From the US WoW forums, link found herehttp://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1778046976&sid=1&pageNo=4#71

If I'm reading this correctly, that means tanks will be able to effectively remove Sunder from their hotbar and just use Devastate, as well as taking Imp. Sunder and it factoring into Devastates cost

Yeah this will greatly increase the TPR of devastate.

The new twist for Tactical mastery is a nice addition aswell for arms or fury specced warriors, increase the threat for MS/BT in def stance. "Tactical Mastery now greatly increases threat from Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst while in Defensive Stance."

My feeling is that the real goal of these two changes is to make life easier for DPSing when protection and tanking when not heavily protection.

Devastate including Sunder means that protection warriors can get cheaper Devastates, and won’t have to choose how many Sunders to use on a mob before starting to Devastate for DPS. This should be a big help when grinding, and also allow more damage for a protection warrior who is taken off of tanking for a given fight. But it’s more of an increase for soloing. For tanking, it’s definitely nice, but not huge.

For low-protection OT builds, I think the TM change looks very good. This should make it a reasonable option to go 14 or so points into Protection to get the low-end really important tanking talents (to Imp. Shield Block and possibly Defiance) along with full TM, and end up with a really nice solid burst threat move (BT or MS) along with reasonably high DPS. My gut feeling is that this will bring a DPS warrior who chooses this path up to around the tanking ability of a protection paladin.

Of the two, I suspect that the TM change will be more dramatic. I’d already been thinking that assuming the proper gear and going into prot up to Defiance, DPS warriors could OT or MT better than many people give them credit for. With the addition of a burst threat move, the one really big hole in their tanking arsenal is filled. The only high-end talents that really matter for survivability and are out of range are Imp. Defensive Stance and Vitality... and you can easily live without those except perhaps on the very worst kinds of fights.

My real worry is that this is going to make DPS specs a *lot* more attractive for tanking, and give deep protection spec barely any increase in fighting power in any context. Yet another strike for "Why be protection if it means all you can do is tank?"

Not to direct this thread into a prot discussion, but I believe the existing fury/prot builds like 0/41/20 or alike are pretty good for offtanks threat wise and that the TM change is mostly going to boost the threat abilities for warriors while leveling up and you're specced full fury/arms or arms/fury since the other 10 points in prot above TM to get defiance are totally wasted for leveling.

We don't really know hos much extra threat it is going to yield. But it has to be ALOT to be comparable to defiance.

I tried my best but I can't find the post I've read a couple of days ago. A blue stated it's going to be less threat than shieldslam, but still a nice boost.
I'm afraid this won't make nonprot tanking much easier in low rage situations, like 5mans. A 30 rage ability is pretty costly imho, especially if your sunders cost 15, heroics 12-15 rage. You're pretty much forced to open up with a sb+revenge combo on every pull.

Let's analyze a low-medium rage situation. Given an 80 DPS weapon, ignoring crits and misses your typical 6 seconds threat cycles would look like this after 2.3:

Deep prot spec at the start of a pull:
SS, shield block, revenge, 2* devastate = 17+10+2+2*9 rage = 47 rage
In blue gear your SS lands for ~400, revenge for ~300 -> that makes a total of 710+501+301+301 + autoattack threat (approx 6*80) = 2293*1.495 threat ->
571 TPS, 73 TPR, 7.8 RPS

Arms spec at the start of a pull:
shield block, revenge, 2* sunder, MS = 10+5+2*15+30 rage = 75 rage
Let's assume a threat value of 650 for MS (bit lower than SS as promised) -> that makes a total of 501+301+301+650 + autoattack threat (approx 6*80) = 2233*1.3 threat ->
484 TPS, 39 TPR, 12.5 RPS

If you pick defiance, you will almost match deep prot threat. Note that 30 rage skills are hardly usable as opener, thus nonprot specs will still lack burst threat. Nonprot specs need about 50% more incoming rage to sustain this cycle. Don't forget that autoattacking with an 80 DPS weapon will yield 4-5 RPS (rage per second) that covers about 60% of rage needed to sustain this cycle for a prot warrior, but only 30-40% of rage needed for the MS warrior. Most threat problems are caused by running low on rage, prot will still have a great edge there.

When rage is infinite, all specs will perform pretty well TPS-wise, however there are no _real_ infinite rage situations, rage mostly comes in bursts. Prot has an advantage here, keeping up shield block charges and a moderate threat level will still be hard as nonprot spec, just because of rage efficiency. You still don't want nonprots maintank raidbosses unless they outgear the encounter pretty much. You will still need to tone down your DPS when your tank is non prot in a 5man.

