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Old 11/23/08, 6:28 PM   #1
A Man In Black
Von Kaiser
 
Gnome Warrior
 
Silver Hand
Parryhaste and raid bosses

Are we sure that bosses still parry haste? I've been seeing rumor-ish posts here and on Tankspot that it may be gone, on most or all bosses, and I'm having difficulty actually finding examples of parryhaste in Naxx WWSes. Instead, I'm seeing swings consistently falling within the margin of latency, whereas the parryhaste was clear on previous bosses, particularly some of Kara's.

A Faerlina example, from this Disbanded WWS:
18:41'17.734
Grand Widow Faerlina attack was dodged by Slymeran.
18:41'18.359
Slymeran Shield Slam was parried by Grand Widow Faerlina.
18:41'19.765
Grand Widow Faerlina attack misses Slymeran.


18:41'58.406
Grand Widow Faerlina melee swing hits Slymeran for 7356 Physical. (2118 Blocked)
18:41'58.547
Slymeran Devastate was parried by Grand Widow Faerlina.
18:42'00.812
Grand Widow Faerlina melee swing hits Slymeran for 8978 Physical.

A Patchwerk example, from the DK tanking discussion here on EJ:
12:56'16.938 - Patchwerk Melee
12:56'17.885 - Patchwerk Parries
12:56'17.885 - Patchwerk Melee
12:56'18.769 - Patchwerk Melee


13:12'54.798 Grobbulus melee swing hits Canns for 10658 Physical.
13:12'55.555 Canns attack was parried by Grobbulus.
13:12'56.798 Grobbulus attack was dodged by Canns.
13:12'57.085 Canns Heroic Strike was parried by Grobbulus.
13:12'58.816 Grobbulus attack was dodged by Canns.
13:13'00.814 Grobbulus melee swing hits Canns for 4188 Physical. (1556 Blocked) (4194 Absorbed)
13:13'02.714 Canns Heroic Strike was parried by Grobbulus.
13:13'02.835 Grobbulus melee swing hits Canns for 6023 Physical. (3112 Blocked)
13:13'04.835 Grobbulus melee swing hits Canns for 7609 Physical. (3112 Blocked)
13:13'06.846 Grobbulus melee swing hits Canns for 9619 Physical.
13:13'09.437 Grobbulus melee swing hits Canns for 9977 Physical.
13:13'11.915 Grobbulus melee swing hits Canns for 9971 Physical.
13:13'13.877 Grobbulus melee swing hits Canns for 9568 Physical.

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Old 11/23/08, 10:37 PM   #2
Montegomery
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Sutiru
Undead Warrior
 
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It seems very likely, given the data, that parry haste has been removed. This doesn't surprise me given that the precise nature of the mechanic was unintuitive and it made expertise arguably the best tanking stat. While the change has no major implications for melee DPS it would obviously have implications for what stats tanks look for.

Effectively, Strength will be the only stat left with strong threat and mitigation components for most tanks (save Feral Druids, who instead have Agility).

What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.

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Old 11/24/08, 12:07 PM   #3
 frmorrison
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Ashstorm
Human Paladin
 
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It seems the "parry flag" has been turned on for at least some of the Naax bosses.

Interested to see 5-man logs, to see if parry haste is gone or just the flag is turned on.

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Old 11/24/08, 12:43 PM   #4
Montegomery
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Sutiru
Undead Warrior
 
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Originally Posted by frmorrison View Post
It seems the "parry flag" has been turned on for at least some of the Naax bosses.

Interested to see 5-man logs, to see if parry haste is gone or just the flag is turned on.
When you say "on" do you mean that an active flag denotes a boss with parry haste or vice versa? Have you seen post-expansion WWS that show any particular bosses who still have parry haste?

What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.

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Old 11/24/08, 1:29 PM   #5
okkita
Von Kaiser
 
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Orc Death Knight
 
The Maelstrom (EU)
VERY interested on this. I think it'd be a sweeping change if they did in fact remove parry-haste.

