Mists of Pandaria: All Specs - Page 2

Rynok · 11/02/11, 6:50 PM

Originally Posted by Elimbras

For an all-around prot specs, the choices seems to have more interest however (because a tank cares more about self-healing, and potentially interrupts / crowd controls in heroics / 10-men raid).

This was my thought exactly. I'm very interested to see what they're doing with the baseline mechanics in order to compensate for the changes to talent trees.

Darkmgl · 11/04/11, 11:11 AM

Originally Posted by Rynok

This was my thought exactly. I'm very interested to see what they're doing with the baseline mechanics in order to compensate for the changes to talent trees.

They tried to emphasize strongly at the panels that the key abilities would just be baked into the specialization skills or baseline skills you gain and that only really fluff talents (which they already pruned most of already) would be removed completely. I'd expect to see passive fluff like War Academy, and Cruelty that really don't need to be there just getting eliminated and the effectiveness of the skills they changed being improved to compensate for all specs.

What interests me is some of the talents that used to be modified by talents/masteries when they were skills. They said something along the lines that what you see is what you get with the talents now so they either baked in the additional effects or they dropped them completely. This really makes some of the talents pretty lackluster (mostly for other classes).

Theres some interesting things out there though. I'm finding the offering of Bladestorm and Shockwave hard to not just always go for Shockwave in unless the Fury Bladestorm is going to strike with both weapons.

It will be interesting to see how the lack of cross speccing might affect things too. Take Deep Wounds for example. That is either going to need to be baked into multiple specs (baseline, which means prot would get it too) or Arms is going to be the only one walking around with it.

It will also be interesting to see how glyphs are affected by the cross talent stuff now too. If the glyphs for them remain for certain classes then it is possible that your talent choices may be influenced by glyph slot limitations.

I'm also wondering how they will handle SMF and TG, if it will let us mix weapons and how that would possibly create interesting play.... Maybe they could provide some sort of parity bonus for doing that. Offhand Rage Builder anyone?

cbgoding · 11/07/11, 11:50 PM

Originally Posted by Darkmgl

Offhand Rage Builder anyone?

This xpac has been around for how long, and the "high speed = high rage" myth is still alive? Good lord. The faster the base speed of the weapon, the less rage you receive from a swing. You actually get LESS rage as smf due to the lower flurry uptime and lower item levels. It just feels like more rage because of slam taking priority over rb.

Elimbras · 11/08/11, 1:11 PM

Originally Posted by Darkmgl

It will be interesting to see how the lack of cross speccing might affect things too. Take Deep Wounds for example. That is either going to need to be baked into multiple specs (baseline, which means prot would get it too) or Arms is going to be the only one walking around with it.

In fact, priest have specific specs "abilitites" which are baked into the two healing specs (namely in-fight regen and defensive magic dispell on friends). Both of them are not baseline (and shadow has neither), but both disc and holy have the same exact version of it.

Rynok · 11/08/11, 1:55 PM

Originally Posted by Elimbras

In fact, priest have specific specs "abilitites" which are baked into the two healing specs (namely in-fight regen and defensive magic dispell on friends). Both of them are not baseline (and shadow has neither), but both disc and holy have the same exact version of it.

I think I understand the point you're trying to make, but you might want to elaborate a bit on it to make it relevant to a discussion of Warrior-specific changes.

Further, the entire point of the post to which you're replying is that the emphasis is on taking these spec-specific abilities found in Talent trees and making them baseline for the upcoming xpac, regardless of whether or not they are currently baseline or not. The question of whether or not Arms will be the only spec that has Deep Wounds or not is entirely valid speculation in that context.

To continue the discussion, I'm also curious about talents such as Tactical Mastery and Incite. Tactical Mastery will likely disappear entirely, sans a drastic overhaul to Warrior Rage mechanics, but I'm curious to see whether or not they roll Incite into Heroic Strike's baseline.

