I'm pretty sure that's going to be more than offset by a global 5% damage increase from the defensive stance change and lower passive armor on targets before you sunder them (I'm talking vs the 3.0 build).

I'd say they're trying to increase the strength on the items along the logic that strength is the best stat and thus more of it is bound to be better. Except I'm not sure that logic works; they're reducing the other stats by more points than they're increasing strength by. It's basically a microcosm of the entire issue with plate - strength is better per point than the stats on leather, but there are more points available because there's another DPS stat that counterbalances the exponential cost on each individual stat.

I've been working at figuring out how arpen/debuffs stack today and have a theory for a formula:



where:
A = the half armor value at 80, 15232.5
B = base boss armor, 10643(the value I found from testing)
x = sum of arpen buffs(mace spec/battle stance/gear arpen)
y = product of arpen debuffs(sunder/ff) (1-.95*.8)

Currently arpen buffs are not working as specified, and are all .81 of what they should be. I.e. Battle stance = 8.1% reduction, mace spec = 12.15%, and 20% arpen from gear(per the tooltip) = 16.2%. The nice thing is that they do stack together additively. So, if you had Mace spec/Bstance/20% arpen, x would be .81*(.15+.1+.2) = .3645

Sunder/FF on the other hand stack together multiplicatively, so 24% reduction when both are applied.

The debuffs and buffs together however do not interact as I'd expect at all. The buffs are summed together, but then do not stack multiplicatively or additively with the debuffs, but somewhere in between. After fiddling with the numbers for a long time and trying to discover a relationship, the ratio in between seems to be A/(A+B), the armor reduction for a boss at full armor oddly enough.

To hopefully be a little more clear.. if you had 10% arpen from gear(ignore the .81 bug for now) and Sunder/FF up.

expected armor reduction from arpen alone if fully multiplicative = .1 * (10643*(1-.24)) = 808.868
expected armor reduction from arpen alone if fully additive = .1*10643 = 1064.3

Actual armor reduction from arpen = 808.868 + (A/(A+B))(1064.3-808.868) ~= 959.24, which puts the final armor value at 10643*.76-959.24 ~= 7129.44, which becomes (15232.5/(7129.44+15232.5)) = ~= 68.11% damage, which is the answer you'll get if you plug all those numbers into the equation listed above.

If anyone else's results don't check out with this equation, feel free to jump in.

After looking on more then just few warrior items, it seems to me they reevaluated socket benefits. Sockets in PLATE gear (and plate only), now cost more - possibly to compensate for higher benefit of STR gems. Its true not only for warriors but any plate gear.

Right now warrior set is "underbudgeted" by around 5ilvl using old "rules", same for other plate. If thats intended and not a bug to be fixed, then its another in series of "hidden nerfs" blizzard is smuggling here. That or some really weird logic - in order to make plate more appealing they boosted STR value - then few days later "compensated" the STR buff by nerfing the same plate items they want to be attractive.

What is the current increase on live, if it's not the intented 20%?
I mean, will this fix buff or nerf our revenge damage?

If this is true, it seems as if it's undoing quite a lot of their work.

When considering such a large amount of the budget lost on:
a) Excess Stamina
b) Loss of efficiency with 1 less extra stat split
c) Overbudget gem slots

It seems resonable to assume that Leather/Mail will pull ahead again--if not now, some time in the nearish future.

Oh Counterbalance, how I missed thee! It's been really tough to evaluate DPS on the PTR with lag, no glyphs, etc etc on and on. I will however say that generally everyone is having the same issues, and mostly my DPS is very lackluster in comparison to the highest DK, Mage, Rogue, Hunter, Warlock, Enh Shaman, Ret Paladin from attempt to attempt.

Given we are a very GCD locked class for half our cycle, I realize the PTR lag can overly affect our damage. That being said even with epic shirts on we're in a bad spot mathematically given our lack of important buffs.

Will edit tomorrow with our epic shirt Hodir attempts, I thought I had the link but no go.

I also have done a bit of testing on the PTR with revenge on some elite 82 mobs. There seems to be no discernable difference other than about 7% total from my live to ptr revenge.

I do believe this was a PTR fix. Going onward with this; I am very displeased with the few amount of changes brought to our class in 3.1. DKs still have more effective health than us. I was hoping for something more developed with both critical block, block rating/value(though GC gave us some indication this wouldn't make 3.1), along with damage shield.

The fact they made recklessness no longer effect damage shield kills me! I loved popping recklessness> Defensive stance > shield block on aoe pulls and watch the aoe try to pull it off. I swear it was better than Death and Decay on my dk.

For the moment, I am still concerned about critical block. Ulduar gear will not give us this satisfaction, but down the future, we can hopefully get more BV gear, which will give our critical block a much larger portion of damage reduction. Though, there lies the problem, as soon as we hit somewhere around 3k block value, crit block will be blocking 6k for 30% of our blocks. DKblock(UA3.1), Feralblock(savage defense?) do not scale this well, as well as holy shield. Holy shield shouldn't be a concern however as its up 100% of the time.

If we begin to scale way ahead in passive block damage mitigation due to high block value builds, we will get it scaled back or reworked, which is too bad. That is exactly what I hope for the warrior class, to be blocking huge amounts of damage, and with shield block up, we could be in for some seroius mitigation(nevermind the t8 4pc).

There is no reason to believe Critical Block will outscale anything. Critical Block is simply a 30% increase on average Block. Block is controlled by item budget. Block doesn't scale any better than AP for Druids nor will Block scale faster than incoming damage from enemies--as they are all balanced around a roughly linear increase in gear power.

Critical Block will always be roughly as powerful as it's always been.

At least looking at worldofraids non set items , it seems its not as bad - the new items there seem itemized properly. Still why is our t8 set nerfed (and ret too), is a mystery. Leads to a belief that maybe its a mistake not a planned design afterall.

Simply put, Wall of Terror is for survivability and Barricade of Eternity is for threat. Use whichever you prefer for the situation.