Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis - WotLK/3.x
Moderators: Fridmarr, Worldie, Aergis, theckhd
Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)

The legend for this graph must be wrong.
I can't see AP being better that Str and Stam still giving us any threat.
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culhag - Maintankadonor
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- Location: France
Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)
culhag wrote:The legend for this graph must be wrong.
I can't see AP being better that Str and Stam still giving us any threat.
Yeah, that legend is definitely wrong... I have no idea how that one got screwed up but the rest were fine.
I'll have to wait until tomorrow to fix it though, my code is at work.
"Theck, Bringer of Numbers and Pounding Headaches," courtesy of Grehn|Skipjack.
MATLAB 5.x, Call to Arms 5.x, Talent Spec & Glyph Guide 5.x, Blog: Sacred Duty
MATLAB 5.x, Call to Arms 5.x, Talent Spec & Glyph Guide 5.x, Blog: Sacred Duty
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theckhd - Moderator
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- Location: Harrisburg, PA
Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)
tlitp wrote:In order to expand the MATLAB code to properly assess combat situations versus trash mobs, we need the base armor values of 80-82 elites. Anyone that has a hunter is asked to provide the said data by using Beast Lore on some easily accessible elites :Thanks in advance.
- level 80 - Frostworg Denmother, Jotunheim Proto-Drake (outdoor)
- level 81 - Dread Creeper (Naxxramas)
- level 82 - Lavanthor, Hadronox, King Dred (heroic dungeons)
Wish you'd asked yesterday, since I've had Dred, Levanthor and Hadronox in daily heroic groups since then.
But for:
80 elites (Jotunheim Proto-Drakes, Battlescarred Frostworg, Frostworg Denmother): 9729 armor
81 elites (Unyielding Constrictor): 10033 armor
Apparently Saurfang's Bloodbeasts are beasts too (untameable
Actually, wouldn't an beast bosses in lowbie 5 mans count as level 82s? Or are those actually 72 instead of 5 man skull mobs?
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fafhrd - Posts: 5430
- Joined: Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:31 pm
Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)
culhag wrote:The legend for this graph must be wrong.
I can't see AP being better that Str and Stam still giving us any threat.

