Prinsesa

We think crushing blows are being removed because the WOTLK version of Shield Block will not allow a Warrior to become uncrushable (unless he does it passively, which is an extreme case).

If Holy Shield is changed such that uncrushability is similarly impossible, then it's extremely likely that crushing blows will be removed or otherwise changed heavily.

That being said, there's also the possibility that Paladins will retain Holy Shield's great duration and block amount as part of their "identity".

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Tornaz

I really think that bliz should strip the warrior abilities and talent tree and rebuild the entire thing from scratch. Less reliance on the random number generator, greater independence of talent spec from stance, and talent abilities that provide benefits applicable to multiple roles would allow for warriors to flexibly switch roles.

That said, some of these changes look partly like a step in that direction, but others are curiously retrograde. I really think they want to make Warriors less intrinsically bound to their spec, but they seem confused as to how to do it.

However, it's Alpha. I've no doubt that there will be changes. I've equally no doubt that the majority of what we are seeing is more or less set in stone anyway.

 

DarthGreg

I'm really curious as to how Blizzard came about realizing how important Shield Slam was for tanking, but not how important Mortal Strike is for PvP. The fact that Hunters and Rogues can still apply an equivalent (though perhaps not as flexible) healing debuff regardless of spec sends the pretty clear message that, while they want a spot for all specs in raids, Arms is still the only spec they want us playing for PvP.

It's not like it would be difficult. The precedent has been set with Shield Slam, they could just make MS trainable and put in its spot a beefy Arms talent. While they're at it, why not give Bloodthirst the same treatment? I don't understand why all of our 31-point talents aren't just trainable. Isn't that the sort of homogeneity that they're going for here? They're on linked cooldowns and, due to their qualities, are role-specific, and are all pretty much required for any kind of tolerable performance in those roles.

Doing this would seem to me to have a very small effect on high-end PvP'ers and PvE'ers, but would allow everyone else to use talents in the way they were initially intended: character customization.

 

Graul

Something like:

Reduces the cooldown of your Mortal Strike ability by 0.5 seconds and increases the damage it causes by 5% 1/1?

 

Mode

The difference is that they don't think there are enough warriors tanking. There are more than enough warriors out there PVPing. So they're attempting to remove every excuse those warriors have for not tanking.

 

Addled

Reduce the damage component of MS to 50% weapon damage, and make MS base.

Then where MS is now, replace it with a talent "Piercing Strikes" that restores MS to full damage, and add "Also increases the length of your Rend and Deep Wounds debuffs by x seconds" 1/1 talent.

Require Piercing Strikes if you want any talent above 31 Arms.

There, warrior fixed. Now even Prot warriors can arena, put up the MS debuff, and get additional arena viability from having the Safeguard ability in Prot.

 

• LodeRunner

All the posts on this page thus far have been utterly fucking retarded. No one cares about your imaginary talents.

 

Zaroua

With the change to Battle Shout being raid wide, I'm worried that [Solarian's Sapphire] will still be the best DPS Warrior trinket out there.

1 Enhancement Shaman
1 DPS Warrior
3 Tanks
2 Rogues
2 Hunter Pets
1 Ret Paladin

With Commanding Presence and Unleashed Rage (70 *1.25 * 1.1 = 96.25AP) we'd get, with 10 melee targets benefiting from the Warrior's Battle Shout, a sickening total of 962.5AP from 1 trinket. If the trinket remains as it currently is, this would easily be the best DPS Warrior trinket in WotLK and maybe even the best in the third expansion. Anyone else think that the trinket will get changed before WotLK goes live?

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.

 

• Morsexy

I would imagine that they change the trinket, it really is far too powerful and if you do not have it vs someone who has it, you're missing a huge bonus.

I don't even wear mine all the time, just Bshot before a lot of pulls. I guess they could make a green with the same passive as someone has suggested earlier in this thread, but what does that solve? Everyone using a green forever?

 

Nitz

Or they could make it downscale with level.

 

Prinsesa

Or they could make a newer version in WOTLK. The amount of attack power could be incremental (say 5 more), but an [Ice Troll's Sapphire] in a level 80 5-man is going to be far more accessible than Solarian.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Steveharris

I think the new Inscription profession is going to be a factor in this regard. Have something like "Inscription of Greater Lung Capacity: Increases the attack power granted by your Battleshout by XX, does not stack with similar effects". Suddenly, Solarian's is worthless; good day sir.

