Posting here on parry-haste, the proc nerf and following me on Twitter.
The other day I posted about preliminary findings which show ICC has parry-haste mostly turned off for the raid bosses. Theck’s confirmed that now, and my gratitude to the original writers Tbdsamman (parry-haste addon) and Clifton (wrote the log parser).
Boss Can boss parry-haste? Marrowgar no Deathwhisper yes Deathbringer Saurfang no Festergut no Rotface no Putricide no Prince Valanar no Prince Taldaram no Blood-Queen Lana’thal no Sindragosa
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1. A clever nerd wrote an addon which checks if the boss you’re fighting has been parry-hasted.
2. Another clever geek wrote a script which parses logs to determine if parry-haste was seen.
3. Combined conclusion so far is that the only boss in Icecrown with parry-haste turned on is Deathwhisper, and possibly Saurfang.
Read the thread discussing it and download the addon from links within. If you’ve got matlab you can also get the code to
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Dual-wield frost tanking threat is effected by the weapon speed.
My weapons. I have two: Black Icicle, and I also have two Rimefang’s Claw. They’re not hard to get, just takes time.
Using my own gear (i232 average), the simulated difference is that those two slow dps weapons (always both with [Rune Of The Nerubian Carapace], for stamina), do ~13% more threat than fast/fast.
A slow/fast combo is 8% more threat than fast/fast.
Runeforges
With slow/fast, if you put fallen crusader (“FC”) on the fast off-hand, you get about 12% more threat than fast/fast, which is another nice middle-ground. FC is better than Razorice (“RI”).
With slow/slow, if you go fallen crusader main-hand and razorice on off-hand to max out threat, it’s a 6% threat gain over two Nerubians. Quite a lot.
Fast/fast with FC and RI, is 6% more than fast/fast Nerubian.
Presumes you’re still over 540 (or 535 defence for 5-mans) without Nerubian. I value stamina highly, so wouldn’t recommend DPS runeforges in a raid (unless it was Ulduar or something below your gear level).
Tabulated answers
Using i232 gear levels, for a 5-man tank. I include the absolute threat values from Kahorie’s sim (v1.202), then I indexed them to a baseline of the fast/fast, and put that index in brackets (it’s a percentage). Obviously, the damage difference is because of strike damage being higher with two slow weapons.
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Frost dual-wield tanking is very popular now. Six months ago, many people were violently against the idea. A year ago, it was so bad I put up a sticky on deathknight.info and policed all discussion into it, because it came up all the time.
Now, it seems to be a debate of the past. I barely ever see questions about parrygib or complaints that DW Frost tanks are dying because they’re pretending to be rogues, or whatever. A few things changed, notably the Nerubian runeforge and the Thassarian talent, but I also think people just realised parrygib risk is negligible now because they didn’t see DW tanks dying like the naysayers had suggested. Some of the bosses also have parry-hasted turned off by Blizzard.
Here, I’m going to revisit the relationship between expertise and weapon speed for tanks, and weapon speed and threat. I’m not going to cover the basics here, that’s in my main dual-wield tank post. I’ll compare DKs with Warriors for baseline purposes.
Warrior parry-haste risk
I need to the number of parryable attacks per minute.
Special attacks
All of a warrior’s tanking attacks can be parried except for shockwave, thunderclap, demo shout and conc blow. Even revenge and heroic strike can be parried. Those unparryable attacks are lower in the priority system used by tanks in a typical fight.
A warrior’s threat priority has two parallel streams: (1) shield slam > revenge > devastate > shockwave | concussion blow; and (2) heroic strike, when it doesn’t conflict with the first stream. See readers’ comments below for elaboration.
Let’s assume in every minute a warrior uses: thunderclap once, demo shout twice and conc blow once. Those five attacks can’t be parried. Let’s also assume a fight where the warrior is not rage starved, and can just keep going at it.
There are 40 GCDs in a minute. Five are used on non-parryable specials, leaving 35.
Auto-attack
There’s also auto-attack, at weapon speed, the whole time. Many of them should be replaced by heroic strike, but since that can be parried too, for this analysis it nets neutral. Let’s use Rimefang, 1.6 speed. Lovely tanking weapon and readily accessible.
Auto-attack at 1.6 speed is another 37.5 attacks per minute.
