Last night our guild dipped it's toe back into ICC to see what it was like. Mind you, none of us had beta accounts so we really only had our experience on the PTR as preparation for this patch, and since we raid pretty solidly during the week, we really didn't have a lot of time on the PTR even.
I ended up tanking, but I would have done that by choice, as I'm not entirely happy with the general "feel" of the fury rotation anymore. I don't know if it's the ability queue system interfering with my ability to capitalize on procs, or the fact that we have so much more of our rotation linked to unstable procs than before, but one way or the other, I've found that even when the RNG swung my way and the numbers were good, those "good feeling" rotations didn't last more than one or two stretches. It's a strange combination of having a very tight rotation (BT every 3 seconds, means one button press in between, which is supposed to be one of Raging Blow, Instant Slam (both procs, and uncertain) or WW for multi-target situations, and hit Heroic Strike or Cleave when you have 50 rage or more -- yet another proc) along with having so many parts of that tight rotation that can't be counted on to be available. On the PTR I ran once through Heroic UK and literally only used Raging Blow about 3 total times. Not because I didn't want to, but because I never enraged. Admittedly, I could have used Berserker Rage or Death Wish to patch over some of that, but I wanted to see what the rotation felt like without having to resort to using cooldowns. I would go into combat, hit BloodThirst, and by the time I got another button to press (usually Bloodthirst again) most of the pull was dead. I lost count of the number of times I finally enraged and had the opportunity to hit Raging Blow at just about the same time that everything died. I normally am a huge fan of warriors sundering just to help, and I've made MANY posts and comments to that effect, and suddenly I find that I don't want to sunder any more. It doesn't help as much as it used to, and more importantly, I don't have the gaps in the basic rotation to slot it in any longer.
Tanking, on the other hand, was great. I did not find it to be tougher than it was Monday, just slightly different. I definitely had to go into it with an open mind, but once I was comfortable, it was really very much the same as it had been.
If I had any complaints at all about tanking, it was that I occasionally felt like I was made of tissue paper, but I found myself wondering if this was a bug or something. I would go for long stretches of time and be perfectly fine, and then all of a sudden, I'm dead with no warning at all. I went back through my combat logs and I only see evenly spaced hits coming in ranging in the 6-8k damage and not even too frequently, so since I'm reasonably sure I was being healed at the time, I really can't say what happened. I don't see any huge spikes, nothing.
But so much of that kind of thing will happen, we encountered at least 3 bugs just getting up to halfway through the blood quarter that we're glad we only decided to bring a 10 man group to raid with. As an example, during the Gunship battle, one of the Alliance sailors (that should have been dead) apparently went invisible and came onto Deathbringer's Rise with us. All through combat it was attacking some of our ranged dps, and we couldn't figure out where it was coming from. It also kept putting us back into combat after we wiped making it impossible for us to rez or even take the transport to the rise (which we can't walk to). Finally someone found the spot that the invisible sailor was in and we killed him and things went smoother.
But all in all, things went much smoother than I'd have thought. Bosses went down very quickly, which had me a little concerned. Damage numbers weren't really "higher" than usual, but our 10 man was setting speed records on every boss we downed, and half our dps were really not our "best" dps. No one was over 11k, including our lead Fury warrior who usually sits pretty comfortably at 18-20k sustained average with the ICC buff.
If you're worried about the 4.0 patch and it's effects on the game until December, let me caution you to wait. They're going to fix all these strange inconsistencies, because the last thing Blizzard wants to do is tick off everyone who plays one particular class and lose that richness of uniqueness that makes the game fun.
I can understand if Fury warriors are having a tough time right now, I am too. They've already announced that they're buffing our numbers, but for me it's more of a feel issue. I'm just not happy with my basic rotation yet, and until I can get comfortable there, I don't know that having bigger numbers will help as much as they might think. I know when I was dpsing I was seeing melee damage at 30%-38% of my overall damage, and that just hurts my feelings. At that point it almost feels like I shouldn't bother even hitting buttons, since just standing in place does almost as much damage as trying to accomplish something. But, this is now common knowledge, and they're already fixing coefficients and adding to baseline damage of abilities and doing everything they can to make this right for us and ret pallies and kitties. I don't know if rogues are suffering at all, and I know that DK's are still seeing massive numbers, so those all seem ok.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to welcome little Perppy to my 80 club. In addition to my two other plate wearing alter-egos, I now have a fun loving little rogue of my own to play with.
Of course, she literally just hit 80 on Monday, so this may be the perfect opportunity for me to take some time and find out how to play a rogue post 4.0.1, since I won't have the pre-patch misconceptions clouding my judgement.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Some Patch 4.0.1 Warrior notes for PvE
Hello. I spent some time testing on the PTR and also researching through information on EJ and others, and here is basically what I've gleaned about how Fury and Protection will work for secondary stats.
Fury priorities in order:
Hit Softcap (still 5%), Expertise Softcap (26)
Fuzzy area (Hit to a "reasonable" level, not sure what that is, then Strength)
Strength, and Mastery
Crit
Haste
Basically, what most people are saying is a 'good' idea is:
(1) make sure you're wearing plate, wearing only plate adds 5% to all stats.
(2) reforge as much haste as you can to hit rating, at least enough to get a "comfortable level of rage income" whatever that means. If you lack expertise rating, use some of this budget to get to soft cap.
(3) Gem everything you have for Strength, but go ahead and match sockets, i.e. use Strength/Crit to match yellow sockets, or Strength/Hit to match blue sockets.
(4) enchants should stay about like they are, but if you have enchants that add hit/expertise, etc. and you don't need the rating, and there's a better option, get that.
(5) I haven't been able to find any indication of whether mastery is desirable enough to forego Strength or Hit for, but since the only way to get mastery right now is by reforging, and people seem to be agreeing that we need a lot of hit rating, I'm guessing that at 80 we're not supposed to spend a lot of time worried about mastery rating. We may investigate this some and see if we can get a better idea how to include this.
Protection priorities in order:
Hit rating to soft cap (8%), expertise rating (as much as you can get, hopefully softcapped)
Stamina
Strength
Parry/Dodge (basically the same, but Parry has a talent that edges it out if you take it)
More Expertise until hard cap
Mastery (people are saying that mastery is about 2/3 the value of other mitigation types right now, so this is pretty much last for us until they change their minds)
So the 'basic idea' at this point (from what I've seen and read) is to
(1) reforge to hit expertise and hit caps
(2) any additional reforging that you feel you want to do either put into block rating (I think this is still available) or dodge or parry, and probably parry will be the go-to stat for a while here.
(3) gem for stamina. It "may" still be advisable to look at socket bonuses, but stamina will cause your vengeance to scale, and your gear should have a lot more dodge/parry than before. If you do try to get socket bonuses, use the standard stamina/hit, stamina/expertise, stamina/dodge, and stamina/parry gems, unless you feel you need some crit rating or something.
(4) otherwise we're pretty much the same as before.
I'll apologize in advance to any Arms warriors we have, as I haven't really spent a lot of time looking into your new designs. I will try to do that at some point, but from what I've heard, while Arms is "closer" to being viable in PvE content, it's still behind Fury by enough that most people aren't really looking at it seriously yet.
Fury priorities in order:
Hit Softcap (still 5%), Expertise Softcap (26)
Fuzzy area (Hit to a "reasonable" level, not sure what that is, then Strength)
Strength, and Mastery
Crit
Haste
Basically, what most people are saying is a 'good' idea is:
(1) make sure you're wearing plate, wearing only plate adds 5% to all stats.
(2) reforge as much haste as you can to hit rating, at least enough to get a "comfortable level of rage income" whatever that means. If you lack expertise rating, use some of this budget to get to soft cap.
(3) Gem everything you have for Strength, but go ahead and match sockets, i.e. use Strength/Crit to match yellow sockets, or Strength/Hit to match blue sockets.
(4) enchants should stay about like they are, but if you have enchants that add hit/expertise, etc. and you don't need the rating, and there's a better option, get that.
(5) I haven't been able to find any indication of whether mastery is desirable enough to forego Strength or Hit for, but since the only way to get mastery right now is by reforging, and people seem to be agreeing that we need a lot of hit rating, I'm guessing that at 80 we're not supposed to spend a lot of time worried about mastery rating. We may investigate this some and see if we can get a better idea how to include this.
Protection priorities in order:
Hit rating to soft cap (8%), expertise rating (as much as you can get, hopefully softcapped)
Stamina
Strength
Parry/Dodge (basically the same, but Parry has a talent that edges it out if you take it)
More Expertise until hard cap
Mastery (people are saying that mastery is about 2/3 the value of other mitigation types right now, so this is pretty much last for us until they change their minds)
So the 'basic idea' at this point (from what I've seen and read) is to
(1) reforge to hit expertise and hit caps
(2) any additional reforging that you feel you want to do either put into block rating (I think this is still available) or dodge or parry, and probably parry will be the go-to stat for a while here.
(3) gem for stamina. It "may" still be advisable to look at socket bonuses, but stamina will cause your vengeance to scale, and your gear should have a lot more dodge/parry than before. If you do try to get socket bonuses, use the standard stamina/hit, stamina/expertise, stamina/dodge, and stamina/parry gems, unless you feel you need some crit rating or something.
(4) otherwise we're pretty much the same as before.
I'll apologize in advance to any Arms warriors we have, as I haven't really spent a lot of time looking into your new designs. I will try to do that at some point, but from what I've heard, while Arms is "closer" to being viable in PvE content, it's still behind Fury by enough that most people aren't really looking at it seriously yet.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Some Pre-Cataclysm Warrior Tank Specs (Guesses, but well educated ones)
Last night I had a guild mate ask me for some advice on speccing out his warrior tank after patch 4.0.1 hits and it started me thinking that perhaps it would be easier to put my thoughts here so anyone that wanted could read them too.
To begin with, here are a couple links to "mostly" current PTR quality talent trees:
Wowhead
Mmo-Champion
Personally, I like the wowhead calculator better as it also lists Mastery etc. in the beginning exactly as it will appear in game.
Now to the trees. I want to point out some specific talents in the protection tree, some good some bad, but all noteworthy.
Must Haves:
Don't Takes:
Soak Tank - High Survivability: Level 80 (2/3/31) Level 85 (5/3/33)
Additions here include:
Additions here include:
Additions here include:
To begin with, here are a couple links to "mostly" current PTR quality talent trees:
Wowhead
Mmo-Champion
Personally, I like the wowhead calculator better as it also lists Mastery etc. in the beginning exactly as it will appear in game.
Now to the trees. I want to point out some specific talents in the protection tree, some good some bad, but all noteworthy.
Must Haves:
- Toughness (Tier 1 3/3) may not be exciting, but it's a must. Tanking in Cataclysm is looking hard enough without turning down free armor rating.
- Gag Order (Tier 2 2/2) hasn't really changed much, apart from the reduction in the Heroic Throw CD (an amazing change), but it's still 100% necessary. Control is the name of the game, and we don't have any other way to control casters. If it makes you feel better, pretend it's Death Grip for Warriors.
- Last Stand (Tier 3 1/1) is an oldy, but you'll need every cd you can muster, and this is still nothing that can be skipped.
- Bastion of Defense (Tier 3 2/2) is a new talent, and a Cataclysmically original must-have. This talent takes the place of Improved Defensive Stance, but with some differences. Among other things, this talent now eliminates the need to worry about becoming defense capped (which is good, since defense is gone). The less exciting changes here are that it no longer reduces damage taken by 6%, and the enrage chance has been reduced to 20%. Don't worry too much, though, they've added a new Vengeance mechanic that should be picking up where this enrage effect dies off.
- Warbringer (Tier 3 1/1) in WotLK was a decent talent and very useful, but in Cataclysm you're going to need the ability to react and stay mobile more than ever. They've still left the restrictions on removing the movement impairments to only with Intervene, but I can see this being something no warrior tank will be functioning well without since our AoE threat mechanics have been tuned down significantly.
- Improved Revenge (Tier 4 2/2) has been moved up in the tree, but still does the same thing. Threat has been an issue, and this is one threat talent you're going to want no matter what, even though in the past it has been debatable. This will be a mandatory talent for the same reason glyph of Cleave is going to become a staple on tanks in Cataclysm.
