Loading ...The Rotation. It’s not as Easy as you think.
I’m guilty of thinking it was as simple as prioritizing:
Shield Slam > Revenge > Devastate
…but, it’s not.
The Real Priority System
Shield Slam > Revenge > Concussion Blow > Shockwave > Devastate
…and when you throw in the mix that you many have to renew Battle/Commanding Shout, Demoralizing Shout and Thunder Clap as well which all take precidence over Devastate, it becomes very apparent how little Devastate is part of the threat system now. Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t get to 5 Sunders as quickly as possible, you definitely should, but it does mean that when it comes to bosses that Devastate just shouldn’t be a big part of your rotation.
The Ramifications
It’s for this reason that Puncture is currently one of the weakest talents in the Protection tree. You simply don’t Devastate enough to justify spending 3 points (or even 1 for that matter) on this talent. On the flip side, however, the desire to Devastate as little as possible makes Glyph of Devastate more appealing than one might have expected for the 3rd Major Glyph slot (behind the Blocking and Revenge Glyphs) as it does doubly duty being useful on both Bosses (allowing you to do your proper rotation sooner) and on Trash.
December 30th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Almost for every class, it has become a matter of priority. At first it seems daunting, then you realize a few hours later that its no different than a rotation; even back then you had to follow a priority system. c.c.
Lastly said, I think when 3.0.8 comes out, I’ll try out the cleave glyph. hitting 3 targets would be nice, considering how much aoe we do on trash. If not, I’ll pick up the devastate glyph. It’s been taking me too long to put sunders up on bosses.
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veneretio reply on December 30, 2008 3:18 pm:
When Dual Specs come around, I’ll likely sport a Trash-style glyph set with a more AOE-style spec and a Boss-style glyph set with a more Boss-style spec. At that time, the former will likely run the Cleave Glyph, but until then it’s a hard sell. (Which isn’t to say, I won’t be tempted to try it… after all gotta have a little fun too)
Currently, I’m conflicted. The Devastate glyph is nice. The Heroic Strike glyph is nice. They both offer very minor benefits on bosses with the difference being that the Devastate glyph offers a lot more on Trash, but the Heroic Strike glyph offers slightly more on bosses.
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Cleaved reply on December 31, 2008 1:16 am:
I go with Devastate Glyph, have since I hit 80. I just find getting those Sunders out of the way ( especially on multiple mobs ) to be worth more than the HS Glyph. Even on bosses it helps, because you get them up faster and if you (for some reason) let them slide… its very easy to just put them back up. Go with Devastate and see how you like it, I don’t think you’ll miss the HS Glyph, especially if you aren’t rage-starving yourself with constant devastates. Granted, you could get some rage back when HS Spamming… but its negligible imo… since its only on a Crit with HS.
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Rustyboy reply on January 18, 2009 8:30 am:
Yes, the devastate glyph is very nice. I’m still deciding between that and the HS one, the reason being my heroic strike crits for around 30% of the time and a lot of the fights go up and down in regards to rage generation. Over the coarse of a night of raiding that’s ~30% of free heroic strikes that you can spam without worrying if its after revenge and at the same time you can push our more threat before your rage generation drops again.
The devastate glyp is great don’t get me wrong, however HS is a big part of maximising your threat and I think at the moment HS glyph is more useful. Especially on fights where your rage generation is very bursty.
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December 30th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
BTW Ven, the spec i was talkin about in the other post, basically does exatly this: for every 1 SS you get, i get 2-3 by spamming Dev when i can. This method has for me at least, put me on top my guilds TPS of all the tank classes, and its by far the largest guild on my server, so i have alot of tanks to compare to. I’m essentially following your very Priority order to its truest form, SS as hard and fast as possible. And if i can get extra dps from the move, then why not?
