Protection legion Discussion

[Carmion]

Fair enough.

But then again it is questionable, how comparable it really is. RFDT is the only source of rage that differs with whever you are actively tanking or not (enrage is only for the crit blocks). I do not mean to offend you, but I doubt that you can look at the basic rage income and the dump options and ignore big parts of both versions of addiotional rage sources and come to *any* conclusion of worth.

And just to make it sure: I am NOT defending RFDT, im am against it. From the depths of my soul I want to avoid ending there at any cost. I simply do not think that this is a working way of comparison.

[Agromat]

... Anyone who argues that a tank acts as nothing more than a meat-shield aiming to take minimal damage for their raid, I would like to personally award the title 'Basic Bitch'. In a raid environment, especially on progress, every tiny amount of dps matter. What in my world separates the 'manly mustache' warrior tanks from the basic bitches is the amount of dps that is able to be squeezed out by cleverly using mitigation to allow a bigger dump of rage into damage. The current beta model however offers a model that is the exact opposite of this mindset. I haven't checked the exact number but FR dmg wise feels pretty similar to HS. The rage cost is the same, but how does that make sense when we just established that the rage generation is slower than before, especially when off tanking, or taking low damage. Shouldn't FR have been lowered in rage cost similar to how the defensive abilities were, seeing how simply buffing the flat damage would cause an imbalance due to how crit and ultimatum works with free procs?

I finally found the Celestalon post I was remembering that talks about this. It was buried in a deep post on a thread from January:

On the topic of tank offense, we see lots of discussion about how tanks need to have ways to trade defense for offense, such as choosing to use resources on defensive abilities or offensive abilities, what choices they are for that, how effective they are, etc.

We actually completely disagree with that whole premise, because it leads to a lot of un-fun cascading effects. You may focus more on damage, and frustrate healers with needing more healing. You may focus on your assigned role of tanking, maximizing defense, while doing meager damage. While there are definitely upsides (it can certainly be fun trying to ride the line of not giving up too much defense, while maximizing offense), there is a better way.

Instead, we think that how skillfully you play your class should affect both your offense and defense. If you're trying hard to play your character well, you should be performing well at all of your jobs, and that includes both survival and damage dealing for tanks, not sacrificing one for the other. You shouldn't have to give up your mitigation in order to deal respectable damage. You shouldn't have to accept doing trivial damage if you want to really make sure you survive and minimize healer assistance. Both of those goals should be aligned, and you should be rewarded for playing well with great damage and survivability.

We won't be removing absolutely all damage/survivability tradeoffs, but the few that remain will be significantly toned down.

Now, whether each tank ends up doing comparable damage to each other, and how their damage compares to DPS specs' damage, depends on tuning and remains to be seen. But this definitely seems to explain why they're not making weaving Focused Rage into our rotation a significant increase to our DPS - they want us expressing skill in different ways. It probably explains why we got Battle Cry too - timing that skillfully with high damage abilities allows good tanks to increase their damage without impacting their survivability.

It was interesting to reread all of Celestalon's posts in that thread, knowing what we know now. For instance, they're trying to reduce active mitigation uptime from "70-100% on live to 40-60% in Legion." That seems to tie into what we're seeing in rage generation rates. If it's too low, we only use IP to soak spike damage attacks. If it's too high we just hit it on a rhythm or to avoid capping (the way Shield Barrier can feel on live). My impression is they're trying to hit a sweet spot where we can make some interesting decisions about tactically timing our IPs, like to fill in windows between things like Neltharion's Fury and Demo Shout, or to maximize the effect of Never Surrender.

[Kaljurei]

I've been out of touch with Prot Legion discussion, but is the problem of survivability being inversely proportional to ilvl increases still there?

[Agromat]

I've been out of touch with Prot Legion discussion, but is the problem of survivability being inversely proportional to ilvl increases still there?

No. Increasing ilvl causes rage generation within a tier of content to go down, but survivability to go up. I'll try to add some links here to stuff I wrote about it a little later.

