1. #1681
    Quote Originally Posted by Sammonoske View Post
    What sucks is that unless there is a second iteration of the artifact system in the expansion after Legion, all the classes are going to go through massive changes once again. If by chance Prot tanking is refined and ends up being enjoyable by the end of Legion, it's all going to be redone. For better or for worse, again.
    Yeah, there are definitely going to be growing pains with Artifacts both pre-launch, once Legion is live, and after Legion. Will be interesting to see how the whole thing is viewed after the fact.

  2. #1682
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Shadow the Edgehog View Post
    I'm not in beta, but I've been looking at everything so far. What does everyone think of the fastest way to get all three golden artifact traits? I don't remember someone mentioning it recently. I'm going to be doing this route, I'd rather have the extra rage and rage gen than going for the extra armor or stamina first.
    I haven't really given this too much thought but my initial feeling was to take this route (left) http://i.imgur.com/JCTYgcW.png.

    I value the revenge damage + flat armor WAY higher than SS crit during SB + flat max rage. At 100 rage you have a rage cap that allows you to do 2 SB's + 2 IP's which imo is more than enough early on with this rage generation.

    Then you have flat stam/last stand versus thunder clap dmg/flat IP increase, I would generally prefer clap/IP but I don't think this out-values the previous flat armor + revenge damage traits on the left side.

    Finally there is duration increase on demo + rage gen increase on demo vs unlimited SR and IP increase + 30 rage. (The 'important' ones)

    Demo will be 1.5m CD 12 second 20% reduction + 50% rage from SS/R during those 12 seconds.
    On the other side
    Spell reflect can reflect unlimited spells and generates 10 rage per spell relfected. How effective will this be in a raid environment? Using HFC as an example the amount of reflect-able spells during boss encounters is extremely limited. On top of that you get 0.85 procs per minute of ONE increased IP by 60% and 30 rage. You will get roughly 2 procs of this for every Demo shout you have available, which is why I think maxing left side first is better. Those are just my thoughts however...

  3. #1683
    Deleted
    They can just bake in all artefact traits as passives if they decide to discontinue the artefact feature. Then again it's not like they've ever carried the spec over from one x-pack to the next completely intact.

    Dragon Scales was previously brought up as a great golden trait compared to the lacklustre Might of the Vrykul. But because of the relatively low proc-frequency and randomness of the proc, how good is it in practice? Even in comparison to MotV? Do you keep track of the proc? Can you actually play with it in some way other than 'Oh nice a random fat IP'?


    And what's the final verdict now on cheesing a US starter account for posting on the official beta forum?

    Otherwise Mr. Drkreven can add me to the count of blasphemers who...

    1. Like the concept of Focused Rage and see no relevant disadvantage to HS. FR synergizes better with Shield Slam modifiers i.e. the whole prot spec.

    2. Are completely fine with the fundamentals of Legion rage generation because Shield Block is practically free and IP's absorb amount is directly balanced around how often you can pop it. Lower overall rage could potentially give us more meaningful absorbs.
    Rage generation on live is effortless and almost meaningless. Mitigation and the "skill" of using it is still limited by Shield Block charges and when you use them, not ever by having or not having enough rage for them. Extra rage is used on barriers, sure, but more in the spirit of 'yeah sure it is mitigation... I guess'. Because barriers are relatively small and actually disproportionally expensive in opportunity cost. Nobody ever gears for more rage, unless to max-deeps with Unyielding Strikes.
    Generating rage in Legion will mechanically be no more difficult than it is now, whether you feel like it's connected to your 3-button faceroll or not, but proper pooling and spending of rage can potentially be made more interesting. In addition, haste will not just be a trash stat and gearing for higher rage-gen can be an effective choice.
    Last edited by mmoc61098086ac; 2016-06-05 at 09:02 PM.

  4. #1684
    Quote Originally Posted by Ejs View Post
    I haven't really given this too much thought but my initial feeling was to take this route (left) http://i.imgur.com/JCTYgcW.png.

    I value the revenge damage + flat armor WAY higher than SS crit during SB + flat max rage. At 100 rage you have a rage cap that allows you to do 2 SB's + 2 IP's which imo is more than enough early on with this rage generation.

    Then you have flat stam/last stand versus thunder clap dmg/flat IP increase, I would generally prefer clap/IP but I don't think this out-values the previous flat armor + revenge damage traits on the left side.

