Protection Warriors?

[truculent]

Ive played beta for a few hours over the weekend. prot warriors were exceptionally boring.

[Blackcurrant]

What does active mitigation seem to be for prot warriors?

It must be a new concept for the rotation does it not?

It can't be the use of long cooldowns (shield wall, last stand) that we already have and it can't be the use of short cooldowns (shield block, shield barrier).

What seems to be changed at this point is only the rage mechanics and those are the similar for all warrior specs, be it dps or tank.

Conclusion should be that the active mitigation model that was spoken about when threat got obsolete is for warriors not yet implemented?

[Pagezero]

It really means we no longer get Rage from being hit and if you want Rage you need to be attacking and actually hitting the target, right now there are two things you can do with that Rage, use Shield Block/Shield Block or HS/Cleave.

The good part of it is hit and exp will now be useful, some might not think this is good, but personally I like it, the bad part is really not anything to do with active mitigation, it's really that most think Shield Block is not very interesting or fun and generally boring, it needs to do more and make us really want to use it. Add an a heal to it, add a shield spike effect while active, something, anything.

[Tengenstein]

Its the using rage for short term defensive CDs Shield Block and Shield Barrier. be impressed yah!

[darus]

From a gameplay point of view it doesnt feel at all as interesting as blizzard wanted it to be, they just put heroic strike out of the rotation in place for shield block/shield barrier. From a gearing point of view hit and expertise will have excessive value since you rely on hitting the target for rage, thats defenitley one thing that theyve done right.

[Blackcurrant]

Thanks for the answers.

I agree that working towards making hit and expertise important for tanks definitively makes gearing more interesting. Also making rage management more important can be interesting. Leaving the active mitigation model as ready after those two changes does not feel totally satisfying compared to what i read into the changes last autumn. It's like the finishing touch after this build up is missing.

As i wrote a couple of posts up a more dynamic mitigation (like former threat rotations now instead building mitigation) would solve the same problems as the beta changes done so far and on top of that making the gameplay more mirror what active mitigation could be. Also it would make it possible to give an unique model for one tank, something i think in the best of worlds all tanks should have.

As been mentioned i neither think it would be a problem if different tanks would end up being slightly easier or harder to play.

[Airowird]

For me the problem with the Warrior (and Druid) mitigation models is that they are exactly like the tBC Shield Block model.
It is still a button you have to press to reduce damage, but it has no direct relation to your rotation.
A DK or Paladin gains a mitigation buff from using an offensive ability. How well they do their rotation relates directly into how often they can use that ability and thus how well they manage their damage reduction buff.
For example, on a boss with a 3s cast Big Breath the DK or Paladin must make the choice of not using their offensive ability during the first 2.9s of that cast because they're not taking damage anyway, so instead they might fill up that time with more Rune Strikes or another Crusader Strike to start pooling some resource a bit more. A Warrior or Druid has no such mechanic. Their damage output is always the same, regardless of bosses swinging or not, their defensive ability might be limited to their rotation, but it's not directly linked to it. If you could macro your rotation on a Warrior or Druid, then you are set for any given boss fight and the only thing you'ld have to do is press that one ability at the correct moments. Your resource income is somewhat predictable, so you have a pretty decent idea of the maximum of uptime of your buff and the only thing left to do is sliding the gaps around a bit to maximize damage reduction (or if you don't need more, add in some extra damage from HS/Maul). This is (in my eyes) in no way interesting and rather looks like having to do two separate rotations each doing one job, than doing a single rotation that does two jobs.

It is similar to how healing works. A tank has a certain amount of damage reduction and his health goes down. A healer tries to fill up that bar with his heals, but the healer has no real influence on the damage reduction of the tank, and neither has the tank a whole lot of control over the amount of incoming heals. The two jobs are linked by a common resource (namely the tank's HP), but the jobs themselves have no direct link to eachother.

