Buka

Ghost talking about DPS plate itemization here once again.

My favorite part:

Looks like, they do not exempt such "fix".

 

• Morsexy

I understand that part of any game as complex and far reaching as this game really is, when you think about it, is always going to suffer from a latest is greatest type of system of balance. I can accept that, and I understand that other classes besides the warrior have had it far worse for far longer.

But I agree wholeheartedly with the frustration with some of the pure ridiculousness of how the game evolves. Then we have people who are against changing, 'fixing', the issues for some reason I can't really fathom. It is the same closed thinking that has meant deathwish still gives a damage penalty, even though abilities like Beast Within ( Death Wish on Crack ) do not, because frankly it is patently ridiculous if it did confer a % damage increase on the player on use. I can almost hear what people would say, "So I do extra damage, and can't be stunned, but I take 10% MORE damage, that doesn't make sense!" and neither does it for us at this point.

The DK stances are far superior in every respect, instead of giving us the toughness change, why not make battle stance increase run speed by 10% or something. It is really time to get over the whole "everything HAS to have a detriment" angle for warriors.

 

• Morsexy

No apologies necessary! I just enjoyed it mostly because if you had to guess which boss those trinkets dropped off of,
( I know I didn't replace my scarab until Black Temple ) I highly doubt you'd pick Flamegor.

And very appropos, the "homogenization" should mean we wouldn't have that type of trinket fiasco according to some of the opinions I'm reading on here, yet I think that is really an outcome of poor itemization and implementation overall.

The guy who designed those trinkets is not the same guy who designed the M'uru tank trinket, I mean it just can't be possible.

 

PSGarak

Battle Stance doesn't do anything because it's not a stance. It's a lack-of-stance, like druids when they're not shapeshifted. The difference is it's easier to code a null-stance for ability restrictions than to allow you to become stanceless. That's also why there will not be any Improved Battle Stance talent: it's more thematically consistent (and more powerful) to give a talent that's active all the time, regardless of stance.

DKs are designed that they're always going to be in a presence, the same way that mages and warlocks are designed that they're always going to have one of their various Armor spells. Warriors are not. They are designed not to be in a stance, and have the option, rather than the requirement, to acquire one. That means that presences are balanced against each other, and armors are balanced against each other (within classes, not between them, which was itself a discussion that came up a few weeks ago, and is remarkaly similar to this one). Stances are balanced against not needing one.

You're already creating a strawman by saying that presences are the same as stances. They're not. They're class abilities, and make sense only in the context of the class. Warrior abilities are balanced around battle and berserker stance, DK abilities are balanced around blood and unholy presence (not to mention the rage vs rune+RP resource systems). Frost presence is OP compared to defensive stance because a) it includes the shield that a warrior would equip separately, and b) the damage reduction in inherent simply by not being in blood/unholy presence.



This is not to say that the stances don't have problems. Berserker's damage penalty makes warriors more frail in raid situations in a way that may not be fair, and the defensive stance penalty is (somewhat) redundant with the restriction of high-damage abilities to other stances (with the notable, and perhaps justifying, exceptions of MS, BT, and devestate). Stancelessness is also out on a lurch because either extreme is generally favored than balance. In my opinion, there are too many "utility" abilities like intercept, pummel, and hamstring available in, or restricted to, berserker stance, which is meant to be a much more offensive stance. Trading utility for damage, instead of damage for damage, would be a consistent and balanceable way to give berserker a place and a purpose, while keeping some notion of situationality about it.

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

 

Darian_TruBlade

It's also important to note in the Stance vs Presence argument that Presences do not restrict what abilities a DK can use, but simply affects the abilities he'll already be using. Stances represent access or inaccess to various abilities. Stances are balanced around the fact that certain abilities costly to reach at any given moment.

The problem is partly that the costs/benefits of each Stance are largely outdated, and there's so much bleeding between them that there's usually only one or two utility abilities you don't have access to that are relevant to your current role. The only DPS difference between Arms and Fury in terms of available abilities are Overpower and Rend on the Arms side and Whirlwind on the Fury side. I'm not arguing that there should be more abilities locked out per stance, but that the differences between each aren't as interesting as they should be (at least when it comes to Arms and Fury).

