1. #1

    How will active mitigation work for warriors in BfA?

    I apologize in advance if this has already been posted, but I'm genuinely curious about this. After spending some time on the beta, I have found that ignore pain has been removed and no defensive ability has been added to replace it. Talents that previously worked with ignore pain, either work with revenge or shield block instead (as far as I can tell, mainly revenge).

    I'm not necessarily upset by this, but it's a surprising change. This means that the only thing you have to spend extra rage on will be revenge. Rage will no longer really be a resource you can burn defensively; even if you take the bolster talent (40% of your strength as armor for x seconds) will have a cooldown, and as far as I can tell , does not stack on itself (correct me please if I am wrong here).

    Ignore pain was a little broken, sure, especially early on, but I liked having an ability to spend rage on defensively on demand. I haven't even checked other tanks; have they gotten similar treatment, too? This just feels like a strange change. My warrior will certainly feel a little less interesting with me just spamming revenge offensively to use up my rage, but I mean I didn't make this thread to complain about it. I'm confused by it.

    Has Blizzard commented lately on their design intention behind this? I haven't kept up with everything lately, so I may have missed something crucial here. But this just feels like a really odd choice. I hope Blizzard isn't moving away from active mitigation in general.

  2. #2
    They are not moving away from Active Mitigation in general, just for warriors (and hopefully just at launch).

    First they modified Ignore Pain, and increased the rage cost of Shield Block to keep it making sense mechanically with the new Ignore Pain.

    Then they removed Ignore Pain because it is outside of the sort of Active Mitigation they want in BFA according to several posts on the matter (They want everything to be armor; then "reactive" stuff like heals are also OK.)

    They then didn't change the cost of Shield Block back. So they kind of pushed themselves into a corner on what they could give us, because we can't get a second high rage cost armor boosting ability (blocking is effective armor in BfA.)

    The new talent Bolster is a low rage cost, long duration ability. It's much more of buff maintenance than active mitigation as you will have enough rage to use it for 100% uptime once we're in raid gear, and doing so is going to be optimal in any encounter that we'd take it. They could make it proper active mitigation if they made the cost higher, duration lower, and effect greater, as it then would not be used on cooldown and instead in relation to incoming damage--but now that blocking is mechanically armor, that would cause it to compete with Shield Block in a confusing way, thus we instead get an Ironfur-esq ability but it doesn't interact with our spec at all, it's just guaranteed 100% uptime. It can't even stack duration so you could, say, pool it up and then spend extra rage on more Revenges instead for a while, it's basically just passive and could be macroed into some other ability if the cooldown lined up with the duration.

    I fully expect them to revisit warriors (possibly all tanking) in 8.1. In the meantime I will say that we're pretty fun to quest on at least in War Mode, and have some interesting builds we can make with the PvP talents combined with our base talents. It'll probably get nerfed but with the Demoralizing Shout PvP and Base Talent, and Anger Management, you can maintain a 100% uptime on Demoralizing Shout and generate literally more rage than you have abilities to spend it on, which is pretty fun while zipping around and bashing quest mobs.
    Last edited by Firefall; 2018-05-12 at 07:18 PM.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Firefall View Post
    They are not moving away from Active Mitigation in general, just for warriors (and hopefully just at launch).

    First they modified Ignore Pain, and increased the rage cost of Shield Block to keep it making sense mechanically with the new Ignore Pain.

    Then they removed Ignore Pain because it is outside of the sort of Active Mitigation they want in BFA according to several posts on the matter (They want everything to be armor; then "reactive" stuff like heals are also OK.)

    They then didn't change the cost of Shield Block back. So they kind of pushed themselves into a corner on what they could give us, because we can't get a second high rage cost armor boosting ability (blocking is effective armor in BfA.)

    The new talent Bolster is a low rage cost, long duration ability. It's much more of buff maintenance than active mitigation as you will have enough rage to use it for 100% uptime once we're in raid gear, and doing so is going to be optimal in any encounter that we'd take it. They could make it proper active mitigation if they made the cost higher, duration lower, and effect greater, as it then would not be used on cooldown and instead in relation to incoming damage--but now that blocking is mechanically armor, that would cause it to compete with Shield Block in a confusing way, thus we instead get an Ironfur-esq ability but it doesn't interact with our spec at all, it's just guaranteed 100% uptime. It can't even stack duration so you could, say, pool it up and then spend extra rage on more Revenges instead for a while, it's basically just passive and could be macroed into some other ability if the cooldown lined up with the duration.

