[Protection] WoD Alpha/Beta Info & Discussion

[Jackielope]

It didnt in the start of the expansion. Math is only as good as the model used, and the current model is extremely far from flawless.

Which is kinda the point. We knew that avoidance was shit. Because we knew that, we adjusted the math to also say that. Math can show you want you want if you just ask the right question.

Most practical theorycrafting is done way before any simulations is released. The amount of people that use those tools are very limited.

It depends on what conditions we ("we" being the community in general) define something as "shit," among other assumptions. If we assume that total damage taken is something we want to minimize as much as possible then avoidance would have been good. However, since the assumption eventually went with was that burst damage was the thing to avoid (based on data saying it, not total damage taken, was the real tank killer) then the eventual number crunching showed that haste was best in our case. It's all in what we choose to say is actually valuable information, whether that choice is based on actual data or is just a random thought that seemingly comes out of nowhere.

A limited number of people using certain tools can still be enough to create massive changes, as already evidenced.

[Frostcrest]

no

https://code.google.com/p/simulation....simc?name=wod
this is the latest priority list
It has no support for sanctified wrath, Emp Seals, and seraph.

Fairly sure that TMI is still out of date / un-adjusted for WoD.

Can we just stop with this for now ?

P.S. this is how much simpler ret looks with the addition of seraphim https://code.google.com/p/simulation....simc?name=wod

The code module, not the APL...

The module itself is up to date, not the default Paladin_Protection_T17X.simc file

http://gyazo.com/7998ebd17d283c2670ad304296524df3
http://gyazo.com/f20ac0d67135ab2dbb056f5e723931d5
http://gyazo.com/8f7845d98d078c83cb54ac11eb55d6a0

[Deleted]

It depends on what conditions we ("we" being the community in general) define something as "shit," among other assumptions. If we assume that total damage taken is something we want to minimize as much as possible then avoidance would have been good. However, since the assumption eventually went with was that burst damage was the thing to avoid (based on data saying it, not total damage taken, was the real tank killer) then the eventual number crunching showed that haste was best in our case. It's all in what we choose to say is actually valuable information, whether that choice is based on actual data or is just a random thought that seemingly comes out of nowhere.

A limited number of people using certain tools can still be enough to create massive changes, as already evidenced.

It is always interesting to discuss what people consider should be the baseline.

Where should we define the baseline of discussion? At the level of the average protadin? At the level of the average forum poster? At the limit of what is possible?
You will get many different answers depending on what your target audience is. I do not believe blindly stacking haste is even benefitial for a vast majority of protadins as they do not have the GCD usage to benefit from haste. We can see this very clearly from raidbots, or just from checking the "Fix my tanking" thread here on the forums. Well over 50% of protadins do not benefit greatly from haste as they do not possess the ability and class knowledge to utilize it. Yet I do not think anyone here disagrees that haste is the best protadin stat right now, other than crit for max dps of course. Currently I would say that the common knowledge of what is best is tailored for the 80th-98th percentile, however the answer for those below and above that can be fundamentally different.

My personal stance in arguments is that when discussing something as a whole, I always theorycraft from the maximum (realistic) throughput standpoint. Though of course you can go into individual scenarios and realise that the answer is completely different. As in the example of the "Fix my tanking" thread that I mentioned earlier. In that thread I always go into the individual case and give advices from that.

To me basing cutting edge discussions around incomplete simulations and/or inaccurate baseline scenarios based around the 80-98th percentile is not interesting. I rather find out how I can maximize myself to the 100th percentile.

[celinamuna]

To me basing cutting edge discussions around incomplete simulations and/or inaccurate baseline scenarios based around the 80-98th percentile is not interesting. I rather find out how I can maximize myself to the 100th percentile.

Stack mastery and crit, get free veng from timing sotr perfectly, ggwp.

[Deja Thoris]

To be fair, math bore out exactly how shit avoidance stats were for us (and other tank classes) despite how good they are in mechanical theory.

Theck does a lot of good work, and is after all building the tools the rest of us use to theorycraft with. No?

I sorta followed the evolution of the prot pally reasonably closely at the stage in MoP when haste was becoming the next big thing. I may not have my recollection perfect but Theck was asked to sim huge haste for lols. It seemed to me that someone said "I think lots of haste can be amazing, can you prove or disprove this with clever sums?"

