Ivanstone

The AP is never "on top of it". It takes up itemization points. Part of the problem is many plate items end up being poorly itemized or are simply absent. Ask any Fury Warrior trying to gear up to do Kara/T4 content about the troubles of finding good plate. Its also overly simplistic comparing agility and strength. The correct comparison is AP/Agility vs Str/CritRating. An item with 30 Str and 30 Crit is fairly different from 60 AP and 30 agility depending on who wears it. Still the real solution is less braindead plate design (Hard Khorium Battlefists anyone?). The changes to Blacksmithing make this closer to a reality ensuring that Plate Wearers can get a full suite of gear for all specs up until the Naxx 25 level at least.

On the other hand, I can see what you mean about a lack of Strength. Many DPS accessories and weapons are intended to be generic for all physical DPS but this will hamper shield users who may need to switch mid-fight. Introducing more socketed items that will allow people to choose their DPS stat would be most appropriate.

PS It could be worse. Enhancement Shammies may not tank too often but their stat changes borks their survival options whilst using a shield.

 

Tornaz

A DPS nerf to prot isn't that surprising, really. The level of parity between deep prot and deep fury cannot be considered intentional.

 

Darkrenown

No, he clarifies on page 3:
WoW Forums -> Ghost: When does Warrior tanking get easier?
I'm really surprised more hasn't been made of this. From the sounds of it def stance will have a 175% threat modifier now. That would also explain why they dropped the 1.75 dmg to threat modifer from TC.

Regarding weapon throw, Imp shield bash now also adds a silence to it.

 

Fellwraith

I wonder if anyone realizes that's barely a threat or dps upgrade to the swordbreaker's bulwark without kings. With both shieldslam glyphs it's a downgrade in our 4pc T6. The rage gain from that extra AP is nominal at best.

I'm really not happy about this change, it wasn't necessary and actually causes us a fair amount of pain once we get to level 80. This means you probably will want to replace a lot of these pieces with blues before stepping foot in Nax because they won't have the defensive stats you need to survive (especially with the anticipation change). Previously we might have gotten away with keeping a couple of the Sunwell/T6 items and re-gemming them.

The Nax 10 man tier sets for Warriors are well short of crit immunity without specifically gemming for defense (you need at least 3-4 gem slots out of 7 to be used solely on defense, that's with items like the gurtogg trinket, the M'uru ring, and the hydross trinket). You can't use your T6 to help you out with achieving crit immunity either now.

I think the people who were clamoring for the gear to be re-itemized don't have any idea what the hell they were asking for.

 

Shha

You dont understand though - sure AP takes itemization points. But basically what it means is that rogues get lets say 5 stats (agi/stam/ap/2extras) vs 4 stats of warriors (str/stam/2 extras). Now the itemization in wow doesnt add the values - it adds squares of them. So if lets say with 4 stats warriors get 10 "units" of each stat, then rogues will get sqrt(80)= ~9 units.

5 different statistics increased by 9 units are almost always better then 4 increased by 10. Of course in real game you dont get same values of each stat, but basically the principles stays - the item with more sockets and more different stats is better. Just an example I guess to illustrate.

Cataclysm's Edge has:

75 str (75 units)
49 stamina (33 units)
335 ArP (48 units)

Now lets keep the same stamina and see how "good" stats we could get by spreading the rest of points among every possible dps stat : str, agility, expertise,hit, crit, haste, attack power, armor ignore.

75^2+48^2= 31 average "units" of all those stats.

New stats of the sword:

31 str
62 attack power
31 agility
31 crit rating
31 hit rating
31 haste rating
31 expertise rating
220 armor ignore
49 stamina

Counting ap as 0.45 str that means that we traded 16 str and 115 armor pen for 31 agility 31 crit 31 hit 31 haste 31 expertise. Seems like a really good trade, considering crit alone is worth about same as what we lose.

Hopefully that clarifies the idea of itemization. As long as leather will get basically same set of stats, with the exception of getting BOTH agility and attack power to replace strength, this imbalance will continue.

