Crush are gone but does someone know if Blizzard wants to add new similar mechanics?

In addition to what was said about the 2h weaps having far more stats than the 1h'ers, the addition of a WF proc to Titan's grip could be devastating. And if totems help raid wide? Sure they will help all melee, but the slow 2h weaps with high damage, procting wf? I'm not sure of the math, but it sounds sick.

Almost forgot that WF totem is becoming a buff rather than a weapon pulse, so it enables the use of weight/sharpening stones for us. Actually, thinking about it, that favors quicker weapons overall, but not by a spectacular amount.

Agree/Disagree: 1 two-handed weapon is no longer a valid PVE spec in WOTLK.

Despite waiting for other details to be fleshed out in testing, it seems that all the best PVE combinations involve dual-wielding. The previous point of Arms PVE was to gain blood frenzy. It was to benefit the raid while finding an alternative source for dps in getting improved slam and 3/5 flurry. Now with enough points to be able to go to 5/5 flurry bloodthirst and possible improved berserker, I don't see any possible PVE reason to wield a single two-hander. It would seem that the viable combinations will either be 2 one-handed weapons going into arms blood frenzy, or 2 two-handed weapons deep into fury with Titan's grip.

I would agree that there is likely no situation where 1x2H is optimal, although whether it's inviable or not is uncertain. I would guess it might still be competetive at lower gear levels, before DW or 2x2H starts to realize its better AP and hit scaling, sorta similar to how affliction was still good in early TBC.


There is absolutely no solid evidence to back them up, but I wouldn't be too surprised to see some easing up on the requirements to become crit-immune. It falls in line with the removal of crushing blows, and the movement towards more transparent mechanics than the magic number of 490, and would be a consistent alternate explanation of the change of Anticipation. I wouldn't even put the removal of Defense Skill altogether beyond the realm of possibility, although again I have no supporting evidence whatsoever and no idea how else they would have you remove crits. This would also mean that the feral druid -crit% talent is purely a PvP toy.

I'm not so sure about that. You need a lot of hit rating and crit rating to make 2x2h viable. The rage generation with it is going to be very spikey, making it considerably more difficult to play well. How much does it cost you to make TG work properly and could those stats have been spent on more crit, ap, or expertise? Bloodfrenzy and trauma's value will depend on how much the rest of the raid scales. By the look of things, the new arm's builds have a lot of raid utility that the TG build doesn't get (stronger offtanks, other situational abilities).

I also think crit is a bigger deal than haste for a TG build. You get the instant slams, increased flurry uptime and better returns from impale/deep wounds. Similar to how MS/slam doesn't usually want to go below a ~2.5 adjusted swing speed, you'll have target numbers for a TG build that you don't want your MH to go below (factoring in 5/5 Flurry). I don't think you'd ever see a TG build using heroic strike like you might see with a bloodfrenzy build today.

A lot of the item budget in those 2h weapons in TBC is put into stamina. That doesn't do a whole heck of a lot for your dps.


Separately, I think it would make a lot of sense for them to adjust the str to block value conversion rate for warriors and prot paladins. It allows them to simplify tanking plate drops and it also benefits your other tanking abilities as they scale with AP.

The way things stand now the strongest build is probably deep fury that skips Titan Grip, but I would be pretty surprised if arms is completely uncompetitive when it's all said and done. Strength of Arms is a little underpowered and Bull Rush is incredibly stupid, but it wouldn't take much adjustment to make the tree appealing, and it's going to be quite good for offtanks the way it is. Remember that picking up Trauma is going to improve all bleeds by 30% which will make Feral druids extra happy and if Bloodbath and Hemo and possibly hunter pets see some improvement the raid-wide synergy is going to be fairly substantial, even in a 10 man. It all hinges on what happens with Slam.

Going deep enough for blood frenzy with a primarily fury build is actually pretty terrible as you dump a large number of wasted points in to the arms tree to get that deep (going from 17 to 33 with only 6-8 points that are really any good), but a 26/x/x weapon spec/fury build is likely going to be very good.

A protection warrior is first and foremost Raid Main Tank. 5 man tank, 10 man tank are diluted version of raid MT.

In this context, i found the new shield block mechanic quite useless. Take a current end-game boss. Hits 7k each 2.5 sec. Does it matter you block 1/2 of his attack each 20 sec?

I see the new talents as watering down evn more the Raid MT role. Shield Break? does anyone see this as a good tool versus a boss? Sure it is a tool, but it's an unsharpened tool.

Loosing 6 expertise, gaining 15% crit to HS/TC/Cleave. There is a lot of expertise in game atm, the newest tank gear comes with loads of it, and probably will keep it so in expansion. This seems a good trade off, but considering position in talent tree, is an easy accesible talent for any warrior.

Imp Revenge with 25% more dmg. Revenge it's a skill that does not scale with anything. Would be usefull if revenge would scale with something. Maybe a filler if there are spare talent points (doubt that).

Imp Disarm. 10% more dmg taken by target. Unless they change bosses to be disarmable, it's of no use in raid.

Vigilance, replacing Shield Slam. That talent seems at same time very good and very bad. But in raid you can put it on OT, and that's all. 5% dodge to 1 person. i find it really bad.

Rage from dodge/parry. Everything is better than nothing

Safeguard. When tanking, intervene/intercept are used when something went bad. And in a raid if something went bad, then it's a half wipe. I can't see it's use in raid enviroment, except for encounters tailored for it. It's more a pvp talent thrown in the mix to apease those who consider protection a viable and competitive build in pvp area.

Sword and board. 10% of free SSlam. no ideea really. looks good, but i like things with as little random factor as possible. I stole this from someone else: The tank is the bringer of order into chaos. I tend to plan ahead next 1-2 skills to use in the rotation, prioritizing some, skipping others. S&B procs, i have 1 free SSlam. I'll probably use it, skiping a skill in regular rotation. An ideea would be to take the extra SSlam off the GCD.

Shockwave. I personally don't think it will be the new alpha and omega of prot warriors, we'll have to wait and see how it performs in raid enviroment.

Will have to wait for beta and NDA lift, to find out more. I just hope it won't be another situation as at TBC begin. After TBC release , fixing rage generation problems, devastate changed to add sunder effect, TC in def stance are just a few changes that come to mind and which for me made a huge impact in prot warrior gameplay and performances.

I think Imp Revenge's scaling is the talent; 25% more damage could equal 25% more threat? Safeguard could be very useful when the tank needs a bit of a mitigation buffer. Have the OT intervene the MT on a pull, and your MT eats a few hits at an extra -20% dmg.

Attumen the Huntsman was disarmable! >.>

Personally I'm viewing it more as a benefit for multi tank encounters than a threat to prot warrior ability on a single target.

That is to say, thinking about every fight I've done so far in TBC, I can only think of a few that only feature a single tank.

-edit: in fact, on a two tank encounter, if tank stacking is really going to be an issue, you'd more likely see the use of two prot warriors so each can vigilance the other, rather than the warriors getting replaced by a different tank class.