Protection legion Discussion

[Sal the Shieldhog]

Well, S&B doesn't exist for PvE anymore. Devastate just has a flat 30% chance to reset SS's CD. S&B does still exist as a PvP talent, but that hardly effects us.

So no, S&B, as it was and as it exists now, does not effect us as PvE tanks.

[Voyle]

1) mashing Devestate is not wasted. It proccs SS with a 30% chance. Just like your Autohits with Devestator. The diffrence is, that even with ridiculous amounts of haste you cannot get your swingspeed from 2.6 anywhere near the 1.5 gcd of devestate. That means, to spell it out for you, you can squeeze more devestates (with 30% chance to reset) in between abilities with higher priority then you can do autoattacks in the same timeframe.
3) If you are saying, that you´d only use procced revenges, again, nothing changes wheather you´d take devestator or Indominable, since you´d do that anyway if you took vengeance. On the other side´, you´d be sitting on a lot of unfilled gcds, while all your spells are on cooldown. Revenge has a cooldown, you know.

1) You are not pressing devastate 100% of the time. Your priority is Shield Slam > Thunder Clap > Devastate (free GCD). Haste affects both the GCD and auto attacks the same, for simplicity we will assume 0% haste. Shield slam is pressed every 6 GCDs, no procs, thunderclap is pressed every 4 gcds. This leaves 7/12 of your GCDs free. If you take your 1.5 gcd / 7/12 you get one free GCD every 2.57seconds for whatever you want, devastate, procced shield slam, procced revenge. Every time you press revenge or shield slam you are effectively lowering your 7/12 number and increasing the value of devastator as it is not affected by the choice to use your procs.
3) If you are using procced revenges over devastate then you are lowering your chance to proc shield slam. Devastator allows you to gain all of the benefit of spamming devastate while still pressing all the good buttons that aren't devastate.

The talent has its costs, but it is certainly not worthless.

[Alaexaender]

1) You are not pressing devastate 100% of the time. Your priority is Shield Slam > Thunder Clap > Devastate (free GCD). Haste affects both the GCD and auto attacks the same, for simplicity we will assume 0% haste. Shield slam is pressed every 6 GCDs, no procs, thunderclap is pressed every 4 gcds. This leaves 7/12 of your GCDs free. If you take your 1.5 gcd / 7/12 you get one free GCD every 2.57seconds for whatever you want, devastate, procced shield slam, procced revenge. Every time you press revenge or shield slam you are effectively lowering your 7/12 number and increasing the value of devastator as it is not affected by the choice to use your procs.
3) If you are using procced revenges over devastate then you are lowering your chance to proc shield slam. Devastator allows you to gain all of the benefit of spamming devastate while still pressing all the good buttons that aren't devastate.

The talent has its costs, but it is certainly not worthless.

There's also the fact that some people play with high ping/lag (100ms or more is what I consider high), and the more lag you have the better the talent is. if you need to waste 100ms before each cast, it essentially gives you an additional .1 seconds on your GCD, regardless of haste. Autos don't have this lag.

[Valech]

Well, S&B doesn't exist for PvE anymore. Devastate just has a flat 30% chance to reset SS's CD. S&B does still exist as a PvP talent, but that hardly effects us.

So no, S&B, as it was and as it exists now, does not effect us as PvE tanks.

Thank god, I assumed devestate didn´t procc SS anymore -.-

- - - Updated - - -

There's also the fact that some people play with high ping/lag (100ms or more is what I consider high), and the more lag you have the better the talent is. if you need to waste 100ms before each cast, it essentially gives you an additional .1 seconds on your GCD, regardless of haste. Autos don't have this lag.

Didn´t think of that and tho I don´t find that to be a strong argument it still is viable.

[kiklion]

So, they finally gave some insight into their reasoning for the changes.

They wanted Revenge to have a more defined role in our rotation and figured that removing the enjoyment focused rage was required to define Revenge.

I mean, there is obviously a very small amount of design space left with our numerous abilities. It's not like they could have made revenge generate more rage per target hit, so that it jumps up a bit in priority when there are more adds around. Another completely impossible idea would be to give revenge charges, and let it consume all charges in order to do x damage and generate x rage, so that it serves as something we don't want to use on cooldown but is a cooldown to use before it caps out (and would increase the value of crit by increasing parry chance). Nope, they obviously had to cut focused rage.

[Valech]

1) You are not pressing devastate 100% of the time. Your priority is Shield Slam > Thunder Clap > Devastate (free GCD). Haste affects both the GCD and auto attacks the same, for simplicity we will assume 0% haste. Shield slam is pressed every 6 GCDs, no procs, thunderclap is pressed every 4 gcds. This leaves 7/12 of your GCDs free. If you take your 1.5 gcd / 7/12 you get one free GCD every 2.57seconds for whatever you want, devastate, procced shield slam, procced revenge. Every time you press revenge or shield slam you are effectively lowering your 7/12 number and increasing the value of devastator as it is not affected by the choice to use your procs.
3) If you are using procced revenges over devastate then you are lowering your chance to proc shield slam. Devastator allows you to gain all of the benefit of spamming devastate while still pressing all the good buttons that aren't devastate.

