3.0 and Wotlk OTing as a Prot Warrior

I'm going to post this in a format I believe was suggested by Ghostcrawler on the beta forums, which is the following (but I couldn't find the quote):

We cannot X. Well we have Y. Y does not serve this function because of Z.

That is this:
I have spent a fair amount of 3.0 OTing in pugs, generally because my Warriors gear isn't quite as good as whoever I'm pugging with. That being said, I still feel I have a decent feel for the role as a 3.0 warrior, and I have to say I think that warriors make poor OTs. (I am assuming with the new design philosophy that we should OT as well as anyone).

Here's why:
What we got in 3.0 (and wotlk) to OT better:
1) Better rage intake from better white damage (str on gear, more damage tuned into the prot tree)
2) Better scaling on gear.
3) Less rage starvation.

Why I think we cannot OT that well:

For the sake of this discussion I'm going to assume a warrior is my main tank (because it's a good baseline, and still probable) and I will make comparisons to bears (the quintessential OT) in terms of capability. My boss of choice will be a boss like Hydross, where threat-based transition is important but the OT is taking little to no direct damage.

As posted previously, the best threat rotation for a MT warrior looks like this:

Revenge->Shield Slam->Devestate->Devestate+Heroic Strike and with a priority on Sword & Board.

Of that rotation, i cannot use the following while OTing a boss such as hydross:

1: Revenge. My best threat move every 4th GCD is now gone, I am not being swung at. Even on Gruul, it's not enough to be able to use. There goes a good chunk of my scaling, DPS based threat.
2: Heroic Strike: While MTing a boss (at least one that hits hard and you don't overgear), you should never see white swings. With plenty of rage, Every swing should have a HS attached. However while OTing, white swings are the only source of rage (no, I'm not counting the glyph, but the glyph is still significantly less rage than white swings).

Additionally, I lose the Imp Def stance enrage, for a -12% damage reduction, which probably evens out to sometihng like 8-10% less threat provided the same rotation.

This is where the comparison to bears is most apt: Built into the feral tree is a way to turn yellow damage into rage. At a certain gear point, bears no longer have rage problems, which is why bears can use a full threat rotation including Maul (their heroic stike) while warriors cannot.

In the end, the fundamental reasons that a warrior cannot OT is:
Warrior threat is still based entirely around getting hit.
1) There is no way to turn yellow damage into rage, despite prot doing 90% of its job through yellow damage as well as a significant portion of its dps.
2) Warrior damage and threat (through enrage and revnege) also requires getting hit.

Suggestions to make this work:
I'm assuming that we should be able to OT as deep prot.

There needs to be a talent that converts yellow damage into rage (pefereably deep prot).
Also, either damage/threat needs to transfer from revenge -> another skill (i would love to see it on Devestate) or there needs some way to use revenge regularly while not taking swings (not intervene).

Thoughts? Comments? concerns? Feedback from Beta testers is welcome and encouraged.

BTW I do think this is a concern on par with MT concern. I for one would love to OT wotlk, partially because the role isn't as stressful from a guild attendence/management level (I can have RL conflicts with raiding, and I would prefer to OT for that reason).

reserved

Quote:

---

In the end, the fundamental reasons that a warrior cannot OT is:
Warrior threat is still based entirely around getting hit.
1) There is no way to turn yellow damage into rage, despite prot doing 90% of its job through yellow damage as well as a significant portion of its dps.
2) Warrior damage and threat (through enrage and revnege) also requires getting hit.

---

I'm going to nitpick at this in that you are saying we -cannot- do it. Yes, we can, we just aren't as good as druids.

As much as I would love to see a talent which translates yellow damage into rage, I have yet to find myself while off-tanking in a situation where it's been necessary.

While we may not have revenge or our enrage available (unless we are in a fight where a cleave must be shared), the threat we generate using Devastate and Shield Slam is quite powerful on their own as well as the option of slapping Vigilance on your MT if they're leaps and bounds higher than your dps (which they should be on any boss fight). There is quite often unavoidable aoe elements at current which help stock your rage bar up which lets you blow them on your other skills such as Shockwave and Concussion blow.

If at 80 this is a different story and we simply do not scale as fast as our DPS does I would see a real need for a fix to our rage mechanics as a whole (A post was made on the beta forums a while back which highlighted these problems amazingly well) rather than a bandaid talent solution (like Armored to the Teeth was for plate itemisation). Not saying I wouldn't like to see a rage fix now but I wouldn't hold my breath.

