Druids aggro generation, unlike warriors, is solely centered around the idea of the more damage you do the more aggro you generate. In this thread, I wish to explore how much aggro each move does then analyze on the basis of time and rage the aggro a druid generates.

Druid Aggro Multipliers
Bear Form Multiplier - Druids by solely being in bear form generate 1.3x more aggro than normally.
Feral Instinct (Talent) - Druids can spend 3 pts into Feral Instinct for a 5% increase in aggro generation for each point for a final multiplier of 1.15x.
Special Moves - Maul and Swipe generate 75% more aggro than autoattack does resulting in an additional 1.75x multiplier on them. (unknown for Lacerate)

Druid AutoAttack
A druids base weapon is 2.5 seconds with 54.7 DPS with an increase of 1 DPS per 14 Attack Power.

Druid Damage Talents
Naturalist - Increases all damage by 10%
Savage Fury - Increases the damage done by Maul, Swipe, and Mangle by 20%

Druid Special Moves
Maul (15 Rage/10 Rage Talented) - Deals 100% Weapon Damage + 176 Damage giving us a formula of the below
Aggro_Maul=A*(1+C)*(2.5*(54.7+P/14)+176)*1.1*1.2*1.75*1.3*1.15
Aggro_Maul=A*(1+C)*(P*0.61669+1080)

Mangle (20 Rage/15 Rage Talented) - Deals 130% Weapon Damage + 234 Damage giving us a formula of the below
Aggro_Mangle=A*(1+C)*(2.5*(54.7+P/14)*1.3+234)*1.1*1.2*1.3*1.15
Aggro_Mangle=A*(1+C)*(P*0.64271+812.6)

Swipe (20 Rage/15 Rage Talented) - Deals 84 Damage to 3 nearby targets w/ additional 0.07 damage per 1 Attack Power
Aggro_Swipe=A*(1+C)*(84+0.07*P)*1.1*1.2*1.75*1.3*1.15
Aggro_Swipe=A*(1+C)*(P*0.24174+290)

Lacerate (15 Rage/13 Rage Talented) - At 1 Stack deals 31 Damage (40.3 w/ Mangle) per tick every 3 seconds for 5 ticks (15 seconds) At 5 ticks its 155 Damage per tick (201.5 w/ Mangle) and w/ Naturalist 170.5 per tick (221.65 w/ Mangle) so this works out to aggro generated by Lacerate per tick as
Aggro_Lacerate=L*31*1.3*1.1*1.75*1.3*1.15 (w/ Mangle)
Aggro_Lacerate=L*115.9783625 (w/ Mangle)
Aggro_Lacerate=579.8918125 (L=5)

Attack power has no added benefit for Lacerate and aggro generated might be different since says causing a high amount of threat (needs testing to determine if its actually different).

A = Armor Mitigation
P = Attack Power
L = Lacerate Stack
C = Crit Rate

Make notice both cat form and bear form mangles currently can stack resulting in two 1.3x multipliers for damage on bleeds.

Maximal Single Target Threat Rotation
12.5 Second Rotation works out fairly well for being potentially possible to pull off while closest enough to the LCM for all the various numbers involved

5 Mauls

Global Cooldown Moves
1. Swipe
2. Mangle
3. Swipe
4. Swipe
5. Swipe
6. Mangle
7. Swipe
8. Lacerate

Total Aggro Moves
5 Mauls (50 Rage)
2 Mangles (30 Rage)
5 Swipes (75 Rage)
4 Lacerate Ticks (13 Rage)
Total Rage = 168 Rage

Threat Generated
Threat = 5*A*(1+C)*(P*0.61669+1080)+2*A*(1+C)*(P*0.64271+812.6)+5*A*(1+C)*(P*0.24174+290)+4*57 9.9
Threat = A*(1+C)*(P*5.57757+8475.2)+2319.6
Threat Per Second = Threat/12.5 Seconds ~= A*(1+C)*(P*0.446+678)+185.6

Rage Required Per Second = 168 Rage/12.5 Seconds = 13.44 Rage/Second

I have a question, what does this mean? I look at this and it doesn't help me understand what a druids threat generation does. I think something I would like to see from your work is how much threat is generated per point of DPS out and then compare this to a warrior with how much theat they can generate with DPS in. I think once we understand these threat generations we can then figure out how much DPS can do in relation to their threat generation capabilities.

