[Tank] Weapon Expertise and Parry Mitigation - Page 5

kalbear · 07/03/08, 4:31 PM

If you don't avoid void sentinel hits on M'uru, you're going to die - one and a half healers cannot keep up with every hit connecting. It doesn't matter if those hits are coming because of parry flurry or not; it's a simple question of healing throughput in a tightly tuned encounter. If you don't avoid one out of four hits during stomp, you are probably going to die (partially a moot point since Brutallus doesn't benefit from parries). If you don't avoid any hits during corrosion, you're going to be in serious trouble or pull too much healing off the raid. The burst in the Kalecgos encounter comes because you're stunned, it has nothing to do with your swings or lack of avoidance.

Right...but in all of those cases, expertise does nothing special anyway. Void Sentinels don't have a ton of parry. Felmyst won't kill you because of a parry-hasted attack either. Brutallus can't, and Kal won't. Clearly, expertise is a poor form of mitigation when parry-gibbing doesn't actually occur.

So yes, to be clear: expertise does not help when parry haste doesn't come into play or when the encounter requires something else.

This seems like a different question, honestly. Not 'what is the best way to avoid parry gib' but 'what actually kills tanks'. Expertise is better until you can stack very high levels of avoidance in avoiding parry gib. That doesn't mean it's better overall, but if your concern is about that facet, it's the best. If your concern is taking 4 hits in a row (regardless of the speed of those hits) that's a different question.

Riot · 07/05/08, 2:34 PM

What kills tanks?

Healers who aren't paying attention. Bosses that hit hard enough in a single swing are few and far between, or those huge hits that come at precise times - Stomp, Corrosion, Corrupting Strike.

Expertise is nice and all, but there are really no fights that I'd recommend stacking it. It's true - expertise will pretty much bring down hits to a predictable level. Unfortunately, bringing down damage to a predictable level of damage doesn't automatically make it manageable as well.

Jokal · 07/05/08, 3:18 PM

A. To Kalbear, your math is incorrect due to the fact that simply multiplying by one factor of .15 for parry assumes that the tank only swings once during that whole cycle.

B. From a pure damage mitigation standpoint, Expertise does provide a rather useful benefit.

Random situation 1:
You swing 9 times every 6 seconds(SS/Rev/Dev/Dev cycle)
A boss swings 3 times every 6 seconds.

The average haste granted from parrying an attack is 24.2%. So given a 100 mob swing sample, 1% parry provides a .242% increase in damage. And given that a player swings 3 times as much as a mob, that number gets upped to .726%.

So 1% expertise or 4 skill or 15.7 rating decreases damage taken by .726%.

Compare that to dodge where 18.9 rating decreases damage taken by 1%.

How you value that nature of dodge vs the nature of expertise is a complete different topic, but there's the basic math.

Also, as that 9/3 figure approaches 1, the less valuable expertise becomes.

kalbear · 07/14/08, 6:13 PM

A. To Kalbear, your math is incorrect due to the fact that simply multiplying by one factor of .15 for parry assumes that the tank only swings once during that whole cycle.

The original factor was for a 2-second period. I didn't think that to be a particularly bad assumption given weapon swing timers. Factoring in multiple swings in that period would only increase the effectiveness of expertise.

It's true - expertise will pretty much bring down hits to a predictable level.

Predictable damage is much easier to manage than unpredictable damage. That's kind of the point of EH, after all.

Fellwraith · 07/15/08, 5:25 PM

All the expertise in the world doesn't save you from random shit like this from happening (this was 2 weeks ago during a farming run):

22:08'47.353 Shadowmang's Swing parried by Teron Gorefiend
22:08'47.353 Shadowmang's Swing parried by Teron Gorefiend
22:08'47.451 Teron Gorefiend's Swing hits Mulack for 5803 Physical damage (756 blocked) <-- this was his normal swing
22:08'47.747 Utaki's Swing parried by Teron Gorefiend
22:08'47.747 Shadowmang's Sinister Strike parried by Teron Gorefiend
22:08'47.857 Teron Gorefiend's Swing hits Mulack for 4095 Physical damage (756 blocked) <-- Half a second swingspeed?
22:08'47.857 Flerix's Swing parried by Teron Gorefiend
22:08'48.169 Shadowdru's Rip parried by Teron Gorefiend
22:08'48.169 Flerix's Sinister Strike parried by Teron Gorefiend
22:08'48.169 Utaki's Swing parried by Teron Gorefiend
22:08'48.248 Teron Gorefiend's Swing hits Mulack for 9048 Physical damage (crushing) <--1 second later - his normal swing speed is about 2 seconds

He was turning to cast shadows of death and incinerate during those parries and proceeded to parry/shadowbolt gib me despite the 14% parry reduction and 60+% avoidance I was sporting. Was it bad luck? Yep. However, it's a very good real-world counterargument to the single-tank mathematical models people are throwing into this thread. Mobs turn to cast, channel spells (reducing their parry to 0), and you have to remember there are 24 other people in your raid (and their pets) who can be out of position periodically.

Expertise only goes so far. Your melee dps will never be parry-capped with expertise gear, it's a complete waste of their item budget 99% of the time. I think you have a false sense of security if you think expertise is going to completely reduce the burst on you.