Wendigo Brewing Co. / General / Warriors / Class Discussions

warrior dps

lee — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:35:25 GMT

so, ~2500 dps in ideal fights (ie patchwork, lothebe) is obviously too low. Any math on where you should be with ideal spec, best pre 25 man gear, full buffs?

~important~ warrior post

Giant — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:15:54 GMT

Just some basic info mainly because I'm bored and because nobody really uses this section of the forums!

[u]~Random semi important information~[/u]

Dual-wielding white hit cap without Precision: 919 hit rating to remove the 28% miss rate.

Dual-wielding white hit cap with 3/3 Precision: 820 hit rating to remove the 25% miss rate.

Titan's Grip yellow hit cap without Precision: 460 hit rating to remove the 14% miss rate.

[b]Titan's Grip yellow hit cap with Precision: 361 hit rating to remove the 11% miss rate.[/b]

Berserking enchant does stack (~you lose 100-200 ap from the -armor proc)

[u]Expertise[/u]

Against bosses (lvl83)
Expertise rating cap (0/2 Weapon Mastery): 214
Expertise rating cap (2/2 Weapon Mastery): 148
Expertise rating cap (0/2 WM + Orc/Human racial): 173
Expertise rating cap (2/2 WM + Orc/Human racial): 107

strWith more leaning towards hit/expertise as TG over str/crit in terms of gemming if you're not close to capped on either.

Arms- 50/21/0 is probably>5x/xx/xx because bladestorm is fail

Overall arms raiding is mediocre at the moment so its probably better to just stay TG unless your gear is incredibly bad. Main issue being pre-WoTLK the purpose of arms was to do fair raid DPS+bring buffs (Imp Demo, Blood Frenzy, talented battleshout) but since rogues have savage combat, its kind of meh. The main problem with it is that it relies a lot more than fury on RNG (i.e. taste for blood, sudden death procs) not to mention with the sudden death nerf its suddenly much less desirable.

Because everyone else is~

Giant — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:08:47 GMT

What bosses do you guys want in for?
May as well organize this so its easy for us to know when we want in/out without having to waste time on the spot

I can update this post for each person if you just edit your original post etc(25 mans only preferred)

Giant:
Gauntlets of the lost protector-Sartharion
Crown of the lost protector-KT
Aged Winter Cloak-Heigan, or Gothik?
Ruthlessness-Any of the naxx 25 bosses?
Grim Toll-Grobbulus
Legplates of double strikes-instructor raz

Would mainly like the helm, and gloves

Warrior tanking in wotlk

Veriann — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:35:30 GMT

(Blue)Threads have popped up in several class forums that seem to be converging on a few of the same issues. So rather than cross-posting a lot, I thought I would start a new thread.

Tanking Design

Our goal in Lich King is for all 4 tanking classes to be viable.
We would like for tanking to be a little more fun. I'm going to leave this vague on purpose, but it is definitely a concern.
In 5-player instances, most warriors, druids, paladins and death knights should be effective tanks. The healing specs may have a harder time than the dps specs. Arms wariors, Fury warriors, Ret paladins, Ferals and most DKs should do fine.
In 5-player heroics, the expectation is that the tank has a heavy investment in tanking talents and appropriate gear. Arms warriors might have trouble tanking a heroic unless they overgear the instance.
For raids, we want all 4 tank classes to be viable. If your group has e.g. a Prot paladin and Feral druid as main tanks with appropriate gear and reasonable skill, you should be good to go.
This is a shift in philosophy for us. Previously, we sometimes tried to steer Ferals as being better off tanks than main tanks. We also expected specific classes to appear in the raid. Our new assumption is that you might have any of the 4 tanking classes as a tank. We are trying to achieve as much parity as we can among the 4 tanks without making them too similar. If nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT, we've failed.
This is a big one: the game isn't finished. We aren't spending too much effort yet to make sure mitigation, threat and tools are similar across the 4 classes at level 80 in blue or purple gear. Likewise, your talent trees and core abilities aren't finished. Tanking (and PvP) need to have a lot of other pieces of the game in place before we can really get the numbers right. It's fine (useful even) to point out when you feel a particular ability, talent, class or build is too good or not good enough. But please don't infer the work in progress as a reflection of our intent. If we end up changing our minds or if things don't work out, it will be posted here.
There are a lot of changes in Lich King that change tanking and raiding in general. I won't list them all out here, but keep in mind things like itemization changes, widespread raid buffs, consumables, UI changes, etc. Just keep them in mind. We're not in Tempest Keep anymore.

