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Ciderhelm posted this on Sep 06, 2008 - 7:22 PM
The gear is a mix of current Burning Crusade tanking gear on a level 71 Warrior. While not as fast as a Paladin currently can clear this (which it may be once Damage Shield is fixed), it represents an enormous playstyle shift for Protection Warriors.
Xav posted this on Sep 05, 2008 - 4:38 PM
Lots and lots of warrior changes, I'm only going to cover the protection ones.
This post wont have the best formatting or look pretty because these changes *just* went public and I want to consolidate them here for now.
New Onslaught and Sunwell tank pieces, warrior only, but yes, paladins had changes to their gear also.
First off: Some massively nice new talents.
Shield Mastery and Improved Shield Block combined into Shield Mastery, Tier 3, 2 talent points, same overall effect. (30% block value, -20 sec cd)
Puncture is on Tier 4, 3 talent points again, so sunder/devastate again cost -3 rage.
Improved Shield Wall changed to Improved Disciplines, 2/2, -60 sec cd on wall, reck, and retal. No more damage reduction improvement on wall, shield wall is Reduces all damage taken by 60% for 12 sec baseline now.
Gag Order, 2/2, new tier 5 talent, it's Improved Shield Bash + new stuff. Shield Bash + Heroic Throw (our new pull ability) now silence the target for 3 seconds, and we get the +10% shield slam bonus that the old shield bash talent used to grant.
Concussion Blow changed to 75% AP - I do believe it was 50% before this.
Vigilance's "threat-siphon" feature they mentioned isn't implemented yet, or at least on the talent screen it isn't.
Vitality, 3/3, you gain 6% stamina, 6% strength, and 6 expertise. So, it's overall a buff, and we save talent points.
Warbringer talent tooltip confirmed, they changed their mind (again), it reads: "Your charge ability is now usable in combat and in any stance."
Sword and Board: 3/3 Increases the critical strike chance of your Devastate ability by 15% and when your Devastate ability deals damage, it has a 30% chance of refreshing the cooldown of your Shield Slam ability and reducing its cost by 100% for 5 sec.
Pretty much overhauled, very nice buff. The Devastate crit bonus is ridiculously huge - this helps both prot tanking and prot DPS significantly. Not to mention the increased proc chance will cause us to very reliably fit in repeated shield slams, and slopping up our rotation because of it wont matter because of how much more threat Dev and Shield Slam are causing now.
Damage Shield 2/2, new talent next to S&B: Whenever you take damage from or block a melee attack you cause damage equal to 20% of your Block Value.
If I'm reading that right, it's a deep-prot warrior thorns. Permanently, as long as we have block value. (Might only work while a shield is on, though). So as long as something hits us and we take damage (or if we block it), we're going to be reflecting back hundreds of damage. However, the damage shield apparently wont be proccing off hits that miss you, or you dodge, or you parry, which is how normal damage shields work anyway.
Shockwave unchanged, same long cooldown, stun, and annoying cone effect - except now it's 75% AP as well.
Glyph of Heroic Strike - You gain 10 rage when you critically strike with your Heroic Strike ability.
Glyph of Devastate - Your Devastate ability now applies two stacks of Sunder Armor.
Glyph of Sunder Armor - Your Sunder Armor ability affects a second nearby target.
Glyph of Resonating Power - Increases the maximum targets affected by your Thunder Clap ability by 4.
Glyph of Thunder Clap - Increases the radius of your Thunder Clap ability by 2 yards.
Glyph of Shield Slam/Blocking - Increases your block value by 10% for 10 sec after using your Shield Slam ability.
Glyph of Revenge - After using Revenge, your next Heroic Strike costs no rage.
Overall: Happy. They're giving us AoE tanking via Damage Shield and Thunder Clap buffs, and Shockwave will be a periodic nice AoE threat tool, but only if they fix the way you use it. Frontal cone will never work due to mob follow mechanics. It has to be a PBAE or it will only be a very situational tool and unreliable.
We're going to have a lot more rage, and a sickening amount of threat output. I absolutely cannot wait for these changes to go live.
