WotLK talent Preview/Discussion - Page 80

JTLJudoMan · 09/15/08, 2:29 PM

That should increase the damage from deep woulds substantially.

Roughly double the previous 12(second) dps...

(This may be a stupid question)
Why have none of the Recount parses showed deep wounds?

All of the TG builds I've seen have Deep Wounds... Is recount just not picking it up?

48% of a 2hander is another (using Hateful Gladiator's Decapitator ) 671.5 dmg minimum over 6 seconds so 111.9 dps vs the old 56.0 dps...

Does it scale with your attack power (priest with warrior alt... so I don't know everything about warriors)? If so; you could probably get easily 150 dps out of deep wounds alone.

Orsier · 09/15/08, 2:58 PM

I'll make one more post about TG and the stupid penalty in the hope someone sees reason, because I still think the current version is so much dumb it makes me cry.

I mean, come on. Even if in the end the dps is balanced, it's still incredibly stupid to put such a penalty on a talent. Imagine Arcane Barrage talent being "causes 14000 to 24000 arcane damage". Oh crap, that's too much ! Ok let's add a 15% hit penalty on arcane spell. How great. I'm sure all the arcane mages in the world would be happy. Instead you could just tweak the numbers and have the same effect on the global dps.

What's the whole point of nerfing TG anyway ? To balance Fury and Arms / DK, isn't it ? I mean, if Fury warriors can wield 2h weapons in one hand without any penalty, they'd look stupid (the arms warriors and DKs would, I mean). Like how stupid they'd look now in live if they were wielding a single tiny 1h sword. It's alright, but why to nerf TG like that ? Why not to do something simple like, giving poleaxes much better stats than the other 2h weapons ? That way, arms warriors and DKs still get their huge badass weapon, and fury warriors get not as good, but sill huge 2h weapons and no insanly stupid penalty.

Ambika · 09/15/08, 3:08 PM

Originally Posted by Jamor

Did I miss something about new mechanics giving rage on parry and dodge? Didn't they get rid of that in favor of 10% more damage with Imp Def. Stance?

I could've sworn they said they were baking that into our spec as I read that from a blue poster indicating they were looking at doing that. Maybe I misremembered wrong then when I was gaining rage. Either way, I was blocking,dodging, and weaving taking little on the damage side and propping up mad amounts of rage. Was glorious to be able to wander around like a mad demon.

Gnomish Auto-Block+BT Trinket=Win!

ioguolo · 09/15/08, 3:47 PM

I believe you guys are referring to Greater Blessing of Sanctuary? Greater Blessing of Sanctuary - Spell - World of Warcraft

Ambika · 09/15/08, 3:51 PM

Originally Posted by ioguolo

I believe you guys are referring to Greater Blessing of Sanctuary? Greater Blessing of Sanctuary - Spell - World of Warcraft

Didn't even know that spell existed in that form until now. Warriors have talents that help them generate more rage when we block in the first 5 points of our prot tree.

I was shocked and amazed that here I am in my full BT tanking gear and I've got tons of rage kicking around and not too worried about running out if I play my cards right. TBC I'd be sucking fumes left and right till I swap on some dps/tps gear and then goto town.

Liar · 09/15/08, 4:22 PM

Originally Posted by Ambika

Didn't even know that spell existed in that form until now. Warriors have talents that help them generate more rage when we block in the first 5 points of our prot tree.

Yes, but there is a difference between getting 2 rage from a 1000 damage block or getting the actual value as if you were getting hit.

In any case, if this is really baked into our stances, then this is great news. Mind testing this? I'd do it myself but EU servers are as stable as always. :S

Nezralix · 09/15/08, 4:48 PM

Originally Posted by Ambika

I could've sworn they said they were baking that into our spec as I read that from a blue poster indicating they were looking at doing that.

They were suggesting it, but have said nothing more about it since then. So... somebody should probably test it if you really think they've included something like that.

