[Tank] Weapon Expertise and Parry Mitigation - Page 3

phydaux · 03/02/08, 12:47 PM

I have an Expertise question that, to my knowledge, has not been tested anywhere.

Humans get 5 Expertise with sword and mace. When I equip a sword or a mace, my profile says I have 5 Expertise and my opponents have a -1.25% chance to dodge or parry. When I Duel Wield and I equip two swords or two maces my profile says I have 5 Expertise and my opponents have a -1.25% chance to dodge or parry.

However, when my Human Warrior or my Human Rogue equip a sword and a mace, my profile says I have 10 Expertise and my opponents have a -2.5% chance to dodge or parry.

Is this a known issue? Has this been tested at all? Is it just a "tool tip error" or is it an expliotable bug?

Thank you in advance,

phy

Enova · 03/02/08, 1:03 PM

I would assume it's just an unintended tooltip error, due to the inability to display separate expertise tabs for main hand and offhand.

ALEXTREBEK · 03/02/08, 3:56 PM

Originally Posted by Xaviera

a) I'm not sure what % haste it is after a parry, I thought it was 40, maybe it's 30, maybe it's 50, regardless, it's a lot faster.

It reduces the time left on your next swing by 40% of your weapon speed, although it caps the time until your next swing after a parry at 20% of your weapon speed. If your next swing will land within 20% of your weapon speed, it does not modify your swing speed at all.

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Anyways, I'd personally agree with the bulk of the people here who said that Expertise should not be treated as an avoidance stat. And frankly, I don't think it should be treated as a mitigation stat either. Obviously it is a threat stat, but really, what it seems like, to myself at least, is that it is more or less a stat that reduces the need for "oh-shit" buttons as a result of burst damage. Yes, you could equate avoidance or mitigation to a stat like this, however it seems as though the three stats are entirely different things. To be blunt, Expertise as a damage reduction stat is quite a bit more like resilience than anything else, as it reduces the likelihood of burst damage.

Expertise is obviously important, foremost as a threat stat, but it should be no substitute for actual avoidance or mitigation. It is a major reducer of "oh-shit" damage, however. As a whole, throughout the fight it will not offer you the same boss DPS reduction as actual avoidance or mitigation would. With that being said, it should still be quite inherent that expertise should be treated as one of the higher priority stats to stack, possibly putting expertise gear close to the same level of importance as items such as the Shadowmoon Insignia. (The Shadowmoon Insignia offering a counter to burst damage while decreasing boss DPS through avoidance, expertise gear offering a counter to burst damage while offering an increase in TPS.)

Tourach · 03/02/08, 4:50 PM

Well from my own personal knowledge, expertise is working as an excelent mitigationskill. Meaning you can avoid "oh shit situations" form certain fearsome melee bosses like Asgalor. As a warrior your shield block ability has a cooldown of 5 seconds, therefore the increased melee speedburst from certain bosses can make you get crushing blows from a boss that couldn't normally do that. This kind of burst damage increases (50% speed and the chance of crushes) can kill almost instantly if you are unlucky, making expertise a excelent surviving skill as well as threatskill.

Bovino · 03/03/08, 6:30 AM

Most serious bosses (like Azgalor) don't crush though, which reduces the value of Expertise from a defensive perspective. It's still a good idea to stack it on these bosses, but not at the expense of real avoidance. That said, I rate Expertise quite highly, as there is nothing else you can stack to prevent random parry gibs from happening, and also provide at least the same threat gains as Hit rating.

Yenadar · 03/03/08, 10:19 AM

I wish I had numbers to back this up. Our feral druid has been MTing Azgalore every time we clear Hyjal, and with the rare exception of a bad rain of fire plus silence not getting resisted by any of the healers, our only source of tank death is parry hasted swings. First learning and clearing Hyjal, he had no Expertise, and would die to a parry hasted swing at least once a night. He stacked up Expertise, and now deaths from parry hasted swings are once every few weeks.

