[Tanking] Class Tanks vs Non-Crushing Bosses - Page 3

Xei · 01/17/08, 11:22 AM

I miss you Vorp!

Anywho, we got our second Azgalor kill this week, using our Warrior tank again.

I know I said I didn't want this to a boss specific thread, but here is our WWS for those curious anyway.

WWS

Our MTs average hit was 6519 and max hit was 9363.

7 min fight, 10 Ancestral Fortitude procs and only 3 Inspiration proc's ... had 2 Resto Shaman and 1 Holy Priest (not sure who was healing MT and who was healing OT). 2 Stoneshield pots used (cheapass) and had amp magic/imp/devo etc.

Never had a problem keeping him up during silence. I guess people talked Azgalor up as some really hard boss for the tank to survive through, but none of our grand total 3 learning wipes where due to tank death - and 1-shot him on our second ever kill.

At least I learnt something out of this thread, I had thought that a warrior would get no where near 75% mitigation whereas a bear tank hits it very easily. Druid generally do make the absolute best OT's with their unique abilities (Feral Charge for example) and being able to go back and DPS reasonably well while still maintaining their raid support (LoTP, Innervate, BRez) - I have even seen our bear pop out and spam max rank HT's when things get hairy.

vorpalblade · 01/17/08, 11:57 AM

Originally Posted by Xei

I miss you Vorp!

At least I learnt something out of this thread, I had thought that a warrior would get no where near 75% mitigation whereas a bear tank hits it very easily. Druid generally do make the absolute best OT's with their unique abilities (Feral Charge for example) and being able to go back and DPS reasonably well while still maintaining their raid support (LoTP, Innervate, BRez) - I have even seen our bear pop out and spam max rank HT's when things get hairy.

Likewise, and I'm glad to hear EF is doing well! I'm sure you'll have Archie and BT down soon

What you stated above is also a big reason that a warrior tank is well suited to Azgalor... He can live through a bad silence on his own (even if it doesn't happen much), and on a fight with a built-in Death touch, every B-Rez counts. That said, we've gotten to the point now where he dies fast enough now that we can finish the fight without having exhausted our rezzes and soulstones, so we're now a bit more open to experimentation on mixing up the tanks.

I guess the main thing to remember is that mitigation isn't necessarily the reason to pick one tank over another, but rather to look at everything you gain and lose by swapping classes. In stark contrast to a Druid, you don't gain a lot of raid utility from a non-tanking prot warrior, but a lot of bears I know get frustrated when they arent allowed to tank fights where they can be just as effective as a warrior, so it's good to throw them a bone. (A [Large Bear Bone] perhaps?)

vorpalblade · 01/17/08, 11:59 AM

Wrong button. Apologies, delete please.

seminarca · 01/17/08, 6:25 PM

Originally Posted by Fellwraith

You do realize warriors can block 100% of an incoming attack, right? The block cap is 100% of incoming damage, not 75% of the incoming attack.

The way it works is that you resolve the base damage, then apply the block value. I.e. if a warrior/paladin somehow has 75% damage reduction from armor, then he can apply his block value on top of that. There's lots of times in lesser instances that a paladin or warrior will fully block an incoming attack (also worth noting that this makes block rating an incredible avoidance stat in these types of instances).

I'm also not sure you can say for certain that the cap is 75% including defensive stance. I'm pretty sure there's only a cap on armor mitigation, not armor + defensive stance. Even with ancestral fortitude, inspiration or imp LOH, you won't be approaching the armor cap with a warrior or paladin at the start of MH/BT.

Of course Warriors can block 100% of an attack, but are you seriously suggesting someone go out and gather 6,000 Block Value to fully block these hits? Keep in mind that the maximum possible Block Value I can see possible from this lootrank filter is 961, 1,221 with the Autoblocker popped (assuming Shield Mastery). And this makes some overall fairly sub optimal gear choices. And nowhere was it assumed that only 75% of an attack can be blocked, if you look at the calculations, Block Value is being applied after mitigation from armor and defensive stance.

The 3rd paragraph: it also wasn't assumed that armor + defensive stance mitigation is capped at 75% it was merely being calculated what values of armor a Warrior would need to effectively reach this mitigation, of course it can go higher. As vorpalblade calculated, capped armor + defensive stance for a Warrior is 77.5% mitigation.

