Prot Warrior Expertise Sheet

kahalm · 10/25/09, 9:09 PM

After reading several articles about the usfullnes of expertise for Tankadins as Avoidence stat I began to wonder about the implications for my own tanking gear decissions. I wrote a simple spreadsheet where you can plug in weaponspeed and basestats and get the damagereduction of dodge vs expertise. I am aware that exp is only usefull if the boss has the parry flag on (which is in the t9 contend only Onyxia and the first bosses in toc left out gormok), but for those it might be better to use expertise gear/food do avoid overall damage and damagespikes.

list of parry-haste bosses
original calculations (paladin)

spreadsheet (ods)
spreadsheet (xls)

Fixed a stupid error, I had the agility hard coded
edit2: why have I ever started... Found 2 more errors but at least now I get the same values than other sims/spreadsheets
edit3: as requestet the list (unfortunatly I have no old parses)
The List

Onyxias Lair
Onyxia - Parry Haste Enabled

Crusader's Coliseum
Gormok the Impaler - Parry Haste Disabled
Acidmaw - Parry Haste Enabled
Dreadscale - Parry Haste Enabled
Icehowl - Parry Haste Enabled
Lord Jaraxxus - Parry Haste Disabled
Faction Champions - Not looking for these as they're not a tanking encounter
Fjola Lightbane - Parry Haste Disabled
Eydis Darkbane - Parry Haste Disabled
Anub'Arak - Parry Haste Disabled

Ulduar
Razorscale - -
Ignis the Furnace Master - Parry Haste Disabled
XT-002 Deconstructor - -
Stormcaller Brundir - -
Runemaster Molgeim - -
Steelbreaker - -
Kologarn - Parry Haste Disabled
Auriaya - -
Hodir - -
Thorim - -
Freya - -
Mimiron - -
General Vezax - -
Yogg-Saron - -
Algalon - Parry Haste Disabled

The Eye of Eternity
Malygos - -

The Obsidian Sanctum
Sartharion - -

Vault of Archavon
Archavon the Stone Watcher - Parry Haste Disabled
Emalon the Storm Watcher - Parry Haste Disabled
Koralon the Flame Watcher - Parry Haste Disabled

Naxxramus
Anub'Rekhan - -
Grand Widow Faerlina - -
Maexxna - -
Patchwerk -Parry Haste Disabled - Confirmed Here
Grobbulus - -
Gluth - -
Thaddius - -
Noth the Plaguebringer - -
Heigan the Unclean - -
Loatheb - -
Instructor Razuvious - N/A
Gothik the Harvester - -
Lady Blaumeux - -
Thane Korth'azz - -
Baron Rivendare - -
Sir Zeliek - -
Sapphiron - -
Kel'Thuzad - -

Jayde · 10/26/09, 10:44 AM

I'll also note that Rawr.ProtWarr also supports marking a boss as hastable and will display/weight the value of Expertise according to the reduction in damage granted by having it.

Casstor · 10/27/09, 1:53 PM

Originally Posted by Jayde

I'll also note that Rawr.ProtWarr also supports marking a boss as hastable and will display/weight the value of Expertise according to the reduction in damage granted by having it.

Is weighting expertise as a flat % average damage mitigation really the appropriate way to model it?

As we all know, a single parry at the beginning of a swing timer means you will see two attacks in 1.6 swing timers - creating a potential increase in damage received by 25% over a very short time period (under 4 seconds for a mob with a 2-second swing timer affected by Tclap). While this is not as drastic an increase in damage as being crit, it certainly seems that it deserves some kind of similar treatment with regards to weight.

Think of it this way - if you weight Defense rating as a flat % of less damage taken, you would never guess that 540 defense is absolutely mandatory for tanking raid bosses, would you?

Jothay · 10/27/09, 4:24 PM

Jayde's explanation is rather poor compared to what Rawr.ProtWarr is actually doing. I'd explain it better but I don't think I could get the point across as accurately as EvanM (the Dev) can. Note that we don't use Stat Weights at all, so please throw the word Weight out the window where it belongs.

Edit: Note that I'm just saying that one liner was poor, not that Jayde's an idiot or anything (I reread what I wrote and realized it might come across poorly).

Jayde · 10/28/09, 8:27 AM

I was just expressing in a simple way that Rawr properly models Expertise's contribution to damage reduction and displays it appropriately when present on gear/enchants/gems. My reference to weight was in regard to the proper contribution of Expertise on an item to the overall and defensive value of said item.

