12-10-2004, 04:57 PM
Artega,Dec 9 2004, 11:10 PM Wrote:An improvisation of the standard high-DPS warrior, with some Fury skills and Two-handed Spec. sacrificed in favor of a couple of the Defensive Talents. This is still a Battle Stance warrior, however.
Arms Talents
Deflection - 5/5 (+5% to Parry)
Improved Charge - 2/2 (+6 to Rage Bonus)
Improved Rend - 3/3 (Bleed Damage +35%)
Deep Wounds - 3/3 (Deals 60% Weapon Damage as DOT on crit)
Improved Overpower - 2/2 (+50% of crit on Overpower)
Impale - 2/2 (+20% damage on crit)
Improved Heroic Strike - 3/3 (-3 Rage Cost on Heroic Strike)
Sweeping Strikes - 1/1 (Next 5 melee attacks hit additional nearby opponent)
Axe/Mace/Sword Specialization - 5/5 (+5% chance of crit, 6% of 3-sec stun, or 6% of additional attack, respectively)
Improved Hamstring - 2/2 (+10% slow effect)
Improved Thunder Clap - 3/3 (Damage +25%)
Mortal Strike - 1/1 (200% weapon damage, heal effects -50% for 10 sec)
Fury Talents
Cruelty - 5/5 (+5% chance of crit)
Protection Talents
Shield Specialization - 5/5 (+5% chance to Block)
Toughness - 5/5 (Armor value from items +10%)
Iron Will - 5/5 (+15% chance to resist Stun and Charm effects)
Obviously, there are a few problems with this build. It's designed to take advantage of shields' Blocking, Armor, and stat bonuses, but in order to sacrifice the five points into Shield Specialization, one must give up Two-Handed Weapon Specialization (+5% damage with two-handers), and there aren't enough points to reach One-Handed Weapon Specialization. Toughness drastically increases your Armor rating in the late-game, and Iron Will makes it more difficult to Stun or Sheep you.
Alternatively, one could ditch shields completely and pick up Anticipation (Defense +10) instead of Shield Spec., pick up Two-Handed Spec., and drop Improved Heroic Strike and Improved Thunder Clap.
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I have to say, I'm not a fan of Improved Charge, Improved Heroic Strike, Improved Thunder Clap, and Impale.
Improved Charge, for me, rates an "Okay," but I find that in groups, I very rarely get to use Charge (especially in instances).
Improved Heroic Strike seems very much like a waste of talent points to me, as Heroic Strike is the most rage-inefficient attack we have (costing a number of rage, replacing the next attack (which will not generate rage as a result), and doing only "okay" damage). This is okay if you're dual-wielding, but as a two-hand or sword and board-focused warrior, you really can't afford to be skipping rage-generating attacks unless you've managed to generate way too much, in which case you are probably tanking multiple enemies, and will soon be enjoying the bizarre interactions of Sweeping Strikes + Cleave (which also fails to generate more rage, but does ridiculous sums of damage to multiple monsters at once).
Ditto Improved Thunder Clap -- the skill itself is entirely lackluster in the damage department, a 20% bonus will do just about nothing to help you there.
Impale is a tricky subject. It only adds damage to your special ability criticals. If you're playing a build that goes for a lot of heroic strike damage and a high critical rate (axe or polearm spec, obviously cruelty, generally dual-wielding to minimize HS's inefficiencies). If you're a 2-handed or shield-specced warrior, though, I find that your special attacks are things like Hamstring, Shield Bash, Execute, and the occasional Overpower and Cleave. The first two deal negligable damage. Execute is funky, and I only use it while soloing, in general (in groups, it seems to waste my entire rage bar while not doing any damage due to timing issues, more often than not). Overpower crits a *lot* thanks to Improved Overpower, but things don't tend to dodge with frequency. In the end, it's a judgement call, and I went with "no". I may change my mind after I get Mortal Strike in a quarter of a level and start buying points in Cruelty. If I do, I'll let you know.
The more I play Warrior (39.75 or so as of this post), the more I find that the key to being as good as I could possibly be is good reflexes and effective stance micromanagement. While solo, I tend to stick to battle stance, and swap to Berserk every 10s for Whirlwind while farming. While grouped, I tend to stay in defensive stance to easily taunt things off of people, improved aggro, improved rage build, and better defense (I've been using a two-handed weapon at all times due to a lack of suitible 1-handed weapons, but I just came across a good one, so we'll see how my shield-bearing holds up), swapping to Battle stance to jam my overpower key if a target dodges, hitting Thunder Clap to secure aggro on multiple targets, swapping to Berserk for Whirlwind against multiples, switching to Battle for Sweeping Strikes when I have a lot of rage and can do tons of damage by hitting two things with execute, or just multi-cleave.
Obviously, it's something that people need to play around with on their own.