Posts with tag protection-warrior

Last week, I said that we'd see changes to protection. This week, we're seeing them. It's build 13033, also known (to those of us who care) as the protection warrior pass. Last week firmly started balancing fury's DPS, but this week is definitely protection's turn. Today, in fact, just hours before this patch went to the beta servers, I got done writing a long post talking about protection in the beta, what I saw as its strong points and its weak points.

Every single one of the weak points was addressed in this build. Every single one. This is what you call serendipity. It also means I have to completely rewrite my column with not a lot of time to spare, so as you may understand, I am at once pleased to see things improved and irritated that I spent all that time writing a column that will never see the light of day. It should be noted that these changes are on the PTR, not live on the beta as yet. It's a little odd to see the PTR get updated first, but I'd expect the beta servers will see a new build soon as well.

Having been 85 for a week, as well as having transferred over two level 85 premades, I've been running around testing out various alternate specs and taking them into instances. Why did I do this? Because, as we have already established, I am certifiably insane. Even before this patch, protection stood out as the strongest of the warrior leveling specs, and now it should see increased power as a tanking class. Vengeance is amazing for a leveling protection warrior. It takes the greatest strength of the tanking classes -- the ability to soak up damage -- and turns it into offensive power.

Welcome to Pimp My Profile, the column in which the WoW.com staff turns zeroes into heroes. Don't think you're performing where you should be? Not sure how your class/spec is supposed to be gearing up? E-mail us with your Armory link, and you might be next to receive our help!

I WANT TO RAID GOOD. Please, teach me to raid gooder than I already raid.

-Derongar

While I believe that your gear is pretty solid (at first I was confused by the lower stamina but then I realized you'd logged out in arms spec but tanking gear) there are a few places that can be adjusted.

Blizzard, perhaps jumping the gun a little, has posted the patch notes for the upcoming Patch 3.3.2 mini-patch on the official Korean site. We've translated them for your convenience. Lots of changes to heroic dungeons, some class buffs (warlock, shaman, druid), and some class nerfs (prot warrior). All this and more, after the cut.

Disclaimer: Translation is hard! Some of these notes, especially more complex ones, may be slightly off. We'll post the official English notes when they're posted as well.

Update! Warbringer change clarified (again). Ghostcrawler chimed in about it.

Dungeons and Raids

Icecrown Citadel

• The Frostwing Halls, the last stronghold of the Lich King and the Scourge, has been added, but the Ashen Verdict must break down the door first. (Does this mean we have to wait some additional time to fight Arthas?)

Halls of Stone

• Brann Bronzebeard has been working out, so he'll run faster during the escort event.

Forge of Souls

• Devourer of Souls will cast Mirrored Soul less often.
• Trash mob Spell Reflect abilities have been changed. It now has a casting time, and will proc only twice at a rate of 75% instead of 100%.

In a forum thread discussing the recent prot warrior block changes and Warbringer nerf and the state of prot warrior DPS (it's basically acknowledged as the lowest DPS among the tanks) Ghostcrawler chimes in that they intend to buff sustained prot DPS while reducing burst in PvP. However, he quickly comes back to point that at this stage in the expansion they don't want to make any sustained mechanical changes and so, don't expect one. The sustained DPS increase will come from buffs to existing abilities.

While I can understand the trepidation from prot warriors at this statement (no one is terribly excited about a buff to Devastate, not even me) it's an unfortunate but valid point he makes here. You really don't have the time to make drastic mechanical changes this far into the cycle. We might like a more drastic solution, but with Cataclysm looming on the horizon you don't really want to see too much tinkering with the base mechanics.

Still, please don't just buff Devastate. Please. I'm begging you here.

Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column.

Listening Music: Home Video's "You Will Know What to Do." The video is some sweet NASA footage; try to not be mesmerized by it (difficult, I confess). When I first heard Home Video a few years ago (Citizen EP, We and In a Submarine), I thought the band might be a Thom Yorke solo project. That's high praise from me. These guys do not disappoint.

Last Week: Part V of our Beginner's Guide to Arena. After featuring some Miles Davis and John Coltrane, we talked a bit about some of the aspects skilled arena damage-dealers excel with.

