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.
Aye, that and when picking up Nagas at Vashj.
Well, either they need to change Charge or Improved Charge if they want to make it sellable. As it is now, the main advantage of using Charge is the rage gain which we will lose in tanking situations anyway. In fact, most of the time it is the only advantage compared to picking up the mobs by throwing a rock at them, or what have you. However, with the Safeguard talent, it can be used as an extra "Escape Artist" ability. So...how about merging Warbringer and Safeguard?
On a different note...
There are being done some good work in analysing prot abilities and talents based on the current basic threat rotation. The latest talk about the buff to Spell reflect made me wonder if anybody has sussed out the threat of Concussion Blow and Shockwave yet? How are they comparing to the staple threat moves (threat per rage or threat per second). Will they be abilities we'll want to use as soon as they're off cooldown?
Originally Posted by 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.
Either that, or make it work like a Sword Spec proc.
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.
I am torn, because I would like to see a bit more dynamic gameplay when tanking instead of just falling into a monotonous 4-5 button tanking rotation. While I certainly agree that a free, instant SS that procs from SS or Dev seems more useful than this current implementation of S&B, Blizzard posters have stated they want more "fun" abilities or tools to help tanks out instead of mandatory talents that add little or nothing to gameplay. Even something as simple as, "You can press a button that lights up before it's supposed to!" like S&B is now is a step in the right direction, and this talent has a great amount of potential, but your analysis clearly demonstrates it needs some work before I can non-begrudgingly invest 5 points into it.
Either that, or make it work like a Sword Spec proc.
Even then, I'd rather it has a lower proc rate and works on Revenge. Otherwise it's basically just an incentive to drop Revenge from the rotation for no really good reason.
EDIT: Although truth be told, I'm not even sure if I care about SnB being extraordinarily mediocre. It's a good excuse to grab Justified Killing, Impale, and Anger Management in Arms, which I'm sure more than make up for the threat and rage tradeoff.
Regarding Spell Reflect: I imagine it would be easy to keep it a gimmick without making it required. The first Shattered Halls boss and Kael's MGT version are good examples.
Reflecting a Shadowbolt/Fireball adds a bit of DPS and makes it slightly easier on the healer, but the encounter itself is tuned around not having it, and the DPS added isn't really enough to make a Warrior clearly better than the others.
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.
Totally agreed. I was really enjoying where they were going with it. Shame they've killed it.
Regarding Spell Reflect: I imagine it would be easy to keep it a gimmick without making it required. The first Shattered Halls boss and Kael's MGT version are good examples.
Reflecting a Shadowbolt/Fireball adds a bit of DPS and makes it slightly easier on the healer, but the encounter itself is tuned around not having it, and the DPS added isn't really enough to make a Warrior clearly better than the others.
I think Kael in Heroic MrT is an example of where Spell Reflect is not just a gimmick. A Prot Warrior can chain Spell Reflect and Shield Bash to invalidate dang near every Fireball. In contrast, a Feral Druid gives up a couple seconds of threat to interrupt one every 15 seconds and a Prot Paladin has to rely entirely on his DPS to do the interrupts. Depending on group composition, the other tanks could take twice as much damage as a Warrior, or more.
I think Kael in Heroic MrT is an example of where Spell Reflect is not just a gimmick. A Prot Warrior can chain Spell Reflect and Shield Bash to invalidate dang near every Fireball. In contrast, a Feral Druid gives up a couple seconds of threat to interrupt one every 15 seconds and a Prot Paladin has to rely entirely on his DPS to do the interrupts. Depending on group composition, the other tanks could take twice as much damage as a Warrior, or more.
Similar contrasts can be made to the speed at which a paladin tank goes thru say, shattered halls.
I am torn, because I would like to see a bit more dynamic gameplay when tanking instead of just falling into a monotonous 4-5 button tanking rotation.