[Tengenstein]

I don't really think Rage management is particularly fun or interesting. its going to be much more similar to playing an arms warrior now, you go through your standard rotation and if you manage to get up to a threshold you dump.Prot seems to be going backwards. As it stand now we have a fairly fun fish for procs, keep up a dot and 2 defensive debuffs and a defensive buff whilst making sure not to cap rage and weave in our trucks. in Beta our rotation is SS>Rev>Stormbolt>SW>Dev and press TC every 30 seconds. Yeah we still have to worry about SnB procs but compared to now where we get maybe 15 a minute, we're going to get maybe 4 and half of them will have no appreciable change in our rotation as every other Rev immediately precedes an SS anyway. Prot;s always been a twitchy spec with a large toolbox of abilities, now its not so much, we don't have to pay attention to our procs anywhere near as much, and as a consequence we don't need to worry about weaving trucks in at the right time. Rage is no longer a frantic resource we need to prevent capping or Starving low on. and our toolbox is now half empty.

The changes seem incredibly boring from a play style PoV. I know Prot had alot of complaints that it had a lot of buttons and you needed to be a concert pianist to hit all of them at the right time, but it was fun, and alot more engaging that what we have here, the equivalent of playing the triangle.

[Airowird]

You forgot to mention that if you take Avatar & Bloodbath/Deadly Calm all you do is SS>Rev>TC(<5s left)>Dev.
For one, I would find the system entirely more interesting to play with if instead of Rev, Dev was the SnB proc'er. Suddenly you're faced with the challenge of "Do I Rev after SS for damage or Dev for the chance on extra Rage=SB uptime?"
Perhaps Revenge could be changed into a) not being a proc and b) be the combined damage and SB tool.
Then you'ld have a choice of: Rev>SS>Dev, SS>Rev>Dev, SS>Dev>Rev or some other intricate balance between them. Perhaps TC and/or IV could be doing damage somewhere in between Dev & Rev? It would certainly make the limited amount of buttons interesting choices, without pushing you towards hotbars full of situational abilities.


PS: Am I the only person that finds Revenge STILL being an avoidance-based proc archaic and outdated? I mean, with the drop in avoidance & block it'll be completely random and unreliable, especially while gearing up. Even Rune Strike is now guaranteed for DKs in Blood Presence, surely Revenge could get the same treatment?

[Tengenstein]

Indeed it is out dated, In Wrath it was a bit OP when an arms warrior went def stance and landed a really heavy 2 handed Revenge. now its not really a problem since the AP scaling for tank abilities is much lower, and next expac well, only Prot will have access to revenge. and the chance of us not getting a dodge/block/parry over 9 seconds is redundant, and harms us when we're not tanking as it means less Snb procs (none) which means less shield slams, which means less enrages which means less rage, which may be why they want to do it, so when we've handed the boss other to the co-tank we don't start dumping with HS rather than SB. which makes less sense since the other tanks don't have rotational abilities denied when they're not tanking. DO bears ahve som sort of less rage when not tanking maechanic, or did warriors get screwed. again.

[Bigbad]

These new changes make me think they're on right track, but really did they make it intentionally bad at the start to make us more excited for the real thing?
- Revenge 6 sec cd,
- devastate proccing ultimatum for a free HS,
- rallying cry not sharing a cd with last stand anymore,
- shieldblock giving guaranteed blocks for the 6 sec duration instead of just 1 block.

Ultimatum procs are really needed to keep things interesting and shieldblock change is nice just wondering what the guaranteed blocks will do with the value of mastery/avoidance.

[Airowird]

I don't think they intentionally made it bad so they can buff it later, I think they were just too cautious (although a decent math review of the system could tell you it's flawed).

I like how the new stuff works out and I understand why they don't make the Paladin buff guaranteed (would devalue Mastery), but DK Mastery is still too powerful without DR on it.
I do like the extra bonus procs of Ultimatum, although they didn't resolve any issues with Revenge:
With it's CD being the same as SS, you'll start out with Rev just after SS, but as soon as you get an SnB proc, you will always use Revenge before SS, unless it's not available. If it's not available enough to make the CD the priority limiter, than there is an issue (especially with gearing up = more procs). If the CD is what it's all about, why still need the proc? And if you Rev every time on CD, isn't SnB just "Revenge has a chance to grant you 5 Rage"?
Imho, we are better off with the 9s CD, bigger damage output and not being a proc than what they want to do now.

