Glyph of Devastate (Mechanics News?)

Post by Porcell

I just did some testing of the Glyph of Devastate.

Without the glyph of devastate, your devastates will do Damage + 5% of your attack power as threat. (This is already well documented by Satrina)

With glyph of devastate, your devastates will do Damage + 10% of your attack power (assumed that it's the normal Dev + 5%, with an extra 5% attack power as threat from the extra cast of sunder armor).

This applies for ALL applications of devastate if you have Glyph of Devastate on. It doesn't matter if it is your first, second, fourth, or eleventh cast of devastate on a mob; each cast will do Damage + 10% of your Attack Power as threat.

Anyway, this has pretty big implications. A lot of people had a misunderstanding of how this glyph worked (myself included). This glyph really ups the power of Devastate as a threat generating ability. Some people thought that Glyph of Devastate only gave you increased threat on the first couple attacks, others thought that Glyph of Devastate gave you no bonus threat what-so-ever and was only good for getting your sunder stacks up faster (thus increasing damage in general as well as the bonus damage for devastate from having more sunder stacks sooner).

It kind of makes sense why it works this way, and it kind of doesn't. First off, it makes sense because if you cast just plain old Sunder Armor, it will do 345 + 5%AP every time you use it (be it first, second, fourth, or eleventh time you cast it). If you consider Glyph of Devastate to "Cast Devastate and immediately cast Sunder Armor" you would expect the threat to be DevDamage + 5% + 345 + 5%. You don't get that 345 from Sunder Though.

However, if you think of Devastate as doing Damage (and the threat associated) as well as applying Sunder Armor (bonus threat of 5% AP), then it would certainly make sense that adding the glyph of devastate would do damage (and threat), and sunder (5% AP) and another sunder (5% AP).

Regardless, I'm now using Glyph of Devastate because of this revelation on how its threat mechanics work. Please read and pass the word. I'll try and contact Satrina so that she (he?) can update the post over on TankSpot.

Post by 95537

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Porcell

I'll copy and paste what I posted over on TankSpot:
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Now, I really haven't seen this anywhere else. Satrina's threat values post goes over Glyph of Sunder Armor (DevDam + 5%AP on main target, 345 + 5%AP on secondary target) but doesn't touch Glyph of Devastate. Everywhere I have looked I've seen people say either 1) It gives bonus threat for the first 2 casts of devastate on a mob or 2) It doesn't give any bonus threat, it just lets you get your sunder stacks up faster.

So I tested it out today. I downloaded Satrina's threat data Addon and double-checked the values for Devastate Threat (Damage + 5% AP) in order to confirm that was correct and also to familiarize myself with the data reporting of the addon.

Here is a snippet of my non-glyphed devastate data:

Threat: target - 862783
Threat: 0x... Sunder Armor - nil
Threat: 0x... Devastate - 558
Threat: target - 1003988

So that's 141205 threat, normalized to 681 threat. Minus 558 Devastate damage is 123. My Attack Power during this test is 2477 (*5% = 123.85). I repeatedly cast devastate on the target up to 11 or 12 times before it died and all of the devastate data looked the same as the above: 123 bonus threat.

So then I put on the Glyph of Devastate.

Here is a snippet of my glyphed data:

Threat: target - 2222168
Threat: 0x... Sunder Armor - nil
Threat: 0x... Sunder Armor - nil
Threat: 0x... Devastate - 650
Threat: target - 2407953

So that's 185785 threat, normalized to 896 threat. Minus 650 Devastate damage is 246. That's 10% of my Attack Power, twice the 123 I was seeing un-glyphed.

Note that I spammed devastate on this mob (a wolf under Dalaran) and connected with devastate 10 or 11 times before it died. EVERY cast of devastate looked like the above, doing 246 bonus threat per devastate, regardless of whether it was the first, second, or tenth devastate I cast.

Someone please feel free to recreate and confirm my testing here. I think this newly discovered data will really impact people's selection of glyphs. It's a nice Full Time threat bonus for devastate. It makes the glyph continually useful in boss fights by adding more threat, and it makes Tab-Target or Mouseover-Target Devastating for trash and heroics even better.

Post by Porcell

And just an explanation of those numbers. Satrina wrote a crude addon that would report the Blizzard In-Game Threat numbers to your chat window. These are the same threat numbers that drive the Default UI's threat meter and also what Omen uses to report threat. These are 'real' numbers.

In the first example,

Threat: target - 862783
Threat: 0x... Sunder Armor - nil
Threat: 0x... Devastate - 558
Threat: target - 1003988

I started with a target threat of 862783 (I had been doing damage, etc). Then I casted Devastate, which did a Sunder Armor effect and then Devastate which did 558 damage. After that happened I had 1003988 threat. Subtract the two and that's 141205 threat. Now you have to "normalize" it by dividing by 207.35. This number comes from the 207.35% bonus threat we get from being in defensive stance. Normalizing the 141205 means that I did 681 threat (before being modified by my stance). Of that 681 threat, 558 was from the damage from devastate. The additional 123 threat was from the 5% AttackPower bonus threat.

Post by 95537

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Porcell

I'm a bit surprised that this thread didn't get more attention.

Post by 95537

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by marklartank

this is really interesting news. i just picked the glyph up strictly for getting sunders up quickly, since devastate is so low in my rotation priority now. but i love what you're saying here, and now i'm quite happy using a glyph slot for it.

Glyph of Devastate (Mechanics News?)

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