Machinator · 09/15/08, 5:06 PM

I made a napkin math spreadsheet and tried out the ptr for TG this afternoon. First thing I noticed, in both, was that I had tons of rage. Not only more from 2H in general, but missing specials cut down my rage use I think. Compared to a DW 1H build I did about 10-20% more. I couldnt test on the ptr, but I think a lot of that has to do with if you arent going TG, DW fury needs to get points in the other trees you cant reach at 70. I theorycrafted some DW 1H incite and Axe spec and they were about 90% of what I got for TG.

I experimented with other ways to nerf TG that would be less annoying. I got some severe penalties to bring TG down to the same level as a DW 1H:
-25% haste
-30% white hit
-20% weapon damage

The haste nerf required threw me off, but Im not sure I should be comparing TG to 1H but to arms. DW 1H really doesnt get much new stuff. But swinging vengful weapons at 3.2 with flurry and winfdury at ~40-50 rage a hit is still enough for a full rotation if I didnt screw up somehow.

I can upload the sheet later if anyone wants to see it.

Malpractices · 09/15/08, 5:10 PM

Assuming Bliz keeps the 15% hit penalty on TG and we end up gemming for hit to negate the bonus as much as possible. Wouldn't that make dual Mongoose our best enchant for pve? Landsoul stated he had about 28% crit rate, at that level I would think mongoose would be a better add than Executioner because it will help keep up flurry, deep wounds etc... I haven't done any of the math on this as of yet but can anyone shed light on this?

Darian_TruBlade · 09/15/08, 5:29 PM

Originally Posted by Machinator

I made a napkin math spreadsheet and tried out the ptr for TG this afternoon. First thing I noticed, in both, was that I had tons of rage. Not only more from 2H in general, but missing specials cut down my rage use I think. Compared to a DW 1H build I did about 10-20% more. I couldnt test on the ptr, but I think a lot of that has to do with if you arent going TG, DW fury needs to get points in the other trees you cant reach at 70. I theorycrafted some DW 1H incite and Axe spec and they were about 90% of what I got for TG.

I experimented with other ways to nerf TG that would be less annoying. I got some severe penalties to bring TG down to the same level as a DW 1H:
-25% haste
-30% white hit
-20% weapon damage

The haste nerf required threw me off, but Im not sure I should be comparing TG to 1H but to arms. DW 1H really doesnt get much new stuff. But swinging vengful weapons at 3.2 with flurry and winfdury at ~40-50 rage a hit is still enough for a full rotation if I didnt screw up somehow.

I can upload the sheet later if anyone wants to see it.

Blizzard has stated in their explanations for the TG nerf that nerfing the damage of the weapons themselves felt as though they were simply swapping 1H weapons for new 1H weapons with different art. While there's always room for change, I think it unlikely we'll see the last of your options. Source

The suggested haste nerf is worse than the previous one and suffers the same issues. It's a big hit to white damage scaling and rage generation consistency. The suggested white hit nerf is even worse. It would nerf white DPS considerably, in turn nerfing not just rage generation consistency but flat out rage generation, and thus indirectly nerfing our yellow damage as well. It's also insurmountable, no one is ever going to want or have enough hit to deal with that kind of a penalty.

There may potentially be other options for TG penalties. As it stands, however, the TG penalty isn't game breaking and is even intuitive. That doesn't make it ideal or without fault, but I find it significantly preferable to every other penalty seen or suggested thus far.

hellord · 09/15/08, 6:19 PM

A possible balancing for TG would be moving 2h spec deeper in arms tree so that 5% damage isnt reachable by a TG build, reducing the hit reduction to 5% (or making it a bit higher and putting 5 pts in precision).
This would mean about 160 hit rating difference that would be quite easy with the increased stats and will diminish the scaling once hit reaches a high level.

Sardaukar · 09/15/08, 6:49 PM

Originally Posted by Ambika

Note: I was in BT/Sunwell full tanking set. No threat/tps/dps gear.

I logged into northrend and was immediately wowed by the content level of the zone. Very lush, very yukon/northern like. It's very pretty. I saw my mods were all broke, took 2hrs to fix them while servers melted and then Respec'd deep down in the prot tree to 51. Started off in def stance and charged a mob.

