Tornaz

I see where you are going with that Talent build, but thus far I can't see how you can maintain Sudden Death as workable in such a fluctuating rage environment as Arms. To me, Sudden Death seems impractical while using a 2 hander - it's positioning lends itself to a 28/43 (or 29/42) build - Axe weapon spec and full flurry with Sudden Death/Imp. Execute.

And I'd feel dirtier about taking Endless Rage if I were you. useless waste of space talent if ever there was one.


The problem I can really see with the alpha talent trees as shown thus far is that they show tantalising glimpses of Bliz wanting warriors to be multi-role capable, but the positioning of talents makes it impossible to be multi-role capable without unduly gimping your main role.

 

Thairne

I try to eliminate the fluctuation with endless rage. Currently you can and will run into no-crit, no-sword and no-windfury phases where your rotation will break down. Fixing this alone would warrant endless rage in my book. Don´t forget the new windfury too and the axe spec... It can´t be as spikey after all if you don´t have any extra white attacks to shoot you up some 40-60 rage. With ER you can far better predict what your rage will look like in the next 5 seconds and maintain the rotation, throwing in a SD or HS if you feel like it.
The problem with Sudden Death isn´t the talent itself, but rather the lack of something else to take to get further up the tree. Imp Disciplines filled that slot better...
Imo Trauma is simply a must just like Blood Frenzy is, which means you´re already 37 in.

 

Tornaz

I've just realised how stupid something I said earlier was. Changing Windfury to pure haste completely eliminates concern over the 3s internal CD of windfury. My bad, too early, not enough coffee.

 

Zaroua

I'm fairly certain the 3s internal cooldown only applies to Windfury Weapon, not the Totem.

If a Druid specs Moonkin in Darnassus, do the trainers still laugh at him?

 

• spawnstah

You have put points into Imp Revenge and Imp Shield Bash, why?
I've not used Imp Revenge since BWL where mobs got immune to stun and I dont think the 10% extra damage from Shield Slam is worth it. At least not from my experience of the T6 setbonus. Thats a couple of points you can put into cruelty at once.

Also I doubt Imp Def stance will make much of a differnce in Heroics or 10mans, the mobs spells dont hit hard enough. a spell that hits you for normally 4000 - 6% = 3760 (even if it hits you for 10.000 vs 9400) wont make much of a difference when you have more than 20k HP. So thats more points you can free up.



I'm thinking about something like this to start with;
http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

I'll probably change it a bit later on for raiding since most mobs seem to be immune to concussion blow, making it useless and I'm not convinced yet that Vigilance will be any good. Also the 2 points in Imp Taunt can be moved to Shield Mastery and Imp Def stance if needed.
But I think the above spec is quite good to start with when doing 5mans and in preparation for 25man raids.

Maybe we should move this part of the conversation to the Prot warrior thread?

 

Darmon

About vigilance, I'm pretty sure i didn't saw before the words: 'and reducing the threat they cause by 10%'.

This means the talent moved away from the idea of dual tanks teams, since giving to offtank 10% threat penalty is out of the question.

 

Dra

You can move the points in critical block directly into shield mastery and gain more bang for your buck.

While vigilance seemed to be situationaly useful before, it now seems to be one huge contradiction, and I can't think of many situations where it would be useful. Pretty annoying to see such a tree defining ability be "replaced" by something that I'm not even sure will be worth the talent point.

 

Graul

Not sure if this has already been brought up in one of the numerous Warrior threads or not, but it seems like they are making major changes to threat generating abilities, or at least I hope that is the case. Otherwise welcome back to playing a Horde Warrior pre Tranquil Air and TBC.

And so far two versions of this, not sure which is the most recent:

And then there is this change:

Defiance was removed, so now all Warriors have the same natural threat when in Defensive. I hope that the innate threat from Devastate is going to get a huge boost to make up for a 30% threat deficit. Although that would definitely change things for any secondary Protection Warrior that isn't tanking on a fight.

 

Borodin

I've a concern over just how good the new Paladin Shield Slam looks compared to that of Warriors.

