Making Warrior's Butcher Block combo relevant

[Aana]

Teh strongest aggro is warrior period. The heal from equilbirium is so much stap aggro, along side an unchained tamhawk and dps stance IR, the other tanks can't really do that and still keep thier dps up.

Not really. Drk has a higher enmity opener. The only reason War's enmity is 'better' is because it doesnt cost hardly any DPS, not because they generate more enmity than a Drk opener. Pld just sucks at both enmity and takes the biggest damage hit to do it.

I mean just consider: DAPS in grit: 440 pot, 11x enmity multiplier, 2.16x grit multiplier (0.8*2.7), 20% darkside bonus.

Total for that ONE gcd is 12,545 potency of enmity. The entire combo is 15,927 enmity

The entirety of a defiance unchained war opener (Toma>eye combo+Equil) is 7587. Even if you add in the IR window (with deliverance 5%, eye 10%, and IR buff) it begins to come close. The IR onslaught is ~2200 depending on crit value. 5 crit/DH FCs and upheaval combined is just over 6000 (depending on crit).

War entire opener (Unchained>Toma>Eye+Equil>Deliverance>IR>FCx5+Upheaval+Onslaught) is roughly 16000 variable based on crit gear in IR.

Let that sink in.

The entire 9 GCDs of a war opener including the IR window is ~16,000
DA Power Slash combo in grit+Darkside alone is 15,927

But you still have dark passenger, plunge, and whatever damage you do with the remaining 6 GCDs. Heaven forbid you crit and/or DH that powerslash rofl.

Dark has utterly stupid enmity. People just dont do it because warrior sacrifices 5% damage on 4 unbuffed GCDs (no deliverance buff on toma+eye combo) while drk gives up siphon MP, 10 blood, and 20% damage on 3gcds before you drop grit. Which, while lame, is still better off than pld and Drk at least gets payment for that sacrifice (ridonculous enmity). People just dont like trading damage for enmity, but that in now way makes drk bad at enmity in the slightest. War is just the cheapest 'passable' amount of enmity in an opener.

[Chrono_Rising]

Dark has utterly stupid enmity. People just dont do it because warrior sacrifices 5% damage on 4 unbuffed GCDs (no deliverance buff on toma+eye combo) while drk gives up siphon MP, 10 blood, and 20% damage on 3gcds before you drop grit. Which, while lame, is still better off than pld and Drk at least gets payment for that sacrifice (ridonculous enmity). People just dont like trading damage for enmity, but that in now way makes drk bad at enmity in the slightest. War is just the cheapest 'passable' amount of enmity in an opener.

I don’t disagree with your conclusion, warrior loses less in this process and that is why warriors are typically expected to pull, but I do disagree with your method of getting there.

I mean just consider: DAPS in grit: 440 pot, 11x enmity multiplier, 2.16x grit multiplier (0.8*2.7), 20% darkside bonus.

This calculation is slightly off, enmity is calculated as 440 potency x 5.5 multiplier + 1650 potency as in flash potency. When there was no added potency for dark arts the 11 multiplier worked. It shorts things by about 2400 potency, not really a huge deal, but the number is slightly lower than what you calculated.

The entirety of a defiance unchained war opener (Toma>eye combo+Equil) is 7587. Even if you add in the IR window (with deliverance 5%, eye 10%, and IR buff) it begins to come close. The IR onslaught is ~2200 depending on crit value. 5 crit/DH FCs and upheaval combined is just over 6000 (depending on crit).

War entire opener (Unchained>Toma>Eye+Equil>Deliverance>IR>FCx5+Upheaval+Onslaught) is roughly 16000 variable based on crit gear in IR.

Well we are comparing apples and oranges here, specifically dps opener to an enmity opener, I would be surprised if warrior’s dps opener won this battle. In reality if we wanted to compare apples to apples we would be comparing warrior enmity combo with dark knight enmity combo. Even then I would want to sit down with excel and go through the exact warrior and dark knight openers to work out how much enmity is generated by each. I have not worked this out since 4.1 so I’m unsure of the answer, but warrior use to lead dark knight by a large margin by shuffling 1 or two items around and I’m not certain if that is or is not the case. However, I'm generally disinterested in such circumstances because we could always pump out more enmity, the question is, do we need that much enmity.

