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Noob prot warrior questionsFollow
Gonna change to prot spec after 51, maybe after the 2.3 patch comes out. For anyone who's been goofing around on the test realm, has it changed the viability of leveling as a prot warrior, what with the changes to devestate? Also, does a shield spike add dps when shield slam? Not that I really care about major dps but I just wanna know if it'll be a bit quicker to level.
to answer one question, no a shield spike does not affect shield block values, so it doesn't affect shield slam damage.
leveling as prot is a pain, i don't recommend it. but if your looking for a challenge...
with the changes to devastate? so you can spam devastate, deal very little damage in prot gear, and apply sunder the whole time?
Or do you mean, put on a fury set with very high strength, and spam devastate for dps? Because no matter what MS > devastate for dps, and the same goes for BT (for the most part, their might be a point where you have less than 200 ap, but a fat slow 1h high dps weapon).
Quicker leveling is probably gonna be arms or fury 2h.
leveling as prot is a pain, i don't recommend it. but if your looking for a challenge...
with the changes to devastate? so you can spam devastate, deal very little damage in prot gear, and apply sunder the whole time?
Or do you mean, put on a fury set with very high strength, and spam devastate for dps? Because no matter what MS > devastate for dps, and the same goes for BT (for the most part, their might be a point where you have less than 200 ap, but a fat slow 1h high dps weapon).
Quicker leveling is probably gonna be arms or fury 2h.
The spike will cause damage if you block. Should be able to find someone to attach a Felsteel Spike in trade channel.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23530
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23530
I've levelled my warrior to 39 (almost 40) by mostly just tanking instances, and I've found it to be good fun, AND I get good practice tanking.
Also, I just went from 38-39 questing and it was pretty fun. I take so little damage that I almost never had to stop and eat/bandage, and I could still take out 3 yellow mobs without much trouble.
I reccomend leveling as prot if you plan to tank in the future, It'll give you an edge.
cc
Also, I just went from 38-39 questing and it was pretty fun. I take so little damage that I almost never had to stop and eat/bandage, and I could still take out 3 yellow mobs without much trouble.
I reccomend leveling as prot if you plan to tank in the future, It'll give you an edge.
cc
Disagreed, personally. There's absolutely no reason to level prot, imo. For starters, tanking in the end game (not just raids, the 5 mans as well) is VASTLY different from pre-BC tanking. For example, use of sunder. While it's one of your main agro tools as you level, it's something that's used very little in the late game. While it's good to learn this stuff, it's nothing you CAN'T do as a fury or 2H build. I've always seen better results in fellow tanks from people that didn't level as prot, as well. If you learn to tank without having the threat and mitigation boosts that a prot build gives, generally you're that much better when you actually do switch over to prot and get a bit of practice in.
concolor wrote:
I reccomend leveling as prot if you plan to tank in the future, It'll give you an edge.
Agreed. I've levelled 2 warriors. The first, was done with no understanding of talent builds, based on what I was using at the time (ie This weapon looks good - I'll use that. Dunno what that ability (Shield Block) does - ignore it).
I got her up to lvl54 (Sep 2005) before she ran out of money on repairs.
I returned to warriors about a year later, and levelled this one specifically as Prot (Admittedly with my wife's priest for company). That was 60-odd levels of practice. Guess what? I'm a better tank for it.
Bad Pulls can be recovered from. I've been in fights where one accident results in 6-8 mobs wandering in, and 2 people ran for the exit. One escaped, but the other paused before the exit, and saw a nice controlled fight, came back and helped us finish.
I don't think that if I'd have levelled as an Arms/Fury DPS warrior I'd have even contemplated thinking about attempting that; With 60 levels of training / practice it was exactly what I'd been doing all along: Ho Hum, just another day on planet Draenor.
And as an aside, I saw an LFM from a lvl29 warrior looking for Deadmines players. He specified lvl 25+ ONLY. In all my characters, I've never been in DMs above lvl 23. Has DMs got significantly harder, or was this guy in need of someone to show him how to play?
You do not need to be prot to tank pre heroics, IMHO.
In fact, after you get enough gear from heroic/raiding, you can even do heroics non prot. your only problem is threat generation, as non prot. prot has superior threat generation while being able to tank.
It's because of shield slam and defiance. Overall these talents are the most threat you'll gain overall.
In fact, after you get enough gear from heroic/raiding, you can even do heroics non prot. your only problem is threat generation, as non prot. prot has superior threat generation while being able to tank.
It's because of shield slam and defiance. Overall these talents are the most threat you'll gain overall.
26 posts
"Because no matter what MS > devastate for dps..."
Could you elaborate why? Is it the rest of the tree or are you comparing the two abilities by themselves?