Also don't forget that MS and BT will scale _very_ poorly in tank gear, while SS will still scale fine. Talents like precision, flurry and impale might offset this partially.

Don't misunderstand me, I think this is a very good change, but not something that will suddenly make prot specs almost obsolete.

For a arm/fury specced warrior the only scalable abilities threatwise are MS/BT and HS/cleave since you don't have devastate. But, usually you don't need all your greatest survival gear as an offtank so you can buff your AP and crit to more reasonable levels.

Without defiance you won't be a that much better MT than now (still rather poor) but for the casual trash tanking and the normal instances it will provide a welcome buff and combined with defiance you will be a much better OT. Sure you won't be as rage efficient but on the other hand you won't generally have as much avoidance either so you will gain a little more rage on average.

Yeah, you won't replace the MT with a hybrid build but it won't be as difficult tanking stuff when DPS specced anymore. We always look at the druids, who gets defiance plus increased stealth in the same talent, with envy and we welcome this change.

A very interesting back and forth was recently had on my servers forums. The topic was basically Devastate and weapon speed for tanks, with one tank arguing slower weapons and other people arguing fast. Both sides present lots of formulas and other evidence to support their case, I was hoping someone here might take a look at the discussion and give their informed opinion.

WoW Forums -> Devastate is NOT normalized, test results enc

Devastate is normalized, there was some math proving this a long time ago on the EU warrior forums. The OP in the thread you linked just has a difference in Devastate damage because Spiteblade has way higher average damage due to the slower speed.

Does anyone possibly know a good link (from these forums perhaps) that would address the argument he makes about slow weapons being better for threat gen and rage efficiency. I posted a couple links myself, but didn't see one here.

Sorry... I was a bit unclear there.

We have some very good prot pallies in my guild, so yes, I know just how good they can be, especially in terms of threat generation. What I was thinking of specifically is the increased fragility they tend to have when they *are* hit with a big damage spike, due to their tendency to have lower hp totals. I think that an OT spec DPS warrior will be similar.

(I'm thinking specifically of one of our pallies on Al'ar, who the healers have to be extra ready to heal when he taunts off another tank who is melted. Another of our pallies usually tanks all of the adds, which is not a job I'd want to tangle with, as a deep prot warrior.)

Anyone able to get around the threat calculator ? (Kenneth Gant Niebuhr - Online portfolie)

I could get it to work a few weeks ago, however now it sets everything to 0 and doesn't calculate TPS at all.

This is not considered in the sheet, but since the only normalized attack is devastate it's in the first column in the devastate row iirc.

There are so many real tanking weapons out there so I didn't feel the need to include an option for daggers.

It doesn't work when there is a queue on the WWS log you are using. Just try again later.

Bless God for the SA/Dev changes. Hope will increase TPS significant.
Nice Sheet imho - seems to be accurate.

I tried searching all over these forums, among others in search of some comparative data. Rather than start a new thread about it this seemed the most relevant topic to post in.

Anyway, just got Unbreakable Will today, and at first the weapon didn't seem as appealing as the Mallet which I already had, or the Brutalizer from which boss is easily accessible to us (haven't had one drop yet though).

However I gave it some thought and compared the two weapons thoroughly. I also want to dl this spreadsheet provided by the OP but for some reason I can't get it to download, just to see how accurate I am.

Anyway in comparing Unbreakable Will to the Brutalizer, here's the raw facts (so you dont have to look it up on Atlas or wowhead)

Unbreakable Will
112-209 DMG
1.6 Speed
100.3 DPS
308 AC
33 Stam
+21 Defense Skill Rating

Brutalizer
128-193 DMG
1.6 Speed
100.3 DPS
33 Stam
+22 Defense Skill Rating
+21 Axe Skill rating

Now at first glance I was like well +axe skill rating, sure choice. But I gave it another thought. While they're both about the same in +defense, dps, speed, and stam...the major differences are of course the skill rating vs. the AC. But then there's also the top end damage. TUW has 209 top end and Brutalizer has 193.

Through some brief testing my devastates with the TUW already are most definitely higher than my Mallets were, due to normalization the small decrease in top end on the sword doesn't seem to mean that the devastate dmg is lower.

However the reason I am unsure whether I should go with the TUW as a main tanking weapon or the axe is this: Threat vs. Mitigation. I am tauren (hax) and have about 16.6k HP unbuffed in my general boss tanking gear (Stam/AC oriented with some avoidance, about 25% dodge unbuffed and 18% parry). My armor is a modest 17.5k in said gear. My +hit isn't too hot yet, only around 29. Now the Sword has 300 AC and the higher top end dmg. This is, probably giving me more threat per hit (assuming I hit as often as I would with any other weapon) than the Brutalizer would, but the axe would allow me to hit more often, correct?

