| Alrix | #6591 Monday February 13, 2006 at 14:10 | |
Paladins > WoW |
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-warrior&t=735732&p=1 It's often said that we will never be able to work out the way threat and hate lists and mobs' AI works, because it's too complicated and unknowable, that we'll only ever have crude approximations and guesses. I've conducted some decent, rigorous tests, and i have what i believe is a good list of hate values and explanations of gaining and losing aggro and the behaviour of taunt. I am also able to debunk a few myths about how threat works. 1) Definitions We define "aggro" to be who the mob is attacking. We define "threat" to be a numeric value that each mob has towards each player on it's hate list. Note, as we shall soon see, even for a normal mob, the target who has aggro is not necessarily the player on it's threat list with the most threat. We define arbitratily that 1 point of unmodified damage gives 1 point of threat. 2) How to gain aggro - the 10% barrier Simply put, for a mob to change aggro to a new target, the new target must have over 10% more threat than the mob's current target. E.g. mob is attacking player x. x does 100 damage to mob, then stops. Player y starts hitting the mob. The mob will start attacking y when y does over 110 damage. Proof: this is easy to demonstrate. Get two players both doing autoattack on a mob (not warriors of rogues; we'll see later they complicate things). Have player 1 do a certain amount of damage, then stop. Have player 2 keep attacking till he gets aggro. You have an upper and lower bound on the threat required to get aggro - 1 attack before he got aggro was not enough, but the attack that he got aggro was at least enough. With low damage attacks (i.e. fists only), you will get a very good value of 10%. This is only a description of the normal mob targetting. Obviously there are mobs who will attack secondary targets with special abilities, ignoring their current threat / aggro. 3) Threat modifiers from Warrior Stances In Battle Stance and Berserker Stance, all threat from a Warrior is multiplied by 80%. In defensive stance, the multiplier is 130%. With Defiance, it is 145%. Proof: a simple modification of the above proof. Get a warrior to do, say, 1000 damage in defensive stance, without defiance. Get a non-warrior to take aggro with white damage. You will find it does not happen before 1430 damage. The warrior's 1000 damage caused 1300 threat in defensive stance, and the 10% barrier means you need more than 1430 to gain aggro. 4) Threat does not decay Threat never, ever decays. Here is test data. Warrior does 83 damage on mob in battle stance, gains aggro. From above, we know it will take more than 83 * 0.8 * 1.1 = 73.04 threat to gain aggro. Warrior waits for 5 minutes getting beat on. Then mage starts attacking slowly. Mage does 73 damage, but does not gain aggro! Mage does another 2 damage, and does gain aggro. From the warrior's initial hit to losing aggro, the time taken was 496 seconds. As an upper bound, assume maximal threat decay. i.e. the mage only needed 73.000000001 threat to gain aggro. Then the warrior's threat had decayed to 66.36363636, from 66.4. This means he went down to 99.945% threat in 496 seconds. At this maximal rate of hate decay, the time taken for the warrior's threat to decay to 90% of the original value would be 26.5 hours. In fact, if a warrior logged in as soon as the server came online after the weekly reset and hit a mob, his threat would not decay to 50% before the server reset next week. I think this is enough to rule out threat decay. 5) Threat values for some warrior abilities the following list is not exhaustive, but includes all the major tanking abilities. Note: the following values are given in raw terms. In reality the warrior must have either a 1.3 or 0.8 or 1.45 modifier on these, depending on his stance and talents. Note: * All abilities do not include threat generated by their damage. This will be discussed more later. Sunder: 260 (258.0 - 260.8) Heroic Strike*: 145 (143.9 - 148.8) Revenge*: 315 (313.9 - 318.3) Revenge Stun: 25 (23.4 - 29.1) Shield Bash*: 180 (175.4 - 180.3) Shield Slam*: ?? 250 (estimated) Shield Block: 0 (0 - 0. Can be higher - more on this later) Thunder Clap*: 130 (126.9 - 134.8) Demo Shout: 43 (42.8 - 43.8) 6) Healing, "you gain x ___", etc Each point of healing, when completely unmodified by talents, gives 0.5 threat. Replace the proof for (2) by the second person only healing. Note: overhealing doesn't count, only the actual amount healed. This is easy to demonstrate. Abilities that put "you gain x mana" in the combat log give 0.5 threat per point gained; life is the same. Examples would be drinking potions, but not natural regen, or the Shaman's mana spring totem. Abilities that put "you gain x rage" in the combat log give 5 threat per point gained. However, this is not modified by warrior stance. Such abilities include bloodrage, improved blocking talent, unbridled wrath, and 5/8 Might. Like healing, these only give threat if you are below the maximum. 