Devastate

Devastate is the 16 point talent in the Warrior Protection tree. It is a tanking skill meant to be used as an upgraded Sunder Armor, as it combines all the effects of Sunder Armor with an amount of damage that increases as Sunder Armor debuffs are stacked on the target.

Devastate is an instant attack that costs 15 Rage, giving it the same cost as Sunder Armor. It deals 150% of the damage of a normal white hit plus an extra amount of damage per application of Sunder Armor on the target. The threat bonus increases with each application of the Sunder Armor debuff stack and resets the timer on the target's Sunder Armor debuff. Devastate is affected by all talents and glyphs that affect Sunder Armor, including Glyph of Sunder Armor.

Tips and Tactics

 * Note that while Devastate applies Sunder Armor, you do not get the threat from the Sunder that was applied. You get the threat from the damage dealt by the Devastate plus 5% of your attack power as threat.


 * Devastate receives bonuses from Glyph of Sunder Armor, causing it to apply a stack of Sunder Armor to a second target.


 * The higher the DPS rating on your weapon, the more damage that will be caused with this ability. This is a normalized attack, so weapon attack speed does not matter when calculating bonus damage in terms of attack power.  Normalization means, all other things being equal, this will cause less bonus damage when used with a dagger, regardless of weapon speed, and will thus cause less threat. All in all, a slow weapon will still apply more damage to Devastate because of its innate weapon damage.


 * Example:

You have 1400 attack power and wield a dagger with 100-100 Damage over 1.30 seconds. Devastate will now do the following, when you activate it:
 * It will cause 120% of your Weapon's damage not regarding any speed: 100-100 damage = 100 average damage X 1.2 = 120 Damage
 * It will add damage according to the numbers of sunder armor that you have already applied on the mob. For each application it will add 202 points of damage at level 80.

So all in all, when 5 sunder armors are applied on the mob, you would cause 120 + (5 X 202) = 1130 damage (when fighting a mob with 0 armor).

As you see, the damage you do with the dagger is absolutely uncoupled from your attack power rating. Whatever dagger you wear (no matter how fast or slow it may be), the contributed damage via attack power would always be the same. So it can be said that using slower weapons doesn't matter that much, since it only affects the first number in the final formula and will otherwise reduce your aggro gained by spamming heroic strike.


 * Useful when solo leveling or rep farming with a Protection-tree Warrior, since it is an instant attack and has no extended cooldown.