I’ve been reading through Noxxic, WoWhead guides, and Icy Veins - and all three suggest that Devastator is the go-to talent for the first row.
I’m having some trouble understanding the logic there.
Devastate by itself gives you 30% chance to reset Shield Slam, and can be fired off faster.
Devastator (Talent) only gives you 20% chance to reset Shield Slam, and is tied to your sluggish auto-attacks.
To me, Devastate looks superior in every way, but everywhere I look people are singing praises about what seems at face value to be a meme-talent.
I also keep reading ‘it’s better in Multi Target situations’, but how could that be?
Your chance to proc Shield Slam goes down from 30% to 20%
You can spam Devastate much faster than you can Auto Attack
You have empty GCDs and lose threat through inaction
You cannot quickly apply Deep Wounds to new targets
The only way for it to be better in a Multi-Target situation is to spam Revenge
The only reasons I can see to choose Devastator are if you want to open up a space on your Hotbar, or you have arthritis and spamming an ability is uncomfortable.
Could someone please help me out with understanding this?
Thank you for reading
If your swing timer is 2.6 seconds, you’d have to cast Devastate once every 3.9 seconds just to break even with proc from Devastator. Counting haste, the whole thing plays on fast-forward, but the proportion is the same. In other words, if you’re not casting Devastate every other GCD, you’re probably not even coming out ahead. Are you actually casting Devastate that often?
Devastator applies Deep Wounds from your autoattacks.
Without cooldowns, my rotation looks like this;
Charge > Thunder Clap > Shield Bash > Devastate x2 > Shield Block > Shield Bash > Thunderclap > Repeat from Devastate
Swapping Shield Bash in on procs and Thunder Clap over SB to hold aggro of multiple targets.
Throwing in Taunt for if a DPS pulls the aggro off of me.
Using Shield Wall / Demoralizing Shout during tough encounters to strangle incoming damage and make the healer’s life easier.
About Deep Wounds;
That was poor wording on my part - I didn’t mean that Deep Wounds didn’t exist, I meant that if you swapped at the wrong moment, there could (and for me, often was) a delay between swapping and applying the DoT, my bad
Difference between Devastate and the passive talent Devastator besides what you mentioned is that you can potentially have back to back Shield Slams for one thing. More haste, more opportunities obviously.
Devastator IN A WAY can be a little ‘slower’ style, but you actually will have more chances to ready Shield Slam due to BOTH auto attacks and your GCD abilities (Thunderclap and Revevge) being able to ready your Shield Slam where without the Devastator talent, only your GCD abilities can ready your Shield Slam.
So Devastator, while slower, provides you more opportunities to use other abilities?
I’m slowly working the differences out, but wouldn’t Devastator turn out less Shield Slams overall?
Thinking out-loud for a moment.
With Devastator, if you hit Thunder Clap every single time it’s off cooldown, it comes to around 50% chance of a Shield Slam between casts; driven up to 80+% over the course of 6 seconds when mixing Revenge into the mix at the expense of defense because of the Rage cost of Shield Block and Ignore pain
Without Devastator, GCD downtime (Thunder Clap % Shield Slam on cooldown) can be covered by Devastate, costing no rage to generate 30% chance every GCD 1-4 times before Thunder Clap refreshes or Shield Slam procs, resulting in a near constant 30% chance per GCD for Shield Slam to refresh free-of-charge Rage-wise
I might actually be misunderstanding the strongpoint of Devastator;
Is it that the reward for Devastator isn’t that you get Shield Slam cooldowns, but that a filler being automated and thereby freeing up a GCD is the actual reward, though the outcome in comparison to Punisher damage/rage-wise is the same?
I suppose I could see why having a cleared space could be useful, for incorporating Storm Bolt or Shockwave on your hotbar in Devastate’s place
I don’t think you need to theorycraft the rotation very hard here. If you look at Details from a dungeon run, how many casts of Devastate do you have, vs how many autoattack swings?
I tried it on a dummy just now, but what I learned was mostly that I’m way out of practice with using Devastate, so I missed many opportunities to cast it, haha.
Oh, I’ve never used tracker plugins before, all I’ve got is GatherMate and BetterWardrobe
I’m logged in as well, been swapping back and forth between Punisher and Devastator.
