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Warrior changes in patch 3.0.3
With 3.0.3 going to the live servers today, we have a nice batch of Warrior changes to look at. First and foremost on everyone's mind are the changes to Titan's Grip.Prior to patch 3.0.3 Titan's Grip had a 15% miss penalty. That penalty has been reduced to an astounding 5%. What does this mean? It means that you're pretty much going to hit 10% more then what you used to when you have Titan's Grip talented.10% more means 10% more crits and 10% more yellow damage. Of course, these numbers end up being a bit different in practice than in theory crafting (and some will even correctly say that 10% more chances for damage is an oversimplification - and they would be right, and that's another article), but they're still a good base to look at when talking theoretically about the class.The simple jist of it is Titan's Grip just became a whole lot sexier.Continue reading on after the break for more changes to the Warrior class in 3.0.3.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Itemization in Wrath part four
No Totem Talk today because I'm going on a raid tonight as an elemental shaman and so I don't want to make my big 'elemental shaman's in 3.0.2' post until after that. Instead, we return to itemization in Wrath of the Lich King.As far as gear that you're earning now is concerned, if you're raiding in T6 or Sunwell content, don't expect to slap on the first greens you see off the boat. While there are blue quest items as good as Karazhan gear in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord, you won't be throwing your Apolyon out for a long time... the first real blue replacements for that gear aren't until level 78. Comparing the Breastplate of Agony's Aversion to Agin's Crushing Carapace, which requires level 77 to wear, and you can see how the Sunwell drop dominates (and will even more so with the new gems coming into the game. Just look at the various +defense options available to you to extend that Sunwell drop's life. You could most likely walk into Naxx in that gear and, save for worrying about critical hits, do perfectly well. So if you're raiding at high levels right now, don't sweat the gear reset: while you most likely will replace a piece or two on the march (especially if your leveling spec is fury and you raid as prot) you won't start seriously re-inventing your gear selection until you're near the end of the leveling curve. However, if you're not raiding past Karazhan right now, you'll start seeing upgrades early on in the instances.Let's start looking at the gear.
The Bro Squad 3-mans Karazhan
Back in early September, I told you about a trio of level 80 players in the Wrath beta that cleared Karazhan with just the three of them. At the time, it was quite a feat and really surprised a lot of us, bloggers and readers alike. Well, it's been 3-manned again. At level 70.Metosai, a partially Sunwell geared Protection Warrior, recently ran Karazhan with a mix of experienced characters and some lesser geared ones. About a third of the raid was in greens, he said. They cleared the place in under an hour. Metosai was surprised at just how easy it was, and decided to see if they could do it with just three.He looked for a couple of people from his guild to help him, and they took to Karazhan with a team of a Protection Warrior (Metosai), a Retribution Paladin (Dok), and a Holy Paladin (Dantez). The first half of the instance was easy, they say, but the second half got a little more dicey. Netherspite was cited as the most difficult to figure out how to do with three people (it took 5-6 tries), but they managed it and supplied video.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Itemization in Wrath part three
If you are a fury warrior, rejoice. Some of you were wondering where I was during the initial discussion. Frankly, I I was bodily assumed into what I can only assume was heaven. Sorry about that. Turns out it's really nice. I honestly don't have a real lot to say on this score (amazingly) aside from noting that I'm very pleased, it was exactly the change I was hoping they would make. It will be much easier to gear your fury warrior as he levels and when he reaches 80 for prepare for raiding. Admittedly, I'm not thrilled with the increase to armor for bosses, but it hits all physical DPS about the same.I've wanted to discuss gearing in Wrath since we were interrupted a couple of weeks ago. Granted, we've been interrupted by awesome news like the above, but still it seems like a decent time to get back into looking at what gear we'll be picking up as we level through Northrend. And frankly, if we don't start talking about that again, this entire column will probably be me typing "Titan's Grip aarrgh 5% ahmina kill everything gaaaaa" and nobody wants that. Well, maybe you do, I don't know what you're into. But I'm pretty sure that I should try and move past "You will know I am the warrior when I lay my vengeance upon thee" ranting aside and get on with the column.Titan's Grip.Oh, come on, you know I had to!
