Thoughts on change to Retaliation, Recklessness, Shield Wall stance requirements.

[Insahnity]

if only they'd remove the requirement for shattering throw, /le sigh

Amen brother. I hate that. At the least, give it to both arms and fury (i,e. both battle and berserker stance).

[truculent]

I have a feeling that they will share a cooldown, so that it's shield wall OR retaliation OR recklessness. I don't see myself as likely to use Retal or Reck except under very situational circumstances as prot, but I suppose it could happen, and it would be a benefit to be sure.

that would suck and defeat the purpose. i cant see retaliation on a cd with shield wall..

[Reev]

that would suck and defeat the purpose. i cant see retaliation on a cd with shield wall..

It used to be on the same cooldown. Letting warriors have all 3 cooldowns available in any stance seems a bit strong to me is all. Warriors already have a ton of cooldowns available to them.

[Geach]

Wasn't something said about taking out stance dancing a while back? Something about making stances mean something? I like the idea of having more snap aggro. It just seems the reasons to stance dance are dwindling. In fact I can only reason I can come up with to stance dance is to use Shattering Throw.

[swelt]

@Booi: use your function keys? F1-5 at least are usable, ideal for cooldowns that you don't want to hit by accident. Get a mouse with more buttons (a couple of extra thumb buttons makes a big difference).

But in general I had the same thought - too many buttons. What I wonder most is whether the days of stances are numbered, or at least "stance-limited abilities". They made a design decision when they made DKs not to have "x ability requires y stance", if they are trying to consolidate and simplify abilities then having certain abilities only usable in certain stances seems rather outmoded. Not something we'll see til an expansion I expect though...

[truculent]

It used to be on the same cooldown. Letting warriors have all 3 cooldowns available in any stance seems a bit strong to me is all. Warriors already have a ton of cooldowns available to them.

but thats why we had to stance dance


Just saying that if offencive and defencive abilities share a cd, that seems a bit over kill. It seems far more practical to not allow arms and fury to equip shields. after all, this seems like another pvp solution ...

[kopcap]

I am in between Reev and Booi. I like to press thinkgs like CB, Demo Shout and Heroic Leap. But I made a decision from the very start that I won't use any in combat macros apart from the Warbringer. And I only use one spell on a modifier. But then I don't pvp at all so take it for what its worth

[Aggathon]

Ya booi, two things. First, you can bind things to caps+something just straight up I think. You don't need any special macros or anything to do that. The mod syntax in macros is just to have an all in 1 macro, like to do heroic strike but if you press shift to cleave instead or something (I think). Most bar addons have a "mod" button too for bars so that if you press caps then the bar flips to a different bar to press things with.

[Booi]

Thanks, agg.

[livion]

Speaking for Deftanks, those changes should not make too much of a difference.

Normally, you're in defensive stance anyways, allowing to use shield wall.

When necessary, you can always pop shield block (causing enemies to be unable to crit you, due to the magical 102,4%), go to zerker stance, cast recklessness, and be back in deffstance in no-time. If you have the time, you can place a colossus smash before going back to defensive stance. The next Shieldslam *will* look awesome. promised. : )

Retaliation on the other hand is not all that good for tanks anyways, because we're using one handed weapons. Just tried it on Zanzils Zombies in Zul'Gurub. Wearing two strengh-trinkets, titanic strengh-flask, + 90 strengh bufffood as a tank, the 20 charges from retaliation did shortly under 80000 damage. Hardly worth the stance dancing, and extremely weak for a 5-minute cooldown.

In my opinion, these changes are a "minor buff", if anything, due to overloaded action bars.

Greetings, livion

[Loganisis]

Okay, first, this really is a Tank/Arms boon, since Shattering Throw isn't included.

Retaliation has very little value to Fury but not stance-dancing for Reck has value to Arms.

And tanks now can use Retaliation and Recklessness without stance dancing. <--- Big Winners

Not sure what the value of not having a stance requirement is for Shield Wall is. Maybe for Arms running a macro to swap between a 2-Hander and a 1Hander and Shield? If someone can shed more light on this one?

Dunno - Win for Tanks, nice for Arms, meh for Fury is what it seems to me.

