WotLK talent Preview/Discussion - Page 28

Gruntle · 08/04/08, 6:19 AM

Well, I think a 37/34 build dualwielding onehanders will be better than that. Sudden death is not too hot (read utterly worthless) together with 2h slamming.

Gellor · 08/04/08, 7:12 AM

So does anyone know if the change to Deep Wounds (rolling ala ignite) is intended or bug?

Fqubed · 08/04/08, 10:47 AM

DW bringing in rolling ignite is almost 100% sure a bug. Its the same thing that happened with ignites only with fisical, and we know what happened to ignites.

Shha · 08/04/08, 11:34 AM

I think it might be intended - they couldnt fix to deep wounds refreshing themselves and not ticking at all for the longest time.

However they will probably do 2 things:

a) Make sure they roll like ignites NOW , not pre-BC
b) Possibly rebalance the amount of DW damage. Even properly "rolled" deep wounds (aka like mages do now, and not addin extra damage) would be a lot more powerful. Current DW damage seems to go in 3-5% damage range. With rolling rule, DW means basically 60% weapon damage every crit (as far as I know not normalized) - which could be "averaged" by around 25% more damage from every crit - so up to 15% damage.

Well either way its a nice change to DW, and I bet its intended (save for possible nerfing the 60% to something lower in the future).

Nite_Moogle · 08/04/08, 11:38 AM

I'd guess the Deep Wounds stacking is incomplete implementation. If they are now stacking the counter rather than constantly resetting the timer it will solve the problem of constant crits making deep wounds not very useful, but it'd be (as demonstrated) amazingly overpowered. On very long fights that debuff never drops off and will stack up to insane numbers if allowed to 'roll' uncontrolled. I would venture that they'll cap the stack (probably at 5) and change the talent to 10% of weapon damage per debuff, which would still come out as a net buff.

zaon · 08/04/08, 2:42 PM

Hmm I wonder if they have thought about the threat component of deep wounds and who that gets assigned to. If it gets assigned to the originator of the stack it could be interesting for threat. Have MT spec into it, establish the stack, and then let the dps warrior go to town.

• landsoul · 08/04/08, 2:55 PM

A very easy way to fix it is to make the first bleed an X% of weapon damage happen instantaneously on the crit and then bleed every 3 seconds afterwords without resetting, but continuing to bleed the given damage at the same ticking cycle if a new crit occurs.

Tooltip:

When dealing critical damage with a weapon attack, deals X% weapon damage in addition and places a bleed effect on the target which deals X% weapon damage over X seconds. Any new crit will refresh the debuff timer.

This kind of change would also make any version of TG more desirable.

Shha · 08/04/08, 3:20 PM

From what I understand they arent rolling like old pre-BC ignite. Every warrior has his own DW stack, and it just adds the new crits to the stack like with mages (which basically means, every crit gives you 60% of weapon damage sharp, not more not less).

Still with amount of crits and attack speed warriors have its really potent. To take my old brutallus that i posted here for example -

2700 total dps ~45% crit

With average of 5k AP and 2.5 weapon speed (103 dps) My weapon damage is around 1200 for MH with BF , and 750 for OH. Corresponding 60% of those is 720 for MH, 450 for OH.

WW every 10 seconds procs 0.45x720+0.45*450 dmg from deep wounds
BT every 6 seconds procs 0.45x720 dmg from deep wounds
Melee speed is around 2.5/(1.25(flurry)*1.15(haste/drums)) = 1.73. So its around 1/1.73 attack/sec = 0.45/1.74 crits/sec =0.26x720 (MH DW), 0.26x450 (OH DW).

So totalled its

deep wounds originating from

WW - 53 dps
BT - 54 dps
Melee/heroic - 304dps.

Now it adds up to 410 dps. With 3 sec ticks, it means average tick of DW BEFORE mangle, would be 1230. With mangle it would be up to 1600.

So all the "big numbers", are possible with just "personal DW". It was lvl 70 comparison too - Id imagine with trauma and lvl 80 gear ticks would be greater.