I read this all the time and I but I just assume it happens... does no other warrior tank debuff for themselves? I pretty much always debuff, regardless if there are other warriors present. Every 5th cycle should have a thunderclap (more if there is a resist), every other 5th should have a demo shout in it if you don't have another warrior. Battle/challenging shout also break it up every 2 minutes.
Admittedly this isn't much and most cycles are just standard, but there are options to improve it. The most obvious is sword and board, which effectively destroys running the standard rotation. However if you are buffing/debuffing for yourself, you usually replace devastates in your rotation with TC and demo, which reduces your chance to proc S&B and makes it less useful. S&B encourages warriors not do debuff mobs which I think is counter productive to the class.
The other alternative is to make longer cooldown abilities generate more threat than devastate to encourage their use in the rotation. For example:
- concussion blow now does 25% ap and high threat. If CB did more threat than devastate, you'd be encouraged to use it every 30 seconds, even if the mob is immune to the stun.
- shockwave does 50% ap and high threat. If it does more threat than devastate on single-target, you'd work it into your rotation every 20 seconds.
- shield block will be in rotation every 40 seconds and apart from specific bosses, will be used more for threat than mitigation.
- if rend was buffed to the point where its threat counted, you'd be refreshing it every 15 seconds
If blizzard think this stuff is important they will check it in the threat pass, I very much doubt any of the long-cooldown abilities actually do more threat than devastate right now (no beta key, can't check). Warrior tanking right now can be more complex than SS-rev-dev-dev, its just that it is of more benefit to the raid to stick to this cycle to increase the threat ceiling rather than make tanking less monotonous.
As I understand it Shockwave is very good threat purely because it's 50% AP but not sure if I accept reports I've heard that it approaches Shield Slam threat because it not only stuns but hits potentially all targets 10 yards infront of you.
If it were to do near-Shield Slam threat it would render a lot of Warrior Trash tanking overly easy (imagine cornerpulling which funnels them all into the area of effect).
Few numbers now: I currently have 1,500 AP when raid buffed so that's 750 base damage. Modified by Stance, 1H Weapon Spec and assuming I am Enraged that's 817 damage or over 1184 Threat in Defensive Stance (@1.45)
Assuming that "High Threat" means a modifier of no less than 100 (I'd guess closer to 200) we are talking somewhere between the threat of Revenge and Shield Slam.
I'd be firing that off every cooldown against single targets, including Bosses - replacing a Devastate
Regarding Concussion Blow it might become something we want to fire off even on a Stun-Immune Boss but of course for this to be true it would also need to exceed Devastate Threat. Notably in a blue Q&A today the reply to a complaint about our threat scaling poorly is "AP on things like Sunder and CB will help".
Probably reading too much into it but that could imply CB threat indeed exceeds Devastate threat.
If the above cases are true that's more chances for Sword&Board procs you are skipping. But I agree S&B is more about rage retention than extra threat.
PS: the blue also states they are still considering rage on Parry/Dodge.
I read this all the time and I but I just assume it happens... does no other warrior tank debuff for themselves? I pretty much always debuff, regardless if there are other warriors present. Every 5th cycle should have a thunderclap (more if there is a resist), every other 5th should have a demo shout in it if you don't have another warrior. Battle/challenging shout also break it up every 2 minutes.
stuff
If blizzard think this stuff is important they will check it in the threat pass, I very much doubt any of the long-cooldown abilities actually do more threat than devastate right now (no beta key, can't check). Warrior tanking right now can be more complex than SS-rev-dev-dev, its just that it is of more benefit to the raid to stick to this cycle to increase the threat ceiling rather than make tanking less monotonous.
Main reason to have one of the DPS Warriors DS is because you typically do not have 5/5 Imp DS as an MT. Possibly an OT but rarely as an MT. Not only is it a spec limitation but every time it gets resisted, that's another GCD wasted, lowering overall threat. As far as making tanking "fun and exciting" I honestly don't know why anyone would want to make a threat rotation more complex just for the sake of being "less monotonous" if it means you're just pushing more buttons to achieve the same effect.
