f13.net

We know the dynamic here - you can visit any class forum and pretty much find it full of whining about why the class  in questions needs more perks and is an underdog.

So when I visited the warrior WoW forums - for a measure of balance - I read the topics started by druids on warrior tanking issues.  My summary:

1.  Druids / Paladins are now the kings of multitarget tanking (I agree - and do not have a problem with this per se)
2.  Warrior threat on a single target is weak - and is a pain in the ass in 5 mans when rapid clearing is needed (I agree)
3.  Warriors have comparable survivability to a druid in bear form (I dunno - but this should not be true - we choose warriors to be tanks - and I do believe Paladins have superior survivability which onluy makes matters worse).

The warrior is a great class - and I have never had any problem with it.  Until now - I am really noticing some issues.

From Dev statements (well, forum blue posts -- of dubious validity. I've been reading the Hunters trying to explain why "Only having three stable slots means you can only have two real pets" to one for a week now) -- it appears Blizzard Devs are worried about gear scaling at endgame. They seem to have overdone it, though.

I hadn't played my Paladin in half a year, but I respecced into a full protection build, except for 10 points to get the skill that prevents your heals from being interupted. Even with green gear, some of it 50, lightforge gloves and belt, som +mana regen items, and wyrmslayer spaulders (level 45?) I can tank 4 level 62 boars or buzzards at level 60 for what ammounts to infinity. The combination of Retribution aura, Blessing of Sanctuary, Seal of Light, reckoning, righteous fury, and a group of mobs hitting you is insane. And the more you get hit, the more reckoning procs, which makes your seal of light proc more - wich means you get healed more. I bet I could tank a dozen mobs at once that were a level or two below me.

The warrior logic seems to have departed from the original concept in WoW.

To be brief:

EQ:  Pallies superior at aggro, inferior at tanking vs. warrior
WOW at launch:  Pallies inferoir at getting aggro, superior in tanking to warrior
WoW with BC:  Pallies superior at aggro, superior in tanking to warrior

The fact that paladins in WoW had poor ability to get / maintain aggro kept their superior survivability to a warrior a mute issue for the most part.  Now of course, with superior snap aggro control - there is nothing to hold a paladin back - or put another way - there is little reason currently to use a warrior.

I'd disagree... paladins are still painfully boring and un-interactive. I have a 57 warrior and a 60 paladin. The warrior is still much more fun to play. The paladin, despite being for all purposes unkillable, is still just autoattacking and refreshing a seal. Like this morning... I ran into a group of buzzards on hellfire peninsula, judged SoL, on one, refreshed the seal on myself, backed up so they were still in my front arc, went and got my baby, went and got a bottle for him, cut off a piece of cheese for myself, cut off some pepperoni to go with the cheese, went back upstairs to my study, and made it back in time to judge SoL on a different buzzard as the first one was killing itself against me. Other than moving my toon about to find fresh MOBs, I don't even have to be involved in combat. It's painful. But the perfect class and spec while feeding a baby and watching TV.

Once people get back into full epics and overpowered weapons rather than greens and blues warriors will be on top again.

I haven't really noticed anything playing my warrior (only level 64 though) outside of the fact that druids are pretty competent tanks now. As far as single-target aggro I have to call horse shit. I'm full protect-spec and outside of taunts or aggro wipes nothing will get a boss off me. Not druids in bear form, not tankadins. I sunder up, and hit devastate, shield block, and revenge over and over to infinity. I need to install damage meters again to see how much damage my devastate contributes for a good boss fight, because I bet it's pretty damn good compared to before the skill was available. It's a wonderful rage dump along with shield slam.

Speaking as a person who has MT'd in MC/BWL farm instances, and then now has to fight in 5 mans again, warriors are still not in trouble with tanking. One main issue is that many if not the majority of warriors sold their soul away in the expansion to the arms/fury build instead of protection. This makes for shitty tanks, I don't care what you say. I'll go into it further if needed, but the fact is that protection tanks with the current specs are have a major advantage in BC at the higher levels. Any idiot can tank Hellfire at whatever level, but you can't stick a druid into the Shattered Halls as your MT and expect great success.

However, the new advancements have made feral druids incredible offtanks. They are now choice #1 IMO for the best OT against physical opponents.

Prot Tank here :  What those two said ---------------^

I would have to say that druids are "ok" tanks for tanking in a general sense.  However, chances are that anyone suggesting a druid main tank a Heroic Mode anything is going to get their face slapped.

Druids only have 2 forms of damage mitigation: Dodge, and High armor values.

Warriors have 4: Dodge, Block, Parry, and High Armor Values (throw in Periodic Spell Reflects for one more).  Count also the fact that Any attack that is blocked can NOT be crusing OR critical, and you will notice that a good warrior takes SIGNIFIGANTLY less damage then a druid over the course of a fight, contributing to less chance of healers running out of mana.  All in all, the only real reason Druids "seem" to be better at multi target aggro is cause they can spam Swipe over and over again to keep 3 targets on them, where as a warrior has to sunder, tab, sunder, tab, revenge, tab sunder, etc.

Due to the 3% less crit talent and the newer itemization Druids and Warriors will easily get enough defense as to not be crit.

In the end Warriors block a lot and don't take crushing blows, they have last stand, shield wall and parry.  Warriors live better.

Druids definetly are my pick for any of the instances I've been too (through Sethekk).

I have a 63ish warrior alt (fury specced.. the only way to not want to stab your own eyes out with a spoon while solo pve'ing) and have MT'd and watched my guildie prot pally / two feral droods MT a lot of instances.

I'd say that non-prot warriors lose out a bit since their increased damage isn't contributing much to tanking efficiency (there is NO threat generating ability that scales with damage, even devastate and heroic strike only have a threat bonus to their base damage.. not sure on devastate, actually). On the other hand, the main druid and paladin threat generators ARE damage-based. The feral druid tanks I run with always get #2 on the DPS charts, outdamaging all dpsers except for my warlock main or one of our fire mages; they outdamage elemental and frost mages easily (zomfg nerf!!11). Pallies and druids both have incredible AOE tanking tools in consecrate and swipe; my poor warrior is usually struggling to have enough rage to keep 2 mobs under control, much less 4 or more.

But when it comes to tanking bosses (and quite possibly heroic mode trash), warriors win. There's a LOT of rage input, and those can be effectively turned into mitigation (shield block, spell reflect), damage (heroic strike spam) and threat (heroic strike spam, revenge, sunder, shield bash; shield slam and devastate spam if specced). Some of the warrior debuffs are also universally very nice, while pallies don't debuff the target at all, and druids only have demoralizing roar and non-stacking faerie fire (mangle isn't that useful for the debuff except for the druid himself to hold aggro with lacerate). All warriors get Sunder Armor, Thunderclap (it IS pretty darn good now, esp. if improved) and demo shout, fury warriors get an aoe daze (Piercing Howl), prot warriors get a stun (Concussion Blow... yeah, druids and pallies get a single target stun too), arms warriors get a flat damage increaser debuff (Blood Frenzy?), Improved Thunderclap and Mortal Strike (which is still hot against the few mobs and bosses that like to heal).
However, if it's a polymorphing boss (haven't seen any, yet), druids are the best choice; and pallies are the best against undead and demons still.

Overall I'll wait until my warrior hits 70 (which'll be a long while, I only play my warrior with rest xp) before I cast judgement. Also, in pvp, more hp is universally a good thing for warriors, with or without support. I HAVE noticed however, that druids have a lot easier time being damage dealer and tank in basically the same gear and spec, while pallies and warriors have to switch gearsets and builds to maximize their potential in either.


-- Z.

I'm afraid to play my warrior honestly.  So much doom and gloom, and the brightness that is the warlock is...comforting.

Yes I am embrassed to say my observations are counfouned by the fact that to level I went to arms from protection - and I have not returned to protection yet (at level 67 currently).

I certainly agree Angry Bob the warrior is far more engaging to play than a paladin.  The paladin is the perfect BOT - which Korea is generously leveling for my friends and I - who will be our "5 th man" on non-heroic runs.

Looking forward to seeing the warrior scale with gear - but this is based on faith not observation.  I don't understand what the hell my problem - or the problem is with loot right now.  I have not seen a SINGLE warrior drop that has made me drool as a protection tank.  Right now, my greens that are either pure Defense or pure Stamina are far more preferrable than the blue shit I am seeing in BC.

Blue warrior itemization before Steamvault is typically based on the fact that WoW believes you will be doing DPS. It's a lot of hit/crit/damage rather than defense on the majority of drops. This flips of course with the Warrior blue Dungeon 3 set, which is the Armor of the Bold. However, I've found that despite the great defense increases, at a certain point you get diminishing returns on the values.

I have ~450 on my warrior right now, which is a good number for me, but i've found that you can jimmy around with resilience and shield block values to get a better overall effect on percentages, rather than just going hardcore defense like we would have in the past. It's something to keep in mind before you put that huge resilience necklace on the shelf in favor of 10 more defense.

Ah ha, so Resillience DOES work in PvE.  I had such an argument with a few folks over that becuase they said, "dude it's a PvP only stat, that's why it's on all the PvP gear."    :roll:  Argh.

It's not that it's horribly useful yet, which is why the majority of people are frothing about it's pvp potential. However, it does save your ass on big boss crits occasionally which over a long haul fight puts less strain on the healer crew, and saves mana for the group. Also, the main reason to use it is the diminishing return of defense benefits I've seen at numbers over 400, where a 17 defense item is only giving me 7 for some reason. So, it just makes sense for me to get the full 20 resilience over that extra 7.

