Protection legion Discussion

[Zasriel]

Beardyface's long post

I can agree with all of those points. Do you have access to the beta forums or is someone with access posting for you?

[Beardyface]

@Yse has been kind enough to post some things for me. I don't have beta access.

Part of that post was just to get everything in one spot for my own organization, but if it helps others with feedback, that's great too. Part of it was for a reply to FinalBoss' Prot Warrior video that just went up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ceIKQoAMX0

Unfortunately, while he seemed to understand some of the issues during the twitch testing, he either didn't talk about them or got them wrong in the video. His main fallacy was that health figured into calculating IP, which is an easy mistake to make unless you kept up with the theorycrafting thread, since the IP formula still mentions the health portion in datamining, or did until very recently.

If they post another feedback thread and Yse can't post for me, I may ask someone else to.

Thanks, though!

[Deleted]

I tanked my first instance on beta at the weekend. But imo I'm not sure.

This is my actionbar:
http://imgur.com/nj0mZeR

This are my macros

VER 3 0100000000000001 "charge" "INV_MISC_QUESTIONMARK"
/wirken Abfangen
/wirken Heldenhafter Wurf
END
VER 3 0100000000000003 "demo" "INV_MISC_QUESTIONMARK"
/wirken Demoralisierender Ruf
/wirken Steingestalt(Volksfähigkeit)
END
VER 3 0100000000000006 "dev" "INV_MISC_QUESTIONMARK"
#showtooltip Verwüsten
/wirken Verwüsten
/wirken Zähne zusammenbeißen(Aktive Mitigation)
END
VER 3 0100000000000002 "jump" "INV_MISC_QUESTIONMARK"
#show Heldenhafter Sprung
/wirken Heldenhafter Wurf
/wirken Heldenhafter Sprung
END
VER 3 0100000000000005 "rev" "INV_MISC_QUESTIONMARK"
#showtooltip Rache
/wirken Rache
/wirken Zähne zusammenbeißen(Aktive Mitigation)
END
VER 3 0100000000000004 "ss" "INV_MISC_QUESTIONMARK"
#showtooltip Schildschlag
/wirken Berserkerwut
/wirken Kampfschrei
/wirken Zauberreflexion
/wirken Schildblock(Aktive Mitigation)
/wirken Zähne zusammenbeißen(Aktive Mitigation)
/wirken Fokussierte Wut
/wirken Schildschlag
END
VER 3 0100000000000007 "taunt" "INV_MISC_QUESTIONMARK"
/wirken Spott
/wirken Heldenhafter Wurf
END

Talents:
http://legion.wowhead.com/talent-cal...rotection/MFxz

I really like the Vengeance talent. On top of that it makes IP macroable.

[Zasriel]

I haven't tanked a dungeon on beta yet, so can't fully commit to how I feel regarding prot warriors, but so far I am vast underwhelmed by their playstyle.

The leveling process (at least at the beta level - ilvl 690) is painfully slow and I loathe the Devastate spam (I'm OK with Devastate spam with Unyielding Strikes, because I know I get extra damage out of it through Heroic Strike) except for those few SS procs.. but the CD on SS is too slow at low ilvls, I can only hope it doesn't feel like that at 110 and higher ilvls.

And the look of our Artifact... it is such garbage compared to other classes, I just can't fathom what Blizzard was thinking...

To be honest, I haven't gotten to far in to the beta for those two reasons alone. The gameplay is just so slow, I really hope they open up Character Copy soon so I can see how it is with 740 ilvl and more Haste.

[Ashenia]

Long post

A post worth having in here and as always - pasted on WoW forums. Hope they will listen to some of it after 4 pages of constant "this *IS* an issue"...

[Valkaneer]

Suggestions to fix:

a. Revert IP to the formula: Ignore 90% of the next (Total Health * 20 / 100) (based on maximum health) you take from any sources.
b. Change the rage from damage taken formula to (50 * Damage Taken) / (60 * Stamina).
c. Change Toughness and Indomitable to health increases rather than stamina increases.

If the devs do this, they can call their work on rage from damage taken mostly done for the expansion. If they Ignore this, they should prepare to have to constantly re-tune rage and IP scaling a few times each tier.

Of course, the best solution is to change it back to the live model, but I don’t think that’s going to happen at this point.

