Thunder… Thunder… Thunder Clap Ho!
June 12th, 2008 Posted in TheorycraftingSo, going back to my post a few days ago on crushing blows. I made a decent job of illustrating a stat that you really shouldn’t be stacking to try to avoid crushing blows. Block rating in that situation is indeed worthless.
There are ways to minimise crushing blows, though, and they don’t rely on any particular gear or stat, unless of course you count a shield (and, hell, the shield you get when you start at level one would do if you really wanted to challenge your healers).
Let’s start by establishing that the most frequent swing timer for a boss’s attack is 2s. Some have higher, some, especially dual-wielding bosses like Prince Malchezzar, will have lower. But in the general case you’ll be mostly facing up to attacks that come every two seconds. And every attack has the base 15% chance to crush.
For the purposes of this example I’m going to ignore parry-accelerated swings, because they’ll obviously use up shield block charges and therefore my method isn’t infallible. It does help, though.
I’ll use a brief combat log as an example:
00:00:00.00 Namthe gains Shield Block
00:00:00.50 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)
00:00:02.50 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)
00:00:02.50 Namthe's Shield Block Fades
00:00:04.50 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 6000 (crushing)
00:00:05.00 Namthe gains Shield Block
Now, Thunder Clap reduces the boss’s swing speed by 10%. So if I assume the boss has been debuffed with Thunder Clap, the combat log will look like:
00:00:00.00 Namthe gains Shield Block
00:00:00.50 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)
00:00:02.70 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)
00:00:02.70 Namthe's Shield Block Fades
00:00:04.90 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 6000 (crushing)
00:00:05.00 Namthe gains Shield Block
The swing timer’s slowed down, but not enough to stop me taking a crushing blow. Obviously for the same duration fight, I’ll take less damage, but I’ll still get crushed. However, this is where Improved Thunder clap comes in. I’ll again go over the combat log, and this time I’ve talented for 3/3 Improved Thunder Clap.
00:00:00.00 Namthe gains Shield Block
00:00:00.50 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)
00:00:02.90 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)
00:00:02.90 Namthe's Shield Block Fades
00:00:05.00 Namthe gains Shield Block
00:00:05.30 Boss's Swing hits Namthe for 3600 (400 blocked)
Suddenly that third crushing blow has been blocked, because we’ve slowed it down enough that it hits after we could reapply Shield Block. Obviously with a 5-second cooldown on shield block and the swing timer incerased to 2.4, there’s still a 0.2s window where crushing blows are possible. However, it’s a much-reduced window of opportunity.
So:
- Without Thunderclap, you will be vulnerable to crushing blows 20% of the time
- With Thunderclap, that window shrinks to 12% of the time
- With 3/3 Improved Thunderclap, it shrinks even further to a staggering 4% of the time
Let’s not beat about the bush here, you will still be vulnerable to crushing blows, especially on a fast-hitting, dual-wielding boss, but even then the extra 10% increase in attack speed is massive.
If you don’t want to take the talent, you should probably be having words with your off-tank to persuade him to take it. Your healers will thank you enormously.
One Response to “Thunder… Thunder… Thunder Clap Ho!”
By Tankette on Jun 16, 2008
I’ve seen good results (less deaths) since taking improved TC. I am typically running with a druid as the second tank so there’s no off tank that could do improved TC for me.