Cataclysm Warrior Changes - Page 11

Onyxhorn · 07/14/10, 10:12 PM

My God how did I miss the changes to Shield Mastery? With all 3 ranks, -30 sec to Shield Block CD, -180 sec to Shield Wall CD, -3 sec to Spell Reflect CD. What this means (as of right now. Changes to the abilities as they currently exist could well be on the way) is the following:

Shield Block - You get the 4pc T9 set bonus along with the current Shield Mastery cooldown reduction. +100% chance to block for 10 sec every 30 sec. Not great but not bad.
Shield Wall - This is the doozie. Full powered Shield Wall (60% damage reduction) for 12 sec on a 2 min CD, no glyph needed.
Spell Reflect - 6 second CD.

This is another huge win for Prot in terms of a very powerful 2 min CD, and with the improvements to how Block removes damage (on boss fights in particular, figuring at least a 5 minute fight) getting in 30 extra seconds of Shield Block uptime should end up being a noticeable boost to overall mitigation.

hellord · 07/15/10, 10:21 AM

Originally Posted by levk

I haven't noticed that change to impale; yeah like that it's only useful to arms.

I still have my doubts about enrage - for one I doubt we'll see proportional level of raid damage anymore compared to Wrath raids due to the healing changes and I still don't know how it stacks/does't stack with deathwish and fury in the blood. If it doesn't sdtack with fury in the blood then what's the point of that talent, if they both stack together but not with deathwish then what's the point of deathwish other than to annoy you with having to spend that point.

Imp WW will probably get the damage to 60% weapon damage rather than 70% up from 50% (is that what they said it's going to be?), regardless though, you need to weigh it against something else. Given that you have the rage to press the button and a free GCD, you're going to press it even if it did 1% weapon damage because 1% is greater than 0%. We need more specifics to discuss rotation in depth at this point. If HS is 3 sec CD off GCD, is cleave getting the same behavior? On the same CD? Or is it still on GCD? If it's on GCD then that's one competitor for WW. In vanilla arms spammed hamstring between cds in rotation because it did some pathetic damage and procced sword spec and deep wounds (which was nothing to write home about)

I wouldn't marry to the bloodsurge chance number if WW is really leaving rotation. I think they like bloodsurge and will keep it happening at around the same pace even if it means changing the proc chance.

I'd spend the 2 points in Incite rather than Impale, and I agree that WW is actually still appealing in a single target rotation.

A consideration I had is that Fury is not anymore strictly tied to berserk stance, at least not in a single target scenario. WW is in fact a good reason to go in zerk. It will be low priority, even lower than Rend and GW, and may be used when HS is on cd. It will deal respectable damage (97.5% WD) and hit twice, and depending on the itemization available it can easily compete with AP based moves.

I don't think Berserk stance will be so much better than Battle to avoid dancing at all. Your timeframe in-between WWs may be higher and you can plan it so to not waste rage during swaps thanks to the new HS.
With WW not being top priority Fury will have more reasons to swap more often from zerk to battle:
- Obvious Less damage taken
- Rend damage is gonna be much higer than armor-mitigated moves
- No more Imp Berserker Stance
- Istant rage dump off-gcd helps running under stance-rage cap (25 built-in)

We'll see how much is the difference once we know bosses' armor values and the new C for level 86.

About arms now.
I like the new talent (Lambs to the Slaughter) that speeds up your next swing after a MS, but I think it could be really problematic. If Slam is gonna have a fixed .5s delay you can't use it before the swing following the MS. On the other side you would want to use MS when you can fully benefit of the buff (ie before 74% of the swing).
This buff also comes at a big cost since MS consumes quite a lot and clipping it can lead to starvation. So you end up seeing weird scenarios where you can have from 10% to 80% of the buff uptime and you have virtually no control over it without tracking the swings.

So while the idea is nice it can produce a dependancy on swing-timers to manage DPR that is impossible to achieve just "looking at white numbers" showing up on your screen. In Cata raids we should get in the range of 2.5-2.8s swing and that means a lot more chances for LttS clipping to occur. A short timed buff (3.5-4s) may work better than a charge-based buff, but still there is counter synergy in using MS and Slam.