My first mob Fu_TopScore said "2500 Shield Slam Record" figured it was a fluke. Next hit 2100, sword and board proc'd crit'd' over 3k. I was floored as the mob died. I looked at my Hud to see if I lost all my rage, nope still sitting at 1/3 rage left. I charged another mob and proceeded to beat it down senselessly using Devastate, Thunderclap and SHOCKWAVE (love the animation).

My next thought was "If a pally can do it, my gear can hack it, let's roll" and I swapped out a trinket for the Spyglass of the HIdden fleet. Picked up 4 mobs and beat them all down and mashed the Spyglass to regen the little health I lost.

Now these are all starting mobs. Once I moved into the upper zones I couldn't pull an elite+3mobs, ya I died there quite a bit testing it out.

The new mechanics giving us rage when we dodge and parry are excellent. I'm constantly packing on rage and stunning stuff and then running out and charging back in. Great way to keep rage flowing. That 2 pts in improved charge will pay off I can see that already.

Overall if you were worried that you'll be rage starved and need to throw in DPS gear to do quests fret not. I completed most of northrend in defensive stance with full tanking gear on. Just swap out more BV gear and you'll be good to go!

I will repost more when I get a chance to tank an instance. Looking forward to trying it out with my guildies.

What about for warriors without heavy raiding gear? Specifically, someone with just pvp gear and maybe a smattering of rep available rewards? My warrior alt only really has pvp gear and its starting to sound like prot might be the best way to level him in wotlk (pvp gear having a lot of stamina and strength with a good amount of crit strike rating - those stats seem like they would work best for prot). Obviously won't have all the passive avoidance that a real tank with pve tank gear would have, but then those stats are going to start to fade after a few levels anyway (also there are several different blacksmithing tank armor sets that are available at different levels).

DarthGreg · 09/15/08, 6:54 PM

Something new occurred to me today while ranting about having to use Leather DPS gear on the beta forums today:

Why not change 1 STR from 2 AP, to 1 AP and some crit for Warriors, Paladins, and Death Knights?

Allow me to explain. We all know that high-end Warriors wear Leather, because there are usually off-set Leather pieces that are simply better for Warriors than available off-set Plate. This is often a side-effect of the Leather item having more stat types. The more of a stat on a piece of gear, the more it costs to add more to it. 10 STR costs more than 10x 1 STR. This situation favors gear with diverse stat types, as the first points in a stat are the cheapest from a standpoint of item budget. By increasing the number of stat types on a piece of gear, you effectively allow that piece of gear to have more total stats. In general, the Leather & Mail pieces that Sunwell Warriors are using exemplify this advantage that most Leather & Mail has over Plate.

One of the primary causes of this difference is that, somewhere down the line, Blizzard figured out that, while STR/CRIT worked out pretty well for Plate, Leather gear was much better off itemized as AGI/CRIT/AP. However, they didn't realize that this gave Leather & Mail a large inherent advantage over Plate. By changing STR as I proposed, it would act like AGI does for Rogues, Hunters, and Shamans, and Plate gear could then be itemized for STR/CRIT/AP, which would bring Plate in line with Leather from a standpoint of stat points.

Am I missing something, or is this a pretty good idea?

Steveharris · 09/15/08, 6:58 PM

I think TG is going to stay pretty much as it is-maybe get 10% miss, but I wouldn't bank on another overhaul. Blue has said it's too much of a DPS increase for a single talent; okay I can buy that, but if that's the case, they need to unfuck 40-50 Fury to make up for the DPS loss. So far we've gotten Bloodsurge, and a negligible change to Rampage which many might not even spec into due to the presence of a Feral druid. Unending Fury is a joke, buffing precision would be an easy thing to do, since leveling warriors will notice a DPS loss with TG without enough +hit. But then, why even have the hit penalty on TG if people are just going to spec to negate it?

I think having 2H spec is the type of DPS boost they're looking for-the issue is CERTAINLY not unnerfed TG doing too much DPS. Merely that a 51 pt talent takes you from 1500 DPS to 2300 (example). If it goes from 1500 to 1600 with TG, then 5 pts in 2H spec gets you 2000, they seem okay with that. Kinda silly IMO (given the cost to obtain each) but I'm not the one designing the game.

