Yeah it really is just a matter of “can I eat three, back-to-back, hits with crits or crushes and survive?” Because of the stupid Thrash stacking charges, the “loot pinata” fights really are the most EH intensive.
Baseline Block% & Block Value are wonderful mitigation for small, fast hits. The active ability Shield Block is great against any slow attack, although its mitigation is really only needed for high damage situations.
What’s extremely important to know is that Shield Block’s primary mitigation does NOT come from the block value, but rather the immunity to crits and crushes that comes with it due to the extremely high block % pushing crits/crushes off the combat table.
If your block value is 50, then:
Shield Block mitigates an 800 damage swing down to 750.
Shield Block mitigates a 1200 damage crush down to 750.
Shield Block mitigates a 1600 damage crit down to 750.
The key is having Shield Block active for those Thrashes, so that none of them can crit or crush. If a Warrior can do that, he’ll be much better suited to survive than a Druid. If a Warrior can’t do that, he’ll be worse off than a Druid.
Is there any known timer for Thrash? From its ability to stack up charges and wreck anyone if a drake gets kited too long, isn’t it just… constant?
There does seem to be a pattern to it, as a healer u can feel it
Not sure exactly if it’s a timer or what
Ends up acting like a timer
Thanks, yes I know how GBoK spam works, pally version of the Battle Shout spam that got us World Last Nefarian in vanilla, but even more ridiculous given class stacking.
Realizing I wasn’t clear enough.
My point was you said the pally would already be generating enough TPS if he spammed it on 7 warriors. Therefore, if there are 11 warriors, if the pally spammed it he’s just generating useless extra TPS. Rounding 7/11 off to 8/12, he could cast GBoK only 2/3 of the time and use the extra GCD for uh, for uh, that’s where I’m drawing a blank.
Keeping the TPS down would also keep the “AE Taunt” issue under control where it’s an issue.
From your other statements about what else the pally is going to be doing, you’re obviously assuming severe mana issues. My spot checks indicate it’s pretty frequent for a druid to end a fight with Innervate still in their pocket. What if they used it on the tank? Might that not enable the tank to shift away from obsessing over mana to providing more utility?
This is kind of amazing. I honestly don’t remember this at all. And if it is the case that it a) happened and b) isn’t documented in the patch notes then that would be a pretty big stealth nerf. I went through all patch notes from 1.6.0 onward, looking for the word “critical” and found nothing like this.
Question would then be, if this is true, how many top guilds didn’t know it and made their tank put on enough gear to mitigate an MS crit…
Good news for my ambitions of tanking as a shadow priest, I guess…
To some it may seem a mundane detail but when you really want to understand what is going on… maddening!
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I’m familiar with Blocks affects.
But what your suggesting in reference to Thrash isn’t accurate.
You CANNOT control when Shield Block is active in reference to thrash. A mob, on average will attack 2.5 times per 5s measured against 2 charges of Shield Block during that duration.
Thrash is 3 total attacks. That doesn’t include a possible 2 more attacks happening within a single Shield Block window, nor does that include Parry Triggers adding 1 more.
For a modern Warrior, not stacking total avoidance, once shield block is down, you are facing Crushing Blows full total percentage value of landing on you!..which is 15% of the time.
Shield Block, doesn’t have a bearing on crit once its down…which it will be. Defense is what governs that when it is down.
I agree with you that Shield Blocks true power is its immunity to crushes…but that’s the problem that makes Thrash as dangerous to a Warrior as a Bear…it will yank Shield Block down with great frequency which means every other remaining attack has a 15% chance to Crush you and if your not +Def capped, so also now Crit you.
For Warriors Shield Block can break up some of that bunching of damage that causes the spike. And of course Warriors have higher avoidance that can break up the spike further. This is how Warriors deal with it from a mechanic standpoint.
Druids compensate through higher EH values when the spike comes.
However those 3 Drakes are the highest EH value fights that you will face in BWL and prior, and most will underestimate that fact.
Moreover without solid values of EH, sufficient for both classes, then tanking those drakes becomes an issue of luck and not skill…assuming your healers aren’t complacent.
If you can clear the content with a bear in place of a warrior isnt that enough to justify themselves? Sure warriora might be better, but its doable with either. Therefore all of the talk is purely irrelevant.
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MCP farming takes less effort than picking flowers.
Using innervate on a prot would be pretty wasteful, because the buff itself is closely tied in effectiveness to the recipient’s spirit, which is in no small way a big reason why priests are the absolute best candidates to get it. Even holy paladins possess barely any spirit, and definitely not prot paladins.
The reason innervate may go unused is not an indication of inefficiency…it’s an emergency spell that you keep incase it is needed. If you just robotically used it on CD then you won’t have it in the event you actually need it.