I'm not sure Theck is cutting edge theorycrafting wise. His sims and models are amazing though and the community would be a LOT poorer without him.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I sorta followed the evolution of the prot pally reasonably closely at the stage in MoP when haste was becoming the next big thing. I may not have my recollection perfect but Theck was asked to sim huge haste for lols. It seemed to me that someone said "I think lots of haste can be amazing, can you prove or disprove this with clever sums?"

I'm not sure Theck is cutting edge theorycrafting wise. His sims and models are amazing though and the community would be a LOT poorer without him.

I remember chatting with him about haste and mastery before MoP launched on the beta servers when we were doing some combat logging tests.

[Deleted]

To be honest the most compelling thing about Theck has always been the rigour with which his models are developed, and the degree to which he explains them.

There's nothing quite like not just knowing that a sim model works, but why it works - even if the math is sometimes convoluted enough to make me shudder.

[Jellospally]

Tanking 3+ target is so dumb with tier lol. 75-85% uptime on average of 90% Block and 90% Block Value... I knew it was gonna be dumb but it is really dumb when you actually tank real mobs with the set bonus on. Cant wait to see how it feels on the tests tomorrow.

[Deleted]

Tanking 3+ target is so dumb with tier lol. 75-85% uptime on average of 90% Block and 90% Block Value... I knew it was gonna be dumb but it is really dumb when you actually tank real mobs with the set bonus on. Cant wait to see how it feels on the tests tomorrow.

Blizzards history of creating set bonuses for tanks is awesome

- - - Updated - - -

I remember chatting with him about haste and mastery before MoP launched on the beta servers when we were doing some combat logging tests.

Yeah, but it was just at that level, chatting. He released a blog post prior to MoP where he said that haste was plausible and could hold some merit or something along those lines. Haste started getting recognition in mid T14 though most paladins kept stacking stamina in gems. Whereas several paladins reached the conclusion during release week that haste was extremely good and stacked haste even on their very first gear piece. My first order of business after dinging 90 was to get a full blue haste set and a full blue "tank" set, in case they would in some way nerf haste. I learned my lesson from stacking agility in T8 and T9 as a retribution paladin, sitting on leather and mail in every slot except tier when they announced that agility would no longer give attack power to strength users.

[Deleted]

I imagine that set bonus/block interaction will get nerfed. If they balance us around it, we're going to suck shit in any content where it isn't active and before we get it.

[Deleted]

I sorta followed the evolution of the prot pally reasonably closely at the stage in MoP when haste was becoming the next big thing. I may not have my recollection perfect but Theck was asked to sim huge haste for lols. It seemed to me that someone said "I think lots of haste can be amazing, can you prove or disprove this with clever sums?"

I'm not sure Theck is cutting edge theorycrafting wise. His sims and models are amazing though and the community would be a LOT poorer without him.

Yeah, I know I asked him that several times, though I am fairly certain I was not the only one. His early haste simulations included 3000 parry and 3000 dodge, and had around I believe 5-6k haste in them. I was sitting on something around 16k haste in T14. So out of interest of how his sims would change I asked him to sim a stronger haste build. I also asked to sim a build without expertise capping. Then from judging the results I could see the weaknesses in the sims.

- - - Updated - - -

Stack mastery and crit, get free veng from timing sotr perfectly, ggwp.

Well, for dps yes I was more inclining towards when actually progressing a tier. Farm never really interested me, beyond maybe getting rankings if I play a DPS spec, and even so finding out how to get max dps is easy

[Jellospally]

I imagine that set bonus/block interaction will get nerfed. If they balance us around it, we're going to suck shit in any content where it isn't active and before we get it.

Eh the Prot war one is 100% Shield Block uptime so that means 30% more block value cuz of 4 set + crit blocks basically block 90% like pally and 100% block...

[Lethora]

when they announced that agility would no longer give attack power to strength users.

Agility never gave AP to STR users. It used to give us crit.

[Deleted]

Agility never gave AP to STR users. It used to give us crit.

It gave attack power during WotLK up until a patch mid-wotlk in ToC or if it was when ICC was released. Not many paladins used this fact, but for those that did it was insane.

I believe the rate was lower then strength however. I think it gave 1 attack power per point compared to 2 attack power per point from STR. A lot of agility items also had better secondary stats / gem slots so that made the benefits even larger. It of course also gave us crit.

Post #7 http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1549670453 in this thread seems to confirm my memory of 1 attack power per point compared to 2 from STR.

Agility gear also used to have 5 stats compared to 4 on strength which was the biggest reason it was used really. Having an additional secondary stat was awesome.

