1h Shield Dps versus Dualwield Style
Posted 09-13-2008 at 03:25 PM by Galushi
Ok. I've done a majority of the work i think, and with the result im not going to press the issue further.
TLDR version: Dualwield style is still better then 1h/shield method, and will scale better with rage gain, dps gear, and raid buffs. 1h/Shield is a lot better then current but isn't the best. Might be good for dps situations while in tank gear when nothing to tank.
1h/Shield Prot Dps -versus- Dual Wield Prot Dps
The Battle of the ages!
Okay, so i set out to find out if the new talents and mechanics to protection based abilities would give us the means to dps with shields instead of the dual wield that we've been doing. I was thinking that with increased devastate and shield block average damage, and devastates chance to proc rage free shield slams, it would compensate for the methods lack of rage generation.
Let's start with some disclaimers and assumptions/simplifications i made. I'll try to be as thorough as I can, but as I'm typing this up after I did all my math, I'm probably gonna forget things.
1. I based rage gain off white attacks on a few mobs to estimate how much rage I would get per swing with a 2.6 speed weapon. Crits are double rage, offhand generates rage relative to its 50% damage it does.
2. The only buffs I factored into my calculations was Windfury as a rage gain benefit. Any further raid buffs or advancements in gear would scale non-shield slam methods better, because pure AP doesn't affect shield slam.
3. As I assumed, and also found through running numbers based on a rage generated per hit, Dual Wield's rage generation will scale faster then 1h/shield since it's white dps outscales a single one hander. This is to be expected. This also means that an increase in gear or buffs will scale dual wield rage more then 1h/shield giving dual wield an edge not shown in this simple model.
4. I based all damage on abilities around my current gear level. About 1850 AP, 32% crit, 9% hit, 100 dps 2.6 speed weapons. I did not factor in ArP or mob armor because differences in that nature would effect all methods equally. Due to my oversight, i did not include dodge/parry in the attack table. So for this test i'll pretend im also Expertise capped. lol
5. I did not factor in glancing blows or the prevention of glancing blows that heroic strike offers into the equation. Doing so was extra work I did not want to do. Because of this Dual Wield is slightly inflated i think, but it shoudlnt be much. Since I'm soft hit capped, we can probably pretend this test is with a lvl 70 mob that only has specials capped, 19% miss on white damage, and no glancing blows.
6. Even tho stats and ability levels are taken as a lvl 70, i used a level 80 spec because it would include all the talents that would be relavant at 80. Assuming each ability scales the same with eachother between 70 and 80, i think it's fair. Things like 1h Spec effect all damage equally so don't need to be calculated.
7. I normalized at 2.6 instead of 2.4 spd to save work. Inflates Deva/WW a little.
8. Oh ya, I included use of the Glyph that returns 10 rage on heroic strike crit. Since i dont know if the "+10% SBV after SS" meta will fit with my HS glyph, or how that sbv stacks with talents, ill only consider the HS glyph.
Now onto some data. From my quick test hitting a few mobs I made a guess that a MH white hit generates 12 rage on a non-crit. Critical hits will generate double rage. To figure out an average rage gain per swing i used this formula:
Prot Shield 4dev/ss method
MH = 19.8 x 874.5 = 17305 dmg
Dev = 32 x 1267 = 40544 dmg
ShSl = 8 x1732 = 13856 dmg
H-Str = 5 x 1531 = 7655
Total = 1322 dps
Prot Shield 3dev/ss method
MH = 18.8 x 874.5 = 16440 dmg
Dev = 30 x1267 = 38010 dmg
ShSl = 10 x 1732 = 17320 dmg
H-Str = 6 x 1531 = 9186 dmg
Total = 1349 dps
Prot DW 7dev/ww method
MH = 20.8 x 748.6 = 15570 dmg
OH = 24.8 x 374 = 9275 dmg
Dev = 35 x 1267 = 44345 dmg
Ww = 5 x 1375 = 6875 dmg
Hs = 4 x 1732 = 6928 dmg
Total = 1383 dps
Prot DW Dev Spam method
MH = 16.8 = 748.6 = 12576 dmg
OH = 24.8 x 374 = 9275 dmg
Dev = 40 x 1267 = 50680 dmg
HS = 8 x 1732 = 13856 dmg
Total = 1439 dps - THE WINNER!
As you can see, the 1h/shield methods do a decent job at keeping up, but this is a situation (nearly unbuffed, low rage) that favors 1h/shield. With dual wield white damage out scaling 1h/shield rage generation, and heroic strike for dual wield being slightly cheaper, Dual Wield will easily outgrow shield slam dps. This is coupled with the fact that AP buffs will not effect shield slam.
In the other direction, at low dps gear levels such as wearing tank gear (with some SBV stat as bonus), 1h/shield dps might possibly surpass dual wield damage. It seems to be stronger in low rage situations where the proc for a free shield slam becomes very useful.
Another interesting thing to note. With Devastate buffed to 80% weapon damage and getting a 15% critical strike bonus for Devastate and Heroic Strike, its not useful to use whirlwind on cooldown anymore. On more then one target it could be a dps gain, but its better to use that 22 rage on a 9 rage devastate and apply that 13 rage saved on a heroic strike. Doing that will be a better dps advantage. This means that for future proc dps after patch 3.0 , we will be doing nothing but spamming devastate and queuing heroic strike to dump rage.
