Earlier this week, Ghostcrawler informed us that they planned on addressing the “haste problem,” which I discussed in my last post, by changing Grand Crusader’s proc trigger.  Rather than triggering off of Crusader Strikes and Hammers of the Righteous, it would trigger from dodges and parries.

So of course, I immediately went to my MAT-cave and modified the Monte-Carlo simulation accordingly.  A few hours of data generation later, I had results for exactly how this affects our gearing choices.

But before I found the time to post the results, we found out it’s changing again.  Now they’re going to try having it proc off of both CS/HotR and avoidance.  I would imagine this was a response to the (completely valid) criticism that the proposed avoidance-only version gave roughly the same benefit while tanking, but gave no benefit while off-tanking.  That would create a few less than desirable results.  First, the difference in DPS output between tanking and off-tanking would get even larger, because we wouldn’t have AS procs while off-tanking.  The more important point in my mind is that not having AS procs while off-tanking would be really boring.  Even more boring than it is now, which is pretty boring to begin with.

So boring, in fact, that I was going to propose a new mechanic to let Grand Crusader pull double duty:

Neglected Crusader: Your Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous abilities grant you the Neglected Crusader buff, which gives you a 25% chance to trigger your Grand Crusader effect on a successful Crusader Strike or Hammer of the Righteous.  Being the target of a melee attack removes Neglected Crusader without effect.”

This would work in tandem with Grand Crusader – while you’re being attacked, Neglected Crusader wouldn’t grant procs, but while off-tanking you’d have the Neglected Crusader buff up full-time and would get the usual procs from CS and HotR.  I also fooled around with some stacking versions (i.e. each CS gives you a stack, and the proc chance was cumulative), but this one was just simpler and probably better from a design perspective.

But none of that matters now, because it’s all changing.  Which is a good thing for me in some ways.  See, I have all this data, and while I’ve analyzed it and come up with preliminary impressions, I didn’t have time until today to write a blog post about it.  But now I can skip the lengthy, extended analysis post and just toss the data at you with some brief comments, saving me time and energy!  +1 for Lazy Theck.

Data

Anyway, what follows are the results.  This is the usual Monte-Carlo code retrofitted such that CS/HotR do not proc Grand Crusader, but each avoidance event has a 30% chance to proc it.  First I’ll give you a table of the gear sets, followed by the usual DTPS/Smoothness breakdowns.  So that I don’t have to keep figuring out which post to link to in order to describe the metrics to first-timers, I’ve worked up the following copy/paste summary:

To better understand the data below, here’s a rough overview of how it’s generated: I run a Monte-Carlo sim that simulates 10k minutes of combat (think Simcraft, but paladin-specific and more limited in scope), making all combat rolls and logging all damage events.  I take the resulting string of attacks (something like “1, 0, 0.7, 1, 0, 0, …” where 0 is an avoid (no damage), 1 is a full hit, 0.7 is a block, and so on) and do some calculations on it.  I calculate the average damage intake normalized to 100% possible throughput (i.e. “1, 1, 1, 1, 1, …”), and report that in the “mean” row, representing mean damage intake (lower is better, represents better TDR).  “std” is just the standard deviation of that mean as averaged over 5 attacks.  “S%” is SotR uptime.

The rest of the rows are smoothing data for strings of N attacks.  For now, let’s just consider the first gear column (C/Ha).  I take the damage event sequence and perform a moving average on it (i.e. an N-attack moving average).  I then calculate how many of those N-attack averages exceed a certain threshold of maximum throughput.  So for example, if we look at a 3-attack moving average, the “70%” row tells me how many of those 3-attack averages exceed 70% of the maximum throughput.  Max throughput for 3 attacks is “1, 1, 1″ or 3 normalized damage, so the 70% row tells me how many exceed 2.1 damage.  And so on for 80% and 90%.  Note that they’re cumulative, so if 5% of attacks exceed 90% max throughput those attacks are also being counted in the 80% and 70% rows (thus, if 17% of attacks exceed 80% max throughput, the percentage between 80% and 90% is 17%-5%=12%).  I should add that the repeatability on these simulations is quite good thanks to the long integration time – results usually fluctuate by less than +/- 0.1% (absolute, i.e. 5% +/- 0.1%).

I do this for a bunch of different gear sets, i.e. “C/Ha” for Control/Haste, etc.  The first table lists all of the gear configurations so you get a rough idea of what they look like.  They’re roughly equivalent to stats in ilvl 496 gear.