7) Explaining Cop's 4.0 damage to heal ratio Cop stated that in his tests, each point of damage by the warrior took approximately 4 points of healing by the priest, for the priest to get aggro. Here's how: Warrior in defensive stance, with defiance: 1.45 multiplier Gaining aggro from Warrior: 1.1 multiplier Priest with discipline: 80% threat Healing: each point gives 0.5 threat Together, 1.45 * 1.1 / 0.8 / 0.5 = 3.9875. Pretty darn close to 4. Threat from pulling? There is no threat associated with pulling. The smallest amouts of threat we could generate drew aggro from a body pull, no matter how long we waited after the pull. Pulling with damage did not effect the results of tests such as in section (2) at all. 9) Taunt The behaviour of taunt appears at first randomised or complicated. For instance, if you taunt a mob off another player, then do nothing, the mob will go back to the player as soon as the debuff wears off. It appears to be giving temporary hate, then. The following experiment disproves this: take any class, do 1000 damage or so to a mob, then stop. Then have a warrior taunt the mob, taking no action until the debuff has worn off. The mob will return to the original player. Now have the warrior twiddle his thumbs, have a beer, read the paper, etc, for as long as he likes (not too long or his buddy will probably die). Then have the warrior deal white damage until he gains aggro. You will find that in defensive stance with defiance, the first hit over 69 damage will score the warrior aggro. With battle stance, still only 125 damage is needed. The behaviour of taunt is surprisingly simple, once you remember the 10% rule. It will give you exactly the threat of the player on top of the threat list - but not the 10% needed for the mob to change aggro, only a temporary aggro from the debuff! If you do nothing, you will stay at 100% of the mob's old target's threat, and will lose aggro with the taunt debuff. With a relatively small effort, you can gain aggro. The behaviour can be described as "temporary aggro, permament threat". It is easy to show that taunt does not give the warrior any constant amount of threat. Have player 1 body pull a mob, but do no damage to it. He now has 0 threat, but has aggro. Now have the warrior taunt, and do nothing. After the 3 seconds, the warrior will lose aggro. He is now on 0 threat, but does not have the more than 0 required to gain aggro, by the 10% rule. 10) Implications a) Regaining aggro. Considering the 10% rule, if you lose aggro naturally, someone will have at least 110% of your current threat. To regain it, you need 10% of that, or 121% of your current threat, at an absolute minimum. So don't lose aggro, it's hard to get back! Not that you didn't already know this, but still. b) Taunt is potentially your highest threat move, because it gives permanent threat. The longer other people have been beating on a mob while you were not, the more threat you will gain by taunting. But from the 10% rule, you will need to do a lot of work to get aggro if the mob has been attacked for a decent amount of time without you. c) Heroic Strike should not be used as a primary threat ability. Suppose you are tanking a level 62 mob. Let's give him 8,000 ac raw, and even assume he has 5 sunders stacked, for 5750 final ac, so he will take 48.89% of damage. A 15% crit rate is balanced by the 10% penalty to damage in defensive stance, and a 10% chance of a glancing blow chance for 50% damage. Then you can expect the 138 damage from Heroic Strike to contribute 67.5 damage on average, for a total of 212 unmodified threat. This is still only 82% of the threat a sunder would give. Even with a 1.3 speed weapon, you will still do 94% the threat of sunder per time interval. Best practice is to spam sunder, and use HS in between to soak up excess rage. d) Revenge ftw. You can expect to do about 345 unmodified threat with Revenge, including damage, against the mob in the example above, which is exceptional for the low rage cost, even throwing in 10 for a shield block. However, there is a rage cost of shield block, in that you will block more attacks, so take less damage, so gain less rage from damage. Two blocks for 180 damage and you can say goodbye to another 4 rage. e) Demo Shout ftl. Demoralising shout does one sixth the threat of a sunder. Even spammed in defensive stance with defiance, you're doing no more threat than 42dps on each mob. Besides picking up whelps in Onyxia and tanking panthers in the Panther boss encounter in ZG, i can't