Considering the current mechanics of MTing, I hope there will be no tanking weapons slower than 1.8 seconds. The small Devastate improvement is just not worth it.
As I usually don't get enough rage to use more than 50% of my auto attack timer in HS I could use a slower weapon without any problem.
Do you really get enough rage to use a HS on every auto ?
On which boss ?
Going from a 1.6s 80 dps to a 2.4s result is a +32 on devastate, +32 on a 200 skill is not a small improvement for me
But again, of course if you have enough rage for your tanking ratation + HS spam, of course the faster the better.
Last edited by PitiChatMignon : 04/10/07 at 1:32 PM.
I do not think its worthy of being a 41 point talent currently. Its extremely situational, as we have seen discussed.
IMO the 41 point Protection talent should just add the current Devastate's damage to Sunder. So, Devastate goes away but your Sunder Armor does damage in addition to its current threat/armor debuff mechanic. One less hot key to worry about and and the talent gets better w/o being overpowered.
Sure Devastate will produce more threat, but really the difference is pretty small, and its arguably a wasted talent point at this point.
I'd argue quite strongly with it being a wasted talent point. As people have mentioned, buffed up and fighting a fully sundered+debuffed boss, Devastates easily hit for ~250 (that's with my Grom'tors Charge, 1.6 speed and only 67dps - with a higher dps it would be more). That makes them 50 more threat than sunder, before you include crits. It's also more procs as mentioned, particularly more WF procs which is a fair bit more aggro. Even just assuming a 15% crit rate and no special procs, the average devastate hit will be ~288, for an 88 threat increase over Sunder. In defensive stance and with defiance, you're looking at about ~120 extra threat every cycle (assuming one devastate every 6 seconds). That makes about 20tps, which seems not inconsequential to me.
Then, you've got to factor the main selling point for Devastate - it scales. Whilst right now it may only be 20tps, when I get a King's Defender, it'll be more. And then when I get a SSC/TK weapon, it'll be more, and then a Black Temple/Hyjal one, it'll be more. Unless they go AQ20 on us again and give a new skill book for sunder, Devastate is going to continue to pull away in just a pure TPS manner, before you even count the fact that you're also doing extra dps on the boss (and as everyone knows, dps is king, right?).
Lastly, and most importantly, I would never consider devastate a wasted talent point when it ups my dps considerably in a dps situation. In DPS gear DWing on Aran, I can get crit devastates of between 1000 and 1100, all for that measly 12 rage. Sure I'm causing a bit more threat, but so does Heroic strike which is a prot warriors main other spammable dps move. The fact that devastate (combined with focused rage and 1h spec) means I can output a reasonable amount of damage when not tanking makes it easily worth the 1 talent point it takes to get it.
As I usually don't get enough rage to use more than 50% of my auto attack timer in HS I could use a slower weapon without any problem.
Do you really get enough rage to use a HS on every auto ?
On which boss ?
Going from a 1.6s 80 dps to a 2.4s result is a +32 on devastate, +32 on a 200 skill is not a small improvement for me
But again, of course if you have enough rage for your tanking ratation + HS spam, of course the faster the better.
Last I checked about 80% of my auto swings are heroic strikes. I definately HS a lot more than not, without missing shield slams/revenges for it on pretty much any boss. The only time rage production is low is on early grow Gruul, and this is solved by not using an armor potion.
I'd argue quite strongly with it being a wasted talent point. As people have mentioned, buffed up and fighting a fully sundered+debuffed boss, Devastates easily hit for ~250 (that's with my Grom'tors Charge, 1.6 speed and only 67dps - with a higher dps it would be more). That makes them 50 more threat than sunder, before you include crits. It's also more procs as mentioned, particularly more WF procs which is a fair bit more aggro. Even just assuming a 15% crit rate and no special procs, the average devastate hit will be ~288, for an 88 threat increase over Sunder. In defensive stance and with defiance, you're looking at about ~120 extra threat every cycle (assuming one devastate every 6 seconds). That makes about 20tps, which seems not inconsequential to me.
Then, you've got to factor the main selling point for Devastate - it scales. Whilst right now it may only be 20tps, when I get a King's Defender, it'll be more. And then when I get a SSC/TK weapon, it'll be more, and then a Black Temple/Hyjal one, it'll be more. Unless they go AQ20 on us again and give a new skill book for sunder, Devastate is going to continue to pull away in just a pure TPS manner, before you even count the fact that you're also doing extra dps on the boss (and as everyone knows, dps is king, right?).
Lastly, and most importantly, I would never consider devastate a wasted talent point when it ups my dps considerably in a dps situation. In DPS gear DWing on Aran, I can get crit devastates of between 1000 and 1100, all for that measly 12 rage. Sure I'm causing a bit more threat, but so does Heroic strike which is a prot warriors main other spammable dps move. The fact that devastate (combined with focused rage and 1h spec) means I can output a reasonable amount of damage when not tanking makes it easily worth the 1 talent point it takes to get it.
Well it scales poorly. So when you get something better than King's Defender, you'll generate an extra 23 tps compared to 20, and the next weapon will bring that up to 26 tps. 50% weapon damage is really rather low.
