Talent point shuffle with respect to increased threat change (warrior)

[Vrodd]

Hi all

With the new added threat changes, I was considering changes to some points. Before this increased threat change, Incite and Heroic strike, plus all the damage buffs were mainly (in my mind) to increase damage in order to increase threat. It seems to me that I would now have the opportunity to allocate points (or even maybe glyphs, which I did not look at yet) to make myself more survivable as opposed to more "threatable." Such talents as Blood Craze and Impending Victory come to mind.

On the other hand, perhaps survivability is not the way to allocate points but rather, maximize my DPS for the sake of killing the boss faster. In which case, maxing out Incite, Cruelty and Deep Wounds (at the cost of Shield Specialization, which I saw in one persons spec).

Any thoughts on this? Or are most people just keeping their spec as-is and focusing on keeping up the mobs debuffs, such as Demo shout, etc (b/c I'm very guilty of letting that fall off b/c of priority ability procs).

[Loganisis]

Kill things faster - Bloodcraze is really poor, even at it's best, it's like a 1.2k/s heal for 5 seconds.

Impending Victory, if you don't need the DPS, might be more valuable, as crazy crap can go on in the last 20% of a fight, but at the same time, faster death = less chance for error and you're probably going to be giving up a noticeable amount of DPS depending on the talents you give up.

Shield Spec - only give this up if you are raged capped and using HS on CD. More rage generation is good, even if it's not for DPS (Shield block, enraged regeneration, pummel, demo shout, thunderclap). You don't want to find yourself rage starved when you need one of those. Top players drop it because, well they're far better than me. But I don't think you'll gain a lot from dropping it.

Right now Imp Rev is really the red-headed step child unless you run a lot of dungeons.

Keep Battle Shout and Thunderclap up. Keep them up over DPS. Or make sure someone else is keeping them up, but you'll probably want to keep them up yourself.

[Tengenstein]

To add to what Logan's said, Shield Spec is highly valuable, and you really can't afford to drop it until you're using Ineer Rage and Heroic strike on CD. Imp Rev does have advantages on fights like Rag where due to the on again/off again nature of the fight its hard to maintain a steady rage income. So either take the points from Thunderstruck or Imp.Rev. by skipping one of those talents, and Gag Order, Safe guard and Imp.Victory, you should be ableto hir Cruety and Incite, and Deep wounds

Demo shout is your priority Ability. Thunderclap while important should maintain itself as you're going to be using it ~13 second to keep rend up. you can ignore demo shout on non-threatning content, but when you're doing an encounter that you could die to and your given the choice of letting Demo fall off or delaying a Shield slam, you should be delaying the shield slam, even if Colossus Smash and shattering throw and shield block are up.

[Vrodd]

I have been using Revenge as it procs, always. I think it's just been that way for me throughout the patches and expansions, and hadn't thought that it might not be as useful as it had been. That said, is Revenge out of the rotation priority, and therefore the Improved Revenge talent can be taken away?

Granted, I do a lot of dungeons; but I don't know if it would hurt my tanking abilities in those situations by taking out Improved Revenge.

[Tengenstein]

Pretty much, the same thing happened in 3.2, the reason is twofold, firstly while both scale off AP (Rev more so than Dev), Dev does so via weapon damage, and we can improve weapon damage by getting a better weapon in addition to all the things we do to boost AP, secondly Dev due to its Glyph and the Sword and board Talent has a much higher likelihood to crit giving it a higher damage per execute than Revenge, lastly this higher crit rate is boosted further by deep wounds

This is a little graph I made of Rev VS Dev average DPE at various AP values and weapon damages, the X axis is AP and the Y axis, you can see that at sufficient AP Rev does indeed over take Dec, but its quite a bit beyond what you can get this tier, unless you have a very crappy weapon, compared to the rest of your gear.

[Vrodd]

Point well taken. I think this causes me to change my rotation so that Revenge would be used more in a multi-mob situation, in on a single target, boss situation, I would work Heroic Strike in the rotation and phase out revenge.

Apart from having to move due to boss fight mechanics, I can actually work on my rotation even better versus looking at my Threat Meter and mashing buttons to save our lives.

I tried out Impending Victory and much like many others, I'm less than impressed by it.

[Nehama]

Don't cross out revenge totally just yet.

If you take it all in a perfect world, you are right. What you do have to keep in mind is that revenge takes way less rage - which can be used on hc strikes with inner rage. Now, granted, if you go 3/3 shield specelization (which you should, imo), you won't be rage starved too much - but I find myself often drop from 100 rage to 30'ish and even lower sometimes if I'm mashing my hc strike and inner rage is up. That is the time you'd prolly want to use revenge, since it won't make you stop hc striking and shield slamming whenever it's off CD.

On another note, I found impending victory priceless on heroic raids. Bath', Lord giant-magma guy and any other boss excpet shannox (Who is cake, tbh) are most healing intensive towards the end. Getting those 20k heals every 5-10 seconds is priceless imo. I'm also a big fan of Safe Guard - it's a great ability to use on raid members to decrese raid damage on one person / save the other tank a bit more without taunting.

Deep wounds end up being probably the best dps talent - but I find it's un-needed, spacially now, when the dps should be atleast on-par with gear requirments, if not outgearing it.

[Tengenstein]

Don't cross out revenge totally just yet.

If you take it all in a perfect world, you are right. What you do have to keep in mind is that revenge takes way less rage - which can be used on hc strikes with inner rage. Now, granted, if you go 3/3 shield specelization (which you should, imo), you won't be rage starved too much - but I find myself often drop from 100 rage to 30'ish and even lower sometimes if I'm mashing my hc strike and inner rage is up. That is the time you'd prolly want to use revenge, since it won't make you stop hc striking and shield slamming whenever it's off CD.

While this is true, the problem with factoring rage expenditure is the CD of HS strike, sure you may not be able hit HS the exact moment it comes off CD, but then you get a huge boost 1 second later you've only lost one or two 3rds of an HS over time realistic. You need to be delaying HS by quite a large amounts due to lack of rage on most boss fights before the Rev's lower rage cost becomes an advantage somewhere in excess of delaying each HS by ~50% on my sims an a 5 minute fight.

I really wish this wasn't the case, but it is. Revenge is Dead, as a class we need to realise this and get Blizz to pump some Life into old girl. If it can't cleave make it hit the same target twice, D'YER HEAR BLIZZ!