We would still like to have tanking "flavors" as you put it, but I want to be a little careful when I say that because some people have taken that to mean that their class won't be good enough to tank the content they want.

If druids had gigantic health pools but lower mitigation and avoidance than a warrior, that would be tanking flavor. It would mean you heal the bears a little different -- they might drain more mana, but the damage would be more predictable. In really long fights, the warrior might have an advantage. In a fight where a boss hit quickly for less damage per hit, the warrior might have an advantage. In fights with periods of really big damage, the druid might have an advantage. In magic fights where armor was less of a factor, the druid might have an advantage. This is just an example. Our overriding concern is making sure the tanks have the tools, threat and mitigation they need to tank. A secondary concern is making sure they don't feel too similar.

-not so sure I agree on this one, druids are already just as good as, if not better than, warriors for many fights. (any boss that can stun, hits hard but doesn't crush, or has an armor reducer) I would even argue that aside from sunder and tclap, druids are better than warriors on brut. Every tank class in the game has successfully tanked every boss, druids have even tanked illidan (warrior flame tanks intervened shears)

All tank classes have their place atm, and each has a unique tanking style. Druid armor, their unique facet, is being reduced in wrath, warrior/paladin avoidance is being nerfed. Are we all supposed to be clones? Prot paladins are getting some sizeable buffs, prot warriors some sizeable nerfs. Feral druids are (supposedly) getting more dps and more tanking utility (infected wounds, berserk)otection Spec and DPS

(Blue)We think we can make the Prot tree more fun. Without talents like Defiance, there are already a few less mandatory talents, and we think we can make even more interesting choices. We definitely can improve Prot dps, so that it doesn't feel so painful to go do dailies or run a 5-man in a dps role.-why do a 5 man as a prot warrior if you aren't tanking? your dps is NOT enough to contribute meaningfully unless you severely outgear the other people.

So, they want everyone to be able to tank everything, but they dont want the classes to be too similar? wtf? PROT IS NOT, NOR SHOULD IT BE, A DPS TREE. This is why you can do dailies for respec money. I bitched and complained about farming prot, but i did it, and when i needed something specific i respecced on the weekends. While I understand the need of people in lower content with less time than I have, why does every character I play get changed to make THEM happy? Every spec should have 1 thing they are good at, be it pvp, pve dps, or tanking. A prot warrior with "limited dps capability" will still be as useless as a trap door on a canoe when not tanking, and because of this new dps, our tanking will decline slightly. THE WHOLE PURPOSE OF THE TREE IS TO ASSIST IN TAKING DAMAGE, NOT DEAL IT.

/end rant

Titan Grip HOOOOOOOOOOOO

Prot PvP is Good

Roark — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 10:52:15 GMT

Seriously. Victor specced Prot and him and I were doing some BG's last night and he was right behind me in damage in just about every battle. He'd also have way less deaths...

He likes it so much he's going to stay. We dueled and he pretty much kicked my ass. I'm actually leaning towards switching to prot.

Shield slam and shockwave do a lot of damage and all the offensive abilities have high crit. Charge in any stance in combat, shield bash silence, disarmed targets taking more damage, conc blow does a lot of damage, thunderclap does a lot of damage, permanent thorns reflecting over 100 per hit... I think we'll be seeing a lot of prot warriors in pvp now.

TG pretty much sucks. As arms I just about raped every TG warrior I came across and Victor beat them down even harder.

wotlk builds

Gaffgarion — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:14:12 GMT

eh, every other class thread has something like this as their top thread so, i just want us to fit in

NE Warriors:

Schwerpunkt — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:32:55 GMT

So, shadowmeld is different now.

So you attack a frost mage. He nova's you and blinks away, and starts to wind up a frost bolt.

You press shadowmeld! Frost bolt is canceled. He has to run back to you to detect you (or to AOE) or you get away free. Plus you drop combat, so you can charge him.

This is kinda only good for classes that want to be in melee, because if someone is on top of you already I think they will detect you again pretty easily. It is also good for people who have different abilities out of combat (rogue/warrior). Because it instantly drops combat, a rogue could be running right at a mage and right before you get to him you press shadowmeld --> cheap shot.

fury spec for someone

toiletimp — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:27:37 GMT

posted just for someone that asked

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warrior/talents.html?tal=350003013020000000000000550010450501205311510000000000000000000000

i forgot...

Ironwombat — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:10:24 GMT

how to read.

