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

[Khordam]

This just in to the weaponswitchers...

Switching weapons a) triggers GCD and b) resets the swing timer. IOW, you should take damage (and thus rage) lost from white swings not going out into account.

[redrum657]

For tanking ide say that your weapon speed would have to be significantly slower in order to take precedence over devastate (Assuming shield slam and revenge are on CD).

Another situation would be when the boss goes into the air or some sort of phase where you cannot damage it from the ground (Example being nightbane).

Also with the correct buffs a slower weapon it can do more dmg hence more threat. I dont have certain math to prove this right now but its pure opinion. My rend says it will do 950 dmg buffed in raid and the higher dmg with 75% or more health. Theoretically if rend isnt mitigated by the mobs armor then it can do up to 1300 for me. Which for 7 rage is better than heroic strike and devastate.

[Jock]

Don't forget. If revenge + gimmick abilities (conc blow, shockwave, tclap) are on cd and Shield slam is ~1.5 seconds from being back up, the only thing you gain from using devastate over rend is a chance to get a free shield slam. This means that your sword and board proc gives you only the rage component of it's "benefit". In other words you loose the cooldown reset of shield slam making the proc less effective.

If the ability is LESS rage and causes our best proc to be less effective, why use it? Why not increase the effect of the sword and board procs by not using something that procs it on the last gcd by sneaking in something else if it's available. If nothing is available, fine... devastate, but otherwise, why?

I hardly ever devastate anymore. Usually it's just to refresh the sunder stacks. Especially once I get 5 stacks up against a raid boss and it is above 75%.

[Kavtor]

I've started playing with Imp. Rend, and it seems to be working reasonably well. While tanking, I really only use it on the 4th GCD if S&B didn't proc, and conc blow and shockwave are on CD. But on some of the multi tank encounters where I'm OTing, then DPSing the boss it's worked out to a fair chunk of my damage.
With Mangle up I get it ticking for just under my devastate damage, depending on what weapon I'm using, although my weapons are still pretty terrible.

[Horacio]

I've been running with it macro'd to charge and with the mob at above 75% health, thus triggering the 35% increase to its damage, it amounts to a fair bit of DPS. Debuff slots are unlimited as per blue but there is a limit to what is shown graphically. You're not knocking off a curse of doom.

eh, I like to think I can make all the tools at my disposal work. In the end, it might not be the best option but it does deliver some threat and damage at a relatively low cost and being able to say you used rend on a raid boss is full of awesome.

[Ranx]

i have been thinking about this too, at the moment im using a dw build. As you all know in this build you normaly take imp hs and imp charge to get down to impale. But after playing around with rend i have started to concider using it and also switching the points in imp charge into imp rend instead. granted the extra rage from imp charge is cool, but i mean bloodrage and normal charge holds quite a bit of rage as it is. Also due to chain pulling etc you usualy have left over rage from previous pack. Any thoughts on this??

[Halgreg]

The 15/5/51 spec with Improved Rend fantastic in situations where protection warriors have to deal damage when not getting hit. I use it all the time for its excellent damage to rage efficiency.

[CyCy]

Specced into imp rend IM liking it alot. mouseovered on the trash it's a nice way to stay 2 or 3 in the dps meters. And very nice for the flying bosses that clear their aggro when they land helps in the off chance of miss clicking and being #2 to the boss

[Lightmgl]

I'm one to call rend an epic pile of fail any chance I get but tonight I started crunching the real theorycraft. Tomorrow I will try it in actual raid.

Excluding Crits:
Anyways devastate is 505 + .5 Weapon Damage * .75 armor = 378.75 + .375 weapon damage

Rend is 380 + Weapon Damage and ignores armor

Now the first thing that jumps out at me. On a per AP basis devastate gains .375 damage for every 1 point of damage rend gains. Rend scales almost 3 times as fast and the static damages are virtually equal. This means when looking at a non crit devastate on a debuffed raid boss you are looking at a move that should immediately be doing more then your non crit devastates.

Now you get to the magic. You can add +20% to that damage via talents, +30% via. You also gain an additional 35% at 70%+ health. Now, to be thorough.

Under 70% health cumulative: 1.2 dmg with talents, 1.56 with trauma, 2.184 with the glyph.

Over 70% health cumulative: 1.62 dmg with talents, 2.106 with trauma, 2.94 with the glyph.

In addition to this the base damage also scales with these abilities so that 380 becomes much higher. Devastate does not stand a chance vs scaling like this. It only takes a just over 300 points of weapon damage to have rend with just trauma + talents outdamage a crit devastate under 70% which is the worst possible situation (no glyph, no health bonus) in a 25 man raid.

