Thank you Roop, I think I'll be giving that first mod a test run tonight when I get home.

I have noticed this as well, seemingly as soon as I look at a target, I tend to stay at roughly 4-5x the threat level of the next highest DPSer. I've only done one raid though thus far (being the Tol Barad boss), but I did notice that I tended to pull out ahead of the paladin tank, and nearly wiped the raid when I decided it was a good idea to pop DRW on the pull (never doing that again, at least on the Brut-clone).

My one problem with replacing it though is that there is not a real wealth of decent major glyphs to choose from, that and our threat might start to become less effective relative to the dps as they start to gear up again.

If this is truly supposed to be a long term solution to Threat then what's wrong with just buffing up the Threat Modifier to say 500%? I watched Ensidia's Kill Videos for Halfus and Theralion/Valiona 25, their Tanks spent the majority of the time on Top 1-4th place on Recount, over 50% of the fight on Top 14.

Threat is even less of an issue than it was in WotLK. With Icy Slam it took some time to get a Threat lead this large. Now we just whack 2 Rune Strikes and we can sit there mashing DS/HS for Blood Shield and Blade Barrier until the opportune moment to use Rune Tap or if we need a Defensive Cooldown for whatever reason.

The current Vengeance needs a re-design so it won't work just for 1-2 Tiers, but for the whole Expansion. Until they figure that out, Threat Decay would be an excellent alternative....

Regarding the dimishing returns on Parry / Dodge....

If I understand it correctly, the theory is to make the values of each as close to each other as possible. Thus if Im sitting at 12% dodge, and 20% parry, I should reforge my parry values to dodge when possible. This would effectively increase my total avoidance? IE. I should attempt to reforge until I get to 16%/16%.

And then.... Where does mastery fit into all of this? If Im at 12% dodge/20% parry, if I was reduce my parry to 12% and use those values for mastery (which is currently 12.5%) would I gain more in absorbsion vs avoidance?

I thought the point of simplifying the stats for Cataclysm was to ummm... Simplify the game. Seems like theres far more fuzzy theorycrafting that needs to be done now... Or am I wrong?

If you want even fuzzier theorycrafting, try looking at haste as a survival stat for more DS/minute.

To answer your question, yes, DR is equal, so on avoidance, try to bring the ratings to equality. Not the actual percentage, but the rating value for each stat.

I did some napkin math trying to work out that exact haste question a while back, but right around the time I realized that the value of mastery differs based on the specific ratio of physical/magic damage on a per-encounter basis, I gave up.

Since you can't work out an actual EH value for mastery without going fight-by-fight for it, then trying to compare it to dodge/parry is essentially impossible unless you plan to reforge between fights.

If anyone wants to mess around with the stuff I have from those attempts, I have a spreadsheet and some formulas I can send you.

Heres a google docs link to the sheet, for now I have it set to not be modifiable online, but you should be able to save it locally and work on your own copy.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?...thkey=CIKiu_0H

The working formula I started with is h=[(.3625x)+z]/n.

h= EH gain for physical incoming damage
x=dmg/5s
n= % not mitigated.
z is your DS shield, which = .3625y

All values labeled "Don't Touch" are interval steps, the label was to remind me of that more than anything.

Sorry its so poorly documented, if something doesn't make much sense, feel free to pm asking for help with it.

Some of the values may not be updated to the most recent patch, I haven't messed with this much in a month or so.

Obviously, the whole thing assumes a greater than minimum heal. Values for avoidance, mitigation, and haste are all variable, as are the raw damage in and % damage physical values.

If you're looking to find out differences between avoidance and Mastery, BloodSim is an excellent tool for that. Just figure out what your avoidance and Mastery would be if you fiddled them around and run different iterations to get results for comparison.

What I'd like to do to make this easier is throw some ratings conversions with DR in so that you don't have to do a lot of math before you're able to even run the sim. This is on my to-do list, but at the moment I don't have a whole lot of bandwidth to make it happen.

