Exigent
09-07-2007, 01:47 PM
So I've been looking at threat output recently and I've been noticing a trend. First off, as an aside, one current theory regarding weapon skill that has recently garnered a lot of support from testing is that 5 weapon skill (specifically the first 5 points that bring you to 355) grants around 3% to hit against a level 73 boss mob. There's a ton of theory-crafting and data analysis that's gone into testing weapon skill and thus far there appears
to be a non-linear benefit from the stat (i.e. it's more logarithmic like spell haste). That said, it then appears that we're looking for approximately 5.6% hit from hit rating so that combined with weapon skill (from Brutalizer) we'll reach the 8.6% cap for sword/board.
Back to threat, though, a couple of factors that I've noticed surprisingly adding up are:
(1) Threat caused by damage.
In defensive stance, the threat multiplier for warriors is 130%. Defiance is a 15% threat bonus, but since the values are applied multiplicatively, that boosts the threat modifier to 149.5%. Threat meters consider 1 damage equivalent to 1 unmodified threat. In other words, when a tanking warrior does 1 damage, he's actually generating 1.495 threat. This doesn't include the innate threat generated by skills, such as the bonus from Heroic Strike, etc.
Now what I've noticed is that a number of guilds bring an Arms warrior, presumably for the Blood Frenzy debuff since I doubt their DPS is very competitive. Blood Frenzy, fully talented, yields 4% additional melee damage to the target whenever the Arms warrior applies a bleed effect (either rend to guarantee 100% uptime or Deep Wounds if their crit rate is high enough). That doesn't seem significant at first glance. But consider the effect of multipliers. Suppose a tank did 100 damage. Following the defensive modifier, that's 149.5 threat. Factoring in 4% additional melee damage and the tank would have done 104 damage or 155.48 threat.
Toss in a threat enchant to gloves and the base modifier is boosted to 152.49%. Now that same 100 damage would yield 152.49 threat. With Blood Frenzy, you're looking at 104 damage yielding 158.59 threat.
Still seems insignificant, eh? Let's look at Teron Gorefiend from this past week:
Bazz did 98,799 damage in 4 minutes, 5 seconds (255 seconds).
With Defensive Stance, that's 147704.505 threat. 579.23 TPS.
With Blood Frenzy, that would have been 102750.96 damage or 153612.6852 threat. 602.40 TPS.
Factor in a threat enchant to gloves and you'd be looking at 156684.939 threat. 614.45 TPS.
Look at this another way:
98,799 damage * 104% (Blood Frenzy) * 152.49% (threat modifier) = 156684.939 threat
But threat is multiplicative, so we can compact the second two components as:
98,799 damage * 158.5896% (threat modifier) = 156684.939 threat.
In effect, with regard to damage, Blood Frenzy is the equivalent of a 4% threat boost. Longer encounters will only yield even better results as all of this scales well.
Let's look at the effect on DPS classes. Let's assume a class with zero threat reduction except for Blessing of Salvation, a 30% threat reduction. Salvation multiplies your threat generated by 70%.
So in order to get 1 point of threat, you can do 1 / 0.7 = 1.43 points of damage.
With Defensive stance alone, Bazz generated 147704.505 threat. The DPSer above could do roughly 211217 points of damage before passing Bazz. 828.30 DPS.
With Blood Frenzy, the DPSer could have done roughly 219666. 861.43 DPS.
With Blood Frenzy and the threat enchant, the DPSer could have done roughly 224059. 878.66 DPS.
So about 50 DPS gained for a player who only has Salvation. Rogues, DPS warriors and other classes that have other multipliers would gain even more. On average, I'd guess we have 14 DPSers in the raid. That's an allowable 700 DPS boost as a worst case scenario. More likely it'd be much higher than that when taking into account passive modifiers for the other classes. Also remember that this is only the threat we generate through damage. Innate skill threat is unaffected.
Is this worth it? Probably not, but it is one way to boost threat and overall DPS.
(2) Healing threat.
I've noticed that healing threat granted to tanks is about 4 times as large as that which we're accustomed to seeing. Between Prayer of Mending, Lifebloom, and Earthshield, Fusion tanks are getting approximately 20 TPS, whereas a number of other tanks are seeing anywhere from 80 to 100 TPS added. Taking into account the math above and you'll see that even 20 TPS isn't anywhere near as significant as it might seem when you consider the potential DPS gains as a result.
(3) Haste potions.
