[Ciderhelm]

Please Note: This is a bit dated. Check TS news page for more updated information!

The community has had shifting moods over the last several weeks as we've tended to focus on individual parts of Protection changes, both good and bad, without anchoring everything to the full picture. I know that my own recent focus on the shortcomings of AOE tanking for Warriors and Druids has caused me to lose sight on just how awesome everything is. My goal with this post is to create the anchor point so players who may have just started watching the Wrath of the Lich King changes can get a fuller picture of what we can look forward to!

Many of the raid-related concerns have been brought up by Xav, who has been actively clearing WotLK raid content and has provided detailed feedback on the subject. Threat-related concerns have been brought up by Satrina.

For fair warning, I do need to jump into the issues we're facing first, as I believe that will be the most valuable to Blizzard. Also, the list is created for completeness, and we're expecting the majority of issues listed to get fixes soon, per comments from Ghostcrawler.


Current Gameplay Issues
The Protection Warrior has a few key issues that have not been resolved at this point in time. These are:

• Thunder Clap is assumed to be the intended method of scaling AOE aggro since it benefits Fury and Arms as well; as such, it suffers from poor scaling and a limited target cap.
• Shockwave is not effective to use to solve the target cap issue of Thunder Clap in 5-mans because of it's cooldown; more specifically, we're often burning the cooldown before finishing out a pull and have to wait an awkwardly long time for the next pull if we want to use it again to gain initial aggro.
• Shockwave is having issues hitting raid bosses.
• Rage starvation is still coming from Avoidance streaks.
• Talent trees have too many required talents. After they were slimmed down, Armored to the Teeth was added to Fury, which leaves us struggling to find points for optional perks we were expecting to get.
• Sunder Armor glyph is scaling lower than it should be at 5% Threat scaling on the secondary application rather than 18%.
• Shield Wall is on the global cooldown.

Current Balance Issues
These issues are important to balance between ourselves and other classes or specs:

• With the emphasis on equalizing tanks, Druids and Warriors are still flatly inferior to Paladins in our ability to hold aggro in multi-target situations.
• Holding aggro in multi-target situations is not scaling at the rate of multi-target damage output from DPS classes -- in other words, as a raid increases in average gear, the tanks have a more difficult time performing their role while other players have an easier role in performing theirs.
• The availability of both Thunder Clap and Shockwave as proactive means of gaining AOE aggro means getting Thunder Clap to the right level for all Warriors without overpowering Protection Warriors may be difficult.
• Warrior Block is scaling better than it is for Paladins in high damage situations due to Critical Block, which may mean alterations for Warriors are coming (or, ideally, a buff for Paladins).

Now For The Good Stuff
First and foremost, the Protection Warrior is doing well for mitigation at the moment. Most of the mitigation-oriented talents have been stripped out of the tree, which was a concern for many in the community, but the numbers in early raids are coming out balanced to other classes.

The Protection Warrior is going to see the most fundamental change and improvement it has ever seen. In many ways, the game feels entirely new to me, and I really can't give justice to how much better it is.

To summarize the philosophy change Blizzard has had with Wrath of the Lich King: Protection Warriors should be able to take part in as many aspects of the game as possible, including leveling, farming, dailies, and PVP, while maintaining their flavor of using a shield, and without feeling as though they are at a severe disadvantage by choosing not to respec and regear.

They are succeeding at this goal. Here's a few quick points.


The Revolutionary Talents & Abilities
If you've been watching the news, you've seen the talents and abilities I've been preaching about for weeks. If not, take a quick look:

