warrior threat continued

[praetoria]

As a warrior a few tips I'll share.

For single target threat I always start with a shield slam and then spam my macro till shield slam is off cool down or sword and board procs to make it available.

Whats the macro?

/cast devastate
/cast heroic strike

I keep a regular devastate on my bars if I run into low rage situations, which is almost never on heroic bosses in ICC.

Also key bind Vigilance and Intervene. When someone is riding my ass on threat I hover over their raid frame and hit the bind. Changing Vig during a fight to higher threat targets and intervening them when applicable is a huge help.

Ive posted this before and had many respected community members agree with me here: http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...s+to+all+tanks

my only question would be " would the 30% icc buf have any effect on the need for expertise/hit ?" hit the caps or pretty close to it from gear anyway, so its never really been a big concern to me

[Bodasafa]

my only question would be " would the 30% icc buf have any effect on the need for expertise/hit ?" hit the caps or pretty close to it from gear anyway, so its never really been a big concern to me

Quick note, I also use the taunt glyph.

I hit 26 expertise skill using the expertise food, so yeah its not that hard to get considering good gear has expertise on it. Hit on the other hand is on almost no good top end gear. My goal first and foremost is to gear for effective health (armor + stamina), everything else is second to that. Off pulls hunters and rogues should be giving you their externals so the DPS can hammer hard at the start and get cooking. Combined with using your own abilities properly, you should not have threat issues.

There is also this thing pallies hand out called Salv, I think people thought it was removed in WotLK for some reason.

Threat is our job, but not to the point where it is a detriment to our survival, ie: geming, gearing for hit. Not when we can get the job done without it as long as people work as a team and use their abilities in concert.

[Tengenstein]

my only question would be " would the 30% icc buf have any effect on the need for expertise/hit ?" hit the caps or pretty close to it from gear anyway, so its never really been a big concern to me

No.


the 30% ICC buff scales damage, health, healing done, and shield sizes. you actually appear to be quite far over the melee hit cap. The only thing this does is increase the chances your taunts/demoshout won't miss, however looking at your log, you Vigilance the other tank so you don't have to worry about taunt missing since it's gonna be refreshed next time the other tank takes a hit. You're threat problem is due to your poor use of abilties, not your gear/gemming/spec.

[praetoria]

No.


the 30% ICC buff scales damage, health, healing done, and shield sizes. you actually appear to be quite far over the melee hit cap. The only thing this does is increase the chances your taunts/demoshout won't miss, however looking at your log, you Vigilance the other tank so you don't have to worry about taunt missing since it's gonna be refreshed next time the other tank takes a hit. You're threat problem is due to your poor use of abilties, not your gear/gemming/spec.

so your saying you never have ur ss dodged/blockd/parried? and your pulling 16-17k tps? all the while doing this without raid support? If you look back at the start of the threat, thats really what this is about. granted, Ive become more ambitious about my rotation. hs,hs,hs. but Im certianly not loosing aggro mid fight. I just really dont see how your pulling the kind of tps mentioned above and crediting such to rotation and ability. I dont even think my ceiling is 17k. i might hit 14-15 for a split second in the right situation.

[Tengenstein]

Just bunged myself into War Totem's spreadsheet and built a 60 second GCD usage, with priority being SS>SW>REV>CB>DEV, with 100% HS uptime and a 25% SB uptime and a boss swing timer of 1.94s, fully buffed it says i'm pulling 15,086.86 tps average. This is ignoring the SnB procs, and threat from Vigilance.


Looking over my most recent raid log my usual vigilance target was averaging 10.1k dps over all boss encounters, he's a hunter and I can't recall them having any funky threat modifyers, so my glyphed vigilance will be pulling 15% of his dps (9.2k excluding his pet's dps) as TPS, correct me if i'm wrong. Which is an extra 1.38kpds

I'm not really sure how you can simulate the added TPS of SnB Procs but, my math is not strong enough, but it is gonna be an increase.

So yeah, i'm theoretically pulling just shy of ~16.5k tps without MDs and tricks but with dodges, blocks, parries and misses. which concurs with my raiders' opinions.

Omen is not good tool for measuring TPS, I have it set to maximum sample rate so it goes all over the place but is a precise measure of my TPS over the last 2 GCDs and such is gonna be rather forgiving of those times I have to stop TPSing to do something like Intervene out of a Defile. Sometimes im rocking with >24k tps just becuase I'm getting back to back SnB procs while SB is up and crit streaking, other times I'm down as low as 8k becuase I failed to connect my attacks. We would need some sort of Omen log addon to get more that a random gist of our true TPS averages, or we can build a theoretical model.