The other way they could go is to have buff...buffs(?) put on to items more liberally. I can't seem to recall pre-BC itemization very well, but I don't believe there was more than a handfull of melee DPS trinkets. I'm quite sure that there was only one "clicky" melee DPS trinket which came out in the AQ patch and was tied to CC faction, which meant digging holes in Un'goro, or doing your part in the Silithid genocide for rep. Fast forward to entry level TBC raids, and every melee DPS class has passive stats with +AP "clicky" trinkets coming out of their collective assholes from quests/badges/instance drops. It's possible (but unlikely) that Blizzard just starts throwing "Increases your Battleshout attack power bonus by XX" on more items, rendering Solarian's useful, but not mandatory/good.

Following this, you would expect things like "Increases the Stamina of Power Word: Fortitude by XX" on items, which sounds more like something you'd see from Inscription, and we're back to where I started this post.

 

Grayson Carlyle

Has anyone else noticed the oddly huge increase in AP our next rank of BShout (550 AP) gets? I'm betting [Solarian's Sapphire] won't affect ranks of BShout higher than 8, which would actually put Rank 9 BShout in line with a Solarian's Rank 8.

 

mjs9893

As far as TG goes, what about using 5/5 sword spec with 1/5 TG, very slow 2H main hand and a very fast 1H off hand.

Assumptions:

Off hand sword procs main hand weapon. (Not sure if it is still like this, its been a year since i theory crafted my rogue).
Instant slam doesnt reset swing timer. (TBD in Beta)
Off hand 1H weapon isnt affected by the -28% speed. (This is fuzzy to me based on the wording of the talent)

If all of the above are true, I can see 25/46/0 being pretty dominant for dps.

Rage will be more constant than dual 2H weapons. You will still get max benefit from slams, WW will be hurt somewhat with the fast offhand, BT is moot. But the sword procs will be huge, even though they are getting reduced to 1 every 6 seconds.

What do the masters think? I have not tried to theory craft a warrior and am probably not going to. =)

 

Mardraum

I've thought about that build as well, but i'd probably keep 2 2 handers and just use a faster 2 hand for the off hand (assuming they itemize any, which, im sure they will...) apollyon is 3.4... nice

 

Natural

ATM, if you put a 2H in your MH your OH receives the -attack speed regardless of whether it is 1H or 2H.

 

Zaroua

* Anticipation (Protection) now increases chance to dodge by 1/2/3/4/5%, moved to tier 2.
* Challenging Shout cooldown reduced to 3 minutes.
* Death Wish (Fury) no longer makes you immune to Fear effects.
* Death Wish and Sweeping Strikes have swapped locations in their respective talent trees.
* Defensive Stance now increases threat by 45%.
* Defiance (Protection) removed, replaced by Incite and moved to a new location on tier 2.
* Hamstring now only has one rank and no longer causes damage.
* Improved Bloodrage (Protection) now increases rage generation of both the instant and over-time effects by 25/50%.
* Improved Disarm (Protection) now reduces the cooldown of Disarm and Shield Break by 5/10/15 seconds and increases damage taken by disarmed targets by 4/7/10%.
* Improved Shield Block (Protection) now has 2 ranks and reduces cooldown of Shield Block by 5/10 secs. It no longer increases the number of blocks.
* Iron Will (Arms) now has only 3 ranks, reducing the duration of Stun and Charm effects by 10/20/30%.
* Last Stand (Protection) cooldown reduced to 6 minutes.
* Mace Specialization (Arms) can no longer trigger more than once per 6 seconds.
* Mocking Blow now only has one rank and causes weapon damage, cooldown reduced to 1 min and can now be used in Defensive Stance.
* Overpower now only has one rank and no longer causes any bonus damage (i.e. weapon damage only).
* Poleaxe Specialization (Arms) now also increases critical damage done by Axes and Polearms by 1/2/3/4/5%.
* Pummel now only has one rank and no longer causes damage.
* Shield Bash now only has one rank and will cause damage based on a % of AP.
* Shield Block now increases chance to block and amount blocked by 100% for the next attack. Cooldown increased to 30 seconds.
* Shield Slam is now available to all warriors, starting at level 40.
* Shield Specialization (Protection) moved to Tier 1, now increases rage by 2 on a successful block.
* Sword Specialization (Arms) can no longer trigger more than once per 6 seconds.
* Toughness (Protection) moved to tier 3.


From the released beta patch notes.

Biggest new things are, I think, Shield Bash being AP based and the removal of damage on Hamstring/Pummel and the Mocking Blow change.

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.

 

Thairne

The biggest indirect change I could see by flying over the patchnotes:

Windfury Totem is now a flat 20% melee haste totem. All ranks have been modified.

This could have any sort of impact on Arms Raiding...

 

Tornaz

Yeah, I just noticed that myself. That's a straight out Arms (and Retri) nerf. 20% Haste isn't going to make up for slow weapon Windfury procs - IIRC the general assumption is 25% DPS increase with Windfury (correct me if I'm wrong).

 

zork

I am currently looking for a new tanking spec and most of the new prot talents are great.