Total
Grand total of 72.5 parryable attacks per minute, based on specials + auto attack.
Side note: When first writing this analysis, had thought the best way to work it out was to look at a log parse, and take the proportions of attacks used. After feedback from readers, it appears that was unnecessary since the proportions of attacks would only matter if a good number of them cannot be parried. I have included the logs I did look at in ‘further reading’ below, in case you’d like some verification of what happens in Saurfang.
Death Knight
It’s more difficult to model the interaction of a DKs abilities such as Rime, so I’ve used the simulator to get an ideal case.
Special attacks
A two-disease DK priority will be: icy touch > plague strike > rime howling blast> obliterate > blood strike > frost strike. A Frost DK played appropriately will use Howling Blast on every Rime proc, which is not parryable.
A single-disease DK will not use plague strike, but for modelling I’ll base it on two diseases since it’s a worst-case for the boss gaining parry-haste.
Read more… » continue reading
Blizzard have given a unequivocal statement that Frost is designed for dual-wielding. That two-handed Frost will not, and is not intended to, give the same DPS (for raiding) as dual-wield will.
In tanking, it’s the same: you get higher TPS in dual-wield. Just remember, you should have more expertise to tank dual-wield than two-handed.
What’s refreshing is a black and white statement about their design intent, from blue poster Zarhym.
Q u o t e: Just curious….are we ever
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New patch notes.
Dual-wield frost tanking with a runeforge is coming. My guide is helpful here.
Also the change to IT Glyph is very interesting and will have consequences in frost and unholy builds.
Notable changes:
- Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle: There is now a 1-handed version of this rune in addition to the current 2-handed rune.
- Glyph of Icy Touch: Instead of granting additional runic power, this glyph now causes Frost Fever to deal 20% additional damage.
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One of my must-have addons, being a stats geek, is TankTotals.
It just got updated to v3.310 and is now compatible with patch 3.22.
If you’re not already using TankTotals, let me point out that in a prior patch the author Reynard added a few nice features.
I particularly like his time-to-live calculation which even factor in expertise/parry-haste, which will be interesting for everyone including dual-wield tanks.
Druids will enjoy seeing a figure for savage defence uptime, too.
I
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March 23 2010: checked for 3.3.3.
Can and should a DK dual-wield as a tank? Patch 3.22 made it possible, with rune strike now being effected by Threat of Thassarian. Patch 3.3 now lets you DW tank with DPS weapons. DW for DPSers in Frost is very strong.
Sure a tank can do it too, but is it wise? What should the lead tank say about it to their corps?
No parry-haste, Feb 9 2010, almost none of the Icecrown bosses have parry-haste turned on. Therefore, parrygib is irrelevant on most bosses. Therefore, don’t worry about expertise anymore!
3.3.3
For the highest threat dual-wield frost spec in 3.3.3, see this forum post. I do not recommend Icy Touch spam builds.
Original post continues:
The questions relate to survival and threat. To work it threat, I used my simulator.
Threat
- impressively, the threat on dual-wield (“DW”) tanking is the same or slightly higher than a two-hander, based on a like-for-like simulation I did.
- for the stat values for threat (to help choose gear or weapons), I provide a complete equivalence table here.
Survival: incoming damage
- if a DK tank has two fast tank weapons and 30+ expertise skill, they will receive about as many parry-hasted attacks as a warrior with one fast weapon and 26 expertise
- this is because warrior’s attacks can nearly all be parried, but some of a DK’s cannot (icy touch and howling blast)
- because of their itemisation (dodge/parry/defence), you should end up with up to 2% higher avoidance from two tanking weapons; a lot relatively if you’re already around 60%
- note you no longer lose the 2% stamina from Gargoyle runeforge, but gain net 1% avoidance from swordshattering runeforge, because of the new 3.3 runeforge.
Gear and expertise stats
- ideally you would get two slow tank weapons, but they don’t exist except for the now old Broken Promise. With two slow weapons you only need 21+ expertise skill, 26 is preferred.
- you could get two Peacekeepers, for example
- try to get Quel’Serrar from Onyxia, it’s lovely
- in the new 3.3 content, tank one-handers are Bonebreaker Scepter, Rimefang’s Claw, and Lucky Old Sun. The latter two from 5-mans.
