Surviveability on beta

[Deleted]

A quick question really, where do we stand on surviveability so far. I mean against level appropriate content. All these new 'timeless isle' style elites wandering around makes me wonder if we get much of a chance to take them. Warriors have always lacked an on demand type self heal.
Warriors have a tendency once geared up to be able to handle that type of thing but since I won't be raiding this xpac other than LFR it makes me curious.

Hope that's clear enough

[Deleted]

Warrior remain somewhat unchanged in this department, our victory rush heal gets slightly increased and enraged regen usage is easier (for it's best effect) in WoD but outside of speccing prot and sitting at <35% health, surviving from cycling cooldowns and spamming barrier between second wind -> lifeleech heals we are still somewhat 'meh' on the soloing stuff side. Your best melee bet is probably DK with (prot) paladin getting some serious nerfs on the sustained healing and best ranged choices are either hunter or warlock (in it's current state probably the latter).

[Leih]

My warrior on beta (premade though, cause I'm EU, so like 500 ilvl gear) felt pretty squishy against elites and stuff. Once DbtS was out, I'm pretty much dead-meat against anything hitting hard. Second Wind is very very weak compared to how it is on Live, so I was running the much improved Enraged Regeneration for questing. All in all, we seem less strong in the soloing department than we did on live. Demo banner is gone, as is shield wall, and defensive stance is pretty much useless. That's happened to most classes though, since pruning has chopped out a lot of CCs, cooldowns and that sort of thing.

That said, my shitty premade has 80 ilvls less than my actual warrior does on Live, so it's hard to say how it'd compare to someone with a bit of gear. There's also tuning still to be done, obviously, we're far from in a finished state in the current beta. And there's later stats like versatility to consider, which might boost our self-healing and such.

However with tank damage being buffed substantially and not relying on vengeance anymore, soloing things as protection is way more viable now. My prot damage is barely lower than my fury damage in the current build, and I'm much much more sturdy.

[Will]

Despite what some have said here, I find the fact shockwave and storm bolt are in the same talent tier (less stuns if you so desire to spec down that route), and the fact that charge does not stun unless you take warbringer (thus sacrificing how frequently you're able to use charge), coupled with the loss of disarm, have substantially hurt survivability. Having to stance-dance to use Spell Reflect doesn't help either.

Whilst you could of course tout that all classes are losing some form of CC or another, it is not safe to say that all classes are losing survivability because this is not the case. My feral druid on beta is FAR harder to kill than he was before because his self-healing is a lot better (frenzied regen is awesome!) and there are new survivability glyphs like one that reduces all damage taken in cat by 10%, or one that increases armour in bear to tank-high levels. SURE, you could argue that Symbiosis gave me some nifty survivability cooldowns, but symbiosis wasn't to be relied on; you couldn't always find the right class-spec combination to use it on.

My point is, whilst all classes lose something, warriors seem to have lost a lot more survivability than others.

[Skillfall]

It's hard to say at the moment honestly, I have both a premade and a copy of my warrior and haven't set up the premade yet.

However at 570 (cus upgrades -.-) I am able to pull ~15 mobs bladestorm and shrug off the pack like it's nothing and end at ~ 60% hp without any cds, now this could be due to scaling mobs down in beta for testing but it could simply be over gearing them.

[Jjmackey]

I just got beta yesterday and didn't have much time to play around aside from checking out the level 100 stuff, but a buddy of mine says that leveling as Protection is probably going to be the way to go, just because the damage is pretty good and the survival more than makes up for any gap between Tank and DPS damage done. That said though, if you've got a geared DPS Warrior, you can probably level quickly until the leveling gear catches up to your HWF gear

Edit - Removed the part where I was stupid and referenced Gladiator stance for pre-100's

[Leih]

a buddy of mine says that leveling as Protection is probably going to be the way to go (or Gladiator), just because the damage is pretty good and the survival more than makes up for any gap between Tank and DPS damage done. That said though, if you've got a geared DPS Warrior, you can probably level quickly until the leveling gear catches up to your HWF gear

I would agree with that from my experience. Though, bear in mind that Gladiator is a level 100 talent so when the game launches we will not be able to level as Gladiators, sadly.

But with Prot damage being tuned to be about 75%-80% of the damage that a DPS warrior does (with no more vengeance to think about), I definitely found that Prot was pretty efficient for levelling. You're so sturdy you can pull non-stop without your health ever moving, and elites/rares are no threat at all. The damage is only slightly lower and the pulling speed and aoe available to you without having to worry whatsoever about your survival makes up for that.

That said, I'm basing this on 500 ilvl character. My real character is 580+ in DPS gear, which would probably be one-shotting all these mobs which are tuned for a more freshly dinged 90 in greens. Once more of the beta unlocks, it'll be possible to see how things scale up in the later zones once the gear catches up with SoO.

[Jjmackey]

I would agree with that from my experience. Though, bear in mind that Gladiator is a level 100 talent so when the game launches we will not be able to level as Gladiators, sadly.

