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Friday, April 24, 2009

Breaking news: iMangle rotation owns!!!

Synopsis
Get yourself to an iMangle rotation, even if you don't have the idol!


[edit]
See next post. The breaking news was broken. It is not true. Thanks go to Tarskin for that. Thank you very much. :-( XD
[/edit]

Either iMangle roation own, or rawr lies.
Inspired by Tarskin's post on Faerie Fire / iMangle rotation I took my head our of my ass and saw that FFF is huge threat. Definately do it every time you can.

I took his post and extended it a bit.

This is a screenshot of my calculations.



First of all the rotation. All rotations are based on a continues cycle. It doesn't say what you should start out with. They all start at the moment lacerate is renewed, thus the first action is Lacerate.

Instead of only looking at Mangle / Fearie Fire I took Lacerate into the cycle. Lacerate can not be allowed to drop, so do that at least every 9 actions. Atfer 10 actions it will have dropped.

6 sec Mangle:
If you are doing Mangle / FFF every 6 seconds, you have to do lacerate every 12 seconds. If you do that every 13.5 seconds if will inevitable collide with Mangle or FFF. It would mean the cycle you would have would be very long, and hard to execute.

That means the rotation would look something like this:
8 moves; 12 seconds: 2 Mangles, 2 FFF, 1 lacerate and 3 swipes.
  1. Lacerate
  2. Mangle
  3. FFF
  4. Swipe
  5. Swipe
  6. Mangle
  7. FFF
  8. Swipe
4.5 second Mangle:
For refreshing Lacerate it has to be done at least once every 13.5 seconds.
That is coincidentally exactly 3 Mangles. This gives us a 9 move cycle.
9 moves; 13.5 seconds: 3 Mangles, 2 FFF, 1 lacerate, 3 swipes.
  1. Lacerate
  2. Mangle
  3. FFF
  4. Swipe
  5. Mangle
  6. Swipe
  7. FFF
  8. Mangle
  9. Swipe
I must say this rotation is a bit more complex, but I'll show you it is worth it.

It is not disputed that iMangle does more damage. However the fact that if you take iMangle means you will have to drop Master shapeshifter. And everything does less damage.

So from Rawr, using my own gear and fully raidbuffed I took the following average values. I took the average values because you have to count crits too. Here I only discuss threat though damage can also be seen in the spreadsheet:
iMangle spec:
  • Mangle: 4552
  • FFF: 3434
  • Lacerate: 1128
  • Swipe: 2142
Master shapeshifter spec:
  • Mangle: 4734
  • FFF: 3434
  • Lacerate: 1153
  • Swipe: 2228
This shows that a 6 sec Mangle cycle gives me 24173 threat = 3022 TPS
An iMangle 4.5 sec Mangle cycle gives me 28078 threat = 3120 TPS

So taking iMangle over master shapeshifter is 100% the right thing to do and it even leaves 2 extra talentpoints you can spend somethere you like.
Unless ofcourse my rawr data is wrong.

15 comments:

  1. I still don't get it

    I have both imp mangle and MSS. (Although I do not have IW because I always have a frost DK)

    This you must drop MSS to get Imangle is getting old. It depends on your situation and raid makeup.

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  2. Are you guys seeing DPS catch up to you? I MT'd almost everything in 10 man Uld (we couldn't get Vezax down before reset) with some of my guild's better DPS last week without iMangle, MSS, or even using FFF in my rotation and I rarely had problems. Last night, I tried the MSS build and worked FFF into my rotation on 25 man XT and I was at nearly *double* the threat of our top DPS. Same was happening on a quick Maly kill where I was MT again. XT isn't a great example since DPS is bumbling around killing adds for a while, but has threat really been that much of an issue for anyone? (I believe the only non-tauntable boss I've seen so far is Vezax).

    Now, DPS in my guild is not great, but the top damage dealers routinely hit the 5k mark on non-gimmick fights. Even if they were up to 7k DPS (or more as I'm sure we'll see in late Ulduar), I would likely not have a threat problem.

    This makes me think that I might drop MSS, skip iMangle, and actually get Feral Aggression since I'm the one usually keeping DemoRoar up and tank death has been more of a problem for us as we learn encounters.

    Again, it all depends on the guild/raid, I suppose. If tanks are staying alive without a problem but you're hitting enrage timers or going for fast kills, MSS/iMangle make more sense.

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  3. Marino
    Why the heck does Rawr put up such huge threat on mangle for you? Rawr claims 1841 damage / 3831 threat for Mangle versus 1103 damage / 3594 threat on Faerie Fire based on my toon.
    Repeating your spreadsheet with those values would be something worth doing somewhere this weekend if i can get the time free somewhere :/

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  4. PS: Do my a favor and email me said spreadhseet to save me some time? :P

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  5. @Darksend
    Indeed if you are sure you don't need IW you can just use those 3 for iMangle. For me I won't risk getting more damage. So the thing to sacrifice for me is MSS, especially because it uses 3 combopoints in SS that are pretty useless for PVE.

    @Sollaires
    Indeed it all depends on your preferences. And no, dps doesn't really catch up with us. That is why I take defensive stats over threat any time. SSaying that I must admit I don't use Demoralising Roar on most fights though. Maybe I should. But to put 5 points in Feral Agression just to get an extra 163 AP reduction... seems a bit worthless.
    Also on threat, when you wear your stamina/polar gear set, or if you are simply tanking Hodir in max frost resistance... your threat is less. Also you can't always hit the target. It just stands there while you have to run. In any case I always prefer to do as much threat while surviving.

