Devastate
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More tanking changes for warriors
After the changes to Devastate made in an attempt to 'buff warrior tank DPS' (I'm sure you all remember our coverage of said change) many warriors reported that one of the side effects of this change was to make Revenge, a long time warrior tanking ability, less than useful. With Devastate threat up (especially when glyphed) there's just less reason to use Revenge when it lights up. Now, Ghostcrawler interjects into a post that yes, Revenge will likely see some changes. This is interesting to me for two reasons. First, because it's a fairly rapid statement of intent compared to past issues, where months could pass before anyone would address an issue (Thunder Clap only hitting four targets, for example, which was a huge problem for warriors for most of BC) and secondly because it highlights the domino effect that changing class abilities can have and showcases just how difficult class balance really can be. They knew even when they were making the change to Devastate that this might be necessary, but they understandably wanted to roll out any changes in an incremental way. My expectation is either a threat buff for Revenge (which, frankly, isn't really all that interesting a change), a DPS increase (which isn't likely) or perhaps a small bit of AoE viability like a cleave effect. That last bit would be a good way of adding some AoE bite without replicating the paladin model which we've already been told is a touch over the top.
Analysis of Warriors changes in 3.1
Hello, my fellow warriors. Change is at hand. How does it affect us, you may ask? Well, let us break down the changes. WARRIOR Changing stances now has a much reduced cost: you lose a maximum of 20 rage (10 with Tactical Mastery). For example, if you have 100 rage and change stances, you will have 80 rage remaining. If you have 10 rage and change stances, all of your rage is lost. In addition, we may change the penalties associated with some stances. You now gain rage when damage done to you is absorbed, such as through a Power Word: Shield. Blood Frenzy now causes 2/4% physical damage done. Sunder Armor (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 4% per application, and is now a single rank. Creature armor has been globally reduced so that debuffed targets should take about the same damage from physical attacks that they did before this change. The net effect should be that this debuff is slightly less mandatory in PvE and is not disproportionately more powerful against cloth targets in PvP. We are also adding increased damage to Arms, possibly through Overpower or Slam. We are also looking at granting rage when the warrior blocks, dodges or parries. We talked about stance penalties this week, and frankly, this one change is the biggest and best news for warriors in quite some time. The rest of the changes are either positive or sort of neutral.
Center your tanking
While I'm pushing through Black Temple and Mount Hyjal nicely as my guild's tank, I am still trying to improve my style and playing elements. There's not much more I can do to build threat – the Devastates, Shield Slams, Revenges, Heroic Strikes, etc., are all going off at the right time. Gear is fine, I can pretty much tank anything in the game at this point and succeed. So why am I still dying? Why am I missing that critical moment when I could put up my Spell Reflect and live a second longer?I think I've found it.It's all about eye movement. Try this: focus your sight to the upper left hand corner of the screen, and now move your sight down to the bottom of the screen. If you have a large enough monitor, you completely lose focus of the text and items near the upper left corner. This is problematic for tanking in that the unit frames (those things that tell you who's in your group and who you're attacking) are by default located in the upper left corner, and the action bars are located at the bottom. So if you want to make sure you're going to hit something – or even look at your keyboard for a moment – you're moving your eyes quite a bit.
Build Shop: Warrior 8/5/48
Hey folks! This week on Build Shop I'm examining another Warrior build, but this time it's not about dealing damage with the spec -- it's about taking damage. That's right, it's time for a Protection Warrior build! This one is focused on raid tanking, and maximizing your damage reduction. It's not the most rage-efficient Protection spec out there, but 8/5/48 (and its variants) seems to be pretty popular these days. This build does skip some of the talents that make grinding and solo play easier, so I wouldn't use this one for anything but main tanking a raid instance. With that said, let's take a look under the hood and check out what makes this build so great at damage reduction and threat generation.