DarthGreg: Why not just have STR stay at 1:2, but also add AP? The first 20 AP is going to be cheaper than the next 10 STR if an item already has 10 STR. Should probably throw some hit in there while we're at it, so STR/AP/hit/crit becomes the dps itemization for warriors/pallies/DKs, while Rogues/druids/etc. get AGI/AP/hit/crit like you said. I guess just having AGI/STR do the same thing but for different classes feels wierd.

DarthGreg · 09/15/08, 7:07 PM

The easiest fix to TG, I think, is to redesign Unending Fury to help mitigate TG's counter-balancing element, then make it a pre-requisite for TG. Hell, no reason to not make Rampage a pre-requisite for Unending Fury too. The more pre-requisites you add to TG the more powerful it can be justified as being, if what GC says is to be believed.

Unending Fury
Requires 45 points in Fury
Requires 1 point in Rampage
Reduces the rage cost of your Bloodthirst, Whirlwind, and Cleave abilities by [1,2,3,4,5], and increases your chance to hit with damaging special attacks by [2,4,6,8,10]%.

Titan's Grip
Requires 50 points in Fury
Requires 5 points in Unending Fury
Allows two-handed Swords, Axes, and Maces to be equipped in one hand, but reduces your chance to hit with damaging special attacks by 10%.

Tweak as necessary.

DarthGreg · 09/15/08, 7:09 PM

Originally Posted by Steveharris

DarthGreg: Why not just have STR stay at 1:2, but also add AP? The first 20 AP is going to be cheaper than the next 10 STR if an item already has 10 STR. Should probably throw some hit in there while we're at it, so STR/AP/hit/crit becomes the dps itemization for warriors/pallies/DKs, while Rogues/druids/etc. get AGI/AP/hit/crit like you said. I guess just having AGI/STR do the same thing but for different classes feels wierd.

Mainly because Blizzard has displayed a reticence to make Haste or Armor Ignore "standard" stats on Plate DPS gear, and Expertise and Hit are both able to be capped.

Basically my idea was to turn STR for Wars/Pals/DKs into what AGI is for Rogues/Hunters/Shamans. It displays a nice duality, I think.

Gruntle · 09/15/08, 7:28 PM

Originally Posted by DarthGreg

The easiest fix to TG, I think, is to redesign Unending Fury to help mitigate TG's counter-balancing element, then make it a pre-requisite for TG. Hell, no reason to not make Rampage a pre-requisite for Unending Fury too. The more pre-requisites you add to TG the more powerful it can be justified as being, if what GC says is to be believed.

Unending Fury
Requires 45 points in Fury
Requires 1 point in Rampage
Reduces the rage cost of your Bloodthirst, Whirlwind, and Cleave abilities by [1,2,3,4,5], and increases your chance to hit with damaging special attacks by [2,4,6,8,10]%.

Titan's Grip
Requires 50 points in Fury
Requires 5 points in Unending Fury
Allows two-handed Swords, Axes, and Maces to be equipped in one hand, but reduces your chance to hit with damaging special attacks by 10%.

Tweak as necessary.

While I agree with that suggestion in principle, the example talents you posted are a bit weird. If you make UF a prerequisite you can't make that talent negate the entire hit penalty from TG, what's the point in having the penalty at all then? Maybe if you tweaked it to 1-5% on UF and -10% on TG or something like that.

I still think UF should give something like 4-20% extra crit on BT, which would synergize well with Bloodsurge and somewhat negate the silly fact that BT suffers from the hit penalty while not gaining from TG.

Writhe · 09/15/08, 7:42 PM

Originally Posted by Steveharris

DarthGreg: Why not just have STR stay at 1:2, but also add AP? The first 20 AP is going to be cheaper than the next 10 STR if an item already has 10 STR. Should probably throw some hit in there while we're at it, so STR/AP/hit/crit becomes the dps itemization for warriors/pallies/DKs, while Rogues/druids/etc. get AGI/AP/hit/crit like you said. I guess just having AGI/STR do the same thing but for different classes feels wierd.