The talent has its costs, but it is certainly not worthless.

1) The only value of devestate and thunderclap in terms of survivability is, that they can procc SS. I don´t see how the use of a procced SS lowers the value of devestate (or increases the value of devestator), if said devestate enabled me to use that extra SS in the first place. Nontheless I like your mathematical approach. If you are somehow able to, perhaps you like to do some math with the whole picture: the additional 25% health and the 25% larger IPs on the one side and the 5 rage per swing on the other side.
3) You are correct, that the use of a procced revenge over devestate lowers my chance to procc shieldslam. However, revenge (with vengeance talent) nets me a guaranteed 19 rage gained at the next IP, whereas devestate only nets me a 30% chance to gain 20 rage.

I do not claim, that the talent is worthless. I claim, that it is weaker then the alternatives.

- - - Updated - - -

So, they finally gave some insight into their reasoning for the changes.

They wanted Revenge to have a more defined role in our rotation and figured that removing the enjoyment focused rage was required to define Revenge.

I mean, there is obviously a very small amount of design space left with our numerous abilities. It's not like they could have made revenge generate more rage per target hit, so that it jumps up a bit in priority when there are more adds around. Another completely impossible idea would be to give revenge charges, and let it consume all charges in order to do x damage and generate x rage, so that it serves as something we don't want to use on cooldown but is a cooldown to use before it caps out (and would increase the value of crit by increasing parry chance). Nope, they obviously had to cut focused rage.

If you don´t like it, why coat it in cynicism?

[kiklion]

Because I did everything right to select a spec for the whole expansion, trying different classes/specs during the prepatch in order to find one I like, spend 3 months working on understanding the class inside and out and then get a bit frustrated when they decide to change the core playstyle for a weak reason like this.

I was expecting some reason like an admittance that they couldn't balance FR, like they keep saying stagger is very powerful but people don't seem to think so. That might require a revamp. Not that this ability, which is used currently, doesn't have a defined enough role.



Regardless, it was a stupid post. I blame it on the holidays.

[Voyle]

1)I don´t see how the use of a procced SS lowers the value of devestate (or increases the value of devestator), if said devestate enabled me to use that extra SS in the first place.
3) You are correct, that the use of a procced revenge over devestate lowers my chance to procc shieldslam. However, revenge (with vengeance talent) nets me a guaranteed 19 rage gained at the next IP, whereas devestate only nets me a 30% chance to gain 20 rage.

Same example as above

• 2/12 Shield slam, 3/12 Thundeclap 7/12 Devastate - Devastate every 2.57 seconds or Devastator every 2.6 seconds

If you add in 1 procced revenge you get:

• 2/12 shield slam, 3/12 thunderclap, 1/12 revenge. 6/12 devastate - Devastate every 3.00 seconds or Devastator every 2.6 seconds

Add in another shield slam to the total and you get

• 3/12 shield slam, 3/12 thunderclap, 1/12 revenge, 5/12 devastate - Devastate every 3.60 seconds or Devastator every 2.6 seconds

These examples are on the low end, but this is why Devastate becomes worse the more procs you get, while Devastator remains the same value regardless of procs.

3) Same logic as above if you had the Devastator talent you would still gain the same 21 rage from revenge without missing out on your devastate.

Singletarget raid environment the only use of Devastator would be low rage (low damage intake) fights where you dont need the health. Not very realistic in the current raids.

AoE raid / 5 man mythic environment this becomes much more viable. You continue gaining all of the shield slam procs that you normally would get in single target while being able to take advantage of all revenge procs, as well as a slight amount more shield slam procs, and overall higher rage. This will lead to more consistently having an IP buff (likely overall smaller) and clearing the trash quicker (more useful in 5 mans where tank damage is very significant). In 5 mans especially the first 15-20 seconds of the pull is normally the easiest, with CDs and stuns and if mobs continuing living past that it becomes much more difficult to be standing in melee.

BTW, I heard that thunderclap does double damage of what it used to, but by the blue post today it sounded like revenge was also supposed to receive a damage buff? Does anyone know the ballpark of how much of an increase?

[deadmanfred]

These examples are on the low end, but this is why Devastate becomes worse the more procs you get, while Devastator remains the same value regardless of procs.

Did some initial theorycraft in using logs and came to the conclusion that for short fights indomitable will always stay on top, but longer fights Devastator starts to pull ahead.

