[Guardian] Pulverize Use

[Transistor 0]

Hello! I am new to bear tanking, and while looking up the guide I got confused over a minor point.

 

Basically: if I have 6 seconds left on my pulverize buff, mangle is on cooldown, my enemy has 3 stacks of lacerate, and thrash doesn't need to be refreshed -- do I cast lacerate or pulverize? I'm not sure if it's better to just delete the stacks or to let them roll as much as possible, keeping the pulverizes to a minimum.

 

Thanks in advance!

Edited June 26, 2015 by Transistor

[Krazyito 521]

Just spam lacerate, it's your filler spell when you have nothing to do. 

 

You can refresh pulverize at 3.6s without a loss.  

[Tarazet 144]

Pulverize hits pretty hard, but the thing is, you run the risk of missing a Lacerate tick that could reset the cooldown on Mangle - and Rage generation trumps simply using your highest DPS ability because it's available.

[Krazyito 521]

I thought it was on lacerate hits, not ticks now?

[Tarazet 144]

I thought it was on lacerate hits, not ticks now?

 

I believe you are correct. The tooltip says that the ability, and not the DoT, now has a chance to reset the cooldown on Mangle. Nonetheless the advice remains the same; getting off as many uses of Mangle as possible should be your goal, as Rage is key to survival, and using Pulverize more often than needed detracts from that.

[Shedim 13]

Using Pulverize is a slight dps loss because of two things:

- You lose your Lacerate stacks, which have to be built up again

- You waste a global that could've been spent on Lacerate which could've reset the cooldown of the much harder hitting Mangle

 

Using Pulverize also reduces your rage generation by a tiny bit and the amount of Ursa Major stacks you get as well.

 

That is for single target situations. In multi target situations, the effect is much bigger.

 

If you decide to go with the talent, it is not high priority to keep 100% uptime, if you're not taking any damage.

Edited July 4, 2015 by Shedim

[Sargerik 5]

Pulverize may be a dps loss but isnt having the constant 15% dmg reduction worth uptime more beneficial to your survival as tank dps isnt what it was in MOP , OR because your keeping pulverize up more your getting less lacerates which means less mangles which = less rage which in turn means less SD usage to smooth out incoming dmg . 

[Krazyito 521]

Pulverize may be a dps loss but isnt having the constant 15% dmg reduction worth uptime more beneficial to your survival as tank dps isnt what it was in MOP , OR because your keeping pulverize up more your getting less lacerates which means less mangles which = less rage which in turn means less SD usage to smooth out incoming dmg . 

 

That wasn't the question.  We never suggested to not have pulverize up, you can refresh pulverize anytime under 3.6 seconds and not lose out on the buff / dps.

 

The question was basically do you just spam lacerate or redo pulverize after 3 lacerate stacks, but higher than 3.6s. (answer, just spam lacerate)

[Sargerik 5]

i didnt think you were suggesting that and sorry if thats how it came across ...

[Tarazet 144]

Personally, I don't even keep Thrash up on a single target. I don't care about the DPS that it provides; if I want to DPS then I'll just go cat and spam Mangle/FB while my co-tank has the boss. While I'm tanking, Thrash's position on the priority list means I will never use it. In multiple target situations it is of course needed for threat maintenance.

[arguewithplato 0]

Using Pulverize is a slight dps loss because of two things:

- You lose your Lacerate stacks, which have to be built up again

- You waste a global that could've been spent on Lacerate which could've reset the cooldown of the much harder hitting Mangle

 

Using Pulverize also reduces your rage generation by a tiny bit and the amount of Ursa Major stacks you get as well.

 

That is for single target situations. In multi target situations, the effect is much bigger.

 

If you decide to go with the talent, it is not high priority to keep 100% uptime, if you're not taking any damage.

 

This summarizes to me why IcyVeins is a useless site for tanks. Just a bunch of meter-heads min-maxing each other in the corner.

[Krazyito 521]

But we would be wrong to tell him to constantly use his lacerate stacks everytime he gets to 3. There is literally 0 reason for that. Otherwise you're just sitting there not doing anything.

Secondly, why would you not want to try to optimize your dps in general? He didn't ask about usage for other cooldowns. Just when it was a good idea to use pulverize.

Next, if we don't explain the min/max portion of why we do things, then no one will know why or understand why what we are doing is better / worse. Why would you ever not want to learn how to min/max and be the best that you can be? That's what we try to strive for. Give you the information you you ask for, explain how to use it effectively and efficiently, and you use it how you will. We don't force you to play a certain way, just tell you how and why it's done that way.

Lastly if you're complaining about the "defensive" uses for why he said specifically he's not wrong for the lacerate. The more you reset mangle the more rage you generate. The DPS boost is a side effect.

If no one was a "meterhead" then literally no community fan site or resource would exist for you to even complain about. Theorycrafting is the corner stone of sites like Icy Veins or any other. It's how we can have meaningful and in depth discussion about the classes we love.

[Tarazet 144]

To add to what Ito said, tank damage still matters. It's not as impressive as it was in Pandaria, but that doesn't make it less important. Any time you can reduce the time to death for your target, without indirectly causing your own death or someone else's, you are increasing your contribution to the raid. We all have to make our own decisions about how we adjust that balance in a raid setting, bearing in mind the situation that the other members are put in by positioning, raid mechanics, class mechanics, latency, etc. But it's important that those decisions are made on the basis of a good understanding of your own class and how to best make it perform.