Slow Weapon & Deep Wounds -- Math Challenge

[Ciderhelm]

Once I got a chance to look at my damage spreads, I've noticed Deep Wounds is doing substantially better than I expected. This may be, as another poster suggested, because both Damage Shield and Thunder Clap can proc it now.

Here's the challenge, if anyone wants to take on the math:

Can a slow weapon be superior for Warrior Threat under single target situations?

Keep in mind when doing the following that we'll have 25% crit on all cooldowns except Revenge, including subbing normal attacks for Heroic Strikes (base 5% + 5% Aura + 15% from talents). There is also the possibility of Damage Shield procs if you want to factor that in.

What makes this more complicated is that you'll have to factor in both Devastate and Heroic Strike, since Devastate favors slower weapons and Heroic Strike favors faster weapons. At this time, assume the difference to be 1.6 speed (Red Sword of Courage) vs 2.5 speed (Titansteel Bonecrusher).

Finally, feel free to factor in different talent models where the Warrior has 2% Crit from Cruelty in addition to Deep Wounds (this is harder to get, but may be worth it).


I'm already certain that a slow weapon will be better for AOE tanking in almost every case. The point here is to determine how we best utilize gear sets and multiple specs.

[Ghreystar]

taken from shattered hand forums:World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> @ lvl 80 tanks (raiding)

this is from Dranlo, MT for Relentless (18th guild in the US)

AP is good, but strength is better. My current armor is about 25k, (I took the values from the end of our Naxx run last night) and with that talent I'd have 406 AP for 3 points.

Consider with a feral druid (enhanced bleed effects), and deep wounds my deep wounds tick for 300 - 400 after if not slightly more, Also, you may have noticed I'm using a slow weapon, high dps/damage range, in the past we were forced to use fast weapons. Devastates, heroic strikes, etc. are amazing with it. I was ripping 4.5k - 6k tps last night. So, yeah, I'll take deep wounds over armored to the teeth any day.

and

Deep wounds was retuned, back in the day, a new "crit" would over-write an old one. So if you had deep wounds ticking for 100 previously, next crit, regardless of if it was better or worse than your current deep wounds tick it'd replace it. They changed it so it's not so static. Deep wounds uses your weapon damage, so higher damage ranges/dps will make a difference for sure. So, I'll take an example from last night, my first crit deep wounds started out at 81, then it shot up to about 200 or so, and topped off at 340 or so. I don't know the exact mechanics (was too focused on getting to 80) it doesn't overwrite your deep wounds anymore. They stack, think of the old ignite mechanic for mages (if you played then) but you can keep it stacking until it completely falls off, or you hit the cap. I want to say it will only add to your number after 3 or 4 crits and then it lets that deep wounds fall off before refreshing. It's pretty hand, moderate dps = tps. Hope this helped a bit, I'll try to respond when I do more homework on it!

[Porcini]

I'm already certain that a slow weapon will be better for AOE tanking in almost every case.

Well, that's a bit of a revelation.. definitely going to give this a go. I did find it interesting that we are seeing slow weapons with obvious tanking itemisation. I think initially people were commenting that they've been designed with paladins in mind, but that may have been a bit of an oversight.

Should the following be considered AoE tanking weapons for warriors?

Infantry Assault Blade
Broken Promise

I'm assuming your build is something along the lines of Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft [15/2/54]

Is a deep wounds build with a slow weapon always going to produce better threat? caveats?

Also, I seem to remember that deep wounds could only proc from weapon damage - what patch changed this to allow for procs from thunderclap and damage shield?

[Kazeyonoma]

Well crap, if i had seen this I would've picked up the axe from Ragemane's Flipper quest instead of the mace -_-'

[Roana]

Well crap, if i had seen this I would've picked up the axe from Ragemane's Flipper quest instead of the mace -_-'

I wouldn't worry about that too much. Right now, I'm getting a maybe 10% increase in sustained AE TPS (back-of-the-envelope calculation, no guarantees) from having Deep Wounds with a 2.7 speed weapon vs. a 1.6 speed weapon. And that's extremely backloaded -- you have to land a crit and Deep Wounds has to run its course. And, of course, you have to have specced into Deep Wounds (which makes for a very tight spec).

[Ghreystar]

Well crap, if i had seen this I would've picked up the axe from Ragemane's Flipper quest instead of the mace -_-'

its because of this i did choose the ax! wierd going from a 1.6 to the slower weapon. i keep checking my ping, wondering when will i swing?!!

[hbombs]

lol ghreystar that's my thread

I'm without a doubt trying the slow weapon with Deep wounds. It just sounds fun

edit: just looked back at the thread.. do I get points for the tankspot shout out cider?

[jere]

I think initially people were commenting that they've been designed with paladins in mind, but that may have been a bit of an oversight.

That was probably an old remnant from Beta. Back in the Day, Hammer of the Righteous was based off of weapon damage and I believe not normalized. Now it is based purely off of DPS (4x DPS), so the speed no longer matters.

