[kryonik]

There are a lot of factors going into this that seem to be disregarded.

You cannot overlook crits.

Let's say you Devastate once and it does 100 damage. That'ss 119 + 301 + 100 = 520 threat or 520 / 9 = 57.7 TPR.

If you Shield Slam once and it does 500 damage (not unreasonable), that's 307 + 500 = 807 threat or 807 / 17 = 47.5 TPR.

Now if they crit.

Devastate now becomes 119 + 301 + 200 = 620 threat or 620 / 9 = 68.9 TPR.

Shield Slam now becomes 307 + 1000 = 1307 threat or 1307 / 17 = 76.9 TPR.

That's a marked difference for a tame Shield Slam. Mine hit for ~700 noncrit.

I propose we take into consideration expected values. Expected values are a statistical concept, one that takes into consideration all the amounts you stand to gain (or lose) by the chance each value has and adds them up. It's basically a weighted average. For example, a fair one sided die has a 1/6 chance to roll on a 1,2,3,4,5,6. So the expected value would be 1*(1/6) + 2*(1/6) + 3*(1/6) + 4*(1/6) + 5*(1/6) + 6*(1/6) = 3.5, so the average of all your rolls for a large number of rolls will be close to 3.5.

With this we can much more accurately figure out what the expected threat gains from each ability are. For example:

With a 15% crit rate, your expected Devastates are (0.85 * 100) + (0.15 * 200) = 85 + 30 = 115. Your initial expected Devastated will do 119 + 301 + 115 = 535 threat or 59.4 TPR.

Your expected Shield Slams are (0.85 * 500) + (0.15 * 1000) = 425 + 150 = 575. Your initial expected Shield Slam will do 307 + 575 = 892 threat or 52.4 TPR.

Thoughts?

[LilBudyWizer]

I wrote two mods, MyTPS and ThreatU, that report sustained TPS for a fight and keep running totals. MyTPS uses KTM and gives threat by power, but, regretably, KTM hasn't been updated for awhile. ThreatU uses ThreatLib for the threat data, but can't tell you threat by power.

I generally test on the endlessly respawning heathens and savages at the start of shattered halls. I generally get enough rage to sustain a rotation. The biggest issue is that it takes so friggin long to generate a sufficient sample size. I currently have 3500 shield slams in MyTPS which took 12.6 hours of combat.

[Hollykiller]

I check whole TPS with average Hit and Crit. The results are same as Sangi.
But I change one revenge with Dev at 5th GCD. Because Dev has much threat than revenge. While it provide same threat finally at the 2nd SS.

Old: Dev, Dev, Dev, SS, Revenge, Dev, Dev, SS

New: Dev, Dev, Dev, SS, Dev, Dev, Revenge, SS

[mattdeeze]

Since the 2.3 patch ive always opened with dev x2, somtimes x3. Not because i did the math and found that my follow-up abilites (Rev and SS) create more threat with sunders applied, but because ive found devastates to be an extremely rage efficient way to build threat fast.

It just has seemed to me that by popping bloodrage and using a rage efficient ability like devistate (with improved sunder of course) allows me to stack threat and rage fast. While when i pop SS right off the bat there is often a little flat spot where rev hasnt procced yet and I dont have enough rage to use another GCD ability >.<

It's reassuring to know that by using devastates early I'm also creating more threat with my Rev and SS.