- Devastate (Tier 4 1/1) just like before you'll want this key ability. With sunder stacks being less important than before, your dps will really not be interested in applying this much, so not only is it up to you, but you need the threat building action.
- Heavy Repercussions (Tier 4 2/2) snuck into the talent tree. This was an ability that was tied directly in with Shield Block back when the damage from Shield Slam came from block value. Now that they've been separated, this talent will allow you to not lose this important burst threat ability.
- Sword and Board (Tier 6 3/3) will still be mandatory.
- Shockwave (Tier 7 1/1) hasn't really ever been in question, but now that Thunderclap no longer brings with it the kind of snap aggro it used to, Shockwave is the only remaining AoE ability we have to keep large groups under control. It does good damage, and generates good threat. In Cataclysm it's a must-have.
Don't Takes:
- Safeguard (Tier 6 2/2) probably looks about the same to you, and it is. Intervene is definitely a useful ability, but on a raid tank if you're having to intervene people, things are already out of control, and perhaps your two talent points should have been spent getting something to keep things under control in the first place. Although this talent sounds like it could have so many uses, the fact that it requires distance (although I heard they are removing a minimum distance from cataclysm for intervene, so that may change things) and the fact that there is a taunt associated with it kind of stuffs this into the category of something you'll "use occasionally during tank-swapping fights where you don't have to stand right on top of each other" and right off the top of my head, I can't think of even one from previous content that fit this bill. Not to mention that when you intervene someone, you also take the next two hits from that mob, and the damage reduction barely lasts longer than the time you're getting yourself hit from them. Not terribly worthwhile in my opinion. Possibly more useful in PvP.
Soak Tank - High Survivability: Level 80 (2/3/31) Level 85 (5/3/33)
Additions here include:
- Incite 3/3 - This looks to be a very promising increase threat move for single targets.
- Shield Mastery 2/2 - big time important, decreased cd's on all your great defensive cd's
- Vigilance 1/1 - Typically Soak Tanks aren't the ones that are being targeted, so their rage generation suffers. With the change to vigilance, this is now the perfect tool for Soak Tanks and Add tanks.
- Hold the Line 2/2 - This one can probably be traded out if you don't feel it's getting enough use. It requires being attacked and if you're not parrying anything in your encounters, it may be best to swap these for Blood and Thunder to help the MT with sustaining threat on spawns.
- Field Dressing 2/2 and Blood Craze 3/3 from the other two trees are pretty desirable, at least until you know for sure whether your healers are having difficulties or not. If it turns out that they're not, you should see if you can swap these for talents like Cruelty or War Academy.
Additions here include:
- Thunderstruck 2/2 and Blood and Thunder 2/2, and eventually Deep Wounds 3/3 again all intended to make Pugging at least a little less painful, along with Blitz and a couple points in Shield Mastery to help with rage generation and pull control.
Additions here include:
- Cruelty 2/2, War Academy 3/3 for added threat
- Shield Mastery 3/3 for extra rage generation
- Hold the Line 2/2 since you'll be parrying often
- Impending Victory, since you'll actually be in a position to use this more often than the other tanks (except the Soak Tank, who also has it) and the combination with War Academy is just extra nice.
Friday, September 17, 2010
My Favorite Upcoming Cataclysm Talent Tree and Why
A while back there was a blue post somewhere that asked us to tell them which talent tree we think they did the best job on and why.
At the time I was still trying to assimilate the changes to us warriors and hadn't really had enough time to poke around to find out more, but now that I have I wanted to share my opinions on this.
In my opinion the best upcoming talent tree re-design is the paladin trees. Now, in terms of feel of filling it out, it's approximately the same as the others, but what really distinguishes it is their better overall design when compared to current talent trees.
Let's look at a couple comparisons to understand why I say this. Let's look at the holy tree now and then.
Right now the "pinnacle" of the holy tree is beacon of light. Beacon is something that no holy paladin can really be effective without, so this makes sense. Currently you can't learn beacon of light as a holy paladin until you hit level 60, but once you do, you've got a wealth of options as to how to proceed from there.
In Cataclysm, you'll be able to get beacon of light at level 39. Admittedly, healing will be working differently, but this advancement has the effect of making you "FEEL" OP whether you are or not. I mean, you get to have the current "pinnacle" talent at 39. In fact, going one step beyond that, the next several tiers of the tree just feel like they're improving on that whole tree. A talent to improve how well beacon works (Tower of Radiance) an extra heal buff (Conviction) and a completely new "pinnacle" for the talent tree, the AoE heal that paladins are still talking about (Light of Dawn).
In fact, if you look at the other trees, you'll see this kind of careful redesign at work there too. Hammer of Justice is now an 11 point talent. You have so many new chewy things in the protection tree above Hammer of Justice it just makes it feel like it's shiny and new. The one criticism I have with the upcoming protection tree? Ardent Defender being made the new "pinnacle" talent. However, there were some critical changes to how Ardent Defender works that might make it better, but it's a tough call right now. Personally (since warriors have 0 automatic cooldowns) I'm fine with other tank classes also having to hit a button instead of relying on a strange rng or hidden cd to maybe save them from death, but I don't know how the paladin community feels about it. Regardless, I feel like this ultimate talent spot could have gone to something more, I don't know, "epic" I guess.
The ret tree also is seeing some of this redesign love, with the former pinnacle talent "Divine Storm" moving down to it's 11 point resting spot, and the new Zealotry replacing it. The thing I like about Zealotry is that it plays directly on the new Holy Power mechanic, just like the 31 point talent in Holy does (although I notice the protection tree ultimate talent does not). Even if Zealotry is not as epic as it could be, this still makes the talent itself seem shiny and new and gives this air of Blizzard trying to help players find direction with this new system they've designed.
I compare all of this to trees that I feel like were kind of "phoned in" by the developers more than the paladin's. In each of the remaining talent trees, I think the ones that look the best were the ones where the devs decided that the current "pinnacle" talent should become the level 10 baseline ability for that tree, which forced them to redesign the top tiers of that spec.
Unfortunately, the others are suffering. let's look at our talents (as examples, not as QQing). Currently, we can get to shockwave in protection, TG in fury, or bladestorm in arms at level 60. These are the "pinnacles" in our classes as it stands, and outlands leveling is made so much more enjoyable since we have these. (tanking in outlands or early Northrend without shockwave? It makes those initial seconds in a pull that much more crazy and difficult to control.) How does that compare to the cataclysm version of these same trees? Well, the 31 point talents aren't available until level 71. That's right, level 71, a full 11 levels after they're available now.
I think the general comparison for how the trees feel is somewhat stinted just because of that. Instead of reworking the trees to make something that fits everything right, we're stuck with the same talent tree, but postponed 11 levels, making them more expensive and less exciting all at the same time.
Suppose we were going to make something for, say, Fury that mirrored how the paladin trees were overhauled. Well, for starters, TG and SMF would both be 11 point talents. No protection or arms spec would be able to spec into them, so they're safe, and warriors would be able to make a decision immediately about whether they're going to be using 2 2 handers or 2 1 handers as they level up through their 40's. Of course, that would also mean they'd have to come up with some better idea for a pinnacle talent for the Fury tree, but I think they can do it if they put their minds to it.
Shockwave (and quite possibly Bladestorm), then, could be similar to beacon of light. Move it a little down from the top (even if only to the 26 point talent) and give a 2 point talent somewhere that improves upon it, and maybe a cool new epic tanking talent that still gives us the nice stun for those first few seconds of a fight when things go bad by 60-ish, but something even more epic to work up to by 71.
Anyway, that's my opinions about which talent trees I think were done right.
At the time I was still trying to assimilate the changes to us warriors and hadn't really had enough time to poke around to find out more, but now that I have I wanted to share my opinions on this.
In my opinion the best upcoming talent tree re-design is the paladin trees. Now, in terms of feel of filling it out, it's approximately the same as the others, but what really distinguishes it is their better overall design when compared to current talent trees.
Let's look at a couple comparisons to understand why I say this. Let's look at the holy tree now and then.
Right now the "pinnacle" of the holy tree is beacon of light. Beacon is something that no holy paladin can really be effective without, so this makes sense. Currently you can't learn beacon of light as a holy paladin until you hit level 60, but once you do, you've got a wealth of options as to how to proceed from there.
In Cataclysm, you'll be able to get beacon of light at level 39. Admittedly, healing will be working differently, but this advancement has the effect of making you "FEEL" OP whether you are or not. I mean, you get to have the current "pinnacle" talent at 39. In fact, going one step beyond that, the next several tiers of the tree just feel like they're improving on that whole tree. A talent to improve how well beacon works (Tower of Radiance) an extra heal buff (Conviction) and a completely new "pinnacle" for the talent tree, the AoE heal that paladins are still talking about (Light of Dawn).
In fact, if you look at the other trees, you'll see this kind of careful redesign at work there too. Hammer of Justice is now an 11 point talent. You have so many new chewy things in the protection tree above Hammer of Justice it just makes it feel like it's shiny and new. The one criticism I have with the upcoming protection tree? Ardent Defender being made the new "pinnacle" talent. However, there were some critical changes to how Ardent Defender works that might make it better, but it's a tough call right now. Personally (since warriors have 0 automatic cooldowns) I'm fine with other tank classes also having to hit a button instead of relying on a strange rng or hidden cd to maybe save them from death, but I don't know how the paladin community feels about it. Regardless, I feel like this ultimate talent spot could have gone to something more, I don't know, "epic" I guess.
The ret tree also is seeing some of this redesign love, with the former pinnacle talent "Divine Storm" moving down to it's 11 point resting spot, and the new Zealotry replacing it. The thing I like about Zealotry is that it plays directly on the new Holy Power mechanic, just like the 31 point talent in Holy does (although I notice the protection tree ultimate talent does not). Even if Zealotry is not as epic as it could be, this still makes the talent itself seem shiny and new and gives this air of Blizzard trying to help players find direction with this new system they've designed.
I compare all of this to trees that I feel like were kind of "phoned in" by the developers more than the paladin's. In each of the remaining talent trees, I think the ones that look the best were the ones where the devs decided that the current "pinnacle" talent should become the level 10 baseline ability for that tree, which forced them to redesign the top tiers of that spec.
Unfortunately, the others are suffering. let's look at our talents (as examples, not as QQing). Currently, we can get to shockwave in protection, TG in fury, or bladestorm in arms at level 60. These are the "pinnacles" in our classes as it stands, and outlands leveling is made so much more enjoyable since we have these. (tanking in outlands or early Northrend without shockwave? It makes those initial seconds in a pull that much more crazy and difficult to control.) How does that compare to the cataclysm version of these same trees? Well, the 31 point talents aren't available until level 71. That's right, level 71, a full 11 levels after they're available now.
I think the general comparison for how the trees feel is somewhat stinted just because of that. Instead of reworking the trees to make something that fits everything right, we're stuck with the same talent tree, but postponed 11 levels, making them more expensive and less exciting all at the same time.
Suppose we were going to make something for, say, Fury that mirrored how the paladin trees were overhauled. Well, for starters, TG and SMF would both be 11 point talents. No protection or arms spec would be able to spec into them, so they're safe, and warriors would be able to make a decision immediately about whether they're going to be using 2 2 handers or 2 1 handers as they level up through their 40's. Of course, that would also mean they'd have to come up with some better idea for a pinnacle talent for the Fury tree, but I think they can do it if they put their minds to it.
Shockwave (and quite possibly Bladestorm), then, could be similar to beacon of light. Move it a little down from the top (even if only to the 26 point talent) and give a 2 point talent somewhere that improves upon it, and maybe a cool new epic tanking talent that still gives us the nice stun for those first few seconds of a fight when things go bad by 60-ish, but something even more epic to work up to by 71.
Anyway, that's my opinions about which talent trees I think were done right.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Updates from the up and coming Tank
Hello again. I just wanted to update everyone on the exploits of my up and coming "warrior main tank" on the separate realm so I didn't have the impetus to shower him in BoA gear or extra cash from my other toons.
