Broken Promise vs. Red sword

[Paramount]

So I have both.

Generally I've been using Broken promise all the time. I figured that the higher dps on it plus the higher deep wounds damage would make up for the faster attack speed of the red sword.

But when it comes to infinite rage situations; I pretty much sit at 100 rage the whole time. Even when I'm heroic striking constantly.

So my question is this:

Should I switch to using the red sword on fights like patchwerk so I can increase my heroic strike usage?

Also another question:

When is broken promise a good choice?

My initial gut reaction has changed towards the mindset that I'll be using broken promise on trash and Red Sword on hard hitting bosses.

Here's my armory:
The World of Warcraft Armory

[Bayho]

There are quite a few posts here about this subject. The short of it is that Broken Promise will not produce more threat than the Red Sword. The amount of Heroic Strikes you can throw out with a faster weapon is significantly more threat, and damage I believe, than the increased damage with Deep Wounds. I recall someone saying you would need an absurd amount of AP to make up the difference, something like 11k, but do not quote me on that.

[pompuspilot]

i use broken promise and you will hear all day how the faster weapon is better...maybe it is, but i like the additional damage i do with the slower weapon. i also have never seen a problem with threat. its basically up to you if you like promise use it..if you like the faster weapon use it instead. the days when a fast weapon was mandatory are past. i do a lot more threat and damage with other abilities then hs. poeple will argue about this till the cow comes home, so do what you think is right. this is just my opinion.

[Kru]

If for a given fight your rage is sitting capped at 100, then you're better off with the fast sword. Any other time, you're better off with Broken Promise.

You could break that down into bosses vs. trash, but there's lots of bosses I'm not rage capped on so that may be a bit simplistic.

[veneretio]

i use broken promise and you will hear all day how the faster weapon is better...maybe it is, but i like the additional damage i do with the slower weapon. i also have never seen a problem with threat. its basically up to you if you like promise use it..if you like the faster weapon use it instead. the days when a fast weapon was mandatory are past. i do a lot more threat and damage with other abilities then hs. poeple will argue about this till the cow comes home, so do what you think is right. this is just my opinion.

Broken Promise is not extra damage, that's the point.

With a faster weapon like the Red Sword in a High Rage situation (like every decent boss fight), you'll not only do more threat b/c of Heroic Strike spam, but also do more Damage. The days of fast weapons being mandatory aren't past, not even close. In fact, it's quite the opposite. We play in a world of constant High Rage situations which is the very reason we use Fast Weapons. There has NEVER been a time in the game when Fast Weapons were as consistently strong as they are right now.

If for a given fight your rage is sitting capped at 100, then you're better off with the fast sword. Any other time, you're better off with Broken Promise.

You could break that down into bosses vs. trash, but there's lots of bosses I'm not rage capped on so that may be a bit simplistic.

This guy basically nailed it. On trash, sure go to town with Broken Promise, but on any boss that's doing a decent amount of damage, it's time to rock on the Red Sword.

[Taelas]

There are quite a few posts here about this subject. The short of it is that Broken Promise will not produce more threat than the Red Sword. The amount of Heroic Strikes you can throw out with a faster weapon is significantly more threat, and damage I believe, than the increased damage with Deep Wounds. I recall someone saying you would need an absurd amount of AP to make up the difference, something like 11k, but do not quote me on that.

Quick math.

Red Sword of Courage, DPS 143.4, speed 1.6, strength ~26 (52 AP). Average hit, ~235 damage.
Broken Promise, DPS 156.6, speed 2.5, strength ~30 (60 AP). Average hit, ~402 damage.

Assuming infinite rage over the course of one minute and perfect Heroic Strike uptime:
Red Sword of Courage: 37 Heroic Strikes. Total damage, 495+235 x 37, or 27010.
Broken Promise: 24 Heroic Strikes. Total damage, 495+402 x 24, or 21528.

Crit:
Assuming 10% crit (25% Heroic Strike):
Red Sword of Courage: 37 x .25 x 495+235: 6753
Broken Promise: 24 x .25 x 495+402: 5382

Deep Wounds damage:
Red Sword of Courage: 37 x .25 x 495+235 x .48: 3242
Broken Promise: 24 x .25 x 495+402 x .48: 2584

Total damage from Heroic Strike:
Red Sword of Courage: 37005
Broken Promise: 29494

Diffence: 7511
That's the speed related difference. The difference in Deep Wounds damage is around ~80 damage... and I have ONLY modelled the weapons.

Devastate and Thunder Clap have the same crit rate, and all of their crits will be pure benefit. Shield Slam crits, Revenge crits, Damage Shield crits... all of them benefit from the slow weapon.

