WotLK talent Preview/Discussion - Page 22

Hisstok · 07/28/08, 2:32 PM

Originally Posted by Fellwraith

It seems like you guys are really jumping the gun by saying "woe is me, I'll never get a raid spot in the hypothetical min/max raidgroup that I'd never join in the first place". Who cares? You probably aren't going to get sat for another class if you've got history with your current guild and you're competent.

I think many of the biggest worriers remember how horribly we got screwed early-BC and do not want to relive that experience.

Ballistae · 07/28/08, 2:35 PM

Originally Posted by Fellwraith

I'll be brutally honest: I'm getting very sick of "OMG I'M NOT A UNIQUE SNOWFLAKE" posts.

Well, then you should probably take a deep breath before reading and responding. Either way, reducing my and others concerns over the deeper protection tree talents to a question of vanity isn't fair nor true.

I thank you for your well written list of warrior tank advantages, though. I don't think anybody is questioning many of the new talents will be great in 5-man instances as we know them today. The problem is, that unless the design of bosses in WotLK changes significantly from how they're designed today, being able to taunt them or stun them or interrupt their spells more often than other tanks isn't going to have any effect. Demo shout and sunders can be kept up by non-prot warriors, even dps warriors won't be impacted severely like they would had they had to keep up thunderclap as well.

Thus I'm not convinced we're left with more selling points than the two advantages I up brought myself: Greater survivability and/or greater single-target tps than other tanks. As you said, we don't know yet how much better survivability or tps we'll have over other tanks, if indeed any, but I'm still convinced that such is a must to preserve room in a 25-man raid for a warrior tank.

In the end, it matters little what class the tank is. But in a thread discussing the talents and structure of the talent tree in the expansion, it's still a valid question wether the protection talent tree will be worth going down for a raiding warrior. What will bring more utility and value? A pure Fury-build, a Fury/Prot-tank, or a deep Prot?

◊ Birdemani · 07/28/08, 2:38 PM

Originally Posted by Fellwraith

6) Only warriors and feral druids have both AP and attack-slowing debuffs. A paladin or deathknight is going to require a feral druid or warrior to reduce their mob's AP.

Target's melee attack power is reduced by 416, and increases the time between melee and ranged attacks by 20% for 2 min. Only one Curse per Warlock can be active on any one target.
Instant cast, 265 Mana, 30 yd range

Curse of Weakness, Rank 9

JamesVZ · 07/28/08, 2:46 PM

Originally Posted by Mumbles

Most of us might be overreacting, I truly hope so, but Blizzard doesn't have a good history on class balance, the constant buffs/nerfs middle expansion happened allot in TBC.

More importantly, they don't have a good track record for the start of expansions. And while itemization may still be Up In The Air, as it were, we can make educated guesses about where we'll stand when we hit the end game. We know that Strength, unless it scales by some ungodly factor, will be nowhere near as good for threat as Expertise or Hit, so we'll stack as the third stat for threat. We can probably assume we'll cap out both of those in the expansion somewhere around the mid-level raid game, and have Strength mostly open to stack in the last raid zone. Personally, I'm figuring around 500-600 strength around the mid-level raid game, with who knows how much in the last raid zone, maybe a little more depending on how high our base Strength goes up.

I doubt it will make a gigantic difference in our shield block value either way, since Strength is just too expensive in the item budget compared to SBV. I also think it's a shame that they're giving us a flat 30% shield block crit rate rather than have it be built into some kind of shield mastery or expertise stat that would allow us to stack it. If block value as a form of mitigation is what they're trying to push us into, they should at least open it up for some kind of significant power gain. Make it worth stacking against the boss that will be hitting you for 12k, you know?

Anyway, to me it's not about whether or not I'll be 'viable' in the raid game. I have a feeling that I'm a good enough player, and Blizzard has good enough design, that I can make a position for me in any raid. The question is will playing a protection warrior be the most satisfying tanking experience come the expansion, or will I have more fun playing a Death Knight? If we're given the equivalent of another non-sunder-applying-Devastate, or Shield Discipline, or other such clunky mechanics, I doubt the warrior will hold up compared to the Death Knight.

P.S. Nerf the Tauren racial already. Jesus.

nfw · 07/28/08, 2:47 PM

Ferals can interrupt casting with Feral Charge.

Liar · 07/28/08, 3:10 PM

Shha, alot of the problems you mentioned about Prot Paladins are being fixed.

