Cruelty vs. Incite

[mrwisdom]

Hello, currently i am running with this build.
http://wowtal.com/#k=_m2-_o4_.aei.warrior.RXJwtp

I was curious if it would be more beneficial to take the 2 points out of cruelty and place them in incite. And the spec would look like this: http://wowtal.com/#k=_5vLJ0jg.aei.warrior.qBqQf5

I have gone through some of my logs and on most fights HS is not at the top usually 2 or 3 and wanted some input from others if they have tried this spec or their thoughts on if its worth it or not.

thanks

[Ricovega]

personally i take both, i still dont see what the fetish is with deep wounds even in WOTLK if ur tanking trash fair enough but for raiding its just limited especially when rend should be in a prot warriors rotation after 3 stacks of sunder with it being refreshed by thunderclap

those 6 points being used to get 3/3 deep wounds could be used to get three other talents needing 2 points each which would in turn increase the number of tools available in ur tanking arsenal which will make you more versatile and effective

[MellvarTank]

I don't even know what you are talking about. There is nothing wrong with deep wounds if you choose to go that route. It isn't 100% necessary, but that doesn't mean it isn't handy. Cruelty is lackluster to me, and I would take incite over cruelty unless I was going for a Piercing Howl build.

[praetoria]

it all depends what you want out of the build. if this is purly a single target build, you want to drop B&t... full incite, full cruelty. there arer plenty of threads running right now about applying rend via gcd, not thunderclap. this would be your max tps single target spec.

is that what your looking for? a max single target spec?

or are you looking for an aoe spec?

or are you looking for a utility spec?

it really matters

[Kojiyama]

Deep Wounds is a lot better than Cruelty (almost twice as good) if people are wondering.

Incite and Cruelty don't really compete directly though. You get Incite if you want TPS when maxing out the Protection tree. You get Cruelty if you want TPS after you have maxed the Protection tree. In a TPS build, you should already have Incite before you have the chance to pick Cruelty at all.

However, for a single-target spec (as has been discussed elsewhere) as you have 33 points in Protection, possibly the most optimal thing to do is to get rid of Improved Revenge for Cruelty and drop Revenge from your rotation. However, you may still want the Revenge splash damage.

If, for some reason, you are choosing between Incite and Cruelty, they are really quite equal actually. Incite is likely slightly better.

[squats]

personally i take both, i still dont see what the fetish is with deep wounds even in WOTLK if ur tanking trash fair enough but for raiding its just limited especially when rend should be in a prot warriors rotation after 3 stacks of sunder with it being refreshed by thunderclap

those 6 points being used to get 3/3 deep wounds could be used to get three other talents needing 2 points each which would in turn increase the number of tools available in ur tanking arsenal which will make you more versatile and effective

Deep wounds causes a decent amount of threat.
Just because rend is in your rotation doenst mean that deep wounds is any less valuable. Your trying to compare apples to apples here.. but one of the apples may look like an apple.. when its actually an orange... it just doesnt work that way.

[feralminded]

Deep wounds causes a decent amount of threat.
Just because rend is in your rotation doenst mean that deep wounds is any less valuable. Your trying to compare apples to apples here.. but one of the apples may look like an apple.. when its actually an orange... it just doesnt work that way.

Yeah ... if anyone can tell me what rend has to do with deep wounds ... well I'm listening but don't expect me to eat your magic mushrooms to get it. Of all the optional TPS talents, deep wounds is currently #1 ... be it AoE, single target, your momma ... whatever.

[Disruptor]

Imo DW is completely useless. Can you support your assumptions with logs? I never saw DWs passing 3% of overall damage which is not worth to skill 3/3 WA. SS is the most reliable and efficient threatproduction. The threat modifier on SS damage is pretty huge. HR and Cruelty are the way to go right now.

[Kojiyama]

There is no threat modifier on Shield Slam any more.

The value of Deep Wounds is in pure math. How much percent of your total damage is Shield Slam? What percent of that is critical damage? How much is 10% of that value? Cruelty is alright, but it's not as valuable as you think it is.

[feralminded]

Imo DW is completely useless. Can you support your assumptions with logs? I never saw DWs passing 3% of overall damage which is not worth to skill 3/3 WA. SS is the most reliable and efficient threatproduction. The threat modifier on SS damage is pretty huge. HR and Cruelty are the way to go right now.

