Warrior- Deep Wounds in a Raid?

[Savient]

I'm an arms spec warrior who recently joined a new guild. While raiding MC I was told that I would need to respec out of the Deep Wounds/Impale line. Is Deep Wounds that serious of an issue when it comes to available debuff slots?

[Kevin]

I'm an arms spec warrior who recently joined a new guild. While raiding MC I was told that I would need to respec out of the Deep Wounds/Impale line. Is Deep Wounds that serious of an issue when it comes to available debuff slots?

If you are going for completely optimal, other debuffs are better. However, if you have to be completely optimal to beat an encounter, I think you have other issues. I've never seen Deep Wounds as a real problem. It usually gets knocked off pretty quick by other stuff. I can knock other stuff that is better off but really in most cases I can't see it mattering much at all. And in some cases the debuff that needs to not be up there is something else. When you see a deep wounds tick for over a 100 damage you realize that it is now better than serpent sting from a hunter that doesn't have the AQ20 book. And if there were still only the 8 debuff slots on a mob I could see the arguement even more against deep wounds. Personally I don't care all that much if a warrior does or doesn't have it.


That being said my warrior with deep wounds in the last raid he was in did 4% of his damage from deep wounds, and impale turned out to be around 2% of his damage. If the points weren't in the impale/deep wounds line they would be over in improved charge and improved heroic strike. Looking at the numbers (since I do get to charge in MC a decent amount and since I was using HS a decent amount) those talents may have upped my damage by about 2% (hard to say, since it's all based on estimating additional rage in the few fights that you get to use it but I would have gotten in a few more mortal strikes from the extra rage a few more slams, ect). So while I'd lose DPS getting rid of the deep wounds/impale line, it might not be as much as expected. I do look at it as more of a solo/small group talent line it doesn't add a lot in raids.

[Tal]

I'm an arms spec warrior who recently joined a new guild. While raiding MC I was told that I would need to respec out of the Deep Wounds/Impale line. Is Deep Wounds that serious of an issue when it comes to available debuff slots?

It was my understanding that some of the debuff stickying changes have been put in. I know that things such as sunder armor don't get pushed off like they used to. That being said no one has ever complained about my deep wounds pushing off a much needed debuff.:)

But I'm varient scum™ so take my advice with a grain of salt.;)

[castille]

A lot of the prioritization is in place right now. Things that are very important to overall raid stay there: Curses, things like Vampiric Embrace, sunders... while things that can be reapplied easily -- DoTs, shadow weaving, shadow vulnerability, fire vulnerability, etc -- are still vying for whatever slots are left.

[Concillian]

I'd tell him to expect a lot of dual weild fury warriors and very few warriors with 5/15/31 (hybrid DPS/tanking).

As GG pointed out, deep wounds and impale is a significant amount of damage to a 2H warrior, between 5 and 8% in my own parsing, and he pointed out 6% in his own parsing. You can get some of that back through other talent points, but if you already have 2H spec and a specific weapon spec, there is very little else that nets all that much damage in the arms tree. You run out of useful places to put points.


For 100% optimal debuff slot usage, yes deep wounds is pretty weak compared to other possible DOTs. But forcing this does have a potential side effects your RL may not be considering...

Warriors will probably start realizing that they can be most effective for DPS without deep wounds / impale when spec'ed for dual wield, as this build benefits least from the wounds damage. You can potentially get more warriors than average spec'ed for DW fury, which has two potential issues:
- less flexibility since 5/15/31 with 31 in Fury is somewhat sub-optimal (no tactical mastery). Arms is a less attractive option due to removal of deep wounds and impale. Overall you potentially end up with fewer hybrid tanks, so potentially less effective off-tanking.
- more overall raid demand for good 1H weapons. Less raid demand for 2H weapons. You risk losing just as much DPS as you gained by optimizing debuffs by de-optimizing loot distribution. 2H weapons will be going to people who get smaller damage increases. 1H weapons will be in high demand and will warrant increased DKP pricing. You might start seeing 2H weapons get sharded while you have warriors who could benefit from them while the rogues and warriors are saving up for the 1H weapons.

At work we would call this sub-optimization. Optimizing one particular aspect to the point that it looks great, but other aspects have de-tuned to the point that you have an overall loss of system efficiency. Is there sure to be a net loss of efficiency here? Not for sure. But there is potential for it.

I would generally consider this a bad idea. Not only does it potentially cause loot issues and potentially reduce the desire for hybrid warriors (5/15/31), but it surely causes morale issues with some warriors as they feel they can't spec the way they want to. I don't think those side effects are worth optimizing +100 DPS or so out of the debuff slots.

[ZugzwangZeitgeist]

No it isn't and they're crazy for asking you to respec over it. This may have been an issue a long time ago when people had much poorer equipment, poorer strategies, and the debuff limit was much smaller.

Now the debuff limit is not only much larger, they're also properly prioritized. You should also tell those guys to relax a little - there's nothing worse than a bunch of raid leaders who simultaneously don't know the game very well and yet are confident enough to bark orders at everyone about what they can and cannot spec or can or cannot do. Smack them around before their egos swell to large.

[Raelynn]

A lot of the prioritization is in place right now. Things that are very important to overall raid stay there: Curses, things like Vampiric Embrace, sunders... while things that can be reapplied easily -- DoTs, shadow weaving, shadow vulnerability, fire vulnerability, etc -- are still vying for whatever slots are left.

I remember reading somewhere that the devs know that Deep Wounds has (or had...dunno if it was fixed) a higher value on the priority than it should. This would cause it to bump more things off than it should've. making it less attractive to the raid leaders that are control freaks about that kind of thing:)

[Concillian]

I remember reading somewhere that the devs know that Deep Wounds has (or had...dunno if it was fixed) a higher value on the priority than it should.

One comment here by Tseric:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...p=1#post8867195

We don't have any plans to expand the debuff limit of 16. It may change, but we like the way it is now and the development of the debuff rankings is somewhat dependant on having clear numbers to work with.

When players settle into these mechanics and they are developed further, we can iron out specifics on our end(such was the case with Deep Wounds taking too much priority) and players can make more group-based decisions if there are a lot of instances of competition for slots. There is play we would like to have between what is established through game design and what can be manipulated through player/group decision without resorting to a UI interface or a 'raid leader mechanically decides what has more value' system.