• Aeverius

Hand of Salvation works (according to current data) like an active threat reducing ability- it'll reduce your threat, but it'll lower your damage too. It's probably a good idea to invest in some talent points to reduce threat passively- you're getting two separate talents in the fury tree for it, there's most likely a good reason for that.

Vigilance is apparently being replaced. Plus, Blizzard just removed BoSalv and Tranquil Air Totem- was that really so they could replace Shield Slam with a passive raid threat reduction that a Prot Warrior would be forced to waste a point on? Doesn't make much sense.

The only threat increase tanks have gotten so far is the rolling of old threat talents into baseline abilities (Defensive Stance getting the 15% that used to be talented via Defiance, base Righteous Fury getting the increase from the Imp Righteous Fury talent, etc). If WotLK went live tomorrow, a 70 tank would output basically the same threat per ability that he does today. The talents we're getting should help us scale our threat adequately at lvl 80, of course, but DPS will scale too.

[e] Edit for confirmation of intended Vigilance changes.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

Graul

 

Calgar

Sudden death is....interesting.

In a 32/39 BF/fury build your rotation would run the typical BT > WW, but instead of using heroic strike as a rage dump, you use execute. Obviously you want to get the min rage executes off possible so you aren't "wasting" rage for minimal increases.

Sudden death is NOT for using a 2 hander with, unless it's PvP and you are getting focused or something.

Dual axes, as fast as you can find is the way to go. Flurry + New WF totem a lot of haste on 2 1.5 speed weapons, you could literally be landing a crit every 1.5 seconds and have Sudden death up every 3 or 4 seconds. (1 second attack speed with some passive haste, 40% crit rate, 30% proc rate), which should allow you to weave in BT/WW and SD executes with some consistency.

Don't really know what to think about warrior talents ATM though, a lot more interested in DKs.

 

gia

Except you'll be using Shield Slam while tanking (assuming BT/SS/MS share a cooldown).

--
The Vigilance change shows that they don't want it to be used on another tank, just like the reworked pain suppression got changed to reduce threat while it was being tested.

We're not going to see many threat increasing talents, they are actively removing them so that they can balance threat generation across all specs and not just prot. Threat increase should come through increased damage while tanking and better scaling with attack power, which I think is the current intention. Whether they've succeeded or not I don't know.

 

Crimsonstorm

Oh yeah. Boy does the bonus threat on TM look stupid now

Yes.

I hope they give us a 30 point prot talent that actually does something for a raiding MT.

The removal of Salvation (replacing it with this hand of salvation thing that the pally has to use on 1 person to take off 20% of their current threat and costs them dps, seems kindof lame). I dont see how tanks are going to generate sufficient threat to cover unsalved dpsers, unless they are going to be doing a LOT more damage.

 

Tornaz

Hmmm. Appologies if this has already been mentioned, but;

Rend

Live version:


Reported WotLK version as seen on Wowhead:


Rend rank 8 has been buffed to cause 5.75 times more damage, over a duration only 71% current. This results in it's DPS rising by roughly 8 times, if my calculations are correct. Further, Trauma will increase this by 30% - resulting in a Rend DPS roughly 10 times higher than previously.

And as Physical damage, all 3 bleeds are affected by Blood Frenzy, 2 of them proc BF, and 2 of then are quadrupled by Enrage.

Anyone want to make an educated guess at how much 30% of a level 80 Epic 2 handed axes damage is?

 

Hisstok

I think a better idea would be to calculate what the buff would do with a lower end 70 epic and then compare with modern values rather than speculate how much damage it would do linked to a mystery weapon against a mystery opponent.

 

• Aeverius

Well, think about how dumb it is that you can't raid without putting Salv on everyone. What kind of sensible mechanism is that, really? Instead of wasting people's time and gold buffing Salv constantly, why not just rebalance things to eliminate that? And they've left a window so that aggro can still be managed on the fly (via the Hand mechanism), but only as needed. Now, the dead easy way to balance it is just to give all tanks 30% more base threat (via increased stance bonuses or what have you), but since that doesn't appear to be happening... I guess we'll see.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

Tornaz

Ok... how about a Lunar Crescent, that would count as a low 70 epic?

