Restricted-Mana Tanking

I have on a couple occasions been slightly mana-starved on the Curator - never so badly as to lose control of him, but enough that I had to downrank significantly to save up mana so I could light him up during evocations. In one case I ended up switching the two warlocks from Kings to Salvation mid-fight because one was about 35,000 behind me and the Curses of Doom were ticking away.

This will happen to me again, since I'd be merely embarrassed to have DPS nipping at my heels on threat but I'd be completely mortified if healers had to fight hard to keep me alive...so I'm going to put up some basic thoughts on restricted-mana tanking and then invite comments and suggestions.

Mana Consumption
A tankadin running flat-out will be cycling some or all of the following abilities. (Mana costs assume the tank has Benediction.)
Seal of Righteousness - 221 mana every 8 seconds = 27.6mps
Seal of Vengeance - 213 mana every 8 seconds = 26.6mps
Judgement - 124 mana every 8 seconds = 15.5mps
Holy Shield Rank 1 - 135 mana every 10 seconds = 13.5mps
Holy Shield Rank 2 - 175 mana every 10 seconds = 17.5mps
Holy Shield Rank 3 - 215 mana every 10 seconds = 21.5mps
Holy Shield Rank 4 - 280 mana every 10 seconds = 28.0mps
Consecration Rank 1 - 120 mana every 8 seconds = 15mps
Consecration Rank 2 - 205 mana every 8 seconds = 25.6mps
Consecration Rank 3 - 290 mana every 8 seconds = 36.3mps
Consecration Rank 4 - 390 mana every 8 seconds = 48.8mps
Consecration Rank 5 - 505 mana every 8 seconds = 63.1mps
Consecration Rank 6 - 660 mana every 8 seconds = 82.5mps
Exorcism Rank 1 - 85 mana every 15 seconds = 5.7mps
Exorcism Rank 2 - 135 mana every 15 seconds = 9mps
Exorcism Rank 3 - 180 mana every 15 seconds = 12mps
Exorcism Rank 4 - 235 mana every 15 seconds = 15.7mps
Exorcism Rank 5 - 285 mana every 15 seconds = 19mps
Exorcism Rank 6 - 345 mana every 15 seconds = 23mps
Exorcism Rank 7 - 400 mana every 15 seconds = 26.7mps

A maximum-threat rotation with perfect cooldown management and no Exorcism will cost 154 mana per second, sustainable if you're taking 1540 DPS.

Damage Output (DPS) and Effect of Spell Damage D
These figures assume 2/2 Improved Judgement and 2/2 Improved Holy Shield.
Seal of Righteousness - 27.8 + 0.09D
Seal of Vengeance - 44 + 0.05D
Judgement of Righteousness - 27.3 + 0.09D
Judgement of Vengeance - 66 + 0.054D
Holy Shield Rank 1 - 19.8 + 0.017D
Holy Shield Rank 2 - 28.9 + 0.017D
Holy Shield Rank 3 - 39.3 + 0.017D
Holy Shield Rank 4 - 52.1 + 0.017D
Consecration Rank 1 - 8 + 0.06D
Consecration Rank 2 - 15 + 0.075D
Consecration Rank 3 - 24 + 0.095D
Consecration Rank 4 - 35 + 0.115D
Consecration Rank 5 - 48 + 0.12D
Consecration Rank 6 - 64 + 0.12D
Exorcism Rank 1 - 6
Exorcism Rank 2 - 10.8
Exorcism Rank 3 - 15.4
Exorcism Rank 4 - 21.5
Exorcism Rank 5 - 27.7
Exorcism Rank 6 - 35.6
Exorcism Rank 7 - 43.7 + 0.029D