At raidbuffed endgame weapon damage of 650-750 @ 1.6 you'd be talking about an attack that is 20% more effective vs a crit devastate with just the talent and glyph and nearly 3 times as good as a non crit devastate. This will just continue to scale more and more in favor with rend as you gain ap and stronger weapons.

If you add the glyph in or the mob is above 70% health it just becomes silly.

Correct me if I'm wrong but devastate has no bonus threat once sunder is stacked so I think its pretty clear that rend is going to be pretty superior to devastate in all cases once you pass a certain # even with sword and board taken into account. You begin looking at gains around double the damage of a crit devastate and as high as 4 or 5 times a non crit devastate when you add the glyph in and above 70% health just doesn't even need to be mentioned at this point because it is simply icing on the cake.

The real math test would be if using a 2.5 weapon to rend would add enough difference in combination with deep wounds, rend, and devastate to surpass the heroic strike marker. There would have to be a magical AP number where eventually the DPS lost from HSing 36% less will be made up for by the significant boosted damage in rend and deep wounds combined with the small increase with devastate.

The question is, will that number be attainable? This may put us a step closer to slower weapons being viable. It will take our new glyph and some seriously complicated math to figure that one out. A crit HS on a 1.6 weapon is something like a gain of 680 tps over an autoattack and a crit HS on a 2.5 is something like 435 TPS. Bla bla glancings and impale but You only need to make up a few hundred TPS purely from the weapon switch before that gap is covered. By my quick guesses I don't think that gap can quite be covered yet but its gonna get smaller and smaller as we move through raiding tiers.

I'm not calling rend a huge pile of fail anymore. It is looking like a notable TPS upgrade in a rotation that will grow stronger through the expansion. You can call me an idiot for this, but I think the math certainly shows that it requires some serious testing. It could be as high as a few hundred TPS in gains over that devastate it replaces.

[Aethelas]

What amazes me throughout this whole debate is the fact that tanking warriors are modelled around devastate and the abilities proccing of it. It's one of those defining protection warrior talents.

Yet wherever we turn we find better alternatives... shockwave, concussive blow, rend...

I cannot argue with the maths on this - it seems pretty solid to me. It does however seem like a fluke in the design of synergy for a protection warrior. Don't get me wrong; I love complicated dynamic rotations, really do. But well - this just strikes me as really odd and unintentional from Blizz's part.

[Lightmgl]

Well once again it relates to Blizzard's old problem with warriors. They suck at making us scale properly. Devastate is already so low on the list and now it is going to get pushed down another notch. Really it only needs to be used a couple of times every 30 seconds to be refreshed so any threat alternative once it is stacked is a good one.

Rend is also more rage efficient though the difference is negligible for practical purposes. I just could not believe my eyes when I saw my non crit rend doing more then a crit devastate on a dummy with just trauma and the talent. I subtracted the bonus for being over 70% and it was still higher. My jaw dropped.

Alot of our moves scale oddly. Thunderclap should be used before Devastate too beyond a certain AP level. Its scaling at 156 damage per AP with improved vs devastate just under .06 with a 1.6 weapon. Thats 2.5 times better. It should surpass devastate around the high 4000s ap including weapon damage on the KT axe. Does it still have it's bonus threat? Hell can it even be dodged or parried either? I've never noticed one. Bonus threat and lack of dodge/parry would reduce that ap benchmark by alot.

IMO anything that is in the prot tree or increased by the prot tree should proc Sword and Board with rend also having an argument even though it is technically an arms move. They did this to fury, I don't see why they will not do it to us. The alternative would be to increase the proc chance and they will never do it because it would be imbalanced in pvp.

[larson]

Hooray people are actually starting to pay attention to this. I posted this on the third page of Ciderhelm's "Protection Warriors - Increase Your Damage" thread and got completely ignored. Now that people are looking, I'll re-post below:

One thing I'll be doing is starting to use Rend as part of my tanking rotation, as I've now specced into Imp Rend over Imp Charge.

Rend hits hard for that first 25%.. the fact it gets buffed by Mangle so much makes it incredible. Using my Last Laugh, I'm hitting target dummies for 1530.. factor in raid buffs and a feral's mangle (30% more) and that damage shoots up. If you really want to min-max, you can switch to a slow weapon immediately after your last ability to minimize the reset of the GCD, Rend, then switch back.

This would make the priority with Rend not up:
S&B Shield Slam > Revenge > Shield Slam > Concussion Blow > Shockwave > Rend > Devastate - I'm not convinced waiting for the GCD before Shield Slam is up is even necessary for Rend.

Of course, you never Rend again until the last one falls off.

Added information since then: For what it's worth, you don't need to wait until the GCD before SS to use Rend. The biggest problem with incorporating Rend is that Devastate has a very real chance of falling off without proper attention because of how rarely it is used.

