I think you need to check the WWS parse again. The numbers reported by the parse does not match what you think you did. I think you added up the total misses as well as the dodge and parry misses (which are already reflected in total misses) and counted them as hits.


You can always stop spamming shield block to get more rage. A complete threat cycle costs 37 rage over 6 seconds. Shield block costs 10 rage over 5 seconds or 2 rage/sec. Not shield blocking saves you 12 rage which is abotu 30% of the amount of rage needed to power your threat cycle. Or alternatively, it's enough rage to let you heroic strike 1 more time every 6 ( or 5) seconds. It also lets the boss do more damage to you and fills up your rage bar faster.

I included the misses because I was measuring what I was performing, not what hit/missed. If I miss, that is somewhat out of my control, but it is more important to measure what buttons I was pressing to ensure that I was using a correct rotation. 12 of my shield slams missed, and 4 were crits, with 31 connecting successfully, meaning I used the ability itself 47 times. Sorry for that misunderstanding.

I do use the not using shield block for extra threat from time to time, but I have never considered using that strategy on a very hard hitting boss. I'm not sure what the results would be of doing that, and unfortunately, with only 21.5k raidbuffed health at present, I may not have the health pool to get away with it.


Edit: My bad, you're right, make that only 43 shield slams performed. Even worse.... shit.

Actually, you only performed 39 shield slams. You're adding normal + hits + missed + parried, but the "missed" column is already a sum of miss + block + parry +dodge. You counted the 4 times you were parried twice.

As far as I know, trinkets and potions do not trigger global cooldowns, unless ironshields and pocket watch are "special" which I highly doubt. Hotkey/macro them or something so they don't disrupt your cycle, just like you're probably already doing with shield block.

The simplest way to calculate your threat via a WWS log is to use the online calculator:

Kenneth Gant Niebuhr - Online portfolie

Click your page for a specific fight, and put in the URL, you may have to submit it 2-3 times before it properly loads the report and spits the number out.

As for how to generate higher threat, outside of just getting a better group/better gear.... you basically already seem to understand. Don't miss globals, you should nearly always have enough rage to perform a Dev, SS, or Revenge on every GCD. You can drop Shield Block from your rotation on most bosses and not worry about your survivability, and even if you do take a "controlled" crush you can use the rage you quickly gain from it to shield block immediately after, ensuring you wont get "double crushed".

As long as you're not ever letting rage build up to the 90-100 levels, you should be fine. I start hitting HS at the ~35 rage levels, but I won't mash it repeatedly unless I know I'm getting hit steadily. Say you're at 35 rage and mid-rotation you hit a HS, then get hit for 5500 so you gain 55 rage, then you can machinegun your heroic strike key while you continue your rotation. Once you drop back down to ~30, slow down/stop. But, you really do want to hit your HS key as fast as you can when your rage is in the upper levels. One way to know you're doing this "Ideally" is if you can check your log for Windfury Attack procs (if you have a shaman), and if your "extra attacks" are actually being queued as heroic strikes rather than a normal melee swing.

Past the basic SS/Rev/Dev/Dev rotation non-stop and managing HS, it's just your gearing, group and raid composition from there (and fight duration).

Well shield bash can be used quite readily on a low rage global as well. And ratios in WWS don't tell the full story, as some ratios depend on the rage you had at the time.
Most tanks can perform ideal rotations under infinite rage, it is quite simple - its how you manage the low rage circumstances and make appropriate low rage decisions that define your ability to surge on threat.

Using the HS here in no way screws your instant rotation.

At 50, assuming focused rage, improved sunder, and no Imp HS (I still think its a garbage talent), you have enough for the heroic strike, your next shield slam, your next shield block, your next devastate, and a revenge.

If this decision is made 1s before the shield slam, we're talking about a time span of 5.5 seconds before a GCD comes up that you don't already have the rage for. During that time, your mob will likely try to hit you at least twice, and you will take at least two more swings after the heroic strike.

If you are overgearing a boss to that point that sitting at 50 rage with a SS cooldown about to become available really means that you are in danger of rage starving yourself soon, trade some avoidance for hit, expertise, and block value. Hell, stop using shield block... that 50 rage will then be enough for HS, SS, 2 devastates, and a revenge. Thats 7 seconds, if youre talking about a start time 1s before SS is up.

50 rage is enough to HS safely (once) without risk of rage starvation in normal encounters. It doesn't necessarily mean you can HS for the next eight swings, but one wont hurt you, and you might as well use the rage before it caps out.

I did a quick search and didn't find anything concerning this...

I've been considering a weird build (17/3/41) that picks up Impale in an attempt to increase dps. I often MT kara and heroics, so I really need to retain my threat generating ability from being prot spec, but I also would like to boost dps when I'm not MT, or while soloing.


