Game-Changing New Powers

[Legedi]

I should clarify my post - I wasn't slighting the warriors on Terenas or their gear level. Just pointing out that if Seiki is using his raid-level tanking kit that he has a LOT of avoidance and mitigation gear. Having run with the Terenas warriors I know they're a quality set of tanks.:)

I actually have been using a mix of tanking gear and high stam/DPS gear on trash. And then go full tanking gear on bosses. Some times when I forget to tank the full tanking gear off it's like "ah, why am all I'm doing is taunting and auto-attacking?" I probably should have taken off more tanking gear, but it's just so damn stupid IMO that I have to take off all my tank gear to tank. eh, I figure when I hit the level 70 man instances I won't be over geared anymore.

[Mavfin]

I'm curious about trying to solo with a heavy prot build. I figure I'd stay in my DW gear. The one thing I'm wondering is do you use sunder and then devastate, or just go straight to devastating? If the damage loss is only 10% or less I think it will be worth it to save the headaches of tanking.

Seiki, I stay DW unless they're hurting me too much, I sunder to half-life on the mob, or 5, whichever comes first (usually half-life about 3), and then finish it off. It makes for a nice damage boost, and is cheap on rage. If I have my shield on, I use shield slam some, if not, I use HS/Devastate mostly, along with a fair amount of overpower. Zerker's 3% crit usually isn't worth the damage you take in most cases as a prot build soloing, IMO.

[Mavfin]

I'm curious about trying to solo with a heavy prot build. I figure I'd stay in my DW gear. The one thing I'm wondering is do you use sunder and then devastate, or just go straight to devastating? If the damage loss is only 10% or less I think it will be worth it to save the headaches of tanking.

Yeah, on trash that's too low to hurt me much, I just use DPS gear/shield, then flip to full tank for bosses.
Even in DPS gear/shield, a lot of trash doesn't go over my block amount.

[bonemage]

I'm curious about trying to solo with a heavy prot build. I figure I'd stay in my DW gear. The one thing I'm wondering is do you use sunder and then devastate, or just go straight to devastating? If the damage loss is only 10% or less I think it will be worth it to save the headaches of tanking.

I'm still playing with this a bit. Dual wield with Devastate or sword and board and rely on Shield Slam seem to be the options for a prot warrior. I did try soloing with a two hander and slam, but I don't think it's as good as the other two, much more down time. I just started Dual wielding, and I think that's the way to go. You're limited by the global cooldown on getting the sunders on, then spam Devastate. I don't have a great weapon for Devastate (Shadowrend Longblade), so I need the sunders to make Devastate useful. Not sure how that will work for a TF warrior, though.

[Kevin]

Seiki, I stay DW unless they're hurting me too much, I sunder to half-life on the mob, or 5, whichever comes first (usually half-life about 3), and then finish it off. It makes for a nice damage boost, and is cheap on rage. If I have my shield on, I use shield slam some, if not, I use HS/Devastate mostly, along with a fair amount of overpower. Zerker's 3% crit usually isn't worth the damage you take in most cases as a prot build soloing, IMO.

I took little Gnolack out for a spin the other day to test some stuff so I was only doing Hellfire quests and only facing L58-62 mobs with my L60 self. I did the same method. Dual wield (my Quel and Brute blade) unless I hit one of the elites or got 3 or more on me. Sunder till 50% life or a 5 stack then devestate and heroic strike. The sunder to 50% health or 5 has a kinda of natural pattern too. Lower armor mobs hit 50% faster so you don't "over sunder". High armor mobs get the full stack before 50% health so you get more advantage out of it.

I did some playing with gear and maybe not so oddly I kept 5 piece wrath on for the highest DPS, I was only doing about 230 DPS but that is plenty for grinding. That proc that cuts rage by 5 is really nice there were a few times that I got that and overpower and I got 3 rage back from the overpower since with focused rage overpower is already down to 2 rage. It did refund rage, it was neat not that that happened a lot. The extra AP from battle shout didn't hurt either. I would usually try to do the HS with the proc up since that seemed more effective than a 7 rage devestate. As Mav said with shield on I will do shield slams for more DPS and just generally not use HS. And my weapon, the Quel, is a bad devestate weapon as well, but it still seems to work a bit better for DPS than pure HS.

