Archive for October 13th, 2009:
TPS revisited
Here we are, in 3.2.2, the next big content patch is on the horizon, and I have wanted to talk about the changes that 3.2 brought to prot warriors for ages. I just never got around to writing it.
What’s changed? Devastate has, that’s what. Previously basically the support ability that let you stack 5 Sunders with a threat bonus, Devastate is now almost back to the role it had in TBC. It’s made a huge comeback in our rotations when its weapon damage was increased to 60% plus an additional bonus damage of 20% per stack of Sunder Armor. This makes Devastate one of the top 3 damage abilities of a protection warrior, and is usually only surpassed by Heroic Strike and Shield Slam for me.
Wartotem over in the ever knowledgeable realms of Tankspot has created a DPS/TPS spreadsheet that does the number crunching for us.
The results:
Devastate now tops Revenge easily when it comes to both threat and DPS. It’s even better when you have the 2pc T8 or 2pc T9 bonus. Or both. It’s also stronger than Concussion Blow and Shockwave, but those 2 produce more damage than Devastate.
What does this mean for our rotation?
Priority has shifted to:
> 
> 
> 
> 
On bosses, Shockwave and CB will continue to provide greater DPS despite not stunning the boss. Revenge has fallen to the bottom of the priority list, but is still the ability with the best rage to threat ratio and does more damage than Dev. This makes it very valuable in low rage situations, e.g. when running heroics. In unlimited rage scenarios filling any Shield Slam cooldown time with Devastate will be more successful as far as threat is concerned.
This also means that I would not recommend the Glyph of Revenge anymore, as Glyph of Devastate is a lot better. The faster you get your Sunder stack to 5, the more threat you can frontload. This is especially important in such threat-sensitive fights as Malygos, Hodir and Twin Val’kyr where your DPS will receive big damage buffs.
I highly recommend everyone who’s remotely interested in numbers to plug their stats and talents into the spreadsheet and then have it all laid out there. Good stuff.
