WotLK talent Preview/Discussion - Page 14

• Nite_Moogle · 07/20/08, 2:55 PM

Originally Posted by Graul

Please explain how dumping 5 points into a near end tier talent that should be increasing your DPS and only having it affect two handers would be considered "broken"

It's broken because TG is applied as a negative haste aura on the player, not a modification to the individual weapons. It affects both weapons or neither. If you allow a 1her in the offhand with no speed penalty, you've also done that to the main hand. Equipping a 2her and anything else triggers the aura. You can use a 2her and a shield and the slow penalty is in effect.

Graul · 07/20/08, 3:01 PM

Maybe you misunderstood my point, or I yours. Since TG is applying an aura then it makes sense why both hands are affected, but much in the same way expertise from racials only affects that particular hand/weapon, the haste penalty should be changed to work similarly. All my point was is that being able to use an unmodified one hander wouldn't be "game breaking" at all and the primary difference would be rage generation.

◊ Fellwraith · 07/20/08, 3:41 PM

Originally Posted by Graul

I don't know how many guilds actually give a Feral Druid to the melee group anymore, but when we bring at least two Hunters, they always get put in the tank group with the Druid, Warrior and Shaman.

It's very rare that we don't set up a group identical to what you describe. However, I think there will be incentives to break up that group in the next expansion. You no longer need a GoA based group since totems are raid-wide and GoA is linked to SoE. Feral druids and protection warriors also get substantial benefits from bloodknights (also worth noting that 2str to 1 block value and AP scalars on several tanking abilities increases the value of abomination's strength).

Enhancement shaman are changing to 1 str = 1 AP and 1 agi = 1 AP, so you probably don't want them in with the warriors and bloodknights. Survival hunters have a talent further down their tree that gives you an incentive to put rogues in their group (10 energy, 4 rage, 2% mana or 10 runic power to people in their group on a critical hit, once every 8 seconds). It'd make a lot more sense to have a group of enh shaman, survival hunter, 3x melee dps (rogues or 2 rogues and a ret paladin).

The biggest problem I see with DPS warriors is that they don't have any form of CC. Ret paladins have repentance, shamans have hex. What do the warriors have? Two of our trees are set up for a dps role, but the best we can do is stun a target for a short duration. The only reason I'd want a warrior in a 5 man is for shouts and/or tanking. A DPS warrior is the red-headed stepchild in this situation. Unless you're good friends with the guys running the group, you won't be their first choice for a dps class.

Graul · 07/20/08, 3:58 PM

I know there are some Warriors that feel they absolutely must DPS in a 5 man, but I'm not really concerned with that. If I can't get in as DPS, then I'll simply respec. I actually enjoy tanking small instances anyway (at least the first ten times or so...), so for me it's a moot point. My concern is how the raid setups are going to look since it looks like WoTLK is going to be even more synergy centric than what the current game is, and whether or not a non BF Warrior build is going to even be permitted, let alone having more than a single DPS Warrior if you have two Rogues, a Ret Paladin and a Death Knight there as well. I'll eat my shoe if it turnds out differently, but I highly doubt Blizzard is going to make any changes to the status quo in regards to melee/caster/item setups for raid balance.

Pyros · 07/20/08, 4:00 PM

Well arguably, warriors AE better than the other 2 you mentioned. Sweeping strikes+cleaves+whirlwind totals to a good amount of AEing. The issue is with the tank keeping the mobs(since you can't really afford to pull aggro in heroics). With a prot pally tank though, it was pretty awesome, and I could outdps pretty much every of our midT6 level geared players with my T4/badge fury war, but the destro locks seeding.

How much does that weight in against good CC for a pug 5man though, probably not much at all, since pugs would rather CC adds than try to tank everything. If warriors were to get a CC though, it'd probably have to be way way down the fury tree, for PvP balance issues. Or it'd have to work on everything but humanoids or something like that. Then again, rogues are getting a better sap, and they're not really at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to pvp, at all.

Graul · 07/20/08, 4:06 PM

With a prot pally tank though, it was pretty awesome, and I could outdps pretty much every of our midT6 level geared players with my T4/badge fury war, but the destro locks seeding.