Devastate deals half weapon damage (plus a bonus), with no cooldown. MS deals full weapon damage (plus a bonus), every six seconds. MS is coming off a 2-hander that does typically 50% more damage, giving MS roughly 3x the damage of Devastate: (0.5x) vs (1.5*1x) = 1.5/.5 = 3:1. Did I do that right?
But MS takes 30 rage while Devastate takes only 9 with talent points, meaning you can spam 3 devastates for the cost of one MS. Suggesting their rage:damage ratio is about the same.
Of course, arms offers additional dps oriented talents (Impale etc), while Devastate provides free sunders... not sure how those balance out.
As far as levelling a prot warrior... I found it pretty slow 40-50, but since 50 the levels are moving by quickly. Partly due to devastate, but even more due to XP rate changes in the recent patch. My prot warrior just completed level 54 in less than 3 hours, which is a pace I'm personally quite happy with. I expect things will slow down when I hit Outland.
I previously levelled a fury warrior to 70 and an arms warrior to 66. They did seem to kill things much faster, but required periodic bandaging. With Devastate you have enough dps to get the job done, and as prot spec, you almost never have to pause for health recovery.
Could you elaborate why? Is it the rest of the tree or are you comparing the two abilities by themselves?
Devastate deals half weapon damage (plus a bonus), with no cooldown. MS deals full weapon damage (plus a bonus), every six seconds. MS is coming off a 2-hander that does typically 50% more damage, giving MS roughly 3x the damage of Devastate: (0.5x) vs (1.5*1x) = 1.5/.5 = 3:1. Did I do that right?
But MS takes 30 rage while Devastate takes only 9 with talent points, meaning you can spam 3 devastates for the cost of one MS. Suggesting their rage:damage ratio is about the same.
Of course, arms offers additional dps oriented talents (Impale etc), while Devastate provides free sunders... not sure how those balance out.
As far as levelling a prot warrior... I found it pretty slow 40-50, but since 50 the levels are moving by quickly. Partly due to devastate, but even more due to XP rate changes in the recent patch. My prot warrior just completed level 54 in less than 3 hours, which is a pace I'm personally quite happy with. I expect things will slow down when I hit Outland.
I previously levelled a fury warrior to 70 and an arms warrior to 66. They did seem to kill things much faster, but required periodic bandaging. With Devastate you have enough dps to get the job done, and as prot spec, you almost never have to pause for health recovery.
Yeah, ok;
1.5 GCD = Devastate CD.
(Slam > MS BTW)
So 4x Devastate / 1x MS.
I'll use kara grade weapons and stats for my comparison
2450 Ap (buffed) and 5.6+% to hit (for skills), ignoring crit rate (it should affect the damage equally). And I'll say 5x sunder on the target already. Infinite rage.
Gorehowl. 120 dps, 3.6 speed.
MS Damage = 210 + weapon damage (432 average damage) + ((AP /14) * 3.3)
MS Damage = ~1220 damage (average)
1220 / 6 = ~200 DPS
Decapitator. 92 dps, 2.6 speed.
Devastate Damage = (# of sunders * 35) + (50% * 239) + ((AP /14) * 2.4)
Devastate Damage = ~715 damage (average)
715 / 1.5 = ~477 DPS
This even out does BT at those AP levels. 2450 * 45% = ~1102, 1102 / 6 = ~184 DPS.
Now. Devastate does MORE threat than any other dps type ability we have. It has inherent threat. MS and BT do not.
The math for slam is a little more convoluted; Since it resets your swing timer, it also costs half the rage of MS. You should be able to use slam after every white hit, you should be able to throw a BT or MS out every so often as well in between slams, even a WW if you have excess rage.
Slam dps is calculated by adding a modifier to white dps, adding 0.5 time to each attack, but not changing the damage values assosiated with it. This means your dealing slightly less white dps. Slam is also NOT normalized.
--==--
Synapsis. You do NOT get flurry if you spec for devastate. Flurry is by far one of the greatest DPS boosting abilities warriors have. While you may level as prot, you will find that you lack MUCH of the abilities that allow you to 'burst' down mobs, sustain heavy dps, etc...
1.5 GCD = Devastate CD.
(Slam > MS BTW)
So 4x Devastate / 1x MS.
I'll use kara grade weapons and stats for my comparison
2450 Ap (buffed) and 5.6+% to hit (for skills), ignoring crit rate (it should affect the damage equally). And I'll say 5x sunder on the target already. Infinite rage.
Gorehowl. 120 dps, 3.6 speed.
MS Damage = 210 + weapon damage (432 average damage) + ((AP /14) * 3.3)
MS Damage = ~1220 damage (average)
1220 / 6 = ~200 DPS
Decapitator. 92 dps, 2.6 speed.
Devastate Damage = (# of sunders * 35) + (50% * 239) + ((AP /14) * 2.4)
Devastate Damage = ~715 damage (average)
715 / 1.5 = ~477 DPS
This even out does BT at those AP levels. 2450 * 45% = ~1102, 1102 / 6 = ~184 DPS.
