Yomon did you update your program to account for the 14% expertise cap as well as the 1sec GCD on Concussion Blow?
The 0.5 sec advantage of Concussion Blow is a threat gain - for a few second that is, then you delay your Shield Slam and lose the TPS you have gained. On paper a special with 1 sec GCD looks good, but it simply does not fit into our rotation, or do I miss something?
But thank you very much indeed, for finding the expertise cap. I added it to the program. I also added Mongoose (it is averaged out crit), a active Shield Block option and the 5 % Shield Block Meta. I added the calculation of the Sword and Board procs mentioned in my post above.
While it is interesting to see the S&B proc values with active Shield Slam, the threat values have not changed much.
These values are very accurate now. It would take ages to find and calculate more precise numbers. I guess even if you would have the perfect values, they would only differ about one to five percent from my values - so I'll add more features and options, but I won't change the algorithm as it's change would alter these values only very slightly.
In my opinion there is now a rotation which is the best:
At start of the boss fight:
1. Heroic Throw, Recklessness, Defensive Stance
2. TPS needed?
- Shield Block, Shield Slam, Revenge, Concussion Blow, Shockwave
- use Shield Slam if S&B procs
2. Sunder Armor needed?
- Shield Block, Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Devastate
- no S&B use
2. Normal Boss fight?
- Shield Block, Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Concussion Blow (Shockwave is to unreliable if the Boss is still moving)
- Use Shield Slam if S&B procs
3. Normal priority rotation:
Fast Weapon:
- Shield Slam
- Revenge
- Devastate
- 1. Heroic Throw, 2. Shockwave, 3. Concussion Blow, 4. Thunder Clap or Devastate (what expires first)
Slow Weapon:
- Shield Slam
- Revenge,
- 1. Rend above 75% (only if either HT, SW or CB is off CD) 2. Devastate
- 1. Rend above 75% 2. Heroic Throw, 3. Shockwave, 4. Concussion Blow, 5. Rend, 6. Thunder Clap or Devastate (what expires first)
I find your thinking nice about Recklessness, but dont use it on Patchwerk or other fights like that, its 20% more Dmg inc until you got your 3 Specials out. Be careful with that one. Retaliation could also be a viable opener. For Patchwerk its about 5-7 White hits more (at 45% dodge+miss+parry) up to 11 Hits.
I had not really given much thought to using reck and retal on pulls, even though it makes a ton of sense. I frequently forget about the cooldown seperation. Anyway, I am going to play around with them opening on boss fights, but in the mean time, I made up a couple quick macros for anyone else that wants to give it a shot.
EDIT: on a side note -- I was just doing some playing around with these, and the reck + SB + laventhors looks to be a nice helper for trash packs. I remember someone mentioning this a while ago, but had completely forgot. If you have reck charges, damage shield will crit, but not consume. Quite nice for a charge, TC, SW followed by reck / trink / SB == Reck-it-and-forget-it. I haven't gemmed or enchanted a block + BV set I am putting together, but something like that would put up a nice burst of damage.
Recklessness + shield block is especially useful on large light to medium hitting packs. If there's one big guy in here you can Shield Slam -> wait 3 -> Shockwave -> wait 3 -> Shield Slam to maximise recklessness cool down period as damage shield does not use any of its charges but is effected by the high chance to crit.
You can use both recklessness and retaliation as your grinding through trash in 5-10 man instances easily, I also use shield wall/last stand when I go ahead of the group so by the time they come into range I have heaps of aggro and they can do hard aoe from the get go.
Concussion Blow no longer triggers the GCD (much like it was in some iterations of beta), which is just amazing for even more pure frontloaded threat with zero drawback, and fitting Conc Blow into your rotation with no loss or fudging up of your cooldown cycle.
Concussion Blow no longer triggers the GCD (much like it was in some iterations of beta), which is just amazing for even more pure frontloaded threat with zero drawback, and fitting Conc Blow into your rotation with no loss or fudging up of your cooldown cycle.