Assuming:

*Five minutes of combat using the 4-ability (six second) cycle SS > Rev > Dev > Dev
*Five sunders on target at beginning of fight
*No lag
*sufficient rage at all times during fight
*No misses/dodges/parries/glancing
*Target's armor is zero

Stats (no raid buffs):
300 str
1000 AP
13% Crit
300 Shield Block Value

Weapon: 91 dps sword w/ 1.6s delay (almost kings defender)

In a 300s long fight, there is room for 300/1.6=187.5 melee attacks, and 300/6=50 full rotations, allowing 50 shield slams, 50 revenges, and 100 devestates. I will spare the individual dmg calculations and cut to the numbers. Damage numbers are the summation of the total damage done by that ability, including crits.

Damage components for my current build (10/7/44) Includes imp HS, 5/5 cruelty, and all the threat goodies from the prot tree...

Melee - 55088
Devestate - 37742
Shield Slam - 41245
Revenge - 25990
Total = 160,065

The new build reduces crit% by 2% (3/5 cruelty) and strength bonus by 4% (3/5 vitality). This reduces AP to 980. We also add damage from Deep Wounds, and assume a 90% uptime for this ability

Damage components for the "Crit" build (17/3/41)...

Melee - 53610
Devestate - 37560
Shield Slam - 41318
Revenge - 26036
Deep Wounds - 3478
Total = 162,0005

Only a marginal increase in total dmg output, however, if we assume that there is enough excess rage to allow one Heroic Strike for each cycle, then we can add the heroic strike damage. Remember that Heroic Strike adds a static amount of damage to an otherwise normal melee attack, except that Heroic Strike crits can benefit from Impale. I will only show the damage ADDED by Heroic Strike, so melee dmg numbers will remain the same.

(10/7/44) (17/3/41)
Melee - 55088 Melee - 53610
Devestate - 37742 Devestate - 37560
Shield Slam - 41245 Shield Slam - 41318
Revenge - 25990 Revenge - 26036
Heroic Strike - 9944 Deep Wounds - 3478
Heroic Strike - 11849
Total = 170,009 Total = 173,854

Another slight improvement, and you can see that as you add more yellow dmg (more heroic strikes, higher shield block value, etc) the difference will become larger. If we consider the ability that gives 1 rage per 3 seconds, we can assume that the second build has 100 more rage to use in this timeframe, and add damage accordingly via heroic strikes. 100 more rage = 10 more heroic strikes or another 2370 damage, for a total of 176,224 dmg in 300s.

176,224/170,009 = 1.037 or 3.7% increased dps.

DPS is only a part of where warrior tank threat comes from, so total TPS increase will be less than 3.7% (closer to 2-2.5%?). To achieve this, imp demo shout has been lost, 1 point has been removed from anticipation, and 2 points have been taken out of vitality. Somewhat minor survivability has been traded for a minor increase in threat generation. But, if you are pushing this hard for threat, you probably don't need the 2% Stamina, 4 defense, and 16% imp demo shout.

This was just a rough calculation to see how closely I should look at this build, and hence I used my personal stats, substituting a common sword that doesn't suck. I have neglected any mob avoidance, as well as glancing blows, I'm not sure how those will affect the outcome. My shield block value is also relatively low compared to what it could be (300 instead of 450-600). The whole idea also goes caput when you are fighting unbleedable mobs (deep wounds goes away). It is theoretically possible to boost the dmg a bit by using a slower weapon, and thus increasing devestate dmg slightly, but you run the risk of going too slow and not being able to heroic strike fast enough to dump rage effectively.

Let me know what you think, or if anyone has tried something like this before.

Is there really any reason to push Shield Bash anymore these days for threat purposes? It seems to me that under the assumption that everyone is rocking a nine rage Devastate, the situations under which pushing Shield Bash seems kind of low.

I've considered impale and deep wounds before and not thought it was worth it. I've seen other tanks use it and decide to ditch it.

If you really want to be able to dps when not tanking, I suggest 0/31/30. I've tanked kara with that build and had no trouble surviving or holding threat (I firmly outgear kara, though). It's also very competitive dps. Note that Bloodthirst threat depends heavily on attack power, so you really need to have battle shout up while tanking, along with blessing of might or trueshot aura or something.

In my experience there is no middle ground between Main Tank and Occasional DPSer. Either you are maxed out for tanking, and can handle the MT role, or you're a hybrid, and you handle the offtank roles when needed. On anything hard enough that 0/31/30 doesn't cut it, your raid is going to want to bring a full tank spec instead of any shade of hybrid. Anything less than the best isn't good enough, so you really need to choose MT or hybrid (and only choose hybrid if your guild has a viable MT option).

Now that that's out of the way, a few technical notes:

1) I notice you state that your intention is to trade survivability in tank mode for dps in dps-mode, but all your dps calculations include shield slam (tank mode). You may want to figure out how much it helps you dps while dual-wielding in dps gear.

