The Art of Seduction

Yes, I know, I'm a Druid blogger, and this is a druid blog. But I said at the outset that one of the topics I would write about is my alts, and so today, I bring you an article about playing a warlock. I encourage you all to read it, though, since one of the marks of a great WoW player is not just knowing your own class, but having a working understanding of the other eight classes, as well!

So anyhow, I have a confession to make. For the last couple of weeks, the Rambling Bear has fallen to the corruped influence that is Kirari Jacol, the Affliction Warlock. Sure, when it comes to raiding with the guild, I've been hopping on Surania and tanking it up like a pro, but in my off time, I've been working on gearing up the gnome. Well, at least in the time I haven't been spending grinding out daily quests with the Shattered Sun Offensive. Been trying to save up money for an epic flyer for the missus once she hits 70, and while I could technically make gold faster by farming primals and such, I get bored of that REAL fast.

Anyhow, one of the big things I've been doing on Kirari (or at least trying to do, when groups are available) is running Heroic Magisters' Terrace (Or MrT, if only because that abbreviation amuses me greatly). The first boss has a dagger I desparately need (as I'm using the Continuum Blade, and have yet to see the Netherzim Mind-Blade), the third has a trinket that is absolute sex for warlocks (and shadow priests, I hear), and Kael himself sports some nice gloves (which, admittedly, also drop in normal mode), and I'd love to get a shot (rather, a second shot) at the rare mount or phoenix pet.

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Now, for those of you who may have warlocks, or have done Terrace runs with them, you know that one of the most important jobs of a 'lock in there is providing crowd control. And since 90% of the mobs in there are humanoids, we're not talking about banish here (though banish definitely has its place, making the succubi into a non-issue). Indeed, this is one place a warlock will be called upon to summon their succubus and utilize seduce, unless your group is willing to trust in your ability to fear-kite mobs without pulling extra groups (Just be careful, they might then want you to do BOTH!)

The problem with using Selrah (or whatever your succubus' name might be) for CC is. . . well, there are multiple problems, really. Seduce has a lot of limitations that the more mainstream methods, such as polymorph or ice trap, do not, at least not all at once:

1:) Short Duration. Admittedly, this isn't a direct limitation, as you can always re-cast, but with only 15 seconds of duration per cast, your seduce target does require plenty of attention in even the easiest circumstances.

2:) Channeled Spell. Fortunately, since it is your pet, not yourself, channeling the spell, it does not necessarily limit your ability to contribute damage to the group. In fact, it technically opens you up to DPS even more, as you don't need to spend time re-casting your CC every once in a while. It does, however, mean that you need to be extremely careful where your pet stands while seducing, as any damage (from AoE especially) will break the seduce and send your succubus running back to you . . . or worse. . .

3:) Can't Be Refreshed. Yes, your succubus can recast seduction whenever it breaks. But since she has to channel the spell, she can't RECAST it before the first one has expired. This means that not only is it harder to prevent early breaks by recasting long before the spell should expire, but also that at the very LEAST the mob you're controlling spends 10% of the time free from your spell's influence, during which time it is likely to go after either the succubus or your healer, both of which are less-than-ideal situations.

4:) Succubi are Frail. The succubus isn't exactly the most hearty of travelling companions. Last time I looked, Selrah was sporting about 4k health, and I think that was with a fortitude buff. So not only will her taking damage break the seduction, it may very well break HER, too.

5:) . . . And have Limited Mana. Unless you're deep into demonology, there is no way to lifetap and regenerate your minion's mana like you do for your own. And while seducing every 16.5 seconds isn't a huge mana drain, you still have to be mindful of her mana (and that goes DOUBLE for affliction 'locks like me who are used to stealing mana from a phased imp all the time).

Because of these limitations, using seduction as crowd control is a skill that takes lots of practice to master. And while I by no means claim to be God's gift to warlocks, I felt the need to post a guide because of all of the comments I've gotten from people I've grouped with regarding how amazed they were at my ability to keep a mob locked down in seduce. Such comments say two things to me: I do pretty damn well for myself, and there are a large number of warlocks (I'd dare guess the majority of PuGgers) who do NOT.