Another point I want to bring up is level of play. Looking at some higher dps ranking very very rarely does a player manage to squeeze out more devastates then auto attacks. I.e. devastaor on paper gets you the same SS resets but in actaul play +latency you get more from devestator. So if your an average player or below average I see Devastator being very good.

Rank #1 M Odyn https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=6
255 AAs to 241 Devastates.

The #1 M Guarm rank ,jinzelqt, has more devastates then melee by about 20 but he's also using the legendary gloves, still don't see that putting him that far ahead being that the #2 warrior on Guarm has less devastates then AAs.

Mostly just some things I've noticed, food for thought. I hate anyone posting numbers without logs or simcraft to back up "napkin math". Also did some tanking target dummy stuff on the ptr and found my hp did not move at all for 3mins using devastator but it dropped below 90%several times with indomitable. I also had on the legendary neck which is btw very op now.

[Toybox]

Did some initial theorycraft in using logs and came to the conclusion that for short fights indomitable will always stay on top, but longer fights Devastator starts to pull ahead.

Another point I want to bring up is level of play. Looking at some higher dps ranking very very rarely does a player manage to squeeze out more devastates then auto attacks. I.e. devastaor on paper gets you the same SS resets but in actaul play +latency you get more from devestator. So if your an average player or below average I see Devastator being very good.

Rank #1 M Odyn https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=6
255 AAs to 241 Devastates.

The #1 M Guarm rank ,jinzelqt, has more devastates then melee by about 20 but he's also using the legendary gloves, still don't see that putting him that far ahead being that the #2 warrior on Guarm has less devastates then AAs.

Mostly just some things I've noticed, food for thought. I hate anyone posting numbers without logs or simcraft to back up "napkin math". Also did some tanking target dummy stuff on the ptr and found my hp did not move at all for 3mins using devastator but it dropped below 90%several times with indomitable. I also had on the legendary neck which is btw very op now.

Wow, I never thought about checking my Devastate vs Auto-attack logs... Will do so now

Devastate/Melee
Nythendra: 113/113 (not even joking lol)
Renferal: 114/132
Ursoc: 84/110
Dragons: 110/146
Cenarius: 95/112
Xavius: 165/188

These are from my best logs for TEN Mythic. Left out Ilgynoth as it's a tad irrelevant... So yeah, I'm not a great player by any means, but I'm pretty solid at using SS on CD, so I'd benefit more from Devastator than Devastate.

[siusang]

warbringer buff boys, we are become mythic + gods

[Sorshen]

Shockwave gets the nerfbat, NotLikeThis T_T

[Zoldor]

Is there going to be much stat priority change? Still looking Haste>>>Mastery>>Verse> Crit? or are we going to see Verse or Crit make a jump? I can't see anything beating out Haste, but I could be wrong, I'm not a bold theorycrafter.

[Chrno]

Wow, I never thought about checking my Devastate vs Auto-attack logs... Will do so now

Devastate/Melee
Nythendra: 113/113 (not even joking lol)
Renferal: 114/132
Ursoc: 84/110
Dragons: 110/146
Cenarius: 95/112
Xavius: 165/188

These are from my best logs for TEN Mythic. Left out Ilgynoth as it's a tad irrelevant... So yeah, I'm not a great player by any means, but I'm pretty solid at using SS on CD, so I'd benefit more from Devastator than Devastate.

Also checked my last nythendra hc kill. ilvl 875 - 203k DPS.
- 140 devastate
vs
- 137 melee hits



https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=3

[Toybox]

885 Iron Relic Finally, I have a decent weapon!

Shockwave gets the nerfbat, NotLikeThis T_T

Wat? Noooo! I don't think I wanna read the changes now

So, 3 seconds down from 4? On one hand, a 4 second stun every 20 seconds is pretty strong for mythic+, but then again, it's the only real group-beneficial utility we bring into that content...

Really should be baseline.

Is there going to be much stat priority change? Still looking Haste>>>Mastery>>Verse> Crit? or are we going to see Verse or Crit make a jump? I can't see anything beating out Haste, but I could be wrong, I'm not a bold theorycrafter.

If anything, devastator causes haste to go up, and the loss of ultimatum causes crit to go down? But then crit gives parry which increases the chance of revenge proccing... Hmm.

I think it'll be similar to how it is now, but like yourself, I'm no theorycrafter.

Also checked my last nythendra hc kill. ilvl 875 - 203k DPS.
- 140 devastate
vs
- 137 melee hits

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=3

Damn, we're close

[Deleted]

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/7...n-the-715-ptr/

As we mentioned before, the next PTR build will have a fairly substantial number of new class changes. We wanted to provide some insight into our goals and strategy with these changes, particularly for the specs that have seen the most change. Note that one of our overarching goals with Patch 7.1.5 is to increase talent diversity by making some of the less popular talents more attractive, which may open up new styles of play and new ways to approach different situations for all specializations, not just those we've listed here.