Nothing you just said makes any sense at all and I believe you must be severely confused or misinformed. Shield Slam indeed does huge threat but has no modifier anymore. There are no modifiers anymore. Additionally the more damage you do with shield slam the better deep wounds becomes. Shield slam crits produce deep wounds just like anything else. For the record deep wounds produces an average of ~5% of my damage on fights I tank. That's significantly higher than cruelty can manage.

[Disruptor]

Maybe im misinformed. But usually every style had a base threat + damage as additional threat. Usually SS had a very low base threat compared to all other styles. Maybe I used the wrong term with threat modifier but SS crits in def stance yield tons of threat. . Are there any updated threat tables available? I'm pretty positive some important things changed.

@Koji
Imo Cruelty is very strong combined with HR. SS crit with SB up should be huge amounts of threat.

I need some logs for DW. If you do not have the 5% crit buff you only have crit due to HtL and some increased crit on specific styles. And I do not like WA 15% dmg on Devastate sounds awful.

[feralminded]

Yeah this all changed with 4.0.1 back in October. Threat = damage x (some multiplier ... I think its around 3 but not precisely sure). Strictly speaking anything that makes you do more damage does a linear amount more threat since 4.0.1. So if adding 3% more crit makes you do 3% more damage or adding deep wounds makes you do 5% more damage, deep wounds wins. This is true for anything you can do across the board.

[feralminded]

Man you're SOOOO misinformed. 15% damage on devastate is AWESOME. It brings Devastate right up there with revenge to the point that some people are dropping improved revenge (I'm seriously considering it). I think you need to some serious research on the current state of warrior threat ... you seem to have A LOT of misconceptions. I'm not sure where you're pulling them from but you're just flat out wrong on so many things it's hard to communicate. Devastate is huge for us now, specially after the 4.0.6 patch. War Academy is a fantastic threat talent. Deep wounds > cruelty. Threat increases linearly with damage.

If you want to argue whether we NEED threat boosting talents or not, fine we can have that discussion. But when it comes to which talents provide the most threat bonus you seem to have it completely backwards. It's frustrating as this isn't a matter of opinion ... as Koj said above this is simple arithmetic.

[Disruptor]

EDIT: As long as there are no exact calculations I am not misinformed. That is why I was asking for them or logs. And I think you can't understand my reasoning because I am raiding 10s. And in 10man-content I would never ever skip Safeguard. I would not even recommend to skip Blood craze, especially not in 10s. And DW loses its value without 5% crit buff

[Loganisis]

http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...or-Spreadsheet

With his base character in there, 0 points in war academy, 0 points in deep wounds, 0 points in cruelty: TPS = 22342.08
With his base character in there, 0 points in war academy, 0 points in deep wounds, 2 points in cruelty: TPS = 23035.48
With his base character in there, 3 points in war academy, 0 points in deep wounds, 0 points in cruelty: TPS = 23172.58
With his base character in there, 3 points in war academy, 3 points in deep wounds, 0 points in cruelty: TPS = 25091.92

From 0 to 2 for Cruely, 693.4 TPS / 2 = 346.7 TPS/talent point
From 0 to 6 for WA/DW, 2759.84 TPS / 6 = 458.306666repeating TPS/talent point.

Cruelty looks to be slightly better than WA on a per-talent point basis (1 points for only a 140 more TPS) but when you look at DW - it does come out on top, giving almost 33% more TPS per talent point.

Now, as Feral said, if you want to discuss whether you need the TPS and maybe more survability/raid tools with fewer threat modifiers is what you want, but the math is there.

[Disruptor]

Thanks for this information. I was looking for facts like that and it is a beginning. But these calculations do not satisfy me. Incite/T11 influences DW, as 5% crit buff does. Your parry value increases the value of DW. And HR and Cruelty both benefit from each other. SS with HR and SB is the highest hitting ability and scales better than any other style.There are way more influences to look at.

[Loganisis]

First, those calcuations included HR uptime and 3/3 incite. So HR, WA/DW > Cruelty without the set bonus.

