Bregonn

I haven't seen TG tanking mentioned anywhere lately, so here goes:

I tested with my level 60 TG warrior (295 weapon skill, 2.7% to hit + 3% from precision), with a 2H'er and a shield against a level 60 target dummy and got:

0 misses in 300+ white hits
0 misses in 150+ shield slams
0 misses in ~100 sunder armors (no suprise since it's not a damaging ability)
6 misses in 40 bloodthirsts (15%)
5 misses in ~30 rends (also ~15%)

I'm not assuming the numbers will be different at 70 or 80. Does this mean they just took off Shield Slam from the -15% TG penalty and left the rest the same? I didn't test revenge, heroic strike or thunderclap which are the next interesting abilities. Does anyone know how they implemented these?

In case you're wondering, I tested on my 60 warrior and not my 70 because I didn't want to respec twice (lazy me!) and I'm actually more interested in the results at 60 atm, wanting to tank some instances while levelling to 70.

 

Rott

Shield Slam being effected by the TG penalty was a bug. I did not see official confirmation but I would assume it has been fixed. As far as I know it was fixed before the patch went live as our TG warrior reported no problems while tanking some trash in sunwell the same day the patch was released.

 

dr_AllCOM3

Just have to update Deep Wounds and it's mostly done and correct.
There is still a lot of room for statistics, if you know what I mean .

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Vhad

I've been trying to find a consolidating post about the current spec options at 80 with no succes. I skimmed through the 10 first and last pages so apologizes if it's been answered or if there is a consolidating post it'd be nice if someone could point me in its direction.

What!?

 

Azaghal

That's quite a complex "combo", but it seems efficient, good use of the GCD/CD, but recklessness proccing only on special attacks, You can end up rage starved before the bladestorm.
Personnaly, I always stay in battle, I'm already quite busy keeping rend up and MS under CD while using as many procs of OP and Execute as possible.
I should begin to use slam in all this, but I'm concerned of the fact that I could be rage starved quite quickly. Any feedback on that point ? I reckon it should only be used quickly after a swing, but not right before a MS if it drops your rage under 30... It seems a lot of thinking, but is the dps increase worth it ?

I already use Sweeping Strike before Bladestorm (when I have enough rage...), but the Retaliation is a good addition, I'll try it !

 

dr_AllCOM3

In build 9155 Deep Wounds is still bugged. The BT bug has nothing to do with your offhand I think, I get extremely low ticks even with one 2h equipped.

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Shha

Im pretty sure they just made it so Deep wounds are based on the "weapon damage" of weapon doing that damage. BT and execute have some "hidden damage" involved for the game mechanics (like sword spec etc), and wounds are simply calculated off that.

Thats why my suggestion to just drop OH deep wounds alltogether, and increase dual wield spec talent makes even more sense now - the more I think about it, the more I like it.

 

Prinsesa

Your results are correct.

No white misses since you're not dual-wielding.
No Shield Slam misses since SS requires a Shield and not a weapon, so the TG penalty doesn't apply.
No Sunder Armor misses since it's not a damaging ability as you pointed out.

Bloodthirst misses since it requires a weapon, so the TG penalty applies.
Rend misses since it requires a weapon, so the TG penalty applies.

Revenge and Heroic Strike both require weapons, so expect the TG penalty to apply to them.

Thunder Clap does not require a weapon (even though it deals damage), so do NOT expect the TG penalty to apply to it.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

dr_AllCOM3

Most likely. My nakes premade warrior was doing 1-2dmg ticks with just the 2h equipped. Can they just let it count as a mainhand hit? Those skills aren't related to a weapon.

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gringo

Since BT requires a weapon, this would make sense, but you could also just take the average non-mitigated damage of the skill and use this as base for Deep Wounds calculation. Would make sense, since the Deep Wounds tick should reflect the attack it was caused by.

 

Russta

One thing that hasn't really got the attention it deserves is the inability to effectively interrupt in Battle Stance. Before it just wasn't a problem because everyone did DPS in Berserker Stance but with the advent of the new Arms talents, surely it's time Pummel become usable in all but Defensive Stance? I was really excited when they announced the changes to interrupts because I always felt that doing one should be a test of skill and reflexes, not just sitting there waiting to push a button.

