Improved Thunder Clap

[bosephus]

I've been playing a warrior tank for only a couple months now, and I really enjoy it. The lessons I've learned here have been fantastic in helping me become decent quickly. I've noticed two things with Improved Thunder Clap that I don't understand, so I thought I would ask here.

First, when talented, Thunder Clap supposed to slow down an opponent's attacks by 20%. Upon mouseover, the tooltip on the debuff icon that appears on the target states only 10% slow down. Is the tooltip wrong or does the talent not work properly?

Second, Imp. Thunder Clap is supposed to do 246 damage. I've never seen it do more than 200, even on mobs that are gray to me at level 70. Is this because it is classified as a physical attack and therefore mitigated by armor? If so, wouldn't this therefore do nearly 0 damage against a heavily armored 72 elite melee mob, since it does not scale with AP? On most fights, it seems to hit between 140-170 damage. I can't pretend to fully understand the game mechanics, so please correct me.

I tried posing these questions to a GM in an in game ticket, but was rebuffed. I was told they had received queries from others that had questions about the same issue, but had no answers they could give me. I was told to watch the patch notes, but he would not say when (interesting...).

I've tried searching Tankspot, but this doesn't seem to have been addressed recently as I could find nothing. Anybody know what the deal is?

[Xav]

Tooltips never (or almost never, some may be special-case) update with talent augmentations. So the Imp TC talent that changes the way TC works and its effectiveness, isn't listed anywhere except for perhaps mousing over your own spell book/hot bar ability for thunderclap. Rest assured, it's working though.

Second, TC is physical damage, and doesn't scale with anything besides the defensive stance penalty. Thus, normal armor mitigation rules apply. (Boss armor mitigation % vs flat TC non-scaling damage)

[ebs2002]

Just to clarify, armor does not cut out a set amount of damage; it's a percentage. That's why even a level 1 mob deals damage if you aggro him (assuming you're not dodging/parrying/blocking and he's not missing). He'll only be doing 1 damage, but it's a percentage rounded up.

Block, on the other hand, is hard-damage blocking. If you keep shield block up, a mob that deals less than your block value will never damage you with physical damage. This is probably where you got confused.

[bosephus]

Thanks for the clarification. Something else occurred to me: is there any way to increase the damage of Thunderclap? Like if I pickup up a couple pieces of Paladin plate, with +spell stats, could I then mix it in with my trash mob armor kit and increase the damage (and therefore aggro) of thunderclap?

I rarely run with a Prot Paladin, so all those drops in Kara aren't going anywhere, really...

edit: I guess if it's completely physical damage, then this wouldn't work at all. Ah, well.

[ebs2002]

As far as I know, the only way to increase the damage is by speccing into Improved Thunderclap. Thunderclap is an ability, not a spell, and does physical damage, not spell damage (see Thottbot World of Warcraft: Thunder Clap (http://thottbot.com/?sp=11581) as a reference)