On a slightly different note. Has anyone been on the PTR yet with their destro-lock. My machine is in the shop getting a board changed. I was wondering what conflagrate is hitting for post-nerf.
Knock 25% off what it's hitting now and you're about spot on, at least for the nuke itself.
If you're thinking PVE, it's pretty much the same. You lose the firestone 1% bonus on the DOT, but the nuke and DOT crit independently (DOT ticks get the 25% elevated crit rate, too) - so a non-crit can still get a DOT crit and do more damage than a normal noncrit, and vice-versa. DOT crits don't proc pyroclasm. It's a very tiny effective nerf.
Target dummy DPS seems to be down a little bit, but I think it might be just as much recount buggery from the burst nerf as actual DPS loss (sort of like how mages gain 1500 dps going from fire to arcane but gain much less damage done over the course of a boss fight than that number would imply).
It'd be cool if they'd make pyroclasm proc off the dot crits, which would definitely make this a wash for PvE effectiveness. It'd almost guarantee that it'd be up all the time, which would be awesome.
Talents like pyroclasm are a cop-out to me. It's basically saying they want you to do 6% more damage with your fire spells, but instead of just giving you a flat bonus they want to act like they're going to make it happen via some interesting combination, like Conflag critting. It's just something that's going to be assumed to be up all the time.
To me things that make a spec fun to play are talents like backdraft, warbringer, etc.
It'd be cool if they'd make pyroclasm proc off the dot crits, which would definitely make this a wash for PvE effectiveness. It'd almost guarantee that it'd be up all the time, which would be awesome.
Yeah, it doesn't though.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
It'd be cool if they'd make pyroclasm proc off the dot crits, which would definitely make this a wash for PvE effectiveness. It'd almost guarantee that it'd be up all the time, which would be awesome.
Yeah, it doesn't though.
I know, hence "It'd" rather than "It's." Just an idea for them to make this hurt less to destruction locks who enjoy their large numbers.
So they apparently just removed the threat from the fel armor heal.
It's a nice gesture, but eh... It's just that, a gesture. Fel armor isn't really the source of our threat troubles. Fel synergy, soul leech, improved soul leech - all healing threat.
Passive threat reduction is the big one, though. Only fire and frost mages have 10%, and we're unique in that ours comes at the cost of a DPS talent. Frost isn't a powerhouse DPS spec, and their buffs in 3.3 are going to a pet, so their threat will be split. Fire feels a lot of our pain, but doesn't pile on the healing agro.
Aside from hunters (feign death says hi), every other class has at least 20% passive - either built in to the class or as a talent that doesn't cost them elsewhere in their build, a number have 30%, several can hit 40%, and at least one can potentially go as high as 45%. We're also the only pure DPS class without a 100% drop, though that itself isn't such an issue - even with 50%, timed right it's enough.
On the other hand, I still don't think we have serious threat issues. Blizzard's resistance to fixing our threat is that they don't want people just ignoring or trivializing threat, which means that it's not us that's broken, but almost every other spec. Problem there is that at this point, buffing fire and warlock threat reduction up to 30% will go over a hell of a lot easier with players than a sweeping across the board nerf to eight classes plus one mage tree.
Personally, I think the first step (and the easiest one for 3.3) is that any uncontrolled healing (perhaps giving exception to stuff procced by a healing spell) should be made threat free as a rule, like they did with judgement of light forever ago.
Im surprised how easy it has been to gear up in WotLK. I broke 2800 self buffed this weekend and I have only done a handful of ToC 25s which were all pugs.
Hate: Lost the roll for tier pants out of VoA 25 again. That is the third time and I would have been the only lock there if had not been for the damn Mage DCn because the group looked less than optimal. We 1 shot everything though.
Aside from hunters (feign death says hi), every other class has at least 20% passive - either built in to the class or as a talent that doesn't cost them elsewhere in their build, a number have 30%, several can hit 40%, and at least one can potentially go as high as 45%. We're also the only pure DPS class without a 100% drop, though that itself isn't such an issue - even with 50%, timed right it's enough.
Unless you're talking about ranged DPS only, this is misleading since all ranged get a "passive" threat reduction in the 130% aggro threshold (vs. 110% for melee).
Actually, I was talking about ranged only, though most melee have 30% passive or more and only a 20% pull disadvantage. Arms is limited to 20%, some DK specs can go as high as 45%, the rest are all 30%.
