As far as I can tell warrior threat generation is pretty much unchanged by the patch. However, many classes recieved significant dps upgrades and unless they control their aggro they will pull trash mobs off me. Boss aggro feel a bit less stable as well, but I have not had any real problems.

The reduction in demo shout threat is very noticable on the spider packs in Naxx. Before the patch I could keep the spiders off healers just by spamming demo shout. Now they will peel off at the first heal.

I have had the chance to use devastate quite a bit now and I'm still not that impressed. Using widow's remorse I end up at approximately the same level of threat as if I had spammed sunder. If I instead whip out my servo arm I will generate more threat, but on the other hand I will lose threat from not being able to use HS as often. I can see devastate being good in fairly lengthy fight where you have insufficient rage for using HS much. Overall it feels too weak and situational for a 41 point talent.

In the end I think warrior aggro took a bit of a hit, but it seems to be good enough for most raid encounters. However, I can definitely see keeping aggro becoming a big problem in the BC 5 man instances due to lack of AE threat tools and aggro reduction buffs.

I was wearing 4/9 dn on balinda as a dps fury warrior 0/48/3 (6% hit) and couldn't generate rage worth a damn. I even switched to berserker stance to try to. Eventually I lost aggro to a 6/9 rogue, and we found that we didn't need to tank her at all..just dps her down. Of course this was doing the 6 minutes and less AVs, but still.

Given the unchanged threat values for warrior abilities, it would seem to be the increased dps of the dps classes that is the problem since 2.0.

As an aside, and my apologies if this deserves a separate thread, but given that Devastate only surpasses Sunder for threat with larger hits, and both abilities causing a proc, would Sunder not be a better choice to spam when using a Thunderfury?

devastate just SUCK at threat generation, the best threat generation u can get is heroic strike with a weapon <= 1.6 speed.
thunderfury got a sunder armor for free so its ok (270 dmg proc in def stance)

the innate threat from heroic is 175.

according to this 2 threads devastate is kinda sloopy right now.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...54980895&sid=1
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....92309409&sid=3

Devastate Rank 1 (lvl 50) 73 72,8-73.4 threat
Devastate Rank 2 (lvl 60) 47 46.66-47.64 threat
Devastate Rank 3 (lvl 70) 27 26.84-27.12 threat

the innate threat from devastate goes down while the rank climbs up, this is cause each application from sunder adds the bonus damage like this:
Dev 1: 73 + (((5 * 15)+(wdps/2))*multiplier) = x
Dev 2: 47 + (((5 * 25)+(wdps/2))*multiplier) = y
Dev 3: 27 + (((5 * 35)+(wdps/2))*multiplier) = z

Problem? Well the bonus damage is physical and the least mobs got zero armor after 5 sunders. so the that is kinda tricky.

But lets do some math.

Lets assume Mob got 30% Armor Mitigation after 5 Sunders, Tank got 12% crit, 6% hit, onehand spec and defensive stance.
thats 0.7*1.12*1.1*0.9=0.77616 damage modifier.

well lets assume we use a heavy weighted weapon line spineshatter...99-184 damage, 54,4 wdps (weapon dps)

a tank with buffed 1200 AP would have 85.7 adps (ap dps) but that does not count into devastate.

(99+184)/2) = 141.5weapon damage ... devastate only takes 50% ... ok ok = 141.5/2 = 70.75

so se what we got with our devastates after 5 Sunders.

Dev 1: 73 + (((75)+(70.75))*0.77616 ) = x
Dev 2: 47 + (((125)+(70.75))*0.77616 ) = y
Dev 3: 27 + (((175)+(70.75))*0.77616 ) = z

x = 73 + 145,75* 0.77616
y = 47 + 195,75 * 0.77616
z = 27 + 245,75 * 0.77616

x = 186.1
y = 198.9
z = 217.7

according to your threat modifiers what does that mean?

IT DOES MEAN THAT DEVASTE S**KS *SS!!!

Sunder Armor generates superb 260 unmodified threat to that.
rank 3 devastate generates 217.7...

well roth...calm down lets finish it.

ok lets assume we got defensive stance and defiance we got threat modifier 1.495

x = 186.1 = 278,2 tph (threat per hit)
y = 198.9 = 297,4 tph
z = 217.7 = 325,5 tph

ok now we can get it down to the final value the tps (threat per second). devastate got global cooldown so on spell every 1.5 seconds.

x = 185.5 tps
y = 198.3 tps
z = 217 tps

Sunder Armor got 259.1 tps btw...

devastate heavily depends on mob aborb and weapon damage.

well next to devastate there are some white hits, but sunder got them to, the white hits will do 162.6 tps...

well thats the g*d d*mn truth right now, devastate sucks for tanking, DO NOT USE IT for TANKING!!!

