So last night I respecced back to prot, and was dreading the questing/pvp experience - simply because of the lack of that extra instant attack with good dps that MS or BT provides. Then I thought of the equivalent for the protection spec...shield slam...and devastate (as instant attacks).
Shield slam is self explanatory, and I think its perfect where its at in terms of dps. Nothing would be more OP than having a prot warrior using a shield and having powerful dps. This brought me to davastate.
Devastate - "An instant weapon attack that causes 50% of weapon damage plus "X" and additional threat..."
50% of weapon damage. Wouldnt be too shabby to have using a two-hander. Now, considering the cooldowns on mortalstrike and bloodthrist, you could easily out dps those specs considering devastate is an instant attack, and it is based on weapon damage.
But what if we modified devastate to have a different cooldown?
Like, lets say 75% of weapon speed = cooldown?
I looked over xordons lvl 70 gear check, and under the tanking weapons I found no such weapons remotely close to the slowness of my following example...
Xordons post: http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/class.html?wclass=1;mid=118407355447055428;num=74;page=1
So, assuming I am using a 1 handed weapon, with a speed of 2.5 (which I would say is pretty freaking slow for a onehander, making this what I believe to be an EXTREME case which could affect tanking...
Wpnspd X 75% = Amount of time required for cooldown to expire
2.5 X .75 = 1.875 Seconds
So approximately .375 more seconds extra to spam devastate while tanking, which imo isnt a whole lot.
This little example gave me the impression that should something like this be applied, our tanking would not be gimped.
Now, onto the juicy part regarding 2 handers...
For example's sake, I will use the merciless gladiator's decapitator...
Of course certain weapons will deviate from this, but I just want to give a basic example and see what you guys think (limited in scope as it may be)
http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=31966&locale=enUS;source=live
spd = 3.6
Max wpn dmg = 549
So, 50% of wpn dmg....
.50(549)= 274.5
Cooldown
75% of wpn speed = .75
Wpn speed = 3.6
.75(3.6) = 2.7 Seconds
Devastate at rank 3 adds 35 dmg to each attack as well, so, 274.5+35 = 309.5dmg every 2.7 seconds
(the 2.7 seconds uncludes the GCD, so in reality it will be adding only 1.2 seconds on to the cool down)
Consider mortal strike untalented (as most warriors usualy skip it) doing wpn damage (549) plus 210 every 6 seconds
So we got 549 + 210 = 759 dmg per 6 seconds
Comparing the two
You can only hit devastate twice in 6 seconds (2.7X 2 = 5.4 seconds)
So in 6 Seconds, using devastate twice, you would have 309.5 X 2 = 619 dmg
In 6, using mortal strike once, you would have, 759 X 1 = 759 dmg
Now, being short on time, I cant calculate any further, or factor in the rage costs (which Im sure will play a huge roll in dmg/rage, as 30 rage/MS vs 9 rage /(talented)devastate is kind of a huge difference). Im sure the cooldown time could even be bumped up to 80% or so with out hardly affecting devastate spamming with a one handed weapon while tanking.
Now, this is my FIRST post ever trying to incorporate math with WoW, so if I made an error, plz be nice, I am really just trying to make an effort to present logical case for my idea, so if any errors were made, or something was overlooked, i apologize for innacuracy.
let me know what you guys think!