Prot changes (TClap, WW, SR, S&B, Dev and Vig)

[cattebrie]

So I have been a prot warrior for a very very long time all the way back into vanilla when you raided UBRS, and I just wanted to post here about some ideas, that we could possible discuss with blues to make Prot tanking better both in terms of effectiveness, and fun.

I would like to hear from others about any of these ideas, both good or bad. Some of them are very popular ideas proposed by others, while others I havn't seen discussed anywhere.

What Id like from this post is to find out which of these most people like, think is a good idea, and we could get blizzard on board with. Once we decide this, go to the blizz forums and actually discuss it there....

Ideas:
1) TClap- I personally like the way it is, however, I think there could some easy changes to make it interesting. Personally I do not want to make it like Conscecrate or DnD, but making it have a dot mechanic would be nice....
Glyph of TClap- Reduces initial damage by half, but adds a dot that last 6secs. (would do more damage, but less up front)
Why? Allows more sustained TPS for AoEing trash in an instance/raid

2) Whirlwind- Add a 1-Point talent (maybe replace vigilince with it) that makes whirlwind usable in defensive stance. Plus on top of the weapon damage, whirlwind now also deals Damage if a shield is equiped equal to Shield block value.
Why? Allows for greater Threat for AoE pulls, but also adds an attack in to the rotation for Prot Warriors attempting to max out DPS. Also, it would be fun and cool.

3) S&B- I love the talent, but it makes me worry about another RNG. I would rather be worrying about my healers, my health bar, and any cooldowns i need to pop at any give moment. So how can we fix this...
Simply make Sword and Board Proc a free shield slam, instead of reseting the six seconds.
Why? Allows tanks to have a solid rotation again, and worry about more improtant things then what button to press for TPS/DPS. Also it makes all the GCD equal in value. Right now, the last GCD before Shield Slam is up is just worthless when proccing S&B.

4) Devestate back to 80% Damage.
Why? They removed it from the game because back at 70 Fury warriors were taking it because they couldnt get Deepwounds and Titnas grip, and spamming Devistate was better. That just isnt the case anymore. I hate the fact that I would rather Rend, or SW sometimes instead of Devistate

5) Spell Reflect- Ok, its just useless too much of the time, so what I was thinking was like a mini shield wall for spell damage attacks.
Imp Spell Reflect- Currently what it does, but also reduces incoming magical damage for 3secs by 10%/20% for the next 3 secs.
Why? Allows us to catch up a bit with Magical Damage mitigation. I think it would make the spell much more viable both in PvP and PvE

6) Vigiliance- Not worthy of 31st point talent make it trainable. Put something else in the 31st point splot...Possibly the WW thing mentioned above, or something that is equal to the sanctuary buff in terms of rage when we dodge, miss, or parry.

7) Remove 10% Damage Reduction from Defensive Stance and Add some Percentage to Health. Not a lot... 3-5%
Why? Why not? Actually I personally dont ahve a problem with the penalty/bonus thing with our stances... But right now our DPS and EH is lacking compared to other tanks. And as stam goes up the difference in health will only increase.

I think this would fix many problems such as:
1) The need to go Deep Wounds to even get close in damage to the other tanks. Without the need to get DW, we can have more flexability in our prot talent choices
2) Getting us closer to the Sustained AoE threat of Pallys and DKs
3) Makes it more fun, and dont think it really makes us broken. Most changes increast DPS/TPS, and only mitigation improvement is with SR, so I dont think its unballancing.


What are your thoughts????

[Kazeyonoma]

I can't say I hate your ideas, some may be a bit far off from what I'd do but some of them are pretty nice.

I like Vigilance I don't have a problem with it.

10% damage penalty removal would be pretty nice actually to help us catch up to the other tanks in terms of our tanking dps.

devastate to 80% would be pretty sick too, but it'd have to be a very closely monitored testing period, with weapons like broken promise that are slower it can change a lot of our slow vs. fast debates as well as coupling it with the above removal of 10% damage penalty, could spell warriors gaining too much of a dps gain.

