[Sproutster]

I allways thought that there would be some avoidance value to expertise in particular helping avoid spike damage, but I never really sat down and did calculations until a couple of days ago. Later I found this thread and apparently expertise is even better than I thought at reducing damage (I found a flaw in my earlier numbers).

Maintankadin • View topic - Calculating the avoidance value of expertise



The thread's findings:

• Expertise is about 73% as effective as dodge rating for reducing incoming damage
• Expertise is about 69% as effective as dodge rating for reducing the number of incoming attacks that connect
• Expertise is actually 2x-4x better than dodge at reducing spike damage intake from boss melee attacks, with the added benefit that it preferentially reduces the largest spikes, thus smoothing out our spike damage by reducing the maximum spike size

Is there any reason why this thread shouldn't hold true for warriors or should we start gearing (not geming) for expertise past the soft cap?

The World of Warcraft Armory

[drae]

That's a really interesting post, thanks for the link!

Personally I don't stop gemming for expertise at the soft cap, any red slot gets a exp/stam gem. Good to know it may have additional advantages.

Theck mentions it could have different ramifications for warriors. Anyone have additional info on this from a warriors perspective?

[theckhd]

The reason I said it may have different ramifications for warriors is that you generate a different number of parry-able attacks per second. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly which of your attacks can and cannot be parried, so I couldn't give you a number. But if one of you was able to calculate the average number of parry-able attacks a tanking warrior makes per second, I could give you a ballpark estimate.

I would expect that most of your abilities can be parried, which would make expertise even more valuable to you guys. But I'm not sure if that's a reasonable expectation now that paladins have a hidden mechanism that effectively doubles the rate at which we generate parries (Holy Vengeance applications can be parried).

[Sproutster]

In a 60 second period I would expect 2 thunderclaps, 2 demo shouts and 3 shockwaves. So that would be 7/40 GCD's that can't be parried.

P.S. Thanks for taking the time to make that thread theckhd, it's very useful

[Trondhjem]

more and more bosses don't use the parryhaste mechanics no more, so this is a very constricted benefit of this (however great) stat.

[lyd]

this is fascinating math. This has implications for DK tanks that DW as well. I would love to run these numbers for a deathknight. good post!

[Mookey]

Source: Trondhjem more and more bosses don't use the parryhaste mechanics no more, so this is a very constricted benefit of this (however great) stat.

This is true while most of them still do, and connecting to this thread we should make topic with compilation of Bosses with Parry haste flag removed

From top of my mind
Patchwerk
Thadius
Kologarn
Gormok

[WarTotem]

Could you give us more information in your math than the results? I would assume that weapon speed would influence these numbers greatly. I'ld be greatly interested in how the number of white swings per second would affect these numbers, DPS weapon choices for Warriors (and Paladins), as well as the consequences for DW DKs.

[theckhd]

In a 60 second period I would expect 2 thunderclaps, 2 demo shouts and 3 shockwaves. So that would be 7/40 GCD's that can't be parried.

So the other 33 GCDs would be completely filled with parry-able attacks? What about passive effects (e.g. does a Deep Wounds application count as a melee attack that can be parried)?

I assume that a warrior's auto-attack count would be similar to a paladin's as well, at around a 1.3 swing speed after haste buffs. Does that sound about right, or do you guys have extra haste talents that I'm not familiar with?

Source: Mookey This is true while most of them still do, and connecting to this thread we should make topic with compilation of Bosses with Parry haste flag removed

There's already a list going over in this thread, though it's fairly sparse so far. Contributions welcome.

Source: WarTotem Could you give us more information in your math than the results? I would assume that weapon speed would influence these numbers greatly. I'ld be greatly interested in how the number of white swings per second would affect these numbers, DPS weapon choices for Warriors (and Paladins), as well as the consequences for DW DKs.

I went into pretty fine detail on the math, the most correct version of which is in this post. The spike damage calculation is here.

I took a quick look at weapon speed in this post, with the (as expected) result that expertise increases in value for slower boss swing speeds, and decreases slower player swing speeds.


I'm planning on cleaning up the calculation and writing it up as an article in the next month or so, so when I get around to that I'll try and provide plots and such for different variables (weapon speed for example). All I think I need to include the other tanking classes is the base number of parry-able attacks per second for each class.

[Fodi]

Source: theckhd So the other 33 GCDs would be completely filled with parry-able attacks?

Notwithstanding interrupts and commanding shout (which the tank doesn't always do), yes.

Source: theckhd What about passive effects (e.g. does a Deep Wounds application count as a melee attack that can be parried)?

Deep Wounds cannot be parried, nor can damage from Damage Shield.

Source: theckhd I assume that a warrior's auto-attack count would be similar to a paladin's as well, at around a 1.3 swing speed after haste buffs. Does that sound about right, or do you guys have extra haste talents that I'm not familiar with?

Warriors have nothing for haste until well into the DPS trees.