I'm not enough of a math whiz to model Deep Wounds accurately over all of these factors, but consider that the difference in damage will be consistently higher with Broken Promise over Red Sword of Courage.

Plus, Devastate itself will hit harder. Even Shield Slam has more benefit from the slow weapon as it has better stats.

[Horacio]

I pray BP drops and our pally tank takes it so I don't have to argue with him over Last Laugh.

[AoDraka]

I'm thinking Broken Promise was added for DK Tanks whose every attack is instant and relies on a portion of weapon damage, yes?

[Taelas]

I'm thinking Broken Promise was added for DK Tanks whose every attack is instant and relies on a portion of weapon damage, yes?

That's not correct -- Death Knights have an ONA-strike. Rune Strike.

[veneretio]

I'll just piggy back your math as best I can to fill in the rest of the gabs, Norrath. Assuming perfect global cooldown usage over a minute, we'll get 40 GCDs.

Assuming your 10% crit, 15 Devastates (25% crit) and 13 Shield Slams (25% crit)

12 * .10 * 235 * .48 + 28 * .25 * 235 * .48 = 924.96

12 x .10 x 402 x .48 + 28 * .25 * 402 * .48 = 1582.27

Now granted there may be a few more Shield Slams, but I mean... is that going to magically bridge the over 7000 damage gap?

How many Devastates are we going to do? 20 would be the maximum possible if we were using the old school rotation of SS > Rev > Dev > Dev. I think we can all agree that the actually number of Devastates has to be closer to 15 in a minute.

I wish I had more time at work to figure this part out, but somebody run with this... 15 Devastates... what's the damage breakdown? Is it enough to make up 7000 damage? 7000/15 is only 466.7 damage... so maybe it's possible?

[veneretio]

Okay, this was killing me being lazy so I dug up some Devastate data from this old school thread (which is still accurate): http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/...state-faq.html

Red Sword average damage: 235
Broken Promise average damage: 402

Let's assume 3500 AP since that's pretty reasonable with a lot of raid buffs. (I'm not including the AP difference b/c frankly it's so minor that it's not going to skew our results that much)

3500 / 14 * 2.4 = 600

As you can see that both weapons have their AP normalized around 2.4 speed, so there's no compelling advantage for either weapon thus far.

600 + 235 = 835
600 + 402 = 1002

I'm not going to add the Sunder damage bonus cause it'll affect both equally. So, let's move to dividing this by 2 to get our actually Devastate damage.

835 / 2 = 417.5
1002 / 2 = 501

Let's add in the assumed 10% crit + 15% additional crit from SnB for a total of 25% to crit.

417.5 * 1.25 = 521.9
501 * 1.25 = 626.3

The Difference: 501 - 417.5 = 104.4

15 GCDs * 104.4 = 1566 damage

Now granted I could have fudged the math a little bit between the Deep Wounds GCD procs and this Devastate math, but the reality is... the gab that Broken Promise has to climb is 7500 damage. It's not even coming close to bridging that gab.

What should you take away from this?

Heroic Strike is A LOT of our damage so Faster is better.

How much better would the Slow weapon's DPS have to be?

Well to make up that 7000 damage mark, it'd need to be 466.7 damage better per Devastate than Red Sword. So, let's work backwards.

521.9 + 466.7 = 988.6
988.6 / 1.25 = 790.88
790.88 * 2 = 1581.76
1581.76 - 600 = 981.76 Average damage
981.76 / 2.5 weapon speed = 392.7

392.7 dps

That's how much DPS a 2.5 speed weapon would have to do to bridge that Devastate gap. Now granted, Deep Wounds would kick some major ass with a slow weapon that high in dps so it's likely not that extreme... but the point is, even in later content when you've got a 200 dps weapon, if it's 2.5 speed, it's still not better than Red Sword of Courage.

[Kalbitang]

I pray BP drops and our pally tank takes it so I don't have to argue with him over Last Laugh.

haha, good luck with that.

[Galushi]

The dps listed on the Broken promise isnt what your going for to overcome the HS's of redsword. It's the fact that since its much slower, deepwounds (and rend if you use it, which with a slow weapon becomes very nice) does a considerable amount of extra damage. To say that the slower weapon needs to be 392dps to overcome the HS spamming defiency is a little biased. You get a little less proc rate on the deepwounds cuz your MH is swinging slower, but all the GCD instants and dmgshield crits are proccing much higher deep wounds damage then what you'd get with Red Sword of Courage.

If your rage capped, sure a fast weapon will let you dump more rage and will be better. If your not capped, slower tank weapons i think will edge it out maybe. Especially for OT/dpsing duties when your not even close to rage capped. But its not really a cut and dry Faster is better case these days.

Id also keep in mind that Broken promise has some expertise on it, which is a harder to come by tanking stat.