I hope this was useful to someone. I spent nearly all morning working out some stuff so i hope i didnt botch it too badly. Let me know what you think!
-Galu
TLDR version: Dualwield style is still better then 1h/shield method, and will scale better with rage gain, dps gear, and raid buffs. 1h/Shield is a lot better then current but isn't the best. Might be good for dps situations while in tank gear when nothing to tank.
1h/Shield Prot Dps -versus- Dual Wield Prot Dps
The Battle of the ages!
Okay, so i set out to find out if the new talents and mechanics to protection based abilities would give us the means to dps with shields instead of the dual wield that we've been doing. I was thinking that with increased devastate and shield block average damage, and devastates chance to proc rage free shield slams, it would compensate for the methods lack of rage generation.
Let's start with some disclaimers and assumptions/simplifications i made. I'll try to be as thorough as I can, but as I'm typing this up after I did all my math, I'm probably gonna forget things.
1. I based rage gain off white attacks on a few mobs to estimate how much rage I would get per swing with a 2.6 speed weapon. Crits are double rage, offhand generates rage relative to its 50% damage it does.
2. The only buffs I factored into my calculations was Windfury as a rage gain benefit. Any further raid buffs or advancements in gear would scale non-shield slam methods better, because pure AP doesn't affect shield slam.
3. As I assumed, and also found through running numbers based on a rage generated per hit, Dual Wield's rage generation will scale faster then 1h/shield since it's white dps outscales a single one hander. This is to be expected. This also means that an increase in gear or buffs will scale dual wield rage more then 1h/shield giving dual wield an edge not shown in this simple model.
4. I based all damage on abilities around my current gear level. About 1850 AP, 32% crit, 9% hit, 100 dps 2.6 speed weapons. I did not factor in ArP or mob armor because differences in that nature would effect all methods equally. Due to my oversight, i did not include dodge/parry in the attack table. So for this test i'll pretend im also Expertise capped. lol
5. I did not factor in glancing blows or the prevention of glancing blows that heroic strike offers into the equation. Doing so was extra work I did not want to do. Because of this Dual Wield is slightly inflated i think, but it shoudlnt be much. Since I'm soft hit capped, we can probably pretend this test is with a lvl 70 mob that only has specials capped, 19% miss on white damage, and no glancing blows.
6. Even tho stats and ability levels are taken as a lvl 70, i used a level 80 spec because it would include all the talents that would be relavant at 80. Assuming each ability scales the same with eachother between 70 and 80, i think it's fair. Things like 1h Spec effect all damage equally so don't need to be calculated.
7. I normalized at 2.6 instead of 2.4 spd to save work. Inflates Deva/WW a little.
8. Oh ya, I included use of the Glyph that returns 10 rage on heroic strike crit. Since i dont know if the "+10% SBV after SS" meta will fit with my HS glyph, or how that sbv stacks with talents, ill only consider the HS glyph.
Now onto some data. From my quick test hitting a few mobs I made a guess that a MH white hit generates 12 rage on a non-crit. Critical hits will generate double rage. To figure out an average rage gain per swing i used this formula:
12 Rage x (.32)2 x (.68) = 15.84 rage / swingThe (.32) represents the crit rate being multiplied into the base rage gain to get an average. Since I'm using Windfury 20% haste for this experiment (cuz i wasn't sure if id be rage starved before i started), the main hand attacks at a speed of 2.6/(1.2)= 2.42 spd. I want to use a nice even number of gcd's and cycles so i will use a fight duration of one minute (40 gcd). With an attack speed of 2.42, we will have 60/2.42 = 24.8 swings in a minute.
24.8 swings x 15.84 rage/swing = 392.8 rage gained in one minuteReverse engineeing this rage gain to include the 19% miss penalty of duel wield yields:
336.26 rage gained per minute, MainhandSo now we have an idea of how much rage we have to work with. Now our goal is to figure out some rotations with our GCD's and see how much rage they use, and hopefully have some left over to burn on heroic strikes. Heres the couple rotations I think would be most ideal
168.13 rage gained per minute, Offhand
-------------504 rage per minute, total.
1. 3Dev/SS Method. Operating with 1h/shield, and using Sword and Boards roughly 1/3 chance to proc free shield slam. Ideal/Lucky situation.The rage gained and used in each situation is as follows:
2. 4Dev/SS Method. Operating with 1h/shield, and on average should have a total 120% chance to proc free shield slam. On paper this guarentees that condition. Safe.
3. 7Dev/1WW method. Operating with Dual wield, this is close to what we use on live, tho i added an extra devastate so that the full cycle of gcds is a good multiple of 40.
4. 8Dev Spam Method. Operating with Dual wield, this is an all out spamage of devastate, using any excess rage on heroic strike.
1. 3dev/ss = 392.8 (gain), 270 (used), 104 Left.So we have our rage gain and spent in each cycle, and how much rage we have left. But how do we know how much we can heroic strike? Well, since i already assumed we got all that rage from white damage, we have to include the rage not gained in the heroic strike cost.