I would be appreciative if someone could make a post about it on the US beta boards. I know they like their stances to be fresh and original and hip and cool but Warriors are gonna start to notice this when Arena's start back up at 80.

 

levk

I'm not trying to advocate for pummel only in zerker, but in the meantime if you're staying in battle it's better to switch to shields and shield bash instead of switching to zerker. It's two GCDs - counting switching back to 2h - but you keep your rage.

 

Bregonn

Good point about requiring a weapon, forgot about that. So I did a bit more testing:

16 misses in 120 heroic strikes (13.3%)
1 miss, 1 crit and 103 hits in 105 thunderclaps

Assuming that warriors don't get spell hit/crit from their hit/crit rating (which was already concluded on this forum IIRC) it means that TG works exactly as the tooltip says. TG tanking threat will be a bit behind prot threat (10-30% ?) but given the thread lead tanks have now that shouldn't be a problem for the content they're supposed to be able to tank.

 

clavarnway

Nevermind.

http://sigs.guildlaunch.net/sig.php/1424974uXyta.png

 

Chumble

The consensus so far seems to be that for 2H Arms, Axe specialisation is the way to go. Has anyone done any testing with Dwarves and their 5 Expertise with Maces racial to see if that affects the figures? I'd speculate the improvement is negligible on most bosses but don't have the maths or much experience as DPS warrior (yet) to back up that assumption.

 

Chirality

I don't know about that--if you have very high rage, perhaps...but since you also reset your swing timer by doing that ....

 

Pixen

Anyone know if the numbers for Rend from Wowhead are accurate? It's showing the 3.0.2 Rend as

"Wounds the target causing them to bleed for 255 damage plus an additional [0.3 * ((MWB + mwb) / 2 + AP / 14 * MWS)] (based on weapon damage) over 15 sec."

and the 3.0.3 Rend as

"Wounds the target causing them to bleed for 215 damage plus an additional [1 * ((MWB + mwb) / 2 + AP / 14 * MWS)] (based on weapon damage) over 15 sec."

The listed change in the patch is "Rend base damage has been slightly lowered, additional damage changed - originally took 15% of base weapon damage, now takes 50%, originally took 2.14% from weapon attack power damage, now takes 7.14%." I'm not fantastic at math, but does the change in Rend in the two formulas I listed above reflect the change in percentages Blizzard's comment would indicate?

 

Grigori

No, it is not. The AP increase is consistent with the Blizzard comment, but the base weapon damage contribution is double what Blizzard says (30% -> 100% instead of 15% -> 50%). My guess is that the dev making the comment misread Blizzard's own formula because of the "divide by 2" part (0.3 x (WMB + wmb) / 2 is 30% of average base weapon damage, not 15%).

 

• adamb10

TG may get its hit penalty removed altogether:

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> GC: You said -5% hit on TG not 12%

 

Darian_TruBlade

I believe Blizzard has figured out, though I think they probably had an inkling before, that holding all talents to the same standard is folly. By nature there must be iconic, spec-defining talents that break out of the "1% per point" paradigm. Having a baseline of "1% per point" works as a great foundation to build off of, but true balance can't be obtained by rigidly sticking to that concept.

Talents like Bloodthirst and Titan's Grip are iconic, just as Shadow Form, Earth Shield, Fel Guard, Crusader Strike, Bestial Wrath, Water Elemental, Shadowstep and Mangle (and many others) are. Whether providing utility, damage, or other effectiveness these talents can't play by the normal rules. Good gameplay must trump everything except class/spec balance.

It's very hopeful to see that Blizzard is willing to reverse nerfs made for the sake of arbitrary rules. Whether or not we'll see the removal of the 5% penalty probably rests more on how the armor buff to bosses affects us relative to other melee/physical DPS.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Russta

Hit was a ridiculous penalty to add in the first place.

• It ruined Fury's ability to tank well when they were trying to make it possible for non-tank specs to be able to do so.
• It ruined Fury's viability in PvP when they were trying to get all trees viable in both PvP and PvE.
• It made Fury a very unappealing choice to people leveling the class due to the chronic lack of gear to support it outside raids.
• It made Plate gear require more hit on it which ruins the homogenization of gear as Paladins and Death Knights (sorta) don't need so much of it.
• 15% and 12% were just annoying to aim for, 5% is wholly irrelevant, and, eventually, Fury Warrior will become God when the gear is available to truly negate it.

