On the Effectiveness of Various Threat Stats for Tankadins

[Dorvan]

With the talent and itemization changes of 2.3, Tankadins are faced with more options than ever in terms of available stats to increase threat. I decided to take a look at the relative effectiveness of these stats in order to help Tankadins better make decisions about their gear. There are 4 stats worth mentioning when it comes to Tankadin threat: spell damage, spell hit rating, hit rating, and expertise rating. The threat effects of these are summarized as follows:

Spell damage -- increases the damage dealt by our spells (and healing done by heals, though this usually isn't relevant to tanking)

Spell hit rating -- reduces the frequency of "miss-resists" on spell abilities. The following abilities can be miss-resisted:

JoV 5-stack hit
JoR/JoV
Holy Shield

Hit rating -- reduces the frequency of melee attack misses, affecting both our white damage and seal damage (since misses do not proc seals). Avenger's Shield and (as of 2.3) Righteous Defense misses are also reduced by hit rating.

Expertise rating -- reduces the chance for our melee attacks to be dodged/parried, having similar effects on our threat to hit rating. Does not affect AS/RD, but does reduce incoming damage slightly due to fewer parries.


Analysis of threat stats:



Spell damage: In a full threat rotation, 1 spell damage provides about .5 tps. The calculations have been done more extensively in other threads so I won't repeat them here, but if you want more information check out:

http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintanka ... .php?t=241

An important note for the equivalence figures in the stats below. To figure out at what tps each stat equals +dam, I simply set up the equation:

.5 = X% * Y TPS

and solved for Y, where X is the % damage increase from the stat. One consequence of this approximation is that the tps numbers refer to tps from damage only. Threat from energy regen and healing tends to be much more variable and so I haven't attempted to capture it here, but generally I've found that 15-20% of my threat comes for energy regen (the vast majority being Spiritual Attunement mana gains) and self-healing through earth shield and Prayer of Mending. Thus, if you're comparing to results from a threat meter or parser, you'll generally want to add 15-25% to the cutoff numbers listed to get the cutoff in terms of overall threat rather than threat from damage only.

Spell hit: For a very rough look at spell hit I will make the following simplifications:

-- 37% of our threat comes from miss-resistable spells (thus far parses indicate this number is about 35-39%)
-- These spells have a miss-resist rate of 17%
-- We have taken the 2.3 Precision talent

Given this set up, 1% spell hit will give us a .35*(.01/(1-.14)) ~= .41% increase in threat
Since 12.62 spell hit rating = 1% spell hit, a single point of spell hit rating would provide a ~.032% increase in threat. Thus, under these assumptions 1 spell hit rating = 1 spell damage at a threat output of about 1560 tps

Hit rating: The main assumption here is that white damage + SoR account for 35% of overall threat generation. We also assume 6% miss, 6% dodge, and 15% parry by the mob,, which includes precision.

Thus, 1% hit provides a .35*(.01/(1-.27)) ~= .48% increase in threat generation. 15.76 hit rating = 1% hit, so each point of hit rating provides a ~.030% threat increase. In other words, 1 hit rating = 1 spell damage at about 1660 tps

Expertise rating: Here the same assumptions will be used as with hit rating.

1 expertise is -.25% dodge/parry (.5% combined), which provides a .35*(.005/(1-.27)) ~= .24% increase in threat generation. 3.94 expertise rating = 1 expertise, so each point of expertise rating provides a ~.061% threat increase. In other words, 1 expertise rating = 1 spell damage at about 825 tps


Conclusions:

In summary, taken solely in terms of threat, most Tankadins should prioritize threat stats in the following order:

Pre-T6:

spell damage > expertise rating >>>>> spell hit rating > hit rating

T6+:

spell damage = expertise rating >>>>> spell hit rating > hit rating

The general take home message is that our 2 primary threat stats are +damage and expertise rating. The 825 TPS from damage only mark roughly corresponds to about 1000 overall tps...generally hit around early T6. Hit rating and spell hit rating are nearly identical in terms of their threat contribution, but each is about half as effective as +dam or expertise rating. As a small editorial comment, note that if hit and spell hit were combined into a single stat, the resulting stat would provide a .062% increase in threat per rating point, almost identical to expertise (hint, hint Blizzard).