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Old 11/24/08, 6:01 PM   #6
Andrast
DFTBA
 
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Draenei Shaman
 
Frostmourne
Originally Posted by Darian_TruBlade View Post
When you say "on" do you mean that an active flag denotes a boss with parry haste or vice versa? Have you seen post-expansion WWS that show any particular bosses who still have parry haste?
It was assumed that there is a flag since they removed parry-hasting from bosses such as Halazzi, Brutallus and Mother. We are trying to figure out if parry-hasting still exists so any example from any mob in Northrend would be interesting. Currently we have none.

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Old 11/25/08, 7:06 AM   #7
Ati
Glass Joe
 
Human Death Knight
 
Shadowsong (EU)
I'm also very interested to see whether this is gone or not. It will be easier to achieve nice avoidance stats. I could try some testing on normal mobs once I get home.

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Old 11/25/08, 1:51 PM   #8
Montegomery
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Sutiru
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Originally Posted by Andrast View Post
It was assumed that there is a flag since they removed parry-hasting from bosses such as Halazzi, Brutallus and Mother. We are trying to figure out if parry-hasting still exists so any example from any mob in Northrend would be interesting. Currently we have none.
That's not exactly what I was getting at. frmorrison was rather vague when he talked about turning a flag on for some Naxx bosses. Intuitively turning a flag on would activate something, which made it sound as though he was claiming some specific bosses in Naxx have parry haste. This would have immediately, with evidence, clarified whether parry haste was removed entirely or from specific bosses.

Now I may simply not have been privy to some past conversation about the bosses you mentioned wherein everyone settled on this way of phrasing the conversation, but for anyone who wasn't a part of that conversation it's a very confusing way to frame the discussion. Functionally speaking there's no difference, it just goes against the common usage of flags.

What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.

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Old 11/25/08, 4:26 PM   #9
Gort
Don Flamenco
 
Blood Elf Death Knight
 
Hyjal
Originally Posted by Darian_TruBlade View Post
That's not exactly what I was getting at. frmorrison was rather vague when he talked about turning a flag on for some Naxx bosses. Intuitively turning a flag on would activate something, which made it sound as though he was claiming some specific bosses in Naxx have parry haste. This would have immediately, with evidence, clarified whether parry haste was removed entirely or from specific bosses.

Now I may simply not have been privy to some past conversation about the bosses you mentioned wherein everyone settled on this way of phrasing the conversation, but for anyone who wasn't a part of that conversation it's a very confusing way to frame the discussion. Functionally speaking there's no difference, it just goes against the common usage of flags.

Actually, the flag specifically refers to the ability of those bosses to have their attacks hasted. It may be related to how they parry--I'm afraid I don't recall--but regardless, the net effect is "bosses with this flag set do not haste their attacks". This has been historically done to enraging/hard-hitting bosses such as Patchwerk, Halazzi, Mother, and so forth, where the normal attacks are so strong that a haste will tend to gib the tank, leaving success in part to RNG effect.

In this case, the implication would therefore be "specific bosses in Naxx have had their parry haste capability removed", which makes sense given the nature of the particular encounters.



I would suspect, given Blizzard's openness about other mechanics changes such as crush removal, their specific statements that DK DW tanking was discouraged due to parries among other things, diminishing returns, etc, that there has been no change to the haste mechanic.

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Old 11/25/08, 5:29 PM   #10
Ati
Glass Joe
 
Human Death Knight
 
Shadowsong (EU)
Originally Posted by Gort View Post
I would suspect, given Blizzard's openness about other mechanics changes such as crush removal, their specific statements that DK DW tanking was discouraged due to parries among other things, diminishing returns, etc, that there has been no change to the haste mechanic.
Where did you read that statement, I must have missed it..

