Devastate data

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

Used to do 90% weapon DAMAGE in phase1 (fully stacked)
Now does 200% weapon DPS in phase2 (fully stacked)

This is effectively doing around 80% weapon DAMAGE now, of a 2.7 speed weapon which was the ideal in phase1 (Talwar)

Needs more buff to even get to what it was. A total of 230% weapon DPS (fully stacked) would put it back to the 90% of a 2.7 weapon DAMAGE, as it used to be

…

That said, with the new possibilities that have opened up for dual wield or two-handed tanking in phase2, even that might not be enough to make it worth using

If devs want Shield Warriors to be a thing (which they seem to be inclined to) this needs more love

4 Likes
2

They don’t. If they did, there would be way more implemented.

3

I think this may be too much work for the dev team.

4

If they buffed its damage it wouldn’t be a nerf now, would it?

1 Like
5

If they buff it to much it will be part of the rotation of every warrior not just shield.

6

I think they are done with Devastate.

Ability was nerfed, lots of vids of people just 1 button spamming and topping the dps in phase 1.

Need a rune to buff Shield Slam enough that it scales just as much as bloodthirst, and Shield Block needs to be worth it, blocking ~45 damage from a 750 dmg hit isn’t worth the damage and threat loss.

Classic Warrior tanks DW tank 99% of this game as fury / Prot. SoD is the perfect chance to make Shield Warriors useful.

1 Like
7

Could make a rune that gives the strength ratio to block value that wotlk has. I think in classic it’s something horible like 20 strength to 1 block value, where as in wrath it’s 2 strength to 1 block value. This would also buff shield slam’s damage.

1 Like
8

Unlikely, since it’s playstyle works in direct contradiction to how Arms and Fury works.

1handed overpowers are weaker than 2handed ones, and since it requires Sunders and Defensive stance to work, it’s a nerf to your overall DPS to use it.

9

Well, Shield Slam is completely trash because it doesn’t scale with strength/ap like Blood Thirst does, and doesn’t provide any additional threat.

Also, using a shield generally isn’t worth it outside of a few encounters anyways.

Deep prot is trash, it’s been trash, and likely will always be trash. Blizzard generally doesn’t understand how or why it’s trash unfortunately.

1 Like
10

The P3 runes indicate they want shield warr tanks to be a thing.

(Which is fine with me, I always disliked the “I’m a tank without a shield” aesthetic. Bears KINDA make sense, but that’s more to do with popular culture/fantasy than any actual common sense.)

11

I wrote a thread on this, but the problem here is that our rage generation - incoming and outgoing is just bad. And no matter whether devastate does 150% of weapon DPS (100 + 5 * .10) or 200% (150 + 5 * 10a% - the after stacks aren’t going to be what the numbers were.

Even if they put “old” devastate back in, you’re still not going to get your old numbers as you can no longer get hit soft-capped, and targets have more mitigation than Ragnaros in some cases. By comparison, I think Akumai was like 1500 ish?

Any buff to devastate or anything else changes how we spend rage, not earn it.

-Horse

12

Can’t use Devastate without a shield equipped.

13

Give Prot passive rage generation, or modified rage formula and you fix a lot of its issues.

14

They added Devastate and “leaked” runes for next phase have two that work for sword+shield. Surely its a simple fix when every other tank class gets 6% crit mitigation, 30% hp, 50% threat in one rune right? Just make Devastate do more damage and give warriors 20% more damage when using a shield, since they’re already penalized -10% for sitting in defensive.

15

That would be one way of doing it - you have kinda the same problem that paladins have where the +hit is in the Prot tree, but Retribution is a lot of where you need it - or druids where Furor is in the Resto tree, but feral’s more where it’s useful - or you lose the 31 point talents, or can’t powershift, and either way, don’t have the Wolfshead helm…

Protection warrior, traditionally, fresh 60, you’d have Anger Management, the talent, and you’d get that passive rage generation - or at least that would be an option for you… But you can’t have that and shield slam, which is where a lot of snap threat comes from. Axe spec, sword spec, 2h spec, all improve your rage gen, but those live over in Arms.