As for balance issues - DW change like that would be a very good idea, adding something new to warriors , and possibly fun. There isnt anything inherently wrong with it - 1600 ticks at 70 seem a bit overboard at first glance - but consider that 1600/3 sec = 533 dps. Its not that outrageous compared to our dps (the calculations were taken from 2700 dps brutallus - in which old DW were around 120 dps). Still its a 15-20% artificial increase to warrior dps - not something unheard of for other classes with the WOTLK changes - and something that im sure could be balanced.

Most obvious would be a nerf to DW damage % - a crude but effective solution. Id rather have them stay as important part of warrior dps, since it sounds fun - so maybe a general "nerf" to warrior dps to compensate for DW. Or maybe its just what dps warriors need to be more viable - well see.

outcast · 08/04/08, 5:25 PM

Originally Posted by landsoul

From the whole time I have been playing BC, from SSC to Sunwell, and in different guilds, I have always kept pace with rogues in overall damage. With similar gear levels, I never really found myself getting outclassed by them. I was either 5% ahead or 5% behind. In fights where raid synergy is stacked towards physical DPS and threat is not an issue, I would have the slighter edge. Does everyone's guild have every rogue with warglaives or am I completely missing something? Are my rogues bad? Am I outclassing my rogues?

My experience has been that I can keep pace with equal-geared Rogues in general. But I do need to spend much more effort than them to successfully do it.

There's several "minor" points that make having a Rogue easier - less damage taken, CloS enhancing survivability (debuffs on Kalec, Burn on Brut, Encap on Felmyst just to list some), Vanish (whereas I just have to turn off any attack if threat is wonky) and Rogues actually having proper itemization and getting leather stuff before the plate "rogues". All together this makes quite some difference, especially on learning new bosses where the margin for error is very slim.

Couple this with general raid requirements and the favoring of ranged dps in many boss fights, and I already have difficulties now in SWP in justifying my raid spot as the third warrior in the raid (first is Prot, second Arms obviously). I still have it due to history, attendance and other stuff like occasionally respeccing Arms. But especially if my Battleshout is not needed we're often thinking "this would be way easier if I were a Rogue".

Fast forward to WotLK, total raid composition reshuffle, 1 more class to fit into 25 slots, shouts being raid wide, BF still in Arms tree with another potentially raid-relevant debuff even deeper in Arms (Trauma) and to me it certainly seems pretty hard to justify demanding a deep-Fury warrior slot.

Maybe 32/39 will be a fun substitute of the 17/44 playstyle for raiding, but I'm still hoping that some significant changes will happen during the Warrior review - preferably introducing another synergy talent in the Fury tree, alternatively moving BF to Fury, or just nerfing the power of BF so it's not as mandatory as it is now.

rhen · 08/04/08, 11:16 PM

The overpowered part of the rolling deep wounds is that you can apply and stack it at will with recklessness. This is something mages can't do with ignite. Granted that recklessness has a long cooldown, but the speculation and hopes are that the cooldown is reduced...

Densor · 08/04/08, 11:37 PM

Actually, the overpowered part of DW stacking like you are suggesting (it isn't rolling unless you get extra damage, which may or may not be the case) is that it becomes significantly better than Impale in terms of crit damage bonus. As a result, they could get rid of Impale (bad idea for TG specs, I think, although it is probably still be a net gain) or add the effect of Trauma and/or BF onto Impale (awesome idea) or nerf DW (sucks, but you'll still have a net gain). At this point in time, it is impossible to know if DW would actually be imbalanced in its current form, since the DPS of most classes is up in the air.

Now, if they roll, then something is wrong, but I think they know how to not cause rolling debuffs now. Also, ignites currently suffer from a wonderful bug that occurs when you get two crits at the same time. One of the ignites gets lost when this occurs, maybe, sometimes. We have no clue. We can reproduce the issue, though I'm not sure if anyone has bothered testing for it on beta. DW will probably suffer from it, too, if it still exists.

Hypatia · 08/05/08, 12:14 AM

Isn't the "rolling" part of the impale the remaining total damage divided by the number of ticks in a normal Deep Wounds? That would mean that over time, this "rolling" is going to do the exact same amount of damage as if every deep wounds proc did damage individually. There shouldn't be any way to make it do more damage than that overall, right?

i.e. your first DW is going to do A damage. Half of that damage is done and then it procs again. The second will do B damage. So the new DW starts at full duration with B + A/2 damage to do.