    I fully expect them to revisit warriors (possibly all tanking) in 8.1. In the meantime I will say that we're pretty fun to quest on at least in War Mode, and have some interesting builds we can make with the PvP talents combined with our base talents. It'll probably get nerfed but with the Demoralizing Shout PvP and Base Talent, and Anger Management, you can maintain a 100% uptime on Demoralizing Shout and generate literally more rage than you have abilities to spend it on, which is pretty fun while zipping around and bashing quest mobs.
    Huh. I am even more confused now, then. It sounds like Blizzard really doesn't know what they are doing in regards to warriors. But I assume it's not that simple, of course.

    I would be fine if shield block was going to be out active mitigation, but it doesn't appear to be; it's still on the same cooldown and limited in usage. Still, I don't hate where warriors are act now, but it just feels strange. Even without ignore pain, we had shield barrier before that. It seems like it has been a very long time since all we had was shield block.

    Well, I guess I'll just wait and see how it works out. I don't have much choice. Although I really liked ignore pain, mechanically warriors are still fun to play. Lacking that tool, though, I fear how I'll be able to react to burst damage that was once easily manageable. I'll spend more time on the beta I suppose and see how the class actually ends up playing.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by therealbowser View Post
    Huh. I am even more confused now, then. It sounds like Blizzard really doesn't know what they are doing in regards to warriors. But I assume it's not that simple, of course.

    I would be fine if shield block was going to be out active mitigation, but it doesn't appear to be; it's still on the same cooldown and limited in usage. Still, I don't hate where warriors are act now, but it just feels strange. Even without ignore pain, we had shield barrier before that. It seems like it has been a very long time since all we had was shield block.

    Well, I guess I'll just wait and see how it works out. I don't have much choice. Although I really liked ignore pain, mechanically warriors are still fun to play. Lacking that tool, though, I fear how I'll be able to react to burst damage that was once easily manageable. I'll spend more time on the beta I suppose and see how the class actually ends up playing.
    Shield Block is definitely still our Active Mitigation--and because it's limited, we should save it or ensure we have it for when it really matters like a big tank buster or a diffilcult movement phase that will reduce heals--but yes, we no longer have something to dump resources into for defensive purposes.

    They have buffed (and if needed will likely continue to buff) our passive mitigation so I wouldnt worry viability-wise. And yeah, we're in a much better place now offensively so we still have some engaging gameplay there. But we are quite hollow defensively right now, and much closer back to the ancient model of just being the big guys with the bigger shields that can take a lot or punishment.

    Spell Reflection is also slightly more valuable in the world of BFA from what I can tell, with most short cooldown tanking abilities seeming to be physical damage reduction or armor. It was nerfed but it's still a short-ish cooldown.

    There has been a deluge of feedback on the official forums, and I'm hopeful at this point that we will see changes in 8.1. I don't think Protection Warriors will go the entire expansion without a revisit, at the least.

    I'm still very dissatisfied with our gameplay defensively, but I'm hopeful. The expansion at-large is looking fun at least.
    Last edited by Firefall; 2018-05-13 at 07:42 PM.

  5. #5
    The problem with BFA, is that they seem to be moving back into the older days of "reduce the auto-attacks/counter the breath ability with your cooldown", instead of what we had the last 2 expansions as Warriors with the buffed Shield Barrier, eventually Ignore Pain transition.

    Block as always is our main mitigation, and Shield Block the main active as it has been since the start of the universe.

    Its really hard to get used to after you were never losing HP in the outside world and on most minor content for the last 4 years, its the only reason that might actually make me reroll for the first time in 13 years of playing my Warrior as a main.

    And you are not saving anything, High Haste/HR Talent, Shield Block uptime --high % as it was at the start of Legion, obviously not 90% since it was nerfed but high enough to be as good as it is now with very close to 90% and above with lucky SS resets.