- now in patch 3.3, you can dual-wield two slow DPS weapons (as opposed to tank-itemised one handers) and runeforge them with the new one-handed version of Gargoyle, called Nerubian
- slow one-handers give significantly more threat, and lower parrygib risk, so I’d suggest that’s a good path to go
- expertise: you should bias your gear selection towards expertise
- you could use two expertise/stam gems, I’d say (that’s not scientific, but based on a notion of minimal compromise on the primary tank stat). Otherwise, like in any tank spec, gems should tend to be all-stamina.
- if you need more than two gems to reach this expertise target, you should consider not DW tanking at all. Go get a two-hander instead.
- your gear is going to still need 540 defence with the Nerubian runeforge’s 25 included towards that total.
To help choose betweeen weapons, read my longer post on survival vs threat.
More about expertise and hit»
Spec
- there is not much variation, this is the main spec.
- alternatively, for 1.5% more single-target threat you can move 2 points from KM into [Scent of Blood] for this spec but note the KM procs are useful in AOE situations for howling blast, so you lose that edge
- for [Improved Icy Talons], it is more difficult to spec well, best to read my full discussion with specs
- 3.33 changed the stacking for IIT, my full analysis is here.
You cannot DW tank as Unholy or Blood, not enough threat. Frost is it.
Rotation / priority
Read the full post here.
Simulation
I have run several tests at i213, i219, i226 and i245 gear levels. I’ve compared DW to 2H, and cross-compared Frost DW to Blood and Unholy. The general theme of results is this: dual-wield frost generates slightly more threat than 2H, and more of it is physical (less frost), with a much higher proportion of damage from Howling Blast (because it procs Rime on offhand).
Patch 3.3: Two fast tank weapons -vs- two slow DPS weapons: two slow weapons are notably more threat and less parry-haste risk. Read my complete analysis of threat from weapon speed.
So, should I do it?
Remember most ICC bosses basically don’t have parry-haste turned on! This post was written before that was known. » continue reading
Expertise reduces the chance the boss can parry you.
Bosses have a 14.25% parry chance and reducing that to 1% would take 467 expertise rating (= 57 expertise). That’s massive and it’s not sensible to even try to achieve that when stacking stamina would be more effective instead.
For level 83 the soft cap is 6.5% dodge or 26 expertise (214 rating), and the hard cap is 14.25% parry or 57 expertise (468 rating). Source.
Expertise rating:skill conversions:
* 1 Expertise Skill reduces the chance your attacks will be dodged/parried by 0.25%
* 32.79 Rating is equal to 1% less chance your attacks will be dodged/parried.
* 8.20 Rating is equal to 0.25% less chance your attacks will be dodged/parried and thus is equal to 1 Expertise Skill.
To-hit
Spell Hit and Melee Hit scale differently with Hit Rating. You need 26.2 hit rating for 1% chance to hit with spells and 32.7 hit rating for 1% hit to melee attacks.
Dual-wielding, the offhand has a 24% chance to miss rather than the usual 8% for two-handed weapons. Note, your special attacks (eg. frost strike) disregard the offhand miss rate, your special melee attacks are 8% and spells are 17% even if you are DW tanking. To-hit does not effect your survivability, just your TPS.
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If you’re handling loot, you should know what kinds of weapons a DK tank will want. If you’re giving loot priority to tanks this should also mean DK tanks get first dibs on some 2H weapons which otherwise you’d give to a DPS.
Fist I’ll outline the basics you need to know about, and then list out some of the better 3.2 DK tank weapons.
I have an ordered list of 3.3 Icecrown weapons.
Dual-wield tanking is a topic for another day, but in terms of one-handed tank weapon drops you should always give first rights to shield-tanks. If it’s an upgrade for a shield-tank, it will be better for them than for a DK tank who’s dual-wielding.
In contrast, if a two-handed weapon drops which is an upgrade for the DK tank, they (ideally) should get priority over DPSer. But what is an upgrade? » continue reading
This is just cool. DPS warriors will love this.
A good mate of mine Splug, who’s the GM and hardcore tank (named Spyte) in the US guild Angry (wowprogress | ranked world 91, USA 41) gave me some ridiculously awesome news.
Their fury warrior Nomepunter got two Voldrethars.
I just grin about with the idea of a massive Tauren wielding two pwnage weapons like that. That’s pwnwear!
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