But yeah my pattern hasn't really changed from pre TBC days, sunder is still a very solid DPS increase, I hate downtime so while I could get more DPS from going to zerker and working in some whirlwinds (put my untamed blade on and throw those out) the extra damage I took even with high mit meant that I was eating/bandaging more frequently and that extra downtime chewed up the killing speed advantage.

I do want to see about building a little more rage with the dual wield and then putting on the UTB and doing some slam spamming, which was a standard DPS method for me in raids as prot but is now viable solo with the changes to slam but I generally can't build that much rage. But it might prove to be more DPS, dunno.

Oh and Gnolack is 5/5/41 right now as well.

[Kevin]

You gave him 10 seconds of lead time?! Dude! You're going to be spoiling our tanks! Be aggro monkey extraordinaire! Trust me, they'll love it. :shuriken:Go full bore from the first half second of combat. C'mon. You know you want to. ;)

:wub:our tanks. :)

Well you should be happy to know that I'm not letting them off at least even if Frag is. :) I'm unloading with Marn right away and not hitting FD. I also tend to leave growl on with the pet as well. Not that a 9K armor 6500 HP, 12% dodge, 6% parry, 6% block pet (average numbers from the last couple of Slave Pen and Underbog runs) is a horrible thing to have aggro. Of course many of them make my pet tank the first to die target anyway so maybe that helps them get more rage, I dunno. Generally I've got the pet on one and another in a trap if I'm around so they aren't going to get beat on as much. Don't want those warriors with rage. If they get rage how am I supposed to "win teh instenance!" :) I don't care if the tank doesn't have a chance I have to keep in the practice of keeping them warriors rage starved. :)

And yes I'm popping trinkets, beastial wrath and rapid fire on trash, right at the very start at times and then unloading with arcane, multi, steady shot barrages. That's pushing 1400 AP, 28% crit, 15% extra damage (the pet will have critted for 3% more having it out is 2% and the beast within is 10% more) with a Rhok that is shooting at around 1.3 - 1.5, depending on if improved hawk procs early or not. I never worry about that taking aggro either. I'm not fully sure what that works out to for a "burst" DPS, but with the short cooldowns on that stuff I'm trying to use my cooldowns better. That AP and crit can be higher than that depending on who else is in the group too of course. I know that hunters aren't the best DPS burst class, though several of the changes have given us a lot more control over it (which is awesome) but yeah I'm not worried about stuff like that pulling aggro. It's fun. :)


On the whole gearing thing

But yeah as mentioned by others I'm dealing with a set of warriors that isn't really in raid gearing. I know that pre-TBC when tanking the older instances it generally didn't work to wear the raid tank level gear either, heck many times it didn't make sense to be in def stance for those either, but yeah, the game has been like that for awhile. If the mobs are in that -2 to +3 range in the 5 mans and you really outgeared then as a tank you could have rage issues but the healers never really had healing issues. And I do agree that it kinda sucks. It would be nice to see a mechanic that got you some rage when you avoided an attack. Perhaps this only works in defensive stance and battle and zerker are still more rage based on damage you take but def stance is more rage based on damage you avoided. There are several issues with that and I haven't really thought it out well, but it would feel better for the gearing you want to wear for that stuff. It could of course make soloing as prot in def stance insanely easy. But you can think of it as when you are in battle/zerker you get angry when you get hurt. When you are in defensive you get excited when you avoid and you get that rage/adrenaline to do the special stuff either way. But whatever.


And looking at the theory craft on some of this. Paladin tanks kind of have an advantage here. They can pile on all the mitigation they want since the damage they take doesn't really influence the aggro they can generate. I know that isn't fully true. They are limited by mana and cooldowns as well, and they get mana back from being healed now, but if the mana pool is large enough for the fight or popping potions isn't an issue then mitigating all damage will not diminish the aggro generated. This is not true for warriors or druids.

[Kevin]

Oh one thing that should be pointed out here is that we are talking about horde vs alliance in some of this.