Legendairy.
Just like my future tauren Paladin.
10 SIN
20 GOTO HELL
20 GOTO HELL
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æ - Posts: 213
- Joined: Sun Oct 12, 2008 8:02 pm
- Location: Santa Barbara
Re: 3.3 Talent/Spec Analysis
Thalastor82 wrote:Eredor wrote:
Where do I find the equations to calculate block value?
Summing all block value on my armory I have 829.
Rawr tells me I have 2273.
The block value you mention are way way bigger than mine.
Thanks,
Eredor
the block value of your items is only part of the total.
part comes from strenght (1 block value per 2 force), plus you have Redoubt (+30%) and possibly the metagem (+5%) that increase the total.
In the block value set I use for instancing, I have around ~1k block value coming from items, the same coming from strenght (~2k force, full red gemmed) and after kings, meta, redoubt and buffs I come to ~3k blocking. In raid it would be even bigger, but in raid I usually don't use the blocking set (with few exceptions).
If you want to increase the block value gem force and put the meta. A greath trinket for this is the noble deck, it gives 390 force (195 block value) during uptime. Also, you can make use of low lvl items that are perfectly ok for instance even if already unused in new raids. Many drop from ulduar25, for instance.
In any case, the DR mentioned in the previous posts concerns only the treath contribution of the blocking value. In effect, the SotR has diminishing returns, probably to avoid huges slams in pvp. The effectivenes of the blocking value against white non-bleeding attacks is not affected by diminishing returns and, the more you have, the more you block
theckhd wrote:
Rawr should be correct, or if you want an in-game source, Tankadin2 will calculate it for you. It's not surprising that the values I gave are large, since they're near the levels of the ShoR damage cap, which most people don't reach in regular gear.
If you sum your BV from gear, the formula is
- Code: Select all
block_value=floor((floor(STR.*0.5) - 10 + Gear_BV + T84pc).*(Redoubt + BV_Meta));
Assuming 3/3 Redoubt:
STR is character sheet strength * 1.1 for kings, plus 291 for raid buffs
Gear_BV is whatever you summed it to be
T84pc = 225 if you have 4-piece T8 equipped
Redoubt = 1.3 (or 1.2 for 2/3, 1.1 for 1/3, etc)
BV_Meta = 0 if you don't have it gemmed, 0.05 if you do
Thanks & thanks.
Saving in my files for future reference
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Eredor - Maintankadonor
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Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)
theckhd wrote:culhag wrote:The legend for this graph must be wrong.
I can't see AP being better that Str and Stam still giving us any threat.
Yeah, that legend is definitely wrong... I have no idea how that one got screwed up but the rest were fine.
I'll have to wait until tomorrow to fix it though, my code is at work.
Legend is fixed now, apparently I hardcoded all of the legends for these plots, and failed to update the BV-TPS one in 3.2. Hardcoding legends is something I don't tend to do anymore (most of my plots are more dynamically generated now), but had to because of the line style choices in these plots. I may re-do the plotting section of this m-file in the future when I have some time.
fafhrd wrote:Wish you'd asked yesterday, since I've had Dred, Levanthor and Hadronox in daily heroic groups since then.
But for:
80 elites (Jotunheim Proto-Drakes, Battlescarred Frostworg, Frostworg Denmother): 9729 armor
81 elites (Unyielding Constrictor): 10033 armor
Apparently Saurfang's Bloodbeasts are beasts too (untameable), so I'll try to snag a shot of them for you tomorrow.
Actually, wouldn't an beast bosses in lowbie 5 mans count as level 82s? Or are those actually 72 instead of 5 man skull mobs?
Thanks. The lowbie 5-mans are 72 elites, so they won't work. But Saurfang blood beasts will be fine. However, I can already guess what they'll be from your data.
- Code: Select all
level armor
80 9729
81 10033
82 ?
83 10643
If you plot those three, you get a straight line of the form:
armor = 305*level - 14672
So a level 82 should be around 10338 armor based on the fit.
I actually suspect the fit is off slightly, as the lvl 80 value differs by 1 armor and the intercept is negative. In all likelihood it's a nonlinear function, but we're looking at a small enough level range that it's locally linear.
"Theck, Bringer of Numbers and Pounding Headaches," courtesy of Grehn|Skipjack.
MATLAB 5.x, Call to Arms 5.x, Talent Spec & Glyph Guide 5.x, Blog: Sacred Duty
MATLAB 5.x, Call to Arms 5.x, Talent Spec & Glyph Guide 5.x, Blog: Sacred Duty
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theckhd - Moderator
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- Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2008 3:06 pm
- Location: Harrisburg, PA
Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)
theckhd wrote:
- Code: Select all
level armor
80 9729
81 10033
82 ?
83 10643
If you plot those three, you get a straight line of the form:
armor = 305*level - 14672
So a level 82 should be around 10338 armor based on the fit.
I actually suspect the fit is off slightly, as the lvl 80 value differs by 1 armor and the intercept is negative. In all likelihood it's a nonlinear function, but we're looking at a small enough level range that it's locally linear.
It's worth noting that the equation for the C constant in the armor DR equation is in the same form:
value*enemy_level - value
I wouldn't be surprised if the enemies armor was exactly like that.
EDIT:
armor DR equation:
DR_armor = AC/(AC+C)
C = 467.5 * EnemyLevel - 22167.5
EDIT:
Also, those armor values you see could be after rounding. Given that the DR equation uses 0.5's in its values, that might be why one of the values is off by one.
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jere - Posts: 2878
- Joined: Fri May 11, 2007 5:12 pm
Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)
Thanks for helping us out, Faf. Theck and Jere are right, the slight numerical discrepancies we see between the linear model of the base armor values and the observed ones are an effect of integerization.
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tlitp - Posts: 554
- Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2009 3:25 pm
Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)
3.3 Weapon Analysis, round 2
Now that most of the Icecrown loot table is available, let's look at the weapon analysis again. First, let's look at what we don't have.
We don't have most of the loot from the lich king encounter, but we know there's an axe that drops from the heroic 10-man encounter. So it's fairly likely that there's a non-heroic 258 version on his normal-mode loot table. There's also the possibility that the 25-man lich king encounter drops a tanking weapon on either difficulty, which would add two more potential weapons in the 271 and 284 ilvl slots. And of course, there might be a juicy slow dps weapon in any of those four loot tables that could be good for threat.
Once we have confirmed loot tables for the lich king encounter, I'll post the final wrap-up of this analysis. In the meantime, you can estimate the positions of these weapons based on the others of the same ilvl that we already have stats for.
I've also made one change to the simulation since last time - I'm now artificially forcing the expertise and hit from gear to be 0. This way each weapon will get the full benefit of its stat contributions. There are arguments for and against doing this, but gear will be so variable this tier that I'm not sure it's fair to artificially choose a particular hit and expertise level as a baseline.
----------------------------------------
Quick overview of what we know about weapons and their effect on our threat:
Since 53/18 will be the de-facto tank spec for Icecrown, we'll calculate threat for the 1V+3C and 3R+1V+3C specs. There are notes at the end on how to modify this if you pick up more or less points in Reckoning.
Thanks to Blizzard's inane "lets make identical items with different names" policy for Coliseum, I've generated tables and plots for both Alliance and Horde versions of the weapons.
I've included all of the 2.6-speed melee DPS weapons from Coliseum and ICC. There's no point in adding the 1.6-speed melee DPS weapons, as we'd be better off using a tanking weapon if we're going with a fast weapon. In addition, the difference in TPS between fast tank weapons and fast DPS weapons is very small.
Note that this list is not incorporating racial expertise bonuses - in a close race, the expertise bonus will probably tip the scales in favor of the race's preferred weapons. Be sure to factor that in for yourself if you're using this to gauge an upgrade.
Setup
Rotation: 969
Seals: SoV
Glyphs: V
Talents: 1V+3C and 3R+1V+3C (see the Glossary or the talent analysis if you don't know what these mean)
Gear: T10 Progression Set
Weapons: Too many to list, basically every epic tank weapon in WotLK as well as all 2.6-speed melee DPS weapons from Coliseum, and ICC.
This time around, there are simply too many weapons to fit on one graph that isn't excessively long. I've broken down the plots a bit to make it more manageable. The first three plots will be tanking weapons only, and the fourth plot will show DPS weapons and a few representative tanking weapons.
The data table and first plot will be sorted both by instance and type. The top group on the graph is all slow DPS weapons, the middle group is Coliseum tanking weapons, and the bottom group is Ulduar and Naxx tanking weapons. The table is inverted (DPS weapons at the bottom, tank weapons at the top).