U Can Has Macros

The very first thing you need on your quest to become a master pimp (Hey, your succubus is the one seducing people, not you big guy) is a focus macro. Actually, I would recommend using a similar macro for ANY classes with crowd control duties; Mages, Priests, Hunters (for distracting shot), and even, dare I say it, Druids. The point of macroing your seduce is simple: without macros you have to change your target to that of the CC'd mob in order to apply/reapply control, a process that is both time consuming (as you have to pick your mob out of the crowd) and dangerous (sometimes you CANT find the right mob fast enough). By writing a focus macro, you never have to take your eyes off of the next mob in the kill order to reapply your control of choice. So what IS a focus macro? Well, try this simple two-liner on for size:

#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus, exists] seduction; seduction

Yeah. Thats it. All she wrote. End of story. . . well, almost. I haven't told you how to USE it yet. But that part is simple, too. Just type "/focus" while you have your intended victim targeted to set your focus target before a pull (or you can make a macro for that, too, not a bad idea if you're a shaky typist). Got that? Good. Now whenever you press your seduce macro, it will look for your focus target and, if it exists, your succubus will be told to cast seduce on it. And as a bonus, if you DONT have a focus target, the macro is smart enough to say "Hmm, well, he hasn't specified a target, so he probably just wants to seduce whatever HE is targeting." Heck, if you want to get REALLY fancy, you can go with a more complex macro such as:

/clearfocus [target=focus,dead]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus] Seduction

Which works exactly like the previous macro, except it will also, if you dont have a living focus target, set your current target as your focus.

Preventing Lovers' Quarrels

Ok, now you have a nice, simple macro that lets you seduce your intended target at a moment's notice without having to target them first. All set, right? Well, not exactly. You see, those first four disadvantages I mentioned make it so the successful pimp has to take special care of his subject. You have a short duration crowd control that cant be refreshed, breaks if your succubus takes damage, and cant be recast at all if your succubus' limited health pool depletes. This means three things: You need to make sure your succubus stays at full health, you need to ensure your succubus is out of the way of any AoE, and you need to make sure that your succubus doesn't get eaten by her "man".

The first two conditions are relatively straightforward. Make sure you have health funnel on your bar somewhere convenient and that you keep an eye on your pet's health bar, and you have the first pretty well covered.

As for the second, make like a good trapping hunter and stand to the side of your group, at the very least away from the tank, so that any AoE hitting the main group doesn't strike your succubus. If you're in a situation where you cant be apart from the group, things get a little trickier. Either stand way back behind the group, or if you're feeling daring, have your succubus go invisible, and tell her to attack something behind the group you're planning to fight. Don't let her get to her target, though, we just want her to move to where the group to be fought currently is (or at least further out there, depending on how far she can go without being in a position to aggro the NEXT group when she drops invisibility. When she gets to the desired position, either type/macro the /petstay command, or click stay on your pet bar. That way, even though you have to stay with the group, your succubus will stay positioned where the mobs were, which generally isn't where they are fought, and thus wont be where any enemy AoEs are going off.

The third, however, requires a trick. When I first started playing Kirari in groups, I HATED being asked to use my succubus for one reason: The minute the first seduction expired, the mob would almost ALWAYS beeline it for my succubus and gank her, as her casting seduction was the only threat on the mob. Sometimes I'd manage to get a second seduce off before Selrah bit the dust, but at the end of the second cast she was pretty much guranteed to be a goner. So basically, I got a sap with 1/3 the duration that cost me a soulshard and prep time after every pull.

Eventually, though, I realized there was a simple solution to this problem. Since the tank wasn't going to hold aggro off of my succubus, it was up to ME to hold the aggro by slapping it in the face with a nice dose of shadow or fire. I personally prefer slapping the mob to be controlled with a shadowbolt, if only because it takes a bigger chunk out of the mob's health, especially since I have a number of shadow-only DPS pieces. Searing Pain may be preferable to use if you absolutely need to seduce your target the instant the pull starts, as you can start casting it, hit your seduce macro a split second later, and the two spells will go off near-simultaneously. Talk about a hunka hunka burnin' love!

Anyhow, the advantages of you having aggro instead of your succubus are threefold. First, you probably have a LOT more health than your succubus, and thus are more able to take a hit if it comes down to that. Second, healers are a lot more likely to keep a warlock alive than his pet, so you wont have to spend precious time channeling heals like you would if the succubus were getting hit. And third (and most importantly), unlike your succubus you are MOBILE. Every time you recast seduce, your next action should be to get as much range as possible on the seduce target, preferably in a position where the succubus is between the two of you. This gives you plenty of time to recast the seduce without getting beat on in the meantime. If you're seducing a caster, try to get out of their line of sight, as well, though if they cast spells with >1.5 second cast times, its likely they wont be able to get anything off anyhow.