2. 4dev/ss = 392.8 (gain), 288 (used), 122 left.
3. 7dev/ww = 504 (gain), 425 (used), 79 left.
4. devspam = 504 (gain), 360 (used), 144 left.
1h/shield : 15.48 (white swing rage) + 9 (Base - Talents) - 10*0.47 (rage refunded on crits) = 20.14 rageNow after taking the leftover rage and turning them into heroic strikes, rounding down, we have a total table of the attacks we get. Now the important part. DAMAGE! Using my unbuffed stats i gathered avrg damage values for each ability and calculated in crit rates and impale. Heres the list.
DW : 13.56 + 9 - 4.7 = 17.86 rage
1. MH : 662.5 : 1325(crit) : 874.5 avgWhew! Okay so we have a list of rage gain, how many GCD attacks and heroic strikes that lets us do, and how much they all hit for on average. All we have left it to multiply it out and see how much relative dps each method does!
2. MH(dw): 662.5 : 1325(crit) : 748.6 avg (lower due to miss rate)
3. OH(dw): 331.3 : 662.5(crit) : 374 avg
4. Deva: 810 : 1782(crit) : 1267 avg
5. WW: 993 : 2184(crit) : 1375 avg
6. ShSlam: 1108 : 2437(crit) : 1732 avg
7. H-Strike: 979 : 2152(crit) : 1531 avg
Prot Shield 4dev/ss method
MH = 19.8 x 874.5 = 17305 dmg
Dev = 32 x 1267 = 40544 dmg
ShSl = 8 x1732 = 13856 dmg
H-Str = 5 x 1531 = 7655
Total = 1322 dps
Prot Shield 3dev/ss method
MH = 18.8 x 874.5 = 16440 dmg
Dev = 30 x1267 = 38010 dmg
ShSl = 10 x 1732 = 17320 dmg
H-Str = 6 x 1531 = 9186 dmg
Total = 1349 dps
Prot DW 7dev/ww method
MH = 20.8 x 748.6 = 15570 dmg
OH = 24.8 x 374 = 9275 dmg
Dev = 35 x 1267 = 44345 dmg
Ww = 5 x 1375 = 6875 dmg
Hs = 4 x 1732 = 6928 dmg
Total = 1383 dps
Prot DW Dev Spam method
MH = 16.8 = 748.6 = 12576 dmg
OH = 24.8 x 374 = 9275 dmg
Dev = 40 x 1267 = 50680 dmg
HS = 8 x 1732 = 13856 dmg
Total = 1439 dps - THE WINNER!
As you can see, the 1h/shield methods do a decent job at keeping up, but this is a situation (nearly unbuffed, low rage) that favors 1h/shield. With dual wield white damage out scaling 1h/shield rage generation, and heroic strike for dual wield being slightly cheaper, Dual Wield will easily outgrow shield slam dps. This is coupled with the fact that AP buffs will not effect shield slam.
In the other direction, at low dps gear levels such as wearing tank gear (with some SBV stat as bonus), 1h/shield dps might possibly surpass dual wield damage. It seems to be stronger in low rage situations where the proc for a free shield slam becomes very useful.
Another interesting thing to note. With Devastate buffed to 80% weapon damage and getting a 15% critical strike bonus for Devastate and Heroic Strike, its not useful to use whirlwind on cooldown anymore. On more then one target it could be a dps gain, but its better to use that 22 rage on a 9 rage devastate and apply that 13 rage saved on a heroic strike. Doing that will be a better dps advantage. This means that for future proc dps after patch 3.0 , we will be doing nothing but spamming devastate and queuing heroic strike to dump rage.
I hope this was useful to someone. I spent nearly all morning working out some stuff so i hope i didnt botch it too badly. Let me know what you think!
-Galu
Total Comments 3
Comments
-
Very nice work, looks right to me.
Posted 09-13-2008 at 04:45 PM by Rootkitworm 
- Excellent work.
One question, tho, have you figured in the usage of the free shield slam outside of the 4dev/ss or 3dev/ss cycles?
Just wondering if that would balance out the dps of the straight devastate spam.
Other than that one question, I'm very impressed, tho...
Posted 09-13-2008 at 10:41 PM by Orkchops - well i chose those cycles because on average, every 3 or 4 devastates would proc a free shield slam and reset the CD on it. Those rotations are already factoring that all shield slams are free. In actuality when dpsing in that method you would be hitting devastate and then using shield slam whenever sword and board procced. Could be after 1 devastate or after several. I think it would be more efficient to wait for a proc even if shield slam came off cooldown cuz if you use the ability without a proc its gonna cost you 17 rage, which is gonna cost you almost a full heroic strike. With Heroic strikes increased dmg and crit rate in 3.0, i think its worth being as efficient as possible to get those. In a sense, i saw the whole rotation as Devastate spam, except when SnB procced you substitute devastate with an attack thats rage free and hits a little harder.
Posted 09-14-2008 at 09:03 AM by Galushi
Updated 09-14-2008 at 09:08 AM by Galushi
