Kenco: A Guide To Threat. - Page 3

Whiteknight · 12/07/06, 8:02 PM

I don't trust the wow forums to keep that post for long enough to serve as a reference. Including a quote here:

Originally Posted by Lavina

As part of the patchday boredom and desire to do something useful; we decided to check out some of the abilities that make warrior tanking to what it is. Together with Enkidu (Emerald DreamEU) and Roywyn (Argent DawnEU) who actually took the effort of getting high end test characters, the orcs of the Blasted Lands were not safe to our giggling and eternal teasing.

Some of these values may prove useful to people on the test realms.

We've uncovered the threat values of the following abilities:

Sunder Rank 5 (pre-60) 261 threat (confirmed)
Sunder Rank 6 (lvl 68) 301,5 301,045-301,56 threat
Heroic Strike Rank 10 (lvl 66) 196 195.4 - 196.9 threat
Devastate Rank 1 (lvl 50) 73 72,8-73.4 threat
Devastate Rank 2 (lvl 60) 47 46.66-47.64 threat
Devastate Rank 3 (lvl 70) 27 26.84-27.12 threat
Shield Slam Rank 5 (lvl 66) .. oops forgot.. move along, nothing to see.
Shield Slam Rank 6 (lvl 70) 307 303.4-312.5 threat
Revenge Rank 7 (lvl 63) 371 370.3-373.11 threat
Revenge Rank 8 (lvl 70) 417 414.73-418.23 threat
Shield Bash Rank 4 (lvl 64) 230 228.2-231.7 threat
Demoralizing Shout Rank 6 (lvl 62).. oops I did it again
Demoralizing Shout Rank 7(lvl 70) 56 55.24-56.11 threat (No difference for talents)
Cleave Rank 6 (lvl 68) 130 129.84-131.23 threat for main target 60 57.8-61.5 threat for secondary target
Battleshout Rank 7 (lvl 60) 30 29.2-30.2 threat (Threat no longer applies to each buffed member, just yourself)
Battleshout Rank 8 (lvl 69) 69 68.5-69.3 threat (Threat no longer applies to each buffed member, just yourself)
Commanding Shout (lvl 68) 68 64.3-68.5 threat (Same policy as BS for buffing purposes)
Disarm 104 103.83-105.91 threat
Mocking Blow Rank 6 290 283,3-298,4 threat
Spell Reflect (lvl 64) 0 threat
Piercing Howl 0 threat
Concussion Blow 0 threat

Main conclusions:
Battleshout tanking is no longer possible
Devastate threat has been scaled reversedly, making the purchase or Devastate rank 2 and 3 making the purchase of Devastate rank 2 and 3 not so much of a buff. The damage increase does not outweigh the innate threat caused until two sunders have been applied.

Discussion:
For tanks, attack power will drop to about 600 unbuffed, whereas it's around 800 currently. This doomvision can be seen in full Kharazhanish tanking gear.
Sunder Armor threat is hilarious compared to the dps increase of other classes; please make it scale with something (and please not attackpower, as that will only reduce it's effectiveness with current tanking gear design.) Devastate in it's current form is no solution to the problem as some hope. (Nor should it be, so please balance warrior basic threat generation.)

Disclaimer: Experiments have been performed on the beta server. Some things may have changed on the PTR. Several abilities may be missing; unpayed service comes with lots of recklessess :)

Lavina Darkspark

Kenco · 12/08/06, 7:26 AM

Demoralising Shout threat is now splitting like healing. Did some rough testing, tank pulls n mobs, does 10 demo shouts. Within 30 or so threat, it took the same ammount of healing to pull off 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10 mobs. (just using lesser heal).

Whiteknight · 12/08/06, 9:05 AM

Yeah, I can attest to that. We did some testing in MC tonight. Our normal strategy is to have one warrior offtank all 8 Garr babies with demo shout while the raid kills Garr. Aggro is normally really solid - now healers pull mobs off the tank in groups of 3-4 after a couple of heals.

Really quite a disappointing change.

Roana · 12/09/06, 6:24 AM

I've done some testing on Thunder Clap, and it appears that either the innate threat value for the base skill has been raised or that Improved Thunder Clap increases the innate threat of Thunder Clap. I cannot say for certain which it is, because I have the talent and wasn't going to spend the gold for a respec.

Right now, after tests, I'd peg the innate threat of Improved Thunder Clap at somewhere between 245-250; unlike Demoralizing Shout, it is not diminished when hitting several targets. Of course, being a Battle Stance ability, Thunder Clap is affected by the Battle Stance threat penalty. So, assuming mobs with 30% damage mitigation, Improved Thunder Clap produces about (206*0.7+245)*0.8 = 311 points of threat per application and mob. This is more than five times of what a single Demoralizing Shout in Defensive Stance with Defiance would do pre-patch, but limited to four mobs. The same innate threat may also apply to non-improved Thunder Clap, but currently I have no evidence for that.