3===================D~~~ ( . )( . )

Redoing gear for more consistent DPS

Giant — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:49:23 GMT

Basically what it comes down to is STR vs Crit(with expertise on the side, the problem being with expertise is that it comes on so few pieces that we have access to)

While a healthy balance of both str/crit is prefered, at the point where I'm at in my gear, I'm running approximately 30% crit/2000 AP unbuffed, the problem with this being that at this point in my gear crit far outdoes STR point:point, and once I grab a shard of contempt, my crit will drop even further(Probably 29%)

I've been looking at a lot of 2h warriors in raids, and it seems like some of them either choose not to make the hit cap, or have Moonkin in their raids so that they can afford to lose 1-3% hit

I think some changes I could make to see a more consistent damage range(I look at some WWS and my average crit for my whites or specials some fights is sub 20%, which is just absolutely bad luck on RNG or just a lack of base crit) is to increase my crit rating at the loss of AP.

The main thing I'd like to do(especially with the whole purchasable vortex thing) is to craft another red belt of battle, and gem it with a smooth lionseye/jagged seaspray, allowing me to regem my Illidari Shatterer Helm with either an inscribed Pyrestone or a Smooth Lionseye(Though at what point would it be better to use Pyrestones over Lionseye? Scaling with kings makes pyrestones superior, though it'd appear that we have many many more Lionseye than Pyrestones). Once I pick up Dreadboots(Smooth Lionseyex2), it'd put me at just enough hit to afford picking up T6 shoulders(Lionseye/Seaspray) and from there on ignore all blue sockets in favor of either pure crit, or pure str gems.

Another thing I'm wondering is which pieces of t6 I should be picking up from readily available bosses, my main problem is that I put myself in a bit of a stupid situation when I took t6 helm and replaced it with arguably the best helm in the game next to the one from Sunwell. Now does making set bonuses make up for the superior static effects pre execute range? And would the 5% damage increase on my "secondary" special warrant losing superior pieces in some sockets?

The only problem is, I'm not sure if I'd be seeing an actual damage increase, technically on a spreadsheet it says that I'd see a fairly large damage increase(more so without a feral druid) if I don't it'd feel like somewhat of a waste, also, seriously shard needs to drop.

Also, redoing gear means redoing gems, which I'm not sure how many we have >_> in terms of the more useful ones

New Warrior Spec

Gaffgarion — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:57:55 GMT

check this guys spec, i expect to see you all representing!

[url]http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Deathwing&n=Rainday[/url]

Illidan flame tanks, future reference

Veriann — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:21:56 GMT

I know we arent there yet, but this video is awesome for showing the tanking paths for phase 2 flame of azzinoth tanks. Putting it up here for future reference. http://files.filefront.com/Illidan+P2+Instructionalwmv/;8605657;/fileinfo.html

Keybinds?

Susa — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:55:49 GMT

Looking for a good way to set them up because *sigh* Half the time I find myself clicking :crying:

Starter MS gear

Susa — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:18:53 GMT

Helm - 2nd sight (SMV 5-man quest chain)
Neck - Natasha's Choker (Blades Edge soloable CE quest chain)
Shoulder - Ragesteel Shoulders (smithing crafted)
Back - Mines Ok
Chest - Chestplate of A'dal (Arc key quest)
Wrist - vindicators
Weapon - S1 sword and throw savagery on it
Ranged - Felsteel Whisper Knives (smithing crafted)
Trinkets - Bladesfist Hourglass or one out of Mech 2nd trinket. It wont be replaced until SSC
Rings - get your Vindicator's and Veterans rings
Boots Vindicator's
Legs - Need Armor kit for them
Waist - Vindicators
Gloves - Ragesteel Gloves (smithing crafted). These are actually better for pure dps than the DPS T4. and with the shoulders give you an extra 20 hit

Penis

Giant — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:59:58 GMT

Discuss

45/13/3... 45/5/11 sup?

Knil — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:28:53 GMT

Been thinking about this... people are saying it does more damage than flurry specs if you're not being focused and enraged. I'd probably go with the first because I love my piercing howl, but last stand might have saved me from getting gibbed that one 2345 mirror match.

Sweeping Strikes is a BG fun time talent, I don't have rage for it in 5v5. Also, I'd love having my tact mastery back and 3/3 imp hammy. Disarm, eh, I can just disarm them back then renew shouts/piercing howl, and shield bash/pummel someone. I dunno, either that or chain my S2 mace or one hander and switch to it when we play disarm happy wars.

/equip Vengeful Gladiator's Bonegrinder

/equip Merciless Gladiator's Bonegrinder

I am definitely rage starved in 5v5 and if ER is any good it'd be a big boost.