1) Touched by the Light - Spell - World of Warcraft is fixing the demand of spell damage on their gear for one. I only took a peak through the Prot Pala thread and read something about them having the same amount of spell damage on WotLK in Warrior gear than they have no on live in their normal Prot Pala set.

2) Combat Expertise - Spell - World of Warcraft and Sacred Duty - Spell - World of Warcraft gives Paladins 16% more stamina. Warriors get 5% via Vitality (and ironically, Paladins also get 15% more Str from Divine Strength - Spell - World of Warcraft beating all advantages of Vitality). To top it off, they get to keep their 5 expertise, too. Combined with Shield Spec that both Warriors and Paladins share, Paladins might even end up with more SBV in the same gear (Seriously, who thought Critical Block would be a good talent? It's pretty much another Shield Mastery without the added bonus of providing more TPS with bigger SS hits).

3) Deep Prot for Paladins seem to focus on their threat alot which indicates even more so that Blizzard wants to close the threat gap between Warriors and Paladins. They also get their own version of Shield Slam (Shield of Righteousness - Spell - World of Warcraft the dispel) that does damage = 2xBlock Value. Who know, this skill might start doing less damage than Shield Slam at the start but might outscale it in the later tiers of raiding when there is enough SBV going around.

Crimsonstorm · 07/28/08, 3:11 PM

Originally Posted by Fellwraith

Reasons why you're still special:

1) Warriors provide 2255 hp or 550 AP with their shouts for the entire raid that's in range of the shout. Even with scaled up stats on gear, that's a significant buff (for reference paladins greater blessing of might is only 300 AP at level 79). A DPS warrior only provides one of those.

A DPS warrior, either arms or fury, will provide a 25% better shout to the raid. That means that 2 dps warriors as your only warriors in the raid results in better shouts than 1 dps warrior and 1 prot warrior. This is an incentive to use warriors as dps and not as tanks.

2) Warriors reduce a foe's armor by a significant amount without costing your rogue's or DPS warriors any dps. Talented imp expose armor at level 80 is 4200 armor reduction, 5 stack sunder at level 80 is 3925 armor. The gap between the two abilities is smaller than it was at 70.

The amount of dps that using Imp EA actually costs the rogue is small, especially when they get the benefit of the extra armor penetration. Raid dps increases using Imp EA.

Using a warrior tank PREVENTS the use of Imp EA, which is the optimal way to go, because you are forced to instead use sunders so that the warrior tank can get decent aggro from devastate. This is actually a disadvantage of the warrior. (For example, on Brutallus many guilds use 2xDruid tanks so that there is no drawback of Imp EA.

3) Warriors take less spell damage than any tanking class except deathknights (by the look of things, an unholy deathknight is almost too good in this regard). In addition, warriors can generate a significant amount of damage and threat while completely mitigating one single-target spell every 10 seconds (note: this can include critical debuffs like deaden or voidblast).

An area that used to be a warrior advantage over any other tank, we are now onyl 2nd place in. And given that magic damage is the death knight tanking specialty, theyll be doing it. Warriors get to be backup magic damage tanks now?

4) Warriors have the most reliable and shortest cooldown fear-breaking ability. Feral druids and deathknights can break one fear every 5 minutes.

There is also fear ward which is available to everyone, and tremor totem. Plus fears no longer lose you aggro anymore. So various changes have been weakening this advantage for a while now.

5) Warriors have the shortest cooldown taunt ability (8 seconds with talents) and 2 other back-up taunts should their taunt be resisted. Paladin taunt has 15 second cooldown with no back-up ability and redirects 3 mobs to the paladin (this can fuck them over pretty badly if they aren't supposed to be tanking all 3), the taunt requires mana. Feral druid taunt cooldown is 10 seconds, they have one back-up taunt every 3 minutes. Deathknight's bloodboil ability is on a 15 second cooldown and requires runic power, their back-up ability (deathgrip) is a really nifty ranged mocking blow with a 3 second duration (it's worth noting that mocking blow lasts 6 seconds, i.e. until your taunt cooldown is up).

Which is irrelevant to most boss fights?

6) Only warriors and feral druids have both AP and attack-slowing debuffs. A paladin or deathknight is going to require a feral druid or warrior to reduce their mob's AP.

The fury warrior that has the talent improving demo shout can do this more effectively than the prot warrior.

