Rend


 * Were you looking for Rend Blackhand?


 * "I gave him a choice: die piece by piece, or all at once." — Gorebelly

Rend is a warrior damage over time ability. It is also one of the few warrior attacks that isn't mitigated by enemy armor. It is available only in Battle Stance and Defensive Stance.

Even without investing in talents to improve it, Rend is a very rage-efficient attack. Investments in Taste for Blood and Blood Frenzy makes it shine even brighter. However, as a damage over time ability, its rage-efficiency is reduced if the target dies before the Rend has completed its 15-second duration. Also, Rend cannot be used in Berserker Stance.

Combined with Taste for Blood this is one of the essential Arms abilities, as it allows for the use of Overpower very frequently. Benefits such as this can make Rend an essential part of a warrior's rotation, even when time does not allow for its full effect.

Tips and Tactics
As a DoT, this is a great ability to use in PvP against Rogues, as it makes it more difficult (though not impossible) for them to esacpe using Vanish, and to return using openers such as Cheap Shot and Ambush.

As with any DoT, Rend is also great for continuing to cause damage to opponents when they are out of melee range. As many classes will wish to spend as little time as possible within range of the warrior's attacks, together with Heroic Throw and Shattering Throw, this is one of the only ways for a warrior to deal damage to a target once they have left melee range.

The ticks from Rend will occasionally finish-off an opponent who would otherwise have escaped, or even ensure their demise after you have perished. As a DoT, its frequent ticks interrupt attempts at bandaging, and as a bleed effect, there are very few abilities that can remove it before its time. In PvE, when mobs at low health flee, Rend's ticks can potentially finish them off, preventing them from aggroing other mobs.

Improvements

 * Taste for Blood: Increases your Overpower critical strike chance by 20/40/60%. In addition, whenever your Rend ability causes damage, you have a 33/66/100% chance of allowing the use of Overpower for 9 sec. This effect will not occur more than once every 5 sec.
 * Blood Frenzy: Your bleed effects cause targets to take an extra 2/4% physical damage. Applying a bleed effect increases bleed damage taken by the target by 15/30% for 1 min. In addition, your autoattacks have a 5/10% chance to generate 20 additional Rage.

Additional damage
In addition to the base damage, Rend will deliver extra damage depending on how hard the weapon hits. The formula looks a bit complicated, but it basically calculates the average weapon damage modified for attack power and takes a fraction of this:

Weapon Speed x Attack Power                                         743 Extra damage = ( --- + Average Weapon Damage ) x Duration x -- 14                                                    300000

Note, The DPS of the weapon isn't the most important factor. It's much more important that the weapon is slow.

Example: Wally the warrior has an attack power of 1400, and he uses a Rend with a duration of 21 seconds. When he uses The Unstoppable Force (Speed 3.8, average damage 233½) his rends will do 32 points additional damage. When he uses Widow's Remorse (Speed 1.6, average damage 100½) his rends will only do 13 points of additional damage, even though Widow's Remorse has a slightly higher DPS-rating than the Unstoppable Force.