Protection legion Discussion

[Breccia]

It's a theorycrafting related question, and it won't get answered in the Prot Warrior thread.

I stand 100% behind my original statement. We deserve an answer about our own damn spec in our own damn thread.

However...we finally got something personally addressed to us, that attempts (in some small way) to address a major issue we've been bringing up forever. They proved they were listening in the most minor, trite way they possibly could. I'll take the most tarnished of silver linings over the silence we've had so far.

[Beardyface]

Yeah, they're going to have to do something with Vengeance. It used to be a fun little game of weaving in one FR between each IP to keep the overall rage cost down, but now that we can cast IP at 20 rage, there's no benefit to weaving in any FRs aside from the free one from Ultimatum.

[Zasriel]

Oh crap. A 10 rage Vengeance: Ignore Pain puts up an absorb for half of what a 20 rage non Vengeance: Ingore Pain does. With the Vengeance: Ignore Pain buff, the IP tooltip changes to 10-30 rage, but casting it with 40 rage uses up all 40 rage (you would expect it to leave you with 10), and puts up the same absorb as a 40 rage IP without the Vengeance: Ignore Pain buff. At 100 rage, it uses 50 rage and gives you the same as a 60 rage non Vengeance: Ignore Pain. Something weird is going on with Vengeance: Ignore Pain.

Would be a good question for the theorycrafting thread.

Added to the Prot Warrior thread:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...87?page=14#274

EDIT:

Also created a bug post, because to me, that reads more bug than intentional.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20745665179#1

[Deleted]

I stand 100% behind my original statement. We deserve an answer about our own damn spec in our own damn thread.

However...we finally got something personally addressed to us, that attempts (in some small way) to address a major issue we've been bringing up forever. They proved they were listening in the most minor, trite way they possibly could. I'll take the most tarnished of silver linings over the silence we've had so far.

it doesn't personally address anything, if you read the previous few posts in theorycraft, they mention they are getting around to fixing the last couple of thousand bugs. So that is all this is, a bugfix.

Just aggravates me that this probably has been on their to do list for months, and we have been sitting here getting pissed off for them not listening to us, when they could have just dropped a "we are aware, it's on the list".

[Agromat]

I did some testing of Ignore Pain on the PTR. This post from Salix is still correct:

• With Never Surrender the cap is x 6 base IP (100% HP) ... so x 3 fully boosted IP (0% HP). Never Surrender's boost affects how fast I fill it, but cap is static regardless of %HP.
• With Indomitable the cap is x 3 boosted IP.
• With neither the cap is x 3 base IP.

In all cases the cap shifts with mastery/AP procs.

One interesting new wrinkle is that the cap is a multiplier of your maximum size IP, the amount you get if you spend 60 rage on it. Your cap won't go down if you cast a 20 rage IP, or a 37 rage IP, or whatever. It all contributes to a shield that maxes out at 3 or 6 times your 60 rage IP.

The cap is still based on the size of your most recently cast IP, so it shifts with mastery and versatility modifiers, and presumably with Dragon Scales. So you can still have part of your shield drop off if you cast a modified IP and then a small un-modified version, but the larger cap means that's less likely to happen in practice.

The fact that the cap is twice as big when using Never Surrender is super weird to me, and something that feels like maybe a bug and maybe won't stay. If it does stay, it may be abusable on fights like Mannoroth where you have a long OTing stretch to build up a massive shield.

[malachute]

New build lowered rage from 40 to 20 and changed the attack power value:

Ignore Pain
Fight through the pain, ignoring 90% of the next up to [ 2,250% of Attack Power + 225% of Attack Power ] damage you take from any sources, based on Rage spent.

So, better or worse?

[Leih]

New build lowered rage from 40 to 20 and changed the attack power value:

Ignore Pain
Fight through the pain, ignoring 90% of the next up to [ 2,250% of Attack Power + 225% of Attack Power ] damage you take from any sources, based on Rage spent.

So, better or worse?

Tooltip from data mining is a bit inaccurate. It still works just the same as DH Soul Cleave now does... or like how Shield Barrier works in live.

It's 20-60 (I think?) rage, DR is based on amount of rage spent.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure I agree with pushing IP's max cost to 60 being more flexible, 20-40 yes. Max at 60 is doing the old Shield Barrier to our rage pool again. I can't choose to cast a lower IP if I have 60+ rage. If I want to cast lower rage IPs, then I have to give up rage pooling.

The reason I might not want to blast away almost half my rage at a huge barrier is because it might not get used up efficiently. IP's duration is now long enough for it to technically get used up in most cases, sure. But, say I get spiked -> I use a 60 IP -> part of it was enough to freeze my HP long enough for healers to get on top of it, part is now wasted to trickle damage that would get healed easily. I'd rather have saved some of the rage for IP later or even FR, than "livelording" some trivial damage. We already had the option to create huge IPs according to need - it stacks and can be cast in rapid succession.

