Latest Quote from a dev on warriors which doesn't seem to have been picked up yet by MMO champ or World of raids yet, still nothing on arms/fury:
I think the druid still needs a niche. I think "best tank when the boss can't crushing blow" and "best tank that can also dps" aren't great niches now, and perhaps weren't even before LK.
And yes, you shouldn't convert "niche" into "required for" in your mind. A guild lacking any one of the 4 tank classes should not hit a progression wall or we, frankly, suck.
It may be that warriors need a little more space away from paladins and death knights too. This is all stuff we are discussing right now, so it's useful to get all this feedback. I can tell you that two goals we have for LK are that tanking 5-player instances is easier and more fun, and you don't need any one class to raid.
Agreed, Emeraude already made a post on the Beta forums here. It's an interesting read and I would urge everyone of you with an US Beta account to support this thread. I could also copy the thread over to the EU forums if noone did that yet (frankly, I don't even bother to check EU forums anymore, US boards get replies from the Devs - EU doesn't) and if Emeraude doesn't mind.
I had an additional thought on this. What if Zerker or Battle stance removed all additional threat modifiers to our spells? This way Heroic Strike, Shield Slam, Devastate, Sunder, Execute, and Revenge are no longer high threat moves but just base damage threat. This would then allow a prot warrior full DPS off tank roll in raids.
While I like the idea, it'd have to be very finely tuned. With no artificial threat cap, I do not doubt that a devastate-spamming-hybrid-spec (x/x/41) warrior could match or even surpass the DPS of fury/arms.
I had an additional thought on this. What if Zerker or Battle stance removed all additional threat modifiers to our spells? This way Heroic Strike, Shield Slam, Devastate, Sunder, Execute, and Revenge are no longer high threat moves but just base damage threat. This would then allow a prot warrior full DPS off tank roll in raids.
Maybe I'm just not reading this correctly, but why would you want a Protection Warrior that is in DPS gear using SS and Revenge instead of simply donning the typical 17/44 gear and just using Devastate and Heroics? That's what we do now and threat isn't really a problem at all. Unless you're talking about some kind of fight that has tank switches via taunt where you would still want the Warrior in "tanking" gear and doing what damage they can, but not so much that they pull aggro? I'm not sure they could pull aggro in that case anyway.
I had an additional thought on this. What if Zerker or Battle stance removed all additional threat modifiers to our spells? This way Heroic Strike, Shield Slam, Devastate, Sunder, Execute, and Revenge are no longer high threat moves but just base damage threat. This would then allow a prot warrior full DPS off tank roll in raids.
I think this makes sense, even if threat isn't generally an issue. There's almost no conceivable situation where a warrior would be trying to hold aggro outside of defensive stance, with the possible exception of Whirlwind/Cleave AoE DPS tanking, which isn't particularly common and hopefully won't be necessary in Wrath. There are, on the other hand, many conceivable situations where additional threat from core DPS abilities could be a liability when the warrior *doesn't* want aggro.
And the idea that a Prot warrior in a DPS role wants to be the next-highest on threat... doesn't really hold water, because it's very obviously overshadowed by the possibility of pulling aggro and getting splattered.
Well the way I see it, they could just remove extra threat on heroic/cleave/execute in berserker stance, while keeping them intact in battle - to possibly give warriors more options, and reduce strain on DW 1h builds.
I agree with Lithose regarding TG - from the moment I saw this talent I saw a giant can of worms. Infact by the time I saw it in all it's tooltip glory the theorycrafting which "proved it was a DPS nerf" had already appeared.
It's the the talent I expect to see change many times before Live release and many times afterwards.
They would probably be better off scrapping it and creating something less problematic but having teased us with it once before then waved it about in beta it might be too embedded in our expectations now.
No matter what state it's in at live I will use it to level for the "fun / cool" factor then it's back to Prot at 80. But I will continue to watch this talent with interest.
I think heroic / cleave is necessary to have a threat additive on them. How else are we supposed to DPS-Tank things (casters for example or things you can take hits from) while trying to out-threat other DPS that may pull off you while still benefiting from the awesome modifiers of berserker stance? I would be very sad if I was not able to hold aggro over other players while doing a high amount of DPS just because you took the threat mod off of heroic strike in zerker stance. If something is hitting on you and youa re getting healed just fine, rage incoming is very huge especially hitting zerker rage too that you can spam heroic strike no every attack, doing massive DPS and massive threat even with salv and zerker modifiers.