[praetoria]

Just bunged myself into War Totem's spreadsheet and built a 60 second GCD usage, with priority being SS>SW>REV>CB>DEV, with 100% HS uptime and a 25% SB uptime and a boss swing timer of 1.94s, fully buffed it says i'm pulling 15,086.86 tps average. This is ignoring the SnB procs, and threat from Vigilance.
.

dose this assume that sw and cb are available every gcd? or every 3rd gcd? also, im sure this is a dumb question, but would the swing timer have anything to do with my wepons speed?

[Tengenstein]

No, it's taken that SW is used the GCD before a SS, so slightly less than 3 times a minute on average, CB is also only used in the GCD before a SS but with the caveat that you use a SW or revenge instead if they are available so less than 2 times a minute on average.

Boss swing timer is the how fast the boss is hitting you and is used to calculate the threat from damage shields.

I haven't really looked into how your weapon speed affects threat. on one hand faster weapons means more HS/melee hits, though faster wepons generall have lower base damage, and thus each HS/melee/Dev hits for less

[praetoria]

No, it's taken that SW is used the GCD before a SS, so slightly less than 3 times a minute on average, CB is also only used in the GCD before a SS but with the caveat that you use a SW or revenge instead if they are available so less than 2 times a minute on average.

Boss swing timer is the how fast the boss is hitting you and is used to calculate the threat from damage shields.

I haven't really looked into how your weapon speed affects threat. on one hand faster weapons means more HS/melee hits, though faster wepons generall have lower base damage, and thus each HS/melee/Dev hits for less

im trying to work in the spreadsheet now, the sheet has me a bit confused. do i need to make modifications to the default boss fields? so far, the spreadsheet has me at 9443 tps. assuming calculation do not include procs, that sounds accurate.. no where near 15-16ktps. perhaps im missing a field or 2? also, i see cycle rage: sec -8.43 what dose this mean?


also, i added in 1 tk and ds since they are included in my rotation, then adjusted hs to 85% assuming im not hitting 100 at all times, and finally, reduced the number of dev to reach a sum of 60 seconds ( accounting for the added tk and ds)

also: why is my block rating = 0 ? according to armory and wow screen

[Airowird]

Tab 1:
Go to your armory, fill in whatever stats there are on there. Also works from in-game paper doll as long as you do not have any buffs active
Basicly fill out all the yellow slots. For boss stats, the 4 yellow cells in Target stats are where you need to be. Armor is the default for nearly all bosses. The parry chance is for expertise value & parry hasting, although if the beta screenshots are an indication it should be 14% flat. (see MMO-C)

Tab 2:
First column: select flasks/elixirs (armor pots can be added to buff armor if you wish, but average effect is not supported)
Second column: buffs & debuffs your raid has (default should have all maxed for max TPS benchmark)
Third column: Talents
Fourth column: Glyphs & tier bonuses. You will definately want to be using T10 and the GoDev if you're going for threat.

Tab 3:
Nothing to fill in here, just an overview of all the numbers on your abilities

Tab 4:
Fill in a rotation in the yellow cells. The average time between uses is right next to it, so you can make certain you aren't clipping CDs. Due to prioirities & reaction time, you will have to figure out your SnB procs yourself, which should be around a ~5.6s average. A good way to take these numbers is take a partial parse of a fight where you were straight up tanking (Marrowgar, Fester, Saurfang, ...) and you were aiming for max TPS.

Tab 5:
Defensive stuff, only the swing timer here affects TPS and then only due to reflective damage and when your boss isn't Parry Hasting.


Cycle Rage/Sec (and Auto Rage/Sec) are the Rage requirements for your cycle, including expected white swing gains. It's a simple indication of how much Rage you need to receive through talents, abilities and received damage to be able to maintain the cycle. Useful for off-tanking only, as aggro = full bar nowadays.

[praetoria]

Tab 1:
Go to your armory, fill in whatever stats there are on there. Also works from in-game paper doll as long as you do not have any buffs active
Basicly fill out all the yellow slots. For boss stats, the 4 yellow cells in Target stats are where you need to be. Armor is the default for nearly all bosses. The parry chance is for expertise value & parry hasting, although if the beta screenshots are an indication it should be 14% flat. (see MMO-C)

Tab 2:
First column: select flasks/elixirs (armor pots can be added to buff armor if you wish, but average effect is not supported)
Second column: buffs & debuffs your raid has (default should have all maxed for max TPS benchmark)
Third column: Talents
Fourth column: Glyphs & tier bonuses. You will definately want to be using T10 and the GoDev if you're going for threat.