    Guess people forgot Shield Block was changed back to 6 seconds, and with the usual 30% Haste and above it does below 12 seconds/stack, aka same as it was for the first year of Legion.
    Last edited by potis; 2018-05-13 at 08:43 PM.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by potis View Post
    Guess people forgot Shield Block was changed back to 6 seconds, and with the usual 30% Haste and above it does below 12 seconds/stack, aka same as it was for the first year of Legion.
    They did change the duration from 4 secs to 6 secs, but they also changed the recharge time from 13 secs to 18 secs. So you need 50% haste to go down to 12 seconds recharge time.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by thebdc View Post
    They did change the duration from 4 secs to 6 secs, but they also changed the recharge time from 13 secs to 18 secs. So you need 50% haste to go down to 12 seconds recharge time.
    I dont think its that high, i think its around ~13.5 seconds with 30% Haste? I do not remember the scaling atm, and you can play Into the Fray to boost it to stupid levels to force it further down, there are lots of things to do.

    Either way, HR exists for that reason, Shield Block is perfectly fine as it is, just once more, Haste as main stat, woohoo.

  8. #8
    With 45% haste (with 5 stacks of Into the Fray) my SB is at 12.4 secs recharge time. Fun fact: Into the Fray actually gives 3.775% haste per stack, not only 3%. Not sure if that's intended or I'm missing something else. So 5 stacks give 18.874% haste.

  9. #9
    I mean if they really love blocking maybe they could make it so we could spend rage to force a critical block? Perhaps even making it so that critical block works on spells? Maybe force critical blocks for x seconds, or x attacks? I'm just theorycrafting here. Obviously that wouldn't work for spells, though, and with the removal of ignore pain (and shield barrier) I kind of wonder if our spell mitigation won't be worse as well? Or is that perhaps why it was removed? I don't know what Blizzard's endgame is here.

    I don't know what to suggest here. But it feels bad; IMHO protection warriors don't have a lot of buttons as it is, so the idea of 'spam revenge until you drop' isn't super compelling, but as the guy who quoted me earlier said, at least we're in a good place offensively. I can't complain about that.

    It just feels weird to have nothing defensive to dump our rage into when that has been warrior design for years. I feel like I'm back in vanilla where the only defensive tool I have is shield block. It's a great ability of course but, it feels like a step backwards to just give up on ignore pain.

  10. #10
    Deleted
    Blocking isnt enough since there are some boss abilities that are unblockable.

    We need something else and Blizzard knows that. The reason we havent heard anything yet is most likely because they have a hard time figuring out what to do with us.

    Dont bite into the doomsayers(Firefall being the biggest one on this forum).
    Just provide constructive feedback and hope for the best.

  11. #11
    Deleted
    the problem with block in Legion is that it reduces the damage by a stupid amounts (for me 40% normal block, 80% crit blocks)

    and that creates huge spikes when your shield block isn't up (for example Kil'jaeden could chunk you almost from 100% to like 20%)

    with focus going into more of an armor based mitigation and block reducing the damage by a healthy amounts, the downtime issue shouldn't be that big as it could be in Legion

    (also I don't have the numbers on blocking in bfa) Also bolster helps with the mitigation too, where blocking would fail (bleeds/unblockable attacks)

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by thebdc View Post
    With 45% haste (with 5 stacks of Into the Fray) my SB is at 12.4 secs recharge time. Fun fact: Into the Fray actually gives 3.775% haste per stack, not only 3%. Not sure if that's intended or I'm missing something else. So 5 stacks give 18.874% haste.
    Believe it is 3% haste plus 3% of our haste % gained from stats.

    My priest atm on live has 32.25% haste as disc. When i use power infusion, her haste goes up to 65.31%. Even though PI increases haste by 25%, and 32.25+25 does not equal 65.31.

    Therefore, the total haste I get from PI plus my original haste is equal to (0.3225*1.25)+0.25=0.653125. Which rounds to 0.6531. Which is 65.31%

    Meaning i get 33.06% haste from PI. Which is 8.06% extra haste.

    And to top it off, 0.3225*0.25=0.080625. Which is around 0.0806, or 8.06%
    Last edited by Volardelis; 2018-05-14 at 11:56 AM.

