I'll try to calculate the numbers for raid enviroment, no buff will be directly counted for, just the numbers used so far (IE if you get a buff to attack power, it's already considered in your 2000), Mangle will be counted in for, as in most raids you'll get it, I'll use 2 different values, both reasonable in my humble opinion:
1) Mangle will be used only after your first tick, meaning you get only 25% bonus from it to Garrote.
2) Mangle will be used immediatly, meaning you get the full buff to Garrote, 30%.
Both are reasonable as it's a Druid's first attack both when DPSing (right after his opener) and when tanking, but a cat Druid might come a second after you.
No armor reduction abilities will be counted for, as we are talking about the opening of the fight, so there is no time yet for any, but if you think there is a chance for some to be applied already, just add that to your armor penetration.
I'll ignore Dodges because I'm not sure how they work on attacks from stealth.
I'll ignore Parries and Blocks because I assume you attack from behind, and misses will be out of the equation as I assume you are hit capped for special attacks.
Windfury Totem will NOT be counted for, assuming it isn't up yet (and it's really hard to calculate anything with Windfury totem, because of the innate 3 second cooldown, you might get it to proc on your first Sinister Strike, but it would prevent your next autoattacks from proccing it, whereas Garrote doesn't).
I'll use the numbers TherionSaysWhat and Prikker calculated (thank you for that), and try it for crit rates of 30%, 35%, 40% and 45%.
TherionSaysWhat wrote:
Garrote as Combat (20/41/0) (sword or fist @ level 70 with 2k AP)
Garrote damage = [ (810 + (AP x 0.18) ] x [1 + (0.04 x OPrank) + (0.2withShS + (0.01 + (.03 x MoSrank)
Thus, [ (810 + (2000 x 0.18) ] x [1 + (0.01) ] = 1181.7
Let's factor a partial Mangle debuff in -
Garrote's DPE with partial Mangle=1187.5*1.25/50=
29.69 this'll be denoted as
partial Mangle.
With full Mangle debuff in -
Garrpte's DPE with full Mangle=1187.5*1.3/50=
30.88 this'll be denoted as
full Mangle.
Prikker wrote:
Sinister Strike (normal hit) with Aggression & Surprise Attacks:
Damage = ([(Attack Power / 14) * Normalized Weapon Speed + Weapon Damage + 98] * 1.06) * 1.1
Thus (assuming your weapon with 257.5 average damage), damage = ([(2000/14) * 2.4 + 257.5 + 98] * 1.06) * 1.1 = 814.28
Sinister Strike (critical hit) with Lethality, Aggression & Surpise Attacks:
Damage = [([(Attack Power / 14) * Normalized Weapon Speed + Weapon Damage + 98] * 1.06) * 1.1] * 2.3
Thus, damage = 814.28 * 2.3 = 1872.85
Boss armor reduction will be noted as X, where X is a number between 0 and 1, represinting how much damage the armor mitigataion on the boss,
after applying your damage reduction. I'll assume bosses have 6000 armor and we'll see how much armor penetration is needed for Sinister Strike to bypass Garrote DPE-wies.
30% Critical strike chance -
Sinister Strike's DPE=(1872.85*0.3+814.28*0.7)*X/40=28.29X
Let's ask oursevles what X must be for Garrote to be equal to Sinister Strike DPE-wise:
For partial mangle - 29.69=28.29X -> X=1.05
This is obviously unattainable, X<1.
For full Mangle there is no need to calculate of course, as the DPE of Garrote will be even higher.
So, for this numbers, in said situation,
Garrote is better than Sinister Strike no matter what the armor penetration you have.
35% Critical strike chance -
Sinister Strike's DPE=(1872.85*0.35+814.28*0.65)*X/40=29.62X
Let's ask oursevles what X must be for Garrote to be equal to Sinister Strike DPE-wise:
For partial - 29.69=29.62X -> X=1.002
This is obviously unattainable, X<1.
For full Mangle there is no need to calculate of course, as the DPE of Garrote will be even higher.
So, for this numbers, in said situation,
Garrote is better than Sinister Strike no matter what the armor penetration you have.
40% Critical strike chance -
Sinister Strike's DPE=(1872.85*0.4+814.28*0.6)*X/40=30.94X
Let's ask oursevles what X must be for Garrote to be equal to Sinister Strike DPE-wise:
For partial mangle - 29.69=30.94X -> X=0.96
To have 4% armor reduction the boss needs ~440 armor, meaning 5560 penetration on your part. Maybe fully raid debuffed it's possible, not otherwise.
For full Mangle - 30.39=30.94X -> X=0.98
Even less likely, I won't even bother calculating this with all due respect.
45% Critical strike chance -
Sinister Strike's DPE=(1872.85*0.45+814.28*0.55)*X/40=32.27X
Let's ask oursevles what X must be for Garrote to be equal to Sinister Strike DPE-wise:
For partial mangle - 29.69=32.27X -> X=0.92
To reduce the boss armor so it only absorbs 8% will require you to have 5223 armor penetration, which is not really achieveable.
For full Mangle - 30.39=32.27X -> X=0.94
I'll take the lazy rout and not calculate the number here, safe to say it's around 5400 armor penetration.
As a conclusion to this long number crunching, you can see that Garrote is superior to Sinister Strike in all real occasions (assuming Mangle is up and attack power is a fixed 2000, more on that later), I can do the calculations again if you want without Mangle, but don't ask it if it's not important, it'll take me a long while to do it :).
I would also like to compare the scaling of Garrote and Sinister strike with AP (as a sort of an anti conclusion here):
Using the method of calculating from above, Garrote gets 0.18 damage per attack power or
0.0047 damage per attack power and per energy.
Using the method of calculating from above, Sinister Strike gets 2.4/14*1.06*1.1=0.2 damage per attack power
before counting armor and critical hits. With 30% armor mitigation and 30% crit(no Dodges), it's (0.2*0.7+0.2*2.3*0.3)*0.7/40=
0.0049 damage per attack power and per energy.
So even with no armor penetration and only 30% crit rate they both scale the same way, the more crit/armor penetration you have, the better Sinister Strike gets in comparison.
Some last things I wanted to add/emphasize:
1) I ignored Dodge chances on the boss, can someone tell me if there are any for opening attacks from stealth? (IE for both Sinister Strike and Garrote).
2) The method Pikker calculated the bonus to Sinister Strike from Aggression and Surprise Attacks is wierd in my opinion, if I recall correctly, such bonus usually stack additively and not multiplicatively, can someone shed light on it please?
It does
not change anything drastically, and that's why (as a way to honor someone who worked on something) I used Pikker's numbers.
3) All the calculations are for the begining of fights, if you Vanish midfight and want to make use of your stealthed status for another Garrote, numbers might be off wildly (more debuffs are on boss for example).
4) I ignored threat issues, this must be taken into consideration each fight seperatly.
5) That is for
raid enviroment, when Garrote will not last to it's full duration all bets are off, then again, it doesn't REALLY matter in said situations.
Thank you for reading this, and hope I helped (more than it confused :) ),
Yuval.
Edit 1: minor corrections, spacing, typos and a slight clarification on the conclusion.
Edited, Aug 6th 2008 12:27pm by YuvalR