Darian_TruBlade

It's stable, but it isn't comfortable. The problem is that immediately before each Whirlwind you have an awkward moment where your GCDs don't align. This is also a problem for Berserker Rage and Bloodrage, but it's much less noticeable because they aren't the core of your rotation.

The problem is that before we had two core abilities that matched our GCDs perfectly and a few ancillary abilities that, while important, were only used occasionally. Now we have 3 or more core and secondary abilities which are out of sync with our 1.5 second GCDs. It's functional and technically more stable, but at the same time it's like trying to waltz to jazz music.

 

Skarrzog

That is not how slam works on live. If you have enough experience and decent ping, you are supposed to cast slam before your auto attack goes off. In a perfect setting .5sec before that is with robot timing and 0ping. But a decent warrior can cast slam before an auto attack leading to a penalty <0.5sec on your auto attack. With this change no matter what your timing you will get a .5 sec penalty. This is good for people with higher pings and who might be new to slam, but for those who have been doing this a while and have decent connections its actually a nerf.

 

mistersix

Fair points but the builds you pointed to still have quite a few points to throw around even assuming level 70 let alone level 80. 50/21 could be viable and picks up the bleeds, the pvp-y talents in the arms tree, ms, and damage enchancers let alone scooping up deathwish from fury. 53/15/3 sacrifices deathwish for imp hamstring and tactical mastery.

I think earlier in this thread even there were some more hybrid specs that went less into arms and more into fury and even prot for some added "hard to kill" flavor.

 

Frederic

No, you are the one working with a misapprehension here.

You time your slam to begin before your white attack according to your computer, not the server. Once the command to slam actually reaches the server, however, the white attack has already occured. If it has not, the white attack is clipped. As soon as the server realises you are attempting to slam, it pauses your swing timer, and as soon as the slam has been processed, your white attack is reset.

There is no possible way to have a slam cast with an effective loss of less than 0.5 seconds off of your swing timer barring artifacts of a freakish server application which at this point would be pure conjecture. Do not bother replying with anecdotal evidence about your swing timer's GUI, it will be inherintly wrong, possibly by a relatively large margin depending on how Blizzard's API handles obtaining latency and whether it includes intranet hops and server processing speed or whether it just relays round-trip time bounced off of one of Blizzard's gateways.

 

Armagedon

A bit of new protection data for you guys to take a peek at.

WoW Forums -> Dear Devs; want prot pvp to be viable?

 

Skarrzog

I was commenting more so on the method behind slam on the player's side of the screen. You're probably right about the networking; I honestly would not know since I have no background in networking at all.

 

Graul

I really do not understand what the big deal is about the loss of 1 second. I mean, from a spreadsheet perspective someone might have an argument, and maybe it was just horrible latency issues that I was going through since the beginning of the year until now, but BT and WW would *always* overlap constantly for me with one in Imp WW. I even accidentally forgot to dump one point into it one night and there was virtually no DPS loss. Maybe I've just been doing a radically inefficient rotation or something, but they've always overlapped (for me) and the new change is nothing but a buff.

 

Shha

Considering you have NOTHING else to use beside stuff i listed, it hardly matters. Yea you use your skills then you have a 1 sec gap before gcd end and WW cooldown - but so what, you cant use any instant anyway so whether its 1 sec gap or an "even" 1.5 is irrelevant. Lets look at rotation again:

0.0 - WW
1.5 - BT
3.0 - (reserved for Slam)
4.5 - Berserker Rage
6.0 - Free GCD - trinket+DW
7.5 - BT
10.0 - WW [*[*[* AWKWARD CD - 1 sec free time after BT]*]*]
11.5 - (reserved for Slam)
13.5 - BT [*[*[* AWKWARD CD - 0.5 sec free time after potential slam]*]*]
15-18 - 3 free GCD to use Battle shout/demo/Slam
20.0 - WW/rotation reset [*[*[* AWKWARD CD - 0.5 sec sec free time after 3 "extras" gcd]*]*]

And tell me WHAT instant attack you could use in the spots - if nothing then gcds arent relevant - you simply do your "stuff" then wait on cd on next skill rather then gcd.


As for the Duranthor post - it contains a lot of mistakes, but i want to address the heroic strike part.