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: A pile of my enemies' bodies
Welcome back to The Care and Feeding of Warriors. The carnage you see above you is the entire Scarlet Monastery Cathedral (and all the mobs before it, too!) except for the ones who died before we got this far. (I stole this idea shamelessly from a commenter named Brian Arnold.The video he linked is pretty much exactly how it went down for me.) Damage Shield, you complete me. Well, you and Shockwave, and the new limitless target Thunder Clap. This is my build: I skipped over Anticipation because, while an excellent talent, I want to be hit instead of dodged. I'll pick it back up again once we start leveling. A couple of fun screenshots from my character panel: This is my admittedly gimmicky shield block value set. Pretty much every piece on it has block or str, I hover at around 16000 health in it. What I find really fun (and what allowed me to pull the entire Cath as well as both bosses onto myself) was this next trick. Nothing up my sleeve but Shield Block.
[EDITED] Patch 3.0.2 primer for Protection Paladins
It's a sweet time to be a Tankadin. I know that AoE tanking is no longer the exclusive domain of Paladins, but that's cool. With the changes to the way tanking works now, tanks generally generate threat by dishing out more damage... and boy does a Protection Paladin deal damage. Because Protection is the tanking tree, a PvE-oriented endeavor, I'm going to put away my PvP-fanatic hat aside and focus on a build that is optimal for tanking. Don't worry, even in this spec Paladins are still formidable. That's just the way it works in the new world.We see a big change right away on the first tier with Blessing of Kings made accessible to all. It's not quite the baseline spell we've been asking for, but it's close. Some players can choose to pick up a scaled down version for less than five points, but since this is standard raid fare, we're throwing in 5 points here including Improved Blessing of Kings. We're also going to pick up Divine Strength on this tier, which was moved from the Holy tree. It's important to note that pretty much everything we use scales off attack power now, too, so more Strength means more pain. And more pain means more threat. Strength also contributes to block value, so we'll be looking to get Strength in our gear, too.
Skill Mastery: Damage Shield
Do you like it when people hurt themselves trying to hurt you? Sure, we all do! And Damage Shield makes sure that's exactly what happens. A simple, beautiful, long needed change for warrior tanking, Damage Shield inflicts damage on anyone who hits you with a melee attack, or anyone who you block in melee. This is, to my minds, a nice compromise with an avoidance ability still having positive threat results: while it wouldn't make sense to damage someone if they miss you, or if you dodge them, it does make sense that you can block their attack and whack them a sharp smack on the snout for the trouble.
Kevlar handkerchief keeps your nose clean, protects against friendly fire
We find it hard to believe that we won't see one of these being used somewhere in the upcoming 007 film, but even if not, you can definitely put one to use in your everyday life -- if you can get ahold of one of the ten being made, that is. Srulirecht's DÆmdur is a Kevlar-based handkerchief which can keep your schnoz squeaky clean and (in theory, at least) keep your chest free from bullets. Granted, even the manufacturer makes clear that it takes no responsibility for "schmucks and wooden-heads who feel compelled to test the endurance or resistance of the textile in any way," but it sure beats those cotton ones you buy ten to a pack.[Via OhGizmo]
Holy and Protection buffs incoming for Paladins
Ghostcrawler just recently posted some good news for both Protection and Holy Paladins. Some of them are simply a matter of convenience, but all of the changes posted were nice little buffs.First, Righteous Defense now has an 8 second cooldown. It's 15 seconds on live realms, and was 10 seconds previously in the beta. I'm very, very glad this change was made, though it's an example of the 'slippery slope' of homogenizing classes/tanks. Paladins were the only class with a ranged taunt, but now all of the tanks have one. Righteous Defense still taunts multiple mobs, but all of the other tanks had/have AOE taunts as well. Righteous Defense mostly lost what made it beautiful compared to the other taunts, so it really needed this buff to not look terrible. I'm glad they did it.