[Bigbad]

Even with the 6 sec cd you'll always want to use revenge after shieldslam, you will delay it occasionally with 3 secs (half a revenge or less then 2,5 rage) but always gain half a shieldslam (5 rage) when it procs. This is just from a rage perspective not sure about the difference between revenge & shieldslam damage if it's a dps increase or not.

[Airowird]

That's the thing though, you're postponing Rev (and use Dev instead) so that the next time you have an SnB proc you actually get the CD shortening from it. According to MMO-C, Rev has higher damage (I assume that's base, don't know about AP scaling atm), so as long as Rev does more damage (especially if you have adds to tank) waiting 3s with Rev to gain 3s from SS is a DPS loss.

Rage math:
If you always Rev on CD, you get an average time between SnB procs of 10s, in which time you do exactly 1.6667 SS. Total Rage gain is then 5 + 1.6667*10 = 21.667 Rage over 10s = 2.16667 RPS.
If you wait 9s after SnB procs to use Revenge again, you will get an average proc time of 13s (6s/60% proc chance +3s delay), which means 2.6667 SS during that time (1 + 10/6), total Rage gain of 5 + 2.6667*10 = 31.667 over 13s = 2.4359 RPS
That's a 12.43% increase in Rage gained from your rotation, or an extra SB every 3min43s or an extra Heroic Strike every 1min51s

The question will remain, will the damage be worth it? Won't this make the rotation very much like the old WotLK one? (Snb>SS>Rev>Dev>CD) And more importantly, isn't this one of those counter-intuitive-but-theoretically-better things starting players won't learn until they visit a theory crafting site?

[Bigbad]

I thought about the dps, when you delay revenge you replace a revenge with a devastate but when SnB procs you replace a devastate with a shieldslam. So as long as shieldslam does more damage then revenge its a dps increase.

[Tengenstein]

I don't think that DPS will really matter. Shieldblock uptime is what we're gonna be worrying about, and thats going to be about squeezing the most rage out of our rotation, so any trucks that have rage costs aren't really going to worth using until we're approaching 100% SB uptimes and can spare the rage. Does Stormbolt/Heroic throw act as they do now on live and delay or swing time? if so we can throw those trucks out, Shockwave might be rage neutral, but its alternative, Avatar is a rage gain, which leaves us pretty much much with Victory Rush/Impending Victory which we should be timing to our healthpools, not rotation.

So while yes our max DPS is almost certainly counter intuitive fish fish truck, approaching the rotation from a max DPS standpoint is also counter intuitive,

[Kazeyonoma]

yeah, i tried tanking a bit on MoP this weekend and it's felt weird compared to the running model of mash buttons until you bleed to edge out every bit of dps. I'm still toying with the rotation, but with shield block uptime being crucial and impending victory being a decent and frequent life CD, it found myself just watching my own survivability more than anything else.

[Dreador]

I'm having major issues holding aggro while tanking mop randoms at 85, so bad that I reforged my t13 to hit/expertise to be closer to the caps. I'm using everything at my disposal including foregoing shield block for HS sometimes. Still managing to keep taunt on CD. Anyone else experiencing this?

[Dreador]

I'm having major issues holding aggro while tanking mop randoms at 85, so bad that I reforged my t13 to hit/expertise to be closer to the caps. I'm using everything at my disposal including foregoing shield block for HS sometimes. Still managing to keep taunt on CD. Anyone else experiencing this?

So it turns out after a reset they take you out of all stances, found the problem.

[Bigbad]

What glyphs were you using Dreador? I had a quick look at the beta and was surprised by the amount of major glyphs. You got one for shieldslam, revenge, devastate(not implemented yet), cleave, thunderclap, heroic leap, speedboost while enraged which all seem usefull. Specially the incite glyph for devastate will be powerful giving ~50% uptime on enrage.