Epic Tanking Weapons. Yep, All Three!

So, I was recently surprised to see someone say that the Earthwarden was a druid tank's best option until the legendary LOL that is the Pillar of Ferocity. And while I'm not sure if he felt that the weapon commonly regarded as our best tanking staff (Wildfury Greatstaff) was inferior to the Earthwarden, or if he simply didn't know about it since its a trash drop, I felt compelled to compare the three items formally.

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The Suspects:
All translated values assume a standard spec with all tanking talents taken.

Earthwarden
Drops From: Cenarion Expedition Exalted Reputation
500 Armor
39 Stamina
27 Defense Rating
24 Expertise Rating
712 Feral AP

--Which Translates To--

0.46% Crit Reduction
2750 Bear Armor
0.91% Avoidance
663 HP
712 AP
3.05% More Accuracy (Dodge/Parry Reduction)


Wildfury Greatstaff
Drops From: Serpentshrine Cavern Trash
500 Armor
75 Stamina
54 Dodge Rating
992 Feral AP

--Which Translates To--

2750 Bear Armor
2.86% Avoidance
1275 HP
992 AP


Pillar of Ferocity
Drops From: Anetheron (Hyjal Summit, Second Boss)
550 Armor
47 Strength
96 Stamina
1059 Feral AP

--Which Translates To--
3025 Bear Armor
1632 HP
1166 AP


Round 1: Earthwarden V. Wildfury Greatstaff

Earthwarden Advantages:
0.46% Crit Reduction
3.05% More Accuracy (Dodge/Parry Reduction)

Wildfury Greatstaff Advantages:
1.95% Avoidance
612 HP
180 AP

The Lowdown: Crit immunity comes first. If you ned that defense on Earthwarden to stay crit immune, by all means stick with it for the timebeing. However, once you find a way to replace that with a few gems or some PvP bracers (for examples), the story changes. Earthwarden's only advantage here is the 3% effective hit provided via Expertise (and some slight avoidance via reduction in parrys, though not enough to make up the 2% gap). Assuming 2500 AP and 30% crit with the Earthwarden, if we plug in the threat stats into the handy, dandy threat calculator, we find that the hit and AP almost exactly cancel each other out (Wildfury comes out 1 TPS ahead). So it appears that Wildfury is a cut-and-dry upgrade from Earthwarden, with more health, more avoidance, and the same average threat.

Hold on, though, don't go vendoring that hammer just yet. There are situations where you just might want to swap it in: Pick-ups. No, not those horrendous groups of slackers you get for 3AM Steamvault runs, I'm talking about picking up mobs on pulls and after threat dumps. Three percent more effective hit makes it much less likely your Maul/Mangle combo will miss. Lets say you have 82% effective hit without EW, and 85% with it. Earthwarden increases the chance both Maul and Mangle will hit from 67.2% to 72.3% (Yes, 5% more likely, funny how that works huh?), and reduces the chance both will MISS from 3.24% to 2.25%, which means more than 1 in 4 of your double-whiffs would no longer happen, causing a very sensitive threat situation. Normally, this isn't a big deal, but on threat-sensitive fights like Hydross and Leotheras, losing a bit of mitigation for some increased threat reliability can be a very good idea. And you can always switch back to the Wildfury once you've picked up your target.


Round 2: Wildfury Greatstaff V. Pillar of Ferocity

Wildfury Greatstaff Advantages:
2.86% Avoidance

Pillar of Ferocity Advantages:
275 Bear Armor
357 HP
174 AP

The Lowdown: First of all, lets remember where the Pillar drops: Early T6 content. At that point, most bear tanks are already going to be butting up against, if not exceeding, the armor cap, making the extra armor on the Pillar more or less useless. Even if we don't take that into consideration, though, 275 armor isn't a whole heck of a lot (Probably about 0.6% less damage taken), and even combined with the 357 extra health the Pillar affords us, I would much rather be hit 3% less often, thankyouverymuch. So even though the Pillar drops from a later instance, its actually the inferior mitigation weapon.

But, as with the Earthwarden V. Wildfury comparison, the Pillar of LOL does have one redeeming quality: Superior threat generation. If we assume the same basic stats as before, Wildfury would boost our threat by about 31 TPS. Not a whole heck of a lot, but if you're really struggling to stay ahead of your DPSers on threat, it might be an option to swap this in. As a bonus, you'll be getting hit more as well, so will have extra rage to work with (Yeah, even lower mitigation can be an advantage sometimes).