From what I can see on normal mobs, they do not parry haste. Unequipped my weapon, spent minutes beating on different mobs and none of them seem to speed up when they parry my attacks. I'm to low to test it out in a raid environment.

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Old 11/25/08, 5:44 PM   #11
Enova
Great Tiger
 
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Night Elf Hunter
 
Moonglade (EU)
It would be interesting to try a reverse approach, and see if at least players can trigger haste effects when they parry.

I'm going to try and get myself [The Blackrock Slicer] and some parry gear, find a willing healer and spec my warrior out of Flurry, then start auto attacking on the Blasted Lands mobs.

Originally Posted by XI- View Post
In summary, TBC raiding is easy. 9/10 encounters can be summarized with 1 phrase. Stay out of the fucking fire. If this is too difficult BWL was still there last I checked, so go have at it for some practice.
Originally Posted by Kaubel View Post
You people are idiots
Guilty as charged ^

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Old 11/25/08, 6:13 PM   #12
Gort
Don Flamenco
 
Blood Elf Death Knight
 
Hyjal
Originally Posted by Ati View Post
Where did you read that statement, I must have missed it..

From what I can see on normal mobs, they do not parry haste. Unequipped my weapon, spent minutes beating on different mobs and none of them seem to speed up when they parry my attacks. I'm to low to test it out in a raid environment.
References:

Weapon choice, from here:
Our intentions are for Death Knights to tank with two-handed DPS weapons, but we want dual-wielding to be viable as well, so we are not going to prevent you from tanking with two tanking swords for an example. If it turns out that all Death Knights choose dual-wielding for tanking, then we will of course do something about that, like for an example making the +parry rune enchants only work on two-handed weapons to compensate for the lack of mitigation on two-handed weapons.

This should not be interpreted as threat towards those of you who prefer to dual-wield, but we are simply not interested in seeing every Death Knight tank with dual-wielding weapons.
Parry haste, from here:
I don't think the parry speed up should be a major factor in 5-player instances. It may come into play in some raid encounters, but without crushing blows you shouldn't hit too many big number in a row even in those cases.

Now it is possible that DK mitigation is just too low. It isn't our intent that you go put together an awesome tanking set while leveling up to do Nexus and Halls of Stone. We are tuning those instances so that you don't need them, but also realize that a lot of people who are running them now are doing so in Sunwell gear and are basing their experiences on that.

We recently made some changes to improve DK tankining.

Thanks for the feedback.

If there has been something to contradict/negate these statements, I am unaware of it. Frankly, from the latter one, I think any class-specificity is irrelevant, as they specifically mention the ability in terms of its continued existence.

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Old 11/25/08, 6:14 PM   #13
Lazare
Piston Honda
 
Human Priest
 
Lightbringer
Originally Posted by Gort View Post
Actually, the flag specifically refers to the ability of those bosses to have their attacks hasted. It may be related to how they parry--I'm afraid I don't recall--but regardless, the net effect is "bosses with this flag set do not haste their attacks". This has been historically done to enraging/hard-hitting bosses such as Patchwerk, Halazzi, Mother, and so forth, where the normal attacks are so strong that a haste will tend to gib the tank, leaving success in part to RNG effect.

In this case, the implication would therefore be "specific bosses in Naxx have had their parry haste capability removed", which makes sense given the nature of the particular encounters.
If "the flag specifically refers to the ability of those bosses to have their attacks hasted", as you say, then - logically - turning the flag on would mean that those bosses did have their attacks hasted by parry. For clarity we should either talk about how "Halazzi had the parry-haste flag turned off" or "Halazzi had the no-parry-haste flag turned on". Trying to mix ideas, as both you and frmorrison have done, is only going to be confusing.

More to the point, I think Enova's approach has a good chance of settling this fast. If players no longer benefit from parry haste, it's good odds that no mobs do. Although if that change has been made, it raises the question of whether its a bug; it's a surprisingly big change to be made without comment. Also, I believe parry and dodge still have different costs in the item budget; without parry haste that no longer makes much sense.

