Windwalk, outdated?

I look at it this way:

Landslide offers a minute chance of shortening the fight in a meaningful way, and a very small chance of proccing at the right time to kill an add right before a time limit.

Windwalk offers a minute chance of saving healer mana in a meaningful way, and a very small chance of directly preventing my death.

They are both rather unimpressive buffs, but it is far more common for a boss to hit me really hard than it is for my DPS to be important at a particular moment. For the same reason, as a DPS I would always choose the tiny DPS buff over the tiny chance to prevent a tank death via some proc.

Just got Souldrinker (normal DS one), putting Landslide for a bit. Check our logs, then move back to Windwalk....check our logs. Landslide is a welcomed change from Windwalk....makes me feel cool....for now.

Just wanted to add a different view to this
Windwalk gives a chance to dodge attack (meaning yes it can be random but as all things random - its randomness becomes average over course of 100's of boss pulls), this means you will take less damage with this enchant as it also changes blocked attacks which still gives you damage to dodge attacks which gives no damage and hence takes no healing.
No healing in return free's up healers to heal raid and will eventaully lead to 2 man healing a fight instead of 3 man healing it, so another way to look at it would be what would you rather have a tank which does slightly more dps or an extra dps as team can do with only 2 instead of 3 healers

Crashtest wrote:Just wanted to add a different view to this
Windwalk gives a chance to dodge attack (meaning yes it can be random but as all things random - its randomness becomes average over course of 100's of boss pulls), this means you will take less damage with this enchant as it also changes blocked attacks which still gives you damage to dodge attacks which gives no damage and hence takes no healing.
No healing in return free's up healers to heal raid and will eventaully lead to 2 man healing a fight instead of 3 man healing it, so another way to look at it would be what would you rather have a tank which does slightly more dps or an extra dps as team can do with only 2 instead of 3 healers

We are aware of this and we are not saying that is useless, just being anal and saying that when the proc is active we're wasting itemisation points as mastery is pushed off the table and not used, on the other hand a +40 hit or landslide are never wasted.

You can agree or disagree, fair enough, but we know the mechanics

Crashtest wrote:Just wanted to add a different view to this
Windwalk gives a chance to dodge attack (meaning yes it can be random but as all things random - its randomness becomes average over course of 100's of boss pulls), this means you will take less damage with this enchant as it also changes blocked attacks which still gives you damage to dodge attacks which gives no damage and hence takes no healing.
No healing in return free's up healers to heal raid and will eventaully lead to 2 man healing a fight instead of 3 man healing it, so another way to look at it would be what would you rather have a tank which does slightly more dps or an extra dps as team can do with only 2 instead of 3 healers

Windwalker dodge proc will never, ever, ever (ever) make the difference between bringing 2 or 3 healers to a 10 man. You're talking about a 2% chance to dodge with a low uptime -- looking at 4 different logs, I have an overall uptime of ~11%, which contradicts the generally quoted 30% uptime (and frankly makes it look like complete shit)(redacted due to inaccuracy). This enchant might save your life once in a blue moon, but it won't change your healer's behaviour or demands on them at all.

Increasing RDPS to beat spawn timers, however, will drastically change overall healing requirements. On Ultraxion, Spine, and Madness, these are very real concerns.

Edit: quoted uptime figure was incorrect.

fuzzygeek wrote:You're talking about a 2% chance to dodge with a low uptime -- looking at 4 different logs, I have an overall uptime of ~11%, which contradicts the generally quoted 30% uptime (and frankly makes it look like complete shit).

Which logs, if you don't mind me asking? If the model is incorrect, or if something about the mechanics have changed, I'd like to know.

fuzzygeek wrote:This enchant might save your life once in a blue moon, but it won't change your healer's behaviour or demands on them at all.

No, it certainly won't change how they heal. I think the first part is why most people take the enchant; tank death is very often a wipe and hard to recover from, so preventing even one of those over the course of a raid week is an efficiency improvement.

fuzzygeek wrote:Increasing RDPS to beat spawn timers, however, will drastically change overall healing requirements. On Ultraxion, Spine, and Madness, these are very real concerns.