So, here are the gear sets:

|    Set: |  C/Ha |  C/Ma |  C/Av | C/Bal | C/Bal-NC | Avoid | Av/Mas | Mas/Av |
|     Str | 11000 | 11000 | 11000 | 11000 |    11000 | 11000 |  11000 |  11000 |
|   Parry |  2000 |  2000 |  4000 |  2375 |     2375 |  7325 |   6000 |   4000 |
|   Dodge |  2000 |  2000 |  4000 |  2375 |     2375 |  7325 |   6000 |   4000 |
| Mastery |  1500 |  5500 |  1500 |  2375 |     2575 |  1500 |   4150 |   8150 |
|     Hit |  2550 |  2550 |  2550 |  2550 |     2450 |   500 |    500 |    500 |
|     Exp |  5100 |  5100 |  5100 |  5100 |     5000 |   500 |    500 |    500 |
|   Haste |  4000 |     0 |     0 |  2375 |     2375 |     0 |      0 |      0 |

And here’s the data:

|   Set: |    C/Ha |    C/Ma |    C/Av |   C/Bal | C/Bal-NC |   Avoid |  Av/Mas |  Mas/Av |
|     S% |  0.4339 |  0.4015 |  0.4100 |  0.4215 |   0.4190 |  0.3697 |  0.3654 |  0.3570 |
|   mean |  0.6504 |  0.6274 |  0.6230 |  0.6412 |   0.6403 |  0.5791 |  0.5822 |  0.5899 |
|    std |  0.1478 |  0.1456 |  0.1593 |  0.1494 |   0.1495 |  0.1785 |  0.1725 |  0.1636 |
| ------ |  ------ |   --- 2 |  Attack |  Moving |  Average |  ------ |  ------ |  ------ |
|    70% | 48.2028 | 42.0042 | 44.1597 | 47.3503 |  47.3137 | 38.1367 | 36.1103 | 38.0830 |
|    80% | 24.2250 | 26.5713 | 23.8852 | 24.8875 |  24.9892 | 23.0018 | 24.4585 | 27.1740 |
|    90% | 16.3245 | 15.6458 | 16.0750 | 16.3403 |  16.3287 | 15.4883 | 15.1640 | 14.7728 |
| ------ |  ------ |   --- 3 |  Attack |  Moving |  Average |  ------ |  ------ |  ------ |
|    70% | 45.5793 | 31.4155 | 39.2735 | 43.9363 |  43.8478 | 30.6848 | 31.4643 | 28.3237 |
|    80% | 23.9660 | 20.0918 | 21.7070 | 23.5210 |  23.5300 | 18.3902 | 17.2638 | 18.2195 |
|    90% |  5.1670 |  5.4040 |  5.5568 |  5.4785 |   5.5012 |  5.9182 |  5.7685 |  5.5332 |
| ------ |  ------ |   --- 4 |  Attack |  Moving |  Average |  ------ |  ------ |  ------ |
|    70% | 45.0138 | 35.7713 | 37.7693 | 43.3978 |  43.4673 | 29.3110 | 30.6845 | 30.0923 |
|    80% | 12.9537 | 14.9048 | 12.8605 | 13.6620 |  13.7040 | 11.0223 | 12.0872 | 10.5453 |
|    90% |  1.4653 |  2.2108 |  1.9160 |  1.7888 |   1.9303 |  3.7698 |  4.1010 |  4.6233 |
| ------ |  ------ |   --- 5 |  Attack |  Moving |  Average |  ------ |  ------ |  ------ |
|    70% | 43.1337 | 38.4438 | 36.5067 | 41.9658 |  42.0258 | 27.8370 | 29.3805 | 27.5218 |
|    80% | 18.8300 | 11.6480 | 15.8715 | 12.9865 |  12.9167 | 11.3098 |  9.4408 |  6.4842 |
|    90% |  1.0348 |  1.1995 |  1.2645 |  1.1620 |   1.2818 |  2.4400 |  2.4528 |  1.6063 |
| ------ |  ------ |   --- 6 |  Attack |  Moving |  Average |  ------ |  ------ |  ------ |
|    70% | 36.7632 | 33.7557 | 29.4542 | 35.1230 |  35.2080 | 21.6915 | 23.8085 | 24.2385 |
|    80% | 13.9718 |  7.2770 | 12.0438 | 13.8740 |  13.9332 |  8.9863 |  9.4820 |  7.1500 |
|    90% |  0.0000 |  0.0000 |  0.0000 |  0.0000 |   0.0450 |  0.8915 |  0.7860 |  0.8315 |
| ------ |  ------ |   --- 7 |  Attack |  Moving |  Average |  ------ |  ------ |  ------ |
|    70% | 36.1710 | 30.4658 | 29.0652 | 34.0295 |  34.1423 | 21.1305 | 22.8490 | 22.5603 |
|    80% | 12.0710 |  6.1180 |  9.5338 |  9.9135 |   9.9833 |  6.4348 |  6.8053 |  5.8450 |
|    90% |  0.0000 |  0.0000 |  0.0000 |  0.0000 |   0.0065 |  0.3165 |  0.3403 |  0.4040 |

Analysis

This is the part where I get to phone it in since it’s all changing anyway.  Rather than talk about everything in incredible detail, here are some general impressions.

First, note that for short stings of attacks (2-3), Control/Haste is still pretty good.  None of the gear sets are particularly bad for 2-3, they all perform about the same.  The avoidance sets have a slight advantage in the 70% category, which is new this time around, but if we look at 80%+ spikes there’s not a lot of difference.  This is just reinforcing that avoidance sets have a broader distribution with a lower mean, while control gear sets have a more skewed distribution that suppresses 80%-100% events at the expense of taking more 60-80% events.  I could show you that with plots, but that wouldn’t be a very good way to phone it in either, and it’s not like you couldn’t just look at any one of the previous posts to see those plots.