 

Liar

Know what? Let them do it. That way they would have to buff Warrior talents to synergize with out Plate itemization. In the end, we will do Rogue DPS without any leather tricks since that is their stated goal. It's easier for them to design talents if they know we won't game the system by picking up the better itemized leather.

EDIT:
That is not true. Warriors are designed around their stances. Just take tanking for example; threat values are assigned to skill with Defensive stance (and Defiance) in mind. If they were not, then Warriors would be ridiculously overpowered threat wise.
In the same vein, Warriors are designed around PvPing in Zerker Stance. They know it and we know it. It's not a choice to be in it. Also, Warriors are not competitive when DPSing in anything but Berserker stance pre-3.0.2. It's just how the class was made and how Blizzard is going to measure our DPS potential, too. Once again, they won't buff MS/BT damage so high that you can be competitive DPS without WW and the 3% crit from Berserker stance. If they do, then a Warrior that used Berserker stance would be overpowered.

Your argument is comparable to me saying that Druid tanking isn't designed around Bear form. Bear form is just an option for them to tank.

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

 

Machinator

It seems more likely that they think the plate is fine for us, and synergize with the bad plate rather than good leather. I remember at blizzcon someone asked why T6 had agility on it. The response was something like "we didnt know agility was bad for warriors at the time."

"Information is ammunition."

 

Liar

Yes, but back then noone knew how much DPS to expect from a Warrior compared to other DPS classes. This time it's simple: If you do not do the same DPS as everyone else, something has to change. We can moan about homogenization all we want, but that's the advantage: We know what they want. Warrior will be able to tank everything or do the same DPS as other classes.

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

 

Machinator

Im not sure I understand. How didnt we know then? or how do we know more now? To be honest the whole problem with warriors is that we dont know what they want, or to be more precise, they dont know what we want.

"Information is ammunition."

 

Liar

We didn't know how much DPS a Warrior should be able to do in TBC. Because we brought raid utility on top of our DPS and Rogues didn't. Now that these things are gone, we know that Rogues and Warriors will do the same DPS unless Blizzard fails at their own philosophy (player skill + gear > class). And because we know that we can point out if we are over- or underperforming. How many of us knew before if the Agility on T6 was a deliberate choice to tone down Warriors DPS or if they actually fucked up itemization? If this happens in Wrath, we know why they are doing this.

It's simple really, they laid down their class philosophies and goals to us for Wrath. They have never done it to this extent before.

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

 

• Morsexy

Well I don't particularly agree with this, especially without knowing what your experience is with a warrior. Apparently this discussion is against the rules, or my post about it was, so I'm fine with tabling it. What I hope gets examined is that Berseker stance has a penalty of the extra damage taken, and that battle is the one or two ability stance.

 

mistersix

The agility on plate issue goes back to vanilla. At one point tier gear had it on there, then it was removed. Then people bitched. Then it started coming back in tbc since the item budget could accommodate it because of the sta budget changes.

in terms of the stance debate I know a lot of highly ranked arena players that spend time stance dancing more than the notion of "people only pvp in zerk stance" really suggests. I also know people that park in battle stance, rather than zerk stance depending on the composition of the opposing team. Regardless, with the overpower tweaks they're clearly trying to make dps in battle attractive at least for some builds.

 

Frederic

Agility on plate would not be an issue if warriors got the same agility:critical strike ratio as a paladin or shaman does (25:1), the problem is that we currently get 33:1 as a ratio, and rogues get 40:1 plus 1:1 AP / agility. This really sucks when all of your tier gear is covered with agility.

There is no particularly good reason why we don't get the same amount of benefit from agility as rogues/hunters/paladins/shamans except for the fact that Blizzard was apparently worried about tanks attempting raid bosses in a stacked agility set. Given not so current events one would think that it's about time that they correct agility to give an appropriate benefit to warriors rather than using feigned ignorance as a way to covertly nerf our tier gear.

 

Lasie

Well, its only safe if the opposing team doesn't have a Lock, Priest or Rogue. Meaning only a very small % of teams are "safe" to use battle on.

I really think it's time they revisited the Stances concept. When the game came out, abilities were pretty heavily dependent on stances, and stance dancing was a lot more prevalent then it is now. As time has gone on, many of the abilities have become shared between stances. Do they intend for us to switch stances a lot, or are we suppose to stay in 1 stance the whole time? The latter reflects a lot of the same idea as Presences.

