[Prot] WoD/Legion Alpha Discussion

[darkwarrior42]

This cropped a while ago on this forum as well. There's no bug, so far as I can tell, just people not reading things properly. Warcraftlogs shows data in a couple of different places, and if you read the wrong column it can look like your block chance is a lot lower than it actually is. (If you're looking at warcraftlogs, go to "damage taken", then mouse over the coulmn "hits" to see how many of those were blocked; you can also mouse over "misses" to see the miss/dodge/parry breakdown. If you mousover the "damage taken", you see what % of the damage was unblocked, and what % of the damage was blocked.)

Also, one of the people making the complaints is confusing real block chance with what the mastery says. I agree with him in that I'd like to see the tooltip on mastery account for DR, but the block chance on the character sheet is mostly accurate so it's not that big a deal for me.

Looking at one of my first M BRH runs, i see a block chance of 22.5% on me against melee hits for the entire dungeon. Mousing over the damage taken column, I see I took 84.78% of my melee damage from unblocked hits, and 15.22% of my melee damage from blocked hits.

[flzk]

Here's that weakaura for Ursoc.
You'll need to have your co-tank set to focus for it to work right. It's purposely annoying, but you'll never miss a taunt swap again

dOdbeaGAQcA9iLyxuL61sfAMufnxKIzRs3uf03OkzNGyVKDdSFPI(jvHgMkYVf52izOsv1GLQYWbvhuf6XIQJHuDoPcwii1sPkWIPQA5s5HuvEQYYeuphXHL0ufAYuz6qxuQsxvqUmQRtXgLk5ZuYMPuBxIoTQ(ksPAAIsFxQIdPc8xjmAbmEqYjrkLBjvQRbkNxu8mbABQOghsjTOROgLMtZPOMDcG7Pfwq8kSM7jWV1mrgkulEmeK4bhCGwnh)so2EllUDyYXcs30pPvZXpbikQrWAdvuJKmaxrEGkaWxTdReKBAKKb40OnaYn7AotZrNlbi0q7CTJhnTkHM(t9WTJMwLCi7(knlzaocn(RuENSS0CPcsYaCcAHA2p4jbuuZLkijdWj)cfQ5EIhAa54xYAvqgTmE02MWOGqh2jnS9wwCtrnmdCwJlzaQLBiyIQiW7yn8PyNMbWLma1WNIDAotRIFcOfuJlzaQ5lr5VID2NNjlnhtWqGh1St5gIMHWfe489cPsXcAndHlCmbdbEuqRrm(5sgGZyB)qPv474IflKpF9UPrGZ3lKkfR5XsU1ta(sjuRXwFceZaN1qgkuRN3HbuxW8YRtHd6fmyDiBWoe88jz3D2SAadvS9wwCJiiH1ENwOgjLRfGFRaO6c2PZNHb70zyzHfm45GHLD3zpRDtvNIAy9YaurnkZfFffkuZq4cgKNmaKBVt(1CVT9NBUygf1Omx8vuOqTw6YkQrzU4ROqHA21C8taf1Omx8vuOqn4LWX6LbOIAuMl(kkuOwRMZkQrzU4ROqHAmipzai3ENgDAnlDHAvN7XpbQ3cS9wwCJOOGqxrnS9wwCtrnmdCwJlzaQrm(5sgGZyB)qPv474IflKpF9UP5mTk(jGwqnUKbOMVeL)k2zFEMS0ig)CjdW(BS9dL26Vxp9uZXeme4rn7uUHOziCbboFVqQuSGwZq4chtWqGhf0AgaxYaudFk2PrGZ3lKkfR5bmW1zFDDzsaHAga2EllUPOqHcfQr0c7DyVP7nmTsbHE2W0fkb

doesnt that make you eat overwhelm+rend if you only taunt when overwhelm is applied ?

[TheRabidDeer]

This cropped a while ago on this forum as well. There's no bug, so far as I can tell, just people not reading things properly. Warcraftlogs shows data in a couple of different places, and if you read the wrong column it can look like your block chance is a lot lower than it actually is. (If you're looking at warcraftlogs, go to "damage taken", then mouse over the coulmn "hits" to see how many of those were blocked; you can also mouse over "misses" to see the miss/dodge/parry breakdown. If you mousover the "damage taken", you see what % of the damage was unblocked, and what % of the damage was blocked.)

