Olon97,May 23 2005, 10:12 PM Wrote:Just respecced to 11 arms, 29 prot, 11 fury on the test server, and I enjoyed it so much I ended up switching over on the live server, despite the currently wasted points in iron will. Ironically, my PvE farming is not noticably slower than the 30 fury/ 21 arms build I was messing around with before (I do miss the novelty of Sweeping Strikes+Cleave). My PvE aggro control took a noticable boost as expected.

In group PvP, you need tac mastery for quick access to charge/intercept depending on which has its timer up / even works at the time. Intercept / hamstring / conc blow on a high value target while the other 4 members of your kill squad focus fire is a deadly combo in CTF.

Piercing howl also ends up being invaluable in certain PvP situations. Give me TM and PH and 29 other randomly chosen talents, and I think I can contribute to group PvP. Mortal Strike builds are still king for pure 1on1 PvP vs. healing classes of course.
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Thawwing Light,May 25 2005, 08:22 AM Wrote:What I'm curious about is the question of 'Why Iron Will?' Is the version on the test server that much better than the currently useless live version? I would think a few points Toughness, pushing for Last Stand, finishing off Shield Block, anything would be better than a 3% chance to resist fear/charm per point... is it noticable on the test server?

I'm also curious of how much of a boost the new Conc. Blow is, with the stun limit...

Olon97,May 25 2005, 12:56 PM Wrote:Stun and charm effects have been the bane of my tanking career in late-game content. With Iron Will finally working (to some extent, it doesn't appear to stack with the orc racial ability), I have decided to give it a go. Groups should be prepared to handle the worst case as before, but when that 15% resist kicks in, it could make many of the hardest encounters I've fought so much smoother.

A couple examples that come to mind:
SM Strath 5-man, final boss opting to mind control me is annoying.
DM mobs/bosses knocking back for reduced aggro (esp. King & Prince). Not a problem with a methodical group, but can frequently become aggro pinball encounters if you're not given a large enough aggro lead.

Not to mention, the possibility of passively messing up a stunlock rogue's cheesy perma-stun combo in PvP is too tempting to pass up.

I'm not a fan of last stand. I like my loss of life to be as predictable as possible, and I play with enough different healers that I wouldn't expect one to start anticipating when I would be using last stand. That and the 2 pre-req points are a poor value since the patch that changed the bloodrage skill, IMO - I use non-talented bloodrage regularly and the HP hit is already negligible.

As for the new conc blow, the change is a huge stealth boost to its rage efficiency. You can now Whirlwind an AoE pull using a 2H and immediately stun one elite without swapping to a faster weapon, something I would never have done with the old conc blow (losing a full swing's rage on a 3.8 speed weapon is very pricey). Even with fast daggers, the old conc. blow could be frustrating in PvP due to people moving away before you get the stun off. On-demand instant stun is nice, esp for interrupting short cast time spellcasting.

I don't generally try to stack conc blow on a mob others have been stunning anyway (or even that I've been revenge-stunning). It's best use is as a lead-off stun or as a quick switch to a target you don't have time to tank properly, stun it, and go back to higher priority mobs.
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Olon97,May 25 2005, 10:56 AM Wrote:I'm not a fan of last stand. I like my loss of life to be as predictable as possible, and I play with enough different healers that I wouldn't expect one to start anticipating when I would be using last stand. That and the 2 pre-req points are a poor value since the patch that changed the bloodrage skill, IMO - I use non-talented bloodrage regularly and the HP hit is already negligible.[right][snapback]78557[/snapback][/right]

Thawwing Light,May 25 2005, 03:33 PM Wrote:What exactly does Iron Will give a 15% chance to resist? Thott lists it as Stun and Charm... is this accurate? If this is the case, I don't see why it would effect knockback, which is what that boss is using, if I'm understanding you right. Mind Control is the only Charm effect I can think of, and there are only a few bosses (that  one in Strat, possibly Arugal's Curse from SFK) that use it, leaving its utility to 'against enemy priests, rarely' for the charm portion.

Quote:As for preventing stunlocking Rogues... I'm not really that sure on this one. half of a Rogue's stunlock isn't stuns, it's disorients, with gouge and blinding powder thrown in the mix to keep the diminishing returns from hurting too badly. That, and it's only 1/6 of the time, against one of maybe 3 stuns... I just find this rather weak. I suppose the stun resistance is much better than the charm resistance, but it still doesn't seem like too much of a boost.

Quote:Full defiance strikes me as more useful, as 15% more rage while in Defensive stance is a substancial boost.

