[Prot] WoD/Legion Alpha Discussion

[Serenais]

Disclaimer: I am not a theorycrafter, I am just trying to make sense of things. It is possible that I understand the calculations wrong, therefore take with a bit of salt. Or feel free to wholy ignore.
TL;DR: It looks like that math seems to imply that they can't do all that much about connection between active mitigation and the rotation.


Hm. Trying to wrap my head around all what was said and written, I am starting to think we might end up in a situation where we will want to crit enough times to get a full recharge pretty much guaranteed over the time it would take to get one recharge. There are several ways to get to it, albeit probably pretty insane all of them...
1) No haste. That means two crits over 12 seconds. With 2.6 weapon speed, that is 4,6 autoattacks. Ignoring the 0,6, that means that the average crit rate would have to be at 50%. That is, I believe pretty ridiculous and unlikely to happen.
2) All haste. Not going to bother with math here, getting from 12 second recharge to 4,5 one is simply in the realm of fantasy (talking 170%-ish haste).
3) Crit-haste combination. This is where it gets a bit funny. With just some 33% haste, we can get to 9 second recharge. Judging from the gear in this expansion, that isn't so far fetched. Considering that it would mean one recharge over the span of two SotR, we'd need one crit over the 9 seconds. The roughly 4,6 autoattacks over the time it would take to get one recharge, that means we'd have to crit once in four autoattacks. On average, therefore, 25% crit. This would effectively turn the 33% haste to a soft cap. I unfortunately lack the necessary understanding of probability math to get to relatively reliable amount of crit over four swings, although over the span of the fight, this theoretically should even out (considering starting with three charges, this should get it covered unless something really bad happens). Whether reaching 25% crit will be possible, however, is not something I know enough to easily figure out.

The above, however, has one BIG problem. It effectively means that with just passive stats and autoattacking, we can get near 100% uptime on 25% damage reduction - and that is with no mastery whatsoever. No rotation, no skill usage. Considering that SotR doesn't even trigger GCD, we would just have to follow a DPS rotation with keeping usage of situational abilities in mind.
I don't know how about you, but to me, that doesn't sound like active mitigation, automated mitigation sounds more accurate. Mind you, that is with no talents whatsoever, and in order for talents to change the above, they would have to take away some haste or crit in exchange for something else, which is by definition not going to be prefferable (as it would disrupt the 25%+ damage reduction).
So, I am quite wondering where Blizzard intends to go with this. It might be that reaching 25% crit rating while having 33% haste will be nigh impossible. It might also be that near-100% SotR uptime will not be a bonus, but downright necessary for top raid progression. However, the question then would be what else would there be for active mitigation. More importantly, why it wouldn't be in the preview, considering that it would pretty much be the most important thing for the spec.

So. I hope I have the math wrong? x)

EDIT: The rotation could, in theory, increase the damage reduction temporarily, but... That doesn't sound like "enough".

[Deleted]

Just wait for all our talents AND artifacts talents... It could drastically change everything

IMHO we have to wait for the beta. We can't say (or do math) anything in relation with the actual expac.

Just wait You know Blizzard... Everything could change in the first week of Legion too.

(oh sorry, I am not a Mythic raider, read it or not)

[Serenais]

Just wait for all our talents AND artifacts talents... It could drastically change everything

IMHO we have to wait for the beta. We can't say (or do math) anything in relation with the actual expac.

Just wait You know Blizzard... Everything could change in the first week of Legion too.

While I agree with that, the thing is, for what I wrote to not be correct would be either me having the math wrong, or the recharge time on SotR being longer. The first one is WAY more likely than the second one - having one charge go back up in more than 12 seconds would make it seem like an eternity, and would probably be too punishing. I only had math for three years on an university, and I ended with tackling probability with not as much success as I'd like, so I might be wrong on the math part, however.

(oh sorry, I am not a Mythic raider, read it or not)

Doing mythic raids doesn't mean having exclusive rights on being able to do math, or to common sense.
Those who tell you otherwise try too hard to be special snowflakes.

[Lethora]

(oh sorry, I am not a Mythic raider, read it or not)[/I]

There are also different kinds of Mythic raiders!
There are some hardcores who've been 13/13 for a while. And then there are people like me who raid on a very relaxed schedule (10hrs/week max) with not too hardcore people and are 7-9/13.

