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UPDATE: I did more math later on, and it looks like armor penetration is much better. I've changed the tables and the conclusions below. The link to that is here.
A lot of folks have been asking about how to have awesome threat, and that their threat is kinda going through the tubes, and what they can do to help it.
Well...here's the bad news. Threat for bears scales very poorly. That early threat bears get is primarily because of frontloaded awesome threat from maul, lacerate and FFF. As we scale with gear...we will not see as high of gains, especially compared to some other classes who don't have these things.
At the same time, there are things you can do. And if you don't read anything else into it, note this: the best threat stats to stack are expertise (until the dodge cap), then hit, then expertise (until the parry cap), then armor pen.
I did a very basic sim to show this. The basic stats starting out are as follows:
10k AP
40% crit
60% armor on the target
0 haste, hit, or expertise to start (other than the 10 expertise skill we get from Primal Precision)
With this value and a rotation of mangle/lacerate/swipe/FFF (a very boring one), we have a threat value of 4473.88 TPS. Yes, this isn't an optimal rotation, and it's assuming no MSS or improved mangle as well.
Here's how adding 100 of any given rating (except AP, since that's 2 AP points for every one rating point) increases that base TPS:
100 expertise (below cap): 296.26
100 hit: +164.32 TPS
100 expertise (after cap): 147.3
100 armor pen: 98.396
Well...here's the bad news. Threat for bears scales very poorly. That early threat bears get is primarily because of frontloaded awesome threat from maul, lacerate and FFF. As we scale with gear...we will not see as high of gains, especially compared to some other classes who don't have these things.
At the same time, there are things you can do. And if you don't read anything else into it, note this: the best threat stats to stack are expertise (until the dodge cap), then hit, then expertise (until the parry cap), then armor pen.
I did a very basic sim to show this. The basic stats starting out are as follows:
10k AP
40% crit
60% armor on the target
0 haste, hit, or expertise to start (other than the 10 expertise skill we get from Primal Precision)
With this value and a rotation of mangle/lacerate/swipe/FFF (a very boring one), we have a threat value of 4473.88 TPS. Yes, this isn't an optimal rotation, and it's assuming no MSS or improved mangle as well.
Here's how adding 100 of any given rating (except AP, since that's 2 AP points for every one rating point) increases that base TPS:
100 expertise (below cap): 296.26
100 hit: +164.32 TPS
100 expertise (after cap): 147.3
100 armor pen: 98.396
100 haste: 68.12
200 AP: 57.5
100 crit: 52.12
Hit and expertise are insanely good here. But what about more realistic numbers? Let's say you're 100 points from the cap on hit and parry-expertise - how do the values fall in then? This means you have 163 hit and 279 expertise rating; in this case, your base TPS is 5418.8.
100 hit: +162.5 TPS
100 expertise (after cap): 147.5
100 armor pen: 98.396
200 AP: 57.5
100 crit: 52.12
Hit and expertise are insanely good here. But what about more realistic numbers? Let's say you're 100 points from the cap on hit and parry-expertise - how do the values fall in then? This means you have 163 hit and 279 expertise rating; in this case, your base TPS is 5418.8.
100 hit: +162.5 TPS
100 expertise (after cap): 147.5
100 armor pen: 98.396
100 haste: 84.5
200 AP: 67.5
100 crit: 63.5
Even here, expertise and hit are far, far better as threat stats. Up until the cap, of course. Then you're hosed.
Now, this definitely doesn't do a good job of modeling armor pen, and I didn't want to go into the insanity of that; it's quite complex. (UPDATED: complexity over here.) And as it turns out, bears are going to likely have a decent amount of armor pen given the leather in T10 - close to 500 with good gear without trying. But really - the most important thing here is that hit and expertise are the only stats that scale with the threat multiplier on bear attacks. That's the key; AP, crit, armor pen, agility - all do not scale.
200 AP: 67.5
100 crit: 63.5
Even here, expertise and hit are far, far better as threat stats. Up until the cap, of course. Then you're hosed.
Now, this definitely doesn't do a good job of modeling armor pen, and I didn't want to go into the insanity of that; it's quite complex. (UPDATED: complexity over here.) And as it turns out, bears are going to likely have a decent amount of armor pen given the leather in T10 - close to 500 with good gear without trying. But really - the most important thing here is that hit and expertise are the only stats that scale with the threat multiplier on bear attacks. That's the key; AP, crit, armor pen, agility - all do not scale.
Haste is an exception, in that it scales with the amount of mauls and thus kind of scales with that threat multiplier. But only barely. Otherwise no dice. And because it doesn't scale with as many attacks as armor pen, you're out of luck.
So if you're having threat problems? Make sure your expertise is above 26 expertise skill. Make sure your hit is reasonable. Then go for more hit and expertise and have fun.
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16 comments:
This post just makes me sad because there's so little expertise on leather TOC gear. I mean cloak from 25 man and t9 helm are actually good pieces, but then I'm compromising and using the expertise neck from 10 man hard mode and the boots from there as well. Not as good as equivalent 245 items in 25 man for mitigation or stam, but they've got expertise to put me over the dodge cap and cut down on a few parries.
Here's a question I've been wondering about recently: How adversely does haste affect your survival from additional parry hastes? Basically with all the haste on my new TOC gear I'm wondering if expertise just becomes even more important as a mitigation stat.