I think they should / could change formula to take damage taken before mitigation is applied. That way Armor, mitigation CD's, and other things such as Absorbs won't screw us.

Also could give us a passive that increases the % of rage gained based on the amount of armor / mitigation we have.

IMO nothing is satisfactory unless the rage from damage model is fixed. Anything else is a band aid and I don't want to rely on a set bonus ever again to be viable, as some specs did in WoD. It's not like we can go and just run as another spec in raids, no one is going to bring a person to a raid that does not have their Artifact charged. So going off spec in raids is kinda out of the question for the foreseeable future.

[Khelon]

3. Focused Rage

Also isn’t fun. Not sure this needs a lot of explanation. If used rotationally it won’t stack 3 times before Shield Slam comes off of cooldown. It’s clunky to use.

Suggestion to fix: bring back Heroic Strike as it is on live.

Even if you think its clunky to use you will get used to it. The damage bonus you add to shield slam is EXACTLY the same as heroic strike would do on live, but the damage you gain is enhanced by talents or artifact traits, heroic strike alone would not get this benefit.

[Beardyface]

I think they should / could change formula to take damage taken before mitigation is applied. That way Armor, mitigation CD's, and other things such as Absorbs won't screw us.

Also could give us a passive that increases the % of rage gained based on the amount of armor / mitigation we have.

IMO nothing is satisfactory unless the rage from damage model is fixed. Anything else is a band aid and I don't want to rely on a set bonus ever again to be viable, as some specs did in WoD. It's not like we can go and just run as another spec in raids, no one is going to bring a person to a raid that does not have their Artifact charged. So going off spec in raids is kinda out of the question for the foreseeable future.

I agree totally, but I don't think they're going to do a complete overhaul at this point. The suggestions I'm making are ones they've already made and then reverted (the IP formula is the original one) or ones that would be very easy to implement.

Also note that absorbs don't reduce our rage generated, only dodge, parry, increase to max health, versatility and damage reduction. So basically everything but absorbs.

Also, as stated, the best option is just to revert it to the way it works on live, but that's unlikely to happen, as it would involve a total redesign of Ignore Pain.

As for pre-post mitigation, that's not really the issue. Sure, pre-mitigation would make rage income a lot more even, but the issue is they divided everything in the RPDT formula by MaxHealth, which re-introduces all the old RPDT problems from years and years ago. If they could figure out another stat to divide it by, one that didn't tie into so many of our talents/spells, and one that didn't hurt us as we geared up, this wouldn't be a huge issue. Unfortunately, the only static stats on hear are Strength and Stamina (and Intellect), so they don't have a lot of choices.

- - - Updated - - -

Even if you think its clunky to use you will get used to it. The damage bonus you add to shield slam is EXACTLY the same as heroic strike would do on live, but the damage you gain is enhanced by talents or artifact traits, heroic strike alone would not get this benefit.

Sure it would. Heroic Strike would benefit and interact with all current talents identically to Focused Rage. In fact, early in the alpha, that's exactly how it worked. There was no Focused Rage at all, only Heroic Strike.

Focused Rage is a PvP ability. And it's great in PvP, but PvE prot should have Heroic Strike and Focused Rage should be a talent in the Prot PvP tree. It's no fun having an ability that stacks 3 times that's impossible to stack to 3 during normal PvE gameplay. The only way to do it would be to delay Shield Slam, and that's bad, as it generates rage. You could theoretically do it while off-tanking, but unless you don't have to tank switch for a long time, you're going to want to have max rage pooled for SB /IP as soon as it's your turn to tank again.

[Khelon]

Sure it would. Heroic Strike would benefit and interact with all current talents identically to Focused Rage. In fact, early in the alpha, that's exactly how it worked. There was no Focused Rage at all, only Heroic Strike.

Focused Rage is a PvP ability. And it's great in PvP, but PvE prot should have Heroic Strike and Focused Rage should be a talent in the Prot PvP tree. It's no fun having an ability that stacks 3 times that's impossible to stack to 3 during normal PvE gameplay. The only way to do it would be to delay Shield Slam, and that's bad, as it generates rage. You could theoretically do it while off-tanking, but unless you don't have to tank switch for a long time, you're going to want to have max rage pooled for SB /IP as soon as it's your turn to tank again.

