I haven't actually sat down to do the math properly, but sword and board just doesn't seem worth the 5 points right now. With the current talent tree I see on MMO Champion, I still reach 51 points before I need to spend any in S&B

I think I would rather put those 5 into arms. Something like this:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...00000000000000

getting the cheaper HS's and 20% higher damage from crits - combined with the Prot talents that enhance the crit chance of many of our agro abilities - above the normally low Prot spec'ed levels they were at in TBC

edit:

They also still need to do a lot for the DPS of Prot spec warriors who are not tanking. Prot DPS looks like it will be much than it was in TBC relative to other classes. The new prot talents and changes affect shield damage or other tanking based abilities. Devastate spam with a good set of Fury Gear was always by far and away the best DPS option as prot. A shield wielding DPSing Prot still wont be competitive. But the DPS warrior (and other classes) talent changes have enhanced their base DPS, while there is almost no change to the amount of damage that Devastate spam is going to be able to do. Devastate, 1H Weapon spec and 10% Str were the two talents that made Prot DPS work as well as it did, and they are exactly the same, with nothing else added.

If devastate was moved to a 31 point talent, there would perhaps be the opportunity to build a moderately focused Prot build in 31ish points, and then get the essential 5 in arms for parry and have 30-35 left in fury for haste, off hand spec and bloodthirst etc.

Or they could just change Devastate from 50% to 100% base damage ;-)

Agreed 1000%. Alot of the the abilities being introduced are specific to certain stances (Arms to Battle for Rend and OP) and yet the stances are based on ideas from Vanilla WoW. If they changed stances it would be easier to base the new abilities off of them rather than work around 3 year old ideas.

Ideas:

Battle Stance
Instant 1 sec cooldown
A balanced combat stance that increases attack speed by 25%

This idea came from the Weapon masters in Gorefiend trash. If you are spec'ing deep enough into Arms to get some of their staple abilites, you won't have enough talent points to get a full 5/5 Flurry. Battle stance would help negate this problem and help make Arms a PvE viable spec. The other idea is to simply make Rend and Overpower usable in Berserker Stance but this doens't address the ancient stance problem.

Defensive Stance
Instant 1 sec cooldown
A defensive combat stance. Decreases damage taken by 10% and increases armor contribution from items by 20% (tweakable number). Increases threat generated.

This takes the extra component they recently added to Improved Defensive stance and bakes it into our Core Ability (-10% + 10%).

-Remove Justified Killing
-Change Improved Defensive Stance

Improved Defensive Stance
While in Defensive Stance, reduces all spell damage taken by 6% and generates 4 rage when you dodge or parry an attack.

Brings back Stalwart Protector as part of the Defensive Stance, and removes Justified Killing from its awkward position in the Arms tree.

One-Handed Weapon Specialization
When using a one-handed melee weapon, physical damage you deal is increased by 10% and increases your expertise by 6.

Brings back the expertise lost when our talents were changed.

Sword and Board
When your Devastate and Shield Slam abilities deal damage they have a 15% chance to deal an extra attack on the same target equivalent to a Shield Slam.

This what you get when you mix Sword Specialization with Sword and Board. This alleviates the micromanagement of watching the Shield Slam cooldown and it is very possible due to the Sword Specialization technology already implemented.

While those changes that you listen would be a wet dream - you have to consider that the warrior today is balanced around our stances, so if you remove them we are going to be overpowered.

I assume you play the Beta and know this for a fact then? Because I play it and the Prot changes would definitely not "overpower" us in any way. Also, this is about concepts first, numbers will be tweaked later.

Apparently Imp whirlwind is supposedly 10% / 20% damage increase now as opposed to 1/2 second CD reduction.

Nevermind, too early to say. There are "reports" that haste is also affecting the melee GCD as well now, yet no official blue post yet.

There is no source, Blizzard never said this. A few people keep passing it off as fact though for whatever reason on the beta boards. =/

# Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both melee attacks and spells.


Yeah, right. Try reading patch notes a bit more.

I think he is referring to how haste reduces a caster classes GCD while haste is not supposed to have the same effect on melee.

That has nothing to do with reducing the GCD... It means there is no "critical strike rating" and "spell critical strike rating" separation anymore; it's only a single stat.

It is not supposed?And how do you know it?If it modifies BOTH melee attacks and spells (including spell GCDs), I don't see why it shouldn't for melee attacking GCD.