If a warrior uses all of his abilities and skills to the fullest. There are several ways of remedying situations like that with our new tools:

1. Berserker Rage. No longer only a berserker stance exclusive and can thus be used freely on bosses or trash groups that deal AoE oriented damage (many).

2. Warbringer. Instant rage.

3. Blood rage. Instant rage.

4. Mocking blow. Forces the mob to focus on you for several seconds which means an opportunity to proc revenge.

I think you're looking at a very narrow problem that will hopefully not show its ugly face too often.

We have several new tools to utilize, but you must still keep an active communication with whoever is assigned as "MT" (gawd, ugly word). Make sure he does not include mob A and B into his threat tree and I think you should be perfectly fine. I have yet to come into a situation where I am actually trying to pull a mob away and not getting it to work. Mocking blow is an awesome ability in those situations that I think alot of people forget about.

From my experience when i'm ot now rage is not such a big problem tbh and i usually have about 1500+ threat with devastate,shield slam and heroic strice at 50+ rage. Its realy the same rotation as usual except for no revenge and less heroic strikes/shield slams.

You mention hydros as an example, but since he resets aggro on transition you can just white swing him on the first phase and be on a full rage bar when you have to pick him up. Otherwise bloodrage,charge or even aggro an elemental for some dmg.

As it is now i personaly dont see a problem in warriors ot'ing, but wotlk raids may prove me wrong. Time will tell.

Devastate + Shield slam + Slow dps weapon

Is what most were using before this patch, off tanking as a warrior is doable and not as bad as you make it out. If you are offtanking chances are you can swap in some hit gear but even thats not needed. I offtanked gruul on my karazhan geared warrior (no kings defender, i used the 1h 2.6 speed axe from mgt). I only lost one feral druid who shouldn't have been dpsing I also got 0 miss directs.

So while gruul there is some aoe damage there is always some extra damage in melee range (like bloodboil's cleave) the encounter will accomidate prot warriors dont ever think it wont as your just fooling yourself..

Well their are a couple of good suggestions here, but i'd like to point a few things out:

1) Beserker rage doesn't generate rage if your not taking damage
2) Warbringer generates rage, but requires gimping ur tps as you run out
3) Mocking blow does not work on most bosses.


My main concern wasn't that we couldn't do it on fights with cleaves (like linx or bloodboil), but on fights like hydross. The last time i did hydross we just tanked him till he 2 shot the tank, then he preceded to 2 shot people until downed. I tried to pull off the warrior tank, but i wasn't even close.

I can't use HS unless after a revenge, cause it's hard on my rage bar, and white damage is my source of rage.

Yes, using a slower weapon would help (WTB normalized devastate).

I do think it can be done, especially with better players/playstyle than that found in the pug. But mostly, that requires the MT caping his or her dps and tps in order for you to keep up, because as an OT you can't keep the same rotation up unless there's a shared cleave. Even with aoe damage, your still dropping enrage and revenge.

This is different then say a druid, who can go head to head with a MTing warrior thoughout the fight because the druid can maintain 100% of his rotation/damage in an OT roll.

I just find oting irritating cause its often very raged starved. And the disparity between druid/warrior in 3.0 feels a little like the paladin/warrior pre-3.0 aoe tanking disparity, rather than the current paladin/warrior one.

I've seen some really cool things done (including raid saving ones) done by druids in raids pre-3.0. I'd like to see warriors a little closer.

First off your tacticks on hydros wrong, very wrong:D. But i get it, last time in ssc i tanked hydros the whole fight without any resistance gear and he just rolled over, so yeah people are using different strats on bossfights now.

But if you had done the fight as it was intended with frost/nature gear and dps not nuking in transitions so the 2 tanks could get aggro first. Rage would not have been an issue and offtanks would be tanking elementals. I dont want to bash your thread since ot threat is something that should be discussed, but using hydros as an example is making up a poblem that dont exists.

I have tried to find a fight where the ot had to be 2.nd on threat (gruul,VR,bloodboil kind of fight) and not taking any kind of damage, but i cant find one in tbc. I have not been in swp so maybe there is some fight there, but even then its a minimal problem. Warriors are fine imo and i have yet to find a fight where i'm restricted from a sertain role because of my class after 3.0.

I still find it hilarious that people want solutions that seem to cater to the "no-brainer balls out button mashing"-crowd. If you are doing tank transitions then by Kel'Thuzad's soiled pants you should have a stable communication going between the tanks. The person that a mob is focused on will always generate the most threat, period.