Windfury totem is a game changing ability for a warrior that gets it. The proc from the totem still produces white damage that generates more rage. Considering that WF totem was the horde answer to blessing of salvation and that from what I have seen and read that it increased that warriors aggro by ~20% (the extra damage and the extra rage if there were rage limitations allowed that much more aggro). So we are talking Terenas warriors here in many cases. Now they don't always have a shaman with them on a 5 man, but we have enough shaman that I would guess they usually have a shaman with them so the average experience they report is going to be affected by memories where windfury totem was down for them. It is significant enough that it should be kept in mind I think.

[bonemage]

You gave him 10 seconds of lead time?! Dude! You're going to be spoiling our tanks! Be aggro monkey extraordinaire! Trust me, they'll love it. :shuriken:Go full bore from the first half second of combat. C'mon. You know you want to. ;)

:wub:our tanks. :)

I second this! I still remember the first Ramparts run I ran with Fragit (Frag's rogue), and he asked me if I wanted him to be a good rogue and not rip aggro. I told him to "go nuts", and I don't think he has stopped, and I love it. I've been pushed and challenged, and I enjoy tanking for aggro monkeys. Yes, there are times where I simply can't hold something, but as a result of Fragit's pushing, I'm comfortable knowing that it wasn't a lack of skill on my part. I have found another gear or two in my tanking as a direct result. We also did several first runs at -3 boss levels for me, equal level for Fragit, and the only CC we had was sap, so I was pushing to keep aggro vs. Fragit while trying to protect the healer(s). It sometimes resulted in a rogue offtank (not a really bad thing), but I have a much clearer idea of what is possible for the warrior class, and for myself as a player.

Hunter pets are another matter. They simply aren't fair, and play by a different set of rules. Two revenges and a shield slam in defensive stance is a LOT less threat than a single boar charge. That's why we never fight the hunter pets for aggro, it's simply not worth the massive rage investment to stand a chance, and it's often a battle we lose. All that rage dumped on one mob means you're behind on the other mobs. No thanks, the pet can have it if he wants it. Plus, threat generation on a warrior is much greater when they have aggro, and pets generate threat at the same ungodly speed whether or not they are taking damage. I'm not sure if this is by design, and if gearing will change matters in the future, but right now beast mastery pets make me feel inadequate. This is llike when we were at Maraudon gear levels and the BM pets rivaled me in armor, life, DPS, and threat generation.

[bonemage]

Oh one thing that should be pointed out here is that we are talking about horde vs alliance in some of this.

Windfury totem is a game changing ability for a warrior that gets it. The proc from the totem still produces white damage that generates more rage. Considering that WF totem was the horde answer to blessing of salvation and that from what I have seen and read that it increased that warriors aggro by ~20% (the extra damage and the extra rage if there were rage limitations allowed that much more aggro). So we are talking Terenas warriors here in many cases. Now they don't always have a shaman with them on a 5 man, but we have enough shaman that I would guess they usually have a shaman with them so the average experience they report is going to be affected by memories where windfury totem was down for them. It is significant enough that it should be kept in mind I think.

For the "first runs" of Ramparts, Blood Furnace, Slave Pens, and Underbog, only Slave Pens had a shaman along for me, so for the anecdotal evidence from my experience, Windfury (which ROCKS for warriors) isn't much of a factor.

[Kevin]

For the "first runs" of Ramparts, Blood Furnace, Slave Pens, and Underbog, only Slave Pens had a shaman along for me, so for the anecdotal evidence from my experience, Windfury (which ROCKS for warriors) isn't much of a factor.

You were also the one Terenas warrior who has replied that said things felt a little rage light though not starved. But yeah.

Hunter pets are another matter. They simply aren't fair, and play by a different set of rules. Two revenges and a shield slam in defensive stance is a LOT less threat than a single boar charge. That's why we never fight the hunter pets for aggro, it's simply not worth the massive rage investment to stand a chance, and it's often a battle we lose. All that rage dumped on one mob means you're behind on the other mobs. No thanks, the pet can have it if he wants it. Plus, threat generation on a warrior is much greater when they have aggro, and pets generate threat at the same ungodly speed whether or not they are taking damage. I'm not sure if this is by design, and if gearing will change matters in the future, but right now beast mastery pets make me feel inadequate. This is llike when we were at Maraudon gear levels and the BM pets rivaled me in armor, life, DPS, and threat generation.

