Warrior Threat of Sunder Armor and Heroic Strike

[frederik]

Hello,

Somebody recently told me that SA does only very low threat compared to other abilties we have. Even more so if it is already applied 5 times on a mob. Is it true that SA does less threat if there are already 5 on the mob? He told me that for max threat I should priorize HS over SA if Shield Slam and Revenge is on CD.

So SA does 260 threat but no damage. HS does only 196 but it also adds damage. When I am in Defensive Stance my abilties cause 130% threat. So with a HS that does 200 damage on a mob would I have to add 260 threat to the 196 base threat HS does or is this calculated in another way? I also think that you probably can't compare SA and HS directly because if you use HS you miss out on rage you would have generated with your auta attack, which in turn you can convert into more threat. So it is also important to know how much rage do I generate per point of white damage I do?

Of course in situations where I have to tank multiple mobs SA has the advantage that I can apply it each second where with HS I have to wait for my auto attack. I often don't have that time. So there is no alternative to it in that situation. But against a single mob when you don't have the rage to spam all your abilities on CD how do you priorize SA over HS and how does their threat value really compare especially if you take the rage loss of HS into account?


Thanks for the help

 

[epix]

shieldslam>revenge>sunder

personally im using HS only when my rage bar explodes. HS replaces the normal melee swing that creates rage and even costs rage itself. using HS usually means having no rage for shieldslam - unless your rage bar is exploding

SA does less threat when 5 stacks are allready applied? first time im hearing this. sounds like a rumor/hoax to me.
melee damage increases when SA gets applied and at 5 stacks its capped, so melee damage cant increase more from applying SA. maybe someone messed this up with less threat.

 

[frederik]

shieldslam>revenge>sunder

personally im using HS only when my rage bar explodes. HS replaces the normal melee swing that creates rage and even costs rage itself. using HS usually means having no rage for shieldslam - unless your rage bar is exploding

Yes, that is how I priorize it as well. I use Shield Slam, Revenge and Sunder and when I see that I still have too much rage left I use HS in between. Most of the time I don't have the rage to use HS on my attacks. Exceptions are bosses that hit very hard or when I have more than 3 mobs on me.

SA does less threat when 5 stacks are allready applied? first time im hearing this.

Yea that was surprising for me as well. That would mean that it is actually better to use HS instead of SA if you have applied SA 5 times on a mob, Shield Slam and Revenge are on CD, and you know that you have 25 rage left when their CD is off.

So some questions remain. It would be really nice if somebody of you could answer me this:

> Does SA do less threat after it has been applied 5 times already?

> How is threat of abilities that do bonus threat and damage calculated?

An example: HS has a base theat value of 196. I do 200 damage as well. So that would be 396. In Devensive Stance and with 5/5 Defiance my threat modifier would be 1.45. So the threat caused is 574.2. If I use a 2 second weapon that is 287.1 TPS caused and I lose rage from my auto attack. That's less threat per second than SA would do (260 * 1.45 = 377).

> Is this list of threat values correct (taken from True Guide to Vanilla Tanking)?

Sunder: 260
Revenge: 315 (if the revenge stun procs, adds 25 more threat value)
Shield Bash: 180 (if interrupted a cast, adds 50 more threat value)
Shield Slam: 307 (increases with Block Value)
Shield Block: 0,5,10 (if each successful block generates 1 rage from talents, each rage point will generate 5 threat)
Thunder Clap: 130 (not usable in Defensive Stance, has a 0.8% threat modifier)
Demo/Battle Shout: 43/55 (43 applied to each mob for demo, 55 multiplied by each party member buffed for battle)
Cleave: 130 (this is split equally if hitting two mobs, so each one gets 65)
Heroic Strike: 196

In the article Kenco's research on threat different values are used in some places.

> How much rage should I get for each point of damage done by my auto attack?

> Is Defensive Stance affecting the threat done by items like Crystal Charge as well?

 

[Slippy]

Sunder does the same threat even if capped at 5.

 

[Bolverk]

One thing to take into consideration with heroic strike threat is that it prevents glancing blows. However, it does not provide extra windfury chance like sunder does for horde and as alliance you probably got 5 weapon skill anyways so the glances on your auto attacks aren't as bad. Also the threat created by the heroic strike bonus damage scales with crit whereas sunder doesn't scale at all.
It is basically
(sunder threat + average auto attack threat)/rage cost
VS.
(heroic base threat + (bonus damage + non-glancing auto attack damage))/(rage cost + rage lost from auto attack)

So it is about TPR (Threat per Rage), not TPS because for maximum TPS you always go GCD skill + heroic (as long as you got the rage to do so). Sunder is better TPR unless there is some crazy high crit scenario or something.

