The Protection Guide - Page 39

Eyegore · 02/21/08, 2:58 PM

One thing, I see he had windfury. Other group synergy buffs can up TPS as well. If you get in a group with an enh. shaman, feral druid, dps warrior (and get heroism like he did) you can really do some nice TPS...

acx · 02/21/08, 3:07 PM

Originally Posted by Tylerlee

I wanna switch topics, to (probably already covered, but looking for it to be more personal) TPS, i must first admit 99.9% of the time i either use normal tanking gear, or avoidance gear, ive only used my SBV set on Teron twice. Weve been clearing BT for over 2 month now and with the release of Sunwell and Brutalus, we really need to push the guild and thus myself, to the peak of what we can achieve.

My current SB set is pretty much like the set on the first page tho no T5 Helm, so wear gloves instead of Enforcement and no Deflection trinket, using Vengence. Mallet to increase my Expertise. Stam gems in all slots to keep health to a decent level (16.5k unbuffed) 25.32% Dodge, 17.04% Parry, 31.24% Block, with 778 sbv listed.

Spec for reference, standard 8/6/47 Aggressive. (Armorys messing up at so no link)

Heres a link to a Teron fight where i used said setup, WWS Loading... Only 980 tps :S (hense the point of this post)

Then theres Vis Maiors Teron fight WWS, Kold - WWS 1331 TPS.

Major differences that i can see are hes doing around 10% more dmg on all his abilities which i can only put down to a different weapon?? but the TPS difference is huge, over 300 tps, my "theory" is im lacking hit, only 61, but where can i find the hit i need while not sacrificing Stamina or other stats that i "need"?

Vis Maior's Gorefiend kill is a completely stacked raid and tank group. There is an enhancement shaman in the group with windfury, unleashed rage, and heroism. He's also using both shield block trinkets and got chain drums of battle. Don't worry too much about Teron kills with stacked raids with over 30k raid dps. For a more realistic TPS benchmark look at slightly longer fights without stacked groups somewhere in the 25-28K raid dps kill range.

Tylerlee · 02/21/08, 3:26 PM

Yup, its all in order to get best i can for Sunwell dps race where you need 28k dps, our max on Teron atm without any pushing is only 20k.

Sepulture · 02/21/08, 3:29 PM

I don't have redundant sets of gear like some of the guilds that have been farming Illidan for over six months, but I think my outfitter setup is optimal, especially my trash sets. I regularly update each of these sets every time I get new gear.

1) Tanking- Trash threat
Target Stats: 4/5 tier 5, 95ish hit rating, 5.6% expertise, then maximum block value, then crit.

2) Tanking - Boss threat
Target Stats: 4/5 tier 5, 142 hit rating, as much expertise as possible, then maximum block value, then crit.

3) Tanking - Max Hit Rating
Target Stats: As much hit rating as possible, including Icon of Unyielding Courage. This is for Al'ar or any taunt gimmick fight

4) Tanking - Block
Target Stats: As much block rating as possible. Mostly for fun and to surprise people in the battlegrounds.

5) Tanking - Survival
Target Stats: All the highest iLvL tanking items, favoring avoidance, armor, stamina. Gemmed with stamina, or possibly not if the item features a 6 sta bonus from a single socket. No expertise items.

6) Tanking - Effective Health
Target Stats: Armor, Stamina, SBV. This is a relic from early SSC, but I am keeping it up to date for new content that hits really hard.

7) Tanking - Expertise Survival
Target Stats: Same as 5, but with expertise items substituted in (except for shapeshifter's signet).

8) Tanking - Health
Target Stats: All the top stamina items gemmed with stamina gems. For Kael'thas and heavy spell damage fights and for impressing ignorant people who ask "how much health do you have?".

Fellwraith · 02/21/08, 3:49 PM

Originally Posted by Tylerlee

My current SB set is pretty much like the set on the first page tho no T5 Helm, so wear gloves instead of Enforcement and no Deflection trinket, using Vengence. Mallet to increase my Expertise. Stam gems in all slots to keep health to a decent level (16.5k unbuffed) 25.32% Dodge, 17.04% Parry, 31.24% Block, with 778 sbv listed.