Muspel · 11/09/11, 3:01 PM

There is a new attack called Wild Strike. At the moment it is an off-hand attack without Slam's cast time. The Bloodsurge proc then lets you do 3 cheap Wild Strikes on a 1 sec GCD. Wild Strike also has the MS debuff, replacing Furious Attacks.

From the most recent Q&A. Fury won't be using Slam anymore, according to Ghostcrawler.

Also, warrior specs are going to get rotational abilities that grant rage, rather than costing it.

It'll be interesting to see how this will affect the stability of fury's rotation, as we currently can get somewhat screwed by strings of misses. I also like how Wild Strike can be used three times, which will help reduce the number of empty GCDs.

Runtime · 11/09/11, 3:06 PM

It appears that warriors will no longer generate rage from damage taken in order to make active mitigation work. To be honest,l I kind of expected a change like this as rage is nearly limitless as prot and there needs to be a limiting factor of the resource used for the mitigation abilities.

Muspel · 11/09/11, 3:50 PM

Originally Posted by Runtime

It appears that warriors will no longer generate rage from damage taken in order to make active mitigation work.

That part might only apply to prot, given Death Wish's tooltip.

Runtime · 11/09/11, 3:58 PM

Its weird that they would make a talent literally useless for a spec given their current design goal. Im curious if that talent is up for change. Perhaps it might be change to allows rage gen from damage taken or something.

Muspel · 11/09/11, 6:57 PM

Originally Posted by Runtime

Its weird that they would make a talent literally useless for a spec given their current design goal. Im curious if that talent is up for change. Perhaps it might be change to allows rage gen from damage taken or something.

That's also possible. Or maybe the new Death Wish was made before they started looking at rage system revamps.

Rynok · 11/09/11, 8:02 PM

Originally Posted by Runtime

Its weird that they would make a talent literally useless for a spec given their current design goal. Im curious if that talent is up for change. Perhaps it might be change to allows rage gen from damage taken or something.

Possible, but look at what it's next to: Deadly Calm has incredible potential for Prot, Heroic Strike and Cleave being anchors of the Prot rotation (especially for consistent threat).

I understand that Bull Rush might seem more geared to Prot than the other talents in the tier due to its inclusion of Intervene, but let's face it: how often do you really Intervene during the average boss encounter?

Muspel · 11/09/11, 10:44 PM

Further info: the attack speed slow debuff is gone. Thunder Clap will apply the 10% physical damage reduction in an AoE, instead. Also, our mastery is going to be nerfed in some way, which isn't a surprise (either that, or they're massively buffing the DK/druid masteries, but that's less likely).

One less debuff to keep up for tanks will be nice. Should also give us more rage to work with for the new active mitigation playstyle.

Runtime · 11/10/11, 12:26 AM

My guess would that our masteries buff our mitigation abilities like shield block in the same way DK mastery buffs deathstrike. As for losing demo shout I am extremely glad as it is quite annoying to apply.

Bull rush kind of confuses me since raging blow is still in the game. Do they expect fury warriors who take this to intervene on CD?

Muspel · 11/10/11, 9:34 AM

Originally Posted by Runtime

My guess would that our masteries buff our mitigation abilities like shield block in the same way DK mastery buffs deathstrike. As for losing demo shout I am extremely glad as it is quite annoying to apply.

Bull rush kind of confuses me since raging blow is still in the game. Do they expect fury warriors who take this to intervene on CD?

Bull rush strikes me as more of a PvP talent.

Runtime · 11/10/11, 3:08 PM

Based on some info we gained from blue posts after the Q&A, it appears the enrage mechanic might be changing a bit although they were kind of vague. It appears critting will actually cause you to be enraged since they are removing deep wounds. And the enrage will increase the amount of rage gained from auto attacks. So it is possible that the bull rush talent won't be needed as you will have a high enrage uptime anyways. The enrage change could have interesting implications for prot as it looks as if they want rage to matter for the spec. It would be interesting to see if crit becomes a viable tank stat. All very interesting changes indeed. I think I'll need to save judgement till beta goes live as the scope of these changes are very large.

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