Tanking Topics #4: Cooldowns

[TomHuxley]

With the way the ptr is currently tom, we dk's will take way more dmg then the warrior, pali, and probably even druid. It's going to be as spiky, as it was prior to the 3.0.8 changes, if not more spiky.

Will you? Why? The numbers didn't back it up on live post 3.0.8. I know it seems to be a mantra of DKs that they take more damage, but they weren't even without CDs on live, so how are you sure without actual numbers that you will be now?

Pretty much nips is right, we are warriors without shilelds, and 3-4k more hps,

And 4-5k more armor.

Now if i had 10k more hp then you before buffs or after buffs then sure, i guess i could live with that, but currently less then 5k unless i stack stam, and thats going to make me equal to you interms of tanking?

DKs are still going to have more avoidance, just not by nearly as much. You still have more armor, and more health. And you have a lot more magic mitigation (and there seems to be a lot of magic damage in Ulduar). You don't have block, but you are getting a 5% buff to physical mitigation. So...where is the extra squishiness?

[Shake]

Truth be told, I have a very well geared Warrior tank link: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Fenris&n=Shake

Since I have an 80 DK, and our raid has 2 Prot Warrior tanks, I volunteered to put my main of over 2 years on the shelf, and re-roll a DK as my main. Mostly for the reason that it's better to have a variety as opposed to 2 of the same class for tanking. I've tanked heroics to get the hang of things, and I'm really enjoying the new challenge of learning a new class...it has sort of refreshed the game for me. I leave the math and such to people who have more time then me, and this website has been an endless resource of information.
I'm trying to keep patient and see how PTR comes about, but I dont want to find out that I've made a terrible mistake, and have been reduced from MT for progression to a spiky trash tank. Now I need to set a timer of every 2 minutes to get used to the Icebound Fortitude debuff, and take away a point from Lichborn. No big deal I guess, but like previous posters have pointed out, there is allot of animosity towards DK's right now, and it really seems to be stemming from the Palitards & druitards that re-rolled and still suck at tanking, but are able to stay up with the cooldowns.
Just need to keep the faith and know that Blizz will keep things fair...you made some very good points Tom

[nips]

Frost and unholy dont have more health then warriors/paladins. I used the numbers from tanking topic #3 and frost/unholy tanks got a whooping 12 more health then a paladin in t7....

As for having more armor we dont have def stance so ofc we need more armor. I guess we just have to aggre on dissagreing tom We both want the same thing when 3.1 hit live so lets hope blizz know more then us.

[Janana]

Will you? Why? The numbers didn't back it up on live post 3.0.8. I know it seems to be a mantra of DKs that they take more damage, but they weren't even without CDs on live, so how are you sure without actual numbers that you will be now?

And 4-5k more armor.

DKs are still going to have more avoidance, just not by nearly as much. You still have more armor, and more health. And you have a lot more magic mitigation (and there seems to be a lot of magic damage in Ulduar). You don't have block, but you are getting a 5% buff to physical mitigation. So...where is the extra squishiness?

just compairing an unholy dk to xav on armory right now, as if ptr went live tomorrow. Both have near , bis.
The World of Warcraft Armory

The World of Warcraft Armory

Xav

* Health: 33496
* Armor: 24877 - 62ish% damage reduction
* Defense: 542
* Dodge: 20.39%
* Parry: 20.95%
* Block: 15.42% amount blocked 960.7 / 30% chance to crit block 1921.4

Xav takes 10% less dmg in defensive stance, additional 6% less on spells, he has all the block/block value talents, (which i will admit i dont know how to fully account for though i tried), last stand, shield wall. spell reflect(appears to be useful in Uldar)

Plagueblood- (i have factored in frost presence)

* Health: 32891.1
* Armor: 29719.8 - 65ish% damage reduction
* Defense: 563
* Dodge: 24.15%
* Parry: 18.77%
* Block: 0%


10% reduction on spell dmg all the time, 5% damage reduction from BB (99% uptime), 20% damage reduction from bone shield 6 hits(glyphed) min uptime 18 sec, max up time 5 min, adverage uptime 24 seconds 2min cd. Ibf 35% dmg reduction 15 second duration, 1 min cd . AMS 75% magical dmg reduction 5 seconds, 45 second cd.

so just looking at it as it stands if 3.1 were live, xav has less then 1k hp more then the dk. takes 1% less spell dmg all the time(if blade barrier applies to magic dmg), about 5k less armor, which is about 3% less damage reduction. So base xav has 2% more dmg reduction all the time due defensive stance. 10% vs 5% + 3%(xav-pla)= 8%, xav has 2% more parry, plauge has 2% more dodge that's a wash.