Horde Names
Last Word and The Facelifter are new additions this round, in both normal and heroic varieties. The Facelifter is a pretty solid contender, falling just below Bonebreaker Scepter in both categories, and marginally ahead of the 245-ilvl tanking weapons from ToGC10. There's not much else to say about this weapon though, it's sort of boring.
So far, Last Word is the only 25-man tanking weapon we know of, and its proc makes it hard to gauge performance. I've modeled the proc as 30% uptime, which is a completely random guess. Once we have more details, we'll have a better idea where it falls in the rankings. If you increase the uptime to 100%, it pulls ahead of everything in its category by a decent margin, including Troggbane.
If I had to guess (which I did, hence the arbitrary 30%), I'd say that Last Word will end up in the 30-50% uptime range, which will put it slightly ahead of its peers, but leave the heroic version slightly behind Troggbane.
Troggbane is the first slow tanking weapon we've seen since Broken Promise, and that 2.0 speed really shows in these simulations. However, it's going to be a few months before we see it.
More pertinently, the Bonebreaker Scepter is a pretty impressive weapon. Its 1.7 speed nearly catches it up to Silverwing Defender in threat output. The fact that Bonebreaker drops from the first boss of 10-man ICC means that it should be far more available to tanks thank the previous tier's tanking weapons were.
In addition, we have three new weapons from the new 5-man instances. Lucky Old Sun drops from normal mode, while Rimefang's Claw and Falric's Wrist-Chopper drop from heroic mode. The 232 weapons are a very competetive boon for players who haven't had luck with Anub'arak drops.
The next plots are just sorted differently, by TPS and by ilvl respectively.

Horde Names

Horde Names
Here's the plot with the slow DPS weapons, along with the "upper tier" tanking weapons (ToC/ICC). Again, this one is sorted by instance, then ilvl, then TPS.

Horde Names
Nothing particularly amazing here in terms of insight, but the plot reveals a few interesting options for the new tankadin. The new 219 DPS weapons actually perform as well as the 245-ilvl tanking weapons. Black Icicle from one of the new heroic 5-man instances actually out-threats any tanking weapon available pre-heroic ICC.
If you can get your hands on one of the slow dps weapons from the 10-man instance, that's probably your best bet for a threat weapon at this point, as it will probably take a month or two until the dps weapons from 25-man go to off-spec.
Finally, I've run the numbers for a few spell damage weapons as well. We all know that spell damage weapons are inferior, but now we have a place to point to with numbers to prove it.