Shield of Righteousness
L75 Slam the target with your shield, causing Holy damage equal to 200% of your block value. This spell causes a high amount of threat.
Instant cast, 5 yd range, 6 sec cooldown

It's a single rank skill at L75 but for the sake of comparison I am going run some numbers here assuming a L70 Warrior v L70 Paladin with the same Block Value of 500.

Assuming the Warrior has Shield Mastery, 1H Weapon Spec, Imp. Shield Bash and is in Defensive Stance (the new version with 145% threat).
I will also assume the target mitigates a flat 20% of the damage via Armour (i.e. full debuffs).

I will assume the Paladin is running Righteous Fury of course which now gives Holy Damage 190% Threat.

WARRIOR SHIELD SLAM
We get near-fixed amount of damage (430) + 130% x Block Value modified by Armour.
Our damage is then reduced by 10% for Defensive Stance, increased by 10% for 1H Weapon Spec and increased again by 10% for Improved Shield Bash (Wrath version).

Threat is 1.45 x (Damage + 307)

WARRIOR
At L70 with 500 Block Value that's:
430 (base) + 650 (BV) x 0.9 (Stance) x 1.1 (Bash) x 1.1 (1H Spec) x0.8 (armour) = 940 damage
That's 1808 total Threat.


PALADIN "SHIELD SLAM"
They get 2x Block Value and ignore armour as it's Holy Damage.

PALADIN
At L70 with 500 Block Value that's:
500 x 2 = 1000 (Holy) Damage
That's 1900 Threat from damage alone. If they the "High Threat" is the same +307 they pull substantially ahead on threat.

So at 500 Block Value and at 70 the Paladin is ahead - as you increase BV beyond that (I estimate endgame tanks will have around 800 BV and up to 1,500 BV at L80) the Paladin Shield Slam pulls further and further ahead.
I am aware at L80 the Warrior Shield Slam will have more base Damage and Threat but the Paladin continues to scale better as they add Block Value.

Unless the L80 version of Shield Slam scales very well (and future proofs for L80 Block Values) for the first time with planned Wrath changes I am quite concerned that such an important, signature threat move will be trumped by a better version appearing for another Class.

 

Adrammelech

Not entirely pve related, but I noticed that pummel and hamstring no longer deal damage.

This would probably indicate that weapon specs will no longer proc off these abilities (no spamming for mace stuns), and clearly they can't be used to get flurry going in a raid setting.

 

• Nite_Moogle

Tigole said that Vigilance would be removed and a new ability would take its place some time ago on the alpha forums, so its continued existence says that they aren't done with warriors yet. There were no major changes to the class' abilities or trees this patch so if you have big concerns they may yet be addressed.

[Carebare]: I'd rather not fit through doorways than be a troll

 

Darmon

You forgot that paladins have talents to enhance dmg/block value also.
They have Shield Spec for 30% extra dmg absorbed by shield, 1h weapon spec for 5% extra dmg, Shield of the templar for 15% ( new datamined talent)

 

Zugs

I fear that Fury will be an even more dead spec in WotLK then it is now.
As it looks right now, when WotLK hits there will only be 2 Warriors in each raid. One prot for tanking and one Arms that is only there for Blood Frenzy and Battle Shout.
Fury warriors will never see a spot in a raid unless they bring the same dps as Rogues and other pure dps classes and i just don't think this will happen.
Blizzard keeps pouring on more and more raid utility buffs/talents to the hybrid classes but Fury Warriors still has nothing to make them wanted in raids. And we all know that Fury won't be really viable for PvP any time soon.

What do the rest of you think?

 

Jonny_Monroe

With regards to paladin shield slam: remember that it deals holy damage and therefor should crit for only 150% versus your 200% crit value. I don't know if that balances out things a little more, but its something to remember when working out the math.

 

Duranthor

I think rogues better watch out, warrior damage is going to be insane in wotlk. I am not sold on titans grip however a build like this Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is going to have some serious chops.

Now if blizzard would only listen to the warrior feed back and unlink enrage from flurry, then we could really talk about some great things for the fury tree.