Or what you could do, is only implement threat modifiers to certain skills while in defensive stance, and then give us another kind of heroic strike that instead of adding damage, would add threat instead. Something like: "Hateful strike: causes your next attack to also cause a very high amounut of threat, 5 second cooldown on swing ability"
Or they just need to give us a more viable dps oriented rage dump that is better than heroic strike and keep heroic strike what it is.
I had an additional thought on this. What if Zerker or Battle stance removed all additional threat modifiers to our spells? This way Heroic Strike, Shield Slam, Devastate, Sunder, Execute, and Revenge are no longer high threat moves but just base damage threat. This would then allow a prot warrior full DPS off tank roll in raids.
I'd rather see a talent deep in the prot tree (possibly adding to or replacing sword and board) that increases our damage with shieldslam in battle or zerker stance. Something that allows us to dps in our tank gear without having to do a complete gear swap to pull off a DW devastate rotation (something that helps in situations like the reverse twins, M'uru, or Brut when you aren't tanking).
Also, for what it's worth, DW devastate will never surpass a proper fury build and can't compare to an arms build with bloodfrenzy and trauma. The hypothetical "hybrid" you're talking about Zegai suffers from a 50% damage tax on its primary attack. 1h spec, focused rage, and vitality are good, but not that good.
I think heroic / cleave is necessary to have a threat additive on them. How else are we supposed to DPS-Tank things (casters for example or things you can take hits from) while trying to out-threat other DPS that may pull off you while still benefiting from the awesome modifiers of berserker stance? I would be very sad if I was not able to hold aggro over other players while doing a high amount of DPS just because you took the threat mod off of heroic strike in zerker stance. If something is hitting on you and youa re getting healed just fine, rage incoming is very huge especially hitting zerker rage too that you can spam heroic strike no every attack, doing massive DPS and massive threat even with salv and zerker modifiers.
Or what you could do, is only implement threat modifiers to certain skills while in defensive stance, and then give us another kind of heroic strike that instead of adding damage, would add threat instead. Something like: "Hateful strike: causes your next attack to also cause a very high amounut of threat, 5 second cooldown on swing ability"
Or they just need to give us a more viable dps oriented rage dump that is better than heroic strike and keep heroic strike what it is.
Do you really believe that DPS tanking in Berserker outweighs the 40% threat (if you have Imp Berserker) bonus minus 10% damage but the use of Revenge of Defensive Stance? I can't tell if you're being serious or not.
How else are we supposed to DPS-Tank things (casters for example or things you can take hits from) while trying to out-threat other DPS that may pull off you while still benefiting from the awesome modifiers of berserker stance?
Berserker stance has a 0.8x threat multiplier, going all the way down to 0.6x with talents in the Fury tree. There is *no conceivable way* that any extra damage you receive from being in berserker stance would compensate for the 1.45x threat multiplier that defensive stance gives you.
"DPS tanking" is about what gear you use and, even to a lesser extent, what skills you choose to employ. It's not about being in berserker stance.
A 0/30/41 build (devastate and 5/5 flurry) might be able to keep up a little behind.
0.0 whirlwind
1.5 devas
3.0 devas
4.5 devas
6.0 devas
7.5 devas
9.0 devas
10.5 whirlwind
12.0 devas
13.5 devas
15.0 devas
16.5 devas
18.0 devas
19.5 devas
versus
0.0 BT
1.5 whirlwind
3.0 slam
4.5
6.0 BT
7.5 slam
9.0
10.5 whirlwind
12.0 BT
13.5 slam
15.0 slam
16.5
18.0 BT
19.5 whirlwind
Trading 3 BT and 4 slam with slower swings due to slam for 12 devastates.
The prot build only has less modifier strength (weapon spec and focused rage versus 10% AP and rampage)
Again though the prot build would have a lot more heroic strike usage, yet would become threat capped faster because of the devastate modifier and the extra heroics.
I'd rather see a talent deep in the prot tree (possibly adding to or replacing sword and board) that increases our damage with shieldslam in battle or zerker stance. Something that allows us to dps in our tank gear without having to do a complete gear swap to pull off a DW devastate rotation (something that helps in situations like the reverse twins, M'uru, or Brut when you aren't tanking).
Also, for what it's worth, DW devastate will never surpass a proper fury build and can't compare to an arms build with bloodfrenzy and trauma. The hypothetical "hybrid" you're talking about Zegai suffers from a 50% damage tax on its primary attack. 1h spec, focused rage, and vitality are good, but not that good.
While it does have a 50% tax, it has no cooldown (well, apart from GCD) and a low rage cost. Devastate scales pretty well actually, especially if no new skills or forms of GCD use are introduced (assuming fury: you have BT, WW and possibly Slam). Without taking slam-viability into consideration, you end up using 5 GCDs (3 BTs and 2 WWs) every 18secs, or 12 total. Without rampage it's not likely you will have to use GCDs for much else (as hybrid).
