[Meia]

OK, well, I still don't think it is going to change the overall feeling I had at the end of the theory crafting. I guess 8 weapon swings for maybe 100damage each, is about 800damage, or 1,000 more threat. But that is a pretty wild guess.

The fact that I've created a situation where you can generate threat in the most efficient of ways, would in my mind counter that increase, especially since every time you miss a devastate, you'd lose one of those 8 swings as well.

It'd take a bit more mathcraft to figure out, and we'd have to use a base weapon like King's Defender as well.

edit: Hah, you are moving faster than I am Bitesize!

[Bitesize]

Another thing I was wondering about... this situation assumes infinite rage and no need to apply TC or Demo Shout. In other words, the GCDs are all Shield Slam, Revenge, or Devastate. A 6-second rotation would be Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Devastate. So we should be doing twice as many Devastates as Shield Slams or Revenges... more like 11, 11, 22 in 66 seconds rather than 18 Devastates. Also... in a 30-second period, 10 Devastates could be used, rather than 8. (Since we are talking perfect situation here)

I did a spreadsheet based on this, factoring in a 30% reduction of damage due to enemy armor (the Devastate refreshing rotation does better the less damage is reduced by mob armor) and factoring in Defensive Stance + Defiance bonuses. I figured Thunder Clap was probably the only good skill to fill the empty GCDs when not refreshing Devastate, and it can be used once for every twice Devastate can in the rotation, due to its cooldown.

I did a 45-second comparison, 30 seconds for the Sunder debuff to fall off, followed by 15 seconds for the second rotation to apply all 5 Sunders again (we'll ignore that this is 15 seconds out of 45 that melee DPS is slightly gimped). The results I got showed 2058 additional threat for the first rotation, not letting Sunder fall off. That goes up to 2270 with 20% mob armor mitigation, and down to 1845 with 40%.

Based on this, just continuing to use Devastate seems to have every advantage.
A) More threat in the long run.
B) More consistent threat generation.
C) Enemy armor reduction is never lost.
D) More damage dealt to enemy.
E) Simpler and more straightforward.

[Arrowson]

now meia, u know talk like thats only gonna make blizz increase the duration of sunder

[Bitesize]

Sunder duration increase is bad? Heh. Not that it'd really happen.

[Meia]

I tried to account for a little human error, there is no way we can hit every GCD at exactly the correct time and get the full 1slam 1revenge 2devs per cycle. I also tried to get revenge a little bit off the rotation to get it cycling on its 5 second cooldown. Finally, I still prioritized revenge and SS over devastate and that is what reduced those numbers.

Obviously this skews my numbers a bit, but I figured they'd be skewed in a more human way... maybe that isn't so good for theory crafting... but then I direct you to the disclaimer >.>

The lack of something decent to use in place of devastate is really what is going to kill this hypothesis I think. There really aren't that many choices. You can either heroic strike more, or use TC like Bitesize said. You can't sunder, cause you don't want to refresh it. Devastate is obviously out. So you kind of run out of options.

oh well... maybe we can get blizz to buff the sunder time anyway, that'd be a neat side effect.

[Athan]

Not meaning to deliberately throw a wrench in your calculations, but there are a few other factors to consider when deciding whether or not you'll generate more rage letting the sunders fade or continuing to spam devastate. An infinite rage scenario is a great testing ground, but if we're trying to maximize our rage, we'll be hitting heroic strike every chance we get, and that alone will limit our rage. If rage is now a limitation, we have to consider the rage cost of the abilities we could substitute for devastate. The only practical one is thunder clap, which has its own limitations.
Also worth factoring in is the damage you'll be generating with devastate. Although raw damage is less of a concern while tanking than threat, whatever we can add to the overal dps of the group is beneficial. On the subject of damage, one must also consider crit rate and raid buffs to further improve devastate's overall effectiveness. It was suggested earlier that the lower a mob's damage reduction/armor, the more efficient it would be to spam devastate rather than to let the sunders fade, but it's important to note the corollary - as devastate damage increases, spamming it becomes more efficient. It's effectiveness will continue to scale with better gear and raid buffs. Several tanks on the blizzard forums are talking about trading in their block value for crit rating and swapping in slow one-handers - I'm not ready to go that far, but one can certainly see the potential here.
Everything I'm suggesting requires more math than I'd like to consider, but it would take some more selling to convince me to let the sunders fade on purpose

[songster]

Source: Arrowson I don't think a 2k boost in Threat in the middle of the fight is worth the instablity it will bring before the sunders wear off

Cooperation with rogues. Devastate until fully stacked, replace with an improved Expose Armor. Continue tanking as per normal. Rogue then goes back to normal finishers and lets the Expose Armor debuff wear off. When it wears off, tank Devastates back to a full stack, and so on.