Liar, to be honest I didn't bother digging too deep as to whether Inspiration / Ancestral Fortitude apply to buffs, but it wouldn't surprise me if that assumption was wrong, because the results I'm getting are pretty "out there". I'll see if I can find any definitive information on it, or if someone can clarify that'd be great .. and I'll jiggle the numbers again.

edit: I found an obscure discussion on wowwiki that says it only applies to armor from items.

edit2: Edited the numbers again, Inspiration / Ancestral Fortitude are now only applied to the armor from items (estimated about 500 armor from Agility after raid buffs as well, which is also not multiplied). Our armory Warrior now falls roughly in the following bracket:

35000 Raw Hits
@500 Block Value, armor needed = 19104
@600 Block Value, armor needed = 18755

A lot more reasonable.

edit3: For interest, without Inspiration:

11000 Raw Hits (without Inspiration)
@500 Block Value, armor needed = 19458
@600 Block Value, armor needed = 18370

Inspiration is insane for Warriors. Without it, he can mitigate an 11k raw hit by 75%, with it the threshold increases to 35k raw hit. That's huge.

Influxreptile · 01/17/08, 7:20 PM

, your Warrior won't take that much more damage than the Druid per hit.

Both have roughly the same base avoidance (~38%, Bear Form gets an extra 4% dodge through a talent). The Druid will gain more hp and avoidance from raid buffs than the Warrior will, the Warrior will have much higher chance to be missed (due to higher Defense), with raid buffs we can call it a tie.

Warrior has Shield Wall & Last Stand, Druid will typically have higher threat, both have access to potions/healthstones etc while tanking. Druid can dps if he's not tanking, Warrior can .. well .. debuff and Intervene?

I'd just put the Warrior on Azgalor, get the Druid to DPS, but give the Warrior everything he needs, Improved Devotion aura, Blood Pact, tree aura maybe, make sure he's chugging Ironshields etc. Alternately, if you don't have access to Inspiration or Ancestral Fortitude on the maintank, use the Druid.

edit: Oh, the Warrior will also take 16% less damage from the Rain of Fire.

fakeedit: Prinsesa, didn't mean to come across as an asshole, just wanted to keep the information straight ><

Some remarks here :

-Have I been misinformed by our druids for years or are you wrongly stating here that druids have access to healthstones and potions while in bear form ?

-Personally I disagree on druids typically having more threat than a warrior. Is there any mathematical proof for this ?
If so i'm really interested in this because our druids don't seem to put out more TPS than I do, not to say that they don't even get close.
I'm hit capped and got a decent amount of expertise combined with high block value which according to the spreadsheet should make it possible to get above 1.4k sustained TPS with the ideal rage income and setup. Trinket usage and T5 bonus not included. How would druids fare in theory with about thesame avoidance/mitigation that I have + a decent amount of expertise ?
About the 10% defensive stance reducton : To obtain the exact amount of "armor" mitigation you could for example start with a 30k raw hit, being reduced by 66% armor mitigation (which is the amount i get raid buffed approximately)
which makes the hit go down to 10200. Add my personal average 900 block value (calculated with the gnomeregan trink duration + the t5 bonus) and that goes to 9300. To end with we take 10% of that value which comes down to taking average hits of 8370.
Now if you would have ancestral fortitude or inspiration up 50% of the time I think i'll be about even to an armor capped druid with the advantages of taking less fire damage and having quite the amount of panic buttons which a druid lacks.
On our first tries we had our healers exploding rather often and without (improved) shield wall and last stand and keeping trinkets and pots + hs cd ready to use them in the end we woudn't have had such an easy kill. I agree that this problem gets sorted out later once healers start getting shadow resistance which makes it easier to complete the fight without casualties but if you're just starting i think a warrior is a better choice because of the 15 seconds you practically become immune to damage (with that i mean you can kind of keep yourself up with a hs and pot and last stand even if all healers are dead, assuming you're full damage when you pop shield wall).

My 2 cents about that topic.