Tab 3:
Nothing to fill in here, just an overview of all the numbers on your abilities

Tab 4:
Fill in a rotation in the yellow cells. The average time between uses is right next to it, so you can make certain you aren't clipping CDs. Due to prioirities & reaction time, you will have to figure out your SnB procs yourself, which should be around a ~5.6s average. A good way to take these numbers is take a partial parse of a fight where you were straight up tanking (Marrowgar, Fester, Saurfang, ...) and you were aiming for max TPS.

Tab 5:
Defensive stuff, only the swing timer here affects TPS and then only due to reflective damage and when your boss isn't Parry Hasting.


Cycle Rage/Sec (and Auto Rage/Sec) are the Rage requirements for your cycle, including expected white swing gains. It's a simple indication of how much Rage you need to receive through talents, abilities and received damage to be able to maintain the cycle. Useful for off-tanking only, as aggro = full bar nowadays.

ok, i filled in the above mentioned. ceiling now indicates im at around 14k tps. this assumes 2 ds and tks in the 60 second period ( refreshing dots as needed) it also assumes however, that im taking advantage of max ss procs . furthermore, weather or not was was at 50% hs efficency or 95% didnt make a large difference ( maybe 1300tps max). in a best case situation in icc, i can hit around 14-15k. so this is all starting to look a lot clearer. thats not to say that i average 15k tps per fight.

[Raij]

Okay, so lets talk max threat rotations, weaving and all.

First off, lets use my stats, seen in these SSes of Wartotem's spreadsheet:
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/4365/statsq.jpg

Remember, my rotation differs, because in BiS gear alot of odd things happen with your stats. Lesser gear = different prioritization.


So, looking at how this affects my TPS, my prioritized abilities highest to lowest are: (note this is using my previously discussed MAX single target TPS build)

Playing around with glyphs, you gain a higher tps build with MB glyphs as opposed to blocking, as I suspected.

Shield Slam (with SB) - 11607.28 TPS
Mocking Blow - 10955.80 TPS (impressive and awesome)
Shockwave - 8421.49 TP
Shield Slam - 8067.76 TPS
Revenge - 7532.65 TPS
Devastate - 5731.60 TPS (with glyph of Devastate this actually adds +832.12 TPS *2 per application); 7395.84 TPS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heroic Throw - 7042.53 TPS
Concussion Blow - 6017.86 TPS
Rend - 3244.58 TPS
Demo Shout - 42.00 TPS

Arij...did you fall asleep on your keyboard? What the fuck is that line?

Calm down, that is my "line of usefulness". Anything below it does TPS, but is not really viable, as you would be using the GCD that uses Devastate to use a lesser TPS ability. As such, you cut those out of your general rotation and use them under circumstances you can't spam your rotation. Oh, use the term rotation lightly, its more of a priority system.

So....lets get down to the dirty, icebath inducing prot warrior TPS "rotation"......

Now for simplicities sake here is just a plain timeline of our high TPS movements in order to guage what we are going to have to do:

Note: GCDs are 1.5 seconds long. I have considered some kind of cool haste stacking experiment to see how it would affect TPS, but uhhhh...that is maybe for later.

0s - Charge, Shield Block, Heroic Throw, Mocking Blow OR Bloodrage, Taunt, Mocking Blow, Shield Block (this depends on if you have to stand near the boss or can engage with a charge)
1.5s - Shield Slam (with SB up)
3s - Shockwave* (gear dependant)
4.5s - Revenge (we use this now because it will expire if we don't, we'd use Shield Slam otherwise because of the higher threat)
6s - Devastate
7.5s- Shield Slam

Now that is a basic opening, but that assumes a few things, one we aren't weaving shouts, thunderclap or procs into the rotation:

How to do the "weave":

Mastering weaving is key to high end warrior tanking. It allows you to do things that keep you alive or help the raid WHILE you maintain awesome TPS.

So, generally we prebuff ourselves with a Commanding Shout, so we will just forget about that for now.