Spec for reference, standard 8/6/47 Aggressive. (Armorys messing up at so no link)

Heres a link to a Teron fight where i used said setup, WWS Loading... Only 980 tps :S (hense the point of this post)

Then theres Vis Maiors Teron fight WWS, Kold - WWS 1331 TPS.

Major differences that i can see are hes doing around 10% more dmg on all his abilities which i can only put down to a different weapon?? but the TPS difference is huge, over 300 tps, my "theory" is im lacking hit, only 61, but where can i find the hit i need while not sacrificing Stamina or other stats that i "need"?

Hit isn't as big a deal as you might think. You should have enough expertise that you aren't getting dodged first and foremost (I see a dodged heroic strike in your parse, which probably means you have 5.25% parry/dodge reduction from expertise or something close to it). Cap your dodge reduction before you get too concerned about +hit. Expertise provides better returns than hit until you're dodge capped (and even after you're capped against most raid bosses).

1) He had 2 uses of an autoblocker in slightly over 2 minutes, which is going to inflate his TPS relative to someone who has a 3-4 minute kill. More of his time was covered by a higher block value. It's the same as a dps class that has their entire kill shot covered by cooldowns - they're going to look like they did ridiculous dps (and they did!) but it's not sustained dps. Also, shorter fights are prone to RNG benefits, maybe you got lucky and crit a lot at the beginning? Maybe you were unlucky and got a few too many parries.

2) You don't have an enhancement shaman (or any shaman for that matter) in your group dropping totems and giving you bloodlust. That's a significant threat loss. If you're really concerned about threat, you need a shaman, preferably an enhancement shaman.

3) You did 32 shield slams, 76 devastates, and 37 revenges (he was 19:38:21). You need to prioritize shield slam over devastate. The ratio should be approaching 1 shield slam/revenge to 2 devastates assuming you have unlimited rage.

I personally think the 4pc T6 bonus is just as good as the haste bonus from T5 on most bosses (I did 1,265 tps to Teron this week in 4pc T6 by my math). Once you get several pieces of T6 gear, you start getting lots of expertise, crit, and +hit. T5 requires that you get hit in order for it to activate the haste rating, and haste really only helps you heroic strike or melee faster. That's not as helpful as a higher shieldslam value on every shield slam against a lower AC boss.

Lambach · 02/21/08, 4:16 PM

I'm really sorry about having to ask this, but my tanks been bugging me about it and I can't figure it out for him. How exactly do you find TPS numbers in a WWS?

acx · 02/21/08, 4:18 PM

You can do it manually or try to use the online calculator: Kenneth Gant Niebuhr - Online portfolie

Rott · 02/21/08, 4:51 PM

Originally Posted by acx

You can do it manually or try to use the online calculator: Kenneth Gant Niebuhr - Online portfolie

I don't think his calculator works for Druids. Is there a similar app for feral tanks?

Tylerlee · 02/21/08, 4:59 PM

Originally Posted by Rott

I don't think his calculator works for Druids. Is there a similar app for feral tanks?

No, but think he was working on one? not sure, but at present, no there isnt.

Xav · 02/21/08, 6:42 PM

On the TPS topic, it's come up before, and I normally wouldn't link this, but it's pretty much a very informative place to go if you're having questions about how to maximize your threat. I wrote an "article" of sorts giving tips on how to maximize your threat generation, and how to analyze your threat gen / WWS logs. (For comparison, not that it matters at this point, but I'd obtained much higher numbers than the one even linked recently in this thread)

Warrior Generating "The Threat" - TheorySpot

Darkrenown · 02/21/08, 7:59 PM

Originally Posted by Eyegore

One thing, I see he had windfury. Other group synergy buffs can up TPS as well. If you get in a group with an enh. shaman, feral druid, dps warrior (and get heroism like he did) you can really do some nice TPS...

True, we just had our 3rd Terron kill and I managed 1099 TPS in my avoidence gear*. I don't think the online calc counts MD threat either:
darkrenown - WWS

Had a resto shammy for WF and a dps warrior for BS.