Either that, or make it work like a Sword Spec proc.
This would be nice. It wouldn't make the talent more powerful or less powerful (since it is expected to use it when it procs), but it would become less frustrating to monitor Shield Slam cooldown and work it into the rotation.
Highlights:
* Defensive Stance "essentially has Salv built in". To clarify, I believe this is beyond simply rolling Defiance into Def Stance's baseline performance
* Thunderclap confirmed to have a 12% AP coefficient
* Thunderclap will receive a Glyph to increase its maximum target cap
Own questions:
* The new talent he mentioned in #3 is Incite, right?
* The new helpful pulling ability he mentioned is Weapon Throw, right? It seems odd that he said it would help pull casters, unless he means simply generating threat on them while you run for LOS
* The new helpful pulling ability he mentioned is Weapon Throw, right? It seems odd that he said it would help pull casters, unless he means simply generating threat on them while you run for LOS
It's Weapon Throw he's talking about, as it's the only new ranged ability we have gotten so far.
I would love to think he's hinting at making it interrupt casts, but I assume he means just generating more threat on casters while pulling them with line of sight. We could already do this with Spell Reflect though, but Weapon Throw makes it easier since it seems to costs no rage at the moment.
Edit: Does Weapon Throw still only cause 10% of AP in damage on Beta?
Regarding Thunderclap:
I did some calculations and - unless I am way off - it will replace one Devastate in our rotation (further diminishing Sword&Board returns).
At Level 80 given 2000 AP , a 10% base crit chance, Defensive Stance, Incite and Improved Thunderclap I got the following average threat values (unmitigated by armor):
It's Weapon Throw he's talking about, as it's the only new ranged ability we have gotten so far.
I would love to think he's hinting at making it interrupt casts, but I assume he means just generating more threat on casters while pulling them with line of sight. We could already do this with Spell Reflect though, but Weapon Throw makes it easier since it seems to costs no rage at the moment.
Edit: Does Weapon Throw still only cause 10% of AP in damage on Beta?
Unless it silences for 2-3 secs, but I assume that would cause no end of QQing from casters.
EDIT:
Regarding Sword and Board: it's a very minor gain, probably smaller than Cruelty. It really needs to be worked on, it makes absolutely no sense that a tier 9 (or something) talent gives less threat (overall, per talent point, etc) than a tier 1 talent on a DPS tree... I really like Cruelty, but..
Main reason to have one of the DPS Warriors DS is because you typically do not have 5/5 Imp DS as an MT. Possibly an OT but rarely as an MT. Not only is it a spec limitation but every time it gets resisted, that's another GCD wasted, lowering overall threat. As far as making tanking "fun and exciting" I honestly don't know why anyone would want to make a threat rotation more complex just for the sake of being "less monotonous" if it means you're just pushing more buttons to achieve the same effect.
Well... taken to the extreme all classes could then have one button labelled "dps", "threat", or "heal"
The effect wouldn't be the same if more abilities were viable... it would be more fun, which is the main effect I hope to pull out of tanking. Sure, I want to maximise threat and survival, but all in all I also want it to be fun. And personally, I'd love tanking to be more reactive than just deciding when to add heroic strikes and when to skip shield blocks.
Shield Specialization now Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your shield by 10/20/30% (Paladin)
This is interesting..It seems that paladins will only gain +30% BV from what their shield grants, not from strength or BV items. While warrior shield mastery was changed to reflect that they will gain the +30% BV from all sources.
This would "even" out the damage disparity between the two classes "shield slams", due to the paladin one ignoring armor. It would also go a little ways to evening out incoming damage discrepancies, as the paladin will still block a lot more attacks, but for a significant amount less than the warrior, which I'm not sure I like, its almost always better to have more stable damage incoming..However, with our shield block, this amount of damage mitigation could really really be large, enough to be the "mini" shield wall that they spoke of.