Having AP and strength on a piece of armor feels counter intuitive if strength has only a direct relation to ap and no other stat (lets ignore BV for the case of dps specs). And imo feels weirder than agi/str doing the same thing for different classes. (keep in mind spell damage and AP do already do effectively the same thing for different classes). The reason i always assumed for having ap and agi on the same piece was to keep crit levels lower while increasing the attack power levels of rogues (and the others).

Originally Posted by DarthGreg

Mainly because Blizzard has displayed a reticence to make Haste or Armor Ignore "standard" stats on Plate DPS gear, and Expertise and Hit are both able to be capped.

Basically my idea was to turn STR for Wars/Pals/DKs into what AGI is for Rogues/Hunters/Shamans. It displays a nice duality, I think.

I like the idea too, It makes about as much sense as aggroing every bears ;p But:

Honestly they should have just reworked/lessened how much str was worth. Would probably be easier than reworking the stat entirely. Especially with how crit happy protection warriors are now in beta already. Adding crit to the new* tank stat would require a hefty rework of talents across three trees and no doubt 3 classes tanking abilities.

hellord · 09/15/08, 7:47 PM

Originally Posted by Gruntle

While I agree with that suggestion in principle, the example talents you posted are a bit weird. If you make UF a prerequisite you can't make that talent negate the entire hit penalty from TG, what's the point in having the penalty at all then? Maybe if you tweaked it to 1-5% on UF and -10% on TG or something like that.

I still think UF should give something like 4-20% extra crit on BT, which would synergize well with Bloodsurge and somewhat negate the silly fact that BT suffers from the hit penalty while not gaining from TG.

In that case BT will scale insanely high. At high levels you'll have hit capped specials, white hits and an astonishing number of crits on BT proccing a free slam non normalized. I'm still thinking that the only way to reduce the damage is moving 2h spec to a higher tier sicne it won't directly affect the tree and will limit the scaling. For arms warriors this won't be at all an undesired effect would make sense moving it on same tier as 1h spec for prot.

Making UF a prerequisite which negates most of the hit penalty would transform tg in a 6 pts talent that could be in line with what Blizzard wants.

I anyway don't know why they don't put tg at 45-50 talents (10th tier) with 5 talent points like it was before, but with the hit penalty reduced. First point is -15%, 5th point is 0 with 3% hit penalty reduction per point (or maybe 2 per point leaving a small amount to be capped by gear).
They'll have then the chance to put an avg or sub average 51th pt talent like it is for arms or maybe do something new.
Tg will remain a no brainer but nobody tell you that last talent should be a no brainer (arms doesnt have a valid last tier since vanilla wow).

DarthGreg · 09/15/08, 8:14 PM

Originally Posted by Writhe

Having AP and strength on a piece of armor feels counter intuitive if strength has only a direct relation to ap and no other stat (lets ignore BV for the case of dps specs). And imo feels weirder than agi/str doing the same thing for different classes. (keep in mind spell damage and AP do already do effectively the same thing for different classes). The reason i always assumed for having ap and agi on the same piece was to keep crit levels lower while increasing the attack power levels of rogues (and the others).

The standard I'm using is that, if AGI/AP/CRIT makes sense (and it clearly does, by browsing through WotLK Mail/Leather), than STR/AP/CRIT can be made to make sense by having STR replace AGI. STR and AGI already do different things for different classes, there's no reason from a standpoint of precedent not to alter the way STR works for Wars, Pallies, and DK's.

Originally Posted by Writhe

I like the idea too, It makes about as much sense as aggroing every bears ;p But:

Honestly they should have just reworked/lessened how much str was worth. Would probably be easier than reworking the stat entirely. Especially with how crit happy protection warriors are now in beta already. Adding crit to the new* tank stat would require a hefty rework of talents across three trees and no doubt 3 classes tanking abilities.

STR is already basically a different version of AP; on an item, 2 AP costs the same amount as 1 STR. The only reason to diminish it would be if they intended to remove STR from Plate DPS gear, which makes no sense to me. The reason to make it act like AGI, as I suggested, is to raise the standard number of stats per piece of gear to be equal to that of Leather & Mail.

I actually hadn't considered how this would affect tanks. For Warriors, I don't see it being a big problem. I can't speak for Feral Druids, Prot Pallies, or (tank spec) DK's, but I see no reason why their ratios and coefficients couldn't simply be tweaked to accommodate. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.