FWIW, there's an old thread about this, but it didn't see too much discussion.

http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=8561

Yeah, I want to work out the exact details of what it means but figure I would start with just the basics then work it out. My next plan is to generate the same formulas for a warrior for comparison value. Basically had to start somewhere and figured before getting into working out the supposed maximum single target aggro generation cycle I would set down the formulas I've worked out so far here to get comments back on.

One thing, I need to rework the equations to take into account damage mitigation.

These warrior numbers might be slightly off so would need a warrior to check over them to see if the various mechanics are correct.

Warrior Aggro Generation
Sunder (15 Rage) - 301.5*1.3*1.15=450.7425
Heroic Strike (196+(W+500)*A)*1.3*1.15
Devastate (15 Rage) - (27+(35*5+50%*W)*A)*1.3*1.5
Shield Slam (20 Rage) - (307+(430+S)*A)*1.3*1.5
Revenge (5 Rage) - (417+110*A)*1.3*1.5

W=Weapon Damage
A=Damage Mitigation
S=Shield Block

Warrior Threat Numbers are from http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....picId=92309409

2800 ap

Attack:
54.7 + 200 = 254.7 dps
636.75 average dmg

Maul:

10 rage / 2.5 sec = 4 rps
176 damage / 2.5 sec = 70.4 added dps
(254.7 + 70.4) * 1.1 * 1.2 = 429.13 dps

Mangle:

15 rage / 6 sec = 2.5 rps
((636.75 * 1.3) + 234) * 1.1 * 1.2 = 1302.21 average dmg
1302.21 / 6 sec = 217.04 dps

Swipe:

Can't find any good info about how it scales


Anyway, with enough incoming damage to sustain 6.5 rps (not much at all)
a druid with 2800 AP, just using Maul and Mangle will do 646.17 dps before
crits and mitigation/avoidance.

That comes out to.

646.17 * 1.3 * 1.15 * 1.75 = 1690.54 threat per second

Throw 20% armor mitigation and 10% avoidance in there and you get.

(646.17 * 0.8 * 0.9) * 1.3 * 1.15 * 1.75 = 1217.19 threat per second

Edit - As a BM hunter the difference is really noticeable since my damage comes in bursts. If a warrior is tanking I have to wait a good 15 seconds before I can trinket up and blow all my cools. If a druid is tanking I can do it seconds after the engage.

Something to test would be whether Mangle gets the 1.75 threat modifer or not. I've seen a couple of brief tests posted (mangle then get an unarmed party member to pull agro punching) that suggested that Mangle doesn't get the same modifer that Maul/Swipe do significantly widening the gap in terms of agro/rage of Maul versus Mangle. Still leaves it as a great rage dump and a better alternative than swipe against single targets (maths in the Druid Talents are up thread if curious).

We have both Druid and Warrior tanks and in a rage limited situation the Druid makes more threat (fights like Jin'do where the boss hits like a pansy or trash pulls). In infinite rage situations threat generation seems to be more on par using Vael as an example. The difference is Warriors have a bunch of quick consistant moves for threat generation and for the Druid it comes in big 2.5s long threat clumps, if a Druid gets 2 or 3 mauls parried/blocked in a row you'll have a threat gap but if they don't get any blocked/parried you'll see them well ahead of where a Warrior would be (till they get some blocked then it evens out again).

For a raid buffed Druid tank you're probably looking at 1000-1300AP for your base generation. My ideal geared druid tank has ~750AP unbuffed and with Battle Shout, GoA, SoE, Mongoose, and Giants ~1200AP (~32% critical strike). After mitigation you're looking at ~800-1000TPS (threat per second) which is equivalent to a Warrior of the same gear level.