IBF i think is about ~1.4% per second damage reduction if you were to spred it over the entire cd.

Bone shield is ~1% per second damage reductionif you were to spred it over the 2 min cd.

at the moment i dont know how to figure out the mitigation value of last stand, and shield wall is giving me a funky value of 15% over the 5 min cd for the unglyphed value. and a value of 8.75% for the glpyhed 3min wall.

now i maybe aproching this all wrong and wouldn't mind being corrected on how to figure the value of these cd's

the forumla i figure should be right is
x=[%reduction]/(duration/CD duration)

anyway i still chewing on this and looking at it as i am work and trying to do this between phone call (kinda hard)


edit: placed a 6 inplace of a 1 and qualified the change.

[Blóódfrenzy]

I do think that Paladin's and Warriors could use a few more cooldowns. With the Deathknight cooldowns going up to 2 minutes, these might also give warriors and paladins a better edge against large magic or physical attacks. Couple ideas to discuss.

Paladins
Shieldguard - The paladin places his shield between himself and the target. As long as the Paladin remains behind the shield it will block all damage incoming to the paladin untill it absorbes (Spell Power * 4) damage. While the effect is on the paladin he may not block or use abilities that require his shield. - Maybe have it on a 2 minute cooldown or even shorter. Vary the spell power component to make it absorb around 16k damage or so.

Warrior -
Shield Halt- The warrior braces himself against his shield, deflecting spell damage around him. He will hold his shield up untill it absorbes (Attack Power * 3) damage. The warrior may not block or parry any attacks. His dodge rating is doubled while he maintains his shield. Same thing, two minute or so cooldown.

[TomHuxley]

Good work Janana. Looking at the armories the gear is equivalent, although Xav seems to be trying harder to stack stamina (including the JC-only 41 stam gems) so I don't think the warrior would actually have more stamina if gemmed similarly (also notice that the DK has quite a bit more defense that could be gemmed for stamina).

So for unholy it looks like right now on the PTRs the same HP and avoidance. 1% more magic mitigation for the DK, about 2% more physical mitigation by the warrior (before block).

So now it's about how the CDs and block offset against one another. Since block hasn't been addressed yet and may not be at all (I wish they had before trying to balance DKs, but what can you do?) at this point it's obviously going to help warriors and pally disproportionately on non-caster trash pulls and have much less effect on bosses (although it's still some).

I don't think last stand is mitigation at all, although obviously it's temporary EH. How about frost deathknights? I note that Xav has about 52%(ish) avoidance unbuffed there, which should still be less than a frost DK even post-nerf I suspect.

Anyways, I'll have to familiarize myself with the CDs and how well they mitigate, but I can see where block may be more powerful that the CD balance, so something may have to be done there. Keep the numbers coming

[Blóódfrenzy]

At 563 Defense his IBF is a 44.45 percent damage reduction. Remember it scales at .15 percent per skill point past 400.

[TomHuxley]

Looking at this a bit longer I have a few more thoughts:

Unholy Magic mitigation: I really like the spell-damage changes for unholy; now spell-damage is very slightly better than warriors all the time, but you still have AMS to pro-actively make yourselves better against magic bosses, especially with the right skill/timing. Feels "right" to me. Spell-reflect will factor in here, although how much will depend on what bosses it works on.

Physical mitigation: It looks to me like the faster but not-quite-so-powerful IBF works out more or less against SW (with or without glyph), and bone shield should actually hold up quite well against block IMO. Getting 20% knocked off of six hits every two minutes (I know, but on average anyways) is at least as good on large bosses as block, and still less good on trash. It will also provide a good way for Blizz to tweak DK mitigation if truly need be, as they could add more charges, etc.

I also like that a fast-hitting physical boss would still cater to shield tanks a bit (eating through the bone shield charges fast) while a slow-hitter does the opposite. I don't know about you guys, but this still feels very close in terms of survivability. Obviously we have to await tests.