Those people will be changing tunes anyway when they face a boss who can crit for 15k, so resilience gear will be the only thing keeping you alive. I suspect a little will be good for most fights here and there with defense still being king, but I think people will build "resilience gear" for boss fights that are heavily phyical damage.

Resilience also works on spell crits, while defense doesn't... though I'm not sure just how many spell-crittin' bosses are out there.
... and anyway, most instance drop stuff with resilience on it either has a truckload of stamina or an activated "shield" ability. If that's not tank gear, I don't know what is. As a 70 warlock, I think non-tanks should just get +resilience gear from pvp, and leave the +resilience dungeon loot to the tanks. If something's critting you in pve repeatedly as a DPSer / healer, things are going horribly, horribly wrong and some minor crit reduction won't save ya. :P


-- Z.

Okay do I understand this correctly? :

Defense:  damage avoidance for MELEE (no effect on crushing) and in particular avoiding criticals.  (with Def about 480 I have not been criticaled once).  No effect on SPELLS.

Resilience:  IF you do get criticaled - this scales it down for SPELLS and MELEE Damage.

That's how I understand it.. though Resilience also reduces the chance to get crit in the first place (ALL crits, magical and physical).


-- Z.

Prot Warriors also get Piercing Howl.  It's a lifesaver.

40 Resiliance is like -1% crit chance and -2% crit damage on you, so its pretty damn good.  Defense lowers the chance you get crit in melee and raises parry/block/dodge.

Bah.  That's the fury tree.

Problem is, I like protection so much - most times I don't leave myself enough points to get piercing howl. 

Amazing for pvp though.

20/41.

The Howl and the extra Rage generation is the best mix of tanking and allowing yourself to level while waiting for the next group.

Monsters can't crit with spells.  Honestly it won't take that long before people are hitting defense values such that bosses can't crit anyways, so resilence on PvE gear will be essentially wasted.

My main is a level 69 prot speced warrior. I also have a level 61 druid so I have seen both sides of the field. With the new mitigation changes for druids and increased dodging bear form druids can deffinatly hold their own. I still wind up taking far less damage at comparable levels with my protection speced warrior.

Multi mob situations druids and paladins shine in but typically my group has one or two of the group of mobs locked down with crowd control so what is left I can easily take. Also while druids shine vs the trash warriors shine vs the tougher opponents. The tougher the mob the more rage and time to use their tricks warriors have. Shield blocking and spell reflecting as often as they pop up depending on what boss you are fighting can cut the ammount of damage a ton.

My hp with my new gear is easily equal to druids although it took me more work to get to that level. At 69 with what instance gear I have gotten so far I am at totally unbuffed about 10500 HP and well over 10k armor. My dodge block parry are all at around the 13% range.

I know there is a lot of doom and gloom but warriors tank no worse than they did before and if paladins and druids have come up a bit all the better. Personally I don't think its the spec or even class amongst the tank classes thats the big key its the person driving them. If you play to your strenghts you will tank fine a warrior lives longer and is more duable but has to work a bit harder to hold the agro. Druids and paladins have an easier time managing off target agro but typically need more healing. One nice synergy for the paladins is although they need more healing heals on the wind up giving them more mana to cast thus more agro giving them the staying power they always lacked.

I have not gone into any dungeon yet and felt unable to do my job correctly. I have done all the instances up to the first circle of time instance and probably will be working on the level 70 instances and tempest keep once the rest of my group catchs up a bit most of them are 66 67.


kaid

If you are going main tank protection mode you wouldn't have 20/41 you would have something like 15/5/41 as deflection is simply to good to pass up. A flat 5% boost to your parry skill that does not get neutered as you level up is just to nice. The 20/41 build would be a good prot build that still allows you more oompf while soloing. I have tried it and it works well but I always fall back to getting deflection.

kaid

That'll teach you to read the forums.

Actually, this was the very first thought I had when reading this thread.  If you want to find new and innovative ways to hate your gaming experience (and ultimately your life, too), just go check out the class forums.

Um.  That's what I said wasn't it ?

Having partied with Ironwood's Prot specced tank often (and being a crit crazy destruction lock) I see no problem with this build at all. He certainly manages to keep from me (thank goodness). :evil:

WTB: A post with some substance.

Warrior QQing now? C'mon, we're better than this aren't we?

Everyone has provided the refutations already in this thread, I just want to ask why this rubbish is posted here. It belongs on WoW general forums.

An obvious mole for Ironwood Inc. I'll believe it's not when they've built up a couple hundred posts in the Politics forum.

You know this is not going to happen - so I assume you are posting to see yourself?

There are several here that noted some potential problems for warrios in BC and I pointed out some limitations in my own musings on this matter.  The class forums were qualified in their usage by referencing posts by druids on this topic not warriors.

If you're not going to read the thread - all one page of it - don't post. 

Going to check some warrior web sites - any comments on threat generation of Devestate?  You guys spamming it - or use it only to refresh the sunders?

I bolded my original quote. And your quote.

Now:

If you're not going to read (and understand - though I do have sympathy for your troubles in this regard) my post - all four lines of it - don't post.

Classes have issues and they are fun to discuss, but popular Forum Topic QQing is not that place to start from. If you have things you want to discuss then talk about it, but don't come out with crap about warriors being "crap at x" just because it's a popular forum topic.

"Random Statement. Discuss" is not really want we want to be about. That's more for trolling and humor. So keep the generalities, especially ones you have not come up with yourself, to a minimum.

"I'm not really sure what I should be doing with Devastate in regards to threat, how do you guys do this?" is a decent query. So is "I'm having trouble holding aggro with my x/x/x build. Do you guys have any suggestions?" "Warrior threat on a single target is weak - and is a pain in the ass in 5 mans when rapid clearing is needed (I agree)" is not a useful thing to say.

It works dandy...after 5 sunders. It's better for bosses and trash that has a LOT of health. I find my time better spent shield slamming, bashing, and stunning for most instance trash. For bosses, I can sunder up (along with shield block/revenge), then pretty much just hit shield block and devastate the rest of the fight on everything up to where I am (mana tombs). Outside of aggro dumps I can't think of a single time I've lost aggro if I'm allowed to get my 3 sunders in before DPS starts.

Lam,

1.  You say everyone has provided refutations on this thread: I am not going to sir bruce with quotes - but review the above - all 1 page of it again - and you will see opinion is not unanimous on this matter.

2.  This post is more than just about the forums but the new rules that give stronger aggro control to classess like the paladin - which combined with strong / possibly superior survivability - may change the warriors's place in the game (not for bosses but for 5 mans).  Tehre are some clear game design changes that have occurred in BC with the relative contributions of some classes to aggro control.  To poll this position from the other side - I used druid posts.

This is a perfectly valid topic. 

You complain about this thread - and now we are both spending time - 2 posts each total so far - discussing whether this thread is a waste of time.  This is odd utility.  Suggestion: do something else with your time - there must be another thread somewhere in f13.

1. Just because you're not the only idiot on this forum doesn't mean you're not still an idiot.

2. Change the warrior's place in the game.... in 5 mans? Have you played this game? 5 mans are a joke, and many can almost be done without any tank except for the boss fights. For the boss fights Warriors are still the best tanks in most (pretty much all) situations - with all bosses being easy with any of the tanking classes.

Just because I'm feeling nice:

1.  Druids / Paladins are now the kings of multitarget tanking (I agree - and do not have a problem with this per se)

Paladins are, yes. On certain multitargets. But there are few to no situations in the game currently where this is needed. Warriors are able to hold aggro fine on multiple targets if they and their group is competent.

2.  Warrior threat on a single target is weak - and is a pain in the ass in 5 mans when rapid clearing is needed (I agree)

Not at all. Warriors threat is fine. Please provide examples of these "rapid clearing" situations you seem to be having so much trouble with. All the ones I can think of I have managed fine with a warrior. This includes the 'suppression room' in Shattered Halls, which I did with a 68 Warrior when I was level 70.

3.  Warriors have comparable survivability to a druid in bear form (I dunno - but this should not be true - we choose warriors to be tanks - and I do believe Paladins have superior survivability which onluy makes matters worse).

Protection Warriors have more survivability than any other class.

EQ is pertinent, thanks for including it.

I believe it was a 'moot' issue.

No. Palladins do not have greater survivability. They have less health, less mitigation, less spell mitigation, and worse tanking itemisation.

Then the rest of the thread seems to be warriors saying "I tank fine. We're not broken." So umm, I agree with them. Except:

Resillience. Not a PvE stat Paelos.

Paladins to me seem like the ultimate pick for AOE situations.  They literally get more mitigation as they get more mobs attacking them, their taunt affects an ally and taunts three (I think, might be more) mobs onto you, Avenger's Shield is high threat and multitarget.

Druids also seem to be better off with a few mobs, swipe + the talent that returns rage on crits (and imp lotp) seems to make swipe tanking quite valid.

As for itemization...I have seen a lot of paladin plate.  The quality of it I don't know, I haven't been playing my warrior to compare the tanking drops from instances for warriors and paladins.

Yeah, but you never need an AOE tank that much. Normally you can Mage/Warlock/Etc AOE fine, or they're elites that hit hard enough you only want to tank 2-3 at most and CC the rest. And the harder those 2-3 mobs hit the more you want the tank who's going to last the longest tanking them (not the Pally), not the one with the best aggro (aggro on 2-3 mobs isn't that hard for a good warrior).