Its funny how often Aran comes up in reference to Protection warrior dps. I've tried it with and without devastate, my damage is still lower than anyone elses, we still destroy Aran regardless way before he has a chance to Poly, and I've done the encounter in DW dps gear. My damage is still inconsequential, so I just wear my tanking gear now to have a lot more hp and less risk of dying (not that there is a lot of risk dying regardless on that fight anyway).
For soloing this talent is poor. It won't do any meaningful damage UNLESS you have 5 sunders on a mob. In the time it takes to apply 5 sunders, the mob will probably be half dead anyway. I've tested out doing the 5 sunders then devastating, not sundering and just slamming/hsing mobs, kill time varied more based on getting lucky crit streaks than using that ability. Because of the time it takes to get on 5 sunders on a non elite 60-70 mob, it doesn't even really help for soloing.
Yes its more under ideal circumstances, assuming a mob doesn't have high armor too. Even fully sundered sometimes a mob still has a crap load of armor. I tried Devastate on Morogrim, as I recall my Devastates were hitting in the 187-199 range with 5 sunders on which was surprising, but then again, the last time I bothered using Devastate much was on Aran, who has basically no armor. Yes, it can crit, proc windfury, and give birth to the messiah. I just don't think its quite good enough of a substitution for sunder in every circumstance. The difference right now really is insignificant in terms of your total threat production. I've tested it both ways because I'd love for the ability to be good, but it really doesn't matter enough.
And as previous mentioned, fully talented sunder still has better efficiency by far. In a low rage situation, 9 rage sunders > 12 rage devastates unless they can hit for a ton of damage (which right now, isn't really feasible).
Is anyone sitting down and actually doing the math before they post anecdotal voodoo about what they "feel" is better? Are all you guys wielding daggers in a party without a shaman?
Revenge is the best Threat per Rage (TPR) ability you have. Shield slam is the best threat-per-cooldown ability that you have and probably the second best TPR ability that you have (unless you're rocking less than ~150 block value). If aggro is a concern, Revenge and Shield Slam should be the first move that you do - before anything else. IMO the order that you do them in is largely immaterial because revenge is so cheap and because it's not a wasted cooldown if you do either move. Sunder's primary function is to increase the raid's dps, not dramatically increase your threat generation.
Devastate is a subpar soloing ability because it damn near requires you have 5 sunders up for it to be effective. It *is* a solid raid dps ability if you aren't tanking, because you will likely have 5 sunders up.
Reasons devastate is better than sunder 90% of the time:
1) Windfury procs off of devastate (so do PPM enchants like mongoose, trinkets, etc.) A 20% chance for an instant attack, with 445 bonus AP is a big deal. Not only is that "free" raid dps, but the rage from the extra wf attack reduces the net cost of devastate and those extra attacks generate a lot of threat.
2) Sunders (after the 5th one) do not scale with your weapon, crit rate, or AP. Sunder is not affected by raid or party buffs (SoE totem, BoM, and BoK), 1h specialization, or other scaling talents. Sunder is subject to the same dodge/miss/parry as devastate. Yes, you can increase the threat per rage for sunder with talents, however that has 0 impact on the total threat generated for that cooldown.
3) Devastate does a significant chunk of dps even with a 1.6 speed blazeguard. It's a difference of almost 100dps between my sunder x2 vs my devastate x2 threat cycles. 100 "free" dps for your raid is a good thing in a timed fight. I'd also add that when you're only doing 200-250 dps in tanking gear, an increase that large is significant.
There's usually not an either/or decision about devastate vs heroic strike for most of the serious raid encounters as far as I've seen. Gruul hits hard enough that you need to dump that rage as soon as you get hit, because there's a strong possibility that you are going to get hit for another astronomically large amount. You can't have over 100 rage, so any excess incoming damage is wasted. If anything, I'm fighting like hell to get my rage below 50 in a lot of fights.
The goal is to make sure you have enough rage to fuel shieldblock, everything else should be dumped as fast as possible to maximize your threat output and/or minimize your incoming damage. Efficiency only matters if you're offtanking.
Its funny how often Aran comes up in reference to Protection warrior dps. I've tried it with and without devastate, my damage is still lower than anyone elses, we still destroy Aran regardless way before he has a chance to Poly, and I've done the encounter in DW dps gear. My damage is still inconsequential, so I just wear my tanking gear now to have a lot more hp and less risk of dying (not that there is a lot of risk dying regardless on that fight anyway).
How much are your devastates hitting for? A devastate every global cooldown except for when you need to pummel is a ton of damage on Aran. I personally blow away every caster on this fight. They'll probably gain experience at dodging blizzards, etc and eventually surpass me, but I doubt my damage will ever be inconsequential in this fight. We down him before poly also.
But really, this fight is not exactly a model of how prot dps really works on a typical boss.
Last I checked about 80% of my auto swings are heroic strikes. I definately HS a lot more than not, without missing shield slams/revenges for it on pretty much any boss. The only time rage production is low is on early grow Gruul, and this is solved by not using an armor potion.
Yea I just don't use Shield Block while he still hits like a wet noodle.
