We Asked, They Delivered

[Alent]

Now if only they'd fix Avenger's shield.

[AnvilDK]

Going arms means you lose devastation and the whole option of tanking.

Me personally I am a sword and board protection tank because that is the playstyle and responsibility that appeals to me. Sure once in a while I spec arms or fury but I always go back to my protection build.
Once you got the gear the other specs are only decent at pvp. I even grind protection. The downtime is virtually nonexisting as protection. Yes we do not kill as fast but we are not that far behind again. And we survive bad situations 10 times better.

The appeal of the Protection tank in pvp ?

Shield slam dispel is better then a dispel. If you hit a shielded priest and your dispel goes through your shield slam hits the priest without the shield absorbing anything.
Shield bash with talents silence 3 seconds. Damage scales with ap.
Devastate has build in sunders lowering armor class on a cloth class is not to be denied its a huge hit to their mitigation.
Spell Reflect ... well reflect a spell ... says it all.
Charge in combat... never be starved for rage.
Concussion blow stun
Shockwave cone stun plus damage that scales with ap.
Intervene with safeguard can deny the opposing team a kill opportunity.
Charge Intervene and Intercept all remove snare effects with safeguard.
Shield Block makes you virtually impervious to physical damage classes for 10 seconds.

Some of these things can be done by any warrior but Arms and Fury warriors will be married to their 2H weapons. That is what makes them deadly and dangerous. Sure they can situational equip a shield but it will severly impact their ability to dish out the hurt.

Protection tanks are more of a survival class with great short CC. Direct dispel interrupt and built in debuff that improves their damage.

We will be annoying as hell and impossible to ignore for fear of our ability to render their focus fire ineffective be it with stunning the right person to safeguarding the right ally.

Vigilance gives 5% dodge might be a nice buff for an ally.

A personal ambition of mine is to make an arena team of 2 Protection warriors and a protection paladin ... just to see what happens.

Sure we might not kill fast but be fun to see just how viable we will be.

[Schleppy]

Vigilance is still crap on a stick. If you need that 10% threat either the person you cast it on screwed up or you did. It's only point other then allowing bad dps'ers raid spots or bad tanks raid spots is..... Hell, I can't think of one good thing about it.


As far as an arms or fury warrior wearing a shield, well, that only really hurts the arm's warrior, as he has to use a 1-hander with no points in improving his 1-handed damage. however a fury warrior can use a 2-hander+shield and only loose out on what, WW damage from that offhand weapon? I'm fairly sure the ability to SS will more then offset that damage decrease from having a shield instead of another 2-hander equipped for WW, so it only hurts your white damage since enraged assault is going the way of death wishes fear immunity.

[mero12513]

Vigilance is still crap on a stick. If you need that 10% threat either the person you cast it on screwed up or you did. It's only point other then allowing bad dps'ers raid spots or bad tanks raid spots is..... Hell, I can't think of one good thing about it.

No offense, but this simply isn't true. Only if you outgear content should you be perfectly fine on both threat and survival. Even if you could hold aggro on your own, there is no reasonable way to do so without putting on some aggro gear. Simply because threat stats cost itemization points, you WILL lose SOME amount of survival/mitigation by doing so. By siphoning 10% of a high dps-er's threat, you allow yourself to spend less itemization on threat and more on survival. This eases the load on your healers, which allows you more room for bad luck, errors, or even to bring more dps in your raid instead of healers, speeding content.

[Taelas]

I'm personally still not overly impressed by Vigilance. :/ It's an awesome buff, yes -- but it's clunky. Why would I want to rely on a DPSer to do my threat for me?

And the 5% dodge/taunt refresh still seems absolutely useless 90% of the time.