It is kinda hard to find information from back then as most information is from 3.3x and not from 3.1-3.2. It could be possible that it did not give attack power then, but I feel really certain that it did.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Agility gear had flat attack power on it, as well as agility which gave 1 AP per point.

[Lethora]

Agility gear had flat attack power on it, as well as agility which gave 1 AP per point.

Agility gave 1 Ranged Attack power for rogues and warriors and 2 RAP for hunters. As for melee attack power, it only benefitted leather and mail classes.
It never gave any melee attack power for paladins. I play since vanilla, and I used to be melee dps officer in my old guild. I know those mechanics inside out. Firefly, you are plain wrong.

[Deleted]

It is very possible that I am plain wrong in this case. I am just feeling extremely certain this is the case as I and many other people seem to recall this 1 attack power gain from agility. Though it could be just like butler mentioned that since agility gear had attack power native on it, that is what we remember.
I find it very hard to rock solidify either opinion as wrong or right as it was so long ago that finding correct information about it is difficult as most of it was updated to 3.3x

Do you happen to know what was changed between 3.2 and 3.3 then that made agility gear sub-par? Or was it maybe the pre-cata patch that changed stuff. If my memory serves me right it was during ToC or when ICC released that we had to drop our agility gear, though it could have been possible that it was in mid ICC. It was definately after ToC release and sometime during WotLK.

Edit: Yup, after talking it over some, I believe you are absolutely correct Lethora. It was not that agility in itself gave attack power, but that agility items had native attack power on them. In the pre-cata patch attack power was removed from agility items which meant that we had to swap from them. That was I believe how it was. You have a nasty memory of stuff that happened so long ago.

Even so, god, this derailed. Should have used agility for protadins in cataclysm as an example, that would have been a better one haha.

[Lethora]

Do you happen to know what was changed between 3.2 and 3.3 then that made agility gear sub-par? Or was it maybe the pre-cata patch that changed stuff. If my memory serves me right it was during ToC or when ICC released that we had to drop our agility gear, though it could have been possible that it was in mid ICC. It was definately after ToC release and sometime during WotLK.

Well, I played rogue pre-3.2 and I don't recall any plate wearer taking any agi loot in our guild. In TBC, yes, there were some scumbag dps warriors who insisted on wearing leather. Oh, and warglaives. I even recall one ret paladin in Sunwell who wore something with agility. But they did it because of crit. AP amounts from agi gear were still lower than the ones you got from STR items for STR users. Took Blizzard a while to realize that, and I believe that was the time when they introduced 5% increased main stat for wearing proper armor class to discourage warriors/hunters/shamans from using leather. Second step was increasing AGI amounts and removing bonus AP from AGI gear.

[Deleted]

Well, I played rogue pre-3.2 and I don't recall any plate wearer taking any agi loot in our guild. In TBC, yes, there were some scumbag dps warriors who insisted on wearing leather. Oh, and warglaives. I even recall one ret paladin in Sunwell who wore something with agility. But they did it because of crit. AP amounts from agi gear were still lower than the ones you got from STR items for STR users. Took Blizzard a while to realize that, and I believe that was the time when they introduced 5% increased main stat for wearing proper armor class to discourage warriors/hunters/shamans from using leather. Second step was increasing AGI amounts and removing bonus AP from AGI gear.

Well honestly, the reason why not so many people used AGI gear was pretty much the same as why not so many protection paladins used haste during T14. People were simply not knowledgeable enough about their classes to know that it was far superior. There was also a stigma of it being "wrong". The reason was because there was more secondary stats on agility gear, aswell as more sockets combined with agility giving a fair share of critical chance. The patch that is became bad was I believe when they removed AP from agility gear. A mere 5% increase would not have been enough to make strength gear more attractive then agility gear before that.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Well, I played rogue pre-3.2 and I don't recall any plate wearer taking any agi loot in our guild. In TBC, yes, there were some scumbag dps warriors who insisted on wearing leather. Oh, and warglaives. I even recall one ret paladin in Sunwell who wore something with agility. But they did it because of crit. AP amounts from agi gear were still lower than the ones you got from STR items for STR users. Took Blizzard a while to realize that, and I believe that was the time when they introduced 5% increased main stat for wearing proper armor class to discourage warriors/hunters/shamans from using leather. Second step was increasing AGI amounts and removing bonus AP from AGI gear.

Warriors used leather in ICC because of the Armor Penetration stat. I think that the pole-arm from heroic Lan'athel was something like 3rd or 4th BiS for ret pallies too (haste, crit, 3 sockets, attack power).

And every warrior I knew was using leather bracers in ICC.