While EA is active, your Devastates will only get 119 bonus instead of the 176 you'd get from a 5-stack - i.e. a loss of 57 threat per Devastate. That is more than compensated for by the periodic boost from rebuilding the stack.

Also, while the improved EA is active, all physical DPS (including the tank) will gain 2-3% damage, which more than compensates for the periodic loss while the stack is being rebuilt.

[Bitesize]

People talking about getting crit over block rating now don't know what they're talking about, as I see it. The damage portion of Devastate hasn't changed in the slightest, so if crit wasn't worth it before it isn't worth it now. Not to mention that crit is simply not found on tanking gear, so unless it's something you overgear enough to switch out tanking gear you won't be able to stack crit anyway. In 2.3 if you want threat, stacking expertise, hit and block value is the way to go. Expertise being particularly great.

@songster: That's definitely an interesting idea, and I thought it might have the potential to work out to the most threat, but my calculations showed that it came out 1171 threat short of the normal rotation. Losing not only the extra bonus threat on the Devastates but also the extra 175 damage because of not having Sunders stacked put a major dent in how much threat Devastate generates. (~580 threat with Sunders, ~313 threat without using the assumption of King's Defender, 700 AP, 30% armor reduction)

The Devastate refreshing rotation was 8712 threat over 45 seconds (from just the Devastates... I left other threat out since it doesn't affect the comparison).
Using Thunder Clap while waiting for Sunders to fall off yielded 6653 threat over 45 seconds.
Devastating with improved Expose Armor up until it wears off and Sunders are stacked again yielded 7540 threat over 45 seconds.

So over that 45 second period, the normal rotation yielded 30.93% more threat than the Thunder Clap one and 15.53% more threat than the Expose Armor.

Accounting for human error, lag, etc is kind of difficult, so I pretty much assumed that those things would affect any rotation you were doing. The more GCDs you're trying to squeeze in, the more your rotation could be affected by them but... it doesn't seem likely to me that those factors would make up a 30% threat difference (and for the 15% threat difference, both rotations use the same number of GCDs so they are affected equally).

[phaze]

That's great info; thanks again Satrina!

I've got mixed feelings on Devastate's reduced threat after a full Sunder stack is present. On the one hand, I'm pleased that the Devastate changes aren't going to trivialize normal tanking, nor require a revamp of existing content.

On the other hand, it could be a bit confusing for the layman who wishes to spec Protection: a threat-building move that starts strong, increases, then drops back down sharply? I'm a bit skeptical that all this information will make it into the ability's tooltip.

[Arrowson]

Source: songster Cooperation with rogues. Devastate until fully stacked, replace with an improved Expose Armor. Continue tanking as per normal. Rogue then goes back to normal finishers and lets the Expose Armor debuff wear off. When it wears off, tank Devastates back to a full stack, and so on. While EA is active, your Devastates will only get 119 bonus instead of the 176 you'd get from a 5-stack - i.e. a loss of 57 threat per Devastate. That is more than compensated for by the periodic boost from rebuilding the stack. Also, while the improved EA is active, all physical DPS (including the tank) will gain 2-3% damage, which more than compensates for the periodic loss while the stack is being rebuilt.

is expose armor strong enough to wipe a stack of 5 sunders?

Your not just loseing the 57 threat your also loseing... 175 as well I think from the extra damg u get with 5 sunders on so about 225 less threat per dev overall, I still don't think its worth it

also I was wrong the first time, U don't get an extra 2k threat from waiting for sunders to wear u only get an extra 1.5k

When u include the extra damg from dev I belive the diffrance between the first sunder you lay on and the ones following a full sunder is alot less than were making it out to be.

[Bitesize]

Rogue has to be specced 2/2 Improved Expose Armor to wipe Sunders basically... a 5-point with 2/2 is ~3k armor removed vs. 2.5k.

[Thorigrim]

Thanks for all the testing and number crunching, Satrina. I'm actually looking forward to tanking again after 2.3.