    @Tarskin
    You should count crits too. Think back on when you tanked. Your mangle crits for about 5k. So if you hover over the damage and threat done per hit you also see a stat "Average damage/threat done per swing". That is counting your crit chance and average crit damage and makes for hell of a lot more damage on your mangle. FFF however is a spell. Your spellcrit is not as high, even it FFF crits (I think so). So the boost to FFF is way less.
    Oh and check your mail.

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  6. Marino,
    You forgot maul, that's where MSS shines

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  7. You also didn't include the lacerate DOT ticks

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  8. Anon posted this and I deleted it by mistake:

    Marino, about Demoralizing roar (DR), Feral Aggression (FA) and bosses AP.

    Acording to the link below bosses have 575 AP and according to wowwiki and other sources boss AP increases their damabe by about 15%.

    http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/42342-level-80-boss-ap.html


    http://www.wowwiki.com/Attack_power

    Using DR is therefore not a trivial mitigation move. Improved DR (with FA) reduces bosses AP to about 0 (575-408*1,4) and thereby reduces their physical damage to about 87% ((1/1,15)*100%). Normal DR reduces bosses AP by about 70% (1-(575-408)/575)*100%) and thereby reduces the bosses physical damage to about 90,5% ((1/(1+(0,15*0,7)))*100%).

    Improved DR (with FA) reduces physical damage taken by about 3,5% (90,5%-87%) compared to normal DR.
    On a boss that does 20k damage DR reduces damage to 18,1k (20k*0,905) and improved DP (with FA) reduces damage to 17,4k (20k*0,87). DR is better on hard hitting bosses then Bear shield.
    In comparison Protector of the pack reduces damage to about 17,6k (20k*0,88).

    Put in another way for a boss that does pure physical damage not putting the DR debuff on the boss is almost like tanking without Protector of the pack. You are not tanking without Protector of the pack, right:P

    If you are building a pure tank build and threat is not an issue (or the boss is tauntable which make threat irrelevant) you should at least consider putting 5 points into Feral Aggression (FA).

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  9. @Anon
    Very much thanks for this post. I stupudly deleted it by mistake. Luckily I was able to get it back because of browser history. /pfew

    About your post, I think I blindly compared it to players. I run around with 7k AP or so. Thought DR had was just a minor effect. Now I am sure including it in my cycles. As soon as it is down, the next swipe is gonna be replaced by DR.
    Got to see what I am gonna drop in favor of FA. Or that I will take the 2 points left and put then in FA. Still reduces melee damage by 1.4%.

    @Tarskin
    Damned yes! I will make a post counting that too.

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  10. Thank you for posting my math again.

    When a respected blogger in a top end guild misjudge Demoralizing roar (DR) then I am sure that almost all feral druid (and warrior,DK and paladins) are misjudging it. Although math is not always the whole truth it at least give us something to rely to.

    Regarding Feral Aggression (FA), I am not sure you should get it for any price, but if you are building a MT build you should at least consider it. For MT build you have to decide for yourself if gaining some mitergation is better then loosing some threat.

    But newermind spec, you should always try to keep Demoralizing Roar (DR) up when tanking a boss or adds. DR increases your mitigation by a not trivial amount.

    PS: I have posted some napkin math on talents and glyphs on "Of Teeth and Claws" that you might find interesting

    http://teethandclaws.blogspot.com/2009/04/tentative-feral-raiding-specs-for-31.html

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  11. @Anon
    The thing with me is that I never studied the vanialla talents as they were. I was resto and only went feral in 2.4, though it was more as a side project as I stopped raiding. It is my mistake to not investigate that further.

    Thank you for calling me respected btw ;)

    And well I am gonna stick with iMangle anyway since it gives 5% more uptime. But I have 2 talentpoint left free that might go into FA.

    If you don't mind I would like to ask you a few questions so I save some time looking for it on the internet.

    Q1: What do other classes have that does the same? Afaik every buff applied in 3.1 can be given by either one or the other. Mangle/Trauma, Warrior Shout/Blessing of might, etc. So is this something purely limited to druids (Balance and resto druids could do the same btw).

    Q2: Am I blind or can I not find this in rawr as a buff anywhere?

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  12. Oh and the post you linked holds 69 comments. Which ones are you? Maybe copy paste it here, or in my new post that is soon online.

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  13. Talents/buffs which can/cannot be mimiced by other classes.

    Demoralizing roar can be supplied by warriors (I dont know if DK and Paladins have a simmilar debuff but my best guss is that they do).

    Leader of the Pack can to the best of my knowlede be mimiced by an furry warrior (although I dont think all furry warriors take the talent).

    Improved LotP can to the best of my knowlede not be supplied by anyone else!! (I am almost 100% sure this a feral buff only).

    Infected Wounds can be mimiced by DK (talent tree?), Warriors (talent tree?), Paladins (talent tree?).

    Mangle can be mimiced by arms warrior (trauma).
    Improved Mark of the Wild no one else supply this buff.

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  14. No, rather than DKs or Paladins having an AP reducer, its Warlocks that cover this. Infected Wounds is mimicked baseline by Warriors and DKs, but at a reduced strength unless talented, and Paladins mimic through a deep Prot talent. As for Imp Mark, its not a buff, its a self-only benefit for having the talent.

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  15. Having insane threat problems....i know its ok for dpsto throttle threat on lk phase 1 but i just cannot hold them and feel like i should...just main switched from my dk back to my druid and may be a little under geared but i should i really be having dps barreling over me?? or am i not stacking stats correctly?

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