• Shockwave: Conal AOE that has a 4 second stun and great damage output; Even with the AOE tanking issues cited above, this is ability is good on all levels and in all situations.
• Sword & Board: Allows Devastate to proc Shield Slam; I believe Revenge should be included as a means of proccing Shield Slam if they intend Revenge to be part of the rotation; This ability keeps me significantly more engaged and is useful in every situation.
• Shield Block: 40 second cooldown buff that provides 100% Block Chance and Block Value for 10 seconds; While this change means we probably won't be solo'ing old-world raid bosses as easily, it is an enormous and reliable damage and damage reduction buff; In practice, this is a major improvement over the old Shield Block.
• Damage Shield: Reactive damage that scales with Shield Block Value, can crit, and cannot be avoided; Now that this is fixed, this ability is the basis of AOE grinding as a Warrior.
• Concussion Blow: Instant burst damage stun; The addition of damage to this talent make it a must have rather than the filler point it has been over the last several years.
• Enraged Regeneration: 3 minute cooldown that recovers 30% of maximum health; This solves the primary issue of Protection Warrior grinding, particularly in areas with casters, in that our health is constantly being chipped away, and health recovery through food is a painfully long process due to our high health pools; This scales with gear and will benefit Protection immensely in AOE grinding situations.
• Warbringer: Allows Charge to be used in any stance and while in combat; Similar to Shockwave and other new talents, this is useful in everything we're doing; Increased mobility is the name of the game for Protection.
• Heroic Throw: 1 minute cooldown ranged attack that can be talented for silence; This provides the benefit [item]The Decapitator[/item] brought to us and is an ideal pulling tool.

AOE Grinding Overview
Per an earlier news post, this is an appropriate place to outline the changes that make Protection such a solid leveling and grinding spec -- AOE grinding. Do not underestimate the value of a scaling damage reduction from gear (Armor and Block), scaling multi-target damage (Shockwave, Damage Shield, Thunder Clap), and scaling healing (Enraged Regeneration). Each of these may seem small, but what you'll be able to pull off will be nothing short of spectacular. Here's an example video I made of myself at level 70 clearing a Black Temple terrace in under 1 minute:

[veohhd]v15883774Jc7KMgcn[/veohhd]


Grinding -- Shield Block Bonuses, Shockwave
If you choose to level and grind as Protection, here's a few things to keep in mind that will make your job easier.

Shockwave should never be used while Shield Block is active. This is because the value of the Shield Block buff is seriously diminished while mobs are stunned -- Damage Shield, which has it's damage increased due to the 100% Block Value buff, will not proc, and the stun occurring during a period where you have 100% Block Chance is less effective than when your combat table is not covered.

The solution is to stagger the two. Use Shield Block, which should be on a 40 second cooldown thanks to talents, then use Shockwave immediately after the buff has worn off. Since Shockwave is on a 20 second cooldown, it will stay staggered appropriately.

Block Value trinkets are valuable for leveling. If you haven't gone to brewfest and picked up [item]Coren's Lucky Coin[/item] from Coren clears in BRD yet, get to it immediately; you should also have [item]Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600[/item] from badges. The two do stack.

You'll want to get a macro running which will allow the use of these two trinkets when Shield Block goes up. You'll also want to tie Shield Slam into this and make sure it goes off near instantly once the Shield Block and trinket bonuses are up. Here's the macro:

#showtooltip Shield Slam
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast Shield Block
/use 13
/use 14
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()
/cast Shield Slam
/startattack

While Shield Block is active, do not use abilities that don't proc Shield Slam via Sword and Board. If I were to wager a guess, Revenge will probably proc this soon, but I really don't know. For now, Shield Slam, then Devastate until Shield Slam is back up again.


Threat Values & Scaling
Satrina has been recording and parsing out the Threat values and mechanics we're going to see coming in 3.0. Since these are changing with each build, make sure you bookmark this research:
WoW 3.0 Threat Values - TankSpot


How It All Winds Up
We do have some gameplay and balance issues that we need to see resolved, but don't let those overshadow the full picture. Blizzard deserves appreciation for going the extra mile.

[Kazeyonoma]

mmm sexy, and to those who think you need insane levels of gear to do what cider does, I did it with t4 and badge gear and a few mixed pvp (yes pvp!) pieces and i was able to accomplish about the same thing at level 70 on the PTR.

[manicus]

Wall of text crits paladin invasion for 14K damage. :-D

Good overview Cider, if ghostcrawler listens and brings issues to the developers, I think lich king is going to be awesome.

I totally agree on the aoe tanking issues, while I don't want a thundecration, i want viable 4-6 mob tanking.

[Roarc]

Very nice overview Ciderhelm!

My thoughts go similar as yours regarding revenge. Either they include it in the Sword and Board talent so it too can proc our free Shield Slam, or they could make it a lot better than today yet on say a 10s CD.

A few changes I saw last night that hasn't really be brought forward are:

1. Improved Spell Reflection
If this works "passively" ,in theory it then decreases the damage taken from spells by ALMOST 20%. We have the old 15.4% reduction from talents when hit, yet now spells will hit is 4% less often. The below calculations might be off but I think they should add upp.