The Light and How to Swing It: Our time to shine
In about a week, Patch 3.0.2 will drop on our collective heads and it will be a glorious time for Paladins. Barring any unexpected nerfs from the current build, the new patch should see a new era for the class where our brethren from other trees stand shoulder to shoulder with everyone else. Massive changes to the class will mean that Retribution Paladins will not only find a spot in groups, they'll actually be sought after. Protection Paladins will not just continue to excel in AoE grinding and tanking, they'll be the Energizer bunnies of AoE, turning it into an artform. And Holy... well, Holy still has a few kinks that need to be worked out, but Paladins are still phenomenal healers with more flexibility than ever.It is our time to shine. Each and every Paladin of every build will be viable, wanted in groups, and formidable to face in a PvP setting. Core changes to the class will make it less of a chore to micromanage and more fun and strategic to play. For many of us, Patch 3.0.2 will be sweet redemption for all those times of sticking with a class that was generally frustrating to level up with (unless you were Protection), had clunky core mechanics on short timers, and oftentimes pigeonholed into one role, later two. These days, anyone who laughs at our choice of tree, even Retribution -- especially Retribution -- will be on the receiving end of our powerfully revamped Avenging Wrath.
Ask a Beta Tester: The Borean Tundra, Paladin spells, and more
Welcome to Ask a Beta Tester! We're not going to waste any time today, and just jump in feet first with Jerematic's question...Are there any other world PvP objectives, beyond Wintergrasp?There aren't any objectives as far as things you can capture, no, not really. However, there are little PvP areas in certain zones. For example, there are PvP quests in Grizzly Hills. You take the quest, you are PvP flagged as long as you have the quest, and you have to complete it in a nearby area. In the Grizzly Hills example here, the Horde and the Alliance are duking it out in a massive logging camp that they've chased the Venture Co. away from. Have you ever wanted to ride down a river on the back of a huge log? Wrath'll do it for ya.Chalios asked...I'm a prot pally and I was wondering that since Blessings of Kings is going to be 2% stat increase base with an extra 8% on the improved version, will Greater Blessings of Kings start off with 2% as well at base and scale with the improved version or will it still be 10% and provide me with an extra 4 talent points?The Greater Blessing will work the same way regular ol' Blessing of Kings works in Wrath. 2% per talent point. You don't get to skip out on spending 4 talent points.
Tigole confirms dual specs are still in the works
Many people have been wondering about when the promised dual specs will appear in the beta. For those that don't remember, back at the World Wide Invitational the developers said that they would be rolling out the ability for players to switch easily and quickly between multiple specs. At the time one of the main points was that these quick changes between specs would not require gold.Tigole confirmed last night that dual specs are currently being worked on. They are figuring out all the details internally still (which is a good thing). When a poster asked "I imagine by this stage we wouldn't see it until a patch after release?" Tigole replied "Most likely in a patch but it's not too far off." Now you can interpret that different ways. Perhaps he means in a beta patch or a patch immediately following Wrath's release. Either way the fact that these dual specs will eventually be here will make many people quite happy.Last night I was talking to some guild mates about it and the word that was thrown around was "game changing" for Protection Warriors and other low DPS specs. Since the Protection Warrior would just be able to flip into a DPS spec for farming, he would no longer need a farming alt – significantly changing the way the game is played.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Itemization in Wrath part two
Last week, I talked about gear. This week... I talk about gear some more. You may have an entire seat, but you'll only need the edge! Woah, sorry about that. I seem to have gone entirely mad. This week, in looking at options for tanking and DPSing in Wrath, we're going to look first at crafted items and then, if we have time, we'll start looking at instance drops to get yourself up to speed for your chosen role. As always, things can change in the Beta with blinding speed. You never know when they will make a change, allowing Berserker Rage to be used in all stances as an example. However, for now we're going with the notion that you'll need 540 defense to be crit immune at level 80 vs a boss, and that the Titan's Grip hit penalty on specials will require significant hit rating to overcome (roughly 500). Another assumption is that special attacks are using a two roll system instead of the one roll system of white attacks, meaning that you can't just stack a ton of crit to get around the miss penalty on your specials. (Note: I am not a statistician or a mathemetician. I barely understand the math in that thread.) I will say that, having taken my tauren back to Arms and then Fury, that things are not as dire as some comments and even my own past statements may seem: warrior DPS is currently low, yes, but it's not horrible, and you can level with either spec. (My draenei warrior is now 74 using arms as his prefered playstyle and I can say with relative security that the various Arms talents do make for solid leveling.) And while the TG miss penalty makes me cry, it is possible to overcome it, at least at lower levels.