  13. #13
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Zendhal View Post
    the problem with block in Legion is that it reduces the damage by a stupid amounts (for me 40% normal block, 80% crit blocks)

    and that creates huge spikes when your shield block isn't up (for example Kil'jaeden could chunk you almost from 100% to like 20%)

    with focus going into more of an armor based mitigation and block reducing the damage by a healthy amounts, the downtime issue shouldn't be that big as it could be in Legion

    (also I don't have the numbers on blocking in bfa) Also bolster helps with the mitigation too, where blocking would fail (bleeds/unblockable attacks)
    We have IP for that reason in Legion. We dont in BFA

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Zendhal View Post
    the problem with block in Legion is that it reduces the damage by a stupid amounts (for me 40% normal block, 80% crit blocks)

    and that creates huge spikes when your shield block isn't up (for example Kil'jaeden could chunk you almost from 100% to like 20%)

    with focus going into more of an armor based mitigation and block reducing the damage by a healthy amounts, the downtime issue shouldn't be that big as it could be in Legion

    (also I don't have the numbers on blocking in bfa) Also bolster helps with the mitigation too, where blocking would fail (bleeds/unblockable attacks)
    Another good example is High Command, where you can get easily obliterated with stacks of Exploit Weakness when not blocking, but when blocking and IP you get virtually no damage. On that fight I'm usually at the very bottom of the "external healing required" chart.

    On beta block seems to be kind of broken, at least on a fresh 110 character. My block reduces the damage taken by 62%, so a crit block would reduce the damage by... 124%? Maybe that somehow drastically changes at 120? Or the values are just incorrect, becase armor (i.e. also Bolster) increases the amount of damage you block, and I though the amount blocked was only influenced by the block value of your shield.

    Quote Originally Posted by Volardelis View Post
    Believe it is 3% haste plus 3% of our haste % gained from stats.
    Sounds about right. I got just under 26% haste, of which 3% would be the additional 0.775%. Thanks for the info.

  15. #15
    Honestly, I preferred the way Prot Warriors used to work back in the day but that is just me, I have enjoyed all the warrior tanking builds aside from a few here and there. I will have to do some testing once BfA is live to see if there is really anything to worry about.
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  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Nupomaniac View Post
    Blocking isnt enough since there are some boss abilities that are unblockable.

    We need something else and Blizzard knows that. The reason we havent heard anything yet is most likely because they have a hard time figuring out what to do with us.

    Dont bite into the doomsayers(Firefall being the biggest one on this forum).
    Just provide constructive feedback and hope for the best.
    Please tell me what in the world is "doomsaying" about my posts in this thread. Your obsession with me has always defied reason, but come on, even you must know you're being absurd right now. I was right in my predictions, I'm still being proven right, and my posts here were extremely constructive and even cautiously optimistic for our class while praising the overall direction of the expansion.

    I'm flattered but I'm just not that into you.
    Last edited by Firefall; 2018-05-15 at 12:00 AM.

  17. #17
    Ignore Pain seems wholly unnecessary alongside shield block, honestly. Not sure why they even bothered with such an ability, when the other rage tanks do just fine with their shield block equivalent.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Thundertwig View Post
    Ignore Pain seems wholly unnecessary alongside shield block, honestly. Not sure why they even bothered with such an ability, when the other rage tanks do just fine with their shield block equivalent.
    Not sure how much you've played, but most tanks have an equivalent to ignore pain. The most obvious example is demon hunter, who have spikes just as prot warriors have shield block, but they also have a heal. Without any way to fully mitigate damage (as an absorb does), or any healing, protection warriors simply can't survive by themselves.

  19. #19
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Firefall View Post
    Please tell me what in the world is "doomsaying" about my posts in this thread. Your obsession with me has always defied reason, but come on, even you must know you're being absurd right now. I was right in my predictions, I'm still being proven right, and my posts here were extremely constructive and even cautiously optimistic for our class while praising the overall direction of the expansion.

    I'm flattered but I'm just not that into you.
    I comprised an entire list in the other thread about you and your "blizzard contacts" mistakes. And after you have said like 10 times we wouldnt get a 2nd am and a replacement for IP according to your "blizzard contact" we now have both bolster and a new form of IP.

    This is getting ridiculous lol

  20. #20
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    Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
    Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator / Artifact Calculator / PvP Talent Calculator)


    Considering the aforementioned, it seems they've reverted the Ignore Pain removal, thus adding to the active mitigation in Battle for Azeroth.

    Frankly, I hadn't caught the fact they removed Ignore Pain. Glad to see it back.

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