Game-Changing New Powers

[Warlock]

...

Fel armor is amazing, the +20% healing affects every single source of hp that I have tried (pots, food, bandaids, canabalize, heals, and drains) ...

Given a Warlock's HP total, I can see them tanking magic bosses more often. 20% more healing efficiency is as good as 17% less damage taken (well, so long as you're not dead). Searing Pain spam for threat, Intensity + Concentration Aura to prevent casting delays, Master Demonologist with a VW for 10% less taken or with a Fel for extra resists, Soul link to split damage with the pet.

[Delc]

:wacko:For this to happen, assuming the mob passed the 110%/130% barrier and tank hasn't gotten back in range yet (this is the case where the least amount of aggro would cause issues), you would need almost 70% more aggro than the tank at the time you pulled aggro. Now, given the barrier, you can be at 129% safely, so what move is happening that is causing a 41% spike in aggro?

Crit shadow bolt + deaggro of some kind + dots still ticking + drain life in a futile attempt to live long enough for the tank to get it back.

Given a Warlock's HP total, I can see them tanking magic bosses more often. 20% more healing efficiency is as good as 17% less damage taken (well, so long as you're not dead). Searing Pain spam for threat, Intensity + Concentration Aura to prevent casting delays, Master Demonologist with a VW for 10% less taken or with a Fel for extra resists, Soul link to split damage with the pet.

Drain life will easily be 500 hps and may be better than searing pain depending on how high you need the threat ceiling, but yea warlock tanks will probably be nice at some point.

[Kevin]

5) Wait, "aggro free?" Yep. Unknown if this is a bug or not, but currently all healing done by Prayer of Mending will generate aggro for the target being healed, not the healer!

Dunno why you think this will be nerfed so badly.

Earth shield does this, so does Improved Leader of the pack, and as mentioned already lifebloom does this. Yes, those are more periodic effects, but they still follow the same mechanic. It seems to me that this is very much something that was intended to happen and is part of the aggro tools. Putting a prayer of Mending + Earthshield + having imp leader of the pack in with the tank and having a hunter pull with misdirection is probably planned for some of the DPS burn fights that are likely out there where you need to start the DPS right now. The lifebloom will have to hit the tank later since the initial ticks of it are healing done by the druid.

I think it's gonna be great and I think it's already been balanced for.

[Xanthix]

:wacko:For this to happen, assuming the mob passed the 110%/130% barrier and tank hasn't gotten back in range yet (this is the case where the least amount of aggro would cause issues), you would need almost 70% more aggro than the tank at the time you pulled aggro. Now, given the barrier, you can be at 129% safely, so what move is happening that is causing a 41% spike in aggro?

I imagine that when grinding, or even in a 5-man, it could be easy to get way ahead of a tank relatively early in a fight, with a few big crits. In that case, a 50% threat reduction might not do much.

But I agree that in raiding, the ability would be much better and it would be very hard to be at a point where it would not help. After 30 seconds of a boss fight, the tank and DPS all have tens of thousands of points of threat. After that, to get 70% more threat than the tank would require crits of extraordinary magnitude!:)

[Mavfin]

I imagine that when grinding, or even in a 5-man, it could be easy to get way ahead of a tank relatively early in a fight, with a few big crits. In that case, a 50% threat reduction might not do much.

But I agree that in raiding, the ability would be much better and it would be very hard to be at a point where it would not help. After 30 seconds of a boss fight, the tank and DPS all have tens of thousands of points of threat. After that, to get 70% more threat than the tank would require crits of extraordinary magnitude!:)

However, a warlock getting 23K of damage in two back-to-back crits on a shadow-vulnerable wyrmguard will rip it right off the tank, until the warlock gets squashed, then the mob goes right back to the tank:D

[Urza-DSF]

This problem is saving 25 rage for a protection warrior that already has issues with rage generation is like if kick cost 80 energy. It's not something you have to watch for, it down right prohibitive on how you can use your abilities.

You must be joking. My prot/fury warrior Jandrey is in *far* less better gear and in every single fight where he has aggro his rage bar is damn near filled. I have had no problem whatsoever sundering, devistating, shield slamming and spell reflecting/shield bashing while making sure improved battleshout and demo shout are up.