The take-home message from this plot is that even the best spell damage weapons in the game are inferior to tanking weapons available two tiers of content ago. The only exception here is the heroic version of Lockjaw, and even that one is weaker than the tanking weapon from the first boss of 10-man normal mode.
We can use the rotation_AoE file to see whether this changes at all for aoe threat, using the limited skill set:

Not a whole lot of change here. What we gain in Consecration damage, we lose in HotR and Seal of Command procs. Given the relative availability of tanking weapons this tier (from both raids and the heroic 5-man instance), there's no good reason a tankadin should be rolling on spell damage weapons.
TLDR version:
Now that most of the Icecrown loot table is available, let's look at the weapon analysis again. First, let's look at what we don't have.
We don't have most of the loot from the lich king encounter, but we know there's an axe that drops from the heroic 10-man encounter. So it's fairly likely that there's a non-heroic 258 version on his normal-mode loot table. There's also the possibility that the 25-man lich king encounter drops a tanking weapon on either difficulty, which would add two more potential weapons in the 271 and 284 ilvl slots. And of course, there might be a juicy slow dps weapon in any of those four loot tables that could be good for threat.
Once we have confirmed loot tables for the lich king encounter, I'll post the final wrap-up of this analysis. In the meantime, you can estimate the positions of these weapons based on the others of the same ilvl that we already have stats for.
I've also made one change to the simulation since last time - I'm now artificially forcing the expertise and hit from gear to be 0. This way each weapon will get the full benefit of its stat contributions. There are arguments for and against doing this, but gear will be so variable this tier that I'm not sure it's fair to artificially choose a particular hit and expertise level as a baseline.
----------------------------------------
Quick overview of what we know about weapons and their effect on our threat:
- Slow weapons are good thanks to SoV 5-stack procs (see past calculations).
- The only spec-related choice that can change the outcome is Reckoning.
- Higher-DPS weapons tend to trump lower-DPS weapons
- Threat stats make only a minor difference (generally less than a 13-ilvl upgrade in weapon dps)
Since 53/18 will be the de-facto tank spec for Icecrown, we'll calculate threat for the 1V+3C and 3R+1V+3C specs. There are notes at the end on how to modify this if you pick up more or less points in Reckoning.
Thanks to Blizzard's inane "lets make identical items with different names" policy for Coliseum, I've generated tables and plots for both Alliance and Horde versions of the weapons.
I've included all of the 2.6-speed melee DPS weapons from Coliseum and ICC. There's no point in adding the 1.6-speed melee DPS weapons, as we'd be better off using a tanking weapon if we're going with a fast weapon. In addition, the difference in TPS between fast tank weapons and fast DPS weapons is very small.
Note that this list is not incorporating racial expertise bonuses - in a close race, the expertise bonus will probably tip the scales in favor of the race's preferred weapons. Be sure to factor that in for yourself if you're using this to gauge an upgrade.
Setup
Rotation: 969
Seals: SoV
Glyphs: V
Talents: 1V+3C and 3R+1V+3C (see the Glossary or the talent analysis if you don't know what these mean)
Gear: T10 Progression Set
Weapons: Too many to list, basically every epic tank weapon in WotLK as well as all 2.6-speed melee DPS weapons from Coliseum, and ICC.
This time around, there are simply too many weapons to fit on one graph that isn't excessively long. I've broken down the plots a bit to make it more manageable. The first three plots will be tanking weapons only, and the fourth plot will show DPS weapons and a few representative tanking weapons.