Threat Output (TPS) and Effect of Spell Damage D
These figures assume 2/2 Improved Judgement and 2/2 Improved Holy Shield as above, and 3/3 Improved Righteous Fury. I'm also sticking with an overall threat coefficient of 2.25 for Holy Shield until proof of the multiplicative 2.565 figure is shoved in my face.
Seal of Righteousness - 52.8 + 0.171D
Seal of Vengeance - 83.8 + 0.095D
Judgement of Righteousness - 51.9 + 0.171D
Judgement of Vengeance - 125.4 + 0.103D
Holy Shield Rank 1 - 44.6 + 0.038D
Holy Shield Rank 2 - 65.0 + 0.038D
Holy Shield Rank 3 - 88.4 + 0.038D
Holy Shield Rank 4 - 117.2 + 0.038D
Consecration Rank 1 - 15.2 + 0.114D
Consecration Rank 2 - 28.5 + 0.143D
Consecration Rank 3 - 45.6 + 0.181D
Consecration Rank 4 - 66.5 + 0.219D
Consecration Rank 5 - 91.2 + 0.228D
Consecration Rank 6 - 121.6 + 0.228D
Exorcism Rank 1 - 11.4
Exorcism Rank 2 - 20.5
Exorcism Rank 3 - 29.3
Exorcism Rank 4 - 40.9
Exorcism Rank 5 - 52.6
Exorcism Rank 6 - 67.6
Exorcism Rank 7 - 83.0 + 0.055D

Efficiency
Finally, the threat outputs divided by their respective mana costs.

Seal of Righteousness - 1.91 + 0.0062D
Seal of Vengeance - 3.15 + 0.0036D
Judgement of Righteousness - 3.35 + 0.011D
Judgement of Vengeance - 8.09 + 0.0066D
Holy Shield Rank 1 - 3.30 + 0.0028D
Holy Shield Rank 2 - 3.71 + 0.0022D
Holy Shield Rank 3 - 4.11 + 0.0018D
Holy Shield Rank 4 - 4.19 + 0.0014D
Consecration Rank 1 - 1.01 + 0.0076D
Consecration Rank 2 - 1.11 + 0.0056D
Consecration Rank 3 - 1.26 + 0.0050D
Consecration Rank 4 - 1.36 + 0.0045D
Consecration Rank 5 - 1.45 + 0.0036D
Consecration Rank 6 - 1.47 + 0.0036D
Exorcism Rank 1 - 2.00
Exorcism Rank 2 - 2.28
Exorcism Rank 3 - 2.44
Exorcism Rank 4 - 2.61
Exorcism Rank 5 - 2.77
Exorcism Rank 6 - 2.94
Exorcism Rank 7 - 3.11 + 0.0021D

I think the above is all correct, with the obvious exceptions of the downranked Exorcisms for which I need to find coefficients. Next I want to make some graphs of optimal rank vs spell damage, and figure out optimal threat rotations for various restricted-mana conditions.

Notes:
Is Holy Shield's coefficient really 0.05 on each block, regardless of rank? If so, the lower ranks are going to become more efficient and I have to spark up Excel and make me a multiple-line graph.

Gotta find out the truth about that Holy Shield thing one of these days. The 1.9x1.35 isn't an earth-shaking claim and won't require earth-shaking proof, but it's got to be something better than "lots of tanks think so". Dogma gets propagated that way. We're better than that, or at least we should try to be.

The way I'm calculating the mana efficiency of SoR assumes that it's getting refreshed every 8 seconds due to Judgement spam. There should be another value for a badly mana-starved tank running SoR and not judging. I'll probably do that but first I want to see how the efficiency of judgement spam turns out. If it's remarkably low or remarkably high I can keep the current numbers without hurting anything.

After the rotations are done, do a comparison between JoW and JotC. What helps more, the extra mana or the extra spell damage?

Holy Shield has a hidden mana cost because of the damage it soaks. Over 10 seconds against a 2.00 opponent like the Curator, Holy Shield adds approximately 1.75 blocks, meaning it prevents 1.75xBV damage and costs you 0.175xBV mana. This isn't negligible. If you block for 400, max-rank Holy Shield is effectively costing you 350 mana instead of 280. Factoring this in might show us that we should quit downranking HS in the name of mana efficiency. (If we're doing it to prevent a crush, fine, but if you're worried about a boss crush-spiking you to death then this post isn't aimed at you. )
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Scarlet Crusade - 0/46/15 - Uncrushable at 15.2k

Here's some analysis of efficiency and TPS for most of our tanking abilities. If you read down the efficiency graph wherever your spell damage is, you can see in what order you should prioritize your abilities when mana is short.