That these calculations are only done for single target tanking. In multi-target situations spell damage will dominate even more due to the huge role consecration plays in AoE threat.

There are other factors to consider of course: the mitigation value of expertise (which I haven't attempted to calculate), or the reduction in AS/RD resists from hit rating which may be desirable on certain fights. In general however, I would conclude that most Tankadins are actually best off ignoring all threat stats except for spell damage. If you happen to pick up the others that's fine, but I wouldn't go out of your way for them.

Thanks to the many active theorycrafters who provided data points and ideas for this, and especially to Joanadark for the info on miss-resistable skills and to kalbear and cordelia for crunching the numbers on the T6 content parses.

[kalbear]

Nice post!

Something else to consider is that holy wrath and exorcism both are miss-resisted by spell hit and affected by spell damage. It's not a huge deal, but it is important for threat on some encounters.

And while I know you made the point that this is only for threat, it's important to note how useful hit and expertise are going to be. Expertise does reduce damage thanks to reducing parries. Hit will help with AS/RD. Both will help with getting more procs on JoW (if you're running it), though not hugely (about 2.5MP5 per every 1% chance of hitting).

And as said, it's important to note that you should have balance. As you get more spell damage the overall value of spelldamage on your threat rate is going to be smaller than the overall value of hit rate. The threat value of hit scales as you increase damage.

[Winchester]

interesting

[Fridmarr]

Blessing of Sanctuary and Retribution Aura can be resisted, as can the SoV proc to increase, maintain, or start the stack.

Every tick on consecrate can be resisted, though I'm not sure that spell hit would affect that as they are often partial resists.

[Dorvan]

Blessing of Sanctuary and Retribution Aura can be resisted, as can the SoV proc to increase, maintain, or start the stack.

Every tick on consecrate can be resisted, though I'm not sure that spell hit would affect that as they are often partial resists.

I simply lifted that information from Joanadark here:

http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintanka ... 7&start=15

...if you've got some counter-evidence I'd be happy to see it. Spell hit doesn't affect partial-resists or full-resists, only miss-resists.

[Fridmarr]

Blessing of Sanctuary and Retribution Aura can be resisted, as can the SoV proc to increase, maintain, or start the stack.

Every tick on consecrate can be resisted, though I'm not sure that spell hit would affect that as they are often partial resists.

I simply lifted that information from Joanadark here:

http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintanka ... 7&start=15

...if you've got some counter-evidence I'd be happy to see it. Spell hit doesn't affect partial-resists or full-resists, only miss-resists.

Yeah, that's why I said I didn't think spell hit would help with Consecrate. However, I think Joana is wrong about Ret aura and Sanctuary, I'm pretty sure they are miss resists, because I never see them get partially resisted. In my combatlog from last night's Tidewalker kill, there's an absolute ton of Retribution Aura resists, but zero partials.

Here's a look at the filtered log, http://wowwebstats.com/p6v2dns5z333g?s= ... aa=i&fih=9

[Dorvan]

Well, if you look at Joana's post, she claims that those skills can have full-resists, but not partial- or miss-resists. I'm not sure how one can tell whether a resist is a full-resist or miss-resist though, you'll have to follow up with her on that.

[Fridmarr]

Well, if you look at Joana's post, she claims that those skills can have full-resists, but not partial- or miss-resists. I'm not sure how one can tell whether a resist is a full-resist or miss-resist though, you'll have to follow up with her on that.

Yeah, that comes directly off the EJ thread (Protection and You), though the original poster of that does state that ret aura can have partial resists. I've not noticed them, I'll have to do some more log checking.