For 4 attacks, Control/Haste seems to have a slight advantage in both 80% and 90% categories, but only very slightly.  Avoidance “wins” the 70% and 80% categories but “loses” pretty hard in the 90% category, giving double or triple the number of 90% spikes as the control strategies.  Control/Mastery and Control/Balanced both perform reasonably well.  Again, I think you could make an argument for any of these sets here, even though Control/Haste seems a little stronger than the other options.

However, in the categories we really care about, which are 5-7 attacks, Control/Haste starts losing a lot of ground to Control/Mastery.  They’re both about equal at eliminating 90% spikes, but Control/Mastery just does a much better job of eliminating 80% spikes.  As in, twice as good.  As far as survivability goes, Control/Mastery is strictly superior to Control/Haste in this category.  Control/Balance fits somewhere in the middle, as does Control/Avoidance.

Avoidance gear sets don’t perform that badly for 5-7 attacks either, but they also doesn’t seem to provide any distinct advantage over Control/Mastery.  They tend to permit more 90% spikes, but do a little better in the 80% category.  So all in all, they’re within spitting distance of a control strategy by the numbers.

Conclusions

I think that Control/Mastery is probably the best compromise build.  First, because I think it would feel very bad dropping from 7.5% hit and 15% expertise to nearly 0% of each.  DPS would plummet, and the rotation can be very frustrating when HP generators aren’t predictable sources (in the sense that you get HP when you press the button).  I think hit and expertise caps are almost non-negotiable at this point for a smart player.

Especially since those caps give you more control over how you spend your holy power.  With any of the gear sets, you could choose to delay a SotR intentionally to take a “safe” spike (i.e. you’re at full health and loaded up with HoTs) in order to shift it in time to cover a later, potentially unsafe spike.  However, control sets give you much more flexibility to do that.

You could even argue that Control/Haste is the best at that, an argument Meloree frequently makes when we’re discussing this topic.  His reasoning, which I have trouble finding fault with, is that having more periods of high mitigation is more important than making those high-mitigation periods even higher.  If you’re already “safe,” or “nigh-unkillable” by having a 50% mitigation cooldown up, then are you really safer raising that from 50% to 60%, or are you safer by having 10% more uptime on it?  Generally, uptime is the right call.

Of course, Control/Mastery gives the passive benefit of more block, which complicates matters because it’s not a simple “uptime vs. magnitude” comparison.  By the numbers, that extra block from mastery does a pretty good job of eliminating the potential spikes.  The more apt comparison in that sense may be “Are you safer having 10% more uptime on your high-mitigation cooldown, or are you safer having 50% fewer spikes to react to?”

In any event, I was actually enthusiastic about these results because there’s no clear winner.  I can recommend Control/Mastery, but really any of the gear sets perform well enough to work.  With a very simple mechanics change, all of the gearing strategies we’ve been analyzing suddenly became viable.  That’s actually sort of cool.

In any event, I’ll be tweaking the Monte-Carlo to handle the new mechanics, but until we have the actual percentages to work with, it’s going to be hard to determine exactly how far back towards haste the pendulum will swing.  We’ll know soon© though, I’m sure.

And now you know that even when I phone it in, I can still break 2000 words.

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### 49 Responses to Cruise-ader Control

1. zwingli Whisperwind says:

Hey Theck!

I’m going to ask a noob paladin tanking question. When “saving up” for a dmg spike event; exactly how would that work?

Would we be saving our HP to heal us after the event?

Or, are we wanting to hit SotR, right before the big hit, so that we get the 30% bubble?

Thank you!

Zwingli

• blizzhoof says:

I know you asked Theck, but I can field this one. The answer is: It depends.

If you’re going to be taking high physical damage (like between dance phases on H Will, an incoming Overwhelming Assault on Blade Lord, or Furious Swipe on Garalon), then you would use SotR with the stored up Holy Power just prior to the attack going off. If it’s an incoming burst of magic damage, then SotR won’t do anything, so you’d WoG after the magic damage landed.

Note: In the case of Overwhelming Assault, the timers aren’t always right (at least for me), so you’d want to get up to 5 Holy Power and ~2 seconds before the timer finishes, cast SotR, CS/J, then SotR again to get 6 seconds of coverage. Again, this is if your timers are off like mine.

Most of the time you’ll be spending the HoP on SotR as most of the high tank damage is physical or you’re being melee’d when the magic spike goes out and it’s a better option to smooth your intake than to spike and then heal.

• zwingli Whisperwind says:

Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

z

2. Scoutyou says:

Would love to see some more reasonable stats for mastery and haste builds.
I mean, your example of haste contains 4000 haste. I am sitting on thrice that in 490 ilvl gear. Now that we approaching a new tier, it feels like the numbers are really outdated.

Like and example of my stats in average 490 ilvl

9747 STR
265 dodge ( enchants )
0 parry
2560 hit
3786 exp ( not capped )
1155 mastery
13261 haste.

Not that being said, my gear is shit. Got some intellect and agility pieces making my STR so low.
Given an example right now should probably use atleast 509 ilvl as basis. Probably higher even.