Pally gear atm doesn't have as much Stamina. Probably because item budgets and the fact they require more stats.

So Pallys being good AOE tanks does'nt mean that much, unless blizz desings a lot of situations for it. Otherwise it's just a gimmick.

That was my experience tanking with devestate just prior to BC.  But I would like to see the numbers though - in comparing Devestate threat to heroic strike.

In protection - we can take 6 rage off the cost of sunder arm - through 6 talents in two different areas.  So this begs my next question, with 6 off the rage cost of sunder, even if 5 sunders are aleady in place - it might be optimal to spam sunders over anything else.  We know threat from sunders can still take place after 5 sunders - and with the large rage reduction cost in the protection tree - I wonder how it stacks up vs. devestate.

If Connie's still reading after that warm welcome, I would advise her to never, ever, ever enter the politics forum.


Ever.

Ever.


(However, she is right.  The aggro generation on the average warlock is totally insane at the moment and she's one of the TWO in my usual five man parties.  I have little or not problem holding and keeping the aggro, or using P.S to slow them down if they feel like running.  Why people are complaining about the warrior is totally bizarre to me :  I think they're great.)

Oh and Welcome to f13 Connie.  Why you came here after all my warnings, I do not know.  :)

If you're not getting much rage I imagine sunder-spamming would be fine but the DPS contribution from devastate (and the threat contribution of that DPS on top of the sunders) can't be unnoticeable considering I'm doing 200-300-ish damage every 1.5 seconds in addition to my regular attacks instead of just spinning like a top reapplying sunders. With full protection spec (meaning -3 Rage to all abilities) I have more rage than I know what to do with on most bosses when they start kicking my ass. I've had a lot of times where I simply couldn't dump rage fast enough.

Devastate doesn't work well on most trash since by the time you've got enough sunders on something to make use of it (considering you're usually tanking 2-4 things at once), the mob's already 90% dead.

As for that survivability issue, we have a good, very well equipped Feral Druid in our guild who OTs and MTs all the time. My best friend is a holy-spec pally, and he says it's way easier to keep me alive. Go fig.

ahhh, delicious irony.  please take your self-aggrandizing jacking off somewhere, anywhere, else

I think that I am in fact Fabricated, since he's clearly having the same experience as me.  I never have any rage problems at all - especially with some of the Fury talents that I have.  Whenever I talk to a warrior that has rage problems, they're usually always Arms specced.

To which I lol.

I just hit 70 last night with my arms warrior last night. I've main-tanked most everything up through the Shadow Lab (wiped several times on Murmur, us melee people kept not getting far enough away during his sonic blast). I haven't had much issues with tanking as an arms warrior, although most of the time I've been grouped with DPSers who are higher level than me so we can often burn stuff down quickly. I'm probably going to stay arms until I finish most of the solo quests and then I'll probably go protection. Right now I'm the highest warrior in my guild although there are 3 others not far behind.

With respect to the fury three - are you guys putting 5 talent points into extend the duration of your battleshouts by 50%?

I did nto think much of this until BC - (not high enough level to have it myself yet) - but that new warrior shout that gives the party almost 1000 hps for 2 minutes - seems worthwile extending the duration ?

Rage generation - talents in the increased critical and the chance of generating rage on each melee attack - I assume these are the two primary talents in the fury tree you are using to increase rage production as a protection warrior aye?

Some guys have argued that shield slam and devestate are perfect for warriors - since these attacks scale with the gear a warrior uses as he levels (e.g. unlike sunder armor).  In the past I was not too crazy about shield slam - but with the better sheilds available at the higher end - considering this talent is now affected by the properites of the shield - may make it worthwhile as well.

Current Build. (http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/warrior/talents.html?000000000000000000000000505113000500000000002305511333020120001351)

Shield slam is awesome as not only does it scale, but other equipment increasing your block value (not percentage block) scale it further.

I don't see that Devastate scales anymore than HS tho...

I think I may rework myself for the improved shout, but I'm not really a shouty guy.  Commanding shout, however, is well worth it and can actually kill you if you get low on health and it runs out...

Thanks.

I am thinking of a scenario if you are looking at tough heroic 5 man fight (not done a heroic yet) and the party wants the commanding shout prior to battle.  You hit blood rage (assuming there is not a trash mob nearby you can generate rage from) - buff the party - and now have 2 minutes.  Problem is you blood rage is now on timer and will not be available for the next 2 minutes in the fight - which for a hard fight - would make me uneasy.

If you don't have enough rage to replenish a shout, then you're doing a very poor job of holding aggro.

Especially on Heroic mode.  Those mobs should be BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF YOU.

:)

You're going to have to do better than a simple comment to prove otherwise. It's frankly too dismissive based on not having the full scope of information. Does it have viability in 5 mans? Hell no, then again that's never been the benchmark of most specialized gear, which is all resilience happens to be. It's like Fire Resist gear, or shadow gear. The thing is nobody can evaluate what all the bosses are like at the top end because nobody really knows yet, but I'm putting my money on the fact that there will be more than a few crit happy bosses in large dungeons that will make resilience gear important.

Also, I'm under the impression that resilience cuts down on all crits, not just melee. This would be especially helpful for a warrior against bosses that cast numerous types of spells (fire, shadow, arcane) to cut down on all spell crits instead of specializing in one resistance, since defense gear would be useless against spells.

Aggro control is not the problem per se - especially on a boss.  But I don't find myself with extra rage - unless I get distracted - that rage bar does not get close to full.  So I like having blood rage "in case" (an add etc.).

I would like to avoid putting talents into extending the duration of shout though - so maybe it is avoidable.  I just know my party of RL mates is going to LOVE commanding shout and anything I can do maximize it.

Not done Heroics yet though.


We (my friends and I) are betting this as well.  We are expecting huge spike damage on bosses - from a variety of sources - criticals being one of them.  This is inferred from the massive stamina increases we have seen ALL gear in BC - a big step function from WoW we have known.  My green Fire resist ring of +20 is now replaced a by a ring of similar stats but also offers +15 stamina.  The hp increase for warriors is massive even with greens - clearly a dramatic increase from the steady STA increases seen on gear up to 60 / Pre BC.

That heal over time spells can now be stacked - up to 5 times - also supports the inference that this game has massive spike damage - possibly from criticals - in store for tanks et al.

I never understood the whole HoT stacking thing. Does this mean a priest can just renew me 5 times and I suddenly have 5 renew ticks going off, or can I have a renew from each priest in the group?

Hi Connie!  Welcome to f13!

I don't have much to add regarding Warriors since I'm a Druid.  I can tank if I must, however I would rather let a Warrior do the tanking so I can play damage control when things go south.  Go Warriors!
Five different healers.

I really get tired of that argument, especially as a healer. Druids have higher Dodge then Warriors (to offset the Parry/Block loss a bit), but the important thing is the fact they can pretty easily approach the armor cap makes their damage mitigation a lot more consistant then a Warrior's. As a healer, I prefer a Druid tank because it makes my life a lot easier. On top of that, the Health bonus gives a lot more breathing room.

A Druid's mitigation model for the most part is different not inferior to a Warrior's. Things like Spell Reflect are very handy (especially in Steamvaults for example), but in instances, Crushing/Glancing won't come into play because the bosses are 72, not 73 or Boss.

Sorry for coming in late... it's just the "omg Warriors can Block/Parry" argument really annoys me.

A warrior that doesn't have close to equal or more health than a druid has crap gear, imo. It's a highly gear dependant class, so generalities suck when comparing warriors to other classes. We have shit for spells, and most of our mitigations are directly related to gear, followed by spec. Armor on a druid is typically higher for sure by skills, so warriors never catch up. However, I'd like to find the druid who's mitigation makes up for the ridiculous amount of block/parry you can have in decent gear. I carry about 20% block, and 12% parry, and I'm doing it in ZERO pieces of my dungeon 3 set. Just quest rewards and random drops from bosses up to the Mechanar.

The point is that people are making very certain statements about warriors and their viability when the average warrior gear will change those conditions in two months. Right now the sun revolves around the Earth in WoW. Call me in two months and see what we "know" about warriors.

You confuse me.  I can't shed Rage fast enough.   I can't comment more than that because I literally don't understand your problem.  I also can shift into Berserker and hit the Berseker Rage for another 6 seconds of extra rage if I start to get lower than 25 anyways.

I am really starting to think that I need Enrage like a hole in the head and I would be better off taking deflection now.  I'm also thinking on the improved shouts.

So this thread was good for something !  Take Heart !

Ironwood is right, i have absolutely no idea what the hell you are talking about if you're on a boss and can't find rage. Are you fighting kittens? I'm usually getting pounded like a hooker during Fleet Week, so I've got rage to burn as well.

It's not even bosses.  I can't think of a single pull in the new instances where I don't have 3 guys beating on me, which is more than enough.

I think jpark needs to talk to his team.

Without being a shitheel about it, warriors in WoW aren't for everyone.  I used to love - nay adore - being the tank in other games.  However, I just can't pull it off in WoW.  It's different enough and requires such a different thought process that I out and out suck at it and I'm not afraid to admit it.

 Thus why I play Priest/ Hunter (and now shaman) much more often.  My L60 warrior is now a bank toon, and likely will be for a long, long while, unless I decide to go DPS - which I'm fairly ok at.

