Disargeria

But doesn't the %weapon damage/instant strike on most abilities favor 2handers?

 

Disargeria

I bet they read this forum. :P

 

◊ Birdemani

At first glance? Yes, and much better than what it was.

 

Pyros

Yeah obviously, but DW generally wins on white damage/proc based stuff. Once you reach a high enough hit rate, DW usually pulls ahead in white DPS by a rather good margin, which is why they won't bother increasing DW support more than now, since you'd get a pretty decent total DPS out of it even when factoring lower special attacks.

As for new unbreakable armor, I'm still not sure it's worth specing over Bone Armor(unless bone armor was nerfed, but haven't seen any changes on the talent calculator). Because of the long cooldown, it means it's not something you use everytime it's up, like bone armor, you'll be tempted and rightfully so to keep it. However since you also have to spam runes for blade barrier, you'll either need to Empower Rune Weap before to get the rune, or to wait for your next rune to refresh before being able to press it(hoping it's a death, a frost, or a blood and you can afford a blood tap). By then it might not be useful anymore. It seems extremely gimicky, especially since the gain doesn't look crazy to me, 25%armor isn't crazy at all(assuming you're not armor capped either, with priest/shaman heal procs).

We'll see how it works out. Vampiric Blood to solo elites and stuff like that though, has quite some potential. I don't think Blood wiil make a very good raid tanking build though, too many DPS oriented talents and too few tank related stuff.

I still think they should reduce cooldown to 30secs like bone armor, and work from there to balance the stats. 12secs instead of 20 or something like that. 25%armor and a bit of parry isn't as good as 40%dmg reduction from all sources, so hell even a 20secs duration with 30secs cooldown would still be balanced in comparison. I hope they don't go the other way and nerf bone armor to fit with the rest though, would suck.

 

Muarf

I noticed something strange with Bone Armor yesterday, I was tanking the last boss in UK and during the whole encounter I only lost 1 Bone Armor charge but I was taking a lot of hits.

 

Flopi

It might have been a bug but reminded me a blue post I saw this morning. Haven't seen this on these forums yet, sorry if I'm wrong.

Link to quote

 

Sinzar

Does that mean it's -40% damage for a minimum of 14 seconds until the charges all fade, or is it only -40% on hits that consume a charge?

 

joe_in_hell

As AE and DoTs seem to get reduced but never took charges it is is likely -40% for the hole time. I like it!

 

Pyros

Did you have a resto shaman as healer? I already pointed that out, still need to test, but it seems earth shield and bone armor conflicts with each other, so only one expands charges at the same time, at least that was my explanation. And Earth Shield always work over Bone Armor, giving you a very very powerful bone armor. Sadly finding a resto shaman to test hasn't been easy.

 

Prepared

I wonder if that effect is Working as Intended, since there's no other mechanic like that which Earth Shield stacks with. Id be willing to help test that theory out, though, as long as it's something a level 70 Shaman in crappy healing gear can help with.

 

Pyros

It is but I play on euro beta servers and you seem not to. And I doubt it's working as intended, more like an oversight. I'd like to test it and confirm it before I report it though. It'd be insane if it went live, since I managed to keep bone armor up through full 5mobs pull when I had the resto sham. That's almost like perma bone armor, aka 4def stance stacked on top of each other.

If anyone has a sham on Coldarra EU, any level that can train earth shield, send me a PM. Else send Prepared a PM with your DK and test it out, just train bone armor and go fight some random trash with earth shield on and check how's the bone consumption.

 

Prepared

Oh, well that would make it difficult, then. XD

I have transferred my Shaman and my Paladin, but I have yet to log in and rename them yet... but I'll post here again soon as my client re-downloads (go go file errors) and I get that taken care of. If anyone needs my DK for anything, though, I'm only 58, but I'll be game for testing.

On a side note, I definitely love the DK starting area. It has taken first place in my favorite leveling spots, slipping past the Blood Elf starting zone.

 

bitanga

Never had such bug so far. Only problem i see about Bone armor is the fact how much RP will you gain if you pop. It goes from 10 till 60+ rune power.

P.S God bless grammar police, it was not only thing i failed :P

 

nevinera

DW wins in the long run because it scales better, generally.

you need more +hit, but that's a fixed amount. after you have all the necessary stats, and are just adding ap, 14 ap adds 1 dps to a 2h, and 1.75 dps to a pair of DW (with talent). So when you have enough ap, dw will beat 2h.

depending on how they scale the instant strikes,
it's possible for them to make up for that,
but it might be unreasonable.
a better solution might be for them to make the strikes use a different ap coefficient with a 2h than with a 1h.

edit: my mistake - to further explain what the poster below me probably meant,
two handers are normalized to a slower *speed* than one-handers, which is a percent increase on the damage dealt by a strike.
Should have checked my math :-)

 

saiyajinmaster

They do - if an attack is normalized two handers already have higher coefficients, and if it's unnormalized then it's purely based on weapon speed anyway. I'm pretty sure almost all of them are normalized already.