If you havent noticed by now, many specs obtained semi pvp talents or abilities that mostly look like pvp spells for us raiders. The only difference between heroic strike and focused rage, is that you gain the damage instantly and it doesnt suffer from potential overkill damage (which very often wont be an issue).

The decision to make focused rage baseline was probably to make room in the pvp talent tree and it really didnt change your rotation or how you play the spec on beta right now.

If this game was only for pve and nothing else, or separated pvp and pve skills totally I would understand why they should bring back heroic strike, but currently there isnt any real reason for it.

[Deleted]

Sure it would. Heroic Strike would benefit and interact with all current talents identically to Focused Rage. In fact, early in the alpha, that's exactly how it worked. There was no Focused Rage at all, only Heroic Strike.

Focused Rage is a PvP ability. And it's great in PvP, but PvE prot should have Heroic Strike and Focused Rage should be a talent in the Prot PvP tree. It's no fun having an ability that stacks 3 times that's impossible to stack to 3 during normal PvE gameplay. The only way to do it would be to delay Shield Slam, and that's bad, as it generates rage. You could theoretically do it while off-tanking, but unless you don't have to tank switch for a long time, you're going to want to have max rage pooled for SB /IP as soon as it's your turn to tank again.

shield slam gets a lot of damage multipliers that heroic strike wouldn't be able to benefit from though. think you can get to something like 80% shield slam damage increase during shield block in pvp. that at least is some nice synergy i can appreciate with the focussed rage idea.

[Deleted]

Echoing the opinions here that Focused Rage is essentially no different from Heroic Strike and objectively not much worse (better in PvP even). As for not being able to realistically stack it to three, not an issue insofar as the damage-per-rage is the same for a 1-stack and a 3-stack.
The problem that the ability is accentuating, as I understand, is that we don't get enough rage to actually use it (regardless if it was this model or old Heroic Strike) at times when it's not suicidal to use instead of IP.

Edit: Subjectively, I prefer the visual/fantasy of Focused Rage over Heroic Strike. The warrior that retains a guarded stance and makes focused and deliberate attacks at the right time. Rather than flailing around spastically for minor damage - animation spam.
If they were to revert to Heroic Strike, I'd prefer they went back even further and returned the on-next-autoattack HS. What a unique attack that would be.

[Valkaneer]

I agree totally, but I don't think they're going to do a complete overhaul at this point. The suggestions I'm making are ones they've already made and then reverted (the IP formula is the original one) or ones that would be very easy to implement.

Also note that absorbs don't reduce our rage generated, only dodge, parry, increase to max health, versatility and damage reduction. So basically everything but absorbs.

Also, as stated, the best option is just to revert it to the way it works on live, but that's unlikely to happen, as it would involve a total redesign of Ignore Pain.

As for pre-post mitigation, that's not really the issue. Sure, pre-mitigation would make rage income a lot more even, but the issue is they divided everything in the RPDT formula by MaxHealth, which re-introduces all the old RPDT problems from years and years ago. If they could figure out another stat to divide it by, one that didn't tie into so many of our talents/spells, and one that didn't hurt us as we geared up, this wouldn't be a huge issue. Unfortunately, the only static stats on hear are Strength and Stamina (and Intellect), so they don't have a lot of choices.

Why does it have to be health why can't it be armor or a calculated total mitigation?

[Beardyface]

If this game was only for pve and nothing else, or separated pvp and pve skills totally I would understand why they should bring back heroic strike, but currently there isnt any real reason for it.

shield slam gets a lot of damage multipliers that heroic strike wouldn't be able to benefit from though. think you can get to something like 80% shield slam damage increase during shield block in pvp. that at least is some nice synergy i can appreciate with the focussed rage idea.

When they first announced the new PvP tree, this is exactly what I thought would happen, and what I think should still happen. The PvE talents shouldn't carry over into PvP. It's why we had Second Wind in the Prot PvE for so long. Also, PvP button bloat is becoming a thing now for some classes.

Another potential fix would be to make Focused Rage stack twice and adjust the damage accordingly, but then it would be too strong in PvP. You see where this is going...

Focused Rage is an annoyance in PvE more than anything else. It won't make or break us as tanks. It's just an idea that had potential that got squandered by poor design choices.

Why does it have to be health why can't it be armor or a calculated total mitigation?