Compared to Ironwoods build - I am deep protection - no fury.  So right off the bat - there are rage generating features to Iron's build I don't have.

My take on builds is - I maximize not the use of the talents - but anything that incrementally increases my survivability.  I have no linky, but pre BC I was 5 (parry)/ 0 Fury/ rest protection.  Tanking in BWL (usually the off tank - not the MT) - I did not find myself with excess rage usually.  I found I can spend what I get pretty quickly.  That was my big question before tanking in this game - would I find my self with excess rage?  The answer is no - I don't.  Some tanks do - others don't (as I talked to these guys before I was raid capable).

One easy solution to rage generation is to "undergear".  Have less resistance - I had FR 315 unbuffed pre BC - which was excessive for most fights - unless debuffs were taking place on FR.  If I dropped that resistance - naturally rage generation occurred much more readily for FR fights (and so on - shadow, arcane etc.).

The other specs in my guild - usually arms - generated more rage for sure - but seem to have less survivability (my gear set was T1/T2).

Right now in BC I am arms - to level - and have not tried much of the new instance content.  So I don't know outside of a few low level instances in BC how the fights really look.  But pre BC - yup - I rarely had enough rage to hit shield slam.  Our main tank in the guild - who also has close contact with the devs in WoW - and who was a former MT in EQ - was similar - he rarely had excess rage as well.

Zerker rage is a good suggestion.  Will try that when I start tanking for "real" in BC (2 more levels to go!).

Really, the only additional rage I have over you is a 40% chance for 1 extra point on my attack...

I have my Berserker rage on a macro.  It's really handy.  You can shift stance, activate and then switch back.  This will boost your rage generation a lot.

I would really love to see you play.  I'm still not able to get my head around your problem.

(Also, 56 points in prot ?  Are you high ?  Some of those talents are totally fucking worthless....)

I can't see your spec from work, Ironwood, but if you have flurry, that adds rage when it procs because you are hitting more.  Also, is there something in jpark's spec which is spammable?

I haven't played my warrior since the new specs came out, but I know that for some specs I was always waiting on some cooldown or another to spend my rage, so I would end up with a net gain most of the fight.  In other specs, there was always something to spam, so I had to wait for enough rage to do things quite frequently.

Also things like the enemy's dodge% (for overpower) and (more pertient to tanks) how often you get to use revenge play a part.

This's actually been a point of discussion on the EJ boards. Essentially what it comes down to is that Resilience is overpriced in terms of item budget. For the same item cost as 316 resilience (around -11% crit and -22% crit damage) you could get 16% dodge, which would simply negate 16% of incoming damage. this topic (http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=9719) is a pretty in-depth analysis of the item cost of resilience.

[edit] Also, NPCs' spells cannot crit.

Perhaps Chenghiz, but can you dodge spells? I don't think you can, and that's where I see the major utility of resilience gear, stopping spell crits and cutting damage.

Also, I particularly like the 50 prot, 11 fury build. In protection, I don't see the utility of Improved Disarm, Revenge, Shield Wall, and 1Her spec. Putting point in full prot is just throwing them away on things like that. In the 11 fury, i just go all shouts (booming voice, int. shout, piercing howl) since the majority of my early rage is covered by improved bloodrage.

 :|

Wzzzzzttt. Burrrrrrr.  Does not compute.

Resiliance might not also be a gear choice for warriors -- but will be for PvP warriors, to irritate the fuck out of the glass cannon mages with their overreliance on crits and to deal with hunters (although at 70, I think Hunter crit is back down to 20% unless you want glass cannon mage problems....)

Also, I'm not sure I'd buy the "NPC spells can't crit" thing -- unless there's a fundamental gameplay reason that they don't. "NPC spells currently do not crit" might be better.

Exactly, just because they currently do not crit doesn't mean they won't at higher level content.  It seems to me to be a perfect direction to go to make PvE "more difficult," and would make resilience viable from that perspective.

Basically, until all bosses are seen and all skills revealed, I'm going to contend it will have a purpose in PvE. Nature resist was completely useless until AQ, Shadow had no point until bosses in BWL and Naxx, Frost came up in Naxx. I just don't see Blizzard adding an entire new statistic to the game and making it exclusively for PvP, but time will either prove that right or wrong.

If you're worried about spell mitigation, you can get more of that by stacking resists than you can by stacking resilience. As far as NPC spell crits are concerned, none of the content at 70 currently (Gruul, Kazzak, Kharazan) has indicated anything to the contrary.

Gear trends seem to indicate resilience = PVP, defense = PVE. Adding resilience as a PVP-useful stat only helps make a gear differentiation between those who raid and those who PVP. Whereas before you could catass in raids and then go pwn in PVP against people who just did PVP, now those who get their gear via PVP have an edge (in PVP) over those who do not, and those who get their gear in PVE have a PVE edge over those who did not.

Ironwood/ Jayce,

Ya in fury tree don't forget, as Jayce points out, that you have that enrage (forget the name) happening that increases your damage upon being criticaled - which creates more rage (as a function of damage you do).  Also - the 5% critical helps a bit.

I do spam.  I used to have 3 rage off the cost of sunder armor and spam that if shield/ revenge was not showing.  Towards the end - I started spamming devestate.  In the protection tree you can get a whopping 6 rage points off the cost of sunder armor and 3 points off devestate.  For sunder armor - I find it is almost instant - no waiting.  We know that sunders beyond the initial 5 stacking still cause aggro but do not stack further.

I know most warriors are shocked at how many points I have in protection.  No argument there.  But my durability is quite good compared against full T2 tanks in my preBC guild - I know that - as did our healers.  Keep in mind the humorous exercise - very few warriors agree on what is "useless" in protection.  I notice Ironwood you have 2 talent points to reduce yoru taunt by 2 seconds in total.  Most warriors would not agree with that - for me that does not help - but if it works for you - good.

To some extent our talents will be subjective based on our style of play.

NPC spells do not crit.

Most fights that are based around taking spell damage are not conventional, and usualy not tanked in the conventional way. You will want physical mitigation and aviodance becase most bosses will fuck you up there, and perhaps some resists on top if there is spell damage in the equation. But if you dont have physical damage to worry about then you wont want to put on resillience stuff, you'll want even more resists.

Resillience is useless for PvE. You want spell resists get some fucking spell resist gear. There is stuff everywhere with large numbers all over it. And easy enchants.

But I can see how "the game mechanices as we know them may funamentaly change in the future and make us sort of have a point" is a valid argument. I really can. Just like "Warlocks are the best melee DPS class in the game" is valid.

Jesus fucking christ.

Resillience is meant to be (and is) a PvP stat, not a PvE one. That's why it's on all the PvP gear.

Oh and I'm glad this thread is finally heading down the "I guess jpark is just a shitty warrior" road.

When it comes to high level PvE competence the level of agreement is actually rather high. It is not subjective - but instead tends towards the specific. Some things are good for certain, understood, situations, some for others.

I am a fan of alchemy - and like to have as many independent timers as I can to increase my health in a tight situation.  To this end this has caught my eye:

Healing Potion Injector
Requires Engineering (330)
Use: Restores 1500 to 2500 health.
Cooldown: 2 min
Charges: 20 (Expendable)
Sells for 10 Gold to vendors
Item Level 66

Because the mates are 20 super healing potions to begin with - I am thinking the healing potions created from this recipe may operate on a separate timer from super healing potions themselves (this has to be tested - so far have not talked to anyone who has tried it).  If so - this would be handy to have for any tanks considering engineering (I used Eng. for the resistance trinkets - so think I will retain it for this purpose as well).

Good strawman there. Did you hurt your back putting it together? NPC spells do not crit now. That doesn't mean they can't ever crit -- unless there's some gameplay reason they do not that would be difficult to change. No one was claiming "NPC spells will crit in the future". Only that they might. And then we all went on an agreed that, currently, resiliance is far more a PvP stat than PvE.

Several of the resistance stats (NR, SR, FR) were useless until end-game dungeons were added that required them. Given the existance of a resiliance stat that reduces crit chance across the board, why wouldn't Blizzard designers code encounters with NPC spell crits? They're not above requiring gear checks (although they seem to be getting away from that) and I don't consider it beyond them to force a choice between heal stacking to try to handle crit spikes or resiliance gear to smooth damage out.

No, read the whole thread. It's not a strawman given what some people have said.

What is the point about talking about something the requires a game mechanics change to have any relevance? If I started a thread "Warlocks are the best Tanking class" and went on to talk about how if all bosses did only shadow damage and were melee immune Warlocks would be the best tanks in the game (Far and above the best tanks!). Would it be worth discussing? No. We want to talk about what the game is like now, and in the foreseeable future.

NPC spells cannot crit and there is no reason to assume they will do so in the future.

Please point me to the point where we all agree. What I see is people belabouring a highly irrelevent "what if" in order to rescue an argument from their original statements. If we are going to agree that Resillience is a useless PvE stat currently then the whole conversation is over. Yet people are still mentioning it.


Because there is a clear reason for why Resillience is in the game. It is on PvP gear and is meant to lengthen PvP fights and lower the tendancy for them to be 5 second crit fests. It has been created with a reasonably clear goal in mind and is currently itemized to reach that goal. Given this there is no reason to assume that it was ever meant to be a PvE stat, and no reason to assume it ever will be.