But you answer that here:

People just dont like trading damage for enmity, but that in now way makes drk bad at enmity in the slightest. War is just the cheapest 'passable' amount of enmity in an opener.

Once again, this is the correct answer. Warrior's access to unchained and oGCD stance dancing ends up translating to less dps lost overall while also being just enough to hold the attention of the boss, and that is why warrior pulls and is considered best at enmity management.

[Aana]

Interesting. I read that was how DA Plunge worked ("Flash"), but but didnt realize it applied the same way for PS. Good to know.

I certainly havent run the numbers or seen anyone else do it for a 'warrior enmity pull' as it would be pretty bad. You still have to start with Eye or loose the slash+eye buff, then pop unchained and do a buncha BBs for a 30 second 'enmity opener' which would be lovely and all, but ultimately delaying IR for the full duration of unchained+another Eye combo for buff would be pretty catastrophic. Of course from that you could walk it back to any degree. Unchained>eye>1BB>IR. Or try other variations. Straight unbuffed BB>Eye>IR or whatever. All terribly impractical and unneccessary which is why no one runs the numbers lol. The need for Eye for buffs just messes up any other option unlike Pld/Drk who can comparitively just walts up and smash their enmity combo and be on normal track in 3 gcds (4 for pld) while Eye complicates any straightforward enmity opener on war.

I compare PS>Drop grit because thats the most 'efficient' enmity vs damage trade off play for Drk, just as Unchained>Eye+Equil>IR is the 'efficient' warrior enmity play.

TLDR: I dont think there is a true apples to apples comparison to the Pld/Drk Halone/PS>Normal mode because of war needs a setup maim/eye combo to get started on anything. I suppose you could just unbuffed butchers, but then you still have to account for slashing delay for other jobs and a buncha other junk, but its impractical and doesnt change the bottom line. War gets 'enough' enmity on the cheap and 'enough' is al that matters.

[whiskeybravo]

Kinda my fault this got semi off-track, I suppose the "appropriate" thing to do would've been to pull it myself and have the DRK swap later. I was just in the mentality that DRK synergizes with MT role, and especially with magic damage coming out, so I'll let him tank it. But I shouldn't have pulled off of him only doing my DPS opener in Deliverance. We weren't doing parse runs or anything like that, it was just normal pf farm, IMO there's no reason he shouldn't have done a DAPS. The difference, as both Aana and Chrono pointed out, as a WAR usually unchained>toma>eq>eye is enough to keep aggro. But there have been plenty of situations where I had to work in a BB because WHM aggro, just suck it up do aggro combo and finish the fight. I mean I try to treat every run like it's the "one" but reality comes crashing down and you do what you gotta do to keep the group rolling.

TBH I don't like OT role anymore. I get back into DPS tunnel visioning mode and forget what's going on. MT role keeps me interested and engaged in what's happening, after getting back into it fully this tier I don't really want to go back lol (for delta I tanked 1 & 4 while my PLD buddy tanked 2 & 3, cuz reasons)

[Chrono_Rising]

I certainly havent run the numbers or seen anyone else do it for a 'warrior enmity pull' as it would be pretty bad. You still have to start with Eye or loose the slash+eye buff, then pop unchained and do a buncha BBs for a 30 second 'enmity opener' which would be lovely and all, but ultimately delaying IR for the full duration of unchained+another Eye combo for buff would be pretty catastrophic. Of course from that you could walk it back to any degree. Unchained>eye>1BB>IR. Or try other variations. Straight unbuffed BB>Eye>IR or whatever. All terribly impractical and unneccessary which is why no one runs the numbers lol. The need for Eye for buffs just messes up any other option unlike Pld/Drk who can comparitively just walts up and smash their enmity combo and be on normal track in 3 gcds (4 for pld) while Eye complicates any straightforward enmity opener on war.

