Arantis

On another note isnt a TG spec supposed to provide better proc uptime on weapon enchants like executioner or mongoose?

 

Future

IF the PPM mechanic only counts PPM vs landed hits, yes uptime will be higher.
If a miss, negates a proc chance, and is counted against the PPM calculations, you will see terrible uptimes as you miss.

 

Arantis

But as it stand now it should be higher right?

 

Graul

I got my key tonight, and will be able to at least see what it's like at 70 since I can essentially negate the miss penalty. However, unless it was just an oversight or bug, it's also affecting Bloodthirst and I'm also not sure why you are discounting Heroic Strike, because while you definitely aren't using it *as much* as what you would right now as 17/44, you do still put it into the rotation.

Even before this change 1h + Incite builds were doing basically the same damage (Heroic every swing) as TG not using Heroic every swing, so I'm not sure why you would think this, especially after the change. The last rank of Heroic is nothing to sneeze at.

 

Arantis

Well as it stands now i tend to believe that TG cant outperform points spent in weapon specialisations or even an incite spec.The former was a neverending desire but the latter combined with the new rampage and synergised witht the glyph has the potential to make flurry reach the ablosute.Question is what would be better,premature question but still.

But since they allready stated that all fury warriors will be using TG,i guess they will find one way or another to force us into it.

 

Mild Confusion

How could they force fury to spec TG? With the 15% hit nerf, TG will once again be in competition with fury/arms hybrids for raid dps specs. There are no real major deep fury dps talents pass rampage, and even that can be negated if your raid consistantly runs with a feral druid. As it stands now, if a warrior chose to do so, he could stop at imp berserker stance and go deep enough into arms to pick up trauma.

I understand that it will require testing, but at this point, would you consider that TG is a "no brainer" as it was mentioned? Especially with a raid synergy talent such as trauma and axe spec?

 

Hisstok

the 15% is supposed to be something you have to gear for and can eventually overcome if you focus on it, what was unbalancing was a full TG warrior without it had way too much item budget towards DPS.

If this is going to stand fury should get some kind of conversion rate like DK's have towards parry, The only way to overcome the 15% miss is with +hit plate (of which there seems to be a bit) and that is stupid for this "cross itemization" thing blizzard is trying to pull off.

It does make sense that they want to pull some stats away from a TG fury warrior to offset the huge weapon dps+stat bonuses, but this solution is kind of dumb.
Maybe some kind of counter-scaling option? the more str you get the more hit rating you lose or something to that effect? that way as your item budget increases through upgrades you can constantly upgrade your hit rating to offset the penalty, but it isn't so outrageous to begin with.

 

DarthGreg

"They had to counter-balance TG, it scaled too well."

Can one of the multitude of people saying this please back it up with some numbers. I'm a bit tired of hearing it when every single verifiable indication of the spec showed that it underperformed.

 

Uglesh

I tend to agree with the notion that 15% penalty will be VERY difficult to overcome if they are expecting you to still be wearing plate. The way they have homogenized all the itemization for each gear type (plate, mail, cloth), it stands to reason that there simply won't be enough +hit available without forcing people to focus 100% on it through gems/enchants/whatnot. If Blizz stays true to focus, they don't want people to be FORCED to customize one way only... much like how Locks stacked all +dmg. If plate comes with that much +hit then you would expect a chorus of complaints about bad itemization from every other plate wearing class/spec.

 

Shha

I cannot agree more. Right now from my experience both arms and prot pve dps is way ahead of fury. I dont have hard evidence to back it up , but I dont use words like "had to". I also try to show my math with almost every post. I havent seen one post with rational arguments, backing this claim up. They gave us a tree that didnt get half the buffs other got, and counterbalanced it with TG - something as defining to the tree, as current Serpent Swiftness is to BM hunters- talent itself could be considered "overpowered" as it basically increases the damage of a hunter by 20% in one swift move for 5 talents. From the view of the tree however its not as bad. Yea TG as a talent is very powerful for its one point, but the fury tree depends on it in current state.

Furthermore the nerf DOES NOT affect scaling of TG. Scaling = how fast you improve your dps given increase in gear. So lets see:

a) With the nerf TG scales FASTER with hit rating. If you had more hit then the cap for specials its pretty obvious - if not, then hit gems provide best increase per slot easily speeding up your scaling.

b) Low-end warriors tend to still be able to follow the rotation. Its the extra rage dumps/white damage, that tends to grow fastest with gear. Its a known truth since beggining of wow - in greens majority of melee damage comes from skills, once you hit raiding level its the autoattack that does most. Again - a nerf to our ABILITY damage, affects low end gear more then high end.