[Deleted]

Well you know, I was kidding about that If I had the opportunity to do Mythic with my friends, I would do it (not enough players to reach 20 :s).
Just kidding dont worry!

As you can see, i read a lot without answering or boucing on everything :P

Serenais : Your maths seems good and full of meaning. Imo, good analyse.

Playing Paladin since Vanilla as healer first, then Tank from BC until now... you know... I encountered, like most of us, loads of changes.
I come from the age of Aura's, Seals/judgement cycle, Uncrushable maths, using warrior items with spellpower everywhere.. etc. When I see the route that our characters have traveled... it cant be worse. And I am stil playing that same character, same spec Cause I love tanking.

Futhermore, I know that everything can be buffed then nerfed or vice versa in few days (or weeks). Even if we had the opportunity to get what we claim for... the question would be : how long can we keep it ?

I wasn't telling to you "Stop your maths" or "Stop complaining". But : Just, be patient.
Artifacts will have a great role for each classes and spec's. And what do we have ? few screenshots :P that's all.
Thus, no more informations about our new prot talent "tree".

So, If you take all of that combined.. we know nothing.


(sorry for my english, it can be really bad sometimes :s)

[Fiskyh]

What I honestly hope they introduce more than anything, is options and decisions. All of this talk about uptime on active mitigation is fine and all, but I really do hope there's some decisions to be made this time around. That's why I'm not overly thrilled with the removal of HoPo. The system was boring, sure, but that was only because SotR and WoG were the only spenders. Seraphim pooling made it more interesting and fun to play with, but really it was a fairly shallow system. I would've liked them to add different kinds of spenders to that system, so we got the choice of active mitigation vs more damage output, or things similar enough.

I don't have a great understanding of game design, but I'm having some trouble seeing how they could introduce that kind of decision-making in gameplay without having a resource system. I guess they could add an offensive spell that also takes a charge of SotR to use, but then they're essentially just turning charges into our resource rather than HoPo, which doesn't make much sense either. At least HoPo is somewhat attached to the lore of the game.

[celinamuna]

Cool, thanks.

Also how do you play with those horrible unit frames!

VuhDoo - i can do anything hand related with just a click.
Plus don't really need unit frames for anything else.

[bicycle]

While I agree with that, the thing is, for what I wrote to not be correct would be either me having the math wrong, or the recharge time on SotR being longer. The first one is WAY more likely than the second one - having one charge go back up in more than 12 seconds would make it seem like an eternity, and would probably be too punishing. I only had math for three years on an university, and I ended with tackling probability with not as much success as I'd like, so I might be wrong on the math part, however.

No, I think you've pretty much nailed it. All the cries that talents will fix everything are hopeless, because based on the numbers shown, there can exist no talent to make SOTR uptime more interactive, since we're already going to be so close to perfect uptime as-is. Such a talent would need to build in a tradeoff, where it becomes interactive but at the cost of having a longer cooldown or shorter buff duration, and it just won't be worth it when you consider how good the base uptime is.

They just haven't left any design space for it.

[Serenais]

No, I think you've pretty much nailed it. All the cries that talents will fix everything are hopeless, because based on the numbers shown, there can exist no talent to make SOTR uptime more interactive, since we're already going to be so close to perfect uptime as-is. Such a talent would need to build in a tradeoff, where it becomes interactive but at the cost of having a longer cooldown or shorter buff duration, and it just won't be worth it when you consider how good the base uptime is.

They just haven't left any design space for it.

Well, not with the uptime, no. They could, in theory, get creative with the strength of the damage reduction, or damage portion, of SotR. It doesn't seem like enough, though. There would need to be something, well, something "more".

[Fusoya]

So. I hope I have the math wrong? x)

Hitting haste cap while also hitting a semi-reliable crit chance is not going to happen early in a new expansion.

[Deleted]

Hitting haste cap while also hitting a semi-reliable crit chance is not going to happen early in a new expansion.

It is, however, totally possible to hit around 25% raid-buffed crit and 33% raid-buffed haste roughly at the end of the second tier of an expac, at least if rating conversions and gear inflation stay the same. With regards to the probability math, the crits are 4 completely independent probabilities, which means we can state the following:

P(nocrits) = Pnocrit1 * Pnocrit2 * Pnocrit3 * Pnocrit4 = 0.75^4 = 0.3, roughly.