It also remains to be seen that even if NPCs could crit with spells that it would be useful. It would, for one, require a fight with significant spell and melee damage, focused mainly/soely on the single target, the tank. So not only do we require a game mechanics change, we also require a rather significant encounter design change. Something as fundamental as NPCs critting will change the game in more ways than you think.

Secondly; designers are moving away from gear checks? No this is incorrect. Gear checks are still in the game and will continue to be so for very obvious reasons.

Thirdly.. you belabour the point again. So I guess I will too.

You cannot stack Resillience easily with current PvE itemisation. If Blizzard were to design a PvE encounter where the NPC (just that NPC, mind you, otherwise the whole game needs to be rebalanced) could crit then... this is absurd. Why not just make them hit harder on an unpredictable timer. Surely this meets the end result of a damage spike that requires a healing response? It has the added benefit of not forcing the tanks to go PvP endlessly to be able to gear up for the fight - or for them to reitemise the existing dungeons and have the Tank re-run them.

There is no coherent reason for Resillience to ever be a PvE stat, and there are many as for why it is a PvP stat. This argument is beyond stupid and you are an idiot (Please point out to me what Philosophical term you'll use to describe that statment - you'll actually be correct this time).

Lamaros, seriously we get the fucking point. Stop trying to beat it to death.

Resilience is viable in PvP. Right now, it's absolutely more useful in Pvp than PvE. HOWEVER, saying it's NEVER going to be a PvE stat and that's it's completely oriented to PvP and fuck anyone else who thinks otherwise?

Open your mind a millimeter when we haven't even see all the fights yet.

EDIT: I'll also add that most people would agree with you more if you weren't being a giant fuckhead about the entire point.

The resist to resilience parallel is pushing it a bit far, I think. Resists were always useful to mitigate spell damage, it was just not necessary to use it until Ragnaros. Resilience is, point by point, not good for mitigating anything in PVE barring the possibility of an NPC spell crit, and even if NPC spells did crit, you would still be better off stacking resists. There are certainly times at which resilience would be useful but they rely on a set of preconditions without precedent (NPC spell crits, and a significant enough amount of both melee and spell damage on one target that stacking mitigation is better than stacking stamina). It's certainly possible that that could happen but I think the realm of consideration stops short of that. It would be a pretty dick move by Blizzard to essentially require a raid to go through an entirely alternate path of gear upgrades (arena or BG pvp) just to beat a boss.

You can't get Flurry and Devastate, I don't think.  So, no, I don't have that.

I'm not 70 yet, so I don't even have Enrage.  So no extra damage yet.

Seriously, when I said that all I have is an extra 1 point of rage per attack, I was actually telling you the pertinant information.  I'm still not sure how you have a rage problem.  My revenge costs 2 rage.  2.  My Sunder is 9.  I have improved bloodrage and I have a nice wee Berserker macro.

I took improved taunt because, as mentioned, I have two warlocks in my usual 5 man.  They try their best not to crit, but one of them regularly has 50% of the DPS in any given fight.  Taunting with that amount of aggro flying around is just good target management.

I'm also still staggered at 56 points in prot.  Please to post a build so I can see why you're doing that.  If you have improved disarm or improved shield wall, I may have to kill you.

As to the slap fight going on in the other half of this thread - fuck off, will you ?

http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filter=cr=79,42;crs=1,1;crv=0,0

One thing to consider, there are two pieces of the game with defense and resilience.  Both of these pieces' socket bonus seems a bit off for pure tanking gear, so my bet is (due to the high cost) these pieces are made as hybrid, you get def, resi and some sockets to do with it what you want.

However the fact that only two items in the game have defense and resilience makes me think the intention of one being for pvp and the other for pve seems likely.

Christ, that's a nice helm.

But that may be the intention.  In a blizz interview I liistened to several months ago they made the point that collecting the gear you needed would no longer come from just one instance - or even just raiding - but through a spectrum of activites including pvp.  It depends on how far they take it - but right now I am operating on the assumption that to complete a gear set will require raiding, heroic 5 mans and pvp.

Iron - I did have improved sheild wall (but no disarm or taunt).  A 30 minute timer on shield wall makes it irrelevant for 5 mans - but useful for raiding - since it is almost refreshed come the next boss kill.  If you like and use shield wall - increasing its duration by 50% for 2 talent points is attractive for raiding.  As an off tank stepping into take aggro on a boss if the MT has gone down - that's the classic time I pop it - so this gives healers time to sort out the transition of tanks.

It's not irrelevant for 5 mans anymore.

And it's still a waste of talent points.  If you're healers aren't sorted in the time normal shield wall gives you, you're fucked anyway and should sack the idiots.

Or in my case, Divorce them.


Seriously, post your build.

I did.  And they tore it apart and brought it back up better.  (I will be switching to Deflection once I level more).

Similar to what I had before (at 60 preBC) - this is my plan when I reach 70:

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/warrior/talents.html?050000000000000000000000000000000000000000002255511333002123531351

This is the build I've been using since I hit 70.

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/warrior/talents.html?050030000000000000000000505000000000000000000055511030002123231351

I've been tanking regularly since the game came out, and the main reason I ever found myself with a rage deficit was when I failed to spec for Unbridled Wrath. I'm not sure about the numbers, but if I ever specced without it, I found myself quickly short on rage. As soon as I specced with it, I found I could never seem to hit 0 rage.

Any tank might want to consider putting a few points into fury to get it. Talents like improved revenge and improved disarm are completely useless. Really the only fights you should be worried about, and thus speccing for, are boss fights. And you can usually neither stun or disarm a boss mob. So you can have talents which help your build against trash but not the bosses, or you can have a talent which will improve your rage generation and therefore your threat generation overall.

You guys might consider using Wowhead (link (http://www.wowhead.com)) for your specs. It's faster and the links are not as annoying.

I can't stand people saying that they spec only for tanking bosses.  It's like saying you spec only to be an offtank.

Christ, how many times do you wipe getting there ?

Improved Revenge is awesome.  Improved disarm is only useless because it increases the time of something.  I generally find those talents fairly useless.


And, I notice that your build doesn't have improved Sunder.  Are you mental ?

Edit :  I'm looking at your build and the Link MUST be broken.  No tactical mastery ? No Bloodrage ?  WTF ?


Edited Again :  I think THIS  (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=TAZxVkZfVtsIMzb0st) will be my finished build.  I removed Blood Craze because I expect my Resilience to go up and I do like the Shouts and deflection ideas posted here.  Further, I put Improved HS back in for a double Damage and Threat in addition to Devastate.  Finally, having no idea what to do with the last point, I stuck it into cleave.

Because I like to Cleave.

And 2 points tossed in 1h weapon spec, rather than improved taunt.   I dunno, like I said earlier I suck at warrioring, but it was always my understanding that 1h spec was a waste so if you're going to toss-away 2 points to hit the next tier, toss them in taunt.

Yup...

I find the One-Hand talent to be pretty good actually since damage helps a lot in contributing to hate generation. Makes soloing a bit easier too.

Here's my planned spec. http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVMxzZZfVtoIMdbest

I'm basically punching-bag spec. Soloing takes forever but tanking is pretty easy if people don't start DPS before I even taunt. I got to group with a full protecto-spec Pally the other night and I'll say that man they're pretty fucking good. I had to fight for aggro. I won of course, but I had to try.

Yes, prot spec Pallys can tank well, but the solo'ing as one is terrible!  I only lasted a few days as one.  I did well in instances, but out on my own took forever to down an even-con mob.  I'm now a Ret-spec only so I can get through quests in a decent amount of time.  Still, I swear the only reason I even try anymore is because I already have a lvl 60 pally and feel guilty for not putting "some" time in on him.  He does have his uses for our guild when we are short on tanks (which is all of the time.)  Otherwise, I end up just being frustrated at how much slower he is than my rogue-main.

I've soloed my Paladin as a Prot spec paladin from level 1-61 (so far).  The key for soloing with Protection spec is not to take on a single even con mob.  Take on 3-4 of them.  You can, easily, and win.

I've gone out of my way to find loot that improves block in both skill and the actual number. So far my equipment puts me at 30% block rate, and I'm knocking off 406 of damage when I do. It's a hell of a lot of reduction when coupled with over 10k armor.

As I said, the reason you should be speccing for boss fights is because trash really shouldn't be a concern. If you are having trouble on trash, then it's not your talent spec. You need to look at your gear, or perhaps your ability to tab and sunder/revenge is not where it should be.

Tactical Mastery is important, for arms or fury warriors. What are you changing stances for, exactly? I suppose the only time you need to change stances would be to break fear, but you should have aggro anyways and thus should generate plenty of rage once switching back stances. If you are losing aggro then you need to have a word with your ranged dpsers about dpsing when the tank is feared. One-handed spec is not useless as an increase in melee damage dealt is also an increase in threat generated. You don't spec for Anticipation, which is 20 defence. Improved siheld wall, in conjuction with last stand, makes surviving many extremely hard-hitting boss-fights(such as brood lord and earlier golemag) possible. Shield mastery further increases damage absorbed  by your shield 30%. And last, but most definitely not least, Improved Defensive Stance reduces damage taken in defensive stance by 6% straight up. How could you possibly pass that up for cleave and heroic strike and reducing rage cost of sunder armor? Makes me think you havn't even read all of the talents. Additionally, if you are doing your job and building aggro like you should be, needing a quicker taunt is not as important as mitigating the damage taken by whatever your tanking, because remember, taunt doesn't affect mobs already aggrod on you.