Divine Plea changed once more
Last night's beta patch introduced a quite absurd change to Divine Plea (which you can see in the tooltip there), rendering it more or less worthless for Holy Paladins, useful only to Retribution and Protection. In one of the faster turnarounds in the beta, Ghostcrawler has already posted a new version of the spell.In response to player feedback (mana issues, boredom) Divine Plea will now only reduce your healing by 20% (instead of this patch's 100%), but the tradeoff is that it will be able to be dispelled. As someone who primarily plays PvE, this seems like a much, much better version of the spell. I mean, come on. Last night's version of the spell was, "You take a nap for 15 seconds while some of your mana comes back." That's not exactly how you make an engaging and entertaining class. People who PvP heavily may disagree with me, but I'm not sure. I have a feeling naptime is as unwelcome in PvP as it is in PvE.Paladins also seem to be concerned about mobility while healing. There are some potential changes that could come, but Ghostcrawler and the developers seem to want to see the current state of things in action a little more before they make any updates there.
Ask a Beta Tester: Protection Warriors, Death Knight DPS, and more
Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, with even more passenger mount questions! Don't worry, though. It didn't devour our entire column today. We have plenty more for you! For example, Sorano's question...What I'd like to know his exactly how much protection warrior dps as changed. All the talents seem too good to be true.Protection Warriors seems like one of the class/spec combos that have changed the most in Wrath. Their tanking is incredible and a lot more versatile now (all tanks are, actually) but you're asking about DPS and not tanking! Their DPS is good. It's not as high as DPS classes/specs, but it's not abysmal like it used to be. You might actually be DPSing with your shield equipped for the huge Shield Slam crits rather than dual wielding, even when you're not the one being beat on.I don't have any concrete numbers or DPS charts for you, but I can say that what I've seen is really, really impressive. In yesterday's Ask a Beta Tester, reader Friday Knight gave you some more in depth information about the rotations of each spec, so I recommend reading that if you missed it. His information and what I've seen myself makes me want to gear up a Prot Warrior alongside my Prot Paladin instead of having just one tanking character.
Blizzard leaning toward AE Tanking for all
You may recall earlier yesterday that we reported on Thunder Clap losing its target limit, thus quite suddenly making Warriors have a very good chance of being viable AE tanks. One thing that you might have also noticed is that the Druid's Swipe is getting the same treatment (no word on whether it will also be getting the ability to go 360 degrees, but it seems likely, if it's going to be a Thunder Clap/Consecrate equivalent). In addition, Death and Decay, the Death Knight's AE mainstay, recently received a bump to threat gain. That means that all 4 tank classes, in theory, will have the ability to do some Protection Paladin style AE tanking should they want to. This all seems to be in line with the tanking philosophy Blizzard has been pushing for Wrath, one which Ghostcrawler recently reiterated: Blizzard wants to make sure that all tanks are as equal as possible. There should be no reason to take one class of tank over another, all things being equal, and no reason to sideline your tank because he or she is not the right class. Certainly, if this is to be realized completely, you do have to give every tank a good amount of AE capability, and this latest round of announced tank changes seems to be tailor made to do just that. As the former player of a Druid tank and the future (current beta) player of a Death Knight tank, I'm very pleased to see these changes. I know that there was nothing more fun that running through a dungeon like Shattered Halls as a DPS with a Paladin Tank leading the way, and the idea that every tank class might be able to do that to some extent in Wrath makes me incredibly excited. It also allows groups to be more flexible in what DPS they take, including DPSers that traditionally have had a hard time getting groups due to having poor CC abilities, such as Cat Druids and Retribution Paladins. If this change is handled right, it will go a long way toward solving the tank shortage for PuG groups, and, in fact, make the 5-man dungeon run fun again in general.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Itemization in Wrath part one
When I said I'd talk about itemization for warriors in Wrath, I did so fully knowing that it is at present incomplete. New gear comes in with every beta patch, so even if you take every single item currently present into account it doesn't necessarily provide you with an accurate picture of the way it will all shake out once you actually set foot in Northrend.So keeping in mind that not only can this all change tomorrow but that we're talking about gearing the most gear dependent class in the entire game, let's start looking at what gear we're going to require at 80. The defense cap at level 80, for instance, is going to be 540 defense requiring 689 defense rating. For a fury TG build, you're looking to overcome 15% hit penalty on specials, meaning that you'll be stacking roughly 500 hit rating at level 80 (based on this forum post which seems like a pretty good test bed to me) not to mention all the crit and AP you'll need to be effective. Frankly, I think the defense gear will be easier to assemble than the hit gear. For arms, of course, you won't need nearly as much hit, making an Arms DPS build substantially easier to gear for. (To be fair, a fury DPS build designed around Impale, Rampage and Incite would also be easier to gear for.)Of course, the real issue isn't "Does the gear exist" but rather "How easy is it for me to assemble a reasonably effective set for what I want to do?" Does a newly 80 prot warrior have a chance to tank the instances and heroics? What about a DPS warrior, will he be effective? So far, it seems that the gear exists, but can be somewhat difficult to assemble: the introduction of faction vendors in the most recent beta builds actually goes to help in these situations. This week we're going to look at the faction rewards and see what warriors would be interested in. There's also instance drops, crafted items and PvP rewards to consider before all's said and done, but we have to start somewhere.