TL;DR can't react to damage in increments, it's more all-or-nothing.

[Deleted]

So ... is the new cap
- 3 x IP absorb @ 60 rage w/o NS
- 6 x IP absorb @ 60 rage w NS

?

Seems a bit much ?

[Deleted]

Something that has irked me to no end:

How exactly does the Honor Level 22 Spell reflect work for prot? Do we get a second independent Spell reflect in addition to baseline spell reflect?

[Deleted]

I might have missed something, but I was refering to: http://legion.wowhead.com/spell=2168...tion#changelog @lawomous

[lawomous]

I might have missed something, but I was refering to: http://legion.wowhead.com/spell=2168...tion#changelog @lawomous

Sorry I was testing in Prot spec.

In Arms and Fury spec, "baseline" Spell Reflection is gone. This honor talent is a version of it (which I guess is only usable in instanced PVP, otherwise it's greyed out like all other Honor Talents) is a watered down version of the spell they took away.

[Deleted]

Sorry I was testing in Prot spec.

In Arms and Fury spec, "baseline" Spell Reflection is gone. This honor talent is a version of it (which I guess is only usable in instanced PVP, otherwise it's greyed out like all other Honor Talents) is a watered down version of the spell they took away.

Ah alright, I guess there's some issue with the PVP Talent calculator (since it shows both Spell reflect and Mass spell reflect) on MMOChamp. http://beta.wowdb.com/pvp-talent-calculator#gAH . What's in place for Prot? -- Scratch that, just figured out it was tenderizer on WoWHead Talent calc. Sorry for the confusion and inconvenience.

[Reapocalypse]

Something that has irked me to no end:

How exactly does the Honor Level 22 Spell reflect work for prot? Do we get a second independent Spell reflect in addition to baseline spell reflect?

Its a datamining error, its Tenderizer: Auto-Attacks on targets above 80% health generate 5 rage.

[Deleted]

Been playing a bit with Versatility and Inspiring presence.

It seems Versatility procs do work on their healing received, so the legendary ring has a bit of use left during normal/hc dungeon (unless they disable it), but also Versatility trinkets can turn the healing to somewhat usefull.

Even though it does not heal us, there is a way it can. Leech.
If a party member deals damage, 3% of it will show up as healing on our screen. But it seems that our leech % will heal us of that number.
Example: Member A deals 3000 Damage, We will see 90 Healing Done to Member A, and we will receive 10% Leech as healing for ourself: 9.

Now if this will be a reliable, or even a possible way since i do not know if leech will be available in legion, no idea.
But it was quite fun to find.

[Drkreven]

This Post will be in response to the statements people have made about how the talent Vengeance has been feeling strange or as if it is not working exactly as it should. I have noticed a few things since the new build went active yesterday, and from testing here is the results I have came up with which after running logs today I will try to confirm my theories.

1. As many of you will likely agree that while the change to the Ignore Pain formula certainly is a form of a positive change that it also feels odd in it's implementation and at seems to place us back into the old Shield Barrier feeling of properly gauging how much rage we spend on the ability and when we do so. I also have a theory about that, and I will be getting to that shortly. This could be said to be a good thing and a bad thing all at the same thing because it seems to allow us to determine the proper time to either immediately spend the rage or pool it up for a slightly large absorb which is part of intelligent, and precise game play. Whichever we decide the absorbs continue to stack to the caps which have been mentioned, and which after testing I confirmed yesterday as x3 without the Never Surrender talent in use, and x6 with the talent in use. So this being said it can certainly seen as a good thing. Now I come to the bad part of it. What I find to be bad about it is with those whom are more new to the protection warrior coming into Legion this new formula can be and certainly will be confusing to new players of the specialization and I can see them not quite understanding how it is meant to work or how to use Ignore Pain properly as the new formula certainly is complex. There are a few things I noticed about it and I will be posting them shortly.

2. Okay as for what I noticed about the Vengeance talent specifically it is as follows:
I will be attempting to confirm that which I theorize is the fact that the new formula may be working, or rather working too well, and what I mean by too well is this. I have found through yesterday's testing that the spell talent Vengeance, and the talent Ultimatum have a far more defined synergy certainly by the fact that through there actual interaction that they seem to be reducing the already mentioned 20 to 60 rage cost of Ignore Pain down to a lowered amount of 10 to 30 rage. Now this seems like at first glance it could be a good thing itself, but if the formula is still slightly or even a little bit bugged in its implementation it could be bad also. The reason I would say it is a form of a good thing is if the change is indeed reducing the cost of Ignore Pain down to 10 to 30 rage cost within the duration of Focused Rage when not free proc'ed, or otherwise... then it opens up a strong synergy between those two talents as it allows us to not only use Ignore Pain with a even more reduced cost, but it also allows us to use Focused Rage with a reduced cost as well which would, and has for me seemed created a situation where by possibly forgoing a slight amount of survivability by not pooling rage for stronger Ignore Pain's later that I can indeed seem to stack Focused Rage far easier then before, and it becomes far easier to stack Focused Rage to the 3 stack cap.

