Napkin math on Sk'Shuul Vaz vs Devastations Hour for Fury.

[Shelly]

Ok, so for those of you not sure what I'm talking about these are the weapons in question:

https://ptr.wowdb.com/items/172200-skshuul-vaz

https://ptr.wowdb.com/items/172187-devastations-hour

So I just sat down with my current stats on a heroic geared warrior to try and determine whether I'd want the axe, the sword or one of each.

Stat-wise the sword wins. Haste/Crit > Haste/Mastery, but that's not the fun bit. The fun bit is if they roll corrupted and you get the fancy procs.

So under my current stats I'd expect an extra 20k hit twice a minute with the sword. So probably an extra 80k damage each minute while dual wielding under the assumption there's not a weird shared CD. This damage is a big AoE cone in front of you - probably the same as DH eyebeam or the azerite beam using focusing iris.

Now the ax explodes for 300% of your armor every 30s in combat. Under my current stats it's also about 20k. So - again provided no weird CDs stopping things from overlapping and requiring you to say equip a trash weapon for 10s in the fight and then put the axe in your OH - you'd expect again an extra 80k of damage each minute in combat.

The ax does the damage in an AoE around you though.

So in my opinion the ax is going to be the superior pick despite having less desirable secondary stats since it can help with things that aren't in cleave range - which on the last two fights especially are going to be pretty common.

That said, the ax has the potential to be an utter nightmare in Tol Dagor.

[FlubberPuddy]

Rule of Cool trumps Math

IMA FIRIN MAH LASER!



As Fury I'll dual-wield Devastation's Hour

[Justpassing]

It'll probably not hit the mobs you aren't in combat with. Else it'd be pretty stupid.

[Shelly]

It'll probably not hit the mobs you aren't in combat with. Else it'd be pretty stupid.

Every healer with the Azshara Staff laughs and laughs.

- - - Updated - - -

Rule of Cool trumps Math

IMA FIRIN MAH LASER!

As Fury I'll dual-wield Devastation's Hour

Do they have a unique animation or is it just a fast boom or sparkle pop like with passive azerite damage bonuses?

[FlubberPuddy]

Do they have a unique animation or is it just a fast boom or sparkle pop like with passive azerite damage bonuses?

Not sure if they've been available on PTR to test. I don't have PTR downloaded.

[Shelly]

Not sure if they've been available on PTR to test. I don't have PTR downloaded.

Fair enough, me neither.

Also I forgot that the sword should have a higher item level which will probably make it better, but I don't see my heroic guild getting there as fast as the ax boss.

[MORGATH99]

forgot to mention that the sword drops with 10 ilevels higher than the axe on every difficulty

[DazManianDevil]

I love napkin math!
Any word on the PTR what the actual ppm will be on these bad boys? Might have to bench my main and go melee
It also begs the question, will either of these dethrone a non-corrupted Geti of the same ilvl?
Edit: The frickin' tooltip says "2 ppm" I'm a derp.
PS: When will the Hunter Bow be clarified in it's functionality? As it stands it will either be amazing and mandatory or utter crap.

[Zyky]

Ok, so for those of you not sure what I'm talking about these are the weapons in question:

https://ptr.wowdb.com/items/172200-skshuul-vaz

https://ptr.wowdb.com/items/172187-devastations-hour

So I just sat down with my current stats on a heroic geared warrior to try and determine whether I'd want the axe, the sword or one of each.

Stat-wise the sword wins. Haste/Crit > Haste/Mastery, but that's not the fun bit. The fun bit is if they roll corrupted and you get the fancy procs.

So under my current stats I'd expect an extra 20k hit twice a minute with the sword. So probably an extra 80k damage each minute while dual wielding under the assumption there's not a weird shared CD. This damage is a big AoE cone in front of you - probably the same as DH eyebeam or the azerite beam using focusing iris.

Now the ax explodes for 300% of your armor every 30s in combat. Under my current stats it's also about 20k. So - again provided no weird CDs stopping things from overlapping and requiring you to say equip a trash weapon for 10s in the fight and then put the axe in your OH - you'd expect again an extra 80k of damage each minute in combat.

The ax does the damage in an AoE around you though.

So in my opinion the ax is going to be the superior pick despite having less desirable secondary stats since it can help with things that aren't in cleave range - which on the last two fights especially are going to be pretty common.