It is also important to remember that Devastate is fourth in the priority list (behind SS, Revenge, and S&B SS) until five stacks are up.

[Rustyhelm]

It is also important to remember that Devastate is fourth in the priority list (behind SS, Revenge, and S&B SS) until five stacks are up.

This was true till that made dev no longer give threat from the sunder it's just a Dmg + I wanna say 5% of ap as threat.

[larson]

You want the five stacks up to improve raid damage, this has nothing to do with threat. The only reason you don't just start with 5 devastates is so that the DPS doesn't just sit there playing with themselves while you generate no TPS.

[Lightmgl]

One really annoying thing I noticed in my testing last night. Improved rend is bugged, when you spec it you end up with an older version of rend with bonus damage at 90% and not 75%. Really annoying.

Anyways last night in 25 man my rends were ticking for just under 500 outside of the bonus with just trauma and improved rend. Thats 2500 over the duration. A slow weapon improved that number slightly doing about 640 a tick. So like my estimates the rend is doing significantly more damage and threat vs a crit devastate and even more with the high health bonus (which hopefully they fix next patch).

Now theres definitely downsides. Rend will not have a 100% uptime because it is difficult to mix into the rotation. You also have to be very careful not to overlap it or you'll start losing threat. Also a slow weapon over a fast weapon only showed a gain of 90 TPS which is not enough to counteract the loss of heroic strike threat so that is probably a wash.

Under optimal conditions (high health boss, glyph, the works) you'd be looking at a gain of around 200 TPS. Once the boss drops below the high hp threshhold it is more around a 120-130 tps gain. To me it is kinda hard to justify the effort.

[JackDanielz]

Stop scaring thousands of prot warriors with the idea of using slow tanking weapons ! ...

No, seriously - i doubt that macros for "slow-weap-rends" give a considerable threat boost as such macros tend to have problems with lags and stuff...

Let's just stick to fast weapons and HS + SS > rev > rend > dev , k? (for threat)

edit:
i hope im wrong but... lets assume rend does 1500 base dmg without any buffs / talents / glyphs...
with the new glyph ( + 6 sec ) we can increas its duration by 40% (21/15=1.4)
so with mangle, imp rend, and the new glyph it does 1500*1.2*1.3*1.4 = 3276 dmg per gcd... in comparison my shield slam does 2,5k avg with the 770 bonus threat that's 3270. prove me wrong but it looks like rend is equal to SS 0o

[Lightmgl]

Thats a real low shield slam average compared to me and my rend damage is a tad lower with my fast weapon, 1500 is about on par for my slow weapon.

I was all gungho at first but the micromanagement started to get to me. It'll be interesting to see how it scales up in future gear though since the gap will just grow. Need to crunch some math on which glyphs add the most TPS. In Rend's case the glyph is technically useless if you can refresh it near immediately as it drops.

Definitely something I'm gonna keep my eye on though. Part of the slow weapon equation at the moment is heavily negated by the huge dps gain on the final tanking axe over the alternative 2.5. Its really hard to compare when you don't have an equal level 2.5 weapon to that axe. If they put in some 2.5s with the highest dps available though I would definitely do some serious testing again.

I'm more concerned about aoe threat still anyways and rend will be little to no help with that since the tps just isn't high enough for a significant difference in a large mob encounter. Maybe if rend was AoE it'd be more interesting.

[JackDanielz]

yes... i wanted to edit that again... i took the 1500 from my test on the target dummy, which was with the 1.35 bonus for over 75% hp and the 1.2 from talents - so my fault :P
my SS is actually at 4200 threat pre mitigation ((990 base+1300BV)*1.1*1.36+770 innate threat; which is still about 3,2k mitigated threat without stance multiplier) but cant find any mistakes in that simple math.

and to correct the massive "rend-fail": 1065 is the base dmg for 4k ap and a 143 dps wpn => 1065*1.2*1.3*1.4 = 2326 dmg.. still high ... im never gonna take numbers from "experience" again ;D

and the glyph for rend is godlike as you can spend that gcd you save because rend is still up when it would usually have been run out without the glyph... we're always talking about threat per gcd.

[CKaz]

coming from a 'using Deep Wounds' perspective -

one argument against Rend - it never crits, thus doesn't proc DW, so Dev crit is a little more valuable than stated, and Dev itself can yield DW and/or a SS

one argument for Rend - like your DW it enjoys trauma/mangle synergy, if you've gone DW you're probably looking for this anyways, more gravy

argument for rend glyph above agree with - stick to dishing out your other TPS/DPS longer, but trick is taking something else out for it tho... not sure I could :b

[Fuzzy]

I use rend on long boss fights when my rage bar seems infinate and S&B/Revenge is on cooldown and I've got nothing else to do <.<

Eh, I'm sure that extra DoT will help. Lawls.