The Warrior situation in BC

[Paelos]

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.

[Ironwood]

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

[Logain]

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.

[jpark]

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.

[Ironwood]

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.

[Driakos]

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.

[Merusk]

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.

[Furiously]

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?

[Merusk]

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.

[jpark]

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.

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.

[stark]

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).

 

[Jayce]

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?

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.

[Driakos]

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.

Does Tremor Totem work for this encounter?

[Merusk]

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.

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.

[Paelos]

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.

[SurfD]

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 )

[Ironwood]

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?

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.

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

:(

[Zephyr]

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*

[Ironwood]

Wept.

[Jayce]

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?

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.

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

:(

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)

[Ironwood]

Errrr, Not Very.

[Fabricated]

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*

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).

[kaid]

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.

[Ironwood]

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.

[Paelos]

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.

[Morat20]

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.

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?

[lamaros]

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.

[Zetor]

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.

[Merusk]

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.

[Phred]

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.

[Merusk]

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 is better than a Blue level 69 dungeon quest item  something's goofy. (And yet all the hunters I see wear the blue, proving they don't know how to work the new stats.)

[Phred]

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 is better than a Blue level 69 dungeon quest item  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?

[Merusk]

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. 

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.

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. 

[kaid]

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.

[Fabricated]

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.

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.