So those weigths + more STR, maybe 2k mastery and exp cap seems reasonable.

Would be nice to see the use of both heavy mastery and haste stacked builds as we do not have that atm.

• blizzhoof says:

Posting my stats to support your argument. I would also like to see a simulation with stats more similar to what I have now as I’m sure many Heroic raiders would.

13403 Str
2473 Dodge
1932 Parry
2402 Mastery
7022 Haste
5105 Exp
2554 Hit

Unbuffed (this is from armory, so no Might) ilvl 507 equipped, reforging and gemming for Control/Haste.

• Scoutyou says:

Guessing you have quite a lot of stamina gems / trinkets as your secondary stats are kinda low. Though you do have alot of dodge and parry.

That said, I feel like these simulations in this post really has no weigth as all as their stats are completely irrelevant unless you are going for challenge modes in 463 gear.

• Theck says:

If you bothered to read the earlier Monte Carlo posts, you’d see that

A) The gear sets are equivalent to an ilvl of 496, though mostly stamina-gemmed

B) I constrained the gear sets to be non-ideal – in particular, they’re stuck with 2000 dodge/parry. Its unrealistic to assume that you can get rid of all of that avoidance rating, especially during progression when your “ideal” pieces are hotly contested by DPS classes, which will generally make better use of them anyway.

C) The only reason you can get 13k haste is that you’ve foregone essentially all dodge, parry, a good chunk of expertise, and apparently a lot of stamina gemming. And you’re using agi/int gear. While there are some players in heroic gear that are in the 10-11k haste regime, 13k is really outside the bounds of realistic.

D) I think it’s a bit silly to assume these simulations hold no weight, especially given your ludicrous rationalization about 463 gear. 496 ilvl is more than close enough to heroic gear to provide results that generalize.

And again, if you bothered to look back over some of the older simulation posts, you’d see that we *have* run the crazy ~6k haste rating setups before. They failed miserably compared to the hit/exp capped ones. That’s why I haven’t been simming them lately.

• Daishan says:

As always thanks for all the work Theck.
I wouldn’t for a second say these sims hold no weight.
But it would be interesting to see some sims using a higher average ilvl and less stam gems, as many of us tanking 10 man hm’s find stam less necessary. With about 506 ilvl and 1 stam trinket I’m at 7k haste while maintaining hit and exp hard caps.
When blizz give us proc % for the new GC I’d imagine having more rating to play with will show up when avoidance starts to suffer from DR too much to want to stack it?

• Theck says:

As with the other response: yes, the extra itemization you get from higher ilvl gear will be relevant to 5.2. And we’ll get to that, once we’re closer to 5.2 and have more finalized mechanics. It would be sort of pointless to run lots of simulations for this version at different gear levels if there’s a good chance it’ll be changed.

However, if you want a fair comparison to the old version, you want to control for variables. If I run this data at ilvl 509 and compare it to the old data at 496, it’s not an even playing field. Especially since we now have different synergistic relationships between the stats in this model.

As an analogy, you don’t compare average temperature by taking data in Boston during the summer and Houston in the winter. That risks giving you skewed results, and compromises the conclusions you draw from them.

• Scoutyou says:

Yes, I realise that my values are unrealistic. However, seeing as most 10 man tank that has a clue what they are doing is not gemming stamina. Health pools are not needed in 10 man due to how weak the bosses are. Though running a 8k haste setup with hit and exp cap is hardly unrealistic seeing as I can reach that in 490 ilvl.

Reason for using agi/int gear is simply bad drops. 489/496/502/509 agi is better than 463 str. Using 1 agi and 2 int atm. Only drawback is lack of str, but hey, not the biggest deal in the world.

You gotta admit that 4k haste / 5.5k mastery in a heavy haste/mastery build is just way to low.

To presume that tanks are gemming stamina are also interesting. A majority of tanks are not. ( Since stamina gemming is mostly for 25 man tanks, and some, very few, 10 man tanks that do not work their class properly ).

• Scoutyou says:

Also read your twitter posts. You don’t have to act so allknowing. You didn’t even read my post apparently. Did not suggest to sim my gear as an example ^^
Simply said that you should sim gear sets with higher secondary stats.
Using my gear set as baseline would just be stupid.

You do not realise that agi/int is viable for tanking?

And running content that stamina gems is not required is called 10 man heroic. Which has a larger % of the paladin tank base than 25 man heroic.

Solo alot of the bosses for rankings atm. Using 1 tank for feng, gara’jal, sk (obv), elegon,bladelord, garalon, windlord, tsulong, thats how hard 10 man heroic is. Possible to solo tank tsulong hc without stamina gems/trinkets.

Having 0 dodge/parry to me is a success, not a failure. That means you have more of the more useful secondary stats.

Though yeah, read what your commentors are posting before acting all high and migthy.

• Theck says:

So, a number of comments here:
I disagree with you completely about stamina. Stamina is still your #1 best survivability stat, no matter whether you play 10H or 25H. You’re misinterpreting *why* 10H tanks aren’t gemming as much stamina. It’s not because it’s worse for survivability. It’s that they have already passed the point where they have enough survivability. And at that point, they look for ways to increase their DPS. Haste is basically our best DPS stat after hit/exp to 7.5%, which is why they stack it. It is NOT because haste is better than stamina for survivability (in fact, it’s easy to demonstrate that idea is flat-out false).