Protection Warrior:
While Protection’s performance is still solid, we want to provide Revenge a clearer role in the live rotation, and eliminate the need for an off-GCD ability (Focused Rage) to deal damage. To address both of these problems, Revenge is made into a higher-damage ability, which is used rotationally with its usual activation proc, but can also be used outside of that proc by spending Rage. This eliminates the need for Focused Rage. Thunder Clap will fill the role of a second Rage generator, and be used regularly while tanking. Also of note is a new talent that allows you to adopt a more open playstyle if you prefer, by making your auto attacks trigger Devastates automatically, rather than fitting it into open spaces in your rotation.

@ Voyle
Good point to compare auto attacks and Devastate uses. If one does not need Indom Devastator seems the way to go. We could still Revenge after using IP and come out ahead with 1.5 rage for the next IP.

Shouldn't this type of play skyrocket our dps? If not, why?

What is with haste? It has a greater effect when looking at the reductions in seconds comparing auto attacks and GCD.
30% haste is reducing the auto attack to 2 seconds, a 0.6second difference to 2.6seconds.
30% haste is reducing the GCD to 1.15 seconds, a 0.35second difference to 1.5seconds.
Does this keep the auto attack to Devastate usage in line? Or does it change?

To address both of these problems, Revenge is made into a higher-damage ability

Revenge damage seems unchanged:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/spell=6572/revenge vs: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=6572/revenge

Only damage buff I can find is: http://ptr.wowhead.com/spell=202560/best-served-cold

What does he mean by saying higher damaging ability?!

Thunderclap is doubled:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/spell=6343/thunder-clap vs: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=6343/thunder-clap

Btw...on that note. What is up with our artifact weapon? Do you even use it on single target? When do you use it? Do you use it like a mini shield wall if you need 60% melee mitigation?

[ImpTaimer]

I'm having a really hard time understanding why people are upset Focused Rage is possibly going away. It's a minority of people obviously, but it's still annoying.

If you guys are whining about shit you just macro together anyway, then stop whining. Ask for baseline buffs. Anything that you macro-and-forget to save action bar space is poor design. You can't possibly argue in favor of button bloat without purposefully omitting macroing.

It doesn't matter if it's off GCD or not. All (important) Defensive skills are off GCD.

Stop defending shitty parroted playstyles that the even the majority of players can see are counter-intuitive when the problem is baseline abilities hit for shit compared to other classes. Parroting just signaling the devs to put less effort or even throw nerfs. There's no reason Warriors shouldn't be doing comparable damage to other tanks baseline.

Ask for baseline buffs. Stop asking for button bloat. Don't ask for spammable offensive skills off GCD that you're just going to macro and forget when they can just as easily buff abilities that are on GCD that deserve being pressed.

As for Devsator they specifically said it's a playstyle choice. They know and don't intend it for bleeding-edge content in general outside niches. Legion Devastate serves no purpose except to reset Shield slam and swallow GCD. Devastator is a simple, clean talent choice and only reason people are bitching is the same reason they'd bitch if any other ability got replaced--They'll have to wait to get fed crackers to go back to parroting whatever the FotM build is because they're more concerned with being figuratively above the rest of the playerbase than actually playing the game.

As for Revenge nothing important changes because because Prot Warriors don't have an on-demand spammable aoe and rely too much on a passive bleed to hold threat. The solution to this would to simply make Revenge 360 (or at least 270) range, or just replace Revenge with Whirlwind.

Revenge existed because of stances. Now that stances are gone, there's no reason for Revenge to exist and Whirlwind can supersede all functions it provided through prot-only passive/talents.

The only, ONLY way Heroic Strike could come back is if they bring back rage-gen on auto-attacks for Prot. It only ever existed to give you a reason to not sit at capped Rage.

@Voyle Artifact ability, much like other class/specs, exists to attmped to fill a gap. Prot War artifact is an AoE that doubles as an emergency defensive cooldown that synergizes with the critical block elite trait. The problem is that, unlike Fist of Fury, it can be easily interrupted/wasted. Originally it was suppose function like Aegis of Aggramar... but we got a shitty throwaway Artifact instead.

[Toybox]

If you guys are whining about shit you just macro together anyway, then stop whining.

I don't care that we're losing FR, but I doubt the majority here are macroing it, honestly.

[ReD-EyeD]

Yeah, let's macro 30 rage cost ability because we're rage capped 95% of the time. Sounds great.

[Leih]

I'm having a really hard time understanding why people are upset Focused Rage is possibly going away. It's a minority of people obviously, but it's still annoying.

If you guys are whining about shit you just macro together anyway, then stop whining. Ask for baseline buffs. Anything that you macro-and-forget to save action bar space is poor design. You can't possibly argue in favor of button bloat without purposefully omitting macroing.

I think you're playing it wrong. Might be why you don't see the issues.