Edit: Bloodfrenzy is right about IBF, and at that point (over 40% for 15 seconds every minute!!!) it's far more powerful then SW, and almost certainly makes up for any remaining advantage to block after bone shield is taken into account). In fact, I'm willing to say at this point out of the two armories linked Xav certainly has the lowest mitigation over time, although the unholy DK will be a bit spiky in damage uptake if the CDs are not used well.

[Blóódfrenzy]

The DK would get 11.1125% mitigation from IBF, and if we keep to a ~24s average for bone shield 4% from boneshield. All of those figures were from a 1 minute IBF cooldown and 2 minute Boneshield cooldown.

With his avoidance at 54.44%, and an average attack every 2 seconds, 24s seems to be average for 6 charges to hold.

Is there any way to quantify the amount of DR that block provides based on certain levels of incoming damage? I only ask because warriors and paladins have lesser armor than DK's and Bears. If per say, shield armor was increased, this might make the EH gap lessen.

[TomHuxley]

To model the mitigation done by shield block you have to know the attack speed of the mob in question. If a boss swings once every 3 seconds and you have a 20% change to block 1k damage, then over the course of a minute there will be 20 attacks, approximately 4 of which will have 1k taken off, except critical block has a 1/3 chance of blocking for 2k, so rounding up (you got a critical on your first and last block) then in this case a warrior will mitigate 8k damage out of the total done. How much that is percentage-wise depends on the boss. If the boss is hitting you half the time he swings (so 10 times a minute) for 20k each (after armor and stance penalty) then you are mitigating 6,000 out of 200,000 damage or about 3%.

Of course some bosses hit faster for less, in which case block is certainly better. Some go magic, in which case block is pointless. On Ulduar bosses at least some hit for quite a bit more than 20k, which is why most warriors and paladins still stack avoidance and EH on boss fights. Also notice that this mitigation is spiky and unpredictable, unless you use ShieldBlock, which is on CD.

Edit: Doing the same math for a hit every 2 seconds (like in your example above) our warrior blocks 6 times (on average) out of 30 hits, 2 of them for 2k (critical block) so mitigating 8000 out of 300,000 damage, or about 2.7% (the percent mitigated went down because I generously assumed an extra critical block when faced with 4 blocks, whereas here I can go for the "True" value of 1/3 = 2).

Now if our Warrior was facing a boss that hit for 10k every 2 seconds, the amount mitigated stays the same, so now in a minute 5.4% of incoming damage is mitigated. This is where we get scaling problems, with warriors doing awesome on trash and not as well against hard-hitting bosses.

[Blóódfrenzy]

And at the same time I get slaughtered if I'm unlucky on trash. I wouldn't mind it if all the tanks having the same EH, infact I'd like that to be the case. But we don't live in a world where all four tanks have the same avoidance, same EH, and same MEH. If there was only a way Blizzard could make the all the tanks have the same MEH and EH, along with keeping their flavor.

I personally like having a lot of cooldowns. Chaining them in the right order is part of the class and its a fun part for me. Not nessecarily so for other people, but, I enjoy it. If they could balance it so my cooldowns were "True" cooldowns that wouldn't be so bad. They would just have to increase my base mitigation to follow suit. I wouldn't mind if they made the 36pt tank cooldowns 3m cooldowns, and IBF a 2m Cooldown, so long as I got 10% base physical mitigation added to frost presence.

If DK's were changed so they had ~15% mitigation on physical/magic damage and greater cooldown times, I think they would be more in line with warriors/paladins. Change the armor on an average DK to be right around the same as a Paladin/warrior, the hps are almost there, unless you are blood spec. My main fear with the PTR is that they are not increasing the base mitigation up to that of a warrior or paladin or druid while they nerf the cooldowns.

[TomHuxley]

Wait, what? We just went over the numbers (posted by Janana) and compared to a warrior an unholy DK (post-nerf!) is at the same HP, slightly better passive magic mitigation (1%), slightly worse passive physical mitigation (2%) and has cooldowns good enough (especially if you stack def rating) to compensate for block and warrior CDs.

So...why do you need more mitigation?

That said, I'm not arguing against changing frost presence; I think the armor buff should be swapped out for straight mitigation to help avoid armor scaling issues for DKs, but I see no evidence you need a buff, or are in anyway behind.

Now, I don't think you need a buff on trash (use your CDs!) but I do think that pallies and warriors could stand a nerf on trash in the form of a scaling block.