I.e, the probability of not getting a single SotR charge from Redoubt in the necessary 4-autoattack recharge window is 0.3. The likeliest fix to this is the classic Blizzard "oh we'll just nerf the conversion rate of haste because what could possibly go wrong if we did that?", but Serenais is completely correct in stating that they've basically designed themselves into a corner with the interaction between SotR charges and Redoubt. Never mind the fact that it might be a valid progress strategy to find old 1.6-speed weapons (at least until an eventual fix) if they don't normalize SotR charge gen from AA crits like SoI procs were (and might still be - I don't actually recall if they are) normalized in MoP.

We'd scale so absurdly well with gear under the proposed system, at least in terms of survivability, that they would very likely need to actively nerf us between the middle and end tier of an expansion - something I'd rather not be able to foresee through sheer virtue of design years in advance.

[bicycle]

Hitting haste cap while also hitting a semi-reliable crit chance is not going to happen early in a new expansion.

Good thing the math shows only a moderate haste level needed then, and getting 100% uptime is way more than you actually need to be effective in a world of tank swaps.

[celinamuna]

Looking at my 674 ilvl log from Highmaul (i think that was b4 the haste buff), i'd have ~ 98% sotr uptime with 25% haste and 18% crit.
In my 683 from BRF with emps i'd have 102% sotr uptime with 40% haste and 16% crit.

Using current super mastery heavy build, with 50% haste (WuE) and 18% crit i'd have 105% uptime.

So unless blizzard drastically changes something, even w/o any other resource we'll have easily > 100% uptime.

http://i.imgur.com/ks62sGa.png

This is also slight under-estimate, as i'm too lazy to account for blood lust speeding up recharge of sotrs.

[Deleted]

They basically have to decrease SotR duration (which makes the spec more punishing for casual players) or greatly decrease how well we scale with either crit or haste - whether by nerfing the conversion ratio or by making AA crits work like Grand Crusader in the sense that the RNG would be layered rather than the Redoubt proc being guaranteed. Otherwise we seem to be more or less guaranteed to scale completely out of control.

Both sound like really fucking bad ideas to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Jellospally]

They basically have to decrease SotR duration (which makes the spec more punishing for casual players) or greatly decrease how well we scale with either crit or haste - whether by nerfing the conversion ratio or by not making AA crits work like Grand Crusader in the sense that the RNG would be layered rather than the Redoubt proc being guaranteed. Otherwise we seem to be more or less guaranteed to scale completely out of control.

Both sound like really fucking bad ideas to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They need to remove the AA crit rng and re balance around that. If this actually happens by mid first tier in legion lol.

Actually fuck it lets just go back to Holy Power :

[Deleted]

They need to remove the AA crit rng and re balance around that. If this actually happens by mid first tier in legion lol.

Actually fuck it lets just go back to Holy Power :

We'd already start being clowny by the time we had access to Mythic gear from the first raid, as far as I can tell. Tank damage tuning would have to be completely absurd and you'd have to be basically guaranteed to die without some sort of mitigation for it to be balanced, and I just can't see that being their intent in any sense or fashion when casualization of tank gameplay is their outright stated intent.

[Jellospally]

Ya for sure. Something is completely wrong. Like did they not actually take 5 seconds to realize with haste scaling AND the crit on AAs being retarded?

Idk I guess its so early and should expect many changes but holy shit at that uptime lol cuz looking at other tanks they can't just keep that kinda uptime on their mitigation lol.

[celinamuna]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

To see the coverage %. You can adjust duration and weapon speed.

http://i.imgur.com/ID9BykO.png

Possible fixes and issues with them :
Decrease sotr duration --> too punishing (which is why all AM's had the duration extended)
Increase baseline cd --> too dependent on rng and any loss of uptime = kek
Make reset not 100% --> yo dawg, I herd you like RNG, so I put a RNG in your RNG so you can AM while you RNG

Not shitty fixes:
Kill AA mechanic with fire

[Deleted]

To summarize, what do we say to the notion of autoattack-based Redoubt?

[Deleted]

What kind of wacky tobacky world are we in where 100% uptime of what, 30% physical and magical resistance is achieved on a tank is possible with reasonable gear?

Where's the choice lol? Surely you should use it during periods of high damage and when you are tanking and so on.

Should just make it similar uptime to monks really, theirs is basically the same as what this is except much more limited and meaningful in scope.

Still I do find it hilarious, try and think of this in the future to when people predicted 100% SoTR uptime.