I'm also in Psiven's camp regarding raid strategy though; you survive to see the enrage, then you worry about beating it. Tanks are one of the least efficient places to eke out DPS; generally you can get an order of magnitude better increase in RDPS with minor strategy tweaks. Also, I raid 25's, where tank DPS is a much smaller factor; in 10's it can be a different story.

It's all relative though. I wouldn't criticize a tank using Landslide, especially if they're successfully killing bosses. Where I'd question the decision is the tank who gems/enchants for DPS and then consistently dies, becoming the point of failure for their raid group.

fuzzygeek wrote:Windwalker (...) a 2% chance to dodge with a low uptime -- looking at 4 different logs, I have an overall uptime of ~11%, which contradicts the generally quoted 30% uptime (and frankly makes it look like complete shit).

Let's look at the current (Dec 16th) top 20 parses on Baleroc :

25H
4th - 28.6%
5th - 59.6%
7th - 41.5%
9th - 26.6%
11th - 38.7%
17th - 27.5%

10H
1st - 31.9%
4th - 38.1%
7th - 45.2%
8th - 32.8%
12th - 33.9%
16th - 49.9%

The first model of WW was made by yours truly, almost (exactly) one year ago; it proposes a 30-40% (average) uptime under two very specific conditions : an infinite-length encounter and 100% time-on-target for both the tank and the boss.

Then again, the current raiding environment hardly consists of clones of Patchwerk, idling happily whilst you keep pounding at them ad nauseam. I'm not at all surprised to see 10% WW uptimes on certain encounters; you shouldn't be either.

Are you the "add tank" ? Are you off-tanking ? Does the encounter involve various interruptions (dodging oozes/lava, flight phases a.s.o.) ? Does the encounter involve (mandatory) tank-swapping ? Is the encounter particularly short, length-wise (LOLruns on old content, massively over-gearing the "farm" content a.s.o.) ? Don't play the "FFS Windwalk is teh suckz" card if you happen to answer affirmatively to the above queries.

theckhd wrote:

fuzzygeek wrote:You're talking about a 2% chance to dodge with a low uptime -- looking at 4 different logs, I have an overall uptime of ~11%, which contradicts the generally quoted 30% uptime (and frankly makes it look like complete shit).

Which logs, if you don't mind me asking? If the model is incorrect, or if something about the mechanics have changed, I'd like to know.

Here's an Ultraxion normal kill with 30.2% uptime, a Shannox heroic (I was on the boss, so mostly hitting stuff all the time) kill with 27.4% uptime, a Zon'ozz with 35.7% uptime and another with a 43.7% uptime (a bit high because I spend a non-zero amount of time whacking him in the rear?).

I'm sure you've no shortage of your own logs to look through, but thought I'd provide a few cases where the prediction does, more or less, appear to match the observed outcome.

EDIT: tlitp's quicker than me

theckhd wrote:If the model is incorrect, or if something about the mechanics have changed, I'd like to know.

I pulled up some old Firelands logs and looked at overall data; when I drill down to just kills I'm seeing 24.1%, 24.7%, 25%, and 26.5%. So it was an error on my part and the uptime isn't as completely abysmal as my earlier post indicated (I'll go back and fix).

theckhd wrote:No, it certainly won't change how they heal. I think the first part is why most people take the enchant; tank death is very often a wipe and hard to recover from, so preventing even one of those over the course of a raid week is an efficiency improvement.

The post I was responding to was making the argument that Windwalk could lead a 10M raid to drop from 3 healers to 2. In theory, I completely agree that one avoided tank death leading to a wipe is an overall efficiency improvement. In practice, over the past two weeks I've seen far more wipes due to missing DPS windows on Ultraxion, Spine, and Madness than tank deaths -- I can remember maybe a handful of fights in the last three weeks where we wiped due to a tank death, compared to dozens for missing RDPS marks. Again, this is less of an issue for 25M than 10M raiders (and in 25M I would argue that 25% uptime on 2% dodge is going to get completely lost in statistical noise).

theckhd wrote:It's all relative though. I wouldn't criticize a tank using Landslide, especially if they're successfully killing bosses. Where I'd question the decision is the tank who gems/enchants for DPS and then consistently dies, becoming the point of failure for their raid group.

