Rahn
Member
Found that https://www.wowhead.com/npc=134056/aqusirr is an ideal boss to do some testing on. Has a channeled attack that produced a steady damage number, a big attack to get a feel for the damage scaling, has a phase 2 that hits at 50% and can be reset by running away. It's also outdoors so in the event of death I can repair. I fought the boss at least 3 times for each of the values in the table to get a rough idea of how many WWs and the time it took to reach 50%. If some values were wildly different I did extra to figure out which values were probably the outliers.
I don't have the most optimal gear as I do not have any TBC socketed mail gear, and I imagine a more optimal build probably could get the secondary total up to 200 while keeping strength at 57.
Some observations for this test:
Once again having maximum strength is dangerous. Surging rush isn't a one shot, but it will kill if you're not at basically at 70-80% health. I did die once during the testing due to a lack of lifesteal procs combined with dot damage.
Due to the increased health of the TWing bosses https://www.wowhead.com/item=136715/spiked-counterweight has more opportunities to proc. It procced maybe half of my attempts, and a couple of them it managed to proc twice during the first 50%. Every proc shaved off 3 seconds.
While there was a similar time achieved for the STR range between 57 and 77, the incoming damage was increased by a fair margin of roughly 25%.
Full TWing gear is around the area of 95 str, which is to say leaving slots completely naked so you drop down to 70-80 str will result in faster times. Course at this point throwing random on off-stat greens is a boost in this situation.
The conclusion I can draw from this is that there's some wiggle room from 57-77 main stat in where your kill time won't change too much, but the damage you have to soak will be more noticeable. So if you're running in a group as a healer or DPS then it's fine to go up to 80 main-stat. If you're tanking it's probably best practice to stick to the 57 cap. You can go lower than 57, but you have to get it down to 47 (or lower) to further scale down mobs.
As a side note I have experimented with the scaling at level 20, and my conclusion there is while there is a similar soft cap (162 main-stat); the reduced survivability for being level 20 means you're pretty much better off leaving a slot naked than wear any kind of main-stat. (See Level 20 Warrior Testing below for more details)
Casters of course will have a rougher time of things, but while in groups my level 10-11 caster classes still top the DPS ahead of level 80s even if they keep slots empty to keep their int down to 57.
I don't have the most optimal gear as I do not have any TBC socketed mail gear, and I imagine a more optimal build probably could get the secondary total up to 200 while keeping strength at 57.
|
|
| Boss Health | WWs to hit 50% | Time (s) | Undertow | Surging Rush | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 57 (35 +22) |
| 41 | 12603 | 32-33 | 45-46 | 24-25 | 208 | |||||
| 57 (35 +22) |
| 100 | 12603 | 28-29 | 37-39 | 23-24 | 207 | |||||
| 57 (35 +22) |
| 152 | 12603 | 25-26 | 29-31 | 24-25 | 206 | |||||
| 57 (35 +22) |
| 161 | 12603 | 20-26 + Counterweight | 23-30 | 24-25 | 206 | |||||
| 77 (35+42) |
| 165 | 15207 | 23-25 | 29-31 | 29-30 | 256-259 | |||||
| 95 (35 +60) |
| 186 | 19647 | 26-28 | 31-35 | 38-39 | 333-335 | |||||
| 132 (35 +97) |
| 195 | 28894 | 33-35 | 40-41 | 54-55 | 457-481 |
Some observations for this test:
Once again having maximum strength is dangerous. Surging rush isn't a one shot, but it will kill if you're not at basically at 70-80% health. I did die once during the testing due to a lack of lifesteal procs combined with dot damage.
Due to the increased health of the TWing bosses https://www.wowhead.com/item=136715/spiked-counterweight has more opportunities to proc. It procced maybe half of my attempts, and a couple of them it managed to proc twice during the first 50%. Every proc shaved off 3 seconds.
While there was a similar time achieved for the STR range between 57 and 77, the incoming damage was increased by a fair margin of roughly 25%.
Full TWing gear is around the area of 95 str, which is to say leaving slots completely naked so you drop down to 70-80 str will result in faster times. Course at this point throwing random on off-stat greens is a boost in this situation.
The conclusion I can draw from this is that there's some wiggle room from 57-77 main stat in where your kill time won't change too much, but the damage you have to soak will be more noticeable. So if you're running in a group as a healer or DPS then it's fine to go up to 80 main-stat. If you're tanking it's probably best practice to stick to the 57 cap. You can go lower than 57, but you have to get it down to 47 (or lower) to further scale down mobs.
As a side note I have experimented with the scaling at level 20, and my conclusion there is while there is a similar soft cap (162 main-stat); the reduced survivability for being level 20 means you're pretty much better off leaving a slot naked than wear any kind of main-stat. (See Level 20 Warrior Testing below for more details)
Casters of course will have a rougher time of things, but while in groups my level 10-11 caster classes still top the DPS ahead of level 80s even if they keep slots empty to keep their int down to 57.
Also done on Aqu'sirr to determine effectives of going as low STR as I could (with the gear I had access to) or going with the level 20 softcap of 162. Didn't take as extensive of notes for this, and unlike the tests at level 11 this was time to kill the boss fully; and due to the different specs I used full rotations.
I got some interesting results from my limited testing at level 20. The main one being that while dropping strength as fury was faster, it wasn't by much, but doing the same as protection made it much slower. My theory on that is due to the reduced incoming damage meant less incoming rage, which for a protection warrior is less damage.
At level 20 surviving is much harder to do, and while in fury spec and high STR protection the risk of death was quite high for this testing. The only time I felt 'safe' was fighting the boss in protection spec with low STR, but it took the longest to pull off the kill.