So far things have been much easier than I remember them being the first time I did the leveling process on my warrior. For one thing, I did it the hard way the first time, but for another, adding the extra survivability really is the way to go, and with the changes to Improved Revenge, hitting shield block virtually guarantees that you will (a) have plenty of rage from shield specialization, (b) have Revenge procced for a while, and (c) kill them dead. Now, to be fair, there have been some challenges I haven't been able to overcome. For one thing, I am not able to solo group quests of 3 or more unless they're at least 2-3 levels behind me (more if they require more people). I've done pretty well with some 2 person quests, but the 5 person quest to end the Tranquillen reputation grind did not go so well at 22. I'll come back later to take it out once I hit 25, I think.
Meanwhile I've been adding to my gear by running dungeons with the LFD tool, and even at the low 20's and late 10's I've been seeing mostly insta-queues. I've already picked up some decent blue gear, and (while I don't really have a good measuring stick for this) I'm sitting on about 900 health at level 22, which seems pretty good.
I'm reminded again why I hate questing in the vanilla areas so much, though. All the constant quests to "go pick up X from some obscure location in the middle of the other continent" (even though you're barely able to ride a mount) which gets turned back in to the original quest giver to be followed by "now take Y back to the same place you just were (middle of other continent) and ask if she needs anything from here" (inevitably she does, and you just continent hop for an hour to get 3 quests done). I don't think I mind the quests so much, as the fact that the difficulty involved in so many of them is just the annoyance of getting to wherever it is you're supposed to go to do whatever. The actual task is kind of boring, and not always as lore-filled as some would try to argue.
All in all, I'm looking forward to the changes in Cataclysm to the questing system. I'm still hoping to find the time to finish Loremaster before it gets here (since 3,000 quests seem even more daunting, even if you can do 25 of them in the same time it takes you to kill a bug in Mulgore and then gloat about your exploit to someone in Brill, and then turn the quest in to some dude in Sillithus (a quest that, no doubt, came from the Hillsbrad Foothills).
So far things have been much easier than I remember them being the first time I did the leveling process on my warrior. For one thing, I did it the hard way the first time, but for another, adding the extra survivability really is the way to go, and with the changes to Improved Revenge, hitting shield block virtually guarantees that you will (a) have plenty of rage from shield specialization, (b) have Revenge procced for a while, and (c) kill them dead. Now, to be fair, there have been some challenges I haven't been able to overcome. For one thing, I am not able to solo group quests of 3 or more unless they're at least 2-3 levels behind me (more if they require more people). I've done pretty well with some 2 person quests, but the 5 person quest to end the Tranquillen reputation grind did not go so well at 22. I'll come back later to take it out once I hit 25, I think.
Meanwhile I've been adding to my gear by running dungeons with the LFD tool, and even at the low 20's and late 10's I've been seeing mostly insta-queues. I've already picked up some decent blue gear, and (while I don't really have a good measuring stick for this) I'm sitting on about 900 health at level 22, which seems pretty good.
I'm reminded again why I hate questing in the vanilla areas so much, though. All the constant quests to "go pick up X from some obscure location in the middle of the other continent" (even though you're barely able to ride a mount) which gets turned back in to the original quest giver to be followed by "now take Y back to the same place you just were (middle of other continent) and ask if she needs anything from here" (inevitably she does, and you just continent hop for an hour to get 3 quests done). I don't think I mind the quests so much, as the fact that the difficulty involved in so many of them is just the annoyance of getting to wherever it is you're supposed to go to do whatever. The actual task is kind of boring, and not always as lore-filled as some would try to argue.
All in all, I'm looking forward to the changes in Cataclysm to the questing system. I'm still hoping to find the time to finish Loremaster before it gets here (since 3,000 quests seem even more daunting, even if you can do 25 of them in the same time it takes you to kill a bug in Mulgore and then gloat about your exploit to someone in Brill, and then turn the quest in to some dude in Sillithus (a quest that, no doubt, came from the Hillsbrad Foothills).
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Thoughts on rotation for Cataclysm Fury Warriors (as of beta build 12694)
So, I noticed some subtle changes to the fury rotation recently, and I wasn't going to invest a lot of time into trying to guess the rotation for Clysm, but since the Bloodsurge design is getting a bit of a nip/tuck, I'm starting to wonder about it.
Looking at the single target rotation, we have essentially two abilities we're likely to use. Bloodthirst and Raging Blow. Now, Bloodthirst has a 3 second cooldown and no obvious limitations on its use, so that's going to be the capstone of our rotation. Since there is the 1.5 second gcd, that means no matter what else we do, BT will be every other hit (unless something comes up that makes more sense to hit instead). Raging Blow has a 6 second cooldown, so it's going to occupy space between alternating Bloodthirsts (assuming you can keep enraged "pretty much" all the time).
So, here is our rotation:
BT -> RB -> BT -> ____ -> BT -> RB -> BT -> ____ ... etc.
The blanks signify the "gaps" in our rotation that we would be filling with things like Slam if bloodsurge were procced, Sunders, Shouts, etc.
They've said that HS will be off the gcd, which means you can hit it anytime within this rotation you like provided you have the rage for it, so that will not be considered here.
In addition, since they've changed the Bloodsurge design to have a 30% chance to proc off each "hit" from either Bloodthirst or Raging Blow (HS is not included as of this build, and you also have to consider that the effect is only available once per 6 seconds), this works out to a preliminary chance of having a Slam proc (in the first 4.5 second rotation) of about 67%, and eventually it averages out to about 41% chance each subsequent open space. So this means that our Clysm rotation will essentially only have about 3 open spots in our rotation every 22.5 seconds. Some things won't affect us, as I believe that pummel is staying off the gcd as will be HS (under current designs), but this still leaves all the sunders/shouts/etc.
On the one hand, this should be fine. Each warrior will have at MOST 2 shouts they need to use (but one costs rage, and probably would only be used if the tank didn't talent for it) and sunders. So, on average, that will basically give us exactly the opportunity that we're wanting to have, with one open spot every 22.5 seconds for, I dunno, something fun?
Of course, the variation in this rotation will be availability. Raging Blow is only available to use if you are enraged. Slam is only useful if Bloodsurge has procced, otherwise casting Slam is like nailing your toes to a stop sign so the raid can play tetherball with your head -- it's a huge headache.
I think what I'm most afraid of is that this rotation is SO set in stone. There really is no wiggle room at all. Our current rotation is mostly like this, but because of the 4 second, 8 second cooldowns which don't "quite" mix with the gcd's, we end up with a lot more spots where things could go, but they're more costly. For example, our rotation now starts with a BT -> WW -> 1 second spacer -> BT
That 1 second spacer "could" be used for an emergency sunder or a procced slam, but it will also delay the next BT by 0.5 seconds, which makes you have to pause to consider whether having the extra attack etc. in that second is worth losing the 0.5 seconds from the extra gcd, especially since right after your gcd from that next BT, you're looking at a 2.5 second free space which is easily one extra ability, plus another awkward 1 second space.
Now, BRILLIANTLY, Blizzard placed the 0.5 second gcd reduction on slam as an additional proc from the T10 set, which makes slam actually fit nicely into those awkward pauses... a la:
BT -> WW -> Slam -> BT -> Slam -> (Some other Ability) -> and so forth.
But since that only procs 20% of the time that Slam is instant, the remaining pockmarked mess looks the same:
BT -> WW -> awkward 1 second pause -> BT -> Slam -> awkward 1 second pause -> and so forth.
The catch is though, those two awkward 1 second pauses there actually give us some room to fire extra stuff, or do nothing, or whatever is called for, but possibly at a slight loss to us. If Victory Rush is procced, we can throw those in and take the 0.5 second hit. If sunders are about to fall off.... If shouts are wearing out.... etc.
I think I like that we're going to be having a nice tight rotation, but if it's this tight, it may make some of the other utility we used to provide seem kind of sketchy. If we can't be enraged (at least nearly)100% of the time, it will make our rotations very difficult to keep up with, what with hovering over the Raging Blow button and watching, and having nothing else to press really if it doesn't light up.
Of course, I'm assuming that just like the post they made about ret paladins recently they're trying to make our white damage "significant" so that haste remains "more attractive for us" and perhaps that will make all this theory crafting about yellow strike rotations null and void, but that's a separate rant for another time.
For now, that's what it looks like we have to work with, and we'll have to wait and see how things go.
Incidentally, because I haven't said anything about it here yet, notice that our rotation is pretty tight, and the cost is right at 66.15 rage per 4.5 second rotation, which works out to 14.7 rage per second. Dual Wielding, with 0 haste, that will require your main hand weapon to generate 9.8 rage per second and your off hand weapon to generate 4.9 rage per second (well, minus any "additional rage sources"). This makes it seem as though a standard white melee hit with a 3.5 second timer should yield about 34.3 rage, or with a 2.0 second swing timer about 19.6 rage.
And I know that the new Battle Trance talent is very handy, but bear in mind that you're looking at 1 proc of that per 20 Bloodthirst strikes, so figure that means one free swing every 60 seconds, reducing our rage per second needs to 14.36 rage per second. Not exactly a huge change, but that's what it does.
I figure if they're going to make this rage normalization work at all, it will have to be balanced around having "some" haste, but it can't be a significant amount since we'll already have to be stacking hit rating out the wazoo to make up for the hit penalty from dual wielding, especially if white damage is meant to be "significant" in Clysm.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on a rotation come Clysm. We'll have to keep our eyes peeled and find out what else the future has in store for us.
Looking at the single target rotation, we have essentially two abilities we're likely to use. Bloodthirst and Raging Blow. Now, Bloodthirst has a 3 second cooldown and no obvious limitations on its use, so that's going to be the capstone of our rotation. Since there is the 1.5 second gcd, that means no matter what else we do, BT will be every other hit (unless something comes up that makes more sense to hit instead). Raging Blow has a 6 second cooldown, so it's going to occupy space between alternating Bloodthirsts (assuming you can keep enraged "pretty much" all the time).
So, here is our rotation:
BT -> RB -> BT -> ____ -> BT -> RB -> BT -> ____ ... etc.
The blanks signify the "gaps" in our rotation that we would be filling with things like Slam if bloodsurge were procced, Sunders, Shouts, etc.
They've said that HS will be off the gcd, which means you can hit it anytime within this rotation you like provided you have the rage for it, so that will not be considered here.
In addition, since they've changed the Bloodsurge design to have a 30% chance to proc off each "hit" from either Bloodthirst or Raging Blow (HS is not included as of this build, and you also have to consider that the effect is only available once per 6 seconds), this works out to a preliminary chance of having a Slam proc (in the first 4.5 second rotation) of about 67%, and eventually it averages out to about 41% chance each subsequent open space. So this means that our Clysm rotation will essentially only have about 3 open spots in our rotation every 22.5 seconds. Some things won't affect us, as I believe that pummel is staying off the gcd as will be HS (under current designs), but this still leaves all the sunders/shouts/etc.
On the one hand, this should be fine. Each warrior will have at MOST 2 shouts they need to use (but one costs rage, and probably would only be used if the tank didn't talent for it) and sunders. So, on average, that will basically give us exactly the opportunity that we're wanting to have, with one open spot every 22.5 seconds for, I dunno, something fun?
Of course, the variation in this rotation will be availability. Raging Blow is only available to use if you are enraged. Slam is only useful if Bloodsurge has procced, otherwise casting Slam is like nailing your toes to a stop sign so the raid can play tetherball with your head -- it's a huge headache.
I think what I'm most afraid of is that this rotation is SO set in stone. There really is no wiggle room at all. Our current rotation is mostly like this, but because of the 4 second, 8 second cooldowns which don't "quite" mix with the gcd's, we end up with a lot more spots where things could go, but they're more costly. For example, our rotation now starts with a BT -> WW -> 1 second spacer -> BT
That 1 second spacer "could" be used for an emergency sunder or a procced slam, but it will also delay the next BT by 0.5 seconds, which makes you have to pause to consider whether having the extra attack etc. in that second is worth losing the 0.5 seconds from the extra gcd, especially since right after your gcd from that next BT, you're looking at a 2.5 second free space which is easily one extra ability, plus another awkward 1 second space.
