Zileas

An old example of this infrastructural decision is how the old twin emperors used to work

sometimes, i would shield slam a twin emp (physical) and he would teleport shortly thereafter

hed then BEELINE for me.

What happened here was processor #1 validated my shield slam, and executed the ability

However, before it completed, but after it validated, the boss changed position and applied threat clear... after that, my previously validaetd shield slam would land, apply threat, and hed run back to me. Same bug as the "you die, you drink a potion".

 

Zileas

To do the game purely synchronously would have increased the roll out costs severalfold.

What they SHOULD HAVE done though is put critical events related to one mob on one server so that they generally got serial execution. So instead of putting heals, blocks and boss damage on random processors, force them to go to the same processor.

 

Edgewalker

1119 TPS with that group make up is actually quite abysmally poor, that's a group for what should be an easy 1400.
1300 TPS on Teron is an easy to meet benchmark, and your applicant is probably not lying.

 

◊ vorpalblade

Removed.. people already analyzed this. Apologies.

 

Roywyn

A question to the tanks that have tanked things in Sunwell Plateau on the PTR.


Do you think amplify magic (+240 healing taken, +120 magic damage taken) is a very valuable thing on tanks in Sunwell Plateau?
And if it is, do you think increasing this by 50% (+360 healing taken, +180 magic damage taken) is worth dropping 5% DPS of one mage (spec change)?


I've used amplify magic on tanks on most fights before 2.4. But from the impressions I've seen so far, Sunwell has pretty high damage spikes from magic damage and physical damage combined. I can't judge it though from doing just one fight on PTR.

So, do those of you who've been there and tanked stuff think that amplify magic is good? A must-have? Or only so-so?
Would love some pointers or opinions on it. I'll have to decide if +50% improved amplify magic is worth 10 talent points (~5% DPS).

 

Enkidu

Amplify magic is good, but not as a universal rule. I wouldn't spec into improved if it gave a 5% damage loss; much of the damage taken in Sunwell is still magical in origin that often comes in small bite sizes or as a general part of a spike, while the DPS of every raid member is fairly important.
The only fight we made extensive use of Amplify Magic was Brutallus.

You would have to see a breakdown of damage taken / sources, how many heals the tank would be getting and other such considerations before deciding the benefit of amplify magic for that specific encounter, unfortunately 2.4 being what it is finding good tools for statistical analysis wasn't easy at the time of testing.

Kalecgos: A lot of magical damage, the spike damage on tanks is in large magical and heals are scarce.
Brutallus: Not a lot of meaningful damage on the tanks from magic sources, heals are landing none stop.
Felmyst: A lot of magical damage, medium heals on the tank. Might be good for this fight but haven't had many pulls to ascertain.
Twins: Same as Felmyst, could be good on the physical mitigation tanks. Too few pulls to have any clue on the numbers.
M'uru: A lot of small magical hits, dampen magic may be good for certain classes (melee that has lotp/jol, for instance).

 

galzohar

Easiest way to decide is look at WWS parses of tank deaths, see how many heals landed and how many spells hit him from the last time he was at full HP and go from there. You would need multiple samples though and weed out the ones that are something like "everyone died so he got no heals" etc.

Most likely unless the deaths were 2 normal attacks+magical attack (or more) with pretty much no heals in between (which isn't completely impossible but is probably not common on most fights), or even less likely multiple magical attacks+whatever+very few heals, amp magic is going to be worth it.

Reducing 5% DPS in order to get it improved, though, is a tough choice as it's both fight dependant and makes you choose between survivability and DPS - but in general a few percentages of tank survival seem to help progression more than a bit of DPS. The real question is if improving amp magic would be the "few percentages" kind of difference or the "fraction of a %" kind of difference... This depends on the amount of magic damage taken of course. And then how "standard" the fight is, as most fights *until* today seem to have easy DPS requirements if everyone live, yet a small mistake can get the tank killed and wipe the raid.