In related news, the current threat of Growl (hunter pet ability) seems to generate at least twice the threat it should normally do. I don't have precise numbers (just parsing combat logs from an instance run for this), but rank 7 Growl seems to generate pretty close to 1000 points of damage worth of threat (give or take a couple hundred points). This appears to be a bug, and according to the beta hunter forums has already been changed back in the current beta, though the increased value is still on live.

Edit: Clarified a point.

Whiteknight · 12/09/06, 7:56 PM

I had a little time on my hands this afternoon, so I took my paladin and warlock out to Northridge Lumber Camp in WPL to measure paladin heal threat.

My test involved Lifetapping down to around 800hp on my Warlock and then bodypulling a Scarlet Lumberjack. I cast Holy Light on the Warlock to pull the mob off her. This placed the Paladin at heal-threat on the hate list, with the Warlock at 0. I then hit the Lumberjack with a stick till it switched back to the Warlock and wrote down the numbers.

I ran the test a number of times verifying the 1hp healed = 0.25damage worth of threat for a Paladin (other healers are 0.5damage). Then I popped up (untalented) Righteous Fury and repeated the test, getting numbers like the following:

No Righteous Fury:
2005 hp healed, 561 damage to pull aggro.
561/1.1 = 510 (10% aggro threshold at melee range)
561/3005 = 25.4%

With (untalented) Righteous Fury:
1975 hp healed, 879 damage to pull aggro.
879/1.1 = 799 (10% aggro threshold at melee range)
799/1975 = 40.45%

Note: 25% * 1.6 (righteous fury hate modifier) = 40%

I repeated the test till I was satisfied it is reproducible.

So Righteous Fury definitely affects paladin heal hate.

[edit: I've updated the document to reflect this information]

Quigon · 12/09/06, 9:20 PM

Are the values above in defensive stance? What about damage after-the-fact? Its been a while since I saw a list that actually gave practical values, like guestimating shield block values and incorporating that, and then threat per rage. I just guess what to use now adays.

Whiteknight · 12/09/06, 9:38 PM

Originally Posted by Quigon

Are the values above in defensive stance? What about damage after-the-fact? Its been a while since I saw a list that actually gave practical values, like guestimating shield block values and incorporating that, and then threat per rage. I just guess what to use now adays.

I'm assuming you're referring to the quoted list from the EU forums? If so, the numbers are 1 threat = 1 pt of unmodified damage - you'd have to apply all the hate modifiers such as stance, talents, etc.

To see this, compare the rank of Sunder Armor (261 hate) to Kenco's number for the same skill (260) - so they should be on the same scale.

Foghorn Deadhorn · 12/09/06, 9:41 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Here's the best evidence of shared heal threat: Gluth with a kiting DPS class.

A mage who kites Gluth mobs isn't constantly hammering on all of them, and yet a mob they fireblast once can still be on them a minute later. I can shock a zombie (they spawn on everyone's hate list) once and it'll stick to me for pretty much the whole phase unless another DPS class pulls it off. Meanwhile you have healers landing 2k+ heals fairly often on the tanks, but they don't get aggro. That's simply impossible if a single heal on the Gluth tank generates 1000 aggro on all zombies in the room.

How do you know that healers on a gluth tank are on that mob's threat list in the first place (which would be required for heals to generate threat)? I know on many encounters it could be assumed but might not be there.

Elerion · 12/09/06, 11:42 PM

As long as there's a combat pulse in effect, which is the case on every modern dungeon boss as far as I know, I believe everyone is placed on every active mob's aggro list.

Roana · 12/10/06, 12:00 PM

For what it's worth, it appears that the Berserker Stance modifier is not applied to Whirlwind. I.e., a Whirlwind for 400 damage will create 400 points of threat, not 400*0.8 = 320 points of threat. Whether this is a change in the patch or the way the ability already worked pre-patch, I do not know.

Quigon · 12/10/06, 12:26 PM

I'm going to try to come up with some real world practical values later on, lists with no modifiers are not really useful. They're good for a primer to expand into something practical. Anyone know the average armor of a boss-mob? I know some mobs have significantly less, like say, faerlina trash.

ParisTeta · 12/10/06, 12:47 PM

When reading the theorycraft posts, they asume a fully raiddebuffed Mob as 20% Mitigation

Moleva · 12/10/06, 12:48 PM

BWL mobs (bosses and trash) have approximately 4000AC.

♦ Homercles · 12/14/06, 3:04 AM

Originally Posted by Lodekim

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I'm wondering where the devastate numbers came from

Possibly here

Roana · 12/22/06, 5:04 PM

After some more testing, it appears that the threat of Thunder Clap is twice the damage it does, unmodified by the Battle Stance penalty, and that there is no innate threat associated with it. For example, if Thunder Clap hits a mob for 80 damage, it causes 160 points of threat.

This of course means that Improved Thunder Clap doubles the threat that the ability causes.