This Week: We'll be shifting gears a bit this week. Protection warriors are an important (and hot) topic within the arena community. I was thinking about publishing this article as a stand-alone and continuing the arena guide this week, but I've just been a tad bit too busy recently. More after the break!

Should warriors and druids no longer generate rage from damage taken? Ghostcrawler mentions this as a possibility being considered to change the way warriors and druids tank, one that would eliminate difficulties when rage-using tanks take too little damage/avoid too many attacks and have trouble tanking content that they outgear or are using avoidance heavy gear to tank.

• Having warriors only or mostly generate rage from damage done is an intriguing idea that has come up a few times. It would help the problem where better gear leads to rage starvation (at least in lower instances) and where warriors have trouble OT'ing because they aren't getting hit. It might also get warriors to care slightly more about dps stats instead of focusing mostly on survival stats. This would all apply to druids too. This isn't a change we have in the pipe, but it is something we discuss from time to time.

Of course, this would require a real shift in how warrior/druid tanking mechanics worked. It would also have massive effects in PvP: it would essentially break the pattern of design that makes focus firing a warrior in PvP a slightly more risky proposition, since if you don't kill them they'll turn your own damage back on you. (It could also mean that switching to bear as a survival strategy in PvP for druids would become hobbling.) It's a very interesting idea: as a warrior who is currently DPS, I know that rage starvation can be a real issue when you're reliant on damage dealt, any misses or dodged/parried attacks can sink your rotation, so hit and expertise would become even more aggressively important stats for tanks.

There's a lot of issues to consider, but it would make all warriors and all rage based tanks more balanced with each other. No more praying for rage after a dodge streak, no more taking off your pants to run a heroic if you're in raid gear, and more attention paid to parity between DPS and tanking rage use. I'm not sure I want to see so big a change in the game, and I'm certainly hoping they do it right if they do it at all.

In a discussion of tanking mechanics on the forums, Ghostcrawler made a long and in depth post about various subjects that helped consolidate one of the real problems with block and block value in Wrath of the Lich King. Not only is blocking something that only two of the four tanking classes do, but it's a pretty lackluster stat for boss tanking.

• Block as a mechanic is somewhere between avoidance and mitigation. Ideally it removes a fair amount of damage (vs. all damage) reasonably often (vs. rarely). If block is up 100% of the time it just becomes armor that you improve through a different stat. We have let block chances creep up frankly because the amount blocked is pretty trivial when bosses are hitting for 40% of your health pool every swing. If this still strikes you as too RNG, imagine abilities like Shield Block and Holy Shield that could guarantee 100% chance to block for a short period of time.
• We don't think block is cutting it as a mechanic, but the direction we are likely to take it is probably more of a change than you are considering.

The problem with block (which is really two mechanics in one, block rating which determines how often you block, and block value, which determines how much damage you subtract from a hit when you block it) is that for trash, it's inflated due to the block chance creeping upwards that GC mentions above. But for boss fights where a boss can either hit you physically for far, far more than you could ever block or hits you with massive magical damage that block does nothing at all against (well, unless you're a warrior in Tier 8 with the four piece set bonus) block has simply fallen behind the curve.

I have spent 600 gold on respecs in the past week.

Yes, you read correctly. While leveling to 80, I've been respeccing constantly. The reason is simple: I love fury, I love Titan's Grip, I have a ball running around with 2h weapons, but protection is the best leveling spec for warrior right now.

I want those of you who remember the Burning Crusade launch to read that sentence again. If you needed any proof that it's a whole new game now, then let this be your proof: protection is the best leveling spec for warriors right now. It's fast, fun and powerful. These are not things I ever expected to say about prot spec.

Now, I've been tanking for a long time now, and I've been prot since I hit 70 in TBC. It's always been excellent for tanking, but unlike other tank classes, it dedicated all of its tanking power to static threat moves and had weak multi-mob tanking abilities (I detailed what I saw as the problems of the class as tanks here) but all of that is gone now. Everything I wrote about as a weakness of protection? Gone.

Multi-mob tanking? We're strong. Damage output? Very good. Threat? Holding steady. Our health bars? You can't kill me until I run out of tricks. I have solo'd or 2 manned (with my lovely hunter wife and her pet) group quests that call for up to five people. (To be fair, I had 200 health left on one of them.) My love for DPS spec TG is still there, but if you want to finish a quest fast, nothing beats being able to pull an entire room of undead onto yourself, pop shield block, and know that they are going to kill themselves beating on you.