Elemental and balance have 30%, shadow has 25%, arcane has 40%.
Between 6 and 18% of destruction threat comes from healing agro, depending on suppression vs. ISL and raid damage going on (more raid damage=less overhealing). Fel armor's healing specifically accounts for around 0.3-0.6% of our threat.
It's worth noting that since 3.1, siphon life now causes healing threat, which it didn't when it was a drain, so affliction doesn't have problems as severe as destruction, but they do still have exaggerated threat.
Relying on the ranged threshold is a bad idea in many fights, anyway. You can use it safely if there's not a lot of movement (or random tank swaps), but Hodir, for example, it's practically useless, even if damage didn't come in such huge increments.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
Actually, I was talking about ranged only, though most melee have 30% passive or more and only a 20% pull disadvantage. Arms is limited to 20%, some DK specs can go as high as 45%, the rest are all 30%.
Elemental and balance have 30%, shadow has 25%, arcane has 40%.
Between 6 and 18% of destruction threat comes from healing agro, depending on suppression vs. ISL and raid damage going on (more raid damage=less overhealing). Fel armor's healing specifically accounts for around 0.3-0.6% of our threat.
It's worth noting that since 3.1, siphon life now causes healing threat, which it didn't when it was a drain, so affliction doesn't have problems as severe as destruction, but they do still have exaggerated threat.
Which DK specs can go as high as 45%? The only threat reduction talent I'm aware of is Subversion.
What percent of destruction threat comes from the pet?
Relying on the ranged threshold is a bad idea in many fights, anyway. You can use it safely if there's not a lot of movement (or random tank swaps), but Hodir, for example, it's practically useless, even if damage didn't come in such huge increments.
You end up in melee range of a boss on many fights? I think you're doing something wrong.
Relying on the ranged threshold is a bad idea in many fights, anyway. You can use it safely if there's not a lot of movement (or random tank swaps), but Hodir, for example, it's practically useless, even if damage didn't come in such huge increments.
You end up in melee range of a boss on many fights? I think you're doing something wrong.
Because every fight is a carbon copy of Patchwerk?
It's not like I will end up in melee range on every fight. How much I'm willing to go over 100% is highly dependent on whether or not my soulshatter is up, and how likely I think I will end up in melee range. Fortunately the worst fights for putting ranged in melee suddenly tend to be pretty predictable (although Archavon can suck it...), so its easy to use threat dump cooldowns carefully (and then act conservatively if threat dumps are not ready or you have to save them), but it does lessen the advantage.
But, there's the other part I forgot to even mention: It's when I am standing at ranged.
This actually makes threat hard to predict. Firstly, like many casters, I don't deal a constant stream of damage, but instead damage is in larger chunks. Worse, I don't find how much threat a spell dealt immediately, because of travel time. As a result, I don't find out if a spell crit until I'm nearly done with the next spell.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
I died on Icehowl because the tank was trying to adjust him and he caught her with a Whirl while she didn't have her back to the wall, she landed next to me, I had 125% threat. Splat.
(pre-emptive: Yeah I was going to use Soulshatter, but there wasn't a point until after the next Massive Crash. :P)
Hodir forces you into melee quite regularly. You have to go where the snowpiles are, and if all three are dumped on melee it's either 110 range or freeze, with a fairly even split in raid makeup, there's around even odds of this happening at least once in a 3 minute kill. The most common strat for twin valk'yrs on heroic 25 has everybody except soaks in melee range. Several Ignis strats have the bulk of the raid in or very near melee range. Any boss that has to be kept on the move like Koralon, it's better to let them cross over you and pass through melee range than to readjust. You only have to readjust half as much per circuit of the room that way than staying out of 110 range. The only safe way to cross sides on Onyxia is right under her belly, but it's worth noting that her hit box is nearly the size of the room, and agro distance is measured from her center while casting distance is from her neck, so it's possible to be out of casting range and still be in 110% pull range.
Which DK specs can go as high as 45%? The only threat reduction talent I'm aware of is Subversion.
Blood presence has an innate 20% threat reduction.
Ahh, I was not aware of that. Is it documented somewhere?
That would definitely make DKs a threat reduction overkill class, especially compared to poor Arms warriors.
It was added back in vanilla for warriors and druids - multi mode melee classes got innate theat reduction built into their non-tank modes. It was in the patch notes at the time. DKs were implemented consistent with them.