I completely agree. I mentioned in another thread that swapping stam for hit/xpt is fine right up to the point where it starts getting you killed. It is going to be relative and is going to vary from raid group to raid group, from 10M to 25M. I'll clarify my remarks in the future to emphasize that if (generic) you the tank are not dying and causing the point of failure in the raid, then swapping to hit/xpt to help hit those RDPS goalposts is certainly reasonable -- but, again, it's better to get the actual DPS classes to step the fuck up.

I think a lot of my issue with these proccy things is that when Landslide procs, it is guaranteed to give you 1000 AP for 12 seconds. When Windwalk procs, while it guarantees 2% dodge (before DR) for ten seconds, you may still eat every incoming hit.

I find procs that may be completely ineffectual distasteful.

tlitp wrote:Are you the "add tank" ? Are you off-tanking ? Does the encounter involve various interruptions (dodging oozes/lava, flight phases a.s.o.) ? Does the encounter involve (mandatory) tank-swapping ? Is the encounter particularly short, length-wise (LOLruns on old content, massively over-gearing the "farm" content a.s.o.) ? Don't play the "FFS Windwalk is teh suckz" card if you happen to answer affirmatively to the above queries.

It amuses me to no end that your abbreviation of "and so on" saves you three characters, arguably two

Why is your dataset truncated out of curiosity? Did the other parses not use Windwalk?

Also, you are exaggerating my stance or misreading me entirely if you think I'm saying "FFS Windwalk is teh suckz." I'm not playing that card, and I reject your implication that I am, nor do I see what any of your queries have to do with this particular discussion thread.

Let me spell out my argument:
- Windwalk will never, on its own, change healing requirements to the point that a 10M raid could drop from 3 healers to 2 healers. I doubt it has any meaningful impact on a 25M raid's behaviour at all.
- In current content that I have experience with (all 25N, 10N Ultra, Spine, Madness), there are some hard markers that, should you miss them due to insufficient RDPS, make the encounter considerably more difficult. None of these markers are going to be affected by Windwalk. All can be affected by increased tank DPS, with an even more magnified effect in a 10M raid.

Would some raids and tanks benefit more from Landslide than Windwalk? I would argue certainly yes. I would argue that Windwalk's effects are small enough to get lost in statistical noise of overhealing, whereas increased tank dps could contribute meaningfully to hitting RDPS markers.

fuzzygeek wrote:(...) when Landslide procs, it is guaranteed to give you 1000 AP for 12 seconds. When Windwalk procs, while it guarantees 2% dodge (before DR) for ten seconds, you may still eat every incoming hit.

I find procs that may be completely ineffectual distasteful.

Even Landslide's 1000 AP is effective only if you actually manage to hit your target in that 12s window. Granted, missing every attack in those 12s, whilst sitting at 0 hit/exp, is an unlikely occurrence. However, it can happen. LS/WW are both stochastic, using terms such as "guaranteed benefit" is an exercise in futility.

fuzzygeek wrote:Why is your dataset truncated out of curiosity? Did the other parses not use Windwalk? (I)

Also, you are exaggerating my stance or misreading me entirely if you think I'm saying "FFS Windwalk is teh suckz." I'm not playing that card, and I reject your implication that I am, nor do I see what any of your queries have to do with this particular discussion thread. (II)

Let me spell out my argument: (snip) (III)

I. Some of them used LS, some of them were from FR/DE/RU/TW realms.
II. There's no reason to get defensive. I was simply pointing out that your empirical observations (WW's ~10% uptime on some encounters) do not actually refute the 30% average uptime model. And then I went on to explain how that can happen, to which you throw at a "nor do I see what any of your queries have to do with this particular discussion thread". Really ?
Moreover, you claim that "an overall uptime of ~11% (...) makes it look like complete shit" and "FFS Windwalk is teh suckz" are dissimilar. Really ?
III. I don't give a rat's arse if LS is "better" than WW, or exactly the opposite. I don't care if one can be used more effectively than the other one in the current raiding environment. I've only addressed a few mechanical misunderstandings. The burden of decision is entirely yours.


PS. You seem to have forgotten that I'm a Rogue, retired ~3y ago from WoW. Whatever catfights you Paladins like to have, they aren't exactly my cup of tea. More so when we're "fighting" with words, not numbers.

