MATLAB TPS Analysis

Last Updated on Wednesday, 03 February 2010 15:54 Written by Theck Sunday, 13 September 2009 20:13

This guide contains abbreviated versions of a number of threat simulations. The "long version" of each calculations can be found via the MATLAB Thread Table of Contents. In addition, I'll provide a direct link to the latest calculations in each section.

Calculations updated for 3.3

Damage, Threat, DPS, and TPS of our abilities - covers both glyphed and un-glyphed versions. Also talks about simple substitution rotations.
Talents and specs - What talent gives the biggest DPS/TPS boost per point? What spec pumps out the most threat?
Stats from gear - What stat gives us the biggest threat boost? Shows scaling with STR, Hit, Expertise, and BV.
Seal Comparison - How do SoR and SoCom stack up to SoV?
Weapon Speed Analysis - How big of a factor is weapon speed in our TPS?
Glyphs - Which glyph gives us the biggest threat boost?
Enchants and Foods - Which enchants and foods gives us the biggest threat boost?
Glossary of Terms

Damage, Threat, DPS, and TPS of our abilities
long version

As you can see, ShoR, HotR, and Consecration are our staple abilities. They're both high-damage and high-DPS, meaning you'll never want to replace them in your rotation. Judgement is a distant 4th, barely ahead of HoW and unglyphed AS. Holy Shield is the weakest performer, as usual.

Note the prominence of our melee attacks and SoV procs - these are two of our largest sources of threat, each individually being larger even than Consecration. That means that being out of melee-range, or simply unable to auto-attack (knockdown, stun, etc) will be a big hit to your threat generation. Be prepared for that, and make sure your DPS knows to watch it if they're riding you too closely.

C(6%) refers to Crusade's effect against mobs that see the full 6% benefit.

Note that One-Handed Weapon Spec (1HWS), Touched by the Light (TbtL), and Divine Strength (DS) all grant huge TPS bonuses per talent point - never skip these talents.

Redoubt, Seals of the Pure (SotP), Crusade (3%), and Reckoning are our "second-tier" talents, giving around 100 TPS per point. Most specs should take Redoubt for both threat and mitigation; There's a detailed calculation of when a point in Redoubt becomes useless for threat in the long version if you want to see it.

For most tanks, a ret spec with Crusade is going to be the best choice, as that lets them pick up Vindication and Pursuit of Justice, both solid utility talents. For those who are happy to use the boot enchant to free up some points, a SotP spec can be a reasonable TPS choice as well, and will usually outperform a Crusade spec against bosses/mobs that only see the 3% bonus (i.e. most of Ulduar). Reckoning used to be "bottom tier," but bosses in Icecrown swing faster and make Reckoning a better investment than it was in earlier tiers of raid content.

With Reckoning promoted to the middle tier, Conviction is the only lonely talent in the "bottom tier." In current content, Conviction is probably going to be skipped by most paladins unless they're willing to give up raid utility in the form of Pursuit of Justice or Vindication.

In the next plot, the following abbreviations are used: SotP (S), Reckoning (R), Conviction (V), and Crusade (C). For example, a spec with 1 in Conviction and 3 in Crusade would be 1V+3C. All builds assume that 1HWS, TbtL, DivStr, and Redoubt are filled. "DUH" refers to Demon/Undead/Human/(Elemental) mobs that see a 6% Crusade bonus, "no-DUH" is anything else. The number to the left of each bar is the amount of points available for utility talents.

The extra 3% Crusade bonus really does make a huge difference in threat. In general, any spec with Crusade will be better than an equivalently-threat-itemized spec that doesn't have it on DUH mobs, which is most of Crusader's Coliseum and Icecrown.

TLDR Summary:

0/53/18 provides the highest threat potential on DUH mobs, with or without Reckoning.
For no-DUH mobs, specs with 5/5 SotP and 5/5 Reckoning are very strong, and will still be decent for DUH mobs (though about 200 TPS behind).
As a general rule of thumb for maximizing threat, fill points in the following order:
- OHWS, Divine Strength, TbtL, and Redoubt before anything else.
- For DUH mobs, Crusade > SotP> Reckoning > Conviction
- For non-DUH mobs, SotP > Crusade > Reckoning > Conviction.

