Liar

That was a nice write up and really interesting to read through but I am not worried about our TPS at the moment. TPS is pretty easy to fix, you'd just have to up the numbers on a few abilities here and there. The really interesting stuff is how they are going to change Warrior tanking mechanics with the introduction of hopefully new skills (in place of Vigilance I guess) because stuff like that is more complicated and takes more time to fine tune than intended TPS numbers.

I guess I am not far off in thinking that Blizzard has an internal avg or max TPS number assigned to each of the 4 tanks that they want them to reach when Wrath goes live, just like they have internal max DPS numbers for all classes. It would have been nice if they would make those numbers public, so we'd atleast know what to expect but alas. <_<

Really, they should just come ahead and let us in on their tanking class vision, it would make things so much easier (i.e. we all know Paladins are the kings of AoE tanking and DKs are going to be the best anti-magic tanks - but where do Warriors and Druids stand, what is their niche?).

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Chasteyes

The change to Shield Wall looks promising, but I'm curious if they have any plans to lift this ability off of the global cool down timer. Currently, Shield Wall cannot be used within 1.5 seconds of using any other GCD triggering ability (i.e. devastate, shield slam, revenge, TC, etc.), which means if you plan to use Shield Wall during normal threat rotations there will be an average delay of 0.75 seconds (the worst case being 1.5 seconds) - this is an enormous wait time for an ability intended to save your life. When I know in advance that I'm going to use this ability, I'm forced to stand there doing nothing but heroic strikes and shield blocks so to avoid killing myself by triggering a GCD. In the situations where I do not predict safely in advance I will use it, it is not uncommon for me to either die from being unable to use the ability, or end up using the ability after the spike damage already occurred and was healed through (basically wasting the ability).

I imagine paladin tanks will begin to run into this problem as well with their Divine Protection, especially with the introduction of two new tanking abilities that I'm guessing will be instant, GCD triggering abilities.

I'm also curious to see how the threat situation is going to pan out. For those warriors who actually have experience playing with a competent protection paladin in end-game content, you probably have picked up on the fact, even though paladins require a lot less button mashing, they dish out a considerable amount of single-target threat. The protection paladin we run with pulls around 1000-1100 sustained single-target TPS on regular trash mobs (that is, non-undead/demon). Given that he already starts out with full "rage," or mana, he will actually consistently out-threat me on single-targets unless I resort to somewhat extreme measures.

When I'm stacked with typical itemized "threat tank gear" provided by Blizzard (5% hit, 6% expertise, 1044 shield block value, 1300+ with trinket), I'd estimate 4 times out of 5 when we both begin to generate aggro on a single-target at the same time, he will get the mob's attention better than me. This is due to the fact he starts out with full "rage," and is able to generate high threat reliably right off the bat, and because Bloodrage -> Shield Slamming immediately does not compete well with Avenger's Shield + Judgement. I will follow up with devastate spam until the next Shield Slam, but by that point it's typically not coming off the paladin unless I get lucky crits and he gets unlucky resists. With our itemized gear, warrior threat requires repeated and in some cases constant usage of Heroic Strike to pull ahead of the threat paladins can generate basically on command. This is all on a single-target, mind you.

The only way I've really been able to contradict the above statement is by straying from Blizzard's intended prot warrior itemization and replacing tank gear with DPS gear. By sacrificing around the same amount of avoidance and health I would by stacking 1044 block value, I could instead get roughly +600 attack power and +10% crit - which turns out to be a lot better. Essentially, the highest TPS attainable by a warrior is through wearing fury gear in defensive stance. I would estimate when I get to the 1500 attack power, 25% crit rating, 19% dodge, 14% parry mark (unbuffed), I can generate more TPS than our paladin (while I'm raid buffed) without spamming heroic strike. On our last Gorefiend kill, where I was spamming Heroic Strike non stop, I averaged roughly 1650 TPS, with about the same set up as described above.

Link to our last kill: Sekzee produced 1643 tps

In summary, I'm concerned about how this balance will be affected in the expansion. From my understanding, prot warriors and paladins will receive about the same amount of added scaling in the expansion (originally, I assumed only warriors would receive the added scaling from attack power, but apparently paladins will be getting that too on basically all their abilities), meanwhile paladins will be receiving essentially an entirely new, and more effective, threat rotation via two new, fundamental threat generating abilities. This leaves me to believe protection paladins will have even a bigger advantage in the situations where both players are actually wearing the gear intended by Blizzard, and in situations where 1) The warrior has infinite rage and 2) The warrior stacks DPS gear to compete, our advantage will be either considerably smaller or... we won't have one at all.