Now with a weave this is going to look very...odd but lets give it a shot:

The opening will stay the same;

0s - Charge, Shield Block, Heroic Throw, Mocking Blow OR Bloodrage, Taunt, Mocking Blow (this depends on if you have to stand near the boss or can engage with a charge)
1.5s - Shield Slam (with SB up)
3s - Shockwave* (gear dependant)
4.5s - Revenge (we use this now because it will expire if we don't, we'd use Shield Slam otherwise because of the higher threat)
6s - Devastate
7.5s- Shield Slam

However, any time you get a revenge proc, you must use it immediately, however this is SUPERCEDED by any Sword and Board procs.

So, your weave would look like this (add it TO your current rotation); you basically replace Devastates with Shouts, or Thunderclaps. Hit Shield Block whenever it is up.

0s - Charge, Shield Block, Heroic Throw, Mocking Blow OR Bloodrage, Taunt, Mocking Blow, Shield Block (this depends on if you have to stand near the boss or can engage with a charge)
1.5s - Shield Slam (with SB up)
3s - Shockwave* (gear dependant)
4.5s - Revenge (we use this now because it will expire if we don't, we'd use Shield Slam otherwise because of the higher threat)
6s - Thunderclap (woven, replaces Devastate)
7.5s- Demo Shout (woven, replaces the next ability, BECAUSE you want these up at the same time, to make the refresh easier)

That is an example of a weave with survivability talents.

Now it gets interesting because you are using Heroic Strike every time you press another button. So Heroic Strike will replace all of your white swings. It's low TPS is made up for here. *This is in ENDLESS RAGE SCENARIOS only*.

RULE OF THUMB: If you are in a scenario where you are conserving rage, Heroic Strike white hit replacement is only necessary above 45 rage. Use your rage bars!

After you have woven in your abilites, your rotation goes back to normal.

After you have mastered this, you can start stance dancing to use Shatter, Whirlwind, and increase your damage while not tanking a mob!


Fun note: Rage starved? Use Beserker Rage and over double your rage generation.

So, in light of this, the new absolute best single target TPS spec that I can find would be:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LAM00f...idczsGo:RciocM

I'd replace Glyph of Taunt with Glyph of Blocking for non taunt sensitive fights, but honestly, it probably isn't worth the swap because of how much you need the Taunt Glyph.

Glyph of Devastate is confirmed to apply the threat of 2 sunders, and is why I am using it in this case.

I can see this spec easily reaching 14k TPS and beyond.

Sidenote about maximizing threat: Shockwave at high gear levels is some of the highest TPS you can get. Having a scope on your ranged weapon for crit increases this. It is counted as a ranged attack, so like TC, ranged crit affects it and not our melee crit. Food for thought!


On the other end, here is a completely maximized survival spec:

I have excluded Safeguard, as it's uses past our LK kill, and times that I can use it have diminshed greatly.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LVZhi0...idczsGo:irTocM

And a pure AoE spec (I want tri specs damnit):

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LVZhgc...idczsGo:dMfMom

Feedback?

[Tengenstein]

Santoro, your Block rating is 0 becuase hardly any ICC gear has Block rating on it, I think the only piece of ICC gear with it is the shield from lootship 10 man.


1300tps extra is nothing to be laughed at for tightening up your rotation a little its a little more than an 8% increase in threat for what is essentially nothing. How are you getting it to simulate taking advantage of max ss (I assume you mean SnB) procs with 95% efficiency?


War Totem, how are you coming to the conclusion that SnB procs should be around 5.6s, is this a 1 second reaction time on top of an average CD SS (30% its off CD at 3 seconds, 30% it's off at 4.5, and 40% its off at 6?), I must say I'm intrigued.


Edit: Raij, Kaz did some very fine math on showing that it is a TPS increase to delay SWs till the 3rd GCD after a SS becuase it doesn't matter what ability you use SS is gonna be available next GCD whether it can and does proc SnB or not. Additionally twice you mention using Rev over SS, once because it will expire, which seems silly, as SS has a higher threat value than Rev, you are losing threat delaying the SS. I beleive War Totem's third page is threat per use, not TPS. Also no Glyph of vigilance in you're High threat build? a decent DPS in ICC should be pulling 10Kdps, 5% of that is 500dps for most good vigilance targets have say a 30% threat reduction so call it 350tps or approxiamtely 21k threat per minute, MB glyphed twice is 10k threat per use, and has a one minute C. GoVig is better, more tps, doesn't take up a GCD ( so can i add the threat of one Dev on top too?).

[praetoria]

Okay, so lets talk max threat rotations, weaving and all.