[jere]

Actually I am curious about the implications of the new vigilance. Will the other tanks be balanced around not having it in terms of threat generation or is the idea to make one of warrior's niches be "generates most single target threat" (it may not accomplish this at all, just speculating since we don't have any numbers). It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

[Aughban]

I'm personally still not overly impressed by Vigilance. :/ It's an awesome buff, yes -- but it's clunky. Why would I want to rely on a DPSer to do my threat for me?

And the 5% dodge/taunt refresh still seems absolutely useless 90% of the time.

`

well tbh its probably going to change agian, the point of it being in the game atm is to see if it works however i agree the taunt refresh and dodge does seem a little pointless at times however i think that 10% reduced threat is invaluable.

[Alent]

I still think Vigilance should be given to every tank class as a "Trained at level #" thing. Paladins could make even more use of it due to Righteous Defense's unmercifully long cooldown.

[veneretio]

Actually I am curious about the implications of the new vigilance. Will the other tanks be balanced around not having it in terms of threat generation or is the idea to make one of warrior's niches be "generates most single target threat" (it may not accomplish this at all, just speculating since we don't have any numbers). It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I think at one point they had stated that they wanted warriors to be the threat kings on single targets. (but who knows... regardless they'll balance all this in someway)

The interesting implications of this talent is that your raid could bring along 1 person from another guild that grossly outgears the tank and it wouldn't hinder that person at all. This could be especially relevant in a 5 and 10 man setting.

[Kavtor]

Charge in combat... never be starved for rage.
Concussion blow stun
Shockwave cone stun plus damage that scales with ap.

Can we do something about the stun on charge? Make it a one second disorient or something? If they're going to try to make the in combat charge work, can it please not give diminishing returns on my concussion blow?

[AnvilDK]

Can we do something about the stun on charge? Make it a one second disorient or something? If they're going to try to make the in combat charge work, can it please not give diminishing returns on my concussion blow?

I belive they changed charge and Intercept to not count towards diminishing returns. I can not confirm it I do not pvp. Just remember a patch way back that addresse this issue.
Regardless 15 rage (25 with improved charge) every 15 seconds makes it the most rage giving talent over time. Closest thing is intensify fury with improved beserker rage for 20 rage every 20 seconds plus the unknown more rage on hit bonus. And that costs 5 talent points.

Rage will be less of an issue in mobile pvp fighting. Time will tell if it does not get nerfed 6 feet under.

[AnvilDK]

well I found the patch however I remembered incorrectly.

Like way back when. Do not think they changed it since. So I guess your fears are justified.

Patch 1.90 (Warrior section)

• Execute - Improved Execute and other discounts to the Execute ability will now correctly convert the resulting extra rage into damage.
• Retaliation - This ability will no longer lose charges when the attacker is behind the warrior.
• Sword Specialization - Special attacks such as Sinister Strike, and Mortal Strike now properly trigger the chance to gain an extra attack.
• Sweeping Strikes - Whirlwind and Retaliation will now correctly consume the charges from Sweeping Strikes.
• Bloodthirst - The damage component has been increased to 45% of attack power.
• Enrage - The talent will now grant 5/10/15/20/25% extra damage when enraged, instead of 8/16/24/33/40%.
• Mace Specialization - The stun effect's duration no longer diminishes or is diminished by controlled stun abilities and spells (e.g. Cheap Shot, Hammer of Justice, Charge etc...).
• Improved Revenge - The stun effect's duration no longer diminishes or is diminished by controlled stun abilities and spells (e.g. Cheap Shot, Hammer of Justice, Charge etc...).
• Unbridled Wrath - Only normal melee swings will trigger the rage generation from this ability.

[Schleppy]

No offense, but this simply isn't true. Only if you outgear content should you be perfectly fine on both threat and survival. Even if you could hold aggro on your own, there is no reasonable way to do so without putting on some aggro gear. Simply because threat stats cost itemization points, you WILL lose SOME amount of survival/mitigation by doing so. By siphoning 10% of a high dps-er's threat, you allow yourself to spend less itemization on threat and more on survival. This eases the load on your healers, which allows you more room for bad luck, errors, or even to bring more dps in your raid instead of healers, speeding content.

