Stealth nerf to devastate?

[Krazyone]

So i got myself the axe off zul'jin and thought I would be hitting harder with it than King's defender but alas i see myself hitting for less with devastate now.

Wow Web Stats

Using this webstats you can see my average devaste on VR last night was for 230 which seems really low. Our MT is hitting for even less as his average was 157 and i just don't get it. The zul'jin axe has a higher top end and higher dps yet i saw myself hitting with king's defender for much harder. My MT says the same thing. Has anyone else noticed this issue?

[Ont]

Devastate Rank 3
15 Rage 5 yd range
Instant
Requires One-Handed Melee Weapon
Sunder the target's armor causing the Sunder Armor effect. In addition, causes 50% of weapon damage plus 35 for each application of Sunder Armor on the target. The Sunder Armor effect can stack up to 5 times.


King's Defender has an average weapon damage of 140, Cleaver of the Unforgiving goes about 158. Devastate is normalized, so AP scaling will increase each weapon's damage by the same amount. That puts Cleaver 18 ahead of devastate in instant damage- but devastate only does 50% of weapon damage.

You'll never do more than 9 damage more per devastate with Cleaver of the Unforgiving versus King's Defender if all other variables (enchants, other gear, buffs) are the same.

Also, Void Reaver has a higher armor value than almost any other boss.

[Krazyone]

I understand this but I have executioner on the axe and mongoose on the sword and yet I remember hitting for a lot more with king's defender. My point is if devastate is not going to be hitting for more with a better weapon it becomes worthless again and using sunder armor would once again becomes better than devastate. I remember using devastate solely because it was hitting for over 250 after the 5 sunders were up and now if its not going to be doing that it sucks. I will have to go back to using sunder armor for threat generation if this is the case.

[Newname]

Yeah I'm the other warrior [Minirage] tanking with Krazy. Raid wise my melee damage has remained consistent over the last few months - this tells me my attk pwr has been somewhat static.

But over this last month my Devastate, after 5 stacks, has dropped by about 30-40 damage. This is ofcourse with full raid buffs, nothing has changed significantly, and my tanking style is constant.

Post patch I was hitting around 210ish average for a full 5/6 SSC clear. Here is a link for SSC clear on the 29th Nov: Minirage - WWS

The following week I went from 210ish to 185ish. Now to current date I went from that to 155ish.

I too have the Zuljin axe. But I also have blazefury. Swapping both weapons over the course of last night proved that there is no error with Zuljin axe. Hmmm.

[veneretio]

Did you used to have a Warrior with Solarion's Trinket in your group for Battle Shout? or a Shaman with Improved Totems that no longer does?

Also, its more likely that they stealth buffed VR's armor than anything else. That being said, I haven't noticed any change in Devastate damage.

[Mordigen]

I do not go up against VR yet, but I have been using KD for some time now, I have upgraded some armor, but more in the stats of armor and health and probably less attack power if anything, but I have not noticed a change in the damage much. I do not keep good track of this since I was not expecting a change but I will have to have a look at the combat log a little better and see if I notice. You have to also remember that devastate has the ability to crit as well, which is an added bonus over sunder armor too.

[Krazyone]

Ok ignore VR as my example as thats not what im trying to say. If you look at even Alar my devastates are averaging 240 or so with the new and "better" tanking weapon yet when i used kings defender I was hitting for more all the time. I am just trying to figure out why that is happening. Also minirage is hitting for less as well and its just not making sense to us.

[veneretio]

Ok ignore VR as my example as thats not what im trying to say. If you look at even Alar my devastates are averaging 240 or so with the new and "better" tanking weapon yet when i used kings defender I was hitting for more all the time. I am just trying to figure out why that is happening. Also minirage is hitting for less as well and its just not making sense to us.

Well assuming that the trinket and shaman question are a no too then. Did you possible used to have more Paladins so that you guys go Blessing of Might and you aren't getting it anymore? Just try to think about what other variables may have changed b/c I honestly don't believe Devastate is the issue here.

[Krazyone]

had 4 paladins last night like normal all the usual buffs thats why im thinking something happened with devastate cuz it just doesn't make sense.

[Horgar]

I havent noticed any diff. Is your axe skill maxd? Have you seen if the low hits are glancing? Other things to think about are whether the whole raid is doing full armor debuffs.

Have you tried to see if ony has more deep breaths? /duck. just teasin

[Newname]

The group set ups have not changed. The buffs remain the same. The raid is practically the same. Same server time. Same server. Same guild. Same computer. Same same same same. afaik

Even if it did change, it would not account for a drop of ~50 devastate damage.