It’s difficult to tell with the animation overlap, but it looks like I get off around 1.5 Devastates for every 1 Devastator auto-attack, though my Devastate spam occurs during small windows instead of spread out over the rotation.
I’m starting to eyeball Storm Bolt or Rumbling Earth to fill the GCD gap left by Devastate over Double Time
I hated it too and then started using it and saw the light. Now I dont have to waste gcd spamming devastate and i get shield slam procs more often which generates more rage which gives my defensives better uptime. I like having one less button to spam. Weirdest thing to get used to was the occasional down time with nothing to press. turns out having a free gcd once in a while is nice for my fingers and wrist.
Edit: Devastate used to be critical for sunder armor, now that sunder isnt a thing and revenge spreads wounds devastate is worthless as a gcd filler when the talent procs shield slam more
I’d really recommend just installing Details (or Skada or Recount or whatever you like). This is a simple question of numbers: if you actually cast Devastate as much as you feel like you do, Devastator is bad for you. If not, it’s not. Eyeballing it or trying it out on paper is simply not as reliable as testing it directly.
In terms of using other abilities, more or less. As I mentioned, Devastator provides more opportunities to ready Shield Slam via auto attacks, which are off GCD. Of course you are giving up a ‘free filler’ in the form of Devastate.
However you will now have an opportunity to ready Shield Slam through the means of your GCD abilities AND auto attacks.
Without the talent, you will only ever ready Shield Slam through GCD abilities only.
Note when I say GCD abilities, I am referring to the ones that have a chance to ready Shield Slam.
Devastator is optimal because it frees up your gcd. But if you like to cast devastate then you do you. It’s not gonna make or break your viability. And judging by your add-on usage your not that keen on min maxing anyways. So why sweat the small stuff ?
Like some people have repeatedly said… The talent sometimes lets you shield slam into shield slam 2 gcds in a row. An example of the advantage.
It’s coming together in a way that makes sense now
@Kârnage
It’s a relief to hear that I’m not losing my mind, I thought there was something I was supposed to be doing and wasn’t during those empty GCDs D:
Do you think I should swap in Thunder Bolt/Shockwave, or stick to the simple rotation for now?
@Ravicana
I’ll give it a try, thank you for the advice!
@Baneslayer
True, I’m not going to be in the front row pushing Mythic content, but I always want to be helpful to the group.
While levelling, I kept losing aggro nearly instantly to Mages after a single cast or so, and I didn’t seem to have enough damage/threat generation to pull it back to me without Taunt, but still then 3/5 mobs would continue walloping the poor caster D:
I saw the guides were chanting “Devastator or death!” and tried it out, but the gameplay shift was so different that I felt like I was doing something wrong; I thought I had to be doing something with every GCD
In theory, if you were using Thunder Clap, Revenge, or Execute/Condemn, each of those abilities -still have sword and board-.
You just don’t have Devastate, meaning you get the +20% proc chance on auto attacks -and- the +30% proc chance on sword and board from your active abilities.
I did not use Devastator at all, and I can recognize that Devastate is the lowest rotational ability in the priority system. It is a filler ability. Yes, you do end up spamming it on occasion. But consider that the proc chance from Shield Slam is the same from Devastate as it is from Revenge or Thunder Clap. In theory, and with infinite rage, you would get more procs from Devastator.
BUT. It is of course rage capped and depends on you using Revenge.
Also, you would in theory get more rage in those windows where you have Thunder Clap and Revenge procs, resulting in more Shield Slam procs, meaning more rage to feed into Revenge, resulting in more procs and so on. It’s just much less consistent than Devastate and creates lulls/downtime, costs rage, etc.
The other obvious upsides to spending rage to get Shield Slam up and running is if you’re running The Wall.
Thunder Clap on CD, Shockwave is always good at the beginning of a pull when you get everything stacked up, or use as a second interupt/mass stun so you can start kiting. Stormbolt is used in the same way as is intimidating shout. Use revenge only when it procs OR if you need to dump rage and dont need to use IP and shield block. Dont use demo shout if you are near rage cap, use an ability then pop it.
There really isnt a set rotation, just use what you need when you need it and dont over think it! Hit your procs and use Tclap on CD
I tried using Devastator, but my haste is far too low right now, especially after destroying Into the Fray, so I can’t deal with the reset penalty of Devastator and the windows of doing nothing.