The Advanced Class

I've already covered what you need to be a decent crowd controller in instances. But there are some extra techniques you can use to get that extra edge in every fight so you never have to blame a wipe on your own failed CC.

First of all, always put a Curse of Shadows on your CC target. CoS reduces a target's shadow resistance signifigantly, and seduction is a shadow spell. If you're absolutely sure the mobs you're fighting dont have shadow resistance, this isn't strictly necessary, but its a good precaution to take, since it will reduce the risk of seduce being resisted or breaking early.

Second, know how to fear kite. This means having control of a feared mob via use of curse of recklessness to suspend the fear effect when needed. Mistakes happen, and succubi bite the dust sometimes, even for experienced warlocks. If your succubus dies, or for whatever reason *coughswipespambreakingCC* runs out of mana, you're going to have a pissed off mob barreling down on you. Instill fear in that mob, and keep an eye on it! If it runs for a nice safe, clear area, you can try resummoning the succubus mid-fight, but most of the time you're likely to have to simply maintain the fear until the group can get to it. Always watch to make sure the mob doesn't run to another group of mobs, and be ready to hit it with curse of recklessness if it tries. Which means moving with the mob, keeping it at a nice moderate distance from you. Too close, and it might break fear and kill you before you can get another fear off. Too far away, and you might not be in range to cast CoR when you really need it. Oh, and dont DoT up the mob you're fearing, unless you're very confident that you can keep a safe distance while doing it, since DoTs greatly decrease the average duration of fear. For that reason, dont use Curse of Agony to overwrite CoR when kiting.

One more thing. If you're like me, and still wearing all three pieces of your Frozen Shadoweave, be very careful using shadowbolt on your seduce target at the pull. Either use searing pain to get aggro on your target, or wait until the first seduce timer is almost up to toss a shadowbolt. Using a shadowbolt right off the bat is likely to get you aggro on ALL of the mobs in the pull, due to the 2% heal you get from shadow spells, which is not a pretty situation , I assure you. Continue reading 'The Art of Seduction'

Pulling With . . . Cat Form??

Usually, when a druid talks about making a pull, they either talk about using Feral Faerie Fire to do it from bear, or they fire off some balance spells and then quickly shift to bear. Details of such pulls have already been covered in a previous post, but there's one more type of pull that I find myself using, in specialized situations mind you, to great effect. . . the Cat Form Pull!

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The cat form pull is, at its most basic, simply another form of Line of Sight pull. Pulling using line of sight refers to aggroing a group, and then ducking behind some form of solid object in order to force those mobs (mainly the casters and ranged mobs) to follow you. In most situations, this can be done simply by pulling from next to a doorway, corner, or other solid construction, then taking a few steps to one side or another. However, in some situations, such as the four ghost pulls immediately before and after the Shade of Aran in Karazhan, there may not be convenient obstructing materials near your pull site. This is where the cat pull comes in.

The key difference for pulling in cat form is that you need to move a significant distance, for whatever reason, between the place you aggro the mobs, and the place you use to move out of LoS from them. As you may have guessed by now, the reason for using catform is Dash, also known as the "I can recover from wipes faster than you schmucks", or the "Oh shit, I didn't notice Malchezaar's enfeeble!" button. Bearform has the armor to take a hit, but catform has the speed to avoid taking any hits in the first place, and as we all know, the only thing better than taking a hit for the team is that hit never happening in the first place!

Now, since not everybody who reads this blog is necessarily in Karazhan, I'd like to first discuss this pull in a context most of you should be familiar with: Shattered Halls. One of, if not my favorite instance to run. So, lets assume you have gone through the first hall, done the slime gauntlet (or picked the lock on the door), killed the first boss, run the orc gauntlet, and killed Porung to end the event.

Now you're staring at the training hall, with gladiator groups sparring in the alcoves to the sides, some single-pull orcs beating on training dummies in the hall, and most importantly, two big groups of orcs in the middle of the rooms. Now, if you're here with a decent group on nonheroic mode, you may very well just kill off everything in here.