Now, BRILLIANTLY, Blizzard placed the 0.5 second gcd reduction on slam as an additional proc from the T10 set, which makes slam actually fit nicely into those awkward pauses... a la:
BT -> WW -> Slam -> BT -> Slam -> (Some other Ability) -> and so forth.
But since that only procs 20% of the time that Slam is instant, the remaining pockmarked mess looks the same:
BT -> WW -> awkward 1 second pause -> BT -> Slam -> awkward 1 second pause -> and so forth.
The catch is though, those two awkward 1 second pauses there actually give us some room to fire extra stuff, or do nothing, or whatever is called for, but possibly at a slight loss to us. If Victory Rush is procced, we can throw those in and take the 0.5 second hit. If sunders are about to fall off.... If shouts are wearing out.... etc.
I think I like that we're going to be having a nice tight rotation, but if it's this tight, it may make some of the other utility we used to provide seem kind of sketchy. If we can't be enraged (at least nearly)100% of the time, it will make our rotations very difficult to keep up with, what with hovering over the Raging Blow button and watching, and having nothing else to press really if it doesn't light up.
Of course, I'm assuming that just like the post they made about ret paladins recently they're trying to make our white damage "significant" so that haste remains "more attractive for us" and perhaps that will make all this theory crafting about yellow strike rotations null and void, but that's a separate rant for another time.
For now, that's what it looks like we have to work with, and we'll have to wait and see how things go.
Incidentally, because I haven't said anything about it here yet, notice that our rotation is pretty tight, and the cost is right at 66.15 rage per 4.5 second rotation, which works out to 14.7 rage per second. Dual Wielding, with 0 haste, that will require your main hand weapon to generate 9.8 rage per second and your off hand weapon to generate 4.9 rage per second (well, minus any "additional rage sources"). This makes it seem as though a standard white melee hit with a 3.5 second timer should yield about 34.3 rage, or with a 2.0 second swing timer about 19.6 rage.
And I know that the new Battle Trance talent is very handy, but bear in mind that you're looking at 1 proc of that per 20 Bloodthirst strikes, so figure that means one free swing every 60 seconds, reducing our rage per second needs to 14.36 rage per second. Not exactly a huge change, but that's what it does.
I figure if they're going to make this rage normalization work at all, it will have to be balanced around having "some" haste, but it can't be a significant amount since we'll already have to be stacking hit rating out the wazoo to make up for the hit penalty from dual wielding, especially if white damage is meant to be "significant" in Clysm.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on a rotation come Clysm. We'll have to keep our eyes peeled and find out what else the future has in store for us.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Glyph of Taunt for Tanks
So, I did a tiny bit of investigation today into why a tank would take the glyph of taunt even if he already had over 8% hit rating, and as it turns out, there IS actually a reason.
Since this is something that I had wrong before, and hadn't really had issues with (well, to be fair, I rarely MT anything, and when I do, I've glyphed so much for AoE threat that I only use taunt occasionally, so a 6% miss chance might not show itself easily) I thought I'd go ahead and write a quick post in case anyone was interested for future reference (assuming this won't change for Clysm, which it probably will).
The catch to this that makes it confusing for everyone is that taunt works like a SPELL. It's pretty much the only thing we have that does, so I can understand why it's confusing.
Since it's a spell, it has a 17% spell miss chance, and not an 8% melee miss chance that you're used to. For this reason, you have to use spell hit ratings to see how it works instead of melee hit ratings, and you'll find that it requires 446 hit rating to guarantee that taunt will work every time.
Now, there are mitigations, for example, if you have a boomkin or faerie fire etc. in raid, that will reduce that to 14%, or 368, and if you have a draenei (why would you, aren't you horde?) you can reduce that by another 1%, leaving you with needing 342 (barely over 341) in order to guarantee 100% landing of taunt.
That's a lot of hit rating to have to add to your gear, especially when most of the tank gear doesn't include a substantial amount of hit rating to begin with.
Now, on the other hand, if you glyph for taunt, you only need to achieve 9% (respectively 6%, 5% with raid buffs) to guarantee the taunt lands, and that's a more moderate level 237 hit rating (respectively 158, 132).
The 158 hit rating will only get you 4.82% melee hit rating, but that's not nearly as important to you anyway, since pound for pound, expertise is what you "really" want. I mean, in an ideal world, you'd want to have enough to not have to count on raid composition, so you'd want to shoot for the 237 hit rating mark (which still leaves you with only 7.23% miss chance reduction). I happen to know a tank with over 8% hit rating and also the taunt glyph, and that's really awesome, but at the same time, his expertise is lower than the recommended 26, so in that case, he's probably seeing as much of a loss of threat from dodges/parries as he would be from miss if he could trade out the hit rating he's over the 237 mark for expertise. Not that he has any problems in that area, because believe me that's NOT the case, but for all you other warriors who aren't as up on the lore, I think if you're the raid's MT, and you KNOW you have a boomkin, I'd try to adjust your hit rating slightly to about 158 hit rating mark, and funnel whatever else you have options for into expertise (while pretty much gemming/enchanting for pure stamina/mitigation) and TAKE THE GLYPH OF TAUNT. If you're NOT your raid's MT, your taunts may actually not be as vital. In fact, you may really want to have more "spread the love" glyphs, so you can keep a pack of mobs on you easily while the MT is taking the big whallops. On the other hand, you may be the tank assigned to keep adds off the clothies, and if that's the case, you'll want to have this glyph in those fights where one add can one shot a clothie in about the same time it takes your vigilance gcd to wear off so you can try a taunt again.
So, in summary:
Without glyph of taunt, you're looking at:
446 hit rating needed to guarantee a taunt is successful,
With glyph of taunt, you're looking at:
237, 158, 132 hit rating depending on your raid buffs.
And since hit is not easy to come by, you should consider that something to consider.
Since this is something that I had wrong before, and hadn't really had issues with (well, to be fair, I rarely MT anything, and when I do, I've glyphed so much for AoE threat that I only use taunt occasionally, so a 6% miss chance might not show itself easily) I thought I'd go ahead and write a quick post in case anyone was interested for future reference (assuming this won't change for Clysm, which it probably will).
The catch to this that makes it confusing for everyone is that taunt works like a SPELL. It's pretty much the only thing we have that does, so I can understand why it's confusing.
Since it's a spell, it has a 17% spell miss chance, and not an 8% melee miss chance that you're used to. For this reason, you have to use spell hit ratings to see how it works instead of melee hit ratings, and you'll find that it requires 446 hit rating to guarantee that taunt will work every time.
Now, there are mitigations, for example, if you have a boomkin or faerie fire etc. in raid, that will reduce that to 14%, or 368, and if you have a draenei (why would you, aren't you horde?) you can reduce that by another 1%, leaving you with needing 342 (barely over 341) in order to guarantee 100% landing of taunt.
That's a lot of hit rating to have to add to your gear, especially when most of the tank gear doesn't include a substantial amount of hit rating to begin with.
Now, on the other hand, if you glyph for taunt, you only need to achieve 9% (respectively 6%, 5% with raid buffs) to guarantee the taunt lands, and that's a more moderate level 237 hit rating (respectively 158, 132).
The 158 hit rating will only get you 4.82% melee hit rating, but that's not nearly as important to you anyway, since pound for pound, expertise is what you "really" want. I mean, in an ideal world, you'd want to have enough to not have to count on raid composition, so you'd want to shoot for the 237 hit rating mark (which still leaves you with only 7.23% miss chance reduction). I happen to know a tank with over 8% hit rating and also the taunt glyph, and that's really awesome, but at the same time, his expertise is lower than the recommended 26, so in that case, he's probably seeing as much of a loss of threat from dodges/parries as he would be from miss if he could trade out the hit rating he's over the 237 mark for expertise. Not that he has any problems in that area, because believe me that's NOT the case, but for all you other warriors who aren't as up on the lore, I think if you're the raid's MT, and you KNOW you have a boomkin, I'd try to adjust your hit rating slightly to about 158 hit rating mark, and funnel whatever else you have options for into expertise (while pretty much gemming/enchanting for pure stamina/mitigation) and TAKE THE GLYPH OF TAUNT. If you're NOT your raid's MT, your taunts may actually not be as vital. In fact, you may really want to have more "spread the love" glyphs, so you can keep a pack of mobs on you easily while the MT is taking the big whallops. On the other hand, you may be the tank assigned to keep adds off the clothies, and if that's the case, you'll want to have this glyph in those fights where one add can one shot a clothie in about the same time it takes your vigilance gcd to wear off so you can try a taunt again.
So, in summary:
Without glyph of taunt, you're looking at:
446 hit rating needed to guarantee a taunt is successful,
With glyph of taunt, you're looking at:
237, 158, 132 hit rating depending on your raid buffs.
And since hit is not easy to come by, you should consider that something to consider.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Some prospective Clysm Warrior Talent Builds as of 7/30/2010 (build 12644)
Ok, this is mostly a mental excercise, as I know full well this will not hit live as is, but every time they adjust this, I like to go through and work on builds I hope (or might like) to have on myself once I hit max level.
I'll start with the one that just gets juicier the more they have played with it.
Protection Self Healing Talent Build (4/3/34) (main tank, probably)
I debated a lot about how to spend these talent points, but here's what I decided. Since Heroic Strike may or may not be something I hit as often come cataclysm when I tank, I just don't know if the new Incite is worth even considering for Protection (in case you can't see the link to MMO Champs, the text reads: "Increases the critical strike chance of your Heroic Strike by 5/10/15%, and your Heroic Strike critical strikes have a 33/66/100% chance to make you next Heroic Strike also a critical strike. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds."). However, some moves in other trees have made some tasty decisions.
Arms: For example, I now have taken 2/2 in both Field Dressing and Blitz in the Arms tree, but since I'm still dubious about the utility of HS now that the mechanic has changed (although they still say it will be off the gcd) I don't feel taking even one point of War Academy is justified, and there is no "vital" talent on Tier 2 in Arms, so we'll turn instead to Fury. Although, I reserve my right to change my opinion once I can actually try some of this.
Fury: With the loss of AttT, I can only assume they're going to be tweaking Attack Power some other way, and once again, I am faced with a choice of either improving some damage from a couple talents or taking Blood Craze. Now, I don't know about you, but I can't think of anything better for a tank than if he does take damage, there is a chance he could auto heal. Add to that the improvement from Field Dressing in the Arms Tree and you're looking at a chance to recover 10% of your health automatically every so often. With health pools being larger in Clysm (some tanks already have nearly 80k health raid buffed) that could be a pretty sizeable hot. There are some other tasty threat talents to be found here, but I think I'd rather go back and get more from the Protection tree.
Protection: Ok, no lie, pretty much there are only two talents I'm not thinking of taking here. Incite, as written now, seems like it may not have as much all around utility. It may prove me wrong once I test, but right now I'm "--eh". The other one is Safeguard. IMO, not really that great of a talent. I do use intervene in battles, but I work pretty hard to make sure it's not necessary 90% of the time, so this falls into the "probably a PvP oriented talent" area. As an off tank, this could be used by the OT to give a mini-shield wall to the MT occasionally, except that if you target the MT it will also taunt the boss off them. It could be done, but it would requre that both of you were ready at exactly the right time, and even vent lags by a couple seconds. Everything else is pretty nice, I like the shield block mechanic now, and I'm working to put as much into my shield block as I can, so talents like Hold the Line, Shield Specialization, Shield Mastery, and the old Damage Shield all make shield blocking fun. Now, if it turns out that I will need more threat from this build, I would be most likely to take a point out of Shield Specialization and two points from Hold the Line and invest those three into Incite. Again, I'll just have to wait and see. The only other talent I'm not 100% certain about it's necessity is Impending Victory. Mostly, I'm taking this because of all the constant posts warning us that healers mana will be an issue again, and damage will be bad, etc. etc. etc. This is the reason I took Blood Craze and Field Dressing. The combination of these talents will give me some constant self healing to help the healers out as I go, and will also give me a situational heal I can use towards the end of a battle once mana is becoming scarce.
Furious Stance Dance TG build (9/32/0)
There is a part of me that wants badly to invest 3 points into Incite with this build, and I may go back (especially if the glyph of Heroic Strike stays with the same wording it has now). But for now, let's assume that we will want to maybe stance dance to apply rends, or whatever. For this, I don't think you can beat the overall utility here.
