Protection and you! - Page 155

bellator · 09/25/08, 6:55 PM

Originally Posted by Halion

You mention raid bosses, have you had any taunt resists on anything (instance trash / world mobs / etc)?

Honestly I couldnt say. I've paid little attention to it, and AoE tanking is so effect anything that happens to break loose is on the verge of death. I've not noticed any mobs wandering around which i thought should be on their way back to me, but there could have been resists. Planning a full naxx in next couple days so will be more observant and try to keep a combat log open of all my resists to see if anything pops up.

Joasuf · 09/26/08, 4:59 AM

A question for the beta testers on professions.

At present im a prot/holy hybrid (I typically switch between specs 3-4 times a week for raiding) and have alchemy for the healing trinket and enchanting for the +heal/stats/damage on rings.

I am thinking of going prot full time in wotlk and was wondering what the best profession combination is at present? If anyone has looked into this your feedback would be much appreciated.

Halion · 09/26/08, 5:08 AM

The WotLK profession thread

Dig through this, more or less everything regarding professions is in there.

General consensus is Blacksmithing (for the 2 sockets) and Leatherworking (for the fur lining). If it turns out that there are stacking issues with the BS bracer socket and the LW fur lining to bracer, then this will obviously change. I'm not going to speculate what combos will be best if stacking issues arise.

Edit: Here's a post I did about Prot professions.

The WotLK profession thread Page 33

There's some other tank related posts in there if you really feel like digging.

2nd Edit: Here's Maintankadin's thread as well.

Maintankadin :: View topic - So, which professions are you taking for WotLK?

The initial info is a little dated now, but the later posts are ok.

Joasuf · 09/26/08, 6:03 AM

Thanks for the answer Halion I missed both those threads before. Having read the first 20 pages of the EJ thread and then your post and the maintankadin one, it looks like Jewelcrafting/Blacksmithing to me.

It seems counter intuitive that you will be able to fur line plate armor, whilst Blacksmithing/Jewelcrafting will potentially give you some nice items to kick off level 80 raiding on top of the stat bonuses they will provide. But yes you are completely right its speculation at this point however I will start to stockpile mats for a quick profession change which looks likely.

PsiVen · 09/26/08, 6:17 AM

For those interested in our DPS, I've updated the spreadsheet.

Note that our DPS is around 1450 (at 80). Comments from Ghostcrawler regarding warriors seem to indicate that this will be going up substantially. Good news as this hopefully means our extreme threat modifiers will be reconsidered so that we can kill things again.
MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Crunch time, simple but vital questions.

Q: Also is it intended for protection warriors to be in the 1.3 1.4k dps ballpark when prot DKs, pallies or bears do a lot more damage?

A: No, that is too low. We nerfed Devastate (for good reason) and haven't given warriors anything back yet. We don't want to just buff Revenge, because that doesn't help dps when you aren't the tank. Shield Slam is a good candidate.

Cathela · 09/26/08, 11:50 AM

Originally Posted by Halion

General consensus is Blacksmithing (for the 2 sockets) and Leatherworking (for the fur lining). If it turns out that there are stacking issues with the BS bracer socket and the LW fur lining to bracer, then this will obviously change. I'm not going to speculate what combos will be best if stacking issues arise.

From what I've read/seen, my understanding is that the extra sockets don't interfere with enchants. (They'd be largely useless if they did).

Originally Posted by Joasuf

It seems counter intuitive that you will be able to fur line plate armor, whilst Blacksmithing/Jewelcrafting will potentially give you some nice items to kick off level 80 raiding on top of the stat bonuses they will provide. But yes you are completely right its speculation at this point however I will start to stockpile mats for a quick profession change which looks likely.

What's counterintuitive about some soft smooth fur lining on the inside of your hard, cold metal bracers?

In all seriousness, the new theme for professions seems to be that the perks are supposed to be useful to all classes. So LW perks work for plate classes, BS perks (extra sockets) work for cloth/leather classes, etc.

Originally Posted by PsiVen

For those interested in our DPS, I've updated the spreadsheet.

Note that our DPS is around 1450 (at 80). Comments from Ghostcrawler regarding warriors seem to indicate that this will be going up substantially. Good news as this hopefully means our extreme threat modifiers will be reconsidered so that we can kill things again.
MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Crunch time, simple but vital questions.

That's good. Certainly 312%-BV SotR was too much, but it was a very nice feeling to have decent dps for once. Giving us "acceptable" raid dps, (75% of a Ret paladin or thereabouts) will do a lot to reduce the "we don't need you to tank here, so go sit out" phenomenon.

Tilted · 09/26/08, 12:45 PM

That's where a buff to HotR could fit in nicely. It would buff our pre-75 TPS, as well as give us something to do when not getting punched in the face.

Ultimately it would be nice to be able to choose between healing or DPS when we're not called on to tank something. TbtL should be a great addition for the offhealer role, but damage is still a concern. FWIW I do about 350ish DPS on live and about 650 on PTR (this was before the most recent SoV nerf so it's probably a bit lower now). This is one hell of a boost to DPS, but still substantially lower of what it should be if they want us at DK/druid levels.