 

Densor

What's wrong with an OT Arms build? You'd have a 6s cycle of Revenge, SS, Revenge, TC/Demo Shout/Rend/Bloodbath/Whatever that isn't Sunder. That would allow Improved EA to be run in raids, since sunder wouldn't actually be necessary for threat generation (rend is better threat per GCD than sunder, improved TC might be better, too). I don't remember if someone figured out if MS and SS share a 6s cooldown, but MS could also be used for the 4th ability in the cycle.

If you aren't a human, you can make use of Axe Spec for +5% crit (balanced by probably not having Cruelty) and Incite would give you another +15% crit for HS's, so you might even be able to keep Trauma up for a good amount of the fight. BF would be kept up by Rend (2x6s cycle means you could keep rend up permanently by clipping the final tick or could hope that DW would be up for the 3 seconds it would fall in a 3x6s cycle) of course. Endless rage would help with rage starvation situations if you want to grab it. You can also grab Second Wind and Imp Intercept, since you have a ton of extra points for "filler". In Prot, you'd have Shield Spec, possibly TM (if MS is possible), Anticipation, Incite (for raiding, toss those into Cruelty for 5-mans, probably), Last Stand, and Imp Revenge (you are using it every other GCD).

Compared to a Prot build, you lose 10% to all damage from 1H-spec, 10% SS damage, +30% block value, and -3 rage from HS, Demo, SS, and Rend, which are the big things. Additionally, you lose 5% strength because Vitality is better for DPS than Strength of Arms (Why?), +30% block value, +6% magic damage mitigation, Concussion Blow, Improved Taunt (though you could grab it if you want), and Toughness (again, if you think it is better than Strength of Arms or Imp Revenge, you could grab it). You also lose Shockwave, but I'm not sure how important it would be as an OT.

I don't think the trade off is that bad for an OT. For damage, it would be better than a deep Prot build, so on fights that don't require perfect min-maxing you'd be okay. Although you could probably be the second tank on fights like Brutallus.

 

Darmon

I don't agree there. You can't fix TPS by pulling numbers up and expect things to keep balanced. Take for instance the paladin's clone of shield slam. pala tanks already reported it criting for 4.2k, in lvl70 gear with 700 or so block value. How do you think you can balance that versus what a protection warriors can output.

 

Stolidus

Um... By reducing it's block value coefficient maybe?

 

Densor

I had been thinking about this when I made my earlier post about the possibility of an Arms OT build, but I forgot to mention it. Overpower is a horrible ability for PvE. Given that Arms seems to default as the tree that buffs Battle Stance, it doesn't make sense to me that Overpower should be useless in a PvE situation, especially if they want Arms to be viable as a PvE tree.

As a fix, a new talent could fill one of the empty spots on the 4th tier, linked with Imp Overpower. Something like "Your crits with Overpower have a 33/66/100% chance to reactivate Overpower." This could be combined with a change to Sudden Death to include Overpower as well as Execute. Standard attack cycle of Overpower, MS, Overpower, Rend/TC/Demo Shout/Bloodbath/Execute, likely using a fast 2H weapon.

Additionally, why is Bladestorm, the final talent in the Battle Stance tree, an ability that uses Whirlwind, a Berserker stance only ability? This seems very, very stupid. Changing it with Heroic Leap would buff the DPS of TG as well as make more sense overall.

Strength of Arms could really use something else. Even something like "Also, your Heroic Strikes and Thunderclaps cause 15% less threat in Battle Stance and 5% more threat in Defensive Stance." would be nice in addition to its current effect.

I don't think this would make Arms compete with Fury as a PvE DPS tree, but more allow Arms to actually be something you can spec more into than just for BF. Trying to build the entire tree around BF is fine, but justifying it with just BF isn't going to work.

 

Buka

Remember feral druids in early TBC? You can ballance everyting, if you are working in Blizzard.

 

KraxisSingular

In place of the current Improved Overpower I hope? Or esle seeing nearly endless Overpowers would be far from unreasonable (50% crit from Imp Overpower on top of perhaps 25% internal crit, and refreshing CD on Overpower crits). Would certainly crush the competition in PvP.