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Stats
long version

This analysis looks at the relative worth of stats in terms of itemization cost. This is a rather lengthy analysis, which I'll summarize with two plots. First, stat scaling with Strength:

In patch 3.3, Shield of Righteousness became a melee attack and became dodge-able and parry-able. This has caused a paradigm shift in our stat weightings, as Expertise and Hit now solidly surpass STR for threat. At the same time, the increased chance of ShoR misses has dropped Block Value significantly.
However, Hit and Expertise drop significantly in effectiveness once you reach the 8% melee hit cap and 6.5% dodge soft-cap respectively. Similarly, Block Value declines rapidly in value once you reach the ShoR DR region, starting at 2400 BV.

TLDR Summary: General gearing strategy for threat: Stack Expertise to the soft-cap (26 expertise), then stack hit rating to 8% (263 rating), then stack STR.

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Glyphs
long version

Not much to say here, the SoV glyph is the best glyph we have for threat even above the expertise soft-cap of 26. In fact, it's better than the Judgement glyph until you have 53 expertise without the glyph active. AS is relegated to second-place as a flavor glyph or for a little extra threat on the pull.

Accuracy is still king, and Mongoose saw a bit of a nerf this patch thanks to Bryntroll and Retribution Paladins. After over a year of keeping Berserking on this graph just for amusement's sake, now it's actually seeing some use on slow 2.6-speed DPS weapons as a quick heroic clearing / AoE-fest weapon. Who'd have thought?

Dragonfin Fillet, Snapper Extreme, and Rhinolicious Wyrmsteak all battle for top spot amongst the foods. The winner will depend sensitively on your Strength, Hit rating, and expertise. Rhinolicious Wyrmsteak would be in 1st if we were below the 26-expertise soft-cap, but since we're above that in this simulation it comes in at half-effectiveness. Fish Feast comes in at a distant third or fourth.

Higher numbers mean SoV is at an advantage, lower (i.e. negative) numbers mean SoCommand is at an advantage.
TLDR Version:

In short, for single-target threat, SoV is king, by around 1k TPS.
If you're tanking 1-2 mobs that live 30+ seconds, use SoV.
If you're tanking 3+ mbos, use Seal of Command.

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Weapons
long version

The weapon analysis looks at the relative threat output of different weapon choices. The plot below contains most of the tank weapons available in current content. Each subcategory is sorted by ilvl.

For the most part, with tanking weapons higher ilvl wins out. Since we scale so well with weapon speed, there are a few weapons that perform slightly better than expected, such as Broken Promise or (less noticeably) Bonebreaker Scepter. Last Word runs a little higher than the rest due to it's high-uptime strength proc. Also note that the new 5-man drops are strong contenders that new tanks can pick up easily to help catch up without having to run previous-tier raids.

Next, let's look at how slow threat weapons rank compared to the upper tier of tanking weapons:

As you can see, slow (2.6 speed) dps weapons are going to be higher threat than an equivalent-ilvl fast tank weapon. If you're hurting for threat, swapping in one of the heavy-hitting slow weapons might give you the boost you need.

TLDR Summary:

Slow weapons are good for threat.
The new 5-man drops are quite nice. The 251/264 maces from Marrowgar are excellent and should be easy to obtain.
If you really want to dish out the TPS, grab a 2.6-speed melee DPS weapon for those threat-heavy fights.

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Glossary

This section will define acronyms that appear over and over again in calculations. I have tried to be good about defining these clearly in newer calculations as well, but this master list should contain everything you need just in case.

