So I recently obtained a beta key and finally got my level 60 warrior copied over sometime early this morning. When I logged on this evening I found a number of very interesting changes. A number of the changes I'd already been prepared for. Most percentage based modifiers had been replaced with Ratings equivalents. I understood that Defense Rating was a bit more complicated than others since it affected so many things, but nonetheless I'd expected a change in my overall defense and it's associated passives.

As expected, I noted the following:

Defense: 446 (Live) -> 452 (Beta)

I then noticed that my Armor had gone up considerably. The AC on all items EXCEPT rings and shields had been increased somewhat dramatically.

AC: 9452 (63.22% Reduction) -> 10274 (63.59% Reduction)

This resulted in a slight buff in terms of reduction, but I'm guessing the modifier got changed such that the value of armor has been reduced? Have all armor items across classes been modified or is this mostly a warrior specific change?

Then I noticed another strange happening. The values in my Character Profile (the paper doll window) did not reflect those listed in my Spell Book. Going from Live to Beta, I noticed:

Dodge: 19.09% -> 25.07%
Parry: 15.84% -> 22.16%
Block: 29.84% -> 34.76%

Crit: 12.25% -> 11.74%

But that's according to my Character Profile; if I look in my spell-book I get:

Dodge: 18.99%
Parry: 16.08%
Block: 28.68%

These values are closer to what I was on live, but I'm not sure which should be believed. Has anyone else experienced this discrepancy and, if so, which am I to believe is accurate? Perhaps both are correct and I'm misunderstanding the usage of each.

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As a side-note, I noticed the new rank of Shield Slam:

Shield Slam, Rank 6 (Level 70)
Slam the target with your shield, causing 420 to 440 damage, modified by attack power, and has a 50% chance of dispelling 1 magic effect on the target. Also causes a high amount of threat.

On Live the ability is modified by Shield Block Value even though I do recall the devs had long ago planned to make it AP when they buffed the skill. Have the developers given any reason as to why they made this change (I couldn't find any) and has anyone crunched the numbers and determined whether this is a buff or nerf of the modifier?

Also, are there any other warriors sad that you can no longer Shield Slam with your back or side to the target? :(

All armor items besides jewelry and trinkets appear to have changed.

Is this a recent update? I mentioned it to another warrior on live and he then disappeared off in the beta to check for himself. He seemed surprised even though he'd been in the beta for a few weeks.

I do know that they changed the agility rating for warriors, like they did with the hunter class. Basically, you need about 26 points of agility for 1% crit come TBC, compared to about 20 now. I assume they've changed the other aspects agility affect as well. The item AC value buff could then possibly be similar to the ranged weapon dps buff, that is a balancing act to weigh up for the agility nerf, although I am wildly speculating here.

Penn of Nihilum-fame is being quite vocal about the changes in the EU warrior forum, as an example, see:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....70397094&sid=1

The AC changes certainly aren't just restricted to plate - there have been a lot of reports of leather items that at the start of beta had notably lower AC values than live but are now somewhat higher than their current live versions.

So *that's* what that warm, fuzzy feeling is. :toot: Are there any indications of the current armor -> mitigation formula getting changed as well, or do the new mitigations numbers match the current formula if it is extended to levels 61-67?

The armor has been higher since before beta started, when beta opened up, there was a bug that drove armor values lower and since then they've gone back to the higher rates. (Eyonix confirmed they should be higher like they are now)

Shield Slam Ranks 5 and 6 mention attack power instead of shield block but I'm not sure if that's intended or a bug or if they even function that way since i haven't had much time to test it :(

Not being able to 360 shield slam could be a bug as well or a change to the functionality. They changed it from not 360 to 360 and back over the course of it so I'm not sure if it's intended to go away or they fixed and rebroke it.

Penn's complaint, at least on the first page of that thread, seems misguided. He is comparing his crit chance as a level 67 to that when he was max-level with 3 tiers of raid gear. A much more equitable comparison would be between level 67 and 57. For it to stay balanced, he should be back up to this old level of crit% only when he has three tiers of level 70 raid gear, and that still seems very possible.

Dodge: 19.09% -> 25.07%
Parry: 15.84% -> 22.16%
Block: 29.84% -> 34.76%

isnt that impossible? with the 60% avoidance limit and stuff? that would be way over it. if they changed it to 75% somehow it would be over that too..

isn't the "60% avoidance myth" debunked long ago?

Should be. Anyone who has used rogues for evasion tanking razuvius should know that.

The charecter sheet tells horrible, horrible lies.

Just belive spell book values if you can.

The Shield Slam tooltip currently seems bugged. If you go to respec and read the tooltip at rank 1 it's displayed properly modifing damage based on block value. When you rank up it switchs to AP.

AC formual does seem changed, at 67 i have 9987ac and sit at 52.17% mitigation, however it could be that the character sheet is horribly bugged as I noticed about a 4.5% - 5% discrepency in the value of my block / dodge and parry rates.

Edit: Alright the Character Sheet / Spellbook values are different because the spellbook is not displaying the bonus you receive from +defense, where as the CS is.

This is a tangent, but how did that totem bug work anyway? All I ever heard was that it involved a Z axis and I managed to do it to myself once accidentally in the Barrens but I could never reproduce it.

From what I could tell, the Spellbook is displaying the bonus you get from defense, it's just that the CS is double-dipping the bonus.

There is no cap that I've ever seen. I can easily hit 56+% dodge + parry + miss when I'm raid buffed on live and have never gotten hit when evasion is up (as long as I'm facing the mob). If there were a cap, I can guarantee I would have been instagibbed by Razuvious or some other boss by now.

There's no point in approaching a cap without evasion since anyone's dps would gimped to the point that they would never get or hold aggro. It's probably a moot point.

The armor buff went in not too terribly log ago to the Beta servers. About three weeks ago when I had my invite and all the gear I'm wearing now I was at around 3100 armor or so. Then last week I noticed that even though I'd switched up some gear and scored an armor to cloak enchant I was way over my expected value and was now around 3800.

It is just the tooltip, the spell functions the same way - it's always modified by block value, regardless of rank, never AP.

is this for level 60? THat's pretty ridiculous, agility is bad enough compared to +crit rating right now.

I don't know a single warrior that does that. 8 str over 8 agi any day of the week...
Agi imo is a pretty horrible stat right now, items like legplates of carnage or PARC are better by a huge margin because they are high str + crit rating.

I haven't seen that many warriors stacking Agil. More likely to see +str or +stam on everything.

The complaint is that they significantly changed the crit:agil scaling. Instead of being Level/3 like it has been, it now requires 26 agil per crit at lv60, 31agil at lv67 and is predicted to be 36 agil at lv70.

Will be interesting to see what warriors in endgame BC gear are capable of, they seem to have cracked down extremely hard on crit though.

The simple reason you see so many warriors with +8 Agi and +15 Agi enchants is that they don't know much about which enchants give the most dps boost.