 

◊ Quigon

Its only 5% dps on one player. Back in naxx when everything was at such a tight threshold improve amplify was a big deal. For instance: patchwerk and gothik it was huge.
Generally you can compare heals to magic attacks, but you also should consider heal cast time.

 

• Jamor

I am going to play devil's advocate here and say that, as long as your DPS doesn't have to hold back, there is no such thing as "poor TPS". That looks to be a pretty high DPS parse, so he wasn't doing too bad.

 

Saburo

Under you consumables section you don't include anything on the use of Scroll of Protection V or Scroll of Agility V.
Since I am fairly sure both stack with normal MT consumables and buffs, so you may want to include them.

 

◊ Quigon

Strange, I know this was in the original. I'll update it soon.

 

Marathon

Thanks for the great thread; I always appreciate solid numbers.

I'm away from my spreadsheet I made for Patch 2.4 gear, but I'm wondering what the OP's thoughts are regarding the Badge of Justice loot added to Smith Hauthaa. Where would you insert the Chestplate of Stoicism, Sunguard Legplates, Girdle of the Fearless, and Ring of the Stalwart Protector in your Mitigation Set? In your Aggressive Set?

On my mitigation set, I put Chestplate of Stoicism below the Chestguard of the Warlord, Sunguard Legplates as a sidegrade to Unwavering Legguards, Girdle of the Fearless as a sidegrade to the Girdle of the Invulnerable, and the Ring of the Stalwart as an upgrade to my Seventh Ring of the Tirisfallen (though I understand rings are intensely subject to personal preference).

From a mitigation perspective, what 2.4 items are must-have for a warrior working on Vashj and Kael'thelas?

 

◊ Quigon

I'm not going to update anything until 2.4 goes live. Most stuff is subject to change still, and Blizzard isn't well known for speed.

 

Riot

The belt and legs should be on every warriors list. Those warriors already farming BT can choose whether or not to obtain the badges items. The ring and chestplate are good, but certainly not must-haves.

Overslept, / So tired. / If late, / Get fired. / Why bother? / Why the pain? / Just go home / Do it again. - The Commuter's Lament
Norman B. Colp

 

Taliafears

I'm not the OP, but I maintain a pretty comprehensive spreadsheet for making gear decisions (there's a thread here on EJ for it).

For progression bosses, after this morning's armor buffs to 2.4 items, my sheet shows (>> means "much better than", and >= "slightly better than"):

Chest:
T7 >> T6 >> new badge chest > T5 > Hyjal chest = Zul'Jin chest >> T4

Legs:
T7 >> T6 > new badge legs = BT legs >> unwavering > T5 > T4

Belt:
T6 >> BT belt > new badge belt >= iron-tusk = leo belt >> moroes belt

Ring:
new badge ring > hyjal rep ring >= BT ring = moro ring = kara rep ring >= mag ring >= aran ring > za timed ring = tirisfalen

 

galzohar

You should probably include the ZA timed ring in that list

 

mistersix

To be clear in the framework of the op's structure does progression bosses = mitigation set? Assuming that's true where do they fall in terms of the threat set lists? On a related topic where do crafted items like blazefury and the tankatronic (and the new hard khorium goggles) fall into the mix? I'd be happy to run the numbers in the spreadsheets if someone else hasn't already but I'm asking in case someone else already has that info.

 

Taliafears

Progression bosses means a certain combination of threat, damage mitigation, and damage burst survivability. I can't really prove to you that my particular combo is the best, because there IS no best for all fights, but I do my best to match my sheet to the available empirical evidence and conventional wisdom. I also try to make sure that stat valuations are consistent with one another based on those three key aspects (threat, mitigation, burst survival).

Shameless plug (look out for a new upload tomorrow):
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17181-w...g_spreadsheet/

 

◊ Quigon

Yeah there really isn't a best for all fights - but there is a good general setup for any particular fight. In general (and sunwell might be an upcoming exception) during progression the raid DPS does not vastly outgear your ability to generate threat in a mitigation build and set of gear. Basically most progression can be done with low threat. In sunwell you'll need a fine mix - but tier 6 and expertise makes this readily possible without making large sacrifices.