Edit: Here are the two posts I was thinking of. Other people's responses to them follow:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...4#post40577534
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post40580398

But there's been a lot of conversation about it, and not everyone agrees with every aspect of my take on it (to put it lightly). I'd recommend reading the last 10 pages or so instead of us repeating the same things again.

[Kaljurei]

No. Increasing ilvl causes rage generation within a tier of content to go down, but survivability to go up. I'll try to add some links here to stuff I wrote about it a little later.

But there's been a lot of conversation about it, and not everyone agrees with every aspect of my take on it (to put it lightly). I'd recommend reading the last 10 pages or so instead of us repeating the same things again.

I didn't read every post, but I did read some of them and here's what I get from it.

Getting more gear leads to more health which leads to less rage per damage taken. However getting more gear leads to more stats such as vers, crit, mastery, ap, haste etc which leads to better mitigation. However, other tanks don't have this problem, and there's the reason for worry.

My question after all this is - does gear ilvl increases cause a disproportionate survivability loss because the negative effect from stamina gains outweighs the mitigation benefits from the increase of other stats? Sorry if this question has already been answered.

[Cylunaria]

Hey guess what, warriors do have % mitigation, it's called a shield, it blocks 30% base and 60% on critical block (our mastery)

My only concerns are IP scaling and the channeling from Neltharion's Fury. I really hope they get addressed.

Not sure how IP is going to scale going forward with gear, you gain AP from str, bonus armor, and mastery. Strength flasks are looking tasty boosting damage, parry, and IP per cast amount. We may also see a case where we are using str trinkets, remember the tectus trink?

Hey, you caught me in a good mood. Unfortunately I'm still not going to get too numbers intensive since my numbers are still changing every fucking patch cycle (and I've started to work a lot more on DH stuff anyways since I'm probably playing that). Thank you for reiterating points we had already said many times about flasks/trinkets/gear. Oh and since I assume you aren't in beta Bonus Armor is removed. Gone. Donezo.

We have shield block, ok. let's compare that to the other classes base mitigation. (30% block to POSSIBLY 60% only working on blockable attacks.)

Paladin: Shield of the Righteous = % DR (ALL DAMAGE) scaling HIGHER with mastery.
Death Knight: Bone Shield = 20% DR (ALL DAMAGE)
Demon Hunter: Demon Spikes = % DR (PHYSICAL DAMAGE like block but better!) scaling HIGHER with mastery.
Monk: Ironskin Brew = 40% increased stagger (PHYSICAL, half effect for magic) stagger clears more often with gear.

Now that we have done that, let's take a look at the comparison for our AMs that involve healing/shielding. Ignore Pain is a static value based on 1500% AP. Meaning as content changes difficulties our AM does not get any stronger only eaten quicker. However gearing would have a positive effect right? Except when you gear up you don't get to cast it as much. So Stronger shield, lower frequency.

Paladin: Light of the Protector = heal 25% missing HP +20% potency in consecration (% based means it improves the harder content hits you, nice!)
Death Knight: heal 20% damage taken in last 5 seconds (% based again! wow!)
Monk: Chi Spheres/Expel Harm = 750% AP heal (similar to warrior finally, BUT frequency of spheres does not decrease with gear. No cap either on the amount of healing it can do in a short period unlike IPs 2 stack cap, also not gated by resources in any way)

I saved Demon Hunter seperate because they have a ton of shit to manage. Soul Barrier if talented, Soul Cleaves base heal, and Soul Fragments.

Soul Fragments heal for 2125% AP per orb and are created via DH generators (Shear has no CD), Soul Cleave heals for 850% AP and costs 40 Pain, it also pulls in all loose soul fragments to heal you as well. Soul Barrier shields for 800% AP and costs 30 pain, it also gains another 200% AP increased amount for each Soul Fragment you consume during its duration, also pulling in all fragments on cast. Nothing here get's reduced about frequency as you gear up, because generators for DH vastly outway the pain from damage taken unlike warrior.