Another story : I believe that protection warriors with end-game dps gear can do equal as much dps as a feral druid in a case like kaz'rogal where the regular stuns give you huge amounts of rage which is imo the only reason why protection warriors can't keep up at other fights (like of rage generation to spam dev+hs and hs+ww all the time).
Of course i might be assuming wrong but i've recently won a bet with one of hour feral druids about dps'ing at leotheras in ssc who had comparable dps gear to my own. Of course personal abilities also contribute in who deals out the most damage but I still had the druid surprised as hell ending only under one rogue and one fury warrior. (ok i did cheat a little bit in the end cleaving the shadowform :P, but the difference was big enough to ignore that fact and so i received a nice 500g bonus

). Excuse me for signing

EDIT : I may be wrong and if so feel free to educate me but can druids equal warriors when it comes to avoidance as in parry/dodge/miss vs dodge/miss for the respective classes with end-game gear ? With mongoose up I would get up to 32 dodge and 19 parry which makes 51% and a higher chance to be missed than a druid which should give warriors the advantage no ?

• zeidrich · 01/17/08, 7:27 PM

Sorry to mods about this offtopic post. But Reptile, please fix your profile. You're breaking the forum.

Edit: And don't sign your posts.

seminarca · 01/17/08, 7:47 PM

Originally Posted by Influxreptile

[...]

-Have I been misinformed by our druids for years or are you wrongly stating here that druids have access to healthstones and potions while in bear form ?

-Personally I disagree on druids typically having more threat than a warrior. Is there any mathematical proof for this ?

[...]

About the 10% defensive stance reducton : To obtain the exact amount of "armor" mitigation you could for example start with a 30k raw hit, being reduced by 66% armor mitigation (which is the amount i get raid buffed approximately)
which makes the hit go down to 10200. Add my personal average 900 block value (calculated with the gnomeregan trink duration + the t5 bonus) and that goes to 9300. To end with we take 10% of that value which comes down to taking average hits of 8370.

[...]

Another story : I believe that protection warriors with end-game dps gear can do equal as much dps as a feral druid [...]

1) For years, we haven't had access to potions and healthstones in Bear Form. Although we still cannot use potions and healthstones in Bear Form, Blizzard recently changed shapeshifting mechanics, such that dropping a form and going to caster form happens instantly client side (Without having to wait for server response), and it also doesn't incur a global cooldown (GCD). Consuming a potion or healthstone also doesn't consume a GCD. Therefore, by using a macro like:

/cancelform
/use Super Healing Potion
/use Master Healthstone
/cast Bear Form (Shapeshift)

It is possible for a Druid to shift out of Bear Form, consume the potion and healthstone and instantly shift back into Bear Form, with virtually no risk of getting hit in caster form, since the entire macro executes instantly. This is what I meant when I said Druids have access to potions and healthstones in Bear Form.

2) Threat. I don't know if any modern math exists to prove higher Druid threat, but many on these forums have empirically observed it. The main factors for this are: Warrior threat is highly dependant on static threat values associated with skills (which don't scale with raid buffs at all), Shield Slam (which scales only with Block Value which, again, is not enhanced by raid buffs) and Revenge (again, no scaling, just fixed damage and threat). The portion of Warrior threat which does scale with raid buffs (white damage, HS base damage, Devastate damage etc) either scales at a very low rate and/or comprises a very low percentage of overall threat output. Whereas, Maul and Mangle comprise the lion's share of Druid threat, and both scale really well with raid buffs.

Certainly, 2.3 made this a lot closer, you get 6 free Expertise from talents and your tanking gear is better itemized with both Hit Rating and Expertise. And if you're hit capped with lots of expertise, you're probably optimally (or close to) geared. Warrior threat isn't bad by any means, but at equal gear levels, a Druid should be able to out-threat a Warrior. If I can be arsed to, I might come up with rough numbers later =p

I think Defensive Stance is applied prior to Block Value, so you'd actually take 8280 from the 30k hit ((30000 * (1-0.66) * (1-0.1)) - 900).

If you, as a Protection Warrior, are out-dpsing Feral Druids in dps gear in Cat Form, they might be doing something wrong and would need to work on their dps cycles, gear, talents, whatever. Send them to http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16902-f...id_megathread/ .. they can also pick up tips on improving threat and begin to rival your threat generation.

galzohar · 01/17/08, 8:03 PM

Assuming inspiration/AF are up is kinda wrong, imo, as those will never have 100% uptime, and if your issue is tank dying, you don't want him to die when those buffs wear off do you? So you kinda need to assume they're not up even if they have 90% uptime (unless you can magically get them to be up pretty much all the time which is quite unrealistic).

