Rend = Fail.....Are we so sure?

[Horacio]

Shorty mentioned this and it has been a running joke for the warrior class since the beginning of time. Rend is the most useless skill in the game save for those odd PvP situations where you want to prevent a rogue from vanishing and getting the jump on you again.

Well, I was curious and bored and did some math.

Stats:

Level 75
1532 AP
164.5 Average Weapon Damage
1.7 Attack Speed

Using Rend Rank 9 (Rank 10 is available at level 76)

Formula as per the tooltip:
Rend - Spell - World of Warcraft

Yields an unbuffed damage output of 664.44

Divide by 5 (5 ticks over 15 seconds) = 132.88 per tick
Divide by 15 (seconds, duration of effect) = 44.30 DPS

Costs 7 Rage (10-3 for Focused Rage talent) so 6.33 DMG/Rage

This is on the weak side, using Mallet of the Tards in T5ish gear.

As per Satrina's Threat Values, Rend's threat is damage only.
http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/...at-values.html

So...first, off please point out any flaws seen in my math and/or assumptions.

Further assumptions being that it scales up with AP and weapon damage. Buffs like Kings (via STR) Might, Battleshout, etc will increase the output. The 35% added damage component is not considered above but being as how I witnessed ticks of 197 while out playing around with it means its plausible that my math is ballpark correct if I had a buff up (BS, most likely)

Also not considered: any debuffs added by other classes or talents in other warrior trees that augment the damage done by Rend.

Hypothosis: Rend can add a fair amount of damage and threat if used while tanking mobs that are likely to A.) be effected by it and B.) last long enought for the duration.

[Kazeyonoma]

With the recent changes to Rend, it definitely can add up in terms of damage, especially for Arms warriors it is ABSOLUTELY not useless. Arms warriors are gonna be putting it up to proc Overpower Anyways, and as a side-effect, it ends up being a pretty significant DPS chunk because of the Weapon Damage Coefficient that comes from using big 2 handers.

As for tanking, like you've stated it can add a decent damage and threat if used properly, the question is compared to what other available skills, is it worth it to waste a GCD on rend. And I don't have the math to prove/disprove that right now.

Although... i might start toying with charging into battle with a 2hander equipped, rend, weapon swap to sword/board and shield slam O_o lol

[Horacio]

Ooooh. I was already working on a charge macro but a weapon swap oue would be hotsauce...but maybe a little too exotic for my tastes. Even so, yeah. I am going to macro it to charge and see what happens.

[holmedog]

What you really need to do is find a way to macro starting with a shield, charge, switch to two hand, rend, then switch back. That way you can take full advantage of AttT.

[Horacio]

Ah yes, I hadn't considered that either. I worked with a bare-bones theory assuming no buffs, no tricks, plain vanilla "if I walk up to a mob and rend him...." approach.

If a shield has 7000 armor, rank 3 AttT gives 166.67 AP. Hrm, I expect a big ass 2H would deliver much more damage. But then that's REALLY exotic...

[kolben]

Interesting. I might have to fool around with this some tonight and find a good fit for it. I used to rend all my mobs I was tanking up until say Dire Maul/Scholo, I was actually offended when I found out what other warriors thought about it lol.

[Halgreg]

Interesting. I might have to fool around with this some tonight and find a good fit for it. I used to rend all my mobs I was tanking up until say Dire Maul/Scholo, I was actually offended when I found out what other warriors thought about it lol.

It's a lot like dots on bosses that have aggro wipes. I used to put rend up on Onyxia for that third phase. Now, I don't know if it really did help tip starting threat over back to us during phase transition (unlikely with the old rend) but with the new mechanics, it may be a great way to get a little starting threat during aggro dump phase switches.

[demoniclizard]

Didn't swapping weapons in combat trigger the gcd or did they change something recently?

[Prunetracy]

Didn't swapping weapons in combat trigger the gcd or did they change something recently?

Last I heard, it does trigger the GCD, but it is not affected by it. Meaning you can swap weapons immediately after you perform an ability and lose very little:

0.0 Shield Slam
0.1 Weapon swap to 2h
1.6 Rend
1.7 Weapon swap to 1h/shield:
3.2 Revenge, whatever.

If you were to macro shield slam + swap together, you could probably improve the time to be nearly unnoticeable. I haven't looked into this in a while, but I believe that's how it used to work.

