DPS warrior threat/dps

[Groundchuck]

So I was reading this thread:
[Warrior] Future of a DPS Warrior - Elitist Jerks (http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t12386-warrior_future_dps_warrior/)


I got to thinking what if warriors could downrank their heroic strike?

The theory being that a lower rank of HS would have lower innate threat. Yes there would be less bonus damage, but I wonder if it would really be worth it.

The only way to do it would be to consciously not train the last ranks of HS.

[Mozman]

Cleave or Slam when rage dumping HS is going to be problematic.
you can macro
/cast Heroic Strike (Rank 2)
if you want..

[Apate]

Well, it's recently been shown why rage dumping with cleave is problematic, but let's apply the same principle to HS downranking and see:

Kenco: A Guide To Threat. - Elitist Jerks (http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t9258-kenco_guide_threat/) says
Heroic Strike 8.........145 threat (+ 138 + weapon damage)
Heroic Strike 9.........173 threat (+ 157 + weapon damage)
Heroic Strike 10........193 threat (+ 176 + weapon damage)

When you are approaching the aggro ceiling as a DPS class with no threat dump, you want to maximize the amount of damage per threat (DPT).
subtacting weapon damage from each,
HS8 = 138/(145 + 138) = .4876
HS9 = 157/(157 + 173) = .4757
HS10 = 176/(176 + 193) = .4769

Similarly, Cleave = 100 threat (+ 70 + weapon damage); DPT = 70/(100 + 70) = .411


So, we can see that ranks 8-10 of HS have similar values for DPT; similar enough that the variance in weapon damage with each swing will probably overcome the small difference. Therefore, the highest rank of HS is still your highest amount of damage per attack that has the lowest amount of damage per threat.