 

Azhag

Well I don't think you can check off that number as unrealistic generally. As you probably know TPS depends enormously on the encounter and chosen gear. My personal experience shows that I take liberties with generating threat after the first seconds off an encounter unless our dps is "on fire" and challenges me to bring out the best of me. In the majority of encounters our dps can't catch up with my own threat under the circumstances. But in several fights like versus Teron Gorefiend the MT is claimed to burst his TPS and that's good because otherwise tanking would be no challenge

Edit:

As example I quote our last WWS report vs Teron Gorefiend from yesterday. Omen showed permanently much higher TPS values (1.5k<) during the fight then this output with the TPS Calculator. This could be one reason why this warrior app talked about he could meet 1300 TPS regularly.

Calculator: Kenneth Gant Niebuhr - Online portfolie
WWS Report: Azhag - WWS

Battle time in seconds: 241

Heroic Strike:
Amount: 61138 Hits: 110 Crits: 17 Dmg Threat: 91401.31 Skill Threat: 41770.3
Shield slam:
Amount: 33599 Hits: 28 Crits: 3 Dmg Threat: 50230.505 Skill Threat: 14227.915
Melee:
Amount: 11414 Hits: 30 Crits: 7 Dmg Threat: 17063.93 Skill Threat: 0
Revenge:
Amount: 12275 Hits: 26 Crits: 3 Dmg Threat: 18351.125 Skill Threat: 8714.355
Devastate:
Amount: 22346 Hits: 54 Crits: 8 Dmg Threat: 33407.27 Skill Threat: 9361.69
Shield Bash:
Amount: Hits: Crits: Dmg Threat: 0 Skill Threat: 0
Cleave:
Amount: Hits: Crits: Dmg Threat: 0 Skill Threat: 0
Thunder Clap:
Amount: 195 Hits: 1 Crits: Dmg Threat: 291.525 Skill Threat: 510.16875
Reflect:
Amount: 1055 Hits: 45 Crits: Dmg Threat: 1577.225 Skill Threat: 0
Vengeance:
Amount: 527 Hits: 5 Crits: Dmg Threat: 787.865 Skill Threat: 0
Thunderfury:
Amount: Hits: Crits: Dmg Threat: 0 Skill Threat: 0
Deep Wound:
Amount: Hits: Crits: Dmg Threat: 0 Skill Threat: 0
Lifebloom:
Amount: Overheal: % Threat: 0
Earthshield:
Amount: 16553 Overheal: 8% Threat: 15228.76
Prayer of Mending:
Amount: 33912 Overheal: 11% Threat: 30181.68

Total amount of dmg threat: 213110.755
Total amount of skill threat: 74584.42875
Total amount of healing threat: 22705.22

TPS: 1287.9684802905

 

mistersix

Can't wait for the new upload. If you'd like I could help out with stats on the other versions of fireguard. Just let me know.

 

acx

I don't get it. You input a prot DW devastate dps parse into the threat calculator and came out with some TPS number.

 

Tamral

Been a while since I last put something up here, but after putting up a gearing index, which subsequently has finally been solved for most bosses, I came to an interesting yet rather comical conclusion.

All this while, people have said in general, the tank rotation (i.e hitting 3,4,4,4,5,6,3,4,5) etc.. is rather easy. Turns out, apparently it’s not.

Currently, I still run avoidance for the most part (29% raidbuffed dodge, 20% parry, 24% block with about 530 SBV, with 141 hit/27 expertise), but what I’ve found recently is that the actual OPTIMIZATION of the tanking cycle is far from simple. In theory, it is simple enough using 2x devastate, 1x SS, 1x revenge, while keeping SB up, and using HS to burn rage. It unfortunately, leaves one major issue out. What are the optimal ranges of rage to use HS?

It is common knowledge that of the 4 basic abilities, HS gives the least extra threat/rage return, but at the same time, presents one of the most obnoxious problems in that using it too much leaves you viable to being rage starved and missing abilities from the cycle.