That said, the ax has the potential to be an utter nightmare in Tol Dagor.

What you aren't taking into account is that the Sword will always be 10 item levels higher in weapon damage which is huge as titanforging is no longer a thing.

[Shelly]

I love napkin math!
Any word on the PTR what the actual ppm will be on these bad boys? Might have to bench my main and go melee
It also begs the question, will either of these dethrone a non-corrupted Geti of the same ilvl?
Edit: The frickin' tooltip says "2 ppm" I'm a derp.
PS: When will the Hunter Bow be clarified in it's functionality? As it stands it will either be amazing and mandatory or utter crap.

The ax is a consistent every 30s in combat to everything within 20 yards. Sword is random 2PPM.

- - - Updated - - -

What you aren't taking into account is that the Sword will always be 10 item levels higher in weapon damage which is huge as titanforging is no longer a thing.

Addressed this in my 2nd comment. :-)

And while it might be more item level the proc will still remain similar since it's a % base of health and armor rather than weapon damage.

So the question is whether or not that 20y range will be better than a frontal cone just for the proc.

For white and yellow swings the sword should win hands down, but will also be harder to obtain.

[Zyky]

Addressed this in my 2nd comment. :-)

And while it might be more item level the proc will still remain similar since it's a % base of health and armor rather than weapon damage.

So the question is whether or not that 20y range will be better than a frontal cone just for the proc.

For white and yellow swings the sword should win hands down, but will also be harder to obtain.

20y range is often more detrimental than it is helpful. You're also not taking into account the huge boosts in stam that we're going to be obtaining from the heart of azeroth on top of gear, where as Armor increases are fairly minuscule. A skilled player will make better use of the sword than the axe and if raid difficulty is anywhere close to where it's been this expansion then they'll both be easy to obtain from Heroic perspective.

As for obtainment the debate isn't "which is easier to obtain" it's "which is better".

[Shelly]

20y range is often more detrimental than it is helpful. You're also not taking into account the huge boosts in stam that we're going to be obtaining from the heart of azeroth on top of gear, where as Armor increases are fairly minuscule. A skilled player will make better use of the sword than the axe and if raid difficulty is anywhere close to where it's been this expansion then they'll both be easy to obtain from Heroic perspective.

As for obtainment the debate isn't "which is easier to obtain" it's "which is better".

Define how it's detrimental? Because I can only think of those weird times when you've got a bunch of adds floating around just barely out of your reach - many of them stationary or being knocked away. Think things like eyestalks on G'Huun, the little adds that come wandering in on Azshara, the bubbles that aren't placed exactly right on Ashvane, the downstairs adds on Orgozoa, enemies being knocked back by ring of peace, that sort of thing.

Anyway, the "skilled player" argument holds more water for the ax than the sword as well because the ax is predictable but the sword is not. As well as both health and armor will get pretty similar bumps.

For example on my DH I have a 385 azerite helm with 254 armor and 1,360 stamina. The 420 helm they have equipped though has 324 armor and 1,974 stam.

So that's a 51% increase in armor but only a 45% increase in stamina. Though the two will equal out once you figure in the stamina from rings.

Also the debate was on which proc will be better and since they both have a similar proc rate and similar damage it comes down to is a 20 yard explosion more useful than a cleave?

[Zyky]

Define how it's detrimental? Because I can only think of those weird times when you've got a bunch of adds floating around just barely out of your reach - many of them stationary or being knocked away. Think things like eyestalks on G'Huun, the little adds that come wandering in on Azshara, the bubbles that aren't placed exactly right on Ashvane, the downstairs adds on Orgozoa, enemies being knocked back by ring of peace, that sort of thing.

it's extremely detrimental in M+ where it will likely aggro other packs or break cc in higher keys. There are also several situations where dps is told to hold off on adds, like on Queen's Court where you axe could very easily break an orb too soon because you can't control it. With the sword you can by just not having your front facing the add or thing you aren't supposed to be damaging.

Anyway, the "skilled player" argument holds more water for the ax than the sword as well because the ax is predictable but the sword is not.

If you truthfully believe that, you will never get beyond Heroic raiding. No reasonable/skilled melee will run out of melee range because of an upcoming proc just because they don't want to cleave something, they'll either cause a wipe because they won't or they just won't be using the axe.

