Protection Improvements (Build 8885)

[Ciderhelm]

Stay tuned! I'll have a full report once I get more time in Beta. Here's the overview:

Weapon Throw - Level 80
Throws your weapon at the enemy causing [100% of AP + 1] damage (based on attack power). This ability causes high Threat.
30 yard range, 0.5 second cast, 20 second cooldown.

Critical Block
Your successful blocks have a 30% chance to block double the amount and increases your chance to critically hit with your Shield Slam by an additional 15%.

Sword and Board
When your Devastate and Shield Slam abilities deal damage they have a 15% chance of refreshing the cooldown of your Shield Slam ability and reducing it's cost by 100% for 5 seconds.

Improved Defensive Stance
While in Defensive Stance, all spell damage is reduced by 6% and when you Block, Parry, or Dodge an attack you have a 100% chance to become Enraged, increasing melee damage by 10% for 12 seconds.

Vigilance
Focus your protective gaze on a group or raid target, increasing their chance to dodge by 5% and reducing the threat they cause by 10%. In addition, the next 3 times they are hit by an attack your Taunt cooldown is refreshed. Lasts 30 minutes.

Toughness
Increases your armor value from items by 10% and reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 50%.

Safeguard
Reduced to 2 ranks from 3.

Charge
Something fishy is in our 41-point talent slots!

[Kharn]

what is this charge change?
i really never use charge, maybe in pvp, but not in any instance or raid.

Just using my Gun
seems littlebit useless?

[Kazeyonoma]

Puncture changed to a 2 point talent only removes 2 rage...

[Urhan]

I think I need to macro the sentence "I hope this isn't the prot review."

Serennia is saying in the beta forum that the 41-point charge has no minimum range and works in combat.

[Buliwyn]

All the changes in the prot tree are for the better though.. Vigilance is still kinda goofy, but better than nothing. But did it always reduce threat caused by 10%?.. I know it had been suggested. /shrug.

As for the rest..

Imp. def. stance is now a threat booster that scales.
Imp. critical block also includes +15% critical strike chance to shield slam.
Imp. shield wall nows adds 10% more damage reduction.
Sword and board now has 5% more of a chance to proc.

Imp. revenge isn't quite a buff.. but it doesn't eat up so many talent points to max at least, same as puncture as you mentioned.. not a huge deal. It sure makes it easier to skip - if that would really be wise.

I'm still waiting for more info about this charge talent, which at first I thought was a glitch..

All in all, it's definitely a step forward. I don't know how much more we can ask for :P especially with a new ranged threat ability.. if it's available in defensive stance, even better.. some stance dancing wouldn't be terrible though.

[Mardran]

Finally, your ranged attack for warriors Cider, you must be happy!

I will admit though, it looks pretty sweet.

[Gellor]

Ferals get defensive stance!

Branches off from Leader of the Pack

Mother Bear:

Increase Attack Power for Bear form and Dire Bear form by 60%, and for each friendly player in your party, damage you take is reduced while in Bear form and Dire Bear form by 3%(Max 12%).

[Alent]

Ferals get defensive stance!

Branches off from Leader of the Pack

Mother Bear:

Increase Attack Power for Bear form and Dire Bear form by 60%, and for each friendly player in your party, damage you take is reduced while in Bear form and Dire Bear form by 3%(Max 12%).

I read that as possibly going up to 15% if it counts yourself.

[Cloudade]

The warrior prot changes sound like a movement towards the best. The extra damage and rewording is bound to get changed again, but I am liking the extra damage and such to get more tps

[Esillymidget]

They are bloating the heck out of the prot tree. I won't be able to make fun of people running around as 0/0/61 (or 71) quite as much.

[Horacio]

Interesting stuff and I have a long, rainy weekend to play with it

Throw weapon is pretty hawt looking. Ranged weapons really will be nothing but stat sticks now.

When I'm prot, I farm/grind in battle stance and use charge alot and figure to do some of that in the expansion so that might be pretty good stuff.

[Endyllion]

did you consider the synergy of:

Improved Defensive Stance
While in Defensive Stance, all spell damage is reduced by 6% and when you Block, Parry, or Dodge an attack you have a 100% chance to become Enraged, increasing melee damage by 10% for 12 seconds.

with Enraged Assault?

1 extra instant attack at 15 base rage cost every 10 sec.

don't believe that is too shabby

[Scargoth]

I like the prot talents with scaling damage and crit increases. More use of AP in the formulas should meld nicely with the itemization of STR on tank gear.

I'm eyeballing a spec that might drop Cruelty completely (17/0/54), since you can get bigger crit bonuses for HS and SS from the prot tree now.

I'm looking forward to seeing these changes tested. I wish I had a beta key

[Urhan]

did you consider the synergy of:

Improved Defensive Stance
While in Defensive Stance, all spell damage is reduced by 6% and when you Block, Parry, or Dodge an attack you have a 100% chance to become Enraged, increasing melee damage by 10% for 12 seconds.

with Enraged Assault?

1 extra instant attack at 15 base rage cost every 10 sec.

don't believe that is too shabby

Assuming it's on GCD, that's an awful trade for a devastate - you'd do less damage (assuming 5 sunders are up) and threat for five more rage, and lose the 10% melee buff. The buff is the thing that's useful to us here, it should stay up constantly.

[Urhan]

Assuming it's on GCD, that's an awful trade for a devastate - you'd do less damage (assuming 5 sunders are up) and threat for five more rage, and lose the 10% melee buff. The buff is the thing that's useful to us here, it should stay up constantly.

Whoops, that should be "2 more rage" - forgot to deduct for focused rage.

[Taelas]

3 more rage, actually... 9 vs. 12.

[Taelas]

3 more rage, actually... 9 vs. 12.

>_<

Okay, I need to actually look at the new talents before I start making stupid comments. Puncture only 2 points.

[Ngz]

Charge seems really useless, especially with all the intervene talents, cant believe that 41 talent tbh

[Dunmail]

Starting to look tasty, any particular point to charge popping up like a random entity?
Having finally downloaded all the crap would be nice to get past authenticating....

[Aldragoriad]

Goddamnit, when is blizz going to stop the talen bloat in prot... This just makes it worse...