Warrior is the only class with a % AP based mitigation that has it completely gated by resource. Resource that you are not in complete control of, and diminishes with gear level. In other words, it scales like shit. Our % mitigation that you shove in our face is inferior to pretty much every other classes, and our healing mitigation is gated heavily AND weaker than a lot of our counterparts as difficulty scales up. Hey you'll be a god in those heroic dungeons though!

[Carmion]

DK Bone Shield is not a 20% DR anymore, but was changed to an absorb mechanic.

[Cylunaria]

DK Bone Shield is not a 20% DR anymore, but was changed to an absorb mechanic.

This was to not effect death strike, it still reduces damage by 20% just counted as absorb.

[Agromat]

My question after all this is - does gear ilvl increases cause a disproportionate survivability loss because the negative effect from stamina gains outweighs the mitigation benefits from the increase of other stats? Sorry if this question has already been answered.

I added links to my posts about this above. After all my analysis, I am confident in conclusively stating that increases in gear ilvl cause an overall increase in our survivability. Increased stamina often increases our survivability on its own, and the benefits from other stats strongly outweigh the negative effects of reduced rage from damage taken caused by increased stamina and mitigation.

[Kaljurei]

I added links to my posts about this above. After all my analysis, I am confident in conclusively stating that increases in gear ilvl cause an overall increase in our survivability. Increased stamina often increases our survivability on its own, and the benefits from other stats strongly outweigh the negative effects of reduced rage from damage taken caused by increased stamina and mitigation.

Great reply, thanks. What I'm concerned about otherwise is the *fun* aspect of Prot. Because of decreased rage generation there can be periods of downtime where we're not doing anything(I'm saying this because I loved MoP Prot) unless of course you count Devastate spamming as *fun*.

[Carmion]

This was to not effect death strike, it still reduces damage by 20% just counted as absorb.

O.o seems to be correct. What a strange mechanic...

[Cylunaria]

O.o seems to be correct. What a strange mechanic...

Isn't it? They made it that way so having bone shield up doesn't reduce your DS healing by 20%. Funny how that works. Can't do that with our RFDT and blocking though. That'd be nonsensical.

[The Madgod]

I posted a few questions of my own on the theorycraft thread asking how such a outdated and convaluted system as the rage from damage taken mechanic, and a ability that scales with attack power which will become more difficult as we gear up to keep active due to our rage mechanic is expected to work. I highly doubt a response, and more likely then not he will send one of his community managers to delete the post, but here is hoping he actually stands up, and answers a few very long unanswered questions. I am not getting my hopes up though. Far easier to ignore a question then to answer one... especially when you don't have a good answer.

I saw that post. You didn't post a question, you used it as a platform to complain.

If you want questions answered, don't pepper them with backhanded insults towards the devs. You would be surprised how far being a courteous individual will get you.

[Deleted]

While the rage generation feels slower, we are currently getting a lot more 'bang for our buck' from a defensive standpoint. However anyone who argues that a tank acts as nothing more than a meat-shield aiming to take minimal damage for their raid, I would like to personally award the title 'Basic Bitch'. In a raid environment, especially on progress, every tiny amount of dps matter. What in my world separates the 'manly mustache' warrior tanks from the basic bitches is the amount of dps that is able to be squeezed out by cleverly using mitigation to allow a bigger dump of rage into damage. The current beta model however offers a model that is the exact opposite of this mindset. I haven't checked the exact number but FR dmg wise feels pretty similar to HS. The rage cost is the same, but how does that make sense when we just established that the rage generation is slower than before, especially when off tanking, or taking low damage.

Yes, sort of. I think this is currently the strongest point against RFDT. A well played warrior should be rewarded with 'something'. Or at the very least not have the badly played warriors rewarded with something more. RFDT->IP isn't potentially that case because it has a badly played warrior still be just plain worse. Unless the mere extra-button-press action of more frequent (not stronger, not more impactful) IPs is a serious reward to someone and not just 'sake of the argument'.
With the interaction of Focused Rage and RFDT however, you do potentially have warriors who omit all defensive abilities doing more damage. At worst that's just unfair and at best it's a very convoluted dynamic.

In addition, execute and sudden death which added up to a huge amount of the prot warrior damage have been removed, but I don't really see where that gap of missing damage have been filled in.

