Protection: Impending Victory (Victory Rush)

[Petninja]

How is the scaling for Victory Rush right now? I'm consistently seeing it hit for as much as shield slam at any level of Vengeance (without 2pc t11 or shield block up). I'll see if I can remember to get some logs for it.

If they are scaling the same though it seems like just from a dps standpoint you'd want to spam the hell out of devastate for the 50% VR proc chance when shield block is down. I suppose at the end of the day Shield Slam will do more damage because of Shield Block and 2pc T11.

On another note, Impending Victory is rage free so in a lower rage situation you can afford an extra HS that maybe you couldn't which would probably make an IV proc better than a non SnB Shield Slam.

[Kojiyama]

I'd need to double check, but Victory Rush was changed to 56% AP in Beta, yet I believe it was modified as, "Victory Rush damage has been reduced by approximately 17%," in 4.0.3a. That would imply that it is around 46.5% AP now--but interestingly the tooltip on Wowhead still shows 56% some time after 4.0.3a.

I would need to double-check this in-game to be certain.

Either way, Shield Slam is 60% + 2.8k base damage (ish) with a 110% multiplier when glyphed, yielding 66% AP + 3,057 damage.

Victory Rush has a 115% multiplier due to War Academy, yielding either 64.4% AP or 53.5% AP depending on what the real value is.

At high Vengeance levels, I guess we will be seeing Victory Rush become pretty strong. I suppose given that the static damage portion of Shield Slam will become less and less important over time, we may potentially see a shift in priorities here.

Right now, my hunch is probably that SnB still wins out (although Victory Rush would make a great 3rd GCD filler at high Vengeance) at the moment--but there may be a time where it flips around a bit and stops being a TPS loss and instead is a TPS gain. I will do some investigation into this.

The biggest issue with Victory Rush at lower gear levels is that without being included in SnB, it means lost opportunities for Shield Slam. However if Victory Rush closes in on Shield Slam in damage and has a higher proc rate from Devastate, some rotation of Shield Slam > Victory Rush > Devastate fishing (as Devastate can proc both) might come out ahead at higher gear/Vengeance levels.

This is especially possible now that Revenge has started falling behind a bit. It was always a thought in the back of my mind that the new version of War Academy could possibly make Impending Victory a lot more viable.

[WiiMote]

I'm personally a big fan of Impending Victory, but it's pretty situational (as has been stated). It's saved the group from a wipe several times in a heroic... but I've also had many times where the talent points could have done better somewhere else.

My opinion... If your group is capable, the healers are able to maintain mana, don't bother. There might be a few situations where the VR procs would save the day, but with a solid group, the talent is unnecessary. It might be decent to spec into if you're consistently having trouble getting a boss down, though, to help push through the final 20%.

I think the dissent over the value of the talent is a statement for it's situational value. Some players love it, some find it useless. Try it out, see if it works well for you, and toss it if it doesn't. Being willing to try out different specs is one of the things that defines a solid player.

[Garganchewin]

I have tried IV, and I just didn't see the healing portion of this talent pan out as people have said it does. I never once saw it save a healer from healing me. I don't care how quickly you can hit it, if you're down 50k health and you get a 15k heal from VR, your healers are still casting on you, and hots are still ticking. If you drop low, your healers are going to pop you up as you pop your cds. A 15k heal isnt going to prevent you from popping a more significant CD if you drop sub 25%, and it certainly isn't going to stop your healers from bombing you back to full.

The only time I ever forsee this talent as worth it is when your healer is completely OOM, and the only time I've seen that this expansion is on the fights with healing debuffs where VR clearly is not going to help.

I'll stick to my dps talents, unless the possibility that Koji mentioned pans out and IV ends up being a dps increase, although I doubt it will outweigh any of the other possible talents while only being active 20% of a fight.

[Kojiyama]

Yeah, I don't really see it as a great healing talent due to mechanical concerns. I'm more interested in exploring when (or if) it will become a DPS increase for our execute phase. Until now, it has been a poor "execute" mechanic simply due to it being a strict DPS loss.

[Petninja]

Sadly the IMBA testing guys in Blasted Lands have been removed so we can't just spam them for the infinite execute phase. There should be a <20% training dummy in in the cities IMO.

[Airowird]

Sadly the IMBA testing guys in Blasted Lands have been removed so we can't just spam them for the infinite execute phase. There should be a <20% training dummy in in the cities IMO.

There is, just do enough damage and the dimmy goes low :P

[Petninja]

There is, just do enough damage and the dimmy goes low :P

Yeah, so next time I go to work I'll just set my guy to auto attack and then take a two week vacation and hope the servers never go down during it. Then I should be able to get them sub-20%.

