2.4 Berg's Tank Gear Rankings (03/19/2008)

[Kazeyonoma]

all of these are without gems factored in i believe zehra.

[HarounZehra]

I think he's got gems and/ or enchants in the mix. If you look at each item posted, he's got a TP value, followed by a base value. For example, lets look at the 2 items I'm asking about:

11. [Myrmidon's Headdress] 37STA+ TP:9663(7116 base)
The Armory (Steamvault quest)
* 1 gem slot, 1 meta slot

12. [Felsteel Helm] 27STA+ TP:9393(7716 base)
The Armory (crafted)
* 3 gem slots, set bonus for blacksmith

[Berginyon]

Question: How did you get Myrmidon's Headress to calculate as MORE TP than Felsteel Helm? My numbers are as follows:

Myrmidon: (+9 sta gem; +18 sta/ +5% stun resist meta; +16 def/ +17 dodge enchant)
= 291 points LESS than

Felsteel: (+9 sta; +9 sta; +4 str/ +6sta; +16 def/ +17 dodge enchant)
= 291 points MORE than Myrmidon

The rankings factor in gems (assuming stamina geming) but not enchants.

Everyone will have different tank points on an item depending on the overall quality of the rest of your gear. The baseline set I use gives more value to 10STA than 340Armor because I already have alot(16.5k) of armor already. At 14k, you will get more benefit from the armor than the stamina.

I provide this list as a reference, but encourage you to download the mod for yourself if you want to see how an item affects your particular gearset.

[TheIceMan]

when will you add the 2.3 items (heroic / za) *g*

btw nice list

[Berginyon]

I've started compiling the data but I'm wary doing the calculations when things could change. But... with all the fun side-grade to T5/T6 items in this patch it's the whole reason you need a gear guide to see how things stack up, so I think I will release and update before the patch goes live. Maybe within a week.

[OldHarry]

Everyone will have different tank points on an item depending on the overall quality of the rest of your gear. The baseline set I use gives more value to 10STA than 340Armor because I already have alot(16.5k) of armor already. At 14k, you will get more benefit from the armor than the stamina.

Thank you for that explanation as I will get more tankpoints from the Felsteel, and couldn't figure out why. I have downloaded the tankpoints and it was driving me nuts about the discrepancy. I had forgotten about the whole armor/stamina scaling differences.

[TheIceMan]

thx 4 the quick response

atm iam not sure what i should get

new heroic bracers / amu or the blocker trinket -.-

(i have no luck @ maiden / morr with my twink and some new mainchars still need them)

http://armory.wow-europe.com/charact...ostwolf&n=Ices


btw: i realy like this post

[Berginyon]

The Defiance change that adds +6 Expertise along with the 2 new attainable Expertise items are huge. (Especially for a warrior who rolled night elf :-) ) A tank can now actually gear to reduce mob avoidance and since we are the only one who melees from the front, it is most applicable to us.

Back-to-Back boss parries along with a special attack are those rare events that instantly kill you and you are left wondering WTF? Expertise is an avoidance stat in that it is the only way to reduce those killer parries in addition to being a completely overpowered tank aggro stat.

I bet you'll see T6 geared tanks picking up all the +Expertise items even though they are lower level than their BT/Hyjal gear.

This is a huge buff to prot warriors.

[HarounZehra]

The Defiance change that adds +6 Expertise along with the 2 new attainable Expertise items are huge. (Especially for a warrior who rolled night elf :-) ) A tank can now actually gear to reduce mob avoidance and since we are the only one who melees from the front, it is most applicable to us.

I'm not familiar with what you're referring to here. Can you point me in the right direction?

[Kazeyonoma]

man i want those new legs and boots. holy 1k sbv batman!

[Shortypop]

Thanks for the explanation of expertise, a couple of 2.3 related questions:

- What's the cap on weapon expertise?
- Is weapon expertise purely a tank stat?
- Wasnt there meant to be a new weapon enchant?

Once again, many thanks, you've definitely made my next upgrade easier to spot

[Berginyon]

The theorycrafting on Expertise is still ongoing, verifying the mechanics that Blizzard is stating with in game data. I'll update this thread as things are backed with numbers.

- What's the cap on weapon expertise?

I've read skull bosses have 5.6% dodge rate and at least a 5.6% parry rate, but then I've also read of some bosses having a higher parry rate of over 10% but that might just mean sloppy melee are hitting from the front or sides giving them extra parries. That would mean 23 Expertise skill.

Defiance + the 2 heroic badge items will give you 17 Expertise skill. 1 more item and you're capped.

- Is weapon expertise purely a tank stat?

Rogues and DPS warriors will be after this too. A point of expertise rating will give more DPS benefit than a point of hit rating, and most are already at their yellow damage hit cap. If a Rogue caps out, they no longer have to attack from behind. Tanks get double the benefit though since we are always attacking from the front and parry reduction is HUGE.

- Wasnt there meant to be a new weapon enchant?


I didn't list Executioner yet, it gives armor penetration.

[thugthedum]

Strength/Attack Power will increase your white damage, Revenge and Devastate damage only (and shield slam damage in a tiny amount). All other abilities do not scale with attack power.

I disagree. Heroic Strike scales with AP, and is a significant source of threat. Also, in rage starved scenarios, Str/AP create a significant source of rage.

[Berginyon]

True, but is it worth considering when you are itemizing your gear?

First of all Heroic Strike is a fixed non-scaling bonus on top of the white damage that you would have done normally, so I didn't include that as something that is buffed by strength/ap. Using a heroic strike also negates the benefit of increased rage gain from Damage, but how much rage does stacking strength give you? Lets do some really simplified math:

From the last Blue post on Rage:

Rage = (Damage Done / 274.7 * 7.5 + (weapon speed*2.5))/2

Lets assume you are using a King's Defender and your white hits for 150. You will gain 4.05 rage per swing.

