Random threat thoughts

[Bazz]

So I figured I would add something worthwhile to this thread. It is in regards to my routine of attacks to use for max threat.

My old standard routine used to be sunder sunder sunder shield slam revenge, repeat.

This is pretty solid threat, and you can't go wrong with it for basic threat levels. What i found though, is that revent is a 5 sec cooldown, and shield slam is 6. By doing the above, shield slam first, it always made sure the order stayed the same. usually the cooldown was not complete on revenge to use it so i just hit shield slam, and then after shield slam revenge was always ready for use.

I switched it up a few months ago. Found that prioritizing revenge first, even if it meant missing about 1 second worth of cooldown by not doing shield slam, would be more threat. So the routine would look like this:

revenge, shield slam, sunder sunder revenge, shield slam, sunder, revenge, sunder, shield slam, revenge, sunder sunder shield slam.

Slowly, revenge creeps its way up to the beginning of the list, and then when you are at the point of doing shield slam > revenge, you basically have to eat 1 second of doing nothing to wait that last little bit for revenge to light up, then start over with revenge > shield slam > sunder etc.


I'm sure my explanation isn't doing it justice, but thats how it works (BTW, replace sunder with devestate where applicable)

[Draugr]

you/ex should make http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31858

every war and their mom I looked at today had one.

[Exigent]

I actually started collecting that set a week or two ago, not intensively, but I've snagged a few cards, including the 7 that dropped a few days ago during our trash clear to Kael. At worst, it's a better stamina trinket than the two I currently have.

[Exigent]

Some interesting notes that I've found over at EJ:

(actually saw this first note (http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=166546791&pageNo=1&sid=1#2) a month or so ago)

Let's say you increase your weapon skill by 4.

Against a mob 3 levels higher than you, you get: 0.8% lower chance to miss, 0.4% lower chance to get dodged, 2.4% to be parried, and a 0.8% higher chance to crit. That means a 4.8% net increase.

In short, 1 weapon skill:

0.2% chance to hit
0.2% chance to crit
0.1% chance not to be dodged
0.6% chance not to be parried

On Shield Mastery improving Shield Slam; yes, it and 1h speck both actually. The latter is a 10% increase to every damaging attack you do with a 1h weapon equipped, including things done with a shield. They conspire to add a good 43% more threat to each Block Value compared to the baseline .169 TPS/BV I calculated last page, putting us at .242 TPS/BV. You still need about 33 BV for a 1% threat increase and it's still worse than hit or skill on a per itembudget basis, but I do agree that it's certainly much more obtainable on decent tankgear. My intention was more reacting to the blanket statement that BV was the "best" stat for threat more than making a serious case for chosing gear.

That said, I do think hit is relevant for sockets. Rigid Dawnstones are at the very least useful and possibly optimal for those backup Vambracers of Courage and Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden you've replaced with other pieces as primary tanking gear but use as threat gear thanks to their BV.

Here's an interesting threat spreadsheet:
http://www.mediafire.com/?aav4ezarkdd

One of the fun parts is seeing the effect of the 2% threat enchant to gloves on the threat listed there. In my opinion, it remains worthwhile when compared to something like 8 stamina, 15 agility, 26 attack-power or 15 strength.

[Exigent]

So I ran some numbers today using a TPS spreadsheet (http://elitistjerks.com/showthread.php?t=11634) over at Elitist Jerks and I came up with an approximate weighting for comparing the value of +hit rating and shield block value when it comes to generating threat.

Please note that (a) the spreadsheet is subject to ongoing improvements and is not perfectly accurate. It is, however, a decent starting point and provided a pretty good insight. (b) This is not an exact science since everything is still subject to the RND.

In general, higher shield block values lend themselves to higher burst threat. That's the neat thing about block value as a stat for a warrior; it's one of the few ways tanking warriors can scale their threat, since shield slams are directly modified by block value. Land a 2200-2400 crit shield slam on a mob and your threat will jump noticeably. Obviously we can boost threat through typical damage modifiers like critical strike bonuses and attack power, but those are few and far in-between on tanking gear.

On the other hand, we have +hit which increases our chance to land attacks (that, of course, aren't dodged or parried, the latter of which are only countered through weapon skill bonuses).

For reference, 15.8 hit rating = 1% hit at Level 70 and while, wearing a sword/shield, +hit is useful until we hit 8.6%. After that, the effect is allegedly nil.

The issue has been that it's rare to find items that provide both +hit and shield block value. The question that I've had is how do both stack up when it comes to threat generation. Here are my non-scientific [results (http://netigen.com/random/tps-eval.xls)]:

1 Block Value adds about 0.2 TPS
1 Hit Rating adds about 0.6 TPS

Or... 3 Block Value = 1 Hit Rating in terms of typical TPS.