Either way:
Battle Stance needs to be looked at because it has no inherent benefit. Why would people want to switch into Battle Stance? Overpower of course, but that means trading Berserker Rage and a ton of zerker stance abilities. So its not great for PvE, and its not really great for PvP either. There needs to be some way that this is fixed. Battle is suppose to be the "Arms" stance, so it should be good for PvP and PvE arms. Giving a 15% increased runspeed (or alternatively a 10% CC resist) and berserker rage (renamed something "arms-y" of course) would make battle stance a very attractive and distinctive choice for PvP.

Defensive Stance is almost fine, I would say that it doesn't need the -10% damage dealt penalty, but if prot warriors are doing really good DPS already that may be too much.

Berserker Stance needs to be looked at due to the damage component and its affect on raids. 10% extra damage means fury warriors take the worst brunt of raid AoE damage. What do we really have to show for soaking up all that extra healing? We really don't provide any more DPS then other classes (if they're really going to normalize it). So why take a class that's going to be harder to heal, when you can take a rogue that needs much less healing due to the wonders of CoS?

With the changes to avoidance to have diminishing returns it's time they re-visited the agility-to-crit ratio, and make it flat across all classes. While I don't think it would truly make agility attractive for DPS warriors, it would go a long way to solving some of the balancing issues they seem to be having with regards to itemization.

 

Bronwyn

On the issue of the 10% +damage in Raidenvironments:
I always thought it was an interesting element of offwarrior gameplay that you are in fact able to anticipate many damage spikes and switch to def stance beforehand. Thus, you both get rid of the 10% and gain an additional 10% mitigation.

If anything, I would reward the added danger of being in Berserker Stance more.

Also, right now the warrior lacks unique effects in raid environments - most classes actually do bring something to the table that no one else can offer:

Rogues: vanish, clos, tott
Hunter: md, fd
Druids: combat rez, healing component of LotP, etc.

There should be something in the warrior builds (arms/fury) which effectively makes at least one off-warrior a good choice for any raid. Nothing too powerful but special. Right now, a feral druid and a paladin are all that is needed to make the offensive warrior obsolete - especially considering we are all supposed to do the same amount of dps.

 

Lasie

That works well in the case of anticipated raid damage, say a boss-mod timed AoE that happens once every few min or so, but works terrible in an environment when you're constantly taking raid damage. Most encounters are designed around the latter, which is detrimental to us.

Also, we have to sacrifice all our DPS to make the switch, as the only thing you can do in D-stance is HS and Bloodthirst. So while a rogue can pop CoS and keep pouring out the DPS through a hairy raid damage situation, a warrior has to forgo their DPS and back out.

 

Bronwyn

That's right of course. I'm just saying that we are not 100% of the time doomed to taking 10% more. Examples I can think of: Kalecgos when I'm bound to be ported, Brutallus if there is a problem with burn healing in the final 6 seconds of burn, Felmyst Encapsulate, Twins Shadow Nova or Flame Sear. It's very situational, granted - but it's there.

One could of course think about chaning imp. Berserker Stance to also reduce/negate the malus, thus helping deep fury specs.

 

Lasie

Yep.

I'd actually love to see stance dancing happen more often. I kinda like that being reactive and switching to D-stance to take an AoE, I just wish that we could do it without crippling ourselves in the process.

Imp. Berserker already has a lot of stuff tacked on to it, perhaps a lower tier fury talent, like commanding presence, could reduce the damage. However, the idea of having a stance penalty that is then countered by a talent in the tree for that same stance is a bit circular. Why add a 10% bonus damage to Imp. D stance when D stance has a -10% penalty? Why add 10% less damage to a fury talent when Berserker has a 10% more damage penalty? Talents and stances should have synergy, not conflict. Which is kinda why I think the penalty concept for stances is a little outdated.

 

hellord

Actually there are talents to improve both berz and defensive stance, but there isnt an arms talent that improves battle stance.
A small rework would be making an "improved Battle stance" which grants the haste buff (and maybe some threat reduction) similar to fury one, while BF can have, as a secondary effect, something like rend refresh.

10% damage for 3% crit isnt a fair trade at all. Maybe getting 5% crit could be a better solution especially considering that fury warriors will have to trade stats for hit rating.

I'm trying Arms on PTR and personal dps has gone up by a decent amount, also the changes on slam are good enough to make haste a viable stat since it is the "rage provider" and also considering that Armor penetration is now much less powerful (diminishing its value on gear).