As well as both health and armor will get pretty similar bumps.

False, you gain significantly more health then you do armor between tiers.

I'll give you some quick math.

A heroic plate helm from Eternal Palace vs a heroic plate helm from Ny'alotha

EP: 859 Armor and 2578 Stamina
Ny'a: 1045 Armor and 3367 Stamina

That's a 20% increase to Armor and a 32% increase in Stamina. Even if you factor in the armor increase from the axe itself it doesn't come close to the stamina increase before taking the 18% increase given from the Heart of Azeroth.

Taking this further, I'll even calculate for you the damage from wearing full Heroic Ny'alotha gear. For simplicity because we don't know how procs will interact when using 2 of the same weapon, I'll calculate using the corrupted weapon in question and a non corrupted weapon within the raid.

Sword will have a total of 17,721 stam from gear, calculating in the 1000 base(as mechagnome on ptr) and the 18% from Heart of Azeroth we come to 22,091 Stamina. Stamina x2 with a 0 at the end is how much Health your toon will have. So a fully heroic geared Warrior with a Sword will have 441,820 Health. 5% of that is 22,091(ironically comes out to your stamina value) per proc.

Axe will have a total of 6,988 Armor, calculate in the 5% bonus from the axe comes to 7,337‬ armor multiply that for the proc by 300% and we have a grand total of 22,011.

Now the tricky bit we don't actually know the range on Twilight Devastation, the sword proc, most frontal cones are 25-30 yards, but there have been longer frontal cones, for example it could be the same range as the Void Wand from Islands, meaning it will have a super long range allowing more skillful play. Also its worth noting that it's a 2 proc per minute sword meaning it could very easily proc more than twice per minute. Most skilled players would prefer to have a frontal cone that they can control where the proc would go rather than a full blown aoe, especially if they're equal ranges.

Also the debate was on which proc will be better and since they both have a similar proc rate and similar damage it comes down to is a 20 yard explosion more useful than a cleave?

As it's already been explained, no a 20 yard cleave based on armor will not be better than a frontal cone cleave based on health with the addition of 10 item levels worth of weapon damage.

[Roguezor]

*Snip*

As it's already been explained, no a 20 yard cleave based on armor will not be better than a frontal cone cleave based on health with the addition of 10 item levels worth of weapon damage.

There's just 1 problem with that: Axe comes from 2nd boss, sword from last boss. I know we're taking a HC geared char as standpoint for mathing out the damage proc, but it's kinda safe to say that if you're killing N'zoth for the HC sword, it probably won't be long before you have a chance to get your hands on a mythic axe, even if not in a "Clearing mythic asap" guild. Getting mythic sword on the other hand (hue hue, fury pun) will probably take more time.

Also, fury is already swinging their weapons around like maniacs hitting things both front, back and center if already cleaving. Axe doesn't sound that bad to me

[Sinzaram]

One thing you Warrior boys aren't considering is the corruption budget.
Ya know how Sk'Shuul Vaz gives you 25 Corruption and Devastations Hour gives you 75 Corruption?!?

Would you rather have 1 Devastations Hour and deal with 75 Corruption worth of negative effects?
Or would you prefer a Sk'Shuul Vaz and only have to deal with 25 Corruption worth of negative effects?

But it doesn't stop there, you have to also compare with all the other 19 random corruption bonus procs for different corruption budgets.
Lets keep it simple:
I don't know much warrior details these days, but Wowhead tells me your top stat is Crit, so this will probably be the one of the better corruption procs:
Tier 3 Severe: Increases the amount of Critical Strike you gain from all sources by 12%.
For the low cost of 20 Corruption!

SOOO
Would you rather have 1 Devastations Hour and deal with 75 Corruption worth of negative effects?
Or would you prefer 3 stacks of Tier 3 Severe, each one boosting your crit gain by 12%, stacking multiplicatively, and deal with 60 Corruption worth of negative effects?

Just pointing out the weapons aren't quite as shiny as just stacking stat gain bonus' if you take into consideration their corruption costs.
If Devastations Hour stays at 75 cost will more than likely have to be cleansed and just used as a weapon with +10 more item levels on everything else.