Actually, I guess I'd expect the net effect to be that it would do *less* damage than that over time if it procs a lot, since the "leftovers" would always be getting smeared ahead into the next DW duration.

In any case, it seems that this is a way to make it so that more procs doesn't mean that your old DW procs get wasted, that's all.

Densor · 08/05/08, 12:40 AM

No, rolling is when the damage per tick is calculated and added to by each crit, without being reduced by ticking. So, your first crit would deal 50 damage per tick. Your second crit would increase that to 100 damage per tick. Your third crit to 150 damage, etc. After 4 ticks, your first crit should fade, but when things "roll" that doesn't happen, so you end up doing 50 damage per tick from your first crit until you stop critting and the debuff expires. The value of crits ends up being much much higher because they end up lasting like 10-100 times as long as they should.

That was ended when Naxx was implemented, I think. The new rolling then, was that 1 stack of ignite existed on the target and could stack to 5. The damage from the first 5 crits is what determined how much each tick dealt. So, you would AP+trinket pyro + POM-Pyro from all your mages and then spam scorch until none of you critted within 4 seconds. Your ignite ticks from the crit pyros would last until then. It was a much less severe bug, but still was a form of DPS.

Now, ignites just stack so that the damage per tick on one ignite is multiplied by the number of ticks left on it and added to the new ignite to calculate the new ticks.

Prinsesa · 08/05/08, 1:15 AM

It will be interesting to see how they will handle Arena gear which, traditionally, comes with extra armor for Cloth and Leather armor classes. Are they going to disable this in instances like Resilience? What about outdoor bosses? Should they disable it? And so on. I can't wait to see how they are going to solve this problem.

I believe it was mentioned during one of the Alpha leaks that Resilience is/will be disabled inside instances, although that says nothing about bonus armor.

Good thing they are taking a look at Thunderclap, though letting it hit one additional target is still quite underpowered for AoE threat. Unless somehow all the AE pulls are 5 or less.

Outside of Shattered Halls and possibly the last half of Slave Pens, nearly every 5-man pull is just 4 mobs max. The only issue with Thunderclap as of now is that it still can't generate enough threat to hold aggro against just healing even if your DPS never doles out a drop of AOE damage and stays on skull the entire time.

If we look at the idea of "making Warriors viable for 5-mans without stealing the AOE spotlight from Tankadins", then leaving a target cap on TClap while letting it generate as much threat as Consecration (purely fictional, but you get the point) makes sense: You still get to do your heroic runs without having to bring 3 Mages, but the Tankadins ability to pull a second (or third) group to push things even faster remains intact (as long as his survivability/healer can handle it).

Shha · 08/05/08, 1:52 AM

Originally Posted by rhen

The overpowered part of the rolling deep wounds is that you can apply and stack it at will with recklessness. This is something mages can't do with ignite. Granted that recklessness has a long cooldown, but the speculation and hopes are that the cooldown is reduced...

I was supporting DW stacking like CURRENT mage ignite - sure it would boost recklessness , but its not an entirely bad thing.

Actually, the overpowered part of DW stacking like you are suggesting (it isn't rolling unless you get extra damage, which may or may not be the case) is that it becomes significantly better than Impale in terms of crit damage bonus.

Indeed its 3 times more bonus then impale - then again its not burst damage (not important for pve, still for some aspects its something to note). Still what does it change ? Impale will still be an ok skill - not a no-brainer, but definitely a worthwhile talent. In fact they could even switch then impale with DW

- Add it to the list of possibilities.

Or they could switch deep wounds with the extra rage talent at bottom of fury tree (forgot name), and give Arms a pvp one with extra rage generation, while deep fury would get an awesome dps talent oriented at pve, and possibly justify their spot more by pure dps.

[. At this point in time, it is impossible to know if DW would actually be imbalanced in its current form, since the DPS of most classes is up in the air.

Thats right on. We dont know how the dps will really shape atm. DW change adds ~ 15% dps , but will it make warriors 15% too powerful, or maybe it will be just right buff - or maybe even warriors will need even more buffs - more testing will probably bring some answer.