No one would realistically do this calculation, and I agree that such enmity openers are not optimal to consider and therefore usually disregarded as they are unnecessary, but my point about comparisons remains. You compared the optimal warrior MT opener to the not optimal dark knight threat opener. If we want to be close to apples to apples then we would compare the threat generated when a Dark Knight main tank can perform its optimal MT rotation (which does not include Power Slash at all) to the optimal warrior MT opener, and when we compare those things the difference is strongly in warrior's favor as omitting dark arts Power slash will cut Dark Knights aggro generation by more than half.

We cannot compare one optimized opener which minimizes dps lost and aggro generated to something which goes for a high spike in threat but is not optimized to reduce dps lost and draw a meaningful conclusion. Comparing enmity generated in an opener with a combo with emnity multipliers to an opener with a combo without emnity multipliers proves nothing other than multipliers are effective. Warrior doesn't want to delay IR, Dark Knight doesn't want to use grit or Power Slash: With this in mind we could flip the conditions in your post and now require warrior to use butcher's block while dark knight should avoid power slash, and the enmity conclusion will reverse (same conclusion multipliers are effective). If we want meaningful conclusions we should consider what happens when both are optimized.

But again, we shouldn't really care about who has the highest enmity generation potential, only who loses the least while being MT, which you pointed out as well. I also don't mean to pick out your post and tear it apart, I just mean to show why this type of reasoning doesn't necessarily mean what people thinks it means.

Post Script Addition
Been a long time since I've worked on Warrior, there are high threat openers not moving IR and also having Eye buff. Still not optimal but they are also calculated and don't have us using Butchers Block spam.

[Aana]

The comparison was simply to show that Drk is no slouch on enmity when a single combo matches almost exactly the 'best' opener in the game on enmity. Not necessarily that they are the same. The comment I responded to was stating no other tank comes close to war's aggro. Drk can come pretty close.

I dont think there IS an apples to apples comparison as Drk/Pld have zero wind up time (Maim+Eye) so a straight BB>Normal mode I dont feel is a fair equivalent to PS>Normal mode. The enmity max enmity for warrior is based around a 20 second unchained buff after a warmup combo, not an OGCD enmity mega enhancer for 1 action. Comparing flat unbuffed BB opener just isnt an apple to a DAPS combo which requires no warm up buffs any more than 2-3BBs under unchained compares to 1 DAPS or staying in grit for 3 combos doing nothing but PS.

But, ultimately there is no point in mincing semantics on finding an imaginary equivalent as the conclusion doesnt change. War slides into 'enough' aggro with the least DPS lost. Drk has the choice of praying the team helps enough to do DPS opener and maybe skate by, or overkilling enmity for a larger (but not obscene) dps loss. Pld cries in the corner dreaming about the days where halone was the only combo.

[Chrono_Rising]

I dont think there IS an apples to apples comparison as Drk/Pld have zero wind up time (Maim+Eye) so a straight BB>Normal mode I dont feel is a fair equivalent to PS>Normal mode.

No proper Warrior threat opener starts with Butcher's Block, but the opener with unchained and IR is usually enough to hold threat without need of other combo's. Where you are characterizing Dark Knight as doing PS > Normal Mode, Warrior threat is going Normal Mode > BB. Its really not that much different. This also addresses this:

The enmity max enmity for warrior is based around a 20 second unchained buff after a warmup combo, not an OGCD enmity mega enhancer for 1 action. Comparing flat unbuffed BB opener just isnt an apple to a DAPS combo which requires no warm up buffs any more than 2-3BBs under unchained compares to 1 DAPS or staying in grit for 3 combos doing nothing but PS.

This isn't a warrior max enmity opener any more than what you described is a max dark knight opener. But either way, we should not be comparing enmity openers and should instead be comparing optimal MT openers.

Dark Knight's optimal MT opener does not include grit or power slash and this is the analog which should have been drawn to the optimal warrior opener.