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veneretio reply on December 30, 2008 5:30 pm:
The priority system takes Sword and Board into account. If you’re Devastating instead of Revenge, Concussion Blow and Shockwave then you’re simply generating less threat and doing less damage than you could be. You’re not following the system in it’s truest form, if you were then that’s what I’d have been posting. You’re not doing more damage, you’re doing less damage. What I’ve posted is harder, but it does result in better, more consistent damage and threat.
Just because you generate more TPS than other tanks doesn’t validate your methodilogy. Not to mention, just b/c you’re in the largest guild does not mean you’re in the most skilled guild. There’s so many factors in this game. There’s so many ways to gain an edge. The reality is that you’re more skilled than your competition and obviously know what you’re doing in a lot of aspects of this game which is why you’ve got the best TPS in your guild despite using an inferior threat priority system.
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December 30th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
So when do you think the dual spec patch will be out?
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Mojin/Hawksong reply on January 2, 2009 7:45 am:
Rumors have it that dual spec will be out with patch 3.1 sometime this month (January). The hold-up appears to be the decision of how a player changes specs, how glyphs work between specs, and keeping button layouts between them.
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December 30th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Heroic throw might be worth it too but I’d have to check the math on that one and would depend on weapon damage vs AP.
Also if your weapon speed is slow (which ideally it shouldn’t be) rend would be worth throwing up there. ( I know I’m going to be called a noob for saying that but if you work the math out for broken promise its damage is almost on par with shockwave depending on AP and for a lot less rage)
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veneretio reply on December 30, 2008 5:34 pm:
Slow weapons of equal dps to Fast Weapons always result in less damage/threat due to less chances to Heroic Strike. That being said, there has been some calculation that Rend may be better than Devastate in the priority system as well. It’s why you see my current Deep Wounds spec opting for 2 points in Improved Rend over 2 points in Improved Charge.
I can’t be certain if it’s true yet though (otherwise it would have been in this post) and certainly it would never make sense to Rend on trash as mobs would die before you got use of Rend’s full duration, but it may be possible that it’s worth it on Boss encounters.
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veneretio reply on December 30, 2008 5:34 pm:
I forgot to mention too. Heroic Throw has been shown to be inferior to Devastate in the rotation and thus, not worth using.
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Ipick reply on December 30, 2008 6:02 pm:
Good to know!
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mavfin reply on January 4, 2009 5:57 pm:
Yeah, it’s no good as part of the rotation, but I do love the leg up it gives me to start a fight with! Much better than a measly hit with a throwing weapon or the tank gun.
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Vilhelmriker (Lothar Server) reply on January 5, 2009 7:48 am:
if I gun pull more than one piece of trash, I’ll switch to a second and Heroic Throw just as the gun goes off, locking down aggro on 2 mobs before I start my AoE rotation.
on a single pull, I can shoot, then Heroic throw to spike my threat higher for no rage.
December 30th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
i dunno bout rend, even if its dmg is up there, its tps probly isnt, even spec’d.
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December 30th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I take Puncture mostly for trash and if i end up offtanking or dpsing or for a fight. Even if I’m not the MT I like to be able to keep sunder up and it assists alot in getting Sword and Board procs during a low rage situation.
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December 30th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Rend could be useful to apply the bleed debuff if there is no one else applying it, and other classes need it to increase their damage.
I need to change my add-on though .. it keeps shouting in chat
“I’m a noob .. I just applied rend to a World Boss!”
-_-
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December 30th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Correct me if I’m wrong but according to wowhead shockwave doesn’t do any additional threat. Could be dead wrong on that.
Now an example with 3000 AP and Broken Promise
Shockwave= 3000*.750*65.9(Raid boss armor coeffcient)= 1505 Damage
Rend=(380+(274+509)/2+3000/14*2.5)*(1.35+3/4 (the 35% more damage coeffcient when over 75% when calculated over a boss’s whole life)=1570 Damage
Now take it to consider rend gets +20% from talents +30% from trauma and that gets you a good deal more damage for 5 less rage every 15 sec.