Protection is the best leveling spec in the game right now, good damage, excellent survivability, and moments when you revenge and shield slam for 2k back to back and things disintegrate. Today we'll talk about a protection DPS build at 70, 75 and 80. It's a strong build for grinding and can tank instances, but is not a raid tanking build for reasons we'll explain as we go.

We've had a lot of talk here on WoW Insider about what you can do to prepare for Wrath of the Lich King. Stocking up on consumables, clearing out your bank, stuff like that. Some people have really drastically changed their play style to prepare for the expansion which is coming in just a few days.

Me? I've actually stopped doing things on my main, more or less. I stopped farming gold, I stopped worrying about consumables and gear. Just about the only thing I do on my main is raid since we're still doing Sunwell Plateau once or twice a week hoping for some weapon drops from Kil'jaeden. What I've been doing with the rest of my time in WoW is actually power leveling a new character to 70 as quickly as I can. Why am I doing that, so close to Wrath?

Apologies to Paulo Coelho fans for borrowing his title, but we have two Alchemy-related questions to start us off today, in addition to questions on Blacksmithing, cinematics, and dailies:

Horizons asks...

Do the alchemy specializations in wrath still work the same way as they do now in BC? For example, will I still have a chance of getting 5 wrath potions even when I'm leveling starting at 375 such as Wrath Elixirs or Icy mana potions? And will transmute spec ever be fixed?

Yup, alchemy specializations work the exact same way in Wrath. As a potions master, I've already procced a few, but don't expect to see the Runic Mana or Runic Healing potion recipes until...I want to say it's 410 Alchemy. You'll skill up on the array of new elixirs like Elixir of Mighty Thoughts and Elixir of Mighty Agility until then, but do save mats for the new Alchemy trinkets that become available at (I think) 400, like Mighty Alchemist's Stone. We'll have more information soon on materials you'll start getting in Northrend that you'll want to set aside for crafting.

Dear corpsified bundles of beautifully-armored joy (but more particularly those who tank Azjol Nerub while wearing Expedition Bracers of the Bandit),

We had a little bit of controversy in the first installment, so I'm just going to state this as baldly as possible; if you hated what I wrote last time, there's a good chance you'll walk away from this one thinking I eat babies. Delicious, delicious babies. While I never mean to offend people, I reserve the right to tell them the truth, or at the very least a highly entertaining and plausible lie.

Truth, she be at times an ugly mistress. And she ain't gettin' any prettier as we move from DPS to tanking.

Tanks have significantly more responsibility, both in groups and raids, and they face the competing directives of maximizing mitigation (to keep their healers happy) and maximizing threat production (to keep their DPS happy). I've healed dozens of Death Knight tanks at this point, and while the average pugged DK tank has gotten noticeably better, there are still a few trends you'd want to be aware of as a healer. The problems in beta right now are made worse by Blizzard unintentionally overselling the ease of tanking on a Death Knight in 5-man runs. Many people seem to have interpreted the statement that they should be able to tank well with Blood, Frost, or Unholy specs as being tantamount to saying they can tank well regardless of how their talent points are spent in those trees.

Any experienced tank can tell you right now that this is not true, but people believing that it is is how you wind up with 11K-life Death Knights taking 7-8K enraged hits from Keristasza in the Nexus. If you've never tanked before but you're interested in tanking on a Death Knight -- or pragmatic enough to know you'll probably wind up tanking a certain number of 5-mans on your DPS Death Knight -- I hope this article helps you avoid what I went through in May 2007 when I started tanking and sucked at it.

I came to the beta to slowly lose my mind trying to heal insane tank damage and gulp Extra Strength Tylenol. And I'm all out of Extra Strength Tylenol.