Ciderhelm posted this on Sep 05, 2008 - 3:41 AM
I'm going to take this opportunity to summarize the approach Blizzard is taking with Warriors. This should be a fairly in-depth overview of what we're going to be looking at in Wrath of the Lich King.
Yes, All Tanks Equal
Save your breath. This philosophy isn't going to change. This philosophy does not suggest that Warriors will be inferior. Once you accept that this is their intention, read on and start enjoying your new potential.
You'll Want To Level With A Shield
This is first because it's the most important piece of information you'll need stepping into Northrend -- if you've spent Burning Crusade preparing tanking gear but have not focused as much on a DPS set, you're in for a treat. For the first time in WoW, dedicated Protection Warriors will have a dedicated Sword and Shield build designed for every aspect of the game.
Love respecing Arms and think that Arms or Fury should be what you spec if you want to do something else? Then keep it up. None of the changes will prevent you from doing so.
It's About Damage
Tanking, leveling, grinding, and PVP will all be focused on damage output that has not been seen before. Threat is, by and large, being replaced by damage. Abilities like Concussion Blow are now going to see 4-digit crits. Shield Slam has seen a huge number of new and revised talents that increase it's potency and effectiveness. Strength, once considered one of the weakest means of scaling Threat output for Warriors, is now front and center in everything. The Defensive Stance damage penalty is now effectively removed.
Enraged Regeneration Makes All The Difference
Don't overlook Enraged Regeneration. This brings Warrior into the fold with other tanks, all of whom have self-healing that is immensely useful for speeding up leveling, grinding, and dailies.
To explain Enraged Regeneration in a complete way, we have to summarize several aspects of damage intake. First, Enraged Regeneration is a percentage of Health, and Protection Warriors have high Health in tanking gear and this scales with gear. Second, Protection Warriors have high damage reduction and this scales with gear. Third, any given mob has a maximum amount of damage it is capable of dealing to you.
Enraged Regeneration is virtually guaranteed to increase the type and the number of mobs we can solo grind at any given time. Combine this with trinkets or Health Potions, or both, high Thunderclap and Shockwave damage, and reactive damage: Protection Warriors will be able to effectively AOE grind.
The bottom line: Never underestimate the value of scaling healing when you're wearing gear with scaling damage reduction.
The Trees Will Be Slimmer
We're already aware the trees are getting slimmed down. I'm confident the next serious Beta push will prove this out. Stay tuned!
We'll Worry About Balancing When It's Balanced
Blizzard has stated numerous times that they will balance disparities to bring them in line. This will be done and is currently being done by dedicated test teams and by data from the Beta.
You can bet that balancing issues will be on TankSpot's news page when there are serious issues. We don't want the balance issues going into Wrath that we saw going into Burning Crusade. But we also really don't have a way of making judgment calls without knowing glyphs, itemization, or even many of the instances. After everything else we've seen, I'll place my trust in Blizzard, but we'll stay on alert.
Bulk-To-Baseline
Many of our mitigation and Threat talents that once filled our trees are baseline. Don't worry about Defiance. Don't worry about the Defense Skill. They're baseline, either in our class or in our gear, because they took too many points and allowed too little choice. Them going baseline means Arms and Fury Warriors will be capable of tanking better than they currently have been able -- this is great!
Almost every talent that will be in the final tree will have a real purpose and a real benefit. These aren't obscure benefits the way they have been in the past, but tangible benefits like decreasing the new Shield Block cooldown, which also happens to greatly increase Shield Slam damage for the duration.
PVP Functionality Does Not Diminish PVE
Hate PVP and hate the idea of Protection having anything to do with PVP? Don't worry! The PVP talents are small and are in no way required to get deeper in the tree. In other words, they are 100% optional, and skipping them will not have a negative impact on the tanking functionality of the class. They are as deep as they are in the tree because they are intended to be off-limits to Arms or Fury builds.
With the inevitably-slimmer trees, Protection Warriors will have a real choice to pick up some of these talents after min/maxing their builds.
Vigilance Does Not Replace Shield Slam
That 31-point talent just doesn't measure up to the impact Shield Slam had on Protection? That's fine. Remember, Shield Slam is baseline, so Vigilance did not replace it.
