Thunderfury Research & Testing [Proc, Threat, Elemental]

[Zetox]

In this Thread we’ll endeavor to provide the most accurate information regarding the Thundery, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker’s actual values and mechanics within the historical timeline of its adjustments throughout Vanilla.

This post is dedicated to Imbaslap, Hatson, Keftenk for providing me with the inspiration to research, my guildies at < Exiled > for the continued encouragement, and the Nostalrius Staff for the opportunity to test the item!

Introduction
Actual Timeline History for Thunderfury
Threat Mechanics
+16-30 Elemental Melee Damage
Attack Speed Debuff

Introduction
In light of the fact that the Nostalrius Staff provided us a nice surprise with vendors containing Thunderfurys during the test this past weekend I decided to test the weapon. For that I would like to extend my gratitude of thanks, not just for the weapon but for the time that you allowed us to help us better test the server!

By sharing this information I hope to provide Nostalrius the best data possible so that they can come to a satisfying conclusion in regard to the best Blizzlike version that they decide to bring us for its implementation into the game.

The following below is towards Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker ][item=19019]

Weapon Data in regards to the Proc chance on hit, Threat mechanics, and the +16-30 Nature Damage elemental melee damage.

Blizzard’s ‘Official’ Vanilla Timeline History
 Patch 1.12.0 (22-Aug-2006): Thunderfury may be equipped in either hand.
 Patch 1.9.0(3-January-2006): The attack speed slowing effect from Thunderfury has been reduced to 20%, and no longer stacks with other such effects such as Thunderclap. The rate at which the weapon procs has also been lowered.
 Patch 1.8.0 (10-Oct-2005): The Thunderfury effect's spell damage will no longer be increased by other item effects.
 Patch 1.6.0 (12-Jul-2005): Added.
Source: http://www.wowwiki.com/Thunderfury,_Ble ... Windseeker
Source: http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_1.9.0
Note: The 1.9 Patch Nerf also took away the ability for Thunderfury to proc from itself not from the AOE debuff portion, but rather from the single target 300+ damage component which you’ll later hear referenced by many users and in our video response.

What they haven’t told you though just like in regular Blizzard fashion is that the weapon was also Buffed almost immediately after it was Nerfed.

TLDR Timeline

Original 1.6 Version: 30% Proc Chance with ability to Proc from itself and any other damage from weapon (poisons, trinkets, enchants etc)
Nerfed 1.9 Version: 15% Proc Chance only from auto attacks and special abilities.
Restored 1.12 Version: 25% Proc Chance from auto attacks and special abilities.
Note: The amount of threat done by the weapon Proc is never changed until TBC.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_2.0.10
July 19, 2006 during Patch 1.11
Ultimately, it will later get buffed to a Static Proc Chance of 25% in 1.12 then taken down to 20% in 2.0.1 as you’ll see in my timeline in my next post.
Q: “I'd support this. The initial nerf was from 30% down to 14%, and then it was quietly brought back to what looks like 20% a couple of patches back.”
Source

The Changes and the ‘Why’ Behind Blizzard’s Logic

The re-buffing of Thunderfury was done for a variety of reasons. The first and foremost reason is because Blizzard has always consistently changed their game in every aspect to fit the ‘current’ players. When they see a video or a post showing an items current possible capacity or something overpowered about it-- it is nerfed, and likewise when underpowered buffed.

Blizzard saw the reaction to the nerf on their part, reactions by players to bank the weapon (which you’ll see in our timeline), as well as the new content with an increasing amount of damage that players with better gear were putting out forcing tanks to create higher levels of threat caps.

Thus, with the response from the community, changes in content scaling, and the decreasing value of a legendary---I believe were some of the reasons the Blizzard developers choose to reconsider their decision and restore their legendary weapon Thunderfury slightly closer to the original version.

But before we talk about the ‘actual’ timeline of the Thunderfury let’s first see how Weapon Procs function in Vanilla Wow!

What is a Proc Chance On Hit Mechanic and how does it Work?

Before we talk about the ‘actual’ timeline of the Thunderfury let’s first see how Weapon Procs function in Vanilla Wow!
http://www.wowwiki.com/Proc

Thunderfury uses the first option which is a Chance on Hit Mechanic. This chance on Hit Mechanic is a fixed variable that once set within the database cannot be changed by the player. This is what I like to call the “Static Chance”.

This means that by only auto-attacking over a long period of time with no other modification of variables you will eventually find a consistent ( % ) Static Chance for the weapon to Proc approximating towards the actual numerical value dependent upon the iterations done.

