ALEXTREBEK

They won't. Currently armor [for tanks] solely acts (for Blizzard's sinister means, at least) as a means of empirically reducing the amount of damage a tank will take, with the increase between gear sets (ex. T5 --> T6) only being a 2-4% increase in DR. This is why there have been no alternatives to Ironshields made - using an Ironshield Potion is equivalent to increasing your Armor by an entire tier. The sole reason why armor should be valued as highly as it is, is because it is (bar 102.4% Avoidance) the only means for a tank to reduce the damage they will take when an attack does land, I've termed it EDR, or Empirical Damage Reduction. Avoidance offers Theoretical Damage Reduction (TDR), which is why it scales (very well) with itself.

 

Punscho

I don't think they will either, but I hope they are adding many blue place pieces with extra armor at level 80. Warrior tanking was seriously lacking at 70 until you could grab half a set from Karazhan because of the great difference in armor level between blues and epics. Either that or they will have 3 solid months of whining on the forums why druids are better tanks... again.

Honestly I think they _should_ allocate item points for armor on all tanking gear, and let dps and healing plate have slightly less of it. But that's a thought I have for PvP balancing and not for this thread.

 

Muggins

New changes from the latest Alpha:

# Shield Block changes:

* Shield Block - Increases your chance to block and the amount blocked by 100% for 5 sec, but will only block 1 attack. 30 sec cooldown.
* Improved Shield Block - Reduces the cooldown of your Shield Block ability by 5/10 secs. (2 ranks)
* Shield Specialization - Increases your chance to block attacks with a shield by 1%/2%/3%/4%/5% and has a 20%/40%/60%/80%/100% chance to generate 2 rage when a block occurs.

# Mocking blow cooldown changed to 1 minute, and can be used in Battle Stance, Defensive Stance

# Defensive Stance now gives 45% increased threat (was 30%)

# Improved disarm additional damage changed to 4%/7%/10%

The shield block mechanics have me really quite intrigued, especially in conjunction with the critical block talent, it seems that we could absorb some seriously ludicrous amounts of damage and i have to wonder if the 100% increase will work in a similar fashion to 2 piece T5.

 

◊ Quigon

Seems like a silly change to change to shield block - being only 1 block. Maybe they are keeping imp sb's 2nd attack reduction and only mentioning changes.

Increasing defensive stance's threat modifier is also weird. I don't know that this means much, unless they want more overhead to work with with the players.

Improved disarm is still a joke, alert the press.

 

Mode

The shield block changes clearly point towards a rework of the crushing blow mechanics which, let's face it, are retarded. There is absolutely no in-game indication of how important it is to hit shield block on every cooldown.

The mocking blow change is good and long overdue; it's probably just getting changed now because they remembered it existed.

The defensive stance change seems to be a part of their overall strategy of remedying the tank shortage by giving non-prot warriors the tools they need to tank. For example, the deep arms talent that reduces the cooldown on overpower and revenge by three seconds.

Improved disarm is still bad and will only be a part of a few sketchy pvp builds.

Equally-interesting to us warriors, bears have had their -spellcast debuff turned into an -attack speed debuff that probably wont stack with thunderclap. The days of always needing a warrior for thunderclap/demo shout may be coming to end.

 

Russta

The Defensive Stance change is because they removed Defiance.

 

Muggins

This has also turned up on the wiki, but wasn't mentioned before with the previous changes so you might want to take it with a pinch of salt:

Vigilance (replaces shield slam, requires conc blow): Focus your protective gaze on a friendly target, increasing their chance to dodge by 5%. In addition, any time they are hit by an attack your Taunt cooldown is refreshed. Lasts $d. This effect can only be on one target at a time.

It looks like the idea might be to make Shield Slam a base skill for all warriors to help dps warrior specs tank along with the Def Stance modifier change and they've given us this as a replacement.

 

nfw

With druid getting defensive stance like talent, it almost seem like warrior and feral druid will change roles in min/max raids in WOTLK, with druid MT while warrior intervene and vigilance, unless there are fights with spell reflect gimmick

 

Zegai

I'm getting mixed feelings about all that.

While I like some of the +threat stuff, it just feels like we end up losing on the mitigation side of things on the end, if it stays like this. I honestly hope it doesn't work out to be another BC-like situation.

But I guess it's alpha and most things will change before even beta, not to say official release..

PS: And where did they hide the 6 expertise from defiance?

 

Celandro

The changes from the alpha are very interesting but can we split off the discussion of alpha talents to another thread? There is no guarantee that those talents will ever make it to live and its half a year off. Most of the other classes seem to have split off their alpha talent discussion into seperate threads.

