Alliera

In other words, what those debuffs affects are the hypothetical numbers determined by Theras for the purpose of the model, something we can arbitrarily change without needing debuffs at any time. We just wouldn't get the same view on the situation, and it would most likely alter the purpose of the model drastically--such as proving that a fast swing timer benefits paladins and a slow one benefits warriors rather than show the disparity between paladin mitigation and warrior mitigation assuming they're using equivalent gear.

If it bothers you that much, just assume the debuffs are already applied and the numbers assigned are post-debuffs.

 

Silana

Theras, your simulation looks great. However, I am surprised to see you completely ignore paladin's ardent defender talent, unless I am missing something. I'll take the hybrid paladin vs. dualwield example because I consider it the most relevant. With 15811 health and blocked hits doing about 1694 damage, the odds of surviving an extra hit due to ardent defender seem very high.

Example:
After 8 blocks, the paladin will be at 2259 health and ardent defender becomes active. He won't die to two more blocks and he will survive a single crushing blow, neither of which he would without ardent defender.

I'd guess ardent defender will give enough additional time to live and damage reduction to put the paladin ahead of the arms warrior and very close to the prot warrior even in our lousy hybrid gear, but I'd be very interested in seeing the numbers with the talent included.

 

• Theras

Whoops. That bug was present in the original code, but I fixed it before testing what I posted here. I must have accidentally uploaded an earlier version from my laptop.

 

• Theras

I cannot think of a way to accurately express Ardent Defender. If it couldn't be leapfrogged it would be very easy to model, but I am currently using an overly simplified method of determining time to death: health / DPS. From personal experience I very, very rarely see Ardent Defender even activate outside of non-heroic 5-man encounters, as there are very few bosses that will dual wield that quickly (save for maybe Romulo).

If you have something better, though, I am all ears.

 

Liand

Heh, it wasn't THAT buggy. :P

I wrote the original version, and it's still up at http://www.gsf-guild.com/tanking/ as was mentioned in the Beta forums back then. It's been changed to a full suite of tools actually, and you can run the simulation via the CGI script in that folder. The stats are either taken from gear and profile listed in "items.yml" and "profiles.yml" or by specifying "Custom" and manually entering them in. You probably won't want to use any of the predefined sets for serious analysis, as they're all very outdated now, but since source files are available right there, you're welcome to download them to your own server and modify as needed.

In addition to what Theras said, it wasn't included in the original program, because AD behavior also depends on your healers. I had considered, at one point, trying to simulate healing patterns as well, but I realized that even if AD wasn't leap-froggable, and Paladins had +20% effective HP, we'd STILL be worse than Prot Warriors mitigation-wise in many of the cases, so I didn't bother.

 

• Theras

Blargh, blargh, thread necromancy ahoy! But it's relevant given today's announced PTR changes, so I've gone ahead and retested all of the above scenarios with our new itemization and skills, vs. a Warrior's new itemization.

As usual, a spreadsheet with full results can be found here.

Dual Wield target, Paladin Gear
Prot Warrior lives 32.1% longer, takes 17.9% less damage.
Arms Warrior lives 5.1% longer, takes 2.3% more damage.

Dual Wield target, Hybrid Gear
Prot Warrior lives 18.9% longer, takes 8.2% less damage.
Arms Warrior lives 5.0% shorter, takes 11.5% more damage.

Dual Wield target, Warrior Gear
Prot Warrior lives <0.1% shorter, takes 6.7% more damage.
Arms Warrior lives 25% shorter, takes 28.7% more damage.

Two Handed target, Paladin Gear
Prot Warrior lives 45% longer, takes 29.6% less damage.
Arms Warrior lives 19.4% longer, takes 10.4% less damage.

Two Handed target, Hybrid Gear
Prot Warrior lives 32.3% longer, takes 20.5% less damage.
Arms Warrior lives 8.9% longer, takes 2.6% less damage.

Two Handed target, Warrior Gear
Prot Warrior lives 10.7% longer, takes 3.9% less damage.
Arms Warrior lives 9.7% shorter, takes 13.0% more damage.

-----

All in all, not surprising information. We're faring a lot better on dual wielding targets - although still a distant second choice behind a Protection Warrior - and are still getting destroyed by Arms Warriors on all other content. In fact, on non-dual wielding targets we are actually performing worse relative to Warriors of all specs; although our itemization changes were nice, theirs were better. In the mythical scenario where we can wear Warrior set gear, our results are significantly closer to reasonable than the closest real world alternative we have.

If can stay connected on the test realm, I know I'll be spending my time leaving lengthy feedback on why these changes are largely window dressing and fail to resolve any of our serious concerns at all. Combined with the heavy-handed tanking mana generation nerf we've just received from the Spiritual Attunement change, I think I can safely declare the mark as having been missed in Patch 2.1.0.

Here's hoping some of us are still around for Patch 2.2.0 to test any changes they might make then.

 

• Theras

I went ahead and retested this data again under the following two assumptions:

1) Ardent Defender cannot be leapfrogged.
2) Damage dealt to the Paladin is perfectly weighted and distributed above and below 35% health, yielding a perfect 10.5% damage reduction.

Spreadsheet is here.


Dual Wield target, Paladin Gear
Prot Warrior lives 0.7% longer, takes 3.4% less damage.
Arms Warrior lives 24.1% shorter, takes 16.71% more damage.

Dual Wield target, Hybrid Gear
Prot Warrior lives 10.5% shorter, takes 5.6% more damage.
Arms Warrior lives 38.0% shorter, takes 27.4% more damage.