In short , the nerf is a huge hit for fresh lvl 80 warriors. Its by no means small nerf when you get geared, but it mostly targets undergeared people - and it actually INCREASES TG scaling. Its the starting point thats taken back by a lot.


Remember also that TG only really affected your specials. Autoattack/heroics were around the same with axe spec and more deep wounds procs from them , more crit damage etc. Right now it just makes WW hit for around 3.4/2.6 = 30% more. But looking at the miss rate and 2h spec vs axe spec, the boost is MAYBE 10%. Same goes with slam procs. In return we get about same effectiveness autoattacks (counting deep wounds/axe spec), and WORSE heroics - effectivness of heroics is about same with or without TG , and now TG heroics lose 15% hit, 5% crit, 5% crit damage, and hit 5% harder). 25/46 build is just strictly better then 20/51, and thats already pushing it... I wouldnt mind if 27/44 build was effective IF you needed trauma for raid - thats variety. But 25-46 makes little sense.


Heroic strikes are different story - did anyone notice the huge nerf to them? from +492 damage to +10%damage its a strict nerf unless your swings are over 5k damage non crit...

Slam - I heard voices that change to slam will make it useful for TG since its more effective. Honestly its true of course - but Using slam as TG is VERY VERY shaky. 1.5 sec of even just suspended melee swings .... with 3.5 speed weapon 10% haste 25% flurry, 20% WF the normal swing is ~2.1. So you lose more by suspending your OH/MH swings then you gain. Unless they make it so your OH still swings normally during slams, TG wont have use for it.

 

Frederic

PPM mechanics are based off of weapon speed: a slower weapon has a higher chance of gaining a proc. Thus, when you factor in instant attacks, which occur at regular intervals regardless of weapon speed but are given the same percentage chance as the parent weapon's white attacks the increased chance to proc an attack combined with the consistent rate of yellow attacks provides a higher effective PPM. The change to special attack hit chance while using Titan's Grip is a direct reduction to the amount of yellow attacks which occur, and thus reduces PPM derived from yellow attacks commensurate with your chance to miss a yellow attack.

 

Gruntle

But Shha, it's pretty easy to see that TG will buff your dps even with the 15% hit penalty when compared to live. Maybe the buff is too small compared to other specs/classes, but what's to say that those specs will not be nerfed? If the devs say that they want "TG to be a no brainer" I really doubt they will let a 26/45 build be better in terms of individual dps, once you're that deep in fury TG should be more or less mandatory. I don't really see the problem in letting SD builds be comparable to TG, many viable dps builds is a good thing in my opinion.

I must say that I haven't seen evidence TG doing either too much or too little damage, there's been mixed reports since after the haste debuff was removed, so I find it hard to say whether the 15% is too much or not. It is, however, a lot better than the haste penalty in my opinion. The haste penalty did not only cause our dps to go down, but would probably also have caused major problems with rage generation as well as scaling a fair bit worse than the hit penalty at end game. I find it good that they found some way to balance TG without screwing around with our rage generation.

I'm not sure hit will be the best stat even after this. Hit would affect 100% of your damage, and even a bit more if the two-roll system is used, if BT's are supposed to be included (which I find very weird if they are given that they gain very little by TG in the first place). Hit also benefits weapon procs (but not WF any longer). In live hit is worth about 60-65% of str (and something like 65-70% of crit), I'm not sure this change will bring the value up above that of crit or str. That needs to be checked in spreadsheets properly before we go gemming for hit all out.

I have some issues with this. First, you claim that WW's hit 30% harder, this is not correct, the number is closer to 40% if you account for the higher base dps and stats on twohanded weapons. Secondly, how can you claim that you get the same white damage with TG as with a 25/46 build? I don't believe that 5% extra crit/crit damage can make up for 30% base weapon damage (which is about 10% in total dps, at least using level 70 AP) and added stats (probably worth on the order of 3-5% in dps by itself)

edit: Just thought of a few more things.
Unending fury will of course be changed since it still refers to an ability that no longer exists, lets hope they make that talent into something good instead of the pointless crap it is currently.

Secondly, the 15% hit penalty really messes things up for fury pvp. A fairly simple fix would be to state that the hit penalty only applies to "damaging melee abilities that require a weapon", that would keep hamstring at 9%.