Basically if you're doing TWing solo at level 20, it's probably best to go with as low main-stat as possible just for the purpose of getting enemy damage as low as possible.
My recommended trinkets for surviving are https://www.wowhead.com/item=137344/talisman-of-the-cragshaper?bonus=6654 and https://www.wowhead.com/item=137369/giant-ornamental-pearl?bonus=6654 I like these two because they both have only a 1 minute CD and have significant damage reduction. In the case of the latter, the bubble is strong enough and lasts long enough for my warrior's https://www.wowhead.com/spell=29838/second-wind to start ticking in most cases.
For healer classes https://www.wowhead.com/item=110009/leaf-of-the-ancient-protectors has been a quite effective bubble with also a 1 minute CD.
Some other potential survivability trinkets
https://www.wowhead.com/item=158320/revitalizing-voodoo-totem
https://www.wowhead.com/item=175733/brimming-ember-shard
https://www.wowhead.com/item=193678/miniature-singing-stone
https://www.wowhead.com/item=133646/mote-of-sanctification
|
|
| Spec | Notes | Time to kill | Undertow | Surging Rush | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 74 |
| 204 | Fury | Using survivability trinkets | 3:22 | 60-60 | 520 | ||||||
| 80 |
| 204 | Fury | - | 2:22 | 63-64 | 538 | ||||||
| 163 |
| 203 | Fury | - | 2:34 | 102-103 | 882 | ||||||
| 62 |
| 214 | Protection | - | 4:20 | 44-44 | 374 | ||||||
| 165 |
| 207 | Protection | - | 3:33 | 91-91 | 806 |
I got some interesting results from my limited testing at level 20. The main one being that while dropping strength as fury was faster, it wasn't by much, but doing the same as protection made it much slower. My theory on that is due to the reduced incoming damage meant less incoming rage, which for a protection warrior is less damage.
At level 20 surviving is much harder to do, and while in fury spec and high STR protection the risk of death was quite high for this testing. The only time I felt 'safe' was fighting the boss in protection spec with low STR, but it took the longest to pull off the kill.
Basically if you're doing TWing solo at level 20, it's probably best to go with as low main-stat as possible just for the purpose of getting enemy damage as low as possible.
My recommended trinkets for surviving are https://www.wowhead.com/item=137344/talisman-of-the-cragshaper?bonus=6654 and https://www.wowhead.com/item=137369/giant-ornamental-pearl?bonus=6654 I like these two because they both have only a 1 minute CD and have significant damage reduction. In the case of the latter, the bubble is strong enough and lasts long enough for my warrior's https://www.wowhead.com/spell=29838/second-wind to start ticking in most cases.
For healer classes https://www.wowhead.com/item=110009/leaf-of-the-ancient-protectors has been a quite effective bubble with also a 1 minute CD.
Some other potential survivability trinkets
https://www.wowhead.com/item=158320/revitalizing-voodoo-totem
https://www.wowhead.com/item=175733/brimming-ember-shard
https://www.wowhead.com/item=193678/miniature-singing-stone
https://www.wowhead.com/item=133646/mote-of-sanctification
Decided to do some TWing stat testing with my level 11 warrior against Tendris Warpwood. No battleshout (because I took deaths to reset the fight) and I was using only WW till he hit 50% health. I also only counted WW casts against him as opposed to time it takes to make him hit 50%. The STR values are pretty much arbitrary as I was simply swapping in STR gear piece by piece over my TWing gear. Just putting this info out there so people have a better idea of what to expect if your main-stat values are high.
Something interesting to note is that if you swap gemmed gear that has the same amount of sockets, the enemy boss health might not update (But I'm pretty sure this is a visual bug, and the boss health and damage still remain consistent with your actual main-stat value) I only noticed this while I was swapping pieces of gear and got confused as to why the health value of Warpwood didn't change to reflect the new value.
At 92 strength was when Warpwood started to hit hard, and lifesteal started to have issues keeping up with the incoming damage.
at 108 strength Warpwood was able to spike my health down to 1% at one point.
Keep in mind that Warpwood doesn't exactly hit particularly hard, so while 83 str was relatively safe fighting against him; it's not going to hold true for other bosses that can hit harder.
That said it seems like you can go up to 80 main-stat and it won't be too detrimental to your character in TWing, and 110 is basically when it's clearly too much.
Something interesting to note is that if you swap gemmed gear that has the same amount of sockets, the enemy boss health might not update (But I'm pretty sure this is a visual bug, and the boss health and damage still remain consistent with your actual main-stat value) I only noticed this while I was swapping pieces of gear and got confused as to why the health value of Warpwood didn't change to reflect the new value.
| Crit % | Haste % | Versatility % | Warpwood Health | WWs to hit 50% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 59 (35 +24) | 12 | 27 | 11 | 11097 | 20 | |
| 72 (35 +37) | 14 | 26 | 10 | 12377 | 23 | |
| 83 (35 +48) | 17 | 22 | 10 | 14567 | 24 | |
| 92 (35 +57) | 19 | 23 | 9 | 16535 | 26 | |
| 98 (35 +63) | 20 | 24 | 9 | 17847 | 28 | |
| 108 (35 +73) | 21 | 24 | 8 | 20034 | 30 |
At 92 strength was when Warpwood started to hit hard, and lifesteal started to have issues keeping up with the incoming damage.
at 108 strength Warpwood was able to spike my health down to 1% at one point.
Keep in mind that Warpwood doesn't exactly hit particularly hard, so while 83 str was relatively safe fighting against him; it's not going to hold true for other bosses that can hit harder.
That said it seems like you can go up to 80 main-stat and it won't be too detrimental to your character in TWing, and 110 is basically when it's clearly too much.
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