Round 3: Earthwarden V. Pillar of Ferocity

Earthwarden Advantages:
0.46% Crit Reduction
0.91% Avoidance
3.05% More Accuracy (Dodge/Parry Reduction)

Pillar of Ferocity:
275 Bear Armor
969 HP
454 AP

The Lowdown: So, since Wildfury wins out against both of its competitors, I guess we should go ahead and compare Earthwarden, obtainable via rep, to the Pillar, obtainable through deep endgame raiding. The good news is, the Pillar comes out ahead in my opinion. The bad news? Not by much. In terms of threat, I'd call it even between the Expertise rating of the Earthwarden and the extra AP on the Pillar, as the pillar's overall threat advantage is counterbalanced by the earthwarden's higher reliability. In terms of mitigation, though, I would actually have to give the advantage to the Earthwarden. The Pillar's armor gives about 0.6% less damage per hit, granted, but assuming you're around 50% dodge, the 0.9% avoidance on the EW actually translates to about 1.8% fewer swings landing (I refer you again to "The Diminishing Returns is a Lie")

Why, then, to I give the Pillar top billing on this matchup? Nearly 1000 more health, thats what. While I'm a firm believer in getting enough health and then focusing on mitigation, that amount of health would take over 5 Solid Stars of Elune to make up, and thats a lot of gems I could switch from, say, +12 stamina to +8 agi to make up the avoidance difference.


Putting It All Together

So, in terms of overall quality as a tanking weapon, it seems that the Wildfury Greatstaff is better than the Pillar of Ferocity, which in turn is an upgrade from the Earthwarden. Not surprising results, really, as most druids already knew that the Pillar is one of the worst itemized pieces of gear Blizzard has ever come up with. Not that the Living Root of the Wildheart is terribly incredible either, mind you. Seriously, though, hold on to that Earthwarden for making those critical pick-ups, since having a bit less mitigation is always preferable to that mob going and beating on a clothie or three because your aim sucked. Continue reading 'Epic Tanking Weapons. Yep, All Three!'

Sum Bare R 4 MOONFARE?!?!

For most tanking classes, pulling is a rather straightforward affair. Warriors can fire their sidearm of choice at a group to get their attention. Paladins can channel the essence of Captain America/Xena, Warrior Princess. Both also have the option to run up to the mobs to initiate combat (albeit warriors get to do so a little bit faster). Druids, on the other hand, have options. Lots, and lots, and lots of options. Starfire, moonfire, wrath, hurricaine, faerie fire, feral charge, body pulling, tossing a sacrificial gnome, all are options in our arsenal (well, except for the gnome).

All of our options have distinct advantages and disadvantages, but alas, spellcasting is not the strong suit of most of our feral brethren. And while, generally speaking, pulling is only a small part of our job, its still part of what we do, so those of us obsessed enough with our class to, say, read blogs on a daily basis (let alone write them *cough*) should really know what we're doing when we decide to call down orbital lazer fire from space.

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First of all, lets meet our arsenal. Lets just go ahead and assume we have 0 bonus damage and 0% chance to crit, because thats basically what we should have in tanking gear:

Starfire: That would be the big laser with the long cast. Averages 588 damage for 370 mana. 3.5 second cast. 168 DPS, 1.59 DPM


Wrath: The big ball of nature's . . . well, wrath. Averages 405 damage for 255 mana. 2 second cast. 202.5 DPS, 1.59 DPM


Moonfire: The little lazer that burns for hours. . . or at least 12 seconds. With DoT, averages 931 damage for 495 mana. 1.5 second global cooldown, instant cast. 620.7 Damage Per Second of effective cast time, 1.88 DPM.


Hurricane: Why hit one when you can hit 'em all? 206 DPS for 10 seconds on all mobs under it. 1905 mana.


Faerie Fire (Feral): Proof that druids now how to cast fire spells. Or not. Free cast in forms, generates just enough threat to get the attention of your enemies.


One of the first things you might notice is that, without any spelldamage gear, Wrath is just as efficient as, and has higher DPS than, Starfire. Starfire has the advantage of being a bigger single hit, though, something that will come into play later, and make Starfire a favorite choice of this bear.