You are speccing for rage generation when you should be speccing for threat generation and damage mitigation.  I can't seriously imagine how anyone could have problems with rage considering they added focused rage. Thats a 3 rage cut across the board. I never had problems before the talent existed and now that it's in, I can't clear my rage fast enough. There is a 1 sec global cooldown and you can only dump rage so fast anyways.

Every bit of damage mitigation you can get is that much less mana your healers have to dump into healing you, which translates directly into how long your group/raid can survive. When the healers are OOM it is GG, and anything you can do to forestall that is of the utmost importance.

Awesome.

Way to be a dick.

 :roll:

Touche.

I have debated recently about Iron Will in the arms tree.  Right now, I just can't bring myself to see a noticable benefit with it.  What's your experience with it so far?  The best use of this talent - in optimal terms - would be with an Orc warrior - so you can really crank up their racial stun resist.

I will admit that iron will's usefulness is debatable. And yeah, an orc warrior would benefit the most from it. Those three points were the last three to allocate and it was kind of a throw away, figured some stun resist would be nice, right? lol. If I was going to move those I might put them into blood craze. I havn't crunched any numbers or anything but I would bet that considering how many times a tank does actually get critted against it would be a nice talent to have. I'm sitting about 12k hp right now so that would be around 120hp healed every time I get critted against. Blood craze would probably benefit a not so well geared tank over a better geared one more.

Alternately you could pick up battle shout, which when on, would increase your threat generation vs the ranged dps, and would also be a nice boost to any rogues in your group.

Only other thing I'd put them in would probably be to get one-handed spec up to 5/5.

I'm not missing BloodCraze.  At All.

I thought I would, but to be honest, 3% is not even a blip on your health bar. 

Bloodcraze is for solo farming and maybe solo pvp-ing. Bloodcraze+bloodthirst+crusader mean virtually no downtime for my warrior (currently 65), only having to bandage every 6-7 mobs, if that.


-- Z.

Indeed, I actually screwed around with it a little in my first rebuild, and it wasn't worth the points for instance running. I find having a 450 int shout, and a 3 minute commanding shout to be very beneficial though.

Just thought I would throw this out there. I hear there is a warrior buff in the works. Some thing to do with rage. Ill post more when I get more info.

Fuck Rage.

Give us a threat buff.

No shit, devestate is a joke for how far it is down the tree. Shield slam is still the king of big rage.

Make Devastate a multi-hit that applies, or has a chance to, a sunder as an effect.

If you wanna shard some of those old 60ish epics you've probably got lieing around, you can use the nexus crystals for a +threat to gloves enchant. I think it's around 2% or so.

Unless the goal is multitarget threat - I have no problem with our current threat generating abilities.  But I am always looking for ANY incremental way to increase my survivability.

I don't have a problem with threat personally either, since I'm in a good group.  The problem of a warriors threat becomes instantly apparent, however, when grouping with druids, who have far more rage and threat than we could ever hope for at the moment.  That, coupled with their ability to multitarget as a matter of course is really starting to convince a great many people that you should drop the warrior in favour of the druid.

I don't blame them.

I ran Ramparts and Blood Furnace last night.  Our group had a 61 Paladin as our tank.  The rest of the group was 63 Mage (me), 61 Mage, 60 Shadow Priest, 60 Resto Shaman.  In Blood Furnace we lost the Shaman, and gained a 64 hunter.

After the first few pulls, we just had the Paladin run up, Captain America shield, consecrate, and porcupine.  Then we AoE'd most everything.  Usually it took 3 flamestrikes from me on the mobs the paladin was not targetting, to get them to peel away and run towards me (with a 47% crit chance on my flamestrikes).  Then he'd just hit his 3 mob taunt, and things were melted.

The giant demon in Ramparts, I forget his name, the one that kicks for the Raiders, wipes aggro after punting.  The Paladin wasn't able to get it back.  We still beat the encounter, but the priest fell over from a crit shadowbolt.  It was our only death out of the two wings.

I was very surprised at how well the paladin was able to hold multiple mobs, without giving him very much ramp up time at all. 

If we had a warrior instead, I don't think the demon would have gotten loose, but the entire place would have taken longer to get through, due to not being able to burn groups down as fast.

Yeah Pallies seem to be really good tanks for the leveling-up instances.  However, I tried running Shadow Labrynth last night with a Pally tanking.  The first boss wtfpwnd us time after time because of his aoe fear and the paladin's lack of abilities to break out of the fear and get aggro again.  We could have done it if we had a Dwarf/ Draeni priest for fear ward, but that's weaksauce, IMO.

Did you lose this? (http://www.thottbot.com/?i=4593)

Boss casts the fear every 30-35s, so while that helps on the first.. you're kinda boned after that.   Even using misdirection as soon as the fear went away didn't help, simply because of the damage he'd do to the healer in that 'run around blindly' time.

hehe that was one of my starting concerns for this thread :)  But I concede that for 5 man content - that is not heroic - a paladin or druid is a superior tank than a warrior.

I wish the conventional wisdom that feral druid is a good instance tank would proliferate through the noobosphere faster.  Almost every instance I've been on if there was a warrior he was told to tank and I was told to cat/heal (even when he is lower level  and non-protection spec).

 

IIRC, you can't activate that to break fear.  You can only ward against it, and you have to know when it's coming, because it's short lived. 

Berserk rage or deathwish, though, can break a fear.

Does Tremor Totem work for this encounter?

Good question.  I'll let you know when more than just the UberGuilds on Alliance have L70 shaman.  :-D

But seriously, that's what my thought was, we were just missing a 'key' class.  Be it warrior, shaman with their totem, or dwarf priest.  We needed something else to make it work for us.  (Mage/Mage/Hunter/Druid/Pally)   The problem is, of course, pickings are slim for L70 instances outside of the people who will only do preset guild groups.

That first boss in shadow lab doesn't drop aggro when he fears. If you have it right, he fears everyone and chases the tank around the room until you're not feared anymore. Just keep everyone in range of him.

Umm, that would probably indicate that he drops (or more likely reduces) aggro when he fears.  If everyone eats the fear and are all reduced in aggro by the same amount, of course he will still be on the tank.  Its when someone resists fear and gets bumped over the tank in aggro that things go bad.

Another thing to consider is: who was not getting feared and still DPSing?  If the tank gets feared, everyone should stop what they are doing (if possible, this may be hard for healers) and wait for the tank to get unfeared and back on the mob.  If the DPS is dumb enough to keep nukeing away, or course they are going to eat it.

Heck, if you were having problems with the first boss, the second one would probably have bitchslapped you silly.  Second boss in shadowlabs is by far the hardest encounter in the whole place (barring the first few pulls clearing to him :P )

But you can't stance dance while under the effect.  So you still need to know it's coming.

:(

I am not sure why people are up in arms over druid tanks, as a former druid tank, switched to resto now, I envy paladins.  I have been running the lvl 70 instances to build rep and gear up for Kara for the past 2 weeks and the best runs seem to always have a paladin as MT.  Even with a druid tank and 5 points into subtlety, I still draw aggro from the first heal.  However, with a paladin, the mob never so much as twitches towards me and I can switch out of tree form to start tossing out the big heals.  Warriors, forget it, a few ticks of rejuv and I have 2+ mobs pounding on me.  I almost wept after my first wipe-free run of SL on Sunday when we had a paladin tank.

*oops*

Wept.

True for berserk rage, but if you go deeply enough into Fury to get deathwish, it's irrespective of stances.

But then you may not be a full prot warrior at that point (I haven't done the talent math to see how feasible this is)

Errrr, Not Very.

Your tanks suck, or you toss heals too early. Aggro establishment is pretty key for even full-prot warriors. If DPS starts before I can even get a sunder, taunt, or revenge out, or if I take a huge overheal after the first hit it's a fucking pain in my ass to keep up even with the snap aggro of Shield Slam and the ability to CC an enemy for a few seconds with Concussion Blow while I establish aggro on the other mobs.

That, and AoE tanking pallies are at least slowly building aggro on every enemy standing in their consecration. Warriors don't really have any way to build actual aggro on groups of mobs outside of shouting over and over again (which does not generate enough aggro to control anything outside of untouched mobs...and if no one has healed yet).

My only gripe with warriors is I wish our threat scaled a bit better. Holy bajeesus it can get a bit frisky when you have two level 70 mages and a level 70 hunter in your group. Still doable but sheesh I have to be a spinning gnome of button mashing. At least now that the hunter has misdirection I can work with him and he feeds me some extra agro on stragglers.

If they made cleave work like swipe I would be a happy happy happy little gnome. Hell even it it only hit two targets it would still be better than it currently is.

The synergy druids have with swipe and the talent that gives them an extra 5 rage every time they get a melee crit is what makes their aoe tanking amazing. Given how high druids can get their + to crit abilities swipe once you get it rolling is free or damn close to it.  Even with my druids gimp gear swipes can hit upwards of 350 damage on a crit and pretty consistantly crit.

I think one thing could go a long way in helping tanks to tank would be to delink some crap off the global cool down or give warriors the 1 sec rogue global cool down and not the 1.4 second cool down everybody else gets.

They gave me things like shield reflect which is very handy but damn near impossible to use in a fight as you just don't have time to sit waiting and saving the rage up. VS some bosses it works well but against most things not so much.

Yeah.  I was looking forward to Spell Reflect and, don't get me wrong, it's still hilarious, but just not terribly useful.

