[Armstrong]

What's the hard cap for Expertise?

In other words, how much Expertise skill gets you to where you are never parried by any raid boss?

I haven't seen any definitive answer to this (if it exists let me know where), and while there may not be one clear-cut answer, I'm interested in at least compiling results from our readers just to have some data to use as a reference when the question comes up.

By now a good number of T6+ tanks are able to reach Expertise levels beyong 50 in a realistic gear set, so I figured it would be interesting to see what seems to be the magic number. Another interesting question we may be able to answer is whether different bosses have a wide range of parry rates as many people have been suggesting.


What to do:

Post a reply with one or more links to WWS parses that either show you being parried by a raid or show you not being parried at all. Include how much Expertise Skill you were wearing for each pull, as well as any other pertinent information.

I will edit this post to include all submitted data grouped by instance and boss order for easier access. As time permits I'll extract the number of parries vs. total number of attacks made against the boss since WWS reports eventually expire.

Please only include fights where:

• you were fighting a raid boss,
• you remember clearly how much expertise you had equipped. No approximate numbers please.

If you've had 0 parries, please specify whether you spent part of the fight attacking from behind or if the boss spends some of the time in a postition where it is unable to parry (i.e. chanelling spells).

If you have any ideas or suggestions regarding this please let me know.

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Karazhan



Gruul's Lair / Magtheridon's Lair



Serpentshrine Cavern



Tempest Keep: The Eye



Mount Hyjal

Rage Winterchill
Results so far: >53

Armstrong, 53 Expertise (13.25%)
1 parry / 252 attacks

Kaz'rogal
Results so far: >53, <=57

Armstrong, 53 Expertise (13.25%)
1 parry / 251 attacks

Orphium, 53 Expertise (13.25%)
2 parries / 208 attacks

Armstrong, 57 Expertise (14.25%)
0 parry / 164 attacks

The Black Temple

Teron Gorefiend
Results so far: >53, <=57

Orphium, 53 Expertise (13.25%)
0 parrys / 314 attacks

Orphium, 53 Expertise (13.25%)
4 parries / 399 attacks

Orphium, 53 Expertise (13.25%)
3 parries / 306 attacks

Armstrong, 57 Expertise (14.25%)
0 Parries / 269 attacks

Sunwell Plateau

[veneretio]

The number is 57 from what I heard a couple months ago from my buddy, Kavtor. Seems like you've already started there. I'd be tempted to get some results with 56 just to see if one can produce a Parry, but I'd be more interested to see a Parry at 57. (cause from what I've read... not happening)

Anyway I'll try to dig up the source, I'm sure he said it was EJ where it originated from.

[OnourisofRavencrest]

I armoried a sunwell tank not too long ago who had 74(18.5%) Expertise and 0 hit. I highly doubt he was wasting that much expertise just for the fun of it or maybe he was just seeing how high he could go, who knows.

[Kavtor]

Sunwell gear just comes with a ton of expertise, not much you can do about it. I got 57 from EJ somewhere, but I'm not sure where to bring it up again. Regardless, it seems like a good place to start.

[Kazeyonoma]

Next kara run i'll wwslog it and see what I can come up with. I'm guessing that kara bosses have lower parry rates and thus my expertise set (36 ish) should negate some. but I'll see what kinda findings I come up with.

[Orphium]

My findings mirror yours at 53 expertise.

Kaz'rogal
Orphium - WWS 2 parrys / 184 swings

Teron Gorefiend
Orphium - WWS 0 parrys / 286 swings
Orphium - WWS 4 parrys / 380 swings
Orphium - WWS 3 parrys / 273 swings

I'll try to rework my gear to put me somewhere between 53 and 57 and let you know what happens.

[Pandaburn]

So it looks like most bosses have about a 1% parry rate at 53, which holds with 57 being the cap! At least in tier 6 content. Looking forward to seeing some counterexamples!

[Armstrong]

Source: Pandaburn So it looks like most bosses have about a 1% parry rate at 53, which holds with 57 being the cap! At least in tier 6 content. Looking forward to seeing some counterexamples!

Two bosses is not exactly the same as "most bosses". We will be able to confirm 57 as the cap for these particular two when someone demonstrates being parried with 56 Expertise on the same encounters.

It would be particularly interesting to see bosses who consistently fail to parry players with significantly less than 57, like 40 (10%) for example. This would establish that parry rate indeed does vary significantly from one boss to the next, which would be pretty useful information once we start having a decent list.

[hbombs]

I <3 this thread keep up the good work.