There's a good bit of basic information here which might be useful to other theorycrafters. Bon appetit:

http://www.29tharmor.com/WoW/Tankadata.xls
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Scarlet Crusade - 0/46/15 - Uncrushable at 15.2k

Reserved II
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Scarlet Crusade - 0/46/15 - Uncrushable at 15.2k

I'm curious, had the same problems before and starting to hate the curator for it

I'm chugging manapots all through that fight, as if I'm offtanking...
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....curator?

Like, the one in Karahzan?

Like, the one you could auto-attack and go AFK on? Is your DPS beating on him the whole time or something?
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armory | youtube | stuff

I'm sure there's something constructive and useful in that post someplace, but I'm not seeing it right now. I'm probably just tired.

I'll leave it alone for a bit and then give it another look.
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Scarlet Crusade - 0/46/15 - Uncrushable at 15.2k

I'm just honestly wondering how you're having aggro issues on a fight where you're the only one attacking the boss for the VAST majority of the encounter =x
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armory | youtube | stuff

Correct me if I'm wrong, OP, but what I believe his problem is in balancing aggro generation with mana conservation, not simply in holding aggro.

I can only speak from personal experience, but on curator, I usually judge/seal Wisdom, and let consecrate, holyshield, and my autoattack hold aggro. Whenever I can pot/dark rune, I'll throw some extra threat on him till I start to run low on mana again, then back to Wisdom. I've found that between SA and wisdom, I can usually keep max rank HS and consecrate up throughout the fight, and still have enough to throw AS at him during evocate.

On a side note, you shouldn't be worrying about damaging him during evoc if you are having mana issues. Thats what you have DPS for. Because of the nature of the fight, there shouldnt be any way for them to pull aggro during evoc, unless you are running without any spelldamage for some reason.

just my 2 cents. Herbe
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I hate sigmatures, but I love irony.

Well, on the Curator specific note... Herbe is right. If you aren't taking the damage you used to because your gear has upgraded, it really shouldn't hurt you to switch out a couple pieces for more threat. I do this CONSTANTLY and for most of Karazhan (Curator included) I wear barely enough to be uncrushable and then stack spelldamage. I still have way more HP than when I started KZ and was still healable, but now my threat is ridiculously strong compared to then.


On another note, I think the original aim of this post (not for Arcand to find a solution for Curator, but a solution for the deeper problem of when you are mana starved and really -cant- afford to give up mitigation for threat) is a good idea. Personally, when I'm in low mana situations, I just refresh max rank holy shield, throw wisdom on and then SoR it up. I judge Righteousness and reapply when I have the mana, but not at the cost of a max rank HS. I haven't found a situation in as much as I've seen (couple bosses into BT) where that wasn't sufficient. Void Reaver is a little different.
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http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kargath&n=Rexo

Putting aside the specific tactics of Curator, I think it is important to know what is most efficient in a mana restricted situation.

Basically, my routine has been to use max Rank SoR, JoR, and HS. When my mana is low, I cease consecrating, when it's higher, a consecrate.

I'm not sure if this helps or complicates matters, but really I think the trick isn't to just figure out which rank is the most TPS/mana, but to figure out given a lvl of incoming dps, what the best combination is -- a somewhat different question.

Consecrate Rank 1 is -- except for very low spell damage values -- more TPS/mana than Rank 6. But, you wouldn't be very successful using Rank 1 over Rank 6 all the time.

1000 dps incoming --> 100 mps + ~9mps (BoW) + ~16-18mps (JoW, which is optional).

That gives you a ~125mps budget, how much threat can you generate. Max threat cycling is 154mps, 53%! of which is Cons R6.

Hi i have a question are you in set gera or random tank stuff? as i have just under 8k mana raid buffed and 459 spell dmg. i've never once dropped below 50% mana. all i do is stack Vengance on it then just holy shield and thats it so much threat just from that. when its time i pop my wings and let it all out and brun down toa good 20% mana but after evo i put wisdom back on and just auto hit SoV judge it some times if i'm bored and HS up ofcourse. As some where saying maybe put more spell dmg gear on so you don't need to consercrate as much and judge as ur SoV would be ticking for alot all the time. I've enver done this fight with out my threat buff on b4 i did go oom then as couldn't relise why my tps was so low but i only used one pot in the whole fight.
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http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bloodfeather&n=Erlata