The one big drawback is that this only works with a slow weapon which you probably shouldn’t be using anyway. Also haven’t tested this yet
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Ipick reply on December 30, 2008 5:53 pm:
Also yeah rend makes you look like a noob and doesn’t have a cool effect like shockwave.
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December 30th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Anyone else ever have sunder fall off while tanking… Really messed me up the first time I had that happen. Weird thing to have to watch for =/
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sogium reply on December 30, 2008 8:05 pm:
Could that be because bosses have a limited amount of debuff slots? I think I heard about that kind of problem before, when sunwell raiding warlocks didn’t spec into applying a kind of debuff because they were constantly pushing other debuffs off.
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admin reply on December 30, 2008 8:22 pm:
They’ve increased debuff slot limit to a point where it’s a non-factor now. Prior to this, there was an issue with using Deep Wounds because it used up these valuable and scarce slots. Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about that anymore.
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veneretio reply on December 30, 2008 8:18 pm:
Yup, definitely, it can be a lot to take in maintaining Demo, TC, Commanding and Sunder all while doing this priority system and effectively Heroic Striking, but practice makes perfect
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JnP reply on January 23, 2009 3:13 am:
the most of the time we raid we have 1 or 2 fury warriors with us and the most of the fury warriors have improved Demo, so I cant really why you are thinking of Demo, I think I have been on 1 25 mans raid where we did not have a fury warrior with us, but then we had a other Warrior tank, and I think the one that are OT should keep the Demo up, cause almost every boss I tank as MT I can use my rage up if I want, I know alot of people say that is not possible but that is not true you still can, just a matter of using HS, on almost every and when you get low one rage, ofc remember not to do it so you have rage for SW, SS, revenge and so on. I would say the MT should every have to think of Demo if there is a other warrior in the raid with him.
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December 30th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Vene, any reason why Conc. Blow goes before Shockwave? or you just kinda throw them in together? From what I understand, shockwave would be more powerful for 2 reasons: it has a 20 sec cd instead of 30 sec; it is not affected by miss, dodge or parry rates of the target.
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Tengaaris reply on December 30, 2008 9:44 pm:
I believe “blue” stated that the debuff slots have increased by a good margin, but they also noted that the UI still has a limit on the number of debuffs it will display… so if the sunder stack isn’t visible but you’re sure that enough time hasn’t passed for it to fade, then it’s probably still there - just not displaying in the UI.
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veneretio reply on December 30, 2008 10:41 pm:
Concussion Blow has a 1 minute timer so it should be used first so that it can become available again sooner. After all, there’s nothing stopping one 6 second cycle from being Shield Slam, Revenge, Concussion Blow, Shockwave.
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December 31st, 2008 at 5:32 am
Aside from Conc. Blow I’ve been tanking exactly this way, throwing TC up behind revenge on trash, but just keeping it up on bosses. I don’t know why I haven’t been using Conc. Blow though, so I’ll definitely start. Thanks for pointing this out. Sometimes I miss the obvious stuff lol.
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December 31st, 2008 at 6:10 am
I’ve actually seen some number crunching that suggests Shield Slam > Revenge > Devastate, use Concussion Blow or Shockwave only after not getting Sword and Board procs on your first two revenge/devastate. Since Conc and SW can’t proc S and B, Devastate tends to be better until you’re within one Global Cooldown of Shield Slam refreshing, in which case a proc would be useless, thus our stuns become better.
Have you found something to suggest otherwise?
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December 31st, 2008 at 7:15 am
When the Devastate glyph applies two sunders, does it also apply the threat of both those sunders? If it does, then does the value of Devastate with the glyph possibly change your threat order when there are no sunders up?
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ebs2002 reply on January 1, 2009 9:18 pm:
If it does, you’d only get the extra threat when you’re not at 4 or 5 sunder stacks, and thus it shouldn’t change the value of Devastate.