AOE Tanking -- It's Not Just Shockwave
We've been worrying about Shockwave and it's conal effect but much of the community has looked past Thunderclap. Thunderclap is receiving major buffs and, while it doesn't have an unlimited number of targets, the new instances are not designed around massive AOE tanking. Keep an eye out on the potential for this ability in multi-mob packs.
Blizzard Listened To Us
Blizzard has listened to us and our community in a way they haven't shown before. This is, perhaps, the most heartening thing of all.
Ciderhelm posted this on Sep 04, 2008 - 3:51 AM
Ghostcrawler has handed us another great bit of information... read up! (And, if you missed yesterday's news, scroll down for more good news!)
Source: Ghostcrawler, WotLK-Beta Wall o' text coming...
As I said before, whether Protection shoud be viable for PvP is controversial. People on the extreme of both sides of the debate should be able to see pretty clearly that there are plenty of others who don't see their point of view. It's not an argument that is going to be won by debate, consensus or vote.
As I've also said, there are some things we want to do with Prot to improve it. We could make a very fat, very boring tree with 30 talents that promise excellent passive mitigation. I don't think that's going to make warriors any more fun to play. Here's what we'd like to do instead:
Add some more fun abilities to the tree. Warbringer is one such ability. It may not be something everyone will use, and honestly, we're cool with that. Some talents should be optional. We also know some tanks, even hardcore endgame ones are excited about the ability. As a tank it could be a good source of rage (Yes, we know you lose all your rage when stance dancing -- the design of Warbringer is not that you stupidly lose all your rage when you change to Battle Stance and then say oops.) It could also help your mobility on fights where you need to zip around a lot to put out fires -- that's part of tanking too. It's not all sitting there and getting hit by Brutallus.
To make room for some of those abilities, you have to have some options. The classic tanking build from BC doesn't leave you a lot of free talents. We need to combine a few mitigation talents together to buy you some space. Also, must haves like Imp Heroic Strike and Imp Thunder Clap may not be must haves anymore, because...
We're buffing Prot's dps. A lot. This is going to help with threat, and will make doing dps with a prot build (whether as OT, MT, leveling or doing daily quests) more fun. A lot of abilities that do +threat now are going to be doing +damage instead. You are going to see crits from Thunder Clap and Conc Blow that might blow your mind. You're going to hit Thunder Clap and have mobs stick to you long enough for you to use some other abilities. Oh and If you haven't tried Retaliation while tanking yet, it rules. For those who never got to enjoy the joys of Shield Slam with crazy +block, you'll soon get to.
Warriors lost a very comfortable tanking niche with the removal of crushing blows. We need to make sure there are still good reasons to take a Prot warrior. Vigilance and Safeguard are good starts there, but we're also looking at buffing signature abilities like Spell Reflect. A lot of the recent changes were intended as buffs, not nerfs. We'll get you your Expertise back. We'll get you your cheap Devastates back.
As we start to get the talent trees in better shape, we're going to be able to get a better handle on the state of balance. Simultaneously, people in the beta will start venturing into heroics and Naxx. This will start to give us some data for the first time on whether L80 Prot warrior threat or mitigation is too low compared to other classes. If it is, we'll fix it.
I mention that because we designed Vigilance not as a band-aid to fix Prot warrior threat (because we don't know if it's too high or low yet) but because we thought it would be fun. Use it on that reckless warlock who likes to pull aggro and you turn a weakness into a strength. Use it on your fragile healer and you can, yanno, actually *protect* them. Instead of having to say "Please wait for 3 Sunders before you attack" maybe people will say "That tank has Vigilance -- no way you'll pull off him."
We're not done with the trees yet. We still welcome your feedback on these concepts and abilities, but all this rerolling talk is quite premature... and almost always is.
Please explain to me why I have to spec into arms (43/5/23) to attain more threat generation than a full prot spec on beta:
Because we haven't done the numbers yet. But that's still a useful data point to know. It might even be okay if non-tanking specs can generate a lot of threat (heck, hunters do it), so long as they also don't have high mitigation.
Call me jaded but we were promised "awesome changes" in the past. Plus I saw mages promised the same sort of thing and well....no one wanted them anymore by the end of TBC.
