Possible 4.3 Threat Changes

[Chamenas]

so.... the only hard role will be healing....

panda/epic/carebears for everyone.

? Healing is hard?

The game is as hard as you make it to be. There's a select amount of content that only a small percentage of the population does, the rest of the population finds it too difficult. There will, generally speaking, always be something more challenging for people to do for anyone outside that small elite population. No matter the role, there's plenty of challenge.

[swelt]

Given that this is the Theory section of the forum, would it be worth taking a look at the impact that this change has (if any) on rotations/gearing/etc? I'm thinking the following:
- high threat but low damage moves might as well drop from rotations. For warriors, that's probably another nail in the coffin of revenge, and concussion blow is probably not going to beat devastate on average.
- 'Threat' talents now have to make up their worth as 'dps' talents - which makes them a lot more like a luxury. You could imagine a pure utility warrior build that ignores all the damage talents: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LMbZhb0oZcrGdRoRdMu - I'm not saying this is necessarily a smart idea, but if threat is a non-issue then there's certainly an argument to say "don't try to be a poor mans dps, get more utility". In a 10 man group, I'm going to guess that the tanks dps makes up a non-trivial percentage of total RDPS, but in a 25 man group...?
- when the fast vengeance stacking comes up, I guess that has some fairly significant implications for feral druids. I also assume it means that abilities like shockwave that scale very well with raw AP will be stronger much earlier in the fight.

[Mazar]

"Threat sets for Alyzrazor birds" isn't adding hit and expertise for threat its adding for the dmg they aren't increasing our damage by 2/5's just threat so they will still be viable but wearing full avoidance gear I always down my bird so that isnt even an issue.

I honestly enjoyed tank gearing more too when I did have to have threat stats on my gear and balance them appropriately w/ my mitigation / avoidance stats so as not to throttle DPS but at the same time stay alive.

I mean hit and expertise to not waste skills, so we do full damage. I know they didn't buff damage, my concern was about those tanks that usually go with almost no hit/expertise. I found really difficult to do the required damage to the birds in my usual set (gemmed/reforged full mastery) as a prot warrior.

[PimpJuice4]

Originally Posted by Beefius
I find it bizarre that there are players who would complain about a BUFF... what, because it makes their role viable at lower gear and experience levels? Get over yourselves you primadonnas!

wow players will complain about anything

[Spiritus]

Given that this is the Theory section of the forum, would it be worth taking a look at the impact that this change has (if any) on rotations/gearing/etc? I'm thinking the following:
- high threat but low damage moves might as well drop from rotations. For warriors, that's probably another nail in the coffin of revenge, and concussion blow is probably not going to beat devastate on average.
- 'Threat' talents now have to make up their worth as 'dps' talents - which makes them a lot more like a luxury. You could imagine a pure utility warrior build that ignores all the damage talents: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LMbZhb0oZcrGdRoRdMu - I'm not saying this is necessarily a smart idea, but if threat is a non-issue then there's certainly an argument to say "don't try to be a poor mans dps, get more utility". In a 10 man group, I'm going to guess that the tanks dps makes up a non-trivial percentage of total RDPS, but in a 25 man group...?
- when the fast vengeance stacking comes up, I guess that has some fairly significant implications for feral druids. I also assume it means that abilities like shockwave that scale very well with raw AP will be stronger much earlier in the fight.

As much as I was a contributing factor, this thread has been somewhat out of place in "T&M." Lets try to keep things, in this thread at least, more locked into the objective impact uber-vengeance brings to the table, rather than the subjective.

[Airowird]

Well it's a flat bonus, so it does nothing for our DPS/TPS maxing rotations we had before. As for Revenge & Conc blow needs ... we could've done without Rev before, if anything, I'ld put the points from Imp. Rev in Battle Trance (if you don't need Gag Order), as it's also a rage efficiency talent, which was the biggest use of Imp. Rev. Conc Blow still isn't a bad move and as it's still required for Vengeance, you'll prob end up taking it, so might as well try and use it.
I'ld also assume you'ld want glyphs with that spec swelt, perhaps something like this?

On the initial Vengeance: if it's a 2s duration, wouldn't it be better to Dev first before the initial SS? you'ld get way more dmg out of it both from the frist swing (and perhaps even another swing, extra AP!) as well as the armor reduction. I'ld expect a Heroic Throw + Charge pull would patch over the initial Devastate, good enough to start hitting that SS like a boss.