Also, one of the people making the complaints is confusing real block chance with what the mastery says. I agree with him in that I'd like to see the tooltip on mastery account for DR, but the block chance on the character sheet is mostly accurate so it's not that big a deal for me.

Looking at one of my first M BRH runs, i see a block chance of 22.5% on me against melee hits for the entire dungeon. Mousing over the damage taken column, I see I took 84.78% of my melee damage from unblocked hits, and 15.22% of my melee damage from blocked hits.

Is Skada also wrong?
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...bugged/d87r74b

[darkwarrior42]

Is Skada also wrong?
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...bugged/d87r74b

Honestly, I have no idea how Skada breaks its data down precisely, so I can't say... I would guess that Skada is giving accurate results that are being misinterpreted.

At a glance, I can say that the person presenting those screenshots is simply wrong. Block is checked for AFTER miss/dodge/parry, so comparing the two together like that is wrong. That damage log I said I had 22.5% block in? That's 22.5% of the attacks that were NOT blocked/dodged/misses. Of those hits that got through, the ones that were blocked accounted for ~15.2% of my blocked damage. Lots of ways to read the numbers.

Regarding those screenshots: The incoming attack breakdown I see here includes spell hits, dodges, misses, parries, absorbs, and full absorbs. So the things that occur to me immediately are:
1) Spell hits, dodges, parries, and misses have to be subtracted out entirely. They don't interact with block at all (assuming no holy shield, for spell hits).
2) How does Skada separate out absorbs and full absorbs? If an attack is a block that's fully absorbed, will it show as both? One or the other? If an attack is partially absorbed, will it show both, or as only one?
3) If this is across the entire dungeon, is it including mechanics that can't be blocked/dodged/parried, skewing the numbers?
Questions like this are why logs are preferable when trying to hunt these things down, because there's simply a lot more information to work with. I pulled up two of my other logs from mythic dungeons, and both show comparable numbers for blocked hits, nor have I seen anything in-game while playing that would indicate the numbers are dramatically off.

Still, if we look at the http://imgur.com/a/bgmEN screenshot, having what seem to be the most reliable numbers (one shows a crit and some immune messages, while another has over 50% absorb that I'm guessing had a disc priest throwing out shields or the like), we get the following breakdown:
419 physical hits, 407 hits partially absorbed, 194 hits parried, 161 hits blocked, 144 hits fully absorbed, 73 spell hits, 29 dodges, 16 misses.
-We will completely ignore spell hits, dodges, mises, and parries, as they couldn't have been blocked at all.
-If you look only at attacks that have no absorb on them, we have 419 hits, 161 blocks... 580 attacks, of which 161 were blocked, a block rate of 27.75%. Not perfectly accurate, but good for a very rough idea.
---Here's where it gets murky, because I don't know how to deal with those "absorb" entries.
----Possibility #1: None of them were blocks, giving us 1131 hits total, of which 161 were blocked, for a block rate of 14.2%
----Possibility #2: Some of them were blocks, not recorded as blocks separately. We have no way to tell what the block rate would be in this case, even though I think it's probably the most likely... we could assume a block rate, but with 551 hits fully or partially absorbed, whatever block chance we assumed would strongly color the result.
----Possibility #3: some of these were blocks, recorded simultaneously as blocks and absorbs. That would give us 965 hits, of which 161 were blocked, for a block rate of 16.7%.

As you can see, how the data is interpreted and calculated vastly changes the outcome... and none of my results are the "11.2%" rate that the person who provided that screenshot is complaining about. Under any analysis, even the one that is least favorable (possibility #1) to block, I come up with a block chance higher than his parry chance, as we would expect.

- - - Updated - - -

And honestly, reading through rest of the comments I see there (don't usually frequent reddit), I'm not filled with any confidence in much of what I'm seeing there. Lots of people relying on skada's incoming attacks, no links to any logs... I will, if I get a chance, run logs the next time I run a dungeon or two and run skada as well, see if I can figure out exactly what it's doing.

[celinamuna]

Is Skada also wrong?
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...bugged/d87r74b

Yes.


a) This data is terrible because it has spell hits in it.
b) Block only applies after you didn't parry/dodge.
c) Block % already includes mastery
d) it doesn't say if full absorb included blocks

Now let's do math :
B. With 16% parry, and 3% dodge and 1% miss, you avoid 20% of all attacks. So if you only get hit by 80% of attacks, with 23% block, you would expect to block 18.4% of all attacks.