To really test which weapon is better is going to take a lot of numbers crunching and/or numerous tests in a raid enviroment which would be very hard to get consistant unbiased results.

[veneretio]

The dps listed on the Broken promise isnt what your going for to overcome the HS's of redsword. It's the fact that since its much slower, deepwounds (and rend if you use it, which with a slow weapon becomes very nice) does a considerable amount of extra damage. To say that the slower weapon needs to be 392dps to overcome the HS spamming defiency is a little biased. You get a little less proc rate on the deepwounds cuz your MH is swinging slower, but all the GCD instants and dmgshield crits are proccing much higher deep wounds damage then what you'd get with Red Sword of Courage.

Yup, I admit that bias, but I mean even if we throw in that Damaging Shield procs 20 times in a minute which is crazy high for single target tanking, we get the following:

20 * .10 * 235 * .48 = 225.6
20 * .10 * 402 * .48 = 385.92

Which is hardly enough to bridge any kind of gap. Red Sword started with a 7500 damage lead and Broken Promise gained:

40 GCDs: 1582.27-924.96 = 657.31
20 Damaging Shield procs: 385.92 - 225.6 = 160.32
15 Devastates * 104.4 = 1566

657.31 + 160.32 + 1566 = 2383.63 damage

It's still not even close to the massive lead from Heroic Strikes and I'll admit that it's easier to be perfect with Heroic Strikes with a slow weapon than a fast, but that still won't change that the Faster weapon has such a massive lead. (not to mention if you add player error... we'll be removing even more Devastates since it's the first thing to go in a less than perfect minute rotation)

[Sarris]

I pray BP drops and our pally tank takes it so I don't have to argue with him over Last Laugh.

You read my mind. Specially since ours is using a blue weapon still.

[Daavos]

Guess i'm doing it wrong.

BP on Shapprion

WWS Loading...

BP on patch

http://wowwebstats.com/qc1pwdhlpojdm...=318877-357659

[veneretio]

Guess i'm doing it wrong.

BP on Shapprion

WWS Loading...

BP on patch

WWS Loading...

Yes, unfortunately, your dps could have been much higher with the Red Sword. It also looks like you aren't Heroic Striking nearly enough as well even with Broken Promise's 2.5 Speed.

That's an important factor in all of this math. It's assuming you're Heroic Striking, a lot. If because of either lack of rage or simply because of lack of attention to 100% HS uptime, you'll see higher gains from Broken Promise.

To put it bluntly, if you aren't seeing higher DPS from Red Sword on Patchwerk, you're simply not playing good enough.

[Daavos]

Yes, unfortunately It also looks like you aren't Heroic Striking nearly enough as well even with Broken Promise's 2.5 Speed.

That's an important factor in all of this math. It's assuming you're Heroic Striking, a lot. If because of either lack of rage or simply because of lack of attention to 100% HS uptime, you'll see higher gains from Broken Promise.

To put it bluntly, if you aren't seeing higher DPS from Red Sword on Patchwerk, you're simply not playing good enough.

unfortunately, your dps could have been much higher with the [Red Sword... If because of either lack of rage or simply because of lack of attention to 100% HS uptime, you'll see higher gains from Broken Promise

Ah... What?

To put it bluntly, if you aren't seeing higher DPS from Red Sword on Patchwerk, you're simply not playing good enough.

I don't have the Redsword, i have the 1.5 tank weapon from nax. So i can't make a direct comparison.

I'd like to see a WWS with the redsword or the another fast tank weapon. Tanking excel sheets under assuming optiminal conditions isn't winning me over.

you're simply not playing good enough

jump in the well

[Alstott]

Anyone care to re-do the math but for Last Laugh, so we can see definitively how much better it is over BP? It's something I've always wondered, and I'd go back and do it myself except the details of the calcs aren't listed here.

[Satrina]

Looking at a 4 minute Patches fight, you get 96 white swings with a 2.5 speed weapon, and 150 with a 1.6 speed weapon.

Edit: Here's some better numbers
4000AP -> +285DPS

Broken Promise averages 391 damage per swing + 495 HS + 714 from AP = 1601 damage per hit
Red Sword averages 229 damage per swing + 495 HS + 457 from AP = 1182 damage per hit
Last Laugh averages 274 damage per swing + 495 HS + 457 from AP = 1227 damage per hit

Those hits ignore mitigation from opponent's armour, but that divides through equally anyway. Assuming perfect HS uptime (which should be what you are shooting for on Patches)

96 * 1601 = 153696
150 * 1182 = 177300
150 * 1227 = 184050

This isn't advanced theorycraft, it's just basic math.

Edit2: At 2.5 speed, your weapon would need to be about 255DPS to match the HS performance of Red Sword and about 285DPS to match Last Laugh