Mace/Sword... 35/23/3 vs. 33/28

Knil — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:53:33 GMT

I'm still torn. I think I want to try 33/28 and at least pick up imp hamstring somehow... and right now I'm leaning towards staying with mace because it's so clutch.

Warriors in the arena

Giant — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:27:54 GMT

May as well bump the warrior forums with some arena stuffz1!1

#1
If you get FF'd, please, for the love of god, put on a shield, even if you're at 75% health, if the entire team is on you, just put on a shield
#2
In general in 5s, try to avoid killing targets that can make themselves immune to damage(frost mages, paladins)
#3
When playing against 4 dps teams, try to pillar LoS, obviously, this does not work so well in Blade's Edge arena
#4
Get 79 hit rating, missing mortal strikes will make you want to kick kittens and mangle babies
#5
Some popular make ups(5s);
Elemental Shaman-Warrior-Frost Mage-Paladin-Priest
Warrior-Hunter-Warlock(FG)-Paladin-Priest/Shaman
Warrior-Warlock-Mage-Paladin-Priest/Druid/Shaman
(3s);
Warrior-Druid/Paladin-Warlock
Warrior-Shaman-Paladin
Warrior-Paladin-Paladin
Warrior-Mage-Druid
(2s);
Warrior-Paladin
Warrior-Druid
Warrior-Shaman
(of the 3 druid is probably by far the best choice)
#6
Please remember, warriors are probably the squishiest member on a 5v5 team, in general we have the least resilience, and no methods of survival other than shield+spell reflect(-_-) so play defensively if you have to. Contrary to popular belief we are not invincible juggernauts
#7
Building on the point made in #1, please don't LoS your healers, you will die (before you decide to chase that priest around the pillar, consider the possibility that you may be exploded out of LoS of your healers)

so, given the new changes

Gaffgarion — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:42:40 GMT

any spec changes you guys will be doing?

will the primary pvp spec still be arms fury?

will we see more points into arms? ie:will we start getting imp ms?

and raiding specs. will the change to deathwish be offset by the change to whirlwind and getting imp ww? and say we do get imp ww, what will the best fury build be?

lets get some views on these as they are important topics of concern

also i suggest you read the ej forums regarding weapon mastery and its -dodge and how it effects to hit :) it is very enlightening

holy shit warr changes

peteracola — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 00:18:01 GMT

Warrior
- Charge will work more often when targets are up against unpathable areas like walls and poles.
- Defiance (Protection) now also grants 2/4/6 weapon expertise.
- Devastate (Protection) now combines the effects of Sunder Armor into its effect. It is also now affected by all talents and items that affect Sunder Armor.
- Disarm is now subject to diminishing returns in PvP.
- Improved Berserker Stance (Fury) now also reduces all threat caused while in Berserker Stance by 2/4/6/8/10%
[b]- Improved Intercept and Weapon Mastery have swapped locations in the talent trees.[/b]
- Intervene will no longer place you in combat.
- Hamstring now has a 10 second duration when used on PvP targets.
- Mace Specialization (Arms) now has a reduced chance to occur but generates 7 rage instead of 6.
- Pummel: Interrupting a channeled spell with this ability will now always properly prevent casting spells from the same spell school for 4 sec.
- Shield Bash: Interrupting a channeled spell with this ability will now always properly prevent casting spells from the same spell school for 6 sec.
- Shield Slam (Protection) now always tries to dispel one Magic effect on the target.
- Tactical Mastery: This talent also now grants greatly increased threat from Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst when in Defensive Stance.
- Weapon Mastery (Arms) now reduces duration of Disarm effects against you by 25/50% rather than giving you a 50% chance to avoid or full immunity to Disarm effects.
[b]- Whirlwind: This ability now strikes with both weapons when a Warrior is dual-wielding. [/b]

[b]and I also saw somewhere on the EJ forums that they switched deathwish and sweeping strikes[/b]. I don't even know what to say about that one. crazy!

imp zerker stance change

peteracola — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 12:46:37 GMT

[url]http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/2043944509.htm[/url]

[quote]Not a lot is finalized right now, but we are currently planning to make Improved Berserker Stance provide threat reduction by 2/4/6/8/10% while in Berserker Stance.[/quote]

about time fury got some love! now only if the 41 point talents weren't garbage...

sword or axe?

nibbs — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 12:51:01 GMT

so, im thinking of changing things up and going sword or axe but ive been busting my balls trying to figure out wich one would be best for 5v5, what do you guys think?

impale + deep wounds

lee — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:10:16 GMT

[quote][b]Gaffgarion (9/27/2007)[/b][hr]
stick with your points in impale and flurry.[/quote]