I also like SnB a lot, it makes me pay more attention somewhat, and allows for less of the old. 2 3 4 4 2 3 4 4 2 3 4 4. kinda mentality. Anything that might add a "bit" of skill increase is fun for me, but I know the micromanagement of it is not fun to everyone.

[Rak]

Was 80% how much Devastate did in beta? Cause I was out damaging our rogue in 5 mans with that. It felt too strong.

[Dreg]

i don't see why so many people don't like vigilance ... it is an amazing buff

[squats]

A few point i would like to make clear to you

1)Vigilance if used adds to your TPS, its actualy a great buff, and i dont think its appreciated by most of the tanking community like it should be.

2)Thunder clap- if it were changed to a DOT it would criple our threat on AoE pulls, as the spike TPS is what really keeps those targets off the DPS.

3)i would like WW to be useable in defensive stance, however it needs to be added to warbringer, not replaced with vigilance(refer to #1 for info on why)

4) personaly, devistate is fine where it is. its easily useable between CD's for a rage gain, and to proc SnB. if you have all of your stacks up the Dmg is fine as is. buffing it would honestly make it do too much damage.

5)giving a warrior an ability to absorb magic at a static amount would be OP in pvp, and PVE. also, removing the spell reflect functionality of spell reflect would make prot, arms, and fury PvP even worse (dont you love making a moonkin almost one shot himself?)

6)Vigilance IS worthy of a 31 point tallent, as noted above it is a large portion of agro if used correctly

7)10% dmg is countered with the buff we get whenever we are struck by an attack. Prot really doesnt have a 10% dmg reduction unless you arnt tanking.. which sucks, but its not that big a deal.

[Optimoos]

7)10% dmg is countered with the buff we get whenever we are struck by an attack. Prot really doesnt have a 10% dmg reduction unless you arnt tanking.. which sucks, but its not that big a deal.

Time to derail this thread...

So how do people feel about off-tanking in a stance other than defensive? Not having the enrage buff is obviously a downer while doing non-tank dps while prot, but as far as I figure, all of our major damage attacks do not require defensive stance and therefor you can go zerker/battle while doing plain dps. Do you just forget to switch stances? Is there an ability that does require defensive stance that I'm forgetting about? Thoughts?

[squats]

You do have a point, switching to battle stance would let you use most tanking abilities without the -10% dmg

[cattebrie]

Squats...

1) I am not saying I think Vigiliance should be trashed. I love it, I just dont like it as a 31st point talent. It doesnt really redefine our class like many 31st point abilities do.

I have vigiliance and use it always. It is an amazing talent, and I think its something every tank should have, but I dont think it fits as a talent.

2) Devestate is TERRIBLE right now and its not a rage gain. No one uses it, and its replaced by every other ability when off cooldown. The only reason you press it is for S&B Proc. Its a terrible ability as is. Look at the percentage of damage most peoples Devistate is... Its not as large as most would guess, so buffing it would not be that big of a bonus, but would make the ability to be more attractive to press.

3) On Tclap, it still hits just not as hard up front... I made it a glyph for a reason... its a choice more Sustained TPS or more Snap agroo (personality choice)

4) In terms of the minus 10% damage remark is silly... We didnt have damage shield until this expansion... the minus 10% damage ability has always been there. However, you have to monitor tanks DPS it cant go out of control

Lastly, on Spell Reflect...
1) It doesnt change what it does... it reflects an attack.
2) But while Spell reflect is active it also reduces incoming magical damage for some amount of time or maybe for one attack that isnt reflectable.
-- This would effect PvP unless someone went and specced into imp spell reflect which I doub they would. It would however increase the prot viablity in PvP against casters which I think could be a good thing.

However, I do agree if you put all theses buffs in it might buff the DPS too much, and so you would have to monitor the damage a Warrior tank did.

[cattebrie]

Kaz,
In reguards to S&B. I enjoyed it a lot at first, when all we did was SS, Rev, Dev, Dev. That got boring, however, now that we have conc blow and Shockwave that does more threat and damage then devestate, you are already much more dynamic than before having to weave in these abilities. Plus if you are trying to weave in rend (not here for this arguement) its even more complicated.

