Cruelty vs. Armored to the Teeth

[bacchanal]

I wanted to look into the advantages of talents either way - and it's been a long time since I've been max level. Just levelled up to 80 after a long time off when WOTLK got released. That being said, I'm a little out of touch with the new World of Theorycraft.

However, I've been looking at a lot of the recent changes, and it looks like AP is starting to make a pretty big impact on the overall threat and damage capabilities of the warrior tank.

That being said, has anyone already looked into the differences in talents? If not, can anyone provide me with some average raid-buffed stats (AP/Armor/Base Crit Percentage) so that I can consider the differences? I really just want to see if there is a point where the scaling AP from Armored outweighs the flat crit bonus from Cruelty. And since I'm a long way from raiding geared, I know my stats won't make much sense in an equation for this.

[Satorri]

I am going off the top of my head for this, but I'm fairly certain as a tank the verdict has come down to the AP buff being superior.

As an idea of scale, a typical t8-ish geared warrior tank in raid buffs will have 28-30k armor. 1 AP per 108 armor, per pt from Armored to the Teeth for a tank with 28k armor would be 259 AP per pt!! Or 778 AP for 3 pts in the talent. That will outstrip 1% crit per point pretty handily.

[drae]

Everything I've seen puts ATTT over cruelty, even in a deep wounds build at T7.5+ content.

I'm in T8.5 level gear, and I sit at ~3100 AP, 10.5% static crit, (ie not counting talents that increase shield slam and devastate crit rate) and ~25k armor (all un-buffed). I've got 2 pts in cruelty and 3 in ATTT.

ATTT definitely scales better.

[Mordigen]

I never looked into it deeply, just ran with it but that has me wondering, does ATTT scale with devotional aura and stuff like armor enchants?

[Szentia]

I would have thought so.
Easy way to check is to down an armor pot and wait 30 sec to see if your AP changes.

[XtreO]

I am going off the top of my head for this, but I'm fairly certain as a tank the verdict has come down to the AP buff being superior.

As an idea of scale, a typical t8-ish geared warrior tank in raid buffs will have 28-30k armor. 1 AP per 108 armor, per pt from Armored to the Teeth for a tank with 28k armor would be 259 AP per pt!! Or 778 AP for 3 pts in the talent. That will outstrip 1% crit per point pretty handily.

24-25k base. 30 buffed, no. Not without armour rings and Glyph of Indomitability and perhaps engi armour enchant.

[Destruyen]

I never looked into it deeply, just ran with it but that has me wondering, does ATTT scale with devotional aura and stuff like armor enchants?

yes, attt does include armor buffs like devotion aura or stoneskin totem (they dont stack so its one or the other).

3/3 attt outweighs all ranks of cruelty...so if you only have 5 points in fury to spend for threat, go 3/3 armored and 2/5 cruelty (15/3/53 build takes 3/3 attt even). the ap you get from having 24k+ armor is huge compared to the 3% crit you would have if you went past 2/5 cruelty. every ability you use as a prot warrior is based off ap in some form or another; devastate, tclap, revenge, conc. blow, shock wave, etc.

the average uld25 geared warrior tank will have around 25.5k armor, not even close to 28-30k someone said earlier.

3/3 attt outweighs any points in cruelty in all tiers before the buff, and even more so now (change to 108 down from 180).

[Maelstrom]

24-25k base. 30 buffed, no. Not without armour rings and Glyph of Indomitability and perhaps engi armour enchant.

Stoneskin and improved devo aura stack.

Stoneskin (1150, nobody picks up Guardian Totems so discounting improved) + Improved Devotion Aura (1808) + Improved Mark of the Wild (1050) = 4008 bonus armour from those three buffs alone.

4008 + (Talented strength of earth totem = 189 agi * 1.1 (kings) = 208 agi = 416 armour) = 4424 armour from raid buffs. Oh plus maybe another 100 from motw agi.

With an armour ring (Leviathan's coil is really easy to get) plus say the saronite plated legs or an armour neck and cloak enchant, yeah, its pretty easy to hit 30K. No need for the glyph of indomitability or the engineering glove enchant at all. This is pretty easy to test as I run over 30K armour in a raid already.

[Destruyen]

stoneskin and devotion aura do not stack.

[Takethecake]

Last time I checked, I'm pretty sure they did stack actually. Been awhile but I haven't seen it posted as fixed.

[Maelstrom]

Don't wanna tell you I told you so but...

[Dragaan]

I believe it was proven that Attt was better than cruelty even before deep wounds was nerfed (which means before Attt was buffed as well). So especially now, it's definitely smarter to go with Attt. (unless ur going for a prot pvp build)