The other night as I sat there smacking away at some boss mob, mangle, lacerate, maul, etc....I wondered, if there was any reason for me to continue to use Lacerate when I already had 5 stacks up? IOW, once I get to 5 should I do more mauls and only do lacerates when the stack starts to drop? Or does "over stacking" still give me lots of threat?

I think that I should keep using Lacerate, but I'm not sure. Frankly, I'm not sure why I never thought about this before.

Ive allways kept stacking them and it seems to hold aggro solid

Lacerate is still a high treat move, and since the change to front load most of the damage, you're still going to be generating a lot of threat with it and it will refresh your 5 stack.

If you have enough AP & crit swipe can become a VERY good threat generation move as well, surpassing the threat that lacerate does.

That's what I thought. Thanks.

FWIW, how much AP/Crit do I need before I can use swipe over lacerate?

I found this...

http://teethandclaws.blogspot.com/2008/01/when-swipe-surpasses-lacerate.html

SaysAs a rough estimate, if you have 2300-2500+ AP and ~30% crit chance, Swipe will prevail for single-target tanking.

And there is this cool chart (http://ramblingbear.blogspot.com/2008/01/aclabt2-swipe-vs-lacerate-and.html) that gives you the amount of crit you must have at your current AP level in order to use swipe over lacerate.

I'm no where close. I think (though I don't often check these numbers while in bear), I have ~1500AP and 30% crit (fully raid buffed).

also lacerate is a good replacement of swipe when you have 1 or 2 cc'ed mobs near

I don't think I will ever replace lacerate with swipe just for the simple reason if I ever get into a situation that I am next to cc I have a habit of forgetting and boom now cc is broken. Lacerate is leet sauce. LOL

I don't think I will ever replace lacerate with swipe just for the simple reason if I ever get into a situation that I am next to cc Once you have the gear to use swipe over lacerate, CC isn't typically an issue.

I have 2888 AP and 36.74% crit, and trinketed Swipe rocks! And I think soon they're making it so swipe doesn't break CC. I'm certain I read that on the internet somewhere...so it must be true! :crazy:

And I think soon they're making it so swipe doesn't break CC. I'm certain I read that on the internet somewhere...so it must be true! :crazy:It was on the PTR for 2.3 or 2.4 but they removed it before they moved that build to live. I haven't seen it mentioned since.

Drat! Oh well. I enjoy breaking CC with Swipe anwyay. That'll learn em!

Spamming Lacerate works out at more threat than spamming Swipe, even if you already have 5 stacks of Lacerate up on your tank target.

It is only better to spam Swipe if the mob has some kind of modifier on it that increases Damage Taken by a great deal - for example, during The Curator's "Evocation" ability you should already have 5 stacks of Lacerate up, and it's better damage and aggro to spam Swipe instead of Lacerate for the duration of the Evocation.


-Annikk