[WotLK] Warrior

Abso · 08-22-2008

Reserved for Warrior items in relation to WotLK

Abso · 08-27-2008

Originally posted in my blog:

The level grind is over and a few of us in the Death and Taxes guild on the beta server are now 80. All of us are striving to get the best possible gear as quickly as possible to start hitting the content hard as soon as it is available.

This is interesting as a tank in the new world as Blizzard has flipped the tables, changed the tanking game, changed the optimal stats, etc. Most of us tanks are struggling with the new defense cap and waiting for our raw defense to catch up as we take hits while questing.

As I try to piece together my beginning raid set, it looks like it will be some T6, some new blues, and possibly some crafted gear, along with a couple other items I've picked up on the way.

My targetted gear set looks like this so far:

MH Sword--Eternally Folded Blade (Halls of Lightning)
Shield--Nax 10 Badge Loot Tank Shield (no longer available)
Ranged--Nestingway 4000 (Crafted-Engineering)
Helm--Arcane-Shielded Helm (Nexus Heroic)
Neck-Amulet of Deflected Blows (Utgarde Pinnacle)
Shoulders-Pauldrons of Perseverance (SWP)
Cape-Flowing Cloak of Command (CoT: Stratholme Past)
Chest-[Onslaught Chestguard] (BT)
Belt-[Onslaught Waistguard] (SWP)
Wrists-[Onslaught Wristguards] (SWP)
Gloves-[Onslaught Handguards] (Mount Hyjal)
Legs-[Felstrength Legplates] (SWP)
Boots-Tempered Titansteel Treads(Crafted-Blacksmithing)

So far, I have been able to grab the shield and have the mats ready for the boots, however I've held off on crafting the boots as I want to see if there are any of the heroic ones that are better. All of my gear is in the process of being regemmed. Also with Blacksmithing, I have 3 additional sockets (one on gloves, belt, bracers) to assist my stats. Lately, I've had to gem defense/stam to help deal with the lack of defense rating, however I expect this to change as I finish gearing out. For the meantime, I am opting to hang on to my 4 piece T6 for threat gen as my SBV is substantially higher and with the sword and board talent, I land far more shield slams than I currently do on live.

My current prot build, until encounters force me to go for more mitigation is 14/5/52.

Resurrected · 08-28-2008

Ab your just to sexy for words, teach me your tanking ways. Also those boots are fucking ridiculous 1200 health alone? very nice, I'd be really surprised and a lil disappointed if there were heroic rewards better.

Also can you kinda tell me what tanking is like now, with the new shield block changes I assume most of your blocking will come from gear/stats alone instead of you putting it up every 6 seconds. So is it basically keeping everything on cooldown (shield slam,revenge,thunder clap,heroic strike/devestate inbetween) to generate as much tps as humanly possible or is there another mechanic im missing out on or another rotation that wrath has set in place?

Abso · 08-31-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Resurrected

Ab your just to sexy for words, teach me your tanking ways. Also those boots are fucking ridiculous 1200 health alone? very nice, I'd be really surprised and a lil disappointed if there were heroic rewards better.

Also can you kinda tell me what tanking is like now, with the new shield block changes I assume most of your blocking will come from gear/stats alone instead of you putting it up every 6 seconds. So is it basically keeping everything on cooldown (shield slam,revenge,thunder clap,heroic strike/devestate inbetween) to generate as much tps as humanly possible or is there another mechanic im missing out on or another rotation that wrath has set in place?

I held off replying on this post until this latest build was released, but basically here it is:

First off, my new build and my probable end game build. There are a few factors that may change these when it comes to live, however they are all dependant upon the other classes getting proposed talents.

With all of the recent changes, shield block and shield block value are hugely important stats for warriors. They are going to offer us a huge amount of mitigation and threat and here is why:

Shield Block--Shield block has been changed from a spammy 5 second cooldown (talented) that blocked two attacks to a mini-shield wall of sorts. The new shield block is on a minute cooldown, but has a 10 second uptime. During this uptime your block value is doubled and you block 100% of attacks. This offers us two advantages, first off some awesome mitigation and secondly 100% more BV = more threat on our shield slams.

Improved Shield Block--reduces cooldown on shield block by 10/20 seconds. My current build only has one point in here, but eventually I am sure I will have two. I outgear the content as is right now, so more threat > more mitigation at this time.

Shield Mastery--increase SBV by 10/20/30%. Excellent use of points, especially since this is factored in before any of the doubling factors.

Critical Block--In this last build, this has gone from a trash talent to an excellent one. The reason is that they have now added 5% more shield slam crit per point invested here. For 3 points, we now have a 30% chance to block double the value AND 15% passive shield slam crit. Keep in mind, with shield block up, you already have double block value, so we're now looking at a quadrupled value for a critical block. This is why block and block value is going to be so hugely important.

