Protection Warriors?

[Travelsize]

The glyph thing is probably finally being done right. The glyphs are, for the most part 1: interesting and 2: there's way more than three for each spec. I think a lot of the idea behind the old talent tress (mainly the little talents that "tune" your character, an extra proc here, a lowered cooldown there, a bit of extra damage here) are being done much better as glyphs.

The minor glyphs are kind of awesome, but I don't think the one that is supposed to make it look like you're on fire when enraged is working properly yet. Also, the thunderstruck glyph is applying the extra damage on the tooltip (and I think on mobs) without extending the cooldown. Since it's a 50% damage increase, the thunderstruck glyph might be a real winner- on single targets you're just hitting it to keep the damage debuff up anyways, so you might as well get more damage out of that button, and on aoe you're getting the same theoretical dps over time, better snap aggro (not that that's a worry unless they make threat an issue again), and you're opening extra gcds to eke out more shield slams and get more rage to dump into sb/cleave/hs.

I figured since our goal is maximizing sb uptime for survivability, heavy repurcussions glyph probably isn't a bad idea either. I want to try the incite glyph out, but it wasn't on the glyph vendor and not in the ah so sadness for now. I'm running with the victory rush glyph (helll yes a self heal I can control on a short cd) instead.

As long as heroic strike has enough damage output to be relevant, the "where do I spend my rage" question has the potential to be interesting. This is especially true in last 20% burn phases, where the boss is usually dealing extra damage BUT execute is now usable in any stance and costs 30 rage. Someone's going to have to math it out at 90, but if you can afford the survivability hit you could help the raid out dropping sb for heoric strike/execute spam and add a non-trivial amount of damage, especially during hero/lust.

Incidentally, haste seems like it's could be kind of awesome. Not necessarily something you'll want as a prot warrior, but the raid-wide extra sources of haste potentially go from "meh" to "hey extra damage or 100% SB uptime!"

Also, I can see some potentially insane damage output from prot warriors in 5 mans running with offset dps haste pieces.

Also, resource management seems pretty complex now, between managing shield block and hs/cleave/execute WHILE managing free procs from dev, figuring out whether or not to delay revenge for right after a ss, and using impending victory (and keeping the thunderclap debuff up on bosses).

Of course, if the damage gain or survivability increase from proper rage usage isn't significant enough to be noticed, prot warriors are going to be boring as hell.

[Gregasaurous]

Okay, so a question for you actively testing in Beta regarding the newest implementation of Shield Block mechanics, and how this will effect our stat priorities. So as i understand it Shield block now guarantees all attacks not avoided will be blocked for it's 6 sec duration. So if we are able to get 100% SB up-time or even close (possible? situational? nerf-bat inc?) mastery just became useless? If this is the case, then all our gear will be reforged avoidance (after hit/exp caps?), leaving nothing but stamina for our gems?

[Dreador]

Okay, so a question for you actively testing in Beta regarding the newest implementation of Shield Block mechanics, and how this will effect our stat priorities. So as i understand it Shield block now guarantees all attacks not avoided will be blocked for it's 6 sec duration. So if we are able to get 100% SB up-time or even close (possible? situational? nerf-bat inc?) mastery just became useless? If this is the case, then all our gear will be reforged avoidance (after hit/exp caps?), leaving nothing but stamina for our gems?

I'm no theorycrafter but that's what it's looking like. What a wasted stat eh?

[Takethecake]

During shield block, mastery contributes to crit block chance. Crit block has a smaller chance but scales at the same rate pre DR so mastery will be far from useless. If it's worth stacking I'm sure someone will figure out... I'm sure I'll mess with some spread sheets once I'm sure they changes are more concrete.

[Tengenstein]

Sorry if this is nit picky, Is it a case that Crit block doesn't have DRs or that it has a different DR from block? and when you say crit block has a smaller chance is it because like now wie only crit block from mastery, but we get 5%block for having a shield and 15% block for being prot and then whatever else we get from mastery?

Also Greg, who says we're gona get anywhere near 100% uptime on shield block? even assuming we can generate the rage for it, sometimes were gonna be using Shield Barrier instead for magic damage reductions. Has anyone on beta got some uptime numbers for shieldblock? or idea of how much rage per swing we generate? on live it works out to be around 6.5 rps( and in mop thats only guaranteed if we are hit & expertise capped), Airowird worked out that we;d generate about 2.4 rps from our rotation (though this was with the 9s Rev CD), which is 8.9 rps, snot enough for the 10rps we need for 100% SB uptime, assuming you clip it by an infinitely small amount. Also keep in mind we need to keep Weakened Blows up so are gonna need to find another 20 rage every 30 seconds for that. i hope we get lucky with our enrage uptimes.

[Pagezero]

If you can trust the tooltip Crit Block has the same DR as block, also on the beta base block has changed from 5% to 3%. Also the base 8 Mastery from Prot spec also has DR on Block.