If your goal is minimum healing required and not maximum survivability, avoidance plays a big role, so no point comparing average damage taken with/without inspiration/AF without considering the misses, dodges and parries as a part of that average as well... At the end you need to decide what you're actually trying to achieve on this fight!

If it's 11k unmitigated is the "break even" point of your decked warrior and your feral druid it really doesn't look good for the warrior on bosses that can't crush. Of course he still has all the other advantages mentioned already, but he definitely won't be the best for "not dying" on any boss where that is actually the issue. Of course deciding if that's actually the issue or not is a completely different discussion.

On a side note, you need to be pretty decked as a warrior to even consider the warrior survivng physical damage better, while ferals can pretty easily reach the armor cap. If I do the math for our secondary MT VS one of our ferals our feral will probably win even on a non-crushing boss by a decent margin...

seminarca · 01/17/08, 8:33 PM

Yeh, agree.

As I said, this was mainly theoretical, under optimal conditions, of course expecting 100% uptime on proc buffs is unrealistic. I knew dropping Inspirating/Ancestral Fortitude would alter the numbers, but I hadn't imagined it would lower the unmitigated hit by as much as it did ><

Xei · 01/17/08, 8:35 PM

Originally Posted by galzohar

Assuming inspiration/AF are up is kinda wrong, imo, as those will never have 100% uptime, and if your issue is tank dying, you don't want him to die when those buffs wear off do you? So you kinda need to assume they're not up even if they have 90% uptime (unless you can magically get them to be up pretty much all the time which is quite unrealistic).

Well, they don't have to be 90% uptime, just during the hairy patches ... spam low rank heals (ie fast, low mana cost) leading into the silence to pray for a quick proc - I'm sure everyone did it back in the Naxx days on Maexxna as well. I guess it was more viable with 5 Shaman and 5 Priests in the raid.

Influxreptile · 01/17/08, 9:02 PM

Originally Posted by seminarca

1) For years, we haven't had access to potions and healthstones in Bear Form. Although we still cannot use potions and healthstones in Bear Form, Blizzard recently changed shapeshifting mechanics, such that dropping a form and going to caster form happens instantly client side (Without having to wait for server response), and it also doesn't incur a global cooldown (GCD). Consuming a potion or healthstone also doesn't consume a GCD. Therefore, by using a macro like:

/cancelform
/use Super Healing Potion
/use Master Healthstone
/cast Bear Form (Shapeshift)

It is possible for a Druid to shift out of Bear Form, consume the potion and healthstone and instantly shift back into Bear Form, with virtually no risk of getting hit in caster form, since the entire macro executes instantly. This is what I meant when I said Druids have access to potions and healthstones in Bear Form.

2) Threat. I don't know if any modern math exists to prove higher Druid threat, but many on these forums have empirically observed it. The main factors for this are: Warrior threat is highly dependant on static threat values associated with skills (which don't scale with raid buffs at all), Shield Slam (which scales only with Block Value which, again, is not enhanced by raid buffs) and Revenge (again, no scaling, just fixed damage and threat). The portion of Warrior threat which does scale with raid buffs (white damage, HS base damage, Devastate damage etc) either scales at a very low rate and/or comprises a very low percentage of overall threat output. Whereas, Maul and Mangle comprise the lion's share of Druid threat, and both scale really well with raid buffs.

Certainly, 2.3 made this a lot closer, you get 6 free Expertise from talents and your tanking gear is better itemized with both Hit Rating and Expertise. And if you're hit capped with lots of expertise, you're probably optimally (or close to) geared. Warrior threat isn't bad by any means, but at equal gear levels, a Druid should be able to out-threat a Warrior. If I can be arsed to, I might come up with rough numbers later =p

I think Defensive Stance is applied prior to Block Value, so you'd actually take 8280 from the 30k hit ((30000 * (1-0.66) * (1-0.1)) - 900).

If you, as a Protection Warrior, are out-dpsing Feral Druids in dps gear in Cat Form, they might be doing something wrong and would need to work on their dps cycles, gear, talents, whatever. Send them to http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16902-f...id_megathread/ .. they can also pick up tips on improving threat and begin to rival your threat generation.