*= My avoidence gear is basicly my threat gear with the moroes and hydross trinkets instead of autoblocker/vengence and the ring of sundered souls instead of the MH honored ring. Terron dropped his gun tonight, so I'll add that to this set too.

szgeti · 02/21/08, 8:31 PM

Originally Posted by Tylerlee

I wanna switch topics, to (probably already covered, but looking for it to be more personal) TPS, i must first admit 99.9% of the time i either use normal tanking gear, or avoidance gear, ive only used my SBV set on Teron twice. Weve been clearing BT for over 2 month now and with the release of Sunwell and Brutalus, we really need to push the guild and thus myself, to the peak of what we can achieve.

My current SB set is pretty much like the set on the first page tho no T5 Helm, so wear gloves instead of Enforcement and no Deflection trinket, using Vengence. Mallet to increase my Expertise. Stam gems in all slots to keep health to a decent level (16.5k unbuffed) 25.32% Dodge, 17.04% Parry, 31.24% Block, with 778 sbv listed.

Spec for reference, standard 8/6/47 Aggressive. (Armorys messing up at so no link)

Heres a link to a Teron fight where i used said setup, WWS Loading... Only 980 tps :S (hense the point of this post)

Then theres Vis Maiors Teron fight WWS, Kold - WWS 1331 TPS.

Major differences that i can see are hes doing around 10% more dmg on all his abilities which i can only put down to a different weapon?? but the TPS difference is huge, over 300 tps, my "theory" is im lacking hit, only 61, but where can i find the hit i need while not sacrificing Stamina or other stats that i "need"?

You only used Shield Slam 20 times, on a fight long enough to have used it 42 times. Making sure you are hitting it exactly every CD makes a big difference.

galzohar · 02/21/08, 11:26 PM

This issue keeps coming up in raids. On one hand tanks should have expertese and generate significantly more threat than the dps the raid can deal, but on the other hand on occassions people will get threat capped... Having seen some great TPS done without an enhancement shaman before, it seems like putting that shaman in a DPS group is just a better idea.
Clearing hyjal and being not too far into BT, is there any way for people to really be threat capped given they get a shaman and the tank doesn't? Or is a shaman in the tank group a complete waste and should just be used to boost a caster group's DPS (or even a healer group's mana/healing especially when shadow priests are limited)?

Xav · 02/22/08, 1:42 AM

Shaman in the tank group for progress when you need tank survivability at its highest. Not all fights are that threatening. (GoA, etc)
Shaman in the tank group when it's probably farm status and you want to maximize dps, and thus, threat, to kill stuff faster.
This will vary based on personal needs/experiences within the guild, a heavy hunter/feral druid/ret paladin raid could see a tank group with say 1 BM 1 Marks 1 Prot warrior 1 feral 1 ret paladin in the"extra" melee group and it would still be very very strong.

galzohar · 02/22/08, 1:48 AM

Except they seem to insist on putting him in there for windfury/threat, not avoidance/survival (I often need to do some convincing / wait for a tank death wipe to get an imp and devo in the tank group), which just doesn't seem right especially when your caster/sp group runs without a shaman. Also as far as I know wrath of air (not to mention mana spring) for casters is quite stronger than GoA+SoE for a feral/hunter/tank group in terms of dps.

Reliknom · 02/22/08, 4:48 AM

We only use a shaman in the MT group for Vashj and threat has not been a problem yet. Our DPS classes also perform quite well and some of them are outspoken enough to bash the tanks if they have to hold back. For new content (sunwell, here we come) shamans are best used in their "normal" role supporting the DPS classes, at least in my opinion. Of course there may yet come a boss that needs GoA, Lady Sacrolash in her last incarnation comes to mind. But a devotion aura and the imp of your affliction lock is usually better for pogression content.
Since Brutallus has come up as the new benchmark for maximized DPS/TPS, I found myself last night reverting back to my threat set from mitigation, although I did not have the guts (yet) for changing my trinkets from scarab and shadowmoon insignia to romulo's and DST.

(P.S. Taunt resists on Brutallus hurt like hell, some hit rating is a must havefor him. Getting both a caster and a melee goat for 1% spell and 1% melee hit might be overkill though.)

khel · 02/22/08, 6:25 AM

Originally Posted by Quigon

XI. Weapon Enchants

There are only two weapon enchants that a protection warrior should consider:

Mongoose Enchant:

Procs “Lightning Speed”:
Increases agi by 120, and increases attack speed by 2% (associative) for 15 seconds.