First off, lets use my stats, seen in these SSes of Wartotem's spreadsheet:
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/4365/statsq.jpg

Remember, my rotation differs, because in BiS gear alot of odd things happen with your stats. Lesser gear = different prioritization.


So, looking at how this affects my TPS, my prioritized abilities highest to lowest are: (note this is using my previously discussed MAX single target TPS build)

Playing around with glyphs, you gain a higher tps build with MB glyphs as opposed to blocking, as I suspected.

Shield Slam (with SB) - 11607.28 TPS
Mocking Blow - 10955.80 TPS (impressive and awesome)
Shockwave - 8421.49 TP
Shield Slam - 8067.76 TPS
Revenge - 7532.65 TPS
Devastate - 5731.60 TPS (with glyph of Devastate this actually adds +832.12 TPS *2 per application); 7395.84 TPS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heroic Throw - 7042.53 TPS
Concussion Blow - 6017.86 TPS
Rend - 3244.58 TPS
Demo Shout - 42.00 TPS

Arij...did you fall asleep on your keyboard? What the fuck is that line?

Calm down, that is my "line of usefulness". Anything below it does TPS, but is not really viable, as you would be using the GCD that uses Devastate to use a lesser TPS ability. As such, you cut those out of your general rotation and use them under circumstances you can't spam your rotation. Oh, use the term rotation lightly, its more of a priority system.

So....lets get down to the dirty, icebath inducing prot warrior TPS "rotation"......

Now for simplicities sake here is just a plain timeline of our high TPS movements in order to guage what we are going to have to do:

Note: GCDs are 1.5 seconds long. I have considered some kind of cool haste stacking experiment to see how it would affect TPS, but uhhhh...that is maybe for later.

0s - Charge, Shield Block, Heroic Throw, Mocking Blow OR Bloodrage, Taunt, Mocking Blow (this depends on if you have to stand near the boss or can engage with a charge)
1.5s - Shield Slam (with SB up)
3s - Shockwave* (gear dependant)
4.5s - Revenge (we use this now because it will expire if we don't, we'd use Shield Slam otherwise because of the higher threat)
6s - Devastate
7.5s- Shield Slam

Now that is a basic opening, but that assumes a few things, one we aren't weaving shouts, thunderclap or procs into the rotation:

How to do the "weave":

Mastering weaving is key to high end warrior tanking. It allows you to do things that keep you alive or help the raid WHILE you maintain awesome TPS.

So, generally we prebuff ourselves with a Commanding Shout, so we will just forget about that for now.

Now with a weave this is going to look very...odd but lets give it a shot:

The opening will stay the same;

0s - Charge, Shield Block, Heroic Throw, Mocking Blow OR Bloodrage, Taunt, Mocking Blow (this depends on if you have to stand near the boss or can engage with a charge)
1.5s - Shield Slam (with SB up)
3s - Shockwave* (gear dependant)
4.5s - Revenge (we use this now because it will expire if we don't, we'd use Shield Slam otherwise because of the higher threat)
6s - Devastate
7.5s- Shield Slam

However, any time you get a revenge proc, you must use it immediately, however this is SUPERCEDED by any Sword and Board procs.

So, your weave would look like this (add it TO your current rotation); you basically replace Devastates with Shouts, or Thunderclaps. Hit Shield Block whenever it is up.

0s - Charge, Shield Block, Heroic Throw, Mocking Blow OR Bloodrage, Taunt, Mocking Blow (this depends on if you have to stand near the boss or can engage with a charge)
1.5s - Shield Slam (with SB up)
3s - Shockwave* (gear dependant)
4.5s - Revenge (we use this now because it will expire if we don't, we'd use Shield Slam otherwise because of the higher threat)
6s - Thunderclap (woven, replaces Devastate)
7.5s- Demo Shout (woven, replaces the next ability, BECAUSE you want these up at the same time, to make the refresh easier)

That is an example of a weave with survivability talents.

Now it gets interesting because you are using Heroic Strike every time you press another button. So Heroic Strike will replace all of your white swings. It's low TPS is made up for here. *This is in ENDLESS RAGE SCENARIOS only*.

RULE OF THUMB: If you are in a scenario where you are conserving rage, Heroic Strike white hit replacement is only necessary above 45 rage. Use your rage bars!

After you have woven in your abilites, your rotation goes back to normal.

After you have mastered this, you can start stance dancing to use Shatter, Whirlwind, and increase your damage while not tanking a mob!