Plus with S&B board the way it is it makes devistate even less attractive because for every GCD that doesnt Proc it, you want to hit devistate even less.

[squats]

1)If vigilance were trainable, Arms/Fury warrior would be able to get their hands on it, reducing several peoples damage intake by 3% and reducing their aggro. that would be too good and blizzard would never do it

2)i would personally use devistate no matter what, i do.
whenever things are off CD, i use it
i open fights with SS--> devx3
its a dps increase for mele, and i know every guild is plagued with large amounts of mele DPS.
---seccond, its a large part of your damage, look at my WWS on 25 KT here
Devistate is a whole 12% of my overall dmg with a 26% crit. AND of the 54 times i used it, it proc'd SnB 32 times. devistate is not terrible, it could use some work.. but it is not terrible.

60% weapon dmg would be ok.. 80%.. to much.

[cattebrie]

Ok so 12% of damage is devistate... so increasing it to 80% is an increase 60% of devistate damge so that increase overal damage by about 6-7%. Its a nice boost in our DPS, but its not revolutionary. What I am saying is make it more attractive to press. Of course you need to have devestate up till you have 5 stacks.... its worth a ton of threat and ups everyones dps. But thats the first 10secs of the fight.

My point is people are talking about hitting rend over Devestate... that just needs to be fixed.

Lastly that one example of proccing it way more then you should is an example of RNG and should never count on it. Secondly how many of those procs were useless because it was on the last GCD before SS is up anyway? My point is every rotation you use devestate about once at most. Revenge for the first one, Devestate for the second, and then the third should never be Devestate again... cause you have SW, rend, Conc Blow (although with bug its not a problem currently)

And of course if you proc S&B the rotation starts over.

No fury warrior is going to take on 10% threat from someone else... they already have enough threat themselves. Lastly that 3% damage reduction is counter by other buffs. But it sure would help arms/fury warriors tank in 5mans to have vigiliance. But in a raiding enviroment, they wont use it.

[nykken]

I'd like if vigilance increased damage from the target by X% instead of reducing damage taken, that would give me a good reason to spec into it.

[cattebrie]

Nice Nykken, very nice.

Anyway, most of these ideas are stand alone. I would not expect them all to go in effect. If it did it would probably be like a 25% increase in prot DPS which would be way too much. Which ones do you like that increase DPS? Which ones dont you like, or are just weird.

[squats]

Ok so 12% of damage is devistate... so increasing it to 80% is an increase 60% of devistate damge so that increase overal damage by about 6-7%. Its a nice boost in our DPS, but its not revolutionary. What I am saying is make it more attractive to press. Of course you need to have devestate up till you have 5 stacks.... its worth a ton of threat and ups everyones dps. But thats the first 10secs of the fight.

My point is people are talking about hitting rend over Devestate... that just needs to be fixed.

Lastly that one example of proccing it way more then you should is an example of RNG and should never count on it. Secondly how many of those procs were useless because it was on the last GCD before SS is up anyway? My point is every rotation you use devestate about once at most. Revenge for the first one, Devestate for the second, and then the third should never be Devestate again... cause you have SW, rend, Conc Blow (although with bug its not a problem currently)

And of course if you proc S&B the rotation starts over.

No fury warrior is going to take on 10% threat from someone else... they already have enough threat themselves. Lastly that 3% damage reduction is counter by other buffs. But it sure would help arms/fury warriors tank in 5mans to have vigiliance. But in a raiding enviroment, they wont use it.

how do you figure a fury warrior wont use it? id love to see my fury warriors take some of the TPS load from mages and warlocks in my guild. a furry warrior does hardly any tps?

also.
actualy.. only like 5 were used while SS wasnt on CD.. oops.

does rend actually do as much TPS as devastate does tho?


on a side note... doing the math makes me depressed at how much better my rotation could be

[cattebrie]

Yes and NO... Its a DPS increase and TPS increase if used right before the last CD before SS.

Its not much of a TPS increase however, so is it really worth doing it because it complicates the rotation, probably not... but then im bored so im enjoying it.

