Originally Posted by Larisroth
Re: Lacerate
I was just going by the wowwiki description, but looking at the code for the latest version of the ace threat lib, it also has the values of 285 base threat, and then a 20% modifier on all damage. Lacerate doesn't scale with AP, so the maximum average threat you're likely to get when attacking is about 300 threat. Swipe on the other hand does scale with AP, with 7% of AP being added to your base damage. If you have good enough AP, crit and to get your average swipe damage up to more than 300 damage then it will generate more threat per attack than lacerate.
The issue is also complicated by blocks and weapon skill. Pretty much every TBC boss has a chance of blocking and will block for more than lacerate hits for and in those cases it generates no threat. Having weapon skill helps, but even at the infamous +5 level it doesn't negate block completely.
The lacerate threat issue was discussed in the bear tanking thread. Dukes came to the conclusion you need to do about 225 average damage (non crit) to generate more threat. |
My personal standards for lacerate and swipe back when it seemed to be nearly comparable in threat -
Bleed immune I will swipe at 180 damage.
Non-Bleed immune I will swipe at 200 damage.
I used these numbers and not the 225 from Dukes stats simply because I feel I tank with a higher crit rate than most other bears.
Since I have gotten 4pt6 and my swipes often push 250 to 300 I will only ever Lacerate on mobs that are taking ridiculously low damage from melee attacks, the only one I can think of at the moment is the Bloodboil trash during shield wall phases. I use Lacerate so rarely at this point that it is quite near Rake is usefulness, preventing rogues from restealthing or vanishing in the arenas or world pvp.
Lacerate seems to be more of a spam tanking ability for non-ferals that hop into bear to hold aggro on something, and not an ability that we (ferals) are supposed to use for raiding.