 

◊ Quigon

Interesting hypothesis. However, I think that this would really upset the protection warriors out there right now - as typically that role is classically defined... just as priests and mages are. Although, there aren't a lot of pure PvE prot warriors left to anger now adays - so perhaps.

 

seminarca

Pretty much that. The Druid "Defensive Stance" talent has already been removed in the latest alpha push. It's way too early to cry foul given how many changes WotLK is sure to go through before release. Having said that ..

.. and without wanting to get into the usual "but you can tank and dps with one spec" arguments, I do think this classic definition needs a rethink. And it's funny you should mention the classic definition of Priests, given that at the moment Shadow and Holy|Holy/Disc are both widely prevalent, and only semi-recently did CoH make healy Priests feel welcome =p

 

Chardonnay

The warrior changes suggest to me that there will be (there SHOULD BE) a HUGE boost to our blockvalue. I can even foresee a significant change to the currently awful str:BV conversion ratio and tanking gear with lots of str...

Blocks (and especially critical blocks) are going to be serious mitigation and the new improved SB serves as an another oh-shit button if you get low HP, probably. I'd prefer such a change to be honest. The current "mash sb to avoid crushes" is pretty much tiresome and dumb.

Blizzard told they want to get rid of crushings. They also told they want tanks to inflict significant damage when tanking. All these things suddenly click into place if you imagine we will have huge amounts of BV on our gear.

Edit: It also makes me wonder what will happen to the paladins' holy shield...

 

zork

20 seconds cooldown on block with a duration of 5 seconds after talents sounds wierd. You would need passive hit immunity against Illidan's shear if this goes live without a change on the crushing blow mechanics. (If bosses are still player level +3 in WotLk)

BLOG [ZIB] _ GUILD [TDMOG] _ INTERFACE [ROTHUI] _ CHAR [ROTHAR]

 

Touf

He doesn't attack while casting, it's fine.

 

Ja7us

Huh? The issue is that he often shears more than once every 20 seconds.

 

vorda

Do you really want to start wild speculation based on info from an early alpha build while you haven't got the faintest clue about what mechanics they might change?

 

2ndNin

Could this instead of being a removal of crushes (well beyond targetted bosses eg: Brutallus doesn't crush ), that they are defining the roles of the tanks better?

Big Melee hitters - Druids, high armour, eats crushes through armour
Melee hitters + specials - Warriors, oh shit buttons provide multiple outs, guaranteed block
Fast Hitters - Paladins / Death knights
Crushers - Paladins

Rather than the warrior is MT by default unless there is a reason not to (so you would see a lot more progression kills by Druids, Paladins and Death Knights?). Also would give warriors a much more defined role rather than being MT by default, they actually have a role to play and the talents to maximise that role.

 

Efreet

As it stands right now there are only a few heavy hitting bosses that crush, and they only crush (a warrior) because they hit fast and/or parry haste or stun the tank. Relatively sure if they want a boss to hit hard from now on they'll probably just make another Brutallus, unable to crush, unable to parry haste, still does a huge amount of burst without avoidance. From what's implied by 2 hand tanking presumably DKs will be viable versus caster/elemental (assuming they don't crush and aren't blockable) mobs, and paladins will continue to be aoe tanks. I don't think its realistic to assume every guild will have 1 feral druid, 1 protection warrior, 1 Protection paladin, and 1 tanking deathknight either.

 

Fellwraith

I think rather than further specialization, it makes a lot more sense for them to homogenize tanking classes.

Deathknights have a fear-break in the leaked talent trees (which can be paired with a trinket, wotf and/or fearward), druids have a last stand, etc. Giving every tanking class some of the gimmick abilities gives your raid some flexibility without creating an all-in-one tank. Keep in mind 10 man raids will need to be viable, making any *one* class the only one with a certain tanking capability limits their options for encounter design. At a minimum I'd think they'd want 2 classes with any required ability.

Adding new classes to the game without having some cross-class capabilities makes it very difficult to balance a 25 man or 10 man raiding roster, I'd expect that they understand this. With 4 tanking classes, they shouldn't require you to have one of each to function as a raid.

If the block value bonus works anything like 2pc T5 did, then you'll still be mashing shieldblock for threat reasons.

I doubt they'll boost block value that much in the next expansion, it causes serious balance issues if they do (immunity to physical dps in pvp, etc.) Critical block looks pretty crummy compared to the other talents in the tree. You need a lot of block value and block rating or a light-hitting, fast attacking foe to make it worthwhile in today's world.

 

Suesse

Counters include shield break (mechanics seem weird), stuns, being behind the player (easy with two melee). Other disadvantages include doing no damage though this could change I guess if block value were increased enough (base skill - shield slam). After the shield block changes, you'd need some pretty insane avoidance + block rating to actually get this physical dps immunity... remember this is not just crush immunity in pve, physical dps has +hit and +expertise gear/talents.