Quote:More to the point, it sounds like Conc. Blow rocks even more now. Your situational use of it makes a lot of sense as well, given its power and its cost. That sounds like a great boost to Warrior PvP utility, adding another interrupt that's quick and reliable.

Artega,May 25 2005, 04:32 PM Wrote:Isn't sheep a charm effect?
Gouge and Blind are both Knockout effects, and Berserker Rage makes you immune to Knockout and Fear effects.  C[COLOR=yellow]ombine this with the passive 15% stun resistance, and you'll be much more effective against Rogues.  Not that they were much trouble anyway :P

Quote:Defiance increases threat generated while in Defensive Stance by 15%.  GREAT for PvE servers, utterly USELESS for PvP servers.  Even Improved Disarm would be a better place than Defiance for PvP servers.

Quote:Anticipation is quite possibly the worst talent in any of our three trees; +10 Defense is crap for five talent points.  I'd rather take a few points in Toughness than any in Anticipation.

Quote:Unfortunately, it comes at a very high opportunity cost.  If you can live with being pretty much helpless in 1v1 PvP (or in PvP groups where you lack a good damage class, like Warrior-Priest), then it's certainly worth the investment, especially since the best talents in the Protection tree are at the 20-point line.

Xanthix,May 25 2005, 03:31 PM Wrote:The way I like to think of Last Stand is another healing potion the warrior can use. This is what it looks like to a healer too. The warrior who tanks for me swears by it, and says that it has saved us from a lot of bad pulls and unfortunate adds when the situation got dicey. Is that worth 3 talent points? It's up to the individual to decide.
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Gnollguy,May 25 2005, 01:19 PM Wrote:Just a small point to help clarify.  Anticipation is 0.4% to block, dodge, and parry.  I don't know if it does anything for avoiding crit strikes other than that, but that is the way to think about it.  0.8% damage avoidance and 0.4% better chance to reduce damage, if wearing a shield.  It's overwhelmed by items, but so is toughness.  And defense skill does not seem to have any diminishing returns or a soft cap.  I'm not saying it's a great skill and I would still like to see some love for the protection spec warriors, especially in regards to PvP but I just wanted to make sure that people weren't missing what anticipation does.
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Gurnsey,May 25 2005, 03:49 PM Wrote:So was the effect that defense has ever figured out officially then?
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KiloVictor,May 25 2005, 05:22 PM Wrote:All things being equal, people that are working as MT in MC seem to be going for gear that results in a fairly even rate of damage to the MT (i.e. high defense for crit avoidance first, then overall AC, and ignoring dodge/parry altogether) so that the healers can get into a regular healing rhythm.

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Artega,May 25 2005, 12:32 PM Wrote:One last bit: Olon, why Fury/Arms and not Arms/Fury for PvE grinding/PvP combat?  Cleave+SS is certainly nice, but I've just found that I take far less damage and kill much more efficiently by picking single targets and quickly butchering them with WW+MS combos :)

Gnollguy,May 25 2005, 05:24 PM Wrote:Last stand has saved me and groups I'm in from wipes before.  Just keep in mind that after the 20 seconds are up you lose all those HP.  I've died from Last Stand wearing off a couple of times becuase I wasn't able to get the heal on me to get me up higher than the temp HP were keeping me.

I don't see the talent being all that helpful in 1v1 PvP, except to maybe try and wait out a heal pot timer or something similar.  It has about the same usefulness in larger scale PvP when you have a healer around as it does in PvE.  It's a marginal skill that can help at times when things go wrong.
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Olon97,May 25 2005, 07:03 PM Wrote:The details of my current 11/29/11 build are 1 imp shield block (/w pre-req), toughness, Iron Will, 3 defiance, conc. blow (with pre-reqs), 2 imp shield wall, 4 1h mastery, then Deflection & Anger Management and cruelty & Piercing Howl.

As for situations where your tank tells you last stand saved the day, I have a little secret: by "saved the day" he usually means "saved me a repair bill". If last stand is going to serve as a functional heal, it needs to be used right at the end of combat, otherwise it's just postponing and potentially loading damage up later. The last few seconds of combat, groups can usually wrap things up even if the tank falls and resurrect the tank a few seconds later. Has happened to me maybe ~5-10 times in the last couple months. Most wipes I've been involved in were not salvagable from last stand (or really any other protection talent), but were simply a question of pulls gone horribly wrong/ bad group coordination.
My rationale for this spec is that for the most part tanking as 30 Fury, 21 arms was fine, although with enough +def gear, I stopped getting many crit hits on me while tanking and starting questioning 5 points in enrage.