And isn't this exactly the same as how it is now? And isn't this one of the primary complaints about Warriors tanking instances from either the tank perspective or the DPS perspective? Why bring a Warrior to a 5 man if a Paladin is available when you can skip CC and just clear the instance faster? Let us know what Bloodbath + Shockwave are like in this respect.

Also Sudden Death pretty much sucks, I would encourage anybody thinking about it to do some math about blowing a full rage bar on it versus actually saving it for other abilities.

How exactly does Sudden Death work though, what is your window of opportunity? The talent doesn't actually say anything, but I've read somewhere that it's 5 seconds, similar to Bloodsurge. If that's true, it's not really a bad talent at all and seems to resemble Bloodsurge a little bit as well, other than the obvious non scaling aspect of it. Also, the lvl 80 Execute is pretty damn good as well, at least initially.

The level 80 version is 1665 for 15 rage and 38 damage for each additional rage. For the cost of a Bloodthirst you get 2235 damage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but the highest "average" Bloodthirst I think I've done max buffed on a fight like Brutallus is 1850 which is counting an SV Hunter, scrolls, Blood Frenzy and a DS Elixir. To even match the efficiency of a 30 rage Execute you would need right around 5k AP. And compared to Slam, it's pretty similar early on as well. Better for a 15 rage version and still comparable for 30. It doesn't scale, unless you count scaling from having an increased crit rating, but it still seems like it would be a fairly useful talent until the mid - late 25 man dungeons as long as you can determine when you actually use it after a crit. If it works in such a way that you can only Execute as your next instant attack after the crit that lights it up, then it's pretty bad.

zork · 07/21/08, 4:43 AM

Originally Posted by spawnstah

You have put points into Imp Revenge and Imp Shield Bash, why?

Improved Shield Bash and Improved Revenge now give bonus damage to Revenge (25%) and Shiels Slam (10%) which is quite huge.

Liar · 07/21/08, 7:18 AM

Originally Posted by Graul

The level 80 version is 1665 for 15 rage and 38 damage for each additional rage. For the cost of a Bloodthirst you get 2235 damage. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but the highest "average" Bloodthirst I think I've done max buffed on a fight like Brutallus is 1850 which is counting an SV Hunter, scrolls, Blood Frenzy and a DS Elixir.

Is it just me or did you just compare a theoretical Execute that ignores armor with an ingame Bloodthirst on one of the higher armored bosses? Not really a fair comparison, is it? :P

Originally Posted by zork

Improved Shield Bash and Improved Revenge now give bonus damage to Revenge (25%) and Shiels Slam (10%) which is quite huge.

I don't think Revenge damage scales so I will not be taking that talent. Imp Shield Bash is definitely nice though because it affects an already scaling ability.

Shha · 07/21/08, 8:17 AM

Ok well if you really want to compare BT to execute and not theoretical versions then its simply 2235=x*0.45. 5000 ap to match it. Thats possible and likely to have it. Honestly using vanilla->BC as example you AP is probably gonna stay around same if you want to keep your crit at first (I remember it was after some SSC bosses down when my actual ap/crit reached lvl 60 levels).

As for the whole "higher armor bosses" etc, you really forget how much more damage we do in raid setting - I think my highest BT on Brutallus was in range of 5900 - nowhere close to what i would do on unarmored boss but without the buffs. Thats counting of course the impale/red/t6 bonus etc and 5500 ap which isnt that hard to get if you get "windfuried BT".

I find Sudden Death really good simply because of how easy its to proc. I would definitely use 2 fast weapons If they implemented it now - along the lines of 2xKalecgos Sword (extra expertise also lets you pick up imp execute vs WM). 2x1.5 weapon - now lets see the attack amount

1.5/[1.2(windfury)x1.2(average haste with drums dst etc)x1.25(Flurry)x2(2 weapons)x0.9(miss rate)] = 1 attack per 0.46sec (just whites). Im not sure if specials proc it (i heard not) but 0.46/0.45(crit rate) means I crit a white attack once per second on average. with 30% proc rate, on average SD would "light up" every 2nd/3rd GCD. So basically you can executeon every free GCD in your normal BT/WW/Rampage rotation if you modify it a bit to even out the GCD breaks (possible). That means 5 times every 18 seconds - as opposed to having 1 Bloodsurge every 2 or 3 BT - so -1.5 Bloodsurge per "cycle".