 

PSGarak

The details of your math are way off, but the principle is the same. It's raised to something closer to 3/2, but anything greater than 1 results in the same sort of effect. You're making an assumption, though, that rogues scale as well with each of their stats as a warrior does with each of his. By the nature of the itemization formula the ratio of the stats stays constant as ilvl increases, ie increasing the ilvl to double 4 stats will also double 5 stats under a different distribution, which means that the sum of stat points stays at a constant ratio. If warriors scale better with their stats by that ratio, balance is preserved.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

renegar

I would like to point out that for some reason, while Concussion Blow does not trigger the GCD, it is affected by it. To clarify, take this macro:

/cast devastate
/cast concussion blow

Spamming this macro would never trigger Concussion Blow.

/cast concussion blow
/cast devastate

Spamming this macro would cast Concussion Blow at every opportunity, and the devastates would never miss a beat. (Unless you run out of rage, etc.)

 

Grayson Carlyle

Aye, and a lot of trinkets work this way too. Assuredly annoying, but you get used to it.

 

Liar

I agree. It's not just about what happens later in the Beta but also now for raiding. Losing 11% avoidance because people asked for Strength on our tanking gear is... stupid to put it mildly. 11% avoidance is what, 1 or 2 tier's worth of progression nullified by some more Strength on our 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.

 

mistersix

It's been mentioned a few times in this thread recently about warriors having a pain suppression like ability. What is it?

 

Liar

Safeguard - Spell - World of Warcraft and for comparison purposes: Pain Suppression - Spell - World of Warcraft

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

 

nfw

Surely, the most appropriate stat to convert to strength would be any existing SBV?

 

Lithose

Well, don't forget, you're going to be getting 2.8% more native avoidance from the change to anticipation. You're also going to be getting a significant increase in mitigation from BV (Not a fair trade by itself, I agree.)...However, survivability is going to be much much higher with 4 minute shield walls, 5 minute last stands and a shield block that will, or should, block 1200-1300 of every attack for 10 seconds. Thats an extremely large amount of on demand mitigation and in sunwell, knowing when to use it is fairly obvious (Stomp, Corrosion ect.).

So we might lose avoidance, but we have gained a fairly substantial amount of survivability through talents. Whether that trade off is equitable, I'm not sure, until I see the "hard" numbers on gear changes (Like the solid amount of avoidance lost and total of the strength increases, from not only set pieces, but all pieces.).

Edit: Just doing some napkin Math, from what I have seen (Missing rings, neck, cape, trinkets.)

From the pieces I have though (Full onslaught, except for gloves, pants, helm which are borderland/felf/illi.) I will gain 230 strength. I will be assured to have the 80 strength totem, thanks to the changes as well, so thats 310 strength+170 base now (Might be off by 10-15) After Vit/Kings, thats 559 total strength or 363BV, after shield spec, Native block value from Belt, Ring, Shield, Helm will be 409, for a total of 772 damage blocked per attack.

That means every 40 seconds I can reduce every attack by nearly 1500. The way Brut's MH/OH mechanics work, this would decrease his "round" damage by 3k, this would trivialize a stomp even with low avoidance, which is the only place your tanks should ever be worried about dying. Not to mention, as said, you're going to have a lot more cool downs to play with....Granted Muru and KJ may be different, we are only on twins, but surely, its not going to destroy raids..Tank survivability is also going to be a lot higher with things like the new improved devotion aura (Every tank will have 1500 more armor and +3% healing.), raid wide agility totem (Assured to have about 3% more dodge, despite group comp.), grace (3% less damage taken.)..Ect.

 

Gellor

I don't think anyone was clamoring for it, a blue posted a while back, that they would be doing re-itemisation of gear for all classes that had mechanic changes.