Minor thing, but Execute leaving our toolset didn't just "take its damage with it". Your overall damage is balanced to be roughly equal to other tank specs and then that number is divided in whatever fashion between the abilities you still do have. There's no random gap like that.

I would also like to comment on how Intercept is a fucking great ability that should be used basically on cooldown to get that fat 20 rage. Ideally yes. In theory? Maybe. I really don't understand why the 20 rage on this ability isn't reduced and a bit of the rage is added to other abilities like SS/Revenge.

Don't you see the difference between Intercept and SS/Revenge? The optimal way to use SS/Revenge is to just use them. Any time is good, as often as possible, just mash whatever lights up! Warrior smash!
Using Intercept on cooldown can leave you deprived of mobility. It can put you out of position. It can get you unwanted stacks of tanking debuff or just get you killed. It might require additional re-targeting or moving your character. These are not actions and decisions that give experienced prot warriors sleepless nights, but they're additional decisions nontheless. Abilities like this should reward you more when used wisely.

The easiest solution to the rage problem would be that we generate less rage from taking damage. Maybe 1 rage per 3-4% max health, however in addition we are rewarded with rage for x% max health mitigated. Basically a model like this would award using shield block efficiently and using your bigger damage reduction cooldowns would reward you in a bigger worth of rage. This model would give us an increasing amount of rage the more gear we build (because gear allows us to mitigate more damage). On top of that whenever we haven't taken direct damage (when we are not actively tanking) for a given period of time, we could start generating a flat (but lower than actively tanking) amount of rage to help us push for dps and still have an important amount of rage available when required to tank again. Obviously this would need some tuning to prevent it from scaling out of hand, but at least it is a model that rewards good intelligent play. The 2%=1 rage (AFTER MITIGATION) model is so lazy in its design that my mind is actually having problems comprehending how a person on the blizzard dev team thought it was a good idea to implement it.

Your point that better tanks should be rewarded is a good one. One could say that being more survivable is already a reward, but that comes off a little cheap, especially in light of less survivable warriors being rewarded anyway with more damage. Something ought to be done with FR short of nerfing it into insignificance.
I think it's dangerous however to reward tanks that use their mitigation optimally with even more mitigation. This could have us swinging between the extremes of A) Inexperienced tanks just getting crushed and put off by the spec/role and B) Very good tanks closing in on self-sufficiency, which Blizz wants to do away with.

There are no 'easy' solutions other than homogenizing all tanks to the point where they're all literally Guardian druid. Even the RFDT model you think is lazy is in my very humble opinion actually pretty complex when you try taking into account everything it is affected by and everything that it affects, over more than just one logical step into some chaos theory infinity. It does not just generate rage by itself in a vacuum.
Then you further take into account that the spec needs to be balanced (balance not just meaning 'strong enough' but also 'not too strong') in every form and (difficulty)level of PvE/PvP content, within a tier and across tiers. It has to be fun and it has to be challenging. It has to be balanced against all other tank specs and eventually against all specs in the game. On top of that all the specs have to play and math differently from eachother for variety. Doing all this without flaw is quite the task, I would think.
During this discussion only Agromat has so far even attempted to get into this world and actually simulate the spec and math some stuff out on a spreadsheet. The rest of us (me included) are going with "We'll see! Just you wait! But I'm pretty sure I'm going to be right anyway." Sometimes with well-meaning but superficially presented number/mecanic tweaks, sometimes without.


For players who want the RFDT thing gone entirely, or even have some of the potential rage from that shifted over to rotational rage, do keep in mind that they're not going to just let you have your cake and eat it too.
IP then also has to be redesigned, which I'm personally fine with if someone suggests a better idea that also addresses all of the issues with WoW balancing - in actual detail. In some way it needs to take into account your damage taken meanwhile differing from the principally similar tools that the other tanks currently have. in b4 "no it don't!" Sure, bud. It also probably has to retain its absorb/heal identity instead of becoming "Shield Block vs Magic". Blizzards attempts at creating such mechanics (vengeance/resolve) have not scaled Shield Barrier very well (SoO vs all WoD tiers) and have previously given us even less control over smart Shield Barrier/IP use than RFDT. This is their latest attempt.