 

Shha

Its possible that I overdid it saying 25/46 will be strictly better. However it will outperform TG in execute range due to smoother rage generation (and lack of misses on execute), and perform close enough outside of it.

Still the main problems stand:

- TG didnt seem to outperform other builds considerably WITHOUT hit penalty.
- TG change penalizes low-end warriors more then high end

Hit will be the best stat its pretty obvious in my opinion. BT in my opinion wont be affected just judging by the wording. If they word it "attacks that require weapons" then why would it affect our ONLY dps skill that doesnt? Is it supposed to just not affect pummel? Sounds strange in my opinion but oh well. Still Heroic+WW+Slam damage will be around half your damage currently (see below on rage) , so hit will increase ALL your dps except for BT instead of current 40%. Either way gemming for hit or not - it will make itemization easier as hit wont be "wasted stat" as it is now.

Main are that they could nerf and that should be nerfed in my opinion is rage generation. Currently

a) With projected stats at 80 even OH damage alone is enough to provide rage for full rotation and doing a heroic strike on EVERY swing. Thats ridiculous. Math was done in this thread.

b) Makes Endless rage not really that needed again.

I still think warriors should have to choose what attacks to do, and somewhat pay attention to their rage bar. The current implementation doesnt ensure that - instead giving us arbitrary penalty for using 2h.

I do think a pretty solid rage generation nerf is needed, and instead a buff to talents. Try playing at lvl 60 if you still have a raiding char of that level - rage generation is horrid even with naxx gear. At 70 suddenly we are doing fine - its because the current normalization model is fine , but doesnt scale well with levels (or with projected damage). The change basically projects us doing 17% more damage at 80 with swings then at 70 - the weapon damage alone might get us there, and I dont believe gear wont scale. My damage from 60-70 went up around twice - i have no reason to suspect it will only go up by 17% in WOTLK.

 

Fellwraith

Underperformed where? On Patchwerk with 3 bugged/broken classes as a basis of comparison? Warlocks weren't expected to be doing 5k dps in the first raid instance. I don't think we have a good baseline to compare to.

Basically one talent point gave you a weapon in each hand that was considerably better than anything anyone else had at that tier of gear. In effect you have a BT-quality weapon (in each hand!) to everyone else's BOP blue (edit: Actually it's more like an epic from a heroic or BOE epic now that I look at it, still that's a HUGE difference and it scales in every tier). That's the difference you're looking at here. I think that very clearly points to a scaling problem, particularly when you consider that percentage difference moves in parallel at every single tier of gear and we do have a bit of a positive feedback loop when we deal damage (there was a fair amount of commentary on how we'd heroic on every single MH attack at one point in this beta).


If we're underperforming you can't pin that on TG, it's caused by other talents not being what they should be. This is ONE talent point. It should not be a 10-20%+ dps increase. Bladestorm doesn't give arms that much of an increase, shockwave doesn't give prot that much of an increase. No 51 point talent is that big for any class.

Making this the "great hope" for an entire tree is a serious problem. Think about all the people who suddenly think fury is gutted because this one talent changed. If one talent point at the end of a tree really does make an entire tree non-viable, then that's a very clear indication that it has other issues. Yea, 15% is too much of a hit penalty and hit isn't the right stat, but putting some type of handcuff on this talent is necessary.

 

Emeraude

Ghost posted

I started thinking, would multiple small -penalties be better then 1 giant -penalty? Having -20% Slow, killed TG's white damage, having -15% hit makes it a victim of RNG and streaky.

What about something like -5% hit/crit/haste, or something along those lines?

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CX81UJZ8
For the lurking Phoenix Wright faithful.
What is the most important thing to you? Won't you grant me the pleasure of taking it away.

 

Glimred

I've found this on the beta forums:

Seems like a pretty good idea to me. It would counterbalance TG nicely while not making warrior gameplay feel like vanilla release again with all the misses.

What do you guys think?

 

kralizec

Basically, TG hit penalty affecting pummel/harmstring/disarm... would kill fury pvp. The 20% slowing penalty was far better in this respect, as it would have preserved both the burst and the reliability of warrior's CC/interrupts.

Additionally, even if it doesn't affect pummel/harmstring/disarm... , it adds a lot of unreliability on damage dealing when managing to get in melee with your target. Warrior pvp is about overcoming CC and making the most of this scarce moments of contact, using your built up rage to hurt with specials. The second part shouldn't be have a considerable chance to be 0 dmg.