[Zyky]

There's just 1 problem with that: Axe comes from 2nd boss, sword from last boss. I know we're taking a HC geared char as standpoint for mathing out the damage proc, but it's kinda safe to say that if you're killing N'zoth for the HC sword, it probably won't be long before you have a chance to get your hands on a mythic axe, even if not in a "Clearing mythic asap" guild. Getting mythic sword on the other hand (hue hue, fury pun) will probably take more time.

Also, fury is already swinging their weapons around like maniacs hitting things both front, back and center if already cleaving. Axe doesn't sound that bad to me

Again the conversation was NEVER about the convenience of the drop, it was about which was better.

[Roguezor]

Again the conversation was NEVER about the convenience of the drop, it was about which was better.

True, but comparing a 2nd boss drop to a last boss drop on HC in a 12 boss raid, is usualy a bigger gap than last boss HC to 2nd boss mythic, which means at that point you would be better off comparing the HC sword to mythic axe (since people bring up the 10 ilvl difference from early to late HC).....

Doesn't matter if it's 1 from HC and 1 from mythic, the scaling in difficulty throughout the raid does make a difference.

Makes no sense going "Do i want to use X or Y?" and leave Z out of it just because it has a different tagg under it's name

[Shelly]

it's extremely detrimental in M+ where it will likely aggro other packs or break cc in higher keys. There are also several situations where dps is told to hold off on adds, like on Queen's Court where you axe could very easily break an orb too soon because you can't control it. With the sword you can by just not having your front facing the add or thing you aren't supposed to be damaging.




If you truthfully believe that, you will never get beyond Heroic raiding. No reasonable/skilled melee will run out of melee range because of an upcoming proc just because they don't want to cleave something, they'll either cause a wipe because they won't or they just won't be using the axe.




False, you gain significantly more health then you do armor between tiers.

I'll give you some quick math.

A heroic plate helm from Eternal Palace vs a heroic plate helm from Ny'alotha

EP: 859 Armor and 2578 Stamina
Ny'a: 1045 Armor and 3367 Stamina

That's a 20% increase to Armor and a 32% increase in Stamina. Even if you factor in the armor increase from the axe itself it doesn't come close to the stamina increase before taking the 18% increase given from the Heart of Azeroth.

Taking this further, I'll even calculate for you the damage from wearing full Heroic Ny'alotha gear. For simplicity because we don't know how procs will interact when using 2 of the same weapon, I'll calculate using the corrupted weapon in question and a non corrupted weapon within the raid.

Sword will have a total of 17,721 stam from gear, calculating in the 1000 base(as mechagnome on ptr) and the 18% from Heart of Azeroth we come to 22,091 Stamina. Stamina x2 with a 0 at the end is how much Health your toon will have. So a fully heroic geared Warrior with a Sword will have 441,820 Health. 5% of that is 22,091(ironically comes out to your stamina value) per proc.

Axe will have a total of 6,988 Armor, calculate in the 5% bonus from the axe comes to 7,337‬ armor multiply that for the proc by 300% and we have a grand total of 22,011.

Now the tricky bit we don't actually know the range on Twilight Devastation, the sword proc, most frontal cones are 25-30 yards, but there have been longer frontal cones, for example it could be the same range as the Void Wand from Islands, meaning it will have a super long range allowing more skillful play. Also its worth noting that it's a 2 proc per minute sword meaning it could very easily proc more than twice per minute. Most skilled players would prefer to have a frontal cone that they can control where the proc would go rather than a full blown aoe, especially if they're equal ranges.




As it's already been explained, no a 20 yard cleave based on armor will not be better than a frontal cone cleave based on health with the addition of 10 item levels worth of weapon damage.

You forgot if you're DWing axes the bonus to armor should be 10%.

The orbs in Queen's Court are over 20 yards away.

The explosion is an explosion centered around your character, not a cleave.

Neither the damage of the explosion or of the cleave are affected by your weapon damage and are close enough in damage themselves it comes down to which one will be situationally useful more often.

You can't keep claiming "a proc we have control over" when we literally don't have control over procs. That's the point of procs. We only have control over on-use effects. So your claim of "more skillful" just comes down to a player able to constantly line up multiple enemies in situations where that's difficult to do then cross their fingers.

While I agree that is definitely a mark of skill so is either watching your timer or having a weak aura to make sure your character is always in a place to take advantage of the explosion from the ax. If you are able to de-sync the axe explosions (start a fight with a different off-hand, wait 15s, equip the axe so now you have an explosion every 15s) then I'd say the ax is even more skillful.