Second, Moonfire is actually more efficient, and has much higher DPS, than either of our straight nukes. Note, however, that this is only true if you use moonfire only once per target. Multiple casts on the same target wont stack the DoT portion, which is 2/3 of the actual damage.

Third, hurricane kicks the crap out of everything else on pulls of 3 or more, though its damage is more spread out. It does, however, eat a signifigant chunk of your mana, especially if coupled with barkskin.

Now that we've met the players, lets look at one of the game rules that you may know about, but might not have considered when it comes to pulling groups to your furry behind: The Global Cooldown *cue ominous sound effects*. For those who don't know, the GCD is a game mechanic which makes it impossible to start casting a spell if you have started another spell within the last 1.5 seconds (or 1 second for energy users). This is why spamming your moonfire key wont bring down an endless rain of lasers, and why resto druids don't maintain triple-stack lifeblooms on 25 people at a time.

Now, you may have noticed one tricky fact about the GCD. Unlike the five-second rule for mana regeneration (whose namesake 5 second timer starts counting whenever a spellcast is completed), the global cooldown timer starts ticking the moment you START casting. Thats why it tends to really only be noticable when casting instant spells, such as moonfire or lifebloom, and not on casted spells like Starfire or Wrath (save for balance-specced druids and their occasional 1-second Wrath cast).

Why is the GCD stuff important? Well, at first glance, it may look like Starfire and Wrath are pretty pointless to use if you only want to get a little threat on as many mobs as possible. Starfire looks especially worthless here, until you consider the cooldown. Lets say we open our pull sequence with a moonfire, since its the highest DPS/DPM spell in our arsenal. Great, you've effectively applied about 931 damage/threat to a target with your pull. However, you have also just engaged the global cooldown, and must wait 1.5 seconds before performing another action, such as firing another moonfire or shifting to bear form. If you instead open with a Starfire, the global cooldown expires 2 seconds BEFORE that initial burst of aggro, meaning the moment Starfire's 588 damage/threat goes off, alerting the mobs to your presence, you're able to follow it up with another spell immediately (possibly even that same moonfire you would have pulled with before this paragraph). This is, as far as I'm concerned, the best (and only) way to use Starfire as a bear tank, the initial, free (since really, mana doesn't matter as long as we have enough to shift) shot.

Small Group Pulls:

So, lets say you come to the pull just after the first boss in Sethekk Halls: 2 melee mobs. Not really worth busting out hurricane here, best to stick with the single-target damage. How do we want to pull them? Well, lets assume that once our mobs are pulled, we have 3.5 seconds before they're in our face smacking us on the head. Lets also assume we want the bulk of the threat on our primary kill target, because our DPSers have a tendency to jump the gun a bit, especially after seeing a bunch of lasers rain down on the mobs' heads. Standing at max range, we target the primary mob and begin to cast Starfire. Then, with starfire still casting, we switch targets to the secondary mob, and hover our mouse over the primary mob. The moment starfire casts (0 seconds after the pull starts), we fire off a moonfire (which immediately fires, since the GCD expired two seconds ago) on our secondary target, as that was the mob we had targeted, and then immediately click on the primary target again to regain focus. As soon as the global cooldown from that cast expires (1.5 seconds after the pull starts), we moonfire again, this time hitting our primary target. And when THAT cooldown expires (3.0 seconds after the pull starts), we shift to bear form to prepare for taking our first hit 0.5 seconds later. By pulling in this way, we have built up over 1500 initial threat on our primary target (though it will be another 10 seconds before the full effect of the moonfire has been felt) and nearly 1000 threat on our secondary target (again, once moonfire takes full effect).

Two things to note here: While waiting for global cooldowns, you can extend the time it takes for your foes to reach you by either backing up, or turning and strafing/running away from them. I usually just back up to maintain visual on the mobs. Second, even though you're building up some nice initial threat, DPS can NOT immediately lay into the mobs. It would not be hard at all for someone to out-aggro you by the time the mobs got there, especially in your caster-stat-free gear. This is merely an extra buffer for your DPSers to make them safer to go all out once you get a mangle and some swipes into the mobs, and some leeway for the healer to keep you up should your initial attacks all miss.