It may change at lvl 80 since bosses will have a higher armor value, probably in the range of 10k, but actually is a neglible stat that is worth about 1/3 - 2/5 of what is on live depending on boss armor.
I was one of those who used to soft cap it but actually is a waste of stats and crit, at least as arms, has become even more important (10% damage ftw!).

Blasted lands testing gives me ranges of 1.7-1.8k DPS with only BS (with mob hitting me) and 2.4-2.6k DPS with a shaman/pally in group, not sure it compensates the 2% raid physical damage but atm Arms seems the only reasonable dps spec for warriors, considering also that combat isn't anymore the best spec for rogues.

 

Brgid

Just wondering (I really enjoy the 'feel' of dual 1Hers) whether axe spec (5% crit + 5% crit damage) might be comparable to the overall damage increase from TG given the 10% specials hit penalty. In other words, would an axe spec / Rampage (25/41+) DW 1Her build have any viability?

I was even thinking about the PvP possibilities of a 27/44 grabbing Furious Attacks and Heroic Fury as well as Imp Intercept (although I admit up front I have little arena experience.)

 

Lithose

Do druids have any negatives when changing "forms" other than skill lock outs? No, its only benefits, their negative is their inability to use skills within the other stances (And the mana cost for shifting.).

Do DK's lose any skills when shifting presences? No, DK's retain all the same skills, they simply lose the benefit of the other presence (As you said, losing the "required" buffs of those stances is their DPS loss.).

Can mages not use frost bolt with molten armor up?

You see, there are two subtle penalties here for every "class modifier."..The first is requiring changes in that modifier by not allowing skills to be used, there for drawing down a resource pool to "pay" for it ( if the resource pool wasn't effected the "class modifier" would simply be a nuisance, rather than a part of balance.)....and then there is the second penalty, where you lose some base-line power in order to adapt to a situation better, mages lose 5% crit, for example, in order to get better defense..This penalty is based on your class losing potency in one area to gain potency in another.

Why do warriors have both? Well, one of my theories is that because rage is not a finite resource pool the penalty of drawing from it was not enough, so the stances themselves were given penalties too. This however has created a situation where warriors are "double" dipped by penalties and with the changes in raids (Smaller, heavier area effect.) and PvP (More focused, smaller.) this double draw has become more visible and is starting to hurt the class in numerous ways (Again, why bring a warrior if the rogue's DPS is the same? Warriors simply take more damage, this is not whining, this is a simple, logical, conclusion..If two classes DPS the same but one survives much better, you pick the one that survives more, warlocks on KJ, for example.)

I don't know how to fix it, I see why the penalties existed, but the game has come to a point where other classes have gotten close to the same things, -10% in defensive is not super-unique anymore, +3% crit isn't extreme, there is no reason to have outdated penalties that used to be associated with these old-world powerful (And very unique.) skills. As the stance benefits have been homogenized, so to should have been the negatives, or lack there of.

 

Buka

Devs want dps-warriors use 2-handers (1 or 2 - arms or fury), they clearly stated so multiple times. So, i gues, DW 1Her builds will not have any use in xpack's end-game raiding.

 

Darian_TruBlade

What devs want and what is are not necessarily the same thing, particularly during beta.

That said there are problems with the spec in question. Before we can even consider the effect of losing TG we have to consider the different DW 1H specs against each other. The difference between this build and Incite boils down to a Weapon Spec + 5 points of Arms Talents versus Imp Bloodrage, Imp Berserker Rage and Incite.

HS only needs to account for ~35% of your DPS in order for Incite to be approximately equal to a Weapon Spec. Throw on top of that the better rage generation tools and it should be pretty clear why Incite builds are the favored 1H builds for LK.

 

mjs9893

Anyone looked at the viability of using impr overpower with taste for blood as TG spec.

Of course this means you'll be stance dancing to get the overpower off and losing points in 2H spec and or Deep wounds.

What do you guys think? Is it just too hectic to be worth it?

 

Darian_TruBlade

You won't just be stance dancing for Overpower, but for Rend as well. Losing 6% of your damage for a potentially inconvenient proc doesn't seem particularly useful, especially considering that all time spent in Battle Stance is +10% threat and -10% AP, -3% Crit compared to Berserker Stance.