Wise man say: no class is by intent designed to do exactly what you want, how you want and when you want it. It is unfortunate when the chosen "class grievan... er, fantasy" doesn't meet everyone's desires.

PS: Blizzard loyalist white knight pride yo!


Update


Cylunaria, I'm not completely familiar with all other tanks, but I'd like to add some info about the ones I do know (somewhat).

Paladin: Shield of the Righteous = % DR (ALL DAMAGE) scaling HIGHER with mastery.

Lower uptime though. Something like baseline ~30% vs warrior ~45%. Cool ability, makes Shield Block look bad in a lot of cases historically and prolly onwards. Unless Blackhand returns in every tier.

Death Knight: Bone Shield = 20% DR (ALL DAMAGE)

20% POSSIBLY 28%, infinite uptime. Yeah this ability is some special brand of bullshit currently, on paper at least.

Demon Hunter: Demon Spikes = % DR (PHYSICAL DAMAGE like block but better!) scaling HIGHER with mastery.

...but better only on unblockable attacks? How high does it actually scale with obtainable mastery?

Now that we have done that, let's take a look at the comparison for our AMs that involve healing/shielding. Ignore Pain is a static value based on 1500% AP. Meaning as content changes difficulties our AM does not get any stronger only eaten quicker.

It being eaten quicker implies that we're taking more damage which would increase the frequency of use via RFDT rage, through IP absorbed damage.

However gearing would have a positive effect right? Except when you gear up you don't get to cast it as much. So Stronger shield, lower frequency.

Possibly correct! What I'd give to see if in Blizz's internal tests a gear-increasing warrior then gets no more survivable/sustaining whatsoever, all defenses considered.

Paladin: Light of the Protector = heal 25% missing HP +20% potency in consecration (% based means it improves the harder content hits you, nice!)

Um... a Never Surrender boosted IP is like... ~40% of a warrior's HP? At a theoretical 0-1% HP casted vs a 25%* LotP. LotP has a 15 sec cooldown slightly decreased by 'stuff' and doesn't get more frequent the harder the content hits you; no pooling, no preemptive mitigation option. Is the +20% consecration boost additive? This ability looks pretty un-nice.

Death Knight: heal 20% damage taken in last 5 seconds (% based again! wow!)

I mean, nerf these fuckers to the ground for reasons. But DS's strength scales with damage taken and stamina (but only if it heals the minimum value) while frequency increases with gear. So inverse of IP, but not necessarily better just by merit of being '%-based'. Its minimum value is 7% max-HP, less than half that of IP and preemptive use is very limited. Its overall healing is not reduced by Bone Shield's %DR the way that IP-through-RFDT is reduced by Shield Block's %DR! Wow!
DKs also have several passive leech effects which add up to a decent amount and scale with all damage stats.

Monk: Chi Spheres/Expel Harm = 750% AP heal (similar to warrior finally, BUT frequency of spheres does not decrease with gear. No cap either on the amount of healing it can do in a short period unlike IPs 2 stack cap, also not gated by resources in any way)

You don't just heal 750% AP as often as you press a button. What is this frequency actually? As much as I've payed attention, this frequency is very bad at high HP and obviously out of line at <35%. Being a heal, instead of absorb, it can't be used preemptively. This is why IP even has a 2-cap on its max value, so you can't charge up an infini-shield. IP's "healing" limiter is rage, which you can pool to 3 IPs. You can also pool the spheres though, indeed.

Soul Fragments heal for 2125% AP per orb and are created via DH generators (Shear has no CD), Soul Cleave heals for 850% AP and costs 40 Pain, it also pulls in all loose soul fragments to heal you as well. Soul Barrier shields for 800% AP and costs 30 pain, it also gains another 200% AP increased amount for each Soul Fragment you consume during its duration, also pulling in all fragments on cast. Nothing here get's reduced about frequency as you gear up, because generators for DH vastly outway the pain from damage taken unlike warrior.

