[Warrior] Value of Imp Demo Shout and Imp Thunder Clap
 

I've long thought that these two talents are overlooked, the former more than the latter. Combined, they achieve mitigation way beyond what can be found in gear. If I'm mislead, I figure here's the place to find it out. Here's my reasoning (with math in parenthesis.)

Let's take a tank with 55% armor mitigation and 44.4% dodge + miss + parry. This combines rather neatly for the tank to be taking 25% of the raw damage the mob is lobbing at him.

With normal demo shout and normal thunderclap on, the tank should take only 18% unmodified damage. (.25 [normal damage] * .9 [1 - the effect of a 10% attack speed reduction] * .8 [1 - general approximation of demo shout's effect, 20%]). This is a 28% reduction in damage taken from normal.

But with improved demo shout and improved thunderclap on, the tank should only take 14% unmodified damage, which is a 44% reduction from attacks without the debuffs, and a 22% reduction from attacks with the unimproved debuffs. (.25 [normal damage] * .8 [Improved Thunder Clap reduces attack speed by 20%] * .7 [Improved demo shout increases demo shout effectiveness by 50%].

These are not small reductions - they are enormous. But, one might argue, that's what gear is for. Why spend points on these specs when gear can handle mitigation for us?

Let us say that the tank in question is cautious, always putting up demo shout and thunder clap. With these, as mentioned above, the tank is taking 18% normal damage. He wants the mitigation afforded by the improved talents (14%), but is unwilling to spec for it, and will make up the difference in gear. The difference in gear required to reduce an 18% incoming damage to a 14% is rather severe: 95 defense, or 220 defense rating. Or, put another way, 12.3% dodge + parry + miss. (Math Below). That is a pretty freaking gigantic amount of gear required to make up the difference.

In terms of speccing, that is 8 talent points for 100 defense or 12.3% DPM. Other talents include 1 talent point for 4 defense (compared to 12.5) or 1 talent point for 1% parry (compared to 1.5). So, in short, Improved Demo Shout and Improved Thunder Clap may be the most, or at least among the most, efficient talent point investments for mitigation.

A side thought is that if the 18% damage taken is acceptable for the encounter (non-improved) then the tank with improved talents is in a position to shed 100 defense or so for a comparable amount of stamina or threat (hit + crit) to enhance his performance.

*Disclaimer*

The above is reasonably accurate, as far as I can tell, but it applies specifically to *white* damage. Thunderclap will only mitigate white damage, and demo shout will only mitigate white and certain special attacks. So depending on the situations you find yourself in, the above may be valuable or trash. If you're tanking Illhoof - 50% of your damage taken is shadow, so these talents don't matter much. If you're tanking the prince, especially Phase 2 where the game is keeping up with his white damage, it's a godsend. So take the above for what it's worth.

*Math*

The gear to talent ratio thing. Basically, you have to move 18% to 14%. To get that you would need to get an armor mitigation * avoidance amount of 80.56%. (14% [desired reduction] = 72% [effect from 10% thunder clap times 20% demo shout] * x [amount taken after armor * avoidance]. This makes .1944 (which gives us the 80.56% number).

So armor amount taken is 45% and avoidance taken is 55.56%. Each point of defense is worth .04% parry, dodge, miss and block. For sake of illustration, let's make 1% block = .25% parry. So each defense = .13% mitigation. So the formula of defense needed to achieve A&A of 19.44% taken is:
0.45*(5/9-D*0.0013) = .1944
Jiggle that formula and it should come out to D = 94.97 defense, or 220 defense rating. If you take the formula and replace '.0013' with '.01' then you can solve for the amount of dodge+parry+miss [DPM] that it's worth.

If my math is off at all, let me know.

there's nothing wrong with your math. of course your estimate of demo shout is just that, a guess, but it is probably close enough for this discussion.

both imp demo and imp tc are amazing mitigation talents, however, there's no reason to spec for imp demo AND imp thunderclap. pick whichever one less of your guild's warriors have, and go with that. you only need 1 warrior in the raid to have each talent, and a spec which includes both somewhat limits your options as far as some of the goodies in the prot tree go.

we have half our tanks spec'd imp demo + piercing howl, and the other half for imp thunderclap. (actually it's not quite half, more went with thunderclap than demo, because it's incredible in 5 mans for multi-target tanking). we do have one tank with both talents, but in general having all of your warriors spec that way just seems silly.

this is where you're wrong. I'd venture that every "high end" raiding guild has had one person spec imp demo at least since BWL. The first time I recall imp demo being talked about in a big way was when people were discussing getting 1-shot by broodlord.

of course imp tc was changed in the 2.0 patch to be equal to (at level 60) thunderfury, so a lot of guilds at the time who had 1 or 2 thunderfurys didn't pay too much attention to the talent until the expansion came out, and thunderfury scaled down with level.

unless a tank is hitting 590 defense (not possible with current gear, or at least, not practical) taking off 100 defense will never be a good idea. all bosses should always have imp thunderclap and imp demo on them at all times, and I think we can be reasonably certain that blizzard has tuned them around these debuffs being active.