Battle and berzerker stance both have innate 20% reduction (fury gets another 10% from talents, and it's connected to an extremely strong DPS talent), cat form has 30% innate.
The first three are reasonable. All the other encounters that are examples of being at range, but with potential moments of the boss being next to you, you should be prepared to Soulshatter if it's going to happen. It's not like the tank just drags Koralon around the room randomly. Unless you're grouped with some spaz pugger (in which case it's probably not going to go well anyway), you should have ample time to Soulshatter if you're over 110 and he's heading your way.
End seems to imply that half the bosses are just erratically bumbling into the ranged DPS, when in reality the ones who do are by far the exception. Most of the ones who have the potential to do so are predictable and can be handled with a preemptive Soulshatter.
Which DK specs can go as high as 45%? The only threat reduction talent I'm aware of is Subversion.
Blood presence has an innate 20% threat reduction.
Ahh, I was not aware of that. Is it documented somewhere?
That would definitely make DKs a threat reduction overkill class, especially compared to poor Arms warriors.
It was added back in vanilla for warriors and druids - multi mode melee classes got innate theat reduction built into their non-tank modes. It was in the patch notes at the time. DKs were implemented consistent with them.
Battle and berzerker stance both have innate 20% reduction (fury gets another 10% from talents, and it's connected to an extremely strong DPS talent), cat form has 30% innate.
I'm aware of those, but none of the other classes with innate threat reduction have passive threat reduction talents: cats, rogues, warriors (until the above mentioned fury-only talent was added in WotLK).
The other melee specs with strong threat reduction talents (enhancement and retribution) don't have passive threat reduction, so I figured DKs were being implemented consistent with them.
Anyhow, bosses that stay put are typically not the ones where you're likely to be getting capped.
Disclaimer: Most of our tanks are prot warriors.
Yep, 3 minutes (after they knocked the retarded out of their heads and reduced it from 5). It should be available for every boss encounter unless your raid is just turbo wiping.
Anyhow, bosses that stay put are typically not the ones where you're likely to be getting capped.
Disclaimer: Most of our tanks are prot warriors.
Yep, 3 minutes (after they knocked the retarded out of their heads and reduced it from 5). It should be available for every boss encounter unless your raid is just turbo wiping.
It's not available during the entire fight (unless I don't use it until the very very end, but that'd be pointless).
Again, not every fight is Patchwerk. Most fights juggle phases, adds, or some combination.
I try to plan my use of Soulshatter, and hugging 130% is reckless.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
I'd actually say about half of bosses can potentially bumble into ranged without the fight already being in an out of control spiral.
From Ulduar alone, I'm thinking: Ignis, Hodir, Freya (the more elders the more likely, the fight is an absolute clusterfuck by the time you hit 3 elders), Mimiron, Iron Council depending on kill order and tank setup, Vezax with a kite strat for easy mode, Yogg adds (0 light says lol), and Algalon. Maybe Razorscale if you're on a weird kite path.
Even at 3 minutes, Soulshatter is still once-per-fight. if you use it early enough that you NEED it again, the first one was completely wasted.
Anyway, that just moves DKs to the other side of the spectrum fueling my "why do some classes/specs get to (relatively) ignore threat while others do not?" rant. I could see it being a "class defining feature" if hunters were the only ones with ezmoad threat like back in Vanilla, but the decisions just seem mostly arbitrary and inconsistent.
I'd actually say about half of bosses can potentially bumble into ranged without the fight already being in an out of control spiral.
From Ulduar alone, I'm thinking: Ignis, Hodir, Freya (the more elders the more likely, the fight is an absolute clusterfuck by the time you hit 3 elders), Mimiron, Iron Council depending on kill order and tank setup, Vezax with a kite strat for easy mode, Yogg adds (0 light says lol), and Algalon. Maybe Razorscale if you're on a weird kite path.
Even though I'd mostly concede Hodir, the thing about that fight is that since it's a damage gimmick fight, warlocks aren't the only ones whose threat becomes an issue, and a lot of raids have the tank prepared for potentially losing aggro and immediately taunting to get a big threat jump.
Freya. What? The big tree add? By the time it's time to attack Freya, the tank has such a ridiculous threat lead no one has to care at all about it. If you're talking about the trio, you can always just split your damage so as not to over-aggro, or you can be a Snaplasher kiter.
Mimiron. Be more specific?
