Anyways, I took a quick glance at the new datamined items and it looks like they are continuing to add more items with Block Value but without Block Rating and the usual spread of defensive stats like dodge, parry, defense etc.
Where are you getting that from? Of those items shown on MMO-Champ, only the emblem chest had block value, which apparently is a bug. Instead all of them have bonus armor, but it remains to be seen if some of the ICC items will have that as well. It would definitely be interesting to have bonus armor on a bunch of items, even though it comes at the expense of other stats.
I also hope we are not going back to endless amounts of +hit on gear as quite a few of the known pieces have that, including the Ashen Verdict ring. I assume the heroic items will once again just be upgraded versions. That is all speculation though, only a few items are known so far and any of that could still change.
I still wonder why the concept of EH can keep its prevalent position in the minds of a majority of posts on this forum or tankspot.
Yes, it is important if not the single most important aspect.
No, it should not be that dominant that all reasoning is reduced to EH every time tank classes or gear is discussed.
In my opinion, there are as much tank deaths in raid setting which are caused by healer strain as they are caused by unavoidable/worst-case burst. While the latter has everything to do with EH, the former does not.
As liar suggested, I can only assume that by "healer strain", you mean the tank is taking long strings of unavoided blows. Suppose you have a 65% chance to avoid a blow completely, and you're fighting a boss with a fight length of around 3 minutes (a very short fight). Let's examine how many strings of 4 consecutive hits you should expect to take:
E = np
p = (1-.65)^4
n = 72 (number of strings of length 4 in 3 minutes)
E = 1.08045
So, with your 65% avoidance, you still expect to take one string of unavoided hits for almost 10 seconds of the fight. If you up your avoidance to 66%, you should still expect to take one string of 4 hits most (96.2% to be exact) of the time.
I'm just saying, avoidance makes a great stat when you are avoiding blows, and a terrible stat when you aren't. The latter case seems, to me, to be the situation I'd want to gear to guard against most - since probability states that it's likely to occur unless your avoidance is higher than is really possible in the current game, such as if you were looking to have 85% avoidance before Icecrown's 20% dodge penalty, as I've laid out in the example above.
If you're saying in your last statement that you see just as many tank deaths from a boss shortly after an avoided blow(i.e. non-worst case scenarios) as you see from a boss where none of the blows are avoided, I'd be interested in seeing your data.
Where are you getting that from? Of those items shown on MMO-Champ, only the emblem chest had block value, which apparently is a bug.
Shame about the chest. Apparently only the ilvl 219 gear from the 5 man normal has BV without BR, meh. I should have checked the ilvl more closely I guess.
Pity, would have liked to collect a set with good pieces that have BV on them instead of parry, dodge or defense but I guess that is not going to happen.
Where are you getting that from? Of those items shown on MMO-Champ, only the emblem chest had block value, which apparently is a bug. Instead all of them have bonus armor, but it remains to be seen if some of the ICC items will have that as well. It would definitely be interesting to have bonus armor on a bunch of items, even though it comes at the expense of other stats.
The offset pieces we've seen so far make me hopeful that they'll continue the bonus armor trend for the tier pieces. What's your opinion of the set bonus though? Based off past scaling, we ought to be upwards of 60k buffed hp pretty quickly once the 25man gear starts rolling out, and a 12k+ shield every minute is pretty appealing as long as the gear that grants it isn't horribly itemized.
I'm generally suspicious that there'll be at least one gimmick fight which will rely on a massive periodic hit that might require this bonus to survive. Obviously the T9 bonus is substantially higher melee damage mitigation, and will undoubtedly be useful for some time to come in ICC, but the appeal of an on-demand medium cooldown shield is not lost on me.
Originally Posted by Goatbert
No and I'm pretty annoyed about that - there has to be a 1h tanking one right?
Since it's sibling blade is EXCLUSIVELY a tank sword, I wouldn't be shocked if we don't see a tanking Quel'Delar. That's not to say there shouldn't be (or won't be) better tanking weapons, since there obviously will be, but don't hold your breath for a tanking Quel other than the one we already have.
Last edited by vorpalblade : 11/12/09 at 2:58 PM.