Armor doesn't scale linearly with strength, since it doesn't always appear on gear. Stamina always appears on gear coupled with strength outside of stamina trinkets, which, per one of the blue posts I linked, won't be desirable for Prot Warriors. Same problem with an amalgamation of stats - they need something fixed to work with or it's going to spiral out of control as we gear up.

[Zasriel]

This could be a dumb idea, but couldn't they just create an arbitrary number that they use? I.E. DT * .90 = Rage and then they can adjust that number accordingly? Why does it have relate to our stats in anyway? This way, they control the average amount of rage we get and it doesn't effect us as we gear up.

[Beardyface]

This could be a dumb idea, but couldn't they just create an arbitrary number that they use? I.E. DT * .90 = Rage and then they can adjust that number accordingly? Why does it have relate to our stats in anyway? This way, they control the average amount of rage we get and it doesn't effect us as we gear up.

They would have to manually adjust that number constantly. Like once a week constantly. Ideally you want something you don't have to tune. Plus, if it were just a flat number, it would affect people of different gear levels differently. So, say, you tweak the number to keep the guys in Mythic gear from having too much rage and suddenly the fresh ilvl 720 tanks would get almost no rage at all. Or potentially too much rage, depending on how you work the formula. You need to somehow tie it to something that increases steadily with the warrior.

My suggestions are simply band-aids to keep health gains (Last Stand, Indomitable, artifact perks and passives, shaman healing, and trinket procs) from hurting our rage gain. It's not the best solution by any means, but it's the easiest to implement.

There are probably solutions that would involve really complex formulas, but I don't think these guys are that advanced.

So there really is no great solution to RPDT. This is why they scrapped the idea in the first place. The best fix is to revert it to the way it is on live.

[Benzillah]

They would have to manually adjust that number constantly. Like once a week constantly. Ideally you want something you don't have to tune. Plus, if it were just a flat number, it would affect people of different gear levels differently. So, say, you tweak the number to keep the guys in Mythic gear from having too much rage and suddenly the fresh ilvl 720 tanks would get almost no rage at all. Or potentially too much rage, depending on how you work the formula. You need to somehow tie it to something that increases steadily with the warrior.

My suggestions are simply band-aids to keep health gains (Last Stand, Indomitable, artifact perks and passives, shaman healing, and trinket procs) from hurting our rage gain. It's not the best solution by any means, but it's the easiest to implement.

There are probably solutions that would involve really complex formulas, but I don't think these guys are that advanced.

So there really is no great solution to RPDT. This is why they scrapped the idea in the first place. The best fix is to revert it to the way it is on live.

I'm with you that the best way to handle Warrior rage income is the live method, but if they are to leave in RPDT, I don't see why it needs to scale based off of the damage amount. It could be balanced around damage events, so you would always see the same amount of rage per X period of time, but the rate at which you gain rage could fluctuate over that period.

As an example, let's say you can gain a maximum of 30 rage in 5 seconds. If you get hit once really hard, you would burst up to 20 rage, but then the remaining 10 would trickle in over the next few seconds. If you instead take several light hits, say once every second, you get 6 rage per damage event. They could add a red glow or something over your shield and an icon in your buff list to indicate how "angry" you are, ie how much rage you've consumed out of the current allotment. If any rage doesn't get passed to your rage bar out of your total, it would roll over into the next allotment. They would need to write an adaptive algorithm to make it feel smooth, but you would be guaranteed a certain amount of rage within a given period of time, just as you are on live, and it would still have the flavor they are going for.

[Beardyface]

I'm with you that the best way to handle Warrior rage income is the live method, but if they are to leave in RPDT, I don't see why it needs to scale based off of the damage amount. It could be balanced around damage events, so you would always see the same amount of rage per X period of time, but the rate at which you gain rage could fluctuate over that period.

As an example, let's say you can gain a maximum of 30 rage in 5 seconds. If you get hit once really hard, you would burst up to 20 rage, but then the remaining 10 would trickle in over the next few seconds. If you instead take several light hits, say once every second, you get 6 rage per damage event. They could add a red glow or something over your shield and an icon in your buff list to indicate how "angry" you are, ie how much rage you've consumed out of the current allotment. If any rage doesn't get passed to your rage bar out of your total, it would roll over into the next allotment. They would need to write an adaptive algorithm to make it feel smooth, but you would be guaranteed a certain amount of rage within a given period of time, just as you are on live, and it would still have the flavor they are going for.