Improved Defensive Stance- Best talent ever. The new change gives tanks the same magic damage reduction, 6% for 2 talent points now, instead of three. It also gives a flat 10% damage increase whenever we block/dodge/parry, so basically it has 100% uptime. More damage = more threat = more rage. Love this talent.

Sword and Board--New and improved. 15% chance to refresh shield slam CD on devastate or shield slam. This is up from 10%, a shield slam in this way also costs no rage. This will be great in the offtank position as well as the MT position and is a must have talent.

Shockwave-Now does more damage. Five second AOE stun that doesn't break on damage. Very high utility in 5 mans/heroics, still unsure about raid boss tanking. This will depend on the threat modifier and the fight. Still and excellent talent.

Impale--One of the odd talents that I have decided to include is impale. I have chosen this for threat, because prot tanks now have all these bonus chances to crit. If it wasn't for the higher crit chances, I would never pick up impale. This will probably be the first thing I drop for more mitigation though as the fights require.

Tanking in WotLK
Tanking is far more fun now, mainly because you have to be cognizant of your talent cooldowns and you get to see some much bigger numbers. In 5 mans, I tend to charge in, thunderclap, switch to defensive and shockwave immediately. This gives me some time to start building up threat on multiple targets. Once focused on a target, I will shield slam, devastate, revenge and heroic strike similarly to how I do it now. There are a few key differences and some new tools/tricks that we have in these scenarios.

First off, revenge is NOT up as often as it once was. This means more devastate, shield slam and heroics strikes. Secondly, concussion blow is a great asset now. It hits hard, biggest crit I've seen so far is 1100, and it has an incredibly high threat modifer. Also, mocking blow can be used in defensive stance now and offers us another "taunt" in a pinch. With all of these tools + shockwave up every 20 seconds, I feel very comfortable tanking multiple mobs.

When it comes to single target threat, the old mantra of Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Devastate, doesn't really work anymore. Generally for snap aggro, I will go blood rage, shield block, shield slam, and devastate several times to get my sunders up. Once this is up, I will get my debuffs up and set into a rotation. Typically, I am using Shield Slam every time it is up, with devastates the rest of the time. When I have about 40 rage or better, I replace my white swings with heroic strikes or cleaves, depending on the number of mobs. Revenge is still used when it is available, however currently it isn't up as much as I would like. Hopefully this will change as my gear improves.

When it comes to the gear set I've chosen, it has all been with shield slam and block value in mind. That is why, even though I could pick up more stamina with some of the newer gear, the expertise and the dodge from the SWP gear are still important. The 4 piece bonus from T6 is still excellent, despite some of the pieces being weak.

Where the warrior class is really going to shine is in their ability to control incoming damage and to take the big hits. Blizzard is still slotting warriors to be the tank of choice for the heaviest hitting bosses, however they do state the bosses will be doable with another tank class. I am confident in seeing these trees that warriors will be able to perform well in this role and will scale excellently throughout WotLK.

Abso · 09-01-2008

Intro

This video was put together by Serrenia. It shows a good comparison of Arms vs Fury (Titan's Grip). I think most will be surprised by the size of the numbers you see during the arms phase. These are sudden death execute procs. I'll help break this down to talk about rotation, how to DPS as an arms warrior or as a fury warrior in WotLK. While the arms tree is still a bit awkward, you'll see the raw power in it in this video.

SDvsTG.wmv

About the Video
The first thing that will probably shock most people is that he is dual wielding 1H weapons as arms. This seems very odd at first, but if you watch what he is doing, you'll see why. The main reason arms warriors use 2H weapons is because their rotations in TBC included MS and Slam. In this video, Serrenia has opted to not use slam. This is made possible because of some of the new talents that we've gained. Also, MS and Slam rotations are problematic in a hasted situation. In a 1H world where we are relying on Sudden Death and Enraged Assault procs, this is not an issue.

In the first clip he unloads on a test dummy in battle stance for 2min 10 seconds and puts up 3010 dps. He then switches to zerker stance and does the same thing and posts 3094 dps. Titan's grip puts up 2761 dps in the third part. The unconventional approach to the arms tree is pretty interesting here. While this wouldn't be a PVP spec by any means, it has interesting options for pve. Axes are the weapon of choice here for the 5% crit + 5% crit damage from axe spec. Swords/Maces are simply inferior in this setup.

What makes arms tick in WotLK?

The spec in the video works for a few reasons:

Poleaxe Specialization--Increases your chance to get a critical strike and the critical damage caused with Axes and Polearms by 5%.

Endless Rage--You generate 25% more rage from damage dealt.

