Druid tank aggro > warrior aggro

[ukkoshukka]

There was some talk about this in the guild chat, so I searched for the appropriate thread in the US druid forums and found it. I'll copy and paste it here since Bliz forums have a nasty habit of removing the threads too quickly.

Original post:

Its time to show everyone what I am talking about when I say that bear threat is significantly higher then protection warrior threat.

********NOTE: THIS DOES NOT SUGGEST THAT DRUID TANKS ARE BETTER. BOTH CLASSES HAVE THEIR ADVANTAGES. THIS POST IS MADE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEFINING ADVANTAGE TO A BEAR TANK**********

I have used the numbers from the warrior forum that have been accepted as the standard computations, and I have relied upin Chibi's work which is posted in this thread as well.

Relevant threads :
Druid #s in this thread:
forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-druid&T=708760&P=1

Warrior #s in this thread:
forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-warrior&t=735732&p=1

Known Numbers:
numbers = damage before pulling aggro.
Sunder: 261 (260.95 - 261.15)
Heroic Strike*: 145 (143.9 - 148.8)
Revenge*: 315 (313.9 - 318.3)
Shield Bash*: 180 (175.4 - 180.3)
Shield Slam*: ?? 250

These are the bonuses given to warrior attacks.

Druid numbers:

Swipe and maul: dmg x 1.75.

Both Bear and Defensive Stance have a 30% multiplier to threat, which can be raised to 45% through talents availible to both sides.

Lets begin.

Lets use a baseline of 5 sunders with which to begin the comparisons:

261 x 5 = 1305 Threat from Sunder in 1.5 x 5 = 7.5 seconds, or 1305/7.5, 174 Threat per second.

Now any tank worth his salt will be HSing at the same time, so we must add that in as well.

Lets use a Quel. Lets be generous and say that it will do 200 damage from a heroic strike every 2 seconds, counting in some mitigation.

so thats 3.75 swings of HS in that time, at 200+145 = 345 x 3.75 = 1293.75 Threat in 7.5 seconds from HS. for a total of 172.5 TPS

So then we add the two to get the total TPS of 172.5 + 174 = 346.5 Threat per Second.

Then add in the threat multiplers of d stance and Defiance, we get 345.7 x1.45 = 502.425 TPS

(Yes I know at this point you're going to be like but dood, what about revenge. Just hang on, this is simple comparison.)

Lets move on to a mauling, swiping bear.

the Average Maul I hit for is somewhere around 325.

From bear stance, we get the same 45% with talents.

We know from testing that bear threat is 1.75x Damage inflicted.

Thusly, we get 325 x 1.75 = 568 Threat per maul per 2.5 seconds. 227.2 Threat per second.

In the same 7.5 second span a bear will maul 3 times, so thats 1704 threat.

But wait! theres swipe as well!

Swipe is known to do the same as maul, 1.75x damage as threat. Swipe ignores other cooldowns, so you can use it every 1.5 seconds.

My average swipe damage is about 70.

70 x 1.75 = 122.5 threat. +
122.5/1.5 = 81.6~ Threat Per second.

Add them together and you get 308.86~ threat per second.

Time to add in the 45% modifier.

308.86 x1.45 = 447.86 Threat per second.

Warrior threat = 502.425 Threat per second.
Bear Threat (Non crit)= 447.86 tps.

GG warrior wins, right?

sorry.

ITS CRITS TIME!

My average crit maul is 700. I have a 25% crit rate while tanking.

My average crit swipe is 140.

A crit maul will give me 700 x 1.75 x 1.45 = 1776 damage worth of threat. This is 710 Threat per second.

Note a sunder is worth 261 Threat. A crit maul for 700 is worth 1776/348.45 = 4.69 sunders. A crit maul for 1200, with some of the higher AP weapons, will do 1200 x 1.75 x 1.45 = 3045 Threat, or 8.055 sunders
A crit swipe will do 140 x 1.75 x 1.45 = 355 Threat. 355/1.5 = 236.7 Threat per second.

1 in 4 of my mauls will crit for ~700.
1 in 4 of my swipes will crit for 130.

Thus in a sequence of four we have 350, 350, 350, 700 for a total of 1750 damage in 10 seconds. This is 175 DPS, or, 444 Threat per second.

Lets make a swipe crit and see what we get:

70 70 70, 130 or 340 damage in 10 seconds. 34 dps, or 86 Threat per second.

Lets add them together: 86 + 444 = 530 Threat Per second, which is a full 25+ points higher then the sunder/hs spamming tank, which by the way, will never get significantly higher then 503 threat per second, as their abilties are capped.

Lets run a druid hitting for 600/1200 crit and see just how far away they are.

600 + 600 + 600 +1200 = 3000 damage in 10 seconds, 300 dps. which is 3000 x 1.45 x 1.75 = 7612.5 Threat, or 761.3 Threat per second.

Add in the swipe (static damage) of 86 tps, and you get 761.3 + 86 = 847.3 Threat per second, a full 344 TPS MORE then the prot tank.

503/847.3 = a full 41% higher threat from a bear tank then a Protection spec tank.

