The Protection Guide - Page 152

Reeshet · 11/12/08, 5:26 PM

I did some tests this afternoon and there are two things of which I'm now convinced.

A. Never mind this one. I forgot that since Shield slam is affected by armor, most likely the difference here is caused by armor value of target dummies.
B. SS damage does not scale 1:1 with Block Value. It's closer to 2:3 (For every point of 3 points of BV, you get 2 points of SS damage)

My first test was removing all my armor except [Shield of Impenetrable Darkness] and equipping a 1h gray mace (in case 1h wep spec only took effect while a weapon). With this I had (per character sheet)

Strength -178 (adds 77 BV)
Shield BV - 122+21 = 143 BV
BV per tooltip of 287 [which equals (77+143)*1.3]
Shield Slam tool tips says "causes 603 to 635 damage modified by block value" note: This is exactly 10% higher than wowhead tool tip (549 to 577) which makes me think 1h Weapon Specialization is accounted for in tooltip.

After a LOT of trials (over 100 shield slams) I came up with an average Shield Slam of 565.1 (note: if you do this test yourself, don't use devastate to proc SnB because the sunder effect ups the SS avg damage a lot)

Then I put on some gear and had
Strength 374
BV per tooltip of 769 [interesting note, the 5% BV from meta gem is additive to the 1.3. To get right numbers the formula was base BV * 1.35]
Shield Slam tool tip still says 603 to 635 damage

After numerous trials here (not quite a 100 though) I got an average Shield Slam of 888

Trying to put this into the conventional formula didn't yield any results so I recalculated what the actual base damage done was using these formulas (SS = Shield Slam Avg, BD = Base Damage, BV = Block Value, z = modifier, 2nd trial numbers have a 2 after them)

SS = BD + (BV * z)
SS2 = BD + (BV2 * z)

BD = SS - (BV * z) = SS2 - (BV2 * z)

Since the two equations are equal, we can solve for z

z = (SS2 - SS) / (BV2 - BV) = (888-565) / (769-287) = .67

Taking z = .67 we can solve for original equation

BD = 888 - (769 * .67) = 372.77 
BD = 565 - (287 * .67) = 372.71

I did a couple of other tests with different block values (and less samples) and I consistently got BD = 373.

What this may not account for accurately is the z modifier could include the 1h wep spec or other multipliers. But bottom line, the value used is .67 even if it includes other modifiers.

Riot · 11/12/08, 8:16 PM

What kind of situation are we arguing about here exactly?

Expertise and hit are going to trump block value I believe when tanking bosses and for generating consistent TPS.

For grinding as prot I would suspect you'd want to go along with the same methodology that led you to the Whirlwind Axe - killing a mob in one or two hits is attractive. (So yes, BV is fine since when you're killing mobs at a similar levels the penalties on hit are negligible).

Warrok · 11/12/08, 10:59 PM

Originally Posted by Reeshet

A. Never mind this one. I forgot that since Shield slam is affected by armor, most likely the difference here is caused by armor value of target dummies.
B. SS damage does not scale 1:1 with Block Value. It's closer to 2:3 (For every point of 3 points of BV, you get 2 points of SS damage)

Point B seems redundant. It's obvious that each point of BV will not convert to damage 1:1 because of armor. Armor depends on a number of factors like the mob itself, debuffs and buffs.

@Liar:
I tested around with DPS set + 1h/Shield and block set and basically I came up with something like 1-1,1k DPS in the DPS+Shield set and 0,9-1k DPS in the block set. The block set was a bit more dependent on rage generation, as I noted earlier. Though the point I wasn't buying was that you won't take a lot of damage going in DPS gear. Well if you don't stun mobs over the duration of the entire fight, you do. The block set allows to grind nonstop with hardly ever losing life and when you do it's so negligible you will reg it through OOC regen (which is worth a laugh tbh). The more DPS oriented set does a bit more DPS though you will eventually get more damage. Maybe there needs to be a bit more optimization on my part like blowing cooldowns more efficiently, though the point remains. It's a matter of taste.

frankster · 11/13/08, 1:56 PM

Originally Posted by Reeshet

4. Crit - With the talents for +15% crit to HS, TC, Cleave, SS, stacking crit may be a good way to go.

This logic is wrong. Now that talents add 15% crit to most specials, crit (and thus agility) is less useful than it was before 3.0 (if you have 1% crit from gear, start off with 0 crit, 116/115 < 101/100 ). I am not saying that crit is useless for dps though...

Nilaus · 11/14/08, 4:19 AM

How do you guys quest as Prot?

Reading between the lines of the last few pages seem to indicate a heavy reliance on SS and using Devastate to trigger it.
I find that both CS and SW are dealing massive amounts of damage. With 30 and 20 sec cooldowns, either of them will be ready in any given fight.

My priority list is something like this:
SS when Sword and Board procs
Revenge
(HS if I use the Revenge glyph)
SS
SW
CS
Devastate

This defacto means that Devastate is almost never used when I level. It seems to work wonders (with crappy gear), but maybe SS scales better at higher gear levels and that is the reason.

Oronogath · 11/14/08, 3:51 PM

Someone was discussing macros a page ago, and I thought I'd throw something out there to see what everyone thought of it.

In BC, I had a macro that went "/castsequence shield slam, devastate, devastate, devastate" on a short reset so that if I broke off the cycle to revenge, it'd reset back to shield slam.

Not ideal, persay, but it worked pretty well with my setup.

In WotLK, I redid my UI (still training my fingers on some of the buttons), but one of the things that's remained constant is that I want my threat-dealing buttons to be limited to three buttons which must do four things (heroic strike, devastate, shield slam, revenge).

Solution I've come up with is...
"/castrandom Shield Slam, Revenge"

It shows the icon for shield slam so I know when that's lit, and I have an unbound button nearby showing revenge for its cooldown.

Basically, if either of those are lit up, I mash the button until it goes off. If not, I devastate.

I'm wondering if the utility of this macro offsets the fact that it's not 100% efficient (ie. it's only going to hit the 'lit' button 50% of the time). Thoughts?

Reeshet · 11/14/08, 4:19 PM

If you really want to condense those four actions down to 3 buttons then in my opinion you're FAR better off making a macro to link Revenge and heroic Strike since the glyph makes Heroic Strike free after revenge.

I use a macro that says

/castsequence reset=5, Revenge, Heroic Strike

If you wanted to be able to just spam HS til Revenge was back up you could put additional HS's on that line.

The other macro I use is

/cast Heroic Strike
/cast Devastate

Since heroic Strike is a "next attack" timing, you can queue it up and still execute the Devastate. This is great in high rage situations.

Again, I would never use the random with Shield Slam and Revenge because for pure DPS, my shield slam is always better. Plus, I use the below macro for Shield Slam with Autoblocker and Coren Coin trinkets. Even though they don't stack any more, this just makes WAY better use of them since there's rarely a situation where you're thinking "I'd like to save my threat and use it later."

/use 13
/use 14
/cast Shield Block
/cast Shield Slam