Ill get WWS up and running and Ill be posting some results when I can (most likely after the Kael grind is over)

[Xav]

I don't think it's more than 15% either, although I thought I recalled getting a parry at 14.25%. Either way, not something I have too much interest in testing it myself, but I'm looking forward to anyone else's time spent figuring it out!

Source: OnourisofRavencrest I armoried a sunwell tank not too long ago who had 74(18.5%) Expertise and 0 hit. I highly doubt he was wasting that much expertise just for the fun of it or maybe he was just seeing how high he could go, who knows.

That sounds suspiciously like me. I log out in a silly gearset composed of most of the Sunwell items, regardless of how "good" or logical they are. I definitely don't actually raid using 18%+ expertise, though, haha. In an extreme set I can reach even more silly numbers, like

[OnourisofRavencrest]

It was you, I wont lie. I had looked at your gear on two occasions and it was basically the same so I just guessed that perhaps the bosses in Sunwell had a high parry rate or you were seeing how high you could get it.

[Mogri]

I'm interested in this result keep the numbers coming

You need to be careful how you interpret the data with 0 parries. Having 0 parries after x swings certainly doesn't mean that you are at the expertise cap (unless, x = infinity).

For Example:
There is some very small chance of getting 0 parries with 0 expertise after 200 swings. This chance increases as you increase +exp. So it is more likely to get 0 parries after 200 swings with 20 expertise

This means that you can never actually be absolutely certain of the expertise cap (unless Blizz tells us). What you can do is figure out a probability of the expertise cap being y. So the more data collected without a parry at expertise=y will increase the probability that the cap is y. Probability = 100% when you get to infinite swings as mentioned just before.

Maybe some smart cookie wants to take the # swings @ exp = 57 and find the probability that the cap is 57 (for that boss). I forget how to do it right now.

[hbombs]

Crappy gruul pug

33 expertise 20 parries

I was OT till around 30% then MT the rest of the way

[Mogri]

I had an idea about another way to find the expertise cap (which I think is better )

I suggest collecting a bunch of data at 0 expertise and figure out the parry %. Since we know that effect of each point of expertise skill reduces the parry% by 0.25%.

For example if a sample of 300 swings was collected at 0 expertise with say 47 parries. The parry % is 15.67 which implies an expertise cap of 15.67/0.25 = 62.68.

The advantage here is that there is a large number of parries and so the result is less sensitive to the number of parries (maybe the boss turned and the number of parries should have been 48, this means 16% parry chance and a cap of 64)

You can also do this for non-zero expertise values (ie just add (expertise skill) * 0.25% on to the parry % you get from the data). This is probably the more realistic case since I know on my warrior I get 6 expertise from talents.

So a bunch of people could collect data on a particular boss with low values of expertise gear and submit their data. For each data set you have an estimate of the expertise cap so then you could average these out to get the best estimate (if you have enough values you could calculate a 90% or 95% confidence interval too)

So the data collected would be the same as suggested in the original post (boss, exp skill, # swings, # parries) but the expertise skill should be as low as possible.

How's that sound? Think it would work? Seems better to me than waiting around for the parry that never happens.

Edit: I'm aware that the cap will be an integer and that a decimal value of expertise doesn't actually mean much. After doing all the statisticcs then you can round up to get the cap.

[Armstrong]

Yeah this can be done based off any Expretise level, as long as it is known. I've changed my original post to reflect that and will include parry percentages in the results.

What I'm mostly interested in is to see evidence of certain bosses having parry rates much lower than the usual 14% - 15%. If such cases indeed exist, it would be nice to have a record of them so that tanks can adjust their threat set accordingly and emphasise other stats when they would otherwise be "wasting" expertise.

[Bodasafa]

Ill have to get with my GM he keeps WWS records I think and see if I can produce some results for ya. Unfortuantly I only have 42-47 expertise skill. So with the already established numbers you got and your reply in my other thread, it seems im about 10 skill short of giving any useful numbers.

[Armstrong]

It would be interesting to see results for bosses not yet listed.

[Sirq]

Was tanking Lady Malanda yesterday, and I had quite some parries.. I've got 38 expertise which might not be that much but I rarely see bosses/mobs parry more than 4/5 times during the encounter, does any1 else have this with her?
I was stunned tbh

[Sparan]

Aww man. I just did a full BT with 60 exp on and got 0 parries btu I can't seem to get ahold of the WWS.

[OnourisofRavencrest]

Did Teron Gorfiend last night with 55 Expertise 0 parries. It wasn't the cleanest kill and it took 3 attempts so he had plenty of time to parry me if he wanted to, as a bonus you can see how much we wiped going for our 2nd Bloodboil kill.

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