If you add in specials abilities while attacking you will see an increase in the amount of Procs and hence the amount at which the Proc occurs will increase. This is called the Dynamic Proc Chance. Note this is the distinction between what I’m calling the ‘static chance’ and the ‘dynamic chance’.

The Static Proc Chance cannot be modified by a player whereas the Dynamic chance is the Static chance modified by the amount of specials (yellow damage) used by the player. So when speaking about values for a weapon we never use the Dynamic Chance since all classes and specs have different mechanics which will change variables hence invalidating data.

Thus, when talking about the Thunderfury Weapon Proc %’s we do not use the Dynamic chance and calculate any special abilities but rather only “white damage” attacks to find the Static chance.

[Zetox]

Actual Timeline History for Thunderfury

Analysis


Timeline for Proc Chance
Patch 1.8.4
December 17-22, 2005 – Multiple Poster’s talking about 15% and 18% Static Proc Chance, with additional confirmation of the Half Proc Rate. Plus nerf outrage
Q1. “half procrate”
Q2. “the rogue I know with it tested it and said it was around 15% for him”
Q3. “Proc rate is nerfed to 18%. I tested a lot of swings.”
Q4. “The weapon is completely not worth the money now…I’m banking mine. Waste of time”
Source

Important Note: This post starts continuous theme you’ll see throughout the timeline where Thunderfury is Nerfed and Buffed between Patches, but then officially announced later.

Feb 20, 2015 –Nostalrius: This is currently where the Nostalrius version of Thunderfury’s Proc Static Percentage % is on according to my Test during the Stress Test :14%
Source

Patch 1.9
Jan 2,2006– (day before patch) – Thunderfury Proc Rate Nerfed, and Cannot Proc off itself and other damage effects ( poisons, trinkets, enchants etc).
Q. “Actual proc-rate are not lowered, except on Thunderfury…..they changed it so that On Next Swing abilities don’t have a chance to proc twice on hit (like they do now), and so that you can’t proc off a proc.”
Source

Feb 2, 2006 – Extremely useful post – 30% Proc to 15% and Nerf Outrage Confirmation from Community
Q1. ” still had a 30% proc rate (compared to it's 15% now). Pg1
Q2. “thunderfury is now pretty useless.. Or maybe the 20+ page thread of people complaining about it and how it's now a former shell of what it used to be is wrong and you're the only person who knows right? Why don't you go correct the hundreds of people on the WoW forums who have done the math, posted there recap logs to back it up, and know for a fact that TF is now gimp.” Pg1
Q3. “the tripple nerfing it got was too far though and ruined the weapon. Just changing it to not proc off procs would have been enough to make it still worthy of the orange name.” pg2
Source

Wowiki – Cites User Quoting 14% Static Proc Chance from 30,000 iterations. (although comment is from November 1, 2006 the data only fits here. Thus the citation is from an old post during this patch)
Q:“which translates to right around 14% proc rate.”
[url=http://www.wowwiki.com/Talk:Thunderfury,_Blessed_Blade_of_the_Windseeker Source [/url]Note: Somewhere between February to April the 1st stealth buff will appear and change the weapon to 15% to 20%.

Patch 1.10.1
April 16 – Cites 19% auto attack Proc Chance – CTRL + F “actual proc rate” to find
Q:“actual proc rate is around 19% on auto attack”
[url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060707214440/http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=19019] Source[/url]

Patch 1.11.2
August 8 – Threat Theory Crafter Cites 20% proc rate
Q: “TF proc is (300+241)*1.45 = 783 agro with a 20% proc rate.”
Source

Patch 1.12
August 31 – Cites changes in proc rate from 5.2 hits per proc(19%) to 4.3 (23%) (2700 attack iteration)
Q: “Prior to 1.12, Procwatch was giving me a TF "hits per proc" of around 5.2. Currently, with something like 2700 attacks, it's giving me a "hits per proc" of 4.3. Anyone else seeing an increase in proc rate? Or have I just been either lucky since the patch, or unlucky previous to it. ”
Source

November 17 – Cites going off about 20-25% of attacks. Now we can see the 25% during the middle of the 1.12 Patch. (Search Dunamis to find his post at the bottom of the page)
Q: “going off about 20-25% of attacks.”
Source

Note: Here you are starting to see the 25% proc more commonly.