If mongoose procs while the “Lightning Speed” is up, it will simply renew the buff to 15 seconds, it will not stack.

120 agi is:
240 armor (approximately 0.79% relative DR, or ~0.3% raw DR)
3.6% to crit
4.0% to dodge

A warrior with 60% DR from armor, and 50% avoidance, will see an 8.8% decrease in damage due to the “Lightning Speed” Proc. [(1/(1-0.5))*4.0 + 0.79]

A warrior may assume 1.4 ppm for mongoose for 1.4*15s for 21 seconds of uptime each minute. If this ppm value is incorrect please let me know.

This means that a warrior will see on average an 8.8%*21/60 = 3.08% relative increase in damage reduction with the above gear setup.

According to the threat calculator, a mongoose proc will increase a well geared warrior’s TPS by 39. This correlates to 39*60s*(21s/60s) for 772 threat per minute or 12.9 TPS.

Executioner Enchant

Executioner increases your armor penetration by 840 for 15 seconds.
As indicated above in the armor penetration stat section, the lower the boss’s armor, the more valuable armor penetration becomes. Therefore, it is a sliding scale when measuring the worth of this enchant.

This enchant will also not help in mitigation, only in threat.

I will assume this enchant has 1 ppm. This is complete assumption until I find data to show otherwise. This would mean the uptime is 15 seconds out of every 60 seconds, or 25% uptime.

840 armor penetration is roughly equivalent to a 5.6% DPS increase according to information posted by Kalgan.

According to the threat calculator, this comes out to just over a 6% total increase in threat for a well equipped warrior, or ~65 TPS. This would make executioner significantly better than mongoose for use on your “Aggro weapon”.

Keep in mind that the ppm value will radically adjust this first approximation.

Has this ppm value for executioner while tanking been re-estimated? This looks like during the proc, you get a 65tps, so 25% uptime yields an average tps boost of just 16.25%. Compared to 12.9% from mongoose and the avoidance that goes along with that, I don't see much benefit to using executioner.

Is the ppm estimate off maybe? Or is the estimated tps during an executioner proc different? If not, then mongoose seems like the clear winner in almost every situation.

Reliknom · 02/22/08, 7:59 AM

As far as I know both exectioner and mongoose seem to have a ppm between 1.1 and 1.2. There is an actual thread about this, feel free to search it for test results.

Tylerlee · 02/22/08, 8:01 AM

Originally Posted by szgeti

You only used Shield Slam 20 times, on a fight long enough to have used it 42 times. Making sure you are hitting it exactly every CD makes a big difference.

Depends on your timings, with 2dev, rev, ss, your eating into your ss cooldown if im right? so youll never do as many slams as you "could" do if you prioritised slams. Also had 8 misses, (5 parry 3 miss), which is where my "get +hit" theory came in. Ideally id like Kazrogal Shield and gem for hit, but its only dropped on our first kill 6 month ago and never since....

Reliknom · 02/22/08, 8:09 AM

But you do not use a dev-dev-rev-ss cycle! You start off with 5 devs (or until you have 5 stacks of sunder) then go for ss-rev-dev-dev. Shield slam has absolut priority in most situations, only giving way to revenge when seriously rage starved and maybe to devastate when building threat as an offtank.

Coeus · 02/22/08, 12:28 PM

I read through the thread looking to see if this was pointed out/asked, but I could have missed it in skimming over.

Quigon says you need 336 Defense rating to push you to crit immunity, but based on the most recent formula I've seen, it should only be 332 rating.

Base@60 * (82 / (262 - 3*Level))

For a level 70 character, using the base value of 1.5 for Defense Rating->Defense@60 the formula becomes:

1.5 * (82 / (262 - 3*70))

or, more simply

1.5 * (82 / 52)

which equals 2.36538461538. In the OP, Quigon lists 2.3654, which is good enough for my point. You can then perform multiplication to arrive at 332 rating. We know we need 140 additional Defense to be crit immune, so:

140 * 2.3654 = 331.156

Thus showing we need 332 Defense Rating to reach the minimum of 490 truncated defense (and 284 rating for Warriors with 5/5 Anticipation).

