◊ Quigon

I updated the gear sets and a bit about expertise. Let me know if there are any gaps.

 

galzohar

With 454 attacks landed on those 3 fights, if bosses had 17% parry, the chance for 0 parries to had been pure luck is 3.2%. If they had 16.5% parry, the chance for it to be just luck was 32%. So while that sample is probably enough to almost certainly rule out 17% parry, it's not a big enough sample to rule out something like 16.5% parry. Of course with that data most chances are the parry isn't higher than 16.25% but more data is needed to be more certain.

 

ioguolo

Quigon I apologize if my comments came off as "the OP isn't doing his job". This thread is awesome and I don't want to take anything away from how much of a great resource it is. I was just stating that people are throwing numbers around based off the OP w/o reading anything in these threads. Stuff has changed, and people need to be aware of it. And even doing a search doesn't pull up the answer w/o actually just sitting down and reading every post. I think everyone reading these forums just by being here are "better MT's" because they care and want to find the right answers.

 

Punscho

I think the lower bound type of testing is more interesting since a couple of hundred or even thousand hits without a parry at a high level of expertise does not say that much. E.g. "Still getting parries at 12% reduction." would be more helpful information than "No observed parries with 17% reduction out of 1000 swings".

Nontheless, all contributions are good of course!

 

Tehehe

I haven't seen much talk about [Nightstrike] as a TPS weapon. I currently use it in my TPS set when I don't mind losing the stam/avoidance from Stoic Guardian. According to the OP's posted value of 1% hit = 11 TPS, this weapon is 18 TPS if you're not dodge capped and 12.5 if you are.

Are there any better options? Are there any calculations on the new armor-pen bow?

 

galzohar

Well getting a lower bound and an upper bound is just as useful
Getting the lower bound is much easier, though, as a single parry with 15% parry reduction is enough to prove that parry is above 15%, while you'd need an infinite amount of attacks that won't be parry to prove that you completely removed parry from the table (or realistically, enough attacks so that the chance for no parries to had been pure luck to be acceptably low... and that amount of attacks depends on how accurate you're trying to be).

Anyway a couple more parses with 16.25% parry reduction and then some with 16% and 15.75% would probably tell us enough to be quite certain of the value of boss' parry chance.

 

Sambuca

Hey guys, wondering if someone could help me a bit here. I have been trying to get our GM to throw a shammy into my grp for WF or GOA totem but he complains about losing heroism for the dps if he does. He says its wasted when used in my grp. I usually MT boss fights and we are 3/5 MH, 5/6 SSC, and 3/4 TK to give you an indication as to what we raid. Should I just drop it or keep trying to convince him? We usually have 3-4 shammies in our raids. 1-2 enhance, 1 ele, 1 resto. Thanks in advance.

PS
Great Info here!!

 

Xav

I intend to gradually test the lower bound and take off expertise and see if I still see parries. I'll probably do this coming BT on monday with half wearing 13% and half wearing 14.5% if I can manage it.

 

◊ Quigon

I've had a shaman in the main tanks group since day 1 of molten core. We progressed well with this method. There are times during extreme tweaking to change this, but there is tanking with, and without windfury - and outside of tightly tuned week 1-2 sunwell encounters, you'll be better off with the threat imo.
I think your GM is likely a DPS class who may be catering toward his own viewpoint. I started as a shaman (quigon) so I don't feel too hypocritical with this comment.

 

Harne

Well, he could swap your shaman out for a moment midfight to give bloodlust/heroism and then put him back. If he's worried about the dps lost from the totems, that is a different issue. I personally like having a shaman for Windfury for the extra threat, but I don't get one very often either except on fights where threat might be a big concern. My experience is that as my gear has improved, my avoidance is reaching the point where a long 'unlucky' streak of dodges and parries leaves me pretty rage starved, so having the shaman is handy when I can get it.