Let's assume 1400 AP (not unreasonable for someone fresh to 70 with LC) for ease of maths. AP/14 = 100, therefore normalised AP bonus is 330

Average damage of LC is 405.5

Old version:

182 + (0.05201 * (405.5 + 330)) = 220.253355 over 21 seconds = 10.488255 DPS or 31.464765 per tick


New version:

180 + (0.3 * (405.5 + 330)) = 400.65 over 15 seconds = 26.71 DPS or 80.13 per tick


(Looks like I screwed up my back of envelope calcs earlier)

Just over 2.5 times more DPS - and 1.8 times total damage - on plain old untalented, no Trauma rend

With Improved Rend, Blood Frenzy and Trauma, it would tick at level 70 for 170 or so (not sure how the game handles multiple percentile effects stacking)



(check my working)

 

Crimsonstorm

I think its good to remove salv and give tanks more threat.

But what I think is happening is they are removing salv and not giving tanks nearly enough more threat.

Salv stacked with threat reduction talents. So for a Fury warrior, they were getting 30% threat reduction in Zerker + 30% salv = 60% reduction. Theyre only doing threat equal to 40% of their damage. And this was necessary to avoid pulling aggro with heroic strikes, and later executes.

Now without salv theyre back to doing threat equal to 70% of their damage. 70/40 = 1.75 times as much threat without Salv!!

If they wanted to account for this by increasing the Tank's threat generation multiplier from 1.45, they'd have to make it 2.53 (1.75x1.45) to replace the loss of salv. Thats how big Salv was.

 

Pedaw

How the hell is sudden death execute going to suck? I don't think you'll accaully played as a fury warrior in a raid before... You don't blow a full rage bar on a execute.... At 80 its going to be Bloodthirst, if it crits, slam, sudden execute if its up, whirlwind, and then execute/heroic strike if you have enough rage or wait for the upcoming bloodthirst. Its better to do a execute over a whirlwind even. At lvl 70 under 20% your just bloodthirsting and executing, why? Because execute does more damage than whirlwind.









How does "Hand of Salvation" reduce your damage?
Prot warriors get HUGE boost is threat. INCITE, IMP REVENGE, IMP SHIELD BASH, CONCUSSION BLOW(ap based), SWORD AND BOARD, and SHOCKWAVE.

 

kalbear

It reduces damage and healing done by the target by 10%.

 

Pedaw

What about this? Hand of Salvation - Spell - World of Warcraft

 

Crimsonstorm

Hand of salvation gives the person -10% dps for 10 seconds. Its also less threat reduction than salv was.

Prot warriors dont get huge boosts to threat.

Before, they got 1.3*1.15 from defiance = 1.49 threat multiplier in defensive. Now thats dow nto 1.45.

Incite is +15% crit on heroic strikes. Thats solid increase.

Imp Revenge: IF you spend 3 talents on this (there arent enough talents to go around all the prot stuff now), you get +25% to the damage portion of the threat of one ability.
Imp Shield Bash: IF you spend 23 talents on this (there arent enough talents to go around all the prot stuff now), you get +10% to the damage portion of the threat of one ability.
Concussion blow is on a 30 second cooldown, it scales with 25% (lol) of your attack power while tanking. How is that a big change?
Sword and Board is 5 talents to give a 10% for SS/Dev to let your next shield slam come a little earlier. Getting deep wounds and impale would probably give as much threat.
Shockwave is good AoE threat, not really a good single target attack. Again scales with 25% of AP.


I'm extremely worried about warrior threat generation.

Of course, maybe itll be okay, because PALADINS now have Shield of Righteousness, 6 second cooldown, 'Slam your target with your shield, doing HOLY damage equal to 200% of your block value + high threat bonus! Oh yeah, 0 mana cost. Now pallies have a mega-shield slam whose damage is not reduced by armor! So maybe not having Salv will be ok because your Prot pally is going to both MT everythign and do AoE tanking, and generate a ton of threat with super-shield-slam, while your warriors all have to dps.