If you need to have a transition going, then plan it out and communicate. If you need to divide trash to spread the damage out, make sure the puller does not slap a monstrous amount of threat onto your mob or mobs. Taunting mobs works perfectly fine in most situations and mocking blow adds another factor since it affects some untauntable mobs.

For crying out loud it should at least be so challenging that a person needs to utilize his perception, awareness and tactical thinking.

I see alot of whining going on where people want it to be even easier, where's the fun in that?

I see most people talking about Warrior OT threat. What I am most concerned about it Warrior OT damage. I think that a Warrior OTing can generate more than enough threat to stay #2, given the tools available.

What I still find hard to do when I am OTing, is to put up (for lack of a better word) respectable DPS. When MTing I can get out 800 DPS pretty regularly over the course of an entire instance. While OTing, I can barely put out 400 DPS, just due to the nature of our class. As stated, a few of our hardest hitting abilities are not available when we are not getting hit. Not only from lack of rage, but due to the way the abilties work. Revenge only activates after we block, dodge, or parry an attack. When OTing, these will rarely happen, if ever. Damage shield also provides a decent amount of damage, depending on how many mobs, and the attack speed of the mobs.

I don't think other classes have as many restrictions on their abilities, although I am not an expert. Druids as far as I know, only need to have rage available to perform their abilities and do not need to wait on procs such as Revenge.

Something that might be underrated for OT is Improved Spell reflect. I don't think Paladins or Druids have much in terms of magic mitigation (could be wrong), but this allows warriors to help them out a little, if they are the MT. The change in how spell reflect handles threat will help in an OT role, as well (threat goes to whoever the spell was cast at).

Oddly enough, I actually think Warrior's might be too good at off-tanking, and might be pigeon-holed into that role; this was something of a concern of mine when they released the current Vigilance, before the buffs to Sword and Board and such went in.

We do lose a good deal of damage because of the loss of Revenge and Enrage, although we should be able to get at least partial use out of those attacks on fights like Gruul (see: Patchwerk). What we do gain, though, is the ability to piggyback 10% of the main tank's threat... which is enormously helpful on fights like Bloodboil where you want the tanks to stay within a certain threat distance of each other. Even on fights where we can't use Heroic Strike/Revenge/Enrage, the ability to steal 10% threat from a tank means we can both easily stay above the DPSers.

There exists an answer to this problem that many warriors won't like. Spec for OTing. Talents like Improved Bloodrage, Puncture and Gag Order can help out your dps/threat a lot. And since we're talking about situations where you won't be taking much (any) damage, you can afford to drop talents like Damage Shield and Improved Revenge.

But if you absolutely cannot respec for OTing (mid raid?) Change up some of your gear. Put on a piece or two of DPS gear. Its true that if your MT drops and you're tanking now, these pieces of dps gear will be a hindrance. But its a value judgement you'll have to make if you want to maintain threat along with the MT.

You could put Vigilance on the MT, but that may not be appreciated what with the MTs minor drop in threat. But if the MT is also a warrior, try putting Vigilance on each other. You'll be leeching more threat than you transfer back to the MT but you'll be able to keep much closer in threat, and you'll both get the benefits of the 3% DR.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RPZip

Oddly enough, I actually think Warrior's might be too good at off-tanking, and might be pigeon-holed into that role; this was something of a concern of mine when they released the current Vigilance, before the buffs to Sword and Board and such went in.

We do lose a good deal of damage because of the loss of Revenge and Enrage, although we should be able to get at least partial use out of those attacks on fights like Gruul (see: Patchwerk). What we do gain, though, is the ability to piggyback 10% of the main tank's threat... which is enormously helpful on fights like Bloodboil where you want the tanks to stay within a certain threat distance of each other. Even on fights where we can't use Heroic Strike/Revenge/Enrage, the ability to steal 10% threat from a tank means we can both easily stay above the DPSers.

---

not really, honestly, during the most recent raid we had a warrior MT, and a druid (me) and warrior as OTs, the warrior, who can and has maintanked during that same raid even, was having a hell of a time keeping up on the threat meter, even though he did have his vigilance on the MT. and these two were equally geared too. sadly, druids will always be the ultimate OTs, even if we have to hold back to avoid stealing aggro...

also, on this subject, blizz only said they wanted to make all 4 tank classes equally qualified to MAINTANK bosses. i, at least, see that as a statement of, they aren't gonna try and balance offtanking abilities at all. which is why paladins still have almost the same problem as warriors, minus possible usage of seal of blood/martyr to OT with. once again from my own perspective at least, paladins as offtanks have even more trouble offtanking than warriors do.