That said, both stats are important as block value adds burst threat while hit rating provides more reliable, steady threat.

AGAIN, THIS IS NOT AN EXACT SCIENCE. Your mileage may vary.

[Malefic]

And I thought that healers calculating spirit/mp5 ratio, coefficients for +healing and hps were nerds :D

[Xyebane]

Wow, sucks for you guys

Threat for druids is so easy, its just Maul when rage permits, Mangle, Lacer, Lacer, Lacer, Lacer, Repeat.

Smash buttons more, skill less. :p

[Exigent]

Bazz had his Vengeance trinket on last night. I was curious about what it added other than the 51 stamina, which admittedly is a big selling point -- although personally, short of an incredible proc, I can't justify losing threat on non-stamina-oriented fights. Looking at the WWS parse for last night:

Over 76 minutes of actual DPS time, the trinket procced 82 times for a grand total of 7580 damage. The average proc was 92 holy damage, while the highest proc was 108.

76 minutes * 60 seconds = 4560 seconds of DPS time.

7580 / 4560 = 1.66 DPS added

Threat: 11370 over 76 minutes of combat.

-----

Summary: 51 stamina is badass. Using it for the threat bonus is.. meh. Bazz got more out of Thorns.

[Bazz]

Is that accurate? I recall swapping my styleens on for awhile, which may be adding time to that average.

[Exigent]

Best case scenario, assume it was off for 2/3 of the night, since you aren't sure.

22740 damage

22740 / 4560 = 4.97 DPS

Threat: 34110 over 76 minutes of combat.

Better results, although still debateable. It's difficult to model reliably if you're swapping trinkets!

[Exigent]

As an aside, if we assume the numbers above are close to being correct (though I'm hesitant to say they are since you aren't sure how long you switched to Styleen's) then the theory-crafted threat gain is actually pretty good.

Styleen's has 24 block value. Using the values I came up with, that'll be around 4.8 TPS added whereas the Vengeance card had around 7.5 TPS (34110 threat / 76 minutes). Nice, especially considering the 51 stamina. That said, we should try to figure out what the actual uptime on the trinket is (stop switching omg!).

[Bazz]

I'll start using it full time for awhile and see how it does. Just need to get some logs so we can see how much its procing etc.

Can't believe I forgot to log everything last night. My memory is failing!

[Bazz]

As a side note, I think either way, losing 2-3 TPS at most, is well worth the 500 (closer to 600) hp boost from it. It's just such a huge chunk of hit points for survival and to make the healer's job easier.

[Punkrocker]

Being a noob to most things warrior, I do have a question about your comment "replace sunder with devastate where applicable". I'm sure that's obvious to Ex and other long time tanks, but when Punked hits 70 (very soon) I'm probably going to spec prot for 5 mans and whatnot. I don't ever expect to tank cutting edge content, he's an alt, but I do want to do the best job I can with his gear.

So, when do you replace sunder with devastate? Speaking from memory since I'm at work, Sunder starts out at 10 rage, right? You have the talents to drop it to 7 rage. Devastate refreshes sunder once it's up, but costs 12 rage.

Do you normally just devastate every so often, or once you have a 5 stack of sunder up, is that the point in which you stop using sunder and start using devastate?

Devastate "refreshes" sunder, I assume it doesn't add to it? If you have 4 sunders up and hit devastate, you'll still have 4 sunders up with a full timer?

Is it more threat per rage efficient to use sunder or devastate primarily? You can get almost 2 sunders in per one devastate (unless my math is off) but is the extra rage generated by devastate higher than those two sunders?

[Punkrocker]

Ok, now that I got in game I see that sunder is 15 rage too, so it makes sense that once you have 5 sunders you swap to devastate since the rage cost is the same.

[Exigent]

COST

- Sunder Armor can be reduced to 9 rage through talents (Focused Rage and Improved SA).

- Devastate can be reduced to 12 rage through talents (Focused Rage)

PROS

- (Fully talented) Sunder Armor is cheaper and does a static, reliable amount of threat.

- Devastate scales (pathetically) with weapon damage and attack power. The main benefit here is that Devastate contributes damage and can crit.

- Devastate can trigger a weapon's chance on hit ability.

CONS

- Sunder Armor contributes no damage.

- Devastate is affected by armor and consequently can result in less threat than Sunder Armor. The last math that I'd read stated that Devastate needs to hit for 200 in order to be equal to the threat generated by Sunder Armor. Any less and you're inferior.