Damage output:
100x10 000 = 1000 000 HP

Damage avoided:
4% of 100 = 4x10 000 = 40 000 HP

Hit damage reduction:
(1000 000 - 40 000)*0,154 = 147 840 HP

Actual damage taken:
1000 000 - 40 000 - 147 840 = 812 160 HP (81% of Damage output)

If it only works when active it's of course not that huge of a buff.

2. Improved Sunder Armor
Even if this is situational, the Sunder Armor debuffs have no set time till they are removed in the current beta. This is awesome from trash or mobility boss events where you might not be hitting your mob always.

[Ciderhelm]

Added the grinding macro. Enjoy!

[Darmon]

Source: Thugs 2. Improved Sunder Armor Even if this is situational, the Sunder Armor debuffs have no set time till they are removed in the current beta. This is awesome from trash or mobility boss events where you might not be hitting your mob always.

I think there are a few people who reported that SA 'last untill canceled' it is just a tooltip error. It lasts 30s as ever.

[Horacio]

Excellent write up!

Obviously there are still concerns and some will be ongoing. Balancing any class has to be a pain in the arse for the devs and it requires a steady stream of reasoned, educated feedback from the community...something Tankspot can uniquely supply....heh, in bulk.

Our viability AoE tanking has certainly improved but we still lack some in that area. It will be interesting how minor changes going forward integrate as well as how our theories and methods evolve with more hard data and anecdotal observation/experience.

Looking forward to it!

[protonly]

Thank you for the summary. With all the changes to the tanking classes and buffs, nerfs, etc this was much needed. Once the upcoming patch resets the world it will be interesting to review all the tanking changes as a whole and see how each class made out.

Still a lot of work for the devs to do to get the tanks equal and also removing the "gearing penalty" that overgeared tanks have that none of the other jobs have (healers/cc/dps).

[Leeroi]

OK - at the risk of asking a seriously stupid question, has anyone asked Blizz to fix Rend? I hate having level 1 bank alts, so I leveled a new warrior up to lvl 6 or so before heading to IF to be a bank alt. It surprised me to remember who nice Rend was for grinding - under level 10, Rend is actually a functional ability. Is there a good reason Blizz has an ability (which can be buffed via Tier 1 talents) that "automatically" expires at lvl 10-15? Is this something we should be asking to scale with all our other abilities? Does anyone but me care that it have a use beyond keeping rogues from stealthing? Is this a dead issue and I "missed it"?

"There are no stupid questions, just stupid people who ask them."

[Heartwood]

"Shield Wall is on the global cooldown."

This has been a longterm problem that I'm not sure was intended for Prot Wars. Shield Wall is our definitive "oh sh*t!" button. The problems is that its blocked out by the GCD and not available in the split-second when it is generally needed. I can't begin to count the number of times I've seen my health drop to a red/orange sliver on the health bar, hammered my Shield Wall key repeatedly, had a healer swoop in and heal me just in time, and see that Shield Wall wasn't even used. Then again, I also recall the fights I've died in that same scenario where I wasn't able to SW, the healers didn't swoop in, and the raid wiped and SW remained unused due to GCD.

[TomHuxley]

Excellent write up. Indeed, as soon as they fix the Imp TC issue (common raised cap and rebuffed damage...) I will have no issues at all. Which I don't think is something I've ever said about a game before. Taking SW off the GCD would be an added bonus, but I'm so used to using it proactively it's not an "issue".

Wow, I am so looking forward to the xpac...let's just hope they manage to fix the niggling AE tanking issues.

[Nyd]

I'm not going to cross post a huge amount of information I put forth on the Beta Warrior forums so I'll just post a link.

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> [FeedBack] Overview of Prot as of 8982

Largely I agree with you on most things, and on others only in principle.

I believe that getting Prot to a shippable state is really only a few minor tweaks that ultimately frees up precious dev time to focus on Arms and Fury.

[Nez]

Excellent write up Cider, thanks.

My #1 request for warrior changes was to un-cap TC's number of targets. Still hoping for that, love alot of the other current changes.