Now, back to your point about how much haste/mastery is reasonable. Remember that we’re calculating survivability metrics. If you don’t have enough survivability, yolu’re not going to sacrifice stamina for more secondary stats, so it’s not fair to assume that you have access to the excess rating from trinkets and gems.

In addition, when you’re starting to progress through heroics, you don’t have ilvl 509 gear yet (because you haven’t cleared that content). In fact, a reasonable estimate of ilvl for a player starting out in heroics is actually only about 490ish, at least in any reasonably successful guild. 496 is a bit of an over-estimate, but it seemed appropriate given how late we are in the content. When you’re at full ilvl 509, the content is already on farm – who cares how you gear at that point?

I agree that for 5.2 simulations, it would make sense to bump the ilvl up a bit to account for new normal-mode gear. And of course, I’ll do that once we’re closer to 5.2. But if we’re interested in comparing the new mechanics to the old ones, we want to control for as many variables as possible. Since our old data was run at ilvl 496, it makes sense to hold that constant so we have a fair comparison of old vs. new.

I’m not sure what you mean about agi/int viable for tanking. Agi and Int give no practical survivability bonus, so all you’re gaining from those upgrades is the increased stamina based on ilvl. That’s not worth discounting, of course, but unless you’re doing that exclusively in cloak/jewelry slots you’re also losing out on armor, which negates the benefit. The large amount of Strength you lose is also a consideration – it will generally negate a good chunk of the DPS benefit from using a better-itemized int/haste or agi/haste item, and you’ll lose a huge chunk of parry as well (which, while not a huge priority, isn’t actually much worse than haste once you’re at hit/exp cap).

Regarding twitter: I was angry, may have been a little too mean about it. But I get defensive when someone says my work has no value because it doesn’t cover cases that are mostly irrelevant. If you can already clear 10H content successfully enough that you can fool around with solo-tanking the bosses, you aren’t at the point where you need gearing advice. If you don’t need to stack stamina to do that, you aren’t questioning survivability either, so it’s a no-brainer: stack haste. But what point is there in detailing the survivability benefits in a case where you don’t care about survivability?

• Scoutyou says:

I would like to apoligize a bit, I have the tention to sound hostile even though I am not.

Using agi in a ring slot. Simply due to lack of drops.
We are all not so lucky. Int is limited to plate int / rings necks backs ofc aswell.
The added sta and arm is worth taking those pieces sometimes.
Not to mention possible sockets and secondary stats.

I have cleared everything except sha and grand empress on hc.
Reason my gear is so low is due to real life obligations I can’t raid so much, so my guild only brings me on progress. ( they progress the days I can play as I am the most capable tank in the guild ) and let the other tanks do the farm when I can’t due to real life.
Which leaves my ilvl really skewered.

I completely agree that stamina is the best survivability stat and that the reason 10 mans dont go it is because they simply don’t need more survivability, they need dps. Never stated otherwise.

I think that theorycrafting for current content is kinda outdated either.
My questions had nothing to do about current content, that is non issue.
It is the next tier that is the question. And before the next tier my guild will start running me through the farm content instead to let me gear up so 509 ilvl or even normal mode ilvl for next tier, cant remember what it was. Would be more reasonable templates. Since it is fair to assume that most people that are in serious raiding guilds are more concerned about the next content than current content at this moment.

10 man raiding in current tier is in the place that among my tankadin friends, we often talk about crit as a decent stat, as it still increases dps. Some of my friends used the
haste>mastery>crit>avoidance route.

• Theck says:

Yeah, I can see using an agi ring or an int plate item if you’re upgrading from a 463 blue or what not – the raw stam/armor/etc increase would be worth it. That’s a really weird niche case though due to your erratic raiding schedule. Most players would be choosing between, for example a 489 “tank” item and a 496 int plate item, at which point the trade-off probably isn’t worth it.

I definitely intend to run updated gear templates for 5.2 content once the mechanics are nailed down, so we’re agreed on that. I probably didn’t make it clear enough in the post that for right now, I’m mostly interested in how the mechanics changes affect things, which is why locking the ilvl makes sense. It’s good experimental technique to control your variables.

I also apologize, I think I read more hostility into your comment than I should have.

Regarding the 5.2 gear sets, it sounds like you want to see one that’s very heavy haste (i.e. skimping on hit/exp to do so)? I ran one of those gear sets in one of the earlier rounds, and it performed much worse than a hit/exp build did, which is why I omitted it in future sims. But with new mechanics and new gear, it may make sense to do a more comprehensive list of gear sets again. Are there any that you think are missing from this tentative list?
-Control/haste, control/mastery, control/avoidance
-Avoidance
-Avoidance/Mastery
-Mastery/Avoidance
-Pure mastery (low hit/exp, low avoid, no haste)
-Pure haste (low hit/exp, low mastery, low avoid)

• Scoutyou says:

My build is kinda niche that I support with my own math and raid setting. ( I always to my own theorycrafting for the bosses we are practicing on and my current gear+raid group ) and I have valid reasoning to back it up. Partially for using SW talent over HA as I feel it is much stronger + it diminish the value of hard cap expertise. It is however a niche build so making a set of it is kinda pointless since it does not apply to even a fraction of the paladin community.