Now, if they roll, then something is wrong, but I think they know how to not cause rolling debuffs now. Also, ignites currently suffer from a wonderful bug that occurs when you get two crits at the same time. One of the ignites gets lost when this occurs, maybe, sometimes. We have no clue. We can reproduce the issue, though I'm not sure if anyone has bothered testing for it on beta. DW will probably suffer from it, too, if it still exists.

Emeraude · 08/05/08, 7:17 AM

A comment from Ghostcrawler on Blood Frenzy in raids.

WoW Forums -> Blood Frenzy and Raid Synergy in 25-man raids

This issue (who gets into the raids?) is something we are spending a lot of time on right now. Blood Frenzy is the kind of talent that could definitely present a problem if it means Arms warriors are really valuable for their debuff potential and Fury warriors have to compete for raid slots mostly on the merit of their dps. At least Fury still has PvP... oh, wait....

It may be that any class having to earn a raid spot just because it's an awesome class is kind of a tired notion. In an ideal world, everyone brings something to a group, yet a group has a few options for which class and spec it will bring to fill a role. Ideally, stacking more than 1 (maybe 2) of any spec wouldn't bring a lot of additional benefit. I don't think anyone wants to see raids with 4 resto shammies and 3 shadow priests (except maybe the shammies and shadow priests, but you get my drift).

TLDR: Class design isn't done. We are shooting for more parity. Nobody should get a raid spot because their one talent brings a huge dps (or mana or healing or health) benefit to the raid that no other spec can provide.

I was happy to see them finally acknowledge the power of Blood Frenzy, as well as comment on Fury's current sorry state of affairs.

Pitbuller · 08/05/08, 9:10 AM

Best WWSscoreboard warrior dps on Brutallus
Only 2037 of damage come from deep wounds.

If deep wounds worked just like Ignite(without any bug) then deep wound damage potential would be amazing:

[Damage source: Crits * avarage crit damage * deep wound multplier = total damage]

Auto attack:  186 * (1130 * 0.6) = 126108
Heroic strike: 51 * (3030 * 0.6) = 92718
Bloodthirst:   29 * (4570 * 0.6) = 79518
Execute:       11 * (4082 * 0.6) = 26941
Whirlwind:     18 * (1920 * 0.6) = 20736
Hamstring: (ignored)             +
Total deep wounds damage:          346021 or 1134dps.

2037 vs 346021
Potential of Deep wounds is massive but it's bahavior is lame.
If blizzard change it to ignite like model, nerf bonus to 20% and let it generate rage.
Smoother rage gain when specced Tital grip and about 10% boost to dps.
In pvp resillience triple dip this down. Lower crit% + crits damage + lower dots.

Edit: Math is based if Deep wounds work more like ignite and thus it's not how it work now. Idea was just show potential. See Shha post to for correct numbers.

Gruntle · 08/05/08, 9:30 AM

That's an excellent idea Pitbuller. DW could really be fixed to be something great for a TG warrior. The following changes would solve a lot of issues in one stroke:

- Rage giving "ignite"-like DW (with damage adjusted to not be too powerful)
- Switch places of DW talent with the Intensify rage or Furious resolve talent.
- Remove Blood frenzy talent and add it as an effect on DW. Maybe move the talent a tier or two up so that it's obtainable for people who might want to go MS-pve without TG.

Dra · 08/05/08, 9:38 AM

excuse me, misread.

Shha · 08/05/08, 9:46 AM

That calculation is wrong however. Im not sure if its what you want to see, or what you propose?
DW never gave 60% of CRIT damage, just 60% of base, and weapon damage, not depending on skill used (which is also why deep wound from hamstring ticked for a whole lot). Therefore the real damage would be:

Average MH weapon damage for him (derived from heroic strike damage average) = 1160.
Average OH eapon damage 1160x62.5%.

Swing crits = 186+51 = 237.
MH crits = 119
OH crits = 118 (rounded it towards MH)

WW crits = 18, MH=9, OH =9

Total MH crits
Autoattack+Heroic= 119
BT = 29
Execute = 11
WW = 9
-----
168 crits x 1160x0.6= 116928

OH crits

Autoattack = 118
WW =9
------
127 crits x1160x0.6x62.5% = 55245

Total 116928+55245= 172173 damage or 564 dps.