Phixus · 12/22/06, 8:08 PM

(E) Priest

Fade reduces your threat temporarily by a fixed amount - 820 at max rank, and is not affected by threat modifiers, such as Silent Resolve. This is a good thing since a priest would only have negative threat modifiers on. When the buff ends, you get the same threat back, so there is no net gain from spamming Fade you should leave it as a panic button instead. Note that you cant fade to below 0 threat.

When the Fade-buff ends you only get the threat back after you perform a combat-action (cast a heal, land a renew tick, fear, basically anything beside standing still). Havent tested it after 2.0.1, I'll check it out.

Also I've always assumed and I'm fairly confident that pre-fading works. Perhaps you cant fade to below 0 threat but the threat gets "absorbed" by the Fade buff?

I'll find answers, but if anyone knows the (updated) answer please share.

♦ Oggie · 12/22/06, 10:15 PM

While this thread is bumped, have people actually tested that frost shock is 2x aggro? Entirely subjectively, I think it 'feels' like 2.5 or even 3x. It makes some sense that they might bump it a bit higher because we removed rockbiter -and- Earthshock threat...

If there's already been good testing on this, excuse me for being dumb.

Gory · 01/04/07, 9:11 AM

Hello.
Very nice thread good job.

Allthough some questions came up on me.

I couldn't confirm that frost shock generates aggro from patch notes, or tooltips.
Is this actually true? And also the fact that earth shock doesn't generate additional threat anymore?

Also I was wondering if sunder armor generates 260 threat per application, and if devastate multplies it's threat for each application of sunder armor or whether it's the fixed amount you posted.

Apate · 01/04/07, 12:31 PM

Originally Posted by Gory

Also I was wondering if sunder armor generates 260 threat per application, and if devastate multplies it's threat for each application of sunder armor or whether it's the fixed amount you posted.

devastate does not currently multiply the threat, it is fixed. The scaling threat component of devastate comes from weapon damage.

Fellwraith · 01/04/07, 3:57 PM

Devastate Rank 1 (lvl 50) 73 72,8-73.4 threat
Devastate Rank 2 (lvl 60) 47 46.66-47.64 threat
Devastate Rank 3 (lvl 70) 27 26.84-27.12 threat

Anyone else find it odd that the base threat on devastate declines as you increase ranks? That seems very counterintuitive if it's meant to be used like other tanking talents (sunder, slam, heroic strike, etc.)

I know this thread isn't just about warriors, but the improved tclap findings are very interesting. It makes me wonder if I'm better off spec'ing 11/0/46+4 rather than 5/10/46 like I was originally planning. Anger management is probably a better talent than UW for tanking, and tclap is a predictable 20% dps reduction vs demo shout's variable mitigation value.

Avair · 01/04/07, 4:16 PM

Does anybody know, or has anybody tested the numbers associated with Shaman's Unleashed Rage? I would, but I don't have a shaman... yet.

Superficially, it is similiar to Battleshout, so I'm wondering if it got changed when BS was changed to reduce threat. Unlike BS, its very undersirable from a players standpoint if UR were to generate high threat numbers.

Gory · 01/04/07, 5:19 PM

Originally Posted by Fellwraith

Devastate Rank 1 (lvl 50) 73 72,8-73.4 threat
Devastate Rank 2 (lvl 60) 47 46.66-47.64 threat
Devastate Rank 3 (lvl 70) 27 26.84-27.12 threat

Anyone else find it odd that the base threat on devastate declines as you increase ranks? That seems very counterintuitive if it's meant to be used like other tanking talents (sunder, slam, heroic strike, etc.)

I know this thread isn't just about warriors, but the improved tclap findings are very interesting. It makes me wonder if I'm better off spec'ing 11/0/46+4 rather than 5/10/46 like I was originally planning. Anger management is probably a better talent than UW for tanking, and tclap is a predictable 20% dps reduction vs demo shout's variable mitigation value.

It's not about warriors, but warriors keep our arshes safe ^^

Indeed would like to know about unleashed rage too, and confirm the shock threat changes.

Suesse · 01/09/07, 8:09 AM

According to the patch notes, devastate should do more threat now (starting today when the servers come up).

The bonus threat of "Devastate" on all ranks has been increased.
Bonus threat will no longer decrease as ranks increase.

Edit:Quote added in an attempt to be more useful and less of a blabbering idiot.

Eylirria · 01/09/07, 9:07 AM

Originally Posted by Suesse

According to the patch notes, devastate should do more threat now (starting today when the servers come up).

And the increased threat no longer goes down as you acquire new ranks.

Whiteknight · 01/09/07, 5:24 PM

2.0.3 patch notes:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

Originally Posted by 2.0.3

"Swipe" has had its threat bonus multiplier removed.
"Maul" has had its threat bonus multiplier changed to a flat value similar in threat per time to "Heroic Strike".
The threat reduction from "Fetish of the Sand Reaver" now decreases with levels past 60.
The threat reduction from "Eye of Diminution" now decreases with levels past 60.

It seems Druids got handed a threat nerf as an answer to the discrepancy between scaling druid threat and flat warrior threat modifiers.