7) From what I've seen, Warriors are the only tanking class with an offensive dispel (every 6 seconds).

8) Warriors have the most stuns of any tanking class (I count 4 that could realistically be used) and the only aoe stun in the game (aside from warstomp).

9) Deathknights and warriors are the only 2 tanking classes that can interrupt a spell being cast, even if the mob is immune to silence and stuns.

#7: Doesnt work on boss buffs that you care about.
#8: Bosses are immune.
#9: Relevant to gimick fights where you dont have enough rogues?

10) Warriors are the only tanking class that has 2 survival emergency buttons at their disposal. Things can go horribly wrong or the boss can reach an enrage timer and a warrior has the best chance of surviving.

We used to have 2 to a feral druid's 0. Now they get one. We are getting weaker relative to the competition.

In a variety of ways that warriors used to be superior to other tanks, they are now average.

I do think this is fair, in the sense that all tank classes should be able to tank most bosses.

What worries me is that I think that in addition to losing a variety of advantages, we are ALSO going to generate worse single target threat than Druids and Paladins, AND are going to still be worse than Paladins at AoE tanking. Simultaneously, we are worse than Druids at mitigation, because they are armor capped and we are not, and they arent getting crushed anymore.

Why would you want to use a warrior tank that takes more damage, and makes less threat than some other tank class, and also doesnt have the various advantages they used to, assuming you have an equally skilled tank of another class? I think all the top guilds are simply goign to want to find a good druid tank and a good paladin tank, with a death knight for magic damage. Then they'll have a couple dps warriors in the guild for warrior buffs, who can offtank if necessary.

Mumbles · 07/28/08, 3:24 PM

I wasn't going to quote/reply but you leave me no choice really, I don't want to seem a trigger happy whiner because I'm not, but you are not considering everything, in fact, you are favouring the warriors allot by omitting other classes changes in WotLK.

The big issue is single target tanking, i.e. Bosses, not trash, so, I'm just going to discard any comment regarding skills that bosses are typically immune (there are rare exceptions, but, the exceptions confirm the rule).

Originally Posted by Shha

Warriors vs Paladins.

1) Warriors have just better stats. Thats a fact. A lvl 70 warrior has significantly more hp naked then a Paladin. Im pretty sure the trend continues at 80. The difference is substantial and noticeable.

2) Paladins use a really significant item budgeting on aggro. You can complain or be happy about warrior TPS, but truth is most sunwell warriors holds aggro in gear that is barring some expertise not focusing on threat...

3) 1) and 2) add up to 5-5.5k more hp for warrior tank. Its not as visible because Paladins less avoidance and the lack of stats is spread among different attributes. Still - it is there - a Paladin will have less hp/avoidance/threat then a similiar level warrior...

4) Crushing blows being removed solve another "imbalance" in favor of warriors actually - Paladins could get uncrushable , but it required a substantial item budget early on. Right now if you count for sunwell radiance its still a problem, without it not as much. Still on an only Sunwell fight with crushes Paladins are probably worst tanks.

5) Paladins have no "active" spell protection. They cant interrupt and cant spell reflect. In multimob encounters that can be a serious problem - Just take lets say Illidari council as example and Priest or Paladin tanking.

6) Disarm seems like a potent mechanic in WOTLK but its to be seen. In a lot of multimob encounters its a powerful tool. Other Oh-shit buttons are there as well.

7) Shieldslam is a dispel that goes through magic immunity and cant be resisted - its actually potentially another gimmick.

All in all Paladins vs Warriors boils down to Warriors being better numerically, and both classes have some gimmicks not alvaiable to other classes. None of what I said above seems to be changing much in WOTLK except for 4).

1) I don't know, but, in all honesty, even if the difference is 1000 hp (which seems too much) this can only be a benefit for warriors on talents/buffs that are scalable, like tauren racial, BoK, and Vitality, so for a warrior, you can get 15% more stam through talents and BoK, or 20% if you are a tauren, Protection paladins have from talents alone, 26%, and 36% with BoK, that's 36% vs 15% (or 20% if you are a tauren).

2)
Touched by the Light - Spell - World of Warcraft
Shield of Righteousness - Spell - World of Warcraft

Paladins won't have threat issues, specially considering they're threat scales with they're primary stat required for tanking. They won't need to think twice about choosing an item with str and stam they can just stick the one with more stam in it.

