Shha

2k Sounds very likely if not higher.

a) From pre BC (typical block in realm of 120 if i recall) to BC (500 in avoidance gear, 650 if you care about block a bit) we had 4-5 times increase. 650x5 for those who actually care about block and you get the 3k blocks. Considering mana use and other stuff seemed to scale at about same rate vanilla-bc and bc-wotlk its not unlikely. Will it be like that? I have no clue, but you cant just say "I dont see Blizzard doing it".

b) As for pvp. I can get 1200 block now, with trinkets up to 1700. Whats exactly so overpowered about it (and its lvl 70 stats not 80). I cant see prot warriors storming top of arena ladders with shield block gear, sorry.

c) They seem to actually want to complicate pve game , which is overally a good thing.


All in all its too early to see how block will play in end game. My bet is it will have a decent niche at some point of raiding , but without drastic change in mechanics (which can happen - i have a feeling a Sunwell Radiance type of buff can be more widely used - not for zones, but for specific bosses. Its hard to balance but it makes more interesting encounters, if some bosses can shut your avoidance for example, or boost it with high miss rate etc), and avoidance scaling expotentially , it will probably go with stacking of Block/Stamina->Avoidance again.

 

Fellwraith

Uhh the 10% less damage taken in defensive stance is pretty important for tanking warriors. I'd even go so far as to call it a class-defining ability and critical to making the class a desired raid tank. I'd be pretty pissed if they removed it just to appease people bitching about taking extra damage in 'zerker stance. Until we see how the new bloodthirst works and how the blood-spec'd deathknight bonuses work in a raid, I don't think you can say the 10% extra damage taken is a huge liability.

I also don't agree at all with the people who are saying they want to lose their ability to tank because they want to do more damage. You play the class not the spec. If you never want to tank then go re-roll a rogue or an enhancement shaman, there's plenty of time before the next expansion. There's lots of us who enjoy being able to both dps and tank in a raid and small group. That's why we rolled warrior, not because fury warriors they were the cat's ass in Naxxramas. Significantly hampering your flexibility so that you can super-specialize is not necessarily a good thing, especially when you look at how some of the other tanking hybrids are going to work. If all you want to be is a dual-wielding dps without an aggro dump and a red bar instead of a yellow one, why do you choose to play a warrior?


The reason they're reluctant to scale up block value too much is that you become immune to a lot of things in PVE. With the new rogue "dismantle" ability and the warrior shieldbreak ability, I really wouldn't think it's for PVP purposes. It's pretty easy to solo "group" quests in Kara gear today. If they amp that up, you're looking at a class that is immune to physical damage, deals decent dps, and has a load of other special attacks (stuns, silences, disarms, debuffs, etc.) A single healing potion or healthstone goes a long way for builds like that.

 

PSGarak

The problem with the Block mechanic becoming relevant is that the size of hits you take varies so much across different content venues. Mobs in the outside world hit for 100, raid bosses hit for well over 10k, a difference of a factor of 100. If blocking isn't done via percents, you can't make blocking relevant in the high-end while not trivializing the low-end. So either Block Value will become useful for one type of not-top content (like 10-mans), or block value from stuff you get in those various venues will scale up really fast, and the fact that it trivializes lower content will either be accepted as part of the system, or reigned in with lower block rates to make sure damage isn't completely mitigated.

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

 

Novakki

I want to see math. I like math. I'll give it a try working with 5/5 Titan's Grip @ lvl 70.

White damage:

for DW 1handers:
DPS = AP/14+WeaponDPS

for DW 2handers:
DPS = (AP/14+WeaponDPS)/1,2 (<- or multiplied with 0,8?)


This leads to..
AP/14+(1h)WeaponDPS = (AP/14+(2h)WeaponDPS)/1,2

And solving (2h)WeaponDPS we're looking at..
0,2*AP/14+1,2*(1h)WeaponDPS = (2h)WeaponDPS

Therefore equivalent 2hander for 100 DPS 1hander is
0,2*3000/14+1,2*100 = 162,9


A quick comparison made with your brutal gladiator equipments
(or equivalent DPS weapons) and with 3000ish AP which you'll be enjoying at level 70.

