Heroic Strike and Sunder Threats explained

[killerduki 54]

http://web.archive.org/web/20061110230105/http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11931356&sid=1

 

November 10 2006

 

# Sunder Armor: Here we have a winner, one of the best skills to hold aggro. Currently, it is dealing 261 threat, is an instant attack and reduces the armor of your target. There is a great world of combinations with what to use it, but that's it's definition. You should probably wait for 5 sunders before starting to use other abilities if you're not high on rage, although sometimes you will find yourself using both HS and Sunder quickly to use several skills in a very few seconds to grab aggro. At 5 sunders though, even Shield Slam might have an use!
Threat Generated: 261 unmodified. Same value after 5 stacks applied.

# Heroic Strike: This ability is pretty nice, and one of the best uses to burn extra rage. It causes 145 innate threat at rank 8, and around 172 at rank 9. It's use can vary, and including the threat from damage, it becomes a great threat producing skill. The only problem is that you lose your white damage and rage generation through that, so it is best used to burn rage (although I am finding myself using it more and more at rank 9).

[killerduki 54]

Updating with all Threat Generators :

 

In battle or Berserker stance, a warrior produces 80% of threat per damage point or innate threat of abilities. Defensive stance produces 130%. Defiance adds 15% to this.

 

Taunting, make use of this skill when needed, but remember that if something bad happens, you need to have it available. Using it to force the target to hit you and gain rage is great, or to hit shield block and a rage and keep it on you, or whatever you may think of. Taunt will also equal your threat to that of the highest target, but then you will have to make up a 10% of extra threat to keep that target on you. This is what we call the "10% rule".

 

 

Defensive Stance required, or can be used on:

# Battle Shout: Well.. yes, battle shout is powerful even for tanking. It increases your AP and your damage, and hence your threat, but it also produces threat. Good skill once you know you have good aggro established, but don't use it when it's tingly, you'll need the rage to hold aggro.
Threat Generated: Around 50 unmodified.

# Demoralizing Shout: An excellent skill for pulls, whether single or multiple targets are being targeted, due to it's range and threat (43 unmodified per shout to each mob affected). If you're in a situation where several mobs are rushing into your group, an initial demoralizing shout will make them all face you, giving extra time for other tanks to obtain their targets and prevent other classes from being hit. Not only that, but the Attack Power reduction can be quite handy as well, offering further mitigation.
Threat Generated: 43 unmodified.

# Challenging Shout: Just like mocking blow, it is usually used as a life-saver, although this ability has a bigger function since it'll force every mob in a small radius to face you for six seconds. Although you might find an use for certain fights, scheduling the shout (for Nefarian's phase 1 for example), you can use it just like mocking blow if both taunt and that fail to perform, the difference being that you will most likely not able to use the skill again for that fight since it is on a 10 minute cooldown.

# Bloodrage: Very nice skill, you'll be using this a lot, especially on first pulls.It also works as a threat puller since each Rage you gain through it equals 5 unmodified rage with a huge radius, so excellent for drakes in BWL. The talent is worthless, but Last Stand is a great skill. Rage is what gives you threat anywhere, and you need threat to maintain aggro.. so use it whenever you can.
Threat Generated: 5 per Power Gain (rage point after the first 10).

# Revenge: The best threat producing ability that we have. It produces 315 threat at rank 5, and this is not calculating the damage inflicted. The downside to it is that you can't spam it, as it has a 5 second cooldown. Still, whenever it's activated, use it, as it is the best threat-per-rage ability. Shield Block to force it to lit if you need it.
Threat Generated: 315 unmodified, not taking damage into the sum.

# Shield Bash: Have extra rage? Disarmed? Use it, it does a fine amount of threat (180) plus damage. It's obviously great whenever you need to interrupt a mob.
Threat Generated: 180 unmodified, not taking damage into the sum.

# Shield Block: Sweet skill, it will increase your blocking by 75 making it reach 100% or close to that. Without talents it will only block once though, but enough to force Revenge to lit up. With talents it has even more power, and some of it is hidden.

# Shield Wall: Speaks for itself? Use it when you know healers are going to have trouble, when you are about to have a rough moment, or when you are really low on life. It's a life saver, even 30 minutes.

# Shield Slam: (1.10 Notes)Even though this is a talent, I'll put it next to Sunder and Heroic Strike for better understanding of the three skills. Shield slam is the tier 31 talent in the protection tree, and as argued by many, produces too little threat for being where it is in the tree and doesn't scale with new gear. This makes it a better skill for a new tank with bad weapons than for a tank wielding an Edge of Chaos.