Spell reflection has been *amazing* both in solo and group content. I don't have to worry about those damn naga enchantresses handing me my ass with arcane missles. I let them beat themselves up. And the hunter boss in underbog? Aimed shot can be spell reflected and knocks *him* back.

I have no idea what your doing, but reflect is definatly something I look out for to use at any oppertunity.

[ima_nerd]

You must be joking. My prot/fury warrior Jandrey is in *far* less better gear and in every single fight where he has aggro his rage bar is damn near filled. I have had no problem whatsoever sundering, devistating, shield slamming and spell reflecting/shield bashing while making sure improved battleshout and demo shout are up.

Spell reflection has been *amazing* both in solo and group content. I don't have to worry about those damn naga enchantresses handing me my ass with arcane missles. I let them beat themselves up. And the hunter boss in underbog? Aimed shot can be spell reflected and knocks *him* back.

I have no idea what your doing, but reflect is definatly something I look out for to use at any oppertunity.

It's good to hear positive anecdotal information. Thus far, all I've heard of expac Warriors has been mediocre at best. Out of curiosity and at the risk of a thread hijack, what's your current spec? I was looking at a Fury/Prot spec since Arms (except Deflection) doesn't interest me at all.

Edit: Weird word choice. I blame it on the lack of caffeine.

[Tal]

You must be joking. My prot/fury warrior Jandrey is in *far* less better gear and in every single fight where he has aggro his rage bar is damn near filled. I have had no problem whatsoever sundering, devistating, shield slamming and spell reflecting/shield bashing while making sure improved battleshout and demo shout are up.

Keep in mind that Seiki is in full Tier 2 with at least 2 (if not 3) pieces of Tier 3, with the best tank trinkets, shield and some of the best tank rings in the game. His avoidance is literally through the roof.

That being said I've been tanking in this set up through mana tombs and unless I have more than one mob wailing on me I'm pretty rage starved unless I deliberately avoid using shield block.

Edit to link to the profile and not the edit page. :/

[Mavfin]

Keep in mind that Seiki is in full Tier 2 with at least 2 (if not 3) pieces of Tier 3, with the best tank trinkets, shield and some of the best tank rings in the game. His avoidance is literally through the roof.

That being said I've been tanking in this set up through mana tombs and unless I have more than one mob wailing on me I'm pretty rage starved unless I deliberately avoid using shield block.

I deliberately stay off shield block with Keshi, as I don't need it to get revenge lit, and a lot of stuff doesn't hit over my block amount anyway. I only use shield block on big-hitter bosses (not all bosses). I don't quite have Seiki's avoidance, or Seiki's TF, but I"m generally not rage-starved. 7/8 T2 seems to be a happy medium. Is TF's proc damage yellow, and not generate rage now? I thought it used to...

And, stranger still, I'm a 41+-point prot spec, and I just don't see the rage starvation when tanking, even on trash. No, I don't bother with shield block on trash, unless they're hurting me more than a renew/rejuv can heal, but rage starvation isn't really that much of a problem. The only time I'm rage-starved is when a rogue stuns before the mob gets to me, or some other reason the mob doesn't hit me. One hit usually gets me enough for a quick revenge, and then it's simple to keep a mob. Revenge on one, Shield Slam a 2nd, and work from there for 2 mobs. If I have 3 mobs on me, rage is no problem at all. I do get rage when I block, and I block a lot. I think my Defenses bar says 32%. I don't have Seiki's gear, so my dodge/parry total is only about 38% (from Defenses) and my block amount is only 236 (from SCT), so I do take a few more hits, but I wouldn't think it would generate *that* much more rage.

Of course, I've been prot w/o a TF for forever, so, maybe I'm used to working with less rage. I know I'm used to far less rage than an Arms or Fury-spec warrior was used to in the old WoW. The only times I had a full rage bar was when a big-hitter was beating on me.


Edit: After checking Tal's gearset, yeah, I'm in about the same gear. No Dreadnaught, 3% dodge cloak instead of Cryptfiend, Maladath instead of Quel, a couple small changes, the main diff being spec. I'm a 5/5/x prot spec.

[TheDragoon]

That being said I've been tanking in this set up through mana tombs and unless I have more than one mob wailing on me I'm pretty rage starved unless I deliberately avoid using shield block.