Now let's assume that your 16% parry accurately represents 196 hits avoided. --> total hits are 1225. From those you parried/dodged/missed 239 for a total of 986 Hits that landed (while according to math, you'd see that it's 987 for full absorbs + hits + blocks, so so-far so-good)

Let's assume you blocked 23% of those. This would result in 227 blocks. You "only blocked" 161 hits. So what happened to the remaining 66 hits ? Well, you have absorbs : 407 --> 23% of those is 99, so you'd be at > 23% block chance.

But again, your data set is bad due to how it calculates everything.

[grippo]

Hello

I have just decided to park my Veng DH for a while and focus on my prot paladin. I have always played paladin but as Holy so I was wondering if anyone had any good Weak Aura strings for Prots? Maybe with a ability priority built into it while I learn the spec more.

[Angusmcdowel]

doesnt that make you eat overwhelm+rend if you only taunt when overwhelm is applied ?

There's multiple triggers. Trust me, I've killed the boss on all difficulty levels using it, and it works WONDERS.

[Deleted]

Im not a that into theorycrafting or math :P But I sort of remember hearing about a 2 roll system(dont know much), does that change anything about the %block and Dodge/Parry.

I checked my warcraftlog on nythendras melee hits and I only blocked 8 out of 81 melee hits. I have Block 18.98% Dodge 3.00%. Parry 14.04% on armory, should it be that low?

[darkwarrior42]

Im not a that into theorycrafting or math :P But I sort of remember hearing about a 2 roll system(dont know much), does that change anything about the %block and Dodge/Parry.

I checked my warcraftlog on nythendras melee hits and I only blocked 8 out of 81 melee hits. I have Block 18.98% Dodge 3.00%. Parry 14.04% on armory, should it be that low?

Well, keep in mind on any small sample (and 81 is small in this case), you're likely to see a lot of variance. So assuming 1% miss, 3% dodge, 14.04% parry... that's a total of 18.04% raw avoidance.
-18.04% of 81 hits is 14.6, so we'll assume you avoid 15 hits.
-That means 66 hits get through. If you block 18.98% of them, that's about 12.5 hits.

So 8 is a bit low, but easily explained by some RNG.

All 2-roll means is, the game rolls first for dodge/miss/parry/hit. If the attack comes up "hit", it rolls again for "block/no block". So your block chance isn't "18.98% of all attacks", it's "18.98% of all attacks that are not misses/dodges/parries".

[garthvedar]

Just bought it so it better be .. if not, i will find you.

Can we all agree on this, before I spend a ridiculous amount of gold on it ? Is it really that good and worth it ?

EDIT: Talking about DMC: Immortality ofc.

[Marrilaife]

Can we all agree on this, before I spend a ridiculous amount of gold on it ?

Well on my server I bought the tank DMC for about 20% of the price the melee dps DMC goes for, so I consider that a good deal.

A stack of starlight roses could cost me more.

Btw guys, are you using the new armor pot? What's the best usage of it? Does is still give AP like bonus armor in WOD or is it better to pre-pot with a dps pot and only use armor pot as the second in combat pot?

[Deleted]

Well on my server I bought the tank DMC for about 20% of the price the melee dps DMC goes for, so I consider that a good deal.

A stack of starlight roses could cost me more.

Btw guys, are you using the new armor pot? What's the best usage of it? Does is still give AP like bonus armor in WOD or is it better to pre-pot with a dps pot and only use armor pot as the second in combat pot?

Always dps pre pot. Unless you really need the extra survivability use a dps 2nd pot too. I had a bit of trouble ursoc sub 30% so i armor potted there. everywhere else i only used old war pots.

[Deleted]

Wait... you guys can actually afford new potions on your servers? ^^
I'm too cheap to even use them on heroic mode, still using WoD pots. Like I would pay 2k per pull...

[Fusoya]

Yes, it's BiS (and will only be more BiS in 7.1 when you can upgrade it once more)

Your second BiS would be a stat stick with a lot of haste

I sincerely hope that they do make tank trinkets more appealing, the current state of them is shocking, pretty much all of them are traps

What has happened to this thread? DMF trink; armor pots? It's a sad day when the only person making any sense is Lazel.

