Edhrin

Sorry if I get the banhammer for hitting quite a common subject, but I feel that despite its obvious easiness, aggro generation does still diserve a threa(t)d of its own.

I am no scientist so I am just going to ask some questions and hope that people do calculations in my stead :p

The multiaggroing being hardly an issue so far, I am focusing atm on my single target aggro, and I find that some things are not so easy to determine.

First off all, are Concussion Blow and Shockwave parts of a monotanking cycle?
Then in what order should the stats be scaled for a maximum threat generation? Expertise seems to be a cap to reach, but how important is it compared to the necessity of AP scaling, and to the block value? What would be the importance of critrate?
The last question is all the more interesting since in the 15/5/51 build that some people (including me) are experiencing at the moment, the 5 fury points can go either in critrate or in AP - the latter solution seems the better, but it still diserves to be thought about.
Speaking about builds, has anyone done any calculations about the actual usefulness of Deep Wounds and/or Impale?
It would also be interesting to calculate the exact interest of Heroic Strike in low rage situations - which doesn't happen often at the moment, but you never know, they say tanking's too easy and should get harder soon.

Generally speaking, the greatest interest of tanking in Wotlk (like in many other classes and builds) seems to come from the fact that all the stats are connected - neither in avoidance nor in aggro can you stack one stat and hope it works. Then how to figure a build and a priority list making the most of AP, block value, crit and rage?

I only hope for some personal experiences and calculations here, which could form a small "threat generation compendium".

 

Xav

Conc Blow and Shockwave are both superior to a Devastate, so whenever they're available to be used, you should replace Devastates with them. (Yes, even factoring in S&B proc chances).

People have done calculations, unfortunately I had trouble finding any concise links to them, of Deep Wound vs Cruelty. Basically, though, the gist is always that Deep Wounds > 3 points in cruelty assuming your raid buffed crit is something higher than like 10% - which is easy to get. In a raid, and with all talents, the crit rate on your abilities will be closer to 30% average. Easily worth it, then. Prot Warriors in general with Deep Wounds see it attribute to 8-12% of their total damage.

Edit: This thread has some Deep Wounds math, specifically on slow vs fast - but also info about DW in general
Warrior Slow Weapon & Deep Wounds -- Math Challenge - Page 2 - TankSpot

For threat, you still want to be capping our hit/expertise first, and then picking up strength. Block value is, as usual, the lowest on the list. And Crit would only be on DPS gear, so I don't find that an acceptable option, really.

I do still have some intentions of putting up a WoTLK Prot Warrior thread as Quigon suggested, but I need some time first.

 

Rustyboy

Deep Wounds

From my experience I have not seen deep wounds hit up around 10% of damage on a single target. Maybe if you only count a particular trash pull it might. That being said I have found Deep Wounds by itself is not the only thing to consider.

What I mean is that for Trash/AoE tanking and using deep wounds you would want to use a slow main hand like Broken Promise and make sure your buffed with everything that will increase your main hand weapon damage. I've tested the Mirror of Truth which is terrible for single target but for AoE tanking it procs very often and the extra AP increases your main hand damage which has increased my bleed ticks by about %130.

Trash/AoE Tanking

3 Points into Deep Wounds
Slow main hand (Broken Promise the best I can see atm)
Maximise buffs for increased weapon damage (Easier in 25 mans)
Use trinkets like Mirror of Truth and Sphere of Red Dragon Blood (Use the sphere at the start of the pull for increased and consistent bleed damage).

In smaller trash pulls (2-3) tab targeting with a faster main hand and the normal threat abilities will most likely be better imo than relying on deep wounds to have a major effect. That being said.. I don't think I will be changing from gear set to gear set on trash.

Single Target

For the time being I'm going to be sticking with maximising my SBV, Hit and Expertise for bosses. My shield slam can do up to 25% of all damage on boss encounters + its got the biggest innate threat than any other ability (770) I believe. Maximising SBV will make sure you get the most benefit from Shield Mastery / Meta gem / Glyph and it also increases your damage shield. Stacking strength I don't believe is a reliable way of increasing SBV unless its a massive difference ie going from an item will 20 strength to one with 80. Strength is on every piece of tanking gear and I won't go with a piece of gear because it has 12 more strength, I'll be looking at all the other stats as well. At the moment I'd rather use a trinket like Mirror of Truth/Lavanthor's Talisman/Darkmoon Card: Greatness for particular uses than increase most of my abilities by a small amount. Threat maybe out the window but really good burst threat I feel is still extremely useful.