Arms: I really want to get to the second Tier here, so I've taken full ranks in War Academy and Field Dressing. I think they'll both serve some purpose, so no loss there. The reason I wanted to get to the second tier is for Deep Wounds, which hasn't changed (including it's cost, meaning the price has doubled, but at least you don't have to take Impale to get it). I've also spared one talent point for Tactical Mastery, which should give me up to a 35-50 rage cushion when I stance dance. With that kind of a cushion, it could actually make a SD Rend macro something that might not make you angry every time you press it (and not in a good way). I only invested one point, because I wanted the other point to go somewhere else.
Fury: Ok, so besides the decision about Single-Minded-Fury vs Titan's Grip (I've chosen Titan's Grip because I wasn't ever as enamored of the single hand DW prior to WotLK, but to each their own. If it turns out to be more dps, I'll switch too, but for now I already have 2 excellent 2 handers, and not a single good single hander to my name.) the other things I've included here are 1/2 Rude Interruption (I chose 1/2 because Pummel still has a 10 second cd, and most of the time I'm on interrupts I interrupt pretty much 2/3 to 1/2 of the time Pummel is off cd, so at worst we're talking 20 seconds between them), Piercing Howl, Heroic Fury, Furious Attacks (if you have an Arms warrior, and we're assuming that Arms dps is competitive in some way unlike presently, you can drop this and take 3/3 Blood Craze instead of 2/3) and 2/2 Skirmisher. I've passed up Die By the Sword which to me seems like an amazing PvP utility talent that could also help out in a crunch if the tank goes down and someone needs to be tanked quickly (since sword and boarding will be virtually impossible still now that gear has 0 defense). Essentially this build should give the mobility for PvE, it adds the debuffs (even if they're rng and not specified) and gives optimal excuse to use your shouts/pummels during combat.
I think that for a more damage intensive design, I might swap Furious Attacks and Heroic Fury into Improved Execute, especially if you're not void in Arms dps.
I'll start with the one that just gets juicier the more they have played with it.
Protection Self Healing Talent Build (4/3/34) (main tank, probably)
I debated a lot about how to spend these talent points, but here's what I decided. Since Heroic Strike may or may not be something I hit as often come cataclysm when I tank, I just don't know if the new Incite is worth even considering for Protection (in case you can't see the link to MMO Champs, the text reads: "Increases the critical strike chance of your Heroic Strike by 5/10/15%, and your Heroic Strike critical strikes have a 33/66/100% chance to make you next Heroic Strike also a critical strike. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds."). However, some moves in other trees have made some tasty decisions.
Arms: For example, I now have taken 2/2 in both Field Dressing and Blitz in the Arms tree, but since I'm still dubious about the utility of HS now that the mechanic has changed (although they still say it will be off the gcd) I don't feel taking even one point of War Academy is justified, and there is no "vital" talent on Tier 2 in Arms, so we'll turn instead to Fury. Although, I reserve my right to change my opinion once I can actually try some of this.
Fury: With the loss of AttT, I can only assume they're going to be tweaking Attack Power some other way, and once again, I am faced with a choice of either improving some damage from a couple talents or taking Blood Craze. Now, I don't know about you, but I can't think of anything better for a tank than if he does take damage, there is a chance he could auto heal. Add to that the improvement from Field Dressing in the Arms Tree and you're looking at a chance to recover 10% of your health automatically every so often. With health pools being larger in Clysm (some tanks already have nearly 80k health raid buffed) that could be a pretty sizeable hot. There are some other tasty threat talents to be found here, but I think I'd rather go back and get more from the Protection tree.
Protection: Ok, no lie, pretty much there are only two talents I'm not thinking of taking here. Incite, as written now, seems like it may not have as much all around utility. It may prove me wrong once I test, but right now I'm "--eh". The other one is Safeguard. IMO, not really that great of a talent. I do use intervene in battles, but I work pretty hard to make sure it's not necessary 90% of the time, so this falls into the "probably a PvP oriented talent" area. As an off tank, this could be used by the OT to give a mini-shield wall to the MT occasionally, except that if you target the MT it will also taunt the boss off them. It could be done, but it would requre that both of you were ready at exactly the right time, and even vent lags by a couple seconds. Everything else is pretty nice, I like the shield block mechanic now, and I'm working to put as much into my shield block as I can, so talents like Hold the Line, Shield Specialization, Shield Mastery, and the old Damage Shield all make shield blocking fun. Now, if it turns out that I will need more threat from this build, I would be most likely to take a point out of Shield Specialization and two points from Hold the Line and invest those three into Incite. Again, I'll just have to wait and see. The only other talent I'm not 100% certain about it's necessity is Impending Victory. Mostly, I'm taking this because of all the constant posts warning us that healers mana will be an issue again, and damage will be bad, etc. etc. etc. This is the reason I took Blood Craze and Field Dressing. The combination of these talents will give me some constant self healing to help the healers out as I go, and will also give me a situational heal I can use towards the end of a battle once mana is becoming scarce.
Furious Stance Dance TG build (9/32/0)
There is a part of me that wants badly to invest 3 points into Incite with this build, and I may go back (especially if the glyph of Heroic Strike stays with the same wording it has now). But for now, let's assume that we will want to maybe stance dance to apply rends, or whatever. For this, I don't think you can beat the overall utility here.
Arms: I really want to get to the second Tier here, so I've taken full ranks in War Academy and Field Dressing. I think they'll both serve some purpose, so no loss there. The reason I wanted to get to the second tier is for Deep Wounds, which hasn't changed (including it's cost, meaning the price has doubled, but at least you don't have to take Impale to get it). I've also spared one talent point for Tactical Mastery, which should give me up to a 35-50 rage cushion when I stance dance. With that kind of a cushion, it could actually make a SD Rend macro something that might not make you angry every time you press it (and not in a good way). I only invested one point, because I wanted the other point to go somewhere else.
Fury: Ok, so besides the decision about Single-Minded-Fury vs Titan's Grip (I've chosen Titan's Grip because I wasn't ever as enamored of the single hand DW prior to WotLK, but to each their own. If it turns out to be more dps, I'll switch too, but for now I already have 2 excellent 2 handers, and not a single good single hander to my name.) the other things I've included here are 1/2 Rude Interruption (I chose 1/2 because Pummel still has a 10 second cd, and most of the time I'm on interrupts I interrupt pretty much 2/3 to 1/2 of the time Pummel is off cd, so at worst we're talking 20 seconds between them), Piercing Howl, Heroic Fury, Furious Attacks (if you have an Arms warrior, and we're assuming that Arms dps is competitive in some way unlike presently, you can drop this and take 3/3 Blood Craze instead of 2/3) and 2/2 Skirmisher. I've passed up Die By the Sword which to me seems like an amazing PvP utility talent that could also help out in a crunch if the tank goes down and someone needs to be tanked quickly (since sword and boarding will be virtually impossible still now that gear has 0 defense). Essentially this build should give the mobility for PvE, it adds the debuffs (even if they're rng and not specified) and gives optimal excuse to use your shouts/pummels during combat.
I think that for a more damage intensive design, I might swap Furious Attacks and Heroic Fury into Improved Execute, especially if you're not void in Arms dps.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
A New Warrior Dawns
I recently decided on an experiment, now that Blizzard has done many things to make leveling more pleasant. I decided to try to level a warrior from scratch (again), but to remove any temptation I may feel, I'm doing it on a different server. The only assistance I'm allowing myself is having a couple of alts on the same server, one of whom is, I must admit, a DK. The only reason I'm allowing the DK alt is that I remember how long some of the slow grinding for money was, and now that some servers' economies are a little wacky, I wanted to have a way to get a couple hundred gold when my auctions weren't selling well. I'm not using any heirloom items, I'm not affiliated (yet) with any guilds, just grinding up.
To that end, I found a good sticky thread that covers the basic "how to" of this, which I'd like to share with you.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23393139760&sid=1
Jackburton does a great job of outlining not only what you want to strive for, but also why. This thread is highly polished and does a great job of explaining most everything you're going to need to do if you want to try this out.
So far, I've worked for about 12 hours, and I've gotten my little Garggy up to lvl 17. I'm disregarding the DK and paladin alts that I have put in also, as they are meaningless to me at this point.
I have a couple things to add regarding leveling your prot warrior, and that is that if you find yourself doing quests as well as the DF, I would suggest looking at Tranquilien (if you're horde, obviously), as the rep purchases there are pretty nice for low level paladins or warriors, and there is a quest chain that rewards you with a sweet shield, and if you hit exalted with them, a fantastic low tanking cloak is your reward.
I won't go too far into what I have done, but since you can't use the DF until you hit 15, until about 10 I quested in Durotar, and then once I hit about 10-12 I went to Ghost Lands and started the Tranquilien quests. I loved the reward from the warrior quest at 10, as the axe went perfectly with my tanking orc makeup.
I'll occasionally keep you posted on what he's up to.
To that end, I found a good sticky thread that covers the basic "how to" of this, which I'd like to share with you.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23393139760&sid=1
Jackburton does a great job of outlining not only what you want to strive for, but also why. This thread is highly polished and does a great job of explaining most everything you're going to need to do if you want to try this out.
So far, I've worked for about 12 hours, and I've gotten my little Garggy up to lvl 17. I'm disregarding the DK and paladin alts that I have put in also, as they are meaningless to me at this point.
I have a couple things to add regarding leveling your prot warrior, and that is that if you find yourself doing quests as well as the DF, I would suggest looking at Tranquilien (if you're horde, obviously), as the rep purchases there are pretty nice for low level paladins or warriors, and there is a quest chain that rewards you with a sweet shield, and if you hit exalted with them, a fantastic low tanking cloak is your reward.
I won't go too far into what I have done, but since you can't use the DF until you hit 15, until about 10 I quested in Durotar, and then once I hit about 10-12 I went to Ghost Lands and started the Tranquilien quests. I loved the reward from the warrior quest at 10, as the axe went perfectly with my tanking orc makeup.
I'll occasionally keep you posted on what he's up to.
A Sad Farewell
Even if you don't know who this is for, I just wanted to say to some people out there that it's been nice knowing and playing with you and I hope you won't be complete strangers. This Tauren is in a good home now and so are my alter-egos, so I look forward to making new friends along the future path, but I will remember my old ones fondly, I'm just sorry that the decision for us to part ways entirely happened.
Best of luck.
G
Best of luck.
G
Monday, July 19, 2010
Oh happy day! When Blizz announced the Raging Blow.
So, some happy news recently came out of the question and answer session:
Q: Are Fury Warriors still going to see a new attack to fill the loss of Whirlwind? Any insight?
A. Yes! It’s called Raging Blow (at least for the moment), because we wanted to distance is a little from the old Enraged Assault. It's Fury-only and can only be used when Enraged, but does not consume the Enrage. It does indeed strike with both weapons (including the animation).
and just to remind you about some of the proposed features of this ability (beyond the ability to strike with both weapons, yay!) it will only be usable when you enrage, it will not use up the enrage, and I believe it's supposed to have a very short, if any, cooldown so that it can be used as often as you like. That being said, I'd expect some serious changes around how Slam works since otherwise, if this is as good as they make it seem, it could replace any Slam interest at all.
In the end, we should see something like this for a desirability ranking:
Instant Slam, Procced Victory Rush > "Raging Blow" > Bloodthirst > Heroic Strike.
This is because we should want to hit BT when we can, unless something else has procced (which should be more desireable within that time frame) and Heroic Strike should be what we use to bleed rage if we can't hit anything else.
On multi targets, of course, we'd probably still target the main target and replace this with
WW > Cleave > Instant Slam, Procced Victory Rush > Bloodthirst
or something like that.
Q: Are Fury Warriors still going to see a new attack to fill the loss of Whirlwind? Any insight?