It would be odd to have a spell that's only fully-resistable, but in theory, you could determine that versus a miss-resist by the resist rate, there's a fairly big difference between the two. I'd also have to do some parsing on that, since WWS is really buggy for that stuff.

[Dorvan]

At any rate, please post any follow up information you've got, but I'm not too concerned about the effects on the overall picture even if those do turn out to be miss-resistable. Ret Aura generally won't be a factor because I'm concerned with single target situations here where you'll generally be using Dev Aura instead, and BoSanc isn't a huge threat factor either (on my guild's latest Al'ar kill, which should be a huge overestimate of BoSanc threat since it's AoE rather than single target and I was in my block set, BoSanc was a little under 6% of my threat).

[Fridmarr]

At any rate, please post any follow up information you've got, but I'm not too concerned about the effects on the overall picture even if those do turn out to be miss-resistable. Ret Aura generally won't be a factor because I'm concerned with single target situations here where you'll generally be using Dev Aura instead, and BoSanc isn't a huge threat factor either (on my guild's latest Al'ar kill, which should be a huge overestimate of BoSanc threat since it's AoE rather than single target and I was in my block set, BoSanc was a little under 6% of my threat).

Yeah I completely agree (well I use ret aura frequently, Dev aura is supplied by a holy pally usually) but neither are going to cause a change in your summary worth noting. I was just posting for completeness, though I probably should have done some more research beforehand.

[Dorvan]

No problem, sometimes details that seem small at first wind up completely unraveling an argument. I'm always happy to have people try to poke holes in my posts or offer suggestions, it definitely improves their quality.

[Gerilith]

Knowing quite much about caster's spell hit mechanics, I can say there is no possibility to say what has been a miss-resist (spellhit) or spell-resist (res of the mob) since both will just be named "resisted".

As we have no binary spells (except Avengers Shield which ist affected by melee hit), we cannot say what partials are due to res or to lack of spellhit, too.

But you can in fact say, that generally spellhit will lower the chance of full- and partial resists.

And please, have a look at http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Spell_hit_chance . Partial resist can be lowered by spellhit as long as you are not using binary spells only.

[SmurfZG]

We assume 6% miss, 6% dodge, and 15% parry by the mob,, which includes precision.

Expertise rating: Here the same assumptions will be used as with hit rating.

1 expertise is -.25% dodge/parry (.5% combined), which provides a .35*(.005/(1-.27)) ~= .24% increase in threat generation. 3.94 expertise rating = 1 expertise, so each point of expertise rating provides a ~.061% threat increase. In other words, 1 expertise rating = 1 spell damage at about 825 tps

Dodge is only 6% but parry is 15%. It would obviously be much less effective to stack expertise past 24 expertise, but would it be worth it to get rid of more of those nasty parries? How should we priorities when the boss can no longer dodge?

[Gerilith]

We assume 6% miss, 6% dodge, and 15% parry by the mob,, which includes precision.

Expertise rating: Here the same assumptions will be used as with hit rating.

1 expertise is -.25% dodge/parry (.5% combined), which provides a .35*(.005/(1-.27)) ~= .24% increase in threat generation. 3.94 expertise rating = 1 expertise, so each point of expertise rating provides a ~.061% threat increase. In other words, 1 expertise rating = 1 spell damage at about 825 tps

Dodge is only 6% but parry is 15%. It would obviously be much less effective to stack expertise past 24 expertise, but would it be worth it to get rid of more of those nasty parries? How should we priorities when the boss can no longer dodge?

I think it is not possible to reach 24 expertise keeping your tankstats viable. But of course, the usefullness of Expertise will be somewhat more than half (to lower parry also means getting less swings to mitigate) of what it has been before.

[Rhî]

Why we assuming such a high parry chance? I've noticed that myself, too. But i can't figure out why bosses have such a high parry chance in general. It seems to be a flat 9% increase.