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Q u o t e:
I had always been under the impression that the 20% Threat Reduction didn't apply to Thunderclap. And that the high threat multiplier of Thunderclap is 200%.

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Thunder Clap was really only available in Battle Stance before the patch and so there was no way of telling whether the multiplier was 200% and threat reduction didn't apply or if the multiplier was 250% and threat reduction did apply.

Now TC is available in two stances, and threat reduction seems to apply.

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Q u o t e:
In turn, now that it is available in Defensive Stance, it also does not take the threat bonus from Defensive Stance. Therefore it is not affected by the inherent threat of defensive stance but retains its 200% innate threat multiplier.

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Oh, it does. It does more threat in defensive stance than in battle stance, and it does more threat with Defiance than without.

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Q u o t e:


Thunder Clap was really only available in Battle Stance before the patch and so there was no way of telling whether the multiplier was 200% and threat reduction didn't apply or if the multiplier was 250% and threat reduction did apply.

Now TC is available in two stances, and threat reduction seems to apply.



Oh, it does. It does more threat in defensive stance than in battle stance, and it does more threat with Defiance than without.

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Based on what exactly?

Ciderhelm, and the threatmeter guy have their formulas based on 2x physical damage regardless of stance or talent modifiers.

What testing, specifically, have you done to prove everyone else wrong, or are you just making crap up so you sound like you know what you are talking about?

You were all just given a free Thunderfury, stop complaining.

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Q u o t e:


What I'm looking forward to with this is the ability to not worry about a mob I can't quite manage to click on peeling off towards the healer.

My groups are pretty good about focus fire (skull-icon macro ftw), and I'm prot so I can generally hold the focus target ... as long as I don't spend too long poking other things.

But I figure that TClap will now, for me, get enough threat on all the mobs it's hitting to keep them off healers. It won't help if the DPS are being smackwits, but that's fine. I can live with that. As long as I don't have to stress too hard to keep things from splatting healers, I'll be happy.

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Amen

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Q u o t e:
Based on what exactly?

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As you can read in an earlier posting of mine, based on testing I did on the PTR.

Apply TC to a mob, test how much damage it takes to draw aggro of me. Take aggro thresholds into account, and there you are.

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Q u o t e:
Ciderhelm, and the threatmeter guy have their formulas based on 2x physical damage regardless of stance or talent modifiers.

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Neither Ciderhelm nor Kenco ("the threatmeter guy") have access to Blizzard's internal data. Heck, for all I know they got their information from the tests I ran a few months ago and posted about to the EJ forums (http://elitistjerks.com/showpost.php?p=265152&postcount=65).

Since Thunder Clap was only ever available in battle stance, there is no way whatsoever to tell whether the threat reduction was applied or not. Just the end result. It's a black box. Saying that there was a 200% threat multiplier without battle stance modifying it was simply more convenient than thinking about a 250% multiplier with a 20% threat reduction afterwards. You cannot possibly tell which one it was.

Moreover, all what Ciderhelm and Kenco wrote was about the then live realms. Their results could not possibly include PTR data.

You can choose to believe me or not. Better still, just do your own testing. For all we know, Blizzard may have changed things again since I ran these tests about a week ago.

It's moot, it was never a good dungeon ability for tanks. Making it more easily acessed doesnt change that.

L O L Tanking Benefits of TC:
1. Breaks sheep.
2. Breaks Sap.
3. Can aggo all 6 summoners in the Scholo "summoner room" (the one by the bat).

Seriously, it is not something you want to be spamming.


Threat? Hell YA, T O N S

From the mage when you keep breaking sheep :-/

Cat,

Here is what is displayed under your link:

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Q u o t e:
After some more testing, it appears that the threat of Thunder Clap is twice the damage it does, unmodified by the Battle Stance penalty, and that there is no innate threat associated with it. For example, if Thunder Clap hits a mob for 80 damage, it causes 160 points of threat.

This of course means that Improved Thunder Clap doubles the threat that the ability causes.

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Now, that is what is currently believed to be true, that threat = 2x damage regardless of stance.

While it makes sense that thunderclap was always modified by stance modifiers and talents, but that no one could actually discern this because it was only usable in Zerker and Battle stance, it would make me feel better about it if I could see the methodology used to prove this theory.

In any case, it's still our best multiple target tanking tool, as always.

I could care less about the threat aspect of the skill. With improved thunderclap, you can reduce the physical damage taken by a raid boss by 20%. That is major.

Some of you guys have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to utility of TC.