That's an understandable position, but it also leaves us at sort of a dead end. You're jaded so you don't want to get excited or perhaps even post. I stop coming around because the environment is hostile and the posts aren't informative and we all sit around sad and lonely all the time not talking to each other. The only alternative is to keep plugging along and try to do better. I've got thick skin. I'll be around.
This is what we want.
It's what *you* want. I think you can see that not everyone agrees with you, at which point the only option is for someone to argue they are more qualified to know what the class wants than someone else... and that never ends well. The best we can offer is flexibility so that you can pick up all the passive mitigation talents and someone else can try out a different build. The problem with Prot before, I'd argue, is that there weren't enough choices to go around so that by the time you got the bare minimum, the options left were pretty paltry.
It's like we post and you don't listen..
Au contraire. We listen and listen and listen. We also listen to other forums, and hardcore tanks who have been raiding forever, and people we talk to in game and in our guilds. We also do a lot of testing ourselves and we do have some experience designing games. But the point I actually want to make is that WoW is a very big and diverse community with a lot of hardcore players. It is very rare to see consensus, and that also is assuming that majorities are never wrong.
Simply put, we bring nothing to a raid. Nothing, no buffs, no debuffs that can't be applied by someone else.
That is pretty much the point. No class brings anything so unique that you want them to come at the expense of others. You should earn your raid spot because you know how to tank and have some decent gear and a guild who can back you up. Maybe you're a great leader or maybe you don't argue. Maybe you've got a great sense of humor or are a good guild recruiter. All of those are better reasons to get into a group IMHO than because your buff is a unique snowflake. Quite honestly I'd rather raid with my friends than some jerk who has the perfect buff. And I really don't want to send one of my friends off to reroll a level 1 dude because we both happened to choose rogues at first level six months ago and now our group is suffering for want of a buff.
If you can tank, you'll get into raids.
What they'll do is say "Ok, aside from tanking, what do they bring to the table?"
In my experience, what they do is say "This dude knows his class backwards and forwards," or "This dude has a new epic shield," or "This dude is a consistent player who won't leave us in a lurch on Thursday." But for the sake of argument, let's continue.
The druid steps forward and says "I have Battle Res, possibly the best ability in game for guilds when it comes to learning new content. I can also innervate, and I'm really good at switching to dps when I don't have to tank. If we ever get to an extreme fight that requires a lot of healers, I can respec if we need it."
The Prot warrior should also be able to switch to dps, and they come with Battle Shout and Commanding Shout, two very solid buffs. No, they can't heal.
The Paladin steps forward and says "I can cover one of your 3-4 primary Paladin Blessings. I'm still the best AoE tank for large pulls, like those spiders you see scampering around down there. I have many auras which are useful to stack in the raid, I have wipe prevention in the form of DI, and I have plenty of other tricks like BoP or BoF, or Lay Hands. Oh, and I can respec healing too if the raid really needs it for a fight."
If the paladin is so much better at AE that you take him instead of a warrior, then we have a problem. Yes, pallys are able to heal. That part is totally valid.
The Death Knight steps forward and says "I know I'm new, but I'm the WotLK favored child and you know it. I'm the best Magic boss tank, and you know there'll be fights tailored to me. And I bring just as many tricks as the Paladin, only mine are cooler cause they involve ghouls and exploding corpses."
Again, the "best Magic boss" shouldn't be to the extent that you call the raid when she can't come. There will be no fights tailored to a particular class. Sorry. Believe me, we don't have to come up with a gimmick to encourage death knight raiders. Northrend is infested with them already. Ghouls are cool though.
The Prot Warrior steps forward and says "I can Disarm...some mobs, not quite sure yet if it'll hit bosses and how many. And there's an ability that let's me put a buff like Pain suppression on people, which..maybe will come in handy, depending on the bosses we find? And I have a single-target 10% threat reducer."
You Sunder, you Demo Shout, Battle Shout, Challenging Shout. You might Piercing Howl depending on the encounter. You Execute. You Intervene. See where I'm going...? If you are really winning or losing fights based on whether your tank can Innervate, then we've probably made the content too challenging. The difference in skill (or gear) between a potential warrior and druid tank should have a much bigger effect on the outcome.