3) Gear is being homogenized (spelling?) prot paladins and prot warriors will use the same gear, the avoidance one has the other will have too.

4) Regardless of how much it affects the warriors I've always been against crushing blows, still, you are comparing both classes in current TBC, not taking into account the crushing blow removal and new talents from Wotlk.

5) That is true, but, who puts a warrior alone in the priest in illidari council doing all the cancels ? if it wasn't the shield she has a paladin can tank her exactly the same way a warrior does, as there's often at least another melee kicker/pummeler and a caster if not more. Tanking the paladin is nasty indeed.

6) Disarm is situational, most of single target tanking (bosses), they're immune, if you are referring for instance at Mu'ru, with new WotLK spells and talents that task would be thrown to the rogues really through Dismantle, which does the same, and more.

7) Most bosses are immune, exceptions exist, I can't imagine this to change, if there is a boss in WotLK that requires Shield Slam, that classes as a Gimmick fight.

Originally Posted by Shha

Warrior vs Druid

1) There is the main problem of Druids - they dont bring anything special to the fight. Putting numbers aside - what a Druid tank brings in terms of new QUALITY...

2) Crushing blows had to be redesigned or late game druids run into too much problems. When tanks reach 80+% avoidance like they do now, crushing blows current mechanics becomes horribly unfair...

3) Armor as source of mitigation is double edged blade. For one spell damage owns druids. For two, even in physical damage it has serious drawback - no "buffing". I know a lot of people frown upon using such stuff, but honestly - improved LOH, inspiration/anc fortitude ARE powerful tools...

1) Yes they do, it seems you are focusing on raids where you only bring 1 tank, who knows, 10 mans or 5 mans, this issue is more worrying in 25 mans. Druids bring extra dmg on bleed effects through one of they're usual spamming abilities, they bring our Demoralizing Shout, Last stand, 5% crit etc

2) In Paladins vs Warriors you keep bringing SWP up, now you don't know about SWP, probably that's because in SWP the feral druids are favoured ? No crushing blows, armor capped, with sunwell radiance they're the ones least affected due to the armor amount they have, fights which split the armor in half for a set of time, bosses with multiple adds and so on.

3) I fully agree on you with that one, but, again you seem to forget in a 25 man raid you don't have 1 tank only, and in this situations a Deathknight is far better tank that a warrior, besides, they provide raid buffs and resistances that a warrior can't.

Originally Posted by Shha

As for LOH - a clickable ability that reduces damage taken by tank by 15% for 2 minutes, seems really powerful, and I really wonder why people dont use it more often

. Cooldown isnt such a huge problem - its not much longer then SS, ankhs etc.

Well I guess druids have the "bonus" of being able to dps better then other classes in same spec/gear once their tanked mob dies. So yea that can be the "gimmick" going for them - but its still not as much.

Do warriors still look that weak with this point of view?

You are not comparing classes taking into account the new talents, abilities and the current known combat mechanics, and to answer your question, no, warriors are not weak compared to other classes, they are weak in raid utility, if you put the 3 tanks on the same step mitigation/tps wise vs the protection warrior (notice I said protection as in they're spec focuses mainly on protection talents) the protection warrior has nothing to offer to the raid, it's better to have 2 dps warriors doing the warriors unique abilities that the other classes haven't got yet (shouts) than a protection warrior, and that has been the point for the last few pages.

◊ Birdemani · 07/28/08, 3:32 PM

Just curious if everyone missed the Blizzard Poster on the Warrior Beta forums? There are an open-ended amount of changes coming 'soon.' In fact, most classes are in a very unpolished mold right now. I would hold off on the long explanations and complaining until after that patch is out and has been tested.

• Aeverius · 07/28/08, 3:40 PM

Originally Posted by Shha

I know a lot of people frown upon using such stuff, but honestly - improved LOH, inspiration/anc fortitude ARE powerful tools. If a boss hits really hard lets say 2 holy/prot paladins can keep your warrior/paladin tank with CAPPED armor for 4 minutes - usually enough for the fight to conclude (or the enrage/whatever part that calls for physical mitigation). Normally a Druid can outperform Warrior on physical damage mobs mitigation - but during LOH their armor gets even, while warrior retains Defensive Stance/Block to his advantage.

As for LOH - a clickable ability that reduces damage taken by tank by 15% for 2 minutes, seems really powerful, and I really wonder why people dont use it more often

. Cooldown isnt such a huge problem - its not much longer then SS, ankhs etc.