1HWS - One-Handed Weapon Specialization talent. May also be seen written OHWS.
A - Usually used to represent Glyph of Avenger's Shield when referring to glyphs. Often seen in conjunction with other glyphs, i.e. "JA" for Judgement + Avenger's Shield glyphs, "EA" for Exorcism + Avenger's Shield, etc.
AS - Avenger's Shield.
BP - Broken Promise.
C - Depends on the context.
- When referring to glyphs, C refers to the Glyph of Consecration, and will often be used in conjunction with other glyphs, i.e. "JC" for Judgement + Consecration glyphs, "CE" for Consecration + Exorcism etc. May also be referred to as "Cons" in cases where a single-letter acronym would be ambiguous.
- When referring to talents, C stands for the Crusade talent. It is usually seen preceded by a number representing the # of talent points, such as "2C" for 2/3 Crusade. Combinations of talents are usually written like "5V+2C" for 5/5 Conviction + 2/3 Crusade. May also be seen as "Crus" in cases where a single-letter acronym would be ambiguous.
Cons - Consecration, see C.
Conv - Conviction, see V.
Crus - Crusade, see C.
DUH - Cutesy acronym that stands for Demon, Undead, or Humanoid. Uused to refer to mobs or bosses which give Crusade the extra 3% damage. Note that Elementals are also DUH mobs, but the acronym isn't as cute if you have to fit an E in somewhere. An NPC which only gets the base 3% from Crusade is often called a "generic" or "no-DUH" mob.
E - Glyph of Exoricsm. Often seen in conjunction with other glyphs, i.e. "JE" for Judgement + Exorcism glyphs, "VE" for Vengeance + Exorcism etc.
Exor - Exorcism.
HotR - Hammer of the Righteous.
HS - Holy Shield.
HSsA - Holy Shield substitution with Avenger's Shield. Refers to a 969 variation where every 4th Holy Shield is replaced with Avenger's Shield.
J - Usually used to represent Glyph of Judgement when referring to glyphs. Often seen in conjunction with other glyphs, i.e. "JV" for Judgement + Vengeance glyphs, "JE" for Judgement + Exorcism, etc.
JsA - Judgement substitution with Avenger's Shield. Refers to a 969-variation where every 4th Judgement is replaced with Avenger's Shield.
JsHoW - Judgement substitution with Hammer of Wrath. Refers to a 969 variant where Judgement is replaced with Hammer of Wrath.
Jud - Judgement
LL - Last Laugh
LoO - Libram of Obstruction
LotSS - Libram of the Sacred Shield
R - Reckoning. It is usually seen preceded by a number representing the # of talent points, such as "3R" for 3/5 Reckoning. Combinations of talents are usually written like "5V+2R" for 5/5 Conviction + 2/5 Reckoning.
S - Seals of the Pure talent. Usually seen preceded by a number representing the # of talent points, such as "5S" for 5/5 Seals of the Pure. Combinations of talents are usually written like "5S+2R" for 5/5 Seals of the Pure + 2/5 Reckoning. May also be written "SotP" in cases where the single-letter acronym would be ambiguous.
Note: In some of the old graphs, S was used to indicate the Seal of Vengeance glyph. See V.
ShoR - Shield of Righteousness
SoB - Seal of Blood (Martyr for Alliance)
SoR - [http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=21084]Seal of Righteousness[/url]
SotP - Seals of the Pure, see S.
SoV - Seal of Vengeance (Corruption for Horde)
T or TbtL - Touched by the Light talent.
V - Depends on the context.
- When referring to glyphs, V will stand for the Glyph of Seal of Vengeance, and will often be used in conjunction with other glyphs, i.e. "JV" for Judgement + Vengeance glyphs, "VE" for Vengeance + Exorcism etc. Note that in some of the older graphs, S was used for the SoV glyph, this usage has been discontinued.
- When referring to talents, V stands for the Conviction talent. In this context, it is usually seen preceded by a number representing the # of talent points, such as "5V" for 5/5 Conviction. Combinations of talents are usually written like "5V+2C" for 5/5 Conviction + 2/3 Crusade. May also be written "Conv" in cases where the single-letter acronym would be ambiguous.