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Results will probably vary depending on gear level. Half way through Icecrown right now I'm pushing 1900 bv fully raid buffed. I would get no benefit from using shield block as a threat booster after the nerf. For a fresh 80 tank I can still see it being useful though.
No, not really. I mean, what.. you gain 100-140 damage if you are in high-end gear when it's up? So, not really any practical reason to do so unless you are using it for Damage Shield purposes on trash or something.Quote:
Originally Posted by mistersix
For that matter is shield mastery all that worthwhile anymore then given the pending shield slam changes and relatively low benefit of block value as a mitigation stat today?
As both Shield Mastery and Glyph of Blocking are additive with Shield Block and not multiplicative, there is actually only a very minor effect from not having them--both for TPS and survival time.Quote:
Originally Posted by mistersix
However, Shield Mastery's main purpose is reducing the cooldown of Shield Block to 40s instead of 60s, so I would be reluctant to drop it given that it is an OKish mitigation cooldown given the changes to Critical Block.
Although it could be plausible without the T10 2-set to go for a more Devastate-centric build and move away from Shield Slam talents in theory, in practice the majority of talents involving Shield Slam--Shield Mastery, Sword and Board, and Gag Order--have secondary effects which are still very desirable.
I really think the only problem with prot warriors is the abuse of armor pen and shield slam. The only differences between now and previous seasons (where we were laughed out of arenas) are those two things. A nerf to prot burst is about the only thing we need to bring everything back in line. All these stuns and silences and etc are fine if you can't kill someone in the span of them, which is how prot was earlier on in the expansion.
If they INSIST on nerfing Warbringer, have it remove roots but not snares.
I've been following the Blue posts on this pretty closely and they've admitted prot isn't tearing up the upper brackets. It appears there is some concern as BiS PVE DPS gear comes available (think heroic modes) that prot warriors in all DPS gear may hit a point of being uncounterable going forward (i.e. smack in the middle of the last arena season). But really, I think most of it stems from GC's comments that they also change classes that are just really annoying to fight against, even if they aren't OP. So what I'm really reading is "lots of stuns and interrupts aren't fun to play against".
So the obvious solution to me is just to put more of them on DR for pvp. It would hurt PVP prot warriors but not effect PVE prot warriors at all.
As for the nerf to Warbringer, it looks to be a done deal, although I hope they go with just the roots but not breaking snares as suggested above.
I hope their "internal testing" scraps the SS damage changes, they would just be dumb. Prot PVE DPS is already too low, nerfing it for any reason should go in the dictionary to help define the word "retarded". One of the more intriguing suggestions on the official forums was to make the talent Warbringer stop ArPen from working for you, to prevent PVPers from stacking so much of it. Personally, I don't think it would need to be that harsh, it would probably be fine if the act of using Warbringer (i.e. when you charge) set ArPen to 0 for 5-10 seconds. That way PVP prot warriors would have the option of choosing to be mobile over bursty, or less mobile but more bursty, just not both at the same time.
If they need to take disarm out of the game, then let it be replaced with a DPS buff talent for prot...we need it. I've also seen complaints against the way Imp Spell Reflect is OP in PVP, so if need be make it reflect more hits and be up longer but only on the warrior (that would still help us tank multi-caster packs, as we should have agro to start, but wouldn't let prot PVPers keeping reflecting magic off their holy pallies or whatever).
BTW, someone should cull the best/most workable suggestions and post them in the Warrior class forums on the official site. I would, but I already started a similar thread earlier in the week and it would be more effective for another voice to be heard IMO (also, some of the ideas here...including some of the ones I posted here, are better than my original ideas).
But no matter what we need to find ways to address the very specific issues with PVP so we don't harm prot PVE...and hopefully get a DPS buff out of it (I'm happy to say that the fact that they want to increase prot sustained PVE DPS was mentioned again in the dev twitter feed, so hopefully that will actually materialize).
I think it's safe to assume that they're shying away from arp related changes because it's an awful lot of work for something that's largely going away. I'm pretty certain they intimated as much as well. Our mobility is an easy fix that doesn't legitimately punish us in pve (since pve encounters aren't often designed for mobile tanks in mind sadly enough) since it's the trifecta of mobility/control/damage in pvp that's the fundamental issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by TomHuxley
I don't disagree with anything you've said Misterix, but if they went ahead with an ArPen change like this it would be a lot easier for them to buff prot PVE DPS... and at this point I feel they owe us a little work, if that's what it takes, to get our sustained DPS out of the abysmal range and up with the other tanks.