Edit: Nevermind about pet positioning. I get confused easily.

Last edited by Lazare : 11/25/08 at 9:41 PM.

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Old 11/25/08, 8:05 PM   #14
Darkmantle
King Hippo
 
Gnome Warlock
 
Spinebreaker
Originally Posted by Lazare View Post
..also this would make the positioning code on pets to make them attack from behind completely pointless as well, doesn't it?
From the perspective of tank deaths, yes. From the perspective of pets not dying to cleaves and not having parried attacks, no.

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Old 11/25/08, 8:29 PM   #15
A Man In Black
Von Kaiser
 
Gnome Warrior
 
Silver Hand
Originally Posted by Lazare View Post
If "the flag specifically refers to the ability of those bosses to have their attacks hasted", as you say, then - logically - turning the flag on would mean that those bosses did have their attacks hasted by parry. For clarity we should either talk about how "Halazzi had the parry-haste flag turned off" or "Halazzi had the no-parry-haste flag turned on". Trying to mix ideas, as both you and frmorrison have done, is only going to be confusing.

More to the point, I think Enova's approach has a good chance of settling this fast. If players no longer benefit from parry haste, it's good odds that no mobs do. Although if that change has been made, it raises the question of whether its a bug; it's a surprisingly big change to be made without comment. Also, I believe parry and dodge still have different costs in the item budget; without parry haste that no longer makes much sense. ...also this would make the positioning code on pets to make them attack from behind completely pointless as well, doesn't it?
Why don't we just say "Bosses parry-haste" or "Bosses do not parry-haste"? All this nonsense about flags just confuses things.

If parry-haste is gone for PCs, the only benefit of parry is that it has separate diminishing returns.

As for pets attacking from behind, all melee DPS should still DPS from behind, parry-haste or no, because of cleaves, cone attacks, and the fact that parried attacks (which can only be parried from the front) don't do any damage.

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Old 11/25/08, 8:40 PM   #16
Gort
Don Flamenco
 
Blood Elf Death Knight
 
Hyjal
Originally Posted by A Man In Black View Post
Why don't we just say "Bosses parry-haste" or "Bosses do not parry-haste"? All this nonsense about flags just confuses things.

If parry-haste is gone for PCs, the only benefit of parry is that it has separate diminishing returns.

As for pets attacking from behind, all melee DPS should still DPS from behind, parry-haste or no, because of cleaves, cone attacks, and the fact that parried attacks (which can only be parried from the front) don't do any damage.

Because the ability of bosses to do that is a granular ability that can be individually toggled by Blizzard. As such, the discussion about whether or not an individual boss has a particular flag, i.e. "whether a particular boss has their attacks hasted by parry mechanics", which is entirely unrelated to the ability of any other boss to do the same.

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Old 11/25/08, 9:14 PM   #17
Andrast
DFTBA
 
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Draenei Shaman
 
Frostmourne
Originally Posted by A Man In Black View Post
Why don't we just say "Bosses parry-haste" or "Bosses do not parry-haste"? All this nonsense about flags just confuses things.

If parry-haste is gone for PCs, the only benefit of parry is that it has separate diminishing returns.

As for pets attacking from behind, all melee DPS should still DPS from behind, parry-haste or no, because of cleaves, cone attacks, and the fact that parried attacks (which can only be parried from the front) don't do any damage.
It is important because Patchwerk may not parry-haste but Faerlina might.

It is important because tanks can change their gear around for Patchwerk to include more stam and avoidance/mitigation and not stack expertise because, if there is no parry-haste, on Patchwerk expertise goes from being both a threat and mitigation stat to simply a threat stat.