I'm well aware, however, that it wouldn't beat the benefits of the arms debuffs. And that this crude analysis doesn't take upper fury talents into consideration, but.. it doesn't look like the dps of a DW-devastate build w/ flurry would be far from fury (especially considering how our new top-tier fury talents aren't really.. awesome).
I agree that stance penalties have to go, like Emeraude pointed out in her post, they are a thing of the past.
I think the biggest problem is the Arms tree in general, Fury tree can be worked out as we can see clearly they want us to wave 2x2h's around and tuning numbers isnt a problem. For instance i can see Furious Resolve being revamped in order to be really useful.
The concept of 1 tree per stance doesnt really work with the Arms tree, as every Arms warrior stays in Zerk Stance anyway. What i would like to see though is having Arms be the "utility" tree. Great tricks for both PvE and PvP, for instance maybe add a bonus to Battle Stance like Expertise or Hit or even ArP (and make values to equal Zerk Stance bonus dps-wise) or maybe a totally other bonus like rage cost reduction or movement speed bonus. Something to make us actually want to switch to Battle Stance other than Overpower and the very occasional Rend on Rogues.
All in all, i just hope we get some thoughtful review behind all our mechanics and abilities, because as it currently stands, aside from TG, i dont really see the Warrior "flavor" in WotLK.
Berserker stance has a 0.8x threat multiplier, going all the way down to 0.6x with talents in the Fury tree. There is *no conceivable way* that any extra damage you receive from being in berserker stance would compensate for the 1.45x threat multiplier that defensive stance gives you.
"DPS tanking" is about what gear you use and, even to a lesser extent, what skills you choose to employ. It's not about being in berserker stance.
Not really, its 0.8x with zerker and 0.72x with talent. Mashing all my cooldowns and mashing heroic strike on every attack.. yes the modifier is half, but I am giong to be doing about 30% more damage. It comes down to do I want to do 80% the threat and 100% damage or have 100% the threat and do 70% the damage... If no one is going to pull off you, who cares about the threat?
If herioc strike threat was removed in zerker, I would not be able to facetank like this.
Not really, its 0.8x with zerker and 0.72x with talent. Mashing all my cooldowns and mashing heroic strike on every attack.. yes the modifier is half, but I am giong to be doing about 30% more damage. It comes down to do I want to do 80% the threat and 100% damage or have 100% the threat and do 70% the damage... If no one is going to pull off you, who cares about the threat?
If herioc strike threat was removed in zerker, I would not be able to facetank like this.
Where and why do you need to do something like that? How often? I'm going to bet that there are more times when you are locked into tank gear on a fight and have time to get in DPS due to multiple tanks or other mechanics.
Not really, its 0.8x with zerker and 0.72x with talent. Mashing all my cooldowns and mashing heroic strike on every attack.. yes the modifier is half, but I am giong to be doing about 30% more damage. It comes down to do I want to do 80% the threat and 100% damage or have 100% the threat and do 70% the damage... If no one is going to pull off you, who cares about the threat?
If herioc strike threat was removed in zerker, I would not be able to facetank like this.
There are two Fury talents in Wrath that reduce threat by 10%. Whether that results in a 0.6x threat multiplier or a 0.65x threat multiplier really doesn't matter; the point is that you're generating about 45% of the threat-per-damage that you would be with defensive stance. I frankly doubt that the the damage loss is as high as 30%, but even if it is, that doesn't nearly make up the threat difference. The "scenario" you put forth is incredibly contrived, and doesn't hold water in the face of the advantages of removing the additional threat component to the abilities in question.
Although I do get some slight amusement out of the thought that you actually try to convince your healers that this is a good idea.
While it does have a 50% tax, it has no cooldown (well, apart from GCD) and a low rage cost. Devastate scales pretty well actually, especially if no new skills or forms of GCD use are introduced (assuming fury: you have BT, WW and possibly Slam). Without taking slam-viability into consideration, you end up using 5 GCDs (3 BTs and 2 WWs) every 18secs, or 12 total. Without rampage it's not likely you will have to use GCDs for much else (as hybrid).
I'm well aware, however, that it wouldn't beat the benefits of the arms debuffs. And that this crude analysis doesn't take upper fury talents into consideration, but.. it doesn't look like the dps of a DW-devastate build w/ flurry would be far from fury (especially considering how our new top-tier fury talents aren't really.. awesome).