A. Yes! It’s called Raging Blow (at least for the moment), because we wanted to distance is a little from the old Enraged Assault. It's Fury-only and can only be used when Enraged, but does not consume the Enrage. It does indeed strike with both weapons (including the animation).
and just to remind you about some of the proposed features of this ability (beyond the ability to strike with both weapons, yay!) it will only be usable when you enrage, it will not use up the enrage, and I believe it's supposed to have a very short, if any, cooldown so that it can be used as often as you like. That being said, I'd expect some serious changes around how Slam works since otherwise, if this is as good as they make it seem, it could replace any Slam interest at all.
In the end, we should see something like this for a desirability ranking:
Instant Slam, Procced Victory Rush > "Raging Blow" > Bloodthirst > Heroic Strike.
This is because we should want to hit BT when we can, unless something else has procced (which should be more desireable within that time frame) and Heroic Strike should be what we use to bleed rage if we can't hit anything else.
On multi targets, of course, we'd probably still target the main target and replace this with
WW > Cleave > Instant Slam, Procced Victory Rush > Bloodthirst
or something like that.
The Warrior Mentality, and why it's different.
Hi, I know many blogs go on about tactics and other issues associated with a class, but I thought I'd take a step back for those new to the game to explain a little about what you're in store for if you choose to level a warrior from scratch.
First of all, there are only two mindsets to be in when you decide to level a new warrior: The patient, and the dead.
Unlike many classes, warriors are not invincible machines that can just keep churning and churning through mobs like butter. Your main resource will be your life. When your life is gone, you'll have to run back, and notice I said "when" not "if." You will die many many times. It's ok, though, just remember that you're a warrior, and the goal as a low level warrior is to learn to think tactically, and apply the abilities you have at hand to accomplishing the goal you set before you.
Now, if you have infinite patience, you can level as Protection. Your damage will be low enough that you will frequently see Arms warriors running through levels 8 million times faster (possible exaggeration) but you will also die less and have more chance of surviving multi-mob pulls than them. If you choose this route, remember that defenses, armor, shields, stamina, those are your treasures. Stay away from fancy stuff that gives you more of anything else, unless it also gives you more armor, stamina, or a shield. A shield is your friend. About the only friend you have better than a shield is defensive stance. Once you get those two things together, you're ready to find out what being a tank is all about.
If you have less patience, you can level as Arms. Arms warriors have to be crafty, but they will go faster than protection warriors. You will need to control the size of the pulls you make on solo quests, keep them to 1-2 until you know you can deal with them. Remember, as a warrior, you have no escape routes. You're in it to win it or die trying. If you finish the goal, and kill the pack of 3 raptors guarding the chest of silver, you don't have to explain that you died and ran and rezzed and killed the last raptor to do it, you just turn in your quest and go on. Escape routes are for other classes. You're going to find that whether you're a female or male, this class will make you feel "macho." You're literally going to learn the mindset of attack and no surrender. Notice, as you go, you have charge (a way to go into combat quickly), intercept (another way to go into combat quickly), and intervene (a way to go into combat quickly, and help someone else get away). I dare you to find me one ability on your bar that says "helps you get out of combat safely." Oh, sure, Intimidating Shout looks promising, but 3/5 times once they're done running away from you and they come back and bring all their friends with them, you'll be wishing you hadn't. But as arms, you have a lot of things to make it easier to take some people down, you just have to learn to be on your toes all the time, ready to use the right skill at the right time.
If you're masochistic, you can level as Fury. Fury warriors (for soloing) are the ultimate in the warrior mindset. Just look at the explanation of Berserker Stance (where you'll spend most of your time): "An aggressive stance. Critical hit chance is increased by 3% and all damage taken is increased by 5%." in the words of Stan Lee, "Nuff Said." Fury warriors are the ultimate reckless fighting machines. You don't care if you die, you don't even care if you get hit, all you care about is trying to kill as many of them as you can before you go down. It makes a fury warrior a frightening prospect in pvp until other classes learn how to kite you. If you close with them, they're going to hurt, they have to hope they can survive your assault long enough to start kiting you, or they're going to be in a world of pain. If you level as Fury, just be aware that you're going to die more than any other warrior out there. Of course, you're also going to carve through some quests faster than them too. But some of your deaths will slow you down enough that you may find that Arms will end up being faster.
Warriors are not rogues, we do not have an escape route. We do not have a bubble we can use to avoid pain and misery when we're outnumbered. We can't avoid stopping to eat every so often to heal up. We LOVE the first aid skill, and we max it out as soon as we can. We continually struggle between moving faster to avoid rage loss, and moving slower to avoid health loss. The path of the warrior is a path of balancing rage and life. Depending how much weight you give to each side will determine which of our trees you walk along. If life is more important, you will choose Protection and learn the way of a tank. If rage is more important, you will choose Fury and become a sweeping path of destruction that can only be stopped by being killed. If you value them equally, you will choose arms and have a range of abilities and approach every situation tactically and carefully and ready to respond to whatever happens.
I don't know if this mindset affects anything else in our life, but I can promise you if you want to be able to "get away" from trouble, a warrior will not work well for you. Maybe take a hunter, or shaman. Really almost any class will work for that, just not a warrior. A warrior will surround themself with death. The deaths of others, their own death. They also hold lives in the balance, their own, and others. As protection, you hold yourself responsible for every life in your group. It can be very stressful, but when others appreciate you, you feel very good indeed. As any other kind of warrior, there comes a time when you will try to take up the mantle of tank, because if you don't, no one will. As an example, the other day, I went into a random dungeon which I specifically queued for as dps so I wouldn't have to tank. The DK tank that was selected apparently thought it would be funny to pull the first group of mobs and then drop group. Some people have no honor. So, there I am in my fury gear, berserker stance, taking extra damage, and crits, and everyone around me is panicking, so what do I do? I intercept straight into the heart of the mobs, hit a quick whirlwind to get their attention, and then swap to defensive stance and hang on for dear life while I Blood thirst, rend, and thunderclap like crazy. Demo shouts and the whole nine yards. The healer, being fairly pro also, didn't miss a beat. It's fair to say that in this situation, the priest had probably had more than a few warriors do this exact same kind of thing when tanks went down unexpectedly or whatever. People just come to depend on warriors to be able to do this. By the way, once the other 3 dps kind of calmed down and figured out what was going on, we took them down pretty quickly, and no one was scathed. I was annoyed, because I had to put on my tanking gear to blow through the rest of the dungeon, and that wasn't the responsibility I wanted right then, but I knew it was my job and I did it.
Don't ever expect to be given an "easy" way to do something. You might as well wish for Blizz to mail you a pony. I guarantee that no matter what you do, you'll have it harder than most everyone else. You'll be put to the test over and over again as you pull your way up from 1 to 80 and above. You'll become intimately familiar with where graveyards are in each zone and which areas you want to die the least in. You'll learn to pace yourself and watch your aggro radius carefully. You'll learn that it's NOT ok if you accidentally pull a second group of mobs. These are all things that other classes can do and laugh about once they're safely away. These are not things you can do.
If reading this hasn't dissuaded you from choosing to level a warrior, then I welcome you to our ranks, brother or sister. Strength and honor.
First of all, there are only two mindsets to be in when you decide to level a new warrior: The patient, and the dead.
Unlike many classes, warriors are not invincible machines that can just keep churning and churning through mobs like butter. Your main resource will be your life. When your life is gone, you'll have to run back, and notice I said "when" not "if." You will die many many times. It's ok, though, just remember that you're a warrior, and the goal as a low level warrior is to learn to think tactically, and apply the abilities you have at hand to accomplishing the goal you set before you.
Now, if you have infinite patience, you can level as Protection. Your damage will be low enough that you will frequently see Arms warriors running through levels 8 million times faster (possible exaggeration) but you will also die less and have more chance of surviving multi-mob pulls than them. If you choose this route, remember that defenses, armor, shields, stamina, those are your treasures. Stay away from fancy stuff that gives you more of anything else, unless it also gives you more armor, stamina, or a shield. A shield is your friend. About the only friend you have better than a shield is defensive stance. Once you get those two things together, you're ready to find out what being a tank is all about.
If you have less patience, you can level as Arms. Arms warriors have to be crafty, but they will go faster than protection warriors. You will need to control the size of the pulls you make on solo quests, keep them to 1-2 until you know you can deal with them. Remember, as a warrior, you have no escape routes. You're in it to win it or die trying. If you finish the goal, and kill the pack of 3 raptors guarding the chest of silver, you don't have to explain that you died and ran and rezzed and killed the last raptor to do it, you just turn in your quest and go on. Escape routes are for other classes. You're going to find that whether you're a female or male, this class will make you feel "macho." You're literally going to learn the mindset of attack and no surrender. Notice, as you go, you have charge (a way to go into combat quickly), intercept (another way to go into combat quickly), and intervene (a way to go into combat quickly, and help someone else get away). I dare you to find me one ability on your bar that says "helps you get out of combat safely." Oh, sure, Intimidating Shout looks promising, but 3/5 times once they're done running away from you and they come back and bring all their friends with them, you'll be wishing you hadn't. But as arms, you have a lot of things to make it easier to take some people down, you just have to learn to be on your toes all the time, ready to use the right skill at the right time.
If you're masochistic, you can level as Fury. Fury warriors (for soloing) are the ultimate in the warrior mindset. Just look at the explanation of Berserker Stance (where you'll spend most of your time): "An aggressive stance. Critical hit chance is increased by 3% and all damage taken is increased by 5%." in the words of Stan Lee, "Nuff Said." Fury warriors are the ultimate reckless fighting machines. You don't care if you die, you don't even care if you get hit, all you care about is trying to kill as many of them as you can before you go down. It makes a fury warrior a frightening prospect in pvp until other classes learn how to kite you. If you close with them, they're going to hurt, they have to hope they can survive your assault long enough to start kiting you, or they're going to be in a world of pain. If you level as Fury, just be aware that you're going to die more than any other warrior out there. Of course, you're also going to carve through some quests faster than them too. But some of your deaths will slow you down enough that you may find that Arms will end up being faster.
Warriors are not rogues, we do not have an escape route. We do not have a bubble we can use to avoid pain and misery when we're outnumbered. We can't avoid stopping to eat every so often to heal up. We LOVE the first aid skill, and we max it out as soon as we can. We continually struggle between moving faster to avoid rage loss, and moving slower to avoid health loss. The path of the warrior is a path of balancing rage and life. Depending how much weight you give to each side will determine which of our trees you walk along. If life is more important, you will choose Protection and learn the way of a tank. If rage is more important, you will choose Fury and become a sweeping path of destruction that can only be stopped by being killed. If you value them equally, you will choose arms and have a range of abilities and approach every situation tactically and carefully and ready to respond to whatever happens.
I don't know if this mindset affects anything else in our life, but I can promise you if you want to be able to "get away" from trouble, a warrior will not work well for you. Maybe take a hunter, or shaman. Really almost any class will work for that, just not a warrior. A warrior will surround themself with death. The deaths of others, their own death. They also hold lives in the balance, their own, and others. As protection, you hold yourself responsible for every life in your group. It can be very stressful, but when others appreciate you, you feel very good indeed. As any other kind of warrior, there comes a time when you will try to take up the mantle of tank, because if you don't, no one will. As an example, the other day, I went into a random dungeon which I specifically queued for as dps so I wouldn't have to tank. The DK tank that was selected apparently thought it would be funny to pull the first group of mobs and then drop group. Some people have no honor. So, there I am in my fury gear, berserker stance, taking extra damage, and crits, and everyone around me is panicking, so what do I do? I intercept straight into the heart of the mobs, hit a quick whirlwind to get their attention, and then swap to defensive stance and hang on for dear life while I Blood thirst, rend, and thunderclap like crazy. Demo shouts and the whole nine yards. The healer, being fairly pro also, didn't miss a beat. It's fair to say that in this situation, the priest had probably had more than a few warriors do this exact same kind of thing when tanks went down unexpectedly or whatever. People just come to depend on warriors to be able to do this. By the way, once the other 3 dps kind of calmed down and figured out what was going on, we took them down pretty quickly, and no one was scathed. I was annoyed, because I had to put on my tanking gear to blow through the rest of the dungeon, and that wasn't the responsibility I wanted right then, but I knew it was my job and I did it.