---------

In short, if your Devastates are hitting for more than 200 on average and rage is abundant then go with that after five sunders. If your Devastates suck or rage is more of an issue, stick with Sunder Armor; that's assuming of course that you've got SA down to 9 rage (which I do not).

[Punkrocker]

Ah, ok, thanks a bunch.

[Bazz]

I think I found the perfect way to use devestate btw.

What I did....

I have my primary hotbar in defensive stance. It looks like this:

1: attack
2: shield slam
3: taunt
4: revenge
5: sunder
6: shield block
7: intervene (bound to mouse 4)

Now some things you notice. I don't have heroic strike there. I am actually a clicker on most fights for heroic strike. The exceptions to this are untauntable mobs that require a lot of mobility, such as leotheras, ROS, council. When doingg these encounters I change hot keys and put heroic strike where taunt is.

Now on top of this, I have a 2nd hotbar that is "one up" from my standard hotbar. It looks exactly like this exccept the sunder key is replaced with devestate.

What this accomplishes is that for trash, and most encounters, I just use the standard defensive hotbar. But when I want to use devestate, I just start the fight normally, in my normal hotbar, and once I put up 5 sunders, I just shift + mouse scroll up one hot bar, and I end up with the same bar, except it has devestate in place of sunder. This allows me to maintain my same rotations.


A big challenge of the expansion was the new abilities, and how to work them into your routine. Devestate was a bitch, and it took me a solid 3 days of brainstorming to come up with that idea. I simply could not replace other keys in my 1-6 "easy reach" range. So it meant doing something out of the ordinary.

[Torfee]

Wow, sucks for you guys

Threat for druids is so easy, its just Maul when rage permits, Mangle, Lacer, Lacer, Lacer, Lacer, Repeat.

Smash buttons more, skill less. :p

Really? Unless it has changed, I recall that additional applications of Lacerate (past the initial 5 count)caused no additional threat, similiar to how Sunder Armor operates. I read several posts on EJ a while back that said that it is a waste of rage to apply Lacerate past the 5 count unless you are refreshing the debuff.

But, things could have changed since then that I'm not aware of.

[Bazz]

Except your wrong. Sunder armor does give additional threat past the first 5 applications.

[Xyebane]

They changed it torfee

now Lacerate does a small 29-30 initial damage, which causes the main threat component (~290 untalented, 333 talented) also capable of criting. The dot does threat in a fashion of damage/3.

Was in the hotfix the day after they nerfed bears.

[Torfee]

Ah...interesting.

P.S. - Bazz is a poopypants

[Punkrocker]

Necro posting now that I have some experience tanking on Punked.

I've found that devastate with my current weapon pretty much sucks. From some reading I've done it's been suggested that tanks with lower level weapons (and daggers especially since they tend to have a faster swing/lower avg damage) not use devastate (pre 2.3 of course) and simply revenge/shield slam with an occasional sunder to keep the stack up.

After re-reading this today, I think my normal devastates with a 5 stack of sunder up is around 220-230, which from what Ex posted is borderline (or just above) the minimum threshhold to make devastate worthwhile. I HAD been using devastate to dump rage, but was finding that heroic strike seemed to generate better threat per rage. That is a "seat of the pants" observation from watching omen in 5 mans.

Also, I know you guys don't really have an issue with rage on raid bosses due to how hard they hit, but one of my primary problems with threat generation in 5 mans (and trash in kara) is from a lack of rage. I've been thinking about re-speccing to pick up some talents to generate a little more rage but I'm not sure if I'll actually gimp my direct threat generation by doing so.

[Ceres]

Actually Daggers get a different AP-> speed modifier than other 1h weapons, they are normalized to 1.8s whereas all other 1h weapons are normalized to 2.4 seconds. Thus you're going to lose a lot of damage on devastates if using a dagger over a sword/axe/mace/fist.

The biggest upside of Devastate over sunder is that it can crit and be buffed from melee buffs, whereas sunder threat is static.

[Punkrocker]

Actually Daggers get a different AP-> speed modifier than other 1h weapons, they are normalized to 1.8s whereas all other 1h weapons are normalized to 2.4 seconds. Thus you're going to lose a lot of damage on devastates if using a dagger over a sword/axe/mace/fist.

The biggest upside of Devastate over sunder is that it can crit and be buffed from melee buffs, whereas sunder threat is static.

"Faster swing" should probably have been "faster normalized speed". The end result is the same, daggers are far from optimal for devastate, which has me rethinking it with using a dagger as my mh in tank mode until I get another mh tanking weapon.