Iron Council. Be more specific? The only time I can think of where you're likely to end up in melee range (by not being bad) is to get in a rune, and you could always just not stand in a rune in phase 1 if threat will be a problem, since phase 1 is easy no matter what your kill order. After phase 1, threat should not be an issue due to massive tank lead time.
I could see Vezax with a kite strat, but honestly I've never been in a group that's even bothered doing that (or at least tried it and had more success than not kiting). Besides, if you are doing that strat, you should know when he's going to be kited (once per minute) and be able to see him coming right for you if he's even being taken that way and thus preemptively SS.
Yogg 0? OK, I wouldn't know there, but that's a very extreme example since it's something only .01% (or whatever) of players will ever do. Also, warlock threat must not be that big of an issue there since I seem to recall the world first 0 light kill "abusing" warlocks to get the kill anyway (didn't they stack quite a few affliction locks?).
Algalon. I wouldn't know personally, so you're going to have to elaborate on that. All the videos I've watched don't involve him moving around much (read: barely at all).
Even at 3 minutes, Soulshatter is still once-per-fight. if you use it early enough that you NEED it again, the first one was completely wasted.
Once per fight should be enough if you're planning carefully. If you're having to burn it early on, then you should probably be more mindful of where you're standing. If using it a minute into the fight is still too early and threat later becomes an issue, then guess what? You're not going to be the only one running into threat problems and your tank probably isn't very good at threat generation.
There are also a good number of encounters where Soul Shatter should be more than a once-per-fight. Just in Ulduar? XT hard (and threat shouldn't be an issue on normal anyway), Iron Council, Freya, Mimiron, Vezax, Yogg, and Algalon. And if you're using it far enough into the encounter that you won't get another shot, is threat even going to be an issue past that point anyway?
Even at 3 minutes, Soulshatter is still once-per-fight. if you use it early enough that you NEED it again, the first one was completely wasted.
Once per fight should be enough if you're planning carefully. If you're having to burn it early on, then you should probably be more mindful of where you're standing. If using it a minute into the fight is still too early and threat later becomes an issue, then guess what? You're not going to be the only one running into threat problems and your tank probably isn't very good at threat generation.
Well, duh. That's my point, is that it needs to be planned properly. That's why I try not to get myself into positions where I have to use it early.
And you seemed to have completely ignored my comment about delayed threat!
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
Freya: Yes. The big tree's also the only DPS intensive point in the fight. By the time you piled on 3 elders worth of HP buffs you didn't have the luxury of giving the tank time to get into a position and then building threat, or of stopping when the tank had to find a new mushroom. That guy had to die FAST.
Mimiron: Firefighter, he's on the move continuously in phase 4. The tank can't eat shock blast, and you need to also move him enough that he's not sitting on mines. You also have very little control over where fires spawn, and nothing you do in this phase can really control the matter. If you move him into open ground, the fire will just move in and new fires spawn in the open area anyway. If you keep him near fires while you're fire capped, you'll just get a water bomb on the raid.
Iron council: Threat will only be a nonissue in phase 2 if you're using three tanks and not doing Steelbreaker last, and two tanks is normal on Steelbreaker. Runemaster second (or last) are both extreme mobility and DPS gimmick fights.
Vezax: Most guilds that don't do hard modes continued to use a kite strategy throughout 3.1 because the most common defining difference between a non hardmode guild and a hardmode guild was the tank/healer cooldown rotation (same thing as the difference between sarth 0/1/2 guilds and sarth 3 guilds pre-ulduar).
Algalon: He has to be on the move during cosmic smashes if any of the three spawn on melee or a tank, that goes double on 10 man where they still do quite a bit of damage even from medium distance, the dropoff's a bit more forgiving in 25 man, but there's also three of them to move around. He has to be on the move if the collapsing star is close to melee or the tank. During big bangs he charges down whatever poor fuck is assigned to ass rape duty (sometimes a tank DK but very often a shadow priest with the dispersion glyph) and has to be picked up by tanks again. It's an intense tanking fight, an intense raid healing fight, an intense DPS fight, and a heavy movement fight.