 

Fellwraith

Yea I guess I should clarify, I don't mean total invulnerability, just enough that you aren't really threatened by any physical dps class.

Shieldbreak is only -3% to your chance to block, and it doesn't fully eliminate block from what I've seen in the leaked lich king info. Expertise doesn't do a thing against block rating. I also have hard counters like spell reflect (only 15 rage in Lich king) to use against traps and direct damage magic attacks (stuff like shocks).

High block value coupled with extremely high base health and high armor is more than enough to make most fights against a rogue, enhancement shaman, dps warrior, or hunter very manageable. They all have magic, stuns, etc. and they can't do enough damage during the times I'm stunned to burn me down. It becomes a battle of attrition and a protection warrior with a huge health pool, who isn't taking damage 40% of the time, is going to win that (especially when you factor in the debuffs the prot warrior will be using). Yea, they can hurt me, but I still kill them 90% or more of the time.

So now I'm getting some pretty hefty damage increases in the tree (10% to shield slam, sword and board, 10% more damage from disarm every 45 seconds, etc.), my cooldown on last stand is down to 2 min, and I'm doubling or tripling my block value? Protection would be far too powerful a spec in pvp - huge amounts of tactical flexibility, great survivability and decent damage. And that's not even getting into some of the stuff like double-shield slam when sword and board procs (which is not only incredible burst with a high block value, but it also dispels buffs like bloodlust or fortitude). I'd love to be that viable in pvp, but I just don't think they'd let it happen.

 

Suesse

Yes, I've seen this 3% also. Seems a little strange that a broken shield would only lose 3% of its block chance. I know for a fact this is not what happens when my shield goes red.

While expertise doesn't reduce block rating, it does decrease parry and dodge which are necessary in currently available gear to reach immunity from physical damage (assuming each hit is less than your block value).

In general I agree though. Increasing block is very dangerous, I guess my first concern would be 5-mans, but pvp is an issue too. Warriors soloing level-60 raid content or level 70 5-mans in endgame gear has already shown us how dangerous these things can be. (I realize there are other factors here such as healing items and wacky set bonuses.)

Current max of block value is about 1.3k (I think), but you need to wear some level 60 epics for this. At this value, a critical block following a (new) shield block would be 5.2k blocked (assuming it is multiplicative). If current endgame gear were itemized with block value in place of block rating / strength / agility, you'd probably see about 1.5k-2.0k block value on our gear. Imagine blocking 6-8k (critical/shield block). The problem remains, when you take this warrior out of a raid setting those stats are just really wrong.

Perhaps the new shield block is their fix to the physical damage immunity problem. While they add a ton of block value, they also increase the cooldown. If new gear ends up following the lessons learned from TBC (Sunwell Radiance), perhaps gear will have much less avoidance and block rating. Perhaps you won't be able to guarantee a block anymore.

 

Efreet

At current I don't see too many classes that can physically hit much harder than 1300 on an 18000 armor target (with demo up), provided you don't have to turn around very much its very possible to kill a rogue (who doesn't want to run away) or an arms warrior or a fury warrior. It's only possible to kill a hunter, ret paladin, or an enhance shaman if they're pretty dense, but blocking 8000 when presumably MS's on very high armor targets are capped at 3000 and your regular SBV is 2000ish is somewhat irrelevant. You still obviously get ripped to shreds by casters or simple kiting, and you can be ignored altogether if we're talking an arena situation.

 

Balrok

Some background first, and then a question. My toon is a heroic-level tank gear-wise.

In section XXI (Tanking Macros), the following "Lazy Tank" macro is given with pointed instruction to not use it:

#show Shield Slam
/startattack
/cast Shield Block
/use Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600
/castsequence reset=6 Shield Slam, Devastate, Devastate, Revenge

I recently went from no-macro tanking (save for a focus-set devastate for tanking two) to working with several macros. these are two of the macros I wrote:

[Use the "?" icon]
/cast Revenge
/cast Shield Block
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

[use the "?" icon]
/cast Devastate
/cast Shield Block
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

The idea being to increase the amount of time that Shield Block is up. I also left Shield Block on its own in case I need to choose between the two. The last line prevents me from seeing "not ready" warnings when Shield Block is still on cool down, but I do see warnings when there isn't enough rage for both actions to be taken. I'm pleased with the results, since Shield Block is up nearly 100% of the time in endless rage situations (when not on cool down), and up much more frequently during trash pulls.

Question: By embedding Shield Block in Revenge and Devastate am I setting myself up for problems in later instances such as Kara, ZA, and 25-Mans?

Thank you for your time,

Balrok