The situations we've had before have been more like "The paladin can tank all of Heroic Shattered Halls with no CC" or "The druid can do nearly double your dps while tanking" or "The warrior can achieve passive crushing immunity and has the only ability that can handle Shear." Those are egregious barriers to having 4 viable tanking classes, which is why we're trying to fix them.
Ciderhelm posted this on Sep 03, 2008 - 2:47 AM
Needless to say, I'm ecstatic about the changes Protection is seeing. There are still issues, so keep raising awareness of them, but let's not forget the amazing things we're seeing. Here's the latest:
Source: Gamnin, WotLK Beta Enraged Assault redesigned, now Enraged Regeneration: You regenerate 30% of your total health over 10 sec. This ability consumes all Enrage effects and prevents any from affecting you for the full duration. Must be enraged to use. Cost 15 rage, 3 min cooldown.
This is absolutely awesome. This fits perfectly with Improved Defensive Stance, which will keep an Enrage effect active through almost everything we do. This will be great for virtually everything we do, from grinding to tanking to PVP, and could be the ability that finally makes grinding casters and elementals bearable.
Now couple this with the extraordinarily high Shield Slams we're seeing, the addition of Weapon Throw, and several other buffs, and what does this remind you of? Maybe they're watching!
Source: Gamnin, WotLK Beta Vigilance will soon transfer the 10% threat lost to the warrior. It will also have 3 charges to curb using it on targets that are being hit constantly. We’re still polishing this element to get it to feel right.
Vigilance has gone from bad to awesome. Coincidentally, I just read a post from Nephele on the WoW-US forums yesterday and thought, "that would be pretty cool." Quite happy to see this change!
Protection PVP
I know many people in the community aren't looking to PVP as Protection. This is fine. However, I'm not part of this group, and I have to say I'm genuinely excited about the changes to class design to allow effective group PVP in as many specs as possible.
As it stands, Protection will bring the following: Shield Slam burst damage (and crits!), Dispels, single target and conal AOE stuns, and, thanks to Safeguard/Warbringer, very high mobility.
It needs to be emphasized that this is a direction they are taking classes across the game -- it isn't unique to tanks. PVP buffs aren't coming in at the expense of PVE performance.
Ciderhelm posted this on Sep 03, 2008 - 1:27 AM
Gamnin posted some information on upcoming changes in WotLK Beta tonight. Here's the concerning one:
Source: Gamnin, WotLK Beta Sword and Board no longer triggers when Shield Slam is used, but the chance to trigger has increased to 3/6/9/12/15%. Note these are not final numbers.
Note that in the current Beta build, the 15% proc rate is already in place. Presumably the next build will no longer proc on Shield Slam.
This talent has quite a bit of potential. I've been arguing for it on these forums in several threads because I've found it to be enjoyable while leveling and a welcome break from 2344234423442344. But at this point, it is now arguably the worst single 5-point talent we will have in a standard build, and tanks are still going to feel obligated to pick it up just for the sake of min/maxing. The problem is that, unlike Shield Slam, Devastate simply isn't going to be used every rotation due to other abilities like Thunderclap, Revenge, Shockwave, etc.
This is it's own news post because it's in a notably different tone than the other news we got from Gamnin -- stay tuned for the good stuff.
Ciderhelm posted this on Aug 31, 2008 - 7:37 PM
So... I hurt my back last night and wound up lying down without being able to sleep. Naturally, what I do when I'm in bed is think about Shield Slam, and I realized I hadn't actually done the most important thing in this new expansion: figure out just how much it had been buffed!
Shield Block
First, let's look at our new Shield Block. This is a 200% Shield Block Value buff that lasts 10 seconds and can be used every 40 seconds. Blizzard has described this as a "mini Shield Wall," and while we may pass it off given how little our Shield Block has mitigated in the past, take a look:
Shield Slam
This, of course, is the meat of it. Shield Slam has received an enormous number of buffs in Wrath: Improved Shield Bash (10% Damage), Improved Defensive Stance (10% Damage, not currently working in Beta), Critical Block (15% Critical Strike), Sword and Board (15% on Shield Slam or Devastate to receive a free Shield Slam with the cooldown refreshed). The Strength-to-Shield Block Value conversion is 10 times better than it was in the past (in the following screenshot I chose to use [Bulwark of the Ancient Kings] for the Strength buff).