 

galzohar

While running with 5 shamans in the raid is probably optimal, do you really need it for the threat if only 3-4 shamans are available? Does all the new threat gear not cut it? While you can always get more threat to reduce threat capping, when you reduce DPS to increase threat it might not be worth it. I'm just wondering if even when wearing full threat gear you find windfury more beneficial to raid DPS than, say, a GoA to the hunters/cat or a WoA for another lock+shadowpriest+some healers or something like that.

 

Punscho

I've been running MGT to get that weapon for my ranged slot. I'm currently using [Serpentshrine Shuriken] for my threat gear but I believe [Nightstrike] would be a nice addition because of the expertise.

 

◊ Quigon

If you bring more than 1 group worth of melee, which is common, even having one additional warrior with windfury will typically beat giving a group of others GoA. The main tank's group is a decent second melee group if necessary - further GoA is a good tanking ability.

 

Lambach

Its all very dependent on the needs of the raid. Its possible you're raid leader is catering to that in his choices, its possible hes out to lunch. If you're warrior already has great threat, and if healing/tank survivability isnt a problem, then hes probably right, and you could get some dps gain out of giving the shaman to another group. However, if the tank is having threat issues vs your dps, or the goa would help his survivability on a dmg heavy encounter, then switch it up a bit. Its important for him to adjust group comp based on the encounter. (And of course like others have said, rotate the shaman into a dps group for the lust).

 

Krostas

Greetings!

I have made detailed calculations regarding expertise, namely parryhaste and resulting increased boss damage due to parries.
I would like to share my results with the community, but I feel the topic of expertise as an avoid stat deserves a topic on it's own, since it is also a highly hypothetical topic with my calculations being based on speculations of other players in some parts.
Of course it's also possible (read: very likely) that my calculations contain one or more flaws themselves, thus becoming subject to discussion, development and criticism by the community.

As a rough value for your guide, I present the value of 1% Parry reduction on the Boss being roughly 0,76% reduced effectice parryhaste (and thus by 0,76% reduced overall melee damage on the tank).

Edit: Fixed calculation shows expertise to be even more effective.
Furthermore I did not mention extreme forms of parryhaste that may bring unhealable burst damage on to the tank, causing death or worse. The chance for such forms of parryhaste to occur is heavily decreased by stacking expertise, namely by up to 0,44% (per boss weaponswing!) when reducing the boss parry rate from 10% to 9%.

 

galzohar

I see your point about farm content, where if you have extra melee/hunter it'd make sense to group them with a shaman+tanks, but do you have DPSers in the tank group on progression? It seems to be pretty tight in that tank group if you try to buff yourself with an imp and devo aura and possibly a tree, especially when 1-2 offtanks would need buffing as well.

 

Muggins

It looks like some of the pieces may have been left out by accident, if they're not i'll stand corrected. Its mainly the Eternium Shell and Myrmidons which appear to have been directly replaced by the Onslaught, instead of shifting the row along one space, my suggestions are as follows:

Wrist – [Onslaught Wristguards] - [Eternium Shell Bracers] – [Wristguards of Determination] or [Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx]

Boots – [Onslaught Boots] - [Myrmidon's Treads] – [Red Havoc Boots] – [Jungle Stompers]

While it is quite easy to see the progression of helms it might be helpful to those who are fairly new to have a list, again my suggestion is as follows:

Helmet – [Crown of Dath'Remar] - [Faceplate of the Impenetrable] - [Destroyer Greathelm] or [Battleworn Tuskguard]

Lastly i'd just like to thank you for all the work you're putting into this, its a great resource.

 

Mode

Generally speaking, all tank-related research is put in the various tank threads. Just throw your math in this thread and word'll get around. But, right off the top, I can tell you that you'll need to run different numbers for warriors, paladins, and druids; Warriors have way more attacks/minute than the other two tank classes. Nobody can parry gib themselves quite like a warrior. Paladin attacks/minute also vary depending on reckoning vs one-hand spec.

