wow WoD Alpha Theorycrafting Discussion, Resolve Details

[miyari 39]

WoD Alpha Forum discussion includes new Resolve details!

Blizzard has opened up a new discussion post in the Warlords of Draenor Alpha forums, in which game designer Celestalon invites players to ask technical theorycrafting questions about the upcoming expansion. This thread has just recently been opened, but Celestalon has already provided excellent information and insight into the new Resolve mechanic for tanking. No conceptual design philosophy jibber-jabber, just the hard stats. It's very refreshing to see how open the development team is being in sharing internal stats and calculations with the community, welcoming theorycrafters with open arms. This transparency will allow for the development of some excellent tools and spreadsheets in Pandaria. Such tools will certainly assist in providing the best experience and information possible in order for players interested to get the most out of their characters!

Unfortunately, players without access to the Warlords of Draenor Alpha are not able to post questions or contribute to the discussion, but as more players gain access (especially once the game is in Beta) we should see the discussions picking up. In the meantime, it serves as an excellent place to get additional insight into the internal, technical workings of the characters and their spells in order to gain the best understanding of new mechanics and statistics! You can follow the discussion on the Warlords of Draenor Alpha Forums at:

Warlords of Draenor Theorycraft Discussion

Happy theorycrafting!

Warlords of Draenor Theorycraft Discussion

Hey all. For Mists of Pandaria, we had a thread in the beta forums that ended up primarily devoted to theorycraft. It was a rousing success, and we’d like to start that back up again, now that some of you are able to test Warlords of Draenor, and can start building your tools, spreadsheets, websites, etc.

This thread is going to get quite techy and detailed. It’s very important that it remains focused on theorycraft. We’ll still read all of your other feedback that’s not theorycraft discussion, don’t worry, it just doesn’t belong in this thread.

This thread is for:

• Asking for details about how a gameplay mechanic works, so that you can simulate/model it better.
• Discussing how to best model/simulate a rotation/spell/whatever.
• Numbers! Math! Logic! Spreadsheets! Code! Statistics!
• Posting results of theorycraft.

READ THIS! This thread is NOT for:

• Giving feedback on how a rotation feels.
• Asking if we’re concerned that this spec/rotation/spell/whatever is too weak.
• Discussing design philosophy.
• Wishlisting.

All of those are great topics for discussion in other threads, and we absolutely will read them there. But please keep this thread purely about the theorycraft. Unlike other threads, this thread will be heavily moderated to maintain this level of focus. Theorycrafters are a huge asset to the community, and these discussions can become quite complex, so please respect them and each other by not cluttering up this thread.

I’ll get this thread started by describing details of a mechanic whose details are not very transparent in-game: Resolve.

One of the new mechanics in Warlords of Draenor for tanks is Resolve. It is similar in design to Vengeance, except without the offensive component. Incoming damage increases the effectiveness of your self-healing, so that things like Shield Block and Shield Barrier stay competitive with each other, both in solo questing, and mythic raiding.

Resolve: Increases your healing and absorption done to yourself, based on Stamina and damage taken (before avoidance and mitigation) in the last 10 sec.

Resolve from Stamina

• You always get a baseline amount of Resolve, based on Stamina
• This uses the formula: Stamina / (250 * ItemScaling[PlayerLevel])
• ItemScaling is a table with a value for each player level, that you can find in the DBC files. Ex: ItemScaling[100]=261 (EDIT: Correction, looks like it's not in the DBCs. I'll dump the relevant values at the bottom of this post.)
• This updates dynamically with temporary stamina buffs.

Resolve from Damage Taken

• You also get some based on damage taken, as a % of Max Health , and decaying over time
• The server remembers your damage taken events for the last 10 sec.
• This portion is recalculated every 1.0 seconds and on every damage taken event.
• Each damaging event grants 0.25 * [ Damage * 2 * ( 10 - ( Now - DamageTimestamp ) ) / 10 ] / MaxHealth
• This averages to ~Damage/MaxHealth
• This calculation uses the damage before damage reduction (% damage reduction effects, and armor).
• Damage that is not mitigated by armor (Spell and Bleed damage) grants 2.5x as much Resolve.
• Auto-attack damage that is avoided counts as the average amount of damage that that auto-attack would have done.
• MaxHealth does not include increased max health from temporary multipliers like Last Stand, or Ursa Major.

Additional Notes:

• Resolve is multiplicative: A heal of size X becomes size X*(1+Resolve).
• EDIT: Resolve does affect percent-based heals (i.e. "heals you for 20% of your life" would be unaffected).
• There is no quick-ramp-up mechanism or taunt-transfer mechanism
• Resolve will persist through shapeshifts.
• Resolve only affects self-heals and self-absorbs
• It will still have diminishing returns when attacked by multiple mobs (same formula/logic as Vengeance had)