But lets assume that you're going to leave those groups be, either because your group cant handle them (they're not the easiest trash pulls in the world), you dont want to bother with them, or you dont have the time to deal with them (you're on heroic mode and want the badge/potions/primals from the Executioner). You pull the patrol, pull the first big group into Porung's room using the doorway to LoS pull, and clear the orcs sparring with training dummies. And now you're faced with a second large pull, deep into the hallway. You dont want to fight them where they stand, because the third and fourth group of gladiators are right nearby and likely to get pulled (either accidentally or via someone getting feared by the Darkcaster). You cant pull back to where the first group is via LoS because gladiator groups 1 and 2 are still there. Your options are to fight them where the training dummies are, leaving it up to the ranged DPS to take out any casters ASAP (which wont be for a while, due to the urgency of killing the Legionnaire) or pull all the way back to Porung's room.

Obviously, we're going to pull back. First off, mark the pull. The Legionnaire needs to die first, and the casters should either be next, or should be sheeped/trapped/seduced. Once the group is marked, and the rest of your party is patiently waiting in the previous room, its time for the magic. Target the Legionnaire, and drop a Hurricane on the group (remember to use proper hurricane positioning). After a couple of ticks, quickly do a 180 degree turn while shifting into catform, running down the hall toward your companions, and hit your dash. As long as you didn't cast hurricane for too long, and have good mobility, you should at most get hit by a single shadowbolt while running. once you get to your group, take a hard left (or right, but left takes you to a more open area to kill in), shift to bearform, and prepare to mangle that Legionnaire the moment he sticks his head around the corner! Congratulations, you just used 3/4 of your class on a single pull, more or less (Balance spells, catform, and bear form).

There is one other place where this pulling technique is highly recommended, and that is the four-ghost pulls in Karazhan on either side of Aran's room, specifically the first two and the last one, all of which are found just after an upward ramp. Here, the issue is not the potential for adds, but instead the not-so-ideal terrain itself. Your options with these groups are to fight them where they stand (which can lead to some nasty line of sight issues on the initial pull), fight them on the ramp (a fairly cramped area), or pull the group down the ramp to the previous room. Obviously, I prefer pulling down the ramp, and its not that long of a pull, but there's a catch: The LoS issues at the top of the ramp means you have to pull at close range.

Because of the range issue, I pull the ghosts a bit differently. Instead of pulling with a couple ticks of hurricane, prowl to the top of the ramp in catform, face back down the ramp, and when the time is right, pop dash, pull with a feral faerie fire on your tanking target (or one of, if you have multiples) and run like hell. Once the ghosts arrive at the bottom of the ramp, pick up yours as normal. Assuming the other tank and crowd control pick up their targets in a timely fashion, you should only ever get hit by your own tanking target.

Now, while the dash pull is extremely situational, it does illustrate an important point. Always be on the lookout for ways to use your skills that may not be obvious. A healing spell may be the perfect way to grab aggro on mobs (Tidewalker's Murlocs). Rebirth may be usable while main tanking, even when it may not seem like it (Gruul, before shatter). Sometimes tanking a mob means rooting them to the ground (Scouts on the way to Dragonhawk Boss). Sometimes bear form can be used to increase the time you spend doing damage (Feral charge after Aran's AE). Figuring out the little tricks is how a good druid becomes a great druid.

Or so I hear. . . Continue reading 'Pulling With . . . Cat Form??'

The Bear Goes . . . Mew?

Minigame time: While writing today's post, I noticed myself inadvertently using the names of my fellow druid bloggers quite a bit. So, lets make a game of it. Can you spot all 8 blog names? Highlight below for the "answer key":

Big Bear Butt, Druid Tank, Ferocious Bite, Of Teeth and Claws, Lost in the Grind, Natural Perfection, Omen of Clarity, Rawr Kitty Kitty

I'll be honest, when I think feral druid, I pretty much only think Bear Tank. Yes, I do know about catform DPS, and have done more reading about the proper care and feeding of cat form than I care to admit. But ultimately, I'm in it for the big bear butt. . . no, not like that! Sicko.