The data table and first plot will be sorted both by instance and type. The top group on the graph is all slow DPS weapons, the middle group is Coliseum tanking weapons, and the bottom group is Ulduar and Naxx tanking weapons. The table is inverted (DPS weapons at the bottom, tank weapons at the top).
- Code: Select all
Alliance List (scroll down for Horde)
TPS
Weapon ilvl 1V+3C 3R+1V+3C
Broken Promise 213 8810 9151
Peacekeeper Blade 219 8527 8747
Stoneguard 219 8569 8802
Legacy of Thunder 219 8605 8851
Last Laugh 226 8632 8869
Titanguard 232 8674 8914
Shiver 232 8682 8921
Sorthalis 239 8755 8998
Lucky Old Sun 219 8607 8841
Gleaming Quel'Serrar 232 8687 8978
Crusader's Glory 232 8687 8916
Falric's Wrist-Chopper 232 8765 9007
Rimefang's Claw 232 8757 9010
Burnished Quel'Serrar 245 8798 9097
Crusader's Glory (245) 245 8813 9048
Honor of the Fallen 245 8850 9096
The Facelifter 251 8861 9110
Bonebreaker Scepter (251) 251 8886 9148
Silverwing Defender 258 8997 9251
The Facelifter (264) 264 8985 9242
Bonebreaker Scepter (264) 264 9036 9308
Last Word 264 9008 9297
Last Word (277) 277 9167 9467
Troggbane, AotFK 271 9282 9600
Ghoulslicer 219 8911 9272
Hate-Forged Cleaver 219 8925 9286
Singed Vis'kag the Bloodletter 232 8890 9256
Vulmir, the Northern Tempest 232 9019 9388
Nighttime 232 9059 9431
The Grinder 232 9066 9437
Black Icicle 232 9083 9456
The Lion's Maw 232 9084 9456
Caress of Insanity 232 9104 9488
Tempered Vis'kag the Bloodletter 245 9008 9383
Raging Deathbringer 245 9043 9431
Stormpike Cleaver 245 9172 9553
The Grinder (245) 245 9208 9591
The Lion's Maw (245) 245 9230 9614
Gutbuster 251 9288 9678
Frost Giant's Cleaver 251 9289 9680
Cudgel of Furious Justice 251 9294 9683
Soulbreaker 251 9304 9694
Quel'Delar, CotS 251 9317 9720
Relentless Gladiator's Longblade 258 9300 9696
Stormpike Cleaver (258) 258 9312 9704
Remorseless 258 9374 9769
Black Bruise 264 9295 9693
Bloodvenom Blade 264 9385 9786
Gutbuster (264) 264 9460 9864
Frost Giant's Cleaver (264) 264 9464 9869
Soulbreaker (264) 264 9467 9870
Black Bruise (277) 277 9434 9846
Bloodvenom Blade (277) 277 9564 9979
Horde List
TPS
Weapon ilvl 1V+3C 3R+1V+3C
Broken Promise 213 8810 9151
Peacekeeper Blade 219 8527 8747
Stoneguard 219 8569 8802
Legacy of Thunder 219 8605 8851
Last Laugh 226 8632 8869
Titanguard 232 8674 8914
Shiver 232 8682 8921
Sorthalis 239 8755 8998
Lucky Old Sun 219 8607 8841
Gleaming Quel'Serrar 232 8687 8978
Ardent Guard 232 8687 8916
Falric's Wrist-Chopper 232 8765 9007
Rimefang's Claw 232 8757 9010
Burnished Quel'Serrar 245 8798 9097
Ardent Guard (245) 245 8813 9048
Blood and Glory 245 8850 9096
The Facelifter 251 8861 9110
Bonebreaker Scepter (251) 251 8886 9148
Orgrim's Deflector 258 8997 9251
The Facelifter (264) 264 8985 9242
Bonebreaker Scepter (264) 264 9036 9308
Last Word 264 9008 9297
Last Word (277) 277 9167 9467
Troggbane, AotFK 271 9282 9600
Ghoulslicer 219 8911 9272
Hate-Forged Cleaver 219 8925 9286
Singed Vis'kag the Bloodletter 232 8890 9256
Vulmir, the Northern Tempest 232 9019 9388
Nighttime 232 9059 9431
Blackhorn Bludgeon 232 9066 9437
Black Icicle 232 9083 9456
Frostblade Hatchet 232 9084 9456
Caress of Insanity 232 9104 9488
Tempered Vis'kag the Bloodletter 245 9008 9383
Raging Deathbringer 245 9043 9431
Hellscream Slicer 245 9172 9553
Blackhorn Bludgeon (245) 245 9208 9591
Frostblade Hatchet (245) 245 9230 9614
Gutbuster 251 9288 9678
Frost Giant's Cleaver 251 9289 9680
Cudgel of Furious Justice 251 9294 9683
Soulbreaker 251 9304 9694
Quel'Delar, CotS 251 9317 9720
Relentless Gladiator's Longblade 258 9300 9696
Hellscream Slicer (258) 258 9312 9704
Cudgel of the Damned 258 9374 9769
Black Bruise 264 9295 9693
Bloodvenom Blade 264 9385 9786
Gutbuster (264) 264 9460 9864
Frost Giant's Cleaver (264) 264 9464 9869
Soulbreaker (264) 264 9467 9870
Black Bruise (277) 277 9434 9846
Bloodvenom Blade (277) 277 9564 9979