Recount - Gaffgarion's Hostile Attacks
1. Melee 158495 (48%)
2. Bloodthirst 53828 (16%)
3. Heroic Strike 52698 (16%)
4. Execute 38121 (12%)
5. Deep Wound 13432 (4%)
6. Whirlwind 8531 (3%)
7. Victory Rush 2326 (1%)

so to start with, impale only applies to special attack crits.

i didn't export the crit rates for specific attacks, but lets say 35%

so, of your 327,431 damage, what all did impale provide:

it makes your special crits do 210% damage instead of 200 (20% more bonus damage = 210% of what a hit would be)

so, impale accounts for a total of 5% of your crit damage on yellow attacks.

so if a hs hit is 1000, and you do 100 total HSs, you'd get 65 * 1000 + 35 * 1000 * 2 w/o impale and add in 35*1000*.1

so, 135000 damage w/o impale and an extra 3500 with impale.

so, impale makes up 3500/(13500+3500) = 2.5% of your yellow damage if you have 35% crit.

impale made up 3829 of your total damage in that fight
so, 3829/(327431-3829) = 1.2% damage boost for 2 points

deep wounds: on the fight, not too bad, but that's probably the best fight for deep wounds of any fight because you do a lot of running in and out so the bleeds can actually tick. deep wounds upped your damage by 4.2%

so, deep wounds and impale put together are only a 5.4% damage boost. It's less in a fight where you're staying on the target the whole time. like deep wounds is right around 1% in most fights.

tonight, wenesday

genicologue — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:52:58 GMT

ill be on ms or prot whatever is needed, last night the the power went off at my home and it just came back at 2:30 this afternoon.

ill be on for the raid, hoping for a spot..

the "real" geni lol

warriors officially obsolete

lee — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:16:31 GMT

[url]http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v299/Mapster007/?action=view¤t=zomg.jpg[/url]

pve warrior dps

lee — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:49:25 GMT

so, i played royce all saturday and sunday for kara and have done a lot of thinking and have some thoughts / questions.

warrior threat is retarded. It's almost as bad as hunter threat, though once in a while a hunter can actually FD. The only limit on my dps in every fight was threat. Even using a 2her, commanding shout instead of battle (only warrior and eric was tanking), keeping up demo shout and thunder clap the whole time, i had to hold back the entire fight to stay safely under eric's threat. This was also with no shaman, no lotp, no buffs at all other than motw, kings, might and an agi pot, so way less buffed than in a raid where a warrior would have an RA flask, lotp, battle shout, and sometimes a shaman. (to clarify i had a shaman but he was keeping up wrath of air and stonesomething or another for eric, not SoE or Wf for me and wasn't enhancement). I basically sat right at 90% threat the entire fight because i know going even 1% over will get eric enfeebled and didn't want to risk getting too close. With the way prince resists, i was spending a decent amount of time in battle stance to keep thunderclap up even.

Then at 30% when he stops raping eric and starts doing damage to other people instead, but no more enfeebles so i can get up to 110 without consequence, i unleashed and was almost cought up to eric in threat even before we got to 20%, hit the duel wield key, popped death wish then reck a bit later and laughed as i then had to hold back even a bit to keep from passing eric before prince died. I went from a little ahead of people to soaring past them in that last 30%.

so, couple questions:
1. [url]https://www.thottbot.com/i25897[/url] +healing / -2% threat: that work on damage?
2. why is using a slow mh good at all? Like, whirlwind is not very much damage at all and if you do 10 heroic strikes in 1 minute with a 90 dps 1her with a 1.6 speed, that's the same amount of damage as 10 heroic strikes in 1 minute with a 2.6 speed. Actually its the same damage, but because more of your mh attacks are white you get more rage from it. Like what percent of your damage is actually from ww on a boss fight?
3. Even if i'm missing something and there really is a good reason to have a slow mh, how is ww ever better on a single target than slam is, assuming you're just standing there and all.
slam is weapon damage + 140. ww is just weapon damage and for 10 more rage. Unless you just don't have the ability to time putting a slam between auto attacks w/o screwing up your auto attack (something that every single hunter has to do) how is even an unimproved slam ever worse than a ww?
4. is slam on the gcd, ie, can you slam faster than once every 1.5 even if it's improved?