[Maritime]

Great post Ciderhelm! I'm curious what type of gear you were wearing in that video. I plan on speccing to prot as soon as the changes hit, but am currently a fury warrior for my guild. As such I've got mixed T6/T5 level DPS gear, and mixed T5/T4 tank gear. My thinking is to max out STR for the AP and block gains, and on pieces that I don't have a STR bonus (trinkets, rings, cloak) go for armor/block value. I was pretty happy to get the block trinket from the brew boss. 2 weeks worth of Kara runs in 30 minutes.

[Ukk]

Yes, I am curious about the gear make-up. A mix of PvP and t4 is less precise than amounts or ranges of HP, armor, defense/avoidance, and BV we will need to AoE grind similar-level mobs effectively.

I am also curious how inferior prot dps will be in single-target or non-AoE situations compared to fury - can we do 80% of their damage? 50%?

[Lore]

Source: manicus Wall of text crits paladin invasion for 14K damage. :-D

I assure you, it is very hard to get a Protection Paladin to shut up. We will be back, and in greater numbers.

[Maritime]

Source: Lore I assure you, it is very hard to get a Protection Paladin to shut up.

Entirely too true, as anyone on my guild's TS can attest.

[Keshiji]

You should write something about vigilance as well. Every post I see people ignore that skill completely. Most warriors aren't happy with it, I'm right? IF that's so... how is it possible that no one says anything at all? You guys want it to be the same all the time?

[Sumendis]

Nice concise write-up Cider, as always. This thread actually got me thinking a lot about the new protection tree, and there's a few things that strike me as odd...

Firstly Shockwave... sure I've tried it on ptr on some outdoor mobs, it felt like lots of fun, it looks cool, it'll be great for levelling and heroics... but will it actually be useful where it really matters, i.e. against raid bosses ? Unless raidbosses will be entirely different in wotlk than in tbc, stunnable, multiple targets maybe, shockwave would get reduced to an instant attack that does moderate damage, no extra threat, low-ish rage cost but also rather long cooldown. On the ptr my shieldslam was still hitting much harder than shockwave on a single target, with swordnboard we'll use shieldslam more often, so we'd use devastate as fillers, not shockwave. So I'm wondering will we even use it on a raid boss ? Which brings me to the even crazier question... will we even spec into it if we're mainly a raid tank ? Once my guild works on some hard new bosses I won't care about being less efficient in heroics, I will care about optimising my spec for those boss kills. And if shockwave turns out not good enough... all I can say to that is I would find it rather strange if the top talent in the tree, the pinnacle of protection, wouldn't be used in the hardest fights...
And having said that, we can extend this train of thought to the other milestone talents in the tree, the 21pt concussion blow (which so far we were all forced to take to get shieldslam, but no longer), and the 31pt Vigilance which we don't really know yet how it'll turn out...
I've played around with some specs, without conc.blow, vigilance, shockwave, that's 3 extra points to spend elsewhere, it makes it much easier to reach impale in the arms tree for example. And with the extra amounts of crits that we'll get from our prot talents, many of us will consider taking Impale as often as possible due to the synergy.

The other thing that strikes me as odd is how our shiny new ability, Shockwave, actually has a negative impact on another shiny new talent, Damage shield. If you're using shockwave on every cooldown thus keeping the mobs stunned 4sec per 20sec, you're reducing the effectiveness of damage shields by 20%... Does the shockwave damage make up for that ?

Don't get me wrong, I think we're looking at a good future for prot warriors overall, but upon closer inspection a few things just don't seem to compute...

[Warwench]

I was on the PTR tonight.


- Def more damage soloing.
- LOVE Damage Shield.
- Damage Shield doesnt help with rage at all?, in fact with high block (to max the shield) and low hitting mobs, rage is non existant. Doesnt do much for rage starvation in over gearing situations.
- SS - a little under whelmed
- lots of STR, loved it. Love the talents that give more STR from Armor, love the talents that give more STR in general.
- TC, meh, under whelming really. I am not that well geared, only 1250 AP but it wasnt that impressive, cool down is a little long and remove the damn target cap please. Or at least remove the target cap and leave it as it is, it REALLY needs the cap removed. Please.
- Changes to equipment. I had to work to hit the 490 Def cap, and in doing so other stats suffered.

All in all i havent gotten to tank an instance yet, will try that when servers come back up but soloing is improved. Rage starvation and the constant struggle between Gear getting better and tanking ability getting worse for non progression content is still an issue.

Overall in a 15 minute quick look, 6/10.