Horde Names
Last Word and The Facelifter are new additions this round, in both normal and heroic varieties. The Facelifter is a pretty solid contender, falling just below Bonebreaker Scepter in both categories, and marginally ahead of the 245-ilvl tanking weapons from ToGC10. There's not much else to say about this weapon though, it's sort of boring.
So far, Last Word is the only 25-man tanking weapon we know of, and its proc makes it hard to gauge performance. I've modeled the proc as 30% uptime, which is a completely random guess. Once we have more details, we'll have a better idea where it falls in the rankings. If you increase the uptime to 100%, it pulls ahead of everything in its category by a decent margin, including Troggbane.
If I had to guess (which I did, hence the arbitrary 30%), I'd say that Last Word will end up in the 30-50% uptime range, which will put it slightly ahead of its peers, but leave the heroic version slightly behind Troggbane.
Troggbane is the first slow tanking weapon we've seen since Broken Promise, and that 2.0 speed really shows in these simulations. However, it's going to be a few months before we see it.
More pertinently, the Bonebreaker Scepter is a pretty impressive weapon. Its 1.7 speed nearly catches it up to Silverwing Defender in threat output. The fact that Bonebreaker drops from the first boss of 10-man ICC means that it should be far more available to tanks thank the previous tier's tanking weapons were.
In addition, we have three new weapons from the new 5-man instances. Lucky Old Sun drops from normal mode, while Rimefang's Claw and Falric's Wrist-Chopper drop from heroic mode. The 232 weapons are a very competetive boon for players who haven't had luck with Anub'arak drops.
The next plots are just sorted differently, by TPS and by ilvl respectively.

Horde Names

Horde Names
Here's the plot with the slow DPS weapons, along with the "upper tier" tanking weapons (ToC/ICC). Again, this one is sorted by instance, then ilvl, then TPS.

Horde Names
Nothing particularly amazing here in terms of insight, but the plot reveals a few interesting options for the new tankadin. The new 219 DPS weapons actually perform as well as the 245-ilvl tanking weapons. Black Icicle from one of the new heroic 5-man instances actually out-threats any tanking weapon available pre-heroic ICC.
If you can get your hands on one of the slow dps weapons from the 10-man instance, that's probably your best bet for a threat weapon at this point, as it will probably take a month or two until the dps weapons from 25-man go to off-spec.
Finally, I've run the numbers for a few spell damage weapons as well. We all know that spell damage weapons are inferior, but now we have a place to point to with numbers to prove it.

- Code: Select all
TPS
Weapon ilvl 1V+3C 3R+1V+3C
The Turning Tide 226 8419 8653
Seethe 232 8540 8819
Hammer of Purified Flame 251 8582 8825
Frost Needle (251) 251 8566 8807
Quel'Delar, LotM 251 8700 8978
Lockjaw (251) 251 8684 8971
Frost Needle (264) 264 8678 8924
Lockjaw (264) 264 8861 9156
The take-home message from this plot is that even the best spell damage weapons in the game are inferior to tanking weapons available two tiers of content ago. The only exception here is the heroic version of Lockjaw, and even that one is weaker than the tanking weapon from the first boss of 10-man normal mode.
We can use the rotation_AoE file to see whether this changes at all for aoe threat, using the limited skill set:

Not a whole lot of change here. What we gain in Consecration damage, we lose in HotR and Seal of Command procs. Given the relative availability of tanking weapons this tier (from both raids and the heroic 5-man instance), there's no good reason a tankadin should be rolling on spell damage weapons.
TLDR version:
- Slow weapons are good for threat. A quick check of the numbers from this analysis shows:
- Going from a 1.6 speed to a 2.6 speed weapon of equal DPS nets you around 450 TPS.
- Each point in Reckoning will add about 80 TPS for a 1.6 speed weapon, while it will add about 130 TPS for a 2.6 speed weapon.
- The combination of these two things means that a 2.6 speed weapon will be ahead of a 1.6 speed weapon of equal dps by 450+50*(# points in Reckoning), as a rule of thumb.
- If your tanking weapon is growing long in the tooth, head to the heroic 5-man to pick up one of the 232-ilvl weapons (tanking or dps), or better yet to normal 10-man ICC to pick up Bonebreaker Scepter.
- Spellpower Weapons are bad. Don't use them if you have any other option whatsoever.
- Troggbane is the sex.
"Theck, Bringer of Numbers and Pounding Headaches," courtesy of Grehn|Skipjack.
MATLAB 5.x, Call to Arms 5.x, Talent Spec & Glyph Guide 5.x, Blog: Sacred Duty
MATLAB 5.x, Call to Arms 5.x, Talent Spec & Glyph Guide 5.x, Blog: Sacred Duty
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theckhd - Moderator
- Posts: 7467
- Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2008 3:06 pm
- Location: Harrisburg, PA
Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)
Solved.
Last edited by winsonlim on Tue Dec 22, 2009 11:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
- winsonlim
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Mon Dec 21, 2009 11:43 pm
Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)
I'd like to re-do the Mongoose uptime calculation before continuing on to the Enchant analysis. For one thing, the old one is slightly incorrect, which I'll explain in this post. More importantly though, with ShoR becoming a melee attack, we need to know whether it does or does not proc PPM-based effects like Blade Ward and Mongoose.
If anyone has some spare time and a weapon enchanted with Blade Ward or Mongoose, and wouldn't mind checking for me, I'd appreciate it. If nobody gets to it, then I'll test it myself later this week.
Anyway, as to the error in the Mongoose calculation. Let's consider a sequence of events that can cause a proc of some sort - I'm keeping this generic since it's applicable to both Redoubt and Mongoose. We'll say that each event is identical, and has a probability of success s. If the event does succeed, it has a probability t of triggering a proc. Thus, the possible outcomes of any one event, along with their probabilities, are:
Each event is an independent event, or a Bernoulli trial. A sequence of such trials gives you a Binomial distribution. In other words, the probability of having k successes in n trials is:

where p here is our st for a successful event that leads to a proc. In functional notation, this is
P(k,n)=f(k;n,st).
What we want to know is what's the chance of getting 0 procs in T seconds, where T is the duration of the proc effect. If we say there are N events in time T, that's simply
P(0,n) = f(0;N,st) = 1*(st)^0*(1-st)^N
P(0,n) = (1-st)^N
This result is the downtime of the effect, so the uptime is just:
Uptime = 1 - (1-st)^N
This is exactly the form of the Reckoning code - the success chance is s = (1-player_avoid) corresponding to not avoiding an incoming attack, the a proc chance is t = 0.02 per point in Reckoning, and N is the number of attacks we take from the boss in the time it takes to make 4 weapon swings or 8 seconds, whichever's less.
Now look back at the mongoose calculation. Since we're dealing with different event types, it's a little more complicated. I calculated N as the number of successful attacks in the buff duration. For a single event type, this would end up being:
Uptime = 1 - (1-t)^(sN)
... Oops. Of course, for many event types, it looks more like this:
Uptime = 1 - (1-t)^(s1*N1 + s2*N2 + ...)
It's pretty obvious why I made this mistake - I already had an expression for sum(si*Ni), and it was easy to trick myself into formulating the problem by saying that the Bernoulli trial was just the proc itself. It turned out to be a pretty good approximation, as the error was less than 1%, but it's still slightly wrong. The error becomes much more apparent when t grows larger and s becomes smaller.
In any event, the proper way to calculate the uptime of mongoose is to calculate the product of the different event type contributions:
Uptime = 1 - [(1-s1*t)^N1] * [(1-s2*t)^N2] * [(1-s3*t)^N3] * ....
Which is what the code is doing now. What we need to know is whether to include a term in this expression for ShoR.
If anyone has some spare time and a weapon enchanted with Blade Ward or Mongoose, and wouldn't mind checking for me, I'd appreciate it. If nobody gets to it, then I'll test it myself later this week.
Anyway, as to the error in the Mongoose calculation. Let's consider a sequence of events that can cause a proc of some sort - I'm keeping this generic since it's applicable to both Redoubt and Mongoose. We'll say that each event is identical, and has a probability of success s. If the event does succeed, it has a probability t of triggering a proc. Thus, the possible outcomes of any one event, along with their probabilities, are:
- Code: Select all
Event Probability Note
00 (1-s) event fails, no chance for a proc
10 s(1-t) event succeeds, but no proc
11 st event succeeds, proc occurs
Each event is an independent event, or a Bernoulli trial. A sequence of such trials gives you a Binomial distribution. In other words, the probability of having k successes in n trials is:

where p here is our st for a successful event that leads to a proc. In functional notation, this is
P(k,n)=f(k;n,st).
What we want to know is what's the chance of getting 0 procs in T seconds, where T is the duration of the proc effect. If we say there are N events in time T, that's simply
P(0,n) = f(0;N,st) = 1*(st)^0*(1-st)^N
P(0,n) = (1-st)^N
This result is the downtime of the effect, so the uptime is just:
Uptime = 1 - (1-st)^N
This is exactly the form of the Reckoning code - the success chance is s = (1-player_avoid) corresponding to not avoiding an incoming attack, the a proc chance is t = 0.02 per point in Reckoning, and N is the number of attacks we take from the boss in the time it takes to make 4 weapon swings or 8 seconds, whichever's less.
Now look back at the mongoose calculation. Since we're dealing with different event types, it's a little more complicated. I calculated N as the number of successful attacks in the buff duration. For a single event type, this would end up being:
Uptime = 1 - (1-t)^(sN)
... Oops. Of course, for many event types, it looks more like this:
Uptime = 1 - (1-t)^(s1*N1 + s2*N2 + ...)
It's pretty obvious why I made this mistake - I already had an expression for sum(si*Ni), and it was easy to trick myself into formulating the problem by saying that the Bernoulli trial was just the proc itself. It turned out to be a pretty good approximation, as the error was less than 1%, but it's still slightly wrong. The error becomes much more apparent when t grows larger and s becomes smaller.
In any event, the proper way to calculate the uptime of mongoose is to calculate the product of the different event type contributions:
Uptime = 1 - [(1-s1*t)^N1] * [(1-s2*t)^N2] * [(1-s3*t)^N3] * ....
Which is what the code is doing now. What we need to know is whether to include a term in this expression for ShoR.
"Theck, Bringer of Numbers and Pounding Headaches," courtesy of Grehn|Skipjack.
MATLAB 5.x, Call to Arms 5.x, Talent Spec & Glyph Guide 5.x, Blog: Sacred Duty
MATLAB 5.x, Call to Arms 5.x, Talent Spec & Glyph Guide 5.x, Blog: Sacred Duty
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theckhd - Moderator
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Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)
winsonlim wrote:Crusader's Glory's tps seems to be different in these 2 graphs...
Yup, part of the new code I added to split the tanking weapons into three instance groups messed up the labels on the axis. They should be fixed now.
This calculation file really needs a complete overhaul to make it easier to work with. I already know what I want to do, but it will take a decent bit of time. It will probably go on my "Cataclysm Beta To-Do list."
"Theck, Bringer of Numbers and Pounding Headaches," courtesy of Grehn|Skipjack.
MATLAB 5.x, Call to Arms 5.x, Talent Spec & Glyph Guide 5.x, Blog: Sacred Duty
MATLAB 5.x, Call to Arms 5.x, Talent Spec & Glyph Guide 5.x, Blog: Sacred Duty
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theckhd - Moderator
- Posts: 7467
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- Location: Harrisburg, PA
Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)
theckhd wrote:winsonlim wrote:Crusader's Glory's tps seems to be different in these 2 graphs...
Yup, part of the new code I added to split the tanking weapons into three instance groups messed up the labels on the axis. They should be fixed now.
This calculation file really needs a complete overhaul to make it easier to work with. I already know what I want to do, but it will take a decent bit of time. It will probably go on my "Cataclysm Beta To-Do list."
Its no problem. Post removed.
And also just to tell you that I'm a huge fan of your formulas. Just that I'm not so active in contributing to the forums. Great work, appreciate it a lot!
- winsonlim
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Mon Dec 21, 2009 11:43 pm
Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)
winsonlim wrote:And also just to tell you that I'm a huge fan of your formulas. Just that I'm not so active in contributing to the forums. Great work, appreciate it a lot!
No problem, and thanks for catching that error. Pointing out mistakes like that one counts as contributing - you're doing a favor to all the other players who would read the graph and take away the wrong conclusion.
"Theck, Bringer of Numbers and Pounding Headaches," courtesy of Grehn|Skipjack.
MATLAB 5.x, Call to Arms 5.x, Talent Spec & Glyph Guide 5.x, Blog: Sacred Duty
MATLAB 5.x, Call to Arms 5.x, Talent Spec & Glyph Guide 5.x, Blog: Sacred Duty
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theckhd - Moderator
- Posts: 7467
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Re: Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)
One extra feature I'd be keen to see in your analysis Theck is to account for the various racial benefits for different weapon types.
As a dwarf paladin, I have always tried to find tanking maces to get the free +5 expertise bonus, but obviously increased weapon damage from higher iLevel non-mace weapons will outpace the benefits of the additional expertise at some point.
As a dwarf paladin, I have always tried to find tanking maces to get the free +5 expertise bonus, but obviously increased weapon damage from higher iLevel non-mace weapons will outpace the benefits of the additional expertise at some point.
- Finkum
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