Its not unreasonable, given the gear at 80 (Tanking gear) that we will have 600, at least, strength (Including Vit)..With a 300 BV shield, and 200 BV from strength, even with no +BV items (Which we have seen, the boots.). That could be 650 blocked, and frankly, those figures are very "conservative", especially considering kings ect is not factored in yet.
If block values do start to skyrocket, to values well over 1k, its going to be difficult to balance everything. Protection warriors, with the right DPS gear, will hit very very hard in PvP, but be able to effectively negate Rogues/Warriors outside of Shield break/dismantle times. (Especially when you consider how amazing prot scales with pvp gear, even in my current gear, with the changes, I would have 600 BV, for a 1400ish SS, including imp SB/One handed, and my shield slam would crit 50% of the time.),
I'm still in the camp that they should bite the bullet and change BV into an armor like conversion stat, something that translates into % damage reduction which is multiplicative with armor, working like another defensive stance. They could tweak the numbers fairly easily and it would allow the value to scale in content, at the same time you can keep the actual BV for offensive abilities like SS and it wouldn't "break" certain aspects of the game. Setting bench marks for BV in this way, of say a certain% reduction at nax, and then another one at the final dungeon, given the str/bv on tank gear, seems like it would be easier (And probably better overall for tank scaling/balance, since, like armor, you could require a lot more for the higher scaling.) than allowing BV to mess with "Smaller" number combat, like in 5 mans/pvp.
Shield Specialization now Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your shield by 10/20/30% (Paladin)
The warrior Shield Mastery talent actually has the exact same wording.
One thing I wanted to add to the Concussion Blow discussion a few posts back, CB doesn't (and never has) triggered the GCD, so you can always CB and then do something else right after. Unless the threat per rage is outright horrible, it should be used quite frequently in any situation.
That's a surprisingly high value and I feel compelled to confirm it!
I will run my own numbers and see what I get. As well as Improved TC and Stance I will add damage for 1H Weapon Spec and Enrage (from Imp. Def. Stance).
I'm going to ignore crits because if your factoring crits you really need to factor in armour and resists too for "average threat for TC" rather than "threat from a TC hit" as I am looking at. The former is of greater value but it's more work.
AP 2,000 (that's conservative, I have 1,500 Raid Buffed at 70 but I want to use your value for comparison).
Rank 9 = 200 (All the sites show 200 so I assume Ghost is referring to a base Crit).
Damage = 400+240 = 640 (assuming the AP contribution is not also doubled by the talent though it may well be).
Modified by Stance 0.9, 1H Weapon Spec 1.1 and Enrage 1.1 = 697 damage
Threat for TC is Damage x 1.75 = 1220 then x1.45 for Stance
or 1,769 threat for a hit vs a non-Armoured target.
I have to say I am quite impressed by this as that's 295 TPS from TC spam alone. Incite makes it even nastier.
If the base damage has indeed increased to 300 it comes out as high as Lazhar said. But I recall Liar saying in Beta that Battle Stance Thunderclaps were hitting for 600 total which comes in near my figures.
Questions I'd ask Blue:
1. Is TC threat still based on Damage x 1.75 or has that modifier been reduced in respect of the inclusion of AP?
EDIT: Rank 9 = 300 damage confirmed in latest build "Thunderclap damage increased 50%", Lazhar's calculations were right.
Last edited by Borodin : 09/06/08 at 1:33 AM.
Reason: New information
The warrior Shield Mastery talent actually has the exact same wording.
One thing I wanted to add to the Concussion Blow discussion a few posts back, CB doesn't (and never has) triggered the GCD, so you can always CB and then do something else right after. Unless the threat per rage is outright horrible, it should be used quite frequently in any situation.
Shield Specialization now Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your shield by 10/20/30%. (Old - Increases your block value by 10/20/30%.)Paladin, today, 8885 calculator update.
