Devastate

Overview

Breaking an opponent's armor never stopped a Warrior from exploiting that fact.

Functionality

Devastate is the 41 point talent in the protection tree. It is a tanking skill designed to be used after 5 sunders have been applied to a target as to deal some damage instead of wasting rage on further sunders. Devastate is an instant attack that costs 15 Rage, giving it the same cost, before talents, as [Sunder Armor]. It deals half of the damage of a normal white hit plus an extra 35 damage per sunder. It also has a flat Threat bonus (this bonus does not scale with the number of sunders on the mob--the in-game tooltip is a bit misleading on this point) and resets the timer on the target's sunder debuff.

Use

• Cast Cost: 15 Rage
• Cast Time: Instant
• Duration: Instant
• School and Damage Type: Physical
• Targets/Positioning: Single target/front
• Range: 5 yards (Melee)
• Cooldown: Global Cooldown
• Stances: all - [Battle Stance] | [Defensive Stance] | [Berserker Stance]

Talents

[Focused Rage] (reduced rage cost)

Notes

• Requires One-Handed Melee Weapon
• Can score a critical hit.
• Can trigger a weapon's "Chance on Hit" ability.
• Damage is normalized.

Rank Table

	Dmg/Sunder	Level	Cost
Rank 1	+15	50	12?
Rank 2	+25	58	53?
Rank 3	+35	66	1 30?

Tips and Tactics

• Designed to be used on boss mobs or any high-hp mob that is still alive with 5 sunders on it. Allows the tanking warrior to contribute more damage to the group and hold aggro better than with Sunder Armor.

• With the improved sunder armor talent, this may be less rage-efficient than Sunder for many warriors. However, in a rage-abundant situation like a boss fight, it provides more threat/time.

• This skill may allow a warrior to deal more and more threat as his equipment improves, since it scales with the damage he causes. This benefit is questionable since higher tiers of warrior tank gear historically offer very little (if any) attack power increase, but at least the ability benefits from higher DPS weapon upgrades.

• Also useful when solo leveling with a protection spec, since it is an instant attack.

• All ranks of this skill cause the same base threat, 101 plus whatever damage you do with it, before modifiers. Note that before patch 2.0.3, this skill was actually causing LESS inherent threat with higher ranks. This was fixed, to the delight of protection warriors everywhere.

• Is useful in conjunction with a slow, high damage one-hander.

• Don't bother using it without at least 3 sunders.

• Will cause less threat, and damage, when used with a dagger, regardless of weapon speed.

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