There may not be an exact apples to apples as they are different jobs, but optimal opener for both jobs is much closer to the correct comparison than an enmity opener to a dps opener. Even a non grit PS opener would be closer to the correct comparison versus grit and PS. Yes, Dark Knight definitely has huge aggro generation if needed, but it’s usually unnecessary even when pulling. The two pulls compared would be the equivalent of comparing a proper IR opener with a tank stance opener spamming enmity combo and claiming this shows warrior is doing so much more damage in its opener. Warrior does have a huge burst in the opener, but the comparison is still wrong; compare an optimal opener to an optimal opener to illustrate the point.

The comparison was simply to show that Drk is no slouch on enmity when a single combo matches almost exactly the 'best' opener in the game on enmity. Not necessarily that they are the same. The comment I responded to was stating no other tank comes close to war's aggro. Drk can come pretty close.

Missed this the first time, but yes I agree that this has gone down a rabbit hole and it never ends, because we can make the warrior opener do even more aggro, but we begin falling away from optimal again, we can then tweak the dark knight opener to generate more aggro all the while giving up more and more.

Meanwhile Paladin is just laughing and covering us complaining about Goring Blade uptime and sitting in sword oath in a battle of wills on not pulling.

[whiskeybravo]

All valid points but they side step the issue of what's proper in a pug environment. If the DRK is pulling should they not DAPS in pug? Like, as WAR I know I can pull without Defiance, but I still do because it feels like the minimal amount of pug etiquette to display since I know I'll be sitting in Deliverance the rest of the fight, ya know? If you're speedrunning or whatever then priorities shift of course, but average PF groups are average, focus should be on getting the group through consistently. But that's just my mentality I guess, a lot of tanks seem to shun responsibility now-a-days, but at the bare minimum we are responsible for grabbing solid initial threat so that others can start hamming right away.

[Chrono_Rising]

All valid points but they side step the issue of what's proper in a pug environment. If the DRK is pulling should they not DAPS in pug? Like, as WAR I know I can pull without Defiance, but I still do because it feels like the minimal amount of pug etiquette to display since I know I'll be sitting in Deliverance the rest of the fight, ya know? If you're speedrunning or whatever then priorities shift of course, but average PF groups are average, focus should be on getting the group through consistently. But that's just my mentality I guess, a lot of tanks seem to shun responsibility now-a-days, but at the bare minimum we are responsible for grabbing solid initial threat so that others can start hamming right away.

If people are using their aggro tools properly then it may or may not be an issue. Consider pulling in grit with DA dark passenger is 3,628 enmity potency add in dark arts plunge and you are looking at around 4800 enmity potency (also going straight into your siphon strike combo gives 2400 MP while still in grit so extra mp + extra from having blood price active and you are back up to two dark arts worth of MP + bonus blood), compare that to equilibrium at 1620 enmity potency. The main difference comes from the follow up IR burst window, but a dark knight should be in a similar state prior to using all of their oGCD in the opener.

In the end do what you feel safe with in pugs, but this really falls into a you can always add more aggro category. Want to play safer in terms of enmity with warrior? Eye opener with equilibrium > IR > unchained BB. Want to play safer in terms of enmity with Dark Knight? DA PS.

[Aana]

Yeah, i basically always pull in defiance. Even in my raid group. The damage loss is SOOO miniscule i really cant justify not. You nearly triple (2.7) the enmity of Toma, Eye combo and get a 1200 potency equil at the expence of 5% deliverance potency for 4 unbuffed GCDS (Toma/Eye combo).

The net loss in potency on those 4gcds is 38.5. Lets say you do ~3 autos for 100 potency (another 5 lost each). You lost a whopping ~50 potency to bring your aggro from 1641(GCDs) to 4431(GCDs)+3240(equil). I will sac 50 potency for +6029 enmity in an opener.

I get that damage is king and the min max is real but that 50 potency will never break my runs, but loosing it because my nin forgot to shade the whm once a night will. 6k enmity for 50 potency I take all day ery day.

I really dont get why people (especially in pugs) are so obsessed with every bit of damage when most of them suck far to much for it to matter.