[swelt]

To clarify, my first point was that there's no point in having a 'max tps' rotation any more, only a 'max dps' rotation. From there, I guess I'm looking to evaluate the relative DPS values of the assorted DPS talents: incite, war academy, heavy repurcussions, cruelty, deep wounds, etc. If we assume that none of them are strictly required for the purposes of holding threat (which I think is probably true) then we will need to make decisions about whether want to take them for the purpose of increasing our raid dps contribution or whether we could get more value from a utility talent. The build I linked goes to the extreme other end of the scale - I can't think of much use for Blitz in current content, nor can I see myself going for Impending Victory any time soon, but rather I wanted to illustrate that if you stop caring at all about your dps then 'standard builds' could shift.

I ran some (possibly flawed) numbers through your latest spreadsheet, with the default rotation. I started with all the 'dps talents' filled in on the sheet, then took away one at a time, noting the loss in dps. It gave me roughly the following:

Incite ~8-9% dps for 3 points
HTL ~6-7% dps for 2 talent points (ignoring value of mitigation)
Thunderstruck ~1-2% dps for 2 talent points
Sword and Board ~4-5% dps for 3 talent points
War Academy ~2-3% dps for 3 talent points
Deep Wound ~7-9% dps for 3 talent points
Cruelty ~2-3% dps for 2 talent points

I'm not sure how to evaluate heavy repercussions (and there seems to be an error in the sheet, in that the number of HR shield slams aren't included in the DPS summary calc in cell D22) - but it looks like it might be OK and pretty good if you have a two piece T12 bonus? I'm sure you'll be able to get much better qualified numbers than I can - I wouldn't want to draw any conclusions from my ropey maths :P. But to take a case in point: if the value of thunderstruck was 'it helps with snap threat' and the hotfix has meant snap threat is basically guaranteed, then thunderstruck no longer has value unless it also increases my DPS by a worthwhile amount.

[Chamenas]

Threat has never been why I had fun as a tank. I had fun because well-designed encounters could make it fun. I remember when I first started tanking at the beginning of Wrath. Even though the Naxx encounters weren't particularly difficult, tanking Hiegan was sort of fun. Shuffling adds in the first phase of Kel'thuzad was also awesome.

The problem is that you can't always expect Blizzard to get encounter design "right" for everyone. Some fights have mechanics that I imagine Blizzard thought would be fun, but just aren't particularly interesting. Then again, some fights (Deathbringer?) had mechanics that I had no idea how Blizzard thought it would be interesting.

I thought Vengeance was a neat mechanic, though I didn't really get to play with it since my hiatus began shortly after it was imped. However, it was neat to think that there could be a way for Tanks to have competitive DPS without making it so that everyone would be a tank. Aka, the only person that could benefit from the extra damage bonus was the main focus, if you were specced as a tank but not being attacked by the boss, your DPS would be awful. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if it really worked out that way, and I'm not sure Blizzard even intended it to be that way even though that was why I thought it could be cool.

I've been a personal fan of more active cooldown management for a long long time. Just as healers have to make a decision in what heals to use, tanks should have to make a decision in what defensive modes to use.

If Blizzard has us JUST spamming a shield block, death strike, [other attack here] button to stay alive, it will not be fun. But if they force us to think about which ability to use and constantly rotate through a few different defensive abilities that are not specific cooldowns, depending on the situation of the fight, that would allow tanking to be fun and retain a certain skill level to it. It also wouldn't punish other roles for doing their job correctly, unless, of course, the tank drops because he didn't use the right defensive ability. But that much is true of any other role.

[Airowird]

Did your SnB number include the SS procs as well?

HR should be on roughly 1/6 Shield Slams if you use SB on the cooldown, thus it's a roughly 16% increase on SS damage.
So it's roughly up to a ~3-4% increase (if SS is 20-25% of total damage). It lacks if you need to use SB on a 45s CD boss attack though.

Thunderstruck is definately the least beneficial talent for single-target, but it's a great AoE tool, for those that still do heroics.
War Academy is required for DW, which is one of the best talents, averaging ~10-11% for those 6 points (or ~5% for 3 points)
Cruelty is pretty meh for a tank, as it's mostly a DPS talent, it's pretty much a dmg filler if you want to hit the second tier.

I'ld probably go for http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LG0cZZIfGdRoodbu0mzcqzM0
Most likely moving Gag Order to Safeguard once he's raid-ready, maybe Thunderstruck to Cruelty as well.

PS: I believe the Rend error (currently saying to do 20% more damage than it does ingame) is still in the spreadsheet, I'll update it later this week, but feel free to delete the "=1.2*(...)" part in the base damage of Rend in the Abilities tab.

[swelt]

My SnB number is wrong then. Good, would suck if that wasn't worth keeping.

