Upcoming HS + War Academy nerf = ouch for prot warriors?

Heroic Strike damage has been reduced by 20%.
War Academy no longer buffs Heroic Strike or Cleave. It now buffs Mortal Strike, Raging Blow, Devastate, Victory Rush and Slam.

So with those two upcoming changes, and basically those prot warriors who spec'd in to War Academy and in the end, some specing in to deep wounds. What are your thoughts on this?

I quite enjoy war academy, and look at this as being basically a 35% dmg nerf to HS for prot. I understand how HS is insane for fury/arms and the need to try and tone it down, but wasn't quite expecting to be neutered as prot in the process.

It kind of makes me think how prot warriors are going to go back to the wotlk days where we still do great threat, but the dmg output is far less than what other tanks can put out when we get nerfs such as this coming in at us.

I'd like to see them add it in to increase damage for Shield Slam as well, but I've no clue if they will end up adding it, though it would make sense to to keep deep wounds open. I just don't think the devastate alone addition will be enough in my books with how lackluster devastate is, unless they buff the dmg for dev on top of this bonus. Just frustrating to see the nerf stick getting thrown down hard so quickly, though I should be used to it by now after 6 years of being prot, heh.

Kojiyama has been doing research and if you spec into 3/3 war academy, and completely drop revenge and imp revenge from your rotation, you will see a dps/tps increase that is not trivial.

So it's back to two button mashing again basically? Sweet. Bring on the snorefest macro.

Anyone that didn't see this coming from a mile away is lying to themselves.

There's no reason our "rage dump" ability should do 50-100% MORE damage than the #1 ability in our rotation. IMO, they aren't going far enough - more damage needs to be moved to our GCD based abilities with less emphasis on HS. I'd rather see the difference between zero HS usage and max HS usage be only a 10% difference in overall DPS, instead of the 30+% it is now.

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Originally Posted by Kazeyonoma

Kojiyama has been doing research and if you spec into 3/3 war academy, and completely drop revenge and imp revenge from your rotation, you will see a dps/tps increase that is not trivial.

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Is that after the nerf kaz ?

like we put 3/3 into war academy still and spam devastate again and totally ignore revenge ?

Yeah, I posted in a couple threads (won't C&P spam it again!) but if you take War Academy, Devastate overtakes Revenge in damage in most cases even with Improved Revenge--which means that unless you are significantly rage-starved, it will be quite practical to simply drop Improved Revenge and Revenge out of your normal rotation and drop Revenge from the rotation completely.

Rather unfortunate and I'm hoping for a Revenge buff. Seems like we've come full-circle back to how they adjusted things some months back in ICC--which did lead to Revenge getting a sizable increase in damage eventually.

The nerf to Heroic Strike is not unexpected though. It should have happened before Cata launched, honestly. It was overtaking all of the signature abilities with high AP, which just wasn't right.

hmm interesting ... will give this a whirl when the nerf happens .. nice work

With the new changes we can fit in impeding victory without losing anything(get rid of b&t and imp revenge). The 20k hp heal every 3-5 seconds for free is kind of nice now that I think about it, whenever I'm doing al'akir, maloriak, halfus drakes and other such situations.

I thought devastate scaled very poorly with ap, or am i mistaken? So that most abilities will overtake devastate once we get a bunch of ap from vengeance.

Devastate gets 2.4 points of damage per 14 AP(2.76 with war academy). +15% from crit. It's weaker than shield slam and heroic strike obviously, however I guess it would be better than revenge.

I remember at one point in wotlk Revenge was hitting like a wet noodle and you could spam devastate with intermittent shield slams. Then they buffed revenge and made it hit like a truck. Now they're making the same mistake over again. History repeats itself when goofballs like the Blizzard devs are in charge.

I'd keep 2/2 Imp Revenge for 5 mans and trash. It's too useful. Also, revenge is a nice chunk of damage early in fights where rage might be an issue.

Yeah, Devastate's ~20% AP scaler is not particularly impressive unless compared to the even smaller coefficient of Revenge.

Honestly, this is the type of thing Warriors will have to keep their eye on as time goes by. As Vengeance pulls our AP higher and higher over the expansion, it's quite possible that our rotation priorities will change yet again unless they rebalance things.

Devastate relies very heavily on base damage even now, which will cause it to scale poorly.

so the long and short of it is...... HS and rev are useless in a single target spec. is that correct?

Nah, Heroic Strike will still be spammed on CD because it's on its own GCD provided you have enough rage. You will just have to be careful that it does not interfere with your primary rotation once it is not our hardest-hitting ability. (However, only a 20% nerf will still leave it as a very strong ability.)

Koji, you forget Devastate scales with weapon DPS as well.
So you get an extra inch on that wet noodle every content patch, yay!!

ok, so single target rotation as of 4.0.6 should look somthing like:

ss
dev
sw or cb
rend/tk

is that correct?

Even if WA brings Dev above Revenge, is it worth the talent points to take it? Personally, unless it's a huge difference in TPS, I think I'd rather keep Revenge in my rotation. First reason is that if more mobs happen to join the fight, having Revenge hit two targets at once is far nicer than having a slightly harder hitting devastate. The second reason is that it's more fun to have Revenge in the rotation, and it's more useful from a rage standpoint. If I can revenge instead of devastate, I get what, 13 more rage to work with? The biggest reason is the fun factor, though, I think. I like having 3 rotational abilities rather than 2.

in terms of single target rotation only... i belive what kojiyama has been working on shows the threat gain is not trival. sure i am not happy about droping rev at all. its probily fav ability as a prot warrior. however, for a true single target rotation, if it the way to go then so be it.

hey kojiyama, im courious if deep wonds procs off or rend ( upfront or dot tics) or thunderclap..

if it dose, might this make up for lost cleave damage? id be really interested to see if its viable for an aoe situation.thanks.

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Originally Posted by Reev

having Revenge hit two targets at once is far nicer than having a slightly harder hitting devastate.
If I can revenge instead of devastate, I get what, 13 more rage to work with?

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Both of those are very good points. The second one I think is definately something to consider.

Each Revenge is saving you 1/3 of a HS worth of rage. So by keeping Revenge in your rotation, you will be doing more HSs which is almost assuredly more DPS than straight Dev spam.