DMF is a complete waste of gold, and you would be better off going double stat-stick. That being said, stat sticks are also underwhelming. If you want to throw gold at something, buy/upgrade the Alchemy trinket (static vers; fair uptime on large str proc). Alternatively, Horn of Valor or Shivermane's Jawbone remain pretty good if you haven't had one of the viable trinkets drop in raid.

We haven't come close to failing any dps checks at all this tier. If we do, then maybe it will require a trinket swap, but until then, I'll enjoy taking a ton less damage.

>7s from Ursoc enrage
>"Not even close to failing DPS checks"

[Marrilaife]

I'm too cheap to even use them on heroic mode, still using WoD pots. Like I would pay 2k per pull...

Kinda asked the question because wondering what to do, my raid leader said we should start using pots on mythic and when close to a kill, not sure does that apply only to dpsers or to everyone, and need to consider my options.

My inner scrooge tells me to not use them when what's wiping us on mythic nythendra isn't a tank issue or a "low dps" issue but some raid mismanagement. However in case I have to use them, better to know what's the best option.

[Ulrik]

On Elerethe, BoSW ended up being huge for our strat, effectively negating a huge raid damage ability. On the second platform, in roc form, she does this big wind pushback that puts a stacking debuff on everyone in it. It is intended that the active tank and half the raid soaks this. We worked around it by using BoSW and Bubble. I tank it first, and turn her so she pushes me into a wall, and use bubble to negate all the damage. Then my co-tank takes the second one, and he does the same, as I BoSW him. It is important to note that I also took Final Stand, so that I'd retain threat while I'm bubbled. In hindsight, it might be possible to do it without Final Stand, if it works as a fixate, and threat is meaningless during the cast. Will find out next week.

Thanks for the tips. BoSW worked flawlessly. Two extra things, the time between each Violent Wind is greater then Forbearance so you can do both yourself. And I think it is a fixate and found that Final Stand is Not needed.

Since we're three tanking (linked tanks get spiders) this also let me use one permanent spot as my pushback wall. I just used a spot near the encounter entrance that had plenty of wall/roots. The other two tanks handled the Raking Talons while I was running back from East Bumville.

[Angusmcdowel]

>7s from Ursoc enrage
>"Not even close to failing DPS checks"

Considering the fact that we're the third fastest kill on wcl, yeah I'd not consider that close to failing dps checks. Also, out of all the fights this tier, that is the one I'd be MOST likely to use tank trinkets over dps trinkets, along with armor pot at sub 30%. I'll min max as much as the next guy, but there are times when you are better off maximizing your survival to ease your healers to get a kill.

[Fusoya]

Considering the fact that we're the third fastest kill on wcl

That's kind of the point, though. Even the fastest kills are very close to the enrage timer, and the majority of the logs are >5min. For now, you serve your raid by providing the maximum DPS output while not dying. Survival is eminently achievable without do-nothing trinkets like DMF.

Using an armor pot over Old War is criminal. A single pot can put out 2-3 million damage. The best advice to those asking is to manage your CDs appropriately for the sub-30 Blood Frenzy.

[Deleted]

Pawn weights ( Pawn: v1: "Comb_Pre_raid": Strength=7.4, Stamina=7.94, CritRating=6.9915, HasteRating=8.144, MasteryRating=7.566, Versatility=8.2235, Armor=19.608, Dps=1.7905)

I think this was posted on MMO-Champion forums and was celinamunas stat weights. Now, I would like to compare them a little. Crit is 85% as good as Versatility. But 15% difference is significant, right?

No it isn't. There are few reasons for this. First, it's not 15% difference. Let's take versatility (8,2235) and crit (6,9915) and compare them to armor (19,608). Versatility is 41,9% as effective as armor and crit is 35,6% as effective armor. 41,9% - 35,6% = 6,3%. In that 6,3% difference there is littered every single stat besides armor.
Secondly as most gear has two primary stats, armory and two secondarys. We have no control over two primary stats nor armory but can try to get best secondarys. Here is example, Crown of Silver Hand (810ilevel head)
810 head:
508 armor (9980,5 gear points)
894 strenght (6615,6 gear points)
1340 stamina (10639,6 gear points)
659 1.secondary (5419,3 gear points)
466 2.secondary (3795,1 gear points)
(Total best secondaries 9214,4 gear points)

So we notice that even with best possible secondaries, armor beats them. But not only that, stamina beats them by large margin. Add strenght there too and value of secondaries gets even more lower. But lets take a look if that piece had worst possible secondaries:

659x6,9915+466x7,566=8133,2

Total points best secondaries: 36450,1
Total points worst secondaries: 35368,9
So difference of best secondaries vs worst secondaries is 1081,2 gear points meaning that worst secondaries is 97% as effective gear piece as with best secondaries.