I used these for a while, but eventually became stingy as the cost is somewhat prohibitive. I'm noticing a trend among tanks to use these in place of other potions. This one is mostly self-explanatory and I'll likely be investing in a stockpile of these over the next month or so to see how things go.
to be a non-linear benefit from the stat (i.e. it's more logarithmic like spell haste). That said, it then appears that we're looking for approximately 5.6% hit from hit rating so that combined with weapon skill (from Brutalizer) we'll reach the 8.6% cap for sword/board.
Back to threat, though, a couple of factors that I've noticed surprisingly adding up are:
(1) Threat caused by damage.
In defensive stance, the threat multiplier for warriors is 130%. Defiance is a 15% threat bonus, but since the values are applied multiplicatively, that boosts the threat modifier to 149.5%. Threat meters consider 1 damage equivalent to 1 unmodified threat. In other words, when a tanking warrior does 1 damage, he's actually generating 1.495 threat. This doesn't include the innate threat generated by skills, such as the bonus from Heroic Strike, etc.
Now what I've noticed is that a number of guilds bring an Arms warrior, presumably for the Blood Frenzy debuff since I doubt their DPS is very competitive. Blood Frenzy, fully talented, yields 4% additional melee damage to the target whenever the Arms warrior applies a bleed effect (either rend to guarantee 100% uptime or Deep Wounds if their crit rate is high enough). That doesn't seem significant at first glance. But consider the effect of multipliers. Suppose a tank did 100 damage. Following the defensive modifier, that's 149.5 threat. Factoring in 4% additional melee damage and the tank would have done 104 damage or 155.48 threat.
Toss in a threat enchant to gloves and the base modifier is boosted to 152.49%. Now that same 100 damage would yield 152.49 threat. With Blood Frenzy, you're looking at 104 damage yielding 158.59 threat.
Still seems insignificant, eh? Let's look at Teron Gorefiend from this past week:
Bazz did 98,799 damage in 4 minutes, 5 seconds (255 seconds).
With Defensive Stance, that's 147704.505 threat. 579.23 TPS.
With Blood Frenzy, that would have been 102750.96 damage or 153612.6852 threat. 602.40 TPS.
Factor in a threat enchant to gloves and you'd be looking at 156684.939 threat. 614.45 TPS.
Look at this another way:
98,799 damage * 104% (Blood Frenzy) * 152.49% (threat modifier) = 156684.939 threat
But threat is multiplicative, so we can compact the second two components as:
98,799 damage * 158.5896% (threat modifier) = 156684.939 threat.
In effect, with regard to damage, Blood Frenzy is the equivalent of a 4% threat boost. Longer encounters will only yield even better results as all of this scales well.
Let's look at the effect on DPS classes. Let's assume a class with zero threat reduction except for Blessing of Salvation, a 30% threat reduction. Salvation multiplies your threat generated by 70%.
So in order to get 1 point of threat, you can do 1 / 0.7 = 1.43 points of damage.
With Defensive stance alone, Bazz generated 147704.505 threat. The DPSer above could do roughly 211217 points of damage before passing Bazz. 828.30 DPS.
With Blood Frenzy, the DPSer could have done roughly 219666. 861.43 DPS.
With Blood Frenzy and the threat enchant, the DPSer could have done roughly 224059. 878.66 DPS.
So about 50 DPS gained for a player who only has Salvation. Rogues, DPS warriors and other classes that have other multipliers would gain even more. On average, I'd guess we have 14 DPSers in the raid. That's an allowable 700 DPS boost as a worst case scenario. More likely it'd be much higher than that when taking into account passive modifiers for the other classes. Also remember that this is only the threat we generate through damage. Innate skill threat is unaffected.
Is this worth it? Probably not, but it is one way to boost threat and overall DPS.
(2) Healing threat.
I've noticed that healing threat granted to tanks is about 4 times as large as that which we're accustomed to seeing. Between Prayer of Mending, Lifebloom, and Earthshield, Fusion tanks are getting approximately 20 TPS, whereas a number of other tanks are seeing anywhere from 80 to 100 TPS added. Taking into account the math above and you'll see that even 20 TPS isn't anywhere near as significant as it might seem when you consider the potential DPS gains as a result.
(3) Haste potions.
I used these for a while, but eventually became stingy as the cost is somewhat prohibitive. I'm noticing a trend among tanks to use these in place of other potions. This one is mostly self-explanatory and I'll likely be investing in a stockpile of these over the next month or so to see how things go.