Watching an enemy warlock immolate himself is just luv tho.

Pulling a spell reflect on the second boss of the Steamvaults is also pure comedy. Watching the bastard shrink himself still makes me cheer everytime I get the timing right.

Our guild tanks were dying for misdirection. With hunters burst DPS having dropped over the trip from 60 to 70, it's not as "Oh shit cool" as it was back when Hunters were raping everything with their 30% crit rates, but it's still damn nice to throw all the aggro from a Aimed Shot, Auto-Shot, Steady/Multi onto the tank.

I haven't got it myself -- doesn't stack, does it? If you have two hunters, can they both misdirect onto you? And it's an out of combat ability, right?

Warriors are our MTs for every notable encounter so far in game. Druid OT in Kaz and 1 of the 3 OTs on Maulgar. Though the Druid could probably MT if needed (better to have a War tank and Druid DPS than the other way around, though).

Just because a boss will fear everyone and then hit anyone who is not feared does not mean he is dropping aggro. Once the fear breaks on the highest aggro target they will usually go back to it.

I dont understand how you could ever have trouble on the first SL boss, if you can kill the Demons to get to him he should be a joke.

Misdirect is an awesome tool and pretty much makes Hunters the pullers in every situation.

At the risk of derailing the thread... what abilities does Misdirection work on? I assume it works on Distracting Shot (which is hotness right there), but does multishot consume one 'charge'? Does the DOT aggro from volley from all affected mobs get applied to the tank? Etc.


-- Z.

You can't stack misdirect, no.  But it does work with distracting shot (at the very least it consumes a 'charge'.)   If you've got multiple hunters, tell them to work out the chain of who's casting first, then roll with it that way.

It's not as uber as I was hoping for because of the 2-min cooldown.  It's great for bosses, but a 30s cooldown would make it pure pve leetness, since you could be sure it was up EVERY pull instead of every other, or every 3rd if you're moving fast.

I haven't checked on the specifics of how it works with Volley, simply because well, volley sucks.  I'll give multishot a whirl and see what it does.

It works fine with multishot. Each hit consumes a charge though. The cooldown sucks though as you said.  Having seen how our dps has deteriorated at 70 I can't imagine a raid a guild would bring more than 1 hunter to though.

The 'each hit consumes' thing is what I wasn't sure on, if it was each-hit or just the first.  Thanks!  I imagine it works the same for volley.

I need to get into more groups, but my DPS seems fine.  It's not bursty AT ALL is the biggest complaint.  That and I keep seeing L70 hunters running around in GM gear and DS bits like that shit's any good at all.  Plus, it seems like hunters itemization was done BEFORE they changed all our mechanics around.   When a green Level 62 soloable quest-item (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27751) is better than a Blue level 69 dungeon quest item (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29329)  something's goofy. (And yet all the hunters I see wear the blue, proving they don't know how to work the new stats.)

I've been trying everything I can think of to up my dps, with 1900+ buffed atk and a 66.3 dps gun and I can't get it above 400 except for lucky bursts on even level or +1 mobs. I've been trying various shot cycles like arcane, steady, steady, arcane, multi, steady arcane and still can't get any kind of dps close to my old 60 aimed/multi dps which used to top 550 buffed. As to the quill though, wouldnt it up the crit chance a lot more with 54 agi vs 21 on the pike? I'm not sure if that 1.x to crit would be better than 7 atk myself. I'm using a http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28315 and http://www.wowhead.com/?item=22816 atm. I have a http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28263 in the bank no one wanted last mech run I suspect might be better than my current axe with a 15 agi enchant.

Does anyone know how much agi it takes for 1% crit at 70?

You don't mix-in anything at all.  We've gone from hitting two buttons in combat to just one, steady shot, and it's pretty damn boring. It is, however, steady even dps.

  Unless you have a VERY slow weapon, you'll have just enough time to work-in a steady shot between autoshots once you take in the global cooldown.  Try and fire anything else and you're missing an autoshot and screwing yourself. Maybe toss a serpent or scorpid (now that it sticks on bosses)  if you feel like missing a steady, but that's it.  That Arcane shot costs you 207 mana vs steady's 99 and it does less damage and scales worse with RAP. 

(For example, my steady at 1502 unbuffed rap does 600, Arcane does 573.  With AOtH and TS putting me at 1810 that's 635 for Arcane and 693 for SS. +268 RAP = 62 damn for AS but 93 dam for SS)

All our other shots seem relegated to PvP now, but even then all I see is "omg AS sux" and "omg Arcane shot sux" because the folks there are focusing purely on crit, which kills their RAP.   I just read one hunter bitching that he hasn't replaced his HWL gear at 70 because there's no crit.  His RAP at 70 can't be all that great, playing with CT profiles he's got about 1200rap w/o self buffs. Yech.

Crit has always been a strong PvP stat for hunters, but Blizz doesn't seem to want to put the same amt of crit out there at 70 that was there at 60. At 70 each point of agi gives you .025% crit, meaning you need 40 agi for each crit %.  Considering how expensive Agility is in the item budgets vs straight AP, you're giving up a LOT of RAP for that 40 agi.

Then again I'm primarily PvE so I'm not too worried about losing the stat because Crit draws too much aggro in PvE anyway. (particularly when coupled with warrior issues)   Steady, measured DPS and minor CC is where hunters are strongest right now.

I haven't a clue about the PvP gripes, because I haven't done any since hitting 70. 


If you equip the quill instead of the pike you get (as MM spec): +30 Health, -300 mana, +.85% crit -7ap and -18 rap.  The 300 mana and 18 rap for that .85% crit just don't do it for me. Every 20 RAP is +6 dam to every single steady shot. With crit rates so low (mines ~14%) and costing so much in other stats to raise, I'd rather focus on the extra damage over time than the burst that happens every-so-often. 

Oh for shadow labs pain try a group with 2 level 70 mages. They are basically useless for the entire fight as the second they get mind controlled all their mana is blown on the most pointless mana intensive crap. Their DPS was lower in the fight than me and I am a prot speced warrior.

That boss fight and a few others I have seen are very group composition dependent. With the right group they are totally trivial but stack the wrong stuff and it gets WAY tougher.

For that crazy group mind control people you do NOT want all your DPS to be mana users hell the fewer mana users there the better.

It requires nearly ninja-like timing to stop anything you'd really like to stop in most boss fights. I've found it really useful for soloing since it bounces nearly any kind of debuff back at the caster.

Agree about the composition of groups in instances.  I'll do Underbog or Mana Tombs or Crypts once and blow through it in <2 hours with no deaths, and then do it with a (differently composed) group three levels higher that wipes five times.  Its gotten to the point now where I ask if the group has a mage or an imp. sap rogue before I'll even PUG (there is nothing sadder in this world than a rogue trying to instance w/o imp. sap).  If it doesn't have one of the two, I'm out.

I've done Mana-Tombs and Underbog many times with no CC at all, and it SUCKS. The Mana-Tombs has the most irritating trash I've ever seen in a 5-man, even over the Crypts. It's doable though, you just gotta have spot-on healing and concentrated DPS.

I've done this fight a lot and it seems to go smoother once a couple of ppl are dead. :)

It was really helpful on the final boss in the Ring of Blood in Nagrand. He's a big ogre shammy and occasionally does a slow casting lightning bolt. 25 rage for sending a 2k+ bolt back at him? Yes please. Unfortunately it seems a lot of boss spells can't be reflected back.

So how much defense is enough?

Right now I walk around with about 470 Def - tending toward putting on more def gear than STA gear for trash and easy bosses.  To my knoweldge, I never get criticaled.

Any suggestions on numbers here?

490 is the "don't get crit by lv73 bosses" cut-off, iirc.


-- Z.

Thanks for that info - Cheers.

Apparently warriors are getting a significant buff in the next patch (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html) while droods are getting beat with the nerf stick.

Will be interesting to see just how useful Thunderclap is for multi-tanking.. unlike consecrate, it only affects 4 targets and is mitigated by armor (not to mention the 20 rage cost), but it does pretty respectable threat now.


-- Z.

Thanks for that - looking at the notes - nice changes for warriors - looking at the changes for druid - it is not quite clear to me the effect:

"Dire Bear Form" now grants 25% increased stamina instead of 25% increased health. In addition, the armor bonus has been reduced from 450% to 400%.

Does this mean an increase or decrease to the druid hit point pool in bear form?

 A decrease, but not a big one.   They should still wind up with the same +hp from stamina but their base health and any +hp items/ spells won't be included in that 25% increase anymore. 

Ed: Ow, fuck shadow priests took it in the PvE ass.

it was expected. the problem of VE being crazytown with dps scaling isn't going to go away though.

As a 68 druid, this is exactly the reason why when I resubscribed from BC I went balance- I saw this coming a mile away.  I'd do "who" surveys on the 1-20 population and find triple the number of druids from before.  Although I must confess I thought it would be at least two patches before this happened.

What ?

Apparently UB was a chance-per-hit rather than a proc-per-minute talent.  Explains why the time I fucked with daggers in my early 30s I had a shitton of rage.

No, I get that, I just don't get the rationale behind the change.

It's to make rage generation with 2h weapons easier. Especially for 2h fury.

What concerns me is Blizzard's changes always seem to run up against the law of unintended consequences. I truly fear for DW fury warriors at this point. Things are looking up for arms, however. Hopefully, this will make life easier for arms or fury tanks in 5 mans.