8820 Calculator update for warriors. Shield Mastery (Tier 6) Changed to increase block value by 10/20/30%.
They don't seem to..the changes to the notes seem to specifically indicate that they don't have the same wording. The official warrior beta calc doesn't display this (It has the old wording.) but it also has +3 rage for charge, so...
If the 1.75 was taken out they'd have to raise its damage a lot to be really useful.
I mean, 400 TPS for AoE on 80 will be nothing really major - it's more or less what a holy paladin generates with consecrate today (or close; we use a holy pala for tanking some stuff in ZA bear runs). By the way - that's the point warriors should be, I think - better than holy paladins for AoE tanking, but worse than prot.
And I somehow doubt one shockwave every 20secs will close the gap. Especially if the 1.75 is no more.
They don't seem to..the changes to the notes seem to specifically indicate that they don't have the same wording. The official warrior beta calc doesn't display this (It has the old wording.) but it also has +3 rage for charge, so...
Yea and the official paladin beta calc actually says that it adds block value. Anyway, I think this is just a wording change, the talent still does the same thing. The warrior talent on live says it increases damage absorbed by your shield, but it actually increases your BV for Shield Slam as well.
Borodin, wasn't spell resistance on bosses lowered to 9% across the board? TC should hit as often as melee attacks.
The warrior Shield Mastery talent actually has the exact same wording.
Not any more, Shield Mastery in Wrath is worded "Increases your Block Value..."
The Paladin version said that too but changed to say "Absorbs".
I don't think this change was just about "Holy Shield Slam" ignoring armour but also the fact it scaled far better due to being 2x BV damage.
Various recent changes to Warriors went some way to compensate but the fact remained Paladin's BV to Threat scaling was looking quite superior to ours.
1000 BV seems perfectly reasonable to me, I can reach that now if I stack silly gear for it so with Strength all over Tank Gear and Strength feeding BV at a 2:1 ratio I'd expect 1,000 BV to be a fairly normal value at 80.
Paladin (with the Shield Spec wording) and 1H Weapon Spec 1 BV = 2.2 SS Damage
With 1000 BV their SS would do 2,200 Holy Damage
Warrior (Shield Mastery, Stance, 1H Weapon Spec, Enrage and Imp. Shield Bash)
1 BV = 1.3x0.9x1.1x1.1x1.1 = 1.557 SS Damage (though some of those modifiers effect total damage as shown below)
With 1000 BV our SS would do (775 + 1000x1.3) x 0.9 x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 = 2486 Physical Damage or 1988 after just 20% Armour DR.
Chuck in the 15% Crit chance from Critical Block and you see the Warrior version slightly overtaking overall.
Have I missed something about Paladin Shield Slam?
Of course it's entirely possible the wording of Paladin Shield Spec is just an older version of the text creeping into a build and may not represent any functional change.
Dots,
I'd heard about the new 9% Spell Miss but it was not something I was sure was confirmed.
Recently we even had a Warrior on the EU Warrior Forums misreading a Wrath Wiki (the article was badly written) and becoming completely convinced Melee had increased to a 17% miss rate!
In any case I did not factor in a miss rate in my calculations, I just wanted to know what a typical hit looked like.
Thanks for the reminder though I am going to accept it's true and worry less about chain-resists from Bosses vs my 6 second cooldown!
Well... taken to the extreme all classes could then have one button labelled "dps", "threat", or "heal"
The effect wouldn't be the same if more abilities were viable... it would be more fun, which is the main effect I hope to pull out of tanking. Sure, I want to maximise threat and survival, but all in all I also want it to be fun. And personally, I'd love tanking to be more reactive than just deciding when to add heroic strikes and when to skip shield blocks.
You don't make tanking more fun by adding more buttons to push, and you don't make tanking more fun by making us watch for a shitty proc that will eventually increase our TPS by 2% (especially because we have plenty of other "fun" things to watch after). In the end it all comes down to the same thing; pushing buttons in order to perform an optimal rotation. The only way they are going to make tanking more fun is by designing more fun encounters.
09/04/08, 12:07 PM
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