Not that I expect them to put a lot of time into it...but I hope they will do something to rectify the situation. Also note that I'm not saying they couldn't also make the other mobility change to Warbringer, although if they don't let you break any snares it's going to suck in a couple of 5 mans for new tanks.
Remember, they put DR on SS damage from BV, not how much you can block. That still works, afaik. i.e. the damage component of BV is affected, the defensive side is not, as I read it.Quote:
Originally Posted by mistersix
It's not so simple to buff prot PvE DPS either, considering (off the top of my head) the following:
They'd need to remove all the static and scaling threat modifiers from abilities and figure out how much damage they want stuff to do.
They'd also need to remove the aggro from sunder armour and try and figure out how they want to spread the damage over various abilities to make up the threat loss from that.
Given the added scaling they would have to add to abilities, they then come to the real meat of the problem, which is that when you increase tank scaling, their damage in DPS gear becomes a serious problem. Especially in PvP.
Now take that class that you just buffed a lot to do more DPS whilst tanking, and try and balance them when they do a lot more damage in PVP dps gear whilst also being extremely mobile, having undispellable survival cooldowns, a variety of stuns, and a powerful silence combo.
Of course, Blizzard already know all this. If it's painfully obvious to me, I'm pretty sure it is to them too. They are stuck between having to nerf Prot Warrior utility or having to nerf their damage, I suspect they chose the latter because it has less impact on PvE tanking.
As I've said in other threads, and seemingly been totally ignored by most, this problem will resolve itself in Cataclysm when people have much higher health and they can safely raise prot warrior DPS without fear of the infamous 2-shot shield slam.
Scaling will fix scaling? Sorry that last sentence confused me.
Scaling health pools faster than damage, which they've stated on a multitude of occasions, is their intended solution.
Ah. Can you link to any of those for me, I haven't heard that one before.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maelstrom
Thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maelstrom
Well a lot of the problems with Warrior PvP in general stems from Armor Pen and its status as an OP stat. It's getting removed in 4.0 and only used sparingly in specific talent trees/jewelry, but I don't see why they can't make resilience reduce armor pen until then. Have 800 resilience reduce the effects of armor penetration by 30% or so. It's a band-aid fix but I think it could work.
As for buffing Prot Warrior DPS in PvE, the obvious choice seems to be Devastate. Its damage is already low and it's used fairly often. I've always held the opinion that Devastate damage should ignore armor given the idea behind the attack, though that's not a terribly good idea until 4.0. Maybe each stack of Sunder Armor can give Devastate 20% armor pen. Either that or just double the damage and half the threat modifier.
The other big choice is heroic strike. Right now it combos off the shield bash Daze, which is nigh worthless. Maybe extend the bonus damage to Rend... it'd give us a good reason to use Rend for a small damage bonus to boot.
Maybe some sort of proc attack, similar to sword spec, in a new prot talent.
Unforgiving
Passive
Your Revenge ability has a 25/50% chance to deal a Punishing Blow when used, dealing X-Y damage (based on attack power) and reducing the cooldown on Revenge by 1 second. This effect can't occur more than once every 6 seconds.
Given that most Prot Warrior PvP is done in Battle Stance, and that Revenge can't be used against casters, it'd be a safe way to buff PvE without unbalancing PvP.
As a blood tank I've never, ever had a problem against a prot warrior, and usually finish the fight with 50%+ hp.
I think theres a couple huge elephants in the room that is prot warriors. first, a huge issue that comes from our "burst" that we have but paladins dont, is our shield block. I believe if they changed it to up our shield block value but not our shield slam damage, they could safely increase our prot pve dps without causing pvp issues since the "burstiness" would be gone. I also would like to see shield slam be a attack power scaled ability, makes no sense why a defensive stat is scaling a offensive ability.
But the other elephant that is keeping our dps down is vigilance. This not only keeps our dps lower since threat with it would equal out the same as the other tanks, or around the same anyway, but also causes our threat to be inconsistant. Plus I always found that tanks should be doing threat themselves, not rely on someone else to do it for them.
If they need to nerf our utilities then by all means, I wont be against it. I think we have way too many stuns as it is considering as prot you rely heavily on getting hit to gain rage.
Waiting for Cataclysm isn't a suitable solution. I know how it will be fixed then, but I'd like to not finish out the last tier of Wrath doing 20% less DPS than other tanks. I don't want to have to quest that much slower, farm heroics that much slower, or see near-kills that would have beaten the enrage timer if I'd been able to do another 100k DPS during the fights. It's crap and they need to fix it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maelstrom
The whole point of this thread, and others like it is to find solutions that will allow warriors to be nerfed in PVP while buffed in PVE now, before Wrath.