Zapporius

Emphasis on "9 months before SWP release".
When WOTLK hits people wont have double(triple?) sets of gear, hence you'll have a tank druid with tank spec/gear, dps kitty with dps spec/gear, resto druids, prot warriors and dps warriors.

 

Liar

Enraged Assault doesn't consume anything at the moment because it's bugged.

Protection Warrior PvP video | Unexpected TankPoints error

 

Mild Confusion

It would be nice if EA was taken off the GC just to ease the pain of using it.

 

DarthGreg

Or for Blizz to normalize melee GCD's @ 1 second.

 

DarthGreg

Has anyone seen a justification for Blood Frenzy/Trauma remaining unique raid buffs?

 

Mild Confusion

Can anyone in beta do some tests in pvp to point out some differences between arms and fury?

Perhaps different levels of tests.

Start with duels, then open BG free for all style and world pvp, then 2v2, 3v3, 5v5 if possible.

Or at least some BG pvp and duels to see what the major differences are between the play styles and point out some pros and cons of each. It would give more clarity on actual strengths of the specs instead of trying to guess.

 

mistersix

Don't druids have a trauma-like ability?

 

Darian_TruBlade

It only seems painful to use if you're hoping to benefit from the refreshing talents for BT or MS. Otherwise it seems to fit nicely into a rotation with a little attention to detail. Bloodrage and Berserker Rage last 10 seconds, which gives a lot of time to make use of them. Without UF or iMS, there's little complication unless you're responsible for a Sunder stack or TC.

It's only (theoretically) possible to use EA four times an average minute anyway. With just a little forethought on when to hit your enrage abilities it's not hard to map out a workable rotation. Even with 100% crit you won't ever be in a situation where you will both hit an enrage ability and be unable to hit EA before the buff drops. It's simpler without UF than with, but the principles remain.

So the problem is more with UF and iMS than with EA. Having it off the GCD is an interesting solution, but I think Fury at least might benefit more if BT's crit chance was increased by 30% after an EA rather than the refreshing effect.

 

IceBox

Death Wish is (Tier 5) now flagged as an Enrage.
Note from the last build, so popping EA while Death Wish is up, cya Death Wish :>
I actually don't like Blizzard "make any class replacable" politics but we'll see, I don't really like to get replaced :<

Yes I know, IMA FANBOI! but <3 Lakineo

 

Nyel

This is the build im most comfortable with.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...12253100511351

This gives plenty of fun abilities to use while leveling, fun for tanking 5mans too.
To me 2H weap spec is not really needed for 71-80 until good levels of gear. (like Naxx gear)
Unending Fury will most likely be tweaked, so im gonna leave it there untill i see otherwise.

Im not too sure about imp WW. Since in a leveling environment you dont actually use a "rotation", im thinking itll be fine untalented.

 

Liar

Yes, and their's is better because their Mangle debuff is needed for DPSing. So if the two buffs are being consolidated, then only Mangle will show. This is much akin to the Rampage/LotP stuff so I hope they do a good job balancing Warrior and Feral Druid buffs.

Protection Warrior PvP video | Unexpected TankPoints error

 

Nezralix

Here's a question slightly out of left field: Slow or fast weapons for tanking in Wrath?

Here are some potentially relevant considerations:

* We've got more attack power which, given that Devastate is normalized (I assume?), implies that weapon damage might be a smaller factor in the overall damage Devastate does (whereas with low attack power, as is the case in TBC, a slower weapon is generally more advantageous). We may end up spamming Devastate relatively more frequently, if Sword-and-Board remains largely unchanged.
* Again, we've got more attack power, which means that we're doing more damage. That means an individual Cleave is probably going to be worth more in terms of multiple-target threat, especially if they incorporate a glyph that increases the number of targets affected by it. Cleave isn't normalized, but it does have a fixed-size damage and threat component to it, so in infinite-rage scenarios a faster weapon probably still wins out; this could be a difficult modeling scenario.
* Incite is essentially providing a multiplier to your weapon damage, which could mildly benefit a slower weapon, even if the effective rage cost is higher. On the other hand, level 80 Heroic Strike appears to have a significantly increased damage and threat component over the level 70 equivalent, so there's likely to be a great benefit to spamming it in infinite rage scenarios.
* Retaliation is receiving a cooldown reduction. As far as I know, it's not normalized; larger weapon damage yields linearly more threat. Potentially an every-cooldown tanking ability for large pulls.

Now, we also don't really have enough information to make definitive conclusions about this. We don't know what rage gain is going to look like; we don't know what talents we still have coming; we don't really know what itemization scheme Blizzard has in store for "tanking weapons". But I do think there will be some mechanics changes that will, at the very least, give us a different set of reasons for choosing one over the other, and that's worth considering.

 

Gellor

Not really offering anything to the discussion, but beow is a link to the 1st 200+dps 2 hander I've seen. Stat wise it's a pretty awesome TG weapon as well.

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...xxramas_01.jpg

EDIT: I know a few people were concerned about Blizzard berfing itemisation on 2 handers with reargds to TG, but i think its fair to say that this mace should lay those fears to rest.

 

JamesVZ

As long as heroic strike remains the most efficient use of dumping rage, you likely won't see slower weapons pull ahead in threat. You just end up losing too much threat by staying rage capped.

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mistersix

The epic smith crafted tanking weapons are all relatively slow, clocking in at 2.60. I wouldn't be surprised if we either see a change to those speeds or some benefit for going slower.