Anyway, it's threat value is around 250 by what Kenco was able to calculate comparing to Cop's data, plus damage. Without taking armor into account, and thinking it'll do it's maximum damage, we're talking about 250 plus 550, so 800 unmodified threat. It's pretty nice, and you'll see below that comparing to other skills, on a fully sundered target, it can have it's use to burn your 90-100 rage bars, but it loses strength as your gear becomes better, and as soon as you get rank 9 Heroic Strike, Shield Slam goes right down the hill. Still, good for starting tanks.
Patch 1.11 Shield Slam, another world:
As of patch 1.11, shield slam is another completely different ability. I will not remove the 1.10 notes so newer tanks will understand why it was changed.
In 1.11, Shield Slam was changed, reducing the base damage, but allowing your shield block to be a factor of the total damage. This means that your Shield Slam's damage is now based on base damage + block damage.

Around ~180 shield block, this becomes as much damage as the old shield slam, but attention, here's the breaker: Now it costs 20 rage. Not only that, this ability can also crit, and (bug?) it will dispel ALL magical buffs on a target 100% of the time. As a tanking ability it improves a lot, especially for tanks with better gear, but at 20 rage it really helps everyone, and as your gear improves, so will this ability (much needed as you reach certain levels of mitigation). I have not calculated if there was any change to it's innate threat, I will update whenever I can test.

 

 

Threat Generated: 250 unmodified not considering damage.

# Sunder Armor: Here we have a winner, one of the best skills to hold aggro. Currently, it is dealing 261 threat, is an instant attack and reduces the armor of your target. There is a great world of combinations with what to use it, but that's it's definition. You should probably wait for 5 sunders before starting to use other abilities if you're not high on rage, although sometimes you will find yourself using both HS and Sunder quickly to use several skills in a very few seconds to grab aggro. At 5 sunders though, even Shield Slam might have an use!
Threat Generated: 261 unmodified. Same value after 5 stacks applied.

# Heroic Strike: This ability is pretty nice, and one of the best uses to burn extra rage. It causes 145 innate threat at rank 8, and around 172 at rank 9. It's use can vary, and including the threat from damage, it becomes a great threat producing skill. The only problem is that you lose your white damage and rage generation through that, so it is best used to burn rage (although I am finding myself using it more and more at rank 9).

Let us calculate a bit, to compare to other skills. Let's say our HS is hitting a mob for 338 damage, at 15 rage per hit, without any modifiers, we'll be doing 495 threat per hit, and 990 in two hits. Shield wall, will be doing 750 for the same amount of rage, the only difference being that you'll hit with white damage during your SS, for 200, which would kick it up to 1000 if it does it's maximum damage (watch out here, as we are not taking into account weapon speed and unlike HS, SS does from 450 to 550 damage, whereas HS does a constant +138 to your damage) and give you some rage. Not bad, 10 less threat, more or less depending on situation, armour, weapons, sp

Edited November 3, 2016 by killerduki

[killerduki 54]

More Threats Explained :

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20061117215908/http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=46307116&sid=1

 

11/17/2006

Ability_Name	Threat	Dam	Tthreat	Rage	T/R/TalentsRevenge_6	355	90	445	5	89.0Revenge_5	315	71	386	5	77.2Shield Slam	250	350	600	20	30.0Shield_Bash	180	45	225	10	22.5Sunder_Armor	260		260	12	21.7Heroic_Strike_9	175		175	12	14.6Heroic_Strike_8	145		145	12	12.1Thunder_Clap	130	103	233	20	11.7Battle_Shout	55		55	10	5.5Demo_Shout	43		43	10	4.3

[Undertanker 88]

You are not taking into account + Block Value from gear for your shield slam calculations.  Averaged geared tank will have +167 in BiS gear, or +197 if using 5/8 T2, 3/8 T1 set.

 

 

Also factor in the +crit % of a raid buffed main tank can be anywhere from 17% to 25% (higher if they are gearing for it).  Coupled with impale, on raid bosses I see shield slam crits for 850-1k damage.

 

So shield slam does scale with gear.   Sunder Armor does not scale with gear.  Though you can use a weapon with chance on hit proc damage, an enchant with proc damage, and Dark Moon Card: Maelstrom to generate procs off of Sunder Armor to help the TPS.

 

Shield Slam is not a rage dump.  It is the second best threat per rage ability you have outside of Revenge.   Heroic strike eats a white hit which limits your incoming rage, which you have to factor in as well.

 

If limited rage -   Revenge > Shield Slam > Sunder.

If unlimited rage - Revenge > Shield Block > Shield Slam > Sunder + Heroic

[killerduki 54]

Well those are "Base Threat" with 0 Attack Power considered within , just "Pure Threat" abilities which will ofc scale with the Gear as you mention and Talents etc.

 

Glad to have you here ^^

 

I just copied the explanation of archives , nothing else

 

The guy have already mention in his explanation :

Threat Generated: 180 unmodified, not taking damage into the sum.

 

Edited November 7, 2016 by killerduki