Pretty much all bosses these days have parry-haste turned off. It's a trend that started in TBC afaik, with bosses hitting as hard as they do Blizzard decided not to "risk it" with people going below a somewhat misunderstood expertise cap and getting auto-gimped due to hasted melee hits.
Regarding Shamad's comment: not all bosses have parry haste effect off. There are still plenty of bosses (and probably the majority) that have the parry haste effect. However, it should be noted that where it really counts--on bosses like gormok in 25h, parry hastes are turned off.
If you look at the bosses in ToC:
gormok: off
worms: stationary doesn't melee, but i would think the free one would parry haste
Icehowl: pretty sure his parry haste isn't removed
jaraxxus: who cares, he melees like a girl
faction champs: n/a
twins: pretty sure they do. Combined with their power of the twins during a pact, parry haste might gib
anub: i think he does not have parry haste turned off.
I'm not sure on a few of those bosses, but at least you can see that most of them parry hasting doesn't matter or apply, OR, it'll be turned off on the hard hitting ones.
It's ridiculous how little expertise leather there is this raid tier. I've decide I'm going to go with the boots from 10 man heroic and Jaraxxus' neck. I currently have 30 Expertise and am eating Expertise food just so I don't get so many damn parries >.<
I would recommend going for Onyxia's weapon if expertise is a problem
In the rare case I've run into threat issues during raids is to make sure you have the growling glyph equipped. If the boss can be taunted, let the highest ranged DPS actually exceed the 30% threshold, then taunt the boss, and then call out for all dps to use their threat dump. It's not the ideal way to maintain threat, but in a DPS race it's a good technique to use and a 30%+ threat boost for free.
I also keep my dust-collecting resto set handy and equip that gear real quick to pre-thorn all the tanks (assuming you don't have another druid handy). I believe since 3.1? Thorns damage scales with the spellpower of the caster. I've seen my base thorn damage around low 70s, but with spellpower gear it hits for over 200.
Just wish those pesky beasts would just drop the 10man boots..(batting 0 for every week the raid's been available :( )
The thorns thing seems intriguing. I usually click it off when our Boomkin casts it on me so I can use my free hour glyph (bears are dangerous, but also very lazy)
I played with the math a bit, and it looks like expertise as a mitigation stat solely based on the accumulation of haste isn't worth much an issue. (note: at work, have 0 actual numbers from my toon, so I approximated various values) In the interest of simplicity, I assumed hitcap, base swing speed of 3.2, and looked specifically at 26 expertise (sort of worst case scenario). Over the course of a minute I have: 20% haste only responsible for about 1.8 extra parries, and 10% about 1.6. Doesn't seem to be that much.
Would love to see someone model it legitimately to see if my approximations are correct, as I'd like to start include higher levels of expertise and boss swing speed.
Thanks for the post. Much needed. I've been experiencing threat issues in ToC. Believe it or not I'm hitcapped. I also made sure to get to the dodge cap for expertise. But it seems I should be focusing on getting more expertise. I know I need to finally give up Origin as well. That staff from Ony is looking like a mighty tasty replacement. I'll lose some dodge/armor, but I'll gain a ton more threat and health will remain static.
bearmount, I answered your question in the next blog post - but the short answer is that haste really isn't that big a deal.
Shamad - anon is right. Most bosses don't have parry haste turned off. But for most bosses, it's not an issue at all. For Twin Valks the tank damage is really miniscule, honestly; even during a vortex/dual wielding system, she doesn't do enough damage to really matter.
Chris - that's another reason the Ony weapon is awesome.
Xarnen, that's usually a good idea. I tend to ask my other druids to cast it, but they never do. And with all the cat gear and consumables I carry around I don't have enough space in my bags to carry the 2k spellpower resto/moonkin set too.
Michael, you're basically correct. It's not that big a deal.
Willow - yeah, even I was surprised at how good expertise is. The thing about expertise and hit is that both affect all of your direct attacks and thus all of your threat in a linear way. No other stat does that save haste - and haste only affects mauls. The only thing hit and expertise don't work on is lacerate bleeds.
Another Onyxia drop: Stormrage Coverlet is an interesting sidegrade to T9-Triumph.
You lose 10 Stam, but gain a pure Blue socket and trade all that Crit for a boatload of Hit, really offsetting the huge deficiency from upgrading you Weapon.
Hi Kalon,
What IS the hit cap for bears? I see some bloggers indicating 260 or so, while others have a much higher number. Which is it?
wayrachaki - the hit cap for bears is 263 unless you have a draenei in your party. It's the same for bears as it is for cats.
Thanks Kalon. I guess I was confused by the following post:
http://thebigbearbutt.com/2008/11/19/feral-druid-level-80-hit-expertise-and-dodge/
Ah - yeah, that post is very out of date and isn't right in a number of places. Sorry for the confusion.
Having those rates up-to-date would be good; I might post that.
Hi there, thanks for an awesome site!
I have a quick question: What is the exact expertise cap for bears atm?
Thanks
Cisko, there are a couple caps for bears.
The dodge cap for expertise is 26 expertise skill. If you have primal precision, that's 132 expertise rating.
The parry cap for expertise is believed to be 56 skill (14%), though there is little experimental value out there for this. This is 378 rating with primal precision.
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