Considering STR as a tank stat makes the whole think much more difficult to implement, admittedly. The only stat that can really replace AP from my proposed STR/CRIT/AP gear standard is Haste. Hit, Expertise, and Armor Ignore can all be capped*. Blizz could just throw one of those four stats on any Plate DPS piece, but it would require a much less simple alteration to existing gear than with what I proposed.

* TG looks to be only spec that is not easily Hit capped, and I don't really know how realistic capping Armor Ignore is at this point.

Writhe · 09/15/08, 8:23 PM

Originally Posted by DarthGreg

...snip...

STR is already basically a different version of AP; on an item, 2 AP costs the same amount as 1 STR. The only reason to diminish it would be if they intended to remove STR from Plate DPS gear, which makes no sense to me. The reason to make it act like AGI, as I suggested, is to raise the standard number of stats per piece of gear to be equal to that of Leather & Mail.

...snip...

I think I worded my post a bit wrong. I meant lower the buget worth of strength not the worth of strength to warriors, This would allow more strength to be placed onto items, lessoning the need to go after leather to get "more bang for your buck" which is the issue at hand.

DarthGreg · 09/15/08, 8:24 PM

Originally Posted by Gruntle

While I agree with that suggestion in principle, the example talents you posted are a bit weird. If you make UF a prerequisite you can't make that talent negate the entire hit penalty from TG, what's the point in having the penalty at all then? Maybe if you tweaked it to 1-5% on UF and -10% on TG or something like that.

I still think UF should give something like 4-20% extra crit on BT, which would synergize well with Bloodsurge and somewhat negate the silly fact that BT suffers from the hit penalty while not gaining from TG.

The point on having the pre-requisite cancel out the counter-balancing element was mainly to point out how absurd the whole "too powerful for one talent point" rhetoric from GC is. Just arbitrarily assign some amazing talent that every Fury Warrior wants as a pre-requisite, and suddenly it's OK for TG to be more powerful?

DarthGreg · 09/15/08, 8:32 PM

Originally Posted by Writhe

I think I worded my post a bit wrong. I meant lower the buget worth of strength not the worth of strength to warriors, This would allow more strength to be placed onto items, lessoning the need to go after leather to get "more bang for your buck" which is the issue at hand.

This is a actually good idea, and way simpler than what I proposed. I'm not sure to what level it would have its budget lowered to negate the Leather Advantage (2:3 STR:AP? 1:1?), but I think it's certainly worth exploring.

The only problem I see is that reducing STR budget to compensate for having one fewer DPS stat seems to enforce Plate having one fewer DPS stat than Leather & Mail. Granted this does appear to be the case presently, but hope springs eternal.

Jackkills · 09/15/08, 8:50 PM

Are they planning to take away the 3 sec stun and 7 rage in mace spec? It's not listed on their talent preview.

Darian_TruBlade · 09/15/08, 8:50 PM

I won't object to lowering the TG penalty, but again I'm fine where it is. With my T4 Gear I'm already at 15% hit without gemming/aiming for it. It's likely I'll be able to do something similar with T7 gear. It's the rest of the tree I'd like to see some buffs to.

For example, Commanding Presence theoretically deserves to be a 5 point talent because it accomplishes Imp Imp and Imp BoM in one swoop. This is, however, a fallacious assertion. We can't have both shouts up at once, and Imp Imp comes with additional benefits beyond the raid health increase. There's the potential for an additional affect there, or a talent point reduction.

Booming Voice and Improved Demoralizing Shout could also use minor adjustments. Very few DPS or Tanking warriors have much incentive to take either, especially with the raid buff changes.

Lastly, Unending Fury remains a dubious talent. It'll be taken at 70 because it isn't worth going further than 3 points into Arms, but at 80 there's little reason to take the talent over other DPS increases. Specifically, I'm eager to see what replaces the Enraged Assault effect. An interesting suggestion would be to "Your Whirlwind critical strikes have a 5/10/15/20/25% chance to increase the critical strike chance of Bloodthirst by 5/10/15/20/25%".