Originally Posted by XI-
You see, the petty rules and regulations for the general forums don't apply here. If you're a fuckwad you will systematically be mocked and embarassed to the fullest extent of our abilities. In short, take your 12 bucks, shove it up your fucking ass, and don't come back until your IQ reaches double digits.
The offset pieces we've seen so far make me hopeful that they'll continue the bonus armor trend for the tier pieces. What's your opinion of the set bonus though? Based off past scaling, we ought to be upwards of 60k buffed hp pretty quickly once the 25man gear starts rolling out, and a 12k+ shield every minute is pretty appealing as long as the gear that grants it isn't horribly itemized.
I'm generally suspicious that there'll be at least one gimmick fight which will rely on a massive periodic hit that might require this bonus to survive. Obviously the T9 bonus is substantially higher melee damage mitigation, and will undoubtedly be useful for some time to come in ICC, but the appeal of an on-demand medium cooldown shield is not lost on me.
All of the set bonuses but the paladin tanking one are either a bonus damage reduction cooldown or a shield tied to a 1 minute cooldown. The prot paladin bonus is 12% dodge. So you might be right, but if so, then they're getting the short end of the stick. I'll be interested to see how the warrior set bonus functions with items like Juggernaut's vitality and abilities like last stand.
I'd be willing to wager there will 3/5 good pieces of T10 and two pieces that are really poorly itemized (if the prior 3 tier sets are any guide). The legs on the tier set will have to be amazing to match the crafted legs. Similarly, that badge chest could have potential if they keep the bonus armor on it.
With all the bonus armor on some of those pieces, the mitigation benefits of block value goes up quite a bit for us, we might not look down on it as much in the future. Especially with avoidance being less valuable on a relative basis in Icecrown and with most of us already pretty far down the DR curve for it (we'll end up gaining very little incrementally from a def/dodge/parry piece since we have both the itemvalue formula and the DR curves working against us). I really would not be surprised if they're itemizing more for block in this tier since they're trying to un-do the huge amount of avoidance they've been giving us in ToC. Block value and armor mitigation bonuses are much easier to scale encounters around.
I'm really hoping they don't do what they did in the prior couple tiers where they'd have all the "threat" upgrades move from expertise to hit rating, leaving us with next to no expertise in Ulduar gear. ToC25 went to the other extreme and piled expertise all over everything so our hit dropped to next to nothing.
I'm really hoping they don't do what they did in the prior couple tiers where they'd have all the "threat" upgrades move from expertise to hit rating, leaving us with next to no expertise in Ulduar gear. ToC25 went to the other extreme and piled expertise all over everything so our hit dropped to next to nothing.
Yeah, that's always bothered me as well as far back as the T5 -> T6 transition, where we went from easily hitcapped to all expertise based, and then were thrown into fights that required tanks to taunt-switch (I think by midway through sunwell, I was parry capped at just over 15% with expertise without even trying, but had only 1% or so +hit). I'm reasonably happy with the mix on offset pieces at this point in progression however, and it's been pretty easy to mix and match rings and trinkets to gain what you need on a fight by fight basis. Though admittedly I still rely pretty heavily on grim toll to make up for a lot on fights where taunts/interrupts can't miss.
I've been eyeing the badge chest and crafted pants in the hope that it represents a trend in the forthcoming tank itemization (with regards to bonus armor, at least), though I'm fairly certain we'll continue to see a lot of the boilerplate Str+Stm+Def+Dodge+Parry pieces that presently populate much of the loot tables.
e: I'm also curious on how long they're going to continue letting unhittable sets remain possible/viable (Outside of ICC I mean, since radiance will obviously curtail that inside the instance). It's clearly a niche set, but the things it allows you to do are pretty broken. DR on block rating seems like the most likely candidate, but that might have a broader effect than they desire.
Last edited by vorpalblade : 11/12/09 at 4:57 PM.
Originally Posted by XI-
You see, the petty rules and regulations for the general forums don't apply here. If you're a fuckwad you will systematically be mocked and embarassed to the fullest extent of our abilities. In short, take your 12 bucks, shove it up your fucking ass, and don't come back until your IQ reaches double digits.
e: I'm also curious on how long they're going to continue letting unhittable sets remain possible/viable (Outside of ICC I mean, since radiance will obviously curtail that inside the instance). It's clearly a niche set, but the things it allows you to do are pretty broken. DR on block rating seems like the most likely candidate, but that might have a broader effect than they desire.