François · 07/15/10, 11:12 AM

On battle vs berserker stance for fury, I expect the new attack annouced by GC to be tied to berserker stance only.

I wonder how interesting Field Dressing may be if healer mana is really a limited resource in Cataclysm.

Malaize · 07/15/10, 11:17 AM

Now that the NDA is lifted, I feel I can speak freely. I have been testing Cataclysm since the first week of alpha and have leveled two warriors. I am willing to answer as many questions as I can for everyone.

In regard to the WW discussion, cleave is still on the GCD and doesn't act like HS does now - hopefully they will fix this soon. I have all but removed WW from my rotation because of Slam and Victory Rush procs. The Fury rotation is sort of sloppy right now but I'm hopeful they will fix this soon.

Onyxhorn · 07/15/10, 11:29 AM

Originally Posted by François

I wonder how interesting Field Dressing may be if healer mana is really a limited resource in Cataclysm.

There's a similar talent in tier 1 of the Holy tree for Paladins as well (provides the 6% boost to received healing.) I'm willing to bet this is something that will show up in the first tier of a non-tank tree for Druids and DK's as well intended for tanks to spec into it. No reason Arms Warriors/ Holy Paladins couldn't spec into it as well, and certainly Field Dressing would be a big help to Bloodthirst for Fury on raid-damage heavy fights, but there seem to be more attractive alternatives in that tier for all those specs. A Field Dressing/ Blood Craze combo is looking really, really good on boss fights.

Malaize · 07/15/10, 11:30 AM

Originally Posted by François

On battle vs berserker stance for fury, I expect the new attack annouced by GC to be tied to berserker stance only.

I wonder how interesting Field Dressing may be if healer mana is really a limited resource in Cataclysm.

Field Dressing will be a great leveling talent, as will Enrage and Blood Craze. It will also be a great PvP talent if it's not changed too much. With those talents the way they are right now and Victory Rush procs, it's quite similar to a DK and Death Strike.

Powerslave · 07/15/10, 12:12 PM

Originally Posted by Malaize

Field Dressing will be a great leveling talent, as will Enrage and Blood Craze. It will also be a great PvP talent if it's not changed too much. With those talents the way they are right now and Victory Rush procs, it's quite similar to a DK and Death Strike.

Will victory rush heal us in cataclysm or am I reading this wrong?

Dozér · 07/15/10, 12:35 PM

Originally Posted by Powerslave

Will victory rush heal us in cataclysm or am I reading this wrong?

Only if used after a killing blow. I don't believe it works with proc'd vr's. Victory Rush - Spells - Sigrie

Malaize · 07/15/10, 12:42 PM

Currently it heals me for a little over 10k at level 82. This is with Field Dressing fully talented. Let's hope they don't change it - a lot of us are loving it right now! Couple that with the glyphed BT (which heals for like 1k per tick) and Blood Craze, and we have quite a bit of self-healing going on.

Miloh · 07/15/10, 2:34 PM

It doesn't look like Arms will be able to take Sweeping Strikes with the current talent trees, without sacrificing single target damage.

Assuming a "standard" Imp Execute/Incite build of 31/7/3, there just isn't any room in the current Arms tree. I hope the finalized talents permit picking up this ability, perhaps by reducing Lambs to the Slaughter to a 2-point talent.

Blayze · 07/15/10, 8:47 PM

Originally Posted by Malaize

Now that the NDA is lifted, I feel I can speak freely. I have been testing Cataclysm since the first week of alpha and have leveled two warriors. I am willing to answer as many questions as I can for everyone.

In regard to the WW discussion, cleave is still on the GCD and doesn't act like HS does now - hopefully they will fix this soon. I have all but removed WW from my rotation because of Slam and Victory Rush procs. The Fury rotation is sort of sloppy right now but I'm hopeful they will fix this soon.

What specs did you level them as, how did each seem to differ from their live counterparts and how did the levelling experience for each differ from each other?