Sudden Death--Your melee critical hits have a 30% chance of allowing the use of Execute regardless of the target's health state.

Wrecking Crew--Your melee critical hits have a 100% chance to Enrage you, increasing all damage caused by 15% for 12 sec.

Execute--Attempt to finish off a wounded foe, causing [ 20% of AP + 1266 ] damage and converting each extra point of rage into 38 additional damage. Only usable on enemies that have less than 20% health.

Supporting Talents

Impale--Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your abilities by 20%

Trauma--Your normal melee critical strikes increase the effectiveness of Bleed effects on the target by 30% for 15 sec.

Blood Frenzy--Your normal melee critical strikes increase the effectiveness of Bleed effects on the target by 30% for 15 sec.

Unbridled Wrath--Gives you a chance to generate an additional rage point when you deal melee damage with a weapon. Effect occurs more often than Unbridled Wrath (Rank 4).

Cruelty--Increases your chance to get a critical strike with melee weapons by 5%.

Dual Wield Arms DPS The spec used in this video http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...00000000000000

So, why dual wield? First off, Blizzard has changed the arms tree drastically. In these changes, they have ensured that a warrior dpsing with a 2H weapon will likely spend his whole time in battle stance. The reason for this is that the uptime on deep wounds has been reduced, forcing warriors to use rend to keep up blood frenzy. 2H weapons even without slam are prone to a lot of rage issues. One miss/dodge/parry can screw you over on rage gen for a brief period of time, costing you dps. On fights like Brutallus, these things matter greatly. Also, on mobile fights like IC or the Eredar Twins in a TBC world, Slam rotations become exceptionally difficult. When you add in varying amounts of haste, this only gets worse. To combat this, you can dual wield. The arms tree has some 2H specific talents, however the weapon specs work for 1H or 2H weapons. In a dual wield spec, axes are the best way to go.

In the video, Serennia charges in and starts with 100 rage. His second white swing procs sudden death, allowing him to execute even though his target is not below 20% hp. You'll see in his dps cycle that MS and Overpower are used whenever they are up. He is also keeping rend up to get overpower procs through our talent "Taste for Blood" which offers a 30% proc rate of overpower per rend tick. The other thing you'll notice in his combat log is that he constantly is enraging. This enrage is thanks to Wrecking Crew, a new WotLK talent that basically defines the arms tree. Every crit enrages the warrior increasing ALL damage done by 15%. EJ math has this at roughly a 33% increase in rage generation. More rage = bigger executes + 15% more damage. Now, you can begin to see where this build pulls everything together. In addition to this, in the fury tree, he has Cruelty (5% more crit), Unbridled Wrath (more rage), commanding presence (more AP) and improved execute (more rage conversion into damage on executes).

Enraged Assault mechanics are fairly simple. This is an instant attack with a 10 second CD that attacks with all weapons at the same time and consumes the enrage. Since the wrecking crew induced enrage has a large uptime, most of the theorycrafters are suggesting to go ahead and use the EA immediately for the extra damage and it will be back up again quickly. Also, with improved mortal strike, EA has a chance to reset your MS cooldown, allowing you to MS again immediately.

If DPSing in battle stance, you'll want to keep rend up at all times, overpower every time it is up, keep MS on cooldown, and make the most out of your enrage procs by using EA quickly. Execute every time Sudden Death is up, but ideally while your enrage is up as well for the bonus 15% damage.

Based on this video, it seems that dual wield arms in zerker stance may outperform battle stance. If this is the case, then players can skip the rend/overpower part of this cycle and just focus on enraged assaults, MS, and executes. What would be interesting to compare is overall uptime on blood frenzy as if this is lower, the higher personal DPS might come at the cost of some raid dps. Time will tell, but thus far this is a very interesting time for the arms warrior.

Abso · 09-03-2008

The latest upcoming warrior changes:

Quote from: Gamnin

Quote:

Hello Warriors,

I’ve got a sneak preview of things coming up in the beta for you to discuss. We still have lots of polish and bug fixing to do and we’re still wrestling with a few elements of the warrior abilities and talents so do not consider this an exhaustive list. As always, post any concerns or suggestions you have.

General

* Enraged Assault redesigned, now Enraged Regeneration: You regenerate 30% of your total health over 10 sec. This ability consumes all Enrage effects and prevents any from affecting you for the full duration. Must be enraged to use. Cost 15 rage, 3 min cooldown.
* Slam – We’re working to change this ability to suspend the swing timer when you are using the ability. In other words, if you’re .5 sec away from swinging your weapon when you start using Slam you’ll be .5 sec from swinging your weapon after Slam goes off.