Fun note: Rage starved? Use Beserker Rage and over double your rage generation.

So, in light of this, the new absolute best single target TPS spec that I can find would be:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LAM00f...idczsGo:RciocM

I'd replace Glyph of Taunt with Glyph of Blocking for non taunt sensitive fights, but honestly, it probably isn't worth the swap because of how much you need the Taunt Glyph Sad.

Glyph of Devastate is confirmed to apply the threat of 2 sunders, and is why I am using it in this case.

I can see this spec easily reaching 14k TPS and beyond.

Sidenote about maximizing threat: Shockwave at high gear levels is some of the highest TPS you can get. Having a scope on your ranged weapon for crit increases this. It is counted as a ranged attack, so like TC, ranged crit affects it and not our melee crit. Food for thought!


On the other end, here is a completely maximized survival spec:

I have excluded Safeguard, as it's uses past our LK kill, and times that I can use it have diminshed greatly.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LVZhi0...idczsGo:irTocM

And a pure AoE spec (I want tri specs damnit):

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LVZhgc...idczsGo:dMfMom

Feedback?

post of awsomeness, i must say. I am pretty excited to apply this and will update again on monday to confirm the results. however, there is on thing you really lost me on...


mocking blow- are you glyphing for this? in the first opeaning:

Charge, Shield Block, Heroic Throw, Mocking Blow OR Bloodrage, Taunt, Mocking Blow (this depends on if you have to stand near the boss or can engage with a charge)"

is this to say that if you do NOT use mocking blow as the 4th ability in the rotation, then, you should apply it as your 6th ability in the rotation?

furthermore, I guess i never really did my homework on mocking blow, thus, i always left it alone as an oshit button. I guess what im asking here is a 2 pat question:

1) dose the use of mocking blow in your rotation jeprodize the effectiveness of your taunt ( will my taunt miss if mb is used to often)
2) will mb itself miss? often when i use mb my raid warning posts to raid * warning! abc boss was immune to miahalenge's mocking blow! take evasive action!! " I was always put under the impression that mb was a never really used tallent. granted, if this is not correct i will be most happy about said misinformation. lets start there, then i cant wait to hear your novel on bis warrior rotation and why.

ps- how long did it take you to concoct this post?

[praetoria]

Santoro, your Block rating is 0 becuase hardly any ICC gear has Block rating on it, I think the only piece of ICC gear with it is the shield from lootship 10 man.


1300tps extra is nothing to be laughed at for tightening up your rotation a little its a little more than an 8% increase in threat for what is essentially nothing. How are you getting it to simulate taking advantage of max ss (I assume you mean SnB) procs with 95% efficiency?


War Totem, how are you coming to the conclusion that SnB procs should be around 5.6s, is this a 1 second reaction time on top of an average CD SS (30% its off CD at 3 seconds, 30% it's off at 4.5, and 40% its off at 6?), I must say I'm intrigued.


Edit: Raij, Kaz did some very fine math on showing that it is a TPS increase to delay SWs till the 3rd GCD after a SS becuase it doesn't matter what ability you use SS is gonna be available next GCD whether it can and does proc SnB or not. Additionally twice you mention using Rev over SS, once because it will expire, which seems silly, as SS has a higher threat value than Rev, you are losing threat delaying the SS. I beleive War Totem's third page is threat per use, not TPS. Also no Glyph of vigilance in you're High threat build? a decent DPS in ICC should be pulling 10Kdps, 5% of that is 500dps for most good vigilance targets have say a 30% threat reduction so call it 350tps or approxiamtely 21k threat per minute, MB glyphed twice is 10k threat per use, and has a one minute C. GoVig is better, more tps, doesn't take up a GCD ( so can i add the threat of one Dev on top too?).

his theory still makes a lot of sence, revenge procs ss.. using Raji's weaving strat it appears that the idea is that rev will proc ss anyway.

as for glyphs, this im still up in the air about, being as i really dont want to give up gosw or ls.. which leaves i can drop dev for ... somthing. dose glyph of mb have any effect on the machanic of the ability other then cd?

[Raij]

I do not include a glyph of Vigilance for the Mocking Blow experimentation. Also, the Devastate Glyph is actually a calculateable TPS amount, whereas your vigilance glyph depends very situationally on both your DPS and Vig target. Clearly put, I cannot rely on my Vig target to do great TPS, I can rely on my own.

Yes I have glyphed for Mocking Blow for single target fights. If you do not use it at the start, use it right after you do a Shield Blocked Shield Slam. It pushes everything back one spot.