    Finally there is duration increase on demo + rage gen increase on demo vs unlimited SR and IP increase + 30 rage. (The 'important' ones)

    Demo will be 1.5m CD 12 second 20% reduction + 50% rage from SS/R during those 12 seconds.
    On the other side
    Spell reflect can reflect unlimited spells and generates 10 rage per spell relfected. How effective will this be in a raid environment? Using HFC as an example the amount of reflect-able spells during boss encounters is extremely limited. On top of that you get 0.85 procs per minute of ONE increased IP by 60% and 30 rage. You will get roughly 2 procs of this for every Demo shout you have available, which is why I think maxing left side first is better. Those are just my thoughts however...
    I was going off the assumption that the raids weren't going to be available immediately (I remember reading something to that effect, that they'd be similar to WoD's raid openings), so I was basing my decision off of that. I felt like Reflective Plating would be decent enough for dungeons that I could make use of it heavily there, and after getting Dragon Scales, grab Wall of Steel, then head up towards the left for the other rage gen trait (skipping Scales of the Earth momentarily in the process).

    I think the rage gen might even out between Dragon Scales and MotV - assuming you get two SS/R off in those 12 seconds from MotV, that'd be ~2 Rage/R and ~7 Rage/SS (rounding down). That's ~20 Rage at minimum per Demo Shout, more if you get the CDs on Shield Slam or Revenge reset, constrasting to the 60 Rage + 2 increased IPs from Dragon Scales.

    I hear stats are really inflated compared to the beginning of other expansions, but I'm not sure. Crit and Haste will definitely have a good role to play in this, and if we have a lot/get lucky, they could make MotV significantly better.

    Like I said, not in beta currently so I'm not too certain on how AP gains are comparatively, and I'm aware that I could be wrong on any/all accounts given my lack of first-hand knowledge. Just tryin' to get some good discussions going, since I see not many have spoken about the artifact itself

    Quote Originally Posted by Salix View Post
    Dragon Scales was previously brought up as a great golden trait compared to the lacklustre Might of the Vrykul. But because of the relatively low proc-frequency and randomness of the proc, how good is it in practice? Even in comparison to MotV? Do you keep track of the proc? Can you actually play with it in some way other than 'Oh nice a random fat IP'?
    I think there's totally a way to keep track of it, either through an addon or a good Weakaura (and if there isn't someone will make one). When/if I get into Beta, I'd like to give a go at it.

    It might play out differently - you can't control when you get Dragon Scales, whilst you have the ability to do so with Demo Shout. I think these are both really good traits, I'm excited to use both.

  5. #1685
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Salix View Post
    They can just bake in all artefact traits as passives if they decide to discontinue the artefact feature. Then again it's not like they've ever carried the spec over from one x-pack to the next completely intact.

    Dragon Scales was previously brought up as a great golden trait compared to the lacklustre Might of the Vrykul. But because of the relatively low proc-frequency and randomness of the proc, how good is it in practice? Even in comparison to MotV? Do you keep track of the proc? Can you actually play with it in some way other than 'Oh nice a random fat IP'?


    And what's the final verdict now on cheesing a US starter account for posting on the official beta forum?

    Otherwise Mr. Drkreven can add me to the count of blasphemers who...

    1. Like the concept of Focused Rage and see no relevant disadvantage to HS. FR synergizes better with Shield Slam modifiers i.e. the whole prot spec.

    2. Are completely fine with the fundamentals of Legion rage generation because Shield Block is practically free and IP's absorb amount is directly balanced around how often you can pop it. Lower overall rage could potentially give us more meaningful absorbs.
    Rage generation on live is effortless and almost meaningless. Mitigation and the "skill" of using it is still limited by Shield Block charges and when you use them, not ever by having or not having enough rage for them. Extra rage is used on barriers, sure, but more in the spirit of 'yeah sure it is mitigation... I guess'. Because barriers are relatively small and actually disproportionally expensive in opportunity cost. Nobody ever gears for more rage, unless to max-deeps with Unyielding Strikes.
    Generating rage in Legion will mechanically be no more difficult than it is now, whether you feel like it's connected to your 3-button faceroll or not, but proper pooling and spending of rage can potentially be made more interesting. In addition, haste will not just be a trash stat and gearing for higher rage-gen can be an effective choice.
    I personally don't like how the proc works. It's less than once per minute, meaning that playing around it in any way is completely meaningless. It's so infrequent that I'll bet your average player isn't going to care/track the proc. Its just going to be a trait that they pick and forget.

    As for your opinion on rage generation, not even once do you mention rage dumping into dps. Have you actually tried tanking raid tests on the alpha? Because doing so made it awfully clear to me how unfinished this model is. On live when you are offtanking, you have the opportunity to dump rage into more dps, on the beta that simply is not an option. Even while tanking I felt limited to the amount of rage I could dump into dps. Shouldn't you be encouraged to make smart decisions about how you spend your rage? If we are starved too much the only option we have is to rage dump defensively which makes the spec not just boring, but brainless. Anyone that says tank dps doesn't matter on progression are delusional.
    My main issue with the generation system is that it doesn't encourage or award smart play whatsoever. Usually if there are low damage phases of a fight you use those windows to push for dps instead. However since the damage will be low, so will your rage generation and you will be limited by the game, not by skill. If you like the model, that's great and I am happy for you, but for someone like me its horribly designed for numerous reasons.