In rage limited situations the Druid should only be using Maul and Mangle, if rage is flowing faster than you can use it on those two powers you can rage dump with Swipe similar to a Warrior doing so with Heroic Strike. The threat per rage for Maul/Mangle is much better than any series of moves a Warrior can put together. I don't have my numbers on this computer but from what we looked it its 1.5-2x the threat per rage over a Warrior depending on the rest of the factors in the situation.

I'm pretty sure mangle doesn't get the 1.75 multiplier, as has been previously mentioned. It certainly doesn't feel like it does, so I would leave that out of calculations unless proved otherwise.

Even without that though it's still pretty solid for generating threat.

Yeah, I will change mangle. I need to get some testing in later on that and Lacerate.

1300 AP seems ridiculously low. All the druid tanks I've run with have substantially more than that and they haven't been raid buffed.

Browsing around on thott I can come up with a set of blues:

With:
- Blessing of Might
- Battle Shout
- Strength of Earth
- Mark of the Wild
- PW: Fortitude
- Strength Elixer

- +6 stats chest enchant
- 70 AP weapon enchant

That druid has:
- 2400 AP
- 13000 Armor
- 11300 Health

I would assume getting into lvl 70 epics will easily net you another 400 ap

The equipment you picked is mostly way too low on armor, so the choices would be different and lower in attack power for most slots. 2000ish attack power doesn't seem unreasonable though

1.3k AP (unbuffed) isn't really that low for bearform tanking gear and this is on Beta at Lvl 70. My Cat Form gear is just under 2k AP unbuffed.

13k armor is really low for tanking you don't go for AP when your tanking you go for mitigation and defense.

For most stuff I just did an ilvl 100+ search on thott and sorted by armor. Picked what seemed reasonable. I guess thott is missing a bunch of stuff.

Edit - Ahh, I dug around in some of the lower ilvl stuff (80-90) and found much more high armor items.

Currently (on live at least) mangles from all Druids stack.

Heh, the issue is like half the best tanking items are greens.

Sounds like something fun that should be tried out.

Tested and gathered swipe AP contributions from level 1 bunnies with Faerie Fire on them. (Line fitting matched for 0 AP at ~110 as expected).

I totally approve of killing bunnies in the name of science. as well as stacking a raid with 20 feral druids.

Don't confuse the Druids tanking 5-20 mans in DPS gear for the Druids wearing full mitigation gear in 40 man raids.

Imagine a Druid tank having a scale like this:


[----------------------------------------------------------------------]
Max Threat Max Mitigation

Usually in hard content it will look like this:

[---------------------------------------------------------------------|-]
Max Threat Max Mitigation

(Note I am just talking about gear not buffs. I don't remember the last time I had issues in Max Mitigation gear either though because buffs and Sunder do help alot.)

Even with 25% mangle, 20 druids = ~86.74times damage. That's 22812 damage/tick for each druid or about 225k raid DPS, 2.7mill damage over 12s..

You'd better hope there's a couple of tanks with some +spellhit gear, because they're going to need that taunt..

Now.. if we could get 20 ferals on thaddius..


Back on topic. I am really looking forward to seeing the final figures on lacerate threat and what the multiplier is like. Easiest test I guess would be to have someone else do a certain amount of white damage to a target, then try and pull using only lacerate. This at least should give an indication of whether the bonus threat is applied on tick, or if it's upfront bonus threat + regular damage-threat for each tick.

Reminds me of Gurg's 38 Enhancement Shamen (38 Stormstrikes), 1 Elemental, 1 Tank for 3m Lightning Bolts ... why you have a tank is beyond me, untauntable mobs mean the elem shaman has aggro.

My early calculations for Lacerate with 1000 AP, a 30% Mangle increase, and the standard 75% increased threat placed it as the same TPR with a 5 stack as Maul. Maul can crit, but lacerate ignores armor, in the end they're fairly similar.