01-09-2007, 08:12 PM
I've yet to see any talk about"
If that means that slam is no longer stuttered, all warriors just got a nice damage boost. Not huge but it means that slam is no longer a tool mainly used by prot warriors in a DPS roll on raid bosses (build rage with dual wield then slap on that 2H and slam spam it down). It means that even solo you might want to use slam on a mob. It means that slam is now a viable PvP option as well.
Druids vs Warriors vs Paladins
Since mangle isn't mentioned some of those changes also look like they don't want any druid with a few feral talents to be an excellent tank. If mangle is now the primary threat tool (in addition to the great DPS tool it is for cats) then they just gave feral druids a leg up on tanking over non feral druids.
The changes to devestate may have done some more of this for warriors as well. I'm not sure what I feel about this. It means that the gap between DPS warriors and tank warriors could be bigger, it means the gap between feral and non feral druids is bigger, but it means the gap between feral druids and prot warriors should be smaller. Changes to the paladin talents also make it look like prot paladins should have a noticable leg up on non prot pallies. I'm not sure that the aggro changes make the gap between prot and non prot pallies as much as they might be with the druid and warrior.
The net result could be that it encourages people to put that feral druid as a tank in front of the Fury or Arms warrior. Or that it makes you want to use that prot pally instead of another warrior. That to me is a good thing. The downside is that the players that really liked and were really good at the multi-role warrior (personal examples of Lurkers like Conc, Dragoon, Jester, Tal, and others come to mind) might not be able to do that nearly as effectively (changes to encounters would have to be considered, I see nothing that seems to change the effectiveness in current pre-expansion instances). It could also limit the group composition some. Sure if there are 3 very viable tank classes the need for a DPS warrior to tank could be less but it could also still limit groups some. Hard to comment on without knowing the new content.
Shaman
I'm alright with moving the threat from ES to FS. Having recently tanked LBRS on my L57 shaman (I did hit 58 just before Wrym), even with stromstrike, it was very rare that I got an ES on a mob that had the SS debuff on it or that I even needed that for extra threat. Having to spread the threat around and keeping lightning shield up meant that I rarely had the opportunity to uses the SS debuff to maximum effect as if a shock was in cooldown SS might have been needed to pull that mob that just came out of sap onto me, or I had to shock a mob that got split DPS, or what not.
It makes the utility of ES for non tanking higher, while I generally used rank one for the interrupt for mana purposes sometimes I wanted the extra damage when I did the spell interrupt as well, now that doesn't come with tons of threat (it will only be like 1K threat instead of 2K threat).
I do wonder though about rockbiter. I had heard they were removing the extra threat from it as well but I see nothing about that in the patch notes. I hope that means it stays. Shaman already had mitigation concerns as tanks, but they were very viable off tanks grabbing and holding focus fire mobs, or even being able to put out a lot of aggro quickly to get a mob off a priest or caster druid since they can take the beating better. They are also very viable tanks for all the existing content, since the lack of mitigation can be compensated for some with self healing. Not completely but some.
The changes look to me like they don't take anything away while adding a bit more utility.
Some final thoughts
While this is intended to just be a precursor to TBC, there will still be a population of players that won't get TBC or won't get it for several weeks to a month from now. These changes look to not hurt those players at all and fix some of the issues that this patch introduced that Blizzard intended to fix with TBC itemiztion that this subset won't have access too. I'm happy to see that. Sure that segment of the population shouldn't get a lot of focus but it is nice to see that they are getting some issues fixed.
For many people this is simply just changes that will last for 1 week and then the new levels, skills, items, and challenges will change perceptions. I don't really see much that is bad in here. I don't see much to really be upset about. I do things that still leave room for improvement, but the only real nerfs look like they hit classes that quite frankly needed them. I'm expecting something to change for paladin tanks in terms of consecrate as well. I think we haven't heard the complaints about the power of that because people haven't seen a lot of pally tanks. I know that back in 1.06 or 1.07 I was using that + retribution aura and some self healing to easily hold aggro vs Rain of Fire and even Blizzard. Sure not the top DPS AoE but still it let you do some stupid stuff. It was balanced then with the mana costs and downtime of doing that, but with pallies getting mana back from being healed now. I think it's just a matter of time before people realize what skilled paladins can do for tanking. The fact that it can break CC is pretty much irrelevant because you can move mobs around to deal with that (swipe suffers the same problem and druids deal).