As I see it now, SD would remove completely need for a Heroic strike - so comparing its effectiveness to Bloodsurge is a bit unfair. Even if BS is better for a rage dump then SD , will BS+4xHS will be more effective then FIVE executes? I doubt it.

Moogul · 07/21/08, 9:41 AM

Originally Posted by Fellwraith

The biggest problem I see with DPS warriors is that they don't have any form of CC. Ret paladins have repentance, shamans have hex. What do the warriors have? Two of our trees are set up for a dps role, but the best we can do is stun a target for a short duration. The only reason I'd want a warrior in a 5 man is for shouts and/or tanking. A DPS warrior is the red-headed stepchild in this situation. Unless you're good friends with the guys running the group, you won't be their first choice for a dps class.

Thing is, do you really want *three* CCer dps? Assuming they don't repeat the 360-degree-cleavathon that was early TBC, I can't see you wanting to fill all your DPS slots with CC, particularly since your healer probably has some form of CC too. Whenever I make heroic groups, I never mind CC that much. Even when you gear isn't that great, having 1 polymorph or equivalent is enough, if you assist train and tank properly.

Graul · 07/21/08, 9:53 AM

Originally Posted by Liar

Is it just me or did you just compare a theoretical Execute that ignores armor with an ingame Bloodthirst on one of the higher armored bosses? Not really a fair comparison, is it? :P.

To be fair, I also compared what kind of BT you would need on a 0 AC boss as well didn't I?

I think my highest BT on Brutallus was in range of 5900

Your highest is not your average.

As I see it now, SD would remove completely need for a Heroic strike - so comparing its effectiveness to Bloodsurge is a bit unfair.

The mechanic and Slam DPR is all that was being compared, and Sudden Death replacing Heroic was assumed because you wouldn't have the rage to use both effectively anyway.

nakoda · 07/21/08, 11:14 AM

Originally Posted by Addled

More than likely, that part of Vigilance is for 5mans. For instance, in 10/25man raids, a prot warrior will Vigilance the other tank, so he gets the bonus of 5% increased dodge. For 5mans, you Vigilance the healer. 5% dodge is nice, but the taunt reset is what's going to save your healer.

You forgot the 10% threat reduction for the target of Vigilance. You do not want to Vigilance another tank.

Tornaz · 07/21/08, 11:23 AM

Originally Posted by nakoda

You forgot the 10% threat reduction for the target of Vigilance. You do not want to Vigilance another tank.

Agreed. It was a lot more useful without the threat reduction. To be honest however, it's not really a 31 point talent. I believe someone earlier in thread mentioned that a blue post on the beta forum had confirmed that Vigilance was not staying. It would make a nice baseline skill as it stands though. I can certainly see this doing a CloS.

With the threat down, it's a good tool for saving those overeager Rogues, DPS Warriors and Enhancement Shaman.

EDIT: Here we go, found it:

Originally Posted by 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.

Back on p10.

Natural · 07/21/08, 11:53 AM

Originally Posted by Graul

Please explain how dumping 5 points into a near end tier talent that should be increasing your DPS and only having it affect two handers would be considered "broken" when as it stands right now you gain very little from it in terms of white damage compared to what you can get right now with two one handed weapons? The difference between 2x 2h and 2x 1h is extremely small right now even when you factor in your instant Slam around every 18 seconds and the small increase in DPS WW gives. So small that it does not seem worth the points invested at all. The only major advantage to being able to use a one hander without a penalty is much smoother rage generation. You wouldn't actually be gaining much in terms of actual white damage or yellow for that matter...you just won't have such horrible spikes and droughts with rage.

Ex:

Brutal Gladiator's Chopper
196 - 365 Damage Speed 2.60
(107.9 damage per second)
Equip: Improves hit rating by 9 (0.57% @ L70).
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 22 (1% @ L70).
Equip: Increases attack power by 38.
Equip: Your attacks ignore 49 of your opponent's armor.