[Brutal Gladiator's Quickblade] (i was lazy to find the 2.6 version)
[Brutal Gladiator's Greatsword]


With OH dmg aswell, which is a percentage anyway and should not effect the outcome that much anyway >_>
DW 1handers: (3000/14+107,9*1,625) = 389,6 DPS
DW 2handers: (3000/14+140,3*1,625)/1,2 = 368,6 DPS

Please point my flaws. I hope i didn't miss somebody else doing this.
If this is correct, my guildies will think me as a stupid warrior DWing two
Cataclys's Edges just to look cool. Besides what is the balance in spending 5 talent points in a skill
that actually reduces your rage generation?.


Considering specials.. without math is clearly trivial to get some DPS output from skills like
Whirlwind and Bloodsurge. Victory Rush procced, first message \o/

- edit: i found my error in the calculations, going to post about it later -

 

Muggins

Not entirely a flaw if you're looking purely at the weapon damage side of things, but it would be interesting to see how the stats on the weapon themselves affect the totals.

 

kargathia

The nice thing about arena weapons is that multiple weapons share the same itemization, so this is actually doable to check out, while avoiding comparisation of apples and oranges.

[Brutal Gladiator's Slicer]
Since both main hand and offhand weapons have exactly the same stats we can just double this to:

18 hit rating
44 crit rating
76 AP
98 Armor Penetration

[Brutal Gladiator's Decapitator] Interestingly enough this gives different stats than just doubling the 1h, even though it has the same stats (I specifically did not pick the sword for this, since it has str)

It has 6 more crit rating, 1 more hit rating, 24 extra AP, and the same armor penetration. I would appreciate any clarification on why this might be, since it seems odd to give one weapon higher stats than the other, since they both are "stats contributed from MH+OH slot".

Doubling this combines to a total of:

38 hit
100 crit
200 AP
194 Armor penetration

It seems to me that the extra 20 hit, 56 crit, 124 AP and 98 extra armor penetration would compensate for the loss in white dps.

Purely looking at Attack Power, it shows that 124 attack power extra would change the formula to
((3000+1.1*124)/14+140.3*1.625)/1.2=376.68 DPS, still 10 dps under 2x1h, but enough to rather safely venture a guess that the other 10 lacking DPS can and will be contributed by the hit, crit, and armor penetration increase.

 

1337beast

Maybe I'm completely wrong but won't Two-Handed weapon specialization will increase total damage by 5%? Or even better: 5% for both 2 handed wepons you're wearing?

In a build like that: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
2handed weapon spec will provide you 5% increased damage or maybe more if the 5% applies to your 2handed offhand weapon. That'll make TG provides better DPS then 2x1H.

Please points my flaws. :P

 

Zaroua

With the introduction of Death Knights, being another melee-DPS and tank hybrid like the Warriors/Druids, we'll most likely see the end of the 2 DPS Warriors/raid days.

I certainly can't see why any raid leader in WotLK would bring in a third Warrior over bringing a first Feral Druid/Death Knight DPS/Enh Shaman/Ret Paladin. So far by looking at how the new talent trees are shaping up, one can easily conclude that a big part of WotLK min-maxing will be about synergies.

With that being said, let's look at the potential synergies/buffs/debuffs a DPS Warrior can bring to his group/raid:

- (Improved) Thunder Clap
- Blood Frenzy
- Trauma
- Mortal Strike
- (Improved) Demoralizing Shout
- Piercing Howl
- (Commanding Presence) Battle Shout *OR* Commanding Shout
- Sunder Armor

Mortal Strike, Piercing Howl and Sunder Armor are all redundant with other class' skills or in the case of Sunder Armor, best applied by another class/spec (Prot Warriors with Devastate or Imp. Expose Armor from Rogues). Now the rest of the listed abilities are quite good, probably good enough to be required by a raid that worries about min-maxing. Considering a single DPS Warrior can decide to spec have a "viable" spec - I'm not going to speculate on the potential personal/raid DPS of the spec I'm about to link for lvl80 raids compared to other Warrior specs - we can safely assume that something like this would be the prevalent spec in terms of utility: Yarr! Tools :: Warrior 8472
Bloodthirst instead of Mortal Strike because of the self-healing with a focus on the utility talents mentioned above.