Time will tell.

Um, you don't say.

I get that too.  I'm still waiting for someone to explain the rationale behind it.

2Handers - More Damage, Slower Rage.  It's a tradeoff, right ?  Except not anymore, now you can have cake AND eat it !  Awesome.

Like Shields.  Less Rage, More Defense.  And some extra abilities.  Another Tradeoff.  Except now...Shit, it's still the same.

Yayyyy, I may not suck at Multi-target aggro anymore! Thunderclap is going to rapidly become my favorite rage dump after Shield Slam.

Also, hahahah, Blizz again puts a stick in the eye of the Pre-BC raiders:

• The threat generated from the spell effect on "Thunderfury" has been substantially reduced.

edit agian: I saw the druid/shadow priest nerfs/etc. and went to FoH for some personal amusement and saw this post:


Jesus, serious business.

Except the problem is that their damage is a direct result of how much rage they have. Two handed fury warriors blow ass because their rage generation blows. Two handed fury warriors right now are the king of damage, although it's not as extreme as it was before 2.0. When agro isn't a huge limiter, the 2h fury warrior in our guild still tops the charts, and that's before the buff they will get in 2.0.10. 2h furry warriors are...nowhere to be seen.

Not really related to warriors, but I thought I'd toss it in here. Apparently there are some pretty severe Paladin nerfs to paladin tankability on the test server that have the Pally board going apshit. My personal favorite being the 15% damage reduction during after being bubbled that has people saying if it goes live they're going to run around grief-bubbling people to get it changed.

Seriously, the class doesn't need a nerf... at all.

Can we redraft that so there's a difference between a two handed weapon and a warrior that uses a weapon in both hands ?  You didn't make much sense for me beyond the first line.  Also, the patch being 2.0 confused me even more.  At least you didn't talk about the weapon speed being 2.0 as well.


Furry warriors.  You mean Tauren ?

I hear tell that human female warriors don't shave...

Genius.

Pretty bummed about the pally changes.

Also, Avenging Wrath now shares its cooldown with Devine shield. Also, If a priest uses Mass Dispel it will automatically target a buff effect that provides immunity to damage first. Meh I am not happy.

Well that depends.  As horde we are used to putting up with paladins in pvp - so no big deal either way... BUT alliance has never had to fight paladins before.  When the gaming demographic introduces pallies on the horde side in force for pvp - the wail on the alliance boards - I predict - will be deafening :)

Pally nerfs are coming.  And they will be based on the games strongest lobby group - alliance - affecting both tanking (and healing) for paladins.  I am not arguing this is justified - just that it will likely come given the gaming dynamic.  Druid tanking has received a small nerf, and warriors just received a nice buff - I am thinking paladins will get a series of small nerfs as well - but not for awhile.

I just really don't get that though. I don't disagree, but paladins were a complete shit class to until a couple months ago, they're barely viable as it is, and these nerfs completely fucking destroy the class for PvP and a lot of PvE. Seriously. Meanwhile both sides have been screaming all over the boards about warlocks and hunters, both of which are beyond any possible argument overpowered in every sense and every facet of the game. But nothing is ever done about them. Warlocks in particular need to get monkeyfucked endlessly - especially if they're balancing shit off of Arena PvP, which is what they seem to be doing.

Nobody's yelling about hunters anymore.  As predicted, lack of +crit gear at 70, +crit scaling as well as the reduced amt of Agi on items fixed them nicely.

Locks, however...

Nobody is screaming about hunters anymore.  For a dps class, hunters are spectacularly underpowered now.

/AGREED. Now that my Hunter is level 69, I am just about at the same level of RAP and dps that I was at at level 60. Of course, I am a Survival Hunter who was completely invested in Agility. I'm now in love with all things "of the Bandit". I have 9k hp and around 1285 RAP. I figure at level 70, I might actually start heading into the area where I feel like I am doing more damage and kicking more ass than I was 10 levels ago.

I will say this though: Steady Shot and Pet Execute (Kill Command) help my dps quite a bit. And my druid girlfriend thinks I kill things a hell of a lot faster than she does. But, she's tree specced, so that's kind of a given.

Hunters who use anything other than steady shot make me cry, because they obviously have MUCH slower bows than my poor 2.8s bow or twitch reflexes from hell.

 My entire life is Autoshot - Steady Shot - Autoshot - Steady Shot - Autoshot - Steady Shot - Autoshot - Steady Shot - Autoshot - Steady Shot

The Warlock question is the greatest mystery in the game to me.  During the course of the game, almost EVERY OTHER CLASS has had a short period of overpoweredness.  This would be followed, 1-2 patches after, by huge nerfs.  The pattern holds for every single class EXCEPT warlocks.  Their lack of nerfage defies the entire course the game has taken in every other way.  I can only surmise that Bliz's CEO's wife/girlfriend is a warlock and he gets a blowjob for every new buff they get. 

So he gets buffed when they get buffed?

bum-bum-bum-ching!

Locks were gimped for a looooooooooong time before they got buffed if yall remember correctly. There was a massive exodus from the class once people hit 60 after release in my guild and raiding alliance. They only came back to them after the love patch came in. They could use a retool in the sense of fears and a few other things, but I'm not really that upset by their damage. I'd like to see dots not work in pvp while your target is getting feared all over creation. It just seems a little cheap to me, not to mention that's how they farm tough shit solo in pve.

Pallies, I don't know what kind of nerfs they'd need in pvp since I don't do it, but as usual I'd like to see buffs to their healing powers for raiding purposes.

The hunters in my guild do quite good dps, but they also work a hell of a lot at making it good. You might try throwing some arcane shots in there as well. You can fit it in after steady shots and before autoshots without extending any timers. The hunters in my guild also spend fortunes on consumables as well to increase their dps. Fel strength, agility, onslaught, mageblood, and more are all part of their set of normal buffs. Chugging mana pots as well to keep up with all their shots the entire fight is not out of the norm also. The result is that they can keep up with and sometimes exceed the rest of our damage dealers.

You can only squeeze in the Arcane shot with a slow weapon -- else you bump the auto-shot. And chugging pots like fucking mad to "keep up with the rest of the damage dealers" is incredible bullshit UNLESS the other damage dealers are also chugging pots.

Now, given hunters have some utility which lowers their DPS -- but still, a MM-specced hunter should be in the same ballpark as a fire-specced mage, if they're both putting the same effort into it.

Ironically, hunters might get a little damage buff as time goes on.

How's Viper at endgame? The mana regen on that should help -- it seems Blizzard's view is we're supposed to keep up the DPS after the mages keel over from lack of mana. I just don't see it happening, even with properly geared hunters.

Seriously, I don't want to burst your bubble here, but that's never going to happen in a million years unless you have a very large ballpark. Fire mages are glass cannons with no real aggro dump. Hunters are pulling masters with feign death and leather armor and auras. I know they both do DPS in raids, but putting them up near fire mages would be horribly unbalanced.

Hunters can use mail armor, not just leather...

Fire mages dump it all at once -- hunters are supposed to even out over long fights. It's not happening, is the problem. Hunters DPS is simply too low and even with Viper and int gear, our mana pools suck too much. We simply cannot do enough DPS, over the long run, to keep up with any other DPS class. We should be in the same ballpark over a long fight, and fire-specs should fucking roast us at quick ones.

Pulling masters is fucking useless. You need one fucking hunter for virtually any pull. Hunters are supposed to be high, steady DPS with versatility. I don't mind coming in third behind fire-specced mages and rogues, but we're coming in so far behind that we're not in even a very large ballpark.

Interesting points - I know we all derail - but let's take the Hunter discussion to the Hunter thread now recently appeared in the forums here.

But paladins - we can talk about them in this thread - as long as it is derogatory  :evil:

I love paladins when they are healing. Offspecs can generally kiss my ass.

Threat reduction talents, threat reduction for being at range, and a complete aggro wipe in Invisibility. I think they're fine on the threat end. As for glass cannon.. well, if they are getting hit, your tank needs to rethink a few things. Survivability is a much bigger issue for the classes that actually take the brunt of the damage - melee classes.

Yeah I always forget about invisibility because it's new and it takes 5 seconds. Still, until they fix warrior threat in the next patch, we're having a pretty tough time staying ahead of a fire mage without a decent head start on the longer fights.

2.0.6 if I remember right nerfed the spelldamage coefficents of Curse of Agony and Corruption to be worse than they were pre-TBC.  They're fixed at 93% now.

I vaguely recall there being a change to how DoTs resist chance works, to bring it in line with regular types of spells, though that may be an older change, and not as recent.  I do recall a bluename basically saying outright that yeah, DoTs were overpowered, hence the change to resist and damage coefficient and all that. 

Congrats on the upcoming patchnotes.  Warriors got love.

Warriors got a few things changed that should never have been broken in the first place. It's good, don't get me wrong, but they (Blizz) shouldn't have been screwing with this dynamic to start with.

And in a similar vein, Blizz mucking around with UW scares the bejeezus out of me. Leave. It. The. Fuck. Alone.

And furthermore (heh), what really chaps my ass is that now shamans are taking yet another windfury nerf. Well, sorta. But compared to what warlocks are like, a bit of a positive windfury bug isn't all THAT much. Man, I can't win for trying these days in WoW. Leave my fun alone! Jeezus.

A laugh from the druid perspective of these events :) (http://www.warcraftmovies.com/stream.php?id=36513)

That was quite good :)