Eradorn

Since the news that the next several weeks will roll out 3.0 patch, and we will have at least a month or so stuck at 70 with it, has anyone worked out any lvl 70 tankadin specs for 3.0? I am imagining we will pretty much be set with 0/51/10 so that we can still get the 5% parry, but wasn't sure what you guys had played with for the lower level spec.

 

thedopefishlives

Depending on if they implement the "crushing blows = +4 levels" change along with 3.0, it may be possible to do without the 5% parry from the Ret tree. Not to say that it isn't good to have, but I would contemplate possibly taking a couple of points out if I'm missing anything fun and/or important in the Prot tree. This is, of course, a moot point if you plan on tanking Illidan any time soon, as you'll almost certainly need the 5% parry for that.

 

• frmorrison

3.0 would include the +3 mobs do not crush change.

With all of Protection's bloat, I can see a 61 Prot build to work out well enough.

5% Parry is a large loss though.

Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing for something.

 

Nobbynob Littlun

Personally, with Touched by the Light and raid buffs, Seals of the Pure will give me more damage than Libram of Divine Purpose; so I'll be going 5/56/0 and switching to Libram of Repentance if crushability is still a problem. I expect that the crushing blows change will go in, though, as all of the tank trees are designed with that in mind.

Also, for those re-examining gear under the new conditions; assuming the itemization changes also go in, and I expect they will as people will definitely want time to get used to them, the previously sneered-at spellhit rating is being merged with hit rating, making items like Shattrath Protectorate's Breastplate ridiculously good. Especially as Touched by the Light is giving everyone more spellpower for their spellhit to operate with.

 

Cathela

I don't see a chance in hell of 3.0 coming out within "the coming weeks" unless you apply an unusually generous definition to that phrase. Even if they can fix all the remaining bugs by then, there are still far too many talents that aren't even implemented at this point. Hell, if you look at Sanctuary it's pretty obvious they haven't even decided what to do with that.

The Gavel does look interesting for pre-75 tanking (there's literally no other spelldamage weapon in BC with a speed slower than 2.0), but if the talents go live in their current state I think weapon selection will be the least of our worries.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

bellator

I have a feeling that 3.0 might come to PTR in a couple of weeks, but might sit there for a month or so. Seems to early to bring it to live.

As for a lvl 70 3.0 talent spec, i'd be looking at something like :-

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Not taken deflection as the 10 points I can spend on threat elsewhere. Also not taken divine strength due to the relatively low str on gear and lack of ShotR.

As for tanking in general come 3.0, I would be a little worried atm. ShotR is a phenomonal single target threat ability. It's clearly been included as part of the removal of salvation initiative. In a raid situation at 70 with the removal of salvation and the increased dps of others through talents, i'd be skeptical how well aggro can be held without it.

 

• frmorrison

I think you would want Judgements of the Just and drop 2 from Shield of the Templar, not having to worry about Tclap or Curse of Weakness sounds nice.

Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing for something.

 

Kigale

By the same logic HotR might not be very useful either. A tank set might have to be supplemented with some Ret gear

 

• Chicken

Hammer of the Righteous procs Seals as well, which makes it pretty significant extra threat even with low strength. And it's simply an extra ability to throw, which definitely can't hurt since you're currently spending some of your time twiddling your thumbs waiting for your abilities to be ready to use again.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Lunkhedd

Yes, the spreadsheet uses the rotation discussed a couple pages earlier in this thread. It's easy to change the cycle length and number of uses of each ability (though making it consistent with CDs is manual...), but I'd probably have to add more columns to support a seal twisting rotation effectively. Seal twisting would also seem to make the chance of SoV stacks dropping off non-negligible, so I'd probably want to take that into account. I'll add it to the list of things to do .

 

PsiVen

I've put together a spreadsheet using the 6/9 rotation for comparing TPS on weapons. Those interested can always find the latest version here: Maintankadin :: View topic - (Build 8820) WotLK TPS Weapons Spreadsheet

EDIT: The list in this post is outdated. See above.

 

Cathela

Did you model [Syphon of the Nathrezim]? It's the same DPS as Rising tide, but slower, and with a larger AP bonus. If you're modeling misses, I can see how the hit rating on Rising Tide might still put it on top, but I'm surprised not to see the Syphon anywhere on the list.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

PsiVen

You're right, I forgot about that one. I'll put a few more in as well. Misses are modeled, but Syphon is the same TPS single-target and slightly higher on 2-3. Lacking in the stam department though.

 

Smurrf

For those who are already planning on crossing over into more warrior-style gear in the crossover from 3.0 release to WotLK release...with a shift in weapon desirability, what enchants for weapons appear to be the top? Potency for 20 STR is available, as is Deathfrost, Mongoose, and so on. Or, is there still a need for +40 Spellpower even on a more melee-style weapon?

 

Prinsesa

40 spell power is still going to be preferable to Potency/Mongoose as far as threat goes even if you use a fast Warrior-tank weapon or a slow Rogue-MH weapon, since Holy Shield and Retribution Aura do not scale with AP, and most of our abilities either scale equally or gain more from SP.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...s/Gradenko.png

 

jere

Well that is indeed true, but some things to consider:
1. Hammer of the Righteous scales very well with AP and is a significant chunk of threat.
2. Seal of Vengeance scales better with AP than SP. If it becomes our tanking seal, then that will have some effect.
3. Even though two abilities don't scale with AP, we have 2 abilities that only scale with AP or BV, both of which are affected by strength.

Even if some of our abilities scale better with SP then AP, all of them scale even better with STR currently, which is affected by BoK and Divine Strength (if talented) as well. I wouldn't be surprised if Potency edged out ahead of spell dmg. I am not saying it will definitely, but I think it is at least worth consideration given the above points.

