Alright everyone. Firstly before starting big kudos to Moredps from The Underbog, had to borrow his mage Intellect to help with figuring out sword and board proc rates.
I've spent several hours with this trying to figure out whats going on. Its a pretty basic spreadsheet so I'll detail some of the limitations and assumptions which i've made for the sake of pure simplicity.
Assumptions
Assumes base stats (strength) of a level 70 Tauren warrior.
Assumes character talent points are as such:
Talent Spec
Assumes the character has no rage limitations
Assumes a rotation of Shield Slam -> Dev -> Dev -> Dev (more on this later.
Attacks are unable to miss, be dodged, parried or blocked.
Attacks are unable to be critical hits.
Assumes a ping of zero
Assumes a perfect rotation.
Assumes all devastates with 5 sunders already applied.
Fights were calculated over 60 seconds and with 40 global cooldowns.
Spreadsheet is designed to compared identical item point values of Strength and block value.
1 Block Value = .65 Item Mod Point
1 Strength = 1 Item Mod Point.
All calculations are made with a 100 DPS 2.0 speed weapon, and 100 BV shield.
Sword and Board Proc Usefulness Rate
This was a bit of a time waster. As the model called for a rotation of Shield Slam -> Dev -> Dev -> Dev, the usefulness of sword and board procs varied greatly on which of the devastates it proced on. A proc occurring on the first devastate netted a 3 second reduction in the shield slam cool down while a proc on the second or third devastate yielded a 1.5 or 0 second reduction respectively.
Its not as simple as it sounds to calculate the number of Shield slams and devastates in 60 seconds or 40 global cool down cycles.
Moredps created a rough program to run 10,000 sample sizes and determine the numbers of devastates and shield slams that would fit into this 40 global cool down time period. After several runs it was determined that the numbers of devastates and shield slams was
12.5 Shield slams and
27.5 Devastates
or that Sword and board was in effect giving us 2.5 free shield slams per 60 second/40 global cooldown cycle.
This was what was used in the spread sheet calculations.
The Spreadsheet
Pretty crude google documents spreadsheet. Each ability is examined in realation to Shield Block Value only, Strength and a control. or nil situation.
I'd appreciate it if someone else familar with the subject could look over the numbers and check things but i'm fairly confident its correct.
***Spreadsheet*** What it means
The current values set are 100 strength and 153.8 block value (equal item level)
Scrolled right down to the bottom you should see
Code:
Global Cooldowns Shield slam Devastate Auto swing Total Damage DPS
Damage Control 40 8,584 12,320 4,799 25,702 428.37
Damage Block Value 40 11,333 12,320 4,799 28,451 474.19
Damage Strength only 40 9,477 12,838 5,742 28,057 467.62
Damage control is the the damage of everything without the added stats. Damage block value is with the 153.8 points of block value added in, and finally damage Strength only is with the 100 strength added in.
So looking at this portion of the spreadsheet stacking the same item mod points of pure block value resulted in higher dps. Yes I was surprised too initially until I thought about it some more and looked at the limitations of this simulated that I stated earlier.
The contributions to Devastate and Auto Swing from attack power are very low. And as strength delivers significantly less block value than pure block value its dps IS lower than that of the pure block value.
However this is a theoretical situation!
In practice.
We cant guarantee the perfect rotation. This will effect the ratio of shield slams to devastates. The same apply's with latency, and user error ie recognising the sword and board proc and reacting with shield slam.
Use of spells. I dont expect anyone to be using only devastate and shield slam. I'm fully expecting to be using Shockwave and concussive blow every single time they are up. Not to mention revenge if I can.
These three abilities all scale with attack power, Shock wave and concussive blow particularly well. If we were to include these in the calculations the damage gained from the greatly out weighs the loss off firstly global cooldowns spent in devastate and the damage advantage Shield block value has over strength.
Rage at the start of the fight is a big one too. We cant ever just open with a shield slam straight off the bat unless we are carrying over rage from a previous fight, or waiting for bloodrage to reach an acceptable level.
Rage Generation
Attack power pays great dividends in terms of the rage we can generate due to white hits. This alone allows us to dump significantly more rage into say, heroic strike which thanks to incite has a good crit rate and thus good potential damage output.
Damage Shield
This is one ability which is definitely in favour of pure block value stacking, it was well beyond the scope of the spreadsheet to find out by how much, and what proportion of damage would be attribuitable to it as that would require char and mob level, dodge/miss/parry/block hit rating/expertise to all be accounted for.
It is however only 20% so I feel confident in saying that the other positives for stacking strength outweigh the positive that damage shield provides unless you are aiming for only aoe grinding. And that brings us onto another though of true aoe tanking.
Play style
I'm unable to say how valid true aoe tanking will be, nor do I have any actual proof of my theory. But I'd say that with enough mobs, block value becomes better than strength with everything taken into consideration as it provides more mitigation through block. More outgoing damage through damage shield and obviously bigger shield slams to the face.
Ease of Gearing
This points an interesting one. Gear which has high block value tends to have little to no other useful DPS stats. Gear with strength all over it tends to have significantly more.
Yes this will change with the 3.0 updates and epic gear re-balancing however its still on a completely different scale and level. Once again its beyond me to investigate the effect of having defensive stats on our gear like Block Rating, dodge, parry defense. Compared to offensive states like Crit, Hit, Expertise, Armor pen.
As such i'm going to attempt to gear myself in a way which maximises the slots and available choices i have. For example, If I have to chose between a low iLevel DPS chest or a Higher iLevel Tank chest with lots of block value and socketing potential then until someone has some real numbers/stats about how this affects leveling speed it might make sense to take the higher item level for the added survivability and synergy with some of our talents ie critical block.
Conclusion
In the limited tests, pure block value was the more desirable stat for a perfect SS -> Dev -> Dev ->dev rotation. In practice due to a number of reasons as listed above I believe stacking straight strength to be the better option all around.
Feedback and comments please!
Gearing theory for 1h + Shield DPS