If other tanking classes dont have this mechanic, it's safe to assume encounters wont be made assuming this talent will be used. Since blizz has stated on many occasions they want groups to be able to run with any tank and get away from the current "formula's" people use to min/max the best tank for each fight, encounters will not be balanced around this talent. If encounters are balanced around us not needing to use this ability to tank the content, then how exactly do you need it to bypass the content? You are thinking of this in current game mechanics, which are not relevant to a discussion about wrath tanking mechanics I'm sorry to say.

-You will NEED to use to use it to make up for that bad dps'er who cant control their threat or those who don't understand aggro dump's..
-You will NEED to use it if you aren't such a hot tank to get enough threat to keep good dps'ers below you in aggro so they don't have to throttle their damage as much to complete the encounter.
-You will NEED to use this ability if your healers can't keep you alive without that extra 4-6% avoidance, and I guess it's easier to use this ability then to find better healers.

-You will not NEED to use this ability to kill bosses as the encounters wont be designed with the idea that whomever is tanking this boss will have it, otherwise any tanking class that does not have this ability would be unable to tank that encounter.

After reading my post here I have to say I am not trying to come across as attacking you for your comment, but your post seems to ignore the fact we have had a considerable amount added to our threat-generation without this talent so if we in fact NEED to steal 10% of a party-members threat to beat an encounter, didn't blizzard do something wrong with the talents in the first place?

[veneretio]

-You will NEED to use to use it to make up for that bad dps'er who cant control their threat or those who don't understand aggro dump's..
-You will NEED to use it if you aren't such a hot tank to get enough threat to keep good dps'ers below you in aggro so they don't have to throttle their damage as much to complete the encounter.
-You will NEED to use this ability if your healers can't keep you alive without that extra 4-6% avoidance,

As much as you're trying to make a negative spin here, I read these all as great things. It's going to make players with average threat have good threat. It's going to allow high aggro classes/specs to do solid dps and maintain high aggro. It's going to allow me to gear more for survivability and make my healer's job easier.

I don't really understand why you're trying so hard to find the bad in an obvious buff. They took a bad talent and made it good. Let's be happy about that

[relgatta]

If other tanking classes dont have this mechanic, it's safe to assume encounters wont be made assuming this talent will be used. Since blizz has stated on many occasions they want groups to be able to run with any tank and get away from the current "formula's" people use to min/max the best tank for each fight, encounters will not be balanced around this talent. If encounters are balanced around us not needing to use this ability to tank the content, then how exactly do you need it to bypass the content? You are thinking of this in current game mechanics, which are not relevant to a discussion about wrath tanking mechanics I'm sorry to say.

In the end, no you won't "need" to use this talent. A group with any other tank will be able to do the same content just fine. This buff however lets the tank push his threat a bit more, which allows all DPS to push their dmg a bit more, and one DPS to push his dmg quite a bit more. So mobs will die faster. Will it be earth shatteringly faster? Probably not. But faster is better, even if it isn't mandatory to go faster.

[ivanstone]

After reading my post here I have to say I am not trying to come across as attacking you for your comment, but your post seems to ignore the fact we have had a considerable amount added to our threat-generation without this talent so if we in fact NEED to steal 10% of a party-members threat to beat an encounter, didn't blizzard do something wrong with the talents in the first place?

One of your criticisms is that its a crutch for bad DPS or tanks but the facts are no one is flawless at the game and you may not have the most desirable raiding group. I regularly raid with people who could be better at the game or try to stroke their epeen at the expense of others. Sure we could gkick them but then we might not be able to raid. So we shoulder on with what we have, sometimes they improve and sometimes we laugh at them when they die. In any case its just a tool to help control an errant player or to help gimmick fights. Its also very good for small group encounters. For example, you can provide it to a mage and give them more latitude for AOE.