Something like this could work, but sadly, all the design choices they've made point to them wanting you to only gain rage from the damage you take, which is why you still gain rage from the unblocked portions of block events, and from the undefended portion of defensives, and none from parry or dodge.

It's another case of class fantasy gone horribly, horribly wrong.

[Zasriel]

They would have to manually adjust that number constantly. Like once a week constantly. Ideally you want something you don't have to tune. Plus, if it were just a flat number, it would affect people of different gear levels differently. So, say, you tweak the number to keep the guys in Mythic gear from having too much rage and suddenly the fresh ilvl 720 tanks would get almost no rage at all. Or potentially too much rage, depending on how you work the formula. You need to somehow tie it to something that increases steadily with the warrior.

My suggestions are simply band-aids to keep health gains (Last Stand, Indomitable, artifact perks and passives, shaman healing, and trinket procs) from hurting our rage gain. It's not the best solution by any means, but it's the easiest to implement.

There are probably solutions that would involve really complex formulas, but I don't think these guys are that advanced.

So there really is no great solution to RPDT. This is why they scrapped the idea in the first place. The best fix is to revert it to the way it is on live.

Would they, though? If instead of DT (Damage Taken) and made it DD (Damage Dealt, AKA the unmitigated damage), then it would essentially be the same across the board for every Prot Warrior. Boss #1 in Raid #1 does the same damage to Prot Warrior A as it does to Prot Warrior B (of course, this would have scaling issues, as the bosses tend to hit harder later on in the expansion, so that's I guess where they'd have to come up with a formula to combat that).. and as you've indicated, I don't see Blizzard changing the overall method of rage gain. I wish they'd keep it as it is on Live, because the Live version really allows those who do the rotation properly to shine while those who don't struggle.. no better way to compare a good Prot War to a bad one than it is on live.

[l0nglive]

Something just came to my mind.

The reason for prot warrior not regenerating more rage as we gear is to disable double scaling for our AM ability Ignore Pain.

The more rage we have, the more IP we use (as usually expected rotation). But if memory serves, IP also scales with health. Hence, it would double-scale if we are allowed to regenerate more rage from actives attacks. Therefore, getting rage from being hit seems to be the solution. The better our gear are, the less rage we get; this "loss" would be compensated by rage gained from haste effect on cool-down recovery. Then our rage generation would be stable as we gear. In the end, our AM does scale, and it does so once, not making prot warr OP in the end raid tier.

[Beardyface]

Something just came to my mind.

The reason for prot warrior not regenerating more rage as we gear is to disable double scaling for our AM ability Ignore Pain.

The more rage we have, the more IP we use (as usually expected rotation). But if memory serves, IP also scales with health. Hence, it would double-scale if we are allowed to regenerate more rage from actives attacks. Therefore, getting rage from being hit seems to be the solution. The better our gear are, the less rage we get; this "loss" would be compensated by rage gained from haste effect on cool-down recovery. Then our rage generation would be stable as we gear. In the end, our AM does scale, and it does so once, not making prot warr OP in the end raid tier.

From my mega post on the previous page:

1. They removed the health part of the Ignore Pain calculation. Ignore Pain is simply (15 * Attack Power):

See blue description here:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...316?page=9#167

If it did scale with health, then it wouldn't be an issue, because as we gain less rage with more stamina, we would get bigger IPs to compensate.

From that same post:

Suggestions to fix:

a. Revert IP to the formula: Ignore 90% of the next (Total Health * 20 / 100) (based on maximum health) you take from any sources.
b. Change the rage from damage taken formula to (50 * Damage Taken) / (60 * Stamina).
c. Change Toughness and Indomitable to health increases rather than stamina increases.

If the devs do this, they can call their work on rage from damage taken mostly done for the expansion. If they Ignore this, they should prepare to have to constantly re-tune rage and IP scaling a few times each tier.

Again, the problem isn't that we won't scale across tiers: we will. Each tier brings a new ilvl of gear, with added STR and Mastery gains, and each tier will have bosses hitting harder. The problem is that we will not scale within tiers. As you're progressing on, say Emerald Nightmare, you're going to get weaker, both because more stamina = less rage and because the damage the boss does to you will not increase week to week. Sure, you'll get some bigger IPs from mastery gains, but you'll also Critically Block more, which means less rage.