The Gnome Council proudly presents you the first (and probably the last xD) tank blog written in Spanish.
Shield Slam trainable
Posted 06-02-2008 at 04:58 AM by Narshe
I've been following the current WotLK alpha leaks and I must admit I was very satisfied with the way the warrior protection was coming.
They reduced the cooldowns of the oh-shit-buttons to the minimum, increased the capability of burst aggro (we will have a talent that decreases the rage cost and cooldown of Shield Slam any time we deal damage with either SS or Devastate) and the utility of Shield Bash and Thunderclap as their damage will increase with Ap.
This way they will also have open a path into itemization, by putting again STR in our tanking sets.
Last days, however, the Alpha got a big patch with a lot of Death Knight changes and with one big change to our protection maneuvers. I'm refering to a Shield Block change:
This new shield block, can have its cd reduced to 20 via new talents.
This is creeping me off. Warriors will be open again to crushing blows regardless their gear or... maybe they are removing the crushing blows for the rest of the game.
The second option would have some logic, as Death Knights have no viable chance of getting rid of crushings and they won't have that massive amount of armor druids have to mitigate them....
But if warriors are open to CBs... what would be their use in MT raiding? They have some cooldowns yeh, but Bears mitigation is far superior and the good thing we always had is that we had very low chances of getting bursted, not like druids have.
However we are still on Alpha state, so it's a bit early to start pondering about the new talents and abilities. I do really hope to get a beta so I can test the new posibilities of the four tanking classes before the next expansion comes out so I can choose to level one or another to Main Tanking the next HE raiding.
Btw, about the topic title:
At the current Alpha, all warriors would have the Shield Slam ability trainable. The Shield Slam talent has been replaced with an ability that makes you buff an ally with 5% dodge, and anytime that ally get hits, your taunt cooldown will refresh.
I must say is a very nice ability. Not only you can save ur buddies lifes if you get your taunt resisted; you can also buff another tank with +5% dodge, and even get limitless taunts while doing so (as long as you don't taunt the other tank mob xD).
Very nice additions I must say. ^_^
They reduced the cooldowns of the oh-shit-buttons to the minimum, increased the capability of burst aggro (we will have a talent that decreases the rage cost and cooldown of Shield Slam any time we deal damage with either SS or Devastate) and the utility of Shield Bash and Thunderclap as their damage will increase with Ap.
This way they will also have open a path into itemization, by putting again STR in our tanking sets.
Last days, however, the Alpha got a big patch with a lot of Death Knight changes and with one big change to our protection maneuvers. I'm refering to a Shield Block change:
Quote:
Shield Block - Increases your chance to block and the amount blocked by 100% for 5 sec, but will only block 1 attack. 30 sec cooldown.
This is creeping me off. Warriors will be open again to crushing blows regardless their gear or... maybe they are removing the crushing blows for the rest of the game.
The second option would have some logic, as Death Knights have no viable chance of getting rid of crushings and they won't have that massive amount of armor druids have to mitigate them....
But if warriors are open to CBs... what would be their use in MT raiding? They have some cooldowns yeh, but Bears mitigation is far superior and the good thing we always had is that we had very low chances of getting bursted, not like druids have.
However we are still on Alpha state, so it's a bit early to start pondering about the new talents and abilities. I do really hope to get a beta so I can test the new posibilities of the four tanking classes before the next expansion comes out so I can choose to level one or another to Main Tanking the next HE raiding.
Btw, about the topic title:
At the current Alpha, all warriors would have the Shield Slam ability trainable. The Shield Slam talent has been replaced with an ability that makes you buff an ally with 5% dodge, and anytime that ally get hits, your taunt cooldown will refresh.
I must say is a very nice ability. Not only you can save ur buddies lifes if you get your taunt resisted; you can also buff another tank with +5% dodge, and even get limitless taunts while doing so (as long as you don't taunt the other tank mob xD).
Very nice additions I must say. ^_^
Total Comments 10
Comments
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That change to shield block would only make sense if they remove crushingblows. I'm not entirelly sure but I think they talked about changing it/removing it for WotLK quite some time ago.Posted 06-02-2008 at 07:15 AM by Tharr 
- I can't validate the source, but I've heard rumors that blizzard "Is unhappy with the crushing blow mechanic and is considering removing it from the game" about the time ZA came out. This was propogated by the lack of CB's from Haz and Nal, and of course, the SWP has no crushing blows. I suppose they'll balance it out by just having mobs hit harder in general?
Posted 06-02-2008 at 08:07 AM by Muggs - Well, 100% block every 20 seconds sounds like another "ohnoes!@!1!" button. I could get into that. And really, who feels like mashing Shield Block every 5 seconds. But yea, to do that CB's have got to go.
