Dualwielding mobs are generally assumed to get +19% miss penalty on melee auto-attacks (same as dualwielding rogues/warriors/shaman). WWS also show dualwielding bosses with increased miss rate. So yes, you'll get less hits from dualwielding mobs, even though there will be more attacks per second. Depending on your gear, that additional miss can outweight extra hits and produce less holy shield procs overall.
Well, yes, but I assumed that the fact that they were swinging two weapons would make up for this. As in...
Single Wielding Mob, 1.8 speed
(0.95/1.8)*1 weapon = 0.53 hits per second
Dual Wielding Mob, 1.8 speed
(0.76/1.8)*2 weapons = 0.84 hits per second
Or am I not understanding how the speed variable is applied in the spreadsheet? (Like I said, I'm not sure how to access the formulas so I can't verify the way the math is being applied.)
Right, the combat table is going to push a lot of your block off, since it's filled up with the additional miss rate. So lets say that you run around with 55% to block on your normal table with Holy Shield active, so vs a dual wielding mob you're dropping down to 36% to block. That's a significant dropoff.
Add your avoidance to their miss rate. With high avoidance you could even get 0% hit on the dual wielder while getting hit on the non-dual-wielder, thus showing that the ratio between the hit rates can be anything between your listed value (assuming bosses really have base 5% miss...) to infinity, depending primarily on your avoidance.
Right, the combat table is going to push a lot of your block off, since it's filled up with the additional miss rate. So lets say that you run around with 55% to block on your normal table with Holy Shield active, so vs a dual wielding mob you're dropping down to 36% to block. That's a significant dropoff.
Originally Posted by galzohar
Add your avoidance to their miss rate. With high avoidance you could even get 0% hit on the dual wielder while getting hit on the non-dual-wielder, thus showing that the ratio between the hit rates can be anything between your listed value (assuming bosses really have base 5% miss...) to infinity, depending primarily on your avoidance.
D'oh! Ok, so I was missing something obvious. The gear in the spreadsheet has a 55% total avoidance rate on it (Miss + Dodge + Parry) prior to adding the additional avoidance from the DW penalty. Thus, the numbers become:
Single Wielding Mob, 1.8 speed
(1 weapon*(1-0.55% total avoidance))/1.8 = 0.25 damaging hits per second
Dual Wielding Mob, 1.8 speed
(2 weapons*(1-0.74% total avoidance))/1.8 = 0.29 damaging hits per second
That is a lot closer, but still not close enough to explain the dropoff. Presumably, to avoid crushing blows each of those damaging hits is blocked, meaning even with the additional miss rate Holy Shield threat (and Reckoning procs) against a dual wielder should be slightly higher.
The spreadsheet, on the other hand, shows about a 40% dropoff in Holy Shield threat against a dual wielder; roughly what I would expect if only one of the two weapons was being accounted for:
Dual Wielding Mob, 1.8 speed, counting 1 weapon only
(1 weapon*(1-0.74% total avoidance))/1.8 = 0.14 damaging hits per second
0.14/0.25 = ~56%, or a 44% reduction.
It looks like a bug to me...
Last edited by Left : 11/12/07 at 1:44 PM.
Reason: Put in the quotes I am addressing
Something i've not really seen a lot of is information about resist gear.
I've just got to the point where i can start tanking karazhan and would like to start working on resist gear for different encounters. My guild requires that i get a 50/50 Nature/Frost resist gear set for Hydros - Besides the blacksmith plate stuff, which overlap, im not sure where to look for my resist gear.
For Hydross add-tanking, get as many craftable NR/FrR pieces as you can get (chest/helm/legs of one school or the other, one of each craftable ring, and one of the craftable necks), and then scour the AH for "protection" greens. The nice thing about the hydross adds is that they ignore armor, so you can wear cloth/leather/mail if necessary. Get the violet eye shoulder enchant (+7 all resists) for your shoulders, get a resist enchant for your helm, and if you feel like farming Botanica go there for the chromatic resist cape and get the all-resists enchant on that as well.