Edit:
Also, can I get independant confirmation that:
Base Dodge = 3.94%
Base Parry = 5.00%
I went in-game and unequipped all gear, but I haven't been able to find this listed anywhere else and I want to be certain before I build it into BloodSim.

On my to-do list as soon as my servers online.

Also: any chance you could put something rough together to model the value of Haste as a survival stat? I'd be more than happy to actually run it myself if your cycles are claimed, I have a decently high-end gaming PC.

Or, barring this, is there a thread somewhere with the magic/physical ratios and raw damage throughput from the various bosses? That info would make it possible to get rough averages out of my spreadsheet.

Edit for: Those values hold true for myself as well for dodge/parry base at 85.

Well, at World of Logs, I couldn't find anything related to boss damage throughput, seems like most people consider it a lower priority compared to raid numbers, and since raid numbers/execution turn into a pass/fail scenario, specific boss throughput just gets pushed to the wayside.

Seems it would require a specialized addon to actually track the data, or a specialized log parser. Otherwise, you would have to sit down with a calculator and mess around with the percentages and procs to determine raw damage for almost every ability used.

That was why I was hoping there was already a project under way for this. I don't have the coding knowledge to put something like this together, but would happily donate cycles to testing if it was made.

Edit: the data IS available, I just failed. Going to work on this some when I have the time.

It takes some delving, but the information is there on worldoflogs.com

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

For example, is a report of the damage taken by paragon on the 01-12-2010 and heroic LK.

You need a log per run, then you can split it down into per boss from there, its all in the website already. Just takes looking for... (And I certainly dont have the time to do such a task unfortunatly, but thought I would point out that the information is there, just slowly being captured at the moment)

Edit..

For shits and giggles, I am going to e-mail the authors of worldoflogs.com and ask them if they could introduce a section for each boss to show physical/magic % damage taken, so the split is plainly obvious and can be made up VERY accurately with more and more logs being added. Need to have a more in depths explanation/request that "cud you plz do itz" from what I have at the moment, but the information is THERE it’s just a case of amending how its shown will show the % without hassle.

To clarify the value: It allows for a per-boss analysis of average values of mastery and avoidance, and in our case, haste. Once values are determined for certain ratios, we will be able to extrapolate those values with a reasonable certainty for new content based on 1-2 logs analyzed, and finding the most similar ratio from cleared content.

Is that the sort of specific reasoning you needed?

Edit: To clarify, I'm sure you saw the reasoning, rather, the question should be is that a good wording for it?

A little off topic: we did our first testing of Conclave of Wind. You can find my spec in the link to my armory. The spec used was 33/8/0 taking Lichbourne and Glyph of Death's Embrace. Considering there is nothing to interrupt, I will respect the two points from Endless Winter to something more useful (see the end of this post). Threat is a non issue, as there are multiple target switches between bosses, giving you 20-30 seconds alone on the boss (using our strategy).

Just to clarify, we did not kill the three bosses of the encounter. This was strictly for testing and learning purposes. A paladin healer and I were placed on Nazir's (frost boss) platform. After Sleet Storm, you can AMS the following Wind Chill to drops your stacks (which have 30 second duration). We also had our paladin bubble off his stacks when he felt overwhelmed. We found the self heal from Lichbourne to be beneficial for mana conservation and an "oh shit" button (yes, I saved enough RP to heal myself to full while using VB or IF to mitigate incoming Permafrost – I also was not glyphed for Dark Death because I’m an idiot).

If I remember correctly from the previous end game tanking thread, Blood Worms were considered a smart heal but not exactly reliable as a consistent source of healing. For those who've seen the encounter: do I stand correct in my thinking that Blood Worms would be the best potential replacement for Endless Winter (all things considered, of course). I will also replace Glyph of Rune Strike to Dark Death for the increased self healing. What should be done with Glyph of Pestilence? Considering there are no adds to manage on Nazir’s platform and we are not tank swapping, would Glyph of Rune Tap be the viable choice for increased healing during Sleet Storm?

Edit: This spec would be specifically for Conclave of Wind.