Gemming

As far as gemming is concerned and this is a totally personal preference I'll be going with Hit/Expertise + Stamina. I know if you socket for strength etc.. overall you can get a reasonable increase, but my job is still to tank and take damage. Sartharion +drakes takes a decent toll on any group and in that case unless I'm tanking the adds suvivability is still king for that encounter.

Threat

Threat is not a cycle anymore as most would already realise, I believe it to be more of a priority list.

1. Shield Slam (Damage + 770 Innate threat) - To make sure your Glyph of Blocking has 100% up time.
2. Revenge (Damage + 121) + Free Heroic Strike (Glyph +10 Rage)

When off GCD and SS/REV not available

1. Devastate to get sunders up. Procs Sword and Board + %15 extra devastate crit chance
2. Thunderclap to maintain debuff Added
3. Shockwave
4. Concussion Blow
5. Heroic Throw
6. Devastate w/ 5 Sunders

When in a high rage environment que Heroic Strike after any ability e.g.

Shield Slam + Que HS
Revenge + Que HS (As normal)
Devastate + Que HS

It would be good to see someone actually look at these scenarios and apply some proper math. I personally don't like spreadsheets and I'm terrible at math especially when it comes to more advanced calculations and theory.

To Xav: I noticed you were experimenting with maximising your Block Rating (30+%) and now you seem to have moved away from that.... any reason?

 

teiglin

I raided last week with deep wounds for the first time, and found it very successful. On trash and weak bosses, I ran Angry Dead since I don't have a Broken Promise, and on the few harder-hitting bosses for which I was actually tanking (might have just been patch, I don't remember exactly) I ran the silly old Utgarde sword. Across the whole run, deep wounds accounted for 11% of my dps, probably thanks largely to TC on multiple trash pulls, but even on Patchwerk where I spent a lot of my time rage-starved (note that nearly half my swings were non-HS, our bear I think was in full stam gear so took a lot more hatefuls than I did) and using a 1.6 weapon, deep wounds still accounted for 10% of my damage.

Even with deep wounds I don't see stacking crit in tanking gear. In fact, I don't stack any offensive stats, though given content's current difficulty I'm tempted to regem at least red slots to expertise/stam from the pure stam or dodge/stam I'm using now. For trash, hit and strength will outperform expertise of course, since shockwave/tc scale with those stats and not at all with expertise.


I also am curious about Heroic Throw. I generally don't use it while tanking except to pick up a runner or pull a caster on trash, but that's largely because I don't generally think about it? Still, I'm a bit put off by the fact that it resets our swing timer, resulting in less rage/fewer heroic strikes. Has anyone done any calculations of its threat value on single target?

 

Xav

Heroic Throw resets your swing timer and will likely be less threat than a Devastate, since HT is 50% AP rather than 75% like Conc and Shockwave.

Rusty, I have a block set I use on some things, perhaps I logged out in it one day. It's not something I regularly use, it's situational as are many things.

 

Rustyboy

I know Heroic Throw's threat is 150% of damage and I've seen it crit for over 1k so I presumed it would be better than Devastate.

 

Edhrin

My Deep Wound ability provides 7% of my threat on single target bosses, as different as Sartahrion, Kel'Thuzad and Malygos. Comparatively, my Heroic Strike does about 35%, my shield slam does 25% and my revenge 15%.
As to Heroic Throw, it is slightly better than my devastate in dps (1k while Dev does 700 dmg) but doesn't provide the S&B proc, so I'm not quite sure it's worth being a part of a threat techs priority.
But it all remains very empirical indeed, I'll go and check out the link you posted Xav, and see if I got the nerves (and time) to do some calculations of my own.

On a larger scale, Kungen has tried a full expertise gemming, and went for stamina after all. I am curious as to what made his decision. The two stats look pretty equal to me, and expertise being all brand new is a bit sexier.

 

Rustyboy

I don't know why Kungen would worry about stamina.. he had a very high amount of EH even when he gemmed for expertise. I've found that even with 26k unbuffed you can tank all encounters in the game atm, kungen generally sits at around 31-32k with his jc trinket/gossamer + prismatic gems and ring enchants + tauren bonus.

 

• Kalroth

26k unbuffed health for tanking Sartharion+3? You got some really good healers then.