Regarding questions; As a 1 minute CD using MB on CD while tanking a mob will not screw your DR returns of taunt up because you do not need to taunt that often on any boss currently. Situationally it is also better to save it for mobs like the Raging Spirits on LK to gain a tonne of spike threat so DPS can go nuts instantly. If you are on a boss that does not require a tank swap (Halion, BQ, or any add you want spike threat on) use Mocking Blow on cooldown.

If it is a fight where a tank rotation is necessary I'd use it with the taunt in a macro, but not on cooldown.

Also, I say use Revenge then because it is procced. Shield Slam will STILL be useable after, but if we don't use the Revenge proc that is essentially wasted threat unless it is procced again in the next second, which is unlikely because SB has worn off. You LOSE threat by not using it at that point. I'd like to see the math on Shockwave, because in the gear I have currently, the AP scaling is so high that it is more threat with my 2 piece bonus than most raw TPS abilities in my arsenal. From a raw TPS standpoint, it is better to use it before an un-shieldblocked Shield Slam.

I am using Wartotem's TPS values from the rotation page, not the 3rd page, meaning that I am indeed talking raw TPS and not threat per use.

Meh it only took me about 20 minutes to write, I am going to make a flow chart that is accurate for it.

It is just how I tank, and I made it for my guild for offspec warrior tanks, and just general interest. Decided to post it here to get some feedback.

[Raij]

Some Mocking Blow testing that I did:

So, as most warriors, we have deemed Mocking Blow to be pretty much useless for the past 5 years. But I decided to take a look at it, since they have changed it quite a bit. I only used to use it as an emergency taunt, but lets take a closer look.

You can actually use it for extra threat. Here's how:

With full glyphs for this skill (Barbaric Insults and Mocking Blow), we can push over 32 000 threat with a SINGLE MOCKING BLOW. (Source: Kojiyama - Tankspot)

It's usefulness just multiplied 5 times. Using this once a minute, and assuming an average of 11k TPS in say a 5 minute fight, we are gaining around 533 TPS! This is huge. This ability deals more single target threat (glyphed) than any other ability in our entire arsenal.

Math:

32 000 x 5 = 16 0000 Threat in one fight from MB

11 000 * 300 seconds = 33 00000 threat not using MB in one fight

33 00000 + 16 0000 = 11533.333 TPS

11533 - 11k = 533 TPS

So, uses:

For one, make a taunt macro

/cast Taunt
/cast Mocking Blow

Instant 32k TPS, which will settle to around 11.5-12k once you get going. Good for spike threat? Fuck yes.

Weaving it into a rotation:

Because this has situational uses, I wouldn't really bind it to anything other than taunt for a set rotation, as I would use this on spirits on LK, as well as Halion adds. But, you can add it into your set rotation fairly easily. Just like a Demo Shout, TC refresher, replace a Devastate with Mocking Blow once a minute!

Thoughts?

Enjoy!

[Airowird]

War Totem, how are you coming to the conclusion that SnB procs should be around 5.6s, is this a 1 second reaction time on top of an average CD SS (30% its off CD at 3 seconds, 30% it's off at 4.5, and 40% its off at 6?), I must say I'm intrigued

Someone here on tankspot did the math and ended up with 5.56s in a perfect rotation iirc. So 5.6 should be a managable number

Edit: Raij, Kaz did some very fine math on showing that it is a TPS increase to delay SWs till the 3rd GCD after a SS becuase it doesn't matter what ability you use SS is gonna be available next GCD whether it can and does proc SnB or not. Additionally twice you mention using Rev over SS, once because it will expire, which seems silly, as SS has a higher threat value than Rev, you are losing threat delaying the SS. I beleive War Totem's third page is threat per use, not TPS. Also no Glyph of vigilance in you're High threat build? a decent DPS in ICC should be pulling 10Kdps, 5% of that is 500dps for most good vigilance targets have say a 30% threat reduction so call it 350tps or approxiamtely 21k threat per minute, MB glyphed twice is 10k threat per use, and has a one minute C. GoVig is better, more tps, doesn't take up a GCD ( so can i add the threat of one Dev on top too?).