While your initial paragraph is accurate, I'm not sure they're willing to completely trash their vision of what the stances represent. I just don't see them offering an offensive buff to Battle Stance instead of one to utility. The three we currently have cover three roles, being of course defense, balance, offense. Remember, also, that vanilla WoW still *exists* more or less, to those who are leveling warriors. I don't think a 25% haste stance would make much sense in that regard, and frankly it's more desirable than the damage buff of Berserker, only offset by the abilities usable in each.

The solution, most likely, if it is indeed an Arms fix primarily, would be an Imp. Battle Stance talent. That would enable balancing of what level it would be available, and provide further impetus to spec deep in the tree.

My suggestion (a % reduction to CC or harmful effect time, whatever is most balanced) a few pages back would be an alternative that I could envision being innate to the stance, but I do find the concept of an Imp. Battle Stance to fit quite well in our trees considering there is a talent for each of the others. I would not imagine it likely to be equal to Flurry in haste, however.

That line you posted meant that the haste rating affects both spell and melee. There is no longer a "Spell haste," or "Melee haste," stat anymore, nowhere does it say it affects GCD.

That's the feeling I have, that the Haste effect on Arms would be unusual. My other thought is to make Arms have a 1 second GCD similar to how the Unholy Presence works for DKs, which would seem to fit with the multitude of strikes Blizzard seems to be weaving into Arms (keeping Rend up, Overpower and Execute procs, .5 second Slams, Enraged Assault, and of course MS itself).

A quick theorycrafting question. I apologize if this was mentioned elsewhere. I searched but haven't seen it addressed.

In the beta, does Slam still reset your swing time? More to the point, are the instant Slams granted by Bloodsurge going to be a good thing, or will Bloodsurge be something we should avoid?

Thanks for the info, trying to work out a pre-Wrath Fury build.

From what I remember earlier in the post, currently Slam still resets the timer, but the instant slams from bloodsurge do not.

Serennia posted a Titan's Grip vs Dual Wield Arms video, with,surprisingly Arms pulling out ahead, mainly due to the non-stop Sudden Death procs I imagine.

SDvsTG.wmv - FileFront.com

Did anyone in the Beta figure out the purpose of the Charge talent in Prot yet? Is it a bug or intended? If it it's the latter, do you think Prot might get something like a Shield Charge which works like a normal charge but is triggered from Defensive stance and which ould be high threat (maybe fire a Shield Slam on impact that is not tied to your SS GCD or cooldown?). I for one would appreciate such a new skill. I always considered charging into a pack, then changing back into D-stance was sort of counter productive since you lost rage from not having TM.

Supposedly it enables Charge's use in-combat.

That's quite interesting, however I don't understand why he kept a 54/17/0 spec while trying dpsing in berserker stance.
Wouldn't a 51/20 have produced a better dps ?

[edit]Small mistake for the template :P

He tried 54/17 in battle and zerker both. WoW Forums -> [Video] Sudden Death vs. Titan's Grip PvE DPS, post #35.

Didn't a developer say, not long ago, that a beta patch is the manifestation of a work in progress? It should not be seen as a sign that a particular talent tree has reached some new, stable plateau of evolution, but rather as a snapshot of the development process at a more or less arbitrary point in time.

My point is, that the reason why we are confused by the current warrior talents is that they probably aren't meant to make sense just yet. Instead we see some tinkering and some "what if"-scenarios being tried out. To me, it's such an obvious example of unfinished work that we can't deduce more from it than some of the ideas that are being bounced around by the developers right now.

So, I'm not panicing. Even though we still haven't seen a new "toy" for the prot warrior, except Shockwave, of course, I haven't lost faith; the tinkering we're seeing are adressing some of the concerns about bloating, and it seems as if the developers are very much concerned with the mobility of the prot warrior. More mobility would be very welcomed

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On a slightly different note: There has been talk of allowing two talent specs to allow players to both tank and dps or both PvE and PvP without handicap. I don't know if two talents specs are needed, but any efforts to streamlining retalenting are great and it is beside the point: I'm wondering if not the Inscription system will invalidate this idea?

Before, you could collect different gear with different enchants for your different roles, and even though it isn't costless you can easily rearrange talents. But as I assume that Inscriptions will be worth having, you'd want Inscriptions that maximize your ability to do that particular role, be it tanking, pvp or whatever. I also assume that switching Inscriptions isn't as easy (or relatively cheap) as respeccing your talents? Which means that if you are serious about PvP-ing and are serious about PvE-ing, you're facing a much, much higher cost every time you switch role, since you'd need to get new inscriptions every time.

Or have I misunderstood how the Inscription system works? I must admit, I assume that inscriptions will be in the same price-range as enchantments. Some are cheap, but the good are expensive.