[Snitsky]

I've wondered about this since the buff to Devastate in 3.2, but haven't had a reason to actually worry about it until now. However, now that Burnished Quel'Serrar is available and I'm still stuck with a Titanguard, I was wondering about it in general terms.

Are bigger devastate hits worth less heroic strikes?

[krc]

Wartotem has a spreadsheet which you can use to figure out which rotation and weapon is the best for you but right now in my case with the devastate buff the most efficient thing is to get a slow weapon while doing Shield Slam, Devastate, Devastate, Devastate.

[orcstar]

Playing with wartotems spreadsheet, with 2 t9 and 2 t8 and a 2.6 weapon the result was that with a rotation of only Devastate and no shield slams or revenges I got the highest dps and tps, can that be right?

[Celandro]

Up your block value, and dont forget to test the shield block up values.

But.. its very close

I've been using the furious glad 1her for both effective health and threat reasons since 3.2

From my numbers, for a 1.5 speed weapon to be more threat than a 2.6, you need greater than 90% heroic strike up time. Or to put it another way, if you are doing 50% heroic strikes with a 2.6 speed weapon, you would need to do 65% heroic strikes with a 1.5 speed weapon.. Total rage used in this scenario is equal as is total threat. There are more chances of parry haste with the slower weapon but the slower weapon will tend to not have any mitigation on it (outside agility).

[WarTotem]

Source: orcstar Playing with wartotems spreadsheet, with 2 t9 and 2 t8 and a 2.6 weapon the result was that with a rotation of only Devastate and no shield slams or revenges I got the highest dps and tps, can that be right?

Yup, that can be right, I noticed it myself as well

[Eravian]

I've actually started using Razorscale Talon in my prot spec over my Peacekeeper's Blade... largely because Titanguard never dropped... but still, a slow weapon with Devastate definitely gives very good threat gen, and although a 3-4k crit isn't as impressive as a big shield slam, you get a lot of them (although I still throw out Shield Slams, too).

[WarTotem]

Overall rule of thumb is that with Glyph of Devastate, you mainly use Devastate and Shield Slam untill you have T8+T9 2piece combo. Shield Slam gives you roughly the same amount of threat as Devastate, but with 20-30% extra damage. Revenge can never beat Devastate threat, but does hang in between Devastate and Shield Slam damage.

Further more, in any situation where you aren't constantly rage capped, a slow weapon with Deep Wounds beats a fast one. At 50% Heroic Strike rate, slow and fast are almost equal in TPS, while the slow one uses less rage and does more DPS. On top of that slow weapons reduce parry haste on all bosses that don't hit hard enough to give you that infinite rage scenario.

[Satrina]

WarTotem, are you running simulations to derive these results? I'm not disagreeing with your statements out of hand, but I am interested in how you come to the conclusions. I've seen a lot of people do pretty bad math to prove an incorrect point, so there's an understandable desire to see what's going on behind the scenes.

A lot of people talk about 50% HS uptimes. The only reason one would not have 95%+ HS uptime is if one keyboard turns for whatever daft reason. Snap 180 degrees (actually, a little less will do) with your mouse to guarantee a hit when your rage is getting low, and then back at it.

[Magnuss]

Yeah I don't want to discount Wartotems logic because I know he has put alot of time into configuring the math but it hasn't become common tanking bible knowledge yet simply because of how uniquely odd it seems. In my gear with raid buffs and a slow dps weapon I should never hit anything else but devastate :-/... just seems very off to me.

[WarTotem]

I've not done any computer simulations, as those are prone to errors just as much as any other player-made math, but I have compared the spreadsheet numbers with those I gained from doing the daily & ToC heroics and the match pretty well (minus some lucky streaks and <100% buff uptimes etc).

My Warrior is currently stationed on alt position though, due to guild setup, so I can't exactly test a full 25man optimal group (yet).

I do have to correct my earlier statement about HS, in the way that I assumed Deep Wounds spec with that. Without Deep Wounds a fast weapon is indeed better in pretty much all situations I can think of.

[Celandro]

Source: Satrina WarTotem, are you running simulations to derive these results? I'm not disagreeing with your statements out of hand, but I am interested in how you come to the conclusions. I've seen a lot of people do pretty bad math to prove an incorrect point, so there's an understandable desire to see what's going on behind the scenes. A lot of people talk about 50% HS uptimes. The only reason one would not have 95%+ HS uptime is if one keyboard turns for whatever daft reason. Snap 180 degrees (actually, a little less will do) with your mouse to guarantee a hit when your rage is getting low, and then back at it.

Wow.. I feel really silly now.. Ive never intentionally taken a hit to up my threat. I can see how that would have been useful on a fight like hodir. I really don't think its neccessary any more though. If you absolutely need more threat, running 2 piece T8, 2 piece T9 with would generate enough threat without having to worry about messing around with rage generation.