Part I - Rage generation

R= damage* 0.0137+ 3.5*[weapon speed] / 2

damage = [weapon dps+ AP/14]* [ weapon speed]

R = [Weapon Speed]*[ [Weapon dps+AP/14]*0.0137+1.75]

now lets assume the stats close to lvl 70 - 2h is 3.5 speed vs 2.6 of 1h, and 2h does 30% more base dps

1hander

R1 = WS*[[WDPS+AP/14]*0.0137+1.75]



2hander

R2 = 3.5/2.6 *WS*[[WDPS*1.3+AP/14]*0.0137+1.75]


Heroic Strike added damage , assuming 10% miss for whites and 25% chance for 70% average damage glancing. 40% Crit.


White damage = 0.1*0 (Miss) + 0.25*(WDPS+AP/14)*WS*0.7 (Glancings) + 0.4*(WDPS+AP/14)*WS*2 (crits)+0.25*(WDPS+AP/14)*WS (hits) = (WDPS+AP/14)*WS+[0.25*7+0.4*2+0.25]

[top] (WDPS+AP/14)*WS*1.225

Heroic Damage

1.1 (10% bonus) * [ (WDPS+AP/14)*WS*0.6 (hits) + (WDPS+AP/14)*WS*0.4*2.2 (crits with impale) = (WDPS+AP/14)*WS *1.1*1.48 = 1.63*(WDPS+AP/14)*WS

Heroic-White damage = 0.403* (WDPS+AP/14)*WS

Added damage

1 hander

D1 = 0.403*(WDPS+AP/14)*2.6

2 hander

D2 = 0.403*(WDPS*1.3+AP/14)*3.5


Effectiveness of Heroic Strike:

1 hander = D1/(R1+12)
2 hander = D2/(R2+12)

Compared 1:2 h heroic effectiveness = D1/D2 * R2+12/(R1+12)


Comparing at 4900 attack power and 150 dps 2h vs 115 dps 1h (around sunwell stats, abit rounded)


2.6/3.5 * 465/500 * 42/33.11 = 0.88

Heroic strike with a 2h is MORE rage efficcient then with 1h. - provides around 11 % more damage/rage.

 

Frederic

Sorry if I jumped on you a little, but I've seen people try to defend a statement of that sort using the justification of "it looks like it's doing x on my screen!" when theory crafting ideal Slam DPS. This change will make it impossible to lose DPS based on latency, imprecision in meters, or slow response time of the player, which is definitely for the best. It now seems to me to be a question of how Slam is going to get nerfed in order to keep it's damage in line.

 

Mezzlock

Enraged Assault was totally destroyed for PvE fury use tho, you have to remember that berserker rage, bloodrage and deathwish are all enrage effects now.
Speccing 33% less cd on those would allow you to gain those extra attacks pretty often, while the heal would be very situational and not worth alot from PvE fury point of view.

www.in-excelsis.net

 

Gruntle

Yes, you're perfectly right in how the slam cycle is executed, I do it like that too. But my post was out a comparison between the new and old slam in terms of performance, and as Frederic pointed out the swing is paused when you press slam already in live, it's just the reset that is removed. You do not lose anything by the slam change, it just makes the skill easier to use.

To Darian_TruBlade, the 18 sec BT/WW cycle is collision-free only in theory. In reality you will get cd collisions due to human error and latency. I agree with Graul, it's actually possible that the 1/2 imp WW point is quite useless even in live. In any case +10% damage is worth more in my opinion.

 

Liar

To get the ball rolling:

This is obviously a post about DKs but I think we can transfer some things over to Warrior tanking. As I read this there will be no gimmicks that would require Spell Reflect (which is the only gimmick we retain in WotLK). I actually like using SR so I hope there will be loads of bosses that you can SR on without making it impossible if you miss an SR or use a non-Warrior tank. I always thought the elven adds on M'uru were fairly nicely balanced in this regard. A Warrior can offtank a Fury Mage by virtue of SR alone (and add quite some damage) but it works with non-Warrior tanks as well. I want more of that stuff and less RoS P2 style bosses.

What do you think?

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

 

Obould

Sword & Board

I have tried to analyse the new S&B only procing off Devestates (DEV) within two skill rotations (SS-DEV-DEV-REV and SS-DEV-DEV-DEV) over a time period of two minutes. Also noted be, that i was assuming a 100 rage environment meaning end game content were you should get hit hard enough that you dont struggle with rage starvation.