Good catch, that was dumb on my part

[Skillfall]

To be honest as long as you are 550 ish ilvl it's a complete faceroll through mobs atm on beta. Unless they scale up the damage on mob damage the amount of damage you actually take is laughable in the current build.

[Leih]

I had a feeling it would be. Like I said, my only experience comes from ilvl 500 premades.

Though in MoP by the time you go through to like 87-88 or so things started to scale up a lot more when the levelling gear caught up with our Cata gear. I guess it could be the same here.

[Skillfall]

Only time will tell but if we are following the trend of previous expansions then we should start to see replacing some pieces of HWF gear at around 96. ( I doubt this one outside of a weapon quest reward at the end of a long chain?) However it's more than likely 97-100 will see us replacing HWF gear with quest blues.

Trinkets I think may last us until the late 90's although its difficult to predict without seeing what kind of quest rewards will be available.

[Tseng]

Currently you are scaled to iLvl 600 for lvl 100 normal instances...

[Skillfall]

I'm not really sure how that pertains to general surviveability at the moment?

This discussion is based on our surviveability outside of instances in open world, which has nothing to do with scaling of ilvl for instances...

[Horidin]

i never understood why blizzard would change second wind into this pitiful life leech only at 35% or lower, they give paladins the empowered seals that gives them a 3% max hp heal every 2 seconds when ever they judgement with seal of insight for 20 seconds, we can already see how you can keep up multiple seal buffs with that cause judgement is on a short cd. so they can have 3% max hp heal every 2 seconds up time 100% of the time, spirit bond for hunters what 3% every 3 seconds? or is it 5? as an aura up 100% of the time, and dk's conversion i can see is an exception since they need to burn runic power to keep it up but from what i've seen runic power is very easy to gain in wod beta right now. those seem to be fine to blizzard yet warriors having a 3% hp heal every 2 seconds only when we hit 35% hp is un acceptable? i kinda understood where blizz was going with second wind in WoD wanting warriors to stay aggressive to heal them selves when they are low but the healing from it is SOOOOO pitiful it's not worth taking what so ever not even as prot glad stance. i know beta is early going and it might change in some way or just get buffed but i don't know. i just can't see the justification of to the degree they changed it when there are stronger "second wind" type heals on other classes that are up 100% up time on them

[GutsTheWarrior]

i never understood why blizzard would change second wind into this pitiful life leech only at 35% or lower, they give paladins the empowered seals that gives them a 3% max hp heal every 2 seconds when ever they judgement with seal of insight for 20 seconds, we can already see how you can keep up multiple seal buffs with that cause judgement is on a short cd. so they can have 3% max hp heal every 2 seconds up time 100% of the time, spirit bond for hunters what 3% every 3 seconds? or is it 5? as an aura up 100% of the time, and dk's conversion i can see is an exception since they need to burn runic power to keep it up but from what i've seen runic power is very easy to gain in wod beta right now. those seem to be fine to blizzard yet warriors having a 3% hp heal every 2 seconds only when we hit 35% hp is un acceptable? i kinda understood where blizz was going with second wind in WoD wanting warriors to stay aggressive to heal them selves when they are low but the healing from it is SOOOOO pitiful it's not worth taking what so ever not even as prot glad stance. i know beta is early going and it might change in some way or just get buffed but i don't know. i just can't see the justification of to the degree they changed it when there are stronger "second wind" type heals on other classes that are up 100% up time on them

While I love my Warrior and do wish I had more survive-ability, you have to agree that thematically it makes more sense for a Pally to be able to heal himself with the power of the light regardless of spec than a Warrior. What's a Warrior going to do his wounds? Hit them and close them up or shout them into recovery? Actually those sound pretty cool but I doubt it would happen.

I do hope we're a little better off at release than currently though.

[Leih]

While I love my Warrior and do wish I had more survive-ability, you have to agree that thematically it makes more sense for a Pally to be able to heal himself with the power of the light regardless of spec than a Warrior. What's a Warrior going to do his wounds? Hit them and close them up or shout them into recovery? Actually those sound pretty cool but I doubt it would happen.

I dunno, in that respect I felt Second Wind kind of did fit with the Warrior theme, as a hardened fighter who can shrug off wounds that might be fatal to others, with a conditioned body that can (gradually) recover at a much faster rate than the average mortal. While you can't heal yourself fully (like a paladin) you can endure grievous injury and keep fighting when others might have long since given up.

That's how I pictured Second Wind anyways.

[CID-77]

I'm a long time Prot Warrior. Tried Arms, Fury and Prot in the Beta for solo questing. I can confirm Prot is amazing for soloing now. It hits seriously hard and obviously you take little damage. Feels very solid and is fun. Even more hopeful for Gladiator Stance now, if it works out well enough.

[GutsTheWarrior]

I dunno, in that respect I felt Second Wind kind of did fit with the Warrior theme, as a hardened fighter who can shrug off wounds that might be fatal to others, with a conditioned body that can (gradually) recover at a much faster rate than the average mortal. While you can't heal yourself fully (like a paladin) you can endure grievous injury and keep fighting when others might have long since given up.

That's how I pictured Second Wind anyways.

I agree completely. Sad to see it changed.