I should also point out that pallies have their own aggro control in the form of Hand of Salvation.

[tobarstep]

Its also very good for small group encounters. For example, you can provide it to a mage and give them more latitude for AOE.

I've been wondering how it will work along these lines, actually. If you cast it on a single target dps, say a rogue, you'll gain 10% of his threat. On what? On the single mob he was fighting or the one you are fighting (assuming they aren't the same)? What if you cast it on a mage who is doing aoe damage to 5 mobs? Will you get 10% of his threat on all those mobs, or will you get 10% of his total threat just focused on your own current target? If it applied 10% of the threat on every single mob that he was generating threat against, this could be a fantastic tool for aoe tanking.

[Schleppy]

As much as you're trying to make a negative spin here, I read these all as great things. It's going to make players with average threat have good threat. It's going to allow high aggro classes/specs to do solid dps and maintain high aggro. It's going to allow me to gear more for survivability and make my healer's job easier.

I don't really understand why you're trying so hard to find the bad in an obvious buff. They took a bad talent and made it good. Let's be happy about that

I'm not saying it's bad, (well, crap on a stick isn't a good thing, maybe I am saying it's bad) but it certainly isn't a "must have" thing. It's bad from my personal perspective as I play the role of drill sgt. when I tank in a pug or even in guild. I'd rather personally let the guy die who cast that fireball as I was firing my gun at the mob, he wont learn to be better otherwise. It's defintely part of blizzard's attempt to make the game more casual friendly and that is a good or bad thing depending on how you perceive that change to be.


I just think blizz could have done a lot better for a talent then this to replace shield slam. This is what 120 million a month buys us?

[Jasra]

As much as you're trying to make a negative spin here, I read these all as great things. It's going to make players with average threat have good threat. It's going to allow high aggro classes/specs to do solid dps and maintain high aggro. It's going to allow me to gear more for survivability and make my healer's job easier.

I don't really understand why you're trying so hard to find the bad in an obvious buff. They took a bad talent and made it good. Let's be happy about that

I think I understand what he's trying to say, and it makes sense to me. The risk is the potential that having it trivializes threat gen and lacking makes it too hard to keep up, or that it gets nerfed to the point where we're back at square one because of either or both factors.

While it's in the "glass is half empty" side of perception, I think it's a justified concern. Personally I wish they would have scrapped that talent altogether and tried something less passive.

Now on more important issues, I hope Improved Defensive Stance doesn't mean protection warriors are going to be running around every dungeon constantly glowing bright red!!

[veneretio]

I'm not saying it's bad, (well, crap on a stick isn't a good thing, maybe I am saying it's bad) but it certainly isn't a "must have" thing. It's bad from my personal perspective as I play the role of drill sgt. when I tank in a pug or even in guild. I'd rather personally let the guy die who cast that fireball as I was firing my gun at the mob, he wont learn to be better otherwise. It's defintely part of blizzard's attempt to make the game more casual friendly and that is a good or bad thing depending on how you perceive that change to be.


I just think blizz could have done a lot better for a talent then this to replace shield slam. This is what 120 million a month buys us?

Vigilance is probably going to do the same amount of threat as 2 points in Defiance does now. (at the very least, the same as 1 point did) I'd like you to try to sell any tank on 3/3 Defiance not being a must have.

What I find mind blowing is if it was a 1 point talent that said: You generate 5% more threat and get 6 Expertise... then people would have sang it's praises, but instead we get a talent that takes a little thought... is a little creative... but ultimately does the same or more and people call it not good enough?

I think too many people are getting caught up on it somehow having to be as good as Shield Slam was. Why does it? It's not like we lost Shield Slam. It's not like this slot in the talent tree must be something ridiculously uber. It's a strong threat talent. If you just want to offtank all day, it's probably fine skipping it, but I wouldn't want to be staring new content in the face as the main tank without it. It's a must-have in my books.