see a compelling reason to use this. f) Shield Slam ftl. Given the 6 second cooldown, there is no improvement in threat per second by using shield slam. With shield slam: 3 sunders and 1 shield slam every 6 seconds. About 212 threat per second, unmodified. With the 30 rage from the shield slam you can cast 1 sunder and about 1.2 heroic strikes, assuming you have the talents (which you would with any shield slam build), and are losing 3 rage per Heroic Strike from lost white damage rage (i.e. assuming 90 modified damage per hit). The 4 sunders and 1.2 heroic strikes every 6 seconds gives about 215 threat per second. The only improvement is if you are spamming both sunder and HS, and want even more threat. Suppose we have a 2.0 speed weapon, HS spam and sunder spam. That's about 280 unmodified tps. Changing one sunder for a shield slam gives us 318 unmodified. However, the same effect would be achieved by changing to a 1.4 speed weapon and casting HS more often. And these values aren't taking into account autoattack damage, which makes the margins comparatively smaller. g) There's no amazing super secret randomised blizzard aggro algorithm. The concepts are simple and the values can be fitted with nice numbers. Even formulas for threat-reducing knockbacks can conceivably be worked out, if threat values are carefully monitored. For completeness, rogues also have the 20% threat reduction that warriors have in battle and berzerk stances. On a side note, threat is a big issue in BWL. It's (probably?) important that warriors and mages collect full Might/Arcanist for the threat modifiers. 1 point of threat is 1 point of damage from an non-rogue/warrior, excluding any talents (e.g. mage with staff hit.) As for threat modifiers available to classes we have: Druids: * Cower(cat): -600 threat * Bear form: maul and swipe have a threat multiplier (2 or 3?), unlike warriors, bear tanking seems to be a pure multiplier of damage done, no fixed threat component to abilities. * Subtlety: -20% threat on healing Hunters: * Feign death: clears threat completely * Distracting shot: +600 threat * Disengage: -405 threat Mages: * Arcane subtlety: -40% threat on arcane spells * 8 piece Arcanist: -15% threat on spells Paladins: * -66% innate threat on healing * Righteous fury: +60% threat on holy damage * Improved Righteous Fury: +50% threat (+110% total threat with improved) * Blessing of Salvation: -30% threat generated by target Priests: * Subtlety: -20% threat on healing * Shadow affinity: -25% threat on shadow spells * Silent resolve: -20% threat on all damage spells Rogues: * -20% innate * Feint: -800 threat * Vanish: clears threat completely * 5 piece Bloodfang: +25% to feint (-1000 threat?) Warlocks: * 8 piece Nemesis: -20% threat on destruction spells Warriors: * Battle/Berzerk stance: -20% threat * Defensive stance: +30% threat * 8 piece Might: +15% threat on sunder * Various abilities with built-in threat: sunder, revenge, etc. |
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| Fengell | #6592 Monday February 13, 2006 at 14:36 | |
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Altmonger |
I think it's: * Righteous fury: +50% threat on holy damage * Improved Righteous Fury: +40% threat (for a total of +90% threat on holy damage) --
Retired ST:BA (deserving) paladin grouplead. |
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| Alrix | #6593 Monday February 13, 2006 at 14:39 | |
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Paladins > WoW |
I didn't have the talent but I just did it on the talent calc. It's 60% normal and +50% improved. | |
| Brian | #6594 Monday February 13, 2006 at 14:47 | |
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Member |
This has come off the WoW Forums and should be given proper attribution if possible. Or attributed to an unknown source. These sorts of things should be made clear what is original work and what "belongs" to others. - Tallivai |
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| Alrix | #6595 Monday February 13, 2006 at 14:48 | |
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Paladins > WoW |
Aha! It was that link I didn't bother clicking on <.< | |
| Thrizzle | #6596 Monday February 13, 2006 at 15:01 | |
Retired Mini-Shreder. |
Yeah, it's been on the raids and dungeons forums for a LOOOONG time. -Thrizzle --
Excellence, Integrity, Commitment, Courage, Community |
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| Raukurk | #6597 Monday February 13, 2006 at 16:25 | |
Meatloaf |
Decent guide for threat, but should not be used as a general guide for tanking. Other aspects besides threat are missed, such as damagae mitigation. While this guide describes demo shout and shieldbock as useless for direct threat generation, you are however taking less damage because of it.