Brutal Gladiator's Decapitator
404 - 606 Damage Speed 3.60
(140.3 damage per second)
Equip: Improves hit rating by 19 (1.2% @ L70).
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 50 (2.26% @ L70).
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 33 (0.84% @ L70).
Equip: Increases attack power by 100.
Equip: Your attacks ignore 98 of your opponent's armor.

Ignoring any contribution from hit, crit and ArP the one handed weapon without a speed penalty ends up being 69.37 DPS and the two hander with the speed penalty ends up being 76.87 in the off hand. Broken?

It's actually broken the other way around. AP is being calculated before the attack speed change. When you equip a pair of two-handers your white DPS goes DOWN. I will post some in-game examples tonight.

Graul · 07/21/08, 12:19 PM

My example was just based on weapon damage (and whatever AP the weapon gave), not factoring buffed AP, although I was factoring the speed penalty. Emeraude posted some screenshots after I posted those comments which coincide with what you say. Even more of a reason to allow one handed weapons to be equipped without a penalty...Titan't Grip is a bad, bad talent right now for PvE and seems to have been designed purely for grinding, battle grounds and maybe (?) some Arena. These are just examples for white damage, but it's highly unlikely that with the major spikeness of rage gernation that Whirlwind and a Slam every 18 seconds is going to make this worth five talent points, let alone one for a PvE DPS build.

Originally Posted by Emeraude

I run around with 106 Haste, didn't feel like taking it off for this test, would have lowered AP values and what have you.

Just SS's of Titan's Grip with Flurry, and with a DST Proc & Flurry, and the comparison to my normal DW fist weapons. DST & my natural 106 haste = 27.33% all together on a proc.

Weapons used:
Main Hand Weapon for TG:
Cataclysm's Edge
Binds when picked up
Two-Hand Sword
386 - 580 Damage Speed 3.50
(138.0 damage per second)
+75 Strength
+49 Stamina
Durability 120 / 120
Requires Level 70
Equip: Your attacks ignore 335 of your opponent's armor.
Item level 151

Off-hand weapon for TG:
Stormherald
Binds when picked up
Unique
Two-Hand Mace
386 - 579 Damage Speed 3.80
(127.0 damage per second)
+42 Strength
+42 Agility
+61 Stamina
Durability 120 / 120
Requires Level 70
Requires Master Hammersmith
Chance on hit: Stuns target for 4 sec.
Item level 136

Main Hand Fist weapon:
Vengeful Gladiator's Right Ripper
Binds when picked up
Main Hand Fist Weapon
187 - 349 Damage Speed 2.60
(103.1 damage per second)
+30 Stamina
Durability 75 / 75
Requires Level 70
Requires personal and team arena rating of 1850
Equip: Improves hit rating by 8 (0.51% @ L70).
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 21 (0.95% @ L70).
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 12 (0.3% @ L70).
Equip: Increases attack power by 34.
Equip: Your attacks ignore 49 of your opponent's armor.
Item Level 146

Off-Hand Fist Weapon:
Mounting Vengeance
Binds when picked up
Off Hand Fist Weapon
196 - 365 Damage Speed 2.60
(107.9 damage per second)
+22 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +3 Strength
Durability 75 / 75
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases attack power by 46.
Equip: Your attacks ignore 140 of your opponent's armor.
Item Level 154

Fist Weapons
MH: 287.1
OH: 182.7
http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q...008_033051.jpg

TG
MH: 279.3
OH: 168.4
http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q...008_023937.jpg

DPS Difference:
MH: 7.8
OH: 14.3

Fist Weapons with Flurry
MH: 358.9
OH: 228.4
http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q...008_032840.jpg

TG with Flurry
MH: 349.1
OH: 210.5
http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q...008_031155.jpg

DPS Difference:
MH: 9.8
OH: 17.9

Fist Weapons with Flurry/DST
MH: 428
OH: 272.4
http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q...008_024222.jpg

TG with Flurry/DST
MH: 416.4
OH: 251.2
http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q...008_030102.jpg

DPS Difference:
MH: 11.6
OH: 21.2

Nezralix · 07/21/08, 12:31 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

He may have said that some time ago, but the 10% threat reduction was added between Alpha and now, so maybe they've decided to tweak it instead of replace it.

