Tanking observations in 2.0? - Page 3

Heisenberg · 12/15/06, 9:42 AM

Originally Posted by Deathstorm

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?

Improved Sunder talent, I guess.

Kruthal · 12/15/06, 9:42 AM

Originally Posted by Deathstorm

Originally Posted by Roana

It is not a god sent skill, but I beg to differ.
After the sunder stack is fully applied I have yet to find a mob where devestate performs less threat.

Yes, Devastate generally does more threat-per-second than Sunder Armor; however, it may give you less threat-per-rage.

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.

Improved Sunder Armor? That is assuming Focused Rage and Imp Sunder stack, in the sense that Sunder Armor costs 9 rage if you have both, while Devastate would still cost 12 rage.

Deathstorm · 12/15/06, 9:43 AM

Originally Posted by Uziel

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.

I've generally found the opposite, I can't see any noticable difference from using devastate besides the times I get too eager to try it early and focus on getting 5 sunders instead of the highest threat generation and some over eager dps class gets pretty close to over-aggro'ing me which also seems an awful lot easier since patch.

I'm normally an OT but because I have a TF I get to go first on trash and on fights like Noth but I really don't find much value in using devastate over abilities like shield slam or revenge for snap aggro, I sometimes feel it's barely up to sunder in threat but that's just me being too negative on the thing. I don't know about you guys but I didn't get a 41 point talent in protection so I could be slightly less half arsed dps on Loatheb.

Roana · 12/15/06, 9:56 AM

Originally Posted by Kruthal

Improved Sunder Armor? That is assuming Focused Rage and Imp Sunder stack, in the sense that Sunder Armor costs 9 rage if you have both, while Devastate would still cost 12 rage.

Exactly. Devastate needs to generate one third more threat than Sunder Armor to break even for threat/rage (339 threat before you consider the defensive stance bonus), meaning it would have to hit for an average of 292 points of damage.

There's also the issue that a good Devastate weapon (i.e., one that is reasonably slow) will impact your Heroic Strike threat negatively, meaning that you lose out on some Heroic Strikes, pushing the break-even point even farther up.

On the other hand, if you're tanking a DPS fight in a 5-man instance, then Devastate is great -- you sacrifice only very little threat for a pretty good boost to party DPS. After all, Devastate is still easily equal in threat generation to a pre-patch Improved Sunder Armor.

Trindade · 12/15/06, 10:17 AM

Originally Posted by Gyshall

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).

Spot on. The talent isn't supposed to replace your primary threat abilities, it's a scaling ability to replace the flat one (sunder).

Devastate is excellent. I spec'd prot for a couple of days and tried it out tanking some bosses. Once the full set of raid debuffs went up, I was hitting between 250's and 290's (using Blessed Qiraji War Hammer, in defensive stance -- obviously) with just normal raid buffs and battleshout. Even if it had no threat modifier attached, that would put it ahead of sunder. Sure, if you try it out by yourself with no buffs, and don't get a full set of debuffs on the mob it is going to look like it sucks. That's not a valid test though. Consider the fact that it can crit and benefit from consumables, and it blows sunder out of the water.

Later in the raid I wore my dps gear, with normal raid buffs and battleshout I was critting for high 600's to mid 900's with it (using a Misplaced Servo Arm, in battle/beserker stance), hits were obviously for half that. Result? You could probably pull ~400dps of devastate damage in current gear -- that's some fairly chunky yellow damage for a prot spec warrior, and it put a new perspective on the ability for me.

It's a 41 point talent, just remember that. A lot of warrior talents only become good with gear and levels; e.g.: bloodthirst doesn't look too good compared to mortal strike at level 50.

hiro · 12/18/06, 12:48 PM

Originally Posted by Trindade

Spot on. The talent isn't supposed to replace your primary threat abilities, it's a scaling ability to replace the flat one (sunder).

...
[Example from his Naxx geared experiences]
...
It's a 41 point talent, just remember that. A lot of warrior talents only become good with gear and levels; e.g.: bloodthirst doesn't look too good compared to mortal strike at level 50.

And remember that gear ilevels in TBC skyrocket, so abilities that "only become good with amazing gear" are all going to be powered by "amazing gear" in relation to what we know now.

[Edited the quote to more concisely show the ideas I was expanding upon.]

Quigon · 12/18/06, 1:39 PM

Honestly devastate is only useful as dps and for Thaddius.

hiro · 12/18/06, 1:52 PM

Originally Posted by Nezralix

It's fairly obvious to me that Blizzard should either (a) give warriors a 1.0s global cooldown (maybe only in defensive stance?), or (b) take revenge off of the GCD. Right now, it seems Devastate often takes a backseat to Heroic Strike simply because there isn't enough time in the timer rotation for it, and that strikes me as a pretty bad reason to not be using a 41-point tanking ability.

I've got no warriors of any impressive level, but from what I recall on my alt, revenge was only after they dodge/block or something (should be less than 20% of the time) and only every 8 seconds or so...

It doesn't seem that should be used more than once every 10 seconds or so on average, what is taking the rest of your GCD time?

Shield Block? That's the only thing I could think of that you would want to spam nonstop (besides sunder/devastate/shield slam, etc - the abilities you were saying got starved out of global cooldown time)

Apate · 12/18/06, 2:23 PM

Originally Posted by hiro

I've got no warriors of any impressive level, but from what I recall on my alt, revenge was only after they dodge/block or something (should be less than 20% of the time) and only every 8 seconds or so...

check closely:
http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=11585
http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=25288

Note which spell says "...after the target..."

hiro · 12/18/06, 3:39 PM

Ah, K, so two things on 5-6 second cooldown, and after every mitigated blow in any way...

Our Judgement is off the GCD so there are definitely precedents for the sort of thing you are suggesting... but it looks like you might have used your "no global cooldown" credit on Shield Block.

http://thottbot.com/?sp=2565

Us pallies have a poor man's shield block, but it counts for 4 blocks and we can only use it once every 10 seconds so it doesn't do anything significant to our Global cooldown budget, even though it DOES trigger the GCD.

http://thottbot.com/?sp=20925

ildon · 12/18/06, 8:21 PM

My guild has basically decided that Devastate is an offtank ability. It's less rage than shield slam, doesnt have a cooldown, and doesn't interrupt your rage generation from white hits like heroic strike does. It allows an offtank to do some damage and build threat on the mob with a simple spammable weapon ability without killing their crappy rage generation.

Whiteknight · 12/22/06, 6:06 PM

A random annoyance I noticed just recently related to tanking: With 2.0 and the 40 debuff slots, if you miss a sunder or two early in a pull and your dps doesn't hold back, your sunder stack will come in at debuff position > 16 and hence not be visible on the default UI.

This is rather frustratingly annoying if you're trying to sunder a mob up to 5 for dps purposes and happen to want to devastate after that.

Trindade · 12/22/06, 8:08 PM

Originally Posted by Whiteknight

A random annoyance I noticed just recently related to tanking: With 2.0 and the 40 debuff slots, if you miss a sunder or two early in a pull and your dps doesn't hold back, your sunder stack will come in at debuff position > 16 and hence not be visible on the default UI.

This is rather frustratingly annoying if you're trying to sunder a mob up to 5 for dps purposes and happen to want to devastate after that.

http://wow.curse-gaming.com/en/files...debuff-filter/