Math is boring. Screenshots aren't.
The bullet-point before people go too crazy:
This is level 70 without using a single piece of Northrend gear. It also does not have the now-5% SBV Meta gem or the T6 bonus.
This is self-buffed and does not use PVP buffs or berserking debuffs. I did butter up... err, Sunder up... the boar before I did my dirty work.
This is staged. It's on a relatively low Armor mob and I'm using Deathwish, an ability that will never be in a serious Prot build (even a Prot PVP build, thanks to Shockwave!).
Yes, I am using a male blood elf haircut, and yes, it is awful.
Ciderhelm posted this on Aug 30, 2008 - 3:01 AM
We don't know whether the latest build is the more-finalized Protection build Blizzard has been talking about or whether it's still in progress. It's better to be safe and make our concerns known rather than wait without giving feedback.
My biggest concern? If the current build goes live, you will never see the following talents in common Protection builds:
Safeguard, Charge (Protection), Concussion Blow/Vigilance, and Justified Killing.
Of those five talents, four of them are new in Wrath of the Lich King. Justified Killing is particularly painful to lose. Those talents are dedicated tanking talents, nevermind the bonuses tanks might receive from other talents they also can't reach such as Anger Management, Impale, and Improved Charge.
Why not? Because there are more than five points too many spent in non-utility talents that will affect us at every point of progression, from solo'ing to 5-mans to 25-man raiding. Even if this were gutted a bit in Protection, too many points would be at the bottom end of the tree, which would still prevent Justified Killing.
The plus side is that the rest of our talents are just that good. Hopefully some will become even better. To get a quick overview of which talents I'm referring to:
While we can theorycraft and talk about the neat situations where these utility talents we won't have room for might be useful, the situation is the same. All of the above talents help us everywhere in every situation, and that's good, but the utility talents we're getting are going to get lost the moment players min/max their builds.
Ciderhelm posted this on Aug 29, 2008 - 9:17 PM
The previous post was just me getting the notes out (scroll down to see what's new). Here's what I'm seeing in-game. This is a Beta, and issues do constantly come up, but several of these issues are worrying since they could also be undocumented changes.
Vigilance
This is strictly my opinion: This ability managed to get nerfed this patch, and it was already bad.
To put it in perspective, 2 points in Cruelty would do significantly more for allowing increased raid DPS than 1 point in Vigilance and the 1 pre-requisite point in Concussion Blow.
It may be useful for 5-mans, but only so long as it doesn't pick up the community stigma associated with Taunt. I'd like to be proven wrong, or find that Taunt is important in more of the game, but so far this looks like it's taking the route of Endless Rage in Burning Crusade.
Sword and Board No Longer Reducing Cooldown
While Sword and Board and Devastate both proc the Rage reduction on Shield Slam, they are not affecting the cooldown. The tooltip on the buff has been reworded from the last build as well (it used to say it refreshed the cooldown and reduced the cost; now it says it reduces the cost).
However, the tooltip may have been updated since refreshing the cooldown doesn't really need to be included in the buff tooltip (after all, it's abundantly clear that you're able to use the ability again once it's proced).
Chalking this up to a bug, but keeping it at the top of the news in case it's not.
Improved Defensive Stance Enrage
So far as I can tell, this talent is not working. There is no change in my Melee stats at any point during combat, nor do I see a buff. However, I haven't parsed this, so it's possible it is working but not showing up anywhere as a buff.
Charge
Charge can be used in combat with the 41-point talent. However, it's still restricted to Battle Stance, making it relatively annoying since the Rage bonus is negated by stance-dancing, and if I'm dancing and willing to lose rage, Intercept was already doing well.
However, it's a 1-point talent, and it's good for grinding. It's also good with Safeguard as an additional means of clearing impairing effects. While I hope it's buffed or altered, I'd still pick this up in it's current form.
Weapon Throw
Dealing substantially less damage than the tooltip suggests. According to other Beta testers, it's actually going off a 10% AP conversion rather than 100%.