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Old 11/26/08, 12:34 PM   #18
Enova
Great Tiger
 
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Night Elf Hunter
 
Moonglade (EU)
Originally Posted by Lazare View Post
More to the point, I think Enova's approach has a good chance of settling this fast. If players no longer benefit from parry haste, it's good odds that no mobs do. Although if that change has been made, it raises the question of whether its a bug; it's a surprisingly big change to be made without comment. Also, I believe parry and dodge still have different costs in the item budget; without parry haste that no longer makes much sense.
I'll hopefully get to do it tonight when I get back from the University, but I don't mind if somebody else beats me to it. But even if players will benefit from parry haste, there's nothing to indicate that bosses will as well. It certainly wouldn't be the first time there are differences in the way attacks work.

Originally Posted by XI- View Post
In summary, TBC raiding is easy. 9/10 encounters can be summarized with 1 phrase. Stay out of the fucking fire. If this is too difficult BWL was still there last I checked, so go have at it for some practice.
Originally Posted by Kaubel View Post
You people are idiots
Guilty as charged ^

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Old 11/26/08, 4:15 PM   #19
Imari
Glass Joe
 
Undead Priest
 
Frostmourne
Looking at that WWS linked in the top post it seems like at least some bosses are still parry-hasting.

I took the raw combat logs through WWS a boss fight at at time, and filtered them using

source=BOSSNAME and event="swing_missed" or source=BOSSNAME and event="swing_damage"
This gives you a nice list of the boss swings and lets you scan easily for parry thrashes. Like THIS. You then have to check the raw log for actual parries, but more often than not there's one in there somewhere. For example:

19:21'47.203	Heigan the Unclean attack was dodged by Slymeran.
19:21'47.219	Neyzie attack misses Heigan the Unclean.
19:21'47.531	Flateous attack was parried by Heigan the Unclean.
19:21'47.922	Heigan the Unclean melee swing hits Slymeran for 4990 Physical. (1059 Blocked) (2019 Absorbed)

19:33'17.031	Loatheb melee swing hits Slymeran for 1083 Physical. (1874 Blocked)
19:33'17.140	Fumanchoo attack was parried by Loatheb.
19:33'17.187	Slymeran attack was parried by Loatheb.
19:33'17.312	Loatheb melee swing hits Slymeran for 682 Physical. (1874 Blocked)

22:34'44.203	Kel’Thuzad attack was parried by Slymeran.
22:34'44.344	Neyzie attack was parried by Kel’Thuzad.
22:34'44.344	Xyrm attack was parried by Kel’Thuzad.
22:34'44.609	Flateous attack was parried by Kel’Thuzad.
22:34'44.656	Kel’Thuzad attack was dodged by Slymeran.
I may have filtered it wrong or something, and I know very little about the boss mechanics so there may be something going on there, but those are some pretty quick swings. From this I would conclude that at least SOME bosses still parry-haste, if not all.

P.S. I'm sure someone smarter than me can figure out how to filter it down to a simple list of boss swings and player parries, but I just couldn't get it to work.

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Old 11/26/08, 4:59 PM   #20
Wednesday
I'm a fool about my…
 
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Wednesday
Worgen Druid
 
No WoW Account
Is this a side effect of the heart-strike debuff stroke, or is parry-haste based on a different mechanic than generic haste?

ed. Disregard, my own dumb fault for not looking at your WWS.

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Old 11/26/08, 5:57 PM   #21
 nathanbp
Great Tiger
 
Gnome Mage
 
Aegwynn
Blue says (World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Parry Hasting - Was it removed?):
Originally Posted by Daelo
The reduced swing time for a creature's next swing after it successfully parries an attack still exists in the game, and the vast majority of all creatures in WoW use the mechanic. Note that we have the ability to flag specific creatures to not be affected by this mechanic if we so choose for balance purposes. An example of such a creature would be Patchwerk, a very high melee damage dealing raid boss.
From that I'd assume that most bosses still have parry-haste.