Third page is threat per GCD, fourth page is TPS. (Was easier to add up all up into total that way)

As for threat glyphs santoro: Devastate > Mocking Blow > Blocking > Shockwave with Vigi somewhere around MB depending on your DPS

If you wish to use Mocking Blow, try the Taunt + MB macro (in that order) and it will give you no problems. Remember that in order for Taunts to stack DR, they will need to be used within the 'cooldown'. Because you use both abilities at the same time, MB will get DR, but the time untill the DR is reset remains equal.
This gives you a melee Hand of Reckoning wonnabe, but it is only usable on Tauntable bosses/mobs. Also remember that it scales EXTREMELY well with weapon damage (threat = 750% weapon damage when double glyphed) so if you wonna rock that threat meter, weapon upgrades is where you need to be.

On HS uptime and threat gain: The biggest contributors are actual ratio/uptime, weapon speed, weapon damage and all the other DPS stats. Unless you are rage starving the entire time, a fast weapon is way better for TPS. And while 1.3k TPS seems a bit low, remember that it's worth a free Vigilance.

[Tengenstein]

Thanks for clarifying War Totem, just make sure i'm getting this 100% right, the TPS of those abilities will be 66.6% of the number shown on that page, yes?

maths for Raij, the quotes from the QDTG warrior guide thread;
http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...t-Warrior-QDTG

So, here's another way of looking at it.

I'll just approximate here (because it's close enough to accurate) that Devastate and Revenge have roughly the same threat and Shield Slam and Shockwave have roughly the same threat.

Shield Slam/Shockwave: 16730 threat
Devastate/Revenge: 11760 threat

Average SnB cycle is 4.7844s and contains the following distribution of abilities:
1 Shield Slam
1.4596 Devastate
0.73 Revenge
= 42480 threat or 8878.8 TPS

Over 20 seconds, that would be 177577 threat.

First Post-Shield Slam GCD
By inserting Shockwave after a Shield Slam instead of a Devastate, you have having a 30% chance to extend the length of a single cycle by 3 seconds. So, it takes 20.7656 seconds to deal 177577 threat plus the bonus 4970 threat of a Shockwave instead of a Devastate.

So, in that case, you would be dealing 182547 threat or 8791 TPS over 20.7656s seconds. This is 87.8 TPS lower than a normal cycle.

Second Post-Shield Slam GCD
By inserting Shockwave in the 2nd GCD after a Shield Slam instead of a Devastate, you have having a 21% chance (.7 * .3 ) to extend the length of a single cycle by 1.5 seconds. So, it takes 20.315 seconds to deal 177577 threat plus the bonus 4970 threat of a Shockwave instead of a Devastate.

So, in that case, you would be dealing 182547 threat or 8985.8 TPS over 20.315 seconds. This is 107 TPS more than a normal cycle.

Third Post-Shield Slam GCD
However, if you were to insert the Shockwave into a non-critical GCD you would be keeping the same average cycle length (because you weren't altering the SnB situation) with the bonus 4970 threat of the Shockwave at some point in the natural course.

So, in that case, you would be dealing 177577 + 4970 threat in 20 seconds, or 9127 TPS over 20 seconds. This is 248 TPS more than a normal cycle.

Third vs. Second GCD
To solve for the cross-over point for using it in the 2nd GCD rather than the 3rd GCD, you could simply calculate:
8878.8 + 4970 / S = 8985.8
4970 / S = 107
4970 = 107 * S
46.44 = S

So... provided you are never delaying your Shockwave for more than 26 seconds beyond its cooldown (highly unlikely! You have a 49% chance on every cycle to get to the 3rd GCD without a SnB proc. So even in a worst-case alignment, you should not see a delay greater than 9.76 seconds on average) it is best to wait for the 3rd post-Shield Slam GCD opportunity to use the ability.

Even in the worst case situation of a 9.4 second delay, you would be dealing 9047.8 TPS, which is a 169 TPS increase over a normal cycle and still greater than even the best-case 2nd GCD scenario. (Keeping in mind that even a 2nd GCD cycle could be delayed by a few seconds as well if misaligned, although by a lesser amount.)

Disclaimer: I'm doing this math a bit quickly on my breaks, so it may or may not have grevious errors in it. I will double-check it later... or you can feel free to yell out should you find any grevious errors and I will correct it!

[Airowird]

* Yup, TPS of abilities (as well as DPS) is the number from the Abilities page / 1.5 e.g. a 21k Shield Slam will do 14k TPS (21 / 1.5s from GCD)
* "Average SnB cycle is 4.7844s and ..." < guess I was wrong with my 5.6, better start aiming for <5s then

[Raij]

Good to know, I will have to change my weave a little bit, but my premise still holds mostly true.