Despite this, I was realizing today just how silly it is for a feral druid blogger to have an entire post dedicated to the proper use of balance spells (albeit in the context of tanking), but nothing at all about catform DPS. And so, today I want to talk about cat DPS rotations, both for soloing and, more importantly, raid DPS. No PvP stuff here, mostly because I have about as much experience in mewkitty PvP as I do in Nuclear Reactor Control Theory.

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Soloing:

When roaming Azeroth/Draenor slaughtering the wildlife and denizens, catform is the obvious shapeshift of choice. Occasionally you might find a challenge worthy of using bear form (either large groups or tough elites), but in general the raw killing power of some well placed mangles and a ferocious bite is the order of business.

There are two general approaches used by most druids while soloing: Some, such as myself, prefer to go quickly from target to target, using brute force to kill a mob with a faerie fire pull, mangles to 5 combo points, and a FB to finish the job. Other druids, though, prefer a more elegant approach, utilizing our stunning abilities to keep a mob locked down for most of the fight. They use stealth, pounce a mob, mangle it for the debuff, shred until the stun wears off, and then maybe even use their combo points to maim the target to move into position for yet another shred.

While I personally believe brute force leads to an overall faster killing speed in most situations (and it also lets me use less of my brain, allowing me to just sit back and get lost in the grind), stunlocking does have the added advantage of minimizing the amount of time you have to spend out of form healing yourself, and on tougher mobs can even mean the difference between successfully soloing and spending some time dashing away or ghostwalking back to your corpse.

There really isn't that much to say about soloing. For the most part, you can just kill whatever you want, being careful to not let your health drop too low. There isn't much in the way of an optimal skill rotation when slaughtering nonelites, they dont live long enough to use our best finisher (rip), or to even bother with proper timing of trinket popping (pop it before you aggro, the mob should be dead by the time the buff wears off anyhow). If you get multiple mobs, you might need to shift to bear form and swipe spam the mobs to death, though if you can get away with staying in cat form, I find that doing so gives me more DPS, even if I have 3 or more mobs to swipe.

Bleed-Immune Bosses

Now, lets say you're invited to a group or raid and asked to go all rawr kitty kitty. Even here, most of the pulls are going to be more about spamming abilities until the mob is dead, and less about efficiency, because trash mobs die just as fast, if not faster than nonelite mobs you'd be farming in the wild. Feral Faerie Fire on the approach to a mob, mangle, then shred until the mob is dead. Using ferocious bite when the mob is near death is optional, I tend not to do it unless my energy happens to tick into the 35-40 range at just the right time.

On bosses, though, the name of the game changes. Now you have PLENTY of time to worry about efficient DPS rotations. This is also where your A-game is most important, as bosses are generally the real challenge of an instance/raid. First off, lets say we're fighting a bleed-immune mob like Mechanolord Capacitus or Nightbane. Ew. We have to do this without the assistance of our best finishing move: Rip. Instead, we have to use ferocious bite as our combo point finisher, or just not use a finisher at all.

The truth is, ferocious bite has one MAJOR flaw when it comes to raid DPS. . . it eats all of your remaining energy, converting any extra you had at a very inefficient rate to raw bonus damage. 2.7 damage per point of energy, to be exact. At first glance, this may sound like a good thing, letting you store up extra energy to unleash a bigger bite, but think of it this way: 42 energy adds 113.4 damage to the bite. 42 energy, assuming you have a good feral spec, could instead be used to fire off an extra shred. And if your shreds only do 113.4 damage, you need to file a bug report with blizzard, because I'm pretty sure I could do at least twice that NAKED.

So, when ferocious bite is your only combo point dump, you may not actually want to bother using FB at all. In general, you will only want to bite if you have 4-5 combo points, 35-41 energy, and no Omen of Clarity proc up. That way, you only waste up to 6 energy, while still cashing in your combo points for a rather nice chunk of damage. Note that I'm not providing any numbers here. I might come back to this topic on a later date, but for now, I'm simply quoting conventional wisdom. If you find its more effective to use FB every time you get 5 combo points, you just might be right. And if you find that FB is a waste of energy even when you hit 35 energy exactly, so be it. Just dont be saving up 100 energy just to get the big numbers on a bite, because your overall DPS will suffer for it.