As feared, they've gutted out avoidance for the STR. Hopefully they reevaluate the changes. Or else the healers will have to pick up the slack with their shiny new abilities. I can see priest's Guardian Spirits being kept rather busy :/

 

mistersix

Ya know, my brain must be on the fritz. I'm so used to pain suppression in an arena context that I was looking for a self-cast. I've also been biasing myself toward thinking of safeguard almost entirely in terms of the mobility gained from the root breaking.

Lith raises a good point. We also know that at least some encounters themselves are going to have to change (the devs have already mentioned Illidan's shear for example) so maybe it won't be as dramatic as it seems on first glance.

 

Nezralix

Given the slimming of the Prot talent set (which is great, and something I hope they don't reverse), there's a pretty good opportunity to branch out into Arms beyond the Big Two of Deflection and Improved Thunderclap. Specifically, I'm considering the utility of Justified Killing and Deep Wounds.

Obviously, if you're picking up Justified Killing, then you're dropping at least two points in Cruelty. That's a notable loss, especially considering the introduction of Impale as a useful talent, but probably not critical. Beyond that, I see a lot of competition between Puncture and Justified Killing, and I think Justified Killing probably wins. Assuming a monster swinging at you with a 2.0 attack speed, and a fairly reasonable 20% parry chance, then you're looking at one parry per 10 seconds, on average, or 6 rage per 10 seconds. During that time, you're looking at probably 9 to 15 rage saved from Puncture. However, the benefit to Justified Killing comes in from two factors: (a) You're getting a lot more than that when tanking multiple targets, and (b) it assists in the 'worst case', which is to say that you're getting that additional rage specifically at the times when you could potentially be entering a starvation period otherwise (dodges and misses still appear to gain no benefit). If I had to pick between these two (which it often seems to), then I'm inclined to go with Justified Killing.

The problem, of course, is that you've got to fill in three extra points beyond Impale to pick it up. There are certainly plenty of talent points to choose from, including Iron Will, Imp Charge, Imp HS, and Anger Management. I'm thinking that Deep Wounds could be one of the better choices out of those, even though it's not nearly as effective as it would be for a slower weapon than tanks usually use.

Some quick napkin math regarding what its threat output might look like right now at 70, were Deep Wounds to be available with the rest of the current Protection tree:

Assume a 100 DPS, 1.6 speed tanking weapon, with 2000 attack power in a raid-buffed scenario (pretend we've got 1300 attack power unbuffed, based on gear changes that haven't actually occurred!). The end result is an average swing damage of 427, including 1H spec and Improved Defensive Stance. The result is a Deep Wounds bleed effect of either 205 or 226 over 6 seconds (I'm not entirely sure whether the 1H spec gets calculated into the Deep Wounds damage again, effectively twice). Supposing the latter, that's 37.6 damage per second, or 48.9 DPS with Mangle/Trauma. Given current defensive stance modifier of 49% additional threat, that's 72.6 threat per second. Not gigantic, but still a threat bonus that you're not likely to get from the competitive talents in that tree.

These numbers aren't directly transferable to Wrath, because (a) you can't really even get this talent configuration at level 70, (b) threat per second values aren't easily comparable to what you'll be seeing once everybody else gets their new talents in 3.0, and (c) everything is just a little bit different (i.e. defensive stance does something like 180% threat). Still, it seems promising, especially given that it's a buff that you don't particularly have to do anything special to get.

Just for kicks, assuming a fairly liberal raid buffed attack power of 3500 in a Wrath raid (not wholly unreasonable, given that you're likely to have around 1800 unbuffed attack power in ideal level 80 blue tanking gear), and a 145 dps weapon, you could be looking at 79.5 DPS from this talent with Mangle/Trauma (and almost double that in TPS). In fact, with a 2.6 speed weapon, you're looking at 129.2 DPS (another minor inconsistency of the choice between slow and fast weapons for tanking).

Of course, there's another slightly more subtle benefit: Should your Cleave or Thunderclap crit on a secondary AoE target (no longer that unlikely), then you're getting an additional 370 or so damage done to that target over the next six seconds. Not great, but at least as much as you're likely to get from, say, the new Damage Shield talent.