As a whole, the tanks value him in that fight simply because he has the expertise to significantly reduce the chance of our primary source of tank death. Is this a 1-boss-only issue? Perhaps currently, but I greatly doubt it will remain that way.

I strongly believe that Blizzard is moving away from crushing as a tank-risk and more towards parry haste. Existing Crushing Blows unbalance the tanking options, by making Druids inferior tanks through a mechnic they can not possibly influence. Using Parry-Haste as a burst damage source from Bosses effectively levels the playing field between tanking classes in regards to burst damage. Although the risk is still highest with Warriors and lowest with Paladins, I think the Sunwell gear addresses this, with very little Expertise on Paladin gear (more spell hit / a little melee hit), more on Feral gear, and a fair chunk on Warrior gear. Just as they gave Paladin's Holy Shield to cover the gap to attain uncrushable to compete with Warriors on crushing bosses, they are giving Expertise in appropriate amounts to each of the classes to allow them to be competitive tanking options for these parry-based bosses.

In addition to that, take Deathknight. It is currently believed that they will be viable tanks, but will not have Block as an option. They, like Druids, will be unable to avoid being crushed. Removing Crushes removes this risk that instantly makes them inferior. Parry-Haste would still be a source of burst damage on them, but one they can influence and mitigate.

PS: That being said, if Parry is one of the primary Avoidance stats for Deathknight, their own Parry-Haste could comprise a large chunk of increased damage/threat.

Blizzard is paying more attention to individual spec's and tanking alternatives than ever before, and I think simply looking at seeing where Blizzard is going with itemization shows their thought trend. Expertise may not be a massive stat now, but that does nothing to influence the possibility that Parry-Haste is a MUCH more massive threat to tanks in WotLK.

Doing the calculations and math now will help us for when that takes place.

Merple · 03/03/08, 10:33 AM

Originally Posted by Yenadar

PS: That being said, if Parry is one of the primary Avoidance stats for Deathknight, their own Parry-Haste could comprise a large chunk of increased damage/threat.

Players don't gain the benefit of parry-haste, do they?

Yenadar · 03/03/08, 10:43 AM

I may be mistaken with this, but I believe that some testing in another thread showed that players use the same mechanic as bosses. I apologize I can't point you to which thread. Feel free to ignore that piece of information if I am indeed wrong.

ALEXTREBEK · 03/03/08, 11:58 AM

Originally Posted by Merple

Players don't gain the benefit of parry-haste, do they?

Players always gain parry haste, except when your next swing will land within 20% of your weapon speed, it does not modify your swing speed at all.

Edit: Formulas:Parry - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft is clearly wrong in comparison to actual, parsed data.

ALEXTREBEK · 03/03/08, 12:12 PM

Originally Posted by Yenadar

PS: That being said, if Parry is one of the primary Avoidance stats for Deathknight, their own Parry-Haste could comprise a large chunk of increased damage/threat.

Blizzard is paying more attention to individual spec's and tanking alternatives than ever before, and I think simply looking at seeing where Blizzard is going with itemization shows their thought trend. Expertise may not be a massive stat now, but that does nothing to influence the possibility that Parry-Haste is a MUCH more massive threat to tanks in WotLK.

Doing the calculations and math now will help us for when that takes place.

When you mention doing the calculations and math for parry-haste, are you talking about doing the math for a boss's parry haste bonus, expertise's actual damage reduction, a players threat bonus from parry haste, or what?

If you are talking about the latter, well, doing the math for such a subject is fairly difficult as there are only specific situations (as opposed to general situations that pretty much encompass the bulk of the theory work done regarding other stats) due to bosses and players having differing swing speeds and chances to parry.

Rhaegal · 03/03/08, 12:29 PM

First, there was an excellent thread here about parry mechanics that might shed some light. Best data starts at around post 7. They basically just confirmed that parry-haste is a 40% increase in attack speed on the current swing, unless it would reduce the swing to less than 20% of its swing time.