DOWNLOAD EXCEL

Conclusion:

First i want to mention the "clipping" effect S&B has, which means that it procs and your natural rotation would be a ShieldSlam anyway, only giveing you a rage free ShieldSlam but no additional "before SS CD comes off" one.

In a rotation like SS-DEV-DEV-DEV, over a timeframe of 2mins you have 60 DEV hits, yet 20 of those will not really benefit (only rage saving) you since your next rotation skill is a SS anyway.

Also with a SS-DEV-DEV-REV rotation, clipping starts once you have after the second DEV a S&B-Proc since your new rotation would be SS-DEV-DEV(proc)-SS-REV-DEV-DEV-SS which means you fall into a DEV-SS clipping issue again if it procs.

What is also clearly visible is that due to this clipping problem: SS-DEV-DEV-DEV is not superior to SS-DEV-DEV-REV / SS-REV-DEV-DEV, so REV will stay in your rotation.

In the end S&B with the numbers taken into account (SS = 800dmg/307threat, DEV = 200dmg/101threat, REV = 200dmg/201threat) provides a threat gain of ~ 3% over the two minute timeframe. It proced around 7 and 8 times depending on the SkillRotation used which gives you ~100-120 extra rage to use, if you need that. One thing is clear thought that we speak from perfect skill rotations, S&B is not really a threat winning talent it helps in rage starving situations, question is will we face that in end-gaming?

For me its still clear what they have todo to make it a real nice talent, once S&B procs a free SS hit like we used to see with Windfury procs. With the numbers mentioned(15%proc chance) and 7 S&B procs(over 2mins) it would be a 20% threat gain inclusive +100 rage, if 20% is overpowered they can scale it with the proc rate.

 

Darmon

There is no mention around about the fact that S&B affects just a part of prot warrior gameplay. The other part is when dualwielding devastate spam. For this gameplay, S&B is a waste of talent points. Not sure if i'm the only one, but a talent so deep in protection tree should give benefits in all situations, since this holds true for all other classes and specs.

 

Exiliad

This is pretty ridiculous. Deep-tree talents of most hybrid classes benefit the role of that particular tree and not that of the others. The protection tree is designed for a warrior to be using a shield, expecting otherwise you might as well dismiss Shield Specialization, Imp Shield Block, Imp Shield Wall, Imp Shield Bash, Shield Mastery, Critical Block, too because hey, you might not *want* to wear a shield!

 

Orsier

Later on that post, or in another post in the same thread, Ghost says they do want Spell Reflect to be used in WotlK because they like it. I'm guessing they will change it (add some other effect to it ?) / design the fights so that it can be usefull, or at least they plan to do so.

Edit : What Ghostcrawler said :

 

Borodin

Well Ghostcrawler's post about Protection Warriors today says that Spell Reflect is going to be buffed (it's already had the cooldown reduced so I presume something else is coming).

Until we see that change my guess will be is that in addition to reflecting 1 spell you will gain some magic damage reduction for the 5 second duration.
This would primarily make it better on magic dealing bosses without requiring a Warrior-only Reflect gimmick.

As it stands every Prot Warrior is likely to take Improved Defensive Stance with it's 16% Magic DR but some Magic DR on Spell Reflect will benefit non-Prots too, especially in PvP where a Warrior has to swap stance and weapons to use it only to see it instantly removed by an Icelance.

PS Liar: you made a comment earlier about boredom during Mother Shahraz tanking and it made me wonder if you knew her Parry-Hasting had been removed? Sure it was still boring but at least it went beyond keeping Thunderclap and Shouts up! Just a thought.

 

Darkrenown

You know Cleave has bonus threat on it too, right? It's only slightly less than HS and worse for damage.

 

Borodin

Obould thanks for your S&B analysis but you are using some outdated values (compared to Live at 70).

For Devastate the inherant threat is now 105+(15xSunder Count) or 180 at 5 Sunders (some use slighly different values coming in at 176). Choose either value over 101.

I also think your damage values of 200 for Devastate and certainly Revenge are low. 250 would be a more representative Devastate damage value and Revenge is now in the region of 400 damage (414-506 in live, 388-466 + 0.92% AP in Wrath) with all the usual modifers from stance, armour etc.
Your Revenge threat value is correct

These are values at 70 by the way where we know the inherant threat values.