[drae]

1.3s is about right; we don't have any haste talents in the prot tree or anything.

In a perfect world, we'd get 40 GCD's and 46 melee swings per minute right?

Demo Shout, Thunderclap, and Shockwave are all 20s debuff durations (if spamming Demo is GCD, and TC is 6s cd) and are not parry-able. AFAIK all other warrior attacks in a standard rotation are parry able.

So 87 attacks or so would be parryable in a minute. I think. I suck at maths.

[theckhd]

Source: Fodi Deep Wounds cannot be parried, nor can damage from Damage Shield.

You're referring to the application of the debuff, not the damage, right? I didn't mean the damage from Deep Wounds (I assume that can't be parried, just like any other DoT).

As an example, the DoT that Seal of Vengeance applies to a mob can't be parried, but the application of the debuff counts as a separate melee attack that can be independently dodged/parried/miss. That alone nearly doubles our number of parryable attacks per second.

I'm not familiar enough with warriors to know whether the Deep Wounds debuff has similar mechanics.

[Warloco]

The application can not be parried either.

[theckhd]

Source: Warloco The application can not be parried either.

Great, thanks.

[Zothor]

Source: theckhd Great, thanks.

*burning envy*

of course... if SoV couldn't be parried I'd start hating all the expertise gear again. I guess my negativity can't win :P

in all seriousness though this is a huge, huge, benefit to the general understanding of the community, and a part of me wonders if blizzard was aware of the significant of expertise avoidance until theck went ahead and crunched his numbers. Several blueposts have said that avoidance is ALREADY too high - now they went and basically changed all the ulduar tanking gear, which had mostly hit, to TOC tanking gear, which has mostly expertise. bonus avoidance ftw.

[Fodi]

Source: Zothor part of me wonders if blizzard was aware of the significant of expertise avoidance until theck went ahead and crunched his numbers.

Ever wonder why Broken Promise is so slow?

I'm sure they know parry mechanics backwards and forwards.

[Zothor]

Source: Fodi Ever wonder why Broken Promise is so slow? I'm sure they know parry mechanics backwards and forwards.

As a long time shadow priest before I went full on tankage (through sunwell and naxx 25) I have far less faith than you do in this.

The number of bugs, mechanical issues, scaling problems, and major viability problems with the class that flew contrary to blizzard's stated beliefs was astounding. They were, and many continue to be, well known and publicly stated, proven, and backed up by the community. Blizz sometimes get to them. they sometimes don't. If they could be counted on to know "mechanics backwards and forwards" we wouldn't be playing the constant buff/nerf game with things like Armor pen these days either. Do you REALLY think they intended for a level 70 enchant (goose) to continue to outscale all the new options as a combination threat/survivability enchant the way it seems to now that SoV applications proc it?

edit: I'm also pretty sure that Broken Promise was slow because of the continued tweaking of DKs. There were several times in their iteration the DWing dks wanted slow weapons, and the rest of tanks wanted fast weapons. Not because of parrygibbing in lol-Naxx :P

[bacchanal]

What might be worth considering as well is the avoidance value of a slow weapon. There's been other threads discussing the threat implications of a slower weapon - and there is a point where the added devastate damage of a slow weapon outstrips the added numbers of heroic strikes from a fast weapon.

That being said, it's worth seeing how the avoidance compares when there's fewer parryable stats - because it could make the difference between weapon choices of a fast weapon with tanking stats or a slow weapon with dps stats.

[Fodi]

Source: bacchanal That being said, it's worth seeing how the avoidance compares when there's fewer parryable stats - because it could make the difference between weapon choices of a fast weapon with tanking stats or a slow weapon with dps stats.

I loaded my tank into Rawr and had it rank weapons by "mitigation" (i.e. incoming damage ^ -1).

Without parry haste enabled for the boss, 13 of the top 15 weapons listed are tank weapons. The two DPS weapons are near the bottom (and one of them is ilvl 258).

With parry haste enabled, 9 of the top 15 are slow DPS weapons. Broken Promise and Infantry Assault Blade are 4th and 9th, respectively; both of those are ranked higher than any tank weapon under ilvl 239. Many DPS weapons are ranked higher than tank weapons.

Adding expertise on the rest of my gear changes things, but it's not until 40 total expertise that the ilvl 226-239 tank weapons really start to catch up.

I tried the same experiment with some other warriors on my server and got similar results.

However, the results were different for my friend's pally. Most of the weapons listed were tank weapons no matter whether the boss had parry haste.

FWIW.

[Grü]

So we find ourselves in a situation where :

- either the parry haste flag is set, and we need to stack exp along with standard EH stats to avoid spike damages
- or it is disabled, and exp can almost be ignored as long as threat isn't an issue

Considering the criticity of this flag, I am surprised that no one listed its value for every single boss out there... Or is it that the few encounters mentioned above really are the only ones with the flag unset ?
This would suggest that guys like Icehowl, Valkyrs, Algalon can actually parry haste, even in heroic mode ?