But what if there would be single secondary? So same piece of armor would get 1125 points of single secondary.

1125x8,2235 =9251,4 Meaning best secondary gear piece would have 36​487,1 gear points.

1125x6,9915 =7865,4 Meaning worst secondary gear piece would have 35101,1 gear points. That would mean worst single secondary gear piece would be 96% as effective as best secondary gear piece.

Now, it fast becomes obvious that when there are armor and two primary stats, what secondaries happen to be in gear matter extremely little. So what happens if strenght and armor are not around?

Glinting Quartz Ring 810 ring:
754 stamina
678 1.secondary
904 2.secondary

So with best secondarys 754x7,94 + 678x8,144 + 904x8,2235 =
18​942,436

And worst secondaries 754x7,94 + 678x7,566 + 904x6,9915 = 17​436,824

Difference is still small, ring with worst secondaries is still 92% as effective as best secondaries.

But what if there happens to be only single secondary? Holy grail of (currently possible) secondary stat min-max?
So 754x7,94 + 1582x8,2235 =18​996,337
And 754x7,94 + 1582x6,9915=17​047,313
Ring with worst secondary is 89,7% effective as ring with best secondary. 10,3% difference isn't earth shaking but it's significant. But there is twist. As player character has only three possible slot of accesories compared to nine slots of armor that has two primary stats, armor and two secondary stats. So lets compare best ring vs best helm.

Helm:
508 armor (9980,5 gear points)
894 strenght (6615,6 gear points)
1340 stamina (10639,6 gear points)
1125 secondary stat (9​251,4)
Helm total=36​487,1

And best secondary ring:
754x7,94 + 1582x8,2235 =18​996,337

This means that our best itemized holy grail ring is 52% of value from best secondary helm. To put this perspective, we need two rings to compete with one helm.

And I didn't take account that it's not possible to have best secondaries on all pieces simply because it's shared with other classes and we want tier armor because of set bonuses regardless of secondaries.

So, while it's understandable to chase best secondaries, perspective should be kept in mind that difference won't be overblown.

[Deleted]

Hey Dion,

I saw this post on Maintankadin and I didn't find the time to respond yet. So I'm just doing it here, since Maintankadin seems pretty desolated while this forum here is still quite active.

You have basically mathed out what I have long suspected but never got around to calculate. This is the reason why ilvl>all is still around as a gearing recommendation. If people ask me how to handle it I usually recommend to go for the higher item level unless the difference is only 5 levels. I haven't really done the math for that, but since I am testing pawn at the moment and I'm using a similar set of stat weights, it has pretty much recommended the same thing.

However, breaking items down into a single number might not do it justice. Seeing that some stats have a real impact on how or even if we can react to a certain situation (hello haste...), others are just flat out passive and don't change a thing, crit and versatility would be examples for such stats. Haste literally allows me to do more. I can drop and heal back up more often, I can use SotR more frequently and that gives me more freedom to distribute it throughout the fight and having it ready for critical phases. On the other hand, if there are only few critical phases, we might as well stack crit for the damage and the joy of seeing large numbers popping up.

My personal point of view is:

Haste: let's us actively react and prepare
Versatility: entirely passive, but consistent (always up) and very strong
Mastery: RNG-Based via block, it's only reliable component - via SotR - only works when we need it the least
Crit: all-or-nothing RNG, the worst kind of RNG in my opinion, and also weaker than mastery according to pure math

So I usually go for the higher item level unless the difference is only 5 levels, and then I go for the lower one if it has haste and the higher one doesTTn't. I realize that this is highly subjective but I have found haste to improve my experience of the prot paladin by a lot and even now after grabbing some items in the first raid ID which brought my haste down by a few percent, I notice a difference. I feel slower and restricted in the way I can act. From what I've seen, high haste values will let us shine by giving us the tools we need most more often. High versatility is equally good, but it's extremely boring and doesn't scale with player skill at all - it just sits there.