Unknowns for Wrath:
In Wrath the inherant threat bonuses might not increase as much as expected in favour of increased threat from damage scaling. Blizzard wants to move away from non-scaling +Threat modifiers.
One thing we don't know about 70 is how much Sunder Threat (and thus those applied by Devastate) will scale with AP.

Not saying any of this will cause you to change your conclusions just mentioning where you can improve the data.

 

Lasie

I agree. If it were usable in D stance and had a really high threat component on it, then it would be worthwhile. As long as you could create situations where there are split mobs (say having tanks X many yards apart on diff targets) it could work as a rage generation and threat mechanism.

Though without both of those, I really don't see it as being worthwhile, since intercept and intervene offer a superb amount of mobility already. There are very few times where I ever end up finding myself having to use either intercept or intervene, and by the time i've used both the cooldowns are back up. The only time where I've felt that i've made truly the most use of intervene/intercept in a raid environment was for Al'ar's adds. I couldn't ever see needing a battle stance charge at all.

 

Darmon

I would agree if Shield Slam was protection only skill. But it is not anymore. A talent so deep in prot tree has to influence something either tree specific - Devastate or vigilance or charge, or something more generic than beeing forced to have a shield in offhand. Atm S&B is like having Wreking Crew in arms work for just 2handers, or Undending fury work when dualwielding only. As an Arms/Fury tank that is undesirable, and reasons like 'you want to tank then spec Prot' are not valid anymore.

 

Obould

Thanks Borodin, and yeah i used old known threat values (lvl 70),

but nothing would change since in the end with S&B when it does not "clip" you exchange DEV / REV skills with ShieldSlams, yet queue them later on back into your rotation!

- S&B: SS -> DEV -> DEV -> REV -> SS
+ S&B: SS -> DEV -> DEV (proc) -> SS -> REV

In the end you delay other skills (DEV, REV) with S&B Proc and during a long period you exchange REVs/DEVs with SSs, which means threatwise S&B is not good enough the only thing it does is safes you rage.

 

nfw

Ghost wrote that they will change base threat to extra damage on a lot of abilities, TC and CB were specifically mentioned

 

Darian_TruBlade

It's actually a loss of 2 seconds off of BT.

00.0 - WW
01.5 - BT
07.5 - BT
10.0 - WW
13.5 - BT
19.5 - (BT Comes off CD, but you can't hit it without delaying WW)
20.0 - WW
21.5 - BT

Moving from 3 BTs in 18 seconds to 20 seconds is an effective loss of 10% BT DPS. It's compensated by the 20% increase to Whirlwind, but it's still awkward.

This was the rotation before.

00.0 - BT
01.5 - WW
06.0 - BT
10.5 - WW
12.0 - BT
18.0 - BT
19.5 - WW

There is no overlap in this rotation so long as you are able to consistently hit each ability as soon as it comes off CD. Naturally, as Gruntle pointed out, human error/latency comes into play and thus it's impossible to have 0 overlap. However, in my experience (averaging 150 ms latency) the overlap is very minimal with 9 second WWs and very obvious with 10 second ones. The only times I've had jarring collisions in Live were when I misqueued HS and didn't have the rage for one ability or the other.

Ultimately, the point would be moot if Warriors had 1 second GCDs, but that's very unlikely (it would overpower Arms' Overpower for certain).

 

Nezralix

Well, the absolute first thing they need to do it is make it proc off of Revenge. It's just bizarre and confusing that it doesn't. I can *vaguely* see why they might choose not to make it proc of Shield Slam (avoiding a chained Shield Slam sort of thing), but excluding one of three skills in our core threat rotation is just silly.

And as I've elaborated on too many times already, I think our rage issues need to be alleviated through means that don't involve the RNG. Unlike mana, rage is a problem that involves a rather small window, a short-term optimization problem, such that not receiving any benefit from S&B for potentially twenty seconds or more makes it of very questionable benefit from a rage efficiency perspective. Focused Rage is good. Puncture is good (although obviously not nearly as good). Sword and Board is too unreliable to put it in the same category, even if the rage savings is technically comparable to puncture in the long term (although I don't even think you can make the argument that it's comparable on a per-point basis, in a semi-optimal case).