War academy or cruelty?

[theodisius]

I am thinking of levelling my prot warrior alt - currently languishing at L80 - and reviewing the talent tree after a post-Cata hiatus. I am now tempted by all the talents in the prot tree except safeguard and incite, and also by the 5 points you can put in healing talents in other trees. So that leave me wondering - point-for-point which talent is better for threat and dps: war academy or cruelty? Is 5% more damage on cleave and HS better or worse than %5 more crit on shield slam?

My hunch is that war academy may be better, as my L80 seems to have lots of rage nowadays so I use cleave or HS a lot. However, I know shield slam is our big hitter, so quality may outweigh quantity.

I know many people will dispute my premise, but I am coming from the perspective of having my main palatank run heroic 5-mans where I am finding threat trivial and heal tanking the way to go.

[Hamburglar]

War Academy and Cruelty are both worth taking. Right now I would go with War Academy, though in an upcoming build they are removing HS and Cleave from it and instead adding Dev and Victory Rush, limiting its usefulness greatly.

[MellvarTank]

Currently neither are necessary and the deciding factor for me is how far into a tree I want to go. If I want piercing howl, I'll go cruelty... If I want Deep Wounds, I'll go War Academy.

[nserafini]

War Academy and Cruelty are both worth taking. Right now I would go with War Academy, though in an upcoming build they are removing HS and Cleave from it and instead adding Dev and Victory Rush, limiting its usefulness greatly.

This kills it for me. I was only using War Aca for the HS and Cleave bumps. It's no longer worth it, IMHO once it's patched.

[Reev]

I already respecced out of War Academy so I could start getting used to it.

[Hamburglar]

I might just keep War Academy simply because there's nothing in Fury tree I want to spec to other than Cruelty. Deep Wounds is still nice to have. I could see maybe putting the 6 points from Arms into Blood Craze, Piercing Howl and Rude Interruption but that's still suboptimal.

[Booi]

The issue with losing WA, and not taking it post ptr patch is that you are losing ~35% HS damage, and gaining nothing. Remember that the BnT/Thunderstruck was only marginally behind a standard single-target rotation with Cruelty. This devastate buff increases that gap.

[Andenthal]

I originally took War Academy because it was a decent DPS boost for the cost.
I dont see another talent filling the gap with the change. If you all ready have 5 points in Fury, Rude Interuption could fit that bill, but that's about it.


If you don't have 5 in Fury though, where else would you spend those points for a DPS increase?

[praetoria]

If and when this patch hits the live realms, i probily wouldnt spec into eaither. Im more inclined to fill in the other abilties in the prot spec. such as gagh order, victory rush, perhaps even safeguard. aggro seems more then comfertable for me at the moment. If things get hairy, i would look at the 11 expretise im running with, or the 4.15% hit chance first. then go from there.

[Kojiyama]

From another thread:

Ran some numbers. A bit surprising results.

All numbers were run with the 2-set Shield Slam bonus, which gives an advantage to Cruelty but is easy to get so I included it.

If using Revenge in your rotation, War Academy is about 15% below Cruelty in terms of DPS per talent point. Cruelty is better, but only by a small margin. Deep Wounds still remains much better (almost double) per point than either one of them.

However, if you drop Revenge from your rotation with War Academy and use Devastate instead, you gain a significant amount of TPS just from dropping Revenge (about the same value as both points in Hold the Line or all 3 points in Cruelty) but War Academy then adds more TPS per talent point than Hold the Line, Shockwave weaving, or Cruelty by about 10-20%.

If you are single-target tanking and do not need the AoE splash from Improved Revenge, this then frees up two points in the primary Protection tree for use in utility talents or increased Rage flow from Shield Spec. Also, as War Academy buffs Victory Rush it makes Impending Victory much less of a TPS loss should you choose to take it in addition to more reliable as you are replacing Revenge with Devastate. (I don't love Impending Victory, but this route does make it better.)

My personal feeling is that Revenge needs a serious buff, but with these changes it actually seems sensible to still maintain War Academy and drop Improved Revenge and Revenge from your rotation unless you are rage-starved. If you do this, War Academy is actually only about 10-15% worse than it was when it affected Heroic Strike even with a Heroic Strike frequency of 90%.

Example numbers (assume that without Improved Revenge you don't use Revenge):
(baseline), no Revenge: 8623 DPS
2/2 Improved Revenge: 8693 DPS
2/2 Improved Revenge, 2/2 Cruelty: 8893 DPS
3/3 War Academy, 2/2 Improved Revenge: 8932 DPS
3/3 War Academy: 8991 DPS
3/3 War Academy, 2/2 Cruelty: 9191 DPS
3/3 War Academy, 3/3 Deep Wounds: 9614 DPS
3/3 War Academy, 3/3 Deep Wounds, 2/2 Cruelty: 9854 DPS

[joostvader]

Hi guys in preperation for the new patch im currently 5/3/32 With 1 point to put somewhere. Please see below.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LGZhZcfGdRRodbu

Theory: I dropped incite all together i basically dont use HS at all now and choose to use Devestate as a rage dump now after 3 stacks.

Therefore Devestate would benifit from War acadamy for dps boost & it costs half the rage of HS.

I have one point to put somewhere have no clue where to put it suggestions??

[Sirloinsteak]

Kojiyama does this also push thunderstruck buffed rend off the threat table as well as a devastate would provide more ?