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Every expansion people find out the name of Kungen and decide to copy his spec, and his spec is *always* wrong from a theory crafting standpoint. This was true in TBC, it was true in LK, and it's true in Cataclysm.
Maybe he knows something everyone else doesn't but I doubt it, more likely he's just proving that you don't need fully optimized spec/gear to down even progression content.
Or he's spec'ing based on their current encounters. SS is pretty useless for add kiting. Imagine life platform for HM conclave. He has piercing howl for his adds, and can intervene the zephyr tank for another 6 second CD there with the safeguard he picked up over HR. The buff on the boss lasts for 15 seconds, which means that the MT on life platform can typically cover 10 seconds with a personal CD, and having intervene covers the last 5. Yes, you can use externals from healers to cover the last half, but remember that they are typically rotating for the frost debuff, so it can be difficult to ensure you have one on your platform when needed. Heck, a 225% damage bonus buff... take all the externals that you can get.
Same-style arguments for heroic Maloriak.
This always comes up, and it gets so frustrating reading post after post about ideal specs. Look at what your guild is working on. Look at your role during that fight. Spec/glyph/consume accordingly.
exactly, while i'm not a fan of people who just dig up Kungen posts, and historically i'm not a Kungen fan, he does what he needs to for the fights they're working on. I got a lot of flack for spec'ing into imp demo and piercing howl and not getting anything past 5 in arms when we were working on HMs in ICC, but we were currently working on downing LDW and my guild opted to use the Premo strat of kiting the adds during phase 2, and well, we got it, because I did what Xav did, and because it didn't appear to be anyone else in my raid who was picking up imp demo in some way or form, so the other tanks and healers loved me in the raid. It's just about using what your specific raid comp needs. I had spec'd safeguard for much of ICC as well because our strategy for doing LK was built around our awesome DK tank who could hold aggro despite me jacking threat constantly, and it was easier on healers to just heal him and not have tank swaps for soul reapers.
In either case, deep wounds, good talent, but not a necessary talent just like it wasn't one in wotlk, it's about your playstyle, your raid needs, and what you personally prefer, i won't ever get it unless for some reason they need my dps/threat to go up a few % to get a boss kill.
Off the top of my head, I can't really think of any reason that Cruelty would be better than Heavy Repercussions unless you simply weren't pressing Shield Block. Cruelty is actually a pretty terrible threat talent if you aren't using it to get down the tree. (The only single-target threat talent worse than it is Improved Revenge.)
As for Deep Wounds: it's still probably the best per-point threat talent you can get outside of core ones like Devastate/Sword and Board. The question is simply if you want the threat or not vs. some utility elsewhere. That's about it.
If you want the DPS/Threat, there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting it. It's a very solid talent for that.
Personally, I don't think it's worth it--but I wouldn't really think too much about it if someone did pick it.
Threat talents pretty much get ranked in the following order for single-target:
Devastate
Sword and Board
Heavy Repercussions (with at least moderate uptime)
Bastion of Defense
Deep Wounds
Incite
War Academy
Hold the Line
Shockwave
Cruelty
Improved Revenge
(BnT is in the middle of the pack somewhere if you are both using Rend in your rotation and you are maintaining the Thunder Clap debuff.)
For the kite tank on maloriak HM you are saving SB for tanking the adds (they spawn in under 30 seconds) yet you still have ~15 seconds of dps on the boss before each dark phase and before the "first" blue/red phase. Cruelty gets you 10% SS damage for those, whereas HR offers nothing. Furthermore, while kiting those adds: if they swing into melee range i'll catch a revenge/thunderclap and a cleave. But often use shield block while kiting for mitigation. SSing while Shield Block is up is actually pretty rare in that encounter.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kojiyama
Pretty unique... but the same holds true for the life platform in To4W.
Still, for a couple of SS's it's kind of a "blah" situation. Not trying to come across as a 'know-it-all' here, just looking at the situations where it is the "right" decision.
Indeed, but if you are using SS so rarely anyway Cruelty is virtually useless anyhow. As I mentioned above, it's a pretty weak threat talent.
If you aren't using it to get down to Tier 2 Fury, it's very skippable for other things. Plenty of other available threat talents (e.g. all of them!) that are better.
With the new war academy from ptr (only +15% devastate damage) it's way more inattractive to get deep wounds and more likely to pick up thunderstruck/cruelty/bnt/safeguard/ph as dps/utility filling talents - at least for me.
I couldn't agree with this more, the most recent PTR patch notes can be found here:Quote:
Originally Posted by klausi
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1765534540
"War Academy no longer buffs Heroic Strike or Cleave. It now buffs Mortal Strike, Raging Blow, Devastate, Victory Rush and Slam."
As far as tanking goes, this talent will lose 15% damage buff to HS and Cleave and gains a 15% damage buff to Devastate, which is absolutely a net loss for this talent. That being said, any lingering hope I had for Deep Wounds has essentially passed with this change. The good news is I'll have 6 points to toss into survivability and utility talents!
Except that with the WA change, devastate will do more damage than revenge (even talented), which is just dumb.
which, as shown in a different thread, removes Revenge from our rotation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nayre
Edit: quote from thread mentioned:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kojiyama