Now we'd want to couple that DPS Warrior with a Protection Warrior (most likely acting as Main Tank) with a spec that focuses on survivability first and TPS second: Yarr! Tools :: Warrior 8472
Skipping Sword and Board/Safeguard and most importantly Imp. Tclap/Demo. The lower tier Protection talents all seem somewhat lackluster, especially considering that there's a high chance that the SS/Rev/Dev/Dev rotation days are gone. If I'm right, it means that Protection Warriors will use Devastate even less than they are right now in favor of other threat skills - probably Rend, Bloodbath and Shockwave - which would increase the time between Sword and Board Procs. That alone would make what seems like a lackluster talent even worse. Safeguard is almost irrelevant for Main Tanking unless there are a lot of Fel Rage-like abilities but I honestly can't see that many fights where the talent could be considered invaluable *AS A MAIN TANK*. And finally Critical Block which doesn't seem to offer that much for tanking a 25man raid boss - although its value would increase tremendously on trash or on DWing bosses. It still would increase overall mitigation and potentially reduce burst damage on the Warrior; but in the end it just sounds so damn bad, probably bad enough to drop the points into Bloodletting instead.



Overall, I can't really see too many other useful combinations of Warrior specs in a raid with the introduction of Death Knights and so many other synergy talents from other classes. Of course time will tell, but right now it seems like DPS Warriors will be forced to take on the role of BF/Trauma bitches until Blizzard moves those two talents in the Fury tree to take Enrage's spot.

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

PSGarak

What the absolute numbers are isn't as concerning to me as simply the fact that the talent lowers AP scaling compared to DW. The hope is that the extra normalization on WW would make up for that. Bloodthirst I'm going to ignore since it's not weapon-based.

Disclosure This is only looking at how the scaling of a warrior's damage, from Attack Power only, changes when the warriors makes use of TG, for autoattacks and whirlwind only. I am not concerned yet with the higher base damage, only how the character scales with AP.

Whirlwind assumptions are most favoring TG: DW spec and imp WW talents, both weapons get normalized as 2H (3.3) instead of 1H (2.4). Anything that would effect both autoattack and whirlwind equally are ignored (expertise, dodge, armor, %dmg modifiers).
Damage from AP on whirlwind: , where is the normalization factor. Damage difference on whirlwind upgrade from DW to 2x2H is
Used on cooldown, this comes out to .01306 of your attack power as DPS from TG's effect on whirlwind. Meanwhile, adding a 20% dehaste to your DW will reduce your AP to damage from autoattacks by as much as 20% of 1.625/14 = .0232, at the hit cap, and as little as 72% of that, or .0167, with 0 hit and no precision. Whirlwind is a yellow attack, so it could increase by as much as 10% of your crit chance from impale, but it's more than 10% behind so I won't bother. I'm not quite familiar with glancing blow mechanics, but the difference looks too large for that either, especially at high hit levels. This does not account for flurry, which will further increase the AP contribution to DPS.

Conclusion: TG lowers your AP scaling on white attack damage, and the benefit it gives from 2x2H whirlwind is not enough to make up the difference, and the difference gets worse as your hit rating improves. If TG is going to scale better, it's going to have to come from slams as well as whirlwind. Also note, 2x2H WW does not scale with AP as well as BT (38% vs 45% of AP), although you will need a metric shitton of AP for 7% of AP to overcome the base damage of two epic two-handers.

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

 

Anedris

Re: Number of warriors in the raid, remember that with almost every buff that makes the melee group the melee group (battle shout, windfury, unleashed rage) going raid-wide, melee no longer compete with each other directly for spots (unless encounter mechanics specifically limit the number of melee). The 3rd warrior can therefore find a place if he can show himself to be more useful than the 3rd mage, the 3rd hunter, etc. - i.e., it's not just about death knights.

However, I don't think this appreciably changes things in a complete min-max environment.