 

Jakani

You're right, but the numbers are off: Only rogue DW spec is strong enough to get 1.75 weapon damage. DK dual wield is only 15% bonus so .5 * 1.15 = .575, so 1.575 damage per 14 ap.

I personally like the idea of a 2H DK and really hope that DW spec isn't made to scale significantly better.

 

nevinera

sigh. I didn't check the talents before I said that; you're right about the numbers of course.

As far as total damage done,.. they have a scaling problem.
they have to make 2h strikes bonus over 1H scale with ap at the exact rate that the DW bonus over 2H does (proportionate to the relative pieces of total damage done).

It's possible, and I hope they've done the math, but it's a tricky balance if they want to keep both systems viable.

 

Pyros

So just tested with a resto shaman who read the message, and yes, Bone armor doesn't expand charges as long as you have earthshield. Making resto shaman+uunholy tank the best tanking combo in the game ^^. Now to report this to blizzard.

 

Deathwing

It's more than just that, DW will proc things like BRM a lot more than 2H will.

 

Prepared

I see a lot of talk about this for DPS purposes, but what are the opinions about DW versus 2H for tanking? I see a lot of one-handed weapons with nice parry, defense, or armor values on them, and figure those might work really well for mitigation, but unsure of how threat would differ. For non-raiders, the items in question would be something like [Crystalblade of the Draenei] or [Cleaver of the Unforgiving] - both which are, thankfully, not unique.

The only big downside I can see is more attacks by the tank equals more chances for the boss to gain parry-haste...

 

Raedix

I'm pretty sure the answer is "too many stats". A tank can't afford to stack hit rating to the level that a Dual-Wielder needs to... unless the tanking gear in endgame WotLK has an absolutely huge amount of hit rating (it won't), a Dual Wield tank will miss too often to be viable. Remember, when it comes to tanking stats, Expertise is more important than Hit rating, and using a big, slow 2hander will, of course make parry-haste less of a concern.

I have little doubt that Blizzard will include a reasonable number of 2handers with either 1. Huge amounts of STA, and 2 or 3 sockets that can be used for parry or stamina as the DK sees fit, or 2. Defensive two-handers. Judging by Blizzard's 'philosophy' for this expansion, trying to optimize gear sharing, I have a feeling the first will be the solution. In fact, I have a feeling that we may not see any defensively-oriented weapons at all... since they are only for Warrior tanks, and dont' mesh at all with said desire to share gear between more classes...

I have a feeling you'll see a lot of two hand weapons itemized like Apolyon, huge amounts of stamina, and three red sockets for Parry/STA gems, or pure STA gems if you care only about EH (which, it seems, a DK will care more about avoidance slightly, simply due to some talent synergies).

 

Cloudgatherer

DKs (and rogues, and shaman, and anyone who dual wields really) only needs a small amount of +hit to get their special attacks to land. I don't recall the exact +hit needed, but I think it is around 6% for all specials to land (enhancement shaman don't even have to worry, their talents cover this). So, the level of +hit a dual wielder "needs" is pretty low, and 3% is covered in the DK dual wield talent. Add in a little extra +hit and that covers special attacks as well reduces resist chances on Icy Touch and Death Coil.

Using frostfever+swordbreaking seems like a good combo without knowing the proc rate on frostfever or Fallen Crusader (knowing the proc rates may change that). Dual wield tanking does seem like a good move for optimized tanking, especially if there are tanking 1handers available with balanced stats, they should beat the equivalent 2hander due to how stat points get more expensive the higher they go.

 

Darkrenown

It's 9% for specials, which will also remove spell resists in Wrath.

As has been mentioned a few times, they are removing Frostfeaver.

 

Kenera

This isn't exactly correct. Yes, 9% +hit is required for specials, no, duel wielding without 12%+hit or more isn't a good idea. While duel wielding, the majority of your damage (in this case, threat) would come from white damage - not specials. The current tanking model is closer to the 2her scenario, where your special attacks are the majority of your threat generation. Taking two scenario's, one with 2 1hers and one with 1 2her - in the first model with 2 weapons, I hope those weapons have 5%+hit each, otherwise you'd be giving up gems/enchants on your armor that could be geared towards mitigation/avoidance. This wouldn't be bad for an off-tank who needs to generate massive amounts of threat*, but in a main tanking role, you need to be able to mitigate as much of the incoming damage as possible.

Bottom line: Taking a two hander and tanking with it will cause you to generate more threat without having to sacrifice tanking stats to do it.

* Question for those in the beta: What's a 77 DK's average TPS, if you have a way to measure this? Are they like ferals in that they generate large amounts of threat quickly, or are capable of generating a burst amount of threat at the beginning of a fight?

I walk through walls.

 

Muarf

That must be it, the healer was effectively a resto shaman. An almost permanent 40% damage reduction seems to good to be intended, this will probably be "nerfed" in some way. Maybe they will make Bone Armor charges go first.