Now, lets say you had a little more time than that to build threat. This is a rare occasion where wrath might be a good pulling option. Lets say you now have 4 seconds, and can extend that time to 5.5 by backing up during global cooldowns on 2 moonfires (obviously we're assuming a good bit of foreknowledge regarding the particular mobs here). If you're feeling daring, and really want to build some threat on your primary target (or just want to put up some better numbers on the damage meter), try this on for size: Starfire on the primary target to open. When the starfire goes off (0s), start casting a wrath on it, and switch to the secondary target. When the wrath goes off (2s), starfire, switch targets back to the primary target, and start backing away. When the global cooldown is up (3.5s), moonfire again, this time hitting the primary target with it, and keep backing up. Once you're out of that GCD (5s), its time to shift to bear and lay into them both when they reach you half a second later. Same amount of threat on your secondary target, but another 400 threat and damage on your primary.

Large Group Pulls:

Now that we've absolutely obliterated that pull, lets move a bit deeper into the instance. Eventually, you go upstairs, kill off a wind serpent and 2 guards, and are then faced with the biggest pull of the instance: 10 hawks. Now, I know as well as the next guy that these guys are a joke, but lets pretend this is serious business, and we absolutely need to maintain aggro on all ten while not getting hit by any of them outside of bear form. Now, your first reaction to this pull is probably to pull out hurricane, center it over the birds, and fire. However, we want to build maximum threat here, so we're going to do this a little differently. First of all, we're going to target the closest bird and get to maximum starfire range. Then, we're going to start casting starfire, since we already noted that starfire is essentially a freebie when looking at a max-threat pull. Then, while starfire is casting, we are going to click hurricane and get it targeted (yes, you can be targeting it while another spell is casting, aren't you glad starfire takes so long now?). But we're not going to try to center the hurricane over the mobs. Instead, we want to drop it closer to us, hitting the area in between ourself and our targets.

Why target hurricane like this? Well, the answer is simple. If you center it over your targets, those targets only have to pass through part of the hurricane to get to you. If you drop it in between you and them, however, they have to travel the full width of the spell to approach you, and thus spend much more time getting bolts dropped on their heads. More bolts = more threat. Just make sure there is a little distance between you and the near edge of the hurricane so you have a chance to switch to bear form before the mobs start hitting you.

Ok, now, lets get real here. Those birds are a joke, and as long as they get heals, a mage could "tank" them with little problem. So, instead of worrying about getting hit, lets just do as much damage as we can to them. This time, we'll still start with a starfire, but instead of targeting hurricane while its casting, we get ready to run toward them. Once starfire goes off, cast barkskin, and run toward the group. Then, once you reach the mobs, drop that hurricane right at your feet and enjoy the rain of numbers. Just be sure to watch your health, in case the healer cant keep up with the damage you're taking. Bear tank DPS at its finest, my friends.

At this point, I've shared with you what I consider the major tricks a druid can use to build maximum threat on a pull: Always start with a Starfire (unless you cant due to aggro range or arcane immunity). When building threat on multiple enemies, either hit as many of them as possible with moonfire, or drop a hurricane where they have to walk through the whole thing before getting to you. If you need to build as much threat as possible on a single mob before it gets to you, spam wrath, and use moonfire as your last spell before going to bear (takes less time than the wrath, and allows you to back away while waiting for GCD). Additionally, you can do things such as precasting HoTs on yourself, though this will really only give your healer a little more time before they have to start healing you, especially since HoTs cast outside of combat apparently generate no threat (at least thats what I hear, I have never actually tested this, maybe I'll do that tonight).

But, there's one more spell you can pull with. . . Faerie Fire. Specifically Feral Faerie Fire. Practically no threat, but it will bring the mobs to you. And frankly, its what I use for 90% or more of the pulls I make. While FFF isn't going to build you any sort of threat cushion, it has some great advantages. First of all, theres no risk of a sudden lagspike leaving you stuck in caster form with mobs beating on you. Second, once the mob you hit with it gets to you, you can open up with a slightly stronger Maul/Mangle combo because of the mob's reduced armor. Third, if you have a lot of rage built up from the previous pull, you dont have to lose it by shifting out of form. And fourth . . .

You really shouldn't need the extra threat from all those silly balance spells in the first place. Yes, thats right, while optimizing your pull sequence is a fun little exercize in theorycraft, it is also by and large unnecessary, despite what I said about knowing how to call down the lazers at the start of this post.