Yogg 0 may be an extreme case, but the exact same issue exists on 1 through 3 for warlocks, as we're generally not a class involved in killing adds (or keeping them low in 0 light), but adds will readily agro on us when they spawn. I said "0 light says lol" because the tanks are swamped and if two spawns in a row are behind the add tanks and in the same hunter's misdirect range, somebody with healing agro is going to be shitting their pants hoping it crosses the center at a good angle for the tank to grab, and no threat dump will save whoever that is when the tank isn't even on the threat list anyway. And even with other people generating more healing threat than warlocks, weird mechanics happen at low threat - whoever gets it first has always been "stickier" than on an established agro target, like on Huhuran or Twin Emperors, it could take almost 2000 threat to pull off a target that should have no threat at all, but just got initial agro.
Edit: Also to add, the early Yogg 0 kills didn't use affliction locks as heavily as the general belief is. Stars only had two or three, which was about typical for early kills. In their MMO champ interview, Stars did say if they could they'd just stack 10 affliction warlocks for it, but they never actually did that, and the guilds I know of that tried it got splattered when they couldn't pull the AOE. Affliction is untouchable single target DPS for yogg, but the fight hinges much more on AOE. Unholy DKs, shadow priests, and FOK rogues (pre FOK nerf anyway) were the only classes that ever really got stacked to unusual levels for the fight.
Even at 3 minutes, Soulshatter is still once-per-fight. if you use it early enough that you NEED it again, the first one was completely wasted.
Once per fight should be enough if you're planning carefully. If you're having to burn it early on, then you should probably be more mindful of where you're standing. If using it a minute into the fight is still too early and threat later becomes an issue, then guess what? You're not going to be the only one running into threat problems and your tank probably isn't very good at threat generation.
Well, duh. That's my point, is that it needs to be planned properly. That's why I try not to get myself into positions where I have to use it early.
So then it sounds like you can rely on the ranged threshold in many fights.
And you seemed to have completely ignored my comment about delayed threat!
Delayed threat is only really an issue at the start of a fight, when a big incinerate crit can jump you up 50% in threat due to the low threat totals floating about. It doesn't take that long before the absolute threat numbers are high enough that a big crit won't rock the boat much.
So then it sounds like you can rely on the ranged threshold in many fights.
Many, but as discussed, if there's a possibility of ending up in melee range, it introduces a risk of suddenly getting gibbed, so you can't on those fights. Then you also need to have leeway, so that soulshatter does not have to be used if you get a string of crits, so you don't want to get close there either. I've seen a lot of places, places I didn't even expect, where being careful prevented me from being a smear on the ground.
Even if the reliable ranged threshold is reliable, my comfort zone is around 100%, for most of the fight. If I'm consistently constrained by threat, there's no reason to go near 130%. I'll stop holding back if I'm ready to soulshatter, or the fight is very close to ending, but so long as I can easily exceed 130%, I don't risk it. A lot of people seem to advocate hugging 130% as closely as possible, which is my complaint.
Delayed threat is only really an issue at the start of a fight, when a big incinerate crit can jump you up 50% in threat due to the low threat totals floating about. It doesn't take that long before the absolute threat numbers are high enough that a big crit won't rock the boat much.
Throw in a combination of incinerate, conflag and chaos bolt, and it takes longer than you probably think.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
So then it sounds like you can rely on the ranged threshold in many fights.
Many, but as discussed, if there's a possibility of ending up in melee range, it introduces a risk of suddenly getting gibbed, so you can't on those fights. Then you also need to have leeway, so that soulshatter does not have to be used if you get a string of crits, so you don't want to get close there either. I've seen a lot of places, places I didn't even expect, where being careful prevented me from being a smear on the ground.
Even if the reliable ranged threshold is reliable, my comfort zone is around 100%, for most of the fight. If I'm consistently constrained by threat, there's no reason to go near 130%. I'll stop holding back if I'm ready to soulshatter, or the fight is very close to ending, but so long as I can easily exceed 130%, I don't risk it. A lot of people seem to advocate hugging 130% as closely as possible, which is my complaint.
Delayed threat is only really an issue at the start of a fight, when a big incinerate crit can jump you up 50% in threat due to the low threat totals floating about. It doesn't take that long before the absolute threat numbers are high enough that a big crit won't rock the boat much.
Throw in a combination of incinerate, conflag and chaos bolt, and it takes longer than you probably think.
The real kicker is when those 3 hit at basically the same time, all crit, and proc soul leech. blah.