So, how do we DPS against a bleed immune boss? Well, just like any other mob, we open with a faerie fire while approaching the target (or, if preferred, open with a ravage from stealth, but be careful about aggro!). If you have any use: trinkets equipped, pop one, Mangle, and then start shredding. Keep going with the shreds until you either have enough combo points (and the right amount of energy) for a Ferocious bite, after which you should resume shredding, or until the Mangle debuff wears off. When the mangle goes down, do NOT immediately reapply it. Instead, you now want to wait until you have 81+ energy saved up, and then you want to start the process all over again.

This bursty DPS style is used for one very specific reason: Shred is a much more efficient source of DPS than Mangle, but you never want to shred while the mob doesn't have the Mangle debuff due to the 30% bonus shred damage. By saving up your energy, you get to toss an extra shred or two after each mangle, thus upping your Shred:Mangle ratio, and your overall DPS in the process.

Of course, there is one other way to up your shred:mangle ratio, and that is by having another feral druid grouped with you. If you're grouped with another cat druid, they will probably keep up the mangle debuff for you (unless they're expecting you to do likewise), and thus you're likely to never have to apply a mangle at all. And if you have a druid tank, mangle should be up most of the time as well (realize, though, that two missed mangles in a row is not uncommon to a bear, and a double miss will cause the debuff to fall off). If you find yourself running with feral druids often, I would recommend downloading the DeMon (Debuff Monitor) mod and adding mangle to the list of debuffs it tracks. This can give you an easy way to make sure your shreds will be at full effect without having to stare at a million debuff icons.

Bleedable Bosses:

Ahh, this is where a feral druid can really put some hurt on a boss. When bosses can bleed, it allows druids to whip out our big gun, that weapon of natural perfection: Rip. No more do we need to worry about wasted rage from Ferocious Bite. Nor do we want to concern ourselves as much about maximizing our shred:mangle ratio (though its still better if you can use as few mangles as possible). Instead, we now want to focus on Rip uptime.

There are two important facts to know about Rip. First of all, the difference between a 4- and 5-point rip is next to nothing. And since we're now focused on keeping it up as much as possible, that means that its much better to rip with 4 combo points and get that bleed ticking sooner than it is to wait for a fifth combo point. And second, Rip takes 12 seconds to do its damage, ticking every few seconds. Mangle's debuff also lasts 12 seconds. Coincidence?

The attack sequence for rip is a bit different than it was for bite. We still only want to use shred when Mangle is up, obviously, but we also need to make sure Mangle stays up throughout the entire rip, and still want to reduce our casting of Mangle to a minimum. So here's what we do:

1: Keep faerie fire up at all times. Every little bit counts.

2: On the initial pull, mangle and shred up to 4 or 5 combo points (5 only if your fourth point is a crit). When you get there, STOP and autoattack.

3: This is the part you'll be repeating until the boss dies. Wait until you have 81+ energy. When you get there, rip, and as long as the rip hits, follow it up IMMEDIATELY with a mangle. Do NOT mangle and then rip, or the last tick of your rip will happen after the mangle debuff falls. The first tick of rip doesn't happen until 3 seconds in, so you have time. Once mangle lands, spam shred until you get back to 4 or 5 combo points, then let your energy regen again (note that this time spent waiting for energy is the perfect opportunity to refresh faerie fire). Repeat this cycle over and over.

4: Trinkets: You want to pop your trinkets just before you rip. If a trinket's effect lasts 10 seconds, you'll get a rip, mangle, and a few shreds in under the effect. Longer trinkets will apply to multiple rips, and even more shreds and mangles as well. Basically, you always want to save trinkets until you're just about to open up on another burst of DPS.

5: Too many, too fast: Sometimes, high crit and/or lucky crit strings, Omen of Clarity procs, and 2-piece T4 can cause you to hit full energy and 4-5 combo points before your rip is done ticking. When this happens, dont let that extra energy go to waste, throw an extra shred in there! The extra combo point will go to waste, but its better than missing out on "free" shreds! Actually, with regards to Omen of Clarity, you may find it best to always shred when you get a proc, even if you're already at full combo points, if only because it cant proc again while you have a free attack waiting for you.

And. . . thats pretty much it, at least in terms of attack rotations. Follow these simple rules, and you'll be well on your way to inducing a new world of hurt via a flurry of teeth and claws. Nothing too complex, but thats good, because I dont have time to practice complex DPS rotations, I have to work out my bear-pecs!


Continue reading 'The Bear Goes . . . Mew?'

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'