  6. #1686
    To be fair, while Dragon Scales currently procs off a Haste*RPPM on Blocking, it is likely to change to a flat % (according to Celestalon's reply to my post in the theorycrafting thread) once they get around to tuning.

    That changes the value a bit, I'd imagine.

  7. #1687
    Deleted
    Comes down to tuning. How much a FR does damage can and should be tied to how much it practically costs the tank in a dangerous environment. I don't see where the important 'decision' or gaming wiz is in spending rage on HS when off-tanking on live. You cap rage very quickly, you spend it on a half-barrier cost rage dump that does very minor damage (and you're never tempted to waste a Shield Block charge on it, oh my!). You stay conveniently just under cap, which you can close almost immediately.
    Mechanically you still have the opportunity to trade mitigation for damage in Legion, it just isn't as spammy. But because all rage is more 'difficult' to generate and you can save up a relatively larger/meaningful amount, you'd want to make sure that if (when and how much) you dump it on damage, you don't F yourself when you need to mitigate. Because now you seemingly can F yourself by going trigger-happy, which to me seems like an improvement in testing your gaming wiz.

    Whether your DPS is competitive isn't somehow fundamentally determined by the rage generation model itself or the supposed flaws therein, but by numbers tuning that takes into account if and when abilities can practically be used in the encounters.

    You know what you potentially could do with FR though? Decide how much extra damage you want in how short of a damage window.


    As for smart play and general "controllability" in regards to live rage generation. It's 3 rotational buttons with no conditional modifiers. If pressing them in a half-decent order of priority every GCD is skillful and smart to you, then 1. do you play the spec actively for longer than a week and 2. do you keybind your abilities?
    Rotational rage is a smaller fraction of your rage generated when tanking in Legion, but so what? Are you now not encouraged to do your rotation perfectly to generate all of the extra rage that you can generate? If someone is so upset by the background mathematics of that rage generation that they want to just lie down and stop pressing their buttons, then maybe they'll feel a little better if they remind themselves that the rotational abilities still also do damage

    Also, how much of your live "controllable" rage generation is determined by...

    Sword & Board - % proc + whack-a-mole
    Revenge reset - % avoidance proc + whack-a-mole, only when tanking
    Enrage (Devastate) - just a % proc
    Enrage (Crit Block) - just a % proc, only when tanking

    Charge - slightly different case, but how often do you use this on live to rotationally generate that dank 1/3 of a barrier? Very seldom if ever. So no decision to be made as to the cost on your mobility.


    While I'm on a ranting spree. I see the slogans "Not the Dark Ages of warrior rage generation again?!", "It didn't work then, it wont work now!" or something to that effect repeated a lot on the official forum. If anyone of them reads this, then plz PLZ!!1 actually refresh thine memory on the 'old' warrior. The two, not just rage generation, but whole class models aren't even remotely comparable. Some helpful questions:

    What was the actual rage gen formula back then? Did it scale? How?
    What were other means that a warrior could generate rage by?
    What did the warrior spend that rage on? How much on mitigation? What was the rest of it spent on?
    What abilities could the warrior use in moments when he didn't have rage?
    What was threat like back then? Good old family fun for both the warrior and his raid?
    Last edited by mmoc61098086ac; 2016-06-05 at 11:37 PM.

  8. #1688
    Quote Originally Posted by Agromat View Post
    Huh. Looks like they're applying Sid Meier's "Double it or halve it" rule to Neltharion's Fury. Maybe the idea is to see how it performs when warriors use it mostly as active mitigation, instead of as part of our DPS rotation? I don't know.
    I was sad to see this nerfed so badly. Was using it to kill large packs of mobs as prot, pretty much the only decent cooldown for leveling.
    This has changed my balance on which class I'll be leveling first in Legion, but we'll see.

  9. #1689
    The Undying Breccia's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Salix View Post
    Comes down to tuning. How much a FR does damage can and should be tied to how much it practically costs the tank in a dangerous environment. I don't see where the important 'decision' or gaming wiz is in spending rage on HS when off-tanking on live.
    Okay I tried writing a line by line response to this and just gave up. The sheer amount of nonsense, self-contradictory statements and misguided concept of superiority was astounding.
    1) You keep using things like "relatively more rage" as if Shield Barrier (which dosn't stack) and Ignore Pain (read last few pages) are somehow purely based on their 60 and 40 Rage cost alone, and nothing else.
    2) You're trying to defend Rage From Damage Taken by pointing out some of our existing Rage is not controllable either, as Revenge procs, Revenge Enrage, and Critical Blocks are not 100% controllable. But they are all improved by gear. You missed the single largest point about RFDT, which is that we have to fail at our job to get it, and it gets worse with gear, not better.
    2a) You also try to hand-wave it away with "so what? just do your rotation anyhow because they hit and do damage". As if we weren't going to do that, or were planning not to.
    3) I swear you said something like "right now, you can F yourself by spending all your Rage, because Rage is so easy to get" (wait, what?) then said FR was good for doing a lot of damage in a short time.
    4) You asked if we were Heroic Charging on live.
    5) You said the issue with DPS wasn't the model but the tuning. While technically this is true -- you could make Shield Slam do 50,000% AP damage for example and call it tuning -- the practicality is that it's not. Doing damage (and Heroic Strike is not a tiny, insignificant source of damage) is heavily based on the class mechanics, including RFDT and how much of it we lose when off-tanking.
    6) You asked if we keybound our abilities, and have played for more than a week.
    7) You tried to deflect our issues with RFDT, compared to its previous incarnation (which did not, in fact, work well) by asking about threat.