 

Emeraude

Bolded the part that caught my eye, so it sounds like from that post there's a chance that they would consider just giving up on the PvE aspects of certain trees for the sake of balancing around PvP and make the remaining 2 trees PvE focused.

Obvious candidates from my point of view would be Subtly for Rogues and Arms for Warriors.

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Frederic

Arms, Battle Stance, and how to make it work:

"Overpower can now be used after a glancing blow."

fixt

Would make a great deep wounds stacker too.

Also, I really think arms should get some other mechanics if they want to set it apart from the other melee DPS. The two which I have in mind are a deep arms talent which removes the attack speed bonus given to the target of your parried attacks, and perhaps a tank buffing talent, perhaps built into deflection, which allows the arms warrior to parry attacks made against allies in melee range. It would have to be non-stacking, in the case of multiple warriors buffing the tank this way the logical thing to do would be to "award" the parry via a roll, with each warrior given a percentage chance commesurate with their parry chance.

Continuing along this vein, if arms warriors are to be encouraged to spec deep into arms for PvE an obvious solution would be to increase the number of attacks sped up by a parry (perhaps at a small cost to the parry haste bonus), combined with the two other abilities listed. Effectively giving you a flurry ability which procs off of your parry chance so long as you are buffing the bosses target.

 

Axanor

I had the same reaction. I can completely understand wanting to have PvP and PvE build for stuff like the Mage's trees, as they're simply built around types of damage, not a philosophy. But the Warrior trees were never simply "2H, DW, Sword/Board" trees, as each tree had a very specific philosophy and intent behind it. I would be more interested in seeing the 2 fury specs (1h DW v Titan's Grip DW) each bring slightly different things to the raid rather than forcing Arms down their throat for a second expansion.

 

Liar

Heh, I know the chances of something like this is going to happen are slim but I really like that idea (though it sounds more like a Prot mechanic to me). It would give Prot Warriors some sort of utility after being done with tanking their mob and "helping out" the other tank by standing on top of him with some sort of passive Intervene. Parry haste wouldn't be much of a big deal with how expertise is thrown around in gear.

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Tornaz

Well, that's the current mechanic of Vigilance, but they put the threat down mechanic on it to stop exactly that course of action.

 

Liar

Oh, I was thinking of something that would replace Vigiliance but keep the theme so to speak. Vigiliance as it is, even without the aggro reduction, is a flat +5% dodge fire and forget ability. What if we had another ability that would require us to stand on top of the tank that would make us share part of our avoidance with them? It's more active because you'd have to move along with the tank (I am actually thinking of the Mother pull here where you move and stand with the tank anyway) and it scales because it depends on your avoidance.

Then again, I wouldn't be sad if they gave this abilty to any of the 4 tanks (minus Druids, I guess) as well so they get to do something when they finish tanking in a multi tank encounter because I doubt that anyone but Druids can do reasonable DPS even in their Str heavy tanking gear and Paladin tanks won't be able to heal that well either after they are done tanking.

EDIT: If you need an example of why I want this, think about Illidan. I am sure most Flame tanks have thought of this because, for all that matters, you might as well drop dead after P2 is over. Noone will care because you are useless for 3/4 of the fight anyway.

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Frederic

I figured that it would be a good addition to the deflection talents, scaling the amount contributed to the other guy with how many points you've put into deflection. That way, the only people who really benefit in a raid are the warriors who spec deep enough into arms to get the parry haste reduction talent, or off-tanks, who mitigate a lot of a bosses chance to parry anyways through expertise, and so can likely afford to stand in front of a boss to buff the main tank. But with it that low in the tree theoretically anyone can take it and utilize it.

Plus, it gives deep arms some serious love, allows them to DPS the boss from any angle they please in cases where things like cave-in would prevent them from approaching the boss (at a cost of attacks parried, of course), and encourages the raid to bring more than one deep arms warrior in some fights for the hateful strike tank or trash tank.

 

Liar

You are forgetting that even if the boss would not parry haste you are adding another 9% effective miss to your DPS just by standing in front of a boss. DPS (and OTs that want to build threat) stand behind a mob for two reasons: To avoid parry hasting a boss and to increase their DPS because no DPS worth it's salt will stack expertise after the dodge portion is removed.