• frmorrison · 09/26/08, 12:54 PM

Originally Posted by Cathela

That's good. Certainly 312%-BV SotR was too much, but it was a very nice feeling to have decent dps for once. Giving us "acceptable" raid dps, (75% of a Ret paladin or thereabouts) will do a lot to reduce the "we don't need you to tank here, so go sit out" phenomenon.

I think they are balancing dps classes between 3000 to 4000 dps, so a tank doing 2000 dps seems alright. Once Hammer gets buffed (so Prot wants "tank" weapons), that should close to the gap to help reach that additional 500 dps.

bellator · 09/26/08, 4:19 PM

Originally Posted by frmorrison

I think they are balancing dps classes between 3000 to 4000 dps, so a tank doing 2000 dps seems alright. Once Hammer gets buffed (so Prot wants "tank" weapons), that should close to the gap to help reach that additional 500 dps.

Personally from this thread I got the impression that the dps they are aiming for is around 2500:-

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Not possible to leave Ret paladin feedback

There was aslo blue post in the warrior section which can be seen here, that indiactes they are trying to get prot dps to be only 15-20% lower than normal dps dps.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Is prot doing too much DPS or is it right on?

Halion · 09/28/08, 2:33 AM

Our Feral and Warrior friends are getting a further buff to their AOE tanking.

From GC:

Thunder Clap -- Increase in threat generation. No target limit. Swipe gets the same treatment. With these changes, all 4 tank classes should be able to generate very respectable AE threat. Consecration is still a little higher in threat to account for Thunder Clap's debuff.

I have no issue with all 4 tanks being solid AOE tanks, as many have said, taking away our AOE throne allows us to demand equal footing as a main tank, a win-win for all the tanks.

The only concern I have is the mitigation of unlimited Thunderclap, will warriors be the kings of AOE mitigation now? It was already leaning this way with shield block having no charges.

There is still hope though, again GC:

We're doing some more mitigation and survivability tests now. Our suspicion is that warriors are fine in this department and paladins might fall behind in the area of Shield Block Value at very high gear levels. But we'll see.

Russta · 09/28/08, 8:16 AM

Here's hoping we do actually get something to compensate. Saying Consecrate will still do slightly more threat as a way to compensate for the fact that Thunder Clap immediately puts a 20% attack speed penalty on everything is utterly ridiculous.

Exewut · 09/28/08, 8:46 AM

Eh you forgot to quote the important part though:

Nothing against Protadins, and we'll make it up for you by letting you actually MT Naxx.

This proves that they've been keeping aoe threat into consideration when they balanced mitigation. I guess they noticed that being a trash tank isn't all what it's cracked up to be and are fixing this situation now. Let's just see how the changes play out now.

Dragonwing · 09/28/08, 9:39 AM

Slightly off the current topic. but i'm curious to see if anybody has done any number crunching on beta with the new available talents.

I unfortunately don't have beta, but have been looking at the different options. and there seems to be an early cookie cutter prot build that could vary depending on what your looking for.

The talents i'm looking at specifically are

Touched by the light
conviction
sanctified seals
seals of the pure
one hand spec
reckoning

For the most part, you can fill up your talent tree with none of these- and kind of look back with about about 10 points, depending on what build your looking at. I'm curious to see the difference in pure damage increases over in comparison to the increase by buffing crit. Anybody done crunching with it?

Wrathblood · 09/28/08, 2:43 PM

Exewut,

I'm less optimistic. I mean, Naxx basically equals Kara, right? Paladins were MTing Kara back even when tankadins sucked pre-2.2. So, telling us that we'll at least be equal to where we were pre-2.2 isn't exactly comforting.

The way talents are working out, it kinda feels like we're back to where we were pre-2.2 (substandard health, mitigation and avoidance, but boatloads of threat) EXCEPT that our status as the best AoE tanks is now in question AND the value of our "new" main ability, generating tons of threat (compared to warriors at least), is something Blizz has openly said its working to make less important.

I was willing to tank in BC (and fought my way up to MTing despite being arguably underpowered for it), because I took solace in the unique strengths a tankadins brought to the table (harder to crush/kings of AoE tanking/superior threat vs demons/undead). For WotLK, I recognize where we are underpowered, but I no longer feel like we've got a niche to call our own. I'll keep tanking until someone makes me stop, but I feel a little adrift.

Smithist · 09/28/08, 5:01 PM

Originally Posted by Dragonwing

Slightly off the current topic. but i'm curious to see if anybody has done any number crunching on beta with the new available talents.

I unfortunately don't have beta, but have been looking at the different options. and there seems to be an early cookie cutter prot build that could vary depending on what your looking for.

The talents i'm looking at specifically are

Touched by the light
conviction
sanctified seals
seals of the pure
one hand spec
reckoning

For the most part, you can fill up your talent tree with none of these- and kind of look back with about about 10 points, depending on what build your looking at. I'm curious to see the difference in pure damage increases over in comparison to the increase by buffing crit. Anybody done crunching with it?

Have you not been reading this thread at all? Determining expected dps/tps values has been one of the primary topics of Wrath discussion. PsiVen, as well as many others, have posted tons of info regarding this. Here is a link to PsiVen's post ranking weapons for Wrath(follow his link to Maintankadin). The maintankadin page linked is updated and gives you an idea of what to expect based on the current build.