I think my hydross set hits about 220 each in FrR/NR unbuffed, which comes to over 300 with auras and a chromatic flask. If you don't have a good (i.e., epic) spelldamage weapon, you may have to go with a blinding light flask instead, but that should still leave you in the high 200s for each school. (I regularly skip the resistance flask these days and it's never a problem.) Weapon oil and spelldamage food are important as well, of course.
You can safely ignore defense; although you will take a few crits, stacking that much resistance will reduce the overall incoming damage to a level where they won't make a difference. Using this setup I have no problem AoE tanking all four adds when necessary, although we usually have the "off" MT pick one up just to make things a little easier.
As far as picking up the adds, drop a consecrate where one will appear (this should be easy to guess), judge another, and throw your shield at a third. By the time the shield gets off, the last two elementals will have started moving, most likely towards the same person, and if you're lucky you'll get both with the shield. If not, taunt or hope that your other OT(s) are on the ball. Then just consecrate and call for AoE.
Last edited by Cathela : 11/12/07 at 5:05 PM.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
Has there been any looking into [Stormchops] and how it might compare to spelldamage food for trash mobs/grinding in general (I don't usually eat food buffs for my dailies, but it might be something to take into consideration)? A quick search on the forums and in the 2.3 patch thread didn't bring up any information on food at all - no proc rates, damage output, if it breaks cc, if it generates threat, etc.
This may seem like something incredibly minor in the realm of aoe tanking, but the buff text reminds me of the first time I saw a video with [Force Reactive Disk], and would definitely be interested in getting some cooked up regardless.
When tanking Hydross adds, I just wear [Wildguard Leggings], [Wildguard Breastplate], [Iceguard Helm] and [The Frozen Eye]; together with my Frost Aura and AotW, this gives me 155 FR and 190 NR. The rest of my set is all Merciless Gladiator / Veteran shockadin gear, the resilience from which easily makes me crit immune when combined with either [Scarab of Displacement] (once you've killed him at least once ;P ) or [Timelapse Shard] (in which case you should be extremely careful NOT to Use it accidentally). Using PvP gear also has the benefit of putting your spell damage through the roof, allowing AoE to start pretty much immediately. I'm able to tank 3-4 adds with this setup, though as with Cathela we usually have a bear pick up 1-2 of them and bring them into the Consecrate. In terms of grabbing the adds, I do exactly as Cathela described earlier.
Has there been any looking into [Stormchops] and how it might compare to spelldamage food for trash mobs/grinding in general (I don't usually eat food buffs for my dailies, but it might be something to take into consideration)? A quick search on the forums and in the 2.3 patch thread didn't bring up any information on food at all - no proc rates, damage output, if it breaks cc, if it generates threat, etc.
This may seem like something incredibly minor in the realm of aoe tanking, but the buff text reminds me of the first time I saw a video with [Force Reactive Disk], and would definitely be interested in getting some cooked up regardless.
I can't answer in detail as I simply didn't have the time to even try and get the food on test, but judging by the spell details it appears to zap everything in 15 yards around you for 20 to 30ish lightning damage every 8 seconds. In other words it'll add 3.25 dps per mob in range (And that amount of TPS as well since we don't get any aggro boosters on non-holy damage).
In comparison, spell damage food is 23 spell damage, which is 2.875 dps for the highest rank of Consecration, or 5.4625 threat per second.
So it'll be slightly better DPS, but lower threat than spell damage food.
No idea about whether it breaks crowd control, and the food might very well work differently than I assume (WoWHead's spell details also has a version of it's proc recorded doing 660 to 770 damage, actually linked to the 8 second interval, but it seems unlikely it'd do that amount; 89.375 DPS from a single food buff per target is excessive).
That's a fairly good idea, though I think it'd be better to refer to as "Crush Avoidance Rating" or "Crush Avoidance Equivalence"; there's some practical differences to each of the stats for other purposes, so referring to it as equivalence to block rating is slightly misleading.
Personally, I don't care much about the name so long as the idea's useful. I think it can be useful for comparing talents as well, which'll help answer some of the other questions in the thread. For example, using the "Crush Avoidance Rating" name, each point of Avoidance is 5.1 CAR and each point of Deflection is 7.9 CAR. Holy Shield is 237 CAR, but that's pretty much academic .