There is a lot of stuff going on in the background to calculate said value; including recursive parry-hasting (e.g. your parries haste your attacks which cause more boss parries which hastes his attacks which causes more parries by you...) and calculating the actual average swing speeds of both the player and the boss.

Casstor, as far as the question of if you should cap it to reduce raw burst, I believe that is a question everyone should answer on their own based on the encounter and gearing. It's always possible to optimize for maximum Expertise (%Chance to be Parried <= 0) if you so desire. However, unlike Defense, it is often impractical to do this without ending up gimping your gear to the point of taking more damage in your hunt to remove all Parry haste. Very few gear sets will actually hard-cap out on Expertise on a practical level.

I'd also point out that the fact that Blizzard only seems to enable Parry hasting on bosses where insta-gibs are not an issue puts it on a different level compared to, say, being one-shot by a 47k melee crit. Also the fact that it's only present on a minority of bosses nowadays has lowered the use of it as a 'required' stat, IMO.

P.S. Jothay, EvanM = Jayde = ProtWarr dev = me.

kahalm · 10/28/09, 10:44 AM

I'd also point out that the fact that Blizzard only seems to enable Parry hasting on bosses where insta-gibs are not an issue puts it on a different level compared to, say, being one-shot by a 47k melee crit. Also the fact that it's only present on a minority of bosses nowadays has lowered the use of it as a 'required' stat, IMO.

First boss (last miniboss) in toc hardmode, is 'insta-gibbing' alot. Unfortunatly I wasn't able to make Rawr working on my machine yet, will have to look at it someday on a windows-machine (or hope for the new mono)

Casstor · 10/28/09, 12:14 PM

Originally Posted by Jayde

I was just expressing in a simple way that Rawr properly models Expertise's contribution to damage reduction and displays it appropriately when present on gear/enchants/gems. My reference to weight was in regard to the proper contribution of Expertise on an item to the overall and defensive value of said item.

There is a lot of stuff going on in the background to calculate said value; including recursive parry-hasting (e.g. your parries haste your attacks which cause more boss parries which hastes his attacks which causes more parries by you...) and calculating the actual average swing speeds of both the player and the boss.

Casstor, as far as the question of if you should cap it to reduce raw burst, I believe that is a question everyone should answer on their own based on the encounter and gearing. It's always possible to optimize for maximum Expertise (%Chance to be Parried <= 0) if you so desire. However, unlike Defense, it is often impractical to do this without ending up gimping your gear to the point of taking more damage in your hunt to remove all Parry haste. Very few gear sets will actually hard-cap out on Expertise on a practical level.

I'd also point out that the fact that Blizzard only seems to enable Parry hasting on bosses where insta-gibs are not an issue puts it on a different level compared to, say, being one-shot by a 47k melee crit. Also the fact that it's only present on a minority of bosses nowadays has lowered the use of it as a 'required' stat, IMO.

P.S. Jothay, EvanM = Jayde = ProtWarr dev = me.

I'm not talking about capping the stat. I'm talking about weighting it properly. I have a set which caps expertise, but it gives up far too much in the way of armor/avoidance for me to be alright with using in normal fights where threat is not an issue. It's certainly not required, even if bosses which did have high melee damage output could parry-haste, simply because of what you'd need to sacrifice to get there. I guess I'll be more specific.

Let's assume we did some research that showed moving that moving from 7.5% boss parry chance to 6.5% boss parry chance increases the boss's average damage output by .1% (completely made up number, don't use this). Now, let's assume your armor is such that 45 armor gives you a .1% reduction in damage output every swing. This does not mean that we should weight 32.79 Expertise rating the same as 45 armor - simply because the 0.1% damage reduction achieved by expertise is wholly located at the points where a boss's raid damage is highest.

To put it simply, tank death has a higher likelihood of occuring during periods of high damage. Therefore, damage reduction which is only applied during these periods is worth more than damage reduction which occurs randomly, or damage reduction which is spread out over all points in time. How much more depends on how skewed the probability of death is towards periods of parry-hasting. If the probability is twice as high for a tank to drop to parry-hasting as it is when parry hasting does not occur, it stands to reason that expertise would be weighted twice as much as the damage reduction it affords.