Dual Wield target, Warrior Gear
Prot Warrior lives 31,0% shorter, takes 21.4% more damage.
Arms Warrior lives 63.6% shorter, takes 46.5% more damage.

Two Handed target, Paladin Gear
Prot Warrior lives 12.0% longer, takes 15.1% less damage.
Arms Warrior lives 18.9% shorter, takes 2.0% less damage.

Two Handed target, Hybrid Gear
Prot Warrior lives 2.5% longer, takes 7.3% less damage.
Arms Warrior lives 18.5% shorter, takes 9.4% more damage.

Two Handed target, Warrior Gear
Prot Warrior lives 16.8% shorter, takes 8.2% more damage.
Arms Warrior lives 41.8% shorter, takes 27.0% more damage.


Now that I've taken an opportunity to cool off a bit and compare our best case gear scenario (labeled Hybrid Gear), this is the closest I've seen to a balanced and definitive tanking role for us. Slightly better relative performance on dual wielders, slightly worse relative performance on two handed weapons, and most bosses are somewhere in between. I really think this might be the answer we're looking for, especially considering that in the real world our incoming damage won't be perfectly distributed above and below the Ardent Defender cutoff point (it will be heavily slanted towards the high end of our health bar).

Now if I can just stay connected to the test realm long enough to submit my findings via feedback ticket...

 

novasphere

This is some great stuff; try to stay out of the Outlands for now, as it seems that's what's crashing.

 

Alundro

Did you take into account that dual-weild has a +20% miss penalty for both hands? Shield block charge uptime remains relatively the same against dual-weilders(actually, charge uptime is increased if your avoidance is over a certain threshold vs. dual-weilders, but few people, if any, have that kind of avoidance).

Did you take into account that when the tank's attack is parried, the boss increases his attack speed by 50% for the next swing, thus, eatting non-improved holy/shield block charges faster? (every single threat ability that the warrior spams every 1.5 seconds has a chance to be parried on top of his normal swing)

Did you take into account that 25-man bosses that attack every 2.0 seconds almost always have an extra ability that eats shield block charges? ie. cleave, arcing smash

 

• Mongoe

I fully endorse sending Blizzard tangible examples of the inefficiency of our tier sets. That being said, I would be very curious to see this test run with a Paladin in the generic pieces from Kara (Mantle of Abrahamis, Panzat'Thar BP etc)as opposed to the t4 pieces of shiny dung. I imagine it should follow very closely to your Paladin in warrior gear, but hard numbers are always nice.

 

• Chicken

The 'Hybrid' pieces listed in Theras tests are items like the Mantle of Abrahmis etc.

Paladin gear: T4
Hybrid gear: The random assorted pieces
Warrior gear: Warrior T4

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

• Mongoe

Accoring to the spreadsheet, the hybrid gear is a mix of Crystalforge and less spell damage plate in the off slots:

[Crystalforge Faceguard]
[Barbed Choker of Discipline]
[Crystalforge Shoulderguards]
[Gilded Thorium Cloak]
[Crystalforge Chestguard]
[Bracers of the Green Fortress]
[Crystalforge Handguards]
[Crystal Girdle of the Indomitable]
[Crystalforge Legguards]
[Battlescar Boots]

More tank friendly than the Paladin set, but not with the assorted plan B tank items like Irong Gauntlets of the Maiden. The stats on the spreadsheet also show the Tier4 slots to have the same stats (spell damage etc) as the Paladin gear, so I don't think it was just a naming copy/paste error.

 

PsiVen

I'm curious to see the results given that more hybrid tanking gear has shown up on the PTR, plus some warrior gear that will have them losing some avoidance in favor of hit/etc.

I put the gear I'm wearing (or rather, would be wearing if I had enchants/gems) in this spreadsheet if you plan to do another round of tests.

For now I'm just sitting on my hands until they fix SA

 

• Theras

I'd been meaning to update the sheets with more "modern" gear, as well as test the entire off-set Warrior tanking 'set' as a fourth separate test, but I've been a bit busy lately. I've been:

1) Helping our new Paladin recruits gear up.
2) Organizing my honeymoon in a week and a half.
3) Leveling up my Hunter as a 'Plan B' in case 2.1.0 goes south on us.

I'll try to have something concrete by tomorrow afternoon.

 

Errant

Care to run this again with the Tier 6 values?
Paladin:
http://www.worldofraids.com/news/paladin_T6_stats.jpg
Warrior:
http://www.worldofraids.com/news/war...k_T6_stats.jpg

I admit, I attempted it, but... I Fail at excel. =(

 

• Theras

I think I've finished up the top of the line Tier 5 sets, and have gotten some preliminary tests done on Tier 6. I don't have time for much of a summary for you (since I'm exhausted), but here is a link to the spreadsheet.

Some key points I picked out:

• Tier 5 Protection Paladins are still about even keel with Arms Warriors in their own equipment, though our incoming damage curve is not susceptible to spikes making us the clear choice.
  
• Tier 6 Protection Paladins are very competitive with comparably geared Protection Warriors, and bury Arms Warriors. Given what we know about Illidan (he's a dual wielding demon) we may yet see a Protection Paladin being the tank of choice for the final encounter in the Burning Crusade.
  
• Modifying Ardent Defender to not be leapfroggable would make Paladins the clear tank of choice in nearly all situations, period. That's unacceptable, so we can scrap that idea.
  
• You no longer need a Libram of Repentance in a Tier 5 suit and onwards.

Personally, I can live with that. I'm still a little burned up that the Tier 4 level of equipment involves opening up Excel every time I consider an item upgrade, but thankfully that phase will pass once you're into Serpentshrine and you can pick up items like a normal person.