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Taiwei
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Joined: 31 Dec 2013
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re: Apply shield to face

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Hao 2 wurrior 

 

Active mitigation

 

Most of warriors active mitigation is based around hiding behind the refrigerator door you've strapped to your arm for protection. However you should note that warriors, through high armor and defensive stance, have the highest baseline passive mitigation and therefore their active mitigation is less relevant. LOLOLOLOLOLOL JK SHIELD BARRIER IS FUCKING BROKEN.

 

Fuck Shield Block: Shield block is very simple in design. It operates with a 2 charge system with a 9 second cd and 6 second duration. During that 6 second duration you have 100% chance to block. THE NUMBERS MASON WHAT DO THEY MEAN?!??! Well to start the 2charge system means that you cannot have 100% uptime regardless of rage generation. That's the simple part but to get to the fancy part you have to understand the combat table. The combat table operates in a Finite percentile precedence system (you down with FPP? yeah you know me). That in simple terms there's a limited amount of space on the combat table and certain things get to go in before others. So if we imagine the combat table is a club with a bouncer than miss chance is the hot girl. If there's a chance to miss then that chance to miss will be in da club. Overall the order of precedence is miss>parry>dodge>glance>block>crIt>crushing>hit. To less shortly explain that stupid club analogy lets imagine you have a100% parry and  a 100% dodge ratings ,and a 50% chance to be missed. In a scenario like that 50% of the time you will be missed and 50% of the time you will parry. You will never dodge you will never glance you will never block you will never be crit hit or crushed. So whenever you have covered the combat table with higher precedence percentages none of the lower precedence shit will ever occur . Well what the fuck does that mean. The fuck it means is if you're running an avoidance build (which once you get to decent gear you probably should be) your dodge and parry rating make shield block less and less effective because your parry and dodge % push some of that 100% block off the combat table. But Taiwei won't blocking more mean you crit block more so shield block is awesome? No. Fuck you and your pathetic hopes and dreams, this is not a 2 roll system it is a finite percentage precedence. And because crit lock takes precedence over standard block your crit block % pushes even more of that 100% block chance off of the combat table rendering it useless. And now let's look at how our mastery interacts with shield block. Quick refresher on our mastery it increases our chance to block,and critically block. Whoopdy fucking do we now have block chance that is useless during shield block because it's automatically set to 100 for the duration, and crit block that pushes more of that 100% off the combat table. So after a quick check of all our defensive stats all of them make shield block worse. 

 

 

In defense of shield block

So after throwing a tizzy mathematical bitch fit about shield block I'm going to sing its praises. The thing about shield block is that as you attain more gear it becomes less powerful in terms of raw reduction. However to understand the value of shield block you must understand the role of a tank. "Duh Tai you stand there and take it up the ass" No sprak, that's what we do in the bedroom. The role of a tank is dissimilar to that of a dps because you are not trying to take the least amount of damage possible, but rather take the smoothest damage possible that still falls in the realm of healability (I know it's not a word but fuck you I'm a science major). So in practice this means that it's better to take 8 50k swings than parry 7 swings and take a 300k swing. Your goal as a tank is not to take as little damage as possible but require the fewest number of globals and inefficient flash heals, as well as taking as predictable of damage as possible to allow the greatest margin of error for your healers (and give them time to heal baddie mele dps who are actually subject to mechanics). In reference to the fewest number of globals mentioned earlier, you have a margin of error equal to the difference between your point of requiring heals to the value of your healers short cd snap heal. So what the fuck do those words mean and how do I interact mechanically with them. The point at which you require healing is kind of a  variable but in times of low raid damage it's approximately 80%of your maximum health. Your healers snap heal is their short cooldown no cast time decently powerful single target heal, holy shock, serenity, swift mend, riptide etc. So the lowest value you want to be dropping to at any kind of regular interval is about 80% of your health - the value of that heal. However if you can avoid dropping into that range as many times by dropping lower down in that range then by all means do so, as all that means is that less of that heal is wasted. So what does this shit have to do with shield block. DAMAGE MUTHAFUCKA CAN YOU PREDICT IT? While there are more efficient ways to less overall damage there is nothing like a 100% guarantee and that's exactly what shield block gives you. During the course of shield block you will never take more than 70% of the 3 mele swings in that window (4 if you're a fucking G). The reason shield block works is the same reason stagger works it may not reduce as much actual damage as it's counterparts it spreads it out into comfortably healable and predictable levels. Having your healers know that even if you're at 50% they can heal someone else because you're not relying on parrying at least 2/3 of the next attacks gives them the freedom to be much more flexible in who they heal. However another important thing to consider is the toolkit healers have this expansion. They're built like rose pickers i.e equipped to deal with spikes. So while especially at low gear levels shield block will be a powerful damage smoothing tool, there is a certain point at which avoidance's spiky nature begins to produce spikes infrequent enough that it is better to have occasional spike than smooth constant damage because your healers globals become more valuable and powerful with gear. So let's take a look at when that starts to be viable. Typically warriors tend to aim for about 4-5 unmitigated mele swings worth of baseline health (dependent on trinket drops lol daze still has lfr malkorok). Now with that knowledge lets look at how often we will take strings of mele swings per encounter at different avoidance levels. 

 

Assumptions: 1.5 second swing timer, avoidance remains static (basically I'm ignoring dancing steel procs because they make this harder and I'm lazy and it's kind of irrelevant), 6 minute encounter, Z<1,X>N, X is an integer.

 

Y= number of times you will take 4 un avoided mele swings per encounter 

X= a constant equal to the number of mele swing streaks you will take that fight (x= fight length in seconds/1.5*n)

Z=the sum of your avoidance percentiles (%chance dodge+%chance parry)

N= number of swings in a row you are testing for in this case 4 

 

Y=X(1-Z)^N

 

(Note this equation is not entirely accurate due to the nature of possible pairing sequences a more fixed number can be found with a factorial equation)

So with our fight length of 6 minutes and our streak set to 4 we know that X=60 and N=4 and we can set Z as our experimental.

 (Note this equation is not entirely accurate due to the nature of possible pairing sequences a more fixed number can be found with a factorial equation)
So with our fight length of 6 minutes and our streak set to 4 we know that X=60 and N=4 and we can set Z as our experimental. Furthermore the other strength to shield block is its expiration is entirely time based not damage based which is why it is extremely effective when you have multiple mobs swinging at you. The advantages of shield block in this scenario are myriad.

-Smoothing, you will take no unmitigated mele swings as opposed to several with shield barrier.

-Rage generation more swings means more blocks which means more crit blocks WHICH FOR SOME FUCKING REASON MAKE YOU ANGRY

- I had a third reason really I just can't remember it

- Taking a massive shit helped me remember its vengeance. Vengeance now has diminishing returns for the more mobs you have punching you. That means that you're getting decreasingly less vengeance than usual making point based mitigation shittier.

Shield barrier: Fuck yeah






Just kidding I'll explain it. So warriors are the only tanks in the game with resource based, preemptive active mitigation, WITHOUT A COOLDOWN. For an explication of why that's fucking amazing check out the "How to tank as pretty much everything" post.  So let's get a quick rundown of the equations for shield barrier.

X= stam
S= Value of the shield block
A= Your unbuffed attack power
V= attack power granted from vengeance
R= Rage used to cast shield barrier
If (R/60)*2(V+0.1*A)>2.5X
Then
S= (R/60)*2(V+0.1A)
If 2.5X>
Then
S=2.5X*R/60
What this means? Without vengeance shield barrier is a donkey penis connoisseur. But with vengeance it's fucking amazing, where other classes have to

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