[Janana]

Wait, what? We just went over the numbers (posted by Janana) and compared to a warrior an unholy DK (post-nerf!) is at the same HP, warrior is @ slightly better passive magic mitigation (1%), slightly worse passive physical mitigation (2%) and has cooldowns good enough (especially if you stack def rating) to compensate for block and warrior CDs.

So...why do you need more mitigation?

That said, I'm not arguing against changing frost presence; I think the armor buff should be swapped out for straight mitigation to help avoid armor scaling issues for DKs, but I see no evidence you need a buff, or are in anyway behind.

Now, I don't think you need a buff on trash (use your CDs!) but I do think that pallies and warriors could stand a nerf on trash in the form of a scaling block.

warrior is 16% passive magic mitigation
dk is with his spec 10% with additional 5% from blade barrier 99% of the time

[Agrivain]

Don't forget that a Death Knight can enchant their weapon to gain 4% additional DR versus magic if the fight mechanics are such that it would be more significant than avoidance.

[TomHuxley]

warrior is 16% passive magic mitigation

Actually it's not; the 6% is calculated after the original 10% has already been removed (so it's 6% of 90%), so the total is closer to 15% magic DR. So that's just below 15.4% all the time (warrior) vs 15% 99% of the time, plus AMZ and the flexibility to get an anti-magic rune (+4% DR) if need be.

Edit: But you're right, I had swapped the numbers in my head; magic mitigation is essentially identical passively. It's the rune and the CDs that provide the difference now, which seems fair to me. I have no issue with DKs being better magic-boss tanks, but it's even better if the passive is similar and it's the cooldowns (talent) of the DK tank that makes them better IMO.

[nips]

You can argue on small numbers ofc, but fact still remains that dk's take more damage without their cd's if this goes live. As for cd's warriors can actually have just as good uptime as a dk.

Shield block:25%
Shield wall:12.5%
last stand:6.5%
total:44%

Bone shield: 20%
ibf:25%
total:45%

You can ofc argue what cd's are better etc, but when everything sums up it still looks like dk's are warriors withouth block.

[Finelle]

You can argue on small numbers ofc, but fact still remains that dk's take more damage without their cd's if this goes live. As for cd's warriors can actually have just as good uptime as a dk.

Shield block:25%
Shield wall:12.5%
last stand:6.5%
total:44%

Bone shield: 20%
ibf:25%
total:45%

You can ofc argue what cd's are better etc, but when everything sums up it still looks like dk's are warriors withouth block.

Uh, I'm sorry, but your list is terribly inaccurate. Last Stand and Shield Wall are NOT blown on cooldown. Show me a warrior that blows Last Stand in a rotation and I'll show you an idiot tank. Shield Wall is only slightly less ridiculous, if only because it actually provides mitigation, again, it is a emergency button, not a cooldown used to mitigate damage.

[nips]

So what you are saying is that warriors can save their cd's for bad situations while dk's have to use them in their rotation? makes sense >.>

I'm just saying warriors got cd's aswell when they choose to use them is up to them ofc, but on hard hitting bosses using them as much as possible is not a bad idea and most likely to be required on hardmodes. Tbh i think you are a bit stuck in tbc.

[Blóódfrenzy]

The problem is that the time between warrior, paladin, and druid cooldowns make them unusable in a rotation. DK's cooldown times are getting to the point where they will be required to save them for "emergency buttons" and not be able to use them in a rotation.

I'm all for DK's haveing mitigation utilities on short cooldowns. Shield Block for warriors is like this. I think IBF is what DK's have in consideration to Shield Block. I'd honestly like the 36pt talents to be more powerful than they currently are, but, on a longer cooldown. Dk's would still have several other abilites to use with short cooldowns. IBF, AMS, Death Pact. All of those have short cooldowns. If they took the current talented tank cooldowns, increaseed their effect, but made the cooldown longer, that would in essence, make them more like the other tanks in those regards.

They would still have the short cooldowns to use in a semi-rotation, but, they'd also have their longer cooldowns for bigger, expected or un-expected, bursts of damage.

[nips]

Shield block is on a 40sec cd and shield wall can be on a 2 min cd while boneshield is on a 2min cd and ibf is on a 1min cd. I dont see why warriors should save their cd's more tbh.