2) You can easily trade 15 agility for 2% more threat with the glove enchant, this talent change seems to be on the same scale and costs a lot more than 15 agility. (Just one point of anticipation costs more than 15 agility).

3) Every time deep wounds refreshes you lose (on average) half a tick of damage.

4) You state that 100 rage buys you 10 heroic strikes. In tank gear my regular swings generate an average of 6 rage, which must be added to heroic strike's cost. So with fully improved heroic strikes, 100/15 = 6.7 heroics.

This sort of thing is exactly what the warrior DPS spreadsheet is for and I suggest you use it. You also forgot more than a few important numbers, such as hit rating.

Objections:
-If you're the main tank, you should be a tank. Weird hybrid specs were tolerated back in Vanilla when 50 gold was a lot of gold, but now that it's "Do a few dailies", it's just plain unacceptable.
-You're 70 and in Kara. What exactly do you do solo other than dailies?
-It gives up survivability AND DPS in exchange for...DPS. What?
-Deep Wounds screws up CC. If a CC breaks for whatever reason(You got clap happy, ele shaman hit the wrong button, etc), you will need to pick it up for just a few seconds. Randomly putting a DOT on the CC target is not acceptable. Note that CC includes intimidating shout when you're out solo'ing; it's extremely annoying to not be able to use your only escape because you automatically dotted it up.

I had originally done the calculations on the impale spec with the idea of increased threat generation while tanking, and then saw the benefits of this spec while DPSing.

I think the biggest killer for me would be the effects of deep wounds on CC, I had forgotten about this problem from when I was leveling. Thanks for the responses

@Fruffy
In addition to playing around with a DPS warrior spreadsheet, take a look at this thread that breaks down how much impale really effects our numbers. I think you'll find that at 13% crit impale doesn't do much for you.
[Warrior] Impale Overrated?

Oh, and lets not forget that deep wounds counts against the debuff limit.

Yep, Impale works as a "Protection DPS" spec pretty well, but only works well for threat if you legitimately stack crit (a la not wearing tanking gear, bulwark of the ancient kings, battlemaster's cruelty et cetera) which is okay if you're going to do that for a specific fight and obviously you get 3/3 heroic strike and anger management to go with it, but given you don't always tank in a few strange threat pieces it's not particularly optimal. Of course you don't really even need threat boosts as is unless you purposely don't take focused rage, 1HWS, or Shield Mastery for some reason.

Heh, no more posting before lunch!

One of the big reasons I don't want Deep Wounds on my tank alt is that if I need to hit something when CC breaks until it can be reapplied, I don't want to end up putting up a DoT if I get unlucky and crit.

Paladins have no +threat effects, so just multiply their total damage done by 1.9 and mana gained by SA by 0.5.
(Unless I'm missing something of course, in which case I blame posting at 3 am!)

Holy Shield damage is 1.35x threat, and a few druid abilities have innate threat (Maul, Lacerate).

You only multiply their holy damage by 1.9, their white attacks, thorns, etc is regular. Paladins also gain some amount of threat each time they cast a seal, I forget the exact value, 50 maybe? Paladin threat is fairly easy to calculate by hand, Druid I have no idea, and warrior is disgustingly complicated.

Refreshing Rank 9 Seal of Righteousness has actually been tested to be 110-130 threat (Source), though I've yet to see any testing done on the threat generated by other seals. Presumably like most buff gains the threat from this gets divided by the amount of active mobs.

Spiritual Attunement also has a minor complication in that it's threat (like healing threat) should be divided by the amount of active mobs, which can make the exact threat calculations complex in encounters involving multiple mobs. Though it doesn't really compare to Druids or Warriors.

I am stuck thinking how much weapon-choice affects TPS and I hope you folks can help me...

The two weapons I would love to compare are:

"The Brutalizer" from Supremus with
+33 Stamina
100,3 DPS
1,6 speed
22 defense rating
21 expertise

"Dragonscale-Encrusted Longblade" from Kalecgos in Sunwell with
+36 Stamina
108 DPS
1,5 speed
25 haste rating
21 expertise rating

I am interested mostly if there is a way to calculate the theoretical difference in total TPS of these two weapons and if it makes sense to use it as tank weapon. At a first glance it has 8% more DPS, is about 6% faster and will reduce the GCD a little due to haste rating. As most of the threat generated comes from our special abilities like sunder armor or shield slam, I can't work out how much the total improvemet of this sword will be.

I just want to make sure I don't go for a pure dps-weapon IF I should choose this as my tank-weapon But if it has a nice increase of TPS generated it could be a great help for the full raid when doing Brutallus.

Thanks for your imput

Do not confuse haste rating with spellhaste. The former does NOT lower your GCD. Expertise has also been described a few times in this topic as perhaps the best stat for avoiding burst damage, and thus being at the same time a superb defensive and offensive tank stat.