Yeah I'm convinced that boar charge is bugged. None of my other pets can hold a candle to the aggro the boar can put out thanks to charge. The cat is still crazy (and of course they are really crazy for me since I have beastial discipline 2x focus regen and go for the throat 50 focus whenever I crit and that runs from 35-50% rate for me depending on buffs) but not nearly as bad. I do generally try to be good and kill growl to cut the aggro down and even try to not charge at times. But yeah, boars are stupid aggro right now and since I can keep bit, gore and growl all on autocast and pretty much never miss one the boar can do 130 DPS with that charge aggro. The cat hovers around 150. Last underbog I did was Conc, Jandrey, Xarhud, Mogo, and Marn and I took the cat since there was no need for me to offtank. She had growl off most of the time, but even with it on, it wasn't horrible for the warrior to hold aggro on it. But with 2 warriors there I figured she wasn't really needed for the off tanking which was mostly true. But again if there is VE healing or ILotP or a spare earth shield or what not the pet doing tanking seems to make a lot of sense to me. You don't need to spare any healing for it on trash you give the tank more time to build more aggro and things just seem to go smoother. And since Azzassinator (who is Marks) was able to hold aggro just fine with his boar this isn't limited to beast hunters. I think it's pretty well intended that a hunter should off tank, though if boar charge is bugged it might not work out as well for other specs when they fix it.


Of course it isn't just the warrior tanks that I don't hold back with. I go all out on our druid tanks too.

But yeah I don't think they have hunters quite set up yet. The pet can MT an instance just fine (I did MT Ramparts and Blood Furnace I the pet has intentionally or inadvertendly tanked every boss in Slave Pens and Underbog with the execption of the last UB boss). Heck my first ever BF run Mogo and Marn duo'd nearly to the first boss at L61, we picked up Azzassinator who was L60 and then proceded to pwn the boss. So yeah hunter pets are not quite right. OK I think they would be alright if the beat hunter themselves couldn't still do so much DPS and if the boar charge wasn't stupid amounts of aggro (other pets seem to be inline, I can pull aggro from the cat and wolf if I don't use intimidate in some solo situations).

[Artega]

That's what I discovered in beta, is for questing/grinding prot was the way to go, with sword/board + dmg plate I could grind longer and harder with less breaks and the damage wasn't that far behind as to feel boring.

Cheers,
~Frag B)

P.S. On-topic - Lifebloom is nuts! On Torenia it costs 178 mana, heals 704+900 selfbuffed. 9:1 mana efficiency? Woooohoooo! :w00t:

Yeah, I grind with my sword and board out, and it works fine. Mobs with a lot of armor and HP take a little longer, but with them I can simply stack 5 Sunders and start the Devastate spamming.

[Concillian]

P.S. I was feeling the rage starvation in beta, and my gear isn't so much better than those I mentioned above that I should have been rage-less. Dunno, maybe it's something as simple as stop spamming shield block.

It's a few things. I'm assuming here that the difficulty is in the trash, not the bosses. Because I can't see people having problems with bosses.

1) shield block is not something I really spam in 5-mans. You noted the healing being not terrible. I go aggro then damage then mit on trash. "Death is the best CC" school of thought. Mostly I will use shield block to trigger revenge (if I'm in a 5-man with casters so sunder isn't strictly necessary) or when a mob is about to die to get revenge queued for waking up a sheep, so I have good initial threat for that guy.

2) The Terenas Lurkers are generally very good about focus fire and making a target order before each pull. It makes tanking much, much, much easier when people are focus firing well. This is the primary difference between most PUGs I've been on and the Lurker runs.

3) Know when to quit throwing aggro on a mob. If you lose a mob at 20% to DPS and it's under heavy focus fire... it's not going to kill anyone. Healers can deal with some DPS getting a hit or two. Trash killing DPS is not a huge worry unless there was a focus fire gone wrong scenario. As long as they aren't on the healer, this is usually fine.

Having done quite a bit of at level 5-manning before TBC, I can honestly say that it's not a huge difference in TBC. For warriors that have raid tanked most of their characters life, it's probably the (rather significant) differences between 5-man tanking and raid tanking. They are very different, and people who are awesome raid tanks may have forgotten or never really learned how to 5-man very well. I don't think it's something to be ashamed of, it's normal if you spent a year doing raiding to be rusty at 5-mans.