    And my favorite.

    8) "If someone is so upset by the background mathematics of that rage generation that they want to just lie down and stop pressing their buttons"

    You are either an unwelcome mix of arrogant/condescending while simultaneously missing every single point that's been made -- or you're trolling. I'm 100% sure the Beta testers who have taken their time and effort to explore the spec, explain it to us, and rationally explaining the problems with the spec don't deserve this garbage. And for the record, I'm 100% sure they've played more than a week.

  10. #1690
    Deleted
    1. What are you trying to point at? Resolve scaling? Dragon Scales? Never Surrender?
    I'm trying to point out that their absolute rage value costs aren't even directly comparable because the actual worth of 1 point of rage changes considerably in Legion. Their opportunity cost is relative to the max rage pool and how fast you can fill it. The worth of the IP absorb is determined by the incoming tank damage and healer throughput, both of which also supposedly change. From what I've seen so far, IP overall is a stronger and more flexible mitigation ability than Barrier has been in the best of cases (well, there was SoO...)

    2. I see the problem, but only insofar that more rage = more damage via FR which could incentivize MoP-style vengeance whoring gameplay. Could be it's something Blizz is okay with now? Warrior class fantasy? *shrug*
    That is all though. Gear increases our mitigation in various ways even if it does curb RFDT as we start overgearing the content. Otherwise what you're annoyed about sounds something like wanting to take more damage on WoD, so you'd have higher resolve, so you can mitigate more with higher Barriers. In principle you'd be correct, but not in practice. Converting RFDT into IP still puts you at a loss.
    They could indeed add more rage interaction to crit. Increasing rage from Revenge to 10 for example and have Shield Slam resets proc from Deva crits (if this is not the case already).

    3. Read again

    4. How much does that 20 rage matter to you on live? In principle it's a bonus +20, sure. Huge damage, much mitigation?

    5. I'd imagine you can muster up 30 rage at some points in the fight to use FR at all. If you hesitate whether or not you'll want to use it as soon as you hit 30/60/90/130 rage, well then that's good tuning/decision making IMHO. Doing a rough comparison with its relative rage cost, I'd say FR should do the (relative) damage equivalent of 2-3 Heroic Strikes. What they actually tune it as is up to Blizzard's balancing dartboard and due to its current interaction with RFDT, I'd guess that they'll shy away from that 2-3 HS equivalent. It is practically usable and so long as it's even a +1% damage increase, players will try to use it.

    Check how much damage HS currently constitutes; cleave/ST fights, marginal/dangerous boss damage. While I agree with Ejs that on progression every little bit can matter, I don't think HS throughput currently is proportionally that variable which separates the amazing prot warriors from casual altoholics.

    6. Do you play any classes/specs besides prot warrior?

    7. Not sure if this went over your head or you're not the target demographic of what I was trying to say.

    8. There were concerns that warriors are less encouraged to use their abilities compared to WoD.
    Last edited by mmoc61098086ac; 2016-06-06 at 01:57 PM.

  11. #1691
    Quote Originally Posted by Salix View Post
    1. What are you trying to point at? Resolve scaling? Dragon Scales? Never Surrender?
    I'm trying to point out that their absolute rage value costs aren't even directly comparable because the actual worth of 1 point of rage changes considerably in Legion. Their opportunity cost is relative to the max rage pool and how fast you can fill it. The worth of the IP absorb is determined by the incoming tank damage and healer throughput, both of which also supposedly change. From what I've seen so far, IP overall is a stronger and more flexible mitigation ability than Barrier has been in the best of cases (well, there was SoO...)

    2. I see the problem, but only insofar that more rage = more damage via FR which could incentivize MoP-style vengeance whoring gameplay. Could be it's something Blizz is okay with now? Warrior class fantasy? *shrug*
    That is all though. Gear increases our mitigation in various ways even if it does curb RFDT as we start overgearing the content. Otherwise what you're annoyed about sounds something like wanting to take more damage on WoD, so you'd have higher resolve, so you can mitigate more with higher Barriers. In principle you'd be correct, but not in practice. Converting RFDT into IP still puts you at a loss.
    They could indeed add more rage interaction to crit. Increasing rage from Revenge to 10 for example and have Shield Slam resets proc from Deva crits (if this is not the case already).