[Booi]

Not sure what the value of not having a stance requirement is for Shield Wall is. Maybe for Arms running a macro to swap between a 2-Hander and a 1Hander and Shield? If someone can shed more light on this one?

Independent of the pvp implications, it is a really solid change for electrocute-style mechanics in PvE or for wrack-type debuffs from sinestra. They sword and board for two seconds, keep dpsing, and lose no rage or gcds on the stance switch.

[Loganisis]

Independent of the pvp implications, it is a really solid change for electrocute-style mechanics in PvE or for wrack-type debuffs from sinestra. They sword and board for two seconds, keep dpsing, and lose no rage or gcds on the stance switch.

So there is a good swap wep macro out there? I can see the value now, but only if there's a quick and effective way to switch. Of course I don't know macros well, so maybe I've missed it when I searched. :-/

[Booi]

When necessary, you can always pop shield block (causing enemies to be unable to crit you, due to the magical 102,4%)

Crit is on the table before blocks and normal hits. We pushed crushing blows off the table, but crits had to be removed.

Miss
Dodge
Parry
Crit
Block
Crushing
Hit

[kopcap]

So there is a good swap wep macro out there?

What do you mean? I just put equipment set icons on a bar and click them

[Booi]

What do you mean? I just put equipment set icons on a bar and click them

kopcap is right, the in-game outfitter is much less clunky than any equipslot macro

1) make an outfit with everything disabled except the one hander and shield. call it iwanttolive
2)

/equipset iwanttolive
/cast shield wall

[Loganisis]

What do you mean? I just put equipment set icons on a bar and click them

You can do that? O_O sheesh... you learn something new everyday

[Aggathon]

Crit is on the table before blocks and normal hits. We pushed crushing blows off the table, but crits had to be removed.

Miss
Dodge
Parry
Crit
Block
Crushing
Hit

Incorrect, Crushing blows do not exist unless the mob is more than 4 levels higher than you, since bosses are always 3 levels higher, there are no longer crushing blows, and a blocked hit cannot be crit. Since you have to be in dstance to see the benefit from the anti-crit talent in prot, the only way to push crits off on the table is to hit shield block so that you either dodge, parry, miss, or block a hit, and subsequently you knock crits off the table.

[Aggathon]

Probably a double post, but Re: PvP implications:

I think it's better to go d-stance when you have to shield wall in PvP anyways, lol. If you're putting on a shield in PvP, you're probably not gonna be doing a lot of burst.

But from a more pessimistic standpoint: I firmly believe that blizzard has put WoW PvP as more of a sideproject. I haven't had fun in PvP since early S5. And this is coming from someone that did BGs 'til he was blue in the face in Vanilla/TBC and got duelist in both S2 and S5 (each on different toons). Hell I rolled this character to PvP, now I won't touch PvP with a ten foot pole.

[Booi]

Incorrect, Crushing blows do not exist unless the mob is more than 4 levels higher than you, since bosses are always 3 levels higher, there are no longer crushing blows, and a blocked hit cannot be crit. Since you have to be in dstance to see the benefit from the anti-crit talent in prot, the only way to push crits off on the table is to hit shield block so that you either dodge, parry, miss, or block a hit, and subsequently you knock crits off the table.

I am aware that crushing blows have been effectively removed, but still - the combat table has not changed from burning crusade, not fundamentally. Does anyone have a link to the old burning crusade combat table? For some reason I was certain that criticals were on the table before normal hits.

For example:
if you had 5% miss, 89% dodge, 0% parry, 0 defense.
You would take critical hits 6% of the time (no normal hits there is no room for them)

Likewise, I thought we had discovered back in burning crusade that block was after criticals on the table.
meaning that in the above situation, even if you had 50% block, you would never block, and still take criticals 6% of the time.

This was always considered a null case though, because no one could reach uncrushable without being uncrittable.

Before you crucify me.
Think back to burning crusade with no defense gear. When you hit shield block it gave you +75 or was it +100% chance to block???
In any case, you were still crittable because you did not have the required 490 defense even with shield block up. When tanks took critical hits in dungeons, people didn't say "keep shield block up" they said "get more defense rating". When they took crushings, people said "keep shield block up"