The fun thing is that you don't really need a whole lot of rage to tank one mob, so it usually roughly balances out, in my experience.

As for other positive anecdotal evidence, I recently did some testing with my warrior between a 0/31/20 and a 5/5/41 spec to check out the damage difference. Overall, I ended up with a very, very similar DPS output while grinding mobs with the 5/5/41 spec (300-305 DPS with the fury/prot build and 290-295 with the full prot build). I was a bit surprised by that, but given all of the great bonuses of the full prot build (Focused Rage, Vitality, Devestate versus Flurry, Death Wish and Bloodthirst), I think that's the direction I am leaning toward, with my warrior. I was a bit sad to do it because I was one of the first crazy fury warriors in our group and it is somewhat sad to give it up. :(

[Frag]

r.e. Jandrey's rage generation:

Jandrey's mit is definately not up to Seiki's, but I played my wife's tree yesterday healing Jandrey through Slave Pens and in no more than 5 trash pulls (the end ones, you know.. the evil ones :D) all it took to keep him upright was a Lifebloom. He's in near full TBC stuff now and his mit, while not amazing is certainly not suffering. Hell, on Crackler all it took was rejuv + lifebloom and a swiftmend when the debuff was put on (except when I was preoccupied with other party members, had to play catchup then. Not a great healer yet. :blush:).

On the other side of tanking, we did Underbog right after and I took my rogue along. I parsed 589 dps for the whole instance, and up through Ghaz'an I was pushing 650. At no point did he lose aggro, unless I popped blood frenzy/bladefists' breadth/blade flurry & adrenaline rush right at the start of the pull. If I gave him 10s, he could hold against it. Meanwhile, his rage bar was sitting at near full the whole time.
poste

I've seen the same thing with the other warriors I've been partied with from the Terenas-Lurker side of things, full rage bars even with full dumps being used are not that uncommon anymore, and they haven't been hard to heal. The mit difference will likely show in Heroic, errr, no it will show. But for now, whatever gear Durambar/Jandrey/Conc/Iceler are using seems to be working to great effect.

Cheers,
~ Frag :)

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. I'll see if I can convince myself to pull out Tiga today and give it a shot. Respec should be down a bit.^_^

[Frag]

The fun thing is that you don't really need a whole lot of rage to tank one mob, so it usually roughly balances out, in my experience.

As for other positive anecdotal evidence, I recently did some testing with my warrior between a 0/31/20 and a 5/5/41 spec to check out the damage difference. Overall, I ended up with a very, very similar DPS output while grinding mobs with the 5/5/41 spec (300-305 DPS with the fury/prot build and 290-295 with the full prot build). I was a bit surprised by that, but given all of the great bonuses of the full prot build (Focused Rage, Vitality, Devestate versus Flurry, Death Wish and Bloodthirst), I think that's the direction I am leaning toward, with my warrior. I was a bit sad to do it because I was one of the first crazy fury warriors in our group and it is somewhat sad to give it up. :(

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:

[ima_nerd]

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. I'll see if I can convince myself to pull out Tiga today and give it a shot. Respec should be down a bit.^_^

Would you recommend not getting Shield Spec and Imp Shield Block? I was going to get them to deal with CBs but ... yeah, I dunno. Is the Rage problem coming from not taking enough damage or was it not dealing enough damage (problem being fixed by dealing more damage).

[Mavfin]

Would you recommend not getting Shield Spec and Imp Shield Block? I was going to get them to deal with CBs but ... yeah, I dunno. Is the Rage problem coming from not taking enough damage or was it not dealing enough damage (problem being fixed by dealing more damage).

Any serious prot build will need those, the question is how much you *use* it. If I'm not taking much damage, I don't touch shield block to keep the rage coming, and if they start to hurt me more than I want, it's shield block time, and of course, if you're tanking a +3 or more, you want to keep shield block up. I just pretty much don't touch it on trash unless I've got 3 on me, and with 3 on me, rage is no problem.

[TheDragoon]

Would you recommend not getting Shield Spec and Imp Shield Block? I was going to get them to deal with CBs but ... yeah, I dunno. Is the Rage problem coming from not taking enough damage or was it not dealing enough damage (problem being fixed by dealing more damage).