Now most upgrades from t4-5, t5-6, the armor upgrade is roughly 100 armor per upgrade. If you think of it from that perspective, as far as AC goes, the sword would be roughly like getting 3 armor upgrades on a slot that doesn't generally offer that kind of stat. By using the sword vs. an equally geared tank using the Brut I'd have 300 more armor than he.

The question basically I can't seem to work out in my mind is this: Since Stam/AC is preferred (guaranteed) over avoidance (luck based), would it also not apply to this weapon, the Unbreakable Will (guaranteed mitigation and threat from higher dmg) over the Brutalizer's chance to hit from +skill (luck based ability to gain threat but lower dmg per hit)?

Any opinions from people who may have tested both weapons would be awesome, as I have yet to see a comparison of the two weapons by t6+ content tanks.

I don't really understand the argument you are trying to make in regard to comparing the weapon damage of those two weapons. The damage is the same.

112-209 = 160.5 average hit
128-193 = 160.5 average hit

Personally, I think you'd find the lower one to be more consistant due to a tighter damage range. Large variance in damage ranges can be bad, due to their unpredictable behavior. If a weapon has the same speed and DPS as another in addition to higher top-end damage, it also means it has (as in this case) lower low-end damage also.

Actually, I would say that Hit% (direct or indirect) is actually a randomness reducer, rather than a random element.

The combat table will have the Miss% in it already, meaning that with either weapon you will have X% chance to lose threat/rage on any given hit.

+Skill directly and reliably reduces that X% chance to (X-Y)% chance, removing random elements and keeping the combat table more consistant. I would not look at +Hit% as "a chance" to increase your hits...to the contrary, it's an assured method to reduce the chance of missing--which is very different, in essence.

Both due to the +skill and the tighter damage range, the Brutalizer will be a much more consistant weapon in terms of threat generation than the Unbreakable Will--which will be more vulnurable to min-damage and miss streaks.

I'd say that one shouldn't look at it so much as +Hit% has "a chance of increasing your threat" as much as one should think of going without +Hit% as having "a chance of reducing your threat."

Regarding the MS/BT threat boosts:
This may buff BT threat more than MS since in defensive stance with a one hander MS wont hit as hard as BT which is just based on AP. Not sure tho, since BT looses the Imp Zerk stance AP buff and AP buff from gear.
Another thing is that faster weapons are better for HS but slower weapons better for MS threat building, tho again faster may be better because of HS. This may further decrease MS viability as a threat builder on its own or compared to BT threat building.

The final thing to consider is how this would affect the need for tanks in OT threat building situations on the same mob such as Gruul or Bloodboil.

I wonder if blizzard's intention is to decrease the number of full specd tanks you need to bring to a raid. For instance, we currently bring 3 but on alot of fights you only need 1-2. I wonder if this would allow us to bring 1 less full speced tank (or at least have him only put 15-20 points into prot).

I havent tested both tho from what i see alot of tanks like to get the Unbreakable will and combine this with the Gauntlets of Enforcement from Teron to still get their diet of +weapon skill.

The DPS value of weapons are the average weapon damage divided by the speed of the weapon, so if both weapons are the same dps and the same speed they have the same average damage. I'd take the weapon skill one over 300 armor any day.

But this is old stuff, here's the new stuff!


In the latest 2.3 patch notes most, if not all, weapon skill stuff has been replaced with the new skill "Expertise" which lowers the target's dodge and parry.

This is a good thing I think, although some may see it as a huge nerf. But to me it's good because it was kinda silly you needed 5 weapon skill, since it was so much better than 4 weapon skill. This new skill rating will give you lowered avoidance, which means less boss parries, and less spike damage in return. Plus it does not conflilct with plain hit rating. It also was kinda silly both hit rating and weapon skill rating decreased your miss chance.

In other news, also a nice stat for pvp so you might not have those pesky clothies dodging your hamstrings...

It's also important to consider that direct parry reduction lowers the damage you take by a rather large margin. Parry-hasted boss attacks contribute a notable portion of the damage a MT takes, all things considered.

So according to Thottbot World of Warcraft: Tactical Mastery the new TM is add % modifier threat of 21%, 42%, 63% for rank 1/2/3. While playing in ZA tonight the OT that went with a 35/0/26 had no threat problems with people MAing off of him.