Edit: Kahalm, if you mean Icehowl, you're probably standing too close and getting hit by whirl if you feel like you're getting insta-gibbed. From what I've seen, Gormok and enraged Dreadscale hit much harder than Icehowl on a tank, and Icehowl spends half his time whirling or breathing - which usually don't involve much tank damage. Icehowl has only one moderately damaging instant attack and his white hits.

Jothay · 10/28/09, 9:50 PM

Like I said Jayde, "self, open mouth, insert foot"

Jayde · 10/29/09, 5:21 PM

Well Casstor, as Joathy mentioned Rawr doesn't 'weight' stats, so adjusting a specific stat by a 'magic number' is a bit off the table in terms of general calculations. It does have a very specific numeric effect. Doubling it, for instance, is a very subjective thing.

I mean, for instance, you may be lowering the instance of parry haste with a small amount but, in your comparison, the Armor would be lowering ALL instances of Parry haste damage potential as well. So it's not as simple to just say double-weighting Expertise is the logical thing.

Again, I would also point out as I mentioned that Parry haste is rarely enabled on bosses where the burst is actually a major factor. Therefore, doubling it under threat of non-deadly burst would seem to be overkill.

At the end of the day, Expertise is always primarily going to be a threat stat, as the reduction in damage taken in most cases (even if it were to be doubled) is much less than other stats.

Casstor · 10/30/09, 10:48 AM

Originally Posted by Jayde

Well Casstor, as Joathy mentioned Rawr doesn't 'weight' stats, so adjusting a specific stat by a 'magic number' is a bit off the table in terms of general calculations. It does have a very specific numeric effect. Doubling it, for instance, is a very subjective thing.

I mean, for instance, you may be lowering the instance of parry haste with a small amount but, in your comparison, the Armor would be lowering ALL instances of Parry haste damage potential as well. So it's not as simple to just say double-weighting Expertise is the logical thing.

Again, I would also point out as I mentioned that Parry haste is rarely enabled on bosses where the burst is actually a major factor. Therefore, doubling it under threat of non-deadly burst would seem to be overkill.

At the end of the day, Expertise is always primarily going to be a threat stat, as the reduction in damage taken in most cases (even if it were to be doubled) is much less than other stats.

If you reccomend one piece of gear over another piece of gear, you're using stat weights. Your stat weights may be "all 0" or "all 1" depending on what you're optimizing for (Example: an optimization for avoidance might weight dodge and parry equally, and nothing else at all if you wanted it to for some reason), but you can't make gearing decisions without some inherent weights involved. If you're using "burst time", you're using stat weights. You may have multiple sets of stat weights to apply (and you should, considering no stat is weighted the same from fight to fight), but without stat weights, you can't prioritize one piece of gear over another.

I don't feel expertise is a mitigation stat, and if you note from the above that I never said I felt it was. What I said was that if the defensive value of expertise is being quantified, it ought to do so in a way that makes sense. I'm not actually suggesting "doubling" or "tripling" the value based on my random guess. I'm suggesting more thought be put into how to weight stats.

kahalm · 10/30/09, 11:12 AM

The value of burst must be decided be everyone for himself, the mitigation value of expertise on the other hand stays the same and has no need to be weighted. (If you compare it to armor or the mitigation part of avoidance). This is the reason why I do not consider the value of burst in the spreadsheet as this would only reflect my value of this stat.

I don't feel expertise is a mitigation stat, and if you note from the above that I never said I felt it was.

I needed the numbers to value f.e. the badges 245er head, the 69 expertise would equal 45 dodge in my case, so for parry-haste-bosses this will be the headslot of my choice.

Casstor · 10/30/09, 12:05 PM

Originally Posted by kahalm

The value of burst must be decided be everyone for himself, the mitigation value of expertise on the other hand stays the same and has no need to be weighted. (If you compare it to armor or the mitigation part of avoidance). This is the reason why I do not consider the value of burst in the spreadsheet as this would only reflect my value of this stat.

I needed the numbers to value f.e. the badges 245er head, the 69 expertise would equal 45 dodge in my case, so for parry-haste-bosses this will be the headslot of my choice.

Notice: I am not talking about minimizing damage taken. I'm talking about minimizing the probability of death, which certainly is not the same thing.

Edit: Also, your boss's attack speed is not currently affected by Tclap. If you move the speed to 2.4, expertise overtakes defense.

eXa · 11/07/09, 2:37 AM

You can add Algalon to that list. He has parry haste disabled