here's the list u wanted me to write for kara loot

genicologue — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:10:21 GMT

moroes = trinket / belt
shade = ring
curator = legs / glove(t4)
prince = helm(t4)
terestian = cloak
nightbane = chest / sheild
the crone = helm
netherspite = shoulder
chest event = king defender

some dps gear if possible

need help whit an enchant!!plz

genicologue — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:05:59 GMT

i just got sun eater id like to no whats the better enchant i could put on it...
any clue

tnx geni

Add-ons

Giant — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:44:05 GMT

Just curious about which add ons you guys were using, personally I don't use any, but I was thinking of getting a few just because blizzard UI is kind of boring
Bongos and Bartender don't look bad

brewtank gear

lee — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:57:07 GMT

ok, looking for a 2 step gearing setup for brewtank.
head: tanktronic goggles
neck: cen revered neck
shoulders: Warchief's Mantle [url]http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29316[/url]
back: Cloak of the Valiant Defender [url]http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29777[/url]
chest: Breastplate of the Warbringer [url]http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25819[/url]
bracers: green fortress
gloves: felsteel
belt: arc key quest reward
pants: KoT pants
boots: red havoc
ring: boe epic one
ring: Protector's Mark of the Redemption [url]http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31078[/url]
trinket: Dabiri's Enigma [url]http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30300[/url]
trinket: rocket launcher
mh: fireguard
shield: quest from SMV
ranged: eng gun

tank step 2
head: tanktronic goggles
neck: choker of disc
shoulders: tier 4
back: illhoof cape
chest: tier 4
bracers: courage
gloves: tier 4
belt: moroes
pants: tier 4
boots: red havoc
ring: boe epic one
ring: kara rep ring
trinket: moroes / hydross
trinket: rocket launcher
mh: blazeguard / kings defender
shield: inpenetrable darkness / heroic badges / gruul
ranged: eng gun

ability rotation

lee — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:04:36 GMT

so, what is your general ability leadoff when you're tanking, well, assuming a single target.

a: lots of rage
b: not a lot of rage

i've been doing
a: shield slam with my blood rage rage, shieldblock, HS, revenge, HS, demo, hs, tclap, hs, shield block, revenge, hs, slam, hs, sunder, hs sunder, hs, block, revenge, hs, slam
b: um, don't really have this worked out well, obviously "not a lot" is sorta vague. like, i sheild block revenge every 5, slam every 6, and i don't demo or tclap till i'm good and set because if i'm short on rage, probably not in too much danger, but it seems like i have too much rage soemtimes, then like, add in 1 HS and all of a sudden i don't have any. Do you try and keep a certain amount of rage as a reserve, or just go all out?

Tanking boots pattern from SSC

lee — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 12:11:49 GMT

is anyone interested in picking this up? it'd be like 50 points or so. they seem marginally better than battlescar, more shield blocking, less total avoidance, less threat, more defense. Mostly a sidegrade. If no one wants them i'll see if someone that doesn't have battle scar wants them.

stam > ap/crit ???

nibbs — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 16:12:28 GMT

so a second thing i was wondering, for 5v5 whats a good amount of stam buffed with commanding shout?? im sitting at just over 14k right now and to me that seems like enough, it will go up when i get different gear like pvp rings/neck but im really not sure if i should get around 15k? im not even target all that much so im thinking i dont need to but i just wanted other peoples opinion

axe, sword or hammer?

nibbs — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 16:09:12 GMT

so right now i have no idea what i should go into, axe is nice but the 5 crit isnt all that great at a certain point, sword is really nice cause the extra attack but its not procced on other targets when i whirlwind and cleave and such and for hammer imo its great for pvp cause its slow and stuns but i do lose some damage cause i dont get extra crit or sword swing. but keep in mind this is only for pvp

Red Havoc Boots vs. Battlescar

lee — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 09:22:45 GMT

Battlescar Boots
997 Armor
+18 Strength
+28 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +3 Parry Rating
Equip: Increases defense rating by +23 (9.7)
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 21 (0.9%).
assuming dual 12 sta gems: 52 sta

Red Havoc Boots
1105 Armor
+49 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by +32 (13.5)
Equip: Increases your shield block rating by 25 (3.2%).
Equip: Increases the block value of your shield by 30.

+108 armor
-18 str
-3 sta
+9 defense rating (like 4 defense)
-21 parry rating
+25 block rating
+30 block value

so
+106 ac
-18 str
-3 sta
+.16% chance to dodge
+.16 chance to parry
+.16 chance to be missed
+.16 chance to block
-.9 chance to parry
+3% chance to block
+30 block value

so, .42 less total avoidance hits, but almost 3% closer to pushing crushing blows off the table. The armor more than makes up for the loss of sta.

avoidance vs hp vs mitigation

lee — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:51:12 GMT

so, yeah, that. obviously (well, not really obviously, but mathmatically) mitigation is usually better than sta in every case other than magic damage. You can either do the math yourself, or trust me, but assuming physical damage, increasing your armor is better than sta. The whole diminishing returns on armor is a 3rd grade mathematical misconception. Yes, mitigation diminishes, but that doesn't mean the benefits, in this case, living, diminish. Obviously as a raid healer for a couple years that's also tanked a lot, i have pretty decent perspective on this one.