Vigilance sounds like a neat 5 man ability. Put it on the healer, whee. Place it on an AEr. Can think of a few uses. The scary one is say you're doing a fight like Gruul, you put it on the Druid MT to buff HIS Dodge to an even more astronomical level. On the other hand, will also make bringing a 2nd prot warrior a bit easier to justify on those single-tank fights.Posted 06-02-2008 at 10:03 AM by Rayne - @Muggs: They stated that in one of their interviews at blizzcon if I recall correctly.
Narshe: I've been watching that place too. I have a VERY strong feeling that there are a few nere-do-wells whom are actively adding false information just to screw with particular classes. For example, several times now, paladin and rogue talents / skills have been added only to be removed shortly thereafter as a hoax.
Also, could you point out the line stating that shield slam would be trainable? I read that it would be replaced, but I missed the part where it was inherent...Posted 06-02-2008 at 10:19 AM by Shaiden - I am willing to bet a substantial amount of gold that the current to-hit mechanics are going to see a massive overhaul in WotLK.
Why? Because they have reached the end of their life span. They are, for all intents and purposes, broken. See the Sunwell Radiance hack that Blizzard felt necessary to introduce, for example. Or rogues and druids becoming unhittable.
What exact nature that change will have is of course pure speculation at this point. It can be any or all of the following:
(1) Removal of crushing blows. Blizzard has stated previously in a Stratics chat that they were unhappy with the mechanic. And, really, it's mostly an accident. Crushing and glancing blows were originally a mechanic meant to discourage you from fighting mobs well above your level, the ability to eliminate them via Shield Block was more likely an accident of the mechanics and not intended design (it is quite possible that they weren't initially even intended to occur on raid bosses, either).
(2) Doing away with the one-roll mechanic for the combat table. Have separate rolls for miss, dodge, parry, block, crit.
(3) Have diminishing returns on dodge/parry/block rating -> percentage conversion. This would eliminate the dodge > everything bias, among other things.
(4) Remove the possibility to become uncrittable. Have bosses with crit chances > 5.6%. Note that the newer dual-wielding bosses (from Jan'alai to Illidan) already have burst damage very similar to crits with a high crit chance (their mainhand and off-hand attacks occur simultaneously, and you can have one, both, or neither of them hitting).
I also have to say that I couldn't be happier with Shield Block spam being done away with (if the change is not just a rumor). It is a rather mindless mechanic, yet another piece of busywork for your fingers for a class that is already using 1-2 abilities every global cooldown, not something that ties into maintaining active awareness of combat.Posted 06-02-2008 at 12:29 PM by Roana -
Sure, it's below in the notes.Quote:Also, could you point out the line stating that shield slam would be trainable? I read that it would be replaced, but I missed the part where it was inherent...
Quote:Shield Slam - Replaced with Vigilance (now trainable).Posted 06-03-2008 at 12:54 AM by Narshe -
Eh, no, it'd just move it to Defense rating -- unless of course the diminishing returns would be different between Defense and Dodge/Parry/Block rating.Quote:(3) Have diminishing returns on dodge/parry/block rating -> percentage conversion. This would eliminate the dodge > everything bias, among other things.Posted 06-03-2008 at 09:21 AM by Norrath 
- Defense rating is just a package of dodge/parry/block rating, plus reduced hit and crit chance (which naturally would have to have diminishing returns, too).Quote:Eh, no, it'd just move it to Defense rating -- unless of course the diminishing returns would be different between Defense and Dodge/Parry/Block rating.
Posted 06-03-2008 at 11:44 AM by Roana -
Sorry I missed this discussion, thank you for pointing me here, Narshe
Wow. The crushing blow mechanic makes sense. You do not defend yourself, you get splattered. Sure its a pain in the ass to have to actively brun rage on it every CD but there is a good reason why and its rooted in common sense. I'm not sure I like this change, it removes an advantage warriors have that in effect, makes them not better but simply viable. Unless block values rise significantly (which would probably make shield slam way OP) shield blocking is going to be less useful by far. Talented, 2 guarenteed blocks every 20 sec? Ew.
As far as SS being trainable....I don't see the point. Its been, like with MS and BT, the reward for going deep into the prot tree. That is lessened some by the addition of yet another set of tiers to get us down to 51 points but still.
I remember the talk about the removal of crushing blows and I was and still am on the fence for that one. I guess we'll see how it plays out but I'm a little bit concerned now.Posted 07-09-2008 at 07:30 AM by Horacio - Yeah... definitely concerned. I'm assuming that Blizzard is going to do a good job, because that's what Blizzard does. How many megahits have they had? I mean, the Diablo franchise, Starcraft, the Warcraft franchise...
I guess we'll just have to trust them.
But I am worried about my beloved warrior.Posted 07-09-2008 at 09:00 AM by Thireas