There is a caveat I did not (and should have) included: *if this 11% uptime is correct, which I'm not certain of because tlitp's simulation indicates an uptime that should be much higher* but I'm not writing a long disclaimer out entirely because it is hard to type lying in bed with my cat sitting on my chest.

II: I get defensive when I think people are misrepresenting my argument. My call of no-clash was not on how fight mechanics will negatively impact the uptime, and was not intended to impugn your theoretical work. I don't think the nature of the fight (phases,swapping,short fight, w.h.y) affects what I understood to be that particular topic: namely, will Windwalk let you drop a healer.

Also, there is a difference between "this 11% uptime *makes it look like complete shit*" and "this is definitely complete shit for true." Granted I should have included *if this 11% is correct* -- which it is clearly not, and I'd already started writing the retraction before I saw your corrective post. Yes, really. I was unclear, so I apologize. I very rarely make categorical statements, so accusing me of such is a good way to troll the fuck out of me.

The community as a whole deeply appreciates the in-depth analysis that you do, and I make it a point to thank you when you've corrected me on something I've misunderstood or didn't take into account certain additional mechanics or gameplay interaction. I do not interpret your telling me not to play a card (that I did not think I played) as being just a clarification of a mechanical misunderstanding.

I know you are/were a rogue, but your class or current playing status has no bearing on the accuracy or value of the data you bring to the table, which is generally impeccable. Snide comments about catfights aside, yes, you are correct that Windwalk's uptime is theoretically higher than the quick sample I looked at to gauge its performance in actual variegated boss fights, and that the guaranteed 1k AP from landslide can be ineffectual if you fail to hit the boss. These are all rigorously correct.

I just do not see the value of a dodge proc once you are block capped. I know dodge avoid the damage instead of mitigate it but it is a proc! You cannot predict if it's going to avoid a normal mele attack or a megadamage and given that the % increase of dodge is not huge i think that Windwalk is useless.

I'm running 10HM DS and RDPS is a concern so i will try Landslide next save and i will tell you

I gotta say that, for me anyways, Windwalk is outdated. The extra dodge is admittedly good, but with my current stats my guild isn't finding survivability much of a problem as we are DPS.

Now that we're into heroic DS content we are finding that every bit of DPS counts. Most of the heroic fights have tremendous DPS requirements and nothing will wake you up more to this then 5% heroic Ultraxion wipes.

I am definitely taking Landslide, and I think if your debating the same you gotta ask yourself whether your guild currently needs you to be pushing more DPS or more survivability.

Windwalk gives around 2% extra dodge, with around 30% uptime, for around 0.7% extra time-averaged dodge, i.e. you will dodge around an extra 1 in 140 attacks, which will then benefit from 100% mitigation vs 30% (or possibly 50%) mitigation it would have got any way (since you're block capped). 1 in 140 is around the once per boss-fight mark. If the boss hits for, say, 60k on plate, damage taken is reduced by roughly 40k because of the extra dodge, which over a 300s fight would be a reduction of about 130 in dtps. Since it's a sketchy calculation, we'll call it 100 dtps additional mitigation. That's not huge, but I think it's clearly worthwhile.

Landslide gives 240 extra dps, which is also not huge. Certainly it *could* make the difference between passing and failing a dps check, but it's not very likely to. It's certainly not going to help if you're wiping at 5%, say.

I think the basic problem is that if your raid is failing dps checks, the dps need to shape up, and there's nothing you (as tank) can do about it. It's a frustrating position to be in, but I'm not sure the answer is so start fiddling with your tanking set up to achieve dps gains which are incredibly minor in the grand scheme of things. Until my raid leader tells me otherwise, I'll continue to prefer a minor surviability gain over a minor dps gain.

I dont often post on this forum, I usually just come along and read theorycrafting, as its often pretty though provoking, and saves getting complacent with never changing style or stats.
However I would like to say I feel sorry for the guy a little while back in this thread, who when posting along the lines of 'No healing will eventually allow you to change from 3 to 2 healers on the fight' (not ww will let you use 2 healers on this fight), ie, implying that taking survivability stats is a better idea generally speaking than dps ones, from a tanking perspective, got jumped on with a 'we know this' and 'youre wrong!'. I dont think he was looking to patronise or annoy anyone with this, just give his own view of the topic, which was just as valid as many of the other half thought through posts, and tbh after the response he got, if I was him I'd probably think twice before posting here again.