I find those talents to be very effective for use against bosses (and then, usually only when they can hit me with crushing blows), but I never touch it on trash (unless I'm getting low on life) because it is largely unnecessary. :)

[bonemage]

Keep in mind that Seiki is in full Tier 2 with at least 2 (if not 3) pieces of Tier 3, with the best tank trinkets, shield and some of the best tank rings in the game. His avoidance is literally through the roof.

This is a problem with the warrior class. Full mitigation and avoidance has it's pros, but it's cons. For a 5 man group, raid gear with massive avoidance is a negative when it comes to rage. I don't have that gear (but it is better than Urza's), and when I'm tanking, I'm only light (not starved) on rage if I have 1 mob attacking me, and more than 1 and it feels more like the Vael fight. I've had to tweak my tanking to spend rage. Pre-expansion, I lived on shield slam, revenge, and a couple sunders. Now I can work in lots cleaves and heroic strikes, as I have the rage for it now. I only pull out shield block on boss fights, or the very rare times that revenge isn't available and not on cooldown. My mostly expansion gear without shield block is enough to keep revenge lit up almost constantly with 2 or more mobs on me. My hybrid gear runs around 413 defense, my full tank set is 420 with more avoidance.

T2/T3 stuff is raid tanking gear, and I don't even use my best mitigation gear (my raid tank gear) in a 5 man. I run in a hybrid set that's high on armor, stam, strength. The mitigation of hits is good, but the avoidance is down, so my offense is better with more AP and more rage. I think it matches the encounter's needs better. In my opinion, speed is what matters in the 5 man stuff, as success usually isn't the issue. I don't need tons of healing, as my healer often competes with lesser geared (compared to him) DPS classes on damage done. I let the DPS go crazy, and I very rarely need to use taunt. It's loads of fun. 5 man tanking is a different beast than raid tanking.

Back to spell reflection, it is a lot of fun, and I usually have the rage for it, or can save for it without being hindered. I haven't used it in an instance yet because I haven't tanked many caster mobs since I hit 64 (two runs, only one was I tanking), but I did completely destroy a mob caster while soloing with it, as I took no damage.

[Treesh]

If I gave him 10s, he could hold against it. Meanwhile, his rage bar was sitting at near full the whole time.

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. :)

[bonemage]

I believe people were saying Victory Rush can generate Rage. This doesn't seem likely, since I can only assume it's yellow damage, but if it can, there's no reason not to use it. And, really, since it's completely free damage, you really don't have a reason not to use it every time it's available besides forgetting it:)

Yellow damage. I currently can't tell if I got the killing blow or not if I'm in defensive stance without switching out of defensive stance. That's rarely worth the rage dump of the stance switch when there is little chance I got the killing blow. The 15 sec timeframe means you really need to use it in the current pull. Even while I'm doing DPS in a 5 man, and even while trying to trigger Victory Rush by executing, it doesn't happen too often. Also remember that priests are looking for the killing blow too. It's free damage in the right scenario, but it isn't a game-changing new power.

[Tal]

r.e. Jandrey's rage generation:

Jandrey's mit is definately not up to Seiki's, but I played my wife's tree yesterday healing Jandrey through Slave Pens and in no more than 5 trash pulls (the end ones, you know.. the evil ones :D) all it took to keep him upright was a Lifebloom. He's in near full TBC stuff now and his mit, while not amazing is certainly not suffering. Hell, on Crackler all it took was rejuv + lifebloom and a swiftmend when the debuff was put on (except when I was preoccupied with other party members, had to play catchup then. Not a great healer yet. :blush:).

On the other side of tanking, we did Underbog right after and I took my rogue along. I parsed 589 dps for the whole instance, and up through Ghaz'an I was pushing 650. At no point did he lose aggro, unless I popped blood frenzy/bladefists' breadth/blade flurry & adrenaline rush right at the start of the pull. If I gave him 10s, he could hold against it. Meanwhile, his rage bar was sitting at near full the whole time.
poste

I've seen the same thing with the other warriors I've been partied with from the Terenas-Lurker side of things, full rage bars even with full dumps being used are not that uncommon anymore, and they haven't been hard to heal. The mit difference will likely show in Heroic, errr, no it will show. But for now, whatever gear Durambar/Jandrey/Conc/Iceler are using seems to be working to great effect.

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.:)

[Legedi]

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.