In the article Kenco's research on threat different values are used in some places.

> How much rage should I get for each point of damage done by my auto attack?

> Is Defensive Stance affecting the threat done by items like Crystal Charge as well?

I think the values given my Kenco are the pre-AQ ranks and the 196 might be the rank from the AQ book.

Rage gain: From my limited testing the formula for rage from outgoing attacks used by Kronos is very close to the one on
http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Rage#Formulae
However, the received rage seems to be slightly short of what you'd expect from the formula. Unsure if this is possibly due to rounding, speculatively rage actually being handled with decimals. Also the wiki only lists crit/normal hit modifiers but there seems to be a (pretty bad) glancing blow modifier.
Side note: If you look at that formula you can see that you need to do around 60 damage per swing to receive 1 more rage, so the str scaling on it is pretty bad, crit is probably better.

Defensive stance should affects threat done by Crystal Charge. Stuff like dynamite and strat water is very handy because of this.

 

[frederik]

Thanks for your reply. It answered many of my questions.

I just found out that KTM can show a table of the abilities I used, the threat they caused and their rage cost. It even factors in the rage loss from a Heroic Strike. So the rage cost listed was not 15 but 22 (or 21 in some cases, depends on the white hit you missed out on). So that was very handy when testing stuff out.

I came to the same conclusions as you Bolverk. Sunder Armor is both better TPS and TPR than Heroic Strike if you factor in the threat and rage gain from the additional auto attack you get if you are using SA only. So my rotation remains Shield Slam and Revenge whenever they are available. If they are on cooldown I spam SA and use all excess rage for HS.

The unmodified bonus threat KTM is using for HS rank 8 is 145. The total threat of one HS is the threat of the auto attack, bonus damage and bonus threat all just added together.

This counts for all abilities that cause both bonus threat and damage. You just add the bonus threat and threat done by damage together. A Shield Slam has unmodified bonus threat of 250 (at least that is what KTM has shown me). If you do 400 damage that is a total threat of 650 (one point of damage equals one point of unmodified threat). In Defensive Stance with 5/5 Defiance the threat modifier is 1.3 * 1.15 = 1.495 (I found out that modifiers are multiplicative and not just added together). So the total threat done in DS would be 971.75. Thats a huge amount of threat. In comparison SA does 385 (in DS with Defiance) for only 5 rage less.

 

[Crometheis]

i wish elitest jerks was still around (the website) it had all these tables sorted and figured out for u, without speculation. Made it really easy to know ability rotations and such.

 

[Ersee]

Heroic strike also gives a small bonus to the autoattack portion of its damage since it is now unaffected by glancing blows. I haven't done the math but i would guess the effect is negligible and sunder still comes out ahead.

 

[Mac223]

TLDR: I made a python script which attempts to calculate the Threat Per Rage of Heroic Strike and Sunder Armor, and the figures it produced show that Sunder Armor is better in mayn cases - but not always. The important exceptions being a warrior tanking with a shield, an extremely fast weapon, and little in the way of attack power; or a warrior tanking with two one-handers and enough crit to be crit capped by a significant margin.

People have already explained the basic ingredients of the comparison between Heroic Strike and Sunder Armor, but I'd like to re-iterate the main points. The Threat Per Rage (TPR) of Sunder Armor is relatively easy to calculate, take the threat value times the threat modifier(s) divided by the rage cost; and if one is trying to be completely accurate there is also a small modification due to miss, dodge, etc. Heroic Strike is more complicated, since one has to factor in the opportunity cost of the rage that would have been generated by the auto attack, to the tune of one rage per 30 points of damage dealt.

With this in mind it makes sense that the harder your weapon hits, the greater the opportunity cost of a Heroic Strike. If you normally hit for 150 then the opportunity cost is 5 rage, and if you normally hit for 600 the opportunity cost is 20 rage. An additional complication is that at high crit rates it is common to be crit capped - that is to say, all your melee "hits" are either glancing blows or crits - so that Heroic Strike can effectively turn some of your glancing blows in a Heroic Strike crit. This mechanic is even more striking if you are tanking with two one handed weapons, in which case Heroic Strike can effectively turn some of your misses into Heroic Strike hits and/or crits.

