The MS/Prot Warriors in our guild insist that Defiance affects only autoattack aggro. Is this true, or does it affect all aggro-generating abilities?

It's a pretty simple question, and I am only asking here because I distinctly remember Gurgthock saying something along the lines of Defiance being "much more noticeable than it would be if it only affected damage."

I'm asking this because our guild has recently gotten dissatisfied with our performance in BWL (despite having cleared everything up to Nefarian, and having repeatedly gotten Nefarian to stage 2), and the self-righteous "omg i have 100 played hours of warrior experience I know what I am talking about" MS/Prot Warriors are saying that 2 Cruelty is roughly equivalent to 2 points in Defiance, which doesn't seem intuitively correct to every single other person in the guild.

In other words,

2 cruelty = 2 defiance?

if not,

warriors = idiots?

Your warriors are idiots, sorry.

Here's what you do:

Log on to test and drag the most obstinate of them with you. Have him respec and clear his talent points entirely.

Go to Azshara and find an elk, or some other high-hp mob with absolutely no special abilities that might affect aggro (stuns, roots, knockbacks, etc.). Drag him with you. Have him Bloodrage, wait for Bloodrage to stop generating rage, then sunder the elk once. Then do nothing. Walk up to it and begin punching it or poking it with some shitty weapon. Count how much damage it takes for the mob to turn away from him, and towards you. Repeat if you like for a more solid estimate.

Now have him allocate 5 points into Defiance. Repeat the experiment.

Honestly, if they're whining about Cruelty, 31/5/15 is a VERY good PvP and PvE build. You still get MS and all the cool Arms stuff, you get Cruelty, and you get Toughness and Defiance. It's all you need to be a great Horde tank. Most of our warriors have variants on this spec, and then we have a handful who are pure Arms/Fury, since not every tanks very often.

Also, grats on getting Nef to Stage 2. If you're doing that repeatedly, I'd be shocked if you don't have him down in the very near future.

I ran a test earlier, similar to what you suggested, with my Warrior alt and another member's Warrior alt. One sunder on a mob from each Warrior kept the mob on the Warrior with Defiance. Same results with Demoralizing Shout.

The Warriors in our guild attributed this to us being HORRIBLE TERRIBLE TESTERS CORRUPTED DATA WTF JEEZ

Our MS Warriors actually have more than 15 points in Protection, I believe, but for whatever reason the 5 points of the third tier are not in Defiance.

p.s. hi Wodin

p.s.s. thanks for MAD GRATZ on Nefarian, but we need more practice which is hard when he bugs out every 2 seconds and shadowbolts crash people into 500 person queues.

Defiance is pretty much the best 5 points a warrior who tanks raid mobs in PvE can spend. If they've sacked up and spent points in the protection tree, there's no reason not to have it.

If I had to pick a warrior spec that had to be used every day, it would be 31/4/16:

Shield Specialization Rank 5
Toughness Rank 5
Improved Shield Block Rank 1
Defiance

Cruelty 4/5

And then the intelligent choice of talents in Arms.

Edit: when doing aggro tests, it helps to have a third person around to soak the initial aggro bonus.

31/4/16

I'm having a really, really tough time deciding whether to do this or 31/5/15 and only put 4 points in defiance.

To me, that would depend on whether I was PvPing or PvEing more. Cruelty is best in PvP, though it does have some splash benefit in PvE. Defiance is only useful in PvE.

Then again, what do I know? I specced my warrior 34 points in Protection. :)

Defiance is pretty optional in MC and for Onyxia, but doing BWL without it is crazy. 15% doesn't sound like a lot but in practice it is huge.

You don't even have to give up that much to get it, 15-16 points in protection is perfectly fine in pvp, you might lose a few duels because you don't have enrage and the other guy does, but duels are dumb so who cares. Besides, you get 10% more armor from toughness which makes you more effective in group pvp.

what is the ideal threat generating combo. example. 5 sunders, revenge, shield bash, sunder couple more, revenge(whenever its up im guessing) H strike, that shield block ability if you have it?

blocking does produce hate right?

In infinite rage situations (like most of the higher end bosses) my primary concern is making as many autoattacks as possible heroic strikes.

After that I try to fit 1-2 other abilities between heroic strikes. The way I prioritize it is revenge > mortal strike > sunder (I will use sunder over MS if the mob isn't fully sundered though), depending what is on cooldown. I will use shield block when I need to for revenge or when I have a spare second, but with a high enough block rate it usually isn't necessary

Mmmm, someone quit the guild tonight over the whole "BWL MTs should have full Defiance" thing. Oh well!

I took Iron Will over toughness. Mainly as a PVP thing, but Tehax is an orc so fuck him.

QFT

Didn't want to leave, though it was an easier decision as a loot issue two weeks ago distanced me from the guild leadership. Oh and before you think I didn't get an item and was pissed, it was the other way around, I got an item and was demonized as a result. As far as reinvites are concerned, I would only come back if asked, not the other way around.