 

• Jamor

A lot of guilds no longer have warlocks that run an Imp, as most are destro these days. We haven't run an imp since early T6 content. And we also don't run devo aura on most fights either.

 

Riot

The last time I got an imp was on Kael for pyroblasts - I've never gotten an imp since then except our first Illidan kill. Maybe I got one when we were learning Archimonde, but yeah.

Also the only time I regularly get Devotion Aura is when we have a Protadin and he's stuck in our group.

ToL aura isn't a big deal, usually I stick myself with one because our raid has 2-3 resto druids and putting them all in one group is meaningless.

Windfury is the only member of the party I demand!

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

 

Krostas

Thanks Mode, I'll take that as a word. People around here seem rather attentive anyways.

So what I did is basically nothing revolutionary, I simply put some figures together to see how exactly parry influences melee damage on the tank and to what extent expertise has influence on this. Also, some extreme forms of parryhaste may always occur and, being both highly unlikely and not linear, the chance to suffer such a scenario is lowered in another way than the overall dps reduce by stacking expertise.

Factors I took into account were:
EP - Enemy Chance to Parry
SE - Enemy Attack Speed
SP - Player Attack Speed
G - Use of GCD for attack that may be parried (this makes up for the difference between warriors, paladins and druids)

I tried taking player's own parryhaste into account and the result was so minimal, it's absolutely not worth the loss of clear relations.

The figures I took from placing these factors into relation:
AR - Player Attacks per Enemy Weapon Swing
AR = SE/SP + G*(SE/1,5) *fixed
PC - Effective Enemy Parry Chance
PC = EP*AR
PD - Effective Chance on Enemy Double Parry
PD = EP*EP*(AR-1)
PH - Effective Enemy Parryhaste
PH = PC*0,24 + PD*0,08

PD is less effective for PH than PC due to a much larger chance of a second parry during the same swing landing in the part which grants less to no haste bonus. After all, it might have a little bigger impact, but it's also not worth the possible loss of clear relations.

Now I present the results for different sets of input:

As you can see, not only is parryhaste a considerable increase in Boss dps on the tank, both boss dps and chance on double parries by the boss can be decreased significantly by either stop using your GCD for attacks that may be parried or by reducing the enemies parry rate by 5%.

This proves true for other enemy attack speeds as well:

Looking at this data, we can see that the chance to trigger a double parry on a boss can be reduced to a chance below 1% in most cases by either simply stopping attacks on the GCD or reducing the parry chance of the boss by 4-5%.

I have made calculations for a reduction to 2% parry chance as well and even though the overall incoming dps reduction seems somewhat linear, reduction on the chance of double parries is not that strong. Very slow boss attack speeds being an exception, since many player attacks land on the boss during one swing and therefore even a minimal parry chance seems to have still some kind of impact:

So the obvious benefit from stacking expertise (except of course increased threat generation) is also a considerably smoothed out boss dps. Reducing burst damage spikes from 2,3% down to 0,6% over the course of the fight seems to me like a big advantage. Even more so when fighting bosses with slow attack speed.

My personal opinion resulting from these numbers is that stacking expertise up to the dodge-cap is strongly recommended for every tanking warrior.
Concerning druids and paladins, try altering the G variable to a more realistic value.

 

Undernet01

I always like to think a good Prot Warrior below Tempest Keep should have about 15K Health Unbuffed. Any more and you're wasting stats taht should be spent elsewhere.

 

galzohar

While you'll probably do just fine in T5 instances with this HP level, having more will definitely make things easier and thus is *not* an overkill nor anywhere near a waste of stats.

 

◊ Quigon

I tried not to list two items of the same tier that where one was effectively superior. For instance, helmets. I do need to readd the tier 5, 4 helmets. Not sure why I removed that.

 

◊ Quigon

Actually you convinced me, I added those back in - I think its almost as if there is a 4th tier.