Even 10% is categorically unfair. Somebody in the thread on this in the DPS forums put together a list of the top few threat-per-damage specs in the game. The discrepancy between destruction, demo, frost, fire, and affliction, all of which were clustered around or above the .9 tpd mark and the next step down, which was just over 0.7, is pretty stark. Even crediting pet damage as threat free, demo and frost are still around 8% higher tpd than any spec outside of these 5.
The same tests even found something fairly interesting, apparently fel armor, synergy, and soul leech cause 72.5% threat per healing, compared to 50% for other classes healing, active or passive. Fel armor's going away, but that's still a trivial amount of 0/13/58's threat generation.
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We've just hit 58, been wizard-cleaving the fuck out of the battlegrounds. Destro is so much fun.
You talk clean and bomb hospitals, so I speak with the foulest mouth possible
It'd be cool if they'd make pyroclasm proc off the dot crits, which would definitely make this a wash for PvE effectiveness. It'd almost guarantee that it'd be up all the time, which would be awesome.
To me things that make a spec fun to play are talents like backdraft, warbringer, etc.
yes, I don't like talents like pyroclasm
backdraft is awesome
Yeah, it doesn't though.
I know, hence "It'd" rather than "It's." Just an idea for them to make this hurt less to destruction locks who enjoy their large numbers.
Although, I'll admit, it'd be nice.
"...only mights and maybes."
It's a nice gesture, but eh... It's just that, a gesture. Fel armor isn't really the source of our threat troubles. Fel synergy, soul leech, improved soul leech - all healing threat.
Passive threat reduction is the big one, though. Only fire and frost mages have 10%, and we're unique in that ours comes at the cost of a DPS talent. Frost isn't a powerhouse DPS spec, and their buffs in 3.3 are going to a pet, so their threat will be split. Fire feels a lot of our pain, but doesn't pile on the healing agro.
Aside from hunters (feign death says hi), every other class has at least 20% passive - either built in to the class or as a talent that doesn't cost them elsewhere in their build, a number have 30%, several can hit 40%, and at least one can potentially go as high as 45%. We're also the only pure DPS class without a 100% drop, though that itself isn't such an issue - even with 50%, timed right it's enough.
On the other hand, I still don't think we have serious threat issues. Blizzard's resistance to fixing our threat is that they don't want people just ignoring or trivializing threat, which means that it's not us that's broken, but almost every other spec. Problem there is that at this point, buffing fire and warlock threat reduction up to 30% will go over a hell of a lot easier with players than a sweeping across the board nerf to eight classes plus one mage tree.
Personally, I think the first step (and the easiest one for 3.3) is that any uncontrolled healing (perhaps giving exception to stuff procced by a healing spell) should be made threat free as a rule, like they did with judgement of light forever ago.
Hate: Lost the roll for tier pants out of VoA 25 again. That is the third time and I would have been the only lock there if had not been for the damn Mage DCn because the group looked less than optimal. We 1 shot everything though.
Elemental and balance have 30%, shadow has 25%, arcane has 40%.
Between 6 and 18% of destruction threat comes from healing agro, depending on suppression vs. ISL and raid damage going on (more raid damage=less overhealing). Fel armor's healing specifically accounts for around 0.3-0.6% of our threat.
It's worth noting that since 3.1, siphon life now causes healing threat, which it didn't when it was a drain, so affliction doesn't have problems as severe as destruction, but they do still have exaggerated threat.
What percent of destruction threat comes from the pet?
You end up in melee range of a boss on many fights? I think you're doing something wrong.
Blood presence has an innate 20% threat reduction.
Because every fight is a carbon copy of Patchwerk?
It's not like I will end up in melee range on every fight. How much I'm willing to go over 100% is highly dependent on whether or not my soulshatter is up, and how likely I think I will end up in melee range. Fortunately the worst fights for putting ranged in melee suddenly tend to be pretty predictable (although Archavon can suck it...), so its easy to use threat dump cooldowns carefully (and then act conservatively if threat dumps are not ready or you have to save them), but it does lessen the advantage.
But, there's the other part I forgot to even mention: It's when I am standing at ranged.
This actually makes threat hard to predict. Firstly, like many casters, I don't deal a constant stream of damage, but instead damage is in larger chunks. Worse, I don't find how much threat a spell dealt immediately, because of travel time. As a result, I don't find out if a spell crit until I'm nearly done with the next spell.
(pre-emptive: Yeah I was going to use Soulshatter, but there wasn't a point until after the next Massive Crash. :P)
Typically though, I can easily exceed 130% during any of the stuns alone, so I usually use soul shatter before the end of one of the stuns.