As for the Defiance issue, I was our second tank from the first day of BWL to the day I quit. Throughout that time all 3 of our main tanks were 3/5 Defiance, to get Last Stand while remaining 31/5/15. Only 1 PVP'd and it wasn't me. I took 5/5 Crit because I saw a much better effect from crit versus defiance in my overall performance (there were many times I would be called upon to DPS), and that flexibility mattered.

As for the specifics of the debate, 5/5 Defiance v. 5/5 Crit is so close as to be almost indistinguishable in terms of tanking efficacy. The innate threat value of a crit combined with constant Windfury and Sword Specialization talents leads to a much higher threat value than 5/5 Crit alone, or 5/5 Defiance. A balance of Sword Spec, 5/5 Crit, 3/5 Defiance and Last Stand combined maximum tanking efficacy with a survivability that was second to none. Also, mobs with Agro Reduction will not be effected by Defiance in a multi-tank scenario as the Agro Reducing abilities lead to DPS and Healer agro, not a Warrior that's too low on the hate list.

In point of fact I was also of the school that Defiance did not affect Sunder Armor. Perhaps that is incorrect, most of the tests relayed to me involved two people autoattacking, and that test was always flawed.

Finally to set the record straight, I gquit not because of 5/5 Defiance. I gquit because our guild leadership said to its #2 Tank, less than a month after I devised a number of our BWL strats and tanked every boss in there, that I would switch 2 of my points or be kicked from the guild. In effect, I was told my performance was hindering the guild and I would be kicked as a result unless I changed. It was shocking to see what I was thought of, and rather than admit to that shortcoming (one I vehemently deny) I left of my own volition.

-Thargor

"omg ther is no way i am speccing in 2 dual wield spec ok leaving bye"

Why do we have other guild's dramallamas cluttering up our own forum? No one here gives a flying shit why you left or what you were thinking or what you were eating when it happened.

I'm not touching your guild drama with a 20-foot pole. This paragraph however...

Every single sentence in that paragraph is false. Do you realize how little of your threat comes from the damage you do while tanking? You are able to hold aggro not because of the defiance/defensive multiplier to your DPS, but because of the large bonus threat associated with actions such as Revenge, Sunder, Heroic Strike, etc. Critting does nothing to those. Sword spec does nothing to those. Windfury does nothing to those. The advantage of sword spec and windfury is more rage generation in situations where you are not capped out on rage, which allows for the use of more aggro-generating abilities. This is in fact one of the problems with aggro at the high end, and why BoS is so good for Alliance: Tank aggro generation scales slower than DPS aggro generation. Probably 60% of your aggro comes from static-value bonuses associated with skills. The other 40% comes from your DPS. If everyone gets vastly superior gear and doubles their DPS, the DPS classes are now generating 200% of their old aggro, while the tank is only generating 140%. That's the problem, and it's why you need Defiance (or BoS for Alliance) to help close that gap.

Your last sentence makes no sense whatsoever. Read that over a few times. Did you even think before you typed that? You're saying that a mob that reduces the aggro of your tank causes problems that are not attributable to "a Warrior that's too low on the hate list"? You lose aggro when someone else has more hate than you. Obviously (duh). To stop that from happening, you can have other people generate less aggro (hold back, spec Subtlety, feint, feign, vanish, etc.), and you as a tank can generate more aggro. The more aggro you as a tank can generate, the more DPS your raid can safely do without pulling aggro, and the longer you can keep aggro off your healers (who can't exactly "hold back" or tanks will die). There is no situation in which Defiance will not improve this even further, and for a Horde guild, Defiance is in fact MOST useful on those fights involving deaggros (Broodlord, drakes).

In BWL, mitigation is secondary to holding aggro. If your tanks can't hold aggro, you have no hope. Defiance is the single most important talent in the Protection tree for a Horde tank, and it's honestly the only reason to delve into that tree. Once you're there, there are other good things to spend points on (Toughness, Imp. Shield Block, Last Stand), but if not for Defiance, there would be little reason not to just go 31/20 Arms/Fury.

Let's say Broodlord's Knock Away is a 50% reduction.

Let's say with your tank rotation, a regular non-Defiance tank can build 10000 points of aggro between the time he gets Knock Away'd, and the time he returns to the front of the aggro list to eat the next Knock Away.

So a tank's aggro will proceed as follows:
0, 10000, 5000, 15000, 7500, 17500, 8750, 18750, 9375, 19375, etc., approaching a limit of 20000 at its peak.

If your healers ever reach 20000 aggro, you lose. You have to kill Broodlord before this happens.

If that tank had 5/5 Defiance instead and could generate 11500 hate during the same period, the progression would be as follows:
0, 11500, 5750, 17250, 8625, 20125, etc., approaching a limit of 23000 at its peak.

That gives your entire raid more room. 15% more room in fact. 15% longer to kill him. It still helps.