Right now, the reason no one uses LoH consistently is that it drains all your mana. That's not really a good thing. Also, even with talents it's a 40 min cd- can't get a whole lot of use out of that. Those are basically the main issues with it on live.

The proposed buffs are nice though- no mana cost, 20 min cd (16 w/talents), 50% armor buff for 15 secs (instead of 2 minutes). So people will actually use it a lot more, if it goes live that way.

I agree that armor buffs on procs are great, they're just not things you can really rely on in any incarnations right now. Shaman/priest ones rely on crit from classes who aren't spamming heals on the MT usually, and LoH cooldown and its mana drain effect make it unwieldy to use. WotLK is bringing some interesting changes though.

Crimsonstorm · 07/28/08, 4:04 PM

Originally Posted by Birdemani

Just curious if everyone missed the Blizzard Poster on the Warrior Beta forums? There are an open-ended amount of changes coming 'soon.' In fact, most classes are in a very unpolished mold right now. I would hold off on the long explanations and complaining until after that patch is out and has been tested.

Yeah, and after that, the warrior update is that Imp Rend doesnt increase bloodbath damage anymore :p

But really, I know they are goign to be changing warriors more. Those changes had better be improvments to tanking ability, and to our 51 point talents. (I mean, all 3 of our 51 point talents are not very useful on raid boss fights, how lame is that?)

Blizzard needs to know how worried we are about the warrior class, so they make appropriate improvements.

A LOT of peopel who are skilled tanks, who want to be guild main tanks rolled warriors in the past, because warriors were the choice for the raid main tank position.

I'm fine with Druids and Paladins being able to do the job equally well. But currently I think Warriors are not equal, they are in fact the 3rd choice, which means that all those people who rolled warriors to be MT, will feel a lot of pressure to reroll Druid or Pally. And I dont want to grind a new character all the way to 80, when I could be starting out at 70 with gear that will be viable for me in the first raid instance.

◊ Fellwraith · 07/28/08, 4:31 PM

Originally Posted by JamesVZ

Anyway, to me it's not about whether or not I'll be 'viable' in the raid game. I have a feeling that I'm a good enough player, and Blizzard has good enough design, that I can make a position for me in any raid. The question is will playing a protection warrior be the most satisfying tanking experience come the expansion, or will I have more fun playing a Death Knight? If we're given the equivalent of another non-sunder-applying-Devastate, or Shield Discipline, or other such clunky mechanics, I doubt the warrior will hold up compared to the Death Knight.

This is what's important to me. I don't like that warriors are probably one of the most spam-heavy classes in the game right now. Almost every other sunwell warrior I know complains a bit about having too many buttons to hit and having to hit them too often (heroic strike is particularly bad). Druid and paladin tanking are both easier on your hands. I have alts of both classes in the upper 30's and they're easier to tank with. I'm not sure if that changes dramatically by level 70, but I've got most of the same abilities as a level 70, so I kind of doubt it.

I really like the fact that spellhit and melee hit are being unified under a common stat. That will make it possible for us to reduce the resist rates on both thunderclap and demo shout when we stack hit rating and it should be a net threat gain for us. It also should help our taunt mechanics since I think taunt still has the spell hit resist rate even though it benefits from melee +hit.

The past couple weeks, I've taken about as much damage as a feral druid on Brutallus. Why? Because of the way we do the fight and because I'm not armor capped. I have 20+ procs of inspiration and ancestral healing (chainheal off the tank) throughout the course of the fight. Ferals kick my ass when it comes to dps output on the fight (both in terms of their direct damage contribution and their bonuses from mangle, faerie fire, and lotp), but there's not a huge mitigation gap for me on one of the tougher tank gear-checks in the game. If they put lots of +armor on leather at the start of Lichking, then yea, we won't be able to compete. However, there's no evidence that they're going to do that yet (search wowhead's lichking site for leather with +armor, it's all TBC gear).

I could raise a bunch of counterarguments to the counterarguments people have raised, but I really don't think it will accomplish much, especially when we're this early in the beta. I will say that if you need a third party to provide your buffs or debuffs so that you can tank something (when another tanking class doesn't have the same restrictions), that's usually problematic for the tank and the raidleader. Sure you can get around not having the debuff with xyz class, but why do you want to go through that logistical headache? That other tanking class needs to be so much better than the "all-in-one" guy that it's worth it.