-I'll immediately inform our (non forum reading slacker)-druids about that possibility. I do assume that the risk gets bigger while taking damage from more than 1 mob so it might be less advisable if you are for example tanking 8 ghouls at MH trash or any other combination of fast hitting mobs ? Or this the chance really virtually 0 as in for example 0.01% which would make it still viable if 100 mobs are hitting you at thesame time

. Nonetheless a great "buff" to tanking druids that is.

-Ok for the things i've marked in bold characters.

1)Warrior threat is highly dependant on static threat values
I will partially agree, but though I've proven that most encounters can be tanked by purely using heroic strike and devastate (tested this on gruul/magtheridon/fathom-lord (shaman add)) and naj'entus so far. It still allows you to get around 900 TPS on the average which combined with 2 hunters misdirecting you each cooldown should get you around 1k realistic average TPS. As devastate does scale with upgearing/raidbuffs this does get boosted later on. You are right about the fact that devastate is only half weapon damage + a fixed amount so the scaling is half as good. Keep in mind though that the 1k attack power or more that druids have on their weapon also does not scale with any raid buffs while warriors will never have any pure "ap" stats on their gear. Heroic strike though scales fully with raid buffs.
Besides that warriors have greater benefits of raid buffs such as windfury totem which could give them the edge in the discussion about which class being the best at threat generation.
As an offtank with only small amounts of rage incoming from damage taken I'll admit that druids are in theory the better choice (though rage potions do make up for it a bit). I'll probably have to conclude out of this that our feral druids just aren't playing their class in the best possible way, sadly enough.

2)Shield Slam (which scales only with Block Value, correct. But keep in mind that 1 block value on your gear already supplies 1.3 actual block value and is the actual damage increase on your shield slam. With 59 block value on the badge leggings this comes down to a raw 76.7 damage increase on your shield slam. I don't think the value of block points should be underestimated since i doubt you'll get thesame raw damage increase from for example 60 attack power as a druid. Surely not when measured in %dps increase per ap. I may be wrong here though.

3) Revenge (again, no scaling, just fixed damage and threat. I fully agree at this point and unfortunately this will eventually lead to devastate generating more tps than revenge and therefor making devastate the better choice if rage isn't the issue. I don't know if this is possible yet in theory though. I reckon a tank using the MH-azzinoth blade would do more threat with devastate than with revenge. Which leads me to a personal question. Of course I agree on giving your dps the blades first, but isn't the main hand blade actually the best tanking weapon aswel when it comes to threat generation ? Yes, it's slow but the maxdmg is huge and scales with devastate/heroic strike. The stats on it make it as viable as blazefury is with a high amount of stamina, some hit and a decent amount of agility while the ap is just a small bonus.

4) I think Defensive Stance is applied prior to Block Value, I checked this and you're correct here. My mistake.
Still I find it rather hard to believe that a druid's avoidance will keep up with a warrior at end-game t6 quality gear. I'm more geared in the "aggressive" tanking style on an every day fight but i still manage to get around 50% combined parry and dodge raid buffed and a bit more even on average with mongoose proccing rather often. That plus the fact that warriors have more "to be missed" chance thanks to their higher defence should leave any druid behind when it comes to pure avoidance.

seminarca · 01/17/08, 10:04 PM

Originally Posted by Influxreptile

[...]

1) The 1k Attack Power on Druid weapons scales with Unleashed Rage. Windfury totem is a solid threat boost for Warriors for sure.

2) Shield Slam probably does scale better per itemization point (spending equivalent amounts on Block Value & Strength), but you're pretty much constrained by the gear available to you. There are no Block Value gems and many high end Warriors I've seen average 500-600 Block Value. In fact, your profile is one of highest Block Values I've seen, 654 normal, 784 with 2T5 bonus, 914 with Autoblocker and 1044 with both. The trend seems to be that'll peter off as you move deeper into T6. Out of curiosity, are you wearing Attumen bracers by choice for more Block Value or because you haven't had any upgrades drop?

3) I read some discussions on slow vs fast weapons for maximising Devastate or HS threat, but this was at least 6 months ago. Their conclusion was that it's better to go fast to maximise HS threat. The recent Devastate changes could alter that conclusion.