I somehow doubt it is. When interrupts (kick, shield bash, etc.) were removed from the GCD, they had their damage removed as well. I believe (though my memory is a little fuzzy here) that back when Concussion Blow did no damage, it was off the GCD, and got added to it when the damage was added. Being off the GCD while being very high damaging move screams unintended to me.
That being said, while we do have it, keep in mind that it does not trigger the GCD, but is affected by it, so make sure to use it as the first line in any macro you use to link it to another move.
I've been working on my AE/Trash threat generation lately and was wondering if anyone had thoughts on gearing, spec choices, and technique for optimal trash tanking. Clearly we do not want to sacrifice boss viability for marginal trash upgrades, so i was limiting myself to things that i could change on the fly and talents that offer more than just trash usefulness.
Right now i do not have numbers, just what i had the most success with. There are no tests here in any methodical sense. Just
I seem to have the most success by gemming for strength. Other than that i just played with what block value pieces i could accumulate.
Blocking is mandatory. I really enjoyed the new cleave glyph. Tabbing between targets is much more effective with this always queued up. Rapid charge is a preference. I adore it for tanking 5 mans and increased, on demand mobility is a lifesaver, not to mention more rage.
When retal was up i hit that before charging. However, i rarely saw it go below 15 charges even without using shockwave. Im not sure how much of an effect this had on overall threat.
Overall i am still jealous of Deathknights and Pallies.
Speech, I fail to see anything special in what you are trying to accomplish. You use a somewhat common spec. The skill rotation you mentioned looks pretty much like what I do every trash pull at the moment (and I'm pretty sure a lot of warriors do). Of course gemming for Strength yields the best results considering our AE tanking skills scale with AP. For single target TPS Hit/Expertise are arguably better.
Regarding gear there are some points that need to be considered:
a) In general you can throw contemporary tanking gear meant for warriors into two categories (one might find additional distinctions, but this is what I observed). One category is Stamina/Avoidance (Dodge/Parry) oriented gear, with some Hit/Expertise thrown on it. The other category is gear with Block Rating/Value, lots of strength but lacks stamina and direct avoidance. For AE threat the latter type of gear appears to be more suited.
b) Your strength will automatically scale with better gear. When you upgrade from ilvl 200 to ilvl 213 gear within the same category as outlined in a) you will most of the time get direct upgrades in Strength, Stamina and avoidance stats (Miss/Dodge/Parry). You gain/lose some Hit and Expertise along with some other stat shifts on some slots, which is part of Blizzards "upgrades should be a choice" paradigm, but overall your strength will go up without sacrificing defensive stats. I predict something similiar will happen with Ulduar gear (you can already see it on some of the available ilvl 226 pieces). The point I wanted to drive home is that our AE threat will scale automatically. Of course there are situations where maxing out with that Block/Strength gear + some Strength gems makes sense.
I guess like me, some tanks want a threat set for trash and farm bosses; just to push harder to the maximum TPS to make your DPS happy. I calculated therefore the TPS gains for each stat so I can optimize my threat set.
The stats are calculated by my threat calculator along with this 10man threat report as a source. The report is no high threat report (I missed some Revenges and Shield Slams), but the numbers are quite similar to normal farm runs.
Instead of calculating Deep Wound's threat (it is just too complicated), I used a fix amount of threat increase equal to the threat gain of Devastate for Deep Wounds.
Keep in mind that these numbers are the numbers for my case; for other tanks the numbers might differ a bit, but can be used as a guideline.
So here are the numbers for each stat with it's item point costs:
Remember that Hit and Expertise beyond 5% is useless against trash, and that Shield Block Value is even worse at trash due to the lessened importance of Shield Slam (the Damage Shield improvement is neglectable as well).
Because most of our threat comes from the weapon, here are the TPS gains for each enchant:
Berserking 114.5 TPS
Accuracy 74 TPS
Superior Potency 40.5 TPS
Mongoose 40.3 TPS (no threat gains of the haste effect included)
I will go with Berserking on my threat weapon - at farm Raids 5% decreased armor is okay, but if you want a very save threat enchant option go with Accuracy. The thing about Accuracy is, that the 25 hit rating might be wasted at trash.