    3. Read again

    4. How much does that 20 rage matter to you on live? In principle it's a bonus +20, sure. Huge damage, much mitigation?

    5. I'd imagine you can muster up 30 rage at some points in the fight to use FR at all. If you hesitate whether or not you'll want to use it as soon as you hit 30/60/90/130 rage, well then that's good tuning/decision making IMHO. Doing a rough comparison with its relative rage cost, I'd say FR should do the (relative) damage equivalent of 2-3 Heroic Strikes. What they actually tune it as is up to Blizzard's balancing dartboard and due to its current interaction with RFDT, I'd guess that they'll shy away from that 2-3 HS equivalent. It is practically usable and so long as it's even a +1% damage increase, players will try to use it.

    Check how much damage HS currently constitutes; cleave/ST fights, marginal/dangerous boss damage. While I agree with Ejs that on progression every little bit can matter, I don't think HS throughput currently is proportionally that variable which separates the amazing prot warriors from casual altoholics.

    6. Do you play any classes/specs besides prot warrior?

    7. Not sure if this went over your head or you're not the target demographic of what I was trying to say.

    8. There were concerns that warriors are less encouraged to use their abilities compared to WoD.
    wut?

    /10char

  12. #1692
    Quote Originally Posted by Salix View Post
    As for smart play and general "controllability" in regards to live rage generation. It's 3 rotational buttons with no conditional modifiers. If pressing them in a half-decent order of priority every GCD is skillful and smart to you, then 1. do you play the spec actively for longer than a week and 2. do you keybind your abilities?
    Salix, I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but attacking Ejs' skill isn't appropriate or productive. It undermines what you're trying to say. He's obviously a skilled and experienced warrior tank. Here he is, ranked sixth for prot warrior survivability on Mythic Archimonde:

    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=10

    Asking Breccia if he plays anything other than Prot Warrior isn't helpful either.

    In general, ad hominem "you must be bad / a noob" insults make for a bad environment, and aren't informative or convincing. Plus, on this forum, they're usually wrong - I think most of us have been doing this for a while. We can disagree with someone all day long, and slam what they say, but we should make our points without attacking each others' credibility.

    Except Mindwork. To hell with that guy.
    Last edited by Agromat; 2016-06-06 at 08:06 PM. Reason: Softening condemnation a bit.

  13. #1693
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Agromat View Post
    Salix, I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but attacking Ejs' skill isn't appropriate or productive. It's cheap, and it undermines what you're trying to say. He's obviously a skilled and experienced warrior tank. Here he is, ranked sixth for prot warrior survivability on Mythic Archimonde:
    Kihras tank rankings are sort of questionable so I wouldn't really use that as an example of how good I am.

    Quote Originally Posted by Salix View Post
    As for smart play and general "controllability" in regards to live rage generation. It's 3 rotational buttons with no conditional modifiers. If pressing them in a half-decent order of priority every GCD is skillful and smart to you, then 1. do you play the spec actively for longer than a week and 2. do you keybind your abilities?
    I would generally consider a model where the player is in control of generating rage (no matter how much skill it requires) to be better than a model that in its core is designed to award bad play. If you have two prot warriors doing the same encounter, generating the same amount of rage from their base abilities, but one is using his mitigation more intelligently and averages out a higher % of damage mitigated he is going to find himself with a smaller amount of rage generated throughout the encounter. How does that make sense? Shouldn't the smart player be rewarded with opportunity to push for more dps than his less smart counterpart who is putting a bigger strain on the healers? Why should using your defensive abilities intelligently be punished by less resources?

    Quote Originally Posted by Salix View Post
    Also, how much of your live "controllable" rage generation is determined by...

    Sword & Board - % proc + whack-a-mole
    Revenge reset - % avoidance proc + whack-a-mole, only when tanking
    Enrage (Devastate) - just a % proc
    Enrage (Crit Block) - just a % proc, only when tanking

    Charge - slightly different case, but how often do you use this on live to rotationally generate that dank 1/3 of a barrier? Very seldom if ever. So no decision to be made as to the cost on your mobility.
    Honestly a god awful example. On live you have a strong core of rage generation. The procs you present are positively influenced by gear, and they work as extra value to the already strong foundation of rage generation. How is that compare-able to a model where:

    Using any DMG reduction ability results in a rage loss.
    Building almost any stat results in a rage loss of some sort. (Stam, Str, Armor, crit, mastery and vers)
    Not actively tanking isn't just a minor reduction in rage, but a huge handicap.
    The only defensive ability we can use that will not result in a rage loss is IP. How is that a good model?


    I honestly wouldn't mind the RFDT model if it rewarded intelligent play, gearing up and wasnt extremely punishing when not tanking.

    On a side note, the way you are talking down to people in this thread instead of having a reasonable discussion is making yourself out to look like an ass. Have you even tried playing Prot on beta? Cause it sure doesn't seem like it. Maybe if you had you'd understand the frustration of the way this model is counter intuitive.