Malaize · 07/16/10, 9:42 AM

Originally Posted by Blayze

What specs did you level them as, how did each seem to differ from their live counterparts and how did the levelling experience for each differ from each other?

I leveled the first one completely as Fury and the second one as Arms and Prot. Fury was roughly the same as it was on live, other than dealing with some broken talents and a bit sloppier rotation because of HS and WW changes. I had the "leveling up blues" though, where losing all the ArP and hit going to level 82 seemed to affect me a bit.

As far as Arms and Prot go, they were actually pretty similar to live. It's a bit different now since they changed the talent trees but I have been playing with both this week and I am liking both.

The leveling experience overall was pretty painless, especially after they changed Victory Rush to heal for so much. Even as Prot I was just going from mob to mob and killing them quickly with little downtime.

I play Fury on live, and I can say that with the same gear right now it's taking me longer to kill mobs as Fury than Arms.

Onyxhorn · 07/16/10, 10:17 AM

Malaize, I'm curious about the current implementation of Cleave and the ramifications it has on multi-mob tanking. Is it doing significant enough damage to suggest using it on GCDs instead of just spamming TC once Blood and Thunder has applied Rend to all your targets? I would assume the optimal rotation would be something like:

Charge/Heroic Leap > Rend > TC > Shockwave and then hit Revenge procs or Cleave/Target Change until you need to TC again to reapply the Rends.

Otherwise, if Cleave remains on the GCD but isn't significantly outperforming TC, I don't see what keeps multi-mob tanking from devolving into TC spam, which doesn't seem to fit in with the stated design goals of NOT wanting players to rely on very repetitive 2-ability rotations (Ex: the addition of Pulverize to give Ferals something to do besides Swipe/ Tab-Maul.) Can you shed any light on this?

EDIT: It appears that the 6-second TC CD is being re-implemented, so that pretty much negates any concerns here.

Floopy · 07/16/10, 3:03 PM

I think it is open if we will rend at start.

Rotation still may be , Charge -> TC -> (position mobs ) -> ShockWave (as they said SW will be doing awsome threat) -> Revange proc / Shield Slam / Cleave -> Rend -> TC ( and after 3-6 sec from start )

So Rend will be perfect for multimob. But now rend formula is scaling with Weapon dmg and Weapon Speed so for 1Hander its not perfect.

nivfreak · 07/16/10, 4:28 PM

I've only had a chance to run through dungeons a few times so far, but I was starting to get a feel for it. It's hard to get really solid data on threat currently, since they seem to have broken /script and /run, as well as disabled addons (which we all knew about)

Heroic strike being off the GCD makes it fairly similar to the on-next-swing version, but the much more limited rage income makes it play differently. I'd imagine this makes it a lot easier for them to keep consistent rage income since you're dealing a much more consistent amount of white damage.

AoE tanking feels a little awkward at 80. You have to choose between charge -> rend -> TC -> Shockwave, and Charge -> TC -> Rend -> Shockwave -> filler for 2 GCDs -> Thunderclap. The first option means 3 GCDs until you have pretty solid threat started, and it provides a lot of time for a healer to spread a pull out. The second feels really weak if you are attempting to AoE a pack down. Heroic Leap seems like it has the potential to solve the problem with the first sequence, but we can't test it until 85.

With the gear I was wearing last night, and the not-so scientific method of watching SCT, thunderclap hits seemed to average around 400 per mob (and 6 second CD), and rend would tick for ~800. This is with 2/2 Imp Rend. It certainly makes me feel like Rend will be a big part of our AoE threat in this current model.

Shockwave is hitting for ~1500 per mob now. Cleave felt pretty lack luster since I often could just hit revenge at the point I wanted to fill with it. It's still on GCD.

Incoming damage doesn't seem to generate a lot of rage. I was getting 3 rage per nuke off the casters in BRC. In general, single target rage felt really limited, but mutli-mob I had a lot more to work with. I was fully spec'd into sweep and clear.

I have some combat logs that I'll parse later today. These numbers are all from memory.

Edit: Spelling