So no, would not like to see an uncapped hit/exp set since in the simulation you run, we already know the result of that. Would however just like to see how the stats scale upwards. Probably would like to see a little less dodge and parry ( since getting below 2k+2k dodge and parry is not hard or impossible ). And a bumped up haste and mastery on the mastery build, to see how the stats compare at higher values. Like, yes, we know how it looks at 4k haste and 5.5k mastery. But how does it look on 8k haste and 9.5k mastery? Maybe a bit more mastery in the haste build aswell and maybe some haste in the mastery build, who knows.

So simming low hit low expetise makes low sense. Even though it has its niche on fights, it is hard to equate into a sim.

-Control/haste, control/mastery, control/avoidance
-Avoidance
-Avoidance/Mastery
-Mastery/Avoidance
Seems like covering the most.
What would be interesting to see however is making a comparison between

Basically, making one control haste build with a bit more dodge/parry and maybe more mastery to simulate protection gear, and make one with almost 0 dodge and parry and more secondary stat points into haste to simulate retribution gear. Since alot of tanks, especially 10 mans, got full access to dps gear, while running with a warrior co-tank, so I pass up all plate tank to him.

Same goes or mastery. One build with the more standard current to simulate prot gear, and one build with more haste and mastery ( retri gear doesn’t really have that much more mastery but would have alot more haste ). Since it is quite fair to assume that a lot of tanks are in the spot that they can use alot of DPS gear. So having both a control haste and mastery build to simulate that seems reasonable. I think more tanks have pure ret gear than tanks that are going for avoidance.

3. Aidan McClure says:

It’s great to see that your conclusion to their proposal, was actually the answer they wanted in the first place.

I completely agree that gearing should be about choice as much as possible and the sims also show that if you go for that extra parry/dodge, you don’t really lose much in survivability during periods of spikes – because that is the current argument for devaluing those stats compared to haste and mastery builds.

Hopefully whoever is put in charge of dealing with Grand Crusader has some kind of access to this post or any future posts and takes into account these conclusions, because that will then make gearing a player choice rather than a general decision, which is the intended model anyway.

I hope that whatever blizzard devise, the data will lead to the same conclusion as you have above, because it will make a lot of people considerably happier.

4. Caarheim says:

Bonjour,

I was wondering what simulation would give with T15 2PC bonus.
Actually, with 40% more block chance and ilvl 522 stat, we could hit CTC, meaning that every physical damage over 70% disappear.

At this point, which will be more effective for damage reduction : haste, mastery or avoidance ?

• Theck says:

I ran some simulations on the T15 2-piece bonus earlier this month. The short version is that it’s a small benefit for when you have to use WoG, but it isn’t strong enough to use as a maintenance buff.

Also note that we’ll be nowhere near block-capping even with 40% more block chance. Block is on a separate roll, so you need 104.5% block to truly block-cap. 40% of that comes from the set bonus, 13% from base block and talents, the rest has to come from mastery, which is affected by diminishing returns. It takes over 32k mastery rating to do that, so not readily achievable in T15 (or likely T16).

• caarheim says:

This time, I must have stayed in my bed with my flu ..

5. Curiosity says:

I am curious as to how Blizzard would have arrived at the conclusion that haste would lead to loot competition and not mastery.

At the moment, haste is needed by:

2 handed frost dk
ret pally
prot pally

Mastery
Warriors (prot and under certain situations, mastery can be better than crit, although usually dps warriors are crit based)
Blood dk
Dual wield frost dk

It seems the best option would be if loot competition was the justification to make pallies a crit-based tank, somewhat like the leather based tanks or to give crit another useful effect.

At the moment, crit is only preferred by
Dps warrior

• Thels says:

There are 3 general stats: Hit, Expertise, Mastery.
There are 2 DPS only stats: Haste, Crit.
There are 2 Tank only stats: Dodge, Parry.
You will never find combinations of Haste or Crit with Dodge or Parry.

That’s how gear is itemized. The Developers don’t mind if Tanks love Mastery, as long as they have no use for Haste or Crit, because they will take the Mastery/Dodge and Mastery/Parry pieces, and not the Mastery/Haste or Mastery/Crit pieces. Perhaps they do on occasion when none of the DPS needs it.

Haste does not appear on tanking plate, and therefor Prot Paladins are forced to need on gear that is actually reserved for Plate DPS, which is the big problem.

(There are a few pieces that are only Hit/Expertise/Mastery, but usually that’s by design. One handed tanking weapons would only serve 2 specs, rather than 3, while two handed tanking weapons would only serve a single spec. Therefor, these have only general stats, so they can also be picked up by DPS specs. Since we don’t like Dodge and Parry very much, we don’t complain. :D)

• altandmain says:

At the moment, most pallies are swapping to ret to use up their gold coins.