  14. #1694
    The Patient Zasriel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ejs View Post
    I would generally consider a model where the player is in control of generating rage (no matter how much skill it requires) to be better than a model that in its core is designed to award bad play. If you have two prot warriors doing the same encounter, generating the same amount of rage from their base abilities, but one is using his mitigation more intelligently and averages out a higher % of damage mitigated he is going to find himself with a smaller amount of rage generated throughout the encounter. How does that make sense? Shouldn't the smart player be rewarded with opportunity to push for more dps than his less smart counterpart who is putting a bigger strain on the healers? Why should using your defensive abilities intelligently be punished by less resources?
    Oh.. my.. goodness. ALL OF THIS. I can't quote this enough. I know Beardy and others have tried to state this before, what with gearing being a punishment and all. But this. So much of this statement is so true. It's absurd that by DOING OUR JOB, we're punished for it.

    EDIT:

    Ejs, I posted your statement on the official beta forum, with my own bit added to it. I think we need to push this "punishment for proper play" until we get a resolution to this madness.
    Last edited by Zasriel; 2016-06-06 at 09:13 PM. Reason: Added at the end

  15. #1695
    Quote Originally Posted by Mordekae View Post
    Oh.. my.. goodness. ALL OF THIS. I can't quote this enough. I know Beardy and others have tried to state this before, what with gearing being a punishment and all. But this. So much of this statement is so true. It's absurd that by DOING OUR JOB, we're punished for it.

    EDIT:

    Ejs, I posted your statement on the official beta forum, with my own bit added to it. I think we need to push this "punishment for proper play" until we get a resolution to this madness.
    Yes, very well put. Thanks, Mordekae and Ejs.

    I strongly encourage anyone who has beta access and who has not posted on the feedback thread linked in Mordekae's post to do so. I'm not convinced they're listening, but it is our only official avenue for feedback, and if we were to be as vocal as DKs or Brewmasters I think we might have a tiny shot at some positive change. It's disheartening to see that we have less people posting feedback than Paladins or Druids: the strongest and most well designed tanks in the game (pally's boring rotation notwithstanding). We did outpace DKs, but I don't know what they even think anymore. They get nearly a full overhaul every few weeks.

  16. #1696
    There are a few topics that have been discussed over the last page that I wanted to chime in on. I HAVE OPINIONS!

    Legion gives less opportunity to dump rage into DPS
    My opinion is that the difference between a good tank and a bad tank shouldn't be DPS. I know some tanks like expressing skill by riding the line of surviving an encounter while spending all excess resources on DPS, but I don't. I want my skill to make me more invincible, and allow me to live through things that would kill lesser players. Blizzard stated that was their intention for Legion somewhere (I can't find the link), and I'm glad they did.

    Prot Warrior tanking skill in Legion
    I am not on beta, but there are aspects of the design that I think do encourage us to make smart decisions about using rage defensively. The low price of Shield Block means defensive play is mostly about saving for and timing IPs. Like, I can pool rage during periods of low damage (where I can rely on healing to keep me up), and spend it in response to spikes or high raid damage. Never Surrender is an expert-level talent that lets us intelligently use our IPs at low health to maximize their value. I feel like my I'll be able to use my skill to increase my survivability, which is my priority as a tank.

    I've been reading the DH tanking forum, and they don't really have a mechanic like NS that let's a player express their expertise. Their resources have a constant value, and they kind of just use them as they come in.

    Fixation on rage generated
    I don't really understand the fixation on rage generated. I haven't played beta, so I don't know, but I've been playing since vanilla, and I've always felt most rewarded by not dying. If tank A takes less damage and tank B takes more and gets more rage, I'd rather be tank A. I don't feel punished by getting less rage, since I'm not dying and I don't need rage to hold threat or do my DPS rotation. I'm looking forward to gearing up to get better mitigation.

    Of course, I don't find trying to generate extra DPS from HS / FR valuable, so that affects my feelings on this.
    Last edited by Agromat; 2016-06-06 at 11:04 PM.

  17. #1697
    Deleted
    Yeah, I noticed and I apologize for this coming across as an attack towards Ejs' skill at prot warrior. It was not meant as such. It was inappropriate sarcasm.

    I myself also actively play blood DK, prot paladin to a lesser degree and dabble in guardian druid. Out of these specs, prot warrior as a spec feels like the least rewarding of player skill just as is. As has always been to my memory. It's not as if the other specs are miles ahead and take years of practice to get half-decent at, but they do have more knobs to tweak (blood DK resource system and toolset, paladin toolset) and seem to give a higher return per player decision. I wouldn't say the prot warrior has a low and hard skill ceiling per se (e.g. "all prot warriors are knobs"), but very high diminishing returns.
    Compare the blood DK 3-layer resource system to the current rage system. Often times the rage system plays you, rather than the other way around. It doesn't change in Legion in regard to rage generation, but as I see it it does change in regard to rage spending. Which is quite something.