 

Liar

I'll try answering in the same order:

* I don't think we will spam Devastate any more than we do now. Revenge is going to get fixed so we have to include it in our cycle (anything else would just be plain dumb) so Devastate is going to be used twice every rotation. The current S&B doesn't justify using it over a fixed Rev/SS either.
Devastate is going to hit harder with a slower weapon, true. But as long as we have Heroic Strike it won't matter. Sitting on 100 Rage because you couldn't dump rage fast enough is going to be worse for your threat than the slightly bigger Devastates. It looks like Devastate with a slow weapon is going to retain the same niche it has now: Building threat as OTing when you aren't getting hit (I use [Vengeful Gladiator's Slicer] for that myself because it's the best slowest 1h I have).

* Slow Cleaves are a pain. The first one is going to better aggro than a Cleave with a fast weapon for sure (since it fires on contact with the first pair of mobs) but after that the fast weapon will pull ahead. Disregarding rage concerns, this is going to be more threat via damage done alone (think 1 cleave with a 2.6 sec weapon vs 1.7 Cleaves with a 1.5 sec weapon). Add bonus threat on top of that, and fast weapon cleaving should come out as the winner. I also really don't like the feeling of rage starvedness if you cleave with a slow weapon because it will take longer until you land a white hit again for rage generation.

* Incite scales better with slower weapons as you mentioned because our skills don't do double threat on crits. Only the damage part gets multiplied threatwise, the innate threat a skill has stays the same unfortunately.

* I think I mentioned this around 3 times now but: Retaliation is useless as it stands. It doesn't fire on avoided/blocked attacks so a Prot Warrior should forget about using it. I think the only time I use it reliably is the AoE pull before the last boss in Botanica in PvP gear + 2h. I tried it with tanking gear equipped once and I am still annoyed about it. I pretty much managed to lose 1-2 charges of Retaliation over the whole fight.
Retaliation needs to fixed, then I will gladly use a 2.6 sec weapon for that, and switch back to my 1.5 sec weapon after.

Another thing about the Fast/Slow weapon issue: It will also depend on Paladins. I doubt Warriors and Paladins are going to go for two different types of weapons so if Paladins also want faster tanking weapons in Wrath, then that should be final nail on the coffin for slow weapon tanking. Maybe a Prot Paladin wants to comment on this?

I'm just going to throw out this suggestion and I want your opinion on it:

Lower or remove the innate threat components on our threat skills and up the damage they do (already being done). That way our threat is going to scale better with crits, since critting will mean you do double threat. The only expection I could think of would be Devastate. Devastate without bonus threat is somewhat worthless since it starts hitting for like 50 on the first application (granted, you get the bonus threat from Sunder Armor but it still seems low).

Protection Warrior PvP video | Unexpected TankPoints error

 

• Aeverius

Hah, we're not even sure if we want spellpower weapons or traditional "Warrior-type" weapons at this point. Our abilities still benefit quite a bit from spellpower, so that may end up being the way to go in WotLK even with all the other changes.

That said, analysis in general is leaning heavily towards slow weapons over fast. A lot of it has to do with Hammer of the Righteous and how it benefits heavily from a slow, powerful weapon.

Various links to the Paladin thread, if anyone is interested:

WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion
WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion
WotLK talent trees/abilities discussion

And a blog post too:

WotLK Tanking Weapons: Redux - Elitist Jerks


tl;dr- No, Paladins most likely will not want fast tanking weapons.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

Ydwarrior

I'm not sure if it has been discussed already, but I'll ask anyways.
With the release of wotlk talent/spells in the next content patch, what talent builds will you guys be using for each respective builds: arms, fury and protection? This is for level 70.

I'm a BF warrior atm and I'm a little worried on what route I should head towards. Will I be speccing up to Wrecking Crew, stay in battle stance and use rend+overpower as a means of dps? With BF moving up tiers, I can't see myself sparing too much points in fury if I am to remain as the BF arms guy.

Just blindly speccing into arms resulted in
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...00000000000000
speccing deep arms

Or perhaps
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...00000000000000
for commanding presence.

Honestly I'm not sure how much weight I should be giving the new talents, thereby changing my playstyle. Bypassing 4th tier of fury to get to 5th tier is kind of impossible speccing into BF. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

KnThrak

Correct me if I'm wrong, but assuming a rage-flooding situation (Prot Warrior tanking a boss), wouldn't this massively bump up the threat production?

And send the corresponding Warrior home 5 years sooner, from Carpal Tunnel? :P

SQUEAK.
-- (The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

 

Borodin

I've noticed that the crafted weapon which seems most Tank-like is indeed slow but I still think fast weapons will be the way to go because there's no fundmental change to Devastate vs Heroic Strike except some potential AP scaling on Sunder - but will that even be relevant once 5 Sunders are stacked?

Perhaps the crafted weapons are slow because at that stage your often not in a rage-rich environment (unless the tuning really does boost our rage vs trash) which is needed for HS spamming. A slow crafted weapon with partial Tank stats can be used fairly effectively at this stage in Tank, DPS and questing roles.

Or perhaps a "true" craftable Tank weapon is yet to be added but I am not getting my hopes up based on past experience with smithing.

 

Prinsesa

I doubt we're going to see "tank" weapons in the sense of explicit defensive stats such as [The Unbreakable Will] or even [The Sun Eater]

From a gear homogenization perspective, it makes too much sense to assume that you're to take care of all your defense needs within your armor and tune weapons completely towards DPS.

If you want to nudge the weapon towards tanks, you can itemize with an eye towards expertise, ala [Dragonscale-Encrusted Longblade] without locking Rogues and other physical DPS out of the deal completely.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....63815BffMm.png

 

Skippert

-edit- sorry, was already answered.
A 'delete post' button would be nice.

 

Pyros