[Kavtor]

My only problem with deep wounds is the debuff slot.
With out having done any math and just looking at how deep wounds felt while tanking as arms with a slow weapon in 3.0, it'll be at reasonable choice for the prot warrior in 5's and 10's. But I don't think it's worth the slot in 25's with how overloaded we are on debuffs right now.

[Xav]

My only problem with deep wounds is the debuff slot.
With out having done any math and just looking at how deep wounds felt while tanking as arms with a slow weapon in 3.0, it'll be at reasonable choice for the prot warrior in 5's and 10's. But I don't think it's worth the slot in 25's with how overloaded we are on debuffs right now.

This is a seriously true issue. There are some tanks considering a deep wounds spec (and more, in arms, even) as being useful for the marginal tank dps/tps potential gain. However, it takes up a precious debuff slot that may very likely be more DPS to someone else in the raid. I am actually testing the difference in deep wounds vs no deep wounds this week and the following on Patchwerk, which will allow for simple reproduction of numbers and displaying the differences/comparisons.

[Lore]

I'm curious as to whether or not debuff slots are still a concern at all - the closest we ever got to the debuff limit was on Brutallus, and probably 4-5 of those debuffs are all consolidated now.

Anyone have any harder data?

[Kavtor]

There are a couple EJ threads that try to consolidate raid debuffs. I haven't done any 25 / 80 raiding yet to give anything first hand. But the EJ TC seems to indicate things are broken right now.
Any reasonably well balanced raid will be over the cap, even while making an effort to keep off junk buffs. And that's with out affliction warlocks, who completely break things. They're down to trying to figure out which ones are the least DPS loss.

[Xav]

I'm curious as to whether or not debuff slots are still a concern at all - the closest we ever got to the debuff limit was on Brutallus, and probably 4-5 of those debuffs are all consolidated now.

Anyone have any harder data?

Debuff limit is a serious concern now, any 25 man raid can effortlessly fill all 40 slots. It comes down to some classes dropping their weakest debuffs that provide a dps gain, and that's stuff all being figured out now with my guild, we're seeing who's debuff slots are the most logical to drop.

[quinten]

We need more info to model this. How much rage? how much ap? Devastate will scale better with higher ap and if you don't have enough rage to have 100% heroic strike uptime then the faster weapon looses out.

It would be simpler to just take a wws of an infinite rage boss using the proposed spec and a 1.6 speed weapon the calculate how much more damage a slower weapon would get from devastate and deep wounds versus how much you would loose from heroic strike. It's not a math proof per say but it's almost as good as one.

[larson]

Is part of the rationale for this argument that Deep Wounds does more damage per tick with a slower weapon? I'm fairly sure that was changed post 3.0 to simply be 48% of weapon DPS.

I was messing around on training dummies switching between my Red Sword of Courage and Torment of the Banished and noticed the ticks hitting for identical amounts, regardless of what I used to proc the Deep Wounds.

[Zrthun]

Hm larson did you reaply deep wounds (means walk away change weapons walk back and crit). I tested it with Eternally Folded Blade - Item - World of Warcraft and Crescent of Brooding Fury - Item - World of Warcraft and in fact there was a difference. The axe with the lower dps did higher deep wounds ticks. For me it looks like 48% average damage of your weapon is still correct.

[larson]

That's what I did, but maybe the game just hated me at that moment - I was waiting for procs on Heroic Strikes, autoattacks, Shield Slams, you name it.

I'll try it again tomorrow, maybe I was just mentally challenged at the time.

[Muuzilla]

any news on this matter? i got slow weap ready and will respec if it shows to be "better" with deep wounds.

i suck at math and stuff nowdays so im letting the thinking for thoose that does it better then me

[Agromgmt]

I was really excited about this concept so I took Ragemane's axe. Been playing with this spec for the last few days and for single targets I'm disappointed.

The slower weapon gives me rage problems (less white swings so a miss coupled with a dodge/block/parry gives me trouble) and as dps is catching up I don't have the free GCDs to always t-clap for the extra crit chance.

Since my math is no good I can't theorize well, going to spec out of it for now and come back when I have more wiggle room on gear and can do the following:
- 5/5 cruelty and drop AttT and damage shield
- Stack Agi on gloves cloak boots and wpn, +84 total
- Slip in a few high-crit or haste pieces and stay uncrittable

Hopefully then the rotation can stay tight (back to the old SS-Rev-Dev-Dev lol) and still keep this ticking 100%.

For AOE it's amazing.

[Grombrindal]

This may be, as another poster suggested, because both Damage Shield and Thunder Clap can proc it now.

Are you sure Damage shield procs it? I tried a few times and waited for a damage shield crit on one mob and I did not see the a deep wounds debuff on him, so I'm not convinced it does. Does anyone have any experience to the contrary?

Thanks,

Grom