There are only two reasons to seriously use your non-FFF spells for pulling in general: Polymorph/Seduce, and huge pulls like those 10 birds, or the big pulls in Shattered Halls. The former case, the cast time on Starfire gives your mage/warlock the chance to coordinate with you on the pull. I shed a tear of joy when a mage polymorphs his target a split second after my starfire goes off, because I know I wont have to worry about that sheep straying anywhere near my swipe killzone. And my healers shed a tear of joy when I hit a 7-mob pull with 3 ticks of Hurricane, because they know that 600x7=4,200 damage I just did to the mobs means their first heal on me isn't going to send 4-6 mobs barreling down on them.

Oh, and there is one other reason to put effort into your pulls. If you're like me, and have run pretty much every heroic a dozen times, and at least that many karazhan clears, unloading a bunch of flashy spells into mobs on a pull can be a way to keep from getting bored. Heck, I once moonfired all 6 mobs of a pull while bringing them all back to the second boss' room in heroic Shattered halls for fun (and because I thought the hunter that was with me might be amused by the fact a druid tank was jump-shotting with moonfire in a heroic. Jumpshots: they're not just for hunters any more!) Continue reading 'Sum Bare R 4 MOONFARE?!?!'

ACLaBT4: The Tab-Lacerate Fallacy, and Tanking as a Non-Feral

Its time for the final installment of A Closer Look at Bear Threat! (Cue cheesy gameshow music and strobe lights). Today, as promised, I will be taking a closer look at threat generation for the Mangle-challenged. The common perception is that nonferal tanks are about as threatening as a little bear cub, time to put that assumption to the test. But I also want to touch on one other topic that I was reminded of when reading some blog comments today, and that is this strange practice some bears engage in of tab-lacerating their offtargets when multi-mob tanking.

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Tab Lacerate. . . Why?

Last week, we established breakpoints where swipe is actually better threat generation than lacerate, and I personally came to realize that I have reached the switch-over point myself. In order to debunk this myth that tab-lacerate is somehow useful, though, we need to look at the scenario swipe is really intended for: Multi-target tanking. And while you would think logic alone would prevail, that a multi target ability would be better for a multi target scenario, we already found that similar logic breaks down in the single target scenario, so lets do this up proper.

First off, lets give every advantage we can to lacerate, by gimping our swipes. Lets assume we have a mere 1100 attack power, 15% crit, 35% mob damage reduction (since off-targets generally dont get debuffs), and for the heck of it, I'm getting rid of our expertise and hit rating, even though that should affect everything evenly. This is about as low-grade as you can get at 70, we're talking Braxxis staff, full heavy clefthoof with stam gems, and crappy greens, basically.

With those numbers, we're looking at threat values of 338 for Lacerate, and 169 for swipe. But thats on a single target, and we're talking about hitting at least 2 targets here, so double the swipe threat and we get . . . 338. Fancy that! So even with abysmally crappy gear, swipe puts out just as much threat per use as lacerate overall. Anything better, or add a third mob, and swipe is a clear winner.

Now, that doesn't sound like a lot, but think about it for a second. You dont need to hold off-mobs off of the DPS, because they're killing the main target, not offtargets. If they're not doing that, let 'em die as far as I'm concerned. You just need to be keeping those mobs off the healer. In the worst case scenario, threatwise, you have two mobs on you, and are putting out 169 threat per swipe on the off target. Lets assume one swipe every 2 seconds (3 swipes every 6 in a Mangle->Swipe x3 rotation), so 84 threat/second going into that off mob. For the healer to pull it off of you, they need to do 4 times that amount as healing per second (x2 for the 50% threat modifier on heals, and x2 again due to healing threat being split among the two mobs), or 336 healing/second. With a third mob in there, that goes up to 504 healing/second.

Doesn't sound like a lot, does it? Well, its not for those of us who are used to tanking heroics, raids, and the like, but I feel bad for your group if you have 1100 AP, 15% crit, no hit, and are tanking anything at all challenging. And (this is important), even if swipe spam isn't holding mobs off of your healer, lacerate will NOT solve the problem, because we already did the math and figured out swipe is putting out just as much threat. What will help, however, is tab-Auto-attack, tab-Maul, and/or tab-mangle, while still spamming swipe. That actually puts extra threat into your off targets (at the cost of threat on your main target). For those who find that tab lacerating helps them hold 2-3 mobs at once, I'll all but gurantee the difference is the extra autoattack threat you're hitting them with, NOT lacerate itself.