Now. Devastate does MORE threat than any other dps type ability we have. It has inherent threat. MS and BT do not.
The math for slam is a little more convoluted; Since it resets your swing timer, it also costs half the rage of MS. You should be able to use slam after every white hit, you should be able to throw a BT or MS out every so often as well in between slams, even a WW if you have excess rage.
Slam dps is calculated by adding a modifier to white dps, adding 0.5 time to each attack, but not changing the damage values assosiated with it. This means your dealing slightly less white dps. Slam is also NOT normalized.
--==--
Synapsis. You do NOT get flurry if you spec for devastate. Flurry is by far one of the greatest DPS boosting abilities warriors have. While you may level as prot, you will find that you lack MUCH of the abilities that allow you to 'burst' down mobs, sustain heavy dps, etc...
26 posts
Very interesting. Thanks for those calculations, Devious.
As to your conclusions, I do agree that without Flurry (25% dps) etc, Prot deals less noticably lower dps. But given the increased defenses, I find the trade suits me. While I can't burst-dps adds, I do find myself with surprisingly high health after the dust clears and the corpses are piled up.
As to your conclusions, I do agree that without Flurry (25% dps) etc, Prot deals less noticably lower dps. But given the increased defenses, I find the trade suits me. While I can't burst-dps adds, I do find myself with surprisingly high health after the dust clears and the corpses are piled up.
Quote:
In fact, after you get enough gear from heroic/raiding, you can even do heroics non prot. your only problem is threat generation, as non prot. prot has superior threat generation while being able to tank.
I loved that, let me get this straight you just said after you have gear you can tank (TANK) as arms/fury in heroics but the only issue you'll have is threat generation.
The whole point of tanking is to generate as much threat as possible.. threat generation.. threat generation issues = not tanking effectively.
I always thought tanking was just taking as much (All) of the incoming damage as possible.
But if you can't handle the damage (not geared enough), you shouldn't tank. Of course prot is gonna deal more threat than ANY other spec for warrior. They have defiance, and shield slam. But to tank heroics you don't need to be raid tanked out, with raid tank builds. It's mildly sufficient to say, you need your defense skill high enough per pull to negate incoming crits, and have a goodly stacked amount of avoidance. If you put on some DPS/hit gear, and strap on your tanking sword and board, spam HS Revenge TClap DShout etc..., none of those require actually being specced prot. In fact with the way that resilience works, if you put on some pvp gear and your specced fury, you get enrage procs often. Also flurry is a great TPS boost in defensive stance. They gave us a buff to TM, increasing threat from MS / BT in defensive stance. These things make it fully possible to tank heroics...
BUT ONLY IF YOU HAVE THE GEAR! Tanking is not just threat... Tanking is taking damage.
And I fudged something earlier;
Devastate Damage = (# of sunders * 35) + (50% * 239) + (50% * (AP /14) * 2.4))
I teh 4gotted;
2450 AP, Decrapitator...
505 / 1.5 = ~337 DPS, not the much higher number.
Edited, Nov 20th 2007 11:01am by devioususer
But if you can't handle the damage (not geared enough), you shouldn't tank. Of course prot is gonna deal more threat than ANY other spec for warrior. They have defiance, and shield slam. But to tank heroics you don't need to be raid tanked out, with raid tank builds. It's mildly sufficient to say, you need your defense skill high enough per pull to negate incoming crits, and have a goodly stacked amount of avoidance. If you put on some DPS/hit gear, and strap on your tanking sword and board, spam HS Revenge TClap DShout etc..., none of those require actually being specced prot. In fact with the way that resilience works, if you put on some pvp gear and your specced fury, you get enrage procs often. Also flurry is a great TPS boost in defensive stance. They gave us a buff to TM, increasing threat from MS / BT in defensive stance. These things make it fully possible to tank heroics...
BUT ONLY IF YOU HAVE THE GEAR! Tanking is not just threat... Tanking is taking damage.
And I fudged something earlier;
Devastate Damage = (# of sunders * 35) + (50% * 239) + (50% * (AP /14) * 2.4))
I teh 4gotted;
2450 AP, Decrapitator...
505 / 1.5 = ~337 DPS, not the much higher number.
Edited, Nov 20th 2007 11:01am by devioususer
Admittedly, with the new changes it may be viable to tank them, as you wont be having threat issues.
Threat generation = your taking the damage. They come hand in hand, without one you cant really have the other adequate.
Threat generation = your taking the damage. They come hand in hand, without one you cant really have the other adequate.
I guess my point specifically would be, if you can't take the damage, you can't tank. IE, you need avoidance AND hp AND mitigation to tank. Sure anyone can deal threat, but not everyone can take the damage. Taking the damage is the part of tank that is important. Because a dead tank is not a tank.
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