Imp TC is huge for boss fights with a lot of physical damage. Not only that, it's extremely useful in just about every single level 70 5 man due to the amount of mobs getting pulled. Sure it breaks CC, but that's because the tank who is using it is a complete moron. Wait for the CC, pull the mobs back with demo shout then pop a thunderclap and you have all of those mobs on you while you tab target through them and get more threat on all of them.

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Q u o t e:
Cat,

Here is what is displayed under your link:



[quote]Now, that is what is currently believed to be true, that threat = 2x damage regardless of stance.

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Two things: First, if you check the author, you will note that I wrote this.

Second, I didn't say that battle stance didn't modify TC threat. I said that the x2 threat multiplier is not modified by the threat reduction of Battle Stance. If you go to the EU forums and check the testing the folks over there did, you'll note that they gave a 250% threat multiplier before battle stance.

In short, don't mistake for actual knowledge of the game engine what is basically just a wording choice of a reverse-engineered result.

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Q u o t e:
While it makes sense that thunderclap was always modified by stance modifiers and talents, but that no one could actually discern this because it was only usable in Zerker and Battle stance, it would make me feel better about it if I could see the methodology used to prove this theory.

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The thing is, there is not much methodology, because it's so dead easy. Hit mob with Thunder Clap. Have somebody else without threat reduction melee the mob (this can be a mechanical pet if you can't find a test partner). See (using combat logs, damage meters, whatever) how much melee damage it takes to pull the mob off you. Divide by 1.1 for the aggro threshold. There's your threat (or, more precisely, a range of threat values).

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Q u o t e:
I could care less about the threat aspect of the skill. With improved thunderclap, you can reduce the physical damage taken by a raid boss by 20%. That is major.

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Actually, you will only reduce regular melee damage by about 16.7% (1-1/1.2). Instant attacks are also not affected by Thunder Clap. A good ballpark figure would be an actual amount of 15% physical damage mitigation.

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Q u o t e:

I haven't played the PTR so I can't say much about the new Thunderclap, but I imagine using it in defensive stance would cause 10% less damage (thusly 20% less threat.) Even 3/3 Defiance would give it 5% less threat in defensive stance than battle stance.

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10% less damage is 10% less threat, not 20% "because it's doubled", just do the damn math.

100 dmg = 200 threat
90 dmg = 180 threat

Both sides are reduced 10%.

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Q u o t e:
There is no indication that TC was meant to be used for AOE aggro.

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Other than the fact that it generates bonus threat, you mean? :)

Looks like I'm gunna be getting Imp. TC.

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Q u o t e:


More like a good opener to snap aggro so that the priest doesn't aggro healing you.
If it was meant for AOE aggro generation, it would be spammable.

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And if shield slam was meant for single-target aggro generation, it would be spammable, right?

Look. Thunderclap is clearly meant for generating sufficient AOE aggro that healers won't pull, thus allowing us to keep a single target as long as the DPS don't mess up.

And that's all we need.
We can manage positioning so that we don't break CC or pull additional mobs with it - that's easy enough, and positioning is supposed to be part of tanking anyway.
We can, as long as the pull is CCed down to four mobs at most, simply spam TClap when it lights up, same as we do with revenge and shield slam, then put any leftover GCDs into sunders. This will make it so that the mob everyone's beating on stays on us, and the rest of the mobs - which nobody's actually attacking - ALSO stay on us.

That's all it does, and that's enough. Because that means that if our group is well-behaved, tanking will now be EZmode. If our group is badly behaved, tanking will remain impossible.
But ... I primarily instance with guildies, and even when I have puggies in my group, they can generally get the idea that they should be killing the SKULL, and not anything else. And that means I'll be able to engage in stress-less tanking... which is what I want.

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Q u o t e:
For all we know, Blizzard may have changed things again since I ran these tests about a week ago.

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Ran a couple of very quick tests on the now live servers, and it appears that TC threat has been buffed a little since the PTR.

Data: TC for 196 damage in defensive stance with Defiance. 558 damage didn't pull aggro, 568 damage did.

This is consistent with a 1.75 threat multiplier on TC: 196*1.75*1.3*1.15*1.1 = 564.0635

1.3 = defensive stance multiplier, 1.15 = Defiance, 1.1 = aggro threshold in melee.

Did a couple more tests, but haven't added up the values from the combat log yet. Based on the SW stats values I checked while doing the tests, this does not seem to be an outlier.

Overall, nice buff to TC, and it doesn't shortchange Arms/Fury warriors anymore (who end up with pretty much the same threat generation as before the patch -- actually, a couple percent higher).

Thanks for all the info. This patch sounds great. And this is from someone that is going to be banking Thunderfury tonight.