WoWWiki – Cites ‘the proc effect has been observed to be approximately 20-25%. Q:http://www.wowwiki.com/Thunderfury,_Blessed_Blade_of_the_Windseeker?oldid=388455

2.0.1 Patch
December 13, 2006 – This citation is from the same user on the August 31st post who cited the original 23% and now with an iteration of 20,000 Hits Cites a 25% Static Proc Chance during the 1.12 Patch. This data makes complete sense with the November 17 citation as well as the wiki which we can see the sword was buffed again.
Q:“Up until 2.0 patch on live I was running proc watch on my TF, and it came out pretty consistently over the 4 or 5 times I reset it to a 25% proc rate. This was with sample sizes of 20,000+ swings.”
Source

December 17, 2006 – This makes sense to see the weapon again Nerfed down to a 20% Static Proc Chance with the new expansion in TBC as many tanks (such as Kungen)were using TF over LvL 70 weapons.
Q: “Now that it is confirmed that it’s a 20% proc rate” –items.
Source

Patch 2.0.6
Feb 2, 2007 – This comment finishes the timeline perfectly with a user stating a variety of different Static Proc Percentage Chances throughout the patches. Which matches our timeline going from 30% down to 15% up to 25% and back down to 20% with the start of TBC.
Q: “proc rate seems to be about 20% at the number (it’s varied with a number of patches.”
Source


BUT WAIT!
There’s more I saved the best for last! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meIIGr_A3HQ
Here’s a response during his stream from Guild Master Kungen of <Nihilum> regarding TF.
(His guild has the World First C`thun, Kel Thuzad, and half of the World First’s in TBC 20 out of 38) Source: http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/16397- ... first_list --)

Note: Notice that Kungen’s original reply when he says “I don’t remember the proc chance” is towards the Original 1.6 Version of Thunderfury which he will continue talking about throughout the rest of the video but then will confirm the 25% when he says “when they upped it again.”


Result
Nostalrius’s Current Version of the Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker’s Static Proc Chance is at its most nerfed 1.9 version with a 14% Static Proc Chance and no ability to be able to proc from itself. This is an Incorrect value for the weapon to be placed in within a 1.12 Context compared to the historical timeline of the data.

Conclusion

The conclusion is open to the Nostalrius’s Developers and Staff to select as to what version they believe will ultimately best represent the server’s goals, ideals, and Vanilla Progressive Release.

That being said I personally believe based off of my research that there are two viable options to choose from:
Option 1:
The Original Weapon’s Static Proc Chance of 30% with the ability to be able to proc from itself, and any other damage caused by the weapon (Lifestealing, Poisons, Enchants, Trinkets,etc)
Option 2:
The 1.12 Version which had around a 25% Static Proc Chance, with the ability to only Proc from auto attacks and special yellow attacks while keeping the 1.9 Nerf to not allow the proc to happen from itself or other weapon damage effects.

[Zetox]

Threat Mechanics

Analysis

The TF proc effect can be divided into 3 categories.
1: The damage effect, each time the proc activates the target is hit for 300 damage
2: The speed reduction effect, each time the proc activates the target receives an attack speed debuff.
3: The nature resist reduction effect, each time the proc activates the target and targets surrounding it has its nature resistance reduced.
So, baseline values (before defensive stance and defiance) for the threat should look like this:

Damage: 300
Speed Debuff (Single Target) : 92
NR Debuff (Applied to surrounding Targets): 149
Total Base Threat: 541
Total Threat with Defensive Stance & 5/5 Defiance: 784

Source

Result
See my test from Armilus’s Thread Here: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=647#p5643

Conclusion
Correctly Working:
The damage component is working correctly.(Causes 300 threat, or 270 in Defensive Stance)
Incorrect Working:
A. The Speed Debuff does not apply any threat towards the Target.
B. The AoE Nature Resistance Debuff does not apply any threat to the Target or any additional AOE Target’s surrounding it.

[Zetox]

+16-30 Nature Damage Elemental Melee Damage Mechanic

Based on current testing done 2/6/2015 – The mechanic is not functioning properly. Damage is not is being added in at all, and physical invulnerabilities stop all damage done. This drastically decreases weapon DPS. Attacking with Blessing of Protection

Example Weapons that use Elemental Damage: Thunderfury
Source
Warblade of Caer Darrow Source
Source
Iceblade HackerSource
Black Malice Source
Night Reaver Source

Analysis
Oct, 21, 2005 – 16-30+ Nature Damage goes through Bop, Invulenerable Mail, and Invulernable Potions.
( to find CTRL + F search “shisho”)
Q: Interestingly the 16-30 nature damage on the weapon damage will go through physical invulnerabilities and can still cause a direct damage proc on the opponent. So it can proc through BoP, Inv Mail, and Inv Potions. “
Source