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Old 11/27/08, 8:01 PM   #22
A Man In Black
Von Kaiser
 
Gnome Warrior
 
Silver Hand
Looks like the perception that parryhasting was gone, at least on my part, was because the easy-to-evaluate-in-a-WWS bosses (Maexxna, Patchwerk) simply have it turned off.

Oh well.

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Old 11/28/08, 6:00 AM   #23
Spookeh
Von Kaiser
 
Tauren Druid
 
Emerald Dream (EU)
So... I guess we need to eventually compile a list of which bosses do/don't parry haste, so you know when to equip your expertise gear?

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Old 11/28/08, 10:46 AM   #24
Berthold
Piston Honda
 
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Worgen Druid
 
Madmortem (EU)
Parry Haste and the Maintank: Some Numbers and Graphs on Survivability

Hi There,

coming from the DK front, I needed info about the importance of parryhaste for MT survivability. (Especially because DW tanking is a hot topic right now) The first part is a bit heavy on DKs, but later on other tanks should find useful (socketing) information.

I wrote a small simulator, that does typical melee combat (tank vs. Boss) including weaponswings and parryhaste and analyses the survivability for given settings.

Global Setting:
  1. The Boss: Typical melee hard-hitting Boss (~9k Basedmg), 2.0 attack speed with a special attack roughly every ~ 10 secs (1.5*Basedmg). 15% parry
  2. The MT: 30k HP, 50% avoidance (including 15% playerparry) and different tanking weapons. Every 1.9 second a special melee attack in addition to the auto attack.
  3. The Raid: I only modeled the healers for this tool. A typical healsetup consists of a priest spamming greater heal (10k), a paladin flashhealing (4k) and some hots from druids/etc (1200 hps). There are other options, but that should be a quite realistic assumption about the overall incoming heal for a lot of fights.
The tool now simulates 20k tries on this boss and measures how many tries end with a wipe, i.e., MT death.

The following graphs now compare different weaponchoices (stats and weaponspeed) at different amounts of bossparry (15/10/5/0):
  1. DK DW (2x Broken Promise)
  2. DK DW (Broken Promise / Slayer of the Lifeless)
  3. DK 2H (Inevitable Defeat)
  4. WAR 1H + Shield (Slayer of the Lifeless, Hero's Surrender)


It is *no* conclusion that DK tanking is superior to warrior tanking - I did not model block at all. So no comparison possible. I assume the small gap is closed by blocking and they will perform quite similar.
Instead, we clearly can see that Dual Wielding below the expertise cap is a ... not so smart idea.

So. Coming to a wider audience. Does it make sense to lower the expertise cap to increase the survivability?
Same tool. This time comparing socketing options. 15 gem slots filled with:
24 sta / 16 expertise / 16 dodge / 8 exp+ 12 Sta


Although parrygib is a problem for maintanking, we can see that a huge amount of stamina gives higher benefit than reducing the boss's chance to parry.

All these conclusions are only valid for hard-hitting bosses. In the case of fast-hitting bosses, parry haste shouldn't be such a big problem anyways. If the MT can take 6 hits, one or two hasted hits are not such a big problem than if the MT can only take 2 hits.

So my (personal) conclusions?
Deathknights: stay away from DW for tanking.
Maintanks: expertise is nice to have but I would not socket for it. Stamina is, once again, a better socketing option for hard hitters (c.f.Graphing Tank Damage / Life tables )

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

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Old 11/30/08, 1:27 PM   #25
PsiVen
Don Flamenco
 
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Dwarf Paladin
 
Kilrogg
Do death knights really send out a melee special every 1.9 seconds? Also Rune Strike will make a big difference.

On a raid level, you can essentially choose the class of your tank. Paladins have heaps of innate expertise and no melee specials (unless Deflects cause haste), Druids and Warriors spam parryable attacks the entire time, and Deathknights have the ability to live somewhere in between. So I wouldn't worry too much about making exact comparisons between the classes.

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