In the following the assume that we're attacking a raid boss with debuffs putting the boss at 10% physical damage reduction. Let's first look at the classic sword and board case, where the warrior in question is hit capped, has 305 weapon skill, 20% crit, is specced into 2/2 impale, as well as 3/3 in both imp. sunder and HS.

First note that "Average Weapon Damage" refers to the average of what you see when you open your character tab and look at "Damage", and not your actual hits, or the damage of just your weapon. A couple of important caveats to this is that defensive stance will reduce it by 10%, while attack power procs like Crusader or on use trinkets will increase your "Average Weapon Damage".

Secondly, the two lines intercept at ~180, a number which I in my tank gear can only get if I equip a 1.3 speed dagger. (But note that if you're using a dagger you're most likely at 300 weapon skill, which further increases the value of a Heroic Strike.) As such, I think it's safe to say that for sword and board Sunder Armor is the go to option unless you're tanking ZG with a 1.3 speed dagger and no paladins in the raid - in which case it's still on par with Heroic Strike, so you should probably do your melee a favour and use sunder anyway.

For comparison I also did a run where I cranked up the crit to 40%, which increased the point of parity between Heroic Strike and Sunder Armor to ~210. But if you're running with 40% crit odds are that you've also picked up the AP necessary to increase your attack damage by 30.

Which brings us to fury tanking, or whatever you want to call it. Again we are assuming that we're attacking a raid boss with debuffs putting the boss at 10% physical damage reduction, and that the warrior in question has 305 weapon skill, 20% crit, and has 3/3 in both imp. sunder and HS - even though there's not really enough points for that, but for the sake of comparison we might as well pretend. The difference is that there's no more impale, and that 19% miss have been introduced to the combat table. Additionally, we will for the moment assume that the warrior isn't getting enraged, and that out of concern for the healers he (or she) is refraining from using Death Wish.

The effect is clear - we're now up to ~310, largely due to misses being effectively converted to Heroic Strikes. As promised the effect becomes even more pronounced when we bump the crit up to 40%, increasing the point of parity between Heroic Strike and Sunder Armor to ~420, since Heroic Strike is now turning some misses into not just hits, but crits.

Finally we take into account a 25% damage increase - i.e. Enrage, but it also informs us of what would happen if Death Wish was used.

Here we're up to ~450, and one can only assume that with greater crit rates, or while stacking Enrage and Death Wish, that number would be even higher. In any event, this means that if you're fury tanking it may well be worth it to prioritise Heroic Strike over Sunder Armor, depending on your crit and the speed of your weapon. For your typical slow weapon it's still a bit of a wash, but with a fast weapon it seems like Heroic Strike would be your go-to. However, if you're using Thunderfury it might not be worth it, given that using Sunder Armor is an entire new chance to get that juicy proc, where-as Heroic Strike is a mere ~20% increase compared to a white attack - given that they can miss.

Album: http://imgur.com/a/rRfCE

Code: https://pastebin.com/hNhvZZdq

Edit: I unintentionally ignored block in this analysis.

 

[dsammy]

Very interesting! Am I totally ignorant or is tanking in fury with dual wield common? My only experience is up to BWL.

 

[Mac223]

It's not that common, but quite a few of the more hardcore guilds do it. Especially on horde side, since the main benefit of fury tanking is more threath, and they don't have salvation.

 

[Ersee]

TLDR: I made a python script which attempts to calculate the Threat Per Rage of Heroic Strike and Sunder Armor, and the figures it produced show that Sunder Armor is better in mayn cases - but not always.

Should be noted that this analysis only applies to alliance. Sunder procs windfury, which means horde gets a major rage "discount" and threat boost for this skill.

 

[Slippy]

Definitely no DW tanks on Horde. Some run a modified Fury spec though. It's a world buff build.

 

[ohganot]

Sunder Armor is better threat per rage in 99% of the situations. Always prioritize it over Heroic Strike if you want to do efficient threat. Only use Heroic Strike when you're ragecapped.

If you have enough threat, you can stop using Sunder Armor and use only Heroic Strike for increased DPS.

Here's some calculations I made on this topic: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bZmHz1wrOnbhOtgZ2KKzTmOUPepq5rrbMvatBKhVEoQ