Re: Safeguard, if they ever make a Brutallus mark 2 (or an Al'ar or any other encounter where two or more tanks tank side by side or there are tank swaps between two or more tanks) the talent will be incredible even (especially) for the MT.

 

Darkrenown

I just noticed, Deathwish doesn't say it makes you immune to fear now that it's back in Fury.

Also, Sweeping strikes is apparently going to be made trainable and only get 3 charges, but it's still there in the talent tree at the moment. I wonder if we'll get something new or just an improved SS in it's place increasing the number of charges.

 

Rallik

I've been looking at builds that ignore Titan's Grip for the moment to come up with what a competing 1h build would look like at level 80. I see this spec as being the base, with the final 5 points being tricky to place:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Deciding the 2 best talents out of: Sudden Death, Bloodsurge, Precision, and Improved Execute has me at a loss. I'm leaning towards this build however:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I see it as revolving around crit rate and fast weapons. With a 40% raid buffed crit rate, and 3/3 Sudden Death, with 1.6 speed weapons(1.28 flurried, let's say an average speed of 1.35 with 80% flurry uptime), you can calculate the average number of seconds between Sudden Death procced executes as roughly:

((1/.4)*(1/.3))/((1/6)+(1/9)+(1/1.35)+(1/1.35)) = 4.73 seconds. This calculation ignores possible bloodthirst procced slams and the extra executes themselves, which would result in an even shorter average time.

This sort of build would change the functioning of a fury warrior quite a bit. I can easily see crit rate becoming the most superior stat over strength due to the increased crit damage from axe spec, so many extra executes that aren't dependent on AP, crits causing more executes and bloodsurges, and the extra rage generation increase that crits offer over AP which can be primarily dumped into executes rather than heroic strikes.

The fast weapons provide a very steady level of rage generation which further works best with executes and would mitigate the issue of a high crit rate causing spikes over 100 with slower weapons. Also a possibility is a slow weapon in the MH like is typical of a fury warrior, to increase WW damage(not very significant), slam damage(especially since it isn't normalized), enchant uptime, and cleave damage. It would take more in-depth math to decide if the sum of those benefits is better or worse than significantly faster execute proc generation.

 

Fellwraith

There's no way a I would ever think about skipping imp tclap in any build, especially in a survival build (you have 3 points in imp heroic strike instead, which doesn't make a lot of sense if you think about it). I'd never want my survival hinged on another warrior being in the raid and alive.

Rend is based on your weapon damage meaning it's not too great for a fast 1h tanking weapon, I doubt it becomes part of our tanking rotation. I also think bloodbath is supposed to be an aoe ability, it's likely not part of our threat rotation on a single target unless it has a significant front end threat modifier (it does ~250 damage + 250 damage over 15 seconds for 15 rage, ie not a whole hell of a lot). Shockwave is 25% of your attack power in damage + some unknown threat modifier. It *might* make it into a rotation, depending your ap and the threat modifier. Given the 20 second cooldown on the ability, it won't make it into every rotation even if you use it whenever it's up.

If you never devastate once in your tanking rotation, 5 points in sword and board effectively shaves 10% off the cost and cooldown of your shield slam (the highest rage cost and single highest threat per global cooldown ability you have). If you are devastating, at worst it procs on the second devastate, when you would be shieldslamming next in your rotation, so you shieldslam for free. The 17 rage you save can then be plowed into something else (the least rage efficient choice would be heroic strike). Sword and board is a bigger net threat gain than anything you can get in the early arms or fury trees. Edit: It's also worth noting that sword and board is a great talent for an offtank that isn't getting hit but needs to stay number 2 on threat.

 

Zaroua

From what I've seen so far, Rend at 80 will be 300 dmg + 30% of weapon dmg. Assuming 400 average weapon dmg, that gives you a 420dmg Rend, going up to 735 with Bloodletting (661.5 factoring defensive stance). Then you factor in Mangle and Trauma at 30% each and you end up with at around 1118 dmg on a single Rend in defensive stance with a very conservative estimate on the weapon dmg. That's over 1.6k threat for 7 rage (230TPR!), unaffected by armor.