Well they're on record as saying that they're probably going to change block to a % damage reduction in the next expansion, and Icecrown is the supposed to be the end of the line for this expansion. So the problem kind of resolves itself (you'll still take very little damage, but it won't be no damage like today).
Well they're on record as saying that they're probably going to change block to a % damage reduction in the next expansion, and Icecrown is the supposed to be the end of the line for this expansion. So the problem kind of resolves itself (you'll still take very little damage, but it won't be no damage like today).
I really hope they don't make block a %damage reduction. It would be literally just like armor which is somewhat boring. While it is true that unhittable sets and blocking 1500 damage off of a 40k swing are both extremes they probably didn't intend, it doesn't mean that leaving block a static damage reduction is a bad idea. If they remove block rating you eliminate the former problem. If they only itemize BV in a way I implied earlier (BV replacing one of the many avoidance stats), would there really be a problem if we'd run around with high BV in Cataclysm?
On a lighter note, if they do go ahead with the %damage reduction on Shield Block I probably won't be able to tank heroics in full DPS gear anymore which is a shame. :P
Originally Posted by vorpalblade
Since it's sibling blade is EXCLUSIVELY a tank sword, I wouldn't be shocked if we don't see a tanking Quel'Delar. That's not to say there shouldn't be (or won't be) better tanking weapons, since there obviously will be, but don't hold your breath for a tanking Quel other than the one we already have.
Maybe so but aren't you supposed to get that sword through questing? That would mean you aren't clogging up any loot lists or annoying any other class if there would be 50 different blades to pick from. It just makes no sense, Quel'Serrar or not (and QS is pretty horrible anyway).
Maybe so but aren't you supposed to get that sword through questing? That would mean you aren't clogging up any loot lists or annoying any other class if there would be 50 different blades to pick from. It just makes no sense, Quel'Serrar or not (and QS is pretty horrible anyway).
Originally Posted by Blue
We don't feel there is a need for it? We aimed to make sure that every class had something to gain from the Quel'Delar series, but that doesn't mean every spec of every class. Could a tank use the one handed dps version of Quel'Delar? Yes, it may give them more threat. Is this ideal for surviving while tanking? No, but there are other items available for that.
You'll have to content yourself with Quel'Serrar if you want a tank sword with lore behind it. Frankly, there are reasons for a wide variety of DPS weapons to be available, but the expected range of tank weapons is pretty narrow. If they had a Mace and Axe at every tier, that would satisfy pretty much everyone all the time, but even as it is now every race seems to get to do without their racial weapon expertise (if any) for a tier at a time if they want to use the best weapon.
What they really need is a new tanking axe for our Orc brethren. Ulduar and TOC are big on maces and especially swords, which I guess was the payback for making every tank use [Last Laugh] for 6 months. There are SO MANY tank swords now, I really can't get upset that we don't see a tank Quel'Delar. Since people are only really after the best ones anyway, we'd replace it probably before we even completed the quest chain for it. The abundance of swords is really more perplexing in light of the view that there's only one race with an expertise for it, and we get mace expertise too. They could make a mace and an axe at every tier, and be covered.
(e; And then we'll probably still all use whichever one has bonus armor on it.)
Last edited by vorpalblade : 11/13/09 at 1:59 PM.
Originally Posted by XI-
You see, the petty rules and regulations for the general forums don't apply here. If you're a fuckwad you will systematically be mocked and embarassed to the fullest extent of our abilities. In short, take your 12 bucks, shove it up your fucking ass, and don't come back until your IQ reaches double digits.
(e; And then we'll probably still all use whichever one has bonus armor on it.)
You are assuming the Quel'dalar weapon would not have armor on it. How would we know that since there is none? It's a pretty moot point that you might replace the weapon early in the instance. The same is true for all other QDs but yet the quest there and giving some classes/specs a weapon that is pretty much guaranteed. I am not saying I am unhappy with my Crusader's Glory but I just don't see the logic. Quest reward = it doesn't clog up loot tables. Guaranteed reward = you are not relying on RNG.