We've been killing hydross for EXACTLY 3 months now (First kill was 8/13/07) and our add tanks never use resist gear. We just have 5 tanks for that fight. The two hydross tanks have maxed out FrR and NR but our add tanks have 0 resistance gear on. We just go in with our normal tanking gear. This strategy has worked brilliantly for us and we never have any problems with it.
We put all 5 tanks into one group. When the phase change happens, everyone picks up their designated elemental and drags them together. We have our deep holy priests SPAM Circle of Healing on the tank group and give them a shadow priest. What ends up happening is that DPS opens up with AOE as soon as the adds are in the middle and we nuke them down FAST. We have never hit enrage or come even remotely close. This also requires 6-7 healers MAX because AOE healing (Especially COH) is just so efficient here!
I don't see why any guild would put their members through the completely unnecessary step of gathering up resist gear for the add tanks in this fight. The hydross tanks need maxed out resists but add tanks can go with 0 if you got enough tanks to pick up 1 add per tank. Bringing in more tanks doesnt slow DPS down because the AOE can just push a lot harder and they end up having more time to DPS hydross himself.
So your NR phase MT has 365 resistance without an aura/totem?
On an unrelated topic, do we know yet whether or not +spell hit still affects RD, or if it's exclusively +hit now? This is pretty relevant to the question of whether to go for the BoJ chest or to wait and hope for the ZA chest to drop.
Like most everyone else I want to start this off by thanking Chicken for such a wonderful post. Other than the WOW Pally forums I have pretty much figured everything out on my own as I have gone. Im not the type to sit and crunch numbers so I have learned quite a few things by reading this thread. I do however still have a few questions.
Before I ask though, let me give you some info on where I stand so you can more easily answer my questions. Im in a medium sized guild I would say. We can easily run weekly 10 mans but cant really manage to get enough on at one time to do a 25 man. Im about half epiced out mostly out of Kara. I am the guilds off tank, though I may start MT Kara since our MT needs nothing new out of there. My weapon, unfortunatly, is still the Continuum Blade, oh how I hate it. We will be starting ZA tommorrow.
Okay, on to questions. Ive read through this whole forum but its a lot to process so if I repeat a question already answered please forgive me.
1. Which blessing is more important for tanking? I have always gone with Sanc but the other pally in the guild with Kings went ret and no longer has Kings, so which is more important? Kings or Sanc?
2. I have always used Ret aura, but after reading the discussion I think that im better off with Ret in 5 mans and maybe trash pulls in Kara, and Devo for bosses? How would having a pally with Sanctity Aura in the party affect this? At all?
3. Which food to you generally go with? Stamina or Spell damage? I have always gome stamina but saw mention of spell damage food somewhere and wanted to check.
4. With 2.3 here has there been a definate decision on reckoning or one handed weapon specialization? Personally, im thinking of leaning towards reckoning, just because with a ret pally in the group im going to be keeping something other than sotc on the mob, like light. And more swings means more help.
5. Ive seen a lot of talk about Imp Seal of the Crusader vs Imp Judgement, and Spell Warding vs PoJ. Ive even seen talk on here of taking anticipation out in favor of PoJ or Imp SotC. My question is... What if you took out Precision? If you took 3 from there and dropped it into PoJ you get the benefit of both it and Spell Warding. To me this sounds like the best option, but like I said, I dont crunch numbers. Is precision more important than anticipation or PoJ?
I see a lot of people spec with 2 points in Spell Warding and I'm wondering if that's a wise decision. 4% of 1000 spell damage incoming is 40 damage. That really does not seem like a worthwhile reduction.
With the points in prot already becoming heavy would it perhaps be a better return on investment with those points moving to Pursuit of Justice for the 3% reduction in the chance to even land on you. Or is PoJ a purely pvp related talent? I'm not 100% on the mechanics of spell hit and pve on the receiving end.
I agree. My question though is; Is it more amazing for a tank than 3% chance for a spell to miss, and +15% runspeed?