Shha · 07/28/08, 4:53 PM

1) I don't know, but, in all honesty, even if the difference is 1000 hp (which seems too much) this can only be a benefit for warriors on talents/buffs that are scalable, like tauren racial, BoK, and Vitality, so for a warrior, you can get 15% more stam through talents and BoK, or 20% if you are a tauren, Protection paladins have from talents alone, 26%, and 36% with BoK, that's 36% vs 15% (or 20% if you are a tauren).

My warrior unbuffed hp at 70 - 5564 (night elf)
Paladin 4460 (dwarf).
Thats over 1100 hp, probably closer to 1150 because of race differences.

2)
Touched by the Light - Spell - World of Warcraft
Shield of Righteousness - Spell - World of Warcraft

Paladins won't have threat issues, specially considering they're threat scales with they're primary stat required for tanking. They won't need to think twice about choosing an item with str and stam they can just stick the one with more stam in it.

Touched by the light doesnt seem like "enough". Its a help sure, but doesnt remedy all spellpower needs. Shield of Righteousness is something to be seen. Still a bit early to complain (and how knows - block might be as useless as it is now - probably will because of scaling problems).

3) Gear is being homogenized (spelling?) prot paladins and prot warriors will use the same gear, the avoidance one has the other will have too.

Assuming there is plate with spell damage on it, I doubt warriors will use it. Seems like the case of itemization points. If one class has to get some stat (spell damage) other doesnt, it comes at a cost. As I said the talent giving spell damage for stam is nice, but not enough.

4) Regardless of how much it affects the warriors I've always been against crushing blows, still, you are comparing both classes in current TBC, not taking into account the crushing blow removal and new talents from Wotlk.

All I've seen is that "they are not happy with current crushing mechanics" which i wholeheartedly agree with. Nothing was said about total removal of crushings - my take is, they will just make them something "special" a boss has, rather then make it a standard and sometimes remove it.

5) That is true, but, who puts a warrior alone in the priest in illidari council doing all the cancels ? if it wasn't the shield she has a paladin can tank her exactly the same way a warrior does, as there's often at least another melee kicker/pummeler and a caster if not more. Tanking the paladin is nasty indeed.

Still another interrupt (for holy wrath) is a huge help.

1) Yes they do, it seems you are focusing on raids where you only bring 1 tank, who knows, 10 mans or 5 mans, this issue is more worrying in 25 mans. Druids bring extra dmg on bleed effects through one of they're usual spamming abilities, they bring our Demoralizing Shout, Last stand, 5% crit etc

And warriors bring sunders and shout. If you wanna say "but dps warriors can bring it too" - well so can dps druids.

2) In Paladins vs Warriors you keep bringing SWP up, now you don't know about SWP, probably that's because in SWP the feral druids are favoured ? No crushing blows, armor capped, with sunwell radiance they're the ones least affected due to the armor amount they have, fights which split the armor in half for a set of time, bosses with multiple adds and so on.

Honestly if they were favored I'm sure they would be more used. Sunwell already enforces stacking, but still most guilds use warriors. Seem to me that 'favoring' is very narrow. Just look at fights

1) Kalecgos - druids cant keep good demo/sunders/tclap on the bosses to make it ready for physical dps, and reduce damage taken. One of those is addressed in WOTLK (tclap), rest still remains.

2) Brutallus - cooldowns + armor procs on warriors vs barkskin and more armor on druids. I do feel druids do slightly better (if anything because at least one warrior cooldown is long). Its not huge though.

3) Felmyst - Warriors do better on corrosion simply due to spell mitigation. Its very very slight difference as well. Warriors help a lot better on skeletons due to daze mechanics (ferals risk getting dazed for the breath phase)

4) Twins - Warriors are hands down best tanks there - Druids take crushings on basically every Sacrolash hit, making them somewhat hard to keep up. Constant aoe damage alleviates any threat problems for warriors and further pushes them ahead. Paladins have problems with crushings with radiance (or with having proper stats while using pvp trinket/uncrushable set).

5) M'uru - Warriors are probably best tanks for every part of the encounter - however yes its somewhat clear that their utility is lacking. Still 1 at least is a must.

3) I fully agree on you with that one, but, again you seem to forget in a 25 man raid you don't have 1 tank only, and in this situations a Deathknight is far better tank that a warrior, besides, they provide raid buffs and resistances that a warrior can't.