While technically possible to use a 101 state probabilistic model to solve it, I have neither the time, nor the inclination to even try that order of problem statement.

As an example, use the following webstats example.
WWS Loading...

5 minutes and 55 seconds of combat, during which 5 minutes and 48 seconds of engagement (from the time she arrived from misdirect), or 348 seconds. Ideally, in 348 seconds, the maximum achievable number of GCD’s used would be 232 (1.5 S cooldowns), with an expected number (50-150 ms latency) of 220. Under ideal circumstances, this would translate into: 55 shield slams, 110 devastates, and 55 revenges.

My actual results were 47 shield slams, 52 revenges, and 95 devastates, with 6 out of plan uses of Thunderclap, 3 GCD’s wasted using Moroes Trinket, 3 for ironshield pots, and 1 for shield wall, for a grand total of 194 cooldowns used in plan, 6 out of plan, 7 for survival and 13 sitting around like a dumbass (wasted time). However, within that context itself (since I only will use survival cooldowns (except for SW) and pot cooldowns during a devastate portion of the cycle), that’s at least 6-8 SS from which I had no rage to operate, and a good 8-9 devastates as well.

HS to melee ratio was 144 – 80, or close to 2 – 1 (the magic number I want to keep to have roughly 1100 self sustained TPS, or 1400+ TPS when healing/buff (thorns, auras) aggro and all raid buffs are added, but rage starvation cancelled a good 6-7 HS’s). Granted, the 68.2% miss percentage Shahraz had on me certainly didn’t help my rage situation (did make me ridiculously easy to heal though), but I basically have plateaud around the 1250-1350 range on TPS. On this fight in particular, thanks to losing almost 20% of my SS’s and close to 10% of devastates due to sheer avoidance, and wearing a darkmoon card instead of the auto-bocker, I finished the fight with slightly under 1250 TPS. (431k threat achieved in 348 seconds).

So here is the magic question. I generally spam HS until I go under 40 rage, but this ends up leaving gaps in rage coverage. I KNOW for a fact that 1400 TPS is achievable with normal buffs, and you don’t need windfury or heroism. Do any other more avoidance based tanks have any suggestions? If I spam till 50, it results in my ratio dropping significantly (to about 60-40, instead of closer to 2-1), and the loss of that kind of ratio I am worried would lead to more wasted rage (hit that puts me over 100 rage), than the benefits that would come from sticking the gap at 40. Does it vary more by boss fight?

I’m trying to get a better grip on if there is anything underlying that I am missing here, because I would prefer not to have to drop too much avoidance in general to do it (I typically tank with 3-4% more avoidance than my own calculations suggest by boss simply to improve odds, since I am not losing aggro on anything yet anyway)

 

Azhag

Sry wrong wws log

edit: updated preview post with WWS/TPS report

 

Tamral

Here's one way to do it.

Take your DPS and multiply that by 1.49/1.52 (if you have 2% threat gloves).

Take all of your abilities used and apply the following:
# of shield slams hit/crit * 323 * 1.49/1.52
# of devastates hit/crit * 101 * 1.49/1.52
# of revenge hit/crit * 201 * 1.49/1.52
# of HS hit/crit * 193 * 1.49/1.52
# of Tclaps hit/crit * (don't remember the number offhand) * 1.49/1.52

Add it all up. From my experiences, without stacking (with only battleshout), you should be in the 950-1050 range based on this). Stacking the group with a shaman (WF, SoE), Druid, Ret Pally, on some fights you can push 1300 or so raw (700 or so DPS) (without healing aggro).

On a tank and spank type encounter, depending on what healers you have and what they are using, you will also gain healing aggro = amount of the heals as an overall for the battle.

Perfect cycling results in about 320 or so TPS from abilities alone. The rest comes from damage and healing. If you want just a good way to ballpark it, use this.

450 - 600 + (your DPS *1.5) would give you a reasonable range, depending on how much healing aggro you're generating.