That being said, I stand by what I say. Crit gear has the least competition, being only desired by dps warriors. 2

The simple solution for pally tanks would be to just add haste gear to their loot table (for lfr and for gold coins).

• Thels says:

Yes, I’m aware of tanks switching to ret to use their coin, and that alone should indicate it’s not well where it’s currently sitting.

Simply adding Haste gear to the Prot Paladin loot table won’t fix the issue. First, it will make the Prot Paladin table quite bloated, and if you use a coin, chances are big you’re getting a wrong item.

Secondly, as said, the Haste gear is intended for DPS, and by having Prot Paladins roll on it, there’ll be a shortage of Haste gear and an overflow of Avoidance gear.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Haste became a general tanking stat when 6.0 hit, but that’s not something they can do right now.

6. Paendamonium says:

And the latest PTR build goes back to Grand Crusader only producing off avoidance…. Hopefully they add the something like the “neglected crusader” buff you propose to solve the off tanking issue.

7. bryjoered says:

I know I’m a warrior so I don’t really have a right to post on paladin blogs, but I really think that blizzard should go at any length to nerf haste into the ground for paladins. I don’t think it’s right, and I’m pretty sure it was never intended, for DPS to have to fight tanks for gear. Pallies, warrs and DK’s should all value that dodge/parry plate, Monks and Druids should value gear with the same stat allocation as well. I think that as this expansion goes on this will continue to be closer to reality.

• Scoutyou says:

The issue right now is that
1. Dodge/parry is shit
2. Tanking damage is non-issue, espcially in 10 mans.

It is not that haste is to strong. Mastery is still the best secondary stat.
If haste was nerfed, I would probably pick up some crit pieces for the added dps.

• Scoutyou says:

and the fact is that no tank really value dodge/parry gear atm. For warriors and dks it is just that there is no other options. If they had other options they would take them.

8. bryjoered says:

Well, DK’s actually rank parry/dodge right after Mastery. I totally agree with Theck on the Stamina thing though. I feel that all tanks should really be stacking as much as they possibly can. And as for tanking damage being a non-issue I don’t think that is the case. Heroic Will of the Emperor hit’s like an absolute truck. Stamina is just the all around best stat for any type of damage, whether that be physical or Magic damage. Mastery only effects physical damage intake, while I agree that this is the majority of damage taken, I don’t think that mastery is “better” with physical damage than Stamina.
On fights like Lei Shei and Tsulong, I am taking massive amounts of magic damage during the entire fight and I really think If I was mastery stacking I would be in deep trouble.

• Scoutyou says:

My current unbuffed hp is 511k. I run with elixirs instead of stamina flask and usually go with non stamina food (if I am not lazy).

Heroic Will of the Emp is not an issue. Never died on that fight due to a tank death yet.

Stamina is nice, but when bosses hit as low as they do in current (10man) content, the passive stamina from gear is more than enough. The DPS from haste, hit, exp and crit far outweighs the other stats on most fights in 10 man.

9. bryjoered says:

But the thing is they don’t really hit that low. I mean on wind lord mel’jerak when you are tanking him at the end when he has his damage buff he hits me for almost 300k sometimes. (I run 25 man). That is a big chunk of damage, and that is only normal mode. With only 511k health that would take you down into the danger zone where a back to back hit would kill you. I have 660k health buffed and even if I don’t have shield block up that attack wouldn’t be too worrisome.

The rule of thumb has always been, if your healers are running out of mana trying to heal your massive health pool then you should stack more secondary stat, otherwise stamina is king. On magic fights (terrace of endless spring) you literally have no argument stamina is far superior in every possible way.

• bryjoered says:

I should add that in cataclysm, mastery was very valuable because there was the threshold (102.4) or something where it was impossible for you to take an unmitigated hit. This threshold does not exist anymore. I’m aware that many heroic cleared tanks may be stacking other stats now in favor of stamina, but you have to keep in mind that they are not progression raiding right now. These tanks have had this shit on farm for a month or two by now, optimizing dps and trying out new builds is ok for them.

I wish I could bet you, but I can almost guaranteed that when they tier 15 raids come out they will switch back to stamina gearing.

• Thels says:

Nobody is arguing that stacking Stamina is bad for survival. It’s the best option for Survival in general. However, Survival is not the only thing in the game. Berserk timers have been a problem on a lot of bosses, and it’s an important duty nowadays for Tanks to help out on the DPS, especially in 10 mans. While Haste doesn’t do as much for survival as Stamina does, it does wonders for our DPS, which is the reason we take it over Stamina.

Of course, when tank deaths are becoming a problem, Haste will once again be replaced by Stamina.

Oh, and the threshold still exists. It’s just out of our reach, even with the T15 set bonus.

10. bryjoered says:

Yeah, I really can’t recall another raiding tier where the enrage killed us this often. The Garalon and wind lord enrages are noticeably tight. Oh and Tsulong is very tight as well. Still, I really feel that tanks should not be going after dps gear at all. I’m not even a fan of going after hit/exp, as those have always been DPS stats. But, you have to be hit/exp capped nowadays as a warrior/pally or you are hurting yourself and your healers.