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Frederic

That's basically what I'm saying. The parry result still damages the arms warrior's DPS, but it still remains situationally useful at times. Specifically, fights like Gruul where the boss's flanks can be surrounded in cave-ins would make this talent extremely valuable, as you would be able to continue DPS with 9% chance to get parried (with no ill effect to the tank), versus another build which has the option of backing off completely, dying in a cave-in, or parry-gibbing the tank.

 

Shha

Well that could be easily "fixed" by addint parry to a possible condition list triggering overpower. Funny enough thats how overpowered "started", and thats what actually makes sense with ability name.

 

Densor

The problem is that Overpower with Unrelenting Assault can be used every other special. If you're wielding a 2H weapon, that means most of the time you have 1 special, 1 overpower, and 1 auto attack with which to refresh overpower so you can use it again.

Glancings only happen on the auto attack, at a 25% rate. Dodges never happen with some expertise or only 6.5% of the time without it. Losing a swing to a dodge just to activate overpower is stupid, so there'd be no reason to not have full expertise. If Sudden Death were to also allow the use of overpower, you'd have 30% of your crit rate, which probably isn't going to be higher than 50% base. This gives you a 30% chance to proc it on your overpower, a 40% chance to proc it on your auto attack (glancings + crit), and a 15% chance to proc it with MS, TC, or Bloodbath, while rend has a 0% chance.

That would result in a 64.3% chance to have overpower active on when the cooldown was ready if overpower was active before and you didn't use rend on the filling special. If you used Rend, that's a 58% chance. If overpower wasn't active, and you instead used MS and another crittable special, that's a 56.65% chance. If overpower wasn't available and you used rend, that's a 49% chance. And that's with a 50% crit rate base.

So, I think something more than those mechanics would be necessary for overpower to actually be a PvE DPS tool. Thus why I suggested that Overpower have a 100% chance to proc off of its own crits. If you can get to 50% crit, then it would be up all the time, which doesn't seem like a problem in PvE to me, since you won't be using WW or Slam, and Rend doesn't benefit from crit. You'd have to sacrifice a lot of AP to get to that point.

And for PvP, I'm not sure if refreshing it every CD would be a problem or not. You are already providing MS or Hamstring as the first two attacks on any target. If you get a dodge with one of the 3 or 4 attacks you get in that 3 seconds, you can overpower every 3 seconds until someone hits you with cyclone, polymorph, blind, kidney shot, hammer of justice, gouge, frost nova, frostbite, impact, mace stun, psychic scream, fear, deathcoil, dismantle, repentance, concussion blow, intercept stun, entangling roots, chains of ice, scatter shot, intimidate, blackout, maim, bash, divine hymn, or disarm. There's stuff I might have missed, too.

If you really have free reign to beat on someone for that long (while in battle stance) without them doing anything about it, I don't see a problem with you killing them.

Edit: Shha: Adding parry to the possible things to activate Overpower doesn't help, since you don't want to be parried in the first place, nor do you want to eat frontal cleaves, breaths, cone attacks, or other stuff. Even the tank doesn't generate enough parries to make Overpower a useful tool for a DPS class if it has a 3 second cooldown.

I feel you'd really want overpower to be available at least 80% of the time for DPS.

 

mistersix

43/28 seems to be getting tossed around a bit as the new DWBF flavor. Why 43 tho? Wouldn't it be 42/29?

 

Dra

I'd guess its for endless rage.

 

Shha

Considering unrelenting assault reduces OP cooldown to 2 seconds, having 100% weapon damage + impale/red = 226% weapon damage basically every gcd (weave in other instants to use it every 2 gcd - like OP/MS/OP/Rend/OP/MS/OP/OP - you get the idea , would be somewhat imbalanced . With 5 sec cooldown you could be right, but thats about it.

 

Emeraude

Yeah I think +25% static rage might be better then 5% haste on a crit.

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Tornaz

Depends how much Rage you have, really. Endless Rage is a dreadful talent because it becomes obsolete with sufficiently high levels of gear. I had hoped that with the move away from talents that can be obsoleted by gear (see SPriest and ArcMage hit talents) that we would finally see Endless Rage replaced by something worthwhile.

 

Emeraude

Without the old Windfury and the nerf to Sword Spec pretty much forcing Axe Spec, I don't think you'll have those ridiculous spikey 0->100 rage moments anymore, it'll be pretty static rage gain for the most part, and it would help with rage recovery after Sudden Death procs.

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