With imp rend, glyph of rend its almost double the damage then Devestate, but it doesnt have the innate threat increase of Dev so the threat increase isnt as huge. And then when the boss is above 75% its even better. (this assumes 30% increase in bleeds)

So the answer is yes... is it worth it for most of people probably not.

On why I would say most fury warriors wouldnt do it is because they cant dump threat. Mages can dump threat so even if they pump out more over a long fight they really dont have much to worry about. But then is threat really at all an issue at this point...

[kolben]

You do have a point, switching to battle stance would let you use most tanking abilities without the -10% dmg

This is how it was done in the "old days" when I started raiding 40 mans. OTs applied Thunderclap/Demo Shout and stayed in battle stance to DPS.


Mostly what I read out of the OPs comments is a desire to be on equal ground in AOE tanking.

Let me turn this around with a derail. Several of the things pointed out could in theory be resolved with gear. If you are making most of your DPS gain through say Deep Wounds and Heroic Strike, that's what the problem is in my opinion.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Warriors need more Block Value, and More Block Rating to realize the potential of some of the better talents deep in the protection tree for both DPS and mitigation.

[Nyii]

I would be happy seeing Devastate have a little more of a kick to it and Thunderclap go back to a 4 sec reuse time instead of 6 (and a damage increase would help with threat as well).

Vigilance is pretty awesome as it is, for only 1 point.

I also want to see ALL warriors being able to stop relying on Deep Wounds... it seems stupid that most everyone has the same spec.

[Halgreg]

Is there an ability that does require defensive stance that I'm forgetting about? Thoughts?

Shield Block. You're not going to get those big shield slams without the +100% SB increase. If we were to get this usable in Battle and Berserker stance, we could get those big shield slams back.

One thing I wanted to add was that there are a lot of talents that add +15% crit to a lot of our mainstay abilities like heroic strike, cleave, thunderclap, shield block, and devastate. So much though, that for nearly all of our yellow attacks, our crit percentage is more like 35% or so. The problem, however, is that our yellow attack crit percentage is still a paltry 10%, which I think adds to our rage starvation woes when not getting hit. If you look at Arms and Fury warriors and their related gear, they're well into the 30-40% crit percentage.

You know what would be cool? If we had a talent that took this into account and added 15% crit to our white hits but maybe only when you're wearing a shield. In fact, why not just get rid of the added +15% crit bonuses from Sword and Board (for devastate) and Critical Block (for Shield Slam) and change Incite to "Increases Critical Strike chance by 5/10/15% when wearing a shield". You could argue that that would make it so that Arms or Fury would start wearing shields for that extra crit, but I kind of doubt that'll be the case.

[Muffin Man]

devastate to 80% would be pretty sick too, but it'd have to be a very closely monitored testing period, with weapons like broken promise that are slower it can change a lot of our slow vs. fast debates as well as coupling it with the above removal of 10% damage penalty, could spell warriors gaining too much of a dps gain.

I don't see this as a bad thing. If stronger devastates bridges the gap for slow weapons versus fast weapons. My fingers won't miss HS spam one bit.

[Darkblayde]

I believe that currently prot needs to be changed somehow. The biggest current issue with prot warriors is that we lack in most categories of tanking at the moment. We are out dps'd by all other tank classes(Except on several encounters like patch), bested in EH, single target aggro generation, and AoE tanking.(This is of course, assuming equal gear and skill level - A good warrior will best a bad any-other-tank). While I dont see too much of an issue in this, the problem is we don't EXCELL at anything in comparison to the other classes. We bring sunder armor. That's about it, and you can have a rogue Expose Armor. I think devastate does need buffed, maybe not to 80%, but like OP said, its not something you can throw on live servers and forget about it, ANY change needs testing/monitoring. WW in def stance is also something that I would like to see discussed upon more as I could see this as a nice addition. As far as increasing our dps too much, Maybe that could be our niche, being the single target dps tank(and maybe single target threat like we always have been?). Obviously I'm not talking about being worlds apart in DPS, but enough to make us superior. However, I think the issue that needs adressed before we can change prot abilities is the rage mechanic, and I'm not going to start that discussion here as there is already a place for it. Once rage is addressed we can better see how to change abilities to work with the new mechanic, if ever there will be one.