Yea, looking at it, you're right. It wouldn't be a bad offtank build. If they removed the link between enrage and flurry it'd be a much better spec since you could max out dual-wield spec.
The downside is that you lose some dps from impale and deep wounds (possibly sweeping strikes and a weapon spec). Early arms isn't great for dps, but at least there's something there (imp heroic strike and bloodletting are more than you'd get from shield spec or TM). Aside from incite and imp sunder, you've got a lot of wasted points early in a prot dps build and I don't think you make up for it with the talents later in the tree.
There are two Fury talents in Wrath that reduce threat by 10%. Whether that results in a 0.6x threat multiplier or a 0.65x threat multiplier really doesn't matter; the point is that you're generating about 45% of the threat-per-damage that you would be with defensive stance. I frankly doubt that the the damage loss is as high as 30%, but even if it is, that doesn't nearly make up the threat difference. The "scenario" you put forth is incredibly contrived, and doesn't hold water in the face of the advantages of removing the additional threat component to the abilities in question.
Although I do get some slight amusement out of the thought that you actually try to convince your healers that this is a good idea.
Oh it's amusing, they would heal me anyways if I was purposefully standing in AoE or something to get extra rage.
Felmyst Skeletons: holding an appropriate amount of skeletons over the prot paladin and various AoE to spread the load.
High King maulgar, DPS-tanking the priest
Picking up and killing Al'ar phoenix spawns
Trash: many many many different opportunities
Having fun in non-heroic instances: holding aggro on every mob while doing full DPS.
Probably many more.
Regardless, the better solution is adding a more efficient rage dump rather than changing something that is already working as intended, regardless of stance. Since level 1, heroic strike has always been intended as a skill that aids in building aggro and doing a little more damage. People just started using it to remove hit table penalties while DPSing. I don't think blizzard would want to go around modifing skills to act differently based on the stance they are used in.
Yea, looking at it, you're right. It wouldn't be a bad offtank build. If they removed the link between enrage and flurry it'd be a much better spec since you could max out dual-wield spec.
The downside is that you lose some dps from impale and deep wounds (possibly sweeping strikes and a weapon spec). Early arms isn't great for dps, but at least there's something there (imp heroic strike and bloodletting are more than you'd get from shield spec or TM). Aside from incite and imp sunder, you've got a lot of wasted points early in a prot dps build and I don't think you make up for it with the talents later in the tree.
I think it depends more on the level of scaling you achieve with Dev. Assuming you have no extra threat on heroic/dev, you can pretty much spam Dev on every GCD and HS on every other hit, probably to a higher level than a normal fury build.
It probably would have to be modeled - I agree. And yeah, it'd probably be a net loss. But still a close enough call and probably a viable build if things stand as they do now. Of course, if they manage to make some things better, add more things to the rotation or so on, this whole discussion is moot - fury would probably be much better then.
I really think, however, that warriors in general need either new tools or tuning to our tools. While I don't mind doing more DPS while tanking, I don't think the way the current development is going to end up well. Well, just hoping their warrior pass is more of overhaul than minor adjustments, really.
Regardless, the better solution is adding a more efficient rage dump rather than changing something that is already working as intended, regardless of stance. Since level 1, heroic strike has always been intended as a skill that aids in building aggro and doing a little more damage. People just started using it to remove hit table penalties while DPSing. I don't think blizzard would want to go around modifing skills to act differently based on the stance they are used in.
Exactly. To take this a step further, one important thing that is often forgotten on these forums is that WoW caters to a very large audience. The hardcore endgame raiders who want an efficient rage dump without the extra threat is just a small part of this. For example, when levelling up or questing in the field with other players, I would use the threat boosts to "facetank" while still doing full DPS (btw, I like that term a lot :p). In 10 mans (or even 5 mans), people DPS offtank loose mobs (casters, non-elites, etc) all the time. Granted if your tank is good, they don't usually get loose in the first place, but the point is that not everyone is as hardcore as we are on these forums. There are a lot of other situations that I'm sure people would use these abilities in that would make most of us cringe.
Now, that isn't to say that I don't agree that it would be great to have a rage dump like HS that doesn't add extra threat for when I play fury in a raid. To keep things simple, that could be a good candidate for an inscription mabye. Give the option to change the skill if you have no desire to ever use it as a tank, but don't require you to do so.
I really think, however, that warriors in general need either new tools or tuning to our tools. While I don't mind doing more DPS while tanking, I don't think the way the current development is going to end up well. Well, just hoping their warrior pass is more of overhaul than minor adjustments, really.
