Making Warrior's Butcher Block combo relevant

[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.

[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)

[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.