Stamina is still the stat that keeps on giving. I can count the number of times I've had TPS issues on one hand, while I'm often low on health due to healer slacking, me pulling too much trash or simply progression fights where I don't outgear it yet.

And since you don't need expertise rating and hit rating to generate a lot of TPS today, both of those stats are worth less than they used to be (in my opinion). Malygos is the only encounter where I can see TPS being an issue (after a vortex spin) and even then I think he's tauntable, no?

 

ySleep82

"<Premonition>
Alleria

Conc Blow and Shockwave are both superior to a Devastate, so whenever they're available to be used, you should replace Devastates with them. (Yes, even factoring in S&B proc chances)."

is that still true even with [Glyph of Devastate]?

fyi this guy is one of the best payers out there

 

footloop

I believe it was shown that even without fully stacked sunders devastate no longer gives bonus "sunder threat" and instead has a different (and lower) additional threat component than a straight sunder, although that's obviously offset by the added threat from damage. The glyph does absolutely nothing to boost the threat or damage done by devastate. There's a post about it with numbers over at Tankspot.

 

Xav

Footloop is correct. Unfortunately the devastate glyph simply causes the debuff to go up there faster, which does have its own uses.

Rusty, lets run some rough numbers:

Average devastate on Patchwerk recently: 730 (not counting crits, since they both can crit, while HT crits would yield more threat due to the modifier, Devastate has 15% more innate crit due to talents)

Raid buffed AP is probably a bit under 5k, lets say 4800. So HT would be 2400, *.7 (rough armor reduction), ~1680 Heroic Throw damage.

Devastate is Damage + 5% ap, 5% of 4800 is 240, so 730+240 or just about 1000 threat.

As we can see, Heroic Throw is already going to do a lot more threat for that one gcd. 1680 Heroic Throw damage * 1.5 = 2520 threat.

1000 vs 2500, this is before the defensive stance multiplier which is applied to both

So Heroic Throw is certainly better than I thought, however the only things left to cover, which should balance, are: Heroic Throw costs no rage to use, however it has a 1 minute cooldown, and does reset your s wing timer. The free rage cost and more than double threat component should make it worth it.

So on anything you're single-tanking and there's no add picking up and so forth, you should indeed be using HT when you can. However, I pretty much always use HT on the pull, and if its a fight like Sartharion, I use it when I can on stray adds as well to get them off a healer if possible, and so forth.

Good call, though, neat to see just how much threat HT is - I never acknowledged it had a 150% threat from damage modifier.

 

Xav

Upon further investigation, due to Thunder Clap's massive 1.85x damage -> threat multiplier, this means Thunderclap is more threat than Devastate as well, in my case of a Devastate being ~730 average, a Thunderclap would only have to hit for a measly ~550 average to match Devastate, however, I was hitting on average for at least 800 on all bosses. So TC is quite a bit more threat, but also has a cooldown.

Although, TC cannot proc Sword and Board, so I'm thinking again Devastate easily is still worth it. Hmm

 

sveno

I'd have to agree with the above poster about stamina, it is the best stat you can get at the moment. Things are made much easier with a decent amount of health. And since threat is almost a non-issue, expertise/hit are just not worth gemming for. Hell, I think almost every boss in Naxx is tauntable anyway.

And about the rotations, blizzard is working on priority instead of rotations right? So it seems to me you have a little more choice in what ability you want to use next. It's nice not to have to fit in a thunderclap/demoshout where normally your two devastates would be for example. Threat is alot more forgiving now, on most fights dps never even comes close. What i'm getting at is, alot of skills have a very situational use. On some fights you want to keep your shockwave free for when the boss spawns adds or whatever, and you can pick them up instantly. But keeping the skill free doesn't mean your threat will be fucked, and I think thats what blizzard was trying to accomplish. Or maybe they didn't, but it works out nicely anyway.

 

Fellwraith

It really all depends on the socket color and socket bonus. When you've got a blue and red socket in an item and a +6 stamina bonus (which is the case for a couple T7 items), you'll get better returns from an expertise/stamina or hit/stamina gem vs a straight stamina gem. Unless you're a jewelcrafter, you also need red gems to meet the 5% block value meta requirements or the 2% armor meta requirements.

