Runnybabbit

If the 10% hypothesis is accurate, you might not even have the most aggro among people in his melee range. (Which makes the strategy of hunters not using FD even wiser.)

 

• squiffy

Which also makes for an interesting case that for tauntable mobs, if you are the MT why not throw a taunt every now and then, just on the off chance that someone is on the brink of over agroing.

 

subscience

Because you don't want Taunt to be down when you need it.

Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout do not work like Taunt (and Warrior rule #1 states that your Mocking Blow will get Parried when you need it most).


Edit- Which brings me to an idea: What if you assigned someone to be a hate-generator?

E.G.: Before, say, a Z'G boss, have a Mage activate his trinkets, Pyroblast, PoM Fireball, Fireblast, and whatever he can get off while at max range and have the Warrior immediately Taunt it when it approaches the Mage and obtain aggro? The Mage would have to sit out for a little, but wouldn't this give you a very, very large buffer to start out with?


Edit 2- Better yet, a Hunter can do this and FD immediately afterwards.

 

• Arawethion

Actually, I've always wondered about this myself. The tooltip of Taunt specifically says, "has no effect if the target is already attacking you." There are 3 possibilities:

1) Taunt brings you the threat level of the current target (regardless of whether he has the most threat in the raid), and the the information in the tooltip redundantly agrees with this.
2) Taunt brings you to match the current threat of the highest-threat person in the raid, but is specifically disabled when the mob is already attacking you.
3) The tooltip is lying, and Taunt raises you to the top of the list, regardless of what's going on.

I haven't experimented with this yet, but always assumed it was 1 or 2 (rendering Taunt useless when you have aggro). The Rag strategy discussed above rules out #1. But I thought that to make it work, you'd have to wait until someone else had aggro, then Taunt (magically lifting you to the threat level of the Hunters).
Why do you say it's #3? That would imply that there's some use to pre-emptive Taunting, which is a big deal.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

• Arawethion

Or, in even more comical fashion, have two tanks alternate Taunts, each using his Rage-costing abilities only after his own Taunt and before the other Warrior's Taunt, and building rage while the other warrior Taunts and spends it.

This would all be pretty cool if it were worth it to go to so much effort to build aggro on Tauntable bosses.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

• squiffy

Heh, it's generally only a rogue or warlock that you need to taunt to save so if they get beat on for a couple more seconds while taunt is on cool down I'm not really that concerned. I'm pretty sure that that is the expected behaviour as defined in the warrior handbook too. :P

If the cooldown on taunt is a concern, what's to stop you from simply spamming it every time it is up? If people are walking the agro line then by taunting every time you can, if someone has crept over your agro then you get a slight bump back up the table to the topmost threat and continue to build.

It seems unlikely that if you are the current top of the threat list and you taunt, giving zero beneft, that you were going to lose agro within the next 8 seconds anyway.

The sad thing is, I can see this being developed into a mod that'll spam a "Taunt Now!" in the middle of the screen once someone gets to 109% of your current threat.

 

Runnybabbit

It works that way on Rag due to his peculiar mechanics as a fixed mob. He doesn't attack the person with the most threat, he attacks the person in his melee range with the most threat.

 

◊ Praetorian

No, it's because of how rooted mob AI works.

Ragnaros really really really wants to kill the hunter and the mage who are atop the DMs and have been going all out from the first second of the fight. But he has a problem. He has no legs, and they're kind of far away. So he'll settle for beating on the things next to him, and he will select from among them the one with the most aggro. You want that to be your MT.

Let me use numbers:

Nonfeigning hunter has 70k aggro
MT has 60k aggro
Rogues and DPS warriors have 40k aggro

*** WRATH OF RAGNAROS IN 3 SECONDS ***

Ok, melee DPS all backs out of range.

Wrath happens. Let's say it's resisted. But resisted deaggros still fully deaggro. At this instant, this is the aggro list:

Hunter has 70k aggro
Rogues and DPS warriors have 40k aggro
MT has 20k aggro

Ragnaros really wants to kill that hunter. But the MT is the only person in melee range of Ragnaros, so Ragnaros will attack the MT.

If the melee DPS were to run back in now, Ragnaros would still really want to kill the hunter, but now he'd have other targets whom he wants to kill more than the MT (but less than the hunter) to choose from. End result: dead rogues.

This is why the MT taunts after Wrath. It sets his aggro to 70k. The hunter will quickly pass him again anyway, but it doesn't matter. Now Ragnaros is definitely happier hitting the MT than the rogues (70k vs. 40k) so they're safe.

Now, let's pretend the hunter has been feigning.

Wrath occurs.

Rogues and DPS warriors have 40k aggro.
MT has 20k aggro.

Ragnaros wants to kill the melee DPS, but they're still backed off and he can't reach them, so he hits the MT. But even though the MT is Ragnaros's "current target," from an AI perspective, Ragnaros is really aggroed on some hapless melee DPS guy.

MT taunts.