I went into TBC expecting horrible things based on what I had read on the WoW boards about how poorly warriors were able to hold aggro. Now that I'm 65 and have tanked everything through mana-tombs, I don't see it yet. Seems very similar to all the other at-level 5 manning I've done.

[Concillian]

Some times when I forget to tank the full tanking gear off it's like "ah, why am all I'm doing is taunting and auto-attacking?"

I wish I had the gear to try it out. It's always been my opinion that the meat of complaints about warrior rage issues in 5-mans are from raid tanks who have forgotten what it's like to tank 5-man content. As it is I'm doing fine in T2 + T1 level of gearing with a full arms build (horrible tanking spec), but I suppose it could be that there is some line that is crossed where you can't effectively tank anymore. I'd like to be able to experiment with it to know one way or the other.

[ima_nerd]

I went into TBC expecting horrible things based on what I had read on the WoW boards about how poorly warriors were able to hold aggro. Now that I'm 65 and have tanked everything through mana-tombs, I don't see it yet. Seems very similar to all the other at-level 5 manning I've done.

Good. Since I've never raid-tanked but have extensive² experience in 5-mans, I should be ok:)This thread at the Basin kind of scared me with regards to TBC tanking. Glad to see some opinions to the contrary.

[Frag]

It's a few things. I'm assuming here that the difficulty is in the trash, not the bosses. Because I can't see people having problems with bosses.

1) shield block is not something I really spam in 5-mans. You noted the healing being not terrible. I go aggro then damage then mit on trash. "Death is the best CC" school of thought. Mostly I will use shield block to trigger revenge (if I'm in a 5-man with casters so sunder isn't strictly necessary) or when a mob is about to die to get revenge queued for waking up a sheep, so I have good initial threat for that guy.

2) The Terenas Lurkers are generally very good about focus fire and making a target order before each pull. It makes tanking much, much, much easier when people are focus firing well. This is the primary difference between most PUGs I've been on and the Lurker runs.

3) Know when to quit throwing aggro on a mob. If you lose a mob at 20% to DPS and it's under heavy focus fire... it's not going to kill anyone. Healers can deal with some DPS getting a hit or two. Trash killing DPS is not a huge worry unless there was a focus fire gone wrong scenario. As long as they aren't on the healer, this is usually fine.

Having done quite a bit of at level 5-manning before TBC, I can honestly say that it's not a huge difference in TBC. For warriors that have raid tanked most of their characters life, it's probably the (rather significant) differences between 5-man tanking and raid tanking. They are very different, and people who are awesome raid tanks may have forgotten or never really learned how to 5-man very well. I don't think it's something to be ashamed of, it's normal if you spent a year doing raiding to be rusty at 5-mans.

I went into TBC expecting horrible things based on what I had read on the WoW boards about how poorly warriors were able to hold aggro. Now that I'm 65 and have tanked everything through mana-tombs, I don't see it yet. Seems very similar to all the other at-level 5 manning I've done.

The rage starvation in beta it was bosses/trash/solo/group, I felt it everywhere. Somewhere in the last 3 weeks of beta they changed *something* with the formula, we weren't able to nail it down and I had stopped playing over there pretty-much but whatever it was they changed was nice.

You likely have a point. Tiga grew up tanking lots and lots and lots of 5 mans. I tended to level inside instances as the frustration of trying to level outdoors on Tich didn't do good things for my blood pressure. After hitting 60 and starting to raid, I really only did BRS Key runs or an occasional jaunt to Dire Maul, but for the most part I haven't 5-manned in quite some time (until beta). That "shield block spam" I mentioned earlier is a hold-over from raiding, and served me well at endgame TBC, but not in pre-Auch instances (now that I think of it).