The runspeed looks neat (I'm going to try it tonight in TK) but -3% chance to be hit by spells is not going to help terribly much as a tank. Magic damage tends to be more burst-oriented, so you and your healers will have to be ready for it anyway whether you have a 3% less chance to take it or not.
I've got both in my current build (had to go 4/5 anticipation and skip reckoning to make it work) but forced to choose I'd go with Precision.
Regarding your other questions:
Kings > Sanctuary in 95%+ of tanking situations. Part of the problem is that the damage reduction from Sanct is applied before armor, so if you have, say, 50% DR from armor then Sanct is only saving you 40 points per swing. In most situations, the danger of getting bursted to death is greater than the danger of your healers running out of mana, so Kings is preferred for the extra stamina.
Food is situational. If you need the extra threat and survivability isn't an issue, spelldamage food. If the opposite, stam food.
Ret vs. Devo is again a situational decision, threat vs mitigation. Obviously having a Ret paladin in group is going to do a lot for threat, so it's less likely you'd need Ret aura in that case.
I see a lot of people spec with 2 points in Spell Warding and I'm wondering if that's a wise decision. 4% of 1000 spell damage incoming is 40 damage. That really does not seem like a worthwhile reduction.
With the points in prot already becoming heavy would it perhaps be a better return on investment with those points moving to Pursuit of Justice for the 3% reduction in the chance to even land on you. Or is PoJ a purely pvp related talent? I'm not 100% on the mechanics of spell hit and pve on the receiving end.
Anyone have any thoughts here?
My personal view on this kind of thing is that burst survivability trumps most other considerations. A guaranteed 4% knocked off of all spell damage taken is better than a 3% chance to resist everything.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
I agree. My question though is; Is it more amazing for a tank than 3% chance for a spell to miss, and +15% runspeed?
Yes, especially since it will now be affecting taunts. I haven't really found anywhere where I really wished I could run a whole lot faster while in the act of tanking mobs. Sure, it'd be nice, but I don't think that'll dramatically improve your actual tanking performance. 3% chance for a spell to miss is nice, but meh. Just seems too streaky of a mechanic to be throwing points into, especially when we're hard pressed to find spare talent points to start with.
As for you other questions:
1) Kings, kings, kings and more kings. Sanctuary is nice to have when you're rocking 4+ pallies. But the damage reduction is done pre-mitigation, which means it's really only useful for when you're really struggling with threat. Even then, I'd still go with kings.
2) I like ret, but devo is prolly a better option. Again, depends on your threat generation. If you add a ret-pally to your group, go with Devo and Sanctity. If you don't have one in your party, go with what feels better. The two keys to tanking are to keep the mobs on you, and don't die. And you really only want to do the first to just past the point of where you're beating your dps on threat. Anything after that is basically wasted mitigation that could save you from an unlucky string of hits.
3) I go with stamina, but again that depends on where your threat generation is at. If you're having trouble holding onto mobs, spell damage food is a pretty easy boost of theat, at a slight loss of hp (330ish if you're using crawdads).
4) Hasn't been any good math on this. I'll be going with 1-hand, because that helps when I'm forced to off-tank on stuff that's not hitting me constantly (VR, Gruul, etc). But I'll certainly miss 2-hander reckoning procs while farming.
My personal view on this kind of thing is that burst survivability trumps most other considerations. A guaranteed 4% knocked off of all spell damage taken is better than a 3% chance to resist everything.
Is that really burst survivability? If you have 10000 damage incoming you're knocking off 400 of it. You're still taking 9600 damage. If you can survive the 9600 chances are you could have survived the 10k too. How often is the 400 damage difference really going to be a factor? The points in Spell Warding are just wasted points in general. It's getting tight in the prot side. I'm wondering if there may just be better economy spending those points elsewhere.
Magic damage tends to be more burst-oriented, so you and your healers will have to be ready for it anyway whether you have a 3% less chance to take it or not.
My personal view on this kind of thing is that burst survivability trumps most other considerations. A guaranteed 4% knocked off of all spell damage taken is better than a 3% chance to resist everything.