With a 2.6 speed weapon we get 13 rage per swing, rage from just SS and white swings we would get 62 rage in 10.4 sec, that puts is at about a 60% uptime.

[JainZar]

Not sure that my maths is in any way correct:

Using the Glyph of Incite and Ultimatum procs to keep a reasonable uptime on Enrage, you'd need 3 white swings and a Shield Slam to get 58 rage. With a 2.6 speed weapon, that's 7.8 seconds; with the 10% melee haste buff, it's 7.02; another 13% from gear would give 5.92 seconds? Battle Shout gives 20 rage, which gives you the extra you need each minute for 100% uptime?

S'n'B procs give another 15 rage if you delay Revenge, with the potential cost of 2 GCDs that can't be used to proc Ultimatum (but is still a net gain each cycle).

Would it be worth giving up critical blocks to have a higher Shield Block uptime by reforging Mastery to Haste (after the hit and expertise caps, obviously)?

[Tengenstein]

Your calculating Haste incorrectly there, its only a minor thing but 10% haste is does not translate into your sing times being 90% of the unhasted value. new swing time = old swing time/(1+(haste%))*(1+other haste effects) . Essentially 2.6/1.13*1.1 so it swill take 7.09 recurring seconds. this means you need around 18.5% to get your swing down below 2 seconds needed. 18.5% haste is a lot of haste, esecially as we'd need to be hit and expertise capped already. okay maybe not so minor now i look at it.

Edit: so looking at rage generation and enrage uptime being crucual to SB uptime, some of our talent choices seem kinda bleh. Impending Victory for example is another rage dump so whilst its healing may be great but if the choice is between "either use IV now and sacrifice some SB uptime & Damage" or "a very powerful HoT ever minute" or "a passive proc HoT". that talents like Impending Victory are jsut straight up nub traps. The fourth tier is even worst, dragon roar is a straight up enrage if it hits, shockwave costs 20 rage. If you're not at 100% shieldblock or enrage uptime , why would you choose an ability that didn't generate rage over one that required it? the last tier is the same Avatar just looks awesome because of the 50% increased rage gen, I love the idea of stormbolt, but 50% rage for 11% of the time is pretty nice defensively, especially if it lets me get shield barrier up without dropping SB uptime.

[Geach]

The fourth tier is even worst, dragon roar is a straight up enrage if it hits, shockwave costs 20 rage.

Last time I checked shockwave doesn't have a cost rage in mop.

[Dreador]

Last time I checked shockwave doesn't have a cost rage in mop.

Correct, and dragon roar, despite the tooltip, never crits. In fact almost nothing crits right now. Unless you pop reck of course.

[Tengenstein]

This is what i get for going off wowhead. at least i'm pleasantly wrong about shockwave.

[Takethecake]

Sorry if this is nit picky, Is it a case that Crit block doesn't have DRs or that it has a different DR from block? and when you say crit block has a smaller chance is it because like now wie only crit block from mastery, but we get 5%block for having a shield and 15% block for being prot and then whatever else we get from mastery?

Yeah I meant simply that the base chance to crit block is lower and that a point of mastery increases both block and crit block by the same amount.

[Dreador]

This is what i get for going off wowhead. at least i'm pleasantly wrong about shockwave.

Yeah, in my opinion it makes it a good tier. Tossup between guaranteed crit every minute aka enrage aka more rage, vs free DPS truck with a 20 second cd. Either one is good for its own reasons. For me, if dragon roar makes it to live as the tooltip is, I'll use that for most situations simply because of the way our rage is now. It's actually tough to keep shield block or barrier up, there's always going to be a 2 or 3 second downtime. Having Avatar to go along with it would be nice as well. This has the makings to be a somewhat cool class again in my book.

I'm bored on live even though there's only one dungeon on beta right now.

[kopcap]

I have not had a chance to get my hands on beta yet, but my main concern is that no matter how you approach it, you will need exp hard cap to make "100% uptime on SB" work. Combined with hit cap, its an awful lot of itemization points. That perhaps could be better spent on something else, while still retaining ability to pool rage for an incoming burst. Anyway, imo its too early to call anything until we see an open beta, encounter designs and our trinket choices.

Another concern is that this model may inadvertently force progression tanks to constantly swap weapons and elixirs on a fly, ie exp set for rage pooling and SB uptime followed by def set for a burst, then back again.

[Airowird]

Oh, I do miss the good ol' days of different tanking sets!
Hell, I even miss my healing sets on my Shaman, gearing for a fight was half the strategy!

[kopcap]

I am not talking about gearing for a fight. I am talking about hot swaps for subphases, ie interrupt set for prototypes on Nef or hit set for whelps on Sin.

[Dreador]

Unless something changes mechanically, I don't believe true 100% uptime will be achievable even with capped stats. Too many gcds and procs.

This is anecdotal of course.

[Tengenstein]

GCDs and procs?

[Dreador]

Well, CDs not GCDs. And sword and board/enrage.

[Tengenstein]

I still don't understand you reasoning.