Now with the set bonus

With his base character in there, 0 points in war academy, 0 points in deep wounds, 0 points in cruelty: TPS = 22826.90 with set bonus
With his base character in there, 0 points in war academy, 0 points in deep wounds, 2 points in cruelty: TPS = 23575.24 with set bonus
With his base character in there, 3 points in war academy, 0 points in deep wounds, 0 points in cruelty: TPS = 23657.40 with set bonus
With his base character in there, 3 points in war academy, 3 points in deep wounds, 0 points in cruelty: TPS = 25576.74 with set bonus

so

Base is 22826.9 with set bonus
2 points in Cruelty is 748.34 TPS/2 = 374.17 TPS/Talent point
6 points in WA/DW is 2749.84 TPS/6 = 458.31 TPS/Talent point

Set bonus increases Cruetly by 30tps/talent point and WA/DW by basically nothing, but it's already so far ahead that it makes it a little closer, but still, on a per point basis, DW/WA > Cruetly for TPS purposes.

***

If you don't like the numbers, check the spreadsheet in the thread I linked. Wartotem can answer an specific question you ahve about it there or points you disagree.

[Disruptor]

Wartotems rotation tab is not accurate. It is not that easy to calculate the rotation of a tank. Any missed / dodge / parried beside SS and Rev will decrease the value of WA. A priority system would be much more accurate like SimCraft has. Or you have to calculate the average usage of a style per time period which includes some amount of math.

These results are in favor of WA and DW because skipping Dem Shout and parry / dodges / miss from calculations increase the value of WA and DW.

Incite 2/3, Cruelty 2/2, HR 2/2, WA 0/3, DW 0/3

with 5% crit --> 37586 TPS
without --> 35590 TPS

Incite 1/3, Cruelty 0/2 , HR 0/2, WA 3/3, DW 2/3

with 5% crit --> 34942 TPS
without --> 32682 TPS

Incite 1/3, Cruelty 0/2 , HR 0/2, WA 3/3, DW 3/3

with 5% crit --> 35671


Incite 3/3, Cruelty 0/2, HR 0/2, WA 3/3, DW 3/3 ( skipping revenge and imp revenge )

with 5% crit --> 37222 TPS

Even this build does not outtps HR+Cruelty and you are missing 1 point for utility and revenge is crucial for cleaving. As all of those calculations are in favor of WA/DW I cant see how WA/DW should be better than HR/Cruelty. This supports my assumptions. SS scales way better with ap than DW/WA does. I think even huge upgrades of tank weapons wont make DW attractive and crit wont increase due to gear so munching is no option either.

[Loganisis]

I'm seeing some communication issues here.

You're comparing 2/2 HR and 2/2 Cruelty to 3/3 DW and 3/3 WA.

I'm not and never would remove HR, even in a DW build. The other talents I'm missing out dont' excite me.

Gag order? Useful in heroics, haven't found myself missing it after using it all of Wrath in raids though.
Thunderstruck? Another nice Heroic tool.
Safeguard? Might be nice, but haven't found it lacking. The fights we're having trouble on are the ones where there's dual tanking going on, not tank swapping.
Impending Victory? Maybe fight specific if it really came to that.

So regardless of any choices in the Arms or Fury tree, unless a specific fight requried respec-ing for a specific mechanic, why would any tank skimp on HR?

The choice, as Feral was hinting at, is Utility versus threat. WA+DW > Cruelty + whatever else in Fury/Arms in threat. The difference would be 4 points for more utility-centric builds if you wanted that.

****

As for Wartotem's spreadsheet - he'll have to respond specificlly, but I think the rotation page takes into account the priority system already. And if you want to talk about the effect of Dodges/parries/misses - You use Devestate far more than SS because of the shorter CD. This means if your threat is more heavily concentrated in SS, a miss/dodge/parry will be more impactful than a single missed/dodged/parried devastate, so a bad string for SS can be far more problematic.

Re-run your similations with the ONLY difference being 2/2 cruelty versus 3/3 DW. See if it supports your position.

If you want to argue utility - well, as Feral said, that's a different discussion.

[Kojiyama]

I don't understand the avoidance argument. Misses affect everything and no Warrior ability has a higher chance to hit than other Warrior abilities. So it's really not anything that changes the relative value of things. Shield Slams can miss, Devastates missing reduce the number of Shield Slams, etc.

I've run the numbers many times with my calculations in Rawr and Deep Wounds has always come miles ahead of Cruelty in threat.

Also, why are you removing Heavy Repercussions in all your Deep Wounds builds other than to make the DPS of Deep Wounds look artificially lower than it is? The two talents don't compete at all, and Heavy Repercussions is one of the best TPS talents we have. Any threat-oriented Deep Wounds build will have it.