Threat still matters on trash and that's probably at least half your raid night right now, so there is some value to having about 5% hit and expertise. Just because you can taunt Malygos when you land after a vortex doesn't mean it will always hit. Losing a global on that and then trying to mocking blow him back while he's about to breathe doesn't seem too smart to me. You never want to have a 5+% chance that you're going to lose control of a fight (and with stacked sparks you'd have to be very creative with hand of salvation and intervene to avoid that scenario). With the longer Tclap cooldown, it's also pretty important that you either renew it early or that it doesn't miss.

 

PantheraOnca

with regard to threat: i find the only fight its really an issue on is malygos and some aoe pulls if dps don't wait for me to shockwave. a warlock in my guild is constantly riding my threat on malygos even with vigilance on him. i haven't really been incorporating shockwave or conc blow in that fight, but i guess i'll try it out and see how it goes.

 

• Jamor

Shockwave doesn't really work in that fight because he is too big. It doesn't really hit him. Most DPS classes have threat dumps -- it's on them to use them. As long as you are putting out your normal TPS, they are the ones that need to focus on the threat meter.


As far as the deep wounds topic goes. I have been testing differant specs the past 4 cycles in Naxx 25 to try and find what works the best for me. At this point, it's pretty safe to say that deep wounds will be in my spec for the forseeable future. It's a significant DPS boost. I went with 0/3 AttT and 5/5 cruelty this past cycle and did 3072 DPS on a 2 minute 40 second kill. Deep wounds accounted for 14% of my DPS. I got slightly lucky with crit rate on that one, but even a conservative estimate would put the total DPS contribution at 10%. That's pretty significant. Going to try 3/3 AttT and 2/5 Cruelty this week (if we can get together a 25 man with xmas). In theory it should be higher DPS(especially from herioc), but I am curious to see how it goes. Anyone else been testing between the two point allocations? If so, I am curious about your results.

 

Xav

Right now it's pretty hard to test the minor differences possible in specs, for pure dps/threat output on say, Patchwerk. I don't know about other servers, but on Alleria, any given night in Naxx you're looking at about a delay on abilities minimum, unless you're raiding at absurd hour (like, later than 1 am). This really screws up any cycle and min/maxing. Your 3k parse has some crazy high crit on some abilities and average on others, so it's hard to say.

I would be surprised though if an extra 3% crit outweighs the couple hundred AP you get from ATT, considering the AP is gain you're getting on every ability, and the crit is only a small chance improvement. (And as rng + short durations prove time and time again, you could easily crit just as much or more with a smaller actual critrate)

 

Edhrin

First thing about hit and expertise: gemming hit doesn't seem the way to go just now, because we've got a fair amount of hit on our stuff and we get a lot from the raidwide buffs. Without any gem we should already reach the cap (at any rate I do). Expertise is far more interesting. We've got a long way to go before we reach the cap, and this cap would have a double interest, for aggro, but also for survival (no swing timer reset, etc... Dunno if you ever had a murderous wish about a rogue dpsing in front of the boss and killing you thereby, I did). On the other hand, I'm at 29k hp unbuffed while I'm almost entirely gemmed for expertise, and it's widely enough.
As to the threat not being an issue, fair enough, but I don't expect this to last forever. So since we havn't got much trouble in any area whatsoever, it seems the best moment to try new things out.

Now for the TC and Dev aggro matter, I've tried to calculate the threat we gain by an S&B proc.

We admit that Shield Slams remains the highest threat generation possible : for a 1100 block value (which I think most of us have achieved) it generates 1100 (average base dmg) * 0,0023 * 1100 = 2783 dmg, and as much effective threat.
Comparatively, Revenge generates for someone well geared attaining 4k AP full buffed : 0,207 * 4000 + 1454 = 2282 threat.

Between 2 Shield Slams, you have 3 gcd (provided you have no lag, and use Shield Slam as soon as it's available). A S&B can proc either on the 2 first gcds, or on the last. If it procs on the last, obviously it will provide no extra threat since it does not change the outcome.
If it procs on the two first gcds, then at the next one, we get a Concussion Blow, or a Devastate, or a Heroic throw, or a Revenge, or a Shockwave to be replaced by a Shield Slam.
The threat gained by using a Shield Slam is of 2800 - 1000 = 1800 threat on Dev.
It is of 2800 - 0,75 * 4000 * 0,7 = 700 threat on a Concussion Blow or on a Shockwave (I use this point to recall that Shockwave and Concussion Blow deal exactly the same damage on a single target and produce the same amount of threat).
It is of 2800 - 2100 = 700 on a Heroic Throw
Lastly, we gain a 2800 - 2300 = 500 Threat on Revenge.

