Tanking item question.

Balidor · 06/22/07, 8:03 PM

I must decide between the Merciless Gladiator's Shield Wall, and the Merciless Gladiator's Slicer.

Any thoughts on which would be better for a tank to have?

I'm of the opinion that the Slicer would allow me to generate threat faster, by virtue of bigger devastates.

On the other hand, the shield wall would give me an additonal 800+ armor and some odd stamina. (15ish) This would make healing me easier, but only slightly.

In conclusion, I personally believe that building threat faster would allow our dps to go faster without holding back, letting us burn bosses faster, and thus less healing required.

Any thoughts? Theorycrafting would be awesome.

diospadre · 06/22/07, 8:04 PM

i think this thread sucks

♦ Oggie · 06/22/07, 10:06 PM

Lots of Devastates on that pally?

I only ask because I was attempting to see your current shield- but the short version is really, really no. Assuming a rage-unlimited max tanking threat cycle going from a 2.0 to a 2.6 weapon while keeping the same dps and ignoring HS (which do NOT work in a slower weapon's favor and god don't try to tell me dev is better threat than HS) you gain 15% additional damage from AP. To put this in real world terms:

Assuming normal stuff and 20% ac mitigation on the mob, 800 AP, 11% crit, that's 17/hit. Apply the modifiers: (17 * 1.11 *0.9 * 0.8) and 2 per 6 second cycle you end up with about 28 threat before threat modifiers.

On the other hand, my personal shield- Sha'tar Exalted- is I believe around 108 block value base, while the gladiator shield is 152. That comes out to a healthy 44 per shield slam, and after the same modifiers 35 threat per cycle.

Not only is the shield better mitigation, it's substantially better threat, and massively more in either rage starved or rage heavy (HS every swing timer) situations.

Get the damn shield already.

Edit:

Yes, Devastate really does scale that horribly, so if it ever comes down to 'it's better for Devastate' you are using the wrong metric.

Edit2 (more like 4, I shouldn't post when I'm not focused):
This is precisely the sort of thing that doesn't need it's own thread. Necro one of the many, many threads on tank threat- or better yet, actually read the threads. Asking horribly specific questions about your personal gear floods the forums and makes them bad to read.

Balidor · 06/22/07, 10:19 PM

Well put, but I forgot Balidor =/= Me. Look up Deathtater on Scilla and you'll see my actual gear. Which is what brings this question up. I understand threat and whatnot no worries. I just wanted other opinions.

Xerophyte · 06/22/07, 10:51 PM

What Oggie said. The Slicer would be significantly worse for threat than your current weapon in any situation where Heroic Strike is used, which is to say every single raid fight in the entire game where you're tanking actual damage. If you're worried about threat, go find a 1.4 speed dagger or somesuch.

Balidor · 06/22/07, 11:12 PM

Humm, perhaps I didn't word my first post properly.

The question is, would the threat increase on the blade be worth more than the mitigation from the shield?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the extra 5 dps and ~100 damage on a devastate would generate a good amount of bonus threat no?

Also, the equip bonus on my Shield of Impenetrable Darkness is 33 Block Value. Does this just add onto my current block value? Or does it work some strange way like ratings do? If it adds right on, the gladiator's shield would have like 3 less block value, meaning no threat gain.

Am I making sense?

♦ Oggie · 06/22/07, 11:17 PM

Originally Posted by Balidor

Well put, but I forgot Balidor =/= Me. Look up Deathtater on Scilla and you'll see my actual gear. Which is what brings this question up. I understand threat and whatnot no worries. I just wanted other opinions.

With your current gear not counting rage gain from white damage-> TPS and never using HS ever you might potentially gain as much as 1 TPS using the S2 weapon over the S2 shield and nothing else about your gear changing.

Of course, I'm just going to assume from your gear that you're familar with basic threat gen and are using HS as much as humanly possible, which of course makes the whole thing moot.

On the subject of your gear: You're not upgrading those bracers for a while, I'd recommend 12 stam. Can you replace Dabri's Enigma potentially with the Prince arcane/stam trinket till you get the nether badge or one of the decks possibly? I'm not trying to be a jerk but your stamina seems very low for your progression point (which is farther than I) and I'm assuming you're prioritizing holding onto T4 4-piece (I really need to do the math and see what kind of TPS that is). I say this because you're at least one boss further than I am overall and we're neck-and-neck on hp/ac (in my uncrushable-with-pots gear, and you're 2% higher dodge) and I'm a pally. I think you might be better served to stack a bit more hp in general.

Edit:
Bleah, I missed that +adds to block value -entirely-.

But no, the threat gain is going to be around 30ish every 6 seconds, or 5 TPS, if you never use Heroic Strike. If you use Heroic Strike a faster weapon (like, your current one) will obliterate it.

The shield isn't better threat overall, you are correct, I just missed that line. However I would strongly suspect that going from your current weapon to the S2 would be a threat downgrade.

Balidor · 06/22/07, 11:26 PM

I she. Very informative. Thanks for the replies.

Now comes another question, in a raid I'm trying to keep up Thunderclap, Demoralizing Shout, and Sunders, spamming Shield Block so that I can't be crushed... Generally, I'm hitting a lot of buttons, and I actually skip HS a lot. What can I do to make it easier on myself? Less Revenge/Shield Slams? Make macros for each action and add a /cast HS to the end of each?

Thanks for being so helpful.

Edit: Working on the +12 Sta enchant, can't find anyone who can do it. >.<

Also, I do have the Wrynn Dynasty Leggings with 3 +12's and a Nethercleft kit. Giving me another 500ish life on to what you saw. Would you really recommend using those over the 4/5 T4?

Talgog · 06/22/07, 11:36 PM

Your first post was perfectly understood. What they are saying is that the Blazeguard is a very good tank sword and the 2.6 speed Slicer is not, due to Heroic Strike being far better on fast weapons over slow weapons. The speed difference is tremendous, to the point that you will get off 225 Heroic Strikes with the Blazeguard in a six-minute fight, assuming you are engaged the entire time and that you have enough rage.

During the same six-minute fight, Slicer gives you 138 Heroic Strikes.

In damage ALONE, that's 18096 theat (87 more Heroic Strikes*208 damage per HS), ignoring all extra threat modifiers. I'm assuming the target is unarmored for expediency, but since the issue is threat from damage, reducing the numbers only makes the fast HS weapon even better than the Slicer.

As far as DPS is concerned, you are losing around 50 DPS in lost Heroic Strikes, versus the five you would gain from the weapon. And the 5 DPS "gain" will be mitigated just as quickly as the 50 DPS is when armor is factored in. There's no cheat here.

Fast weapon good, slow weapon bad.

EDIT: Re: stamina, this is another reason to go for the Merciless Shield Wall. It has 15 more stamina than your current shield (with same enchant) as well as a lot more armor and you will not lose your uncrittable state, even if the Resillience did not help with that as well.

Balidor · 06/22/07, 11:40 PM

Thank you Talgog, I'm beginning to understand now. Next I need to figure out how I can fit in HS when I'm spamming Shield Block, Revenge, Shield Bash, Sunder/Devastate, Thunderclap (every ~30 seconds), Demo Shout (every ~45 seconds), stance dancing, intercepting back to gruul, and trying to manage my entire raid.

Being MT and Raid Leader is a pain.

Kaubel · 06/23/07, 10:27 AM

Questions like this need to be asked in an existing, applicable thread.