That would definitely make DKs a threat reduction overkill class, especially compared to poor Arms warriors.
It was added back in vanilla for warriors and druids - multi mode melee classes got innate theat reduction built into their non-tank modes. It was in the patch notes at the time. DKs were implemented consistent with them.
Battle and berzerker stance both have innate 20% reduction (fury gets another 10% from talents, and it's connected to an extremely strong DPS talent), cat form has 30% innate.
End seems to imply that half the bosses are just erratically bumbling into the ranged DPS, when in reality the ones who do are by far the exception. Most of the ones who have the potential to do so are predictable and can be handled with a preemptive Soulshatter.
Anyhow, bosses that stay put are typically not the ones where you're likely to be getting capped.
Disclaimer: Most of our tanks are prot warriors.
Edit: Also, I'm usually the one that lives when things go shitty. Being reckless is...well...reckless, and that's not my style.
The other melee specs with strong threat reduction talents (enhancement and retribution) don't have passive threat reduction, so I figured DKs were being implemented consistent with them.
Does Unholy Presence have threat reduction?
Unholy presence does not.
It's not available during the entire fight (unless I don't use it until the very very end, but that'd be pointless).
Again, not every fight is Patchwerk. Most fights juggle phases, adds, or some combination.
I try to plan my use of Soulshatter, and hugging 130% is reckless.
From Ulduar alone, I'm thinking: Ignis, Hodir, Freya (the more elders the more likely, the fight is an absolute clusterfuck by the time you hit 3 elders), Mimiron, Iron Council depending on kill order and tank setup, Vezax with a kite strat for easy mode, Yogg adds (0 light says lol), and Algalon. Maybe Razorscale if you're on a weird kite path.
Even at 3 minutes, Soulshatter is still once-per-fight. if you use it early enough that you NEED it again, the first one was completely wasted.
Anyway, that just moves DKs to the other side of the spectrum fueling my "why do some classes/specs get to (relatively) ignore threat while others do not?" rant. I could see it being a "class defining feature" if hunters were the only ones with ezmoad threat like back in Vanilla, but the decisions just seem mostly arbitrary and inconsistent.
Freya. What? The big tree add? By the time it's time to attack Freya, the tank has such a ridiculous threat lead no one has to care at all about it. If you're talking about the trio, you can always just split your damage so as not to over-aggro, or you can be a Snaplasher kiter.
Mimiron. Be more specific?
Iron Council. Be more specific? The only time I can think of where you're likely to end up in melee range (by not being bad) is to get in a rune, and you could always just not stand in a rune in phase 1 if threat will be a problem, since phase 1 is easy no matter what your kill order. After phase 1, threat should not be an issue due to massive tank lead time.
I could see Vezax with a kite strat, but honestly I've never been in a group that's even bothered doing that (or at least tried it and had more success than not kiting). Besides, if you are doing that strat, you should know when he's going to be kited (once per minute) and be able to see him coming right for you if he's even being taken that way and thus preemptively SS.
Yogg 0? OK, I wouldn't know there, but that's a very extreme example since it's something only .01% (or whatever) of players will ever do. Also, warlock threat must not be that big of an issue there since I seem to recall the world first 0 light kill "abusing" warlocks to get the kill anyway (didn't they stack quite a few affliction locks?).
Algalon. I wouldn't know personally, so you're going to have to elaborate on that. All the videos I've watched don't involve him moving around much (read: barely at all).
Once per fight should be enough if you're planning carefully. If you're having to burn it early on, then you should probably be more mindful of where you're standing. If using it a minute into the fight is still too early and threat later becomes an issue, then guess what? You're not going to be the only one running into threat problems and your tank probably isn't very good at threat generation.
There are also a good number of encounters where Soul Shatter should be more than a once-per-fight. Just in Ulduar? XT hard (and threat shouldn't be an issue on normal anyway), Iron Council, Freya, Mimiron, Vezax, Yogg, and Algalon. And if you're using it far enough into the encounter that you won't get another shot, is threat even going to be an issue past that point anyway?
Well, duh. That's my point, is that it needs to be planned properly. That's why I try not to get myself into positions where I have to use it early.
And you seemed to have completely ignored my comment about delayed threat!