Berserk, the new 51-point talent in the Druid's Feral tree is...what day is it? Thursday? They change it a lot. Anyway, the talent originally combined elements of The Beast Within with Last Stand, but they've disengaged the +health component and made it a separate talent entitled Survival Instinct. The talent that remains affects both Bear and Cat form and does the following:

• Mangle (Bear) will automatically hit up to 3 targets and is spammable (i.e. no cooldown)
• Cat form abilities cost 50% less energy
• Breaks Fear and makes you immune for the duration of Berserk

Berserk lasts for 15 seconds and Tiger's Fury is unusable while it's active, at least in the talent's current form. But odds are pretty good you'll be too busy rolling your face across the keyboard and shouting, "Faster, pussycat! Kill! Kill!!" to notice this.

I received a question over the tip line from an armorsmith this morning who is considering switching to weaponsmith because he is dissatisfied with his profession.

Player regrets surrounding a chosen specialization, or even profession, are common and happen to almost everyone at one time or another.

JDT writes that he is "extremely disappointed" with armorsmithing and what he is able to make, and that one of his reasons for possibly switching to weaponsmithing is that he theorizes it would be helpful to be able to pass down weapons to his alts that cannot wear plate.

Unfortunately JDT, anything that you craft as either a weaponsmith or an armorsmith is not only bind on pick-up, but it also requires you to have that specialization in order to wield/wear it.

That being said, there are blacksmithing plans for weapons and armor floating around that are bind on equip and can be passed along, but those can be made by any blacksmith regardless of specialization.

This week I will begin comparing the various armorsmith and weaponsmith pieces to the first non-crafted upgrades in order to illustrate the value of each item and help each class and spec come to an informed decision when it comes time to choose blacksmithing specialties.

Next week I'll finish out the comparison, as there is more than I can fit into this week's edition!

Tank Talk is WoW Insider's raid-tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column will be rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and myself (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish. Today, dear readers, we might make ourselves hated by the entire population of undisputed, royal-bloodlined, main tanks, but that's OK. We are used to staying at the top of someone's hate list.

One of the accepted facts of raiding life used to be that the main tank was the guild's gearing priority. As Adam Holisky's observed, "Everything that happens in the raid eventually makes it back to the tank." Healers undergeared? You're screwed. DPS incompetent or just badly grouped? Buh-bye. Random number generator wreaking all manner of havoc on healer crits and boss parries? Thar be the graveyard. A truly cynical mind would opine that the tank should be as well-geared as possible if only because it makes it easier for the raid to forget that person existed as anything other than a rapidly-advancing line on the Omen screen that: a). always stayed above their own, and b). never died. There are enough random variables while the raid's learning a new boss that the tank needs to be eliminated as one, and in vanilla WoW that was certainly the goal. Raid and offtank damage on most encounters hadn't scaled to the point where you could make a compelling argument in favor of gear equilibrium across your tanking roster. What was the point of something like that when 95% of the damage in a fight was going to be absorbed by a single person?

That changed.

This idea's been floated before, but a few people on the forums have responded pretty enthusiastically to the notion of introducing a "guild income tax." Others...not so much so. Basically, there was a proposal made in the Beta forums that Blizzard give GM's/officers the ability to levy a percentage-based tax on members' earnings. Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan responded, saying that it "was an interesting idea" and they're considering options for improving guild administration, but there was no way they could program a change like this in time for Wrath. Bear in mind that the original tax being suggested would apply to your toon both inside and out of raids (although no one was seriously suggesting that the tax should apply to non-raiding members of the guild).

I have to admit that I'm not too keen on the idea of a broad-based "income tax" on players, if only because the game's current mechanics make it all but certain that the main beneficiaries will be people who either can't (due to class/spec) or won't put much gold into the guild coffers. Moreover, the taxation idea acts as an incentive for people not to guild their alts, thus avoiding taxation entirely on toons that are usually the real means of support for a raiding main (someone remind me to go reserve a hunter named Swissbank). As an herbalist/alchemist, I farm a lot for friends and have been known to chuck the guild bank a few hundred gold from time to time. Maybe I'd save time and money under a system that required me to hand over 2-3% of my income, but still. Being taxed removes an element of individual responsibility, and it certainly takes away the nice feeling you have for voluntarily helping others.

If nothing else the idea's given rise to a few nice jokes (Cacora of Hellscream: "Do I get money back at the end of the year if I claim multiple alts as dependents?"), but the final word may well belong to Grig from Whisperwind: "So, Blizzard is considering taking one of the most universally loathed concepts from real life and adding it to a game. Why, they'd be silly not to do it."