Arms

* Improved Charge now generates 5/10 rage.
* Mace Specialization now ignores 3/6/9/12/15% of target’s armor.
* Sudden Death and Trauma swapped locations.
* Bladestorm now lasts 6 seconds, causing a whirlwind every second.

Protection

* Toughness now also reduces duration of movement slowing effects by 10/20/30/40/50%.
* Improved Sunder Armor renamed Puncture, reduced to 2 ranks for 1/2 rage cost reduction.
* Improved Disarm reduced to 2 ranks, now reduces the cooldown of Disarm by 10/20 sec and increases damage taken by disarmed targets by 5/10%.
* Improved Defensive Stance reduced to 2 ranks, now reduces spell damage taken by 3/6% and any block/parry/dodge has a 50/100% chance to enrage the warrior causing 5/10% more damage for 12 sec.
* Vigilance will soon transfer the 10% threat lost to the warrior. It will also have 3 charges to curb using it on targets that are being hit constantly. We’re still polishing this element to get it to feel right.
* (NEW) Warbringer is a new one point talent on Tier 9 that allows Charge to be used in combat. Did I mention the change to Improved Charge?
* Critical Block now also increases your chance to critically hit with your Shield Slam by 5/10/15%.
* Sword and Board no longer triggers when Shield Slam is used, but the chance to trigger has increased to 3/6/9/12/15%. Note these are not final numbers.

Fury

* Intensify Rage and Precision swapped locations.
* Enrage now increases damage done by 3/6/9/12/15%, limitation on number of attacks removed.
* Improved Whirlwind now increases damage of Whirlwind by 10/20%, no longer reduces cooldown.
* Furious Attacks changed to use PPM (procs per minute) to make it trigger at the same rate regardless of weapon speed. Note that dual-wielding and haste still improve your chances.
* Titan’s Grip still needs a counterbalancing element, but what it will entail and how severe it will be is still being evaluated.

To answer a few questions:

* Yes, I meant Furious Attacks, not Focused Attacks.
* Some notes are already in the beta, some are not updated yet on the calculator so wanted to give additional visibility to anyone else reading the forums.
* Warbringer: What we don't want to see is Charge becoming part of a tanking rotation. At the moment it will remain usable only in Battle Stance. An experimental idea to be sure.
* Stance Dancing: The short answer here is we want just the right amount of it.
* Final numbers are not in yet for the various talent trees. We want all trees to be viable in PvP and PvE so expect further number tuning across all classes/specs.
* The important upcoming change to Vigilance is the threat transfer. 10% of the target's generated threat will go to your threat total.
* Bladestorm consuming rage every second is a bug that's been fixed.

Hibernicus · 09-06-2008

New Glyphs were released in the latest beta patch, and one caught my eye especially stronger (like, with a fish hook):

Glyph of Blocking - Increases your block value by 10% for 10 sec after using your Shield Slam ability.

That's a REALLY nice glyph for tanking!

Other interesting new Warrior glyphs include:
Glyph of Devastate - Your Devastate ability now applies two stacks of Sunder Armor.
Glyph of Execution - Your Execute ability deals damage as if you had 10 additional rage.
Glyph of Heroic Strike - You gain 10 rage when you critically strike with your Heroic Strike ability.
Glyph of Intervene - Increases the number attacks you intercept for your Intervene target by 1.
Glyph of Barbaric Insults - Your Mocking Blow ability also taunts the target. (I love the name on this one!)
Glyph of Mortal Strike - Increases the damage of your Mortal Strike ability by 10% but the healing penalty is reduced by half.
Glyph of Resonating Power - Increases the maximum targets affected by your Thunder Clap ability by 4.
Glyph of Sunder Armor - Your Sunder Armor ability affects a second nearby target.
Glyph of Victory Rush - Your Victory Rush ability has a 30% increased critical strike chance against targets above 90% health.
Glyph of Taunt - Increases the chance for your Taunt ability to succeed by 8%.

Man, warriors got a huge number of amazingly nice glyphs this patch, to be sure! I checked, and every tank gets a similar 8% increased taunt success glyph, which is really exciting. Never, ever having taunt resisted will be a huge boon.

Synapse · 09-07-2008

Warbringer alos lets charge be used in any stance now. It's basically free 20 rage to get back in range in case you go out.

Moomore · 09-20-2008

Hello there. I found this post/test very interesting.
I can't test anything ymself as I dont have beta acces and stuff like this is very helpfull in such case.

Has there been any testing on Boss dummies yet? If there are any on the BETA yet.

Just to clearify some things. Do you use a slow weapon in OH or just a fast weapon?
Also could you perhaps repost the build because the one currently posted doesn't seem to work. Probably because the calculater has been updated meanwhile I guess?

Thanks

Abso · 09-30-2008