Look at my last solarian kill (last night). Average Devastate = 176!:

Minirage - WWS

And one from 19th November Solarian kill. Ave Dev = 252:

Minirage - WWS

252 is about what I'm typically used to seeing. 176 is alarming to the state of panic. Here is my armory: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...ale&n=Minirage

Again, nothing has changed, atleast nothing to make this drastic change. I have the same spec, same same same same same....you get the idea ok?

edit: has nothing to do about axe skill (I know you are just trying to help). Krazy and I do not sit in the short bus, we know the obvious. I even swapped blazefury and backed to zuljin axe during solarian...nothing helped.

[Horgar]

Most of the stats are pretty out of whack. Look at shield slam is down, miss rate is completely different. The mitigated stat is higher across the board. You can't get me to believe devastate is the only thing different on that report. If your debuffs/buffs/gear and other all all the same on the mob for the whole fight there's a bigger problem than devastate. Or possibly the RNG is just crapping all over you on that fight.

EDIT: The higher dmg one also shows you getting battle shout twice. It's not going to create a 100 pt diff in dmg but there are just too many variables for it to show anything conclusive about devastate.

P.S.S. the max hit for devastate on the first report was on a solarian priest. Having varying armored mobs just adds another variable but looking at alar some of the trends continue. Hismiss rate was way up on the first one and way down on the 2nd one but avg hits down, too. It's like he had a much higher +hit on the 2nd round but must have given up something.

[Tharr]

Go to Blasted Lands, pick one of the imortal mobs, don't buff yourself with anything, start killing it. Switch weapon midfight to see if there actually is a difference. That's the best I can come up with to see if it's actual devastate or something else.

[Horgar]

Well here's one test. I went to find a homogenous <sp> mob to work on. I used no buffs and found a mob with no AP/dmg debuffs. I turned the combat log on after 5 sunders were up and turned it back off after the mob died before engaging anything else (I think maybe a white swing snuck in on one without sunders).

Fireguard 94-176dmg, 1.6s +7dmg enchant
AP: 868
imp 1h talent 5/5

block value 293
shield mastery

imp thunderclap 3/3

Let me know if I'm missing any stats here that are required to figure what should be the exact numbers. All targets had 5 sunders -2600 armor. I have no ignore armor. The whole thing was done in battle stance.

Horgar - WWS

white dmg - ((94+176)/2 + 7 + (868/14)*1.6)*1.1= 265.32 avg white hit before mitigation
actual avg = 179
~33&#37; mitigation

71 weap dmg avg with enchant 74.4 from AP normalized dmg
145.4 dmg * 1.1 = 159.94 dmg
+175 from bonus
334.94 devastate calculated avg
244 avg actual with full bonus
~27% mitigation


246 full TC dmg
171 avg with -2600 armor
~30% mitigation



shield slam calc? I r dont know it off hand... but so far everythings pretty much in line. pre-sunder it looked to have about 40% mitigation as my TC was hitting for 145-147. My initial devastate was hitting for ~85-100 which agrees with 40% mitigation with no sunder bonus. This indicates the dmg was applied before the sunder and no bonus was given. Maybe that's what's changed? The sunder effect is coming after dmg and before it was coming after? That could skew an overall average pretty bad. But it shouldn't mess up the max value... that 349 musta been on a priest(cloth) with full armor debuffs and possibly dmg bonus buffs.

[Brucimus]

I once forgot to train up Shield Slam and devastate to the max ranks after one of my many respeccs ....Not saying this is what happened here...but :-D

[Newname]

I once forgot to train up Shield Slam and devastate to the max ranks after one of my many respeccs ....Not saying this is what happened here...but :-D

I sincerely apologize, lol. This is exactly what happened to me. I guess, last week, when I was drinking some wine I was in a hurry to respec from pvp to protection. We all had a good laff this morning, at my expense

Neat thing is, I was still able to hold aggro for a week's worth of raiding and near 1k tps =D

Krazy's issue, on the otherhand, is unrelated to mine.

[Taelas]

It's not an uncommon occurance.

[Narshe]

It has happened to all of us once.
I remember not able to hit more than 700 tps with my agro gear, and wiping once due to that -_-

[Mordigen]

LOL that is funny, sorry to hear that, but glad you were able to maintain. I was just going to point out you went from 4% crit with devastate to 14% crit with devastate between those fights, that is a big difference there. Alls well that ends well.