Threat for Non-Ferals: Why Offspec Druid Tanks Lose Aggro

First off, just let me clarify: I'm not trying to say that non-feral druids CANT tank. Heck, my first time killing High King Maulgar, I was full resto spec, and was one of the tanks on the Warlock. I'm just highlighting why offspecs have such a hard time tanking. All of the mitigation in the world is meaningless if mobs aren't actually beating on the person with the mitigation, and while not having feral tanking talents makes us a little bit squishier, the pain is really felt when we realize that we're a lot less THREATENING without the myriad threat talents in there.

Lets take our baseline feral druid from the calculator. He has all of our feral talents, 2500 AP, and .3 crit. He can crank out 802 threat per second if not using maul at all, and only needs to take 185 damage per second to maintain the rotation. If he is taking at least 1253 DPS, he can go full throttle with Mauls as well, and his threat output shoots up to1069 threat per second.

Now, lets say this druid respecs for PvP. At first, he only drops mangle to pick up Nature's Swiftness. How much can the loss of one talent point hurt? Well, a lot. We change the rotation he uses to nonstop lacerates, and lose the (minimally) boosted threat from lacerate's damage modifier (note that just changing the "Mangle?" box in the calculator to zero automatically zeroes out your mangle damage line, and removes the 1.3x modifier from lacerate's damage). Now, in order to maintain our lacerate spam, we only need to take 149 DPS, but at the same time, our threat generation plummets from 802 TPS down to 593 (A loss of over 25%). If we throw our mauls back in, we need to take 1217 DPS, but our threat generation pops up to 860 (still nearly 20% less threat than before).

Our hypothetical druid realizes that NS does not a PvP healer make, so he respecs to a full PvP resto (8/11/42) build. Now things get a bit trickier. We get to keep Naturalist and Ferocity, but lose the rest of the listed talents (I'm assuming you're taking thick hide here, since threat generation is useless in PvP). In addition to the talents listed, we also lose 6% crit from Sharpened Claws, 105 attack power from Predatory Strikes, and while I'm not going to try to quantify it, you'll also lose some AP and crit from Survival of the Fittest. Now we're down to a measly 492 threat without Maul, and need to take 800 incoming DPS to sustain our lacerates, and if we spam Maul too, we only get up to 721 TPS, and need to take a whopping 1814 DPS to sustain it. Note that at this point, the healer would overtake you on threat if you were taking that much damage, unless they were a paladin.

But lets not stop there. Lets go all the way, and see what a typical moonkin build with absolutely no feral talents could put out threatwise with that same set of gear. Now we drop Naturalist and Ferocity too, and cry a little. Lacerate and autoattack now only give us 467 threat/second, requiring us to take 920 damage/second to even maintain that (While the non-pally healer cranks out 460 threat/second just to heal us through that kind of damage), and if we mix in maul, we only get up to 689 threat/second, and we have to take 2125 damage/second just to get the rage for it!

Two lessons to take away from all of these numbers. First of all, Mangle itself is a HUGE source of threat for feral druids, losing that one poing alone can drop our threat generation by as much as a quarter! Second, and more importantly, a druid who isn't deeply into the feral tree generates CRAP for threat. They could probably pop on some armor and take a hit fairly well, but they can't piss the mobs off enough to be getting hit unless they're the only ones paying attention to a mob (or the DPSers are very careful/bad), and they have a paladin for a healer, most likely, at least if they ever have enough rage to throw any Mauls.

Continue reading 'ACLaBT4: The Tab-Lacerate Fallacy, and Tanking as a Non-Feral'

ACLaBT3: Earthwarden V. Wildfury, and Low-Rage situations

Today, I'm going to look at our two most used endgame tanking staff options, and try to determine whether its possible for the Earthwarden to truly be better than the Wildfury Greatstaff for threat generation. Then I want to shift gears to a very familiar situation for most of us: Low Rage tanking, often experienced when we're either overgeared for an instance, get a lucky string of dodges, or are offtanking an encounter such as Void Reaver or Gruul.

