resilience rating option.  It is not cheap though, and it doesn not cost money.  For 20 Stone Keeper’s Shards, or about the price of a single heroic run’s worth of shards you willg et .24% crit reduction via  a gem.  The +16 defense gems on the other hand will give you much less.  You will lose the avoidance given by the defense however.

Conclusions & Theories:

The Lesser Flask of Toughness gives us a different way to look at early gemming and gearing.  We all need to be uncrittable.  However, it may flat out be better for our early progression to be gemming for stamina and using this flask instead of being forced into gemming for Defense.  If you are a good raid tank, you are more than likely going to be using a Flask of Stoneblood to gain your 650 health.   Early on you want as much Effective Health as you can get.  Now how you get this health is the key.  If you do this with a flask, you are gainign 650 health.  However, if you decide to use 3 +24 stamina gems instead of those 3 +defense gems you are using, you will gain much more while raid buffed.

Sure you are losing a small chunk of avoidance, but while you are getting your feet wet, this is a better option for your raid as a whole.  As you gain more and more defense from gear, you will be better off, and so will the raid.  Yet ensuring you are uncrittable with as much health you can get is the key to early survivability in say the Spider Wing of Naxxramas, than that extra 1% avoidance.