May 5, 2006 - Elemental damage isn’t shown on an extra line in the combat log. But added onto the existing physical damage, and only shown separating if the white physical damage portion blocked or immuned.
Q: “The cool part of the weapon, putting it in the family of those such as Thunderfury, the Iceblade Hacker, etc., is that it has elemental damage added.
"Awesome," I thought, "can't be mitigated."
But checking through the combat log showed no frost damage that I could see.”
Q2: “Also on the Dark Shades in Scholo (the Occultists that turn physical immune) it would show a tiny amount of damage each swing with the "Immune" message” by Concillian
Source

June 2, 2007 – Damage does not show up separately but is added to the white damage dealt by the weapon. Only shown if Target is Immune or the White attack is blocked.
Q: “The extra frost damage does not show up separately and is added to the white damage dealt by the weapon. It does break through Blessing of Protection though the damage from that will be rather small.”
http://www.wowhead.com/item=13982/warbl ... w#comments

Future 2.4 Combat Log talks about how elemental Melee Functions as a whole. This is consistent with our findings.
Q: “Elemental Melee. Autoattacks that deal elemental damage that can be dodged, parried, and resisted but not blocked (e.g. autoattacks from Hydross the Unstable);
Yes. These are logged under the SWING_DAMAGE event with a school mask greater than 1 (Magical).
Source


October 5, 2006 – Patch 1.12 - Eviscerate 2-White damage hits through Blessing of Protection
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3mBK6Wf_wQ#t=990
16:48 (16:49) Paladin uses Blessing of Protection (Look for the forbearance debuff).
Yellow Immune message (Sinister Strike -> see his action bar spam)
White Immune message (Iblis autohit immune)
59 white damage crit (Crit from Thunderfuries elemental damage, not immune)
The 59 damage from Thunderfury break the bandageing
Directly after that Yellow Immune message (Sinister Strike again)
18 white damage (Blessing of Protection still active, Thunderfury damage)

So the damage from Thunderfury ignored the paladins Blessing of Protection while the Sinister Strike and the Iblis autohits both resulted in Immune messages to be shown. (found by Llharts)

2.0.1 – The Lurker Below vs Nihilum (Kungen POV) – Combat Log Included
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71QCfREf6Sk#t=278
4:52
1: Glancing Blow
"You hit The Lurker Below for 124. (Glancing)
2: Glancing Blow + Resist
"You hit The Lurker Below for 135. (Glancing) (12 Resisted)
3: Normal hit + Resisted
"You hit The Lurker Below for 191. (6 Resisted)

Result

If the elemental damage is resisted it will show as a resist (binary). If the melee damage is somehow mitigated it will also show in brackets.
It displays the mitigated melee damage first always.

So in general the elemental component of the damage is always just added to the normal melee swing unless it is somehow mitigated (by resistance).

From the first movie we can see by the combat text that it simply displays the elemental damage as a normal melee swing when the target is immune to melee attack (through potion or blessing or other abilities).

If an attack crits, the elemental component is also doubled.
It should not be mitigated by armor.
It it possible to resist the elemental component of a melee attack (see video). Resistance against the specific school higher the chance. (found by Llharts)

Conclusion
I think it is clear that Elemental Melee damage is important in Vanilla. From the data we can see that there was a system for calculating Elemental Damage with Weapon DPS and thus should be implemented and work correctly on Nostalrius.

Thank you for taking your time to read and gain a fuller understanding on the history and mechanics of the Thunderfury Weapon. I hope that by providing this information it can add one more step towards Nostalrius becoming the best 1.12 Vanilla Server!!!! Have a great day

[Zetox]

Last Test Session Testing--February 7,8th 2015

Currently, Thunderfury and Thunderclap Stack. This is a bug as they should not stack together

Current situation: The 20% slowing attack speed debuff from Thunderfury stacks with Thunder Clap.

Expected results: Thunderfury (20% attack speed slow) should overwrite Thunderclap (10%).

Source:  Patch 1.9.0(3-January-2006): The attack speed slowing effect from Thunderfury has been reduced to 20%, and no longer stacks with other such effects such as Thunderclap.

Note: There are 2 effects from the the Thunderfury, (Increases time between attacks by 20%) and (Nature resistance reduced by 25) Only the 20% slowing attack should not stack Thunder Clap.

[kovenant]

What the.....
Never knew someone could make a report in such detail about a weapon.
My experience with the weapon , we had three in the guild.
A legendary weapon should be treated as such it takes time , money and alot of effort
By reducing the proc it became less usefull and thus losing its legendary value.
Then better make it an epic.

Your story (i read 75%) has good points and i believe it should be the way it was when introduced.
The value and time is worth the reward

Excellent post!