Stepping away from +threat
Threat is at the heart of tanking. However, it's totally hidden from the player, and many players don't understand it well or at all. A thumbnail sketch: every point of damage you do causes 1 threat. Every point of healing you do causes 0.5 threat (unless you're a paladin, in which case it's 0.25 for reasons I've never fully understood). This is base threat; many classes have threat modifiers. Rogues, for instance, have an innate 30% reduction to threat. Warriors and Druids get 30% improved threat in their tanking modes (Defensive Stance/Dire Bear Form); this will be raised to 45% in LK, I believe. Paladins get 90% extra threat for their Holy damage from Righteous Fury. Then there are various tanking skills which have special threat modifiers. Sunder Armor is one that has been around forever; it wouldn't cause much threat inherently, but it's got extra threat built in. Lacerate and Revenge are other examples. In short, the way Blizzard has traditionally made tanking work – made sure the tanks are causing more threat than everyone else, so the mobs will attack them – is by keeping their damage low, but raising their threat with threat-increasing auras and threat-boosted abilities. This is not the tack they're taking in LK, based on some trends that have been emerging in blue posts over the last month or two. For instance, Ghostcrawler: "We'd like to get away more from +threat abilities for all classes if we can."
Skill Mastery: Shockwave
One of the new talents for Wrath of the Lich King, Shockwave is the 51 point protection talent. Described as having been intended to help with both tanking and soloing, it is a cone attack directed in front of the warrior for ten yards, dealing damage based on attack power and stunning for four seconds. As you can see from the screenshot, it can do reasonable damage if it critically hits (that cloud heading off into the distance is the animation of the spell). In my opinion it does exactly what it is intended to do, helps protection spec warriors with both soloing and tanking.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: A short intermission
In all the talk about the beta, about nerfs and buffs to the class, about design philosophies and alterations to talent trees it can be pretty easy to lose sight of the class as a living entity. The other day, while trying to level my night elf warrior on test in the face of the 132 error (I'm pretty sure my drivers are up to date, but I'm going to check to make sure after I get done writing this) a friend asked me why, since I'm almost always tanking, I'm so concerned about the fury and arms trees and their upcoming viability."You never DPS. You're always tanking. So what if fury and arms aren't as good?"I had a hard time answering this until I logged onto my old Horde server and talked to Elle, a friend of mine who plays a warrior. Elle has never played prot spec seriously, doesn't like tanking. A discussion of the state of the various trees made her unhappy, and she made the point that even if prot were capable of good DPS, it wasn't a playstyle she wanted for her warrior. This makes sense to me: she's always leveled as fury or arms, generally, and she's done so in a guild with at least two serious, dedicated tanks around most of the time. The thing about tanking is, you only need so many. In a guild that fields at best a 10 man raid by itself, two or three tanks is plenty.With paladins, druids and DK's as well as warriors, that's four tanking classes, all of whom are expected to be viable for trash, offtanking and MT positions. Warriors are one of the most played classes in the game, so it's clear that with four tanking classes not all members of these classes are going to be tanking. And two of those classes can only DPS or tank, there's no healing DK or ranged caster DPS warriors.