You can do passive rage gen through runes too - Blood Frenzy gives 3 rage per tick of bleed, but it’s on the same slot as Flagellation, Raging Blow, and Warbringer (which is my favorite rune ever). You do also have to hit something that’s not immune to bleeds with a bleed. Or you could use deep wounds to spark the bleed - but prot warriors don’t have access to any of that if they want shield slam.

So if you can’t do that, you kinda have to gear around it - and that gear doesn’t exist. Being hit-capped would be a huge buff to the rage generation and threat generation of low-damage classes and specs like deep-prot warriors and guardian/bear druids. Even when you’re not doing a lot of damage because of really high armor values, you’re getting something for your attack. And as of patch 1.3.0 warriors get rage for enemies blocking, dodging, and parrying. And that gear, to not miss with abilities, doesn’t exist at present, without stats like “spellpower,” “intellect,” and “nature damage.”
Also zero are plate. Even crafted.

The big gear decision that was made at the beginning of the phase was re-normalizing weapon damage/speed. Which is great, conventional wisdom being faster weapons, more heroic strikes, more heroic strike flat threat bonuses - but HS’s cost is fixed. if you’ve got bad rage gen, the more HS casts you make, the more likely are they to reflect your miss percentage.

So, with a better rage formula, you’ve got a really nasty problem - reward hard hitting warriors hitting harder - at which point folks who are really doing well do better - or you’ve got a formula that rewards missing - not being dodged, parried, blocked - just not prepared. I’d love to hear any suggestions you had for a rage formula that rewarded not being hitcapped, if you have them. But anything else for a rage formula would really just be either very arbitrary or turn people who were already pumping up to 11.

But right now, best way to help the low-end of tanking is being hit capped, and I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think that there are a lot of things that are P2 that are being tested - what happens to melee when you buff armor values, what happens to population metrics when you make shaman really pump (check out ironforge - Horde is definitely seeing a population increase).

So yes, that would be nice, a bonus to dire bear form that not only makes them uncrittable but gives them a point or two of hit. You know that rune from Grizzby most people don’t run? Or even a consumable like the Blackfathom Sharpening Stones/Mana Oil. There are a bunch of ways of solving the problem.

But I don’t think its going to happen. And I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of deep prot tanks this phase. And I don’t think you’re going to hear “We heard you!” from the development staff. I think there’s a lot of stuff that’s “experimental” that we signed up for, where a little transparency/an official Diablo IV-style fireside chat might be nice.

Did you know there was a patch that dropped 3/19? Dropped right in the middle of raid for me.

Anyone seen a link to the patch notes?

16

you need a shield and dstance so im not so sure. but wars are dw tanking in fury stance at this point so…

17

That’s partly because the talent trees are designed to offer things post 40 for people - omen of clarity, furor, etc. It wasn’t common to be a single talent tree until far later in WoW’s class design (after Cata when I first stopped playing).

And I disagree that ret needs +hit more than prot does. A tank that can’t generate enough threat or hold aggro does more to impair a raid than a single DPS not landing enough hits.

Easy enough to fix. “When you attack with devastate, you gain +X rage per sunder on your target”. Now 2 handers and fury prot, who don’t have the same rage issues, are locked out of benefiting from it without being in defensive stance and using a shield.

No notes were released, unfortunately. Devs appear to be busy with Cata and Blunderstorm.

18

Tbh they just need to make shield slam viable to push this, how?? Introduce more low level shield with shield block value in it so the damage of shield slam will be able to scale from SBV status

19

No, they don’t. Shield Slam is at the bottom of a tree that provides absolutely nothing except a threat modifier. I’m tired of warrior tanking being gimped by people stuck on Dial-Up in 2004.

20

maybe try using a different weapon?