    I have not played prot in beta, no. I have tried to watch as much footage of it as I can find. There's not a lot. Yse's raid tests. Sloot currently leveling one. Random peeps on youtube doing normal dungeons. In this footage I sometimes hear commentary on how it "feels" that rage is low (Sloot generally disagrees tho). Compared to live it is, numerically and how fast you fill the bar. But I don't actually see it disabling the warrior's mitigation at all. Only curbing it to keep you from being literally invulnerable with infinite IPs. I do sometimes see mismanagement of rage where a warrior tries to do just that, stay invulnerable, by frontloading IPs at times when healer heals and block is enough, and not pooling rage for when IP is actually necessary for survival later. The potential here is for similar kinds of judgement calls you make when you currently use or throttle Shield Block. Feels change.

    Rage loss from mitigating damage wouldn't be a problem if all we spent rage on was further mitigation. A DK tester Tyvi made a good comparison between RFDT and Death Strike. It's a scaling mechanic to keep traditionally problematic self-heals (too weak at first, too strong later) providing sensible returns at all gear levels. That's one part, the other part I don't deny is class fantasy here, which is fine.
    As mentioned and shown by Agromat's IP data, converting RFDT to IP will never keep you health positive so it's always better to mitigate up-front, with better gear or what-have-you. Rotational rage is enough to provide you the baseline that you need for this up-front mitigation (but I guess not what you want, making higher haste/crit on better gear very desirable). In theory, anyway.
    Could be there's a 1 fight out of 10 where you want to quickly 'convert' health (which your healers then patch up) to rage that you then use a short while after. I'd like to see that mechanic (a strange chain-reaction of events more like) before I believe it and even then, if it's just 1 fight out of 10, it's an interesting niche 'strategy' for skilled warriors to make use of. in b4 can't cuz avoidance.

    I agree that things start to get fishy when Focused Rage enters the system. Now indeed in some cases a 'badly' played prot warrior might end up doing more damage. Will he survive at all though? How much did he screw over the healers/raid by doing this? This is a matter of communication in part. Could be you rotate cooldowns and externals on yourself to keep you juuust healable while gaining the most rage (for FR) you realistically could. This is also a way to use one's defensive cooldowns intelligently, if in a less obvious sense.

    Isn't all this the same you can do on live with HS now? Just spend every last rage you generate on it, at all times. I don't think I see this being done, despite the incentive, on bosses like idk Kromog, Blackhand, Tyrant. Is the source of the rage even relevant here? I do see this being done on Hellfire Council. Hmm...

    Regardless I wouldn't like if this style of play was so strong in clearing progression that it became the only proper way to play, on every boss. I also think there should be an indicator of some sort on the class itself that lets you know when you're not really balancing damage/mitigation anymore and just being unhealable and awful, short of straight dying. Again though, very similar concept to blood DK's Breath of Sindragosa gaming. They didn't use their Death Strike 'optimally' for survival, but so long as they did survive (via smart cooldown usage) the extra damage was worth it. Though not mandatory, as guilds could clear content without a B-DK.
    Last edited by mmoc61098086ac; 2016-06-07 at 01:43 AM.

  18. #1698
    Quote Originally Posted by Agromat View Post
    There are a few topics that have been discussed over the last page that I wanted to chime in on. I HAVE OPINIONS!

    Legion gives less opportunity to dump rage into DPS
    My opinion is that the difference between a good tank and a bad tank shouldn't be DPS. I know some tanks like expressing skill by riding the line of surviving an encounter while spending all excess resources on DPS, but I don't. I want my skill to make me more invincible, and allow me to live through things that would kill lesser players. Blizzard stated that was their intention for Legion somewhere (I can't find the link), and I'm glad they did.
    I don't understand why you think rage only is going to be used for dps? More rage = more mitigation (via Anger Management), and DPS is a byproduct of it.


    Quote Originally Posted by Agromat View Post
    Fixation on rage generated
    I don't really understand the fixation on rage generated. I haven't played beta, so I don't know, but I've been playing since vanilla, and I've always felt most rewarded by not dying. If tank A takes less damage and tank B takes more and gets more rage, I'd rather be tank A. I don't feel punished by getting less rage, since I'm not dying and I don't need rage to hold threat or do my DPS rotation. I'm looking forward to gearing up to get better mitigation.

    Of course, I don't find trying to generate extra DPS from HS / FR valuable, so that affects my feelings on this.
    And how do you expect to get better mitigation when you don't have the rage to mitigate? Any active portion of mitigation you can do cost rage (except major CD's). The only way you can get more mitigation is to spend rage and lower your mitigation CD's via Anger Management. Also I know your knot in beta but go watch some video's and see how fast these tanks are getting wrecked in dungeons. Now the idea I think for warriors is going to be, "Try to keep the boss eating IP's as much as possible not your HP". Since damage against IP also gives you rage you want to have the rage available as soon as IP drops so that you can pop another or pop a double IP. 10% of the bosses damage is still going to pass through IP and hit you directly. So you want to have as much rage available to you as possible so you can eat what ever you can with SB and IP.