 

Muarf

SP is also affected by BoK plus Sacred Duty and Combat Expertise through Touched by the Light.

 

PsiVen

With numbers as they are, equally itemized SP is worth about 43% of STR (source). So Potency is 24/.431 ~= 56 SP, clearly ahead. If I punch it into the spreadsheet above which has more accurate figures, it's closer to 62 SP.

The balance may shift if SoV changes, which seems likely since it's currently the only ability that scales twice as well with AP over SP rather than the other way around.

 

jere

Well technically all spell power is not affected by those (unless you are only getting SP from Stamina) and even so, the multiplier would be 1.1*1.1*1.06*0.3 = 0.38478, where as strength gets: 1.1*1.15 = 1.265 and is multiplied by 2 when converting to AP, so 2.53 multiplier to STR in terms of AP compared to a 0.38478 multiplier to STA in terms of SP. And STR also converts to BV at a 0.6375 multiplier, which affects Shield of Righteousness.

 

Qalor

That 62 SP figure is assuming use of Shield of Righteousness though isn't it? If we're looking at after the patch but before the expansion, I'd think spellpower still would win out.

 

Cathela

This is why I think it's probably a mistake to analyze threat mechanics too deeply before the developers do their "second pass" look at paladins. Doesn't it seem like a pretty safe bet that Holy Shield will be scaling with block value somehow before WotLK goes live?

All we can really do at this point is try to cover all the bases. Presumably if you're tanking already you have a SP-based tanking weapon, so you're covered on that point. Pick up the slowest/heaviest 1-h melee weapon you can get your hands on so you're ready if HotR turns out to be the dominant factor. And if you're not already LC exalted you might want to lock that down, just in case the [Gavel of Unearthed Secrets] really does turn out to be super-awesome.

EDIT: Incidentally: Psiven can you run that weapon through your spreadheet? It's fairly low ilevel, but it's got a unique combination of spellpower and a very slow speed; I'd be really curious to see how it pans out with the current mechanics.

EDIT AGAIN: Looking at the charts you posted in the maintankadin thread, I notice that the Titansteel Guardian is way out in front threatwise. Obviously it's a higher ilevel than everything else, but I'm noticing that it also is a rare slow-swing spellpower weapon, so that makes me even more curious to see where the [Gavel of Unearthed Secrets] comes in.

ANOTHER EDIT AGAIN (last one, I swear): Regarding "things I'd like to know", your formula for consecration is correct.

Also, you mention that your spreadsheet can't handle a non-6/9 rotation right now, which affects modeling of pre-75 threat. However, I think even a non-ShR build is still going to be most efficient as a 6/9 due to GCD meshing:

Judge Hammer _____ _____ _____ Hammer Judge _____ _____ Hammer _____ _____ Judge Hammer... etc.

My understanding is that Ret DPS rotations on live get forced into a 6/9 for the same reasons due to the 6-second CD on crusader strike. So, you should be able to model a level 70 threat rotation simply by removing ShR.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Nobbynob Littlun

Yeah, testing stuff out is great, but I wouldn't be too rigorous, as we can certainly expect tweaks to get made. For example, Thorgred's post's coefficients for str and/or spellpower on some spells (SoVeng, Cons) don't line up with the numbers I'm seeing anymore.

On a related subject, when we do get around to finding those coefficients, let's not forget the formulae for Seal of Wisdom and Light, as they do scale now For now, Wisdom/Light per point of spellpower look to get around 60/75% (respectively) of the benefit given per point of strength. And let's see, spellpower per-point consumes 86% of the item budget consumed by strength per-point, is that right?

 

PsiVen

I don't mind being rigorous about updating tweaks, so no worries there. I intend to update with every beta build to get accurate figures.

Cathela: The Gavel is just worse than the worst on the sheet in SP gear, and .3 TPS under Vengeful in the theoretical T6-using-STR gear. Good catch, it's certainly a cheap alternative to the other low-end weapons.

A correction on the enchant, you're right I was assuming ShoR there. However I ran the numbers without ShoR for all weapons:
Potency adds 29.2 TPS (STDEV .51)
40 Spell Power adds 18.7 TPS (STDEV .03)
Potency > 40SP by 10.5 TPS (STDEV .49)

Upon closer inspection my spreadsheet wasn't actually adding strength's block value to anything because of a bad reference. Hence why the earlier number of 20 STR ~= 62 SP seems to hold up here.

 

Cathela

Interesting; the rule of thumb has always been +2sp = +1tps (which this confirms); now we have a rule of thumb that +2str = +3tps (pre-ShR, that is).

What I'm seeing from your results is that while attack power is better than spell power for threat, spell power is better than innate weapon damage. So you gain threat by switching from the Titansteel Bonecrusher to the TitanSteel Guardian, trading ~60dps and 140 AP for 490 SP. But you would get even more threat if you could convert that spellpower into an equivalent itemization value of attack power -- then you'd have a low-dps weapon with +820 AP on it. Pity such weapons don't exist (well, except for druids).

It leads to a somewhat paradoxical gearing strategy: Stack str/AP on your gear, but use a caster weapon instead of a melee weapon (speed being equal, of course). I don't really think that's what the developers had in mind, but there you go.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

BFG

This is because Paladins will have only one tanking skill that scales with weapon damage (prot Warriors have 3 and use them more often), and auto-attack threat is insignificant. The only way to change the balance without overpowering HotR would be to add a copy of Heroic Strike or Devastate/Revenge, which is probably not happening in WotLK.