I dont even have to crunch the numbers adding in revenge and shield slam to know that there is abosolutely no way a warrior is going to touch that number.

Other good posts on the subject:

Bear Aggro > Warrior Aggro? Maybe not - A warriors rebuttal of the above post.

Note that he uses the absolutely best gear available to make the calculations(a warrior with 10k health and armor) and even then druid aggro is bigger except on mobs with a very high physical damage mitigation.

Myths About Bear Tanking - Basics about druid tanking, written by a druid who has maintanked for his guild through MC and BWL.

[Grul]

Yarr, had a read through several of those posts over the past week.

Numbers are good to illustrate a point, but there are so many different factors involved in most cases, that's impossible to put exact values on things.
Take a 31/5/15 MS warrior for example, a heroic strike crit from them will do +20% damage (from impale), and put Deep Wounds on the mob, each doing more damage (multiplied by 1.45 of course). This attack could then of course proc Crusader on the warrior's weapon, increasing threat some more.
Druids of course have frenzied regeneration, faerie fire to throw on whenever it's up etc., so pretty hard to work out exact numbers

Having said that, I think druids and warriors (of equal skill and gear level) make superb tanks, and I wouldn't say warriors are better than druids, or that druids are better than warriors.

There are lots of encounters where I think druids make better tanks than warriors (immunity to polymorph - come tank Jin'Do for us Ukko!), and others where warriors are better suited to tanking (immunity to fear).

I think warriors do get more choices over what gear they have access to (they can choose between resist sets, +def sets, +sta sets, +DPS sets or combinations), but this is mostly Blizz's fault for not catering to feral druids as fully yet

I agree that warrior talents don't scale as well for threat generation though, as sunder/revenge/shield slam/shield bash all produce a static amount of threat, and it's only threat that's generated through DPS that actually scales (and that only scales with a 1.45 multiplier).
I'm sure this is something Blizz will look into someday (*hopes*), as a fully AQ geared warrior will only have marginally better threat generation than a fresh level 60 warrior with all greens (while his fellow raid members have vastly increased their DPS output...). Their mitigation of course, will be rather a lot better..

Oh, you definitely want to get these two items too Ukko
thottbot.com/?i=53088
thottbot.com/?i=52927

[skrallik]

Ukko...

I have the recipe for your golden mantle now btw..

[ukkoshukka]

grul said:

Numbers are good to illustrate a point, but there are so many different factors involved in most cases, that's impossible to put exact values on things.

Oh, I definitely know - theorycrafting is usually pretty dumb, and there is no easy way to quantify tanking since there are so many variables involved. At least I hope it shows that druids aren't completely outclassed when it comes to tanking.

Take a 31/5/15 MS warrior for example, a heroic strike crit from them will do +20% damage (from impale), and put Deep Wounds on the mob, each doing more damage (multiplied by 1.45 of course). This attack could then of course proc Crusader on the warrior's weapon, increasing threat some more.

True. Problem is that when warrior increases his damage output, it only adds "white damage" aggro. Meanwhile when druid increases his damage, it gets multiplied by the aggro modifier of maul.

I think that scalability of warrior aggro is one of those things that Blizz should be looking into.

I think warriors do get more choices over what gear they have access to (they can choose between resist sets, +def sets, +sta sets, +DPS sets or combinations), but this is mostly Blizz's fault for not catering to feral druids as fully yet

Yes, this is possibly the biggest weakness of druid tanks. There are one or two good tanking drops from bosses([Dark iron ring], [Wristguards of stability] even tho it is just a minor upgrade from blues) and few crafted pieces that are great([Molten helm], [Lava belt]). Other than that, druids can't improve that much in MC, compared to warriors who will get an entire epic item set dedicated to tanking.

I've seen some forum posts from druids that are tanking BWL, and the sad thing is that they are still wearing a lot of pre-MC blues. Blizz is learning, though... there is a lot of good feral stuff in BWL, and even more in AQ.

[Grul]

ukkoshukka said:

Oh, I definitely know - theorycrafting is usually pretty dumb, and there is no easy way to quantify tanking since there are so many variables involved. At least I hope it shows that druids aren't completely outclassed when it comes to tanking.

Bah, we knew that already

ukkoshukka said:

True. Problem is that when warrior increases his damage output, it only adds "white damage" aggro. Meanwhile when druid increases his damage, it gets multiplied by the aggro modifier of maul.

I think that scalability of warrior aggro is one of those things that Blizz should be looking into.

Yep, definitely. I've no idea how easy it is for a druid to increase damage output in relation to warriors though. Warriors can get shiny epic weapons, weapon enchants, stat bonuses, dual wield etc. to improve damage output, no idea whether it's harder/easier for druids to up their DPS.

ukkoshukka said:

I've seen some forum posts from druids that are tanking BWL, and the sad thing is that they are still wearing a lot of pre-MC blues. Blizz is learning, though... there is a lot of good feral stuff in BWL, and even more in AQ.

Most of the warrior stuff I've seen in AQ seems to focus less on tanking, and more on being a middle ground between tank/DPS gear. Will be interesting to see how that works out, and what sort of gear the new AQ encounters require.