A number of the Prot warrior talents need revision, so I hope they just haven't gotten around to a serious review yet.

EDIT: Also, has anyone determined the exact scaling coefficient on Thunderclap damage?

Gruntle · 07/21/08, 12:37 PM

Well, Emeraudes example only considers the char sheeet dps (which has been known to be wrong before), also in that dps figure crit and ArP does not contribute anything. The extra ArP from Cataclysm's edge and the extra crit from Stormherald will make a noticeable difference to the real white dps. With TG the stats on the twohanded weapons become quite important (more important than for onehanders anyway), the stats are what's going to make TG work, Stormherald is not the best option for this, another Edge would have been a fairer comparison in my opinion. Just based on theorycrafting, with 20% speed reduction and comparing S4 onehanders to twohanders we already knew that white dps without stats would go down with TG.

However, the screenshot dps seems to confirm what Natural is saying, the dps from AP is normalized with the original weapon speed (or something like that). This is most probably broken and will hopefully be changed. Max swing damage for Cataclysm's edge should be (with proper normalization and Emeraude's haste):
580 + AP/14*3.94 = 1273,
but it is 1196 on the sheet indicating that something is fishy. I can't quite work out how the normalization is done, maybe Natural's examples will help.

Nezralix · 07/21/08, 12:44 PM

*delete*

Mumbles · 07/21/08, 12:53 PM

Hello,

I have a very big post written already in a txt file ready to be placed in a new thread here, i haven't done that already because due to my low profile nature and not liking to create redundant posts i have my post count low (yeah lower than 10) but EJ forums is one of my daily reading sites.

My current worries atm aren't really the DPS aspect of the class, i'm a prot warrior for 3 years now, and they're related to prot alone, and judging the current new changes on other tanking classes coupled with a whole new one i'm seriously concerned about how much a high end raid leader would want a prot warrior in a raid instead of a feral/prot pally or death knight, specially seeing that all of them got our unique abilities that made us wanted, and we haven't got anything that distinguishes the prot warrior from the rest.

I could post that in this thread if any mod would think it's better, or i could PM someone with it and they could post it in a new thread, as i think it deserves a new thread since i believe it to be very concerning and there isn't much talk about it in any of current EJ's thread, and i wouldn't like to post useless stuff around the boards just to increase the post count and be able to create the thread. Beware, it's a big wall of text.

Best regards,

Graul · 07/21/08, 12:56 PM

Originally Posted by Gruntle

Well, Emeraudes example only considers the char sheeet dps (which has been known to be wrong before), also in that dps figure crit and ArP does not contribute anything. The extra ArP from Cataclysm's edge and the extra crit from Stormherald will make a noticeable difference to the real white dps. With TG the stats on the twohanded weapons become quite important (more important than for onehanders anyway), the stats are what's going to make TG work, Stormherald is not the best option for this, another Edge would have been a fairer comparison in my opinion. Just based on theorycrafting, with 20% speed reduction and comparing S4 onehanders to twohanders we already knew that white dps without stats would go down with TG.

However, the screenshot dps seems to confirm what Natural is saying, the dps from AP is normalized with the original weapon speed (or something like that). This is most probably broken and will hopefully be changed. Max swing damage for Cataclysm's edge should be (with proper normalization and Emeraude's haste):
580 + AP/14*3.94 = 1273,
but it is 1196 on the sheet indicating that something is fishy. I can't quite work out how the normalization is done, maybe Natural's examples will help.

So do you think that +195 ArP +0.59% crit with 0.51% less hit is going to shift the favor to the two handed weapons in any measurable amount that means anything? But like you said, the stats on the weapons are what will make or break this talent and a Stormherald isn't the best choice for comparison.

Do you think they will leave the rage generation formula the same, or scale it down yet again to compensate for level 80 damage? If they left it the same, then it's possible you would be able to consistently maintain a rotation that uses 0 Heroic Strikes, but even then your Flurry uptime would have less of an impact when you could just stay with a one handed weapons setup and pick up Incite (or Axe spec if your weapons allow it), keeping pretty much the same rotation Fury now uses, but with a better Flurry uptime as well as Impale useage not to mention a lot less glancing blows.