Taliafears · 02/22/08, 1:32 PM

There's a formula I'd really like to see fleshed out, for use in my spreadsheet, but I haven't had the inspiration yet on how to approach it. I've looked around for a solution and not found one. Is there anyone that can at least help me get started?

What I want is the average swing speed modifier based on parry rate. So given the amount of my (defensive) combat table consumed by Parry, my weapon speed, and the attack speed of my opponent, what's my new (average) weapon speed? Let's not worry about swing synching issues and assume that my opponent's attacks hit random points in my swing timer. We can leave out double parries, as well.

Sepulture · 02/22/08, 5:13 PM

Weapon Speed including Parry = Weapon Speed - (((Parry Rate/Boss Attack Speed)* Weapon Speed) * .25)

I think that .25 is the average swing speed increase (25%) when you take into account that the 40% swing time reduction cannot go below 20% of swing speed, but don't quote me on that.

Or, in .xls,

= A1 - (((A2/A3)* A1) * 0.25)

Where
A1 = Weapon Speed
A2 = Parry Rate
A3 = Opponent Attack Speed

Xav · 02/22/08, 5:20 PM

Originally Posted by Reliknom

We only use a shaman in the MT group for Vashj and threat has not been a problem yet. Our DPS classes also perform quite well and some of them are outspoken enough to bash the tanks if they have to hold back. For new content (sunwell, here we come) shamans are best used in their "normal" role supporting the DPS classes, at least in my opinion. Of course there may yet come a boss that needs GoA, Lady Sacrolash in her last incarnation comes to mind. But a devotion aura and the imp of your affliction lock is usually better for pogression content.
Since Brutallus has come up as the new benchmark for maximized DPS/TPS, I found myself last night reverting back to my threat set from mitigation, although I did not have the guts (yet) for changing my trinkets from scarab and shadowmoon insignia to romulo's and DST.

(P.S. Taunt resists on Brutallus hurt like hell, some hit rating is a must havefor him. Getting both a caster and a melee goat for 1% spell and 1% melee hit might be overkill though.)

Using a normal threat set on Brutallus will get you killed pretty often, until we start massively outgearing it (the new Sunwell tank loot with lots of expertise).

I'm 99% certain most tanks will be using a heavy avoidance set on Brutallus with only their absolute *best* threat pieces replacing only so-so avoidance pieces of gear. (Or pieces with a healthy balance). For example, the Tank gloves from the trash mobs in Sunwell are just EXTREMELY good for avoidance compared to everything else, by a pretty huge margin, so taking them off to put in Enforcement wouldn't be smart at all.

I don't think Brutallus will be a "TPS" Benchmark until guilds have been farming Kil'Jaeden for months and outgear everything by a massive level.

Taliafears · 02/22/08, 7:25 PM

Originally Posted by Sepulture

I think that .25 is the average swing speed increase (25%) when you take into account that the 40% swing time reduction cannot go below 20% of swing speed, but don't quote me on that.

Yeah, that's the number that I'm most interested in getting right and having the most trouble with. You got me started though so here's what I came up with:

Let x be the % at which the parry happens to land.
Let y be the new total swing time for a given x

For the first 40% of the swing timer:
y = .6

For the second 40%:
y = x + .2
  
For the last 20%:
y = 1

So to find the *average* of y, I need to integrate the whole curve and divide by the width (which conveniently is 1, in this case)

So for the first 40%:
integral of y over x=0 to .4 = .6x
                             = .6(.4)
                             = .24
For the second 40%:
integral of y over x=.4 to .8 = .5x^2 + .2x
                              = .5(.8)^2 + .2(.8) - .5(.4)^2 - .2(.4)
                              = .32 + .16 - .08 - .08
                              = .32
For the last 20%:
integral of y over x=.8 to 1 = x
                             = 1 - .8
                             = .2

So the average of y = .24 + .32 + .2 = .76

That's with parry mechanics as stated in the OP (which I'm pretty sure are accurate or very close).

So the final speed multiplier is

AdjSpd = WpnSpd * (1-.24*WpnSpd*parry/bossspd)

Edit: Edited to correct assumptions.