Haven’t done any testing on this, though
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megagrogan reply on January 2, 2009 1:49 am:
no, it doesn’t add the extra threat.
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rochelle reply on January 5, 2009 4:25 pm:
Devastate, glyphed or not, hasn’t gotten threat from sunders since 3.0
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Arvernien reply on January 7, 2009 10:56 am:
If this is true, there’s almost no reason to use devastate early. We are used to using devastate to get threat both from damage and the sunder armor effect. The debuff armor reduction is gravy improving the entire party’s damage. If devastate no longer adds the inherent threat from the sunder armor effect we’d be better off starting with sunder armor. I would still keep devastate at the bottom of the rotation to keep the sunder armor effect up and for the occasional Sword and Board proc.
admin reply on January 7, 2009 11:02 am:
Devastate offers the damage component it does as threat whereas Sunder Armor offers a static 345. They both offer an additional 5% of your Attack Power as threat. Since the damage you do with Devastate is always going to be better than Sunder’s 345 static threat, you should not be using Sunder Armor instead of Devastate.
Arvernien reply on January 7, 2009 11:13 am:
I’ll have to check on my devastate’s base damage. Since I’m using a fast weapon I think I’ve seen devastates start around 150 damage which is not as good as Sunder Armor’s static 345 threat.
December 31st, 2008 at 10:10 am
Is it still a priority to get a sunder stack up on the boss before settling into the priority chain? Or should we delegate that to a handy TG warrior?
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admin reply on December 31, 2008 3:52 pm:
Yes, your priority should still be to get to 5 Sunders ASAP. If an offtank or a dps warrior wants to throw in a sunder or two to speed up the process though, I certainly wouldn’t say no.
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December 31st, 2008 at 10:37 am
My biggest challenge in playing WoW has always been keyboard mechanics. I don’t know how I can get concussion blow into my rotation unless I can grow another finger on my left hand.
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Urus reply on December 31, 2008 3:46 pm:
Tankette: I know it’s enough to get laughed out of some WoW circles, but I have the same problem. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with clicking abilities with long-ish (10+ sec) cooldowns and hotkeying the 5 or 6 buttons you can easily reach to the abilities you use all the time.
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Kristopher reply on January 12, 2009 9:52 am:
My solution to that prob:
http://www.xoxide.com/ideazon-fang-military-gamepad.html
It comes with a WoW basic binding set as well. The red move keys almost never get used ( unless in combo with the jump key on the side ) … but having twelve action-bar buttons all in reach is damned handy.
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Soldat reply on December 31, 2008 3:48 pm:
I have my keys as
1- SS
2- Rev
3- Dev
4- TC
5- SW
F1-HS
F2-Cle
F3-CB
F4-Shield Bash
And then I assign the rest to shift and alts of those, if that helps.
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mavfin reply on January 4, 2009 6:00 pm:
Yeah, I took the plunge a month ago and macroed it all into the basic old-school 1-=, with alt and ctrl having the lesser-used things on them, and a few other things visible to see their cooldown status. Saves me a lot of acrobatics. I’ve had a month to play with it now, and I’ve tweaked a few obvious things that needed it. I love it.
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Chet reply on January 2, 2009 9:10 am:
yeah, I have trouble finding a set up that works for me. Messing with it slows me down too, though, so it’s hard to change it much. I appreciate Soldat posting your hotkeys. I’d like to compare mine to a few others and see where I could make changes. In the end it’s all about comfort I guess, but I could use a little more functionality out of my hotkeys
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Tankette reply on January 5, 2009 10:35 am:
Same here. I feel like I need a clinic on how to make the most out of my keyboard. I can not hit function keys, the shift key, alt key or control key without looking down at my keyboard. I have tab and 1-5 linked to attackes with 2 more linked to my 2 thumb buttons on my mouse.