Freya: Yes. The big tree's also the only DPS intensive point in the fight. By the time you piled on 3 elders worth of HP buffs you didn't have the luxury of giving the tank time to get into a position and then building threat, or of stopping when the tank had to find a new mushroom. That guy had to die FAST.
Mimiron: Firefighter, he's on the move continuously in phase 4. The tank can't eat shock blast, and you need to also move him enough that he's not sitting on mines. You also have very little control over where fires spawn, and nothing you do in this phase can really control the matter. If you move him into open ground, the fire will just move in and new fires spawn in the open area anyway. If you keep him near fires while you're fire capped, you'll just get a water bomb on the raid.
Iron council: Threat will only be a nonissue in phase 2 if you're using three tanks and not doing Steelbreaker last, and two tanks is normal on Steelbreaker. Runemaster second (or last) are both extreme mobility and DPS gimmick fights.
Vezax: Most guilds that don't do hard modes continued to use a kite strategy throughout 3.1 because the most common defining difference between a non hardmode guild and a hardmode guild was the tank/healer cooldown rotation (same thing as the difference between sarth 0/1/2 guilds and sarth 3 guilds pre-ulduar).
Algalon: He has to be on the move during cosmic smashes if any of the three spawn on melee or a tank, that goes double on 10 man where they still do quite a bit of damage even from medium distance, the dropoff's a bit more forgiving in 25 man, but there's also three of them to move around. He has to be on the move if the collapsing star is close to melee or the tank. During big bangs he charges down whatever poor fuck is assigned to ass rape duty (sometimes a tank DK but very often a shadow priest with the dispersion glyph) and has to be picked up by tanks again. It's an intense tanking fight, an intense raid healing fight, an intense DPS fight, and a heavy movement fight.
Yogg 0 may be an extreme case, but the exact same issue exists on 1 through 3 for warlocks, as we're generally not a class involved in killing adds (or keeping them low in 0 light), but adds will readily agro on us when they spawn. I said "0 light says lol" because the tanks are swamped and if two spawns in a row are behind the add tanks and in the same hunter's misdirect range, somebody with healing agro is going to be shitting their pants hoping it crosses the center at a good angle for the tank to grab, and no threat dump will save whoever that is when the tank isn't even on the threat list anyway. And even with other people generating more healing threat than warlocks, weird mechanics happen at low threat - whoever gets it first has always been "stickier" than on an established agro target, like on Huhuran or Twin Emperors, it could take almost 2000 threat to pull off a target that should have no threat at all, but just got initial agro.
Edit: Also to add, the early Yogg 0 kills didn't use affliction locks as heavily as the general belief is. Stars only had two or three, which was about typical for early kills. In their MMO champ interview, Stars did say if they could they'd just stack 10 affliction warlocks for it, but they never actually did that, and the guilds I know of that tried it got splattered when they couldn't pull the AOE. Affliction is untouchable single target DPS for yogg, but the fight hinges much more on AOE. Unholy DKs, shadow priests, and FOK rogues (pre FOK nerf anyway) were the only classes that ever really got stacked to unusual levels for the fight.
Delayed threat is only really an issue at the start of a fight, when a big incinerate crit can jump you up 50% in threat due to the low threat totals floating about. It doesn't take that long before the absolute threat numbers are high enough that a big crit won't rock the boat much.
Many, but as discussed, if there's a possibility of ending up in melee range, it introduces a risk of suddenly getting gibbed, so you can't on those fights. Then you also need to have leeway, so that soulshatter does not have to be used if you get a string of crits, so you don't want to get close there either. I've seen a lot of places, places I didn't even expect, where being careful prevented me from being a smear on the ground.
Even if the reliable ranged threshold is reliable, my comfort zone is around 100%, for most of the fight. If I'm consistently constrained by threat, there's no reason to go near 130%. I'll stop holding back if I'm ready to soulshatter, or the fight is very close to ending, but so long as I can easily exceed 130%, I don't risk it. A lot of people seem to advocate hugging 130% as closely as possible, which is my complaint.
Throw in a combination of incinerate, conflag and chaos bolt, and it takes longer than you probably think.
The real kicker is when those 3 hit at basically the same time, all crit, and proc soul leech. blah.
I am a freaking nerd.
Yeah, exactly.
The same tests even found something fairly interesting, apparently fel armor, synergy, and soul leech cause 72.5% threat per healing, compared to 50% for other classes healing, active or passive. Fel armor's going away, but that's still a trivial amount of 0/13/58's threat generation.