This stuff, it's not exactly news.

My apologies. From small ponds to big lakes, and the plankton are abnormally sized, etc.

nothing to apologize for.

in any case you might want to check out this thread and some of the threads it links to, there's a fair bit of good discussion about tank mitigation stats.

more generally, you may want to read some of the significant threads here.

Howdy. Sorry to drag up an old thread, but I felt it was better than creating a new one on the same topic (that, and I haven't posted enough to make topics of my own yet ;-))

My question relates to Demoralizing Shout. I recall reading somewhere that bosses only have a small amount of attack power, but with a larger modifier, and that because of that, it was only worth putting 2 points into Imp Demo Shout.

I was wondering if what I read was accurate.

It is possible that imp Demo will bypass the Attack Power removal cap, however if a Warlock using Curse of Recklessness, all of imp Demo is being used to militate damage.

At least from my testing, there is no difference in damage output between 2/5 Imp. Demo and 5/5 Imp. Demo. (Additionally, even full 5/5 Imp. Demo is only a 40% boost to AP reduction, not 50%) due to the AP removal cap in raids. This doesn't come into play if you have a Warlock using CoRecklessness, but in other circumstances they're essentially wasted points.

As noted, though, this isn't news.

Thankyou for your replies :)

I plan to be Main Tanking Karazhan with a druid offtank - do you think it is worthwhile putting 2 points into Imp Demo?

My talent spec will probably look something like this.

Sure, but you should move the 3 points in heroic strike to 1h mastery since it affects all your damage and in this case I'm quite certain it will give you a larger threat increase than imp hs.

Myself I'd never bother with imp demo in Karazhan. I only used it in builds for early Gruul and Magtheridon and then I asked a warlock to spec imp CoW.

Getting a warlock to spec imp CoW really confuses me. You will always want 2 warlocks for cos and coe. The 3rd curse is up for grabs but if you run with decent amount of physical then curse of recklessness is a significant dps upgrade. if you have a toss up between a dps warrior getting imp demo shout and a warlock doing weakness my response is 1 cod does around 150 dps or more. So you are losing 150 dps because your dps warrior needs unbridled wrath? If the 3rd warlock uses curse of recklessness then the warrior gets a dps boost anyway along with all the physical.

So unless you are using 4 warlocks you miss out on a valuable curse, if you are using 4 warlocks then your missing out on significant damage.

You really want someone with piercing howl anyway so going 11 deep in fury isn't that unlikely.

Note that's I'm not saying everyone should do what we did, only that we did it that way and dps hasn't been a problem for us. If it were, the CoW lock wouldn't be the first place to look for improvement, there are many other that could increase their dps in many ways.

I would take issue with the presentation of the value of these talents in terms of overall mitigation (even though it is still huge). For instance, imp TC is more valuable than just the raw "boss attacks 10% slower, so 10% less damage" treatment would show. Imp TC drastically reduces the chance the boss will take down shield block and get in a crush during the SB cooldown. Imp demo can take an unsurvivable spike and turn it into something that can be lived through, ala Broodlord. Making gear and talent choices from the point of "how much overall damage will I take" is naive. These decisions should always be made from the point of view of "what are the points of failure involving the tank", and gear and talents should be chosen such that they eliminate those points of failure or if you can't eliminate them, drastically reduce the chance of their happening.

I have imp demo, and imp tc, and I give up a few points in 1hws (my aggro is pretty good anyway). The damage difference of having both up is incredible - and you don't rely on anyone else (1 prot warrior on dps fights is a big improvement on dps if you can sustain aggro). You can armory my spec (oh and I don't actually tank in that gear).

If you will be the only warrior in your Karazhan runs I would definitely pick up imp TC. The difference between regular demo and imp demo is not so large that it's necessary for Kara. Once you step into 25 man raids most guilds tend to run at least one arms warrior. It's very easy to fit both imp demo and imp tc into an arms dps build, so in those cases you have more freedom in your choices. If you do have an arms warrior picking up imp demo they should go for the full 5/5 in case you run curse of recklessness on any bosses. There really isn't anywhere more important for the 3 points to go.

As the offtank for my guild, I often find myself needing to justify my raid slot on fights such as Archimonde, Gorefiend, and Naj'entus. While DPS gear does narrow the gap between horrendous DPS and "ok, it looks like you're trying," I took Imp TC and Imp Demo as a way to make up for my spec.

On fights where I'm not tanking, I'll hook up DPS gear and refresh TC and Demo so the MT doesn't have to worry about it. Both talents are amazing for Hyjal, especially Demo. At the end of the day, I spend 8 talent points to make sure that I'm not just 1/2 a person on a fight where I DPS, which helps my peace of mind immensely.