Heroic Strike is by far the best threat ability we have. (See link)

if you looking at every ability on its own for tanking this is what we got (mob absorb 30%, using spineshatter, 1200ap...etc see calc)

heroic tps = 333.3
shield slam = 165.9
revenge = 144.9
sunder tps = 259,1
devastate rank 2 tps = 198.3

Well the other part of the story is the 5 second cooldown on revenge which SUCKS cause its need to be 4.5 seconds oder 6 seconds if you dont want to mess the 1 seconds.

well at the end its our choice we got 6 seconds of time in a rotation and need to determine what to use. the clear winner of all threat abilities is heoric strike, next to revenge and shield slam which got excelent threat per hit.

good threat spammage would be clicking heroic while doing revenge+shield slam and from time to time a sunder.

sure there are still some exceptions but from the tanking point of view devaste is a mess.
btw using devastate on a UNSUNDERED mob is a complete waste of rage, it generates nearly no threat.

wbr

So, given the terrible inefficiency of Heroic Strike, we're back to the old Sunder spam and Revenge when it lights up, with Heroic strikes to use any extra rage up, unless we're in an unlimited rage scenario.

Was Devastate intended purely to allow Protection warriors a chance to do some damage? Or will the increased DPS weapons in TBC allow it to out-strip Sunder for aggro?

EDIT: Yes, Sunder does cause Thunderfury to proc.

Long posts are no excuse. Think it over.

I would not judge that by the above numbers.
As stated in my reply above AP Bonus is calculated into Devastate damage.

Fully raidbuffed I have ca. 1400 AP in tank gear. Thats 100 extra DPS to consider which are multiplied with 2.4 speed for most one handers.
That is extra 120*DmgModifier extra threat for each devastate.

With 20% crit rate, 6% hit that Dmgmodifier is something like
(0.4*0.76+0.2*2+0.3*1)*1.3*1.15*1.1*MitigationModifier=1.65*MitigationModifier
when deep prot specced.

With mitigation <20% that would result in DmgModifier=1.32 or 158 extra threat as the contirbution of AP Bonus (neglected in above post).

Still think devastate is crap?

I stand corrected then.

EDIT: Typos

Devastate is a utility/snap aggro ability. I've found that in certain fights - Noth and The Twin Emps specifically, where the 5 sunder armor debuff stack is always on, it's incredibly useful. I've also found that in high rage situations, it's pretty good too - I use a Widow's Remorse, and Heroic Strike/Devastate nets me around 800 damage when used together (keep in mind that this is in high rage situations, but it's still pretty useful.)

It's not really there to take the place of Shield Slam or Revenge, either. But after 5 sunders, you can replace sequential Sunder Armor spam with Devastate, and add a bit of yellow damage to your DPS (where there would be none if you were just using Sunder).

We had a real raid for the first time last night. I am MT and we did Anub'rekhan. I am full protection spec with a Thunderfury. From what I could see, I was definitely generating more threat with Devastate. I would get 5 sunders on him, and make sure Heroic Strike and Devastate were being used.

However, I did have to work more at it. Generally I'm miles ahead of rogues and mages on threat, but people were catching up the entire time.

Couple of questions, since I've hardly played live since the big patch, and these go into consideration for Sunder vs. Devistate, and that's their ability to:

Proc crusader?
Proc windfury?

My understanding is that sunder was not proccing windfury and devistate was. That certainly must be tacked on to devistate's threat values if so. And crusader counts, if you use it, especially with devistate in, I never did change to AGI and I don't know if I will. I am an aggro whore, that's all there is to it.

Also, what are the normalization speeds for devistate? This was a point of curiosity for me as well.

Assuming that devistate does proc windfury and crusader, it seems to me that slow weapons are now king for tanking, if you are a prot tank, unless you are in one of those fabled "infinite rage" scenarios in which of course high speed is god. I'd even like to see the math for that -- how would harder-hitting windfury procs (from devistate) and higher devistate damage with, say, a 2.6 weapon, balance against the loss of HS speed from an equal DPS high-speed weapon?

[Edit] To answer the question about the purpose of devistate, it's a nicely scaling aggro ability for warriors, at what point it passes sunder I don't know, as there's clearly some debate to be had over its values.

I don't follow, if the skill costs the same as sunder and the cooldown is the same how can it give me more threat per second but less threat per rage? I can see what you're saying if the mob has some abnormally high amount of armor but then devastate is always going to come out worse than sunder.