 

• Aeverius

No, you're not understanding. "More abilities that generate threat" is not the same as "more threat." A Shield Slam in WotLK is worth a Shield Slam now. No more, no less. The base threat modifiers aren't changing. Now, some of these new abilities may become part of a solid threat rotation (if such a thing, as we know it, continues to exist in WotLK), but their existence alone is not doing anything to alter a Prot Warrior's TPS.


[e] Shield of Righteousness is 6% of base mana, but that number isn't being listed everywhere. If it makes you feel better, we still don't have a single spell interrupt that works on bosses.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

Hisstok

Not entirely.

remember many buffs are going raid-wide, this will mean your tanks will be rocking many of the same damage increasing buffs that would normally be wasted on them, vastly increasing threat.

Its also been said but I haven't seen confirmed, that shield slam scales with AP now, I dont know if this is a good or a bad thing.

It seems blizzard wants threat management to be more active rather than salv-and-forget. As well as tanking, with the improved intervene, hunter shots, and the like, you may have to manage rotations around many players abilities to keep boss damage down.

 

Pedaw

As PROT your four main threat skills are SHIELD SLAM, REVENGE, HEROIC STRIKE, AND DEVASTATE.

SHEILD SLAM gets 10% more damage from IMP SHIELD SLAM.
SHIELD SLAM has a 10% chance to get its cooldown refreshed by a shield slam or devastate by SWORD AND BOARD.
REVENGE gets 25% more damage from IMP REVENGE.
HEROIC STRIKE gets 15% more crit aka 15% more damage from INCITE.

Ontop of that all those abilites get higher ranks at 80. SO TELL ME how is a shield slam go to be the same at lvl 70 when your 80 huh? How is your threat NOT going to be higher by a massive amount?

 

Hisstok

Your threat may be higher, but not 50+% higher from the removal of salv, tranquil air, ect.

 

Crimsonstorm

What I am seeing from those is increases in parts of the rotation by 10-25%. But 10% more damage is really only like 7% or so more threat, because it doesnt increase the bonus threat component. Lets say that we end up with 20% more threat though, which is a lot.

Lets say that a sunwell warrior is now doing 1000 TPS before multiplier, which becomes 1000*1.3(defensive)*1.15(defiance) = 1490 TPS.

Lets pretend that the warrior was now using the WotlK talent tree, and due to the increases in threat you listed, its now 1200 base.
1200*1.45 (new defensive) = 1740. TPS.


Now lets say a dpser with Salv was making 2.5k dps, and had 30% threat reduction form talents. They were doing .4 thread per damage before (less 30% talent 30% salv), so they were doing 2500*.4 = 1000 TPS. (Way under the tank)

Now they are doing 2500*.7 = 1750. (Yikes, over the tank!)


With level 80 items, and skills, both the dps and tank will probably have their damage/threat scaled by about the same multiplier. So seeing what it would be like with current skills and items vs at level 80 is probably the same.

The main issue is that salv stacked its threat reduction with threat reduction talents.

So someone with 30% reduction from talents + 30% from salv did .4 threat per damage.

Now without they do .7 threat per damage. Thats 75% more!! That is a HUGE difference to overcome. Losing salv isnt '30% more threat' , its WAY more than that.

 

Natural

Guys
Hand of salvation is reducing total threat since the beginning of the fight. If you get two of these halfway through a fight your total threat will be reduced 20% each time, from 100->80->64%. This is better than BoS because it stacks and you can get multiple buffs per fight, wiping the majority of your aggro if necessary.

 

Pedaw

Oh ok so salvation is 50% threat reduction not 30% ok


Those are some solid facts you posted there... NOT

 

• Nite_Moogle

Just confirming that Slam does not reset your swing timer when made instant through Bloodsurge.