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Mojin/Hawksong reply on January 5, 2009 12:02 pm:
Your mileage may vary, but I started with one button a day. I mapped the ~ through 6 keys. Then, once I was comfortable, I started with alt-~ through alt-6. Once I got that down, I mapped an ability to F. Then V. Then G and B. And so on until I ended up with my current key binds.
Because my index finger tends to rest on the F key at all times, F, V, G, and B tend to be my most used skills.
Soldat reply on January 5, 2009 5:59 pm:
Like Mojin aove me, I use Tilda for charge in all stances, then I macro’ed my middle mouse button to be taunt in defensive, intercept in beserker, and I can’t remember what in battle right now. I use g for Intervene, as well. Just keep adding stuff as you get comfortable with it.
Mandragoran reply on January 5, 2009 10:00 am:
To save button real estate, I combine Shockwave & Concussion Blow, as well as Taunt & Mocking Blow using a castsequence with reset = to cooldown. So after I cast Shockwave, Conc blow is available on the same button until Shockwave is cooled down. I also combine Thunderclap and Demo Shout in that way, but depending on your style I guess any of those combos might limit you.
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Ridlyblade reply on January 6, 2009 11:21 am:
I think I’m going to avoid this one as i think if anybody saw my bindings set up their head would explode
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December 31st, 2008 at 6:04 pm
my current tanking wep is Broken Promise from 4 horses.. this slow wep along with rend and deep wounds.. is excelent tps and dps.. im using the same rotation as you vene, but simply adding in a rend every 15 secs.. i put its priority over dev.. this generrates around 6k tps and around the 1.5 - 1.8k dps
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January 1st, 2009 at 2:25 am
Well, with a slow weapon, like Broken Promise from 4HM in Naxx_25, Devastates start to shine. But with fast one handers just like The Last Laugh (claimed to be the best tanking weapon in the game), Devastates just don’t do much threat at all.
Furthermore, with the Deep Wounds spec Broken Promise is capable of about 2k more TPS than Last Laugh, AND it is about 3 times better for offtanking too.
When OT’ing, you usually spam Devastate only and hope for SnB procs.
-> Slow Weapon > Fast Weapon
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Ivanstone reply on January 1, 2009 1:28 pm:
Not really. Its still about the Heroic Strike spam whilst tanking bosses. BP does enjoy a nice edge over previous tank weapons. Its itemization is very good and it has superiour DPS. Even then if you can regularly convert 80% of your swings to HS the advantages of slow attack speed disappear. For me, HS frequently counts for 1/3 of my damage output.
I normally use Broken Promise for trash and a few of the weaker bosses where I don’t have surplus rage. Slayer of the Lifeless was my usual weapon for boss tanking. I recently obtained a Split Greathammer which will likely get used for more DPS orientated fights due to the huge expertise boost I get from being a Dwarf. In any event, it will all get banked for Last Laugh if I get it.
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mavfin reply on January 4, 2009 6:02 pm:
I’m using a 2.5 mace at the moment, and the HS from it is so big that II’m doing over 1/3 of my damage from them, more than I did from the fast 1h. I haven’t mathed out why, yet, though.
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Sumendis reply on January 4, 2009 7:15 pm:
HS adds a fixed amount of damage to your weapon swing, so a fast weapon will always give you more HS damage if you use it on every swing. Keep in mind that the damage from HS reported in the combat log includes your regular white swing that got replaced by the HS. So if you’re seeing a higher percentage from HS with the slower weapon, there’s 2 possible explanations: your slow weapon has higher base dps and maybe more str/ap stats than the old fast one. Or you’ve changed your HS habits and use it much more frequently now.
mavfin reply on January 4, 2009 11:53 pm:
@sumendis from above:
I’m going to hazard a guess that
A) yes, it’s a bigger DPS weapon, and
B) with a slower weapon speed, I’m actually getting it hit every time.