Really, I don't care much about how much DPS we do while main tanking. As long as our abilities scale (sup, Revenge?) with Str then I am good. It's not like I am going to farm in tanking gear anyway, I got a DW or (until you get better DW gear) 1h/Shield set for that which works better. Also, anyone else rejoiced at the fact of the new Str --> BV scaling back when it was discovered? The first thing I thought of was of DPS Warriors making a macro to swap 1h/Shield in, then Shield Block and Intervene the MT on bursty moments. Considering SB gives you a 100% block chance it makes you crit immune and with the BV scaling it also ensures that you will not die by doing this. It's probably not what Blizzard had in mind primarily, but it's a good side effect of the new scaling.
Now to come back to Revenge (again - I think it was mentioned before). Revenge needs to start scaling with Strength really soon. If not, there will be a point where our GCDs are better spent on threat moves than Revenge on high rage environments. I really don't want to see Revenge degenerate into move that you will only do when you are low on rage, especially because you have to trigger it with a block/parry/dodge.
Now to come back to Revenge (again - I think it was mentioned before). Revenge needs to start scaling with Strength really soon. If not, there will be a point where our GCDs are better spent on threat moves than Revenge on high rage environments. I really don't want to see Revenge degenerate into move that you will only do when you are low on rage, especially because you have to trigger it with a block/parry/dodge.
Currently revenge has no new rank. I think it's just not implemented yet.
I've made a quick-and-dirty excel sheet a couple of weeks ago, calculating raid buffed TPS and DPS levels of tanking prot warriors.
Even with improved revenge, the current rank 8 falls behind devastate on TPS, if the tank has at least 2600 AP raidbuffed and uses a current T6 100 dps 1.6 weapon to tank... And we will have that much AP most certainly, I've used a conservative estimate of 500 strength on gear. (That's about 20 str on each equipped item in average) Remember, a lot of DPS buffs will go raidwide and thus will effect all melee equally, including the tank. That is a great boost to our threat, given the new scaling mechanisms.
Add sword and board to that and revenge must be dropped from tank rotations unless you're rage starved.
Even if there will be a new revenge rank in the future, it may need scaling to keep up with devastate and sword & board.
This is either a proof that Blizzard is not even close to be finished with warriors or maybe they intend to drop revenge from maintanks rotations. (To make tanking simpler for example)
Link to XLS sheet, if someone is interested. I know it's quite a poor undetailed sheet, it was not intended to be published to anyone else than friends and guildies who are reading my blog. Sword & board, glances, miss/dodges are not implemented, the results are really just a guideline. http://veszetthorda.hu/blog/LK_protwarrior.xls
Anyone think this double-spec thing will help solve the tank shortage at all? At least for me the main issue I belive is still that tanking is a too gear dependent role. Sure if you do raids you can probably pick up off-spec gear pretty easily at least for your main but most people don't enjoy raiding still. However after a few months when the main characters are done with heroics and people start to focus mostly on alts I don't think it will really matter. Its still too much work to get a tank alt ready for a heroic compared to a dps alt or healer alt. Not to mention that a crappy and inexperienced tank can ruin an othervise good group; while a single bad DPS really has no impact whatsoever.
I don't recall any tank shortage at all while leveling, or during the first 5 or so months of the expansion. It just seems to have become a problem recently as more and more tank players gotten a little bored of the current heroics and focused more on alts; while not many dps players chose to make tank alts to cover. Thats not an issue that is going to be solved by making talent changes easier really.
Also for warriors at least. Since most likely wont be main tank for a guild; but rather raid as DPS wont the situation be the same as before? With the difference that most warriors have a PvE DPS spec and an Arms PvP spec? So while its easier to swap between PvP and PvE it still wont be a protection spec you switch into for PvE.
Thats of course assuming you 'need' to be protection specced to tank heroics at all. That has not been the case in this expansion at least for warriors. And trainable shield slam would make protection pretty pointless for the current heroics at least, but of course none know what the new level 80 heroics will be like.
As for the talents now its kind of weird how boring the new talents in Arms seem. After having picked Mortal strike I can see Blood Frenzy and possibly that Unrelenting assault thing since more Overpower/Revenge might be nice. But after that its straight into Fury for Weapons Mastery. After having gotten Weapons Mastery the choice is Improved Mortal strike or Flurry. After Flurry its just one point more to get Blood Thirst. Anyone know if Mortal Strike and Blood Thirst share a cooldown? Having both might make for nice burst damage....
I think double-speccing is going to fix tank shortages almost single-handedly. Also on the topic of Heroic tanking as non-prot; sure it works for communities who know eachother but for pugs, being protection is much more required.
08/12/08, 11:03 AM
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