Relative Aggro of Warrior Skills

Editor - yet another Blizz forum post destined to drop off in a matter of days that does not deserve to be forgotten.

Original poster "Cop" of the Deathwing server. original thread

---

Notes:
EVERY NUMBER IS ROUGH. NOTHING IS FINITE. THIS IS MEANT TO MERELY BE A GENERAL REFERENCE FOR COMPARISON.
I am no scientist, but I was very careful and methodical in my tests. That said, there very well may be awful math/logic errors within.
All attacks were done by a warrior with defiance and in defensive stance.
All healing was done by a holy/disc priest with the 20% threat reducing talent.
With this setup, tests were performed beforehand to determine the healing/damage hate ratio.
1 point of damage = 4.1 points of healing = 4.1 hate
Hate per point of rage does include damage, and assumes 50% damage reduction on the opponent.
There is a margin of error, but I tried to minimize it as much as possible. The primary source of error was the minimum healing possible is 52.

SKILL NAME
rage cost
listed damage before armor
attached hate, does NOT include damage the skill produces
hate per point of rage, DOES include damage -- formula: [ ((hateMin + hateMax)/2) + (((DamageMin + DamageMax)/2)/2) * 4.1 ] / RageCost
perks: qualitative reasons to use a certain skill
bad stuff: bad stuff

REVENGE
5 rage
64-78 damage
1200-1250 hate
274 hate per point of rage
perks: chance to stun with talents, fair damage for rage cost
bad stuff: unreliable, and often requires use of a 10 rage skill to allow its use

SUNDER ARMOR
12 rage (15 without talents)
no damage
1050-1150 hate
92 hate per point of rage
perks: lowers target armor, no cooldown
bad stuff:

SHIELD SLAM
30 rage
450-550 damage [ed: corrected]
160-210 hate
40 hate per point of rage [ed: corrected]
perks: 50% chance to dispell 1 magic effect, good damage
bad stuff: very poor efficiency

SHIELD BASH
10 rage
45 damage
700-750 hate
82 hate per point of rage
perks: spell interruption, silences for 3 seconds with talents
bad stuff: long cooldown, spamming of the skill means it won't be available when needed

HEROIC STRIKE
15 rage
138 damage
580-630 hate
59 hate per point of rage
perks: good damage, cooldown is weapon speed
bad stuff: hinders rage production from attacks, is on-next-attack so it interrupts the use of other skills while you wait for it to fire

Final words:
Shield slam is awful. Revenge is best used whenever possible, as any warrior could have told you before. Retuning of shield slam is desperately needed as a 31 point talent should not be far outshined by heroic strike.

Although it may be unrelated to this thread, protection warriors need a tanking edge of more than 10% armor. Managing hate is the only thing protection warriors have a clear advantage in, but honestly, in the raiding game any warrior can hold aggro just fine.

The damage reduction was assumed to be 50% for calculating hate from skill's damage. Obviously, lower armor targets favor the damaging skills over sunder armor.

And finally, note that the 4.1 healing to damage ratio is only useful for a protection warrior in defensive stance with a priest that has the -20% threat talent healing. That number is more of a reference point for measuring everything else.