    Anger Management - For every 10 rage you spend your Shield Wall, Battle Cry ( crit / = parry), and Last Stand CD is lowered by 1 second. It's basically the one talent we have the scales with rage. Those 3 are pretty much your biggest mitigation CD's. So I would think you would want as much rage as possible so you could mitigate more and more damage.
    Last edited by Valkaneer; 2016-06-07 at 01:51 AM.

  19. #1699
    Quote Originally Posted by Valkaneer View Post
    I don't understand why you think rage only is going to be used for dps? More rage = more mitigation (via Anger Management), and DPS is a byproduct of it.
    I don't. I was responding to the idea that having less rage is bad because it can't then be dumped into DPS. I am saying that dumping rage into DPS is not a priority for me and I'm glad it's not a major aspect of the design.

    Quote Originally Posted by Valkaneer View Post
    And how do you expect to get better mitigation when you don't have the rage to mitigate? Any active portion of mitigation you can do cost rage (except major CD's). The only way you can get more mitigation is to spend rage and lower your mitigation CD's via Anger Management. Also I know your knot in beta but go watch some video's and see how fast these tanks are getting wrecked in dungeons. Now the idea I think for warriors is going to be, "Try to keep the boss eating IP's as much as possible not your HP". Since damage against IP also gives you rage you want to have the rage available as soon as IP drops so that you can pop another or pop a double IP. 10% of the bosses damage is still going to pass through IP and hit you directly. So you want to have as much rage available to you as possible so you can eat what ever you can with SB and IP.

    Anger Management - For every 10 rage you spend your Shield Wall, Battle Cry ( crit / = parry), and Last Stand CD is lowered by 1 second. It's basically the one talent we have the scales with rage. Those 3 are pretty much your biggest mitigation CD's. So I would think you would want as much rage as possible so you could mitigate more and more damage.
    I'm responding to the idea that mitigating more damage and thus getting less rage is a punishment - I don't see it that way. Mitigation (whether from smart SB / Shield Wall / Demo Shout use or better gear) is its own reward. If I'm taking less damage, I'm surviving better, and don't need the rage I'd have gotten from taking the damage to defend myself. I went into more detail about my thinking on mitigation here.

    Also, Anger Management isn't as good as you think it is, since Battle Cry is not a defensive cooldown - it doesn't affect parry. Our Riposte ability grants us parry equal to our crit from gear, but only from our gear. That's why I'll be rolling Heavy Repercussions or Ravager, depending on how good 30% parry on demand is.

  20. #1700
    Quote Originally Posted by Agromat View Post
    Also, Anger Management isn't as good as you think it is, since Battle Cry is not a defensive cooldown - it doesn't affect parry. Our Riposte ability grants us parry equal to our crit from gear, but only from our gear. That's why I'll be rolling Heavy Repercussions or Ravager, depending on how good 30% parry on demand is.
    Anger Management combined with Vengeance and Ultimatum means a guaranteed 20 rage IP every 40-45 seconds or so. It will also scale with haste, which is our #1 stat, but I can't say exactly how much we'll get per point of haste. There are simply too many variables. On high damage fights you might see 30 second battle cries, which would actually be fairly strong. Not great in the grand scheme of things, but not worthless. It's the only talent in that line that gains us any rage. HR will be close to rage neutral - it won't allow 100% SB uptime, which means we'll still be wanting to cast SB on cooldown, and more SB uptime = less rage, so we'll likely lose any rage it saves us. Ravager = less rage and lots of AoE damage.

    So rage wise, we have a rage positive option, a rage neutral option (give or take), and a rage negative option.

    All said, they'll probably turn out fairly equal, but there are too many variables to math it out yet. We'll have to wait and see what happens when we can start getting some real world data.

    Quote Originally Posted by Agromat View Post
    I'm responding to the idea that mitigating more damage and thus getting less rage is a punishment - I don't see it that way. Mitigation (whether from smart SB / Shield Wall / Demo Shout use or better gear) is its own reward. If I'm taking less damage, I'm surviving better, and don't need the rage I'd have gotten from taking the damage to defend myself. I went into more detail about my thinking on mitigation here.
    If Prot Pallies got less charges of SotR, Brewmasters got less charges of IB and PB, Blood DKs got less runic power, and Guardians got less rage as they geared up, then this would be less of a concern. It would feel awful, but we would all be equal. This is not how it works. They get more mitigation as they gear up and they are able to use their AM more often. We get more mitigation as we gear up but are able to use our AM less often. That's the whole problem. I feel like I've said this a hundred different ways and people don't get it.

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