What kills tanks 95% of the time, (other than healers dying), is not over all damage coming in, its not even single big attacks, its not lack of healing over all, its:

heal
heal
heal all at about the same time, tops the tank off
white attack (blocked, so only partial)
yellow attack (blocked, so only partial)
attack (shield block is over) all happened to not be avoided during those healers all casting their next heal and totaling more HP than the tank has. Often, because its the third consecutive landing attack, shield block's charges were used, and its a crushing blow.
--------- tank dies before next heal lands.

so, what can be done to not have this happen. the issue here is not the overall damage the tank took, its that he didn't live through the duration of of a 2.5 second holy light cast or 3 second GH cast. so the whole issue is not really that he wasn't receiving enough healing over all, and the tank needs to stop going "zomg no heals?" he just needs to extend his no healing lifespan by 1/2 a second or so. but how. oh, and from here on 0HLE is 0 healing life expectancy, aka the amount of time you can survive between heals.

1. avoidance. avoidance does 3 things. 1 it decreases the odds of a string of attacks that all actually land. second, avoidance just reduces the amount of over all healing needed, though the mechanics behind that not just meaning overhealing are a bit loose. The smaller and faster the attacks, the better avoidance becomes because it makes avoidance a smooth damage reduction, allowing for highly effecient healing. lastly, avoidance, primarily against hard attacks decreases the odds of having 3 attacks actually land in that 5 seconds before you renew shield block. Each attack that is parried or dodged does not consume a charge on shield block, meaning the tank is 100% safe from crushing white attacks, but if those first two hits land, are blocked, the third or even 4th can be crushing. so point for point, avoidance is the best way to avoid the situation above from happening very often, but unless you're just lucky, its only a matter of time before the heals will get aligned like that and you won't dance around those swings and you're dead.

2. HP. this one is strait forward, the more HP you have, linearly, the longer you can live before that next heal lands. the downside of it, is stacking sta as opposed to taking less damage, means you need more healing. granted it allows for more efficient healing, but if you look at over healing numbers in meters, obviously different for different fights, but our guild's main raid healers have some fairly ridiculously low over healing numbers. I'll never forget one nef kill where the healers on my side of the room were like, me, sam (he was holy, true story), brian and eric i think, and over the course of stage 1, we had an average of like, 1.5% overhealing. That's insane, and is also only physically possible with healers that know each other very well. That literally means my hots and eric's FoLs just tapped the people perfectly up to full hp, and we trusted sam's GHs to come where they were needed and didn't race to undercut him with our faster heals (holy spec, not with the faster GH cast, because if it needed to be .5 seconds faster, that was my problem or eric's problem)

3. armor mitigation. this is the oft maligned "diminishing returns" armor. I think druids, being that they have only 1 form of avoidance, get the whole issue less clouded and its a lot easier to see the effects of armor. pasting from: Fortifications which stole it from somewhere else.

[quote]
1) I have 3000 armour and 5000 hitpoints. Against a level 60 opponent that deals 200 damage per second I will live for 38.64 seconds Now I will add 1000 armour, giving me 4000 armour. Against a level 60 opponent that deals 200 damage per second I will live for 43.18 seconds Adding 1000 armour increased my time to live by 4.54 seconds.

2) I have 6000 armour and 5000 hitpoints. Against a level 60 opponent that deals 200 damage per second I will live for 52.27 seconds Now I will add 1000 armour, giving me 7000 armour. Against a level 60 opponent that deals 200 damage per second I will live for 56.82 seconds Adding 1000 armour increased my time to live by 4.55 seconds.

3) I have 10000 armour and 5000 hitpoints. Against a level 60 opponent that deals 200 damage per second I will live for 70.45 seconds Now I will add 1000 armour, giving me 11000 armour. Against a level 60 opponent that deals 200 damage per second I will live for 75.00 seconds Adding 1000 armour increased my time to live by 4.55 seconds.
[/quote]
Obviously some old school numbers, but the math stays the same. So, if you can increase your 0HLE by 1% by getting 1% more hp. or by 1% via additional armor, the armor route gives you the same increase in 0HLE but requires less healing to return you to full hp.