Now, in a priority list, Revenge > CB = Sw > Dev.
Revenge procs each time we block, parry or dodge. I'm too lazy to do a probas tree, so let's say it's up about 15% of time.
CB is up 5% of the time, Sw is up 7% of the time, Dev is up all the time. So the techs we would be using for our gcds without S&B are : 73% Dev, 15% Revenge, 7% SW, 5% CB. The medium aggro we're gaining by using a Shield Slam instead is of :
(73 * 1800 + 15 * 500 + 12 * 700)/100 = 1473 medium threat gained.

However, we have to take in account that S&B does reset the Shield Slam cooldown, but does not put it off cooldown. In other words, we don't gain a free Shield Slam, we just do more of them. A S&B proc on the last of the 3 gcds does nothing to change Shield Slam cooldown. A proc on the 2d gcd reduces its cd by 1/4, a proc on the 1st reduces it by half. It means that we win an average 1/4 Shield Slam by a S&B proc.

The average threat gained by a S&B proc is 1473/4 = 368.

Which shows that as Xav put it, Heroic Throw is much better than Dev, even if there is a chance of S&B proc on the latter. However Dev seems to be still a bit better than TC.

For the three points between cruelty and AtTeeth, I've tried the two builds Jamor, and I feel that AtTeeth is better. But here again there is a calculation to be made.

 

teiglin

An interesting strategy for Heroic Throw would be only to use it on the final GCD before Shield Slam would cool down anyway, thus negating the Sword and Board proc benefit of Devastate assuming infinite rage. Same could be done for Shockwave and Concussion Blow, though I often like to Concussion Blow early in hopes of later getting a Sword and Board proc to take full advantage of its half second shorter GCD.

 

Rustyboy

k.. point taken however he was sitting at over 30k with expertise, I'd say 28k including Sartharion + 3. That plus cooldowns and smart play will get you over the line. Stamina is great for that encounter as threat is a non issue and you can change a few pieces of gear to get it up to 29-30k if you need to but the rest you don't need anywhere near that.

I'd have to agree on the point of hit/expertise. I can still get some upgrades to my gear but when stacking these to get to the caps, stats like stamina take a real hit. I think for Malygos hit/expertise to reduce any drops in threat production with random streaks of misses etc maybe the way to go though.

 

pdpi

If 25% of all damage comes from shield slam, where's the remaining 75% coming from? Damage shield and AP-scaling abilities. Sure, SBV is pretty good because it also provides mitigation, but if you're gearing for threat, strength is superior simply because everything scales with it (and scales well, too).

 

Kavtor

Thunderclap is good for single target threat, but since that's generally not the case, you'll want to just use it for the buff over a devastate.
Rend is something to take a look at in a 15/5/51 build as well. Imp rend, raid buffed with a bleed debuff will do a fairly reasonable amount of damage. Another ability that can easily replace a devastate. My Rend is ticking for 500-600 on average. You get 5 ticks, for 2.5-3k damage. Ticks on a boss at high health start to get pretty silly.
There isn't a threat modifier, but again, if you're looking to squeeze out a little bit of extra damage, it's something to keep in mind. Right now, the idea is to try to use Devastate as little as possible. Keeping Conc blow, Shockwave and Rend in your rotation will keep you busy.

Heroic throw on it's own is better than a devastate, but does it beat the opportunity cost of a S&B proc? A pretty good choice if you're hurting for rage though.

 

Rustyboy

"Stacking strength I don't believe is a reliable way of increasing SBV "

Remember I am stating this for single target threat generation (ie Boss) and Shield Slam is your bread and butter. I will still be looking at strength as it does increase my BV and AP at the same time, however changing a piece of gear for 12 strength extra and losing 25 dodge and some stamina may not be the best trade off. I'd rather change one piece of gear with pure 44 BV on it for a piece that may have block rating to get more benefit from my shield slams even if I've just lost 24 AP from the difference in strength on the 2 items.

Strength is an excellent stat for tanks and threat, I just don't think gemming/enchanting or stacking for it at the moment is going to make a one size fits all gear set.

 

sveno

Aren't you guys all forgetting heroic throw comes on a 1 minute cooldown? With the length of most fights, do you think it's worth calculating it in to a rotation? Use it when you think it's best. It's not a rotation type of skill.