[Youfie]

Hi,

A very nice and thorough post backed up with trustworthy sources

I however have two remarks / questions, that don't really matter regarding your report itself, but that bother me a little.

This means that by only auto-attacking over a long period of time with no other modification of variables you will eventually find a consistent ( % ) Static Chance for the weapon to Proc approximating towards the actual numerical value dependent upon the iterations done.

If you add in specials abilities while attacking you will see an increase in the amount of Procs and hence the amount at which the Proc occurs will increase. This is called the Dynamic Proc Chance. Note this is the distinction between what I’m calling the ‘static chance’ and the ‘dynamic chance’.

The Static Proc Chance cannot be modified by a player whereas the Dynamic chance is the Static chance modified by the amount of specials (yellow damage) used by the player.

I don't really get why you make a distinction between the procs from auto-attacks and from special abilities. Unless I'm mistaken, there is no point to do so in this thread because here we're talking about a fixed percentage proc chance, and not a PPM for instance.

Like, if my TF has a X% proc chance, well statistically X% of my auto-attacks will trigger a proc, and %X of my special attacks too - I disregard poisons / enchants etc. here for simplicity purpose.

I don't see how the dynamic proc chance can be changed by a player by any mean. More yellow damage would mean more procs, of course, but the X% proc chance would remain exactly the same.

It's really not that important, I guess you just wanted to distinguish how chance-on-hit procs are triggered to be very clear to your readers and just made a langage misuse, but if I happen to be wrong please explain me, I'd be happy to learn something about procs mechanics as they're a core element of this game .

Option 1:
Option 1 :
The Original Weapon’s Static Proc Chance of 30% with the ability to be able to proc from itself, and any other damage caused by the weapon (Lifestealing, Poisons, Enchants, Sword Spec, Trinkets,etc)

Option 2:
The 1.12 Version which had around a 25% Static Proc Chance, with the ability to only Proc from auto attacks and special yellow attacks while keeping the 1.9 Nerf to not allow the proc to happen from itself or other weapon damage effects.

You seem to distinguish auto-attacks triggered by extra-attacks effects (Swords Spec., WF, HoJ mainly) from regular auto-attacks. I'm quite surprised, cause even the game seems to be hardly differentiating them before TBC.

I always thought, heard and read everywhere that both were treated in the exact same way by the game during Vanilla (unlike during BC when Sword Spec became a yellow damage I think) as they appeared in the exact same way in the combatlog (just preceded by a spell message announcing the proc after some vanilla patch) and thus had the exact same characteristics in terms of proc-related stuff (except maybe for WF not being able to proc off itself, and I'm not one hundred percent sure) like poison, enchants, trinkets etc.

So it would be quite interesting to have your exact sources about this point, as it seems it would only concern the TF proc, which would have quite an unique mechanic compared to poisons, enchants or other on-hit effects if it actually made a distinction between white damage emanating from a proc or coming from an actual swing.


Thank you in advance for your insight, and thank you anyway for your very interesting post.



Regards,


Youfie

[Zetox]

Youfie, thanks for response and kind words. You are correct when you said "Unless I'm mistaken, there is no point to do so in this thread because here we're talking about a fixed percentage proc chance, and not a PPM for instance." That is exactly the purpose of the distinction for clarification's sake. Thus I'm calling the % that you'll see procs WITH yellow attacks included a 'dynamic chance' (which is ppm). So to allow people unfamiliar to be aware that they are different. Hope that answers your response.

Secondly, in regard to the "extra-attacks" you are correct that the 1.12 Version will still proc from those. Thanks for the correction (I remember adding that somewhat quickly.) What it won't do is proc from WF procs, poisons, trinket procs etc.

[Imbaslap]

my only concern is about the aoe damage (300 Nature) being aoe or just single target like it is on the test server.
I could have sworn the nature damage effect caused the threat equal to 1 application of max rank sunder armor.

[Youfie]

Secondly, in regard to the "extra-attacks" you are correct that the 1.12 Version will still proc from those. Thanks for the correction (I remember adding that somewhat quickly.) What it won't do is proc from WF procs, poisons, trinket procs etc.

Okay, thank you for the clarification then . One last thing though : why do you make a distinction between extra attacks from Sword Spec / HoJ / Thrash Blade and those from WF ? All of them appear in the same way in the combatlog etc., so this distinction from you intrigates me.

my only concern is about the aoe damage (300 Nature) being aoe or just single target like it is on the test server.
I could have sworn the nature damage effect caused the threat equal to 1 application of max rank sunder armor.

The TF seems to be completely broken atm on the PTR, not proccing at all whatsoever for my character, and I'm apparently not the only one.