Oh well, we'll see. :)
Quote:- "Slam's" swing time is no longer slowed by damage taken.
If that means that slam is no longer stuttered, all warriors just got a nice damage boost. Not huge but it means that slam is no longer a tool mainly used by prot warriors in a DPS roll on raid bosses (build rage with dual wield then slap on that 2H and slam spam it down). It means that even solo you might want to use slam on a mob. It means that slam is now a viable PvP option as well.
Druids vs Warriors vs Paladins
Since mangle isn't mentioned some of those changes also look like they don't want any druid with a few feral talents to be an excellent tank. If mangle is now the primary threat tool (in addition to the great DPS tool it is for cats) then they just gave feral druids a leg up on tanking over non feral druids.
The changes to devestate may have done some more of this for warriors as well. I'm not sure what I feel about this. It means that the gap between DPS warriors and tank warriors could be bigger, it means the gap between feral and non feral druids is bigger, but it means the gap between feral druids and prot warriors should be smaller. Changes to the paladin talents also make it look like prot paladins should have a noticable leg up on non prot pallies. I'm not sure that the aggro changes make the gap between prot and non prot pallies as much as they might be with the druid and warrior.
The net result could be that it encourages people to put that feral druid as a tank in front of the Fury or Arms warrior. Or that it makes you want to use that prot pally instead of another warrior. That to me is a good thing. The downside is that the players that really liked and were really good at the multi-role warrior (personal examples of Lurkers like Conc, Dragoon, Jester, Tal, and others come to mind) might not be able to do that nearly as effectively (changes to encounters would have to be considered, I see nothing that seems to change the effectiveness in current pre-expansion instances). It could also limit the group composition some. Sure if there are 3 very viable tank classes the need for a DPS warrior to tank could be less but it could also still limit groups some. Hard to comment on without knowing the new content.
Shaman
I'm alright with moving the threat from ES to FS. Having recently tanked LBRS on my L57 shaman (I did hit 58 just before Wrym), even with stromstrike, it was very rare that I got an ES on a mob that had the SS debuff on it or that I even needed that for extra threat. Having to spread the threat around and keeping lightning shield up meant that I rarely had the opportunity to uses the SS debuff to maximum effect as if a shock was in cooldown SS might have been needed to pull that mob that just came out of sap onto me, or I had to shock a mob that got split DPS, or what not.
It makes the utility of ES for non tanking higher, while I generally used rank one for the interrupt for mana purposes sometimes I wanted the extra damage when I did the spell interrupt as well, now that doesn't come with tons of threat (it will only be like 1K threat instead of 2K threat).
I do wonder though about rockbiter. I had heard they were removing the extra threat from it as well but I see nothing about that in the patch notes. I hope that means it stays. Shaman already had mitigation concerns as tanks, but they were very viable off tanks grabbing and holding focus fire mobs, or even being able to put out a lot of aggro quickly to get a mob off a priest or caster druid since they can take the beating better. They are also very viable tanks for all the existing content, since the lack of mitigation can be compensated for some with self healing. Not completely but some.
The changes look to me like they don't take anything away while adding a bit more utility.
Some final thoughts
While this is intended to just be a precursor to TBC, there will still be a population of players that won't get TBC or won't get it for several weeks to a month from now. These changes look to not hurt those players at all and fix some of the issues that this patch introduced that Blizzard intended to fix with TBC itemiztion that this subset won't have access too. I'm happy to see that. Sure that segment of the population shouldn't get a lot of focus but it is nice to see that they are getting some issues fixed.
For many people this is simply just changes that will last for 1 week and then the new levels, skills, items, and challenges will change perceptions. I don't really see much that is bad in here. I don't see much to really be upset about. I do things that still leave room for improvement, but the only real nerfs look like they hit classes that quite frankly needed them. I'm expecting something to change for paladin tanks in terms of consecrate as well. I think we haven't heard the complaints about the power of that because people haven't seen a lot of pally tanks. I know that back in 1.06 or 1.07 I was using that + retribution aura and some self healing to easily hold aggro vs Rain of Fire and even Blizzard. Sure not the top DPS AoE but still it let you do some stupid stuff. It was balanced then with the mana costs and downtime of doing that, but with pallies getting mana back from being healed now. I think it's just a matter of time before people realize what skilled paladins can do for tanking. The fact that it can break CC is pretty much irrelevant because you can move mobs around to deal with that (swipe suffers the same problem and druids deal).
Oh well, we'll see. :)
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.