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Only the foolish attack me, and I make quick work of my attackers. And if there is one thing in this world that is in overabundance, it is fools. |
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| Blubbie | #6598 Wednesday February 15, 2006 at 11:33 | |
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(unregistered user) |
You´ve forgotten the most important Warlock Talent: Master Demonologist: Using Imp: Reduces threat caused by 20%. that makes a totaly of 40% Threat reduction. |
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| sefoniel | #6599 Wednesday February 15, 2006 at 12:06 | |
Arch Druid (at least according to BA!) |
I don't think threat reduction works like that, blubbie. More like: 100% - (100*20%) = 80% - (80*20%) = 64% threat generated. I think there was a blue post on this, but I can't dig it up ATM.. and I know there's a way to simplify my math, but I'm not so great at that. --
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| Thalassicus | #6600 Wednesday March 8, 2006 at 16:43 | |
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(unregistered user) |
It's 1.0 * (1-modifier1 * 1-modifier 2 * 1-modifier 3 * etc...), same result (1 * .8 * .8 = 0.64)  This is a very useful thread! There were two exact points I wasn't sure of (regarding taunt). |
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| Saethir | #6601 Wednesday March 8, 2006 at 17:07 | |
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Protector of the Oak |
Maul's threat multiplier is 1.75. Factor in Dire Bear Form's +30% threat (or +45% with talents), and Maul threat multiplier becomes 2.275 (or 2.5375 with talents). | |
| JJONK | #6602 Thursday March 9, 2006 at 03:43 | |
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Member |
are U sure paladins only generate 33 threat when healing for 100? If that's true.. we are far more powerfull that I thought... (no comment about our chicken dps, and our 2 choice of healing, I have already sufficient joke to counterattack in my own guilde^^)... |
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| Rhatha | #6603 Thursday March 9, 2006 at 04:58 | |
Rathalan Moonrage |
I'll have to dig up the thread for druid numbers again. What it amounts to is that swipe is roughly equal to a sunder on each of the three mobs it can hit, faerie fire is 100 threat, and maul Sae provided. Since druid threat is based purely off of damage, the lower armor a mob has, the more threat we can put out.. warriors work differently in that most of their abilities are flat number + damage with a smaller modifier. It's also why a good crit maul or two early in a fight can lock aggro for a good bit; depending on armor, you're looking at 800-1k damage for about 2k-2.5k threat from one swing. --
Rathalan Moonrage - Druid - http://ctprofiles.net/94788 Dynee Sprysporcket - Warlock We're going to do this because, like our namesake, we inevitably kill anything that fucks with us. - Ranalis It FEELS different; if I wanted to taunt like a warrior, I'd have played... a druid. (Buncha furry bastiches...) - Maxus Bear form gained the strength to tank FIVE gorillas! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kfr3602ANI |
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| Ariasis | #6604 Friday April 28, 2006 at 03:15 | |
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(unregistered user) |
Nice guide... But this bit is incorrect, it's 50% improvement of the 60% so it's 90% when tallented into this It's not added upon the 60% It's like this 60 +(60*0,5) = 90% I have the talent myself, and my RF is 90% increase Greetings, Ariasis |
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| Devious | #6605 Wednesday July 12, 2006 at 23:45 | |
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Member |
My experiences with tanking have found this info to be sound, quite logically. One thing I keep thinking about but forgetting to try, however, is this: Mind Control supposedly generates so much hate that it is "nearly impossible," according to virtually everything I have read, to reasonably pull a mind-controlled mob off the priest after it is broken. Would taunt not make this easily managable? Even accepting that 10% more of this godly amount of threat must be generated in order to actually maintain aggro after the debuff wears off, it seems entirely conceivable considering the potential for threat output of a raged up war. Acting as though the warrior is a class doing over 600 dps (easily possible with proper use of talents, revenges, and sunders) should be sufficient to generate 10% of the one-time spell cast by the priest, I should think. If anyone has ever fiddled with this themselves or has some insight into the amount of threat generated (affected by priest talents/duration?) by MC, I'd love to hear back. |
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