Now MT has 40k aggro and rogues/DPS have 40k aggro. But, remember the 10% rule. The melee DPS were his old preferred target, and while taunt will bring the MT to the top of the list, he won't have enough time to get far enough ahead of the melee DPS to solidify his hold on Ragnaros. So the melee rush in. Then the taunt debuff wears off, Ragnaros turns and splatters a rogue. The raid leader yells on Vent at the "overaggroing" rogue.

---

Edit: Doh, or what the guy above me said.

 

Runnybabbit

You used more words, though, so you win.

 

• Arawethion

No, look, I understand that Rag has aggro list with everyone in the raid on it, but can only hit melee targets. I remember confusing myself by throwing Frost Nova into the mix, back when I was figuring out how Taunt works.

All you had to say was the "doesn't work when already attacking you" clause of Taunt has "already attacking you" defined such that is doesn't count if the mob is only attacking you because he's rooted.

But in the general case (unrooted), is Taunt described best by 1, 2, or 3 above?

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

• squiffy

And there's my something new for today.

:blink:

 

◊ Praetorian

I'm fairly sure the answer is #2 with the stated exception for rooted mobs.

 

◊ Praetorian

We have a shaman who loves doing this with earth shock near the start of many, many pulls, to "help" the tank.

 

Runnybabbit

I laughed when I read this. The guild I'm in is called End Result, and we truly excelled at producing dead rogues before we became a little more sophisticated in our understanding of threat and aggro management.

I can easily recall the days when a rogue getting fragged was blithely accepted as an unfortunate, but necessary, sacrifice when attempting Rag. Our thinking then was basically if a rogue dies, well, at least the MT has aggro back now. It's been a while, but I think we had 9 or 10 rogues in the raid the first time we dropped Rag because we really needed the DPS and we'd come to expect at least 75% casualties for them.

Who needs strategy when you've got brute force and ignorance?

 

• Arawethion

Much obliged. Sometimes I really wish I had some experiementation power at my disposal. Most of time, all I can do is come up with factual questions, and come over here to see if anyone know the answer.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Elerion

It's interesting to hear how your hunters are outdamaging everyone at Ragnaros. Our rogues tend to win the damagemeter on every single encounter in the game, except those extreme "can't touch me" encounters like Shazzrah. Hunters are quite low by comparison. Hell, we even have JoW, which should bring our hunters even higher.

I guess it could be chalked up to different skill levels.

 

Runnybabbit

I don't know about EJ, but in the case of my guild, the rogues are lower on the DM for Rag because they run out of melee range periodically to avoid the damage and knockback effect of WoR. Hunters, mages, and warlocks continue to fire away while the rogues (and DPS warriors) are running in and out, of course, so the ranged DPS always tops melee on the DM unless they die or blow their wad early and have to sit out and regen mana too often. I don't think our rogues pop Feint that much on Rag either, but I might be mistaken.

It's a different story on "normal" bosses, though. In fact, we have two rogues that usually clock in around 11% and 9%, respectively, of total damage done on Vael.

 

◊ Drauk

Somewhat off-topic, but i dont feel like creating a thread just for that question.

Is +nature dam items increase healing done by nature healing spells ?

Fun is for casuals

 

hamlet

pretty sure not, if you look at +damage it is +damage and healing whereas that is just +nature damage.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b3...mai_hime37.gif

 

◊ Drauk

Well, common sense told me the same thing.

However, i remember a rant on R&D forum about lack of generic +damage mod on items. And somebody said that "healing and damage" is basically a +dam on all schools, due to a way spells mechanics works.
So, i thought - if its true, than +nature should increase healing by nature based spells.

Fun is for casuals

 

hamlet

I think that is putting too much thought into it but if +to nature did increase healing also I would definately want the items I am just doubtful that that is the case.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b3...mai_hime37.gif

 

norg

Healing isn't damage.

 

◊ Drauk

Could you please clarify it ? Druids in bear form with Feral Instinct has same modifier for threat generation as warrior in defence with defiance. Did you meant this mulitplier or there is additional one for all (some) bear abilities ?
If it is the latter - what is the value of such modifier ?

Fun is for casuals

 

• Arawethion

Explanation copied from guild forums--answer to question within:
-------
The 1.45 that Druids and Warriors have is a multiplicative bonus to all threat generated while in the correct stance/form.
Some abilities (Faerie Fire, Sunder Armor) have a flat threat associated even though they do no damage or healing. Sunder Armor generates
C*0.8
threat in Battle Stance, and
C*1.45
threat in Defensive Stance, where C is a constant.

Some abilities (Heroic Strike, Shield Slam) have a constant added to the damage they do. Shield slam generates
(Damage + C)*1.45
threat, and the C is a constant.

Some abilties (Druids only) have an extra multiplicative bonus. For example, Maul generates
(Damage*1.75*1.45)
threat. The 1.75 is a constant associated with Maul.

This is the reason Druids scale so well with attack power. Druid threat generation, overall can be loosely represented as
(DPS*X)*1.45,
where X is somewhere between 1 and 2. Warrior threat generation looks like
(DPS + C)*1.45,
where C is a constant and tends to be much greater than DPS.

As strength/AP levels get higher, Druids simply get better and better in comparison to Warriors.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

decimus

Interesting bit of math. Any idea if this 1.75 modifier applies to swipe as well?