What do I miss with the whole deep wounds thingy?
There’s this new trendy Deep Wounds speccing thing going around in warrior tank land. Reportedly it’s a massive increase to DPS and since neither threat nor survivability seem to be big of an issue with the current raiding difficulty, people left and right drop avoidance and/or mitigation talents in favor of 15 points arms. Just, most of those specs seem to pick up Armed to the Teeth, while only giving Cruelty 2/5.
Huh?
You spend a huge amount of talent points to reach Deep Wounds, which procs on critical hits, and then you don’t spec as deep into Cruelty as possible? I get the AP-boost-through-ATTT-thingy, but don’t just some of our abilities scale with that? And wouldn’t 3% additional crit, which also add 3% more deep wound effects, be more effective?
I’m just guessing here. I’ve just recently moved, so I only can get online through my phone, which sucks latency-wise. So no chance of testing any specs over here. Has anyone out there tried which does a better duty in what situations? I’d just guess that, at least in single target fights, 5/5 Cruelty > 3/3 ATTT when combined with Deep Wounds. But feel free to prove me wrong.
I haven’t hit 80 yet, so I cannot comment out of my own experience if the Deep Wounds spec is really worth spending 15 points in the Arms tree.
However, Veneretio over at Tankingtips.com has elaborated on the ‘New Warning Signs of a Bad Level 80 Spec’ (http://www.tankingtips.com/2008/10/29/the-new-warning-signs-of-a-bad-level-80-spec/). The comments also cover the Deep Wounds spec and Vene is currently testing this spec.
Speccing Deep Wounds, however, is in IMO somewhat contrary to the role a tank should observe. Sure, increased damage leads to higher threat, but we’re no damage dealers after all (even after the 3.0 patch). Maybe I’ll do some testing with specs once I hit 80, but for now I’m not going this deep in Arms or Fury.
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Talldar Reply:
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Way I see it our role isn’t as singular a surviving-thing as it once was. In my book tanking responsibilities look like this:
1) Hold Aggro
2) Make the healer’s job easier
3) Support your group (= deal as much damage as possible)
While #1 is not an issue right now, and #2 is easily achievable even with a deep wounds spec, I’m willing to pick that talent up. It’s completely ok to go for DPS-maximization as a tank – as long as you don’t forget #1 and #2.
But I’m really curios about Armed to the Teeth vs. Cruelty, in combination with Deep Wounds that is.
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Mojin/Hawksong Reply:
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:59 pm
A week ago, I was on the same mindset as you, Umbaajo. However, there are a large number of boss fights, both in heroic 5-mans and in raids, where you really need to crank out the DPS. If you can increase your own DPS by up to 12%, that’s a huge benefit to the whole group. On Friday, I respecced to the DW build posted on Tankspot and have heard nothing but good things from the groups I’ve tanked.
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[...] I mentioned, I will be going Deep Wounds spec, the latest flavor in the tanking world. Talldar over at warriortanking.com is wondering why people in that spec go ATT 3/3 and Cruelty 2/5, instead of 5/5 Cruelty. Too bad he [...]
To be honest, you can go that far down in Arms because although a lot has been added/updated in the Prot tree, a lot of it is completely unnecessary now.
When fighting mobs and bosses, with only 2 points in Cruelty I still see a ton of crits happening. As for AttT vs. 5 in Cruelty, AttT will scale as your gear gets better. Very rarely will you put a piece of better gear on and receive less armor, but that 5% crit from Cruelty is flat, doesn’t scale.
I’m a big fan of talents that become more helpful the more gear you get and going Deep Wounds is definitely one of those specs that gets better as your gear/skill does.
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pointed to here from http://www.tanklikeagirl.com/
You know, I asked this EXACT same question on tankspot in a thread about this particular spec…after about a day+ of waiting I didn’t really get a satisfactory response…yet I figured, what the heck, these people seem to know better than me so I’ll give it a try…here is what I found:
I specced into deep wounds with 3/3 in AttT.
As far as I can tell deep wounds debuffs don’t stack. If deep wounds is up on the mob and you crit again it just refreshes the bleed instead of adding another. with 3/3 in AttT and 2/5 in Cruelty I noticed really good uptime on Deep Wounds particularly single target (boss encounters). In fact I’d say I was refreshing more often than having it fall of, with it even refreshing the bleed with more than half the bleed still to tick. When you think about that…to an extent that’s some wasted dps. In that specific case (at least for deep wounds) if there were a way to get more AP over crit it would technically be more dps because in an ideal world you would have 100% deep wounds uptime but you would only refresh it just as it’s falling off.
So, while my test wasn’t entirely scientific, I know I’ll be sticking with 3/3 AttT rather than maxing out cruelty for, at least, the short term. Until I read something that completely contradicts what I’ve noticed :)
As for the reports of “massive dps increases” with the spec. I’m just not seeing it. It’s definitely an increase and I’m definitely noticing it, but I certainly would not call it massive.
Cheers!
-tPaste
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Deep Wounds is flavour of the month because it “rolls”, that is to say it stacks with itself exponentially.
So long as you keep on critting the ticks get bigger and bigger and bigger
The reason Armoured to the Teeth is preferred over more Crit % is that Deep Wounds is calculated according to a formula that includes attack power. So while crit would mean more Deep Wounds procs, attack power means bigger bleeds when it does proc
The formula and mechanics are explained here:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Deep_Wounds
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Ill admit I fell into the whole DW spec fad a month ago and have not noticed a single downside ever since. I too was curious as to why the cookie cutter DW build did not include the full 5/5 in +crit. However after a month of tanking with DW Im not convinced that the extra crit would even proc more often than a 2/5 crit spec. Very rarely will I look at the debuff on whatever mob Im fighting and not notice a DW bleed.
Warrior tanks still cant compare to other classes when it comes to dps. Atleast now we are able to contribute a little more to the group than simply not dieing.
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It’s called Incite and Sword and Board. Try reading our talents. When we get 15% crit to our abilities from talents, a loss of 3% crit is nothing. Also, you don’t spec out of cruelty to gain deep wounds, you spec 2/5 Shield Specialization. The 3 points in cruelty are lost elsewhere.
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