As for the test with my warrior, I pulled Tiga out yesterday and did Ramparts with a ~+1/2 level group to him, we were going for speed and the only times I had aggro issues was when dps was going all over, per usual. At no point did I feel rage starved, I was doing a large amount of cleaving / twist + thunderclapping / twist + whirlwind, all of which are fairly expensive manuevers and can only recall hearing "You don't have enough rage" a few times. That's pretty great. :)


As for 10s lead time... you want me to give him ~2s lead before I pop the whirlwind of death macro? I end up tanking 2-4 mobs in that case unless they're feeling generous and pop an aoe taunt. :blush:

Cheers,
~Tiga :D

[Artega]

Good. Since I've never raid-tanked but have extensive² experience in 5-mans, I should be ok:)This thread at the Basin kind of scared me with regards to TBC tanking. Glad to see some opinions to the contrary.

Honestly, I'm surprised to see someone at the Basin claiming the sky is falling. I've had no problems holding aggro from tier3-equipped DPS monkeys, and I do very well in PvP, even without Improved Revenge.

[Mavfin]

Honestly, I'm surprised to see someone at the Basin claiming the sky is falling. I've had no problems holding aggro from tier3-equipped DPS monkeys, and I do very well in PvP, even without Improved Revenge.

As I've said elsewhere, I think some of the current noise about druid tanks, and hybrids in general at the moment is due to the fact that hybrids really shine in small groups. My elemental shammy rocks in 5-mans. What's going on in TBC right now? 5-mans, 5-mans, 5-mans, and some 10-man Kharazan. Of course the hybrids are doing well. The more focused classes/specs will get their day in the sun, too. There's room for all, IMO.

[ima_nerd]

As I've said elsewhere, I think some of the current noise about druid tanks, and hybrids in general at the moment is due to the fact that hybrids really shine in small groups. My elemental shammy rocks in 5-mans. What's going on in TBC right now? 5-mans, 5-mans, 5-mans, and some 10-man Kharazan. Of course the hybrids are doing well. The more focused classes/specs will get their day in the sun, too. There's room for all, IMO.

I care less about Druids tanking well and more about Warriors not being able to tank. I'm running with a 5-man group that doesn't have a Druid so I'm in no position to lose out. However, if I can't tank effectively, my group's ability to play together will be hurt. I think that thread on the Basin was blowing things out of proportion a bit and I've seen plenty of evidence over here saying Warriors are fine in TBC 5-mans.

[Mavfin]

I care less about Druids tanking well and more about Warriors not being able to tank. I'm running with a 5-man group that doesn't have a Druid so I'm in no position to lose out. However, if I can't tank effectively, my group's ability to play together will be hurt. I think that thread on the Basin was blowing things out of proportion a bit and I've seen plenty of evidence over here saying Warriors are fine in TBC 5-mans.

I'm not having any problems tanking with my warrior in 5-mans, so the warriors you see on other forums crying about not being able to hold aggro just don't know how, I guess. You don't see Legedi, or bonemage, or me, or Conc, or Frag complaining about not being able to hold aggro:D

As far as pallies doing better for 3+ mobs, hell yeah, they do better. It's definitely something they're set up for with consecration and +threat on holy. Druids are shining on 2-3 mob pulls, as Average Joe Warrior in 5-mans is somewhat shaky on holding 1 mob, let alone 2 or 3. Avarage Joe Druid can handle swipe. This in no way denigrates the skilled players of any class, but some things are simpler for some classes. The skilled druid players, and the skilled tank players, and the skilled pallies probably aren't the ones saying all that. You'll be fine:D

[Tal]

I care less about Druids tanking well and more about Warriors not being able to tank. I'm running with a 5-man group that doesn't have a Druid so I'm in no position to lose out. However, if I can't tank effectively, my group's ability to play together will be hurt. I think that thread on the Basin was blowing things out of proportion a bit and I've seen plenty of evidence over here saying Warriors are fine in TBC 5-mans.

I'm presently an Arms/Fury warrior and only struggle when folks are acting like monkeys and not assist/focus firing or when aggro is stripped at 75% (probably because I'm chasing down the mob I hadn't touched yet that someone has opened up on) and the DPSe'r figures its better to turn it up rather than try to dump aggro. I generally will sunder the mob that I want to die first (if there is no pet around) and then tab target through the mobs with Revenge usually popping up for the second mob to die, sunder on the third, etc. Once I've established a rhythm I throw cleave in. Again only losing aggro to dps.