This sounds like some funky OP shit. Mad heals all day every day. So if I go on the Vengeance DH beta thread, am I going to read columns of concerns about how they're going to conceal all this from Blizz and other tanks?


I don't know how warriors will measure up to other tanks yet since "final"-tuning raid tests haven't started and mythic dungeon data is scarce on the warriors, last I checked for logs. Don't just "forget" important details in these comparisons though. Not as if these comparisons are easy to make fairly with all info present and accurate. It still looks bleak even with my additions, but you know, just to be fair.
So while they're bringing back SoO Shield Barrier to bring us in line with DKs and DHs, they should also really think about Shield Block. It's not keeping up with all these spunky post-TBC tanks.

I do not white knight for demonstrably bad balancing by Blizzard regardless if the task is 'too complex for mere mortals'. If they can't handle it, then they shouldn't pile so much on their plates. That still doesn't make throwing random numbers that 'sound good' at them a better alternative tho, or making incomplete comparisons and implying that this is imbalanced design.

[Drkreven]

It may have seemed to be used as a platform as you stated it... to complain, but allow me to ask you a equally good question. When constructive, and useful feedback does not work despite months and months of people's attempts to get a response. What is left but to complain ? If they will not answer when the feedback is useful, meaningful, constructive, and agreed upon by the majority of the community we either go at them with a firm hand, or we set in our corner like children, and hope something changes. If you want something to change you do not set around and hope it does... you do all you can to make it happen. That is this difference between hoping and doing.

[Deleted]

I may have used it as a platform as you stated to complain, but allow me to ask you a equally good question. When constructive, and useful feedback does not work despite months and months of people's attempts to get a response. What is left but to complain ? If they will not answer when the feedback is useful, meaningful, constructive, and agreed upon by the majority of the community we either go at them with a firm hand, or we set in our corner like children, and hope something changes. If you want something to change you do not set around and hope it does... you do all you can to make it happen. That is this difference between hoping and doing.

This is still completely off topic. If you want an answer you ask a question. Period. Complaining won't net you anything and is something we should avoid entirely if we want to be taken seriously.

[Drkreven]

Yes and after I reconsidered my post I did go back and remove any area's of what seemed like a complaint... wether the damage was already done may make that fact irrelevant now, but let's see if I receive a answer when I ask them direct questions, and let there actions tell the tale. Go back and read the post a second time if you question me, but I stand behind my statement that when on this thread and many others we have rallied for meaningful corrections to major issues with the protection warrior, and we receive no response at all. I still ask you what else is left, but to hope for a change, or just smile and take it.

[Deleted]

I agree with your sentiment that we are being ignored (which we clearly are) but still a minimum of etiquette is required if you want something from someone. We still may not get an answer, but the difference if that before we wouldn't have gotten one.

Believe me i'm as frustrated as you are but the sheer lack of decency some people have displayed on this very thread make it hard to discuss between ourselves (reason i don't even participate tbh not that i would add much to the discussion) when there is good discussion to be had. If we can't even discuss matters here without jumping at each other's throat over an opinion how are we supposed to discuss with the devs and convey our issues with the spec ? As much as i agree with the feedback, the official thread is filled with angry people who couldn't even politely convey their opinion to save their lives if they had to and it kills me that those are the people who are supposed to represent the prot warrior community. At this point i'm not even mad at the devs for ignoring us, i know i would do the same in their stead.

[Drkreven]

I see your point and I just think people like myself get tired of giving feedback to feel they are being ignored even on the occasions where they are not. Myself included I have been guilty of this as you just saw, but when I allowed a calmer mind to prevail... I went back, and simply asked them questions. I admit that may have been too late at that point as the damage may have been done by then, but I did go back and direct my questions to specific area's where the protection warrior is currently suffering. I do hope they look at our constructive and meaningful feedback in a fair, and unbiased way as that is all we have left currently.

[Deleted]

Celestalon answered some questions on the thorycrafting thread 20 minutes ago. Oh well, seems like we won't get an answer again.