• Scoutyou says:

First tier in cata was alot more brutal on enrages.
I raid 10, and haste is a lot more valuable in 10 due to lower boss damage and tank dps being a larger % of the total dps.

For 25’s sta and mastery is king. ( As they are in 10 for survivability but tank damage is non-issue in 10 ).

No tank class given the choice would take dodge/parry over mastery. That is just fact. dodge and parry is not a desirable stat for any class. It is just the lesser of two shit piles for some tanks.

11. bryjoered says:

Hmmm, the only fight I can recall hitting the enrage was heroic halfus. The first tier in Cata was awesome, I thought a lot of the fights had fun and interesting mechanics. Nefarian was one of my favorite fights all time.
I have noticed that 25 man does hit harder. I remember when I raided ten man that blade lord tayak’s second overwhelming assault never used to one shot me. Now, I have to have some sort of CD ready or it most likely will. Shield wall can handle it by itself, but if that’s on CD I usually have to combine last stand with a shield barrier and even then it still hurts a lot.

• Scoutyou says:

I think the enrage was an issue on far more fights in cata, atleast if you were raiding prenerf in 25. Enrages was alot easier in 10 and some bosses got hit by early nerfs in health.

Overwhelming assault is a joke in 10. I accidently overaggroed the boss from our other tank and got a third stack without even using a single cooldown. Didn’t die.

12. bryjoered says:

Yeah, I’ve actually looked at the logs when it one shot me one time “Overwhelming Assault hits Bryjoeredd for 615315 physical, Bryjoered dies” haha

13. bryjoered says:

ANother thing that is weird about it is that shield block doesn’t seem to mitigate it at all even though it is physical damage. I haven’t confirmed it but I read that the attack can’t be blocked on wowhead.

• Scoutyou says:

Shield block shouldn’t reduce the damage I think, as the attack cannot be blocked.

Though, on heroic, you can almost switch at 1 stack all the time, due to blade tempest. So, if surviving is an issue, you do not have to take 2 stacks.

• Theck says:

Not almost – you *can* switch at 1 stack every time. That’s our usual strategy.

• Scoutyou says:

Yeah, I thought it was 1 stack every time, but was not sure as we are using a strategy of vengeance stacking on 1 tank for increased dps so one tank takes 3 and the other takes 1.

14. bryjoered says:

Yeah, we aren’t there yet. Our progression has slowed since we switched to 25 man recently. We’ve only downed up to wind lord on 25 man normal so far. I doubt that we will get there before 5.2 comes out to be honest.

15. Thels says:

bryjoered: “I’m not even a fan of going after hit/exp, as those have always been DPS stats. But, you have to be hit/exp capped nowadays as a warrior/pally or you are hurting yourself and your healers.”

While I agree it’s odd that Paladins want so much Haste, while Warriors and DKs have no use for it, let the Hit/Exp requirements stay in, please! Rotations feel a lot smoother when you are hit/expertise capped, and it doesn’t hurt the game at all to require tanks to cap these. In addition, without these stats being important, the secondary stats we’d wanted would be very slim, especially since Dodge/Parry no longer synergize with Mastery.

16. Jav says:

Theck, as of the new Grand Crusader proc, which now procs off both Crusader Strike and Dodging. Will dodge now be our 2nd most sought after stat, after haste? (ignoring hit/exp of course)

Looking forward to a few sims!

17. Bram says:

I wanted to join the notion of a bit more realistical sets you use in your Matlab simulation. What strikes me most is the relative weight of avoidance stats in them. While I can live with it in the case of Control sets, I think you should reshape them in case of Avoidance sets. Especially avoidance tank will try to maximize Parry+Dodge as composite together and will reforge one stat into another to minimize the DMR penalties. Actually even Control oriented tanks should do it if they are being driven by their inner perfectionist beast, carefully picking item pieces to balance Parry+Dodge together.

Maybe you can take it as an inspiration for the next block posting and use your own DMR formulas to actually derive functions MaxAvoidance_Parry(Dodge) and MaxAvoidance_Dodge(Parry).

PS: I hope you realize how lazy bastard I am for making such a suggestion in the first line and will pardon my impudence.

• Bram says:

So I moved myself to check it. With help of your formulas, your tanking spreadsheet and Mathematica I was looking how it all fits together. And I came to surprising results that pretty astonished me.

I took Avoidance set with 11000 Str (buffed), 100 Agi and plugged into spreadsheet:

ParryRating = 7325, DodgeRating = 7325: Parry+Dodge in Char Sheet = 36.67%, recommended is more Parry

I run optimization of ParryRating vs DodgeRating (withing reforging borders) in Mathematica and plugged into spreadsheet:

ParryRating = 9232.99, DodgeRating = 5417.01: Parry+Dodge in Char Sheet = 36.67%

Now I was ass and plugged no dodge and only parry and vice versa:

ParryRating = 14649.99, DodgeRating = 0.01: Parry+Dodge in Char Sheet = 36.02%
ParryRating = 0.01, DodgeRating = 14649.99: Parry+Dodge in Char Sheet = 34.97%

Well, the resulting message is quite surprising… Once you reach some level of parry and dodge rating in both, balancing becomes irrelevant…

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