To answer about LOH - mana cost isnt a huge issue - a paladin can use it , drink a pot and switch to FOL. Even with the switch the tank will be healed better with LOH buff on and less vulnerable to spikes at same time.

To make it clear - I dont have beta access. Most of people in this thread dont for this matter. Still what I'm saying is that it doesnt LOOK too bad. Sure when we know exact itemization, my opinion can change - but for now warriors look ok for tanking, and I think its too early to complain.

JamesVZ · 07/28/08, 5:00 PM

Originally Posted by Fellwraith

I don't like that warriors are probably one of the most spam-heavy classes in the game right now. Almost every other sunwell warrior I know complains a bit about having too many buttons to hit and having to hit them too often (heroic strike is particularly bad).

I'm almost the opposite here. I played Stepmania for awhile there and I have fairly damn good reflexes and can withstand quite a bit of repetitiveness for hours on end -- I highly recommend playing Stepmania seriously, by the by. What I don't like is having to keep track of a million different things at once. Watching two+ debuffs on the mob, their health, my health, my incoming damage to predict when I might die to pop Last Stand or Shield Wall if I'm off the GCD (remove Shield Wall from the GCD, please, for the love of God), position, Shield Slam cooldown, Revenge cooldown, Shield Block cooldown, and general raid fuckery that may or may not make my job harder. Adding in things like popping a 20s ability with a 45s cooldown to make my shield bashes useful, or having to switch abilities mid fight once my debuffs reach a certain stack, is simply not fun for me.

At least we're being given a way to make it so Demo Shout and Thunderclap are not resisted anymore (hopefully), so I don't have to pre-empt their casting by a few cycles just to make sure they damn land in a timely fashion. But I can't say that as it stands now I don't let either or both fall off from time to time depending on what it is I'm doing.

• Chicken · 07/28/08, 5:07 PM

Originally Posted by Shha

Touched by the light doesnt seem like "enough". Its a help sure, but doesnt remedy all spellpower needs. Shield of Righteousness is something to be seen. Still a bit early to complain (and how knows - block might be as useless as it is now - probably will because of scaling problems).

Assuming there is plate with spell damage on it, I doubt warriors will use it. Seems like the case of itemization points. If one class has to get some stat (spell damage) other doesnt, it comes at a cost. As I said the talent giving spell damage for stam is nice, but not enough.

For a single target situation the talent is actually plenty. The fact that Seal and Judgement damage now scale with attack power as well as spell damage, and the fact that both new abilities, even discounting the "High threat" they mention in their tooltip, scale well with strength actually makes strength stronger than spell damage for Prot Paladins. On more than three targets we get a bigger benefit from spell power still though, which is a bit messy. On the other hand even now in the typical AoE encounter a lack of spell damage can usually be solved by giving your Paladin a bit more time before opening up on AoE.

If you're interested in the calculations behind strength being good for Prot Paladins, I'd recommend checking these two posts:
Protection and you!
WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion

Mumbles · 07/28/08, 5:26 PM

Originally Posted by Shha

My warrior unbuffed hp at 70 - 5564 (night elf)
Paladin 4460 (dwarf).
Thats over 1100 hp, probably closer to 1150 because of race differences.

I'm trusting your values as i have no reason not to.
5564 + 15% = 6398,6
(tauren) 5564 + 20% = 6676,8
4460 + 36% = 6065,6

That's 333 hp difference and 611,2 if the warrior is a tauren, I hardly find that anything worth of notice really except for taurens as they got a big advantage there, but then, am not a tauren, am dwarf so doesn't affect me.

Touched by the light doesnt seem like "enough". Its a help sure, but doesnt remedy all spellpower needs. Shield of Righteousness is something to be seen. Still a bit early to complain (and how knows - block might be as useless as it is now - probably will because of scaling problems).

I won't argue about the Touched by the light, as I haven't done any math yet, but about shield block be useless ? have you looked at the talents ? prot warrior talents ? from what I see seems pretty obvious for me shield block will be allot more important than what we are used to now.

And warriors bring sunders and shout. If you wanna say "but dps warriors can bring it too" - well so can dps druids.

Exactly, dps druids are actually feral druids ? so, they bring demo shout, 5% crit, all the other buffs I already covered in previous posts plus they dps better than us. In WotLK we will do more dmg I bet, but I don't believe we will surpass the druids.

I'll keep it here as I also think were banging the same key over and over.