Thats how DW mechanics work atm.

As for rage generation? I disagree. I find rage spikes, the only thing actually challenging about warriors, and giving us a huge potential for smooth rage generation would just dumb it down too much. Extra rage bar through intensify rage (up to 120 max with 2/2), is all I really consider justified for TG.

Also by comparing to current DW damage, just look that he got NINE total ticks of DW - thats how broken a talent is atm

. Even if his average DW just ticked without any stackign but properly every 3 sec they should do well over 10 times more damage.

Roywyn · 08/05/08, 10:02 AM

Originally Posted by Shha

Average MH weapon damage for him (derived from heroic strike damage average) = 1160.
Average OH eapon damage 1160x62.5%.

Thats how DW mechanics work atm.

Hm, from what I read, Deep Wound always uses your average Main Hand damage, whether you crit with your MH, OH or a special. So even OH crits trigger Deep Wounds calculated by your MH weapon.
Or did they change that recently?

Shha · 08/05/08, 10:13 AM

Well I was under impression it used your OH damage. If it doesnt then its even easier to calculate and the DW damage will be:

296x1160x0.6= 206016 or 674 dps.

Ill try to test the damage today to see which one is true.

Gruntle · 08/05/08, 10:19 AM

No I didn't really think of the numbers when I replied, the exact damage contribution of nonbugged Deep wounds will of course have to be balanced anyway. Even though I agree that rage management is one of the few challenging things with current DW fury I think the rage generation with TG is going to be too spiky. Something to smoothen out the rage somewhat will make it slightly easier to manage (120 rage bar would also work of course). Also, I doubt cycles will be used with TG anyway (with Bloodsurge slams) making the fighting more dynamic and fun anyway.

edit: Shha replied as I was writing, removed my response to Roywyn

Shha · 08/05/08, 10:40 AM

Well I'm not sure if DW damage will need to be balanced. Id rather have it like it is with those calculations (as 15-20% of total damage), and eventually the WHOLE warrior dps could be tuned. Right now the % warrants some interesting changes in playstyle (like actually using recklessness to stack them etc), which would be gone if they rebalanced the DW dps. Besides, Ill repeat - we dont know much about how classes compare at 80 with the gear alvaible - warriors while got somewhat interesting talents, dont strike me as getting as much raw dps boost as a lot of other classes. DW change might be just right fix to it.

TG rage generation isnt that bad. With WF change (which is a buff to rage generation too), smoothing out the rage, and negating the penalty, with extra flurry, TG builds will have comparable "smoothness" of rage to current arms builds. In fact they will play a lot easier in my opinion - sort of :

- Get your hasted weapon speed just below 2.5. Using lets say Apolyon at 3.4 base it means 3.4 x 1.2(TG) / 1.24(wf) / 1.25(Flurry) = 2.63 before haste. So roughly 84 haste rating gets you there at 70 , or if you have more you drop TG points.

- Follow with just a sequence of BT SLAM WW SLAM BT SLAM (Rampage/demo/shout/etc) SLAM. The GCD will keep you right on the correct speed (no real need to watch timers given good crit - be vary if flurry drops off, but for slam builds its REALLY rare) , and the rage flow shouldnt be too bad - probably better then at 70 with arms. Free slams dont change anything with TG losing 0.5 sec of swing but getting a new slam off will be beneficial in my opinion - besides , even if you would skip next slam after instant one - the cooldown on BT would "put you back in line", and the extra time saved would be wasted. I'm really not convinced the instant slam is worth taking with TG as much as it sounds counterintuitive. Im trying to model possible outcomes, but so far it seems to me Bloodsurge is completely useless for STATIONARY pve (obviously its a big boost for mobile fights where you cant stand and slam).

Eurytos · 08/05/08, 11:00 AM

Originally Posted by Gruntle

Well, I think a 37/34 build dualwielding onehanders will be better than that. Sudden death is not too hot (read utterly worthless) together with 2h slamming.

Good idea. But if you're doing that, you don't need the points in 2H Weapon Spec. Here's mine: 37/34/0