Anyway, I think there's some potential there. Maybe even more for Fury tanks using a 2H weapon.

 

Nezralix

You're going to have to explain to me why you think it's somehow bad to have STR now but better to have it in Wrath; is this really just a generic complain that STR is an important stat under the new model?

If you're concerned about Sunwell tuning, then idea that encounters are tuned around a target level of survivability goes out the window with all the new talents everyone's getting.

And if you're suggesting that Sunwell gear should ride you right into early Wrath raiding *and* that it should maintain the mitigation-only characteristics of current gear, then that's particularly unreasonable. That's essentially suggesting that you just simply don't want STR, and implying that all the blue level 80 tanking gear is improperly-itemized for this reason. I'm sure Blizzard hopes that it isn't the case that STR is a wasted stat.

 

Branar

I don't quite understand how you can cut points from Puncture in the current tree. Look at this build:

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

It's 51 points exactly, and I really don't think I'm making any choices there that are inferior to Puncture?

 

Nezralix

In this case, I would've put the points into Warbringer and Safeguard instead, given that they have the potential to be incredibly useful in some cases.

You certainly have the ability to put points into Puncture and Justified Killing, but one way or another, I think that Puncture is quite obviously one of the worse talents in the Prot tree, and a good candidate for getting cut.

 

Darkrenown

Maybe if this goes live they'll remove or reduce Sunwell radience buff? Although that doesn't help people on Muru.

Also, sorry for repeating this, but no one is interesting in def stance's new threat modifier? It seems like a massive buff to me, and I haven't seen it mentioned by anyone else. It'd be great if someone with a warrior on beta could test it and see if it's really 175%.

 

Liar

I guess the reason many of us (me atleast) aren't that interested in the new 175% value because it really doesn't change anything. BoS and Defiance were expected when tuning the TPS of the DPS classes (Ghostcrawler implied that much) and with BoS and Defiance gone they just had to buff the Defensive stance modifier from 130% to 175% (130%+15%+30%) to keep things even. So effectively, nothing changed for tanks and the real increase/decrease is going to come from Strength and AP scaling.

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

 

Deathwing

For BoS to be melded into Defensive stance, wouldn't you have to multiply its current threat by (1/.7), or ~1.42, not adding .3?

Also, as for the speccing to Justified Killing discussion, two things to add:

You *have* to spec Deep Wounds...if only to hear that lovely blood spurt sound every time you crit.
Second thing is in a lot of cases, Anger Management is equal to 1 rank of Puncture. I would agree that Justified Killing is probably better than 2 ranks of Puncture, here was the build I'm considering:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Borodin

Darkrenown,

I've only just caught sight of this potential boost to Defensive Stance.

I think there's 3 ways you can interpret the comments about Salvation modfier being "baked in"

1. Every non Tank class/stance has an extra -30% Threat Modfier built in.
2. They have added another 30% threat to Defensive Stance bringing it to 175% threat (and similar for Bears etc).
3. The talents and scaling effects count for this additional 30% threat we "need".

I think the last is very unlikely to be correct so if it's either of the first 2 it certainly pleases me.
Option 2. Would indeed be the most logical and sensible way to do it.

Interesting to note Thunderclap threat modifer being reduced - we earlier saw calculations that it was going to come in at 2K threat and despite my doubts my own numbers agreed (once adjusted for the increased damage). Of course we soon get proof that was too good to be true.

Revisiting the numbers I get about 850 threat assuming 1.45 for Defensive Stance along with all the usual talents, 2000AP and an unarmoured target.
1029 threat if the stance has been lifted to 1.75

 

Grayson Carlyle

Until this changes to show +75% threat, then Option Two from Borodin's list has not happened.

 

mistersix

I personally think puncture should either have as a rider effect (or maybe even just be) a flat armor penetration competent.

Probably right. That said blizz has shown a strong pattern of poorly updating tooltips.