Posts with tag shield-wall

This was actually an offhand remark of Ghostcrawler's a few days ago, but it didn't seem to get much attention. In a thread devoted to the possibility of extending buffs like Blessing of Kings to additional classes in Cataclysm, Ghostcrawler mentioned the following:

Ghostcrawler

Obviously things like Rebirth can't just be handed to out to more classes unless we did something like a second exhaustion mechanic for battle rez or whatever. For now we're going to try the cooldown at 30 min again. In Icecrown's world of limited attempts, a 30 min cooldown likely meant you just cooled your heels until the cooldown was available again. In Cataclysm the hope is sometimes you'll have the benefit available but not every time, which scales back on how much of a game-changer it is.

An alternative to a longer cooldown for Rebirth is something where one druid using it would trip everyone's cooldown for a few minutes. That it's a bit gamey, but might solve the problem.

Also keep in mind that Rebirth is much more useful in today's game where people tend to die from massive damage. In a world where people sometimes die because the healers have run out of mana, then Rebirth doesn't buy you quite as much.

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We covered the changes (including the undocumented ones) to warriors on the PTR, including the new Titan's Grip 'damage tax' on fury warriors. Yeah, it sucks, I'm not happy about it, but it's probably not going to go away.

The idea of Titan's Grip being too powerful is too entrenched in too many minds, so we basically have to hope that the damage penalty only comes into play while you're actually dual wielding and is not just a flat penalty on all of your abilities while you have the talent, which would make offtanking or tanking five man instances quite painful for fury. We'll see how bad it is. Dropping fury warrior DPS by a full 10% seems pretty extreme and it hurts those warriors doing their absolute best the most (if you're putting out 4.4k DPS now, you're losing 440 DPS with this change). I guess it's a good thing I specced my tauren Arms when I did.

But enough grumbling. What about the changes to glyphs?

Which, I suppose, makes sense. It's cold up there.

If you've been playing a warrior for a long time, you've probably gotten used to the way your three big class abilities work. Presently, Shield Wall, Retaliation and Recklessness are linked abilities with a shared 30 minute cooldown. This means if you use one of them you can't use any of the other two in addition to the one you used for half an hour. Not only has this restriction kept warriors from using any of their big cooldowns in Arenas, it also serves as an inhibitor in raiding and soloing and questing. You don't pop Shield Wall unless you're absolutely sure you're going to die, because then you won't have it for possibly two or three boss attempts.

This will no longer be the case in Wrath. In a move that simultaneously nerfs and buffs these long-standing warrior abilities, the base effect of each has been reduced but their cooldown shortened to 5 minutes. The tooltips of each ability spell it out now. The duration of each has dropped to about 12 seconds (not a huge deal), Recklessness has lost its fear breaking ability, Shield Wall only reduces incoming damage by 50%, and Retaliation only hits 20 attacks now. Yes, these are all nerfs. But the upside of a 5 minute duration makes them far more friendly for use. You can pop shield wall on trash if needed and still have it for a boss. A fury warrior can use reck secure in the knowledge that he'll most likely have it back up by the time the boss hits execute range. And retaliation might even be viable for multi-mob tanking now! A little stance dancing and you don't have to fret that shield wall is gone for half an hour.

To me, this is an awesome change. It makes those abilities less restricted and thus, makes me more willing to use them.

While I'm pushing through Black Temple and Mount Hyjal nicely as my guild's tank, I am still trying to improve my style and playing elements. There's not much more I can do to build threat – the Devastates, Shield Slams, Revenges, Heroic Strikes, etc., are all going off at the right time. Gear is fine, I can pretty much tank anything in the game at this point and succeed. So why am I still dying? Why am I missing that critical moment when I could put up my Spell Reflect and live a second longer?

I think I've found it.

It's all about eye movement. Try this: focus your sight to the upper left hand corner of the screen, and now move your sight down to the bottom of the screen. If you have a large enough monitor, you completely lose focus of the text and items near the upper left corner. This is problematic for tanking in that the unit frames (those things that tell you who's in your group and who you're attacking) are by default located in the upper left corner, and the action bars are located at the bottom. So if you want to make sure you're going to hit something – or even look at your keyboard for a moment – you're moving your eyes quite a bit.