You can also see that Mongoose is a very good enchant - it increases threat similar to Superior Potency while also increasing survivalbility.
If we assume that shield enchants are equal in point cost, 40 SBV is equivalent to 20 defense rating, so it would also be equivalent to 20 hit rating. I'm not sure we can safely make that assumption, though.
40 SBV costs 24 points using the shield value/26 using the normal value,
16 hit rating costs 16 points and,
20 def is 24 or 20 points depending if the shield or normal value is used.
So looking at it through stat allocation cost 40 SBV is equal to 20 def, and worth 50% more then 16 hit rating on a shield.
Edit: This was in response to a question that Yomon initially had in his post about the cost of enchants in item points. No one is claiming that you should gear based off of the cost of stats.
Last edited by Ubarah : 02/01/09 at 10:09 PM.
Reason: clarification
What you guys are missing here is that a) SBV is not only a threat stat (and as outlined not really the best one at that) and b) that certain stats might be of higher stat value but are still inferior because of their effective value for our uses. To give an absurd example one could go at lengths explaining 25 Intellect has a higher stat value than 20 Defense Rating, though since we get absolutely nothing from Int it would be pointless.
That being said 40 BLV is still the best enchant we get in the shield slot threat-wise. Also don't write SBV off as a mitigation stat, especially at encounters with weak hits. That's a bit OT here but I remember Xav doing some testing regarding how well contemporary SBV/Block Rating Gear fares in a raid environment, though I don't remember where he posted about it.
Titanium Plating in it's form right now is garbage. Encounters with weak hits? What challenging encounter has had weak hits? Maybe if we see Essence of Souls again in some form will SBV be useful.
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. - Mark Twain
I didn't say challenging encounters. I intended it more like a stat to further trivialize weak hitting bosses (e.g. Loatheb). And I didn't make up that block has some crazy scaling in some cases. As you said with the Essence of Souls example it's clearly situational and also depends on the rest of the gear.
Though I'm with you when you state it's not really useful at the moment.
Surely if you're aiming to trivialise the weak-hitting bosses, the defense enchant is preferable since 40 shield block value is near-negligible mitigation and a weak threat enchant at best - 40 damage on a shield slam or 8 extra damage on damage-shield pre-armor?
Assuming boss mitigation of around 30% (can't remember the figures for armor mitigation off the top of my head), that means 28 extra damage on shield slams. Surely not worth the loss in defense at all.
Titanium Plating in it's form right now is garbage. Encounters with weak hits? What challenging encounter has had weak hits? Maybe if we see Essence of Souls again in some form will SBV be useful.
The way my guild does sartharion with drakes, we task a tank specifically to deal with all fire-elemental and whelp adds until there are a sufficient number to warrant an AOE cycle on them. I've found block rating and block value extremely effective, while maintaining defense cap for level 72 mobs. In this role, maximizing stamina takes a back seat, since damage intake is predictable and non-bursty, albiet moderately intense (we use a tree druid for this heal assignment). Just to make it clear that the elemental attacks are blockable, and about how strong they are, here's some snippets from a WWS of such attempts.
19:47'43.828 Lava Blaze #5 melee swing hits Physicst for 104 Fire. (367 Resisted)
19:47'43.828 Lava Blaze #6 attack was blocked by Physicst.
19:47'44.390 Sartharion Twilight Whelp #2 attack was blocked by Physicst.
19:47'49.390 Lava Blaze #10 melee swing hits Physicst for 699 Fire. (227 Resisted)
19:47'54.343 Lava Blaze #10 melee swing hits Physicst for 700 Fire. (1666 Blocked)
19:47'57.484 Sartharion Twilight Whelp #6 attack was blocked by Physicst.
19:48'01.515 Sartharion Twilight Whelp #6 melee swing hits Physicst for 482 Physical.
(I believe there is an issue with WWS not reporting multiple mitigation effects on a single event. I.e. partial resist and partial block will only show the final damage dealt and the resist amount.)