With faster weapons, my fingers just weren’t fast enough to hit it all the time. However, I also have not tanked with a fast weapon since revamping my bindings to simplify them a lot. I might do better with that, *but*, the 2.5 weap is an epic, while the fast one is a blue of the same ilvl, so, back to A). Also, of course, for now, nothing is even close to pushing me on threat, so I’ll stick with the slower one till I can get a good epic faster one to drop for me.
Thanks for the analysis, though. I did know how HS worked, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something. I suspect B) is most of it with a keybinding revamp.
January 1st, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I have used a Belkin N52 since playing 1942…..maybe earlier. I setup the hat buttons for TB, HS, Cleave, Taunt and then LS on the orange button. I really love this device and would recommend you guys try it or another gaming device for fast key action.
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January 2nd, 2009 at 1:41 am
My experience is that When Things Go Wrong it is usually not due to the tank generating insufficient threat, but due to uncontrolled adds, poor movement, missed heals etc. So while an optimal threat rotation is very helpful to aim for (especially at the start of the encounter) I would normally try to build a good threat lead, and then just ensure I do not die. This means ignoring CB and possibly also Heroic Strike and making sure that TC/shouts are always up, using shield block as often as possible, making sure I am not standing in the fire etc.
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January 3rd, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Because of SaB I use Devastate alot
With SaB my rotations is spam Revenge and Devastate to get SaB to proc -
I Spam HS if Rage permits- and use the slow CD moves aswell ofc when they are up -
Devastate Tps with SaB is close to a Conc Blow
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January 5th, 2009 at 2:40 am
I only just broken my habbit of devistate spamming, it does work better useing anything other than devistate, even thunderclap.
I don’t know about anyone else though, but I’ve tested the new Deep wounds spec too, its great for extra damage and threat and only a minor loss in survivability…but…
Does anyone else feel a little bit dirty by all these changes? Like a rambo DPS with a shield.
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Steele reply on January 5, 2009 3:17 am:
muahaha, word up
i started collecting gladiator things for heroics since i heard resilience can make u crit immune to mobs too… so why not go into heroics with a full gladiator set critting left and right 
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Steele reply on January 14, 2009 8:45 am:
which actually turned out to be great. im now always using gladiator boots & helmet for tanking heorics instead of my titansteel stuff which i only put on to tank bosses in raids. i also noticed resilience helps against caster-mobs and my crit is at solid 15% with only 2 pvp pieces.
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January 5th, 2009 at 6:45 am
To reply to Steel, Resilience will make you crit immune, as defense, but does not raid your avoidance, which doesn’t help you as a tank.
As for the priority of skills, i can’t say that i agree.
Sheild Slam is of course your priority. Followed by Revenge+Heroic Strike (Glyphed), and Devestate should most assuredly be last.
Based off of countless WWS reports, tanks with Improved Thunderclap and Shockwave easily do 1k dps, with a REALLY high TPS, especially if they TC single mobs (Bosses).
Read the description of Thunderclap.
Not only will it add to AoE dps, but also increases tank survivability. How can you look over something like that?
The Deep Wounds spec is nice, but only in certain situations. And why would anyone mainstream a spec the first month of an expansion. We all know Blizzard is warming up the Nerf Bat watching us all do what we do. More content is comming out soon, which has a chance at totally making a tank dps spec worth about as much as gutterslut in an armed conflict.
Stick with the Core, which is a repeating phrase all over this site, but don’t put all your eggs into one basket.
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megagrogan reply on January 5, 2009 2:09 pm:
i’m curious as to what situations deep wounds is not nice in :&
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January 5th, 2009 at 10:51 am
re: Heroic Throw - I just read above that heroic throw is not worth using as part of the rotation. Agreed but I’m wondering if it is not still good to pull with. Presently, on trash I’ll use my thrown weapon, heroic throw, charge & shield slam in rapid succession to build nice aggro on the lead mob, allowing me to quickly switch to mobs 2-5 for a quick devestate without losing the lead mob. This combined with glyph of devestate allows for 2-3 devs on each mob very, very quickly. So my typical trash pull goes as follows:
Throw+HeroicThrow+Charge –> SS –> TC –> Shockwave –> Demo Shout –> devestate on mobs 2-5 –> back to lead mob –> start priority list/rotation.