[Petninja]

Also, I'm noticing I'm doing less healing as of late with IV than I was previous. I was doing around 30k per heal in BH last week, while this week I was getting a rocking 16k. I was glyphed for the improved VR in both cases.

The numbers don't add up properly, so all I can guess is that I was somehow getting double what I should have from it from some bug. Either that or my skada is completely broken.

[Jonhemlock]

I've recently tried the impending victory build, particularly for tanking worms on the Magmaw fight. after reviewing the parse, I was underwhelmed by the healing it did overall. Having said that, the question to me really is what did you have to spec out of, and what glyph did you have to replace in order to have it?

The answer, as best I can tell and as simply as I can put it is: you lose some threat and gain some self heals. Is this the best for you? I don't know.

I only run 25man raids, so the number of times my tanking dps has made a difference in killing/not killing a boss is zero times. The number of times my healers mana has been low at the end of a boss fight, almost every time. I agree that the talent/glyph setup is situational at best, but compare it to the alternative.

I'm not in love with it, but I won't be speccing out of it anytime soon.

[Petninja]

I've recently tried the impending victory build, particularly for tanking worms on the Magmaw fight. after reviewing the parse, I was underwhelmed by the healing it did overall. Having said that, the question to me really is what did you have to spec out of, and what glyph did you have to replace in order to have it?

The answer, as best I can tell and as simply as I can put it is: you lose some threat and gain some self heals. Is this the best for you? I don't know.

I only run 25man raids, so the number of times my tanking dps has made a difference in killing/not killing a boss is zero times. The number of times my healers mana has been low at the end of a boss fight, almost every time. I agree that the talent/glyph setup is situational at best, but compare it to the alternative.

I'm not in love with it, but I won't be speccing out of it anytime soon.

The glyph was actually something I kept for farming, and soloing 80 heroics. It saved my ass a ton when someone decided to try to gank me. As for the talent I'm convinced it's a dps increase during execute phase, which is useful depending on the encounter. Any boss that has a soft enrage at 20-30% will make it more useful than just the average numbers it puts out.

[klausi]

but compare it to the alternative.

0/2 -> 2/2 blood and thunder for a better allrounder specc
1/3 -> 3/3 shield specc for more rage, might not be that useful on certain high & frequently melee-damaging bosses but helps out quite a bit on other
1/3 -> 3/3 incite more hs damage is always good even after the recent nerfs
concussion blow + vigilance -> i'd never drop those for tanking, to many two tank fights out there and i love having another interrupt/stun for trash/5 mans
0/2 -> 2/2 imp revenge there are quite a few fights where revenge comes handy and specced it's more dpr and dpe than devastate
0/2 -> 2/2 heavy repercussions if you really don't need the burst
0/2 -> 2/2 cruelty worse than deep wounds
0/2 -> 2/2 thunderstruck if you're deep into aoe'ing

There are some alternatives around and everyone should be able to drop one of those and give it a try.

As for the talent I'm convinced it's a dps increase during execute phase, which is useful depending on the encounter.

Since you have to drop another talent for it i'd say it's a tradeoff at best. VR is 56% of your ap while Dev is weapondamage + a fix amount at a way higher critrate (+20%) and the chance to procc sword & board for even more damage.

[Katzazi]

I think the best points would be those of imp revenge. Since it's optimal to use as much Devastate as possible at 20% to get the most of IV.

[Drasnal]

My idea too, but I found trash in heroics quite harder to tank without imp rev when there are strong dps at my side. I dropped cruelty btw.

[Disruptor]

I can't check this right now but I assume dodged/parried/missed Devastates do not proc IV. Which makes this talent from a mathPoV useless.

[Petninja]

I can't check this right now but I assume dodged/parried/missed Devastates do not proc IV. Which makes this talent from a mathPoV useless.

Just like SnB is useless because it doesn't work on avoided hits, right?

[Airowird]

I can't check this right now but I assume dodged/parried/missed Devastates do not proc IV. Which makes this talent from a mathPoV useless.

Actual Proc Chance = tooltip_chance * (100% - miss chance - dodge/parry chances)

Fixed.

[Krays]

Yeah, so next time I go to work I'll just set my guy to auto attack and then take a two week vacation and hope the servers never go down during it. Then I should be able to get them sub-20%.

Hehe, i know your kidding but even so, unfortunately the boss level dummy heals itself, , so a single person dpsing it will never get it below 95% or so no matter how much dps they do, you really need a full group of people dpsing it, to force it down to low %.