A wonderful Warrior Aggro thread on Blizz forums

[chippydip]

If you rework the numbers from Cop you end up with:

Hate:
  1pt dmg to mob by warrior = 3 healing to warrior
(With Warrior and priest talents this becomes 1dmg = 4.1 heal)

I don't think these numbers are correct. The effects we are trying to remove are:
1) Subtlety - 20% threat reduction on heals
2) Defiance - 15% threat bonus while in Defensive Stance
3) Defensive Stance - 10% threat bonus while active

Assuming Defiance stacks with in inate threat bonus of Defensive Stance (which is obviously should) we have a total bonus for the warrior of 25% and total reduction for the priest of 20%. Let work through this step-by-step to make it easier to point out errors if I mess something up:

From Cop's testing, we have the following conversion factor:
1 damage = 4.1 hate
1 healing = 1 hate

now, let's remove the effect from above:
1 damage = 4.1 hate / 1.25 = 3.28 hate
1 healing = 1 hate / 0.8 = 1.25 hate

We can look and see that these numbers make sense (warrior is generating less hate and priest is generating more without talents) and we can run the numbers backwards just to be sure:
1 damage = 3.28 hate * 1.25 = 4.1 hate (check)
1 healing = 1.25 hate * 0.8 = 1 hate (check)

Now, if we try and renormalize, like you did, we get:
3.28 / 1.25 = 2.624 healing per damage
if we redefine 1 damage = 1 aggro, then 1 healing = 0.38 aggro

This is about 20% off from the 3 healing per damage figure you gave. I like the idea of trying to reduce these caclucations to their basic elements, though, since it may give some better insight into what is going on inside the code. If we are looking for the "fundamental unit of aggro", however, we may need to look elsewhere entirely. Tests have shown that PW:S generates only about half as much aggro as a comperable shield, so that would put it somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 shielding per damage (or about 0.2 aggro if 1 damage = 1 aggro).

Ball Park internal "hidden" hate, if 1 dmg = 1 hate:
(I've also removed Defiance, so add that back if you talented for it)

These numbers should all still be fine since they are just the result of redefining aggro from 1 healing = 1 aggro => 1 damage = 4.1 aggro, to 1 damage = 1 aggro (and, therefore, 1 healing = 0.24 aggro)

I think its interesting that your numbers seem much more "round" which may shed some light on exactly what's going on behind the scenes. I doubt Blizzard would tweak these numbers a couple of points either way, so I'm guessing Heroic Strike might be 150, Cleave 100, etc.

As an asside:
I think it would be interesting to write an aggro tracking mod to try and solve for these aggro numbers as people play. The only problem I see, over than the enormous liner equation solving required, would be to keep track of separate mobs and who each of them is attacking. Does anyone know if this is even possible? Are there WoW modding sites yet on par with the Phrozen Keep (D2 modding) where the expert modders hang out? I'd like to try some WoW modding, but I need for dig up more info and tear myself away from actually playing the game ;-)