It seems to me that this line of thinking argues for the 3% chance to resist, rather than the 4% knock off. If burst is the problem, then what is 40 points taken off of that 10k hit? Its practically nothing. However a 3% chance to resist a burst spell of 10k is definatly better in my thought.
Mathmatically if you get hit 100 times for 4k damage then you are going to take less damage with spell warding than PoJ... but its going to be at 40 points a hit. PoJ is going to save you on the burst. That's why im leaning towards PoJ if I had to pick one.
It seems to me that this line of thinking argues for the 3% chance to resist, rather than the 4% knock off. If burst is the problem, then what is 40 points taken off of that 10k hit? Its practically nothing. However a 3% chance to resist a burst spell of 10k is definatly better in my thought.
Mathmatically if you get hit 100 times for 4k damage then you are going to take less damage with spell warding than PoJ... but its going to be at 40 points a hit. PoJ is going to save you on the burst. That's why im leaning towards PoJ if I had to pick one.
This is precisely backwards. To make it through bursts, you need to reduce the threat that a max burst poses (by reducing the damage it does or increasing your ability to soak it) rather than decreasing the chances that a max burst will happen.
Eventually, you're going to eat a burst; you need to be able to survive that when it happens, so you're better off having those 100 4k bursts being 100 3.8K bursts than having them be 97 4K bursts.
I think it really depends on the fight. If you can count on statistical certainty and a large number of spells hitting you, spell warding is better. If you can't count on that (for example: when being hit 10 or less times), it's far better to take no damage some of the time than less damage overall.
I was curious about the overall stamina boost from switching enchants, but it's trivial; +3 stam. Really, I think a dedicated paladin tank that is dealing with spellcasters a lot is going to want both. If you can't have both, I'm not sure that 2 points in improved PoJ is worth it other than making things feel better overall for speed.
Is that really burst survivability? If you have 10000 damage incoming you're knocking off 400 of it. You're still taking 9600 damage. If you can survive the 9600 chances are you could have survived the 10k too. How often is the 400 damage difference really going to be a factor? The points in Spell Warding are just wasted points in general. It's getting tight in the prot side. I'm wondering if there may just be better economy spending those points elsewhere.
Originally Posted by Phryxus
It seems to me that this line of thinking argues for the 3% chance to resist, rather than the 4% knock off. If burst is the problem, then what is 40 points taken off of that 10k hit? Its practically nothing. However a 3% chance to resist a burst spell of 10k is definatly better in my thought.
Nitpicking: 4% of 10k is 400, not 40.
The thing about the "how often is that going to make a difference" argument is that you can apply it to any small upgrade in survivability. (How often is the extra 200 armor on this chest going to make the difference? How often is the extra 12 stamina from this enchant going to make a difference? etc.) You have to take these things in little pieces, but they add up.
As far as burst survivability, the point, as Julian said, is that regardless of how much you stack "avoidance" type stats, sooner or later you will take the worst-possible-case burst, and you have to be able to survive it.
If I were a healer, I'd rather be the guy who has to heal through 100 9.6k magic bursts than the guy who has to heal through 97 10k magic bursts. The less your health seesaws up and down, the easier it is on your healers, even if it's only a little bit.
Mathmatically if you get hit 100 times for 4k damage then you are going to take less damage with spell warding than PoJ... but its going to be at 40 points a hit. PoJ is going to save you on the burst. That's why im leaning towards PoJ if I had to pick one.
Again, if you're taking magic shots for 4k each, Spell warding saves you 160 per. PoJ will save you on burst, sure, but only 3% of the time. Spell warding is there on every hit. Consistency.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
I decided to go 0/47/14 for now. I dropped Reckoning and Spell Warding completely. 4% is small enough where I felt comfortable enough making that decision. I also went to 1/2 Improved Judgement. Those extra 8 points went as follows: 5/5 Combat Expertise and 3/3 Improved Seal of the Crusader. Since I doubt I'll be in any place where there's a ret pally, I can provide the extra bonus myself. If I was raiding with a reliable ret pally, I'd probably put the 2 back into Spell Warding and maybe 1 point into Pursuit of Justice.
11/12/07, 1:05 PM
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