Boss AP reduction in Wrath

[Naka]

I seem to have missed that. And I'm wondering why nobody really considers taking Imp. Demoshout at 80, now that you can easily drop a threat talent or two.
So, how's that going to work at level 80 raiding?

What i do know:
- Demoshout reduces AP by 410, fully talented 574
- Roar: 408, 571
- CoW: 478, 573
- Screech: 410

What i don't know:
- AP reduction cap on level 80 raid bosses

I'd suspect it to be around 570, so you'll need either an appropriately specced warrior, druid oder lock to get the maximum possible reduction. But is there any hard data on this yet?

Also, Screech doesn't stack anymore, right?

[Narshe]

It's possible that you won't need a full talented demoshout anymore, as curse of recklessness doesn't stack with faerie fire. Currently only 2/5 are needed if you don't apply CoR.
Tanks usually don't have that talent because fury and arms can get it without hurting their specs and dps (dps warrs usually have a lot of free GCDs).

[Worldie]

What the gnome said, usually you will just have DPS warriors taking it.

We had our prot warrior spec 5/5 Demo once when we had 0 dps warriors, and locks couldn't afford putting up CoW due to strict DPS requirements of sunwell.

Considering the amount of classes that can apply the AP reduction now (and yes, screech doesn't stack anymore) i don't really see the need for a prot war to grab imp demo shout, unless they put another Brutallus somewhere and your locks cannot afford using CoW, and you got no DPS warriors nor bears.

[Naka]

Well i know about the status quo. I'm asking what the situation will be in Wrath, and especially for 10-man raids.

I'm not speaking of Recklessness either, i know it doesn't stack with FF, and moreover it can be talented to not increase the target's AP at all.

So, given I'm the only warrior in my 10-man raid and there's no untalented CoR on the boss - does either our warlock, druid or me have to spec appropriately to get the maximum possible AP reduction? And if so, how many points?

In other words: What's the maximum possible AP reduction on level 80 raid bosses in Wrath? (what's 340 in BC)

[swelt]

Does anyone know the answer to this?

If not, does anyone know how we go about discovering the answer? i.e. what kind of tests we can run

[Kazeyonoma]

Most of the baseline testing that came in TBC came from finding a boss that was a beast (lurker below!) and having a hunter inspect it with his skill. This then led us to think maybe all bosses were that way, and basically we just tested the damage reduction that no demo shout provided, demo shout un talented, demoshout talented 1, 2 3 4 5 and seeing if it ever reached a cap.

[swelt]

Mmm. Sounds like we might need to do the same kind of exercise.

Maexxna is a beast...

[Kazeyonoma]

then we have our perfect case to get a baseline test going. If blizz stays true to how they coded TBC, Lurker's AP was the exact AP that all bosses ended up having through testing.

[phaze]

Lurker's AP was the exact AP that all bosses ended up having through testing.

I think this was always an assumption that was never disproven as being inaccurate; not quite 'exact', but good enough considering?

[Kazeyonoma]

err, well ballpark accurate right? I think what happened was that they found it be within 10 AP of that because they were able to test it by going between the damage reduction of Imp Demo Shout 2/5 and imp demo shout 3/5 and found that everything from 3-5 was no longer reducing the damage being taken. so imp demo 2/5 reduced an amount that was almost exactly the AP that lurker hand, and the boys at EJ tested it against a ton of bosses and found it to hold true. Or is my info wrong?

[phaze]

err, well ballpark accurate right?

Yeah, that's my understanding: everyone was satisfied that the current numbers were close enough, and no one wanted to bother with further testing.