Now one of my theory's which could create a bad situation for new players is one which I have yet to confirm, and that is that they want our Ignore Pain absorbs to possibly be slightly weaker within the reduced rage cost granted by Focused Rage usage... as they themselves said Ignore Pain consumes more rage to the cap to increase the absorption affect. If the rage cost cap is modified by Focused Rage then that would reduce the absorb based on how much rage is being spent within the cost reduction granted by the two talents working together. I have yet to confirm this, and will be attempting to do so today if or when I am able, but as for right now it seems the reduced rage cost of Ignore Pain granted by Focused Rage has no effect on the absorption size of Ignore Pain, and this may either be intended or a bug, but I will leave that for my findings later on to confirm because as of yet I do not have the data to support that theory.

If this is there intended goal here then it goes back to what they said back when other expansions were first announced about wanting us to choose between either surviving better with talent choices, or choosing to push higher dps at the cost of some survivability. I have found using the two talents together that I am indeed able to through the two talents working together to be able to stack Focused Rage far more easily as a 10 to 30 Rage cost on Ignore Pain allows me to much more easily pool my rage by not only using the proc's from Ultimatum, but also through Ignore Pain usage to be able to use Focused Rage more often outside the proc... as it is far easier to pool, and spend 15 rage on a ability to increase damage then 30 per usage outside of the reduction proc's granted from Shield Slam, or taking the Vengeance talent. That being said with the talents synergy it would allow us to pool a total of 30 rage to increase the absorption of Ignore Pain... albeit with a reduced absorb due to the reduced cost if I am right, but also to only end up spending a total of 30 to 45 rage on Focused Rage total... given the correct aligning of the stars in our favor as it were with Shield Slam/Ultimatum proc's and what not. Now of course this is all still built upon by a rage system that still has it's painfully obvious flaws, but is also creates a small window of which maybe we can in some way effectively dps as a warrior tank when not actively tanking whichever boss we are currently fighting.

Well as this is becoming quite the rant I will end it here, but these are a few things I have noticed, and I will be running logs this week to confirm or deny these as either facts or simple speculation. If any of you are capable of doing so as well feel free to share your finding so that it can be used to either confirm or deny what I have theorized in this post.

[Sting]

I can't test anything without beta, but I'm a bit more hopeful after looking through the new set bonus.

Warrior T19 Protection 2P Bonus - You gain 20% increased chance to critically block while Shield Block is active.
Warrior T19 Protection 4P Bonus - Your critical blocks generate 5 Rage.

Would it be possible with enough haste to keep shield block up all the time, using Heavy Repercussions? That would actually be awesome and reminiscent of the old "unhittable" days.

[Beardyface]

I can't test anything without beta, but I'm a bit more hopeful after looking through the new set bonus.



Would it be possible with enough haste to keep shield block up all the time, using Heavy Repercussions? That would actually be awesome and reminiscent of the old "unhittable" days.

It's mathematically possible. Not likely in the 1st couple tiers of riding. You need 60% haste, I believe, plus Heavy Repercussions to become "unhittable." Though I doubt Blizz would like that, and would probably nerf something to prevent it. Personally, I'd actually prefer that we're not able to reach 100% Shield Block uptime - I'd rather the greater skillcap of knowing when it's best to have SB up.

[Deleted]

we can already get close to that in fact

Did some test while the normal was open and i could get close to 90% uptime on shield for nearly a minute.


Tested with nearly full haste stat priority, enchants (ring/neck), trinkets etc and into the fray talent and of course heavy repercussions.

With proper rotation & more or less luck you can extend the shield block by 3sec ( first SS with classic gcd and one reset with s&b proc ).

I was close to 12sec cooldown on shield block.


My stuff on beta is not really optimised its mostly blues from quests & heroic, and still 4 pieces without haste on it ( head, leg, boot & one ring ).


These are the stats from the wcl log :

"Strength: 22,233 Stamina: 34,642 Armor: 4,942 Parry: 4,844 Crit: 4,844 Haste: 5,564 Mastery: 6,358 Versatility: 736".

I'll do a better test with the mythic this tuesday.

[Vestig3]

So basicly our strat prio will be Haste>Mastery>Versatility=Crit?