It was only a select few battles where I felt I could have used some extra advantages. I'm not usually frustrated by insufficient healing or lack fo a "last stand" ability, but rather by being taken out of the fight by a stun / mind control / sheep and having to struggle to regain control once the effect is dispelled or wears off. I'm hoping Iron Will will help in some of those scenarios.
Even 2h WW+ dual wield with fast weapon HS (using the 4/5 1h mastery damage boost) focused damage is peforming similarly to SS+Cleave with the fury/arms build in practice.
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Olon97,May 25 2005, 05:03 PM Wrote:As for situations where your tank tells you last stand saved the day, I have a little secret: by "saved the day" he usually means "saved me a repair bill". If last stand is going to serve as a functional heal, it needs to be used right at the end of combat, otherwise it's just postponing and potentially loading damage up later. The last few seconds of combat, groups can usually wrap things up even if the tank falls and resurrect the tank a few seconds later. Has happened to me maybe ~5-10 times in the last couple months. Most wipes I've been involved in were not salvagable from last stand (or really any other protection talent), but were simply a question of pulls gone horribly wrong/ bad group coordination.[right][snapback]78609[/snapback][/right]

Xanthix,May 26 2005, 10:20 AM Wrote:I have to disagree about Last Stand - let me see if I can point out some other examples of its use.

In my opinion, Last Stand is most useful in the heat of a tough battle, and not just at the end of a fight. There have been lots of times when the tank was low in health and then took a damage spike, while I was still casting a heal. Maybe I was OOM, maybe I was finishing a inner focus'd group heal, maybe I was chain-flash-healing them but was getting hit, but the damage spike came too fast and their potion timer wasn't up, so they would have hit zero if not for Last Stand.

From a healer's perspective, Last Stand works exactly like using a healing potion followed by taking a critical hit 20 seconds later. Sometimes we just need another 2 seconds to land that critical heal to get the warrior back into yellow or green. Last Stand effectively delays a chunk of incoming damage, allowing us to do this.

Another way to look at it is that Last Stand lets a warrior go to -30% of their HP before being killed, for up to 20 seconds. What's not to like about that? I realize it requires 3 talent points with its prereqs, but if you assume that you use Bloodrage each fight, Last Stand is effectively extending your heath bar by 33%. This could easily be another 1000 HP, and I just don't think that should be underestimated.

Olon97,May 26 2005, 04:28 PM Wrote:Point taken. I haven't been in many situations where a heal potion + cleansed whipper root wasn't enough to cover for a gap in healing, but maybe I haven't been actively looking to note such times. If I ever do try a build with last stand, I will make a macro that sends a whisper to every healer assigned to healing me when I use it and another set of whispers when the backend is about 5 seconds away. Considering how rare crits are once you have enough +def gear, a 30% instant HP drop will take people by surprise if you don't communicate what's about to happen. In scenarios where mana isn't likely to be a bottleneck, predictability of incoming damage becomes pretty key to effective healer/tank dynamics.

While in principle, extending the life bar is a handy tool, without a "full heal" spell in the game, there is such a thing as enough life. That would be enough to take the worst case scenario of the pull in question (usually back to back crits on a boss) and still leave healers time to get in their biggest heals. Some discussions I've read (either on the Steel Warrior forums or Conquest guild) estimate that ~5000 life unbuffed is generally enough for MC/Onyxia main tanks, and giving up other useful stats (or talents) to go beyond that mark does not improve the tank's durability enough to justify the loss.

That's PvE, however. PvP it can be a bit harder to predict how much burst damage might be coming your way, or whether you'll even be targetted before the healers in your group are dead anyway. If you're using this sort of PvP tactic (taking point with heal support), having 10k+ life (counting last stand) might be an excellent idea. Granted, that life extension is only once every 10 minutes, but I can definitely see the potential.
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Thawwing Light,May 26 2005, 06:24 PM Wrote:As for those tactics in that video... near as I can tell Pat has @5-5.5k HP unbuffed (he's got 6k with MotW and PW:F), which is nothing unusual, I guess... It seems that this is a good deal of stamina for most purposes, though I wouldn't mind more faced with a barrage of spells.

Olon97,May 27 2005, 02:59 PM Wrote:What I was getting at is that he was being a point man with healer support in moderate zerg PvP. Very hard to anticipate the amount of incoming damage - he could be totally ignored in favor of high value cloth targets on his side, or he could be the only guy in range of the rear alliance lines and be the recipient of some nasty burst damage.

I don't think the warrior in the video had last stand, but in that sort of combat, I can see last stand being handy quite frequently. That 6k buffed HP extends out to ~8k effective HP if you treat last stand as a 30% bonus.
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