4) things you can do. This is a big one, and some warriors actually do it proficiently and some don't. some probably do it well, and don't really understand what they do. Every time a tank dies, everyone's always "did you pop a pot, did you use your healthstone, did you last stand? and they reply, oh, i didn't have time, how was i supposed to know i would die. Well, i guess there are times when it was really completely off guard, but a lot of times, you should really see it coming.

This is something i've never really done, even while understanding that i needed to. Prior to this, frankly, it was enough that i could just stand in the right place, keep shield block up, pick up mobs when needed and generate decent threat; doing the extra things to make sure i lived was beyond the scope of hunter turned druid playing one of several warriors with the buttons moved each time and having not done it in a couple weeks. At this point, i'm pretty set on a lot of the warrioring things, need to generate a bit more threat, though i don't think there's anyway to speed up getting better at that other than playing. I just need to be able to hit the keys just right, without having to think too hard. that'll come. But my focus now, particularly after dying a few times last night where it was just a little too long between heals landing, is what i can do to extend my 0HLE.

this sorta comes in 2 varieties.
1, avoiding the dire situation. For instance, i started popping the +armor trinket if it was up right after the earthquake to try and mitigate enough damage to live till that next heal comes. I also decided that hp pots aren't really going to cut it here. I need something that keeps me up more reliably, not just every 2 minutes, so i went with all ironshield pots. Debating trying to figure out a 9 quake plan for popping something every time instead, not sure yet. gonna play with that a bit. gonna do some math on the value of various trinkets.
2, last second saves. this is hp pots, lgg, sorta shield wall if you catch it early, nightmare seeds, healthstones. There's a lot of "well i didn't have time, didn't know i was going to die with this one." Well, i can tell you healers know when you're going to die a lot of the time when their heal is 2 seconds from finishing and you just took 2 good size hits in a row, and all the information they have is available to you as well. also, the better healers will also watch shield block charges.
-casting monitor / SCT. most unitframes setups, specifically xperl allow a little monitor that shows you the cast bar of others in your raid. set it up to display healers. Sure you can't watch it all the time, but when you see the whole box fill up, and SCT shows you just got like 5 heals at the same time, start reaching for the health stone.
-shield block charges. you shield block, the first two attacks you get after that are blocked, not dodged or parried, reach for the healthstone and if you get within 1 hit of death, whatever the max attack he could do, hit it. you should really be able to keep track of your blocks.

5. druids. resto or DS-NS druids, despite the obvious liability of keeping them alive, are a huge deterrent against this sort of death. There simply isn't a delay where their heals aren't hitting, ever. in addition to being able to, with the proper gearing, output far more healing than any other class on a lot of fights, a druid flattens the surge and fall of the healing wave quite drastically. So, while outputting comparable healing to a paladin anyway, the presence of a single healy druid changes that 0HLE to like, 2k or more healing life expectancy. Unfortunately, 2 healy druids start walking all over each other in terms of actual healing output with their hots over and under cutting each other constantly.

warrior channel

lee — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:41:36 GMT

so, there anything left of a warrior channel? if not, i'd like to get one going again as i'm sure i'll have lots to ask about. pst me in game for details.

random things i learned

lee — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:46:51 GMT

-Even after Mag is "targetable" he has no agro until he actually picks a target (usually not you). Just watch the "target of target" - the second he targets that healer THEN you shield slam and misdirect. Anything done before he chooses a target is wasted.

-intervene little red riding hood every time, it's great. Gives them an extra second to get away.

-/cast [help] Intervene; [target=targettarget] Intervene;

-Intervene is totally useful. Its saved my life many time. When everybody's running out of the instance, I Intervene on whoever's in front.

this will probably be on going

Glad weapons nerfed, BS Buffed out the ass

Knil — Sun, 06 May 2007 02:02:58 GMT

Please help in my QQ fest on the [url=http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11572&sid=1]PTR forums[/url]. There are like 3 topics about it that I will try and keep bumped. Feedback - Gladiator Weapon's and two threads about Gladiator Greatsword.

Why the hell are arena weapons so much worse than BS, and not to mention the greatsword being the only one getting nerfed. If you think BS weapons deserve to be that much better, please die and keep your opinions to yourself and not on the board. JKJK, but not really.

updated engy goggles

peteracola — Fri, 04 May 2007 02:40:04 GMT

[img]http://xs115.xs.to/xs115/07185/WoWScrnShot_050307_232130.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.imagedump.com/pics/499408.jpg[/img]

jesus tittyfucking christ. these things are monsters now.