Originally Posted by DrChem
Surely if you're aiming to trivialise the weak-hitting bosses, the defense enchant is preferable since 40 shield block value is near-negligible mitigation and a weak threat enchant at best - 40 damage on a shield slam or 8 extra damage on damage-shield pre-armor?
Assuming boss mitigation of around 30% (can't remember the figures for armor mitigation off the top of my head), that means 28 extra damage on shield slams. Surely not worth the loss in defense at all.
You should modify the 40 shield slam damage by block crit potential, blocking glyph, shield block uptime, and shield mastery, and then compare it to 22 defense. From a mitigation perspective, defense may still be better for harder-hitting bosses.
You should modify the 40 shield slam damage by block crit potential, blocking glyph, shield block uptime, and shield mastery, and then compare it to 22 defense. From a mitigation perspective, defense may still be better for harder-hitting bosses.
That drives my point home pretty well. Block is situational and has good scaling with talents/glyph/meta. I've never said you should use this on Patchwerk.
On a side note, I think the whole block discussion is a bit off topic here, though still interesting.
Block Value has been a bit doomed since Shield Block is only useful for 10 of every 40 secs. The rest of the 30 secs you are going to be sitting around 30-35% Shield Block chance and that's if you gear/spec for it. I get a more use out of Shield Block/BV for burst threat at the moment however even if I get my BV up around 1400 I end up losing a lot of hit/expertise mainly and some stamina/defence as most of the BV gear seems to be light on at least one or two of those stats. If your doing 5 mans then BV can become very useful because you only have 1 healer and it will also help with single target burst threat. 10/25 man trash is AoE tanked with multiple healers and AP is way more useful for that when it comes to a warrior for threat, survival should not be a major concern unless your under geared.
If your min/maxing for particular encounters then BV to shield can be good i.e. Adds on Sarth/MT Patch and Stamina would be worth while for Malygos/OT Patch/MT Sarth.
I use defence on my main shield because it gives me more versatility with my other gear, if I was to enchant a shield with BV it would be on one which already has BV on it.
Titanium Plating in it's form right now is garbage. Encounters with weak hits? What challenging encounter has had weak hits? Maybe if we see Essence of Souls again in some form will SBV be useful.
BV is the way to go for big DPS (edit: for shield enchants anyway). Aside from that, it's nice for Sarth adds. Warrior tanks in block value/rating sets are pretty sick on the them. Really, if you don't need the defense, what else are you going to use?
BV is the way to go for big DPS (edit: for shield enchants anyway). Aside from that, it's nice for Sarth adds. Warrior tanks in block value/rating sets are pretty sick on the them. Really, if you don't need the defense, what else are you going to use?
You fellas are citing Sarth +3 with a warrior tank tanking adds as an example where BV is useful.
You're right, it's useful, but the amount of incoming damage as an add tank is pretty trivial. We execute Sarth 3 with 5 healers regularly, and with six our healers complain of being bored.
Now, if your guild needs that extra breathing room, I completely understand - but I still stand by my point that the Titanium Plating enchant is pretty irrelevant.
You can use either Stamina/Defense/BV, and it won't matter - in general Shield enchants really aren't that great. I think the reason why I keep Defense is because it gives a slight avoidance boost, and I can swap out the Repelling Charge for something else situational.
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. - Mark Twain
You fellas are citing Sarth +3 with a warrior tank tanking adds as an example where BV is useful.
You're right, it's useful, but the amount of incoming damage as an add tank is pretty trivial. We execute Sarth 3 with 5 healers regularly, and with six our healers complain of being bored.
Now, if your guild needs that extra breathing room, I completely understand - but I still stand by my point that the Titanium Plating enchant is pretty irrelevant.
You can use either Stamina/Defense/BV, and it won't matter - in general Shield enchants really aren't that great. I think the reason why I keep Defense is because it gives a slight avoidance boost, and I can swap out the Repelling Charge for something else situational.
When I mentioned it, I was talking more about 10 man 3D (at least as far as usefulness goes).
01/14/09, 5:18 AM
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