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Earthwarden versus Wildfury:

First off, Wildfury Versus Earthwarden. In terms of overall mitigation, there is little question as to which is better: Wildfury gives us the same armor, coupled with more stamina and dodge, at the cost of some defense and expertise rating. With expertise doing so little for mitigation (one less parry every 67 swings yielding a faster autoattack), the only reason, mitigation-wise, to NOT use the wildfury is if losing the defense on the Earthwarden is needed to stay crit-immune.

The comparison is not so straightforward, however, if you consider threat generation. Wildfury has a whopping 280 more AP than the Earthwarden, but the Earthwarden essentially gives a tank 3% bonus to hit (via a 1.5% reduction in both dodges and parrys). But is it enough to make Earthwarden the better threat stick in any situations?

Well, first off, lets give the earthwarden every advantage we can. Lets say that we're in a zero-rage situation, and thus have to limit ourselves to a simple Mangle->Laceratex3 rotation, with no Mauls, thus maximizing the importance of our lacerates for threat. Lets also say we have 0 crit, and an obscenely high amount of AP: 4000. Assuming we're using Earthwarden, we get a threat generation of 809 TPS. If we add 280 AP, and subtract our the Expertise EW gave us, we end up with. . . 815 TPS. So even under the most absurdly biased circumstances I could come up with, the Wildfury Greatstaff still gives us more threat generation.

Don't vendor that hammer yet, though! There IS one reason to use EW over the Greatstaff, and its threat related. If you need to be absolutely sure that you get some threat on a target as quickly as possible, without an unlucky string of misses, throw on the 'warden, get a few hits on a mob to cement your aggro, then swap back to the Greatstaff. While your average threat goes down, the odds of an unlucky string of misses go way down, too. I still occasionally use my Earthwarden on pulls, and can be great for mid-fight pickups too, like when you need to grab a Hydross add or two.

Offtank Rotations; AKA Low-Rage Situations:

While its fun to look at our threat generation under near-infinite rage conditions, its often not realistic. Maintaining mangles, lacerates, and mauls is hard on our red bar. For our baseline example of a 2500 AP, 30% crit bear tank, we would need a supply of 11.4 rage PER SECOND from incoming damage to maintain all of our attacks at all times. According to Karthis, we get 0.0091 rage per point of incoming damage, so to maintain that threat generation, we need to be taking 1253 damage per second to fund our "infinite" rage cycle.

Now, if you stop and think about it, thats not too unreasonable, at least for 25-man boss fights, and even some of the 10-man fights. At least, not if you're actually taking hits. But what happens when you're the offtank, on fights like Void Reaver or Gruul, and any damage you take is unreliable at best? What happens when you dodge three Hurtful Strikes in a row, and that eternal wellspring of rage dries up?

The short answer is, we have to drop some attacks from our rotation. Most tanks' first reaction is to drop maul from the rotation, and if we look at our rage efficiency numbers, thats the right choice, as it is our most rage-inefficient attack. Dropping Maul from the rotation completely drops the rage we need to get from damage way down, to a meager 1.68 TPS, or about 185 incoming DPS. Even on fights where you truly aren't taking damage, that should be manageable via cave-ins, poundings, whirls, and whatnot. And if it isn't, you may just have to scale back your lacerates a bit to compensate. But never, under ANY circumstance, let yourself be out of rage when a mangle cooldown is up! EVER!

Now, most bears already know this. Never skip a mangle, only maul if you have the rage, blah blah blah. My point is, with the calculator, we can actually predict what our threat output will be under low-rage situations. By dropping Maul completely, we're only losing about 20% of our threat generation. A hefty sum, to be sure, but I'll bet if a warrior made a similar threat calculator, and compared their own infinite-rage rotation to a zero-rage rotation, they'd lose a LOT more. Thats why druids are so valued as offtanks in these situations.

Next time on ACLaBT: Threat generation for non-ferals, or, when spec really CAN be more important than skill. Barring an interesting topic suggestion, this will be the last installment of ACLaBT.
Continue reading 'ACLaBT3: Earthwarden V. Wildfury, and Low-Rage situations'

ACLaBT2: Swipe vs. Lacerate and the Efficiency of Maul

So, now that we have this fancy calcumalator here, lets get to using it. Today I want to look at two subjects: Swipe vs. Lacerate for single target tanking, and the effectiveness and efficiency of Maul. We'll get to other topics, like the value of hit, expertise rating, and how to use the calculator to make a good offtanking threat rotation, in a future post.