But in general, I think we agree that cruelty and thunderstruck are pretty lack luster. So let's re-examine the alternatives against current raid content:
- Impending Victory. A sub-20% rotation of just devastate and victory rush would be a minor dps loss but some free healing. There are a few bosses in this tier where the execute phase can get a bit hairy. You'd only get half the value on ragnaros normal mode (although it's quite a long last 10%). Always been disappointing for the lack of healing it gives, but perhaps better than nothing? Wouldn't be surprised if this mechanic got reworked as part of the 'longer term' changes...
- Safeguard. I am not aware of an encounter where safeguard is a perfect fit, but I ran with it for a couple of weeks and did find opportunities to help reduce meaningful damage. Perhaps something in the heroic modes? (Beth'tilac drones fixate?) It'd be interesting to consider whether the increased threat gain makes this more usable in two tank fights. Not much chance of DPS catching up, more of an issue of boss switching targets.
- Gag order. The silence is slightly useful at Alysrazor (although you might use a specific build for that fight anyway). The shortened cooldown is a quality of life thing for me (on trash, heroics). Certainly not a must have.

[Airowird]

Generally, talents (except ability talents & some rare exceptions) are worth ~2% of 'better job' per point. So overall you'll want talents to compare vs 2% reduction, or dmg increase for each point you put in. That means HtL is actually the slightly better one, Cruelty is not meant for tanks & War Academy is technicly only 'worth it's value' if you also have DW.

Gag Order is definately a QoL thing, although it's still kinda useful for heroics (way more casters there).
Safeguard just puts so many things on a single button, it'll never be a perfect fit (unless on taunt-immune bosses that require a tank swap perhaps. Like that's gonna happen!).
That means that it's basicly it's IV vs Safeguard, or other tanks life vs your own.
In a general note, I'ld say IV would be the most useful, especailly thinking about fights with a sort of end-fight enrage (Cho'Gall, Shannox,...). Although I'ld just love it if we could get the overhealing from VR put into a shield or something. (Perhaps worth a Prime glyph, as we won't be using Rev anymore? Or simply put into IV talent?). Ofcourse, if they made IV to work on a larger boss range (say <35/50% or maybe just all the time, but with a 10s CD?), it would definately become the go-to choice.

Edit: Forgot to ask, did you assume all other talents while testing? Most notably thinking of DW + Cruelty/SnB combo.

[swelt]

I started out with all the dps talents taken, then looked at the dps reduction when I removed those talents, one by one. I repeated the exercise when I realised that I hadn't enabled the 2xT12 bonus. I fiddled around with a few other combos to try to get confidence. The methodology has flaws, for sure, but I don't think I've massively underrated cruelty or thunderstruck, although as you say the latter will have more impact on AOE dps.

[Tengenstein]

This little graph is something i put together a while back(pre t12x2) for running simcraft. this was with the Maintianing Rend Over SnB priority (except the no BT coloumn which prioritises SnB) Low rage was about 14 rpm, high rage was 17rpm, or approximatley and 80k Holy hit every 2 seconds diffrenence in incoming DPS.

[Loganisis]

I mean hit and expertise to not waste skills, so we do full damage. I know they didn't buff damage, my concern was about those tanks that usually go with almost no hit/expertise. I found really difficult to do the required damage to the birds in my usual set (gemmed/reforged full mastery) as a prot warrior.

I'd suggest posting in the HALP! section with your build. It's not easy, but it's not difficult, and there are some tricks that can help. (2pc T11 and 2pc T12 will help too).

****

As for the main point.... The bigger question is even post 4.3 - what will talent trees look like in 5.0? Unless they plan the radcial redesign of 3 of the 4 tanks for 4.3, the current impact is just once you have survival, go for whatever has the highest DPS impact.

This change, while I understand the intent, seems to be implimented too early. Right now threat wasn't hard, but it mattered, so if you wanted to be good you did have to pay attention to something, as opposed to just /faceroll buttons which is the case now once you have a basic level of experience.

There's going to be a huge outcry when the redesign comes in as tanks have gotten used to lazy. Great tanks have said tanking has been /faceroll for a long time, but newer tanks are now going to be in this situation too and when the change comes... all I can think of is there's going to be a lot of /getting popcorn responses to all the QQ over how having to use CDs intelligiently is too hard.

[JongyFong]

So many of our talents are situational in current heroic tier especially with Revenge being broken.

Imp. Revenge, Thunderstruck, and Gag Order - Ryolith/trash pulls (Gag Order is QOL on Alystrazor).
Vigilance and Safeguard - Beth'tilac (Vigilance being more worthless than ever with the threat/vengeance changes).
I can't speak to H. Ragnaros as I've yet to pull it.

That's 9 talent points with little-to-no value, and most other options are basic DPS enhancers.