Don't ever expect to be given an "easy" way to do something. You might as well wish for Blizz to mail you a pony. I guarantee that no matter what you do, you'll have it harder than most everyone else. You'll be put to the test over and over again as you pull your way up from 1 to 80 and above. You'll become intimately familiar with where graveyards are in each zone and which areas you want to die the least in. You'll learn to pace yourself and watch your aggro radius carefully. You'll learn that it's NOT ok if you accidentally pull a second group of mobs. These are all things that other classes can do and laugh about once they're safely away. These are not things you can do.
If reading this hasn't dissuaded you from choosing to level a warrior, then I welcome you to our ranks, brother or sister. Strength and honor.
Friday, July 16, 2010
On a personal note:
As some of you may notice, I've moved homes. My friends, the Hawks, aren't raiding as much as I'd like to be, and so I've followed some of my former Hawk friends to a new guild that has some very dedicated raiders, and I'm looking forward to many new adventures with the Stormwind Mall Security group.
So far, to be honest, it still feels like I'm among friends, as I know so many of them already, but I can definitely tell a difference in the atmosphere. I think there may be some thunder on the horizon.
Thoughts about Warrior Talent Trees in Cataclysm
Hello, all you platies out there. I've thoroughly inspected your preliminary talent trees, and there are some nice things and some things I'm not happy about. Perhaps you feel somewhat the same way. I will start with a blog about my talent trees first, and then look at those of my alter egos, BlackGurggy and PureGurggy the DK and Paladins that share my name.
First and foremost, I am not opposed to the idea they're going with in swapping to a 31 talent centric tree design where talent points should do more, since they'll be fewer of them available to us. I like the idea of giving the classes certain talents etc. immediately at level 10 as it makes level 10 feel like you're really starting to play your class....
My biggest concern, though is for those of us who are already at level 80 and who are facing a grind up to 85.
consider this: Here is my current Fury Talent Selection, and Here is my interpretation of that in the Cataclysm Talent tree. Now, here's what concerns me so far, that I hope gets addressed. My current level is 80, and to get 'the same abilities from talents that I have now' I'll have to get to 85.
Ok, this makes no sense. The reward for getting to 85 is that we can finally have back the same abilities we have now? I think one of two solutions needed to be added globally to every tree, in much the same way that I see this problem in the warrior trees:
1) if you copy and paste a talent from the current talent tree (no matter where it is) and place it into the Cataclysm talent tree, it should have about 1/2 the cost (see Cruelty, Flurry, Bloodsurge). It should not have the same cost, with no extra effects (see Armored to the Teeth, Impale, Deep Wounds, Intensify Rage, etc.). The cost can be rounded up, in the case of 1 point talents, for instance, but in some cases, maybe the 1 point talents should be considered as trainable instead of taking up a position on the tree. Especially if, like Piercing Howl, they've come to be associated indelibly with a warrior attempting to do exactly what this expansion is purporting to attempt to have us remember how to do, and kite things and cc them instead of just wail on them. Basically, I'd just like Blizz to think of this like a currency exchange. You want to make "Clysm-Talent Points" that spend almost like 2 "Wrath-Talent Points." And the goods we're buying shouldn't end up seeming like a bad deal after the exchange.
2) If you don't want to make the talent point cost of an ability less than it is now, but you still like the effect, then increase the effect to make it worthwhile. For example, let's look at Armored to the Teeth. Admittedly, a great talent, arguably an important one to take. The only advantage that it has over the other version of Armored to the Teeth is that Blizzard has already upped the coefficient from where it was originally (requiring 3 talent points but not getting to the level it is at now). If you consider where AttT was "pre" Lich King buffs and where it will be in Clysm, this is a good example of a way that you can make a talent cost the same but still be worthwhile. Unfortunately since the buff happened mid Wrath, at this point warriors have come to expect this level of AttT as a normal version, and won't be happy with less. As a better example, look at the changes to Improved Execute. I love that instead of making the cost less, Blizzard is making it hit harder. As long as the numbers on Execute live up to what I've been hearing (Execute supposedly hits much harder now than it did) I think this could save Execute from being Heroically Stricken from our toolbar. This is a talent that was performed correctly. They wanted to keep it a 2 point talent, so they "engineered" the effect to make it more worthy of those 2 "Clysm-Talent" points (which are actually equal to about 3.7 Wrath Talent points, but close enough to double).
3) If you don't like option 1 or 2 for a talent, then go with option 3, get rid of that talent and design something fresh and interesting to take it's place. Look at deep wounds. Ok, so maybe the devs don't like having that talent be "stronger" than it already is, but for fury warriors, who can't easily rend in their rotations, deep wounds IS our dot. It's the ONLY dot we have. We pretty much HAVE to take that talent, we have no choice. Impale is pretty much the only "optional" talent of those two, and even there, it has been a pretty important addition to our dps. Now, notice, Deep wounds is EXACTLY the same, but costs now nearly twice as many talent points. Impale is actually WORSE, because it provides the same boost as before, but only to "some" abilities instead of all of them. What's worse, the only ones in that list that will help Fury are Slam and Execute, both of which are situational and unpredictable sometimes. Execute may not be as spammable at end of battle as it is now once they normalize rage generation, and Slam is only useful when it's instant, as otherwise it delays our white swing timer. Both of these are nearly twice as expensive as they are now, but are not more valuable. This idea needs to be "relooked at" soon. As an example, if you absolutely must keep it like this, maybe change it around so that you make the first talent (the 3 point one) something like "Each critical hit will also cause an additional 20/40/60% of the original damage over the next 5 seconds." If it scales as crit damage, then it's suddenly worth more, and the 3 point expenditure seems justified. But still keeping with the lame 48% weapon damage just feels like a slap in the face. Similarly with Impale. If you want to "tame it down" to just 20% of some abilities, then tame down the price to 1 point, or redesign the talent to do something else, because clearly it isn't exciting enough to really consider if you can't do better than just copy and paste.
4) A final option that could be considered for some of this is to make sure in the talent tree you can essentially "re-create" the essence of each build currently available AT LEVEL 80 in the new tree AT LEVEL 80. Then, as we level up, we'd get new talent points that would actually be talent points we could put towards IMPROVING what we have now instead of just rebuilding it to what it was.
Ok, enough about what I don't like and what I'd like to see changed.
Here's what I do like:
(notice that a lot of it is along the lines of my suggestions earlier):
I love Fury in the Blood. This is an example of a newly designed talent that does what the talents in Clysm should do. It takes an already utility ability and makes it even better, turning it into an automatic cooldown we can pop, and so changing our gameplay a little to save these for those "crucial" moments, or popping them every chance we get on those dps race bosses.
I love Blood and Thunder. No, this doesn't fix the problem we have with streaming adds, but it sure as heck does address how we can deal with the AoE tanking issues we've been having. This way, we can place a dot on everyone in range immediately, so those mobs will stay more securely (short of dps being idiots) and as new adds stream in, we can use our taunts and other abilities to grab them, and once we TC again, we can cement those to us also. It will not be as easy mode as Paladins/DK's have it now, but it will certainly make it more of a joy than it is now.
I like Hold the Line. This has a great potential for making parry a more prioritized stat, and also adding threat generation as well as mitigation at the same time. I'm looking forward to using this.
I like the changes to Shield Mastery. Even though this is pretty much the same cost etc. the effect of now improving our cooldowns to be more in line with other tanks is much more desireable than the previous effect.
I love the change to Vigilance. This is one instance where I can definitely tell the devs listen to the community. We all said that one of our biggest problems as warriors was trying to off tank. When we don't have anyone wailing on us, how do we get rage? I also love that now the possibility of having two warrior tanks Vigilancing each other to mitigate damage and keep their taunt at the ready is now not a guessing game of concern over whether or not the threat transference will even out. I know some people are complaining about the loss of threat transfer, and while I will miss that somewhat, I'm hoping that the new threat mechanics will help to make up for that.
Now for my "I don't know"s:
I can't decide if I like Lambs to the Slaughter or not. On the one hand, I think having a proc coming from MS is a great idea, but having it happen and all that the proc does is lessen the swing timer on your next swing by 36% is not as cool as it could be. Mortal Strike now has a 5 second cooldown, so assuming that an arms warrior could keep that going every 5 seconds (2 gcd's in between, so maybe room for one Overpower, and/or one rend or slam) it would basically mean that every other white swing would take only 2/3 the time, so every 6 swings would generate one extra swing, so it's kind of like adding up to 16% haste (depending how often you can hit MS). One side of me likes the way they're trying to do that, because the feel of Arms is very reactionary, the other side wonders why they don't just make it something like "adds 16% melee haste for 5 seconds after using Mortal Strike" or some such.
I also can't decide how I feel about Field Dressing. On the one hand this sounds like a nice talent to have for PvP. On the other hand, I notice that it is pretty much the only other talent in tier 1 of the arms tree that a Fury warrior would be interested in, since rend is not planned to be usable in berserker stance still. So I find myself looking at this as a Fury or Arms warrior. First of all, Arms doesn't get Bloothirst, where the majority of our self healing comes from. They can, however, make it up to Blood Craze which has been modified to proc off any damage done, but an extra 20% on that is pretty miniscule, especially since that is only a 10% chance to proc. So, really, the only good Arms gets from it is from Enraged Regeneration. Fury might get some good from it, but if they're doing what they should be doing, they shouldn't be caring too much about the self healing they're getting from Bloodthirst (which is nowhere near what a blood DK does now) and won't really be getting a significant amount from any Blood Craze points they've taken either. In many ways this feels to me like a mandatory talent for protection warriors trying to take some arms talents and not much else. If that's the case, though, what are DPS warriors supposed to take to get to Deep Wounds, which, as I've said, will still be pretty much a mandatory talent group for us as dps?
There are several others that I could go on about the changes, some subtle, some not so subtle, but for the most part I think the majority of what is left falls into either a "I'll have to wait and see how it goes" category, or into one of the four "Blizz please re-think this" categories I mentioned earlier.
Next time I'll discuss the DK trees.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Tips for Noob Putricide Abomination Tanks
Hey there. Last week I pugged a group for an ICC 10 run and one of their tanks had to bail mid run so I shifted my position from dps to tank to help fill out. I'd never done the Abom tank position on Putricide before, and apparently I was the only one of the two tanks interested in doing it, and I've noticed a pattern that seems to happen to every ICC 10 group I've been in: The first time you tank with the Abom you fail, but every other time you do it, it goes pretty smoothly.
I think I determined why these things happened, and I'd like to share my knowledge with anyone who is searching for tips on doing this (in case they've never done it before).
First of all, you will have 3 abilities whose importance is also their lineup in the keys:
1 - eat ooze : This abilities is basically a button you spam until the slime puddle is gone, if you leave even a small amount left it will grow back up and will become almost impossible to clear out. Each time you hit this it adds 4 energy to your bar.
2 - regurgitated ooze : This ability will spit at either of the adds that pop out and slow their movement by 50%. for 20 secs (it also deals damage). It costs 45 energy to use each time.
3 - mutated slash : This ability hits target, dealing weapon damage and reducing armor by 4% stacks up to 5 times. Costs no energy.
Ok, so here are the tips that will help you be a first time Abom champ:
Tip 1: You should get to use the slash some, so equip your best dps 2 hander (and have your sword and board macro ready to go for phase 3).
Tip 2: click the table, then run back to the raid. The Abom will take a bit to spawn out of you, but you don't have to stay near the table. Since the slime will spawn near the raid, the less time you have to take running there, the better.
Tip 3: make sure you stand IN THE MIDDLE of the puddle. I mean the exact middle. Not "near" the middle.
Tip 4: you will spam 1 until a puddle is gone, then go to the next puddle. Puddles spawn in 2's, once they're both gone, you can slash like crazy, and save one regurgitation for when the add spawns.
Tip 5: 1 is spammable. Once you're in position, spam it.
Tip 6: regurgitated ooze lasts 20 secs, so you don't want to hit the mob right away, but you do want to hit it before it starts moving. This may involve practice, but not too bad.
Tip 7: If the slime puddles are soaked up, your priority list is the following:
(a) regurgitate ooze on add (if up)
(b) slash add (if up)
(c) slash professor
You should find that the pools don't take too long to eat up, which should leave you time to do all of these.