And for what it's worth, as much as I care about lore, in this case that is not the driving point. It's the arbitrariness in which the types of blades are chosen when it takes all of 2 minutes to code in new weapon types for all specs. This is pretty much the only time they could actually do this since it's a quest reward and not a drop... but they don't? It makes no sense at all.
The offset pieces we've seen so far make me hopeful that they'll continue the bonus armor trend for the tier pieces. What's your opinion of the set bonus though? Based off past scaling, we ought to be upwards of 60k buffed hp pretty quickly once the 25man gear starts rolling out, and a 12k+ shield every minute is pretty appealing as long as the gear that grants it isn't horribly itemized.
I'm generally suspicious that there'll be at least one gimmick fight which will rely on a massive periodic hit that might require this bonus to survive. Obviously the T9 bonus is substantially higher melee damage mitigation, and will undoubtedly be useful for some time to come in ICC, but the appeal of an on-demand medium cooldown shield is not lost on me.
The set bonuses are very nice. However, I think we're in the same situation as we were with T8 and Ulduar: people saw the 4pc and immediately created a buzz about how it would be required for Plasma Blasts for Firefighter, Frozen Blows for Hodir, etc. Yet, as we progressed through the instance, people began to shrug off that notion and picked up the better off-set pieces yet were able to clear Firefighter without the 20% magic shield block. While the 4pc T10 sounds like it would be real cool to use in sync with Last Stand and Juggernaut's Vitality to absorb The Big Hit, I think in the long run we'll again find ourselves using the offset pieces (assuming they all keep the bonus armor once the patch goes live).
Additionally, the 2pc is cool (20% damage Shield Slam and Shockwave) but as others have said: rogues and hunters (who's misdirect is becoming drastically better in 3.3) will have you far beyond on threat meters and you should be worrying yourself entirely with survivability; as such, the 2pc is cool but in practice it is not needed.
On a lighter note, if they do go ahead with the %damage reduction on Shield Block I probably won't be able to tank heroics in full DPS gear anymore which is a shame. :P
If that is still the case in 4.0, then the dev's will have failed Protection warrior's in a (sorry for the pun) cataclysmic way.
I don't follow, what's wrong with that? Heroics are way too easy anyway and as much as I would like to see challenging 5 mans, tanking in full DPS gear is fun. FWIW, I did that in TBC too, except I used enough resilence gear to achieve crit immunity.
I don't follow, what's wrong with that? Heroics are way too easy anyway ...
You have your answer right there ^^
The only "heroic" dungeons we had in WoW were the TBC prenerf dungeons. Assume 2nd nerf here, the 1st nerf one could argue was justified as they were very demanding on the CC side. All IMHO of course.
You have your answer right there ^^
The only "heroic" dungeons we had in WoW were the TBC prenerf dungeons. Assume 2nd nerf here, the 1st nerf one could argue was justified as they were very demanding on the CC side. All IMHO of course.
I agree, I hope the new 5 man in 3.3 is going to be more of a challenge than the ones we have now. That said, TBC heroics before the first "nerf" were a disaster. Sweeping Striking Naga Myrmidons in Steam Vaults were just dumb beyond imagination and I fear that we will never get truly hard 5 mans anymore after they made every tank capable of AoE tanking since most challenges in TBC were of the self-imposed kind (AoEing in Shattered Halls as Warrior, not running any form of CC in Magister's Terrace and so on). Blizzard just ran themselves out of options by simplifying tanking this much. Remember those fearing guys in Shadow Labs where you had to stance dance to anticipate a fear or do a taunt/mocking blow sequence to have the mob break it's own fear on you (same thing applies for the gouging mobs in Arcatraz)? That was fun but it's not possible anymore now that taunt has DR, fear doesn't break aggro and with Berserker Rage being accessible in all stances.
And the most glaring thing: I revisited some old heroics out of boredom and some mobs in heroic Blood Furnace, a level 70 heroic, hit harder than most mobs in WotLK heroics (in absolute and relative value). What happened here?
In the end, I hope Shield Block stays as it is so those that want to keep running instances with self-imposed challenges may atleast do so. Spell Reflection already got gutted retroactively in WotLK heroics so they should atleast keep this one signature move of ours intact, IMO.