 

mokg

"The new tooltip refers specifically to a hit penalty on damaging abilities, so that Hamstring won't miss. We'll see if that feels better."

Posted by Ghostcrawler, WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Feels like blue is dodgeing us.

 

Grymm

What kills TG for me is when I get to 5/5 Imp Zerker and look at the rest of the tree. Bloodsurge looks nice so I take that. Rampage is farming skill for me as I'll be raiding with ferals so I could skip that. The 46-50 talent whose name I couldn't be bothered to remember is broken. And, then, there's TG which in a raiding environment is about a 7-8% dps boost (better than DW pt for pt). It looks nice, but I don't know about giving up 5 or 6 stat points to get it. I can get axe spec for 5 pts and get a similar DPS return.

Then, they added the hit penalty. Until I passively overcome the hit penalty (which I would do at 70 with some regemming, but not at 80 for a while), I don't see how you could get more dps out of TG + some tree filler than a weapon spec. I would have to regem out of a lot of crit in my current raiding gear to recap hit for specials. In all likelihood, the crit given up for hit would wash out the stat gain from using 2 handers. Then, I have ~8% more dps when I could have 5% more crit (more bt->slams) and 5% more damage from crit which could very well be superior dps.

I think the key then is what they do with that 46-50 talent to bring it in line with wrecking crew. Maybe if it added 1% haste per point to flurry or 1% more damage dealt while flurried to make it a decent skill. Then, the cost of TG would only be 1 point and not 6.

 

Hisstok

Sounds fine to me

It looks like blizzard is trying to reduce yellow damage though, I would be more for just having 2hers wielded in 1h normalize like (or slightly higher than) normal 1 hand weapons, it would be pretty close to the %age yellow nerf that is currently in and doesn't cause "hey this plate is only good for furies" itemization issues we're seeing now.

Arms looks more and more attractive, not sitting in zerk stance and taking 10% extra damage is a big plus to me at least.

Anyone know if wrecking crew and enrage stack? Does the new imp-ms only increase bonus damage like the old one or does it increase overall like it is worded this time?

 

hellord

I'm pretty sure imp MS increases the whole damage of Mortal Strike, not only the bonus.
Even now the tooltip only shows increase in bonus damage, but after some testing with 4pc t6 i would say it is applied to the whole damage (considering also the 5% from 2h spec).

 

Graul

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the TG change. Take these BoE smithed weapons of the same item level for example. Yes, I see they are unique, but it's just an example of DW weapons of the same levels.

Titansteel Bonecrusher
Binds when equipped
Unique-Equipped
Main Hand Mace
251 - 467 Damage Speed 2.50
(143.6 damage per second)
+59 Stamina
Equip: Increases your expertise rating by 29 (3.11 @ L80).
Equip: Increases attack power by 140.

Titansteel Destroyer
Binds when equipped
Unique-Equipped
Two-Hand Mace
507 - 761 Damage Speed 3.40
(186.5 damage per second)
+124 Strength
+105 Stamina
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54 (1.45% @ L80).

At 8k AP (plus stat contribution from weapons) BoK, UR and Imp Berserker, DWS, 2hWS you get:

TG WW: 5460
1h DW: 3475

TG Slam: 2987
1h Slam: 2098

TG BT: 4091
1h BT: 3752

Total difference in DPS from specials, assuming Bloodsurge every 18 seconds ....304
Now how soon do you think we will be seeing 8k AP raid buffed, especially with all of the non stacking buffs?

 

Hozz

I dont understand their thought process. According to parses I saw, PVE Fury DPS at 80 was not great even with the best version of TG.

Now its worse.

This coupled with the terrible plate DPS itemization really makes me wonder what they are basing all of their changes on.

 

Borodin

I think that while the actual value of the Hit penalty is probably too much, counterbalancing the talent itself is needed in reference to the value of a single talent point, even a "gold medal" 51 pount talent should not be adding so much value. 2 weaponslots-worth of stats and 30% more damage on those weapons is a monstrous amount.

Overall Fury performance is another issue for Blizzard to address in their numbers passes.

 

Ronnie

Just a taste of how terrible it is:

Plate DPS Chest
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...amas_25_21.jpg

Leather DPS Chest
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...amas_25_85.jpg

Capping hit as a TG warrior will come at a price. 25% crit raid buffed anyone?