4) Avoidance has been discussed recently as well. Druid tanking exists in various ranges between two extremes: maximising Stamina and maximising Agility. I am of the former camp (all +12 Stam gems minus a few here or there to get a useful socket bonus), and my dodge when raid buffed is still ~50%+ at mid-T5 level (no Vashj/Kael). Druids in the Agility camp go much higher than this since our Agility to Dodge ratio is great (14.7 Agi per 1% Dodge). Of course a Warrior's chance to be missed will be higher, but I don't think there's a huge difference in pure avoidance between the two classes.

Roywyn · 01/17/08, 10:14 PM

Originally Posted by Influxreptile

I reckon a tank using the MH-azzinoth blade would do more threat with devastate than with revenge. Which leads me to a personal question. Of course I agree on giving your dps the blades first, but isn't the main hand blade actually the best tanking weapon aswel when it comes to threat generation ? Yes, it's slow but the maxdmg is huge and scales with devastate/heroic strike. The stats on it make it as viable as blazefury is with a high amount of stamina, some hit and a decent amount of agility while the ap is just a small bonus.

It is slow, yes. This leads to higher devastate hits.
But you cannot use heroic strike as often, which is why every tank picks fast weapons, not slow ones. Bear in mind that Devastate is not normalised.

Napkin math: 100 DPS 2.8s weapon vs. 1.4s weapon (non dagger).
Devastate - you hit for 100DPS*(2.8s-1.4s)*1/2 (Dev is half normalised damage) = 70 more each GCD
Heroic Strike - the slow weapon does 1 HS every 2.8s, the fast one does 2 every 2.8s. So you lose 176 bonus damage every 2.8s and the 196 bonus theat every 2.8s.
Add armour, parries/dodges, defensive stance, and you'll look at 100+ TPS lost by using a slow weapon.

From what I read, using a 1.5s or slower dagger will reduce devastate damage a lot (1.7s instead of 2.4s AP speed modifier), but the increase to your HS TPS makes up for it roughly. Not sure of the details.
But weapon speed has a pretty large impact on high-rage situations where you can spam HS.

Originally Posted by Influxreptile

1)Warrior threat is highly dependant on static threat values
As an offtank with only small amounts of rage incoming from damage taken I'll admit that druids are in theory the better choice (though rage potions do make up for it a bit). I'll probably have to conclude out of this that our feral druids just aren't playing their class in the best possible way, sadly enough.

On Gruul, our warrior hurtful off-tank was struggling to build enough threat for melee. Our druid hurtful off-tank got salvation and even then had to hold back to not outthreat our main tank.

Warrior threat scales with hit and expertise mostly. Crit as well, but it doesn't affect static threat bonuses. Block value feels more like a bonus. If you increase it by 400 from blues to endgear, you increase your TPS by 100 at most. Your DPSers threat will increase in completely different leagues.

Influxreptile · 01/18/08, 3:37 AM

2) Shield Slam probably does scale better per itemization point (spending equivalent amounts on Block Value & Strength), but you're pretty much constrained by the gear available to you. There are no Block Value gems and many high end Warriors I've seen average 500-600 Block Value. In fact, your profile is one of highest Block Values I've seen, 654 normal, 784 with 2T5 bonus, 914 with Autoblocker and 1044 with both. The trend seems to be that'll peter off as you move deeper into T6. Out of curiosity, are you wearing Attumen bracers by choice for more Block Value or because you haven't had any upgrades drop?

Well, since the Naj'entus bracers haven't dropped yet i prefer keeping these for now. Block value will remain about thesame though if I replace T5 head with T6 head after swapping bracers. I used to have even more block value before I replaced Devilshark cape with pepe's shroud of pacification and as soon as Girdle of Stability drops it will rise again to higher numbers. Of course I understand if some people disagree on some of my gear choices but so far healers still prefer me over any of our other warr/feral tanks when it comes to having the "easiest" time.

Letarian · 02/14/08, 5:02 PM

Regarding magic damage:

Druids have a talent which gives 15% AOE avoidance.

Against AOE magic damage, druids will only take 1% more damage than warriors (or 0.4% if defensive stance and imp. defensve stance stack multiplicativey as stated earlier in the thread)

Against single target magic damage, druids will take 16% more damage than warriors.

EDIT: I think that some boss moves which do physical damage also count as AOE's, which gives additional physical avoidance for druids in some situations.