First idea:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Well, I am really anxious about the new shield block mechanic. Currently one of the biggest warrior tanking issues is the rage. The rage-bar is way to spiky atm. When tanking you can get streaks of not getting hit having to rely on your own white hits (white hits can glance) netting very low rage income of ~5-6rage per second.

If one hit lands (from a boss) it will be probalby ~5k-10k. 10k would be instant 100rage, 5k would be ~50rage.

When you mitigate more damage through blocking this may get even worse. We get a nice tradeoff: On every block, parry or dodge we now will get 2 rage which sounds really nice. The question is: Will it be valuable in single target situations and can it keep up with the rage loss of the increased block value?

Shield Block+Critical Block can stack imo. So some hits get blocked by 200% block value.

What I am trying to pointing at is that it would be sad if Blizzard gives us 2 talents that make tank worse in the sense of threat generation. This comes into play especially when tanking 5mans where mobs hit like babies and we may block all the damage.

Last note:
Has anyone found a spec that is capable of including the 5% crit anyhow? I don't have the points for it atm if I am going for Heroic, Sunder and Vigiliance.

If anyone from Blizzard reads this: Maybe you can add some kind of buff on every successful block that will increase the threat of the next shield slam in the next 5 seconds by the amount of damage blocked.

BLOG [ZIB] _ GUILD [TDMOG] _ INTERFACE [ROTHUI] _ CHAR [ROTHAR]

 

Frederic

Repost from WoWhead:

If you can get a 3 second autoattack + Slam time you could also do a more standard 33/28 rotation, perhaps with one point in Imp WW to bring the CD down to 9 seconds allowing you to WW right off the fourth Slam's GCD rather than one second later (which makes timing a lot more "neat").

So here's the debate: 5/5 TG (maybe get heroic leap too, it must have some use) for tighter slam and CD timing or 5/5 weapon spec and 1/5 TG? Dual-Wield spec or 2H Weapon Spec maxed first if the option comes up?

EDIT: 4.5 second rotation and WW every other slam also "works", as does a 5 second rotation and WW every other slam.

EDIT2: This is presupposing that 0/41/30 doesn't rip TG apart on the meters, and that 32/39/0 isn't deemed more valuable to DPS, or that 0/40/31 isn't more valuable to buff a tank with 5% dodge.

 

Novakki

ATM i am creating up a quick dps spreadsheet for comparing 2h arms, 1h DW and 2h DW specs..
Currently i am stuck with a few things in excel (i want to make some type of userinterface if it gets anywhere ready soon). Anyway, i noticed that very slow weapons - i.e. 1/5 TG + 3,5 weps will actually get to same white DPS when you count 5/5 flurry . It seems, if i've done the calculation right, that flurry uptime gets higher as the weapon speeds gets higher (..o'rly). Which indeed does point to a spec which would only include 1/5 TG + 5/5 wep mastery.

I'll try to post my dps sheet when i've come through all the stuff and made a few notes so that one could help me fix the errors. I really want to see what our new specs are capable.

 

Thairne

Well as I see it, a 20% chance for an extra attack (that might crit or glance) is pretty equal to a flat 20% haste. The good thing about the haste is the smoother rage generation. An additional benefit is... you can and probably should skip flurry altogether!
Currently, a Cat´s Edge will swing for 3.0 with a 3/5 Flurry. With the new Windfury, you´ll swing at 2.8 already. Even one point in Flurry would put you to 2.625 swing, the second below 2,5. That would free up 8 talent points... to get endless rage/incite.

 

Tornaz

You are kind of right. 20% chance to proc the attack was higher than 20% more DPS though, due to the additional AP.

Regarding the talents, you are entirely correct, and it's actually true that with this Haste totem, low levels of Flurry are a negative impact to overall DPS (Stupid!). Saving the 5 waste points we were obliged to drop into Enrage is a motivation.

The one high point is that GoA being folded into the same totem as SoE means that a higher crit chance is available. With Axe Spec now being +% to both crit chance and crit damage, the increased AGI (I haven't seen numbers on how much crit this will give at 80) should be useful in combination.

However, I find it hard to label the changes overall as anything but a nerf (to Arms).


EDIT: Having said that about droping Enrage talents, you still have to talent something in Fury to get down to Improved Slam. It's still painful that the baseline Arms DPS talent is 20+ deep in Fury.

 

Thairne

True, I forgot about the bonus ap.. However I dont think that an additional 578 AP every 15 seconds (20% means every 5 swings á 3 sec swingtimer) would be 5% dps.

Skilling up to slam/dw/wpn mastery is not a that big deal. You could try a build like this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

focusing on big crits powering deep wounds, trauma and sudden death (I feel dirty for taking imp ms though ). And of course endless rage to give the rage to use them all. Now if one could get incite...