Tip 8: The key to eating the puddles is to get them while they're small. Larger puddles take longer to eat, and cause you to take more damage. Get the puddles eaten fast, THEN do everything else.
Tip 9: If the worst happens, and your abom is killed, just run back and grab another. If this happens, though, you're most likely spending too much time standing in large ooze puddles and the raid is probably going to wipe, so don't let this happen.
Tip 10: Even in the abom your priority is to make the adds go down. You want to eat the puddles quickly so that you can spend your time on the adds. If no adds are up, and you have no puddles to eat that's the ONLY time you need to worry about the professor.
If you'll follow those tips, I think you'll find that your abom career will be a glorious one.
Recent Pause in Blogs
Hello everyone, I'm sure some of you noticed that it had been a few weeks since I posted anything, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, it had also been a number of weeks since I've done any raiding. The two things are likely to be linked somehow, as I find that when I raid I have things to talk about, and not so much when all I'm doing is leveling alts or doing dailies for cash.
I have recently started raiding with some different groups, so that now I have multiple raid access which makes raids more likely for me for a while, so I expect to have some good things to talk about for the rest of the Summer.
I have two rather big goals, the first of which is to down the LK in either 10 or 25 man. I think it's going to happen sooner rather than later, as I'm 11/12 in ICC 10 man, and I'm starting to do some more 25 ICC raids again.
The second goal has to do with completing my quests to get Shadowmourne. I'd like to do it, if at all possible, prior to the release of Cataclysm (since by then it will be replaced by some green quest reward, you know).
So, I should have lots to talk about in the coming weeks now, just warning you.
Cataclysm Talent Tree Changes
So, by now you've heard that Blizzard has decided to completely redesign the talent trees for Cataclysm. Now, I'm not one of the lucky few privy to the beta testing, so I'm still having to speculate. I've been trying to read the forums, but since posting is restricted to beta testers, I haven't really been able to get much of my own feedback, so I'm having to base what information I have on others.
That being said, I think some things about this move are exciting. First of all, I like the idea that at level 10 everyone will be getting some "defining" characteristic of their class which should make leveling much easier and your initial choices more epic. I am hoping that they are coupling this choice with some revisions to lower level gear to allow talent tree choices to be less painful in terms of gear collection (after all, we still won't get our second spec until 40). I know that much of this is in my head, since it's been a while since I was there, but as I recall it, upon getting to choose my first talent point I found myself practically blinded by the dizzying array of choices, none of which really seemed to matter much anyway. In fact, I heartily agree with the devs when they say that your talent tree choices didn't really start to 'gel' until you hit about 35-40 anyway.
Face it, at low levels, tanking was more a matter of "who wants to" than it was "who is capable of it."
I'm concerned about some of the decisions about how to assign those 41 talent points, as it seems they want to intersperse them on every odd level (which means at each level you either need to visit a trainer or learn a talent). Of course, I also recall them saying that they were removing all those Level 1-Level 9 skills nonsense and just making the same skill level as you did by making them percentages or some such, but perhaps this has fallen by the wayside as well.
I'm also concerned because they can't seem to decide what they want the "defining" characteristic of Fury to be. They seem to be waffling some between some kind of enrage enhancement or an extra proc of some kind.
I don't know how many of you have a Fury playstyle like mine, but I actually took my 5 talent points in Intensify Rage and Improved Berserker Rage just so I would always have something to hit and also so that rage would never be an issue. My standard "wind-up" is to use these two alternately while I wait for the raid leader to be ready and I usually begin every boss encounter with 80-100 rage built up and ready to go. This means that my initial Intercept and about 3-5 subsequent abilities are already paid for before I ever start. I like to spend my freebies on Sunder Armor because (a) I like my dps numbers with Sunders up and (b) it forces an "easing in" period at the beginning of fights when the tanks are the most stressed out about aggro. Yes, it's true, the tooltip to Sunder says it "causes a high amount of threat" but my whirlwind causes a high amount of threat too, and so does my cleave, but these cause high threat to several targets instead of just one. The catch to Sunder is that it causes a "fixed" amount of threat per application instead of something that scales with damage done. I should probably run numbers at some point, but I've never had a lot of problems with pulling off tanks with that opener, and I HAVE had problems when I open with whirlwind.
Anyway, I say all this to point out that I like the possibility of an extra attack we can spam while enraged, which was hinted at by Ghostcrawler recently. If we were given an ability at 10, I'd have to say the best choice would be (a) dual wielding, as I think that should be a characteristic you get used to early, and (b) an extra attack that you can pop whenever you enrage which should hit with both weapons on a single target (and which doesn't consume the enrage, as suggested). Of course, the other thing that would need to happen is that we be given some kind of automatic enrage of some sort, even if it's one of the most basic and infrequent ones. Even berserker rage should work fine as it would turn what starts out as a defensive technique into a cd you can use to increase damage dealt.
And I think that's the best way to define the Fury tree at low levels.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Upcoming Cataclysm Post-NDA news
So, some big announcements that have gone somewhat under the radar, which I feel should be pointed out. Here
Intimidating Shout
We're also changing (probably) Intimidating Shout into a single-target, longish duration CC (basically taking off the fear from the secondary targets and increasing the duration to the Repentance level).
We're also changing (probably) Intimidating Shout into a single-target, longish duration CC (basically taking off the fear from the secondary targets and increasing the duration to the Repentance level).
We see here that the devs are listening to us somewhat. While we may not be getting an interrupt for every stance yet, we are at least getting a CC similar to paladins. And our holy brethren need not fear, they have said they'll be getting an interrupt too. Soon it really will be up to who you have that likes to interrupt and not which classes you have available.
Thunder Clap
Thunder Clap is something we are experimenting with. It might be that it works with no cooldown if Shockwave hits hard enough for the emergency or burst threat. We also might end up changing it back.
Thunder Clap is something we are experimenting with. It might be that it works with no cooldown if Shockwave hits hard enough for the emergency or burst threat. We also might end up changing it back.
I am eager to see how that works. The idea of a spammable thunder clap is both frightening and exciting. If we can spam it, will they diminish the threat/damage it does to compensate? However, having a shorter cooldown (or none) would certainly make those "trickling adds" encounters less of a pain in the tuckus to tank.
Heroic Strike
Heroic Strike is something we're still not entirely happy with. The new design works technically, but it is still a little confusing (one of the things we wanted to avoid) and we are worried that warriors of all three trees will lose some of the visceral feel that warrior players liked about the class. Don't get me wrong -- replacing every white attack with a Heroic Strike was terrible gameplay, but being able to sneak more than one attack into a GCD could be fun too.
The new mechanic that we are trying now is Heroic Strike is still instant, but is off the GCD and with a short cooldown. The rage cost doesn't scale, but we can make it more expensive if it needs to be in order to adequately burn off rage. We are hoping the rage normalization and Inner Rare mechanics do a sufficient job on their own of keeping rage from ever getting infinite. We're still not fans of the next swing mechanic, so that isn't likely to return. It delays gratification, and ends up being really confusing because you lose the rage and damage that white swing would have caused etc. (It also causes a bug allowing dual-wield warriors to cheat their hit chance, but that's fixable in other ways.)
All of this makes us think that Heroic Strike isn't a good starting ability for warriors since teaching them to spam it is a bad thing.
Heroic Strike is something we're still not entirely happy with. The new design works technically, but it is still a little confusing (one of the things we wanted to avoid) and we are worried that warriors of all three trees will lose some of the visceral feel that warrior players liked about the class. Don't get me wrong -- replacing every white attack with a Heroic Strike was terrible gameplay, but being able to sneak more than one attack into a GCD could be fun too.
The new mechanic that we are trying now is Heroic Strike is still instant, but is off the GCD and with a short cooldown. The rage cost doesn't scale, but we can make it more expensive if it needs to be in order to adequately burn off rage. We are hoping the rage normalization and Inner Rare mechanics do a sufficient job on their own of keeping rage from ever getting infinite. We're still not fans of the next swing mechanic, so that isn't likely to return. It delays gratification, and ends up being really confusing because you lose the rage and damage that white swing would have caused etc. (It also causes a bug allowing dual-wield warriors to cheat their hit chance, but that's fixable in other ways.)
All of this makes us think that Heroic Strike isn't a good starting ability for warriors since teaching them to spam it is a bad thing.
I'm hoping they get this mechanic to work right. Moving HS off the gcd would bring back a lot of the feel that our class has now that I was worried about them losing when they added it to the gcd. It would mean that we can still have our rotation (even though I'm still waiting on our other single target button as Fury, but we'll give them time) and also be able to burn extra rage when we need to. Additionally if it doesn't interrupt the white swings, we'll have the added benefit of the HS no longer killing our rage generation, so rage accumulation should look smoother, and be a lot more manageable.
Incidentally, I agree that HS should probably not be the early warrior's ability. It's confusing to new players, and difficult to use until you get much higher. On the other hand, if there were an ability that sat in a place similar to slam, but was instant cast, it would fit nicely into the early levels and even into the later levels. The trick would be either (a) balancing it so you'd still want to hit slam when it became instant, or (b) putting it on a cooldown time about equivalent to WW, so that slam would still be a hitter, and once you got closer to endgame, you could add MS or BT into your rotation along with it.
Another possibility would be to make slam instant to begin with, and then find something else fun to do with the talents whose purpose does nothing other than shorten the swing timer.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Thinking out Loud (pre Cataclysm brainstorm)
So, Blizzard still seems to be debating on whether/how to replace WW in the fury rotation. Blue posts seem to waver between indicating that they're considering it, and debating whether we really need one.
Here are a couple thoughts that this brings up for me, and mainly this is a curiosity more than anything else.
Point #1: Bloodthirst, Slam, Heroic Strike, Cleave, as written do main hand weapon damage only.
Point #2: WW is our only strike that attacks with both weapons.
Point #3: having two weapons has pluses and minuses, e.g. on the up-side, we can melee swing more often (about twice), on the downside we experience 10% damage reduction (for current incarnation of TG) and our miss percentage goes from 8% to 27%.
So, let's take a look at an idea here, suppose that we consider a Fury build that is based around only carrying one 2 hander instead of trying to dual wield. On the one hand, this is not the direction this was normalized in, but on the other hand....
Suppose our melee damage (white swings) are intended to be about 30% of our overall damage. Let's suppose that means that we have two weapons swinging at about the same time doing 30% of our damage. Let's also suppose that we've invested the large amount of hit rating needed to hit cap our white swings. Now, the other 70% of our damage (except on multi-target pulls) doesn't benefit at all from the off hand swings. Only rage generation gets any boost at all.
So, if we trade off our off hand for a single two hander, we gain 6 talent points (maybe more depending how important WW is) to place other spots on the tree (maybe handy, maybe not) including the heretofore undesirable Unbridled Wrath (who knows how this will fare in Clysm?). Let's suppose those extra talents kind of wash out some of the unmeasureable factors, i.e. suppose that those extra talent points in things like Anger Management and Unbridled Wrath cut our rage generation loss so we still generate about 70-80% of the rage we did before instead of 50%, and otherwise have no real effect.
I'll use relative terms so we can compare directly.
Now, not having TG means that our 70% of yellow damage is actually 77% now, and the 30% of white damage becomes 16.5%. However, all that hit rating we no longer need (19% hit rating = 623 hit rating currently) can be transferred to extra haste/crit (interestingly enough, 623 Haste rating = 19% haste currently). So, we can add 20% to the white numbers as well as 20% of our rage generation as well. If we also assume that we are capped on our crit rating (say 50% for a nice comparison) that extra crit + haste interaction will also generate an additional 10% for both white damage and rage generation, thus giving us a total of 30% increase to those two numbers.
So, we're looking at Yellow Strikes making up 77% damage, white strikes making up 21.45% damage and rage generation at about 91-104%.
So, in theory, at least it would seem that swapping to a single weapon style with Fury would yield about the same end result as trying to dual wield.
Rage Generation (normalized to 2H Fury)
TG fury: 100%
Single Fury: 91-104%
Damage:
TG Fury:
30% white + 70% yellow = 100%
Single Fury:
21.5% white + 77% yellow = 98.5%
I can't wait until our talent tree has a preview available so I can see how feasible this idea is.
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