- - - Updated - - -

One thing you Warrior boys aren't considering is the corruption budget.
Ya know how Sk'Shuul Vaz gives you 25 Corruption and Devastations Hour gives you 75 Corruption?!?

Would you rather have 1 Devastations Hour and deal with 75 Corruption worth of negative effects?
Or would you prefer a Sk'Shuul Vaz and only have to deal with 25 Corruption worth of negative effects?

But it doesn't stop there, you have to also compare with all the other 19 random corruption bonus procs for different corruption budgets.
Lets keep it simple:
I don't know much warrior details these days, but Wowhead tells me your top stat is Crit, so this will probably be the one of the better corruption procs:
Tier 3 Severe: Increases the amount of Critical Strike you gain from all sources by 12%.
For the low cost of 20 Corruption!

SOOO
Would you rather have 1 Devastations Hour and deal with 75 Corruption worth of negative effects?
Or would you prefer 3 stacks of Tier 3 Severe, each one boosting your crit gain by 12%, stacking multiplicatively, and deal with 60 Corruption worth of negative effects?

Just pointing out the weapons aren't quite as shiny as just stacking stat gain bonus' if you take into consideration their corruption costs.
If Devastations Hour stays at 75 cost will more than likely have to be cleansed and just used as a weapon with +10 more item levels on everything else.

While that's a good point it's also rather moot. I know that bleeding edge guilds will most definitely push out two swords or two axes from heroic by the 2nd week before beginning mythic progression and just deal with the corruption, for most guilds by the time the sword drops for them whether heroic or mythic and quite possibly even normal their cloaks should be providing a large enough corruption buffer to render the extra corruption moot.

Although if you've been very lucky and got tons of other corrupted gear it'll definitely be on your mind.

[Zyky]

You forgot if you're DWing axes the bonus to armor should be 10%.

The modifier doesn't work that way, it's a unique buff so you'll only get 5% max bonus to armor.

The orbs in Queen's Court are over 20 yards away.

Orbs are further than 20 yards apart the AoE doesn't trigger off the orb, it triggers off the placement of the character.

The explosion is an explosion centered around your character, not a cleave.

It's called an AoE cleave or AoE, the same way Whirlwind is not called "an explosion".

Neither the damage of the explosion or of the cleave are affected by your weapon damage and are close enough in damage themselves it comes down to which one will be situationally useful more often.

Except that weapon damage effects the majority of your dps, the proc is small in comparison, even if you use the numbers that I pulled up. 22k damage for simplicity lets say twice a minute for three minutes that equals 132k which isn't even a fraction of what players are currently doing. An example: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=22

it comes out to about 1% of your damage. which is negligible. In the end honestly Fury Warriors are probably going to use 2 Swords and purge the corruption and use better corruption procs.

You can't keep claiming "a proc we have control over" when we literally don't have control over procs. That's the point of procs. We only have control over on-use effects. So your claim of "more skillful" just comes down to a player able to constantly line up multiple enemies in situations where that's difficult to do then cross their fingers.

It's a proc every 30 seconds, it's in the name of the axe. If it's happening every 30 seconds you have control over where you're going to be for it. You're the one who brought up this argument initially, not me.

While I agree that is definitely a mark of skill so is either watching your timer or having a weak aura to make sure your character is always in a place to take advantage of the explosion from the ax. If you are able to de-sync the axe explosions (start a fight with a different off-hand, wait 15s, equip the axe so now you have an explosion every 15s) then I'd say the ax is even more skillful.

Except it isn't worth it and because it isn't worth it, it's a worse item. Rationally no melee is going to move away to ensure their axe isn't going to aoe on something they aren't supposed to hit because it's a larger dps loss to not be using globals or to be missing white hits than it is a gain to move out of range for the aoe.

- - - Updated - - -

-snip-

better answer: https://www.wowhead.com/news=304672/...tuning?webhook they just heavily nerfed the axe and re-buffed the sword.

[Shelly]

better answer: https://www.wowhead.com/news=304672/...tuning?webhook they just heavily nerfed the axe and re-buffed the sword.

Guess that does put paid to that. Shame they did, but not surprising given the difference in difficulty to obtain the sword vs the ax.