Alchy wrote:I dont often post on this forum, I usually just come along and read theorycrafting, as its often pretty though provoking, and saves getting complacent with never changing style or stats.
However I would like to say I feel sorry for the guy a little while back in this thread, who when posting along the lines of 'No healing will eventually allow you to change from 3 to 2 healers on the fight' (not ww will let you use 2 healers on this fight), ie, implying that taking survivability stats is a better idea generally speaking than dps ones, from a tanking perspective, got jumped on with a 'we know this' and 'youre wrong!'. I dont think he was looking to patronise or annoy anyone with this, just give his own view of the topic, which was just as valid as many of the other half thought through posts, and tbh after the response he got, if I was him I'd probably think twice before posting here again.

I think people get a little testy in December. It's probably too much time around family and too little time playing WoW!

But yes, I agree with you Alchy. It never hurts to be nice.

This has been a really helpful thread - if a bit testy at times. Helped me make up my mind in favor of Landslide until I start dying. Our issue has almost always been RDPS (I'm in a 10-person guild) and very, very rarely tank death.

saif wrote:This has been a really helpful thread - if a bit testy at times. Helped me make up my mind in favor of Landslide until I start dying. Our issue has almost always been RDPS (I'm in a 10-person guild) and very, very rarely tank death.

Do you guys two heal or three heal? As was stated, this alone won't allow you to two heal fights, but it certainly wouldn't hurt, and switching that extra healer to a dps would definitely help your RDPS.

Most of our RDPS problem is on Madness. Everything else we more or less one-shot in about 2, 2.5 hours. We 2 heal just about everything except Spine, Zon'ozz and Yor'sahj, maybe.

Madness we're still trying to settle on a number of healers. And mostly I'm going for LS, to help out in those situations where we miss a second Impale or the limb on the 4th platform by 3 or 4 seconds or something like that.

If it doesn't work out, I can always swap out - I'll keep a scroll of WW in my bags tonight just in case.

RDPS in madness solved in our raid10 : 1tank - 3heal (we do it with a DK or paltank)

with this approach, tank priority is survive, not dps
(-empale is managed by CD)
-the 2 bigbadboy in the end is all about a dedicated survival tank

(we also made some try with 2tank 2heal, but at that time, heals weren't able to handle dmg on the last platform. it might work now with our 2 most valuable healeur, but i'm sure it generate much more stress. In this case, having one tank with a dps approach can be helpfull)

We've always has the best luck with 1 tank and 2 healers in 10-man madness. It's one of those fights where DPS overhead buys you a lot of breathing room, because all the dangerous parts occur when things live too long. Burning down the tentacles before the second impale, obliterating the Blistering Tentacles in under 10 seconds, etc.

I use [Resolve of Undying] and [Fire of the Deep] for trinkets, (Prot Paladin 397 ilvl) and I have been considering this.

When the stacks of Dodge from Resolve are up (which is all the time) I am CTC capped, and when Windwalking procs I am far above it. I know Vengeance does damage, but it's looking like Landslide would be more usefull. Since the prov from Windwalking isnt usefull, and the damage isnt as high as Landslide, I think I'm going to make the switch, and see how it goes!!!

I wouldn't say the proc from Windwalk isn't useful. It's just not very useful. It's still extra dodge, which translates to less damage taken. The problem is that it's doubly random (it's a proc, and it's dodge), so it's not controllable.

I swap back and forth between Windwalk and Landslide depending on what the fight needs. There are a few fights where the DPS increase from Landslide is meaningless, but dodging an attack here or there can make a difference (H. Yor'sahj, H. Zonozz, H. Warmaster come to mind). I use windwalk for those. There are a few fights where dodging extra attacks is meaningless (H. Zonozz off-tanking, H. Ultraxion, H. Hagara, H. Lolchok, H. Spine blood-tanking), so I use Landslide for those.

If you don't have two Souldrinkers to swap between, pick whichever you think is more useful for your guild's progression. Neither is really a "wrong" choice, IMO, because both give you fairly hard-to-quantify benefits.