It takes 5 strength (10 AP) to increase the damage done per swing by 1.14 (with a 1.6 speed weapon).

And at 151 damage you gain 4.06 rage per swing

Over 100 swings assuming you don't Heroic Strike, and the mob doesn't make you miss, dodge, parry or take a glancing blow (which is very unrealistic and simplified). You gain 1 rage.




Now lets look at Rage gained from receiving damage

Rage Gained = Damage Taken / 274.7 * 2.5

A 2000 damage hit will give you 18.20 rage. Over 100 mob swings, if you were to reduce your dodge rate by 1%, you would gain 18.2 rage.



Anyone who has tried to tank MC in BWL+ gear knows that you have to nerf your armor to balance yourself properly to those fights. There is no such thing as a rage starved fight. Reduce your gear to where your rage gain is in your comfort zone otherwise you are the one starving yourself of rage. Taking damage is the best way to gain rage, and if you replace heavy damage reduction gear with aggro/+hit/ap gear, even better.


DISCLAIMER: Nothing in these equations are linear. Don't equate that 5 strength = 1 rage gained over 100 swings.

[thugthedum]

There is no such thing as a rage starved fight.

Everything you are saying is true, except for the above.

- second or tertiary tank on Gruul
- second tank on Moroes
- second tank on lewt reaver
- second tank on just about anything really

Any time the MT is main tanking something and they get all the in damage, sure - they don't need str/ap as in damage is by far their biggest source of gear. But any time you -don't- have aggro and need it, str/ap is the only thing making you get rage faster.

I have a heroics gearing strategy that involves str/ap as well. +hit has less value against L70 trash and L72 bosses. So in heroics I get to 465 or so (uncrittable to L72 in my S2 shield) and stack strength. This means I get more rage - not only from less avoidance, but also from white damage - which means I get more control. The bosses in heroics don't hit hard enough to really saturate the rage bar.

I wrote a quick rage simulator to make sure I was on the right track with this a few months ago, and the math works.

http://www.ro-guild.com/thug/rage.php

It's all about rage, most of the time.

Edit: to sum up, I would agree that an MT in a good raid (with everyone running, and paying attention to, Omen/KLH) does not need to worry about str -too- much, with the exception that threat does scale with AP; and many fights are dps races. But in many fights, the raid is not only keeping TPS below the MT, but also below an OT. By definition, only one of the MT or OT is taking damage. It is the OT who needs to worry about str because it helps them increase their TPS even in a situation where they are receiving no damage.

[Berginyon]

Yea, you're right. I tend to look at everything from a 25man Main Tank's perspective where you have boss aggro for most of the fight and a team of healers who's only goal is to keep you up. Yes outside that role there are rage starved fights.



I like the simulator. It's very useful to see simulations based off the ideal usage of the GCD and queuing Heroic Strike. With a hard hitting boss you generate almost no rage from damage because you use so many Heroic Strikes. Use a soft hitting boss and you have to generate alot of the rage yourself, but the simulator is missing the rage per swing calculation.

I added the average rage gained per white swing calculation and made a few fixes. It was hard to simulate and get the numbers without it because if you generate too much rage, the program just spends it on Heroic Strikes so it balances out. I also upp'd it to 100k events to get more repeatable values and took out the array print of course.

http://www.gloryguildsite.com/rage.php

At 714 AP, you generate 6.4 rage per swing. At 1014 AP you generate 6.9 rage per swing. I'm not saying stacking Strength/AP isn't a good strategy for heroics, but that the rage gains from Strength/AP don't scale particularly well.



I made a few miscellaneous fixes:

I think you have a mistake on the miss rates, should be:

case 73: $bossavoid=9.0*4; break;
case 72: $bossavoid=6.0*4; break;
case 71: $bossavoid=5.5*4; break;
case 70: $bossavoid=5.0*4; break;

based off the latest EJ testing.

Heroic Strike costs 1 too many rage and has the wrong base threat:

$attacks['hero']['basethreat']=220;
$attacks['Heroic Strike']['cost']=12;

Although, I never play without a 9 rage HS, so that is what I made mine :-)

Shield Slam has the wrong base threat:

$attacks['ss']['basethreat']=307;

And the Devastate Threat is displaying the auto attack threat

print "<h4>Devastate Threat: ".$attacks['deva']['totthreat']...




I like your simulator, and If I find some time I might add adjustable boss armor, dodge and parry along with Expertise calcs for 2.3 :-)

[thugthedum]

really glad you did that. i had it to a point where i couldn't tell if it was worth more effort, or where more effort would be warranted.

i used to put 2 points in heroic strike, hence the heroic "miscalculation". everything else is likely to be programmer error. thanks a million for the qa, and really glad another MT / PHP type is looking at it with me.

[thugthedum]

One of the other next steps I think is warranted is to factor parry, dodge, miss, block, crit and crush properly. As you can see in the code, the makings of a proper combat table are in there. All I have to do is expand it.

Could you publish your changes, by the way?

Email my yahoo account if you want, thugthedum@yahoo.ca

[Berginyon]

If we can get a few more realistic stats in there based off current theory crafting: dodge, variable boss armor, variable boss parry, expertise, crushing/glancing blows and then put a few spec choices in there and it would be a pretty solid simulator. Post it to EJ and see if we can get a few more active people on it. Maybe submit it to sourceforge?

[steadymobn]

what about the lower city rep ring? before it was feral and dagger combat skill it now has 20 expertise rating, and it has stam and agi, would that be a decent tank ring?

and as of now i have 130 badges

current

devilshark, timewardens, bracers of courage...


would it be best to get the new badge leggings and cloak

OR

badge belt, cloak, and bracers with expertise on them?