 

Tornaz

I'm not convinced that going 8 points deep into prot for 15% crit on HS and Cleave is going to compete with a flat 5% crit and 5% crit damage by putting those same 8 points into Arms (for a total of 25), picking up Axe spec.

I'm also not sure that Bloodsurge is worth taking with no Titan's Grip. Slam is inherently built with the assumption that a 2 handed weapon is being used.

 

Pedaw

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...12050110501300

This looks like one of the better possible DW fury builds for WOTLK. I haven't looked into the math for titan's grip. If it isn't that great, this is the way to go. You get 5%crit and crit damage from axe spec so you have more bloodsurges and also you get more sudden death procs to use. You'll have Bloodthrist, Instant Slam, Sudden Death Execute, and Whirlwind to use as instants.(Prioritizing the most important to least skills you should use) I don't know how bloodbath is going to work so I didn't put that in there. You won't have to heroic strike as often with all the GCD's/rage you'd be using, that means less bonus threat. Threat isn't a issuse though.



http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...12051110501350

Titan's grip build. Axe spec could be a better choice because more crit equals more instant slams which shouldn't reset your swing timer. Putting 1 point into Titan's grip and getting 5/5 sword spec seems like crap, with the sword spec nerf. You could also maybe drop the 1 point in Furious resolve and put it in Precision.





You don't have to at lvl 70 if your arms. Whenever MS and WW are on cooldown, just spam hamstring over heroicstriking first to get sword specs. With haste gear you can do almost as much damage as prefect slam rotation or more even, depending on the situation. Slam is mindless, boring, and way to anoying to use.

 

Graul

Bloodsurge has been verified to not reset swing timers. With the announcement of the removal of Tranquil Air as well as Salvation, 32/39 DW build looks questionable when you factor in the 16% threat reduction you will be missing from talents. Axe spec is looking like the weapon spec of choice for PvE as well. Good news for Orcs I guess.

 

Pedaw

Every other class other than shaman have a threat reduction ability. With the changes to salvation chances are you'll be getting "hand of salvation". Ontop of that prot warriors are getting Vigilance(10% less threat to the raid). Threat shouldn't be a problem. Also tanks are getting a big threat increase and there's misdirection. Unless your tank is a handicap, you'll be fine.

 

Duranthor

A few things to think about here. While the weapon specializations may seem appealing I think it's going to prove to be less than beneficial since it will also lock you into a weapon selection. However, I think with WF being changed, HS becomes a better and better move for us. As weapon speeds increase HS becomes better. Also think about this: If you are crusing around 40% crit with the 15% from the heroic strike talent putting you up to 55% crit, all of a sudden Heroic strike becomes your Flurry procing move of choice at 12 rage. I forsee having enough rage to support BT, WW, Free Slams, and HS if you build your gear right. That's going to make it very hard for anyone to keep up with us.

 

Graul

Only if it's the Hand of Salvation that does not also reduce your damage by 10%. It's also a much bigger hassle for a Paladin to have to monitor your threat and then cast this based upon reaction compared to simply casting a 10 - 30 minute buff.

This assumes you're using two one handers and you'll be missing some threat reduction if you spend those points in Protection.

 

Pedaw

Why would you get incite? Heroic strike damage as fury is about 30-40% total. Around 15% more damage to that is really only about 5% more damage total. You lose axe spec and sudden death execute. If your so worried about your threat, your doing more damage with heroic strike that equals more threat.... Instead of doing about 5% more damage heroic striking for minor extra damage with huge threat, you could get axe spec with sudden death execute instead and get 5%crit 5%crit damage(that alone without being a sinenergy for anything else is better than incite)for more bloodsurges and more SUDDEN DEATH EXECUTE procs.

 

Crimsonstorm

An incite build would trade some dps for better threat while tanking. You could spam HS with a fast weapon for strong threat, and get TM to increse bloodthirst threat. It could be a good hybrid build.

 

• Nite_Moogle

This would be new in this patch, as the last alpha build did indeed reset your swing timer when you used slam when Bloodsurge was up. I cannot test this yet but will as soon as my warrior unlocks.

Vigilance is going away. I said that on this page.