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.
Friday, September 17, 2010
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
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