Second, I've seen some very conflicting base parry/dodge percentages for bosses. Over in the enh shaman thread it's generally accepted that bosses have a base 5.6% dodge/parry chance (or at least dodge--parry could be different?), which makes the expertise cap 23, or 91 expertise rating. If that's the case, the [Shard of Contempt] from heroic Magister's Terrace will be a single-slot item that would FAR outperform any hit trinket, and get you halfway to the expertise cap. Add in a little here and there from random items like the Lurker mace, and the cap isn't that far away--at least in 2.4. (Of course, you might have to move and change your name so any melee DPS who you outrolled for the trinket don't hunt you down.

)

While parry insta-gibbing of tanks is somewhat anecdotal, it's still a real effect that I think everyone has seen happen enough on perfectly good boss attempts that being able to significantly reduce the chances of it happening has to look pretty good. I agree that it's primarily a threat stat, and you can't really make an argument for it as a mitigation stat in the sense that it "mitigates X% of damage when averaged out over a large enough sample set" when you compare to other mitigation stats. That said, I do think the argument for expertise as combination threat and insta-gib protection is a perfectly valid one.

Yenadar · 03/03/08, 12:51 PM

Originally Posted by ALEXTREBEK

When you mention doing the calculations and math for parry-haste, are you talking about doing the math for a boss's parry haste bonus, expertise's actual damage reduction, a players threat bonus from parry haste, or what?

If you are talking about the latter, well, doing the math for such a subject is fairly difficult as there are only specific situations (as opposed to general situations that pretty much encompass the bulk of the theory work done regarding other stats) due to bosses and players having differing swing speeds and chances to parry.

That line was just answering the "why are we even bothering to do this?" questions. I don't think that player parry-hasted swings as a component of threat has been looked at yet, but I don't think that it will either, until WotLK. As whole, it is a very minor increase at the absolute best, since very little threat for any of the 3 classes is based on weapon swing timer. (Best case is Paladin Seal of Righteousness, but not worth focus) The Deathknight post-script was just an observation I realized as I was writing the post, and if true, would put Parry more into threat/avoidance discussions then it currently is.

Just a theory though.

Borodin · 03/07/08, 7:52 AM

Someone asked if Expertise effects Taunt like +Hit.

Then answer is absolutely not.

Taunt is still resisted as a spell with Bosses having a 17% base resist chance (some Mobs are believed to have a specifically lower chance e.g. ZA Bear Boss) which is then lowered by +Hit only as a special case.

It's there in the "Working Theories of 2.3" though the link to the 17% Spell Resist rate is not made it's entirely implicit in the figures given.

Ivanstone · 03/07/08, 10:18 AM

I have a question regarding the actual chance of any given boss attack to be a parry hasted swing. Most will agree that the base parry chance for a boss is close to 15%. Assuming that a single wield boss will usually auto attack twice per 5 seconds and a warrior tank will attack 6 times per 5 seconds (3 auto, 3 special). To me this would indicate that the incident of parry hasted swings is actually higher. You're giving your opponent 3 chances but he only needs to parry one attack on average to get hasted. This would seem to me that rather then 15% of your opponent's auto attacks are hasted, its actually closer to 39% [1 - (1 - 0.15)^3]. You could try to attack less but that's really not an option for most of the fight. Is my reasoning off?

With Garithras's post regarding Expertise's efficiency at reducing successive parries its starting to make me wonder how much Expertise I should be stacking at the expense of "real" avoidance gear. The amount of total expertise that a T5 tank can currently have is 25 (77 rating plus 6) and a T6 Tank can have 32 (105 rating plus 6). Certainly not an inconsiderable amount but this involves wearing two gimmick threat items (Brooch of Deftness and Shapeshifter's Signet).

bludwork · 03/07/08, 10:37 AM

I think the value (if any) of this thread would be a determination of how much expertise is worth an avoidance point.

E.g. is 1% expertise better than 1% dodge? or is it better than 1% defense? From my observation expertise normally replaces defense and sometimes dodge. Since it is generally assumed that defense is not worth much after 490, expertise might be more valuable in that case.

On another note, a human T5 warrior can get up to 30 expertise.