For Bloodbath, we have 250 bleed damage (I don't think the initial dmg is a bleed effect, nothing points towards it), ending up at 665 bleed dmg and 890ish total dmg. 1290 threat at 107TPR. Not that impressive but it's an AoE effect; it doesn't factor in the "Enrage" portion of the ability either.


But then again this is all speculation - yes missing Imp. Thunderclap as a main tank is a bad thing. But apparently Ferals and Death Knights both get abilities that reduce attack speed (not sure if Infected Wounds will work on bosses though, 50% attack speed is pretty crazy). Again we'll have to see, but overall it seems that your raid's main tank may not have to spend the points into Thunderclap anymore.



And to continue on the main point I was trying to make in my original post - Blizzard has been trying to make hybrids viable since BC came out and just by looking at the new talents and abilities in WotLK, it seems that they'll finally be successful. I can't imagine a raid without 3 Druids (Moonkin/Feral/Resto), 2 Priests (Disc or Holy/Shadow), 2-3 Shamans, 2 Warriors, 3 Paladins, 1 Death Knight, 1 or 2 Hunters (can't imagine what Blizzard intends to give them), 1 Rogue, 1 Mage, 2 Warlocks. This doesn't leave a whole lot of room for extra DPS Warriors to be present, especially since 1 DPS Warrior is all you should need with the proper spec. I'm not saying no raid will ever bring 2 DPS Warriors, but it seems that in WotLK it'll be less favorable than it currently is.



Edit: Also you can't look at Sword and Board and say that it's a flat increase in Shield Slam TPS, I'm fairly sure there will be plenty of times where the free SS won't be able to go off. But the real interesting thing about it is the following: does it have a built-in hidden cooldown? If not, chaining 2-3 Shield Slams could be a lot of fun, although as a tank I can't say that I look forward to relying on the RNG that much for my threat. If anything, Cruelty or Imp. Heroic Strike would be the first two talents to go to make way for Sword and Board.

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

Armagedon

Earlier in this thread there were talks about the new way the steady shot mechanic work and how it wont be overlaping autoshot anymore.

In further discussion on that topic it was said that a bloodsurge'd slam might not clip auto attack anymore even if it isnt made into an instant attack (via bloodsurge talent) like many have hoped.

And on that subject, there is potential that slam itself (non improved, non bloodsurged) will not clip your auto attack cycle anymore. If that were made the case it seems as if slam would be an integral part of your dps cycle in any potential new bulid in the expansion due to the fact that you could weave it in and out of your bt/ms and ww cycle without having to rely as much on heroic strike (our main threat problem) to reduce rage and increase damage. It will be interesting to see how it turns out and how wild the damage possibilities would be.

 

Fellwraith

Yes, you can. What do you mean you wouldn't be able to use a free shieldslam? The only way this talent isn't a flat increase to shieldslam TPS is if there's a hidden cooldown with a long duration. Even if shieldslam was next in your rotation on a proc, it's still a FREE shieldslam, which means you've still gotten something from the talent.

It's a 10% chance to proc on every shield slam you do (the description says: "your devastate and shieldslam abilities", that's both of them). If you never devastated again, you have a 10% chance to be able to follow a shieldslam with another free shieldslam. Even if shockwave is more single-target threat per GCD (which seems unlikely to me), it's still 15 rage to use shockwave vs 0 rage for the proc'd shieldslam and it gets your shieldslam CD going again, so you'd want to use it. The opportunity cost of waiting to use shockwave until the next global cooldown is much lower than the opportunity cost of not using shieldslam immediately on a proc.


1,118 damage over 15 seconds is only 75 dps (a little over 105tps) and you're consuming a debuff slot to do it. We don't know if trauma and mangle stack, we assume they will. Rend is fine for a 5 or 10 man, but not at all worth it for a 25 man raid. Compare the damage on that rend to what you get from a 2h weapon or what a warlock curse, moonkin's faerie fire, expose weakness or any one of another debuffs will do. Situationally useful during an enrage? Sure. Used all the time? Not very likely.