Yea I just don't use Shield Block while he still hits like a wet noodle.
... or thunder clap, demo shout, stone/ironshield. :P
I like getting crushed for 2500 on the pull.
Originally Posted by Fellwraith
tanking stuff
^ this.
That said, I think devastate would be a lot more sexy from a main-tanking standpoint if it refreshed thunderclap and demo shout in addition to sunder armor. Also, I don't think it would hurt to have devastate lay down a sunder armor instead of just refreshing the current stack.
Devastate is a good talent - it's just hard to find space for it in the tanking rotation, and it really is my lowest priority ability vs bosses. Everything else trumps it, except for sunder armor (because sunder does less threat and I don't have talent space for imp sunder).
Is anyone sitting down and actually doing the math before they post anecdotal voodoo about what they "feel" is better? Are all you guys wielding daggers in a party without a shaman?
Revenge is the best Threat per Rage (TPR) ability you have. Shield slam is the best threat-per-cooldown ability that you have and probably the second best TPR ability that you have (unless you're rocking less than ~150 block value). If aggro is a concern, Revenge and Shield Slam should be the first move that you do - before anything else. IMO the order that you do them in is largely immaterial because revenge is so cheap and because it's not a wasted cooldown if you do either move. Sunder's primary function is to increase the raid's dps, not dramatically increase your threat generation.
Devastate is a subpar soloing ability because it damn near requires you have 5 sunders up for it to be effective. It *is* a solid raid dps ability if you aren't tanking, because you will likely have 5 sunders up.
Reasons devastate is better than sunder 90% of the time:
1) Windfury procs off of devastate (so do PPM enchants like mongoose, trinkets, etc.) A 20% chance for an instant attack, with 445 bonus AP is a big deal. Not only is that "free" raid dps, but the rage from the extra wf attack reduces the net cost of devastate and those extra attacks generate a lot of threat.
2) Sunders (after the 5th one) do not scale with your weapon, crit rate, or AP. Sunder is not affected by raid or party buffs (SoE totem, BoM, and BoK), 1h specialization, or other scaling talents. Sunder is subject to the same dodge/miss/parry as devastate. Yes, you can increase the threat per rage for sunder with talents, however that has 0 impact on the total threat generated for that cooldown.
3) Devastate does a significant chunk of dps even with a 1.6 speed blazeguard. It's a difference of almost 100dps between my sunder x2 vs my devastate x2 threat cycles. 100 "free" dps for your raid is a good thing in a timed fight. I'd also add that when you're only doing 200-250 dps in tanking gear, an increase that large is significant.
There's usually not an either/or decision about devastate vs heroic strike for most of the serious raid encounters as far as I've seen. Gruul hits hard enough that you need to dump that rage as soon as you get hit, because there's a strong possibility that you are going to get hit for another astronomically large amount. You can't have over 100 rage, so any excess incoming damage is wasted. If anything, I'm fighting like hell to get my rage below 50 in a lot of fights.
The goal is to make sure you have enough rage to fuel shieldblock, everything else should be dumped as fast as possible to maximize your threat output and/or minimize your incoming damage. Efficiency only matters if you're offtanking.
1) We don't have a shaman at the moment, and I've never had one in my group when we did. I think the benefits of a shaman with [insert dps classes here] outweighs the MT getting Windfury for any fight where DPS matters...and thats basically every fight. Maybe it will matter when people need to hold back because I don't generate enough threat, I suppose if we get a shaman at some point I'll experiment with it.
2) As stated, repeatedly, the benefit of sunders is in your threat per rage, not threat per second. It doesn't make sunder do any additional threat over one totally unmodified by talents, this is true. However, again especially early in a fight the rage savings add up. I see spikes in rage generation early in fights commonly mostly due to me dodging/parrying a lot of attacks, to me the rage savings pay for themselves in extra rage I have to use on other abilities. I haven't seen a whole lot of true unlimited rage situations, hell I've tanked Magtheridon and had enough rage to shield block minutes into the fight, and thats it, and thats a reasonably hard hitting mob (at least compared to other mobs), and its happened many times really where just due to avoidance streaks, I am definately not getting more rage than I am spending.
3) Well does this need to be stated? I didn't think it was news sunder armor does 0 dps. Any damage > no damage.
I'm not denying Devastate not even with the best of the best weapons IS better threat generation compared to sunder armor. I've said it in every single post, it IS better (with 5 sunders applied to a mob, not even close without that).
The question to me is how much does it matter. I'm saying for a 41 point talent, for the tanking tree, no one should be saying "oh its a great ability if you are not tanking for dps" as one of the big selling points about how good it is, and I'm also saying, from experience, you can use sunder or devastate. No one will notice the difference, guaranteed, and you can save a talent point to boot for anything else.
you can save a talent point to boot for anything else.
Spent 3 points in Imp SA to save 1 in Dev?
I mean, we all know that DEV isn't an ultra amazing talent in terms of generating threat.
But if you want to maximize your threat in rage plentiful situations DEV is what you want.
If you want to max threat in rage starved situations imp SA is what you want.
I think that's a fair evaluation of the two talents.
04/10/07, 1:26 PM
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