Source: Satrina 3) Once 5 Sunders are stacked, Devastate will refresh the Sunder stack but does not apply a new Sunder, and as such does not gain the threat for a Sunder. Devastate threat at 5 Sunders is (176 + 1/2 damage). 4) You get the Sunder threat as normal in Battle and Berserk stance if you apply one of the first five Sunders. Once 5 Sunders are on, you will only get (176 + 1/2 damage), multiplied by stance modifier/Salvation/etc.

I didn't see it mentioned directly in your testing: Does devastate still do the extra 35 damage * # sunders)?

Should the bolded threat values above be (176 + 1/2 damage + 35 * 5)?

[Satrina]

Yes, they should. Thanks for catching that!

[tlhovis]

ok maybe i missed this somehwere, but say there is more than 1 warrior in the group (OT) wont his devistates hes using for secondary TPS take away the amount that you are able to get before the sunder threat goes away??

[Kazeyonoma]

yes, having OT's spam devastate or Sunder will effectively lower your beginning threat.

Solution: Tell them not to sunder anymore, and instead do what good OT's do during those first threat rotations: Imp Thunder Clap, Imp Demoralizing Shout.

[Bitesize]

Source: tlhovis ok maybe i missed this somehwere, but say there is more than 1 warrior in the group (OT) wont his devistates hes using for secondary TPS take away the amount that you are able to get before the sunder threat goes away??

Yes. It shouldn't be a major issue though... and if it would be, you'd just have to tell other warriors not to use Sunder or Devastate until there's a 5-stack I guess. Depending on the situation, it could easily be better to just let the OT get some of that extra threat. You'd still be getting more threat overall than using Sunder yourself until the 5-stack.

[Armstrong]

Hey Satrina, thanks for the awesome work on this.

I'm starting to put some thought into updating the Devastate FAQ and I was hoping you might confirm a few things I had in mind regarding how to explain the new Devastate mechanics.

I'm tempted to assume that the innate threat numbers come from a fairly simple formula, such as x + y * #sunders. The damage portion already works in a similar way, and Blizzard tends to try to keep things simple that way in general.

So here's how I'm looking at your findings:

The difference between the five innate threat values you posted is 15, 14, 14, 14. Would it be safe to say that the threat value for the first devastate (which applies an innate threat value based on one sunder) might actually be 120 rather than 119, since this would give us a constant value for y = 14 ?

Also your testing doesn't provide a precise value for the innate threat of a Devastate with 0 sunders (expose armor active), but would you agree that we can probably follow the logic above and say that we're looking at 120 - 14 = 106 ?

Assuming that the above isn't too far-fetched, we would be able to say that the mechanic for Devastate's innate threat value follows this simple formula:

106 + 14 * #Sunders

Do I seem to be missing anything? You think some of it should be tested further?

[Satrina]

Yeah, the values I posted have an error range. 120 is probably the true number. That means that Devastate with 5 sunders needs to be checked carefully to see if it's 180 innate and not 175/176

With EA up, Devastate fell out as 116-140 threat, so I think the minimum innate may be 119/120. I can do more careful testing with EA to try and pinpoint it.

[Armstrong]

Source: Satrina Yeah, the values I posted have an error range. 120 is probably the true number. That means that Devastate with 5 sunders needs to be checked carefully to see if it's 180 innate and not 175/176 With EA up, Devastate fell out as 116-140 threat, so I think the minimum innate may be 119/120. I can do more careful testing with EA to try and pinpoint it.

Where you say 180, don't you mean 190? As in 176 + 14?

Just making sure I understand how you're seeing it. If Devastate counts the sunder being applied as being on the mob already for the purpose of determining the innate threat value, then the 119 value would be for a Devastate with one sunder, even if the sunder debuff isn't actually on the mob until you hit Devastate. right?

Wouldn't that mean that the value we're looking to confirm is that of a Devastate with EA up? (i.e. 0 sunders)

I guess it's either that or Devastate really doen't count the sunder being applied. The latter would either mean that the threat value for Devastate with 5 sunders needs to be re-tested, or that Blizzard isn't actually using a formula like the one I suggested and for some reason gave Devastate the same innate threat at 4 sunders and 5 sunders.

Anyway, just trying to make sure I'm following your train of thought.

[Satrina]

Source: Armstrong Where you say 180, don't you mean 190? As in 176 + 14?

No. I'm retesting it right now, but I am certain that at 5 sunders it is 176.

Wouldn't that mean that the value we're looking to confirm is that of a Devastate with EA up? (i.e. 0 sunders)

The result of that is the first one listed in the first post. I'll retest it as well.