Shield wall and the T10 4-set could also have some interesting synergy, if the absorb is calculated after the cooldown damage reduction is taken out. This would be nice, as we'd be able to use shield wall as a reactionary cooldown (25% of current health / 60% damage taken = the equivalent of a 41.67% increase in health), rather than mostly as a proactive cooldown to prevent spikes.
If it scales with Shield wall, last stand and the battlemaster trinkets, it looks like something around 175k damage after armor (but before shield wall) that a boss would need to do to kill a tank who started with 60k health. Of course, we'd only have all that around for one shot which makes it impractical to use it this way, but it's interesting to think about.
And the most glaring thing: I revisited some old heroics out of boredom and some mobs in heroic Blood Furnace, a level 70 heroic, hit harder than most mobs in WotLK heroics (in absolute and relative value). What happened here?
If you're thinking of the packs of Annihilators at the end of the instance, they were pretty notorious in TBC. When TBC heroics were serious business people would go out of their way to bring a warlock just so they could banish or enslave one of the felguards. I remember going back to Blood Furnace, pimped out in epics and confident I could tank this with my pure awesome, got to the annihilators, and was globaled. We ran back, but this time I disarmed one and stunned the other, so we got done. It was still a really jarring jump in difficulty.
I don't think we'll ever get heroics that are as interesting to tank as, say, Magister's Terrace. Part of its that the other tank classes don't have many tools available and part of it's that the 5-man tanking shortage would not be helped by making it actually hard to tank. There's only so much you can do when you want all of the tanks to be able to do it. Maybe they could have bosses use different abilities based on who's holding aggro.
If it scales with Shield wall, last stand and the battlemaster trinkets, it looks like something around 175k damage after armor (but before shield wall) that a boss would need to do to kill a tank who started with 60k health. Of course, we'd only have all that around for one shot which makes it impractical to use it this way, but it's interesting to think about.
That is quite a big number for sure but like you said it is probably gonna be impractical since in current content tanks stagger CDs like SW and LS instead of using it at the same time or it would be overkill. The only use I see for this is to absorb one or two hits from a boss that went into Berserk to buy your raid another few seconds of DPS time.
Originally Posted by Mode
If you're thinking of the packs of Annihilators at the end of the instance, they were pretty notorious in TBC. When TBC heroics were serious business people would go out of their way to bring a warlock just so they could banish or enslave one of the felguards. I remember going back to Blood Furnace, pimped out in epics and confident I could tank this with my pure awesome, got to the annihilators, and was globaled. We ran back, but this time I disarmed one and stunned the other, so we got done. It was still a really jarring jump in difficulty.
I don't think we'll ever get heroics that are as interesting to tank as, say, Magister's Terrace. Part of its that the other tank classes don't have many tools available and part of it's that the 5-man tanking shortage would not be helped by making it actually hard to tank. There's only so much you can do when you want all of the tanks to be able to do it. Maybe they could have bosses use different abilities based on who's holding aggro.
It wasn't one of the Demons at the back of the entrance, it was one of those orcs (could have been another type of orc but it was an orc for sure and not those unarmed ones) which meleed me for 4.2k or something in my block set.
As it is, there currently is not much of a drawback of actually losing aggro since mobs just don't hit hard enough to threaten anybody. I remember pulls in Blood Furnace where one Ret Pala always edged in front of me on LoS pulls and he got one shot by one of those orcs in passing (melee+instant knockback for double weapon damage total) and they learned their lessons. That said, mobs don't have to hit hard to make it challenging either. I am pretty sure most of you will wince at this guy from Heroic Durnholde using Scattering Shot and making you lose aggro temporarily or all the fleeing mobs there which you could counter with Hamstring, Chains/DG, Infected Wounds/Roots or JoJ and the absolutely brutal patrols.
The closest thing we got in WotLK to this is starting the 3rd boss in Old Kingdom before everyone is in the ring when you kill her followers because that makes like 5-8 Worshippers spawn and follow the last person to enter inside. But again, all this is self-imposed.
I agree, I hope the new 5 man in 3.3 is going to be more of a challenge than the ones we have now. That said, TBC heroics before the first "nerf" were a disaster. Sweeping Striking Naga Myrmidons in Steam Vaults were just dumb beyond imagination and I fear that we will never get truly hard 5 mans anymore after they made every tank capable of AoE tanking since most challenges in TBC were of the self-imposed kind (AoEing in Shattered Halls as Warrior, not running any form of CC in Magister's Terrace and so on). Blizzard just ran themselves out of options by simplifying tanking this much.