 

Deathwing

Wasn't there a post back a few pages about Bloodletting being 75% per rank, not 25%?

Also, don't think they'll ever do that to Slam, it would make MS pointless in 99% of PvE.

 

Darkrenown

I'm not sure if bloodsurge would be worth it with two fast weapons, and it certainly won't be if slam continues to reset the swing timer. Also, unless it's changed execute has a 1,25 threat modifer, so a crit heavy Sudden Death build might suffer from aggro issues. Given that, I'd suggest taking the two points from Blood Surge and adding them to Furious Resolve for a further 7% threat reduction.

 

Pitbuller

I would put those two point to improved execute. This build use execute every 4-5s when over 20% enemy hp and every Gcd under that. So worst case scenario is that all saved rage go for extra damage convertion. 5 * 38 = 190 extra damage not counting crits, armor or multipliers. Over 50dps gain when 100-20% and over 150dps when execute range.

Slow, slower, shaman weapon.

 

Natural

Here's a quick comparison of the Badge fist weapon vs. the badge 2H Axe using Titan's grip: Google Docs - titan_grip_sucks_atm If you want to play with the numbers, here is the Excel Link

White damage is superior using a 1H when you have more than 700 AP. Raid buffed (4500 AP) you take a ~10% white DPS hit. However, if the AP calculation is adjusted to be made based on the final weapon speed, we gain ~3% white DPS with 5 points into a 45 point talent and a larger more awesome weapon (sarcasm intended).

Here is some rough napkin math to break down the talent. Please point out any errors I am making (there are usually a few)

2H Slam Improvement
-If you assume a 33% crit rate, you will gain an "instant slam" proc once every 18 seconds. Assume an average 2H Slam for 2000 damage --> BT->Instant Slam = ~111 DPS
-With 1H'ers, subtract 30% dmg = = 78 DPS
-Gain: ~33 DPS from Slam

Whirlwind Improvement
-Assume average 2000 damage MH / 1250 offhand hits = 3250 total damage every 8 seconds = 406 DPS.
-With 1H'ers, subtract 30% dmg = 284 DPS
-Gain: 122 DPS

Approximate gain using 2H'ers on slam & whirlwind: +155 DPS
Approximate loss using 2H'ers on autoattack damage: -10%

Ignoring white damage -> rage contribution, the break-even point for Titan's grip is somewhere around 1550 white DPS. At this point, switching to 2H'ers will lower your white damage ~10% but improve your Slam/WW damage by the same amount (~155).

There are a lot of assumptions in these calculations, and they are all inter-dependent (i.e. your stats affect both your white damage and your instant attacks, etc.). However I think these are the important DPS factors to consider when evaluating the performance of Titan's grip.

 

Darian_TruBlade

It sounds as though Blizzard is moving away from having us monitor swing/shot timers. It seems like a potentially awesome and game changing alteration to current mechanics.

The problem in my mind is that this undermines the usefulness of Imp Slam and Bloodsurge, at least in PvE environments. Without swing timer concerns, DPS Warriors taking these talents are simply enabling themselves to stare at the GCD rather than a casting bar. That's a bonus to mobility, but as most bosses don't move around much that doesn't seem particularly useful.

 

Mode

That was me. I bugged someone with the database. It's definitely 75% total, not 75% a rank as it initially was erroneously reported as and re-reported by me.

 

• LodeRunner

I'm not sure I understand you. Are you saying you would rather DPS Warriors be staring at casting bars during fights? Would it upset you if we didn't have to?

 

Ja7us

I believe he's saying that imp. slam will not be a DPS gain in a stand-and-burn situation, compared to unimproved slam.

 

Armagedon

I totally agree with your point there man. It absolutely would undermine the usefulness of slam in most non-mobile raid situations. The only thing a bloodsurge'd slam would allow you to do is fit in more instants in the time you are fighting a mob which, essentially, as you said, makes you watch the gcd vs a cast bar.

I can also see something like that have applications in a pvp environment where you can bolster the already weak fury tree in such a way that it wont make it stronger than the MS tree (by having to stand still for that little bit).