[holmedog]

It's how it worked ~5 months ago. I haven't played with it since then, though.

I used to have a macro to shield slam while devestate spamming. I could get it off with barely noticeable loss on the GCD.

[JPC1086]

Not sure if this one was mentioned but keep in mind that using rend takes away from SnB chance to proc. And even if you were to use it on ur 2nd dev in a SS>rev>dev>dev combo, keep in mind too that if the last dev proced SnB id rather have the free SS then the rend. =p

[holmedog]

How does rend take away from S&B? I've seen S&B proc while I was dual wielding.

[Warwench]

i am sure he is referring to it taking up a GCD that you could use Rev or Dev for.

I am inclined to work it into my soloing charge macro at least. Charge - SS - Rend etc etc.

[JPC1086]

i am sure he is referring to it taking up a GCD that you could use Rev or Dev for.

I am inclined to work it into my soloing charge macro at least. Charge - SS - Rend etc etc.

this =D

[holmedog]

i am sure he is referring to it taking up a GCD that you could use Rev or Dev for.

I am inclined to work it into my soloing charge macro at least. Charge - SS - Rend etc etc.

That's the point of doing the weapon change while the GCD is up (as mentioned above). You can change weapons while the GCD is refreshing. If you have it on macro, you can do it with losing very little (if any) of your GCD cooldown.

[Rhiannon]

He means the GCD you spend on applying rend is a GCD not being spent on dev/revenge and so a GCD that is incapable of providing you with a SnB proc.

[CyCy]

I personally havent used rend in tanking since about the time I learned Dev.

As far as leveling though rend on mouseover is awesome on 3-4 man mobs rending all of them and spamming devastate TC and SW when they are up makes the first kill take longer but allows for execute and VR to be available on 2-4 fairly quickly. I have gottan to the point where if I aggro a single mob I use charge to pick up a few more. For the extra 30secs it takes to kill 3 the extra 8k in exp is well worth it.

[sud]

I use rend and keep it up on most every boss fight, I figure every single shred of damage counts on a fight like patchwerk for example. However this got me thinking, i'm not too sure how many maximum debuffs there are currently, by using rend i'm not taking up an otherwise better used debuff slot am I?

[Jock]

I personally havent used rend in tanking since about the time I learned Dev.

Last time I checked, rend was doing more damage (over time of course) than devastate (unglyphed). The question I have, and will need to look into is where the cutoff is pre/post 75% health on a mob. Aka, where does it start to cause more damage than devastate, where doesn't it?

I usually fill it in if/when shield slam, revenge, shockwave, tclap, and conc blow are all on cd. This doesn't happen often, but it usually allows me to keep rend up. If I have shield block, a SBV trinket, or sunders about to wear off, I'll use devastate, but I'm really rather unimpressed with it's threat/dmg these days.

[smokeykurt]

Rend is not for tanking....

its viable in an ms/overpower spec to proc overpower


your missing out on a chance to proc SnB as was previously mentioned, and it has no additional threat value based on damage, in addition it doesnt apply the sunder armor effect as devastate....making applying any form of rend before 5 devastates pointless...right there...rend for trash is basically useless cause the mob should be dead by then. Devastate also causes additional threat not based on damage...has an additional 15% chance to crit....and procs your largest threat generating ability...sheild slam

a standard rotation assuming low latency would consist of sheild slam, revenge, devistate, devistate

if you proc SnB it looks more like this sheild slam, revenge(possible rage free refreshed shield slam), devistate(possible rage free refreshed shield slam), devistate(possible rage free refreshed shield slam)...any time shield slam procs it restarts your rotation, sheild slam takes ultimate priority, then revenge, devistate to proc sheild slam, in addition to sundering the target....this is your best single target threat generation..using rend is pointless with the other abilities available in tanking...devastate is just as rage efficent, revenge is more rage efficient. both of these deal more tps..in addition to giving you free rage shield slams..which is completely and utterly awesome.

if your using rend to tank with...i dont care how large your two hander macro is...

your messin up

rend=fail for tanking, its not worth the global cooldown with other moves available.


yay case closed