Hell, people in a heroic now think you are a good tank if you can manage to line up the mobs before shockwaving. I remember actually having to use stances to anticipate fears, to intercept stun mobs, mocking blow etc. Now it's just stay in defensive stance press your buttons and win.
Kind of a shame because heroics in TBC was great fun for me always, with a fun group you could make it quite challenging on yourself.
Hell, people in a heroic now think you are a good tank if you can manage to line up the mobs before shockwaving. I remember actually having to use stances to anticipate fears, to intercept stun mobs, mocking blow etc. Now it's just stay in defensive stance press your buttons and win.
Kind of a shame because heroics in TBC was great fun for me always, with a fun group you could make it quite challenging on yourself.
All of these were improvements to incredibly clunky mechanics that the class had. It's not like it was hard to set up a macro to stance dance to do this stuff back in the day, there really wasn't a "skill" component to any of it. Maybe someone on their alt didn't have the macros set up, but anyone with half a brain who'd been tanking for a while did (heck, you just had to check the tanking forums to find them). The worst part about it was losing a huge chunk of your rage to do something that was expected while tanking. It'd be pretty stupid if they hadn't changed most of these abilities.
At least our threat generation cycle is interactive now. In classic and even TBC it was possible to macro your way to higher threat, even if you had the reaction speed of a three-toed sloth. If anything, I'd say the class requires far more decision making on the fly than it did back then. You no longer have a rote threat cycle, macros can't prioritize ability chains in the same way, and you have several long cooldown high-threat abilities that you want to weave into your special attacks. I actually enjoy tanking a lot more now than I ever did in TBC or classic, even in the heroics.
Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree there. All the changes they've made to the Prot Warrior has essentially dumbed it down so that it's much easier to use, which is not necessarily a bad thing for the overall health of the game. I disagree completely about 'macro-able threat' and have for the entirety of the game's lifespan, since even if your rotation was, in theory, relatively static you always had rage management and heroic strike to contend with which made your rotations anything but. I don't think a random refresh on Shield Slam makes threat any more 'interactive' than it used to be, especially when given an abundance of rage for 99% of every situation.
Further, we've all but stopped stance dancing intercepts, weaving in intervenes, and managing taunt and stuns for maximum crowd control in the name of one click mass AE threat. I'm not even sure if it's necessary to click through mobs in a crowd any more, but that will be a hard, hard habit for me to break. In the raid scene our cooldowns are used at specific times for specific things, no longer are they to bridge gaps in healing, or ease the burden of it in a potentially critical moment. The potential err in judgement is gone.
That said, I'd be happy with just about any quality of life change they throw our way. At one time I may have lamented a change to Heroic Strike, but with all the haste being thrown around it's getting pretty out of hand how much we can press it. A rage system overhaul to make it matter a bit more than it does now would be nice. Combining some of our tools so that we don't have to use 30 some odd abilities every time we enter combat would be nice. Stance changes. I mean, seriously, you name it I'm down for it.
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler on why the tiered difficulty content model doesn't work
As I have said a million times, good games (maybe good anything) can’t be designed by popular vote.
Personally, I'm a bit surprised by how the set came out. Most noticeably, the set has zero block value on it; which is a big departure from the T9 gear. Also, highly disappointed that there was no bonus armor on our tier at all. We are already so heavily penalized by diminishing returns at this point as is that we really aren't gaining much with this new tier.
Assuming full ilvl258 T9, the stat differences between the two sets are:
Overall its pretty underwhelming for an end game set. Granted this is a small ilvl increase from 258 to 264, however being the final instance, itemization is generally pretty well done. I'm not sure how we manage to lose a blue socket, pick up minimal avoidance and EH (actually lost EH if you include shield block), etc. Having tanked and killed a few of the Icecrown bosses on the PTR, experiencing first hand how hard they are hitting is a little concerning. It seems that our tier which should be the most "tailor made" for warriors, is just generic tanking gear that will net us some set bonuses.
Last edited by Abso : 11/18/09 at 11:10 AM.
Reason: Fixed link issue
11/12/09, 9:17 AM
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