That said, what fights would you suggest intentionally getting hit for in ToC? I don't see it being a useful techinque for current content but maybe Im wrong.

[Satrina]

Suggest isn't a good word. If you are getting low on rage, you just turn around no matter what the fight is. Clearly it's a moot point on Gormok, but sometimes you just find yourself low on rage and it's a very quick fix.

Honestly, this entire debate is a fairly moot issue. The difference between 2.6 weapon with Devastate spam versus 1.6 weapon with Devastate and Shield slam -- we're talking differences of maybe a couple of hundred TPS and probably even less DPS. I would suggest that choosing gear simply to reduce the amount of work you need to do to generate threat is not as useful as gearing for survival or whatever hapens to be best for a particular fight, which is very rarely threat. You can always turn out of an avoidance streak for rage, but you can't change your gear until the next attempt.

Maybe that's cynical, but making threat a no-brainer really drained me of a lot of worrying about it all.

[drae]

My paladin brother used to "sit" to refill his mana in TBC. Your auto crit if your sitting iirc. (I know it is in PvP, but I don't recall for sure in PvE). Then you automatically stand up after one hit.

Basically the same thing as spinning your toon, but without the chance of eating more then one hit if you fubar it up. (And it doesn't move your camera if your bad!)

[WarTotem]

The problem is that sitting basicly guarantees twice the damage taken as turning, and that together. Something your healers surely won't like!

[Satrina]

Sitting is a guaranteed crit, yes. Back in the day that was no problem. Today your raid leader will have to get in line behind your healers for the lynching.

[Warloco]

Source: drae My paladin brother used to "sit" to refill his mana in TBC. Your auto crit if your sitting iirc. (I know it is in PvP, but I don't recall for sure in PvE). Then you automatically stand up after one hit. Basically the same thing as spinning your toon, but without the chance of eating more then one hit if you fubar it up. (And it doesn't move your camera if your bad!)

If hits happen at the same time you can still eat more than 1 crit at a time doing this. I do it very often in heroics.

[AxLxExX]

Source: Warloco If hits happen at the same time you can still eat more than 1 crit at a time doing this. I do it very often in heroics.

I don't know that you being crit by a heroic boss is quite the same as someone being crit by Vezax or XT (just picked random uld bosses...)

[Sirloinsteak]

tbh there isn't 2 piece's of T9 or T8.5 that i would consider using for tanking atm ... if you need more threat your doing something wrong .. so i dunno what other point there is to doing this atm ... if ur guildies arnt doing enough dmg to kill stuff at this point in the game ... id consider replacing them, not trying to gear the tank for way to much threat or dmg, i would have thought that EH and avoidance were key atm

[shiz98]

Was away for a while, so I didn't get the chance to chime in on this discussion...

Further more, in any situation where you aren't constantly rage capped, a slow weapon with Deep Wounds beats a fast one. At 50% Heroic Strike rate, slow and fast are almost equal in TPS, while the slow one uses less rage and does more DPS. On top of that slow weapons reduce parry haste on all bosses that don't hit hard enough to give you that infinite rage scenario.

I both disagree and agree with some statements here. I've been in the process of updating my Slow/Fast tanking weapon speadsheet with the changes made since 3.2 launched, and from what I have right now the result I'm getting (which is still skewed in slow's favor, slightly) is that past 50% uptime, fast pretty much wins for threat. It's quite easy to hit that level of HS uptime even if you're short on rage.

we're talking differences of maybe a couple of hundred TPS and probably even less DPS

At any reasonable gear level the biggest difference possible is pretty much always less than 50 TPS. It's quite small. Where the comparison is useful is in comparing "upgrades." Back in Naxx, it turns out that Broken Promise was actually a threat loss compared to Slayer of the Lifeless (not counting expertise, which might have closed the gap). It's an edge case for sure, but there's still some use in it.

I've uploaded my spreadsheet with this post; IIRC its HS damage numbers are slightly off, because it's missing the 5% damage increase and the armor changes.

[WarTotem]

Using your spreadsheet and a 1.6vs2.6 speed weapon I find the 5000 AP turning point around 75% HS uptime.

In my own spreadsheet this lies a little lower, mostly because:
* Damage Shield can't crit anymore
* You seem to have only used 1 number for crits/second for Deep Wounds, although it can differ a lot (e.g. not using Revenge ups it, having to Demo Shout yourself lowers it, ....)
* They're just plain different :P

I redid my tests on my spreadsheet now though, and either there were some bugs I have since straightened out, or I simply turned the numbers around, because indeed, a +50-60% HS uptime favors fast weapons in terms of TPS

Slow weapons are still better DPS though, in about any reasonable circumstance I can think of