The Surprisingly High Efficiency of Maul

I'm going to start with the second subject first, because it really surprised me when I actually started looking at the numbers. Using the numbers from yesterday, Maul is only about 10% less rage efficient than lacerate, coming in at about 27.2 threat/rage compared to lacerate's 31.4. The lower your AP and crit are, the more rage efficient Maul is, though even if we reduce ourselves to 1500 AP and 20% crit, Maul is only AS efficient as Lacerate. The lesson here is simple: Dont worry TOO much if you Maul one too many times, and because of it miss a lacerate. You're not losing that much threat. . . unless you also miss a mangle, which has an INCREDIBLE amount of rage efficiency!

Now, you might be wondering, how does Maul have negative scaling? Well. . . it actually has no scaling whatsoever (Save for a little bit of scaling with crit, I suppose). The reason Maul's numbers look worse and worse as we get better threat generation stats is actually due to the scaling of autoattack. The better our autoattack damage, the more rage our autoattacks generate. . . and since I'm factoring the loss of an autoattack into Maul's rage cost, Maul actually costs MORE rage the better your gear is.

Swipe Vs. Lacerate: the Breakpoints

Some of you may not realize this, but there comes a point where Swipe actually pulls ahead of lacerate for single-target threat generation. The question is, where does this breakpoint lie. Well, funny thing, its actually pretty simple to extract the data, but it relies on two factors: your crit, and your attack power. I'm going to assume that hit is meaningless here (since both attacks suffer the same miss rate). I'm also discounting the lacerate bleed effect for now, basically assuming we're comparing Mangle->Lacerate x3 to Mangle->Lacerate->Swipe x2, just for ease of calculation. And I'm going to look at 2 values for mob mitigation; 30% because thats what I used as the default in the calculator (And coincidentally, is about what Void Reaver sits at after raid debuffs, that being a very threat-sensitive fight), and 20% (Which will be the new default, based on the research done on boss armor at Elitist Jerks, and assuming full raid debuffs and average armor, more or less). The results, which are also now saved in the calculator, are as follows:

To read this table, just find the row that most closely resembles your Attack power, and the colum that resembles how you want to compare swipe and lacerate (20% or 30% mitigation, Threat/swing or Threat/rage). Where they cross is a crit value. If you have more than that amount of crit, Swipe outperforms lacerate. Less than that amount of crit, and lacerate pulls ahead. So, for example, I figure that, raid buffed, I have about 2600 AP and 35% crit. Looking across the 2600 AP row, I see that, believe it or not, there is only one occasion where swipe DOESN'T outperform lacerate on a single target: Threat/Rage on a target with 30% armor.

What this says to me (and yes, this actually is news to me) is that I need to switch my tanking rotation to more heavily use swipe, except for when I'm tanking on the Lootreaver fight AND am threat limited (Not actually VR's target). Looks like its time to start using that Mangle->Lacerate->Swipe x2 rotation I mentioned earlier!

Tomorrow: Earthwarden Vs. Wildfury Greatstaff, and Offtank Threat Rotations

Continue reading 'ACLaBT2: Swipe vs. Lacerate and the Efficiency of Maul'

A Closer Look at Bear Threat, Part 1

Today's entry is going to be relatively short. Mostly because I've spent most of the last 2 hours creating a threat calculator for our various druid threat attacks, taking into account ALL the variables I could muster. Overall hit rate, crits, bonus threat, talents, heck, the only thing I think I left out was the possibility of having SALVATION on! Well, that, and the possibility of fighting mobs that are lower than level 73, because I dont care about trash *shrug*. Special thanks goes to Karthis; your post on rage generation was a great help, the formulae on wowwiki were just too painful to try to interperet.

First off, here are the numbers that appear in the calculator by default. I assumed a reasonably well geared, raid buffed tank, using an Earthwarden (Note the Expertise rating):


And here is a link to the calculator itself. Simply adjust the green values to suit, and witness the magic!

Tomorrow's post is going to use this calculator to analyze druid threat generation. What fun!

Nonetheless, If you happen to find something I did leave out, or think I might have, say so, I'll get it in there before Part 2 tomorrow. Oh, or any mistakes I may have made (Especially if you happen to have a reliable source with an exact value for swipe scaling).
Continue reading 'A Closer Look at Bear Threat, Part 1'