I seriously have no idea what they were thinking when they added it, it was such a shortsighted decision. I do agree that it needs a penalty but I'm at a loss as to what would work. This talent is going to come back and bite them, and us Warriors, in the arse in a few months because I'm getting serious vanilla Naxx déjÃ* vu.

 

Raised

Possibily transfering the hit penalty to crit penalty, as crit is not a 'reach-cap-and-move-on' stat. It would also nerf rage gen a bit, making the huge increase in white damage be somewhat offset by the reduction of yellow damage.

If they leave TG as is, non-51point Fury Warriors are going to eat nerfs designed to pull the ridiculousness of TG back in line with other DPS classes.

 

Daronsk

The problem with changing the penelty to crit is that it would really hurt the pvp aspect of Titan's grip. Fury already relies on crit to get its damage going due to flurry and this is even more true now that we have rampage proccing off crits. If they throw a crit penelty on top of resilliance then your looking at a very unfavorable position to overcome for fury pvp.

 

Shha

Honestly if you look earlier in this thread I mentioned it already. The penalty was there, and it was about perfect one - the haste one. Reasons why it was correct approach:

- Currently TG scales the best of all specs/classes. A flat nerf on a stat like hit that doesnt really suffer from "diminishing returns" (well it does but very slightly), until cap, just gives ANOTHER way to scale. As in it will simply nerf initial damage while boosting scaling.

- Nerf on haste "scales" with gear. Its more and more severe the more haste there is on your gear. Nerf to hit can be basically said as a flat rating nerf - 5% hit = ~79 hit rating flat penalty. A 5% haste nerf would be a 79haste rating * 1+haste rating boost ). If you had enough haste for 20% speed increase the 5% flat speed nerf would change into a 95 rating etc etc.

- Nerf on haste lowers the white swing/heroic damage, which makes more interesting fury rotation. One thing about TG that has no "mathematical" consequence, but it makes it somewhat boring is the low appeal of the instants. Arms has fun big crits with SD - with TG basically your BT crit often are lower then your autoattack crits/heroic crits.

- A solid nerf on haste makes Slam a viable addition to Fury dps - a NON Bloodsurged Slam to be exact. That makes TG somewhat more entertaining again


Couple a haste nerf within realm of 15%, with a boost to unending fury to 15% damage/10% lower CD on BT/WW/Slam (so BT/WW end up being 4.5/9 sec cds or 3/6 gcds for more smooth rotations) and you have more interesting TG playstyle.

5% like Blizzard said doesnt even make much sense - I got there by gemming ONE 10 hit gem and using hit food over str.

 

levk

I leveled 60-70 as TG fury with the 15% penalty and to be honest it wasn't that bad. People look at the raid hit cap numbers which are staggering but during leveling I mostly went for green quests with green mobs and the numbers there are substantially lower. Was I close to the hit cap on those mobs? Absolutely not and it was mildly irritating to miss two executes in a row, but I still think it was easily the best choice for leveling. Hit gear on outland quest rewards is reasonably easy to find (unless you have leatherophobia) and again you don't need all that much for green mobs. Only gripe really is since there's no hit gear in azeroth you can't take any with you.

I actually think in concept it was a pretty good way to go about it - far better than the haste penalty they went with originally - hit is a cheap stat to stack. And it was good to have this new option open with a good cheap stat making 5 stat gear possible with all the things you really want - hit, str, crit, and haste. The only problem was as you said - none of the other plate classes need this much hit so this gear would be sparse.

About tanking - somebody did tests in one of the warrior threads and reported that TG penalty with a shield offhand only applied to BT and WW. Shield slam, sunder (no surprise here) and even white hits with a 2h mainhand are treated like you have a normal 1h. Basically only BT threat while tanking, and that penalty disappeared if you equipped a normal 1h. If you're in a situation where you can afford the BT penalty threatwise, it's probably better to use the 2h because of the normally retarded stamina advantage 2h have over 1h.