This is, of course, assuming that it is reasonably safe to fight them where they stand and that they don’t need to be moved. If they need to be moved and need LOS pull, I will throw+heroic throw to the 2nd highest priority target and then pick up #1 when the group gets close.
Anyone else using combinations like this to pull?
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Veneretio reply on January 5, 2009 11:22 am:
Heroic Throw is definitely fantastic for pulling. It is especially good for getting caster mobs into your AOE cluster since the Gag Order talent makes it silence for 3 seconds. Basically, what you’re doing looks good
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mavfin reply on January 5, 2009 4:48 pm:
Yeah, Heroic Throw is fantastic, just not as part of the rotation once the mob’s on you. Great for pulling, and awesome for casters with Gag Order. Also easy to do a double pull with gun then HThrow on a different target as someone mentioned earlier.
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January 5th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Anyone have a good macro for this?
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January 5th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
From my experience, don’t Shockwave on Gluth. His hit box is so large that based on where you’re standing and he usually is…he’s out of range.
At least that’s always how it works for me…even during his enrage. (Probably mostly due to reports of Shockwave only really having a 6.5-7 yard range)
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Veneretio reply on January 5, 2009 1:19 pm:
That’s an excellent point. Bosses with huge hit boxes will not always get hit by Shockwave and as a result for bosses that you notice are like this, it’s not worth including it in your rotation.
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Nayre reply on January 5, 2009 1:30 pm:
Yup, another good example of this happening is on Thaddius. The max melee range to hit him is farther than 10 yards (which is how far SW’ll shoot… and rather annoying, I might add), and so to actually use it you need to move closer.
Of course, the problem with that is that people on the other side may have come to the same conclusion, and so fun times may happen.
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Ridlyblade reply on January 6, 2009 11:18 am:
With thaddius, more than likely as a tank you’ll be able to shockwave him after you get a change in charge (i.e. you start out negative then get turned positive). I’ve noticed when you swap his sides and turn him he gets a bit closer to you and will want to stick with that new range.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:15 am
Not to sound trite but…. Dont folks realize that devastates proc Sword and Board? I know that I lazy tank with macros but when I can proc rage free shield slams… I like the devistate spam. I mean theres plenty of room for a rotation with shockwave/concussionblow ect and their cool downs. But I still think it wise to revenge and spam devastate as often as possible.
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admin reply on January 12, 2009 10:29 am:
If you want to do inferior dps/threat then you certainly can not use Shockwave/Concussion Blow. You’ll do fine, you’ll still be able to tank all of the content in the game, but you’ll be doing it with inferior dps/threat. Granted playing this way may allow you to focus on other things more and result in better overall performance and if that’s the case, then by all means, do it.
But make no mistake, if you aren’t using Shockwave and Concussion blow, you’re doing less damage/threat. The rotation does factor in the fact that Devastate can proc Shield Slam, we know this and it doesn’t change that in the long run, you’re still always better off with SW/CB.
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Athelia reply on January 12, 2009 12:17 pm:
They have 40+ second cooldowns. Theres no reason to not use them in your rotation however the rest you can still spam devastate.
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admin reply on January 12, 2009 1:25 pm:
Yes, of course, nothing here says that Devastate shouldn’t be used at all. It’s just lower priority than the rest. If I didn’t think it should be used at all then like Hamstring, Shield Bash or many other abilities at our disposal, it just wouldn’t have even been listed.
January 12th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Also I think once you get a nice slow 1hander then Devastate spam becomes that much better….
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Athelia reply on January 12, 2009 9:35 am:
and deep wounds… damn everything has synergy….
