Devastate question

[Pinkanator]

Ok im sure that this was discussed in great detail and reason was given as to the change back when it happened. However I missed it. I would just like to know why Blizz changed Devastate from 1h melee to shields. Im sure that there is something I am missing.

thanks in advance for your help.

[Aggathon]

Ok im sure that this was discussed in great detail and reason was given as to the change back when it happened. However I missed it. I would just like to know why Blizz changed Devastate from 1h melee to shields. Im sure that there is something I am missing.

thanks in advance for your help.

OMG I KNOW RIGHT. Like seriously, I just figured this out the other day when I was getting raged starved in a heroic I just go "eh, I'll toss on 2 weapons and just devastate spam my way to victory" BUT IT WOULDN'T LET ME DEVASTATE. Somewhere I missed this in the patch notes since the days of ZA and I felt really dumb for not realizing it.

I have no idea why, other than it might have made prot a viable dps spec. I mean while tanking it crits for 4-5k. I miss dual wield prot, I used to be able to do about 800 dps doing that, lol (level 70 obviously).

[Fledern]

This. TBC, the fire dude quest guy from the Oronok questline. The warlock was playing crap but still. Duelwielding devastate can do some serious dps. When they buffed it, they wanted to make sure somebody wouldnt go & jinx up the pvp with it.

[Destruyen]

fury/prot warrior dps spec that was running around on the ptr back then...

[Tzobee]

Because prot warriors could equip fury gear & DW and easily rank in at top5 DPS during a raid which just was not ok. It had to be changed

[Satorri]

Right, on the Beta for Wrath they first buffed up Devastate with all the changes for the goal of "Tanks now hurt stuff to cause threat, not just look threatening and do 5% of the damage that DPS'ers do."

The problem was that there were Prot tanks who could just, like you were saying, throw on 2 weapons and actually be fully competitive dps with heavy use of Devastate.

Blizz felt like this was too strong so they knocked it down a peg and it's been its weaker, filler status, form in the live game since.

They wanted to give it a prop back up, but their solution to not just creating the same problem again was to require you to have a shield, and thus only one weapon for it. Prot can do some nice dps, but they're well below their potential if they aren't getting attacked (which obviously is sort of what they're designed around, and part of what I think makes Prot Warriors so much fun to play).

[Brucimus]

Funny this was brought up today. Yesterday i was trying to help some guildies get Less Rabi so i equipped 2 one handers and stayed in prot spec (for the additional interrupt) and I couldn't devastate...i was irritated