---

As to your other point, you are drastically overvaluing crits. I've personally spent hours testing aggro and coming up with near-exact values for various abilities and modifiers. A crit adds a variable amount of bonus aggro, in the neighborhood of 40-60% extra. But let's go crazy and say that a crit actually doubles the aggro generated.

1 point in Cruelty = 1% crit, or 1% chance to double your aggro from an attack in this imaginary world. So, a 1% increase in threat generation overall.
1 point in Defiance = 3% more threat generation from all sources.

Still no comparison.

Edit: Also, you can't crit a Sunder. And if you crit a Revenge, you're just getting bonus threat on the damage done. You're not getting a percentage bonus of the entire added value of the Revenge. You can't use crit executes on Vael as an example, since there ALL the threat is coming from damage. Obviously a Vael offtank who gets a half dozen 2000pt crits in a row is going to be generating a retarded amount of aggro. But that has nothing to do with tanking.

Edit #2: This is, however, why shamans should drop Grace instead of Windfury for warriors on Vael in particular. When you're pumping out executes, you gain more from getting 3+% more crits than you would from the occasional free autoattack.

Takes convo on tangent: What experiment did you use to determine that crits generate more hate than can be explained by their additional damage?

It still helps your lowest tank. If you add just one more tank, instead of adding 15% effectiveness, you add another buffer of, using your example, 10k threat.

If I were an alliance warrior, I would argue vehemently for Defiance on all tanks. Why? Because you could beat mobs with Knockaway with fewer tanks as they would never fall low enough to meet the (BoS depressed) threat value of the healers and DPS. Well, maybe not never, but much further.

If the fight is about length of time, then another issue comes up - killing time. If you have 6% more Threat and I have 2% more crit, and my crit is say, 2% threat versus your extra 6% threat, that's 1/3rd as effective.

Except, I kill faster than you. And if all the Warriors have 2% more crit, and I have 5 Warriors, I crit 10% more than you. That 10% crit will reduce the time it takes to kill the mob, and that time will take away Knockaways on the fight overall, which will reduce the time that your healers have to climb towards that "Point of No Return" of having more agro than the tank at his lowest point. And as I'm sure you know, time is the limiting factor on knockaway fights.

It's very possible that if all the math were known, 6% Threat (3/5 v. 5/5) might be better than 2% crit. But kill time is very important, even in multi-tank fights, and if fights skew more towards a smaller number of tanks in the future (or better yet, more OffTanking targets as per ZG) then kill time will be even more important as getting adds dead before the healer goes OOM will matter much more than counteracting a knockaway.

In short, though Crit may be 1/3rd as effective as 3% Defiance, the kill time reduction, multiplied by the number of tanks, can reduce the effectiveness of Knockaway itself (as Knockaway matters more the longer the fight goes) to the point where it is nullified.

2% crit v. 6% threat may not solve any fights, but the flexibility of crit (both in dealing damage *and* increasing threat) increases the value of Warriors more than 6% increased threat, AND improves Warrior redunancy as DPS stacks while tanking duties (outside of specific boss mobs with Knockaway) don't.

*This argument assumes that all Warriors of course have a bare minimum of 3/5 Defiance of course.

But sometimes adding more tanks doesn't help. The more people who are in melee range with Broodlord, the more Blast Wave damage has to be healed, though that's a bad example since it's pretty trivial. But take Firemaw instead -- the healing costs of each additional full-time tank are very significant, not only in terms of risking healers running OOM, but also because there is the very real possibility that the additional healing required by having that extra tank in there will accelerate the rate at which your healers generate aggro so as to outweigh the benefit of having that extra tank.

Oh, and you really should bring some rogues, mages, warlocks, and hunters on your raids. No wonder you were having problems with Nef if your only DPS was 5 warriors.

I tanked with a 2her during DM East runs. I would run dmg meters for specific fights (say, the fight against plants in the courtyard) and though Rogues and Mages would outdamage me, I would pull agro on Mortal Strike crits (MS has no inherent agro) even though my damage was lower than them. This was with no agro generating abilities, it was just me spamming MS under Windfury with Sword spec.

It was a sloppy way of tanking, but after my millionth run for the Quel'Serrar I got lazy, and it was interesting to watch the agro exchanges even though the dmg meter told me I was below the Rogue or Mage (and no the Rogue didn't feint, I was talking to my group members about my experiment at the time)

We bring 30 Warriors and 10 Priests. The extra warriors just shoot guns to make sure they don't take the AE.

In all seriousness though, I agree that adding too many Warriors does have diminishing returns after a certain point as the AE puts too much strain on healers, but the kill time decreases at a faster rate than the healer's agro will increase, and the buffer guarantees a victory rather than relying on a 6% increase. For Firemaw for instance we drop from the Broodlord "zerging" to a mere 3, mostly because we only had 3 tanks that could hit 315 FR. Firemaw's AE is almost a joke, as some of our rogues began proving recently as their FR reached 250+.

PS your Edit #2 is actually very insightful, I hadn't thought of that but it's spot on. Thanks.