A Warrior can certainly improve his Shield Block uptime. Even playstyle improvements such as pooling rage to ensure Shield Block is pressed on cooldown make improvements.
My point is that he’s immune to crits while Shield Block is up, yes.
You’re mistaken on the dangerous parts. The most dangerous thing to tanks is burst damage. The highest burst damage on a Warrior comes when Shield Block is already down and then the Thrash comes and 3x crits. Whatever happens next pales in comparison. That’s more burst damage than putting up Shield Block, taking 3 blocks from the subsequent Thrash, then taking a followup crit.
By the time I got to your post you had removed it. I know it had a link to something in it.
When my 60 bear was farming Gnomeregan for MCP’s, I’d sneak in, kill the boss, sneak out again until I reached instance cap, have a beer and play an alt. Rinse and repeat, less trash to kill than picking flowers.
maladath? gross. lost all value with how classic does weapon skill.
What I originally said was:
“Those 0/5 lockouts though… 
”
I don’t find particularly find MCP farming to be too difficult as part of feral life, and I’m cat main in raiding so I have to do it a lot.
I just log out in front of Gnomer every time and do a 5 cycle lockout next time I login first thing to start my day, consistently, and have worked up quite a stockpile.
Shift touched on some of it in regards to Innervate.
The other factor of GBoK spam is you still have to keep up Rank 1 Holy Shield and cast 2 Seal of Wisdom every minute.
If you include human error, input lag, latency, and what have you, you are looking at 28 GCD’s to cast GBoK…not all 40 of them.
With 10 Warriors, that is now 532 TPS for 28 casts per minute, then you add your threat for Rank 1 HS + Sanctuary, and melee values to that.
With thorns, even with 10 Warriors, thats about 750 TPS. So your raid can deliver 1000 DPS to a target. Solid threat, but not so overpowering as some would have you believe.
You can’t see GBoK threat in relations to everyone else’s threat. GBoK registers as a buff and meters as a result can’t track how many you are casting it on for threat determinations, if they even recognized it as threat.
GBoK with HS and Seals is about 5500 mana per minute.
Sow, JoW, and Imp Bow will provide for +/- 3000 mana per minute, the variance will come from weapon delay.
It is mana intensive, and does require consumables to pull of for longer fights. Boss avoidance really hurts JoW/SoW when they are reduced by 20% or so.
Most Paladins raid buffed will be 50 mana per 2s. So innervate will yeild 2000 mana per use. It can help, but as Shift mentioned most guild will want to keep at least 1 in reserve.
I’ve been told many times how onerous it is. I don’t get it.
I’ve never observed a timer for it, but he seems to universally hit me with a melee and Thrash (+2 more attacks). That… honestly isn’t that bad, since you should be taunting with Shield Block (-2 crush/crit chances), but the kicker is that he likes to hit with Shadow Flame with it… most of the time. There’s no guarantee, since his Wing Buffet timer is simply that it’s off cooldown and will be used before or after the very next Shadow Flame (RNG dictated).
Tanks can get spiked pretty hard, so I always call out 4-5 seconds before a swap, so my healers can pre-heal, shield, and/or proc Inspiration. No issues doing that so far, and I wear heavy mitigation, since our MT wears full FR, so he never has to run out.
Ummm…that’s what a conjunctive spike mechanic is, its burst damage, which is what I was referring to.
Spikes kill tanks, and Thrash is a spike that’s made more powerful combined with Shadowflame and the paced damage of Flame Buffet.
Yes, I’m aware.
But as I stated you don’t get to choose when that happens. Once the fight happens you will see the timers for Wing Buffet, Shadow Flame, etc.
You won’t however get to choose when the boss is hitting you, because Parry triggers will change their attack timer.
You don’t get to choose if Shield Block is taken down before or by Thrash itself, as a result you don’t get to control how severe the spike is outside of selecting your gear.
The problem with the Lab Drakes is they require higher levels of EH than most give them credit for, as a result many tanks are going in to the encounter in threat gear without appreciable EH or FR levels.
Thrash affects both Bears and Warriors nearly the same. This isn’t Loatheb where your talking about consistently smaller hits that come in faster.
These are Regular hits that are sometimes coming in threes. that can hit with Shadowflame.
Bear off tank in my guild is already regretting the mcp farm. Told him to get used to it because by the time naxx hits that number might be 10 times higher. I also pulled aggro from him fairly easy when he wasnt using it - to the point i cant even auto attack when im close to threat for fear if getting a wf+hoj proc.
Bear tanks are fine - when raid dps isnt world buffed and fully consumed with raid level or better weapons. The mcp is needed just to make it viable.
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