Leaning towards this build…
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warrior/talents.html?tal=350200002300000000000000000000300000000000000000000000000053251025200012521330113321
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admin reply on January 12, 2009 10:31 am:
Faster weapons still outperform Slow ones because of Heroic Strike. A would not recommend a Deep Wounds built without 3 points in Incite as well for the very fact that Heroic Strike is so important.
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Athelia reply on January 12, 2009 12:19 pm:
I would still think you would spam devastate more for shield slams. Also you wouldnt need to spam HS as much in your rotation until glyph of revenge proc’s.
Meatgazer reply on January 12, 2009 12:38 pm:
You should be spamming HS all the time on bosses in the current content. Rage starvation is not an issue.
Speeding up SS by a small amount does not overcome the fact that the damage from Devasate is so low compared to SW or CB. And yes, you still use devasate when SW and CB are on cooldown.
January 12th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
dont flame me but I have HS macroed with my Devastate rofl…. so Yea I am spamming HS and devastate together. So many folks hate it heh.
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Meatgazer reply on January 12, 2009 1:58 pm:
You may have been flamed about that back in 2.4, but in 3.0 it’s not a big deal.
Heck, you could probably bind heroic strike to every skill on your bar and you wouldn’t see any issues when raiding (maybe right at the beginning of the pull).
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January 14th, 2009 at 8:26 am
when i checked recount some days ago, it strongly suggested that Vene is right
http://www.pictureupload.de/originals/pictures/140109164157_pooo.jpg
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January 27th, 2009 at 4:49 am
So hang on, reading this seems to throw out your earlier rotation spec as stated in ‘Your Role: Maximising DPS …’
Shield Slam
Revenge
Devastate
Dev etc…
and replaces it with
Shield Slam > Revenge > Concussion Blow > Shockwave > Devastate
Does this mean that this is a key rotation for wotlk and tanking now, presumably throwing hs/demoral/tc into the mix.
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Veneretio reply on January 27, 2009 8:13 am:
Correct.
When I wrote the original post you’re referring to many months ago, I was still skeptical of the benefits of CB and SW in the standard rotation. It’s since proven to be superior and thus, this post was made.
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January 28th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
I am fastly approaching level 80 and preparing for heroics and 10 mans. I am switching mains and so I have not been tanking high level for a while. How exactly does CB help with bosses? Are they not immune to the CB effect?
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Veneretio reply on January 28, 2009 4:47 pm:
When Patch 3.0 came out, CB gained damage equal to 75% of your AP. Basically, it does identical damage to Shockwave. Bosses will be immune to the stun, but the damage will still hit.
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Anadorn reply on January 29, 2009 11:01 am:
I will modify my rotation to incude CB, but I am unable to generate enough rage to spam HS in 5 mans. Is it normal to throw a HS in when you can on 5 mans, but spam on a high rage generating boss fight?
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January 29th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I noticed something surprising last night. Rend beat out Deep Wounds by a significant amount of damage. I’m using the Infantry Assault Blade and Rend which I maintained on the boss at all times was 4.1% of my damage while Deep Wounds was only 1.8%. Is this normal?
It’s making me want to respec and move a point or 2 from improved charge to improved rend…
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Namthe reply on January 30, 2009 3:34 pm:
Those numbers surprise me. Deep wounds for me is currently about 10% of my total damage on boss fights.
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Meatgazer reply on February 2, 2009 7:03 am:
Make sure you have points in incite and are using heroic strikes.
Those are two things that are required to get deep wounds damage rolling.
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January 29th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
I think that the difference is that Deep Wounds is a passive stat that applies on a crit and doesnt use a global cooldown that could possibly be better used elsewhere.
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March 5th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
So, with all this talk of rotations, i’m interrested to know what sort of DPS do we put out, as i think i’m a bit low. Even on Patchwerk, i am lucky to get past 1.4 - 1.5k. I’m a pretty well geared tank, deepwound specced, and think that i am on top of my rotations. SO what dps is every one pullling? I’m on Eonar EU if any one wnat to look me up on armory.
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